Questions of this sort, while no longer at the
forefront of serious scholarly inquiry, haven’t completely subsided in the
modern age, especially in the United States where we have the unusual
distinction of being by far the most religious of any advanced, industrial
nation. As the so-called “culture wars” rage on unabated in the run-up to
the 2012 presidential election (with back and forth volleys ranging from Rick Santorum’s failed candidacy to President Obama’s recent declaration of support for gay marriage), the subject of religious
belief and its role in American politics has been pushed to the forefront of
national discourse, and with it has come a revival of interest in a wide range
of formerly obscure ideas relating to God and his role in the universe.
Most visible and controversial among these
various heretical doctrines to emerge, and standing in direct opposition to the
mainstream Christian beliefs still held by a majority of the populace, is the
moral and philosophical position that God is completely imaginary; that he is
nothing but a vestige of primitive ignorance and confusion about the workings
of nature, and that it is therefore up to humans alone to determine what is
best for our species. Rooted in science and fueled in large part by a
perceived religious overreach in all manner of secular concerns, this
passionate and vocal “new” atheism has burst onto the scene over the past
decade – a rapid resurgence of a phenomenon that had gone virtually unnoticed
in the U.S. since the days of Robert Green Ingersoll and the “Golden Age of Freethought” at the
close of the nineteenth century.
As a direct result of its newfound popularity,
there are now more resources available for atheists and other such heathens
than ever before, and the ideas they promote can no longer be as easily
suppressed or ignored as they once were. By embracing the power of the
Internet to share information with a global audience, modern atheists have been
remarkably successful in disseminating their ideas and attracting new
supporters. A simple Google search or a quick perusal of sites such as
Reddit or Twitter gives a good sense of just how ubiquitous atheist articles
and treatises have become among the blogosphere and other alternative forms of media.
Of course, such success has also inspired an
army of detractors, many of them enraged to the point of madness over what they
view as a blasphemous assault against everything they hold dear. When you
stop to consider the relative novelty of seeing viewpoints that were long
regarded as taboo suddenly being publicly and unapologetically expressed
(significantly easier now that doing so won’t result in you being burned alive
at the stake), along with the brutal history of bigotry and oppression that have been directed against atheists since
ancient times, it’s not surprising that Christians, Muslims, and other devout
believers would lash out vehemently against these outspoken infidels and the
threat they pose to their faith.
What is surprising however, is that some
of the harshest critiques of atheism often seem to come, not from the
believers, but instead from individuals who for all intents and purposes should
likewise fall into the non-religious category – people who have rejected most
tenets of orthodox dogma and yet who, for various reasons, still cling to
unsupported and untestable beliefs about an ultimate divine power. I’m
referring here in particular to those calling themselves deists or
pantheists. For anyone unfamiliar with these terms, a brief overview may
be of some help.
A deist is someone who believes that the
universe was created by an all-powerful, supernatural intelligence who has
since retired from active involvement with his creation, content to let it
evolve according to the laws of nature. Deists therefore tend to reject
the idea of miracles, of prophecy, and of divine revelation – in other words,
many of the things most cherished by the traditional Abrahamic faiths.
Counted among their ranks are such famous Enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire
and Rousseau as well as several of America’s founding fathers, including James
Madison and Thomas Jefferson. It is to this deist “God of nature” that
Jefferson was referring when he penned the words, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Pantheists, on the other hand, believe that God is
the universe, and that we, as well as everything else – all the stars and
planets, all matter and energy, all thoughts and ideas, ants and worms, atoms
and galaxies – everything – are all just various aspects of his divine being,
or nodes in his cosmic consciousness. Alternatively, for the less
allegorically inclined, it’s the view that God, Nature, and the Universe are
synonymous and interchangeable terms pointing to a single, grand unifying
principle of existence – a stance Richard Dawkins has referred to as “sexed-up
atheism.” Notable adherents of pantheism include the Renaissance
troublemakers Giordano Bruno and Baruch Spinoza as well as more modern thinkers
such as Albert Einstein.
Now, there are myriad reasons why someone might
choose to subscribe to either of these two positions. Probably the most
straightforward and respectable one is that they just truly feel that’s where
the evidence leads; that in their opinion, Occam’s razor cuts most finely by
positing the existence of some higher being to initiate the Big Bang, or to
tweak the universe’s various physical constants in order to provide the
necessary atomic stability that makes life as we know it possible.
For others, their basis of belief is not so much
intellectual as it is the result of emotional attachment – a lingering
nostalgia for one of humankind’s oldest ideas coupled with what is otherwise a
scientific outlook – one that makes Creationism and other such forms of
Biblical literalism untenable but still leaves room in their worldview for a
deity of some sort. Yet another possible route to such beliefs is that
like Trekkies or die-hard Harry Potter fans, they simply find such speculative
concepts mysterious and exciting to the point of infatuation, thus leading them
to embrace these ideas as the ultimate truth about reality. Regardless of
the underlying psychological motivations, however, both of the positions
outlined above share two major points in common.
The first is that despite whatever mental appeal
they may hold for those who subscribe to them, both of these ideas are essentially
pure speculation. While they’re interesting to ponder as hypotheses
or as thought experiments, by their very nature they seem doomed to remain
forever trapped beyond any conceivable manner of investigation or refutation,
thus placing them beyond the purview of science.
