Skeptics and Religion: Beginning thoughts

I have been hoping to learn more about atheism and religion for a long time.  Although any conversion requires an evaluation of the religious landscape, I have never gone through a systematic evaluation.  And now I have a great opportunity to do that.

An atheist friend of mine often raises objections to religion and faith on Facebook, and I have certainly linked to several critiques of atheism.  Facebook was not built for weighty theological and philosophical discussions, and so often those discussions were not as useful as they could have been.  So in a spirit of dialogue, we have decided to seek out a common vocabulary by listening to lectures on skepticism and religion.  These lectures (I hope) will offer a survey of religious belief and its criticism.  What I hope to gain is perspective.  I want to understand why people have had different views from the perspective of those views.  In other words, it is usually not enough for me to understand the criticism of a worldview.  I also want to hear and understand why it is that a worldview exists.

Our first lecture series is called Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition.  These lectures are given by Professor Tyler Roberts, who is himself a skeptic.  The second lecture series is called Faith and Reason: The Philosophy of Religion by Professor Peter Kreeft, an outspoken Catholic apologist.  I hope that these two sets of lectures will give us both points of view.


To begin the discussion, I have some questions I hope are answered by Prof. Tyler over the course of the lectures:

• Will he frame the religious narrative as a search for truth or as the slow triumph of human thought?
• What does he believe is the purpose of philosophy?
• Can he explain love and the intellect from a skeptical point of view?
• Under the skeptical mindset, what stops one from becoming a nihilist?

The final question is the one that I am most interested to learn about.  Is nihilism inevitable if there is no God?

My friend's commentary can be found here.

Theology on Tap: "The Siren Song of Science"

Reflections

I gave the following talk in May.  I was horribly nervous, mostly because as I stood in front of the microphone and looked out into the crowd, I realized it was the first time I had publicly professed my faith.  But it was worth it, if only for the huge swell of calm that poured over me after I finished the talk.  This was a chance for me to form my ideas into something coherent, something understandable.

But it was also a chance for me to find my limitations.  My nervousness was not only a sign of being a novice, but also of being unconfident.  Why the lack of confidence?  Because in some parts I could only form a first-order approximation of what I wished to express, unaware of the secondary or tertiary meanings.  So for instance, when I wanted to talk about the inconsistencies in the Bible, I meant to say that there are passages in the Bible which do not easily agree with one another.  The finding of the empty tomb is the canonical example.  But I did not mean to suggest that the Bible is filled with incompatible passages, unable to be reconciled by anyone but the Catholic hierarchy.  I meant to imply only that finding the real meaning of the Bible is very difficult, so difficult, in fact, that many atheists see this as a sign that Christianity cannot be right, because it cannot put forth a coherent set of Biblical axioms.  But this very real difficulty is not troubling to most Catholics because of sacred Tradition.  I wanted to say this argument in as few words as possible, and so I called this difficulty "inconsistencies".  There is probably a better word.  

What this tells me is that I have to be more Bible literate.  I have to have a better appreciation of where my faith comes from.  So I have started to read Fr. Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament again, beginning with the epistles of St. Paul.  Beginning with St. Paul is important, because, in my haste to reject Protestant Christianity, it is easy to have a distaste for St. Paul.

But what I also came to understand was that I have a fundamental hunger for philosophy, not the fake philosophy of the Internet age, but true metaphysical thought.  I want to know philosophy in the sense that it is the love of wisdom, a love of understanding.  I had begun this journey with St. Thomas Aquinas, who achieved the height of Medieval thought, but who drew upon Aristotle.  That leads me to Plato and Socrates.  In other words, I want a knowledge of classical thought.  So I am beginning to read Plato and Aristotle in that hope that, with this basis, I can feel more comfortable with my own understanding.  Again, I want to know where my faith comes from, and in many ways, it comes from the ancients.  The church often holds up Socrates as a man who, although pre-Christian, is in heaven.  I have a lot I can learn from him.

