The Evolution of a Christian
Part II
Strangely, my journey back to Christianity was prompted by two of the most unexpected things – my distrust of faith, and an expanded study of the principles and science which support evolution.
First, in a supreme irony, my adherence to reason and logic undermined my atheism. I gradually realized, to my horror, that atheism is not founded in logic. Owing to my limited knowledge of the Universe, I realized that I did not – could not – have enough information to conclude that God doesn’t exist. No one does. To believe God does not exist, in spite of the impossibility of proof, one way or another, is irrational.
I was startled and shocked to realize the truth – Atheism is a Faith!
That shifted me toward the fuzziness of agnosticism which, frankly, bothered me. I’ve never been a fuzzy person.
I’ve always – even as an atheist – believed in absolute truth, and I always considered myself a “good person.” Why? Well, because I did “good” things – because I was nice to people, because I wanted people not to suffer, because I didn’t hate people or do mean things. But what’s “good?”
I had reasoned through this long before I had addressed that little rationalization about God I had made 13 years earlier. Whether or not God exists, absolute truth and absolute standards must exist – somewhere, somehow – for good to exist. Because in a relative universe there can be no reference point for what’s good or not.
Without absolute truth, one cannot be a moral person, because true morality doesn’t exist in a relativistic worldview. There, morality depends not on fixed references, but on what “seems right” to each person. Each person’s “morality” would be relative to everyone else’s morality, like persons each drifting in the current of a swiftly moving river. In the end, it doesn’t matter which person is furthest from the waterfall – they will all go over the precipice, because none of them is moored to anything that doesn’t move with them.
Relativism can be (and has been) used to justify the Holocaust, slavery, religious wars in Ireland or Bosnia, and countless other travesties and atrocities of history. Is someone, then, more moral if, rather than personally killing Jews, they only make the trains run on time which carry Jews to be slaughtered? Is that moral? Or are they guilty because they didn’t stand up for what was right?
Ironically, most young people who would consider themselves “relativists” would agree that the Holocaust was “wrong” (their words), and that those who stood by and let the crimes continue were not avatars of moral principle. In fact, I’ve found that most relativists are only relative on some things, and that they will admit fixed truth in other things (slavery, Holocaust), thereby undermining not only their own adherence to relativism, but also their own claims to some kind of subjective, relativistic morality.
And therefore, because long before I had recognized these glaring inconsistencies in the relativist argument, I rejected all that, and thankfully my devotion to that fixed principle – absolute truth, absolute right & wrong – never wavered.
On the other hand, even as my doubts about God seemed to waver, I still had my rock – my science – to hold on to. I still knew that God probably didn’t exist, because evolution explained everything about how we got here, and I firmly believed it was rationally and scientifically probable. A Godless universe could have produced us, through an endless succession of progressive mutations, and so why should I believe God might have had any hand in that, whatsoever?
Perhaps because evolution was my firmest remaining grasp upon a belief in non-spiritual, non-supernatural origins, I sought to learn more about it. In fact, I began learning more about all of science. I have always found these things fascinating, but had never really taken time to learn the details and concepts of the scientific study of the universe.
Ironically, this new passion led me, again, in the last direction I expected…
...
(to be continued….)
2 comments:
Interesting stuff, Ed. I've been commenting on Dani's blog for a while now, and I've always been interested in hearing about that rationalizations people give for their conversion to the fundamentalist Christian belief system.
I think that some of your explanations and definitions are a little off, however, and I'll try my best to describe how:
I gradually realized, to my horror, that atheism is not founded in logic. Owing to my limited knowledge of the Universe, I realized that I did not – could not – have enough information to conclude that God doesn’t exist. No one does. To believe God does not exist, in spite of the impossibility of proof, one way or another, is irrational.
I found it curious that you used this to support flaws in the atheist's belief system because, as an atheist, I do actually agree with some of it. First, when you say "atheism is not founded in logic", it seems like you're trying to speak for all atheists here (how else could you refer to the problem as one for all atheists?). Second, if you are, in fact, referring to all atheists, you've already encountered a problem in that most atheists have not concluded absolutely that no god exists. This is an important point in that it requires one to distinguish between belief and knowledge. They are two very different things. An intellectually responsible atheist believes that no god exists, but does not know for certain, since, as you stated, it is impossible to prove the existence of a god. It's unfortunate that you weren't able to make this distinction as you questioned the beliefs of atheists; it would have clarified things much better for you. The final point of this paragraph, that not believing in god because he can't be proven is irrational also raises another question; should we believe in the existence of anything that we cannot prove does not exist? I'll refer you to Bertrand Russell's Celestial Teapot analogy. The principle you outline in your problem is essentially that if we cannot absolutely disprove the existence of your god we must conclude that it exists. Hopefully, by consulting the analogy I linked to above, you will see why your claim that the atheist's scepticism is irrational in this case is actually the irrational claim. Otherwise we would be forced to also believe in Russel's Teapot, as well as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the complete host of Norse gods and any
other silly unprovable notion we could come up with.
