Antitheism, Part 2: Theism Is Too High A Price To Pay For Salvation

“Faith: not wanting to know what is true.”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

I don’t want this to become a blog of solely antitheist posts (despite how fun discussing this stuff is). However, it has been said that my first antitheism entry – two posts down – is, somewhat, incomplete in that its arguments and disagreements perhaps only apply to more conservative, literalist religious interpretations and not to modern, progressive ones. I believe it does cover those as well (in fact, I believe it especially applies to such people) but if my words don’t fully show that then maybe I need to return to the subject and clarify things.

To begin with, let me say that, however much some people seem to complain about it, or call it crude or simplistic, some rigidity in structure is required for this debate. No matter how individual beliefs and faiths might be, there are existing linguistic definitions for these things. It is these definitions that I’m drawing upon as a base for my arguments, as much as I try to keep topics like these unrestricted. If you feel my position is unclear or false after this post then I would suggest that this is mostly a matter of quibbling over minor word choices, rather than any problems of being logically or theologically incorrect here. If I do my job right, these beliefs – and, more importantly, my perspective on them – should be clear enough and able to be agreed upon, provided we’re all using the same reasoning skills. Everything that follows comes under the assumption of liberal, progressive theist believers and assumes things like belief in scientific evidence, that evolution does occur, that homosexuality is not a sin, that planet Earth developed over billions of years and the book of Genesis is not historical fact, etc.

The three major “eism” umbrellas, in essentials, are:

Deism – the belief that the universe is a creation of a creator. This creator does not intervene in or care specifically about each being within the universe. Beyond the act of creation, everything is left to run its own course.

Theism – the belief in a creator god, or creating gods, who are active in the governance, organisation and judging of the universe and/or its inhabitants.

Pantheism – the belief that the universe and god are identical. That what people might call “God” is not a personal, anthropomorphic being but is, rather, simply existence itself.

Once again, I’m not saying which one is factually true or which one isn’t (since no one can do that). I’m simply stating my disapproval of one of these belief systems, whether it’s true or not, and saying that I believe humanity should live as if it wasn’t true either way. Theism is the problem and, by its very nature, remains a problem even if we assume a progressive theism. If one is truly progressive then one doesn’t really need theism in their life. Progressive theism isn’t progressive enough. “Progressive theism” is, in fact, an oxymoron.

In many cases, whether they realise it or not, otherwise progressive people are being held back by theism, either via belief or old habits. Example: I have modern-minded Christian friends who don’t believe the Bible is the literal truth but that it is a product of its time, with many values that we should consider unacceptable today (the subjugation of women and condemnation of homosexuals being two obvious ones). However, over issues such as, say, capital punishment or abortion, these friends would quote Bible passages as an authority for their position. Once you deny the absolute truth of the Bible, though, you instantly make it not an authority on anything. You may agree with that particular statement within it but that is coincidence. You might as well quote something by Oscar Wilde or Ayn Rand that you agree with (like me quoting someone at the beginning of this post). Unless you believe that a “Holy” text, like the Bible, is absolutely God’s word – even the bits you might not end up agreeing with God about – then quoting the Bible doesn’t mean anything more than the words of anybody else. It’s no more relevant than quoting me. So, for the remainder of this post, we can dismiss the Bible as a source of God’s thoughts or desires. It’s now a volume of literature or philosophy, with parts you can agree or disagree with. If there is a God, there may be passages of this philosophy that do agree with God’s desires but those match-ups are coincidental and we have no idea which ones do and which ones don’t. We can include all Jewish and Islamic scriptures in this too. Reading them can now be likened to reading The Iliad.

This is where modern-minded, progressive theism gets people stuck in a loop, like a dog that was trained to chase its tail for reasons it doesn’t understand. People too educated to believe in a woman being constructed from a man’s rib, born into a culture too liberal to condone stoning a disobedient child to death and too soft-hearted to want to exclude others are, nonetheless, conditioned to believe in an all-aware supreme entity that wants certain things of us all, while wanting us to avoid other things at the same time. A supposed entity whose ways are not our ways, whose ideals are not our ideals, whose reasons for instructing us are beyond our understanding; so that we might not always like these ideals, since they don’t fit into human comprehension. Except that, surprise, surprise, we always do agree with our God’s ideals! Coincidentally, everything a person believes in or thinks is nice seems to be exactly what their God really wants and anything that they believe is disagreeable or disturbing clearly isn’t what their God would want. Those old values from another culture aren’t true but the ones I currently believe in here obviously are! Because God, apparently, updates his morality every Earth decade, or so, just like humanity does. And, despite our narrow human comprehension, people always seem to be able to explain exactly why God would or wouldn’t really like something. There seems to be no lack of belief that people have in their own understanding. I could ask five Christian friends what they think is right by God in any given issue and they would each give me a different answer, or reason for that answer, than another person.

