Faith Based Reasoning

There's a funny thing about faith. It seems that the holder of it is never aware of the massive leaps in logic that they must make to reach a faith-based conclusion.

I don't think faith is evil, nor is it unnecessary. We all take a lot of things on faith like the idea that our cars will continue to work, our parachutes will open and the laws of gravity will not spontaneously reverse and fling us all into a cold, dark oblivion of death.

 

Pictured above: Racism.

So faith can be perfectly fine, indeed normal. But Faith-based reasoning is the real problem in the world. It extends itself not just to religion, but really to anything that anybody REALLY wants to be true. If you want to believe that unicorns exist for example, then you can find something that proves it to you. You just have to look hard enough. Is that one too silly for you? What if you wanted to do away with all food and drink and show the world that you can live entirely off of light alone? That's completely real. They have a prophet who claims she has lived on 300 calories a day since 1996.  That's 14 years on what amounts to about 5 and a half oreos a day. She's not a strict breatharian, to be fair but that same amount of calories did this to Portia De Rossi.

Nevertheless, people believe in this nonsense without bothering to so much as ask a question like "How does this work?" Instead, they simply trust, or rather put their faith in a smooth talking prophet and then they starve themselves to death next to a lake in Scotland and leave behind grieving family members. It's a tragic fucking thing, really. That's the most common defense of faith based reasoning. You simply didn't have enough faith.

How much faith is in a mustard seed anyway? It must be a tremendously misleading amount because no mountains have been moved around as far as I know. Unless they kept it a secret. Or maybe the faith was misplaced, or mis-asked, or maybe the mountain mover wasn't listening or maybe he changed the rules and is waiting for you to figure that out or maybe he didn't like your request and is waiting for you to ask for something he already likes.

Any of these things are perfectly reasonable explanations when you start with a premise that is unfalsifiable, and untestable.

Mustard Seed sized faith is still big enough to move a goal post.

Bertrand Russell theorized (ironically) that there could be a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars.

"Why, what nonsense!" I hear you vehemently cry, sure enough of your cosmology to know that no such teapot exists. "Where is this teapot, I want to see it!" You further exclaim, perhaps oblivious to the fact that this is just an analogy. Well, you didn't let me finish. This teapot is really, really, really small. Like way smaller than a marble or even a pea. It's so small in fact, that it cannot be perceived by any of our most modern and effective telescopes.

"Well, you just made it up, so that doesn't count" you say, finally coming around.

Here's the thing though, if I wrote it down in a letter to someone. Then wrote another 65 letters and collected them into a book and then buried it in my super awesome time capsule for 2,000 years, then released it to the world. Not only would that, apparently, lend it absolute credibility, but it would also make you a heretic worthy of the inquisition just for doubting it.

Bertrand Russell doing his classic Old Man impersonation.

The list of faith based nonsense goes on and on, and by its very nature, is literally an infinite list, a list with no end. Any possible thing you can imagine would find its way here. Invisible Pink Unicorns, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Russell's teapots, breatharianism, chocolate stomping wombats that spin the world with sarcasm, an invisible man who creates galaxies with words, a human who can save us from a fiery place we didn't even know existed until he told us about it, crystals that interact with immeasurable energies, magnets that heal you, vibrations that...well, you get the idea.

Why is it that faith blinds the faithful so? It seems almost cruel. If unicorns, breatharians and teapots are stupid and silly, then in what way is religion any better? What tools, what credibility does it have that these others do not? If you're knee jerk answer is "God says" then you seem to have missed the point.

The Young Earth Myth

This is one of those topics that is important to me. Primarily, I imagine, because I used to accept it quiet readily.

This is the issue of Young Earth Creationism.

The other night I was watching an episode of NOVA, they were addressing the issue of the Sphinx and its origins. One of the most interesting elements to me was that the great sphinx was not made of bricks carted in like they imagine was the case for the nearby pyramids. It had a much cooler sculpting process...

