I often get accused of holding an anti-supernatural bias, a pre-formed assumption that God does not exist. Because of this bias, I am told, I automatically close myself off to the wonder and beauty of the Bible or I blind myself to the self-evident signs in the world that ineluctably point toward "The Creator." If I were to be more open-minded, I would be amazed at how God's wisdom permeates everything that is, was, and ever will be.I have indeed reached the conclusion that God does not exist, that no gods do or ever have existed. That conclusion came at the "end" of many years of thinking about the matter and going back and forth on it. I place end in scare quotes because it's entirely possible my view will continue to evolve over the course of my life. Since I'm parsing words I might also think more about conclusion: in some sense it was less a conclusion and more like admitting to myself that atheism was what I thought was true. Atheism did, and does, appear to me much more likely than the claims of religions about gods and miracles.
Having arrived at atheism, I now proceed in that frame of mind. I have an anti-supernatural bias insofar as I consider the matter settled. Someone once asked me what would change my mind. My answer: If my grandfather, who died in 1983, were suddenly to appear before me and my family to have a chat, then I would seriously re-think my views. If someone were to make a very specific prophecy - like, "a swarm of bees will descend upon the city and plunge it into darkness for three days" - and it came true in just this way, then I'd be very impressed. Such events nothwithstanding, I no longer find it useful or necessary to keep asking, "but what IF God exists and everything/something said in one or more holy books is true?"
My sense of being godless is that reality is far more beautiful, complex, expansive, and strange than any religion or belief can contain. The universe and its study far outshine the dessicate doctrines of the bible and its commentaries. I would much rather experience the world, know more about the universe, and learn about how humans struggle to apply ever-greater learning to ever-greater problems - problems which are usually of our own making, unfortunately. Religion to me seems limiting in the most unhealthy way: read only the holy texts, praise god/jesus/allah/ganesh, give money to the religious instituion. Lather, rinse, repeat. Trust in the lord and don't look too long at the stuff in religion that's troubling, inconsistent, or offensive.
So let me answer one more question I am often asked. What if God in fact exists? And what if it's the God of the Hebrew Scriptures that is God? Well, if it's true and if he's actually there, this is my answer:
God has no right whatsoever to obligate me - or my descendants or my ancestors or my countrymen or my fellow life forms - to behave or think in any way. God has no right to punish or reward me for what I think and what I feel. To God I owe nothing material, emotional, or intellectual. God may not infringe upon my personal liberties and I refuse to grant it permission to do so. If God and I are to be friends - and why not? - then these are some of the ground rules going in. All this applies to everyone: God has no rights on any of us.
But let's not lose ourselves in fantasy. There's every reason to think our universe and everything in it, including us, developed through natural means and without need of, or intervention by, anything that would fit mainstream definitions of "supernatural" (e.g. gods, demiurges, angels, fairies, and so on). There's no reason to think we have any knowledge of an inscrutable, onmipotent, omniscient, living, personal god.
Without such knowledge, it seems foolish to me for people to give their emotions, money, and intellect in worship of this god. Such people worship only themselves. Ironically, this is what they claim atheists do.
My question to my questioners is this: Why would we owe God anything, if he did exist and if he did make us? Why would all of our self-affirmed and self-asserted rights as individuals collapse before this being? I think it's well worth challenging the standard line of thinking that not only assumes God exists and made us but that also insists we owe God something (our worship, our praise, our labor) for this.
> That God cannot infringe upon my personal liberties and I refuse to grant it permission to do so.
ReplyDeleteIf the God of the bible really exists He isn’t likely to bother with niceties like whether or not He has any claims on you or right to punish you. He isn’t likely to engage in philosophical debates over whether His having created you really does leave you forever in His debt. He is likely to throw a tantrum because you didn’t do exactly what He said and had the audacity to think for yourself. According to the Bible, His tantrums are rather, well, unpleasant for those on the receiving end.
If God really is all-powerful, He can do whatever He pleases. Who’s going to stop Him?
Except that none of us can know the intent and purposes of this omnipotent being, so none of us can say what it would be likely or unlikely to do.
ReplyDeleteImagine all the billions of people who have enthralled themselves (emotionally, financially, intellectually) to the idea that a being exists which, by definition, they cannot apprehend or know.
I agree, no human is qualified to speak for God (if He exists). But your post implies that God has no rihts on you, and this is itself a good argument for not doing what He says. I’m just pointing out that when someone puts a gun to your head, you do what he tells you whether or not he has a “right” to order you around.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that I would perhaps be wise to comply with the gunman's orders regardless of his right, or lack thereof, to coerce my behavior. In such a situation, the practical and philosophical matter of rights is of little value.
ReplyDeleteBut the point I should perhaps make explicit is that I reject the standard line of thinking that assumes God exists, God made us, and we OWE him something (our worship, our praise, our labor).
My question is WHY would we owe God anything, even if he did exist and even if he did make us? Why would all of our self-affirmed and self-asserted rights as individuals collapse before this being?
Again, I agree completely. The act of creating a sentient being doesn’t give you rights over it.