Ask yourself this question of which is more likely: that there is a God who created morality, who wants for us to live a certain way, following its morality and that this morality just happens to match all the values and ideals you like, with none that you don’t like, or is it more likely that, even if there is a God, none of us have any idea what it wants or doesn’t want?

There’s nothing to suggest that anything is, in fact, what God likes or dislikes at all. We’ve already dismissed scripture as the unquestioned source of these laws and ideals. There’s nothing else that suggests what they definitely are.

Because of this, there is no reason to believe – or pretend – that we’re, successfully or unsuccessfully, living according to the rules of any God. Even this should be enough. I can leave out whole paragraphs of my last post about the problems if theism is true; the celestial dictatorship (which it still is, regardless of if it’s benign and if you agree with its laws, all the mechanics within that paragraph still apply), the problems of divine reward and divine punishment, and if they even exist or not. All of it. You can re-read that post, all while you assume the presence of the most soft, cuddly, forgiving, patient, generous God you can think of, with rules that only encompass serenity and compassion that you love and agree with. Assume any kind of God. Each person is still left with nothing but assumptions and nothing outside their own desires or moral values to indicate if they’re navigating this God’s rules to its satisfaction or not. Before we even know if theism could remotely be true or not, we’re not even close to having a handle on what its rules are, even if it’s true. And what kind of rule system is that? It's like a maze with invisible walls.

Most of the religious people I know personally don’t even believe in anything like Hell anyway, so I’m not sure what they’re really worried about. Hurting God’s feelings? After all this time, do we find out that this omniscient, omnipotent, infinite being is really The Racist Dragon Who Just Wanted To Be Hugged?

If you believe, or wish to believe, that the universe and everything within it was created by someone or something – go for it. It might be true, it might not be true. Being created, in and of itself, doesn’t cause problems. Personal interest and ideology causes problems. Every progressive thinking person has concluded together that religious fundamentalists have deluded themselves into thinking they know the will of an unseen, unknowable God. No progressive person should make the same mistake. For all we know, this might be a universe with a God (or gods) but, as far as we know, this is also a universe without a theistic God. We don’t need the morality of one to have morality and we don’t need the conflict and bullshit of trying to second guess what kind of theistic God it might, maybe, possibly be making rules. It’s time to own up and admit that it’s our own desires and laws that we’re living for, without a clue of anyone else’s. Our sex lives and self-respect can’t take this theism stuff much longer.

On The Origin of Andrew Chalker By Means of Historical Hitchhiking

Sir Isaac Newton once famously wrote, of his own scientific endeavours and discoveries, in comparison to those of others’, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Given the use of the fingers on both of my hands and fifteen seconds to do it in, I could readily list a dozen or more names of people that I – for one reason or another – feel a deep intellectual and/or emotional kinship with and gratitude for; people without whom I would not have developed the qualities that I value most in myself. The twist? Many of them are people I have never met. Some were even dead before I was born. These names would include philosophers, musicians, writers, scientists and comedians (among other things). Having been born late in the previous century, many of the events, people or concepts that are so significant to me come from generations other than my own. This has created a certain experience of looking at existence in a rear view mirror as a newly picked up hitchhiker; seeing the sights passed by without having driven through them yourself. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be a kind of “lostalgia”: nostalgia for something gone that you didn’t discover until it was too late to have. How many times have I read a book, fallen in love with it, researched the author and discovered that he or she died ten or more years ago? And, worse, that this small sample of their abilities is all I, and the world, will ever have from now on. The train has finished its journey and all you can do is stand by its rusted remains, enjoying thoughts of what it must have been and could have achieved if it was still working alongside you. In memory of some of the people I’ve witnessed in my hitchhiking that give me this feeling, I will litter my writing with some of their words.

