If there was one thing Facebook is good for (or possibly bad for) is the dispensing of canned advice through adages, proverbs, clichés, and quotes from a random assortment of famous people. I’m not going lie, I do love a good quote now and then. There have been great minds in our history who have profound things to say. There is one adage that annoys me to no end, and so you’ll have to forgive for doing a little bit of venting.
“God only gives you only what you can handle”.
Now this has nothing to do with me being an atheist. Even if I was a theist this statement would be wholly false. Like many of the adages floating out there on social media at best this applies to first world citizens, but even then it still seems like it could end up insulting a lot of people.
My first thought when I first heard the expression: well how many people die of starvation every day? For your information 1.5 million children starve to death in the world each year. That’s over 4,000 children a day, or about 1 child every 20 seconds. Clearly these children were given a situation in which they could not handle. Why would God give children such a situation to begin with?
What about all the people who die of cancer, heart disease, or other fatal conditions? What about the people who suffer nervous breakdowns, have undiagnosed trauma, severe depression? What of those who go a step further and tragically take their own life?
There is no doubt that all of us have a certain amount of adversity we have to face in life. We of course want to survive and for the most case if we can handle it, we will. Nobody wants to just let a difficult situation destroy their lives, or weaken them to the point of personal neglect. Ultimately we handle adversity the best way can, and hope that we are better and stronger for it afterwards. But there are plenty of situations that are beyond one individual.
What is most bothersome about the saying is what it implies about you if you couldn’t handle the situation. If God gives you only what you can handle, if you didn’t handle it, then it must be your fault in some way. You must be doing something wrong. If this message is supposed to give you strength to handle a situation, failure to do so may not bring you the peace you desire.
In the end it is a fairly empty piece of advice, applicable to relatively mild situations, and really only verifiable in hindsight to someone who got through a difficult situation successfully. Personally I think we can come up with something a little more helpful than this expression.
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
Alone by Edgar Allen Poe
I wanted to preface this post with one of my favorite poems. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we interact with people because I love company, I love talking to other people, trying to understand them as I try to also understand myself. I have a wonderful wife, great friends, and am surrounded by bright and energetic students and colleagues, but an incident recently made me feel alone, and I started contemplating what it means to be lonely, to feel alone. I’ll understand if this isn’t a fun read during the holiday season! 🙂
Being alone can have two different meanings and I’d like to focus mostly on only one of them. One can of course be literally alone with nobody else around. I equate this more as solitude and solitude can be a
good thing. It can be a time of reflection, possibly getting in touch with nature, and can be a very rejuvenating experience. Being alone however can mean lonely and this is quite different. Certainly you can be literally alone and feel lonely, but I find that loneliness comes in many shapes and forms and is most strongly felt when one is not literally alone.
When I moved away from home to go to graduate school I didn’t know a soul, and since I didn’t have the money to come down and look for housing I unfortunately lived in the dorms for the first couple of months (a horrendous experience I might add!). I ate my meals in the cafeteria and University of Oklahoma is a big school. There were probably about 500 people eating their meal and I would of course find a spot that wasn’t next to anybody and eat my meal. Now there are some people who might have just sat down next to somebody and started talking, but I’m not that way. It really hits you that you don’t know anybody and yet you are surrounded by people. It is a very intense feeling of loneliness. I would have felt less lonely if the cafeteria was empty. This of course was compounded by the fact that I had just moved away from home and so when you are feeling very lonely it is easy to think more about the friends and family you’ve left behind.
Of course this feeling of loneliness is something you get used to, to a certain degree. Being in new social
From guestofaguest.com
situations where you don’t know anyone, can feel awkward especially if you are like me and seek genuine conversation over the normal small talk. It’s a skill you have to learn to get good at the small talk to get to the better stuff. I think a lot of introverts are like that, but they just refuse to play the game. A lot of people think I’m an extrovert, but I just think I’m an introvert who has learned to be more brave with time. 🙂
One of the more intense feelings of loneliness I think occurs when we don’t have someone to be intimate with. I am not just talking about physical intimacy, although we certainly crave and miss that as well, but just the intimacy of even a close friend; somebody that you can share thoughts and feelings with, and most importantly be yourself around. This type of loneliness is compounded by the presences of others, especially those we wish to be closer to but are not. When you’re shy or lack confidence in approaching someone I think we all start to even get down on ourselves thus worsening the situation instead of making changes to improve our situation to feel less lonely.
Loneliness of this kind can lead to all sorts of behavior that can be unhealthy to you and others. In a desire to get intimacy we may turn to sex as a substitute which gives momentary pleasure but not the intimacy we crave that is longer lasting and ultimately more fulfilling. We may turn to a group of friends that become “drinking buddies”. This may feel like fun temporarily, but often those friends aren’t confidants are even people that you can really be yourself around, and at the end of the evening you still come back alone and feel empty again. We may seek out chat rooms on the internet, and sometimes you can even get to know someone really well, but it’s just no substitute for being in someone’s physical presence.