The ground is in the area is made up of many, many layers of limestone. This limestone was formed when the land of Egypt was completely underwater and the decaying animal carcasses formed the separate limestone layers over a tremendous amount of time. The water over Egypt eventually went away, these layers dried out, the Egyptians built some stuff and eventually the sphinx, which they carved directly out of the limestone. That's right. In an age with no advanced tools, just rocks and sticks basically, they were able to pound, chisel and scrape out an amazing work of art. It likely took thousands of man hours just pounding away at this big piece of rock while some arrogant Egyptian, most likely with a French accent, looked out over his outstretched thumb and muttered something about how lime made for an unruly canvas.

That gate doesn't keep anyone out.

Even now if you look at pictures of the Sphinx you can see these layers of limestone. Even more interesting is that if you follow the layers imaginary line into the adjacent walls, then you can see that the layers line up exactly. A feat that would be incredible difficult to manufacture and something that the even the notoriously, extravagant Egyptian architects couldn't be bothered to do.

Now, this is a Young Earth/Old Earth issue because Egypt hasn't been underwater in the last 10,000 years, (a figure often designated as the age of the Earth by the YEC crowd) At least not that they were aware of and that's the kind of thing that's hard to miss even if you see the world in strange picture form.

Proof.

In fact, that particular part of Giza hasn't been under the ocean for millions of years. The lime sediments date back to the Eocene period which was anywhere from 56 to 34 million years ago. It takes many more than ten thousand years to create solid layers like this, they have to be wet, house life, let the life die and compress on the ocean floor, then have all the ocean water go away and then wait all those millions of years for the fossil record to catch up and then have some people build the sphinx some 4,000 years ago.

Not Egypt. (Present Day)

The evidence is clear, the idea of an Earth created with age has no basis in fact, but it just a wild guess to explain why the facts don't match the faith. Perhaps the most annoying thing about such a theory is that there is no reason a belief in God must contradict the theory of evolution. The only thing that gets in the way is the assumption that this really old book must be literally true in every respect, and thus nature must be wrong. Sorry Sphinxy, you're younger than you thought.

From Missionary to Nonbeliever.

The story of my christian life and its journey toward deconversion has been featured on Ex-Christian.net. A community for people who have left the faith or that struggle with their doubts.

You can read it here: A Former Evangelical Missionary

Comment issues [SOLVED]

I'm having trouble posting in the comments section for right now. Will have it resolved soon.

UPDATE: I fixed the comment problem. You need third party cookies enabled in order to leave a comment. If you just turned them on and it still doesn't work, then clear your cache and cookies, close your browser and try again.

The Choice to Believe

I was engaged in a friendly debate with a longtime friend about faith vs logic. He was someone I hadn't mentioned my agnosticism to yet, but he's cool headed and intelligent enough to accept such a thing without making an emotional plea.

I was able to explain the general ideas behind my line of thinking, as previously written here. My hope was not that I would turn his mind from his faith, but that I would help him notice the gap in logic that is required by religious faith.

We talked about the origins of the bible and some of the contradictions therein. We talked about the idea of a perfect book and how unlikely that is. We also talked about the concept of an inerrant book and where that even comes from within the community of believers.

My friend had the honesty to say that he didn't have all the answers to every doubt, but that for him, their was enough truth in the bible to convince him that the rest was true. He spoke of the historical accuracy, which was verifiable by separate sources, and that he was able to see the evidence of love being a powerful tool with humanity. That it really is the best way to treat people based on his personal experience.

I personally haven't done a lot of research at this point on the historical accuracy of the bible, so I cannot speak for or against its efficacy. But it really doesn't matter because the points I take issue with are the supernatural claims. This is an important line to draw. Just because the bible mentions things in the natural world that can be verified, does not mean that the rest of it is necessarily true. This is a logical fallacy. Just because something is partially true does not mean that the rest of it is true. Each element should be judged on its own merit, and my argument is that supernatural claims are completely devoid of any merit. They cannot be tested because they have no physical, testable evidence. The problem here is what reason is there to be believe the specific claims of christianity vs the infinite other supernatural ideas that are held by others. The truth is, there isn't. At some point, you just make a choice to believe or to not believe.

