Debunking God and Religion in a Single Sentence

Recently, I was challenged to provide "the most powerful argument, in one sentence, that belief in God and religion is nonsense." Now, I honestly don’t know if the person asking the question was a theist or an atheist or something in-between, but I had to laugh at the artificial stricture placed on any answers. One sentence? Why just one sentence instead of, say, a well-reasoned paragraph or two that might allow one to flesh out the argument a bit instead of just providing an easily dismissed sound bite?

[In fact, the more I think about it, the more I can’t help thinking of that old game show “Name that Tune.” “I can debunk God and religion in one sentence!”]

Anyway, there were certainly lots of ways to approach this challenge. I could, for example, have mentioned the sheer number of religions in the world and the fact that so many of them are mutually exclusive. I could have discussed the lack of any compelling evidence or sound arguments to support a belief in God. But, since the challenge was specifically to provide an argument that belief in God and religion is “nonsense” (and not just improbable or irrational), I finally decided to go with the following:

The original concepts of gods and religions were the product of ignorant and superstitious people who had little or no understanding about the world or the universe and our place in it, and just about everything else they thought they knew to be true has now been proved to be false.

Yeah, it’s a bit clunky, but that’s what you get when you expect somebody to cram an entire argument into a single sentence. Overall, though, I’m satisfied with the way it came out and I think it makes a valid point.

Of course, as expected, people immediately began taking cheap pot shots at my answer, demanding that I provide “citations” to “scientific evidence” to support my assertion that the people who first invented religions were largely ignorant about the world and the universe. Seriously? I need to prove that people living thousands of years ago, without access to any of the technology we have today, didn’t know as much about the universe as we do today?

Well, I don’t know about any “scientific evidence” of their ignorance that I can cite, but fortunately there’s this wonderful invention that actually allows me to see backwards through time and know what ancient people were thinking when first describing their gods and coming up with their religions, as well as what they thought about the universe and our place in it. And it’s an invention that has actually been around for many thousands of years.

It’s called writing.

You see, we don’t need “scientific evidence” to determine what ancient people were thinking when they first came up with their religions since they were nice enough to write it all down for us. From the ancient Sumerians who chiseled cuneiform stories into clay tablets, to the people who wrote the Bible, to the writings of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, to the author(s) of the Qur’an, to the recorded Edda sagas of the ancient Norse, etc., we have an abundant treasure trove of literature that clearly indicates that the people first writing about gods and religions largely didn’t have a clue about such basic things as the fact that the earth rotates on an axis, that the earth revolves around the sun, that the stars are actually other suns unimaginably far away and not, say, pinholes in the curtain of the night, that the universe is many billions of years old, that all life on earth evolved from earlier forms of life, that diseases are caused by germs, etc., etc., etc.

Add to that all the many, many, many different “creation stories” we have from all the various world religions and you don’t need “scientific evidence” to understand that religions and gods were all invented by people with limited knowledge about, well, much of anything, really. Not that they were necessarily stupid or unsophisticated, of course, but simply unaware of things that could only be known with the help of tools such as telescopes, microscopes, rockets, computers, etc.

And please, don’t start pointing out how one particular passage in one particular religion’s holy book can, if translated and interpreted in just the right way, supposedly indicates that the author may have actually understood something about the world that most ignorant people at the time it was written probably didn’t know. Especially if you are then going to completely ignore all the other passages that are obviously just plain wrong no matter how you squint your eyes at them. Seriously, don’t tell me that “Let there Be Light” is an amazingly accurate scientific description of the Big Bang and then try to explain why it doesn’t matter that the Bible also says the Earth was created before the Sun.

Atheism Without Theism?

A while back, I was engaged in a conversation with a theist who kept trying to get me to acknowledge that atheists maintain that the billions of people throughout all of human history who believe in God were all wrong. This was obviously poorly veiled argumentum ad populum and I refused to play his game according to his rules. Instead, I kept pointing out that the majority of theists also maintain that the billions of people throughout all of human history who believe in God were all wrong, since they worship the wrong God, or belong to the wrong religion, sect, denomination, etc. Every time he tried to argue that there must be something to this whole God belief if everybody accepted it except for a small percentage of atheists, I pointed out that every single theist was also part of a small group of people who disagreed with everybody else, so there’s nothing special about atheists rejecting all other beliefs as invalid.