I have also noticed a type of loneliness that I could best describe as intellectual or behavioral loneliness. A sort of loneliness you feel when it feels like you are the only one who thinks a certain way. Like being surrounded by a bunch of pro-gun people and after the umpteenth school shooting you are thinking
maybe we should pass some gun laws, and they say make the teachers wear guns! Or wondering if you are the only one who thinks that Julia Roberts isn’t that great of an actress! I know many people who often feel lonely when raised in a certain religion and feel doubts about their beliefs, but feel alone because nobody else seems to be asking the same questions. I would imagine realizing you’re homosexual and not knowing anybody else who is, has to feel very lonely too in this sense of loneliness I am talking about. When you feel like you are different from everybody else. Poe was a pretty depressed guy, but I think this is the type of loneliness he speaks of in his poem and what inspired this post. This loneliness is both unsettling yet necessary. I am not sure if I can explain why I think that. I just do. Perhaps this is why the poem has captured me.
The most painful feeling of loneliness however comes from the people we love the most when we fight, or a relationship is ending. When I was having marriage troubles and it seemed like divorce was imminent, since we both live far from our families we had no place to go so we had to live in the same house, sleep in separate rooms. It was horrible. I never felt so alone in my life. Here was somebody I was so close to emotionally, and so close in proximity, but all of a sudden I felt there was a great distance between us. Someone I loved so much and yet I felt like touching her was inappropriate and maybe even talking to her intimately was inappropriate, it was terrible. I am sure many have experienced this before, but it’s not something that I would want people to go through. Because for all the ways of feeling lonely I’ve talked of already this is the only one that I didn’t feel like I learned anything from. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. It just sucked.
My goal in exploring this topic is the recognition that loneliness is a very shared experience. We’ve all felt it in its various forms and so what seems sort of cool and interesting to me is that even through loneliness are we together and I take some comfort in that. I wish you the least amount of loneliness possible, but loneliness is something all people have to bear throughout their lives and I have found it to be an extremely good source of self-esteem to have battled through lonely days towards better days. It makes you appreciate good company even more. 🙂
If there is no God then you are a fool,
If there is one, then I’m a fool too,
And if there is something else,
Something we haven’t thought of yet
We’re both fools. But isn’t it wonderful,
The kinds of things we can conjure up?
Things to prove and things to lose.
The pain of things gone horribly wrong,
And all we can do is put things right.
I’ve got a few answers,
Maybe you’ve got some too.
Together we can know the truth,
Or else tell one hell of a story,
Either way, we’ll take the world by storm.
But let’s start with the real facts,
We are imperfect and fragile,
We are curious and resilient,
There is only so much we can take,
And it’s all really not that fair.
The only thing that I can be sure of,
Is that in the end…
All is forgiven
Well I have been absent from the blogosphere for a while thanks to a busy semester, but I guess that just means I have more to say! The topic I wanted to write about today is sort of a good one to start back blogging about.
It seems, although somewhat subconsciously, that I have been trying to compile a list of what I think are the most important human virtues. While I think most people could rattle off a list of such qualities, I’ve been trying to pare down the list to the essentials. It occurred to me that many qualities are somewhat related. I’ve written about the importance of compassion. In it I think are many other qualities like empathy, generosity, kindness, etc. Humility is another one that I think is really important and have blogged about before. So today I want to talk about what I think is a 3rd very important virtue and that vigilance. To be clear and add some definition, vigilance, to me, is also the quality of determination and more importantly perseverance.
One of my favorite quotes from a person of history is this quote by Gandhi, “Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.”. At first such a quote might
seem kind of depressing, but I do not think this is what Gandhi was saying, and I think that this quote speaks to the importance of vigilance in life. Life is full of mundane tasks that must be done, not all of them are joyful, nor are they painful, they are just chores that need to be done, often daily; things like brushing your teeth, washing dishes, taking out the garbage, etc. And it’s not to say that these things might not be joyful for some people too. There is something nice about the feeling of clean teeth, or a clean kitchen, but even if there isn’t, it is important that these things be done. Even if you are rich enough to have someone who does a lot of chores, you are likely to still have tasks that need to be done that are sort of mindless. These tasks are often, most of the things we do in a given day. So I think Gandhi recognized this aspect of our lives, but also recognized the importance of those actions as being valuable over time, even if they have little immediate impact. Children for instance need consistency over time as they themselves experience so many new things, a parent who is consistent in their actions and being there for their child is important. Relationships require trust that demands a certain constancy of character in others that you forge relationships with. Good health and long life requires a lifetime of good choices about hygiene, nutrition, and exercise. I have often told people that getting a Ph.D. is not as much about how smart you are, but your ability to persevere through a lot of work, hoops, and bureaucracy (I don’t necessarily mean this disparagingly, because for me it was worth, for others I know it was not). I think it is true that sometimes we even seek this constancy in things that we don’t like. The saying “Sometimes the enemy you know, is better than the enemy you don’t”, speaks to situations where people are willing to put up with something or somebody that is unpleasant simply because they have become used to it and at least know how to deal with it.
