I’ve been idly considering this question a long time:
Am I an agnostic or am I an atheist?
For a long time – approximately since I discovered the term – I have called myself an agnostic. But the last couple of years, I have increasingly felt that agnostic is mostly a term that I used to avoid thinking it through and picking sides.
Spurred by an article given to me by my friend Rasmus, and discussions with Anna and my friends Joen and Kasper, I decided to think about it properly and stop being on the fence.
I have figured out I am not only an atheist, but an antitheist.
I have been for a long time, really. Calling myself an agnostic rather than an atheist or antitheist, has mostly been due to the fact, that “atheism” – to me – carries with it certain connotations that I can’t see myself subscribing to, and I didn’t know the term antitheist until Joen introduced me to it.
Some atheists I have talked to, completely rule out the possibility of any force that isn’t already known. That science has the answers to everything.
For example, that because the actual physical causes of why acupuncture works can not be proven by current science, then it is per definition hogwash. Empirical evidence is not good enough, if there is no directly determinable causality.
I think that mindset is wrong and in conflict with being a logically driven person. Since science is a developing field, it does not have the answer to everything. It might some day, but I think it’ll take a while to get there. And it might not even be possible for regular human beings to understand some of the questions and answers (as I once wrote about in article “Understanding Machines”).
But having thought about it the last few days, I realize that is mostly a problem that I need to overcome with myself, more than it’s something that actually makes it inaccurate that I am an atheist. Sticking a label on yourself will always give a wrong impression to a percentage of the people seeing it, for the simple reason that different people have different definitions of and connotations to those labels. That’s true whether you adopt “mac user”, “atheist” or “capitalist”.
So I am coming out as an antitheist.
Since there are several different explanations for that label, I will elaborate.
I don’t believe there is a god, in the sense that there is no consciousness (even an omniscient one) guiding the happenings of the universe.
This is a belief I hold because of my current understanding of the world, and unlike religion it’s not based on faith, in that it will change if my understanding of the world changes. For example if something proves me wrong. It’s based on what I find is the most probable explanation, considering how well it fits with what I find to be the axioms of nature or of the human condition.
For clarification, I define “faith” in this context as “to believe something without proof or in spite of proof”.
So, if the christian God showed up at my doorstep and showed me how he could do anything he wanted, my perception of what is possible and not would change, and I would change my stance.
Granted, my reeling mind would probably first consider scenarios that I would find to be far more likely in the context of all my current knowledge; that I had accidentally ingested large amounts of a psychoactive substance, that I was dreaming, delusional or insane. Or someone hooked me up to one hell of a Virtual Reality environment.
But after having enough proof to reject those explanations, I would admit I was wrong and decide that there was indeed a god.
Of course, my knack for probabilities tells me that this is a very unlikely scenario.
And christians will tell me, that this isn’t how God operates, because without faith he is nothing (which in my eyes logically amounts to “if you don’t believe in him, he doesn’t exist”, which in turn is “he’s a figment of your imagination”).
But that’s not all. That’s just the atheism part.
Being an antitheist is more than just not personally believing in deities.
It’s also believing that faith is ultimately a bad thing for society.
Let me explain why.
Here are a few statements I find to be self evident truths:
- Human beings are animals
- The greatest differentiator between humans and other species is our intelligence
- Human adaptability (intelligence) is the single most important factor in our success as a species
- The purpose of human life in general is that of all other life: Survival as a species
- The human individual is motivated to survive because that generally is a successful strategy towards surviving as a species
I find that any religious doctrine I know of can be explained in terms of these statements.
I started elaborating on this, but realized that this would be an article in itself.
Based on the survival parameter, I find that the human species is currently a very promising species. Not because we are the most numerous or the most hardy, but because we are far better at predicting problems and planning our way out of them, and by far the most adaptable.
The amazing flexibility of the human brain is what has carried us this far.
And this is what I find problematic with faith:
Believing doctrine blindly, means willingly giving up the most important property of human existence to some degree.
You disallow yourself from questioning and considering without restraint huge parts of the human condition. You purposefully make your mind inflexible on certain areas. You close the book on further discussion and examination.
If it had no practical implications beyond how people choose to think, I would be fine as an atheist.
But the problem is, that religion is so deeply seeded in our societies that even the least religious countries I know of still teach their children that even if you don’t believe religious doctrine and see obvious logical flaws with it, you can not discuss these things because you have to respect peoples faith.
