Stand up for what you don't believe in!

So, it's 'A' Week on Facebook, and as everybody knows, nothing truly happens unless it happens on Facebook.

Anyone that really knows me, undoubtedly knows that I am an atheist, and is probably peripherally aware that I take a keen interest in culture, identity and ideology, especially as regards religion and religious thought (not to mention considering the philosophy of theistic beliefs, and metaphysics and ethics which are most commonly espoused as part of religious belief). Consequently, I've decided to acknowledge 'A' Week by detailing why I am an atheist. Not exhaustively, of course, none of us have the time or will to endure that!

Why I am an atheist:
I haven't found evidence of the existence of God
I cannot trust my reasons for wanting God to exist
I do not need God to exist for my life to be good
Post-Script - Why do I have to prove it?

I have a few issues with the question "Why are you an atheist?", and these will be dealt with in a post-script essay. Leaving that aside, I can turn to considering my beliefs, which is useful even if I don't bear the burden of proof. After all, I wasn't asking whether or not I'm right, but rather why I myself am an atheist, which falls in the realm of value-judgement.

Why I do not believe in the existence of God:

First Point - Nothing has yet convinced me to

Not for want of trying!

As a kid I attended church groups, bible classes and Boy's Brigade (like Scouts but without the badass survivalist element). God's existence was granted uncritically in all these activities. But I don't believe in God. If any of that was supposed to convince me that God exists, something went wrong.

As an adult, I'm interested in the arguments for the existence of God, and thus far I remain unconvinced that God exists. I grant that God could exist, but I do not grant that God does exist. I cannot responsibly make that claim as I cannot prove it; even if I believed it and even if the belief panned out to be true, I cannot justify it therefore I do not know it.

The Ontological argument that God exists by definition is considered fairly dodgy, insofar as honest reasoning goes (despite being able to be explained to the tune of Waltzing Matilda, or perhaps because it can be explained to the tune of that famous Aussie epic... you know they're all descended from convicts, can't trust 'em!).The argument goes that basically, God is defined as being "that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and if we consider something that is absolutely perfect in every way, yet lacks existence, then we can think of something greater simply by adding 'existence' to the mix. Therefore God, being that than which nothing greater can be conceived, necessarily exists. Pretty dodgy, right? Particularly because it assumes that 'existence' is an attribute that something may either possess, or lack. The problem is that means there exists things which do not exist. This all gets extremely messy, so look it up on Wikipedia, or write a comment below this article!

Cosmological and Teleological arguments have a bit more grounding in demonstrable fact and rely much less on logical trickery. However, where they fall down is transitioning from the uncertainty of existence itself to certainty in the existence of God: "Hey, isn't it amazing that the universe is so perfectly balanced to allow life, and that there's a universe in the first place! Ipso facto; God". Needless to say, this leap of faith is unconvincing. You'd think that Darwin would've put paid to Teleological arguments by showing that the appearance of design needs no designer, but we have modern day Paleys arguing for design in the Hot New Science (in Paley's day, biology/genetics was de rigueur, whereas today astrophysics gets all the girls... just ask Neil deGrasse Tyson, that magnificent hunk of intellect! What with his dreamy bow-ties and deep appreciation for the responsible pursuit of knowledge... oh dear, I find myself in the throes of a mancrush). The arguments run that the universe is so finely balanced that there must be some controlling force, some designer, to set it as such (in the Teleological case), or that the universe requires a first cause to have created it (Cosmological). Even if we are to grant these considerations, and there's a lot to be said for and against these arguments (boy is there ever!), it is a leap to say the least, to claim that these forces must be some divine personal agent! I suspect that this is so attractive because we spend so much of our lives thinking empathetically, in terms of propositional attitudes, that we see intentionality where there is none. Just like the humble puddle that marvels at how the pothole it occupies is perfectly suited to fit it, and how fortunate it is that God has created a pothole to so perfectly suit this humble , unworthy god-fearing puddle.


Second Point - I'm suspicious of my own desires and thoughts
In other words, I'm sceptical.

I personally believe that we should be most vigilant in regards to the things we most want to be true, in order to counter personal bias.
As such, I'm naturally suspicious of the claims of religion. Who doesn't want more than some 80 odd years to live? What's not to love about some divine cosmic agent ensuring that justice will always be served? (convenient how we only tend to think about justice when we feel wronged, all those times fortune smiles on us to the cost of others tend to get overlooked...) And who wouldn't want the power to alter reality by closing your eyes and asking it to change? Yeah, that cancer you don't really like? Gone, just like that. Where do I sign up? But, I'm suspicious of the Just World Fallacy clause that God ensures that justice will be served, we have no proof of an afterlife (or of souls, fun topic), and prayer seems completely useless if God really does have a plan (if there's a pre-destined plan then why would God change it if you ask Him to?). The philosophical Masters of Suspicion make a few good points about the psychology of religion: Freud explains God as a comforting universal Father figure that will never abandon us (this is amusingly flipped in Fight Club), Marx explains God as our idealized projection of Humanity, and Nietzsche argues religion itself was originally a tool of passive resistance to overthrow the order of more honest tyrants, tricking them into submission. It's not perfect, but it is interesting to consider!