I think it is easy for vigilance to get caught up in the idea of routine, and maybe it sometimes is, but even that is not necessarily a bad thing. Those with autism depend on routine as a way of making sense of their world, and I don’t think we are all that different. Most of us need
some sense of routine, because our lives are always in conflict between change which brings uncertainty and those things that we can count on which makes us feel safe. Routine can sometimes be very helpful when facing adverse moments in life. Having something to focus on, having something that you feel you need to do, however mundane the task, might be can help us from falling into depression or becoming apathetic. I can’t speak for all people, but I have observed this being helpful for others and certainly for me when I was going through adversity.
Recently I was in New Orleans for a conference and the keynote speaker for the conference was talking about how her spirituality has helped her and that she feels like God works through her because when she looks at the things she has done, she doesn’t know how she has been able to do it. She feels like she herself is not capable. I think it is easy to understand why many people feel that way. I think for most things we do, we are used to seeing the immediate result of a particular action. But the quality of being vigilant is one that builds a wisdom and experience over time. I liken it to a river that erodes to make a canyon. If you could talk to the river at any one moment in its life it would be unaware of how much it is doing. Miniscule fragments get washed away every day however. I likened the speaker’s statement to asking this river a couple hundred thousand years later to look around and see what it has made. I think the river would be surprised at the deep canyon it has made, since each day it only perceives a little less rock underneath and at its side. The weathering of rock by the river is a story of vigilance and I think that we can easily fall into the trap of not realizing how great things are possible when we remain vigilant over long periods of time.
I think it’s important to remember that cause and effect occur over various timescales. Rewards of our labors and actions may often take years to come to fruition. So, although our actions may seem to be of no importance in the short term, over the long term the benefits can be remarkable. Keeping this in mind helps me find more value in the mundane, and gives me the courage to push through when life seems difficult. But like all things in life there is still a balance to be found, so don’t be afraid to make adjustments when life teaches you another lesson. The extreme consequence of vigilance may be stubbornness and we must also be vigilant about not developing too many bad habits. 😉
One of the unexpected things that happened when I realized that I was an atheist was that I began to have a greater respect for life. I know the existence of an afterlife cannot be disproven, but neither can it be proven and so if this is the only existence we have, and death means non-existence, then appreciating this existence is paramount. I know that being atheist isn’t a pre-requisite for an appreciation for existence, but that’s just how it happened for me (not that I was ever in support of violence). I realize also that I am in an economic position in life to enjoy it much more than others but it is often surprising to me how often poor people are happier and more generous than those with wealth. There is something to the old adage “Take joy in the simple things in life”. Nevertheless there are those beyond just being poor. Countless millions who do not get their daily need for food and water met. If one values life then it should be our first and foremost goal to lift all those up to enjoy the marvels of existence.
When someone says they value life, it is often unclear what they mean. First of all, what do we define as life? Some people just seem to mean human life. Some value other animals as well. For some it is just certain animals that we think of as pets, but not ones that we use for food. This tends to vary by culture. Some value the life of animals, provided that they die without suffering and are treated
humanely in their life. Some value the life of an animal based on how close to a human it is, and are okay with ending the life of simpler creatures. Finally some value all animals and only eat vegetables. Why is plant life less important? Should feelings, or the fact that they are part of Kingdom Animalia at all be the deciding factor on how valuable life is? As I have argued before that whenever we put value on life just because of its similarity to us, there is a certain human conceit there that I am not so sure is healthy.
For those that value human life, even that is inconsistent. It is clear that we humans have a different line of reasoning when it comes to the harming of those that we deem innocent. People often get much more outraged at a mistreated animal, or the abortion of a fetus, than a mistreated adult. But we were all children once. A child who is taught to hate minorities will become an adult who hates minorities. If that adult commits a hate crime, why do we hate him back, call for his punishment, or even death. In reality he is simply just an older child who was never taught to see the value in all people and that we are all brothers and sisters on this planet. It is akin to me being upset at someone for not knowing calculus. How could they if they were never taught? It always seems to be assumed that as an adult we have choices to just change the way we think in an instant. This is clearly not true, and in fact it gets harder as you get older, not easier.
From tardis.wikia.com
The biggest paradox I see for those people who are both “pro-life” in relation to abortion, is that they tend to be conservative in their views on capital punishment, war, and gun control. Abortion is a tough issue, no question, and one where I truly understand the “pro-life” point of view. What is clear to me is that no legislation should force a woman to go through something that profoundly effects her body, and for which there is no such equivalent or societal requirement on the father. And the cold reality of the matter is; mothers ending the lives of their infants are a natural part of our psychology. It is uncomfortable to accept such a cold fact as this, partially because it almost makes no sense in a modern society. It is important to remember though that most of our evolution did not take place in civilization, but in the wild. And in the wild resources are often scarce and raising a child, as anybody even today will admit, takes a lot of resources. So in our brains when we feel like the child is not going to be able to get the support it needs, women will make the logical choice of abortion. There is some logic to it. Yes I said it. Our brains are not programmed for birth control; our brains are not programmed for a society in which adoption is possible. In the end, our world is the one right in front of us and in that moment ending an unwanted pregnancy is sensible. This is why abortion rates are lowest in countries with adequate health care for all citizens, especially mothers, easy access to birth control, and plenty of education about sex and the consequences thereof. Then of course there is the issue of whether a fetus counts as life, counts as human? I don’t think that it can be answered anytime soon. All I know is that it is not my place to decide what happens to an embryo inside a womb in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.
