Question from Marianna:
If you do not believe in a higher power, how do you explain joy & suffering and the source of each?
Answer by SmartLX:
If you’ve ever owned or even looked after a dog, you know joy and suffering aren’t unique to human beings. Animals feel much of the emotion we do, but with far less subtlety and of course they can’t articulate it as well. If emotion is a gift, it was given to an entire extended family of creatures – of which we are very obviously a part.
If on the other hand emotion was not bestowed on us from on high, then positive and negative emotional states have persisted and developed over time and generations because they have some benefit to us, or are related to some other beneficial trait. It’s easy to see how emotion can help people survive and procreate: for instance, being in love gives great joy to both partners and helps them stay together, suffering teaches us not to do the things that make us suffer and our innate empathy drives us to create joy and alleviate suffering in others. Aside from all that, emotion may simply be a natural consequence of a certain level of basic intelligence, the benefits of which are myriad. It certainly requires a certain minimum intellect; while a mouse or a chimpanzee can be clearly emotional, it’s beyond the capability of an ant or a brine shrimp.
You could put just about anything into the form, “Without God, how do you explain _____?” and even if there weren’t over a century of scientific research providing just such an explanation, it would be easier to answer than explaining God Himself, having assumed His existence for the sake of argument. Using a completely unknown (hypothetical) entity to explain something else does not ultimately help one’s understanding, because it doesn’t tell you how one causes the other.
“HELP!”
Question from Sammi:
Who would an atheist go to with problems and how would one have the assurance that everything will be okay?
Answer by SmartLX:
Why does everything have to be okay? Maybe it won’t. Being assured that everything is okay when it may not be true is not productive, and could be dangerous if you’re plunging into something risky. It’s when you’re not sure things will be okay that you try your darnedest to improve the situation.
Some false comfort can of course be beneficial, for example to young frightened children. Fortunately, that’s what parents, families and friends are for. Reassurance doesn’t have to come all the way from God before anyone will believe it; any trusted person or authority figure will do in a pinch. I often reassure my wife and vice versa, and it makes us both feel better.
Problems need to be taken to those who can solve them. Fortunately again, there are a lot of people in this world who can solve problems. Not all problems of course, but between the government, the police, doctors, the fire service, engineers, teachers, parents, switched-on children and everyone else, many of the problems in this world are well within our own power to address.
By contrast, asking God to solve a problem has been likened (by Terry Pratchett) to “pleading with thunderstorms”. It’s unfair or it’s pointless; either it’s something which can be solved by people, in which case you’re just externalising their abilities and robbing them of the credit, or it’s something which is beyond human control, in which case it’s probably part of God’s plan anyway, so why bother Him with your petty little desires? (You can thank George Carlin for that particular thought – he starts talking about the plan after 6 minutes, but be careful because that link is not safe for work or school.)
Christmas for Atheists
Question from Floyd:
As a devout Christian, I celebrate Christmas on a religious basis. Ever since was a child this day has filled me with joy. Do you celebrate Christmas with your children? If you do, how do you explain this holiday concept to them?
Answer by SmartLX:
I’m pretty sure nobody here is a parent, Floyd, but a lot of atheists in predominantly Christian countries celebrate Christmas just like everyone else. They put up trees and lights, they exchange presents, they have big lunches, dinners and parties, they sing carols, they travel to be with their friends and families. A lot of them go to church with their families out of tradition, and it’s about the only time they do. All of that can be great fun for kids, and something to look forward to.
The nice thing about Christmas is that it has an alternative, secular mythology already set up: the Santa Claus mythos. If moderate and liberal Christian parents can prepare for Santa with their children, intending to dispel the myth when they get older, atheists can too, and many do.
There’s also no harm in telling children the truth about the holiday: it’s traditionally been to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (hence the name Christmas, and most of the songs), but not everyone believes that’s so important anymore, and everyone gets the holiday anyway so we all like to celebrate. Before that, it was a pagan holiday when people celebrated all kinds of gods and spirits.
