So, what DO you believe, Phil?

[dslartoo]

Pursuant to my last entry about atheism and why I strive to be a decent guy even though I don't believe in a god, here's a link to a well-written post on Atheist Revolution, called Then What Do You Believe?. It brings up some excellent points, including some of my own core beliefs, but because I'm feeling philosophical, I'm going to write today about what I, myself, personally believe.

I believe that no gods or Supreme Beings exist. Define a Supreme Being. Define a "god". Can you reconcile the three attributes "omnipotent", "omnipresent" and "omnibenevolent" with each other? Can you show any evidence for the existence of these beings, anything concrete beyond the tenets of blind faith? These are the primary reasons why I do not believe in any supreme being.

I believe that it is not just a choice, but a moral imperative of every human to explore, question, and expand their worldview. By the same token, I do not refuse to entertain discussion about religion or religious concepts. I will happily listen to arguments, viewpoints and opinions that differ from my own. Religion makes many good points, and those few who actually espouse the good principles of their religion are, at their core, Good People even without their religion. This is my firm belief. I can learn from them just like I would learn from any atheist. Closed minds gather nothing but dust.

I believe that people should be good to others, until they give you reason to do otherwise. I went over this in the last post, but it bears repeating. It is Good and Right to be cool to others. I believe this with all my heart.

I believe that truth is always preferable to fiction. Although I'm often tempted to play ostrich when something unpleasant happens in my life, I will always confront it sooner or later. Because truth, pure truth, is the last, greatest bastion of human thought. I would prefer to see reality as it is, even if it interferes with my own worldview, even if it shakes me to the core, even if it rips me apart. Reasoned, clear thought, science and demonstrable evidence will lead -- MUST lead -- to truth, unvarnished truth, and it's that truth that I prefer to any fiction which might be more attractive.

I believe that there is no afterlife. For similar reasons that I believe there is no god, I believe there is no afterlife. Because this is the case, I also think it's a moral imperative for people to make the most of what little time they do have here on earth. Make the world a better place with your actions, your presence, and the memories and things you leave behind.

I believe that there are many things in this universe that we do not understand. Albert Einstein is the source of one of my favorite quotes: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." By this same token, I believe that there are many strange and mysterious things out there in this universe that we don't yet understand. I say this not as a fallback position for when science fails to explain something strange, but because I freely admit that humans are tiny creatures and our knowledge is limited. Are there other races out there, beyond the stars, with greater knowledge of the cosmos? It's possible. Do I hope to meet them one day? You bet. And going back to what I said about exploring and questioning -- just because we currently don't understand something doesn't mean that we might not be able to understand it one day. I do not think that anything is "unknowable" or "unutterable", merely misunderstood due to insufficient knowledge and understanding.

I believe that people are entitled to their own beliefs and that my own is not the One True Way. I, personally, believe I am correct in my belief (of course I do). But I also believe other people are entitled to whatever beliefs they choose. I don't agree with those beliefs, and I may not understand why you believe that, but whatever gets you through the night. I'm not going to call you a Godded right-wing Jesus freak because you do believe in a God. You're entitled. I won't try to convert you, or change your mind, unless you want to discuss it freely and openly.

What about you? What do you believe?

-- END OF LINE --

[[The Oracle would like to know if you have a magic or lucky number.]]

Comments

[fairgoldberry.livejournal.com]

What interests me is that you address all of this to a monotheist, JudeoChristian notion of 'God'. It's very reactionary with regard to mainstream culture. I don't wish to sound critical, though I probably do, when I say that many atheists in the US just dismiss non-mainstream positions regarding faith, belief, and deity as irrelevant without addressing the very real fact that most of their positions vis-a-vis the snarky dismissive 'Sky Fairy' logic lump polytheists, pagans, pantheists, and animists in with the monotheists, when they've never cared to find out very much about what anyone outside the dominant paradigm believes. It speaks to me, often, as an incomplete position based primarily on a rejection of that dominant paradigm without regard for its development as anything beyond a counter to contemporary JudeoChristian philosophy. In other words, by disregarding how so many other paths address some of the issues you raise here, you suggest that anyone who doesn't reject gods and godhood entire must clearly be a hidebound monotheist who buys into the specific belief system you've got pat rejections arranged for. If I sound angry, it's because just about the only 'debate' I ever get from atheists about the nature of faith that doesn't center around Why Jesus Is A Stupid Myth is pretty clearly cobbled together into Why Jesus Zeus Is A Stupid Myth.

