mister gone dot com slash blog

As I said last time, it’s hard to post, but not because I feel like there’s a lack of things to post about. Part of the problem is that sometimes I feel like I’m just making point most readers will agree with.  Sometimes, I end two sentences in a row with prepositions.

This is a simple point, but an important one in understanding the psychology of a supernatural believer. This is also a point I made in I’m Trying to Think (Episode 29), and I know you all listen to my podcast, so you might find it re-hashed.

Most theists believe in the God they’d expect. God is omnipotent, sure. If you believe that Revelations is divinely-inspired and not just the crazy rantings of John of Patmos, then God is pretty weird sometimes. Despite that strange history, he’s come to be a very modern, sensible guy.

Let’s compare two statements made by a generic Christian person:

Statement A: “I’ve been spending a lot of time alone, and praying for answers. Finally, this week, God spoke to me and told me that it’s time I finally became a writer.”

Statement B: “I’ve been spending a lot of time alone, and praying for answers. Finally, this week, God spoke to me through my toaster oven and told me that it’s time I finally became a writer.”

You, the astute reader, immediately noticed that the statements are the same except for one niggling detail – the bit about the toaster oven. Now, we can all agree that the supposed God could talk through a toaster oven. What would stop him? The question is, what about the phrase makes the second statement sound less credible?

Well, it’s a fairly simple answer. That sounds crazy! Who hears voices from the toaster? We all know that God very quietly and subtly talks to us in our brain. Very, very quietly. God doesn’t need to speak through a toaster, after all! Why would he do that? It’d damage the credibility of your claim. God’s not going to subject you to that.

Except, of course, offering a two-thousand year old text which lacks original source as the supposed proof of his existence. He would do that, but that’s just how he rolls.

It’s this kind of simple conundrum that reinforces my belief that mostly, Christians and other theists don’t really think too hard about what they believe. They believe in religion or God because it is a meme, and a very comforting meme. It is the kind of meme that makes you feel special, that ameliorates the fear of death and that otherwise explains things you don’t want to take the time to wonder about.

In the end, God is the God you’d expect him to be. He’s gone silent for two thousand years. If you expect he’d condemn homosexuality, then he does. If you expect he loves everyone and doesn’t care who they have sex with, then that’s what he does. He fits whatever mold you expect, and has whatever opinion (qua judgment) you think he has.

I have yet to hear anyone say, “I believe in God. He condemns homosexuality, but I disagree with him.” No. People adjust God to meet their expectations and their own personal beliefs.

The more distant you get from any belief in God, the more strange and illusive these kinds of ideas become. For me, at this moment, I can’t even force myself to think this way. I’ve never really believed in God, not as far back as I can remember, but there were points when I could put myself into the right brainspace to make this sort of idea make sense. Not anymore. And that’s what makes this post so weird – why am I bothering to say something so obvious?

Blogs need posts. I’m just feeding this one.

(I was going to save this post for later, but it seems pertinent to comments from my first post, so I’ll just post it now.)

I’m an agnostic, but it turns out that’s not very exciting. For the record, I’m an agnostic atheist, and I don’t believe “agnostic” answers the question, “Do you believe in (a) god?”

So, this post will be short.

“Agnostic” was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in the late 1800s. Huxley said this:

“Positively [agnosticism] may be expressed as in matters of intellect, do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

I am on board with Huxley’s agnosticism. Unfortunately, it’s not really an answer to the question, “Do you believe in (a) god?” Let me compare it with another exchange:

Plinko: “Did you see last night’s episode of the Family Feud?”
Planko: “I remember it, but I cannot demonstrate to you that I saw it, so don’t make a certain conclusion that I did.”

“Agnostic” is a phrase used by some people today to mean “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.” It’s kind of a word for the act of shrugging. But that’s not really what it means – agnosticism is a qualifier.

“Do you believe in (a) god?” should be answered “Yes” or “No.” If you don’t think there’s enough proof to assert that god is true and factual, then I think you have to say you’re an atheist – you don’t believe god is real and factual because you aren’t willing to assert it as true.

And of course, I think any reasonable person is an agnostic. How could we achieve absolute certainty for any given conclusion?

The problem is people think there’s something absolute about atheism. I don’t know why. It’s not like people treat theism like an absolute.

I’ll note – I don’t live my life badgering people who won’t answer “Do you believe in (a) god?” with a “Yes” or “No.” I accept some people just don’t know what it all means, don’t think about it or don’t care to discuss it.

