I think atheism can perhaps go beyond the lack of belief in god. I think it could extend to the disbelief of any supernatural or spiritual force whatsoever that exists outside the provable material universe – karma, fate, the soul, or spiritual detachment from any material matter. The universe is mathematics, end of story. To be an atheist means to be the ultimate materialist. For these atheists I have some questions. Please keep in mind the tone of these questions is not meant to be patronizing in any way. They're 1/2 my own thinking out loud, and 1/2 "devil's advocate" (haha, no pun intended). Humor me:How can you fall in love? Why do you even believe in love? To an atheist, love is just the chemical by-product of humans attempting to find a suitable mate with which to reproduce. Cows reproduce too, but they don't write sonnets. Also love extends far beyond just reproduction for survival, as evolution
would imply. Once past the point of reproduction, a couple's love can evolve into a complex and difficult beast, and can be beautiful and inspiring as the decades roll on. And I believe homosexual couples are completely capable of falling in love, with no physical way of reproducing at all.How can you believe in art? After all, a stunning painting is nothing more than light reflecting off a mix of pigments smeared onto a flat surface. Does a provocative film create rivers of tears from an audience all because of an optical illusion of innumerable still images flashing on a blank white screen for two hours?
How can you enjoy music? Thousands of sound vibrations coming from a bunch of metal strings stretched over a hollow piece of wood can't be anything but air molecules bouncing off your eardrum.
How can you have hope in anything? The outcomes of the future are mere statistical probability without purpose.
Why do you care if you ever hurt anyone else? I've heard atheists speak of their moral foundations as sort of a common-sense "moral rules of man". In a nutshell, don't do anything if it's going to hurt
anyone else. But everyone's definition of "hurt" varies so greatly that's hardly a common-sense law. Plus, but why do you even care? If you hurt someone, there's nobody to punish you or hold you accountable other than the law that governs your place of residence, and if they don't see you do it, more power to you. Is it because you wouldn't want anyone to hurt you, so hopefully if the law applies to everyone than no one will feel motivated to hurt you?Where do you find grounds for such a romantic idea as kindness? If the universe began with random chaos, it will end in random chaos. And so will your human life. With no justice or purpose. So why bother trying to justify any acts you do with morality or kindness for your fellow man or for the earth? There is no punishment for any ill act you do, if you are the ultimate definer of justice. And it makes no difference to make the world a better place, because it will all end in uncontrollable chaos anyway.
And forget something as silly as beauty. The reason a man finds a woman beautiful could be a mate-search honed by millions of years of evolved survival instincts. But who gives a shit about a sunset? Sitting on a sandy beach and being enveloped by a burning red and pink sky certainly never helped any species survive being eaten by another. In fact, you'd think it would be a detriment. I don't know why some ravenous animal hasn't developed a camouflage of a beautiful sunset. As some dumb human stops to admire, they get torn apart and gobbled up.
Humans have the ability to transcend these worthless and otherwise chaotic tangible things into a spiritual experience unlike any animal on earth (so far as we know). And it is unlikely that many of these spiritual experiences had any effect on our chances of survival as a developing species. So it seems they may exist for another purpose (or come from another source). For one to admit that they encounter any of these human states can be admitting to experiencing a non-material, non-mathematical facet of our universe. Give me all the formulas you want, but you just can't prove love.
Just the other day on NPR there was a report on a study of why Homo Sapiens flourished while Neanderthals died out as a species. It turned out that one of the major differentiators was the amount of time required to raise young was much greater for us than for Neanderthals.
ReplyDeleteSomething in our genetic makeup informs us to protect and educate our young while they are vulnerable until they become strong smart enough to survive on their own and cope with the challenges of lives.
The capability for empathy is therefore a key point in the developmental path of our species. It is, in a very real sense, that which makes us different.
Empathy requires the ability to understand emotions and project them on to others. To interpret decisions in the context of emotions is what allows us to decide to place another's well-being above our own for a set circumstances.
So I would say that the ability to feel emotions, to enjoy love, art and beauty, to understand the value of common good and an individual's well-being isn't tangential to our existence as a species but is in fact, the reason for our continued existence.
Humans, to varying degrees, have emotions and rely on them for making decisions. When we decided to blend our lives with someone it's often because we have a positive emotion tied to this person, and we call it love. We also often have emotions that we can't correlate to a tangible thing, and a subset of these we ascribe to things beyond our world, collecting these into a grouping known as religion. Some of these religions create a supernatural concept to use as a definable source for these emotions and call it God. This doesn't mean it exists.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of love there is a tangible person whom everyone can verify the physical existence of, validating the emotions of those in love as arising from concrete experiences with a tangible individual whose existence is verifiable. Such is not the case with God.
Atheists aren't anti-emotion. They are anti-ascribing supernatural beings as the source of those emotions. "Feeling" that God exists does not support the existence of God anymore than "Feeling" that you're due to win the lottery changes the probability that you will win the lottery. However, we as humans are susceptible to just these kinds of errors in judgment and many people do think they are more likely to win the lottery based on a feeling. This is part of the reason why "The Secret" has been so successful in converting people to its philosophy.
More Christian talking points, pretty much straight out of the "OMG ATHEISTS ARE SO LOST AND SAD" book. WTF?
ReplyDeleteFirst off, defining any of these things as "spiritual" is misleading. Human emotions aren't perfectly understood, but they're certainly not any sort of evidence of a god or higher level of anything. Plainly put, complex emotions began to arise when our primate ancestors organized into family groups and our young started taking longer and longer to mature. All the empathetic emotions (love, kindness, not harming, etc.) have very clear benefits to species with strong familial and clan group identities - you accomplish more by helping than you do by hurting.
There's nothing transcendent about these emotions - they're bonding and coping mechanisms for our species, and they're well documented by behavioral scientists and social anthropologists. We have complex minds and have benefited for hundreds of thousands of years of social grouping, giving us time to do more than just feed and flee.
Most of all, they certainly don't have anything to do with god belief, one way or another. They are, however, often used as ad hominem attacks against atheists by those who either don't understand the underlying principals, or are specifically looking to discredit them in some way. You're smarter than this.
Humans are able to ascribe symbolism. The apple reminds me of an orange. The apple is not an orange. I prayed it would rain today and it rained today. Was it my prayer or was it God or was it happenstance? I do not assume to know the answers. I'm not THAT arrogant, but I do think we should keep in mind the cultural factors that have developed over the years in understand the intangible as directly "spiritual". We should also be careful when calling chaos "Random". Chaos is not technically random, but is seemly random because it is outside of our scope to find symmetry. Much in this way God could be called chaotic, but I wouldn't think to calling God random. I digress...
ReplyDeleteEmotions are not spirituality per say. Rather we might have an emotional experience over a spiritual concept. We may cry over a sunset. Does this take away from the qualitative enjoyment? Of course not, does this in turn make the quantitative any less relevant? I hope not, or we may spontaneously get sucked into nothing. There is no one way about it. We as humans are clearly emotional. For one reason or another. We look for answers where there may not be one and use our ability of comparing and contrasting to give us our answers based on what others think.
Is God real? Is God not real? Does it really matter?
To some it does matter. So much that they are willing to cause harm. This harm is usually caused in the quest for power. So, my question is this...
If God exists, then why does he allow humans to wield power in such a way as to cause lasting harm and defeat his "goal".
The absence of an answer is not a solution set.
This applies to both sides of this question.
The most interesting question, what is the animating force? When, where, and how does it exist? The biological function follows and certain level of undeniable symmetry, but is it symmetry that we impose upon random luck, or does symmetry exist elusively from the point of creation. Can humans cause random?