The Problems with Religion and God

Today I'd like to talk about God, the problems that I have with the idea of God and some possible alternatives to faith. Also I’d like to give some explanations for why people believe in God- what propensities humans may have evolutionarily for believing in God.

Freedom of Speech

       From the start, I’d like to say that I support anybody's right to believe in God, just like how I think that anyone has the right or privilege to be stupid or act crazy but I don't think it's right or morally justifiable. There’s a cost to freedom and with freedom comes responsibility. Everyone has the freedom to believe (or not believe) what they want. All Americans have the freedom of religion but I also think people deserve the freedom from religion. One can think anything they want to think but one does not have the right to impose their beliefs on others or do harm to others. This is one of the main reasons that I think that religion does more harm than good. The following are a few more reasons why I think that religion is a dangerous problem for society.

A Personal God vs. the Spinoza God

       My criticism of religion generally applies to a personal god, who listens to one’s prayers and punishes sinners.  Personally if I were to hypothesize a definition for God I would think that God is unknowable and beyond our understanding- certainly not meddling with petty human concerns. By this criteria, I am agnostic, as defined by Thomas Henry Huxley who coined the term in 1869, saying,

It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe.

There is also the idea of a ‘Universal' God which people often refer to simply as a synonym for Nature or the Universe. It is the pantheistic ‘God or Nature [Deus sive Natura]’ of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. It is the ‘God' or 'Nature’ of Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Stephen Hawkings’ famous last lines in ‘A Brief History of Time’…

However if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason- for then we would know the mind of God.

People often falsely claim that Albert Einstein believed in God but he spoke of the pantheistic Spinoza God. Christian apologetics love to misattribute Einstein’s beliefs by misinterpreting such infamous expressions like “God does not play with dice” (which Einstein wrote in a letter to Max Born in 1926).

       I think that there may exist a higher truth or meaning in this world, but to anthropomorphize or personalize it by calling it ‘God’ is to devalue its existence because “it” is not a graspable or tenable “thing” or “person." Although typically throughout history, the Godhead has always been a personified deity; a mythical human, a representation of the super-(wo)man. In the Greek mythology, for example, the gods have human characteristics and their personalities invoke our human triumphs and flaws. Religion was created as a symbolic tool to help explain and give meaning to human society and our place in the cosmos. Ritualized human burial began at least 100,000 years ago in Paleolithic times which is cited as the beginning of religious practices with the belief in an after-life, the belief that consciousness survives death. At around 30,000 years ago, stone carvings like the Venus of Willendorf and cave paintings are often cited as the first evidence of religiosity and abstract thinking in early humans.

       Perhaps there exists some type of “movement,” “oneness,” (a term from Krishnamurti) or “undivided wholeness” (a term from David Bohm) that can be discovered & experienced, but why call it ‘God’ when we have a language with better descriptors and better tools of measurement than pure intuition? I think it’s very possible to have numerous "deep" “earth-shattering,” “mind-blowing,” “awareness-raising,” “consciousness-expanding,” “life-changing,” “mystical,” “spiritual,” “transcendent,” or “religious” experiences (either through yoga, meditation, psychoactive drugs, sensory or sleep deprivation, free fall, contemplating nature & science, etc.) without attributing that very human experience to God. I find it unfortunate that for historical & political reasons religion has co-opted and monopolized the noetic and the gnostic: the nous (spirit) and gnosis (inner knowledge, revealed truth). The above is by no account my entire vision of truth. I think that reality has truth & truth has beauty & our lives have a deeper meaning which we rarely get a glimpse of. In my opinion, one way to find such meaning is through reason & science, observing oneself & nature, increasing knowledge and keeping a healthy skepticism about it all. Of course this is not the only way. To quote Shakyamuni Buddha:

There are many paths to enlightenment.