I don't believe an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent being would have created the Universe as it is, which is in large part why I'm a polytheist. I believe in my gods because I have had, to the best of my understanding, direct interactions with them. They are a real presence in my life with whom I interact. I've seen magic work often enough that either it's real or I'm some sort of quantum singularity of coincidence. Either way, it makes sense to keep doing as I have been. It means that often, the insensibility of things like "Why is there evil and pain?" makes a lot more sense to me than to my Christian friends, because if there are two (or ten, or a hundred) gods working at cross-purposes, there will be conflict even if one of them is not strictly 'evil' in the Right/Wrong Big Picture sense.

As to an afterlife, I believe that we're all, at the moment of death, granted an understanding of the impact of our lives. Whether this is an interview with some divine being or simply a crystalline flash of clarity before oblivion, the true reward or punishment takes place in that moment, when you're fully aware of the person you were and the life you lived, and you must face that without your rationalizations and defenses. Because morality and Being a Good Person are so subjective, I try to live with that moment in mind. I don't have tenets and prohibitions and a Big Holy Book to tell me what to do and when. I've got my belief that the world becomes what we will it to be, both in action and in thought, and so I carefully consider my actions because I am empowered to change the world around me with them.

Many atheists seem to labor under the misconception that it matters to all people of faith whether or not you believe in our gods. I don't *care* if you believe in my gods, because as I said above, either they're real or I'm an epicenter for remarkable coincidence and either way I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing because it works for me and I'm happy. If you don't believe in my gods, that doesn't really affect me, but since you can no more prove to me that they don't exist than I can prove to you that they do, I don't accept their nonexistence as the default.

But please, when you're formulating your arguments against God and gods, offer those of us outside the dominant mainstream the basic respect of considering us as dynamic individual faiths, not simply an insignificant fringe element of monotheistic JudeoChristian philosophy.

Love,
Rowan

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

you suggest that anyone who doesn't reject gods and godhood entire must clearly be a hidebound monotheist who buys into the specific belief system you've got pat rejections arranged for.

Wasn't meant to be anything of the sort. Pagan, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, sun-worshiper, Egyptian polytheist, whatever -- all of them are equally valid, or (from another perspective) all are equally invalid. Just as atheism is. As I said, everyone's entitled to their own opinions.

Many atheists seem to labor under the misconception that it matters to all people of faith whether or not you believe in our gods.

Perhaps that's because it's been our experience that virtually everyone we mention our atheism to immediately tries to convince us of the rightness of their position. I have been preached at by Muslims, Christians of all flavors, Buddhists, and even a Satanist once. The only ones I've had any real experience with who were NOT judgmental were the pagans I've met, most of whom seemed to follow the "an ye harm none, do as ye will" creed quite nicely. If you're not one of those, then good on you!

offer those of us outside the dominant mainstream the basic respect of considering us as dynamic individual faiths, not simply an insignificant fringe element of monotheistic JudeoChristian philosophy.

Of course they're dynamic individual faiths. I never intended to single out any one particular religion, which is why I specifically chose not to mention ANY religion by name. If you felt I was singling you or any other religion out, I'm frankly stumped as to why.

cheers,
Phil

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

If you're not one of those, then good on you!

Clarification: here I meant "if you're not one of the judgmental ones". And I don't think you are.

cheers,
Phil

[fairgoldberry.livejournal.com]

Of course you didn't single me out. You excluded me. There's a difference.

You begin by saying that because you don't believe in omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, you can't believe in a Supreme Being, and everything else you say flows from that statement. Those characteristics are associated with the JudeoChristian and Muslim Supreme Beings, but they're not universal, so the fact that you don't believe in them would have no effect on whether or not you could believe in Lugh, Brighid, Loki, Apollo, or Papa Legba. You have, in that statement, normalized the monotheist outlook as your 'default' for Supreme Beings, and everything you say from that point presupposes that default. Doing so completely disregards the entire realm of faiths for which a god (not a God) need not know all, see all, or love all. Most of the pagan gods only really help out the people who believe in and worship them, so your refutation of 'gods' is really only a refutation of the JudeoChristian and Muslim 'Gods' and doesn't apply to anyone who's not a monotheist.

Your only other argument against the existence of gods (or Gods) is that they cannot be proven to exist with empirical evidence to your satisfaction, so they must be fiction. Well, they cannot be disproven with empirical evidence to my satisfaction, and I don't accept "they don't exist" as the default for the fact that they can neither be fully proven nor disproven. They *may* exist, and I choose to live as if they do. You are more than free to live as if they do not, but please don't sit there disproving only one small facet of divinity and suggest it applies to all of godhood, and then try to tell me that you're not excluding polytheists from your worldview and logic.

Nothing you said in your post applies even the least little bit to my belief system. Not remotely, not at all, because it all proceeds from the notion that 'a god' is bound by the same definitions and parameters as 'God', and that which refutes the existence of 'God' for you then handily refutes the entire existence of divinity and gods.