From talkingpointsmemo.com
But if I weep for an aborted baby, then why do I not weep for all those people killed in war, shot down by gun violence, sent to the electric chair, or for even that matter the 20,000 people who die every day from hunger. The answer comes down to the fact that killing is serious business and we have to justify it. Perhaps abortion is just killing that we have justified. But then it is no less immoral than any other killing that we find acceptable. If we can justify abortion based on the grounds that it is not a child so early in development, then is it not the same reasoning we use for any other type of killing we support and even call for? It comes down to dehumanizing people. Whether it’s Muslims, criminals, poor people, minorities…whenever we say that any human life has less value then our own you will find things like abuse, torture, and killing. Dehumanizing at a fundamental level involves two things. First is the stripping away of things like the individuality of a person (i.e. All Muslims hate Americans). Secondly it focuses on making out their desires to always be about negative things. Things that we consider the worst qualities of humanity or just the opposition of the virtues that we value most highly in our species. So we can say “All Muslims hate freedom”, rather than suggesting that they are more like us than different, and that all Muslims want is to have a livelihood, take care of their families and have self-determination in their lives. Something we all want.
This same reasoning can be applied to how many people think of the poor, other races, political affiliations, criminals, etc. It concerns me that in this country that there seems to be a decreasing value placed on life. The Travyon Martin case exemplifies this all too well. Not just about his murder (it is at the very least manslaughter) itself but by the “Stand Your Ground” law. If being threatened is enough to justify killing another human being then I think we need to seriously address this philosophy in our society. Something must have gone wrong somewhere for such a law to even be proposed. Should someone’s existence end for stealing a television set? There was a recent story about a woman who shot at a car for turning around near her driveway. There were 4 children in the car and children could have been shot. Luckily the bullets only hit the car. The woman’s explanation was that her driveway was getting ruined because people were turning around on it all the time. What does it say about our society when something so trivial as a driveway takes precedence over life?
As far as we know it, death is the very end. Even if it isn’t, this existence must have value or we would not be born into it. We must therefore question ALL killing. We must be forgiving and believe in redemption. We must look at a human as a product of his experiences rather than a creature who always has the power to make conscious choices to do acts of good and evil. This planet teems with life and we are connected to it all. Nothing that lives has more right to life than anything else, and yet killing is also natural whether it is for food or for protection. As a species we have the ability to kill with the strength and power like no other species, but we also have the equal ability to find alternatives to killing. The latter should always be our goal. We should be continually striving to find ways to survive that do not deny the right to life of others even if killing happens along the way.
Recently Jon Stewart had a man named Andrew Harper on the show who works for the U.N. in a refugee camp in Jordan. The area of course is flooded with refugees from Syria. Jon talked about how much of a hero this guy is for doing this every day. It can’t be easy.
From Heroes Wiki
An interest concept to me is the idea of a hero. It feels like to me that those we laud as heroes are often not the ones we should. Maybe this is cultural and is not true everywhere. Is there such a thing as a true hero or is it always subjective to a particular person or culture? I am sure most would agree that the latter is more the case. Although I always find it interesting how much people want to get you to appreciate what they consider a hero. Maybe it’s the same sort of mentality that convinces someone to push a belief system on you.
The subjectivity of a hero made me think about military heroes. I find this to be the be a bit paradoxical at times. In the U.S. there is a strong emphasis over all others to consider those in the military as heroes. It occurs to me that an enemy to a warring nation has their heroes too, so can the person that kills Americans be a hero and also the American who kills the enemy be a hero? Who has the moral authority? The one that wins the war? Of course each side would not consider the other to have heroes even though arguable both fighters would be brave, adept, strong, etc. There is also a strange dichotomy between those in the military and then the larger context of the war itself. There is no doubt in my mind that the men and women are brave and heroic for being willing to put their life on the line. But what if the war is unjust? I am sure Nazi Germany had their heroes; ones that were elevated to hero status for killing the most allied soldiers or even killing the most Jews. In the context of their fight those people were heroes. We of course would not view them as such.
In Shakespeare’s Henry V, King Henry pretends to be a soldier and walks among his men to gather their mood. At one point he questions one of his men, well what if the cause be unjust? The man simply responds that if the war is unjust it is matter for the conscience of the King who leads them into battle and not the responsibility of the soldier. This idea makes me uncomfortable, and of course was not supported during the Nuremburg trials, and probably with good reason. And though it makes me uncomfortable I still find some merit to it. It must still be a difficult choice though, to know you will be jailed, possibly killed for not supporting your country’s cause. In a democracy perhaps we are all responsible for fighting an unjust war. So perhaps the soldier is a hero, since in a way many are responsible for giving that soldier the motive even if it is not a just motive.