Morality & Ethics

       One of the most unjustified claims that religious people make is that Godless people are immoral because they lack the guidance of a divine supreme being or higher power. This claim implies that morals are independent of a rational mind and human conscience. I personally do not think that one needs a belief in God to understand how to have empathy or how to act kind and compassionate to others. I certainly do not think that one needs a holy book to tell one how to behave well towards other people. This is simply the fundamental rule of human reciprocity. Jesus Christ's Golden Rule: 

Do to others what you want them to do to you.

I think that it only requires a good human conscience, a good upbringing, good parents and a good education in order to learn and understand ethical standards of living. 
[What we consider “good” in all these categories is a topic to discuss further in the comments or in a later blog]

       Religion does not give people their morals but rather people attach their morals to religion. An ethical person who is religious may attribute their good deeds to a belief in God and a reading of their holy text. An unethical or disturbed person who is religious may justify their hate and violence by the same belief in God and same religious text. What happened in this instance? Could we argue that the unethical person interpreted the text incorrectly? Or is it more likely that the religious texts act as an excuse or rationalization for fanatical behavior?

       The ability for people to interpret a text in a multitude of different ways is dangerous. The openness of interpretation makes it possible for corruption of meaning and allows individuals and groups to rationalize violent behavior with religious reasons. One does not have to look far into history or present-day events to see how the Bible can be interpreted to defend anyone’s moral position. During the Civil War, the abolitionists and the slave owners often used the same exact passages in the Bible to advance their disparate views on the changing society.

       I do not think that we ought to ban Holy books, like a  dystopian scene from Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451.' I think they have historical significance and I hope that one day soon the majority of Americans will view the Bible in the same way that they view The Epic of Gilgamesh, Hesiod's Theogony or Ovid’s Metamorphosis- an ancient tale, a dramatization of human affairs told in allegory (or as Lloyd Graham calls the Bible, an “allegorical cosmogony”).

[For more on the topic of morality, read Sam Harris' 'Moral Landscape.' For more on Christianity, read Lloyd Graham's 'Deceptions & Myths of the Bible']

Experience of God

       What irks me most about religious and/or superstitious people is their often condescending tone to others who do not believe. For example I think it's insulting to tell someone that since they do not believe in God that they must not have experienced God themselves. To me, this phrase implies that someone who does not believe in God must not have experienced moments of profundity, love, ecstasy, connectedness with the universe and awe-inspiring feelings of self-realization and self-transcendence in life. I think it is misguided for someone to claim that one's experience of God is greater than someone else's experience of the world and thus the idea of God must supplant all others' ideas about being and reality. I think that people can have these kinds of experiences and/or states of mind without attributing it to God.

The Mind of God

       I think it is egoistic, megalomaniacal and delusional to think that one knows the mind of God. I do not know how people have the audacity to claim that they know God, or better yet, to tell people how to live based on that delusion. There is no humility in this aspect of religion. I think that people replace their subjective morals (ideas of right and wrong, good and bad) with the idea of God in order to rationalize their haughty moral superiority. It seems obvious to me that people take the position that "God is on our side" because it is an easy way of taking the moral high ground, when in actuality there is no evidence to substantiate that a belief in God necessitates ethical behavior. 
       In fact, a belief in God or Satan is too often a way of justifying hatred, violence and killing in the name of God. Sadly people often use their religion to rationalize hatred against other groups of people and to rationalize unconscionable behavior such as the mistreatment of women and discrimination against homosexuals. I think that if you consider yourself a progressive, a liberal or a feminist, the most dangerous ideologies that one has to defeat in the 21st-century is that of organized religion. Man-made "patriarchal" religion is by far the most oppressive force against women worldwide.