He who lives as children live — who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance — remains childlike. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Certain examples are met easily and don’t require much adjustment. John Lennon’s murder three years before my birth, for example, is a prominent piece of mental furniture in our pop culture. Like a couch you’ve walked passed every day since you were an infant. These are the John Keats’, the Vincent Van Goghs, the Sylvia Plaths and the James Deans of our history and, along with their influential talents, their status as dead people was always part of their fame (from my birth onwards, at least). In fact, in the case of people like Van Gogh, had I been alive in his time, it’s likely I wouldn’t have known who he was at all and it’s only my living so long after his death that allows me to witness his work so readily. What do require adjustments are the George Harrisons, the Katharine Hepburns, the George Carlins and the Hunter S. Thompsons. Those whom were witnessed, in real time, making the transition from reassuring world presence to nonexistence.

I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words. - Hunter S. Thompson

To take Hunter’s case specifically: I was already a young man, in my early twenties, by the time of his death in 2005. I had only seriously investigated him and his writing a year or two beforehand, though, so my time of being consciously aware of sharing planet Earth with this frenzied maniac of truth and passion, who spoke in a slurred baritone of word chunks, seemed so criminally brief. What I learned very quickly from this man was that rebellion and speaking out are valuable actions and skills. But you’d better do it with intelligence, you better be well informed and you better do it with integrity and heart. I had only just barely fallen in love with his prose, entering into a state of wanting to take Australian law by the throat and forcing it to allow me to be legally married to a piece of literature, or even just a paragraph for a few years, before I was staring not at the talents of a fellow primate but of a dead new mentor. I still frequently reread his work and watch interview clips he did to this day. Part of me rejoices in the lessons he keeps giving, while another part always mourns the loss of an intellectual comrade.

I had ambitions to set out and find, like, an odyssey or going home somewhere … This home that I’d left a while back and couldn’t remember exactly where it was but I was on my way there. And encountering what I encountered on the way was how I envisioned it all. I didn’t really have any ambition at all. I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be and, so, I’m on my way home, you know? - Bob Dylan

Consider three names: David Attenborough, Stephen Fry and Carrie Fisher. Assuming I live long enough to meet the average Australian life expectancy rate, I will live to see a world without those three people. I could repeatedly read and/or watch Youtube content about any of them and the world will literally change around me, moving from a day where I’m watching a piece of the decades-spanning work of a living world figure to the very next day where I’m watching an excerpt from the life of someone who used to be alive. All of these people can be very distinctly defined as singularities. There will be no replacement for them. If I were born a hundred years ahead of when I was, hitchhiking in an era beyond their deaths, would I still discover and be affected by them so thoroughly, as I have been?

There is no other species on the Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have; self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. - Carl Sagan

More recently, I’ve come to be influenced by the words and work of English-born American journalist Christopher Hitchens, a man famous for his intellect, his love of aggressive debate and, for some, simply as one of the most well-known and outspoken atheists today. It’s probably convenient that I would come to discover him now, over any other time in my life. Given the man’s far reaching vocabulary and experiences it’s likely that, however much I might have enjoyed pieces of his ideas when I was younger, I would not have understood half of his cultural or poetic references before now. Christopher’s literary and political knowledge encompasses a gargantuan amount of information, the consumption of which would possibly match the twelve labours of Hercules. His outspoken nature and passion for information makes him something of a next generation Hunter S. Thompson for me. This, sadly, is strengthened by the fact that Hitchens is suffering from oesophageal cancer, likely bringing the death of what could have been a long education alongside an also still developing human mind.

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. - Michel Foucault

Even having never met these people, I will still mourn on the days they each die and on all subsequent days, when I remember all I’ve learned from them and all that I might have continued to learn, given more time in the world with them. Knowledge, for its own sake, is important to me. Regardless of whether the studying you do will contribute to things like your chances of employment and income, or not, acquiring the information in itself is inherently valuable and meaningful. I am the person I am right now just as much because of the people – the famous dead or dying figures – that I have named here as much as from any formal, face-to-face schooling from teachers in buildings I’ve received. I’m constantly trying to learn; to extend and build upon whatever I am at any given point and, sometimes, it works. As mentioned, there are qualities that I hold in myself that I treasure significantly. However, if I have any wisdom, any courage, any generosity or any honesty, I assure you, it’s because I was hitchhiking in the wake of giants.