Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless (14 page)

And progressive ecumenical believers can be unbelievably slippery about what they do and don’t believe. Is God real, or a metaphor? Does God intervene in the world, or doesn’t he? Do they even believe in God, or do they just choose to act as if they believe because they find it useful? Debating with a progressive believer is like wrestling with a fish: the arguments aren’t very powerful, but they’re slippery, and they don’t give you anything firm to grab onto.

Once again, that’s a sure sign of a bad argument. If you can’t make your case and then stick by it, or modify it, or let it go… then you don’t have a good case. (And if you’re making any version of the
“Shut up, that’s why”
argument — arguing that it’s intolerant to question religious beliefs, or that letting go of doubts about faith makes you a better person, or that doubting faith will get you tortured in Hell, or any of the other classic arguments intended to quash debate rather than address it — that’s a sure sign that your argument is in the toilet.)

9: The failure of religion to improve or clarify over time.
Over the years and decades and centuries, our understanding of the physical world has grown and clarified by a ridiculous amount. We understand things about the Universe that we couldn’t have imagined a thousand years ago, or a hundred, or even ten. Things that make your mouth gape with astonishment just to think about.

And the reason for this is that we came up with an incredibly good method for sorting out good ideas from bad ones. We came up with the scientific method, a self-correcting method for understanding the physical world: a method which — over time, and with the many fits and starts that accompany any human endeavor — has done an astonishingly good job of helping us perceive and understand the world, predict it and shape it, in ways we couldn’t have imagined in decades and centuries past. And the scientific method itself is self-correcting. Not only has our understanding of the natural world improved dramatically: our method for understanding it is improving as well.

Our understanding of the supernatural world? Not so much.

Our understanding of the supernatural world is in the same place it’s always been: hundreds and indeed thousands of sects, squabbling over which sacred texts and spiritual intuitions are the right ones. We haven’t come to any consensus about which religion best understands the supernatural world. We haven’t even come up with a method for making that decision. All anyone can do is point to their own sacred text and their own spiritual intuition. And around in the squabbling circle we go.

All of which points to religion, not as a perception of a real being or substance, but as an idea we made up and are clinging to. If religion were a perception of a real being or substance, our understanding of it would be sharpening, clarifying, being refined. We’d have better prayer techniques, more accurate prophecies, something. Anything but people squabbling with greater or lesser degrees of rancor, and nothing to back up their belief.

10: The complete lack of solid evidence for God’s existence.
This is probably the best argument I have against God’s existence: There’s no evidence for it. No good evidence, anyway. No evidence that doesn’t just amount to opinion and tradition and confirmation bias and all the other stuff I’ve been talking about. No evidence that doesn’t fall apart upon close examination.

And in a perfect world, that should have been the only argument I needed. In a perfect world, I shouldn’t have had to spend a month and a half collating and summarizing the reasons I don’t believe in God, any more than I would have for Zeus or Quetzalcoatl or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As thousands of atheists before me have pointed out: It is not up to us to prove that God does not exist. It is up to theists to prove that he does.

In a comment on my blog, arensb made a point on this topic that was so insightful, I’m still smacking myself on the head for not having thought of it myself. I was writing about how believers get upset at atheists when we reject religion after hearing 876,363 bad arguments for it, and how believers react to this by saying, “But you haven’t considered Argument #876,364! How can you be so close-minded?” And
arensb said
:

“If, in fact, it turns out that argument #876,364 is the one that will convince you, WTF didn’t the apologists put it in the top 10?”

Why, indeed?

If there’s an argument for religion that’s convincing — actually convincing, convincing by means of something other than authority, tradition, personal intuition, confirmation bias, fear and intimidation, wishful thinking, or some combination of the above — wouldn’t we all know about it?

Wouldn’t it have spread like wildfire? Wouldn’t it be the Meme of All Memes? I mean, we all saw that
Simon’s Cat video
within about two weeks of it hitting the Internet. Don’t you think that the Truly Excellent Argument for God’s Existence would have spread even faster, and wider, than some silly cartoon cat video?

If the arguments for religion are so wonderful, why are they so unconvincing to anyone who doesn’t already believe?

And why does God need arguments, anyway? Why does God need people to make his arguments for him? Why can’t he just reveal his true self, clearly and unequivocally, and settle the question once and for all? If God existed, why wouldn’t it just be obvious?

It is not up to atheists to prove that God does not exist. It is up to believers to prove that he does. And in the absence of any good, solid evidence or arguments in favor of God’s existence — and in the presence of a whole lot of solid arguments against it — I will continue to be an atheist. God almost certainly does not exist, and it’s completely reasonable to act as if he doesn’t.

“But religion is useful. It makes people happy. It comforts people in hard times. It makes people better-behaved. And losing religious faith can be traumatic. So what difference does it make if it isn’t true? Shouldn’t we be perpetuating it anyway — or at least leaving it alone? Why do you want to persuade people out of it?”

Atheists hear this a lot. The argument from utility — the defense of religion, not because it’s true, but because it’s psychologically or socially useful — is freakishly common. If you spend any time reading debates in atheist blogs or forums, you’re bound to see it come up.