Well, after going back and forth like this for awhile, getting more and more frustrated at my unwillingness to play his game and concede his point, he finally said something that just made my jaw drop in amazement:

What other people believe has nothing to do with the question asked. Deflection to what theists believe is nothing more than a rationalization. You don't base your atheism on what theists believe, do you?

Seriously?

SERIOUSLY???

I mean, I know that theists like to claim that atheism is its own belief system and all, but this is just ridiculous. Of course atheists base their atheism on what theists believe. That’s the whole point! Atheism literally means “not theism” and is nothing more, nor less, than a reaction to and rejection of what theists assert to be true. Theists say, “There is a God” and atheists respond, “I don’t believe you.” If no theist ever talked about God in the first place, there would be no such thing as atheists. How can atheist know what it is that we don’t believe in unless somebody else first tells us about it? Can you disbelieve in Santa Claus or Elves or the Loch Ness Monster if nobody has first told you what they are?

I dunno. I’m used to theists constantly trying to shift the burden of proof to make their arguments seem less irrational (“Atheists can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, so their belief in no God is just as faith-based as our belief in God”). And I’m used to theists constantly trying to portray atheism as some sort of “belief system” instead of simply a lack of belief. But it never occurred to me that somebody would actually complain that atheists dare to define their lack of belief according to what other people believe in.

What a world.

The Incomprehensible and/or Imperceptible God

In a previous post I wrote about the hypocrisy and hubris evidenced by people who claim to be the only ones who “really” understand what the Bible actually says (see The Hypocrisy and Hubris of Biblical Interpretation). The basic point was that it was incredibly arrogant for anybody to think that (a) God actually wants people to know what He wants people to do and (b) throughout all of human history nobody has been able to figure it out until now (meaning, of course, that billions of people in the past got it all wrong and were presumably doomed to go to Hell as a result).

On a related note, I have recently run into a similar group of incredibly arrogant theists. No, they don’t claim to understand the Bible better than anybody else. Instead, they claim to understand the essential nature of God better than anybody else. God, you see, is wholly incomprehensible to the human mind and therefore every single religion throughout history that has ever described God in any particular way just got it wrong.

For example:

As “God”, by the very nature of it’s defined and understood being, exists outside of the physical Universe, there will be no exclusively applicable, scientifically validated or accepted physical or empirical “evidence” of the existence of God.

Or this:

God is an inner experience that no words can explain. The one Creator God created all other gods (small “g”) including the ones you named. None are equal to the Creator God who created them.

The truth of God can be known only by reaching beyond the relativity of the material realm consciousness. It is an inner experience perceived when the human’s consciousness is raised to its higher mind.

Those who meditate know of the higher mind. There are no outer writings or teachings that can explain God for the conscious mind of the human and no religion is necessary for the inner experience of God. When the human is ready the teacher will appear. That teacher is the inner experience of God.

Now, as I mentioned, this appears to be just another example of people who are so full of themselves, who think they are so special, that they honestly believe that they are among the select few in the history of religion to truly understand who and what God “really” is. I’m sure it makes them feel good about themselves, but what type of person can believe in a God who actually cares about us and then thinks that billions of humans throughout history just got it wrong.

However, I think there may be more to it than just sheer arrogance. I suspect that at least part of this has to do with an acknowledgement that there really is no valid evidence to support a belief in the existence of God. And rather than just admit this, these people have decided to redefine God in a way that does not require any evidence. As with the deist notion of a non-interventionist God, however, what’s left is an empty meaningless concept of a god who doesn’t perform miracles, doesn’t promise an afterlife or salvation, doesn’t provide moral guidance, etc. It’s just yet another cop-out to justify why they can’t provide any evidence for God’s existence.