A working definition of Truth

Scientists discuss their work in elaborate ways.  They invest vast amounts of time and intellectual resources toward writing papers and creating presentations.  Often the organization of work takes as many hours to produce as the original work itself.  There is a reward, however: the more effort put into a paper, the easier it is to understand, the more precise the results, and the more convincing the argument.  But their effort would all be pointless if none of them believed their own arguments.  Instead, each scientist believes they are uncovering a previously hidden part of reality.  Science seeks to discover, not to interpret.

We often take this idea about science for granted, but it is profound.  It implies that when a scientist speaks about atoms, he does not mean that, for him, atoms are a good way of understanding physics, but that there are atoms and the universe is made of them.  To disagree is to be mistaken.

Consider the alternative.  If each of us was allowed to have our own understanding of physics, how could we communicate, how could we make progress?  It seems absurd to suggest that there can be no certainty about the physical world.  Yet, without Truth, we are forced to embrace this absurdity.  Truth is what lets us talk about the real world.  It implies there is a right understanding of reality.  It implies there is something to discover.  But it is uncompromising, because it also implies that we can, at times, be utterly wrong.

This is my working definition of Truth.  There is a reality, and we can discover it.  There is a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, and these words have a meaning beyond mere feeling or interpretation.  It may be difficult to find, but it is there.

Intention

My intention in becoming an atheist was never to do harm to a certain faith or to rebel against a society which sought my conversion or for any other vindictive reason.  It was an effort to rid myself of all superfluous beliefs and their unnecessary baggage.  I attempted to reconstruct a tabula rasa, and strongly held to the conviction that I would not believe anything that I could not see with my own eyes or understand with my own mind.  This is a task undertaken only by those who feel they have the intellect to withstand a full frontal assault from reality.  I felt safe within the intellectual fortifications of the university, which, in its clean room of thought, had already declared war on ignorance and continually won virtually every battle.

Or so I thought.

Go to church

The earliest memory I have of anything related to church is leaving.  Being dragged, in fact, away into the parking lot.  I don't remember specifically what happened, but if my mother is to be believed, I had caused some trouble in Sunday school.  I do remember Sunday school, specifically coloring pictures of Jesus and his disciples, always with sandaled feet and continually in the presence of sheep.  Their faces always seemed serious, and I could never figure out exactly why.  These pictures were not like the books I colored in school.  Even at this age I was a contrarian, so if there was some hint of seriousness in my activities at Sunday school, I acted out.  No doubt, it was for this reason that I was being dragged home.

I do not want to project false, romantic ideas back on my childhood, but I can't help but feel a tinge of what would later lead me toward atheism.  In church, I remember feeling stifled.  The air was thick with condescending looks.  And the word "arbitrary" comes to mind.  Why did we go to this big room and sing boring songs and talk about Jesus?  Jesus was boring, absolutely boring.  There were about a billion better things I could to do than go to church.  Even just thinking of those three words, "Go to church," creates ill flashbacks in my mind.

My family moved often when I was growing up, so there was never a chance to settle into one particular church.  But even when we become more stable in Cincinnati, we seemed to switched churches often.  I remember my parents were fond of a particular church in California, and they wanted to find a replacement.  I don't think they ever did.  So from an early age, I was made aware of a variety of worshiping styles.  Perhaps this led me to think of church as arbitrary.  If God is universal, why doesn't everyone do it the same way?

I struggle to remember anything specific.  It all seems like a wash now, and it was over quickly.  I do not remember when or why, but we stopped going to church, because, as my mother said, "I acted up too much."  She was probably right, I did.  So from the time I was about six or seven until college, I rarely stepped inside a church.  My parents tried, after they rediscovered their faith, but there was no way they were going to get me to go to church.

Evidence II: Russell's Tea Pot

There is a hope that becoming an atheist solves many philosophical problems and that the solutions proposed by atheism do not create any greater difficulties.  A popular atheist argument is known as Russell's tea pot.  Bertrand Russell argued he could assert that there was a tea pot some place between Mars and Earth so small that no telescope could detect it.  And given this assertion, no one would be required to believe in the tea pot, because there is no real evidence, just assertion.  Notice, however, that the tea pot cannot be shown not to exist.

This argument is designed to show that if a thing cannot be proven or disproven to exist, the burden of proof falls upon those who assert its existence.  Hence, because God cannot be proven or disproven, the Christians, who assert his existence, must show that he exists.  But they cannot, so the atheist is acting only sensibly.