Few if any atheists object to exposing children to religion, though preferably not just one and not in an atmosphere of indoctrination. Christmas is a great opportunity for non-religious families to see Christian rituals and traditions, and potentially compare them to others.
Punishment: As Above, So Below?
Question from Emily:
What gives you the right to punish your children when you don’t have a higher power punishing you?
Answer by SmartLX:
Other people do, by forming a society with laws that allow parents to discipline their children using reasonable methods.
Rights, human or otherwise, are an abstract concept. They have no physical form; you can only take them away by stopping or seriously discouraging someone from doing something. Since God cannot be shown to prevent or allow any actions at all, acting as He does exactly as if he did not exist, He does not apparently confer or restrict any of our rights.
It is indeed good practice for any authority to itself answer to a greater authority, to prevent the abuse of power. This is true all the way up the chain. The nice thing about a democracy/republic is that those at the top answer to each other; presidents can be impeached, judges can be dismissed and so on. If all authority ultimately rests with one individual, the word for the one in that position is dictator. Benevolent dictator, perhaps (as all dictators like to be portrayed), but a dictator nonetheless.
If on the other hand you just mean that punishment should cause more punishment further down the line, that’s called a cycle of violence. How I Met Your Mother calls this kind of thing the Chain of Screaming. Neither of these are positive behavioural models to follow.
Religious Conspiracies and Tours of Hell
Question from Jack:
Hey I’m Jack from Australia and for the past couple of years I’ve been hearing about the illuminati, people say that they are a devil worshiping secret society who plan to make a one world government, the type of one world govenrment that the book of revelation talks about, now my position on this is quite open, I’m not sure to believe it or not, it’s the same with my faith I’m not sure anymore what to believe
Anyway artists like beyonce, jay z and most recently cheryl cole have put backwards satanic messages in their songs, and as you can imagine the folk on YouTube have immediantly pointed the finger to the illuminati,
Now even more scarier in 2009 a girl in Colombia (I’ve forgotten her name) had a near death experience in which jesus took her on a tour of heaven and hell, in hell she saw michael Jackson and apparently he was in there because he sold his soul to the devil for fame and fortune, and that anyone who listen to his music will be trapped by Satan, she is said she saw 4 year old kids in there who were there for watching Pokemon! It sounds shady to me but none the less it has worried me and affected my life, I no longer listen to most artists and I live a life of caution, so what I want to know is what is the atheist view on this? Could it possibly be a plan to bring people back into church’s? I don’t know but I’m not fully sure about this one
Cheers jack
Answer by SmartLX:
The Illuminati were a real organisation formed in Bavaria (now part of Germany) in 1776 and forcibly disbanded and outlawed in 1785. That’s nine years in the whole of history where we can point to a single thing they actually did. Despite what’s in Angels & Demons, there hasn’t been a single confirmed act by anyone working on behalf of the Illuminati in hundreds of years. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but if they do they’re now so secret that they might as well not exist. As far as anyone knows, we have nothing to fear from them.
Just because something sounds like words when played backwards doesn’t mean it was meant to do that. Do you have any idea how difficult that is to do on purpose, and also how hard it is to keep from happening accidentally? A music buff who plays everything backwards is eventually going to hear some Satanic crap in three songs by dumb luck, even if no one’s trying to put it in.
Your afterlife day tripper girl is actually Ecuadorian. She’s among the first stories listed on this rather loud website. Every part of the website is geared towards convincing people that the afterlife is real and bringing them to the church, so regardless of whether her story is true, that’s definitely the plan. Of course nothing about the story can be tested, but they expect it’ll persuade people anyway, or at least scare believers into being even more devout. You really have no good reason to believe this girl’s “testimony”.
Biblical Evidence Disqualified?
Question from Zach:
Does Christians not having evidence that isn’t rooted in the Bible mean there is no proof that has yet been discovered?
Answer by SmartLX:
What’s in the Bible isn’t proof either, so regardless of the Bible there’s no available proof at all.