Of course heroes are someone that we connect with. Some people connect with military heroes, I perhaps do not connect as much with them as those who take part in humanitarian efforts. It bothers me that these people are not celebrated in the same way we are asked to celebrate those in the military. Support of our troops does make a difference to their morale, so shouldn’t we also support the tireless efforts of those who bring humanitarian relief to people who are struggling? There is a lot of it in this world and these people also work long hours, in less than ideal conditions to provide aid and relief to others. Do their tales not deserve the spotlight are they not the source of inspiration?
And how often do we praise the everyday heroes? What about people who volunteer in soup kitchens, good cops, firefighters, or teachers, doctors and nurses who go the extra mile? What about a single mom who works hard every day to support her children and give them a chance for something more in life? Should we define heroism only by the level of danger that one faces? It seems like this is the most commonly used criteria. The one thing that seems clear is that true heroes do what they do because they are driven to do so, and not to be elevated by society at all.
Many heroes have their flaws too. I am sure there are bad days when they want to give it all up. They may be extremely good at what they do for people, but as a result neglect other parts of life and thus not live up to our elevated expectations of morality. Nobody is perfect, not even heroes. Perhaps the best we can do is try to be heroes ourselves while at the same time never forget to celebrate all those who demonstrate the best in human virtues. They are all equally as important. A person who is willing to die for our freedom should be at least as important as one who is willing to live for our freedom.
Many who attack religious people know little about them or about why people come to believe things in general. Educating yourself before labeling a group of people is important. 🙂
I can see why modern atheism gets a bad rap. Part of it of course has a lot to do with the fact that for a very long time in human history, religious beliefs could not be safely challenged. People who hold religious beliefs are not used to being challenged in public forums. If one completely believes that something in society is right because of some book they believe to come from the divine and you challenge that belief in addition to trying to prove that the divine law is actually unjust, people lose privilege in addition it simply doesn’t make sense in their brain. Once beliefs in our brain are well formed we actually get dopamine released in our brain when those beliefs are reinforced. Neural pathways become forged and your brain is so used to that dopamine release, that trying to forge new beliefs actually becomes physically troubling and is cause for being unhappy and upset.
That being said there are a lot of assholes out there, and atheists comprise of piece of that asshole pie. I see many atheists who ridicule and mock those with religious beliefs and it annoys the crap out of me for several reasons:
It’s not nice. Any time you really don’t know a person, what they’ve been through, and try to understand why they believe what you believe then it is just cruel to attack them by name calling. Even if they attack you. It’s the old “why go down to their own level”. It’s your responsibility as a good atheist to show the world that morality is not contingent on the existence of God, and when you are not kind to all people even in the face of personal attacks you reveal yourself as to be no better than the typical eye for an eye religious person you claim are foolish for their beliefs. How can you ask for tolerance when you demonstrate intolerance?
It’s not smart. If someone says “Abortion is wrong because you are killing a child and God says murder is wrong” and you respond “You are an idiot”. You have actually just taken the intellectual low ground. If you feel an intellectual argument will have affect on the mind of the pro-life person, then all you’ve done is been “not nice”. This person has at least given you their view and given a reason for their view. In your name calling, you appear not only to not be nice, but you also appear to not have any reason for your opposing view other than you don’t like religious people.
It’s a waste of time. Do something useful. Help somebody. Even if it’s another atheist because you can’t stand religious people.
It hurts other atheists. If you have no love of religious people you could at least show love for your fellow atheists who actually want to try to get along with people and help make this world a better place for all. Even if you think you are making a comment on a thread in which only atheists or similar minded people might be reading it, you reveal a pettiness in your intellect that weakens all atheists. Grow up and be a part of the world and not try to remove yourself from it.
The world has religion. The world has believers. We are all naturally evolved to hold beliefs. It is better to understand why people form beliefs. While I think it is reasonable to think that beliefs have a great potential for danger when differing beliefs collide and that we should look to a way of thinking critically and investigation that can lead all people to a more unified understanding of how the universe works. Beliefs are not tore down through name calling and abuse. They are tore down through education, they are torn down most strongly by being a good citizen of this world. Be kind and respectful, be loving and generous, be reflective and forgiving, be courageous yet humble, and demonstrate compassion as often as humanly possible.
Many who attack atheists know little about them, or about atheism in general. Educating yourself before labeling a group of people is important.
Atheists have no moral guidance
Well I am not going to go into too much detail here. You can watch the qualiasoup video on YouTube called “Good without Gods” if you want some excellent explanations for how morality is self-evident without God. If being good didn’t have its earthly rewards and benefit our survival we probably wouldn’t do it. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that the increased chance of survival and increased happiness we experience from our morality is what defines what good morals are. Dawkins refers to it as reciprocal altruism which is the more scientific way to look at it. If we look at our actions in terms of the harm they cause in this existence, what does commandments from another plane of existence matter? If only the threat of punishment from a plane of existence that only exists due to faith is the reason for you being good then to me that sort of cheapens humanity and is sort of worrying. Does the smile on people’s faces not mean something to you? Does the love you get in return for putting love out into the world not give you pleasure? Does the quality of your life not increase when you treat other kindly and with respect?