If you say this argument is wrong, then every assertion is true until proven false.  You must believe in unicorns, UFOs, and telekinesis, because we cannot disprove these things.  Or, at least, if you believe in God, you have no recourse to say that such things do not exist, because you believe in an equally unproven thing.

The weakness of this argument is apparent in its assumptions.  A sensible person, it argues, is one that does not believe anything until evidence is presented.  Yet what could be a more fragile assertion than love?  To be completely sensible, love becomes a contractual agreement, in which true love is measured by how certain requirements are met.  Love is reduced to its components, and if not verifiable, it is delusional.  To embrace Russell's argument is to give up on love itself.  But love does not hit at the heart of most atheists, who often believe that free thinking is the greatest human virtue.  And besides, maybe love is the exception; love without a little delusion is no fun.

The strongest assertion of Russell's argument is that we can logically deduce reality from evidence, and that this deductive reasoning is true.  In a word, he asserts we have intelligence.  But one may ask the question, what evidence do we have for intelligence?  How do we tell the difference between sanity and insanity?  We can use only our intelligence to explore the question, but this is precisely the problem we wish to explain.  Using intelligence to explain itself at best produces a circular argument.  Therefore, brought to its logical conclusion, Russell's line of reasoning argues against the concept of human intelligence.

This argument might be useful to show the nonexistence of God if God were just another material object in the universe.  But like intelligence, God is metaphysical, separate from physical reality but nevertheless a real part of it.  So if God requires evidence, so does intelligence.  Atheism, at least the scientific variety, cannot be comfortable with that.

Reading the Bible the first time

I picked up a Bible the first time as an atheist.  I wish I could say I wanted to be convinced by Christianity.  Instead I read it as any other book, except with added significance, because this was the book of my tradition.  My father had read it, my grandfather had read it, and his father, etc.  It was an attempt to connect to a past I did not know.  I felt a comfort in picking up a book my family had always known.  Each generation had identified itself by picking up this book, and interpreting it in its own unique way.  As part of the latest generation, I had every right to interpret the Bible too.

I saw the Bible as a worn out traveling trunk.  It didn't contain anything anymore, but it was wonderful to think of the places it had been and what it had seen.  There was no reason to use it as anything other than a way to see into the past and to marvel at how it had shaped history.  But it was only a hollowed out book, its cover more meaningful than its contents.

I started at Genesis, as every amateur does, thinking that because it was just any other book, I would read it cover to cover.  My goal was to read it without the restraints of taking it literally.  With Genesis this is easy to do, because it is mythological.  We can view these stories as something like the bedtime tales we learn as children.  Except, these are stories about the beginning of the world.

I read Genesis much more quickly than I anticipated I would, but at some point in Exodus I gave up.  My mistake was to assume the rest of the Bible was so easily dismissed.

My struggle with atheism

There are many reasons that a person may become an atheist.  A person may have experienced great suffering in the world.  They may have been personally injured by a parent or someone they associate with God, like a priest or a pastor.  They may have lived through some natural disaster convincing them that there is no room in the world for a loving God.  These are emotional arguments for disbelieving in God.  There are also intellectual or philosophical reasons for becoming an atheist, reasons of morality or ideology.   One of the most popular types of intellectual atheism is based in scientific reasons.  If you think there is a disagreement between religion and science, and you pick science as the winner, then you will be an atheist.

Each of these arguments for atheism requires a different response.  Each of type of atheist would have a different conversion story if they chose to become Christian.  I am lucky that I have not had great pain in my life, and I never experienced the emotional trauma required to reject God.  My personal struggle with atheism came from scientific arguments, and therefore this is the only type of atheism that I can personally comment about.  This is not to say that I don't think there are good arguments against each type of atheism, but that, if I speak with any authority at all, it is only against scientific arguments.

Evidence I: An atheistic critique of religion

There is often a disdain for the supposed dichotomy present in religious scientists, who must wall off their faith from their science when it comes to standards of belief  Science, in its truest skeptical form, requires all ideas to be questioned and all answers to be corroborated by good evidence.  Faith, on the other hand, is said to be embraced because we are told to by tradition, evidence not factoring into the equation.  Theology, or its twin cousin, philosophy, is often criticized because we can believe almost anything.  Without evidence, all is up for grabs.

