Opinion Time: Atheism and Religion

I suppose this could also have been titled "A Plague On Both Your Houses"* since I'm going to be talking about why I believe atheism today is misguided, to put it lightly, while also discussing why I believe religion is wrong. I will get this out of the way and say that I am an atheist, but this post is going to be very much me sympathetic to where religion stands today. So this is a blog post, arguing for religion from an atheistic perspective, thus satisfying nobody. Ah well, screw it, it's my blog.

Speaking of which, I would usually apologise about not posting enough, but it's my blog and I haven't had much to say that I either can't tweet about (check the sidebar for my exciting Twitter feed!) or I feel needs to be said, if that makes sense. There's been a lot going on in my life recently, not much of which necessitates a post. So please accept this perfunctory acknowledgement of not posting in a while and get back to the actual thing I'm supposed to be talking about.

So what am I going to be talking about in this post? Well, essentially I'll be discussing where I believe religion came from, why I believe it has several positive social aspects in contrast to the seemingly universal negativity*, mentioning some problems I have with religion today, as well as talking about the problem with atheism on the internet today. I will also be providing links to people talking about what I'm talking about who know much more about this sort of thing than I. Take what I'm saying, and work from there.

Also, why am I talking about this? Why am I adding another drop of opinion into the great, corrosive sea known as religious debate? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that I haven't seen this sort of argument spoken much. Essentially, I think my opinion is different enough that it won't be a tired repeating of old arguments. The second, and the reason I'm doing this now, is that I've been having several thoughts about this recently, and talking to some of my more religious friends about this in an attempt to understand religion. It's worked to a degree, but, I still feel like I don't understand enough, and I find writing stuff down helps figure it out in my head. So here I am.

Now, enough of introduction. On to my actual points!

DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant to be bashing of either atheism or religion, only my personal opinion on both. If anyone is showing this to you in order to convince you that your beliefs are bad and you should feel bad, then they are in the wrong. If they are showing this in order to show you a different opinion on the matter, then, well, I support that. Furthermore, I am not and do not claim to be an expert in these matters and I am fully open to being proven wrong in these matters.

Let's start from Point 1: Where religion comes from. I want you to imagine a humanity thousands of years in the past, when hunter-gatherers ruled the plains and religion did not exist (many of you may already be saying "But my religion always existed!" While I can respect that, please just imagine it didn't for a second.). Now, imagine some especially intelligent hunter-gatherer - we'll call this person HG for readability's sake - looks at the world and goes "Where did this all come from?"

It's not an unreasonable assumption for HG to make that since humanity can create things, that the world itself was created - essentially the watchmaker argument. As well, HG looks at the world, and seeing that things seem to be designed for him in it. So HG comes to the conclusion that the world was designed by some intelligent, powerful creator (or creators) for humanity. Please note already that both evolution and intelligent design make the claim that the world seems to be designed for people - intelligent design claims that it was, whereas evolution claims that humans evolved to suit their environment.

Now HG has an explanation for why everything came to be. But, now he/she asks, why are there morals? Why is society (even some primitive pre-society that HG exists in) the way it is? Now, HG can explain this like so: this creator made it that way. Why? We don't have to know why. It's clear that there is some intelligent, powerful creator made it that way, and who are we to question such a being's plan? I will say, even as an atheist, that if I believed such a being exists, I would bow to their superior moral judgement - anyone who created the universe clearly has much more claim to, well, anything, than I do.

So now we have the birth of religion. But why does it flourish? Well, say HG takes this idea to his/her society. It's a captivating idea that wins over the people of HG's tribe - it just makes sense. So now we have some tribe united by an idea - a more cohesive tribe, in other words, whose individual members have a reason, or at least more of a reason, to work together. And these tribes have an edge over tribes that don't have this reason to band together. Jonathan Haidt has an excellent talk about this, where he mentions how these groups of entities who work together for a common interest just outcompete individuals.

 

The conclusion for Part 1: In a world where no religion exists, religion can quickly evolve, simply because it explains things about the world and lends itself to a cohesive society, which can outcompete other societies and spread naturally. As an atheist, I would argue that this is a better explanation for religions to exist than the idea that a deity created it, simply because it does not invoke the existence of a deity to explain something - an Occam's razor approach. The existence of a deity is not necessary to explain anything, so it is excluded from the the explanation.