ReplyDeleteThe feeling I got from your post was that this was enough of a reason not to obey God even if He did exist. This paragraph specifically:
“God has no right whatsoever to obligate me - or my descendants or my ancestors or my countrymen or my fellow life forms - to behave or think in any way. God has no right to punish or reward me for what I think and what I feel. To God I owe nothing material, emotional, or intellectual. God cannot infringe upon my personal liberties and I refuse to grant it permission to do so. If God and I are to be friends - and why not? - then these are some of the ground rules going in. All this applies to everyone: God has no rights on any of us.”
It sounds as though you expect God to need a right to obligate you to do things. He isn’t that nice a character.
Especially the sentence, “God cannot infringe upon my personal liberties and I refuse to grant it permission to do so.”
If God exists, He isn’t likely to care whether or not you give Him permission.
I understand what you mean, but the sentence only works if you regard God as an abstract concept. If you think of Him as an actual Being Who is both all-powerful and willful, it sounds strange. It is as if the gunman cannot infringe on your personal liberties because you refuse to give him permission. You had better do what he says, or things will turn out very badly.
Maybe I’m just nitpicking.
G*3.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate what you call 'nitpicking' because I value clear thinking and clear expression, even when I fail to do it myself.
Whether or not we obey or choose to obey is not the issue for me. I do not address the matter of obedience because it's irrelevant.
You say: "The feeling I got from your post was that this [i.e., God not having rights over us] was enough of a reason not to obey God even if He did exist."
Like I say, obeying or not obeying God is hardly the issue as far as I'm concerned. The fundamental challenge I am making is to the idea that we have an obligation to God. I don't believe we would have any obligation to him, even if he did exist.
You say: "It sounds as though you expect God to need a right to obligate you to do things."
I have no such expectation. I get your point, that God could make anyone do anything with full impunity.
You say: "If God exists, He isn’t likely to care whether or not you give Him permission."
I realize this, but it's beside the point.
You say: "It is as if the gunman cannot infringe on your personal liberties because you refuse to give him permission. You had better do what he says, or things will turn out very badly."
If I refuse to allow a gunman to infringe on my personal liberties, he cannot. He may harm or murder me because of my refusal, but he can't infringe where I don't let him go.
Now, in principle an all-powerful being would not be subject to rights and my assertion of rights to this being would collapse into meaninglessness. An all-powerful being subject to rights is not all-powerful. But I am not all-powerful and I am subject to rights, and if God made me then God made me as a being with rights and subject to them. Maybe the better formulation is that I have a right not to be subject to any being.
I see individual freedom as the rock so heavy that God can't lift it.
Your ability to choose is left intact - God does not violate that.
ReplyDeleteYour limitations in understanding the consequences of your actions, however, does not prevent God from acting based on the consequences of those actions.
Your liberties do not include harming other - including yourself - without consequence.
And unfortunately your concept of your personal liberties does exactly that.
'Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.'
@Anonymous-
ReplyDelete"Your ability to choose is left intact - God does not violate that."
But what would give a god jurisdiction over our actions and thoughts? This is the critical question you must answer.
If gods exist, why do they have rights to obligate us -- or our descendants or our ancestors or our countrymen or our fellow life forms -- to behave or think in any way.
You have not persuaded me (if such was your intent) to see that any god should have the right to punish or reward us for what we think and what we feel. I still maintain that we owe nothing material, emotional, or intellectual to any gods.
I don't understand what foundation you intend to build your "unalienable rights" on.
ReplyDeleteIn the natural world we recognize the right of the creator over the created.
If a factory manufactures products that do not meet the specifications these may be disposed of.
You are a wordsmith, if you do not like a sentence you write - you change it or delete it. I doubt that you consider the "rights" of the sentence you wrote - how do you not recognize the right the Creator has to do the same. Even when He clearly does take into account your freedom and leaves it intact, but makes clear to you the consequences of your actions.
You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
“He did not make me”?
Can the pot say of the potter,
“He knows nothing”?
“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
‘What are you making?’
Does your work say,
‘He has no hands’?
Woe to him who says to his father,
‘What have you begotten?’
or to his mother,
‘What have you brought to birth?’
“This is what the LORD says—
the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker:
Concerning things to come,
do you question me about my children,
or give me orders about the work of my hands?
It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
Ex,
ReplyDeleteMy "creators" were my mother and father. I don't recognize an imaginary super-being as having fashioned a "first" man and woman.
A mother and father have limited rights "over" their child until a culturally determined age. A mother and father have no rights over their adult child.
Look at the analogies you use: factory-product, writer-words. You go for non-living things in your analogies, and that's why they fail. You are not an inert product. You are not a flat inscription. You are a living thing, and one that feels and reasons. You are a living being that can assert rights for yourself, and you do assert these rights (I assume).
The foundation for my "unalienable rights" is the same as yours. This foundation has NEVER needed gods. The foundation is that we can and do ask that some rights be held inviolate amongst ourselves. Gods have nothing to do with the real business we humans need to attend to.
You cite the Bible, Job I think. It's a grisly tale about an awful deity. I see no reason whatsoever to consider this tale anything more than an emergence of the cultural imagination. It's a tale designed to make you afraid, and to keep you in line.
Don't question, it says, for that is hubris. Don't investigate, it says, for that is out of bounds.
Don't you see that by taking this tale as true you are imposing yourself to tyranny? Don't you see that this tale is a Mel Gibson torture flick?
I suppose some people have these fantasies of suffering and being "noble" about it. I'm simply not impressed.