Now, there is a fine line here as well. I don't think it's possible to always choose to believe. If you have no reason not to, then it can be an exciting or captivating concept that lures you in and you choose to hold on to such a belief. But if something doesn't make sense to you, if something defies your worldview, or your understanding of how things work, then you cannot believe it. You can try to force yourself to embrace it, but you cannot fight your doubts. Nor should you.

There are some christians who do this and are still within the church. I've met many of those who finally left after years of doubts. They quietly struggle within themselves, but are too afraid to take that final step. The church, indeed all cults, often use fear as a way of controlling the masses. Afterall, if you are more afraid of the consequences than living with the nonsense, you wont leave and they will feel that they've won.

The fear and the control would be a topic best saved for a later post anyway. For those who are reading this and have opinions one way or another, feel free to leave a comment as I enjoy the debate.

Unapologetics

I received a much greater response to announcing my agnosticism than I ever intended, and while it caught me off guard, I like to think that I welcome the resistance. After all, what are beliefs or opinions if they cannot be challenged. I'm no a priori skeptic and I gladly welcome any and all evidence to the contrary. In fact, I would gladly change my mind if such evidence presented itself.
I feel the need to expound a wee bit on my current position for the sake of those who would understand, rather than condemn out of hand.

My feeling on Christianity at this point is as follows: It's a perfectly nice story, with positive and negative elements, much like anything in this world. It makes a lot of claims about things unseen, things intangible and things that are completely unfalsifiable. It is entirely possible that such claims are true. Since they are not testable, then they cannot be shown untrue. Not definitively at any rate. The old "you can't prove a negative" dilemma.

There are many such negatives in the world today. Homeopathy, psychic powers, demon possession, exorcisms, UFOs, 9/11 conspiracy theories, bigfoot, loch ness, ghosts. While I am a firm believe that anything is possible, I think it's important to stress the weight of the qualifier not everything is probable.

So, it means a trust science. This is trite, I know. This is the most common rebuttal to religion and it holds very little weight with Christians. That's fine, I wouldn't expect to phase a true believer with such a soft ball. The main problem with Christianity, in my book, is that it demands blind allegiance to ideals that are clearly refutable by science, and then assumes knowledge about all that is outside the realm of science.

One might argue, well, Faith takes over where science ends. This is true, by definition. My position however is this: Why have faith at all? If science, in its limitation, can not explain something, then why make guesses and act as though they are fact? Sure, you could be right, but you probably aren't. It's not even a million to one, it's infinity to one. And what makes you so sure that your faith based claims carry any validity over another's faith based claims. Christians vs Islam, or Buddha, or Judaism, or Aliens, or anything. How can you really be sure?


This is where most people, in my estimation, fall back on emotion. If you can't know yourself, you have to trust someone who does know (i.e. God, holy spirit, bible). How do you know what they know, well technically speaking, you don't. But say you get a feeling, you read a verse, you feel that God has communicated something to you in someway. You are still basing your conclusion on what you feel god is saying, or how you feel you should proceed. Sometimes, christians make very logical decisions based on carefully reasoned arguments about bible verses.
This still operates under the assumption that the Bible is indeed true. This is a very scary and unwelcome question to many a christian. How dare you challenge the word of god? What arrogance! How can you think you know more than God! Sound familiar?

But the beliefs we hold most dear should be the ones we question the most.

Think about a belief that is very important to you. Think of the most important belief after your religion. Whether it be political, social or what have you, focus on it. Think about how it makes you feel, think about what the opposition might say against your idea. Think how their words might make you feel. What would you say back to them? How would you defend your cherished belief? What would you say to show them they were wrong? What is wrong with their logic, with their line of thinking? What are they missing that you can so clearly see?
Now, turn that magnifying glass on yourself. No, but really do it. Don't make any assumptions, don't let anything you think be true by default. Its just you, in your mind. No one will know if you say something stupid or make a mistake. Let your guard down a little and challenge yourself like you were your opponent. Be vigorous!