God as a Description versus Explanation

       I'd like to make a distinction between God as a description and God as an explanation. In the Old Testament, god is often depicted as cruel, vengeful and spiteful. This is no mistake because man made God in the image of man (not the reverse). Like the Abrahamic God, humans too can be capricious and evil. In addition to God as a description, God is often used as an explanation for events in the world. Every time that there is a natural disaster in America I hear people say that, for example, "it must be God's will for the hurricane to kill all those innocent people and destroy their families homes. They must have deserved it. God does all things for a reason. God works in mysterious ways.” It is sickening to hear this repeated narrative of a punitive psychopathic supernatural deity. To me, it is reprehensible to blame the victims of natural disasters because of the belief that all good and bad things happen in accordance to God’s plan.
       Similarly banal are the views of the Westborough Baptist Church who protested military funerals because, according to the WBC belief, the dead soldiers must have deserved punishment from God for being homosexual. One could try to dismiss this behavior as lunacy but their belief is absolutely "rational" according to their strict literal interpretation of the Biblical scriptures. Thankfully, the Snyder v. Phelps (2011) supreme court case ruled that the First Amendment does not protect public speech which is intended to inflict emotional distress a.k.a. tort liability.

       In America alone, there are hundreds of different sects of Christianity who claim to have the ultimate interpretation of Biblical truth. The question: is it possible that any one of these sects has the truth? Or is it more probable that none of them do? The fact that none of them can agree on single interpretation of the truth is proof enough to me that none of them have a monopoly on the truth. In fact anyone who claims to have a monopoly on the truth ought to be viewed suspiciously. It’s better to understand the limits of one’s own ignorance. It’s good to admit what you don’t know.

Questioning Dogma & Hell

       In my experience I've seen that the idea of God only shuns and divides people and that the indoctrination of the youth only keeps successive generations from questioning and thinking for themselves. I think that the term ‘God’ becomes divisive when its definition is ambiguous and this leads to tribalism among religions and their factions. For example: 

I believe in my god, but not your god.

       It is enshrined in any belief system to not question the dogma. What makes religion awful is that it gives proscriptions for how one will be punished for not believing. I argue that any religion that threatens to harm or kill nonbelievers (even in an afterlife) is by definition not a peaceful religion. Of course threatening death to apostates is an awfully convenient way to get rid of people who disagree with your belief system but it is not a peaceful way of life. I also think that the idea that a personal God will punish someone who does not believe in ‘Him, Her or It’ is one of the most unintellectual and hateful ideas which exists. To make things worse the idea of hell and eternal damnation is taught to children who internalize the fear based doctrine of original sin into psychological guilt which they can carry around throughout the rest of their lives unless they are able to unshackle themselves with intensive therapy or psychoanalysis. 
       The binary of good vs evil which pervades Abrahamic religions originates from Zoroastrianism in the early second millennium BCE. In my opinion, it is a false dichotomy for moral thinking. In my estimation, the ‘good vs evil’ lens is an oversimplification of the complexities of reality. I think that most people are good-natured/good-hearted and that most of the hate in the world stems from ignorance, not a pure innate evil in people’s hearts. This is the idea summed up in the Hannah Arendt term: the banality of evil. The reasoning is aptly summed up by Sam Harris...

The thing is, most people think there is a lot of bad people running around in the world. There aren’t a lot of bad people. There are a lot of bad ideas, and bad ideas are worse than bad people because bad ideas are contagious. Bad ideas get good people to do horrible things

Heaven

       Many hold onto the comfort of believing that they will be reunited with their loved ones in the afterlife. You may ask: how could this be dangerous? I think that the belief in the afterlife may seem benign but it actually impairs the psychological process of grief in dealing with the death of a loved one. 
       People often say that they believe in God because God answers their prayers. One might wonder about confirmation bias: how many prayers go unanswered? One might ask about efficacy: Do prayers really work? Studies have shown that people in the hospital who know that people are praying for them to get better tend to have higher stress levels and longer recovery times. So prayers have the opposite effect in many cases. 
       I think that we can be thankful and grateful as humans for food, shelter, friends and family without any supernatural belief. We can take agency for our lives and not simply attribute agency of the world to an external pushing force. This makes life more precious- not less- knowing that life is transitory and short. Life is beautiful knowing that Heaven is on Earth.