As for Atheism being a Faith, this too is problematic, though a common tactic used to criticize it. The accusation you are really making here is that atheists believe what they do without evidence. If this is your definition of faith (belief without evidence), however, your belief in your own god is rendered equivalent to a belief in bigfoot or UFOs, since there is no evidence for them either. I'm confident that you don't feel that way about your beliefs, so you'll have to conclude that there's something wrong with the manner in which you've defined "Faith" in this instance, or something wrong with your own faith.
I’ve always – even as an atheist – believed in absolute truth
It's apparent through this line that you are actually not in a position to speak from a typically atheist standpoint. It is actually quite unusual for an atheist to believe in absolutes, or, at least, that they can know these absolutes. It seemed to me, given this predisposition to believe in absolute truths, that you were actually a very likely candidate for the conversion you later made.
The next paragraph was more revealing, however:
I had reasoned through this long before I had addressed that little rationalization about God I had made 13 years earlier. Whether or not God exists, absolute truth and absolute standards must exist – somewhere, somehow – for good to exist. Because in a relative universe there can be no reference point for what’s good or not. [Emphasis mine]
I found the sentences italicized above to be especially telling. I would posit that, if you were indeed an atheist in the past, that you did not actually feel these things. If you did, it would have been a suspiciously Christian flavour of atheism for you to think of morality in terms that so obviously demanded a deity to enforce them. In fact, the last sentence of the above paragraph in particular is so overtly theistic in its wording as to nearly guarantee that it was not written by an atheist. I can't help but conclude as a result that you have forgotten and/or changed what you previously believed about the universe or that you were never an atheist at all.
Relativism can be (and has been) used to justify the Holocaust, slavery, religious wars in Ireland or Bosnia, and countless other travesties and atrocities of history.
This is the point where things get really skewed. At this point, your story turns from a description of the path that led to your conversion to preaching about the dangers of relativism. In it, you've taken the idea of relativism and transformed it into its own belief system. If there was any doubt that you were a fully-fledged Christian by the time this idea struck you (or was passed on to you, more likely), it was dispensed with in this statement. Regardless, there are many, many schools of thought regarding what relativism is and how it functions. I'm curious as to what definition you've used so as to be able to lump the Nazis, the IRA, and African slave-drivers into the same moral category. Further, instead of taking what everyday layman atheists have to say about the implications of a particular school of relativism as indicative of the whole, might it not make more sense to look a little more deeply into the philosophies themselves to see what they really say? There's a half-decent discussion on the topic at Wikipedia, for instance.
And therefore, because long before I had recognized these glaring inconsistencies in the relativist argument
As I hinted above, do you think it might be more likely that the "glaring inconsistencies" you detected were actually a reflection of the fact that you simply did not understand the real meaning and implications of relativism?
In any case, I'm looking forward to reading about how you came to realize that the theory of evolution was bunk, but might I recommend that you first peruse the extensive and very well-supported list of such arguments that Talk.Origins has long had amassed to deal with them? You'll find your arguments to be much better informed for seeing what the actual scientists have to say on the matter.
Ubersehen,
I will gladly respond to your post, but I am limited on writing time, and I do want to finish part III first, before I then devote time to responses elicited by any of the 3 parts.
I also always need to get a running start when dealing with highly philosophical posts, because they require that I think in a more formalized way. For this reason, I might direct you to a friend's article which addresses some of the more philosophically-hard criticisms Why I Gave Up On Atheism, so you can chew on that while I'm thinking. :)
I haven't read your whole post, yet, but the first thing I notice is that you put words in my mouth. My definition of atheist, which may differ from yours, though I'd stand by mine, is that an atheist "does not believe (i.e. is absolutely sure) that God exists." Anyone else -- say someone who thinks God doesn't exist, but isn't dogmatic about it because they know they can't prove it -- would be an agnostic.
Also, I did not say that, when I realized that I could not have enough information to conclude that God does not exist that I therefore concluded that He does. I simply said that realization "shook my faith" in atheism, and set me free from my anchor, not having a firm belief on the existence of God to hold to.
In part III I'll get to what it was -- the evidence -- that forced me to conclude that God exists, and is deserving of worship.
Thank you for taking the time to make your comments! I'll be back soon to address these points.
Ed
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