There are quite a few different ways in which people attempt to prove the truth of Christianity using the Bible, some of which we’ve looked at here (see following links where available) but none of which have achieved much more than to reassure those who already believe.
– They argue that the text couldn’t have stayed as intact as it is from copy to copy from the original manuscript if the important bits weren’t true. To address this as briefly as I can, this is not convincing, because yes it could have.
– They argue that the Bible makes prophecies that are fulfilled in later books of the Bible, came true later or reveal scientific truths unknown to the people of the ancient world. This was Great Big Argument #5 in my series.
– They argue from their own personal “religious experiences” while reading the Bible, claiming that God has done what He’s supposed to do and acted upon them through His Word. This is extremely subjective, and unless it results in a verifiable miracle it’s not verifiable at all. It’s their word against anyone else’s.
– They argue that if people acted as written in the four Gospels and afterwards, then Jesus must really have risen from the dead. This one has caused a lot of long arguments here with little progress, and it remains unconvincing to non-believers no matter how incontrovertible it sounds to believers when it’s coming out of Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell or William Lane Craig. One problem is that Christians tend to be very, very reluctant to concede the slightest point about Jesus, so central is he to the truth claims of the religion. If you want to wade in, there are recent-ish articles about Jesus here and here. This answer has links to tons of material both within and outside Ask the Atheist if you want to go all out.
Gratitude to Nobody
Question from Alexis:
Who do you thank for all of your good fortunes?
Answer by SmartLX:
If someone is actually responsible for something good that happens to me, I try to thank that person or those people, preferably where they can hear me. If not, I don’t thank anyone, because at the risk of stating the obvious I don’t think there’s anyone to thank.
That’s not to say that I don’t feel some sense of gratitude when I’m lucky, and some sense of being hard done by when I’m unlucky. I think we all do. This is most likely because we’re human, and we have such a keen sense of justice and fairness that we subconsciously review our dealings with the natural world the same way we evaluate whether we got a good deal trading sports cards. It’s a lot like how we see faces in clouds and other random patterns because we look so hard for real faces in everyday life; our instincts work overtime in a harmless but very interesting way.
To me, the more interesting question is to believers: who do you blame for your bad fortune? Yourself and other humans for being flawed and sinful, the Devil (or equivalent) for working against God’s plan or God himself for making you flawed and sinful and/or allowing the Devil to work unchecked as part of His arbitrary plan? The answer says a lot about someone’s personal theology.
Morality Recap
Question from Sam:
Where do humans get their moral standards and conscience from?
Answer by SmartLX:
The short answer is, from each other, from their own instincts and from a long line of social ancestors.
My earlier piece on right and wrong answers your question in much greater detail. There’s also a short piece on the foundations of morality.
The question, and where you’re asking it, implies that God’s instructions via some sacred text would be the usual answer. Well, every sacred text has a lot of instructions even most religious people don’t use anymore, like killing people for eating shellfish or working on the wrong day. Those who use these texts as a moral guide are choosing which parts to use – but that means they’re judging the text based on some independent moral standard. Therefore, even believers are getting at least some of their ethics from the simple experience of being a human among humans.
What A Wonderful…World
Question from Camary:
How do you think you’re here today?
Question from Devon:
With no belief in God or Creation, how do you explain the beauty of this world?
Question from Ethan:
How can you think something so complex, something so wonderful as the world can be made out of a big bang?
Answer by SmartLX:
These questions all fit into a category I typically mark with the tag “origins”.
My big article on the apparent design of the world is #4 in my Great Big Arguments series. (Search the site for “great big arguments” and you might save yourself some research, or else want to do more.) It’s got bits about the origin of life, the perception of beauty, the evolution of intelligence and so on. If you’d like to discuss something in more detail, put a comment either here or on that page. (I see all new comments, even on old pages.)
