This is an examination of the most obvious ways in which I consider religion to have failed us. The title is Latin for “Summary against Theology.” Let’s dive right into it, shall we?
You may currently believe in the idea of a god in order to keep that marvelous insurance policy called the afterlife. It’s what keeps you from crying your eyes out when your beloved parents/child/friend/hamster has died. You get to soothe your fears in the restorative pool of faith. Faith that you’ll see them again, someday. And even better, faith that the same inconceivable fate won’t happen to you.
Or at least that’s how it used to be for me. And why I am still reluctant to relax my grip from the last tufts of belief still growing on the rim of that bottomless pit called atheism.
The tufts — moments when I still find myself indulging in the fantasy of an eternal afterlife — are some rather pathetic straws. They include the wish that the reduction of entropy in the universe that is due to my brain will somehow be perpetuated after I die. Could we — our life experiences — get absorbed into some kind of cosmic entropy field that we don’t know about yet?
Or here’s another fantasy straw to grasp: no one knows why some blobs of energy voluntarily choose to convert themselves from photons into matter. These particles with mass —atoms — have existed ever since, some of them even now making up your flesh & blood, the very neurons you’re using to read this sentence. Someone, some law or physics or deity or whatever you call it, afflicted the perfect energy of photons. Converted it from massless, agentless angels that used to exist outside of time and turned them into the cold, plodding lumps — blobs of energy frozen into electrons and quarks, slowed down, condemned to live out of Eden-on-the-light-cone.
Maybe the temporary assemblies of atoms that make us up were assembled by the same supernatural force that moulded each of our atoms from photons? Could the proof of eternal life be built into us through the very atoms of our bodies?
Here’s a third wishful-thinking-for-atheists delusion: the creation of the first living cell on earth. Evolutionary biologists assume that if you shine cosmic rays on a whole planet full of dissolved minerals, you’ll eventually form amino acids and then from there to the first living organism. But this is still unsubstantiated. It’s never been reproduced in a laboratory. What if it couldn’t happen spontaneously? There are something like forty-two million molecules in the simplest cell, and the complexity required to manufacture a single strand of DNA is mind-boggling. What if the only way to form a structure of this complexity is… from another living cell?
Wouldn’t that imply — or at least open as a possibility — that a living organism has to be made by some unknown force, some mysterious power we can’t track, or even explain? In which case there’s no telling what happens to living organisms after they die.
Well, shoot, this was supposed to be a chapter on the fallacy of believing in a god just to avoid the unpleasantness of vanishing after we die. But instead I’ve given three arguments as to why that may be wrong.
I just thought of another argument against nihilism: you are not a unitary being, a single entity. You are an entire ecology of beings. Not only the human cells in your body, but also the microorganisms that you play host to. You are only super-organism that they all combine to form, in opposition to the universe’s dreary march toward increasing entropy. You won’t continue to exist as a unitary being after your consciousness ends, but even if your body is cremated and every single living cell that once inhabited you has been incinerated, the very atoms that made you up still go their merry way and move on to their next role in the super-super-organism we call Earth.
There, don’t you feel better now?
Even with such wishful considerations aside, in my more sanguine moments, I have found that it is possible to reconcile oneself to the bleakness of inevitable non-existence. For one thing, we had no ability to feel bad about the time before we existed, or to experience it in any way. Our own private universe begins with our earliest memories, and will end as we think our last thought. So why should we have a problem with the time after we die?
I suppose Hindus, Buddhists and other reincarnationists might think they dodge that finite-existence bullet, if they believe they’ve always existed. But that belief is still bounded, because even Hindus can’t go back before the Big Bang. There’s nothing prior to have evolved from.
Here’s a mathematical perspective on the same point, for any who are so inclined: space-time is a coordinate system, right? It’s just the four-space volume that we live in. A length by width by height volume, like an ice cube, plus a time dimension — like a movie of an ice cube melting. So the argument is that it makes no more sense to fret about the time where you don’t exist — before and after the movie of the ice cube — than to worry about space coordinates where you don’t exist — like to the left or right of the icecube. You’ve always been cool with the fact that your existence has a finite space window. So why freak out over the finite time window?