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Of course, one question that never seems to get fully addressed is how, if God is so incomprehensible, do people like this seem to know so much about Him what He wants us to do, what He can do for us, etc. Now that’s the real mystery! For example, somebody recently posed the following question to me:

If the maker of a show is not inside the shoe, why do scientists expect God to be perceivable inside the universe?

The clear implication being, of course, that the reason scientists have never been able to detect God is because He is not actually perceptible within this universe. Oh, really? The thing is, if you’re actually talking about one of the many, many gods actually worshiped by anybody throughout all of recorded human history, its not scientists who expect “God” to be perceivable but believers themselves. After all, the gods that people actually worship have not exactly been shy about showing themselves (or allowing themselves to be perceived, if you prefer) in the past, at least if you believe all the various accounts in the various holy books that provide the only source of knowledge that believers actually have regarding their gods.

It’s rather disingenuous to claim that the particular “God” you worship created the universe, performed a multitude of miracles, talked to various people, sent down representatives to interact with humans, made specific promises, provided moral guidelines for us to follow, etc., etc., etc., and then go on to claim that this “God” cannot be perceived in any way. After all, if your “God” cannot be perceived in any way, how do you even know about it in the first place?

Sure, if you define your “God” as wholly imperceptible, then science has nothing to say on the matter. But then again, neither do you. That’s what imperceptible means. On the other hand, the minute you claim to be able know anything whatsoever about your “God” (what it has said, done, promised, etc.), then you are making testable claims that should be verifiable by scientists.

A Revelation Regarding Arguments for the Existence of God

OK, so the title of this post is intentionally meant to be humorous, but after watching yet another debate between a theist and an atheist regarding the existence of God, I had a sudden realization.  An epiphany, if you will.

The theist side of most of these debates usually consists of three main angles of attack:

1. God's existence can be logically proved via a number of different arguments, such as the Cosmological Argument, the Argument from Design or the Argument from Contingency (which is really just a subset of the Cosmological Argument).
    
2. Science (usually equated with atheism for some reason) can't explain everything (or anything, with 100% certainty), but the "God" hypothesis can, so therefore it is more reasonable to believe that God exists.
   
3. Faith, personal revelation, etc., "prove" that the theist's accepted version of God is the right one (which is why Muslims use the same exact arguments as Christians to "prove" wildly different versions of God).

Now, the third angle of attack can usually be dismissed out of hand, simply because the theist acknowledges that there is no way to prove the assertion and it's really just a statement of belief (no matter how deeply held).  And the second line of attack is also pretty easily dismissed, since it's trivial to explain that the burden of proof lies on the head of he who is making a positive claim ("God exists") and atheists don't have to be able to explain anything (or everything) with 100% certainty if theists can't even prove that God exists in the first place.

And so, most of these debates tend to revolve around the first angle of attack.  The theist runs through the same tired arguments that have been refuted time and time again, and the atheist goes through the motions of pointing out how they have been refuted time and time again.  And nothing ever gets resolved!  Even if the atheist refutes every single point made by the theist, even if he explains in careful detail the unwarranted assumptions, begged questions, leaps of logic and major fallacies employed while making the arguments, the theist just continues blithely on to the second and third angles of attack as if nothing happened.

And this is when I had my revelation.  Theists who make these arguments purporting to prove the existence of God aren't actually trying to convince atheists that God exists.  Instead, they are simply trying to offer logical-sounding justifications for what they believe so as to not appear illogical, foolish, gullible, stupid, idiotic, or what have you.  They know that their belief in God is based on a wholly irrational foundation of faith (not to mention cultural inertia, family experience, etc.), and they trot out these arguments to make themselves feel better.

Again, this becomes extremely apparent after a theist runs through all the "logical" arguments as to why a God (of some sort) must necessarily exist, but then has to resort to an appeal to faith or personal revelation or an appeal to emotion to bridge the gap between the supposedly proven "first cause" God and the God that they personally believe in and worship.

All of which is to say that debating theists over the existence of God is probably a useless exercise.  People don't tend to believe in God for logical reasons in the first place, so refuting the logic of their proposed arguments isn't likely to change their opinions.  The arguments are nothing but smokescreens to hide the fact that their beliefs are not based on logic or evidence, since appeals to faith typically don't carry too much weight with the faithless.