I frequently used this argument to defend atheism.  And it is hard to argue against, but it is not bulletproof, because within it, there is an inherent assumption that there is no evidence for any religion.  There is, of course, plenty of evidence for religion.  It could even be said that there is too much evidence, because each religion has its own.  The problem is that all of this evidence cannot be true, because it blatantly disagrees with itself.  At first glance, the only way to evenly evaluate all of this contradicting evidence is to declare it all equally invalid.

I was convinced this reasoning was right, and in fact, the only moral reasoning.  To pick one religion's evidence to be true seemed arbitrary, and picking Christianity would be giving my culture and personal heritage undue significance.

I reiterate these arguments because they were convincing for me and they shaped my rejection of Christianity.  I felt I was safe, because I was being fair.  Upon meeting God in heaven, I could pull a Bertrand Russell and say, "Well, God, you should have given me more evidence."  It would be God's fault.

An atheistic view of science and religion

When I was an atheist, a great problem for me was the intersection of religion and science.  No where was this intersection so lucid than in the creation stories of the Bible, which clearly contradict what we know by science.  The only way to embrace both Genesis and evolution, then, is to rob one of its explanatory power.  But how does one continually affirm a limp and useless source of knowledge?

I could, for convenience, weaken science or Biblical creation only partially.  Where they disagree, one would be declared winner.  Yet once I have taken that step, how could I disagree with an alternative theory that draws that line in a different place?  What makes me so special that I could feel comfortable knowing I was right?  For me, this was a direct path to relativism, because to adopt a weakened source of truth is to adopt them all.  The only way to be rational is to throw out one or the other, and I was not about to give up on science.

At the time, I played tuba at a church on Sunday mornings.  I enjoyed myself and found the sermons interesting, although I seldom agreed with them.  One particular morning, the pastor talked about his understanding of science and religion.  Below is an email I wrote shortly after his sermon.  It is still very interesting to me now, because it encapsulates my thinking at the time so well.  And I would struggle deeply to find the error in my thinking.

Lay down your shovel

I can remember one of the first moments when I began to doubt my own atheism, and it was not due to a theological argument, but to great literature.  Here it is, from Steinbeck's East of Eden:

Will and George were doing well in business, and Joe was writing letters home in rhymed verse and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.

Samuel wrote to Joe, sayings, "I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you'd take a cookie on a full stomach.  But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother.  Your last letter only made her think you are not well.  Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup.  She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization down to a stomach ache.  It worries her.  Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven't even got a shovel yet."

The unanswered question

"Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?'" (John 18.38, RSV).

The evangelist is, unfortunately, silent regarding Jesus's reply.  The question is left unanswered.  In fact, it is startling how quickly the text moves on.  Pilate tries to render his innocent verdict, but is persuaded, deliberately, by the crowd instead.  The unanswered question is followed by an example of its opposite.

Light

A favorite metaphor for God during the Middle Ages was light.  Many of these metaphors still make sense, but some, like St. Thomas Aquinas' idea of light "illuminating" the air, do not survive our current physics.  We now understand that light travels even in a vacuum, not least between our sun and our own planet.  But this concept of light tells us a different lesson about God.

It is often difficult to see how God and evil can exist in the world.  How can God, who is infinite good, allow evil to remain?  If good and evil are two opposing forces, like the two ends of a magnet, then God's goodness would indeed push away all the evil in the world.  But evil is not the opposite of good, it is the lack of good.  So where pure evil exists, there is a complete vacuum of good.

God's infinite goodness does not attempt to fill the voids on his own.  He does not need to, because he can transcend them.  He penetrates through the vacuum and shines His goodness upon us, and if we are willing to follow Him, we begin to fill the voids.  This is God's grace.  God transcends and uses evil in order to teach us, so that we may become saints.