If you’re an atheist you must have no purpose in life
Many people feel that with a hierarchal structure to the universe with a creator on top means that all this is for some reason. That there is a purpose to the universe and thus it makes your daily life filled with purpose. Once again, as a species that has evolved to benefit from having compassion for my fellow species, purpose can simply be derived by not only the need to survive, but to survive well. The best chance for me to survive is to work to increase the quality of life for all my friends and family and hopefully beyond if I can. The world is fascinating and amazing and I am extremely fortunate to even exist for a short time in this universe to appreciate some of it. What difference does it make if the universe itself is indifferent? What matters if there is no intentionality to it? What does it matter that no supernatural being cares about whether I live or I die? I experience love now. I experience existence now. I experience. I have wandered no longer for purposes than anyone else in the world. It takes time to find that…for anybody.
Atheists are empty spiritually
This is simply untrue. The dictionary describes spirituality as being mostly being tied to religion, but this I believe is simply because religion has taken a hold of the definition of spiritual. A secondary definition describes spiritual as something that is incorporeal which means having no material body or form. Do I have feelings or moments which are unexplainable, or in which I am overwhelmed with emotion for which no expression captures that moment? The answer of course is yes, and when people of faith describe “spiritual experiences” the essence of those experiences makes me feel like I have those similar moments. I may not feel the presence of an angel or God but I feel like there is some presence so strong I could almost touch it. I can even feel this knowing it is a conjuring of my own mind, because it is very human to have these moments and experiences. People have them of all different faiths, so why can’t an atheist have them too? Because I can explain the chemistry of love does not make me feel it any less. Because I know why I cry, doesn’t prevent me from crying. Being overwhelmed with emotion is natural, and very often a spiritual event. For the record I don’t believe there is actually a spirit, but rather it is a good word which encompasses these moments I have tried to describe.
Atheism is a belief just like any religion
This one bothers me more than any other. As the definition I put part I clearly demonstrates atheism is a lack of belief in a God. Now this of course doesn’t mean that atheists don’t have beliefs. We all do. What it does mean though is that I live my life as if there was no god. The idea of believing in the absence of something that only exists because people believe in it seems strange to me. Let’s use an analogy:
Me: I believe there are mermaids
You: I believe there are no mermaids. Do you have proof of your belief?
Me: Well they are in books, and other people believe in mermaids too.
You: But I’ve never seen a mermaid.
Me. Neither have I, but they are definitely real. I know it.
Truth has to be evident from observation. It shouldn’t require belief. If we took the books about mermaids out of the situation you would just have two people who had never seen mermaids and thus have no reason to believe in their existence or believe in their non-existence. There are no observations of mermaids and therefore one can conclude that there is no such thing as mermaids.
I for instance can believe that gases expand when heated. I need never have experienced it myself, but I could believe that, but still we don’t know if it’s true. Now if you come along and say you don’t believe that, well now we have something that we can actually observe and measure. We would find that my belief is correct and yours was incorrect. Furthermore someone with no beliefs about the subject of the behavior of gasses when heated could walk into the room during our test see what happens to a gas when heated and conclude based on his/her observation that gasses do in fact expand.
An atheist can have a belief about something, but a good atheist will seek out knowledge to test whether that belief holds because ultimately an atheist tries to be inductive in their reasoning and not deductive. Meaning we try to make conclusions based on the evidence. We may think we know what the outcome will be beforehand but evidence may prove us wrong, and any atheist should be willing to change their stance based on new evidence. I do not believe in evolution. The evidence of evolution is staggering thus I cannot help but conclude that evolution is a real process. Nobody had to tell me it is real. I do not believe in anthropogenic climate change. The evidence for it is also overwhelming. Now if new evidence was found that truly contradicted the theory of evolution I would know that a new theory had to be adopted because if a theory cannot explain all the evidence it isn’t a very good theory. A good atheist should make their arguments with evidence and with respect. Next let’s talk about atheists that worry me.
With even the title of this blog I wonder how many people will bother to read it. It’s still not popular today and can even leave a bad taste in the mouth of some people that I know to be quite intellectual given the pomposity of many atheists today. However, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about atheists and I also wanted to sort of describe my personal journey, and then in two additional posts talk about what annoys me about what people think about atheists and also even make some complaints about atheists that are often seen on public forums and social media. So for anyone who chooses to read this, I thank you.
I tend to start with the bare bones, but I think this time I would like to start more personally. Nevertheless I think it is worth starting out by simply defining the term atheist as I see it and will refer back to this definition later. Theism is belief in the existence of a deity or deities. The dictionary definition also adds in things like someone who believes in a god or gods as being responsible for the universe and also having a personal relationship with his/her creation. The last part is arguable, as many might say that someone who believes in a god who sort of just passively watches is also a theist. The word atheism thus simply put is the lack of a belief in a god or gods. The best analogy that I think can be used to describe theism vs. atheism is to say it is the same as between symmetry and asymmetry. Something is symmetrical or it isn’t. Someone believes in a god, or they don’t. Now on with the story.