The Power of Coincidence

So, I've had this little snippet of classical music stuck in my head for months now with no idea what it actually was.  It might have been something I heard on the radio years ago, but it also might have been background music for a commercial or something else like that.  I suspected it might be something by Bach, but that was the best I could do.  It was really driving me crazy, especially since I could only remember the first few bars and really wanted to hear the rest.

Well, last night I went to my weekly choir rehearsal (yes, I sing in a small a capella choir that specializes in Renaissance music) and asked our director, Jay, if he had any idea what this tune was (obviously, it helps that I can actually sing).  He thought about it and said it might possibly be from Bach's "Italian Concerto".  That's a piece I've heard of, but don't recall ever actually listening to, so I told him I'd look it up on Youtube later and let him know.

After rehearsal, I got into my car and headed home.  The radio was tuned to WCRB (classical music), and literally the first thing I hear upon starting the car was, "Up next, Bach's 'Italian Concerto.'"  Cue the "Twilight Zone" music (doo-dee-doo-doo, doo-dee-doo-doo).  The first movement didn't sound particularly familiar, and neither did the second movement.  When the third movement started playing, though, shivers shot up and down my spine as I heard the exact same snippet of music that had been running through my head for months and that I had just asked my director about.  What an amazing coincidence!  I mean, I can't even begin to calculate the odds of it happening the way it happened, but they must be astronomical to the point where it couldn't have happened just by chance.  Except, of course, that it did happen just by chance.

Later that evening, I began to think more about my experience and started wondering what my reaction would have been had I previously taken some action that could somehow be interpreted as triggering this event.  What if, say, I had read a fortune cookie at the Chinese restaurant where I usually eat lunch and it had said something like, "Today, you will find the answer to your question."  Or, what if I had visited a fortune teller who told me that today was going to be my lucky day?  Well, I probably would have still chalked it up to just an amazing coincidence.  But, what if I were still religious and had prayed to God to please, please, help me figure out what this tune was before it drove me crazy?  And then I had this amazing coincidence happen?  Hmmmmm...

Growing up surrounded by theists, all my life I have heard so-called "faith promoting stories" that people have used to justify their faith.  Yes, I'm sure that some of those stories are complete fabrications, but I'm willing to accept that most of them are totally sincere and reflect instances where somebody prayed about something and then had something inexplicably amazing happen to them, something so bizarre that it couldn't possibly have been just a coincidence.  Or maybe they didn't even pray about something, but knew that whatever happened must have been because God was rewarding them for being faithful, or sending them a message, or whatever.  After all, what other possible explanation could there be?

OK, so maybe in the great scheme of things my little brush with coincidence wasn't all that earth-shattering.  Maybe it's not so bizarre as it seemed to me and stuff like this actually happens all the time.  Regardless, it seemed bizarrely inexplicable to me at the time and it gave me an appreciation as to why people are so willing to think that experiences such as this provide evidence (if not absolute proof) of whatever type of supernatural beliefs they hold.  Of course, since I'm using this experience to reinforce my non-belief in the supernatural, I suppose you could call this a "faith demoting story"...

Why Do So Many People Believe in [a] God?

One argument I hear periodically is that, even if you can refute the claims of one particular religion, doesn't the fact that almost all cultures throughout human history have held a belief in some sort of god or gods mean something?  Couldn't this be evidence that there is, in fact, some sort of supernatural creative force "out there" and we all just perceive and interpret it in different ways?  If you want to get all scientific (and I always love when people invoke science to justify their non-scientific beliefs), doesn't it show that humans have evolved to believe in God and that it would only make sense if there were, in fact, a God to believe in?

Now, the easiest answer would, of course, be that it doesn't matter if a billion people believe something to be true if the thing is actually false, and humanity has collectively believed a lot of wrong ideas throughout history.  For untold thousands of years, people believed ("knew") that the sun went around the earth once a day, despite the fact that the earth actually revolves.  People believed that illnesses were caused by all matter of things (bad air, curses, etc.), despite the fact that they are actually caused by germs.  So yes, most cultures throughout recorded history have believed in some sort of supernatural creator, but (skipping the obvious problem that no two cultures could agree on what that creator actually was like) that doesn't really provide evidence that those beliefs are correct.