Some rebuttals to this: you may be saying, "But why was the universe created? Surely we require a deity to explain this?" Well, not really, no. While we are far from a scientific consensus*, there are a few hypotheses (not theories!*) kicking around. The Hartle-Hawking state is a proposal where there is no real beginning to the universe since there cannot exist something "before time", while in string theory, there's a proposal wherein the universe is one of many, which solves the problem of both creation of the universe and why it seems fine-tuned for life (mouseover these words* for my ideas on that), which Brian Greene explains so well here. Now, while I'm not qualified to claim either of these are true, what I can say is that these show that the creation of the universe is not something science can't explain, it's something science hasn't explained well enough yet.

Now, let's move on to part 2: the benefits of religion. Let me start off with the big guns: it has been shown that a society with some notion of punishment to those who go against the will of the whole is better off than a society without that. By better off, what do I mean? I mean that the individuals in a society are better off if defectors from the will of the society are punished to some degree. Jonathan Haidt (mentioned for the second time in this blog, for those keeping track) has a very thought-provoking and interesting talk which I recommend you all watch where he goes into this idea (for those with access to the ability to see Nature papers, the relevant article may be found here). If we think about religion as this sort of process, where there is some desirable state to be achieved and defectors are punished somehow - with things like tangible punishments such as corporal punishment or an ultimate religious punishment such as a Hell - then we see that a religious society is beneficial for its members.

This is not to say that a non-religious society is necessarily worse off, but rather an anarchic society will be worse off than a religious one, simply by the fact that a religious society punishes defectors. An altruistic society needs some way to punish those who go against it or it becomes worse off. That's the bottom line. Religion is also great for a sense of community and harmony for its followers - just by the fact that it is a group, and these followers share a common interest. And, honestly, if I have to start bringing up people who have used their religion for good, I'm going to be here all day.

 

A common attack against religion is that it can be used to start wars. While I can't deny this completely, I can argue the fact that given two groups with separate ideologies, there is a chance that these groups will be belligerent, regardless of religion - take, for example, World War II, where of all the main Allies and Axis, only Japan was not a historically Christian country (yes, I'm aware the Soviets were officially atheist. But, interestingly enough, when the Nazis attacked the Soviets in 1941, the Soviets enlisted the Russian Orthodox Church to increase patriotism.). On the other hand though, there's evidence to support that warfare among groups is less murderous than warfare amongst individuals - Steven Pinker discusses this in his talk.

 

Another common attack against religion is it stems scientific progress. While I also can't deny this completely either, what with the whole anti-evolution bent in places like the Bible Belt in America, as well as having to mention that I have not done much research on this matter, I can leave this article here discussing how the pursuit of science isn't just compatible, but encouraged in the religion of Islam.
 

The conclusion for Part 2: Religion is, by and large, a good thing for a society. It provides the means for an altrustic society to flourish for the good of its members, and its flaws can arguably be reduced to its status as a group of humans who, by their nature, are antagonistic to other groups, and even this flaw is mitigated by the fact that these humans are in a group.

Now, the third and final part: the problem with atheism. I'll come right out and say it - those who believe fervently in a god not existing, whose lives revolve around the fact that a god doesn't exist, don't really get atheism. Atheism is a lack of belief - it's often said that atheism is a religion in the same sense that not stamp collecting is a hobby.

 

I'm going to do something I shouldn't here and link you something I don't like just for this purpose: r/atheism. It's the subreddit where virtual people sit around bagging out religion, mocking its followers for being ignorant, and cry out that they are persecuted for their beliefs even though they are one of the biggest groups on one of the biggest sites on the net. Now I could point out the hypocrisy of those of r/atheism crying out that they are persecuted while at the same time doing exactly that to religious people, but I have something much more important to say: r/atheism shouldn't exist. Let me put this in bold print: r/atheism shouldn't exist. Now, r/atheism claims that "All topics related to atheism, agnosticism and secular living are welcome here." But the phrase "topics related to atheism" is almost a contradiction in terms - imagine a group of people who all got together to talk about not stamp collecting. Do you notice how the only way such a group can be cohesive is to talk about how bad stamp collecting is? How everything not related to stamp collecting is so huge as to not be something that a group can be based around? Do you notice how to talking about atheism is the same way as talking about not stamp collecting?

This is my problem with atheism on the internet - the very fact that it's a topic is a concern. Atheism on the internet is more antitheism than atheism, more anti-religious than just not religious. Atheism itself is not something a group can align itself around without resorting to antitheism of some kind.

 

OK, so I've just blown through over 2000 words. Hopefully you got something from this wall of text rant about religion and atheism in today's society. And if not, well, you just read over 2000 words on something you didn't get anything from. Congratulations. I hope I can post more soon, but if not... well, that just means I had nothing of interest to say that was long enough. If you want more regular insights into my exciting life, Twitter exists. Anyway. Thanks for reading!

AB