Imagine Hermione Granger and her time turner have apparated above the surface of the Earth. To her, it looks like you exist on the two-dimensional surface of the earth, and she can observe the one-dimensional world path you travel along. Alternatively, with her time-turner she can float outside of time, and view your one-dimensional timeline you travel along. She can play the movie of the melting ice cube that is you. The same way you can re-watch a movie — say, Groundhog Day. It doesn’t make any more sense to her to talk about you not existing than it does to say that Groundhog Day no longer exists after the movie is over. As a four-dimensional being, she can always return to the movie of you and watch you again.
Let’s ask the major religions:
Jeudeo-Christiano-Islam: some god created us because he was lonely, and/or bored. The problem is that he condemns most of us to hell. For eternity. Which would make him the worst mass-murderer in history, if you think about it, because at least Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler all let their victims in peace after they killed them.
Buddhism: everything always existed. This one does have a logical problem: it’s in contradiction with the Big Bang Theory.
Hindus: the world is eternal, going through phases of creation and annihilation, but as to “why”… well, that’s just the way it always was.
Sikhism: we are all just part of Waheguru. Why are we here? Ask the Hindus.
Science: Pass. “Why” is just one of the several fundamental questions that physics still can’t answer. Here are some others. They illustrate the hopelessness of looking for the whys and wherefores from science:
There are 4,200 religions practiced in the world today. And for some reason, all religious people write off 4,199 of them. Atheists are only microscopically different — we write off 4,200.
Most theists believe in the deity preferred by their culture. Almost nobody chooses freely. What does that tell you about the likelihood that any of them are right?
Also damning: all major religions date back to the dawn of man. They are each merely the latest species of an evolution of credos that go back to the pregnant/ithyphallic stone figures of the Neanderthals. Much of the Old Testament is found in earlier religions like Zoroastrianism. If the Old Testament is supposed to be the Word of the One True God, it’s hard to imagine why he ended up copying so much from the Preceding False Gods.
Let’s look at the claims made by each religion’s holy texts. What kind of evidence did they cite? Does a rock that looks like it used to be a gorgon still exist? If so, then that’s one point in Zeus’ favor.
The Torah/Old Testament: The number of errors coded into it are astounding. Guesses range from a minimum of 42 to a pretty big number like 50,000. So if you use the verisimilitude of a religion’s scriptures as a basis for believing versus rejecting, then the Judeo-Christian religions are actually the easiest of all of them to reject on the basis of inaccuracies.
Start with the beginning of the OT, Genesis. Without exception, every one of these infamous claims has been definitively disproved by science:
In addition to scientific inaccuracies, there’s plenty of other logical inconsistencies in the OT, including geographic, historical, and moral errors. There’s rivers in the wrong place, there are events that happened at the wrong time, there are idiotic rules like don’t eat shellfish or don’t wear clothing of mixed fibres, there are indefensible immoral acts urged (kill those who worship the wrong god) & there are indefensible acts of genocide on the innocent (the flood, the plagues).
The Christ Myth: Lots of problems in the New Testament, too.
The Quran: Disclaimer: I never read the Quran, so it would be presumptive of me to state anything from first-hand knowledge. But these are the scientific inaccuracies that have been written about:
Arya Veda: For some reason, this is harder to pin down than research into scientific errors in the Bible. But one guy has made a list of its errors, including an Earth-centric doctrine, heaven supported with scaffolding, etc.
Tibetan Buddhism, etc.: I think we’re all losing interest. If you aren’t, you’re on your own to consider if the Earth is supported by an infinite pile of turtles, or the five kotoamatsukami, etc.
Yes, it would be great if there were some kind of cosmic umpire out there. But for all the deferred justice this wish seems to be responsible for, we should consider if it is in fact actually fostering the opposite. This may be the invention of some evil rich dude from antiquity: “Hey, I know you’re mad because I’m hogging up all the grain and enslaving your loved ones. But the good news is you don’t need to murder me, because after we’re all dead I will burn in hell while you all get to go to heaven.”
I have a fundamentalist neighbor who cited as proof of god a mysterious increase in his checking account balance. I guess the Holy Trinity now does ACH.
My college’s football coach prays to Jesus before every game. If Jesus has a hand in the point spread, such a side business might help build up the capital to fund his direct-deposit program.
It’s hard not to mock these “signs from heaven.” Obviously, most are just coincidences, wishful thinking, yada yada, swamp gas.