As I have told many friends in the past, my questioning of religion happened well before my questioning about God. So I’ll start with religion since this tends to be tied with the concept of a God, but certainly doesn’t have to be. As a biracial child I am fortunate to have both sides of my family love and respect me. And it is this love and respect that first raised doubts in me that religion had some problems. Not that I could think intellectually about it as a child, but I remember thinking:
“Here are two sides of my family from completely different cultures and they were born into two very different stories about spirituality and God (Christianity and Sikhism), and they both seem to love me very much. I saw them all as good people.”
When from the very outset of your life you know good people of two different faiths it tells you that goodness is not something contingent upon a particular faith. And as I grew older and learned more about the faiths in particular, it seemed clear to me that since both stories can’t be right, then both stories must be wrong.
Certainly also having an impact on me is when I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, because I was told that if you prayed hard enough it will happen. Not sure why they tell kids that, but in retrospect I think it is quite cruel. So what did I want? I wanted my alcoholic dad to not drink. I think we can all agree that this is something pretty normal and somewhat virtuous for a kid to pray for. On top of that it’s something that I kid will pray for pretty hard; really hard actually. I was in lock, stock, and barrel. I was 12 at the time so I can remember pretty vividly what I was like. Still being a kid, when the heart of a child decides to do something there is no hesitation, no doubt. He believes. Kids believe with so much more certainty and of course that is how a kid’s brain is designed; to take in information regardless of its truth and believe it. So for a good year, I prayed and I prayed. Well I am sure you can guess the outcome. When the religious people you know tell you that something is true and it is not, it feels like a betrayal and it is hard to believe them again. And when you ask them why it doesn’t work, either they have no answer or they tell you “just to keep having faith” or in the worst case they tell you “it’s because you didn’t pray hard enough” or “God only listens to boys who are being good Christians”. This is a terrific message isn’t it? Now it’s somehow your fault that your dad is still drinking. Children of alcoholics already internalize their parent’s drinking and this reinforces it at the spiritual level.
At this point I am going to skip over a lot, because it would require going over all that I have learned in school and in life, and it’s a long story. I simply wanted to explain the things that I thought were important in sending me on my path towards atheism. It was a long journey and for most of my 20’s I still believed in God but sort of formed my own definition that I was comfortable with. It was peaceful in some ways to believe in a God because it was helpful when things were out of my control I could simply say to myself “It is in God’s hands”. At some point though you realize you are using God as a tool for your own peace of mind and so I had to say to myself, “Well Swarn, what does all that you’ve learned about the world and its history really tell you? There is no god.”
With that being said I knew that I was in a very unpopular spiritual position in this world. It’s not something that I cared to share because I didn’t even feel intellectually equipped for the possible confrontations with people who were worried about my soul. I felt I needed to get even better educated. Since then I have delved into more books about anthropology, evolution, history, psychology in trying to understand the nature of belief, and also trying to understand how the brain works in general. When I add this to my formal education that is steeped in physics I can say for certainty that no particular religion had all the answers even if there was a god. I came out as an atheist around the time that I read Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion as he inspired me to brave. We fortunately live in a society now where one can be an atheist and not get burned at the stake so I feel quite grateful for that. Moreover there is a lot of discrimination against atheists and while atheists feel no need to preach and thus keep to themselves, there is value in organizing and being vocal. I’ll let you look that up if you like, but suffice to say there are 6 states still in this nation who explicitly state in their constitution that an atheist cannot hold government office. I even came out to my mother who is a devout Christian. She has always given me freedom to by my own person and I thought it was better she know who I truly am than to think of me as illusion. I also do not want to try to imply that as atheist I face the type of discrimination that homosexuals face for who they are, so when I say “came out” I make an analogy only in terminology not in circumstance.
I have been messing around with the concept of categorization lately, and have decided that it has dangerous consequences. So I’d like to investigate the topic a bit more and perhaps offer a solution as to a perhaps a better way of thinking about things.
First of all let’s look at why we categorize. It is clear that putting things into categories is an inherent quality of how we think. And there are a lot of good arguments for categorization. Let’s face it. The world is a noisy place. There are a lot of: people, other animals, plants, types of weather, places to see, dangers to be aware of, things to learn, beliefs, truths, languages, cultures…well you get the picture. The list goes on and on. What we can gather is that the world is a noisy, chaotic place. Quite honestly we never would have started to walk upright if we didn’t categorize, because the sheer volume of information alone would overwhelm us. I would argue that we probably had to rely on categorization more as our intelligence grew because we became aware of so many more things. But I maybe wrong about that and it is beside the point. Categorization makes sense, it is useful, and it is natural and evolutionary.