This is something I disagree with and have disagreed with for quite some years now.
I think it is fundamentally wrong that our so-called secular societies feel that they have to pussyfoot around questions of faith. That special provisions and allowances need to be made for religion.
One of the problems, I find, is the arbitrary distinction of what is religion and what is just a silly notion.
As far as I can tell, it seems to be a vague distinction having to do with numbers and age.
If I have the notion that I must be allowed to walk around with a hockey mask and a ceremonial chain saw, even when I go the bank, I would be considered a nut. I would be laughed at, and maybe even put in jail.
If I believed that there is an interstellar army right behind the sun, which is just waiting for the trillionth cheeseburger to be eaten before they attack the earth, I would probably be medicated.
Yet, if we were 50 million people who had been believing it for 200 years, we would be tax exempt and many people would believe it was wrong to openly mock us.
I think that is a strange and arbitrary thing.
Just because many people believe something to be right, it doesn’t make it right. People who can prove something else shouldn’t be afraid to let these people know what is more likely, due to some residual belief in the taboos of christianity.
Just because millions of people think that humans only use 10% of our brains or that throwing rice at a wedding harms birds, doesn’t make them true.
Just because the entire world believed that the universe revolved around the Earth, doesn’t mean Copernicus should politely have shut his trap.
It freezes progress to not question things.
The odd thing is, that most religious people who I have talked to, seem to think that even their omnipotent God is subject to axioms of logic.
For example, when asked why God doesn’t just make humans believe him, if he is in fact real and omnipotent, I usually get the traditional answer of how God is nothing without faith, and we have to love him of our own free will to be believers.
But this follows logic. If he is truly omnipotent, he should be able to break any and all rules. He should be able to make us believe in him with force, yet it would be of our own free will. That’s illogical, but omnipotence should also make it possible to make 0 equal 5 and the square root of 2 to be 90. Without it being illogical. No rules should apply. But apparently they do. At least according to some of the religious people who have endured conversing with me.
God thus seems to have to follow the same rules of logic that are the foundations of science, which has shown his existence to be so very, very improbable by offering up far more likely explanations for what used to be supporting evidence of his existence.
If you adhere to principles of logic, science is making it ever harder to hide god anywhere.
If we want to be logical and still stick to the concept of god, we might finally conclude that god is the basic natural forces governing the interaction of everything. That is somewhat compatible with the the bible in a metaphorical sense.
God could be that abstract principle that turns simple reiterative equations into beautiful fractals. But then the pursuit of science is the pursuit of understanding God, and the notion that any religion should stand in the way of anything science wants to do becomes absurd. When examined logically, that is.
One shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking I disagree with the general moral codex of most religions.
I find that religions are usually quite decent systems of moral principles that were likely initially designed to make our societies run smoother.
But why mix the supernatural into that? Rules for a functioning society is a fine reason for existence in itself. But why not call it a philosophy or set of principles, much like political affiliation or laws are?
It’s also important to understand, that I don’t feel I can’t be friends with people who are non-atheists.
My mom believes in god, and I like my mom. It’s just that I disagree with the fact that they have faith in irrational things. If they, or whoever, can live with the fact that I disagree with that, I am fine with it also.
I have lots of friends who think I am a weirdo for being vegetarian, and I have friends who smoke or are socialists.
Even though those are pretty basic things to disagree about, I find we are very good friends anyway.
To coexist peacefully, I believe that it’s good to have a common set of ground rules that we can agree upon.
So I agree with one of the basic principles of religion there. I just think it should be an adaptable and constantly challenged set of axioms, rather than a collection set in concrete by a single person or committee many years ago, and unchallenged due to doctrine or tradition.
A good way to arrive at things that work seems to be to try many different permutations to what you have and let the things that work better prevail, then do it all over again. Works for evolution. For intelligence. It is also a way of optimizing methods for various areas of science called Genetic Algorithms.
I find this is exactly what science does. There is probably not an area of science that is not under constant scrutiny.
Anyone is welcome to challenge any area of science. There are no holy areas of “you can’t question this”. The more fundamental the knowledge you challenge is, the more clearly you have to prove it though. But ultimately it’s a meritocracy – if you can prove beyond doubt that the sun is made of pizza, most scientists will sooner or later come around. If not, they are bad scientists.
I find that to be much more solid and workable foundation for a globally healthy coexistence in the long run, and in my eyes faith precludes that.
That’s why I am an antitheist.