Notice that all the questions above say “how can/do you think/explain…” You folks are challenging me to explain something, so what if I couldn’t? Why would I accept your explanation even then, if I don’t believe in the thing you’re using to explain it? Why would I assume the presence of something even more wonderful, even more exotic and even less explicable than the entire universe and everything in it, which nevertheless has no available, substantial evidence for it? That would just make things worse.
Death And What Probably Doesn’t Come Next
Question from Sarah:
We all have to go somewhere or will happen to us when we die. If you do not think or believe in God or heaven where do you think you will go or what will happen to you when you die?
Question from Jessie:
What are you living for if nothing happens after you die?
Question from Rachel:
I know you don’t acknowledge a God, but do you believe that we have a soul or that there is some sort of afterlife?
Question from Emily:
What do you believe will happen to your soul after you die? Christians believe that we have a purpose beyond death and that our souls will be in heaven. If you’re not going anywhere but the ground what comfort can you or your family find in death?
Question from Elizabeth:
Where do you think that you’ll go after you die?
Question from Brooke:
What makes you think that God doesn`t exist, and if he doesn`t what comes next? What is there to live for?
Question from Heather:
I know you do not believe in heaven or hell, but where do you believe your soul goes after you die?
Answer by SmartLX:
Looking again at this sudden deluge of questions, I notice they all arrived within ten minutes of each other, so I reckon the questioners are in a group somewhere. Welcome to you all, and I’ll get to everyone before too long.
I’ve answered the main thrust of the above questions once before in Death: Just Curious, but as I’ve said I’m happy to retread old ground for newcomers. (Brooke, for the first part of your question, see the post immediately before this one.)
An afterlife would require something of a person’s identity, mind, memory and so forth to persist after death. All evidence indicates that these things operate entirely within the physical brain, which is completely irreparable mere minutes after it loses its supply of oxygen from the bloodstream. Even while people live, physical damage to the brain can rob them of their memories, drastically change their personalities or turn them into complete “vegetables”. A “person” does not appear to be a separate entity from the tissue and bio-electrical activity in his or her head, as suggested by the concept of a soul, so there’s no good reason to believe in souls.
That said, I have heard from a few atheists who believe in an afterlife and even in ghosts (as you can see here, on the old archive). This is not a contradiction as their explanations do not require the existence of gods; they tend to focus more around energy. I say to them just what I say to others: present the evidence.
I’ve just said that there’s no good reason to believe in souls. A not-terribly-good reason to believe in them would be that if they don’t exist, there is no comfort to take from death or nothing to live for. Even if both were true (and I’ll get to them presently), you would be reasoning that souls are real because it would be better if they were real. This is wishful thinking, and it has no power to determine what really is or isn’t. Formally, it’s known as an appeal to consequences and is recognised as a logical fallacy. More simply put, it just doesn’t follow. Fortunately, things aren’t quite so bleak.
Death is always a loss to the living. There can however be different sources of comfort in death, even tragic death, for those left behind. For those who willingly sacrificed themselves for noble causes, such as the lives of others, we can celebrate their bravery and selflessness even as we mourn. For those who led full lives, we can reflect on their legacies. For those who died with important work unfinished, we can take up a cause in their names. Most obviously, the deceased will no longer suffer whatever pain and anguish led up to their deaths, so at the very least there’s that. If horrible people die, people we wish had been punished more for their misdeeds, at least they can’t hurt anyone anymore.
As for why we would want to live if there’s no life after this, why wouldn’t we want to make the most of the one life we know we have? I’m sure you value this life too; Heaven is meant to be all that and a bag of chips, but are you all constantly wishing and hoping that any moment a car would kill you instantly and send you straight there (indicating that God’s plan had finished with you)? I doubt it. We all have things we want to do before we die – romance, kids, careers, travel, charity, art – and the possible existence of a subsequent (but likely very different) life doesn’t change that. Even the religious are in the dark about their gods’ supposed plans, so apart from doing their bit to propagate their religions, they choose their own purposes in life as well. Atheists just leave out the religious bits.