"I don't believe it because I don't believe it," is a fine choice to make and from my perspective irrefutable. If it makes you happy and comfortable, so be it. But "It is fiction because I can disprove something that looks sort of like it," is insulting. Your talk of science and truth as applying only to your worldview is at odds with your later assertion that there is no One True Way. If there really is no One True Way (which I believe), then on some level science, logic, and truth can be incorporated into *every* belief system, and every belief system is better for the challenge.

And when you close your post with, "I'm not going to call you a Godded right-wing Jesus freak because you do believe in a God," I have a hard time with the protestations that you're not normalizing JudeoChristian monotheism as your default for religion and disregarding the variety inherent in other paths.

I'm sorry you've been proselytized to by people of various faiths. I've been called mentally ill, emotionally weak, stupid, deluded, and ignorant by evangelical atheists, *and* told I'm hellbound by the Christians, so I just might have you beat on that.

Love,
Rowan

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

And when you close your post with, "I'm not going to call you a Godded right-wing Jesus freak because you do believe in a God," I have a hard time with the protestations that you're not normalizing JudeoChristian monotheism as your default for religion and disregarding the variety inherent in other paths.

I used this statement precisely because it is a hypothetical situation. I would never use ANY kind of religious descriptor as an insult, to ANYONE. I wouldn't call someone a Hindu as an insult, or a Pagan as an insult, or a "Godded right-wing Jesus freak" as an insult. That particular phrase was just what I happened to use as the hypothetical insult in question. Since I would never use a phrase like that to ANYONE, no matter what they believe, it doesn't matter what phrase I used as a placeholder.

Regarding "single-god" religions vs. "multi-god" religions: answer me this, please. If I don't believe in a god (or God, or Goddess), for ANY REASON WHATEVER -- the reason why doesn't matter -- then how can you say that I can believe in other gods because their characteristics are "different"?

Also, as I said, "these are the primary reasons why I do not believe in any supreme being". I never said they were the ONLY reasons -- if I were to list EVERY reason why I was an atheist, this would run to fifteen pages. It was long enough as it was.

Finally, I'm sure you HAVE been assaulted by unpleasant atheists as well as unpleasant religious types. I'm sorry for that but all it does is underscore my point that EVERYONE should be tolerant and respectful of other religious beliefs.

I'll say it again, because it doesn't seem to have come across: These are MY beliefs. I accept that you may have others, and it doesn't bother me one whit.

cheers,
Phil

[fairgoldberry.livejournal.com]

Do you understand the semantic difference between, "I do not believe this" and "This is fiction"?

Because if your position is the former, I have no beef with anything you say. Belief is deeply personal. But if your position is the latter, then you have to, to earn my respect for that opinion, back it up. And since you make the statement that gods and godhood are, to your mind, fiction, and the only support you offer for that applies only to the JudeoChristian monotheism, I'm going to call you out on that. You assert that my gods are 'a fiction' because you can prove someone else's God is, and that's intellectually lazy.

You throw around a lot of words like truth and logic and reason, and yet you seem offended when I point out that your *displayed* logic (because how am I to respond to or know anything about those 'fifteen pages' of opinions if you give none of them? I can only go on what you've said here) applies only to one segment of those who believe in a God or gods, and leaves the rest of us out entire. If you say that something is 'the truth' and something else is 'fiction' then I'm going to point out that your reasoning doesn't apply to quite a bit of what you dismiss as 'fiction'.

And I'm not asking you to believe in my gods. I said that in my first post; I genuinely don't care if you believe in them or not, any more than I care whether you believe in the JudeoChristian one. But what I do care about is the tendency, in arguments concerning the validity of faith and divinity, to marginalise my belief system as not even worth separate consideration. And it's not just pagans. Hindus don't believe in omnipotent, omnibenevolent gods (see also: Kali). Buddhists, Taoists, they don't believe in 'a god' (though many Taoists believe in the divine, it's a principle without a straight translation).

I've been pagan for more than fifteen years. I have, in that time, seen a lot of arguments for and against faith, and overwhelmingly they are between JudeoChristians and atheists who focus on the JudeoChristian ethics and tenets. We who don't fit into that are often completely ignored, so whenever I see a post like yours, my tendency is to notice that it's pretty well based in the idea that JudeChristian views of God are normative. You have, as an atheist, a JudeoChristian bias because that's what you have predominantly come up against, I'd imagine.

MOST PEOPLE in this country have a JudeoChristian bias. Most people, when you start talking to them about gods and faith and divinity, work from the perspective that monotheism is the default, and they rarely stop to consider that the most common arguments against monotheism (the three O's, the inconsistency of the Bible, the historical dodginess of the Jesus stories, the remarkable lack of latter-day miracles) are completely irrelevant to polytheists and pantheists. Whether or not you *have* those fifteen pages of opinions as to why my gods don't exist, the fact that you *framed* your argument with regard to monotheism is significant in itself.

