Editor's Note: Spokane Faith & Values has a new feature called “Ask An Atheist” where readers are invited to submit question to our atheist writers. Here's the third set of question that came in, and a response from one of our atheist writer.
Q. How do you feel about billboards constructed by atheists that openly attack faith? I'm in support of any message that encourages people to explore beliefs — or unbeliefs, as the case may be — but not at the sake of attacking what others practice. What are your thoughts?
A. That's a good one, and touches on both discretion and conviction. It is not easy to imagine how an expression of atheism could avoid being an attack on faith, but as essentially a jumbo bumper sticker there are differences in impact depending on how the matter is phrased. A “Come to Jesus” or a “There is No God” billboard, both simple but direct, are nonetheless taking a whack at the opposite position (though the latter would be stepping on the toes of all faiths, not just local ones), so a measure of “taking offense” is inevitable, but less incendiary than “Atheists will burn in Hell” or “Belief in Jesus is plain stupid!” would be. Billboards are best used as a way of expressing positive beliefs rather than negative criticism, such as our own Freedom From Religion Foundation did recently to call attention to the presence of atheists in the community (expressing the sentiments of the pictured members).
The degree to which a billboard gets more specific is limited by space, of course, but the issues governing them are no different than what people would present publicly in other contexts. Any expression of an atheist position is going to tread on people's faith views, and this can turn on factual information as well as philosophical ones. An atheist like me wanted someone to quiz Mitt Romney last year on whether he actually believes the pre-Columbian history recounted in the Book of Mormon (no conventional historian gives it the slimmest chance of being true, especially given its glaring anachronisms such as horse-drawn chariot battles). Translate that into a billboard: “Book of Mormon True? Sorry, no wheeled vehicles prior to Columbus.” And you've got millions of offended LDS, guaranteed. Similarly, for a Young Earth Creationism believer: “Answers in Genesis on the level?” with a picture of a T. Rex with further caption: “Sorry, these carnivores dies out 65 million years ago. Live with it.” would in principle offend their beliefs.
But remember, “offense” is in the eye of the beholder. Any billboard professing a belief to which you do not hold might be deemed an attack on your own. The “Come to Jesus” and “There is no God” billboards are equally offensive to a devout Thor-believing pagan. The reason why such issues don't come up so often is the relative scarcity of Thorists in our culture.
Want to submit a question? Leave a comment below for fill out this online form.
(1/2 parts)
As someone whose view of life has recently “popped” into clarity after leaving faith behind and becoming an atheist, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for outspoken atheists out there. Growing up in a family and culture where faith is presented as the only possible option, rational and questioning people are allowed some leeway in interpreting scripture and theology, but to have no faith is beyond the pale and severely shunned.
I’m a questioning, rational person. I like knowing things for the sake of knowing things. When I was a kid, I used to collect spiders in jars with bits of twigs and leaves to make a “habitat” so I could watch them for a while before letting them go. I used to, and still do, pour over history, science, and philosophical texts.
The problem with wanting to know things is that you end up knowing a lot of facts which contradict the prevailing faith narrative (Christianity, in my case, but the same applies to any faith). If you are feeling social and familial pressure to keep your faith, you end up either going mad, turning to insular fundamentalism to avoid knowing facts, or engaging in lengthy theological gymnastics to “prove” (to who? oneself?) that Christianity (or any faith) has simply been misinterpreted, that it is metaphorical, that the holy writings are greatly in need of modern interpretation to be properly understood.
This is widely practiced in Christianity and other faiths, and I don’t really see it as a bad thing — or not nearly as bad as fervent fundamentalism. I have deep respect for people of faith who get from their holy book a message of love and compassion. Much good in our society comes from charitable and kind-hearted people of faith. Many of them have influenced my life for the good.