So that’s great. But now let’s look at how it can get us into trouble. In my previous blog entry (it feels good to say that now!) I talked about placing things into the category of normal, which by default causes us to put things that don’t fit into a category as abnormal. I argue how this might impacts our thinking and it certainly does. I think this type of simple categorization does harm in other areas of thought as well. In fact I am going to argue that the more simply we try to categorize the more difficult and harmful it is. We can think of many simple categorizations we do every day; bad and good, good and evil, tall and short, smart and dumb, etc. Any system of categorization has two inherent problems in that, firstly, it does not take into account all the points in between, and that secondly it requires us to have a good definition of the each category and an appropriate context.
Let’s take something simple like tall and short. This is a physical quality. Calling things short and tall can be difficult if we include let’s say all animals and then try to separate tall ones from short ones. How do you compare a giraffe to a koala bear to a microbe? There we will reduce the sample size to just humans, and to eliminate gender differences in height, human men. Now we all know well the definition of tall and short in a general sense, but for the purpose of our problem we need to come up with a boundary for the category. Now we hit our first real problem. This separation point is subjective. But let’s say we do some statistics and find that the average height of all men is 5’9”. This may not even be a good way of doing it, because it is more relevant to determine what tall and short mean amongst men of different cultures. It would not be a very good average height likely if we were only talking about Scandinavians or Chinese. But since we’ve decided to make “all men” the context here then let’s just roll with it. So now we can start going around to other men and telling them “Hey, you’re tall” or “Hey you’re short” because they fall below or above a certain criteria that we’ve decided is meaningful. Well of course the problem is that the range of heights amongst men starts at the shortest man to the tallest man, and about 3.5 billion points in between. So there is a guy, who if we measured very carefully is the barest fraction of an inch under, and one that is over, and likely one who is exactly 5’9”. What do we say of these men? Do we label one as tall and the other as short even though we can see no difference with our eyes? And what if a taller man hunches most of the time, and a shorter one has good posture, or bigger hair, thus changing our perspective. I am sure you can find many more other problems with the categorization, and this is only for a simple physical quality, and even this physical quality often has associations that can lead to stereotyping. “He’s short, he’ll never play basketball.” “Ooh he’s tall dark and handsome.”
The problem gets even worse when we start to look at things like good and evil. As an atheist even I have beliefs, so maybe I need to be careful of just saying believers and non-believers. If I lay out the criteria well, I might be able to get away with it. But even then I would be hard pressed to make every person fit into one category or the other.
Things get a little bit better when I try to go into more categories. As a professor I actually like having greater grading resolution. This means that I like to have the ability to be able to differentiate more acutely with one students’ work or grade in comparison with another. A better way might be to categorize heights might be to say, less than 5 ft, between 5 ft and 5’2”, between 5’2” and 5’4” and so on. Often by tying numbers to our categorization we don’t have positive or negative associations, but of course we usually end up associating meaning to those numbers. Nevertheless by increasing the number of categories we get closer to the truth which is that there is a whole spectrum of sizes that is nearly continuous from shortest to tallest. This type of categorization for height once again is relatively easy. How do we categorize something like good and evil? Are those even realistic categories? Is there an ultimate in good and evil? In the world there is definitely a shortest and tallest man, but good and evil is not so clear. Is there even an agreeable definition to those things, especially as it applies to humans? Many religions have this ultimate concept of good and evil by having a God and a Devil. Of course even the definition on the nature of those extremes of good and evil cannot be agreed upon. In the bible God does some terrible things, which according to the writer’s perspective are good because from the perspective of his culture it’s good. I am sure the other culture is not too fond of their God at all.
Categorization is extremely challenging and yet we still do it. I re-watched the movie Hotel Rwanda recently and I began thinking about these things even more strongly. Whether you’ve watched the movie or not doesn’t matter (although you should watch that movie), but it is about the civil war and attempt at genocide by the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda. The difference in appearance between the two people are subtle if even there, yet one side was willing to eliminate the other. Of course we don’t need different colors of skin to hate or to have prejudice and so it made me think about the futility of categorization. Because even if you are a white supremacist and clear all those colored people away, over time you will still start categorizing people who are different even if those differences are slight. And I think this is especially true in a culture that is centered on intolerance. You will only breed more intolerance into your culture which will eventually cause you to even hate the same group of people who were your brothers in the fight for “white power” not too long ago. Even Christianity has fractured from its beginnings into many denominations, many of who have fought wars and still fight today in one way or another.
So I think the best plan of action is to remember first that categorization is a tool and not truth. While it might help you organize things in your mind, your division is likely subjective, arbitrary, and insufficient in understanding any truths about the world. I think it also important to let your categories be fuzzy or living. What I mean by this is recognize that there is likely no absolute and that things do not fit very neatly into any one category, and that as you grow and learn your categories may change definition or even lose their meaning altogether. In the end one must accept that the world is chaotic, that it is noisy. Beautiful harmonies do not occur when everybody is exactly the same. The best harmonies are woven together by a range of keys and octaves. That unifying voice of humanity can only be heard when we accept that there is no amount of force, fear or violence that can make everyone the same. We will only hear this song when we have tolerance for diversity and truly try to get to know one another to find out what things we truly all share.
Cloak Unfurled 