Threaten Me, Please…

As an atheist, I have a recurring conversation with many believers. They can’t understand why I bother to try to be a good person without the impending fear of judgement and damnation. If I don’t think God is watching me and keeping score, why don’t I just go on a hedonistic binge of barbarism?

I always try to patiently respond that my motivation is mostly internal. I want to judge myself to be useful, productive, helpful, and caring. There is an external aspect to it as well. I want my family and friends to judge me positively. I don’t believe in life everlasting. My only shot at living beyond my mortal years is in the recollections of those who might remember me. And for reasons of my own making, I want that legacy to be based on fondness, respect, and maybe even admiration, not on infamy. That is what I aspire to, and what inspires me.

What I don’t usually share is that their question frightens the hell out of me. The implication (or in some cases, the outright admission) is that the only thing standing between them and a life of raping and pillaging is belief in some exogenous force poised to reign retribution down upon them. They are not a tamed animal, they are a caged one.

Of late, I’ve begun to wonder if this same need for external fear-based motivation extends beyond the realm of religion and morality. In economics, I hear the repeated notion that minimum wages, guaranteed health care, food stamps, unions, and any other program designed to help the poor or the working poor is inherently destructive. It removes the incentive to work harder, train harder, or even to work at all. The underlying assumption seems to be that absent the fear of homelessness and starvation, no one would get out of bed in the morning. It isn’t enough to have a sizable carrot in front of you unless there’s a big angry stick behind you to keep you moving.

This same attitude seems to bleed into foreign policy as well. The notion that the USA must remain the preeminent military power on the planet because otherwise we’ll lose our ability to influence other countries seems predicated on the notion that our power comes from fear that we instill. We repeatedly demonstrate that fear of terrorism will motivate us to actions we would otherwise never consider. In fact politics has largely degenerated into a game of which party can paint the scarier future if the other guy wins.

It even strikes me that much of our gun-culture stems from fears that everyone else, left to their own devices, would pose a threat. It is only by being a bigger threat yourself, that you’re able to keep them at bay.

I do believe that most people view others through their own life-lens. That is, they project their own desires, tendencies, and morality onto the behavior of others. People who worry about the downside of atheism, economic security, and world peace are reacting from the awareness that they themselves realize that in such a world, they would rapidly fall into an existence of varying degrees of unfettered sociopathy.

That there exist so many people contained only by a variety of fears is more than disconcerting. And it would be one thing if there was a recognition that fear-based motivation was destructive and there was a collective consensus to mitigate it. Conversely, what we’re seeing is a resurgence in the idea that fear-based motivation is essential and good.

I had hoped for better, but in the end, maybe we are just barbarians with iPhones.

Of Pots & Kettles

I spent way too much time last evening in a running Facebook thread that started with a question of how Muslims could use their religion to justify hatred of others.

While not the originator of the question, one commenter was particularly adamant about his views.

“The false god Muslims worship is a demon. Their god is a god of hate and destruction and death. Their god calls for the death of America.”

He went on to offer other gems within the thread, including:

“Pluralism is a plague in America.”
“…college campuses across the country are home to professors and students who hate America.”
“Obama is wicked… His abortion support. his same-sex “marriage ” support. His abuse of his authority by changing laws after their enactment. His war on Christianity in the military. etc etc.”
“I am not a Muslim hater. I am an Islam hater.”
“Islam is a pathological religion that turns people into monsters.”
“If one does an honest study they will realize the truth claims of Jesus are in fact the truth and the truth claims of others are lies.”

Here was a man with a self-avowed abiding faith in Jesus—a man who viewed himself as a good Christian… and yet a man who was filled with hate. Moreover, his hatred was somehow rooted in his faith—a faith he himself characterized as one of peace and harmony.

“An honest study leads to the conclusion that violence done in the name of Christianity is contrary to its tenets.”

On the one hand, I shudder at the level of cognitive dissonance required to use the message of Jesus to justify this much animosity. And rationalizing that hatred as being focused on the religion and the culture but not the people is a sophistry. “I don’t hate you, just everything you believe in and stand for,” was not quite the point of the Good News. Not to mention the mental gymnastics required to use this sort of argument to defend an abhorrence to college professors, students, liberals, and Obama who largely share Christian culture and religion.

Yet I think the best part is the delicious irony that this screed was motivated by this person’s horror that a group of Muslims could use their faith to motivate hatred. Yes Virginia, religions have been used since the dawn of time to justify the behaviors of groups and individuals. They are a lens that focuses and magnifies the culture and values of the people who practice them. Religions are not inherently good or evil, but the people involved in them or leading them may be. And the cold reality is that Christianity gets no magic pass here.

Your love or your hatred of your fellow man may be motivated by your faith, but you still have to own the result. In the end, you are responsible for your actions—good, bad, or indifferent. Only a coward hides behind their religion as an excuse.

Data Over Dogma

This can’t be stated often or emphatically enough. If you are willing to dismiss, suppress, or reject evidence because it conflicts with what you want to (or have been told you should) believe, then you are acting irrationally—by definition. And your judgement should be discounted accordingly.

While this situation usually comes up with regard to a specific topic, it reflects a larger problem with mindset. Sen. Marco Rubio demonstrated this most recently when, in an interview with GQ magazine, he was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” Rubio danced with all his might, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.” (No Marco, it’s really not.) Rubio is previously on record as stating the “crux” of the disagreement is “whether what a parent teaches their children at home should be mocked and derided and undone at the public school level.”

