Question from John:
Can you believe in ID and Evolution? If not how can we prove that a undirected process created information and design within DNA? And if it was created by a misguided process does that mean that everything around us is simply a delusion?
Answer by SmartLX:
Many people, including some scientists and even biologists, believe that evolution happened but God or some other “designer” guided important parts of it, the main instance being the development of human beings. This position is known as theistic evolutionism. It’s not normally called “intelligent design” because self-proclaimed ID proponents like those in the Discovery Institute oppose undirected evolution explicitly; their goal is to establish their designer as necessary to the process, not just a possible part of it.
Undirected processes create additional information within DNA all the time through mutation, often under observation. The easiest-to-understand mechanism by which this happens is gene duplication: a small part of a genome is duplicated, changing the instructions it gives the same way an extra “o” changes “hot” to “hoot”. Here’s a video by Don Exodus which goes into more depth; I’m sure you can find many more.
By definition, an undirected process cannot create true design, which implies the existence of a designer. An undirected process can however create the appearance of design if a selection process exists which favours more elegant solutions to physical challenges, and that’s exactly what natural selection does. Even Richard Dawkins often says that living things look designed; this has no bearing on whether they really are.
Everything we sense around us might well be a badly distorted image of what’s really there, or even a complete hallucination, but we are able to test our surroundings and find consistency. When we let go of a ball, it always falls down (unless we’re underwater). When we feel something hot, it hurts us to touch it. We know from smell alone whether someone’s farted in our elevator. The world we see gives every impression of being a real, tangible world, even if we might not be seeing it as it truly is. Nobody said evolution produced perfect results, but it’s given us good enough senses to make some internal sense of the world and survive in it. That’s technically all we need.
Evil, Suffering, Injustice and Jaywalking
Question from Vicky:
Hello,
I cannot seem to find any credible sources where atheists define evil or at least how they view evil, injustice, and suffering. What is their solution to evil, suffering, and injustice?
Answer by SmartLX:
Atheists don’t define evil as being against a god’s laws or wishes, because they live and think as if there are no gods. Most atheists define evil in terms of more specific concepts like suffering, injustice and other harmful effects an action or attitude may have. Some atheists don’t think there’s really such a thing as evil, but that doesn’t stop them from wanting to combat suffering and injustice.
Suffering is an uncontroversial idea, because we all know what it looks like. Physical pain, mental anguish and financial hardship are easy to see in the world if we go looking for them. Our common empathy with all human beings (and other animals too) drives most of us to end and prevent suffering wherever we find it. (By “us” I mean everyone, not just atheists.) Any reasons we give for doing this tend to be rationalisations after the fact.
Injustice depends of course on the concept of justice, which can be far more widely interpreted than suffering. We all have an acute sense of reciprocity inherited from our social ancestors, and tend to react strongly when one party is clearly getting less out of a deal than another, especially if we’re in that party.
The solution to any of the above depends on the situation. There’s no all-purpose secular balm for humanity’s ills, or we would have cured them long ago. We just have to get stuck in and solve each problem practically.
Fear
Question from Emma:
I am not sure if I am brave enough to be an atheist. I am pretty cowardly and I fear death, however the only logical explanation I can reach is that God doesn’t exist, at least not in the way people think. Are most Christians only Christians because they are scared?
Answer by SmartLX:
If you’ve reached the conclusion that God doesn’t exist then you’re an atheist, whether or not you like it or you think you’re brave enough. Nobody said atheists had to be happy about the absence of gods; some actively wish there were a god, while others are relieved that there apparently isn’t.
Some Christians really are Christians because of fear, or at least they continue to believe in God because they want God to exist. They don’t consider that this isn’t a good reason to believe something, or that it makes it no more likely to be true, because they have become emotionally dependent on the idea of a personal god. I know this from personal experience – not my own former beliefs, really, but the beliefs of some of those close enough to me to admit the nature of their belief. (It’s simple enough to ask, “Why do you believe that?” but someone might need to be very open to answer it truthfully.)
Of course it’s not as simple as belief assuaging one’s fears and atheism leaving one defenceless. Christianity is itself as much a source of fear as any religion. The adjective “God-fearing” is usually meant as a compliment, for crying out loud. The idea of nothing after death isn’t the only reason to fear it; fear of Hell is part and parcel of the core doctrine of Christianity, and the Church’s main method of keeping and controlling its adherents. This is why so many ex-believers feel a huge sense of relief when they let it all go.
If you leave your religion, your fear of death probably won’t change much. Your real worry will be guilt, and the added fear of retribution by God, during and/or after your mortal life. It’s an irrational fear for someone who doesn’t think there’s a God, but it happens all the same. It’s a symptom of what I call “faithdrawal”, the psychological fallout of the loss of faith. Believe me, it fades over time.
Finally, you’re not cowardly just because you’re afraid of something. Bravery is about facing and overcoming fear, so if you weren’t afraid you’d have no way to be brave. You’re well on your way to courage if you’re delving into this issue, working to make your peace with the concept of death.
