Ending the Entanglement of Belief and Unbelief

Sam Harris said a couple years ago, and I can hardly disagree:

We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

. . .

[One] problem with calling ourselves “atheists” is that every religious person thinks he has a knockdown argument against atheism. We’ve all heard these arguments, and we are going to keep hearing them as long as we insist upon calling ourselves “atheists.” Arguments like: atheists can’t prove that God doesn’t exist; atheists are claiming to know there is no God, and this is the most arrogant claim of all. As Rick Warren put it, when he and I debated for Newsweek—a reasonable man like himself “doesn’t have enough faith to be an atheist.” The idea that the universe could arise without a creator is, on his account, the most extravagant faith claim of all.

Of course, as an argument for the truth of any specific religious doctrine, this is a travesty. And we all know what to do in this situation: We have Russell’s teapot, and thousands of dead gods, and now a flying spaghetti monster, the nonexistence of which also cannot be proven, and yet belief in these things is acknowledged to be ridiculous by everyone. The problem is, we have to keep having this same argument, over and over again, and the argument is being generated to a significant degree, if not entirely, over our use of the term “atheism.”

During the last several months, I have mostly avoided the subject of religion-irreligion here, partly because I was so tired of having to deal with the same tired arguments again and again. There is nothing more tiresome about the endless debate over religion and the existence of supernatural entities than the participants’ perennial failure to advance the discussion into new territory. No one anywhere has any new arguments for or against the existence of supernatural entities. There may be decent arguments for why the social structure of religion is useful, even when emptied of theistic beliefs, but nobody with half a brain is going to adopt a fundamentally different outlook on existence just to obtain the social benefits of joining a church. So who cares?

Another reason I have substantially reduced the amount of time I spend writing about religion-irreligion here is that when religious people make their bogus, ignorant, and irritating claim that atheism is just another religion, they do have a decent point—albeit not the one they intended to make. By stating and holding a position as anti-theism or anti-religion, there is no way to escape the clutches of theism, religion, faith, and all of that. Being the anti- anything only locks you into a death grip with what you’re opposing. As Harris observes, “Why should we fall into this trap? Why should we stand obediently in the space provided, in the space carved out by the conceptual scheme of theistic religion?”

There are lots and lots of blogs and websites written by atheists. You can find all the explanations you need for why a growing number of people decline to believe in supernatural entities, feel no urge to practice a religion, and scoff at the false virtue of faith. Even though people on both sides have been making essentially the same arguments for thousands of years, a lot of people want to keep it up. And working through those arguments is a good thing—for atheist beginners. Lots of people who abandon theism, religion, and faith come to that abandonment somewhat intuitively, or by noticing a small tear in the curtain of belief, poking around to see what lies on the other side, and seeing a surprisingly bright world out there. Those people need to familiarize themselves with all the arguments, mostly because they will need the security and satisfaction of being able to explain themselves to their religious friends and family, who will almost certainly try to bring them back into the fold, but partly because they need to assure themselves that they have not missed anything, that there really are no slam-dunk arguments for the existence of supernatural entities, the efficacy of prayer, the occurrence of miracles, or whatever.

But the imbroglio quickly becomes tiresome. Once you understand why you are not religious, why you do not believe in supernatural entities, why faith is an always-meaningless, sometimes-harmful exercise, then spending your time rehashing the arguments again and again is not an attractive prospect. “Can I just get on with my life?” you wonder.

Becoming an atheist usually means becoming a not-Christian or a not-Muslim or a not-whatever-you-were-before, unless you never “were” anything before. (Literally, an atheist is a not-theist, but we all know that pure theism does not exist in the wild. It’s always embedded in some form of religion.) But if you want to develop even further, you need to become a not-atheist, too. That’s not the same thing as a skeptic becoming a skeptic of skepticism, which would not really address the question that unthinking pedants love to ask: Why aren’t skeptics skeptical of skepticism? (Think about that.) And it does not mean you turn into one of those blithering fools who claims that atheists are fundamentalists, too.

Becoming a not-atheist also does not mean that you stop criticizing the foolishness of theism, religion, faith, and all of that. It only changes your conceptual center, the place from which you exercise your skepticism, perform your analysis, and issue your criticism. Foolishness is still foolishness, but it stands or falls on its own, not because it compares unfavorably to something else. Religion is not bad because irreligion is better; if religion is bad, then it is bad for its own concrete reasons, which make sense without regard to your personal views about faith or belief or supernatural entities.