Consider also that our brains are highly developed and VERY good at tricking us. We have elevated pattern recognition to art, literally! As such, we tend to see significance where there is none, patterns that do not actually exist, and even extend intentionality to inanimate objects (like that bastard of a chair that keeps hurting my little toe!). We think of five dice showing '6' as more significant and rarer than five dice showing '1, 2, 2, 4, 6' (unless you're playing Yahtzee with my sister, that cheat), where there's statistically no difference whatsoever between the two throws, in the same way we see combinations of events as more significant. We think in terms of cause and effect, linking unrelated events, seeing intentionality in things/events that lack agency, and think anthropomorphically, identifying human attributes in non-human things. Keep this in mind when considering the concept of God's divine will, where it's claimed that God has a plan that is partially explicable, we can see his will and reason in certain combinations of events... yet when this consistency used to prove God's existence runs afoul of inconsistency, we're told that God's will is mysterious and unknowable... is it not more reasonable to assume that we are fallible and are projecting a connection, a pattern, on events that are in fact distinct? Likewise, we readily see God's will in our surviving the earthquake, yet peculiarly not in sending the life-threatening earthquake to begin with.

Third Point - I don't need God
Here's the big point about 'A' Week: It's not about proving that God doesn't exist, theists are perfectly entitled to their beliefs (and beliefs espoused in the public sphere can be debated on their merits in a charitable and fair-minded spirit). It's about the belief that it's okay to be an atheist (agnostic or otherwise). This section deals with why I'm perfectly comfortable, perfectly happy, to be an atheist.
I don't need God to be a good person, nor do I need God in order to appreciate a fulfilling life.

Ethics: Turn to the letters page of your local/national newspaper of choice, and you'll no doubt see, from time to time, the claim that your nation was founded on Christian values. God knows Garth George bangs on about it in the New Zealand Herald. If our history is anything to go by, our nation was founded particularly on those Christian values of 'Imperialism' and 'failure to live up to the contractual obligations of our founding document', but I suspect these aren't the values the letter writers wish to highlight...
The thing is, just because Christians espouse these values, does not mean they are Christian values. Not exclusively, not as originating with Christianity. Virtue ethics has been around in Western thought since the 4th century BCE, consideration of what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' has existed for as long as there has been social interaction, and the principles of charity/compassion/etc. have been part of social thought long before the Romans decided to violently suppress an upstart Jewish cult of personality. Concepts of virtue exist regardless of whether or not Christianity exists, you do not need God to be compassionate/charitable/honest/trustworthy/hard-working/anything else Christians consider 'good'.
Is it possible to be moral or ethical without God? Consider this for a minute: If virtue loses its value without God, was it really virtue that held value in the first place? If virtue lacks value without God, virtue was worthless to begin with, in which case the argument that we need God for the sake of having a virtuous society is bunk, as there is no innate worth in a virtuous society. Any system that loses its ethical force with the loss of its divine agent, is not an ethical system.
I can be good, because ethical virtue exists independently of God.

A life worth living: Here's where I tend to get passionate, because I cannot fathom living as if this life is merely a test, a dummy run, something to be endured for the sake of some mysterious afterlife. How can this life be meaningful or valuable if it is to serve only as a vale of tears for the sole purpose of creating a robust soul?
There are people who disparage the world we live in. Who insist that beauty can only be found in a Kincaid Painting life with what someone awesome described to me as 'Nordic Jesus' teaching kids to feed birds, where invisible angels are the only thing that make the world beautiful, that sunsets are beautiful only because God made them, where a garden cannot be enchanting if there are no fairies at the bottom of it. I know this to be true, I've seen enough poorly animated emails to burn that bullshit shimmering snowfall permanently into the back of my skull! I cannot see the world this way, I cannot say a pohutukawa tree is beautiful only because God made it; it is beautiful because I can see beauty in it! My world is meaningful and precious without God, without an afterlife, I could not possibly neglect this unshakable fact of my existence that it is a very, very good thing to be alive in a world of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, meaning and whimsy and all.
Life is beautiful. The world is beautiful. Even the ugly bits, especially the imperfect bits, who could love a perfect world? To be alive, to exist, is an immeasurable blessing simply because it is so improbable, fleeting and fragile. Life is that much more precious knowing that I will die, that others die, and believing that is the end. What matters is not what comes after, but what we do while we're here.