It’s easy to dismiss this as being isolated to the topic of geology or evolution, something that doesn’t impact the lives of the vast majority of citizens. Rubio asserts as much when defending his GQ statement. He said this didn’t matter, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” that has “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.”

Yet, as I’ve argued in this space before, and as Paul Krugman points out in his recent column, it matters greatly. It matters because we are hindering a crop of potential petrogeologists who are limited to guessing where God hid the oil. But moreover, it matters because we are teaching kids that evidence can be ignored if it’s uncomfortable. And it is this mindset which is particularly damaging, and not just to the field of science, and as Rubio has demonstrated, not just to kids.

We have adults rejecting global warming and progressive tax codes, not because of evidence, but because of ideology. We saw dismissal and rejection of pre-election poll data, not because it was inaccurate, but because it supported the wrong conclusion.

We live in an increasingly technological world with a complex multinational economy. Our success as a society, a country, and a culture depends on our ability to carefully and rationally understand and control that abstruse system. Reliance on irrational explanations and positions in the face of evidence backed models of the world is simply dangerous.

That is not to say that faith and ideology have no place in society. They add value to the lives of many. All the world is not explainable using logic and reason. Faith and ideology help most fill the gaps. But where data and dogma collide… bet on data every time. All our futures depend on it.

Aborted Reasoning

Yesterday, I had the questionable pleasure of driving by a small abortion protest in front of a local medical building. Two men and a woman were each holding signs while one of the men used a bull horn to shout something from the sidewalk. One of the signs in particular, caught my attention. It read, “God Chose That Baby“.

In the wake of the recent Todd Akin debacle, I’ve heard a number of so-called Pro-Life advocates claim that abortion is always wrong. This troubles me. I agree that life is precious, but the mother has a life too. And life is much more than being physically not dead. I would never advocate for abortion as a casual form of birth control, but drawing hard lines around exactly when pregnancy is too much for the mother to bear is beyond my pay grade. Choose life? Sure. But whose? And at what quality of life? I’m not qualified to make that decision, and frankly neither are you… or the government.

But the sign started the wheels turning in my mind. A Pro-Life friend recently explained that when God conceives a baby, He has a plan. If the mother dies, or is physically or mentally traumatized or disabled in the process, that’s tragic. But it’s still part of the plan. If God means for the mother to survive, she will. It is not for us to intervene. Hmmm… And then, the apparent worldview of these folks clicked into place for me… and then quickly went all askew.

While I don’t agree with the position, I can at least respect a position that says God plays an active role in our everyday lives. He chooses the key events of our lives, and we are not to meddle in His affairs. He has a plan. It’s not possible to know what it is, but He has one. At least I can respect the position if the person actually lives their life by that philosophy. But I can’t see how that’s so.

According to this philosophy, there’s no reason to seek medical intervention on anything, not just pregnancy. If you have a heart attack, God meant that for you. If you were meant to survive it, you will. To expect that God’s plan included a paramedic with a defibrillator makes no sense. It would then be equally reasonable to assume God’s plan included a pharmacist with a morning-after pill.

If, in fact, God did choose that baby, who among us can say what for? God sent his own son to die for us—to teach us something. Is it so farfetched that he might send an embryo to die for a person or a family to teach them something? There are several references in the bible to men being called to a destiny from the womb. Who is to say fulfilling that destiny requires reaching adulthood? The simple reality is, you can’t say there is a plan; no one knows what it is; but that thing there is definitely not part of it.

The only rational counter argument is that there is something special and sacred about the life of a child. That the value of a child’s life is always above and beyond the value of anyone else’s life. But (since we can’t know the plan) this valuation would have to be supported by the bible, and that’s not at all clear. Jesus may have loved the little children, but Abraham was told to kill his own son, and Deuteronomy instructs fathers to have their non-virginal daughters stoned to death. Further, the bible says nothing about abortions. The closest it comes is in Exodus when it is stated that if you strike a pregnant woman and cause a miscarriage, you must pay a fine to the woman’s husband. God’s plan for the life of children is a bit cloudy at best. Clearly, “Thou shalt not kill,” is not quite the black and white rule you might assume.

Perhaps you believe that God chose that baby. But it seems that unless you’re purporting to know God’s unknowable plan for it, you’re a hypocrite.

Einstein’s God was not Yahweh

The quote attributed to Einstein, “The more I study science, the more I believe in God,” is getting a lot of play around the interwebs. I though it might be interesting to look at what he might have meant by the statement.

Einstein is also widely quoted as saying, God does not play dice with the universe.” Together, these quotes are oft cited as evidence of scientists believing in God—usually by fundamentalist Christian groups defending themselves against the encroachment of science on their literal interpretation of their mythology.

First, Einstein was neither a Christian or even a Jew. He was raised as a Jew and was schooled as a Catholic. He had ample education in the Abrahamic religions, but rejected them nonetheless.

Still, Einstein is not properly classified an atheist either. He rejected the notion of a personal god. Instead, he said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

In other words, he was a Deist, and was in the spiritual company of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Paine. Deists believe that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of a creator.

So Einstein’s quote is an observation of the mathematical beauty, the order, the ever unfolding revelation of the inner workings of the universe that he perceived. It’s not remotely an affirmation of the bible.

Einstein’s god never intervened in human affairs or suspended the natural laws of the universe, and absolutely did not have a supernatural existence or the capacity for miracles. This makes Einstein a curious poster boy for Christians in specific, or even theists in general.