Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless (16 page)

If there’s a single idea I’d most like to get across to believers, it would be this:

Religion is a hypothesis.

Religion is a hypothesis about how the world works, and why it is the way it is. Religion is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, at least in part, because of supernatural beings or forces that act on the natural world.

Religion is many other things, of course. It’s communities, cultural traditions, political ideologies, philosophies. But those things aren’t what make religion unique. What makes religion unique, among all other communities and philosophies and so on, is this hypothesis of a supernatural world acting on the natural one. It’s thousands of different hypotheses, actually, positing thousands of supernatural beings and forces, with thousands of different qualities and temperaments. But all these diverse beliefs have this one hypothesis in common: the hypothesis that there is a supernatural world, and that the natural world is the way it is because of it.

So religion is not a subjective opinion, or an ethical axiom, or a personal perspective. (These things can be connected with religion, of course, but they’re not what make its unique core.) Opinions and axioms and personal perspectives can be debated — but ultimately, they’re up to each person to decide for themselves. Religion is none of these things. Religion is a hypothesis. It says, “Things are the way they are because of the supernatural.” Things are the way they are because God made them that way. Because the Devil is making them that way. Because the World-Soul is evolving that way. Because we have spiritual energy animating our consciousness. Because guardian angels are watching us. Because witches are casting spells. Because we’re the reincarnated souls of dead people. Whatever.

Seeing religion as a hypothesis is important for a lot of reasons. But the reason that’s most relevant here: If religion is a hypothesis, it is not hostile to diversity for atheists to oppose it.

It is no more hostile to diversity to oppose the religion hypothesis than it is to oppose the hypothesis that global warming is a hoax. The hypothesis that an unrestricted free market will cause the economy to flourish for everyone. The hypothesis that illness is caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humours. The hypothesis that the Sun orbits the Earth.

Arguing against hypotheses that aren’t supported by good evidence… that’s not anti-diversity. That’s how we understand the world better. We understand the world by rigorously gathering and analyzing evidence… and by ruthlessly rejecting any hypothesis that the evidence doesn’t support. Was it hostile to diversity for Pasteur to argue against the theory of spontaneous generation? For Georges Lemaitre to argue against the steady-state Universe? For Galileo to argue against geocentrism?

And if not — then why is it hostile to diversity for atheists to argue against the hypothesis of God and the supernatural? How is it any more anti-diversity for atheists to argue against religion, and to try to persuade believers that it’s mistaken, than it is to argue a case against any other hypothesis?

Now. Many believers will argue that religion doesn’t fall into these categories. They’ll argue that religions can’t be proven true or false… and that it’s therefore reasonable for people to believe in any religion that appeals to them. (And that it’s unreasonable for anyone to make an argument against it.)

But… well, for one thing, that’s not strictly true. Many religions, from young-Earth creationism to astrology,
do
make testable claims. They
do
make claims that can be shown to be true or false. And every time those claims have been rigorously tested, they have always been shown to be false. They can’t be disproven with 100% certainty… but almost nothing can, and that’s not the standard of evidence we use for any other claim.

Much more to the point, though: When you start seeing religion as a hypothesis? The fact that it’s unverifiable stops being a defense. It’s completely the opposite. The fact that religion is unverifiable is one of the most devastating arguments against it.

A hypothesis has to be falsifiable. That’s important. If any possible evidence could be used to support a hypothesis — if your hypothesis will be shown to be true whether the water in the beaker gets hotter, gets colder, stays the same temperature, boils away instantly, turns into a parrot and flies out the door — it’s a useless hypothesis. If any event at all can be fitted into it, then it has no power to explain past events, or predict future outcomes. It is, as they say, not even wrong.

And that’s just as true of religion as any other hypothesis. If any outcome of, for instance, an illness — recovering dramatically for no apparent reason, getting gradually better with medical intervention, getting worse, staying the same indefinitely, dying — could be explained as God’s work… then the God hypothesis is useless. It has no power to explain the world, or to predict the future, or to tell us how our behavior will affect our lives. It serves no purpose.

The fact that religion is unfalsifiable doesn’t mean we have to accept it as a reasonable possibility. It means the exact opposite. It means we should reject it wholesale, on that basis alone.

And it is not anti-diversity for atheists to point this out. Any more than it’s anti-diversity to point out that any other hypothesis is unfalsifiable, or unsupported by evidence, or directly contradicted by evidence, or in any other way mistaken or flawed.

Whenever I argue that it’s okay for atheists to try to change people’s minds about God, this argument almost always rears its head. And my answer almost always shocks the heck out of people:

I don’t have a problem with religious evangelism.

Now that your jaw has stopped hitting the floor, let me explain. Of course I have problems with religious evangelism as it commonly plays out in the world. I’ll get to that in a tic. But the very idea of religious evangelism? The idea that people who think they’re right about their god should try to convince others about it? I don’t have any problem with that at all. I support it 100%.

The problem with religious evangelism isn’t that they’re trying to change people’s minds. Trying to change people’s minds is a grand tradition. The marketplace of ideas, and all that. If you honestly think you’re right about something important, of course you should try to share it. That’s how good ideas get out in the world. And being exposed to different ideas is good for us. It exercises the brain. It’s how good ideas get strengthened and clarified, and bad ideas get winnowed out. As Ursula Le Guin said in
The Dispossessed
, “The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.”

In fact, if believers were right, it would be monstrous of them
not
to try to convince others about it. For lots of religions, anyway. If there really was an eternal Heaven and Hell after we die, and this life really was just a temporary testing ground for it? It would be the moral obligation of every believer to devote every ounce of their time into converting as many people as they could. (The fact that most hard-line believers don’t do this makes me suspicious of whether their beliefs are sincere.)