In response to my last post, my good friend Dan asked:

“Chuck, I understand your metaphysical frustration with the absolute moral authority bit. But why include it as necessary part of your definition? If there were an omniscient and omnipotent being without this moral authority (that is, a being subject to the first part of Socrates’ disjunctive rather than the second), would you reject it as a god based on these definitional requirements?”

The short answer is “Yes,” so let’s address why I wouldn’t really think such a being was god.

The definition of god is generally a ultimate  power, a supreme being, etc. As a matter of course, this being is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. It is a being of utter goodness. Now, I don’t think that’s how the Hebrews felt about Yahweh when the Old Testament was written (those ideas come later, with folks like Hillel), but that is how modern people think about god.

But let me examine the idea of a god who has absolute knowledge but cannot dictate morality, even though he may demand it and seek justice on its behalf.

Twenty Questions for God

Christopher Hitchens wrote a book titled God Is Not Great. If I wrote a book on the subject, it might be titled What’s So Great about God? And this ties into my definition of a god. A god who observes and possibly enforces morality in the afterlife might be handy to have around, but how much of a “god” is he really?

If I posit for a moment that there is a God who created the universe, I don’t have an immediate reason to be impressed, although I would love to meet him. Firstly, it only creates the bigger question – “Where did you come from, God?” Second, I’m not sure what to think of this act of “Creation.” Was it a ton of effort (so much that he had to rest on the seventh day)? If so, what kind of a god gets tired? That seems odd to me.

Getting more serious, though, I would be meeting an extremely powerful entity, but one that is ultimately subject to things outside of his control. He would be beholden to some morality that defined his goodness because he could not simple create goodness from evil, as we see it. That just makes more questions than answers, especially about a lack of intercession from a benevolent, moral god.

Can God Make a Post So Long Even He Won’t Read It?

As I make more and more posts about these god topics, I will be saying a lot about any given god’s existential relevance – both existential in his sense and in our sense as our life and time as we understand it.

I think most gods that we can posit as possible are irrelevant. If praying to god doesn’t work, how is he relevant to our existence? If god doesn’t clearly prescribe a code of morals and ethics and give us tools for any quandry, then how is his morality relevant? If god reveals himself to some but not others, then why would anyone expect worship from those who are unenlightened by him?

Of course, I don’t believe there’s a single iota of evidence to believe in a god, so it’s all quite irrelevant to me! Still, I try to be somewhat conciliatory when making these arguments. I know people come at the issue of god from different angles, and I want to cover as many angles as I can.

A being of immense power who created this universe (and by extension, me) would be an amazing find, and would shatter much about how we view the world. And if this being would tell us about morality, then that might be a big help.

But if this being came to earth and told us all, “Yep, homosexuality is immoral,” would we all buy that? If he told us, “Abortion is fine. You can even kill a baby up until it says its first word!” would we buy that? I don’t think so. He would, at the very least, have to give us some evidence we don’t have right now. This is why I said, early on, that he would be impotent in a metaphysical sense. He’d have to prove that the morality he “knew” was the right one.

On the other hand, if he can come down, tell us that abortion is amoral and magic it up so that I just feel how wrong it is, and I can’t even consider why I thought it was circumstantially acceptable, then that’s a god.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to… Well, Everybody?

And the real kick in the pants is – god is believed by many to be so mysterious and ninja-esque in his mannerisms that he would never ever reveal any of this in so obvious a way. Thus, believers are left in a lurch – someone out there is judging you, but let’s face it, you can’t possibly understand the criteria.

On top of that, his behavior is not the model – do as he says, not as he does. After all, if you can save a life, you’re expected to do so. But, assuming god can stop a deadly hurricane, he certainly won’t.

God must somehow be morally relevant. Otherwise, he simply isn’t a god – he’s just a super-alien. Yet, clearly, I can’t see a way where god is morally relevant.

Of course, whether god can dictate morality or not, we still have to use our own moral sensibility to ensure the messages we’re receiving are not the trickery of a demon… or a psychic super-alien or what-have-you.

Let’s Talk about Worship, Baby

As an aside, if this example god created the universe that created me, I wouldn’t feel any particular debt to him. I love my parents not because they biologically spawned me but because they raised me, taught me well and took very good care of me. On the other hand, I would have no evidence that this imagined god had anything to do with my life thus far except its existence. For that, I would have no real thanks to give.

I’ll have a lot to say about worship as this blog goes on, but I’ll save that for now.

Hopefully, this answered Dan’s question in a verbose way. Really, I’m willing to accept many definitions of god for the sake of argument, but this definition is my own personal one, and one thing I mean when I say, “I don’t believe in any gods.”