Existence

Philosophical arguments for God are only useful for understanding the Deist God.  The Deist God is the god of philosophy, capable of providing the foundational support for Truth and purpose.  Even St. Thomas Aquinas only tries to prove this tiny sliver of God, showing the wealth of what we can reason about God purely from this infinitely small section of knowledge about him. 

One of these reasonable assertions is that God is existence.  His essence is his existence, as Aquinas says.  He is the act of existence, itself.  In other words, as we look around and see that anything at all exists, we are seeing God.  He is present to all things because he is the present act of them existing.  If something exists now, then God is there in that act of existence.

Many philosophers get stuck at this tiny piece of God and see no reason to proceed into the Judeo-Christian understanding of God.  Surely there is a need to establish Truth, but how can one make the leap that this God is interacting with the world, that we may pray to him, and that he knows us personally?  We need revealed truth.

It is interesting, though, how God identifies himself to Moses.  Although the early Jews probably had no concept of the abstract idea of God's essence, God nevertheless identifies himself this way.  He says, "I am who I am".  His ancient name means, "I am".  Here we see how right Aquinas is.  "God is" is the most fundamental, yet complete, understanding of God.  To create an analogy that God is "love" or "truth", while true, in some way diminishes God.  The sentence, "God is" simultaneously tells us something about God and identifies him, because he is simultaneously the cause of everything and the presence of everything.  He simply "is" everything, in every possible meaning that we can understand that concept.

What is astounding is that we can know this both by human reason (Aquinas) and revealed scripture (Moses).  They both agree.  And while that does not prove the God of Abraham is the right conception, it certainly throws out many other Gods, namely those of every ancient, pagan polytheistic religion.  Our understanding of the world is only complete in a monotheistic God, who tells us "I am".

Self-contradiction

Peter Kreeft, in a lecture series about St. Thomas, acknowledges a common philosophical mistake about God:

"Another attack on the meaningfulness of Aquinas’s concept of God is this: Some say that the concept of omnipotence, or infinite power, is self-contradictory, and therefore meaningless. They ask whether God can make a rock bigger than He can lift, and if you say yes, then they say there can be something bigger than even God’s power can lift, so God is not infinitely powerful; but if you say no, then they say there is something God can’t do, so again His power is not infinite.

"But the linguistic confusion is in that question, not in the concept of God that the question questions; for “a rock bigger than infinite power can lift” is a self-contradictory concept, but “infinite power” is not itself a self-contradictory concept. So the simple answer to the question is: No, God can’t make a rock bigger than He can lift any more than He can make anything else that’s self-contradictory and therefore meaningless."

If you don't accept this answer, then you don't have a problem with God, you have a problem with the notion of self-contradiction.

Agreement

I think that everyone can agree that, if a god exists, they would like to believe in that god, and that, if no gods exist, they would not like to be mistaken and needlessly believe in a false god.

Most of us probably also agree that no one has it all figured out.  Each of us is aligned and unaligned with reality in our own unique way.  Our intelligence is limited, but we cannot live life without claiming that some things are true and others are false, and therefore each of us will inevitably be wrong in our claims in some way.  In other words, our beliefs do not make reality.  Instead we are constantly vigilant to align our beliefs with what is immutably real.

Musical absurdities

In the autumn before we were married, I can remember sitting outside of a restaurant with Heather. I had been a little depressed, and at the time that meant that I had been listening to the music of Morton Feldman. Before I continue, I have to explain his music. You don't so much listen to Feldman's music as you enter his space and take it all in. This is contemplative music. It is music that is quiet and repetitive. It is abstract, often judged as the sonic equivalent of a Rothko painting. It is not something you sit back and enjoy. For me, it was as close to a religious experience as I had ever known, which is why I turned to it at these times, as a man may turn to God for guidance.

I was talking with Heather about Feldman's music and what it meant to me at the time.  It was all going to my head.   Feldman, the man, had an extraordinary gift for speech.  I had read two books of his essays and lectures, in which he explores the fabric of music itself.  It is impossible not to feel a little bit of a musical scientist as you read his words, discovering the depths and purity of the musical Art.  I ate this stuff up, because I believed, as I do now, that music could communicate more purely than speech.  Music, in its best, allows the very essence of people to open and transfer, not in a mystical way, but in a very real way.  To explore the fabric of music was, for me, to explore what it is that makes us human.  This is why I had become so enamored with Feldman.  In his music, he provided me with religion, in his words, he was Christ-like.  So I began to talk about music with Heather.  I remember discussing an objective musical reality, that there was something out there by which all music was judged. 