And why you should believe in many gods if you don't believe in one? You shouldn't. But when you bring in words like truth or fiction and imply that theists of any stripe are hiding their heads in the sand like ostriches, then I'm going to demand equal attention if I'm to be subjected to equal calumny.

Love,
Rowan

"I just believe in one less god than you."

[marared.livejournal.com]

Atheists bitch about the Judeo-Christian group because they have the greatest influence and the greatest impact. The pagan gods are just as fictional in my worldview as God, Allah, and Jehovah, but their followers don't have a small but loudmouthed minority hell-bent on making the country subservient to their laws, nor does the average pagan child punch another little girl in the face for not believing in her god.

So it's not that we trivialize you guys... you just don't piss us off! In fact, I *like* hanging with the pagans, Buddhists, etc, because I can have a conversation about spirituality (or lack thereof) that doesn't result in me or them feeling threatened. (other atheists, though - we's a bitchy, bitchy crowd.)

Re: "I just believe in one less god than you."

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

it's not that we trivialize you guys... you just don't piss us off!

Thanks for saying what I was trying to get across yesterday. Apparently I was just not tracking well.

cheers,
Phil

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

You still seem to think that I was accusing, pointing fingers, describing what all other religions do, or doing anything at all with respect to any other religions. I wasn't, and I still am not.

Please go back and read the original entry again. "I believe this". "I believe that". "I think this." Every single line regards what I, personally, believe. Again, I very specifically did not mention anything at all about what other religions believe, or what their choices are.

the fact that you *framed* your argument with regard to monotheism is significant in itself

Some of this may be due to my upbringing, as I was raised Methodist, a Christian monotheistic religion. But we'll let that pass for a moment.

Let's look at this from another direction. If I don't believe in the existence of A, why would I believe in the existence of multiple copies or versions of A? Again, since I don't believe in a single god, I don't believe in multiple gods. Thus, pantheism and polytheism are not relevant to my personal worldview either. I "framed it", to use your words, within a monotheistic viewpoint because that's what I've got the most experience with.

imply that theists of any stripe are hiding their heads in the sand like ostriches

Where did I do this? The phrase was that I, personally, tend to hide my head in the sand like an ostrich when something goes wrong in my life. As it happens, I wasn't even talking about purely religious beliefs there. I was saying that I tend to play ostrich when confronted with a hugely unpleasant situation. I then stated that I realize this is a bad attitude to have and that I prefer for truths to be brought home to me, regardless.

For example: the fact that the original post really offended you, for reasons I still don't fully understand. That's a hard truth to accept because I thought I was being fairly clear, but I can accept that it may have been offensive to some. For which, my apologies. But it wasn't aimed at anyone. It was me standing on my soapbox saying "this is what I believe". There was no denigration. There was no finger-pointing. There was no scorn. Just what I believe.

And that's all.

cheers,
Phil

[valentinewolfe.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Phil, it should come as no surprise that we're pretty much of the same mind. I'm not sure I can give out many more passes to faith. I'm not ready to be an activist, though.

Rowan, Richard Dawkins addresses many of your points, with respect to polytheism as well. I'd be happy to summarize/point out/address them further(The basic gist: One need not be an expert in Leprachuanology to disbelieve in Leprechauns. Burden of proof, or evidence, rests on those making the assertion, otherwise, one could claim ANYTHING exists. The Flying Spaghetti Monster illustrates this).

"I'm an epicenter for remarkable coincidence"
Humans are remarkable at recognizing and perceiving patterns where none exists. It is thought the false positive is a leftover survival skill.

Rowan,I don't think you're any of the horrible things you've been described as by evangelicals of all stripes. I don't think any theist is stupid,deluded or mentally deficient, or anything like that. As I said, I'm happy to continue the discussion considering a polytheistic worldview (I stopped by paganism for a few years on my way to atheism), but to this atheist, faith is, dynamically individualized or not, not a virtue.

-Bo from Valentine Wolfe

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

I think you were lucky to find Sarah. I anticipate Leslie's traditional Roman Catholic family to be a problem if/when we get married someday....

cheers,
Phil

[valentinewolfe.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, I'm very lucky, as Sarah is very patient with me. I'm pretty sure she still believes in a higher power, but she's very impatient with the mainstream monotheistic crowd: we watch Penn and Teller together all the time.

We have a very uncomfortable pseudo "don't ask, don't tell policy" with our family. It isn't a problem, but it can be demoralizing and exhausting.

-Bo

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

I think that's going to be part of the problem -- if they ask me straight out what my religious beliefs are, I'm going to tell them. And then the fur will fly. We'll be visiting them this weekend and I'll be talking with Leslie about possible solutions to the dilemma....

cheers,
Phil