A Church of Atheism?
Question from Andrew:
Is there a ‘church’ where atheists congregate; a community of some sort?
Answer by SmartLX:
Church, not really. Communities, yes.
Atheism doesn’t have an official church, otherwise Alain de Botton wouldn’t have argued that it needs one in his new book Religion for Atheists (an argument with which many prominent atheists have publicly disagreed). A quick Google only reveals an entity called the First Church of Atheism, which ordains people online and frankly looks like a simple con job.
It could perhaps be argued that Unitarian Universalism is a church for atheists, if not a true church of atheism. It welcomes people of all faiths or no faith, and provides the community and ritual of regular church services without any doctrinal or dogmatic requirements. If that’s what you’re after, knock yourself out.
As for plain old atheist communities, those are all over the place and come in many flavours. Some are even called that, like the Atheist Community of Austin (which runs the TV show The Atheist Experience). To find one near you, just google “local atheist groups” (without the quotes) or go straight to atheists.meetup.com. Not all communities are physical; a little more searching will turn up all sorts of online groups as well.
Death, Energy and Reincarnation
Question from Nathan:
Hi I was asked a good question about Atheism the other day can you answer this. What happens to Our Energy when we die? because if energy doesn’t die where does it go? my friend was trying to ask if I believe in Reincarnation which sounds ridiculous to me because I don’t believe in that shit can you expain?
Answer by SmartLX:
The human body’s energy consists of a certain amount of heat energy, some electrical energy in the brain and nervous system and a few different types of chemical potential energy in the various bodily fluids (stomach acid, for example). When a human dies and the body decays, that energy escapes into the world around the remains of the body. It might be consumed and carried away by worms and other creatures, seep into the earth and feed plants or be released into the atmosphere by cremation.
This fact is not conducive to reincarnation, because once the energy from your body is dispersed it cannot be reassembled in any form which can be thought of as you. Reincarnation would require all of the energy which comprises your identity to leave the body in a single package, which could in principle be re-inserted in another body – in other words, a soul. There is currently no evidence for such an entity in any of the life-related energies we’ve ever been able to measure. (There was one scientist who figured from his experiments that the body decreased in weight by 21 grams upon death as the soul left it, but his own results varied widely and have not been duplicated since.) If your friend is trying to support the idea of reincarnation, he or she will need better material than general scientific concepts of energy.
The No-Problemo of Evil
Question from Adam:
I was recently debating the problem of evil and I am stuck trying to answer this question. Solutions to the problem of evil are most often found in the form of theodicies, arguing solutions for the problem to reconcile it with religion. What exactly are the atheists’ solution to the problem of evil? Is it simply only a problem for the theist?
Answer by SmartLX:
Exactly right. Evil can of course be a problem for anyone on the receiving end of an evil act, but the existence of evil in the world is only a philosophical problem for theists.
If you believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing and loving God who cares for every one of us, the fact that horrible things happen to people all the time requires an explanation. Of course there are explanations aplenty, such as that we’re being tested, or that it’s a necessary effect of free will, or that Satan is at work. There’s no consensus on which if any is the right one, though, which means no one really has a reliable answer.
If on the other hand you don’t believe that any such being is supervising the world, then it’s only to be expected that among the countless happenings in this great wide world, some of them will be awful, and therefore the world is just as we would expect. The essential conflict is between the existence of evil and the existence of an agent who’s willing and able to prevent evil, so dismissing the idea of the latter agent solves it nicely. Deists are free of this particular conflict as well, because the gods they believe in do not intervene in human affairs.
There’s a separate philosophical discussion about whether there’s really such a thing as evil, but there are certainly acts and events that are harmful enough that we’ll happily call them evil regardless. More importantly they’re evil according to theistic moral systems, hence the conflict with theistic religions and their need for theodicy.
The God Contingency
Question from Dane:
I’m just wondering, what if after all these years of not believing in God (Yaweh) then when you die you find out that there really is a God? What will you do?
Answer by SmartLX:
If that happens, what I do will depend entirely on which god it is.
If it’s one of the popular, jealous gods like Yaweh/Yahweh (the spelling isn’t that important when it’s approximating a different language) or Allah, then I will protest that there wasn’t any available, substantive evidence to justify believing in him or her. I’ll point out that at least I didn’t believe in any of the false, rival gods, and indeed worked to dispel those false beliefs in others.
If it’s a god or a collection of gods from ancient times before organised polytheism, when people fought over who had the best gods rather than the only real gods (see henotheism and folk religion), I will again stand upon my opposition to every other god, and see whether the actual god(s) could use another late convert. Given that the Mormons think the dead can even convert to their form of Christianity, an early tribal god should have no problem with taking me in.
If it’s a god I’ve never heard of, or some strange godlike energy or creature of a type I haven’t anticipated, I’ll have to play it by ear; work out what it wants, whether I can still be of use to it, and whether it even cares what I think or do as a spirit.
If I’m right and there’s no god at all, there most likely won’t be any afterlife, and I won’t be in this sort of predicament.