What’s so disgusting about this mentality is that if ninety Sikhs were incinerated in a suicide bombing last week, that only means, to my fundamentalist neighbor, that the universe didn’t think they were as special as he is.
What may be more difficult to reject are the more personal, less trumpeted miracles. We’ve all heard stories about them: the lady who is depressed, buys a bottle of pills and is going to end it all, when suddenly a rainbow appears. Or gets a call from a long-lost friend. You know the kind of story. The “sign from heaven.”
I’m reluctant to plunge you any further ahead in this vein because I know it feels really great to think the universe cares about you, is monitoring your relations with your loved ones, and that you are, in fact, as special as your mama always used to tell you. Even the most nihilistic atheist on the planet feels in her heart of hearts that she is the most special person on the planet.
But simple logic tells us that such miraculous coincidences are not miraculous at all, but inevitabilties. The average person will have been awake for over 400,000 hours before they die. The odds of never experiencing a remarkable coincidence in any of those hours has to be very small.
I don’t know, maybe this is a dumb reason and I shouldn’t have put it in here on par with all the others. But maybe it actually has more power than you’d think. After all, we do know that humans are wired to be extremely social animals. We are dependent on the approval of others; otherwise, we probably would still be living in isolated caves or trees or whatever.
But if your neighbor, the guy you respect and wave to every day, lets his dog poop in your yard, then you begin to care less what he thinks of you. Or even what other people think of you. After all, most people are visibly flawed. Get to know them well enough and you begin to realize none of them have just that perfect balance of honesty and self-interest that you do. Even your spouse gets on your nerves sometimes.
So it comes down to this: you’re a grown up, you generally try to do the right thing, and you’ve built up this life that you can be mostly proud of. But who is there who still has any moral authority over you? Who is there who knows all the times you chose not to take some dubious shortcut, to keep the change, to screw the vulnerable? Who applauds the fact that you didn’t? Who’s there to love you the way you deserve to be loved? The way Mama used to love you when you were tiny?
So there you go. Believe in some omniscient god, and you get to keep the nice warm feelings from your childhood. You get a divine love to carry you through even your most trying moments.
We know just how persuasive peer pressure can be. Many are the tales of people who stopped believing, but were afraid to admit it for fear of losing their place in their families, their communities.
We have yet to elect a president who didn’t belong to some organized church. In fact there’s only a handful of elected politicians in the US who have “come out” as non-believers and still get re-elected.
This is still one of the major draws of Christianity: as a member of the congregation, you have dozens — maybe hundreds — of friends and neighbors who care about you. Who would bring you a casserole if your aunt died. Who would visit you when you’re sick? Do you really want to give all that up, just because of an easily faked faith?
That’s the problem with being an atheist. No one brings you a covered dish when they die.
Maybe if we had some sort of non-denominational community for getting together, singing, and having coffee & donuts on Sunday, there’d be more people being comfortable with letting go of religion.
I’ll paraphrase Pascal’s famous “gambit”: If you chose to believe in God and are wrong, the repercussions are much worse than if you choose not to believe in God, and are wrong.
So here’s my response to Pascal: I’d rather burn in hell than worship a capricious monster who lets 29,000 innocent children die every day.
This is really about the stupidest reason I can think of which actually is responsible for religions getting more recruits. It’s so dumb that it’s successfully used all over the world. It’s one of the top non-theological arguments of many missionaries. So I suppose I should be writing this argument in Swahili or Patagonian or something. Bring the counter-argument to the front lines of the battle.
But whatever. The logic that you should believe the dogma of the winningest culture would mean that all of Europe should have believed in the Third Reich seventy years ago. Or why not all Asians believing in Marx ?
Back in the Roman days, we should have all been worshiping Jupiter.
Even the strictest materialist has no proof that the universe was not created by some agent. No true free-thinker can definitively prove the non-existence of anything — of a unicorn, or a flat earth, let alone a prime mover outside of the boundaries of the universe, outside of space-time, outside any human means of detection. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only reason one could plausibly give to dispute the existence of an Intelligent Designer is that there hasn’t been any sign of it since — what? The Big Bang? Or possibly since the introduction of life on earth?
So, Intelligent designer, maybe. But Personal God? Well, you have to concede that 3.7 billion years is a long time to abandon your children.