Here is a political analogy: If you are a liberal, you can criticize conservative ideas for not being liberal enough (or vice versa) and no one will perceive any problems with your positions. While there may be objectively good political ideas, most people who stop to think about it understand that, in many ways, a conservative is rightly defined as a not-liberal and a liberal is rightly (or leftly?) defined as a not-conservative, and the underlying ideological differences are essentially a matter of choice. Surely specific ideas promulgated under the banner of either side may stand on their own functionality or internal consistency, or fall on the lack of those qualities, but no true partisan will abandon the party because it had one stupid or problematic idea. Changes in allegiance are just changes in personal political ideology. And it’s difficult, if not impossible, to live in human society without having some political views because politics is about addressing the problems that inevitably arise when people live in society with each other. You might try to stake out a new set of political views that deviate from the established political spectrum, but to be a member of human society without any sense of how politics ought to work is probably an insurmountable contradiction.

Despite what some people claim (see the “atheism is a religion” crowd), the same is not true for theism, faith, or religious beliefs. Being human does not require a position on the existence of supernatural entities or their alleged participation or interest in human affairs. There is no voter registration for theism, religion, or faith. No one will come to your house with a questionnaire and say, “Now, look, either you do believe in supernatural entities or you do not, and there is no ‘decline to state’ box on this form, so just pick one and I’ll be on my way.” The “atheism is a religion” crowd would have us believe that no matter your outlook, no matter how you go about your business each day, you have some conceptual or emotional relation to the proposition that there are supernatural entities who participate, or are at least interested in, what you and all the rest of us are doing. In a limited way, they have a point: so long as you express your views as being “I do believe” or “I do not believe,” then we have to argue about what this “belief” stuff is, and the debate, with all the same, repetitive, pointless arguments will never, ever end. People will keep spending their time and energy and emotional resources fighting the same battles over and over and over.

But you can go about your business without ever worrying about whether you believe. I have done just that for quite a long time now. Life presents plenty of other problems, conundrums, and mysteries to occupy thoughts and provide for deeply satisfying contemplation. Consider the question: What is life and why does it matter? It spawns plenty of other questions: Who is asking? Why? Matter to whom? What if it doesn’t? None of those questions naturally suggests either the existence or the nonexistence of a supernatural entity.

And unlike political ideologies, religion, faith, and theism themselves, not just some of the ideas that people have while claiming adherence, can be made to stand on their own two feet or fall under the weight of their problems. There is no reason why anyone must assume from the beginning that religion, faith, or theism is or is not a good thing before performing a thorough examination. Just as scientists differentiate between philosophical and methodological naturalism, people who want to examine their religion need not make assumptions about their conclusions before diving into the problem. In fact, lots of formerly religious people, including this one, will tell you that their problems with religion, faith, or theism arose only after an examination prompted by a desire to shore up their beliefs. That is, lots of people abandon religion, faith, and theism not because they simply wake up one morning, assume that supernatural entities do not exist,  and go on the attack—as though an atheistic virus had invaded their minds overnight—but because they wanted not only to believe, but to understand their beliefs. They began not with the philosophical assumption of atheism, but with a methodological desire for clarity.

In a sense, then, a lot of atheists really begin their journey out of religion as not-atheists. Only when they find themselves at odds with their former friends and allies, struggling to explain the results of their searching to people who cannot or will not comprehend the possibility of abandoning a religious, faithful, or theistic framework, do they embroil themselves in the tiresome battle of repetitive argumentation. I suspect that this may be exactly what the religious, faithful, and theistic people want. As Harris suggests: “It’s as though, before the debate even begins, our opponents draw the chalk-outline of a dead man on the sidewalk, and we just walk up and lie down in it.”

The entanglement of religion and irreligion, theism and atheism, belief and unbelief obscures reality more than it reveals anything. While people are busy arguing about whether God exists and takes an interest in human affairs, we cannot just put those human affairs on hold until we have a definitive answer. I have heard lots of religious people suggest that I should spend some period of time in prayer, turning my thoughts to God, and in that time the existence of God will be revealed. (And I suppose that, by that method, one could employ the known cognitive biases of the human mind to stimulate sincere belief in just about anything. Spend a month imagining that your cat is communicating with you telepathically and you will probably find yourself believing that, too.) So I propose to them, and to other unbelievers, atheists, and irreligious people, that spending a month completely ignoring the question of whether God is there or takes an interest in what you are doing will reveal the refreshing insight you may actually enjoy your existence more when you pay attention to what you’re actually experiencing and stop worrying about what other people are thinking.