Yet, in my personal quest for truth, something was still missing. The more you know about the universe, the huger and more complex it really is. The more pain and suffering I saw (and experienced), the more theological gymnastics I had to do, and the more tiresome and unsatisfying it became — most especially, for those in suffering. How could the loving, all-powerful author and creator of life let its universe and its people go so badly astray? How could it have authored, even indirectly, holy books which advocated for slavery, genocide, sick sexual mores, and a hostile and predatory world and yet still claim: to God be the glory? On which of the six days of creation did God create cholera, which resulted in the painful deaths of so many millions of people through the eons? How could God have created a biosphere where life depends on eating other life to survive? This, and many other contrarian facts and ideas, drove me mad trying to explain it all from a faith viewpoint.
But for much of my adult life, largely thanks to the Internet, there has been a dissenting opinion, one which my family and community would have never allowed me access to if they could have helped it. It took my years to see it, but atheism is a very clear, simple, elegant, and powerful way to think about reality. I spun theology out as far as it could possibly stretch, and it still lacked the power to explain what/why/how/where/when we are in this place. It caused me a great deal of despair — and a subtle feeling of personal responsibility for the failings of the world. If faith needs a human interpreter, then it must be the collective failings of interpreters that there is not only the suffering that comes about from natural causes, but the great amount of suffering caused by religious extremism.
(2/2 parts)
Atheism is a far better explanation of the world we see. It allows us, and the universe, to just be as we are. Evolution proceeded as it did, with its red claws and short, fearful lives of prey and predator, because it worked in our entropic universe. If you have to trouble yourself with understanding the Creator of all this, then you will be puzzled indeed. But if things can just be because they are, and all you have to do is observe it carefully, then the pieces of the puzzle simply slide into place, with no need to be forced to conform to a certain image of reality. You can put the pieces together, and they build a picture of what is — not what you want it to be. There’s nothing to fight against. There is no need to superimpose an image of God on the cosmos, which is another way of saying, there is no need to impose an image of man on the cosmos.
After making this realization, the “danger” for me became pulling the threads of popular and powerful faith ideology and watching the whole thing start to come unraveled. Instead of trying to hold together the idea that the creator is knowable through many paths of faith, which contradict and conflict with one another ceaselessly, it simply becomes a matter of understanding how various early human societies began to construct narratives about themselves. Their myths become very human ways of understanding a frightening cosmos, and controlling this wily species of clever mammals. The various prohibitions and sanctions that faiths instill in people are not the strangely agricultural and provincial utterances of the deity seemingly powerful enough to create and contain the cosmos. Rather, they are the utterances of an agricultural and provincial ancient people, imperfectly doing what they can to understand and impose order on the cosmos. The consequences of understanding this are huge, especially for people living today, where technology, science, anthropology, and other disciplines are capable of leading us to a better society, and where all too often, those efforts are stopped or even regressed by the blindly devout. This is a measurable way in which faith is a detriment to the world.
Without atheists out there to “preach” an elegant and simple way of seeing the cosmos, I might not have realized this. I think I am now more prepared to do good in the world. You can’t properly diagnose and treat an illness without understand the illness and its effect on the body. In the same way, we can’t properly treat the ailments of our society through either blind faith, or, I would argue, through the theological gymnastics that become increasingly self-absorbed in their attempt to explain phenomena which non-believers have made great progress in doing already, and in a much simpler and more elegant fashion.
Other atheists like yourself, Jim, helped me to understand this. I couldn’t have done it on my own. Being a human mammal, susceptible as I am to social pressures, a lot more of what I and all other people “know” is influenced a great deal more than anyone likes to admit by cultural expectations. It’s almost as if most of us need some kind of social permission to believe what we believe, and if you want to believe alternative explanations, the pressure becomes proportionally greater. It’s important that we be outspoken about what we do, or don’t, believe because there are others out there on the journey who are being driven mad trying to hold together beliefs that in their hearts they know are wrong, because of their anxiety about the consequences of pulling those threads — first in their own minds, and then in the fabric of society itself.