Having said that, however, I think the question does deserve a little more nuanced answer.  It's not enough to point out that people believe a lot of wrong things, since that doesn't mean that this particular belief is wrong (only that it could be wrong despite the fact that so many people have held it, or some form of it).  Instead, it would be helpful to provide an alternate explanation for why a belief in god or gods seems to be such an ingrained part of human nature.  Now, I'm not saying that I can conclusively provide the actual explanation, but I do at least have some thoughts as to one possible alternate explanation.  Someday I'll write a book on this subject and fill it with annotated footnotes to scientific studies and research, but for now I'm just going to go with a summation of things I have heard and read about, as well as my interpretation of what it all means.

Humans may not have evolved specifically to believe in God, but I think it's safe to say that our intellect and capacity to solve problems certainly evolved as a survival mechanism.  Rather than developing armored hides to protect ourselves from danger or razor-sharp claws to bring down prey, humans evolved the ability to anticipate danger to protect ourselves and to solve complex problems in order to figure out ways to obtain food.  When early man saw the tall grass swaying, especially in the absence of any evident wind, he realized it could still be caused by the wind but could also be caused by a predator stalking him.  If he assumed it's a predator and ran away, he lived to survive another day even if it really was the wind.  On, the other hand, if he assumed it was just the wind and it turned out to be a predator, well, he likely wouldn't live long enough to pass his genes to the next generation.  And thus, we evolved to see patterns even when they don't exist and to assume agency (i.e., that things are caused by mindful creatures) even when things happen by random chance.

Although this tendency to see patterns and assume agency was instrumental in allowing humans to survive and flourish throughout the millennia, it also brought along some baggage with it.  That's evolution for you.  Evolution allows species to adapt to changing environments and survive, but there's no guiding force to ensure that a particular adaptation is the "best" possible solution, only that it was better than other adaptations that did not enable a species to survive.  This is why we have eyes with built-in blind spots, appendices that serve no purpose and occasionally kill us by bursting and, sad to say, an intellect that assumes that every little bump in the night must be caused by some creature coming to eat us.

The problem is, of course, that our pattern-recognition skills are flawed.  Sure, they are good enough to help us survive, but they have also led us to see patterns where they don't exist and also ignore any evidence that contradicts the patterns we have convinced ourselves do exist.  If we, for example, see evidence of agency all around us, in the apparent design of the complex natural world or in stories of people being blessed after praying to one God or another, we are going to stick with our beliefs in those patterns even if the apparent natural design can be shown to have an alternate explanation or we hear stories about people who prayed and weren't blessed.  Psychologists call this "Confirmation Bias" and it simply means that, once we have made up our minds about something, we tend to accept any evidence supporting that belief and disregard (or ignore) any evidence that contradicts that belief.  And again, as a rough survival tool, confirmation bias served us well in the past.  The fact that 9 times out of 10 the swaying grass ended up just being caused by the wind doesn't matter if that 10th time ends up being a hungry predator, so it's better to just ignore the cases that don't fit the pattern and see the one case in your favor as proof that swaying grass means death is waiting to attack with sharp, nasty claws and fangs.

So, yeah.  Throughout history, human societies have tended to believe in one sort of supernatural force or another.  We don't know what that bright yellow thing in the sky is, but it moves and therefore must either be intelligent or else be pulled by something intelligent.  And when it hides for most of the day and things get cold, it must be because it is angry with us.  So we'd better pray to it and sacrifice things to it just in case.  And, sure enough, after a few months of prayers and sacrifices, winter comes to an end and spring returns proving we were right.  Except, we now know all about the rotation of the earth, the tilt of its axis and its yearly journey around the sun.  Does the fact that humans, in their ignorance, used to think the sun was a god and worshiped it accordingly really say anything about whether their is a god of some sort?  Or does it just speak to our ignorance and gullibility?