"I believe the cost of life is Death and we will all pay that in full. Everything else should be a gift. We paid the cover charge of life, we were born."

-Bill Hicks, February 1988

Happy 'A' Week, and if you're so inclined, God bless you. I will not judge you the poorer for it =)





P.S.

"So why are you an atheist?" - The nature of the question

Warning: This simply deals with the question, and is unnecessary to read. Feel free to ignore!

Before I give an answer, it might pay to examine the question, lest we run the risk of dedicating lifetimes to the pursuit of an answer that turns out to be something as meaningless as 42 without the benefit of a precise and comprehensive question that would render the answer explicable. I guess in that case we could recoup our losses by releasing an autobiographical novel about the whole ordeal, or at least the thrilling climax where we obtain the final question with a flashback about how the answer itself was obtained. Perhaps with a spin-off or two, maybe a movie. But I'm sure you'll agree this is hardly the most efficient and direct way to go about things!

For convenience, I'll operate on the assumption that we're dealing with Abrahamic Monotheism as the counterpoint to Atheism, as that's what most of us will be most familiar with. It also tidies up my next point by virtue of giving me one name to work with:
There's two general ways to look at the question "Why are you an atheist?", which are essentially "Why do you not believe in the existence of God", the approach where the existence of God is assumed, and "Why have you developed no theistic beliefs?", that does not claim any existence of God, or to put it another way, asks only about the presence or lack of beliefs without dealing with the content of such beliefs.

"Why do you not believe in God" posits the existence of a God to disbelieve in. This becomes problematic if we elaborate slightly to ask "Why do you believe God does not exist?", which isn't strictly the same question but has enough general equivalence to be commonly taken as the same thing. In this case the question suggests there is a God, that the target of the question believes does not exist, and as such is somewhat of a leading question. This is a no-no in critical thought, as it has to grant the counter-point or the content of it (that there is a God) in order to answer or respond to it. It also assumes, to a degree, that belief in God is natural, the baseline assumption from which to operate.

The other way of seeing it, to ask why one has not developed theistic beliefs, says nothing about the content of said beliefs, but does assume that believers arrive at their beliefs rather than being born with them. This may be controversial to believers, I'm certain at least some denominations hold that belief in God is innate and that it is merely a failing or a wilful rebellion that forces one to claim disbelief, but I don't think this really holds true of believers. If theistic beliefs were innate (and inerrant, oh-ho!), surely there would be no need for instruction, you would not have to teach children about God, religion, etc. There are counterpoints to this argument of course, but for the sake of brevity I'll assume that people begin from a tabula rasa state, with little more than the building block essentials of a Kantian manifold of sensations from which to construct their conscious minds (I'm name-dropping the Transcendental Aesthetic to show how smart I am, and to justify having sat through the impenetrable density of Immanuel Kant's meticulous drudgery).

Shall we look at the Burden of Proof? If so "Why do you not believe in God/Why are you an atheist?" is the wrong question to ask, as it makes the claim that there is a God which must be disproven, where God is yet to be proven. This isn't merely making others do my work for me, it's a simple operating principle of critical thought: It is harder to exhaustively disprove something than it is to prove something, therefore the burden of proof rests upon the positive claim until such time as it has reasonable grounds for belief, in which case the burden of proof is discharged to the counter-claim. Look at it this way: Have you ever read a Where's Wally book? ("Where's Waldo" in its original American, they translated it into English for us here in NZ, I shall use 'Waldo' henceforth) Taking any given picture, one could claim "This picture contains Waldo", or "This picture does NOT contain Waldo". Now, to prove the picture contains Waldo, you need only point at Waldo, which is easy enough to do once you know where he is. To prove the picture does not contain Waldo, you must meticulously, laboriously and exhaustively point to every single part of the picture where Waldo could conceivably be, every possible point of evidence, and show conclusively and comprehensively that he is not present at any such position. I know finding Waldo is hard sometimes, because he's a jerk (and probably a hipster) who likes to hang out with others dressed almost identically to himself, but the key point to recall here is that once you find Waldo, you can stop looking! In order to prove he doesn't exist, you MUST look EVERYWHERE.

The same thing applies to God. Conceivably, it should be easier to prove the existence of God than it is to exhaustively disprove the existence of God, and as such the burden of proof is on those claiming the existence of God. This is why I assume the 'lectures' organised by the Christian group StudentLife at the University of Auckland, that begin by asking "Has science disproved the existence of God?", are complete bullshit. Simply because they don't even understand the question they're trying to answer. This is why atheists who can articulate their position clearly usually do so not by saying God 'does not exist/cannot exist', but rather by claiming 'there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that God exists'

Putting this back into the original context: The question shouldn't be "Why do atheists not believe in God" but rather "Why shouldn't atheists not believe in God?"