Think about it. If you have a god who is
the universe or who dwells fully outside of and out of contact with it – a god
whose presence exerts no detectable, discernible influence over the physical
interactions of matter and energy in space and time – then his existence would
mesh so perfectly with the laws of physics as to make it indistinguishable from
non-existence. How is such a god in any meaningful sense “real”?
Faced with such fundamental limitations, it would therefore seem a bit
presumptuous, or at least premature, to assert these ideas as gospel
truth. As the astronomer Edwin Hubble once said, “Not until the empirical
resources are exhausted need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.”
Far more important than disputing these
positions, however, is drawing attention to the second point they have in
common; that is, to the utter irrelevance of any such intangible and distant
god in relation to the specific factual claims made by the world’s major
religions, and to the effects that such claims have on human life in the here
and now.
To say that God exists but that he’s uninvolved
with the day to day workings of the universe, or unconcerned with human
affairs, or that he is the universe and we and everything else are merely
cogs within the grand machine of his being begs the question: How does
that have anything to do with the myths, rituals, and dogmas championed by
Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.? How is such a god in any way relevant to
what we know as organized religion or to the misguided morality it tries to
impose on everyone it encounters?
I think that atheists sometimes get so hung up
on the matter of God’s non-existence that we tend to forget this crucial matter
of relevance. It’s quite simple. Unless God thinks and acts
somewhat like a human being – unless he is concerned with our thoughts and
behaviors, and listens to prayers, and occasionally suspends the laws of
physics to perform miraculous interventions on our behalf (as envisioned by
most devout worshipers and as described in their holy books) – then who really
cares whether some abstract shadow of such a divinity exists or not? If
he lies wholly outside the spheres in which mainstream religion inserts itself,
then the potential existence of such a being has absolutely no bearing on why
society should be anything but secular!
Neither the God of deists nor the God of
pantheists would have even the slightest relevance as far as why one should
follow the Ten Commandments of the Bible, or obey Sharia or the Five Pillars of
Islam, or abide by the kosher restrictions of Jewish orthodoxy. This God
would have nothing to do with the wearing of burqas, or mandatory school
prayer, or with religious opposition to contraception, gay marriage, and the
teaching of science – in short, all the things that get atheists so riled up in
the first place.
If to believe in him requires just as much of a
leap of faith as believing in Yahweh, yet the repercussions of doing so are
utterly irrelevant to human life and interaction, there just doesn’t seem to be
much point in getting so passionately attached to the concept. Looking at
it from a purely pragmatic perspective, beyond its possible sci-fi value,
what’s really the difference between saying he exists or saying he doesn’t?
And if that’s the case, why dispute so heartily with atheists? (Granted,
you could fairly ask the same question of us, but that’s the whole point – it’s
doesn’t matter either way.)
Atheists only concern ourselves with religion –
we only bother with carrying such a ridiculously unnecessary label as “atheist”
(after all, no one feels the need to declare himself an a-vampirist,
a-leprechaunist, etc.), which brings us nothing but derision and grief from the
general public – because we see superstitious, dogmatic, faith-based religion
as one of the most destructive, baseless, and useless pursuits ever dreamt up
by human beings.
Do you as deists or pantheists support the
underlying ideas driving wars of religious hatred? Do you agree with the
censorship and other restrictions on freedom imposed by religious interference
with laws and politics? If so, then fine, we’ll add you to the rolls of
the opposition. But if not, why work to disparage the one group most
vocally and vehemently opposed to all religious bigotry; to all indoctrinating
of nonsense in innocent youth; to all anti-science, anti-progress,
anti-learning, anti-pleasure, guilt-reveling death worship; to all peddling of
false hope in order to control credulous masses brainwashed since birth?
With over eighty percent of humanity holding religious beliefs of some
kind; with forty-six percent of Americans believing the earth was created
six thousand years ago over the course of seven days; with a large contingent
of murderous, fanatical Islamists bent on world domination and the complete
destruction of secular society and values, we have our work cut out for us as
it is.
So why obstruct us? Why tear down the body
of awareness we’re striving to build? Why stand in the way of our vision
of a happier, healthier, more peaceful future? We should be at worst,
uneasy allies, sharing a mutual interest in pursuing the truth about reality,
free from the confines of mental and physical oppression and punishment, and
the stifling of open inquiry practiced by both church and mosque for centuries.
With science now pointing towards such
incredible and exotic possibilities as an infinite multiverse,
hyper-dimensional vibrating strings, dark energy, the Higgs boson, quantum
tunneling, and so many other exciting and fascinating facets of existence
awaiting discovery, we should stop arguing about dancing angels and instead
focus our energies on standing united against the common enemy of
freethought. Even a sentient universe ought to appreciate that!
Colby Hess is a freelance writer and
photographer living near Seattle, WA. He is currently writing a book
about science, philosophy, and freethought. Follow him on Twitter @ColbyTHess
Originally
published as:
“Dancing On Pinheads” on June 27, 2012
by Disinformation > http://www.disinfo.com/2012/06/dancing-on-pinheads/
2 comments:
I have a buddy who is a pantheist and very religious in that liberal way. (He's the guy I stayed with in DC for the rally.) He's never come up with a reason to why he prays to such a divinity.
That's one of the reasons I like Colby's post so much. I have always wondered, and I think I may have mentioned it in a post as some point, that pantheism is...pointless. I guess it is harmless, but I don’t see it as anything different from apatheistic theism. Also, praying to pantheist god is masturbation.
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