Now, when atheists hear this “But religion is useful!” argument, our usual response is to say, “Is not!” We point out that countries with high rates of atheism also have
high rates of happiness, ethics, and social functioning
. (This doesn’t prove that atheism causes high social functioning, of course — it’s probably the other way around — but it does show that high social functioning can flourish without religion.) We’ll point out the many religious believers who cheat, steal, murder, and generally behave very badly… undercutting the notion that religion provides a solid foundation for moral behavior. And we’ll point to ourselves, and to other atheists we know, as the most obvious examples of why this notion is bunk: examples of people who don’t need religion, who live happy, ethical lives without religion, who in many cases are happier and better without religion.

These are all fair points. I’ve made them myself. But there’s a basic problem with all of them:

They make the argument from utility seem valid.

And I don’t want to do that. I think the argument from utility is absurd on the face of it. I think the entire idea of deciding what we think is true based on what we want to be true is laughable. Or it would be, if it weren’t so appalling. I’ve seen this argument advanced many times… and it still shocks me to see otherwise intelligent, thoughtful adults making it. It is preposterous.

So I want to dismantle the entire premise of the argument from utility. I want to dismantle the entire premise that it’s reasonable, and even a positive good, to believe in something you have no good reason to think is true… simply because it makes you happy.

Let’s look at Santa Claus.

Millions of children are made happy by their belief in Santa. They have fun imagining the presents he’s going to bring them. They like visiting him in the department store. They enjoy hearing stories about him, singing songs about him, drawing pictures of him. They get a thrill from putting cookies and cocoa out for him by the fireplace (or the gas heater, or whatever), and seeing them gone the next day. They get more and more excited as Christmas gets closer and the day of his visitation approaches.

What’s more, millions of children behave better because they believe in Santa. The desire for great presents, the fear of getting coal in their stockings instead of presents… this has probably resulted in thousands of cleaned rooms, thousands of finished homework assignments, thousands of un-punched siblings. At least during the month of December.

And millions of children get upset when they discover that Santa isn’t real. Letting go of Santa can be a distressing experience, one that people remember into adulthood. (This isn’t universally true — I was excited to discover that Santa wasn’t real, since I figured it out on my own and it made me feel clever and grown-up to have outwitted the adults — but it’s not uncommon.)

Would you therefore argue that we ought to believe in Santa?

Would you argue that, because belief in Santa makes children happy and better-behaved, we therefore ought to perpetuate it? Would you argue that, because relinquishing that belief can be upsetting, we ought to go to great lengths to protect children from discovering that Santa isn’t real… not only during their childhood, but throughout their adult lives? Would you attend churches and temples of Santa, and leave cookies and cocoa on their red-and-white-plush altars? Would you pity people who don’t believe in Santa as joyless and imprisoned in rationality… and would you chastise these a-Santa-ists as intolerant, bigoted proselytizers when they tried to persuade others that Santa wasn’t real?

Or would you, instead, think that people ought to grow up? Would you think that, for people who grew up believing in Santa, letting go of that belief is an essential part of becoming an adult? Would you think that we need to understand reality, so we know how to behave in it? Would you think that, in order to make good decisions and function effectively in the world, we need to have the most accurate understanding of it that we can muster… and that if the best evidence suggests that Santa isn’t real, we ought to accept that conclusion? Would you look at this idea that we should decide what’s true based on what we want to be true, and call it laughable, appalling, absurd on the face of it?

And if you wouldn’t argue that belief in Santa is valid simply because it’s useful… why would you argue it about God?

Now. You might say that belief in God makes more sense than belief in Santa. You might say that, while we know Santa is a fictional character, the existence of God is, at the very least, an open question… and that therefore, belief in God is more defensible than belief in Santa.

But then you’re back to arguing that God is real. Or at least plausible. You’ve abandoned the argument from utility (which you should, it’s a terrible argument), and you’ve circled back to debating whether God exists, and whether good evidence supports that hypothesis.

And the
whole freaking point
of the argument from utility is that it abandons the case for God being real. The whole point is that it doesn’t matter whether God is real… as long as belief in God makes people happy. So you don’t get to shore up that argument by saying that God might be real after all. Not unless you’re willing to make a convincing case for God being real.

But if you had a convincing case for God being real… why on Earth would you be arguing that it doesn’t matter whether he’s real, as long as belief in him makes people happy? If you can make a better case for God than you can for Santa… why aren’t you making it? Why are you falling back on this absurd notion that grown-ups should believe whatever makes them feel good, regardless of whether that belief has any connection with reality?

And if you think that educated people can handle the reality of a godless world, but the ordinary masses can’t — then shame on you. That’s not simply untrue. It’s patronizing. It’s classist and insulting. I urge you to spend some time on the excellent
Blue Collar Atheist
blog by Hank Fox, which will disabuse you of this notion in a hurry. I urge you to read the brilliant piece by Adam Lee on the Daylight Atheism blog about
atheist janitors
. And in particular, I urge you to read the comments on that piece from atheist janitors themselves, who have plenty of meaning and happiness without religion, who accept and indeed treasure a world with neither Santa nor God — and who resent being treated like the uneducated, unwashed hoi polloi who need to be protected from reality by people who consider themselves their intellectual betters.