There’s no point swearing allegiance to any particular god while I live, unless it’s got better than a 50% chance of being the real god – instead of any of the tens of thousands of major deities humans have apparently invented, and the infinite deities we haven’t thought of yet. Otherwise chances are I’d be picking the wrong god, and would suffer all the more when faced with the real one. This is one of the main reasons why Pascal’s Wager is not an effective reason to worship the God of Abraham.
All Those People Can’t Be Wrong
Question from J:
Hi,
I have a question I can’t seem to be able to answer:
The old testament says (I’m paraphrasing) 300000 people were present when the book/tablets was given to them. It goes on about other events that happened to that group of people.
My question is: how would you convince an entire population of something (that didn’t happen to said population)?
e.g If I was one of those 300000, and these events didn’t happen to me, why would I believe that they did; just because Moses said so?
P.S I hope I managed to get my question across and that you can understand what I’m trying to ask.
Answer by SmartLX:
It was closer to three million people with Moses in total, according to Exodus, but who’s counting? The real problem is that you’re making (or allowing an apologist to make) the enormous assumption that there really were hundreds of thousands of people in the desert with Moses.
The story as a whole hasn’t got a leg to stand on; there is no evidence that the Sinai peninsula ever hosted anything like that many nomads, manna or no manna. They could probably have spanned the peninsula lengthwise if they’d all walked ten abreast in a straight line.
Moses himself hardly serves as an anchor for the historicity of the story. I argue with people about Jesus a lot, but at least there’s a certain amount of material to argue about; Moses doesn’t even have that level of support. The idea that Exodus was written by Moses himself or any of his contemporaries has long been abandoned by most scholars, which means it’s anything but a first-hand account, and that leaves a lot of room for exaggeration. That exaggeration can include not only the events themselves but the number of people who witnessed them.
There’s a line in 1 Corinthians that says 500 “brethren” saw the risen Jesus at once, and a similar point can be made regarding both that and this: an account of witnesses is not the same as accounts by those witnesses. Making the number larger, even arbitrarily, is an easy way to make the story sound authoritative, which means everyone who relayed the story to its eventual chronicler was sorely tempted to do just that. We’re lucky because in the case of the Exodus, the number was made so large it outgrew the land that supposedly contained it.
P.S. Considering my title out of context, any number of people can be wrong. There are two billion Christians and 1.5 billion Muslims and both groups can’t be right, so at least 1,500,000,000 people are agreed on something which is dead wrong.
Proof? We don’ need no steenkin’ proof!
Question from Madoka:
I’m a Catholic but I’m open minded. I keep hearing about how God does not exist but how can you PROVE he doesnt exist? I’m just looking for your opinion because I read about some atheists who had near death experiences and became Christians so it’s kinda confusing. Have you ever thought that He might exist?
Answer by SmartLX:
I can’t prove God doesn’t exist, and I still think that He might exist. Neither of these is a good reason to believe in something, though.
In order to prove God didn’t exist, with our vague concept of what a god actually is, we would have to rule out every place in (and outside) the universe where He might be hanging out. This would be impossible to anyone except a being which itself had godlike powers, so it’s not worth trying. Thing is, it means very little that we can’t prove God’s non-existence if whether he exists makes so little difference to the pursuit. Put another way, we can’t prove that there’s never been any such thing as a leprechaun, but that doesn’t mean we should all believe in them.
I used to think God existed, because I grew up Catholic. When I realised there’s no good reason to think He does, and lost my faith, I didn’t suddenly declare that God can’t exist. I could still be wrong, and He could be out there somewhere. I just think that’s very unlikely, for reasons I’ve given here, and until we know that it’s the right God and not a jealous alternative deity it’s no use worshipping any particular one.
Who/What is God?
Question from Emma:
Hi, I have a religion assignment and I have to investigate the question
‘Who/What is God?’
I am endeavouring to ask people of all different religions, non-religions and world views their opinions to include in the project, so would you be able to tell me, in your opinion
WHO/WHAT IS GOD?
Answer by SmartLX:
The ontology of God tends to be of more importance to theists than it is to atheists, apart from “strong atheists” who positively believe that there are no gods as opposed to just not believing in any. To believe in either the presence or the absence of a thing, you have to have at least some idea of what it is.
A broad theistic definition of a god would be an immortal, intelligent supernatural being with the power to control the universe to some extent, but deists disagree with this because they reject any idea of divine intervention. A broad deistic definition of a god would be an intelligent supernatural being that created the universe, but some theistic gods don’t fit that description (for instance lesser polytheistic gods like Mars and Venus).
The common ground between the two is the idea of an immortal supernatural being with some influence, past or present, on the universe in which we live. Some other hypothetical supernatural beings such as ghosts might also fit this description, so you might add “that was not previously a mortal being”, but the Mormons believe humans can become gods, so that doesn’t work. Therefore I’m content with the above definition in italics, which is slightly too broad but gets the job done. Since I don’t believe in ghosts any more than i believe in gods, that aspect makes little difference to me.