Now, all this acceptance of religious evangelism is largely in theory. In practice, I have serious problems with it. And I do think my attempts to persuade people out of religion are substantially different. For one thing: I’m not knocking on people’s doors, or moving into their villages, or shouting at them through bullhorns on the street. I’m not invading people’s lives or their privacy. I’m writing a blog, I’m giving talks, I’m writing this book. People are free to hear and read my ideas, or not, as they like. And outside the public sphere, I rarely offer my opinions on religion unless I’m asked.

But many atheists I admire do engage in more pro-active, in-your-face activism — putting up billboards, for instance, or going on TV — to spread the good word about God’s non-existence. If the only difference between atheist activists and religious missionaries is that we don’t knock on doors and shout at people on the street, I’m not sure that’s enough difference to maintain my moral outrage at evangelism.

But that’s not the only difference. The problem with religious evangelism, as opposed to atheist activism, is much bigger than the size and effectiveness of the bullhorn. The problem with religious evangelism isn’t simply that they’re trying to change people’s minds.

The problem is with how they’re doing it.

My efforts towards atheist persuasion are based in — here comes the broken record — reason and evidence. I offer arguments and reasons for why atheism makes more sense, is more consistent, is more likely to be accurate. And that’s true of almost every atheist writer I know.

Religious evangelism does nothing of the kind. It bases its persuasion on fear: the normal fear of death, and the trumped-up fear of Hell and eternal torture. It bases its persuasion on false hope: a hope for immortality that the persuaders have no good reason to believe is true. It bases its persuasion on falsehoods: flat-out inaccuracies about the realities of history, and science, and even its own religious teachings.

And it bases its persuasion on the suppression of other ideas.

The suppression of dissenting ideas is one of the most widespread elements of religion. It’s not universal, but it’s depressingly common. It’s codified in the texts and tenets of many religions: the concepts of the heathen and the heretic, the rules against interfaith marriage, the very notion of religious orthodoxy, and so on. It’s often codified in law: not just in blatant theocracies, but in supposedly more enlightened societies as well. (It took until
1961
for atheists to be guaranteed the right to serve on juries, testify in court, or hold public office in every state in the United States. That’s the year I was born. It’s not that long ago.)

And the silencing of dissenting ideas is codified in dozens of forms of social pressure. The idea, for example, that it’s rude to question or criticize people’s religion. The idea that religious faith automatically makes you a good person. The social deference given to ministers and rabbis and other religious leaders. The idea that being tolerant of religion requires that you not criticize it. Religion has built up an impressive array of armor: not intellectual weapons to defend its ideas, but armor to protect it against the very notion that its ideas require defending.

So yes to the marketplace of ideas. But in the marketplace of ideas, religion gets a free ride. In the marketplace of ideas, religion gets a free round-trip ride in a luxury limousine, with a police escort and an armored truck to transport its merchandise. All at public expense. And religious evangelism relies on that.

That’s the difference. The problem with religious evangelism isn’t that it tries to persuade other people that it’s right. The problem is that it tries to persuade using fear, and false hope, and falsehood. And it tries to persuade by shutting up any other ideas that might contradict it. It tries to win, not by playing fair, but by rewriting the rules of the game.

And I think the problem comes from how we think of diversity.

Historically, we pretty much have two ways of dealing with religious beliefs that are different from ours. We have intolerant evangelism and theocracy — forcing religious beliefs down other people’s throats, through social pressure at best, laws and even violence at worst. And we have uncritical ecumenicalism — the idea that all religions are at least a little bit true, that they’re all part of a rich spiritual tapestry, that they’re all perceiving one little piece of the truth about God… and that even if they’re not, it’s intolerant religious bigotry to criticize them or try to persuade people out of them. This second approach largely rose up in response to the old-school “intolerant theocracy” approach… so any criticism of religion automatically gets slotted into that ugly category.

Atheism is offering a third option. We’re offering the option of respecting the freedom of religious belief… while retaining the right to criticize those beliefs, and to treat them exactly like we’d treat any idea we think is mistaken.

The atheist movement is passionate about the right to religious freedom. (With the notable exception of a few assholes on the Internet. Name me one movement that doesn’t have its share of assholes on the Internet.) We fully support people’s right to believe whatever they believe, and to practice whatever religion or non-religion they choose, as long as they keep it out of government and don’t shove it down other people’s throats. And we think this right is a foundation of human ethics, one of the most fundamental rights we have. We have no desire to overturn it.

Yet at the same time, we think the right to free thought and free expression includes the right to criticize other people’s thoughts and expression. We passionately defend people’s right to their beliefs… but we also defend our right to think their beliefs are silly, and to say so in the public square. We express our disagreement in a variety of ways — some more polite and respectful, some more insulting and mocking — but we damn sure think we have the right to express it.

And we see no reason to treat religion with any more deference than any other idea. We see religion as — yes, you guessed it — a hypothesis about the world. We see it as a hypothesis that has never once in all of human history been shown to be correct. We see it as a hypothesis — thousands of hypotheses, actually — that either have been falsified numerous times, or else, worse, are unfalsifiable and should be rejected on that basis alone. And we see no reason to treat it any differently from any other flawed, unsupported hypothesis. We see no reason not to criticize it, to ask hard questions about it, to make fun of it, to point out flaws in it, to point out the good evidence contradicting it, to point out the utter lack of good evidence supporting it… and to do our damndest to persuade people out of it.