If you are resistant to really let the gloves off, then how honest are you really being with yourself? How do you know that you're right if you haven't explored the other side, if you haven't tried to prove yourself wrong? If you are right, as you believe, then it shouldn't matter. You're beliefs will hold water, they will stand up to questioning, they will remain solid when shaken.

Are there any questions you don't want to ask yourself? Is there anything that you've said "well, that's obviously true" about? Why would you say that? What can be so obvious that it requires no scrutiny? Is there anything in your life that you can take for granted 100%. (hint: there isn't)

Your car might not start, your chair might break, your job may be lost, your family member may die, you might have misunderstood something, your perception/memory may have made a mistake. You are human after all, mistakes are normal.
You know that the authors of the bible were human as well? They didn't fall from the sky and neither did the Bible. There is no evidence, no written word that says these writers went into a trance and somehow managed to write error free documents sometimes 30 years after the fact. So where does this belief in the inerrant nature of scripture come from? You know that it doesn't count to quote the bible when trying to prove the bible is correct. So what external source taught you it was true? I can say with absolute certainty that it was someone you know. So who told them? and them and so on. It's such an old idea that it must be true, right? Lies can't last throughout history, the truth always prevails. At least that's what someone told me once.
It was under such scrutiny that, for me, Christianity was found wanting. If you apply the skeptical method to any portion of the Bible, it cannot answer with any degree of certainty. The bible is its own source and it's only source.

There is much more to be said on this issue, but this post is already far too long.

Which of your beliefs have you questioned lately? Any? Have you ever questioned your beliefs? Are you being a priori, looking to disprove any opposition without considering the evidence by itself? Are you looking to prove what you just know to be true already, or are you following the evidence itself to a conclusion? How much of what you believe did you really decide on your own and how much is something you've simply memorized from repetition?

Car Analogy

This was posted on ex-Christian.net by Hammurabi and I thought it was just perfect:


The ultimate tragedy of being a deconvert is the fact that even though we stop believing, we won't let it go. Imagine your old faith like a car. For a while you loved it, you took care of it and drove it all the time but one day it breaks down. You get out and try to fix it, but you can't. You ask a mechanic but he just asks for 10% of your income and tells you to fix it yourself. You consult the user manual but it was written for a horse-and-buggy. In desperation, you start kicking the car, swearing at it, throwing rocks at it. You hate it, and somehow punishing it for leaving you stranded makes you feel some amount of relief. You push it home, kicking it and swearing at it the whole way. You get up in the middle of the night just to take a leak in the gas tank. Then you start acting weird.

You start pushing the car wherever you go, breaking out the windows and scratching the paint. You get a new car and tow the old one behind it just so it's available for abuse whenever you need. You may even attack other peoples cars of the same make and model; "Your car's garbage! Throw it away, you can't depend on it!" Admit it, you actually enjoy being mad at your car.

For a time that anger is very therapeutic, it helps you cope with the loss of a major component of your life. Now however, your life is just as consumed with this car as it was when it worked, and you don't even get to drive it anymore! To truly be past it, you need to go ahead and drop it off at the dump. You don't need to rush yourself, have fun tearing the hunk-o-junk up, but wouldn't it be nice to live a life that didn't revolve around the old christ-moble anymore?

Life without After

As I depart further from the christian faith, I can't help but take time to mourn the loss of certain particularly appealing superstitions. It was hard enough realizing that my friendship with Jesus was imagined, that there is no sentient all knowing person watching over and guiding me. But I would say that one of the hardest remains losing Heaven.

Heaven was supposed to be such a glorious and fantastic place. Full of awesome, terrific and calorie free cookies. There was talk of mansions, and gold paved streets (not sure what gold matters in heaven, but apparently that's cool even there), and seeing all your former loved ones, except they would be perfect and faultless.