The absurdity of these ideas didn't phase me at the time, but I could begin to tell, in that instant outside the restaurant, that it was bothering Heather.  She understood less about where I was coming from that I did, but she did get a sense that she was losing me.  I had the sense that I was losing myself.  It was then that she declared that didn't like discussing music with me anymore.  This was an incredible blow to me, not only because of the great weight I gave to music, but of its place in our relationship to each other.  We became so close, so fast, because we both loved music.  But now it was becoming a wall between us, and this scared me.  I could have, at that moment, chosen an easy way out and dismissed her.  But, and let me pause for a prayer of thanksgiving, I didn't.  This singular event launched me on a study of what I really believed.  Because its absurdity was finally starting to sink in.

Catholic continuum

The entire world is, without always knowing completely, Catholic. This must be true if the Catholic claim is true, that the great church is the universal church, meant for everyone on earth. As such, there is no reason to see the world as a fight between various sides on the issue of religion. There are only those who are somewhere along the infinite continuum of alignment with the truth, culminating in the infinitely perfect man, Jesus.

Song of science

If I could identify a theme to my life and my story, it is a search for truth. Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that I chose to become an engineer. Science is the search for a particular kind of truth, that which we can feel and touch and manipulate. I probably would have become a scientist if there was more money in it. As an engineer, I get to both satiate my desire to understand the world and be financially comfortable. Both professionally and practically, one could easily describe engineering as the combination of science and money. I came to graduate school because I wanted to be a part of discovering real knowledge.

I came to graduate school on an ideology high. All I understood of the world was through science, and I wanted to weave myself into the fabric of this knowledge. The beauty of the university is that you get to learn from incredibly knowledgeable people, the best of which make you feel like you are just as smart as they are. And if you aren't careful, you might even think you're as smart. In this environment, it is easy to be enchanted with the surety of the basics. Newton's laws are so plainly obvious and simple that, given enough time, the rest of science must undoubtedly be within grasp. The siren's song of science.

But as you do science, you realize that it is dirty. Things are never so obvious. The piece of knowledge you carve out for yourself verges of meaninglessness, and, if you are lucky, one other person might be able to understand your ideas. That is, if you are lucky enough to actually have an idea. This is the work of science. Although I was disillusioned, I have never lost my faith that science accomplishes something. Knowledge progresses on, but I must be satisfied with my infinitesimal contribution.

However, as an undergraduate, I was enamored by the human spirit and its search for knowledge. I read the pop literature: Hawkings, Green, and Kaku. A particularly transformative book was Complexity, recommended by a friend who unwittingly changed my life. These books presented a beautiful world. The universe is simple enough to understand, yet complex enough to instill wonder. The laws of nature were obscure to the untrained eye, but could be made obvious if you read the right books. This is the world we lived in, and I knew the secret handshake: science.

It is within this world that I became an atheist. In such a world, what room is there for God?

Introduction

First, I need to establish my credentials. I am in no way an expert on theology or God, if such a thing exists. I can speak only as a layman, a member of God's Church, who has unexpectedly come to God and barely begun to understand what that means. I have a love for theology, but only as a dilettante. And like all dilettantes, it is too easy for me to mistake facts about God as knowledge of God Himself. Realizing my weaknesses, I am reluctant to talk about these things, because I may betray a level of certainty that is not actually present.

This blog has started in preparation for a talk I will give in the Theology on Tap series for my church. I have debated in my head whether I should actually give this talk, because, again, I know so little about theology. But I was subtly prodded by both my wife and my parish priest to share my story, and I finally convinced myself it would be a good idea after realizing it could be a channel for me, a means to let my thoughts coalesce. Its preparation would also be a Lenten penance and a gift I could give to my parish and my friends, who have been so helpful and patient with me.

What follows will be many unrelated, unorganized posts, only meaningful as the seed of an idea. I apologize if they are completely unreadable.