Joseph, perhaps you might want to attend some of our local atheist groups, if you haven’t already spotted us, to find a friendly venue of like-minded people, where at the least you can express yourself freely without any fear of getting frowned at. The Inland Northwest Freethought Society just had their monthly meeting last weekend. The Spokane Secular Society’s next is on the 19th (3 pm at The Onion downtown).
On the more philosophical side of your comments, the theodicy question (why are bad things allowed) has long been a problem for a lot of believers (and fuel for becoming nonbelievers) and shows no sign of going away, though as a thought experiment we might speculate that as society makes progress against disease and injustice it can be easier to shuffle the issue under the rug. If a day should come when there are no more genocidal holocausts, for example, it might be a tad easier not to wonder what the putatively loving god(s) were doing during all the previous ones.
“On the more philosophical side of your comments, the theodicy question (why are bad things allowed) has long been a problem for a lot of believers (and fuel for becoming nonbelievers) and shows no sign of going away, though as a thought experiment we might speculate that as society makes progress against disease and injustice it can be easier to shuffle the issue under the rug. If a day should come when there are no more genocidal holocausts, for example, it might be a tad easier not to wonder what the putatively loving god(s) were doing during all the previous ones.”
Yeah, exactly. It seems like a modern person like me, with sufficient education and some sort of rightly calibrated moral compass (or whatever you want to call it) is in a position to know more about moral behavior than anyone who ever contributed to a holy text like the Bible. And indeed this is exactly what we see. The advances of modernity have given us a fuller and better sense of morality (gender equality, autonomy, the importance of free choice, regard for the boundaries of individuals’ bodies) than the patchwork and contradictory “morality” of the Bible, Koran, or Book of Mormon will ever be capable of, and their followers frequently fight very hard against. That’s not to say that modern humanism doesn’t owe some debt to Western interpretations of Judeo-Christian belief, but humanism’s advances in compassion have far exceeded that starting point, IMO, and that advancement is continuing at a very fast pace.
Jim and Joseph- I’m curious as to what your views are for where does everything come from initially? Why is there something rather than nothing? I haven’t found any satisfactory explanation except for God.
I don’t know, but if and when we find out, I’m pretty sure the answer won’t require a deity.
You sound like you have some ideas as to what that might be. Would you care to share any theories or inclinations? Are we talking math projections or Hawking’s spontaneous appearance or something different?
This is the venerable Uncaused Caused argument (the Get Out of Jail Free Card for cosmology) that ultimately begs tons of questions. Is “nothing” actually an option? If not, if there has been “something” and cannot be otherwise, then there’s not necessarily any spot to shoehorn in a deity. Why can’t a universe or multiverse or metaverse itself be an uncaused cause? If theologians want to be let off the hook when asked “who created God” then atheists are no less justified in refusing to grant religious believers exclusive right to pencil in their deity on their Uncaused Cause card. In both cases philosophers are indulging in assumptions, not deductions.
Back to the theodicy issue though, even if one grants the “something rather than nothing” argument as a slam dunk for “god” it begs further questions: is the God that is responsible for there being something rather than nothing in turn justifiably worthy of being worshipped? And more deeply still, exactly which God did you have in mind? This is the same presumptive problem that plagues another venerable argument, Pascal’s Wager, where old Pascal blithely assumed not merely that there was only one game to bet on at the casino of etenity (Catholic rather than Protestant, or Greek Orthodox, or later tables like Mormons or Jevhovah’s Witnesses) but that there might also be competing casinos (Jewish, Muslim, ans well as non God of Abraham ones like Hinduism, Sikhism, etc).
I guarantee all, though, that none of these pithy matters will be resolved here at Spokane Favs, any more than it has over the last several millennia.