Plus Jesus would be there. You'd finally get to meet face to face. He'd stand you in a line and say good job or sort of breath through his teeth while reading your crimes and send you toward door number two.

Well done, my good and faithful servant. That was a phrase I was longing to hear. To get that final and official nod of approval from the big man who I'd served diligently in spite of evidence, reason and general common sense.

Even as I moved away from God, the church, the old belief system, there was always that understood element of the after life. After all, I was still a christian, I just didn't congregate or take anyone's word for anything, but there was still heaven. Then the runaway logic train broke through that final wall. Heaven too is part of the myth.

That means there will be no eternity. No everlasting joy. No jumping and laughing all day every day. No mansions, no gold streets and no final approval from the big man. That's a hell of a thing to let go of, but in the face of reality, it's not a choice, just a result. If there can be no evidence of heaven, not even eye witness testimony, then where in the world did that idea come from? It can only have been from the imagination of mankind. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. Every description of heaven is from the perspective of an ideal earth. No sin, no violence, no sadness. These are all earthly worries and concerns, why would heaven only be measurable in these terms unless it was created and processed through the filter of someone on earth. Since no one comes back from the dead, then there can be no knowledge of heaven. There could be one of course, but the odds of it being like anyone has guessed are pretty slim.

Someone pointed out to me a rather interesting thing, however. If heaven is where we all become perfect, with no shame, no pain, no sadness and none of the things that makes us feel that way, then what is there left of what makes us human and lovable. If we remove all of our flaws and everything flawed about us, then what is left of the people we know and the things we love about them. What separates us from each other if not the quirks of our personalities. If those quirks are missing, then how fucking boring must heaven be if we're just singing all the time. Can the concept of a perfect community even exist? Isn't it a paradox by nature? If everyone is perfect then where is the give and take? What can you talk about since you would all have the same opinion and be able to perfectly articulate it and perfectly understand it? What's the point of communication when there is nothing new to say? What's the point of pleasing a Jesus when everyone there doesn't care about your accomplishments because you're all equal?

Is that a place I'd really like to be? Where no one is as I remember them and I can't do anything due to paradox?

Maybe it's not such a hard thing to let go of after all.

Then again...

Skepticism over Religion

This is a very over-written subject, I know, but so what. This is what I'm going through and I thought I'd start a blog to get my thoughts out there for anyone else who may happen to respond to it.

I'm a former Christian. An ex X, if you will. I feel the judgment and harsh looks just by typing such a phrase, but that's exactly the kind of reason that I need to get away from it all. It's not an accepting place, nor is it logical, evidence based or in the least bit scientific.
I think organized religion really serves to be more of a form of repression in modern society. Maybe in all society ever, but I don't know enough to make that claim directly. What I do know is that it breeds an attitude of insecurity and fear to make its followers feel that they simply cannot survive outside of it.
It's true and that's it. And if you question it, you are showing a lack of faith, of trust. Faith after all, is not about knowing or understanding, it's about believing. If you can find a way to make it all seem sensible, then that's what matters. That it seem sensible. It doesn't have to stand up to further questioning, it doesn't even have to make sense to anyone else. It's about pacifying skepticism so that it doesn't grow to be a threat to your faith.

I used to think Skepticism was a dirty word! How ridiculously brainwashed was I? Not even allowed to ASK about the thing you believe. I've heard it said and it's my new favorite mantra, if you will. (and you will)...
The beliefs you hold most dear should be the ones you question the most.

Isn't that beautiful? It's so true. If you really REALLY believe something to be true, then you should do everything you can to disprove it because that's the only way to know that it holds any water.
You may think your boat floats, but you still have to put it in the water. You may think it's unsinkable, but you still need to sail it in a storm. You may think its the best boat, but it should be compared to every boat you come across and remeasured. This is the only way to be sure, and even then it can never be 100%. Its about trusting your boat until another one comes along.


note: if you're Canadian and reading this, I'm talking about sailing vessels not the word "about".