Bruce, I’d echo what James said. I’d consider myself an “enthusiast” when it comes to scientific understanding, and it appears that the universe — or rather, as it’s becoming apparent now, the multiverse — doesn’t properly have a “beginning”, at least not as we think of it. The mathematics support the idea that new universes are being formed in big bangs as we speak, and have been forming in big bangs before ours. It’s a weird concept, but it’s been very satisfying to read about and attempt to understand the research that’s being done. Weird as some of the post-Einstein theories seem — or shall we just say, counterintuitive as they seem — they are being borne out in experimental work. If someone like Hawking says that something is so, it seems to me that it probably is. And if it isn’t, I believe the scientific understand will eventually be rectified into something closer to the actual truth.
In all the discoveries of science that have ever been made, there’s a curious thing: Not one of them has ever been found to require the hand of a supernatural being. Though it has been claimed many times, with each new discovery, a perfectly plausible, provable, demonstrable non-supernatural basis has been found to explain the workings. I guess that science is a laborious process, with grants, peer reviews, experiments, development of technology to do the experiments, and so on. So it might take decades to figure out some key piece of — not to mention that it seems like a lot of really important discoveries have been happened upon by some sudden, fruitful spark of inspiration, and that’s not really something that scientists can create on demand.
That’s all to say that with every new piece of information, not divinity has been required. For the pieces of the puzzle we still don’t know yet, it seems unlikely that for the first time in history, one of those puzzle pieces will absolutely require a supernatural hand in its making. I know this is counterintuitive but that’s just because we are clever primates whose brains have evolved to understand things in ways that are important to our daily lives. We notice design because we are capable of design. Not many other living things would probably ever consider in their lives that anything has a design, because they have no ability to understand the concept. (If you could talk to other animals about their theories of the origin cosmos, it would be pretty interesting, I’m sure.) Needless to say, in the entirety of the cosmos, design is really not important. Things happen the way they because they are possible and the universe is vast. If you look at all the deadly, dangerous, catastrophic events happening in the universe, it’s clearly not a place that was made to be hospitable to life.
Thanks guys! I appreciate the discussion and your time with the answers.
I want to point out the sociological phenomenon of privilege.
Privilege is the benefits you get for belonging to a group. Privilege is a normal and healthy part of human society, but it’s one that can get out of hand. Religions are systems of privilege. Being a Christian or a Jew or whatever means that you identify with an ideology, and you USE that identification to gain the privilege that membership provides.
I think that one of the reasons that people get offended by Atheist signs is that people (often unconsciously) view that signs as a challenge to the privileged status of their beliefs.
I have been shouted down for saying that the bible is wrong. This was a defense of the privileged status of the bible. It was NOT an argument against my claim that the bible is wrong (which of course, it is, about lots and lots of stuff). This emotional outburst served to enforce social norms of privilege for this set of beliefs.
MY belief is that beliefs should not HAVE privilege. My belief is that all beliefs can and should be tested and argued on their merits. This is an ethical value that I have. This ethical value is why I’m an atheist.
When our opinions are challenged we are only offended to the degree to which we have a stake in our opinions. When I see Christians getting upset about an athiest sign that says “Good without God? Millions are” I think, “here are some people who get a lot of mileage out of their privileged status, and they don’t want to have anyone take that privilege away from them.” When I see signs covered with fire that say “do YOU know where you’re going after you die?” I think “How insulting it is to ME that they assume that I would be persuaded by their fear-mongering.” But I don’t write into the Spokesman to complain about it, because they have the right to their ridiculous opinion.
Signs which openly insult a religious belief are rude. Not un-ethical, but rude. This is not what I’m talking about here. I don’t see any signs that say “Christianity is stupid.” What I do see are signs that challenge Christian privilege. I believe that it is this challenge that offends people. A lot of people are offended simply to see criticism of their beliefs. This is their problem, not the author’s. If I say that your beliefs are superstitions, that your reasons for believing what you believe don’t hold water, or that I do not respect the privileged status of your sacred text, this is my opinion about your beliefs. I have the right to my opinion, and I have the right to speak it. You do not have the right to not be offended.