       May I remind the reader that a belief in the afterlife is the driving force for suicide bombers who willingly kill themselves and others with the belief that they will become martyrs in order to reach paradise.
[For more on this topic, read Michael Shermer's book 'Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia']

Evidence of Absence is Absence of Evidence

       One rebuttal to expect in a debate about religion is that 'one cannot prove that God does not exist.' Technically this is true but, to me, this is akin to saying that you can't prove that fire-breathing dragons, fairies or unicorns do not exist in objective reality. One could say that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but in this context I think it would undermine the importance for evidence in scientific methods of epistemology- the way we know things about the world, knowing as opposed to belief. In the case of God, the absence of evidence is exactly that. No one has (yet) proven to me that God does exist. The lack of evidence for a supernatural being that controls everything makes it an implausible claim to me. As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

       Likewise I understand that the general argument for the existence of God does not obey the rules of logic. God is “felt." One must have faith in God, they say. But I think that believing in something does not necessarily make it true.  Even if God is just a mass hallucination, does that make God real?
[For more on this topic, read Carl Sagan's 'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark']

Religion and Morality

       Religion and morality are so deeply intertwined in people’s minds that the word ‘a-theist’ is equated to ‘a-moralist.’ In Pew Studies, Americans consistently have a more favorable view of Satanists than they do of atheists (perhaps because Satanists, at least by name only, appear to have some commonality with the beliefs of Christianity). In Britain they did a study of religiosity where most Christians admitted upon further questioning to not believing in any of the doctrine of their religion (transubstantiation, virgin birth, heaven and hell, etc.). When asked why they still identify as Christian albeit not believing in any of the doctrine, they said that they identify as Christian because they equate being a "Christian" with being a “good person.”
[For more on this topic, read Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion']

Religion and Government

       One of the most common rebuttals to atheists in religion debates is “Atheists are bad too. Look at Hitler, Stalin, Mao…” but this is patently confused thinking and an altogether misleading argument. Hitler was a Catholic and the Nazi SS had “Gott mit Uns” written on their belts (by the way, this is not dissimilar from the motto of the United States “In God We Trust,” which replaced the motto “E Pluribus Unum [out of many, one]" in 1956). In addition, the Communism and leader worship of Mao Zedong's China and Stalin's Soviet Union was a state religion. This brings to light the fact that it is not just the world's major organized religions that are dangerous. Any dogma (especially institutionalized belief systems) which forces conformity and closes the mind to outside thinking is harmful to its adherents and not beneficial to society as a whole (see North Korea & China today). 

       What scares me about the direction that America is going in is that we have already institutionalized Christianity into our society, culture and law. As children in public school, we were made to recite The Pledge of Allegiance every morning which (since the 1950’s) contains the phrase “one nation under God.” This is antithetical to the idea of the First Amendment which was written in order to prevent there being a state-sponsored religion. This is why Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were in favor of “the wall of separation between church and state.” 

       With this said, why do religionists control our government? Why is it practically impossible to get elected to Congress if one is an avowed atheist (i.e. skeptic)? Why are there so few scientists in Congress? Especially when science is so crucial in making policy decisions concerning the infrastructure, the environment, women's reproductive rights, space exploration, etc.
[For more on this topic, read Christopher Hitchens' 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]

Religion & Education

       Religion does not belong in the education system. We should not allow the religious indoctrination of impressionable minds. Schools ought to teach the youth how to think, not what to think. [For more on this topic, read Steven Repka's blog: Religion Does Not Belong in the Science Classroom]

Religion in Society
       In debates on religion, atheists are often asked the question: what will replace religion? i.e. what will replace the community, social networks and safety net that churches often provide for people across the country? First of all, nothing needs to replace the church. In many communities, the church is more than a place of worship. It’s a culture; a place of picnics and social events that have little to do with the tenets of Christianity. That will not go away. Family and community will always have significant importance for a sense of belongingness and closeness in the tribe. Also, I think that people will create alternate groups for like-minded individuals that do not center around an overtly religious institution, or people will simply do other things, like go to the gym, plant a garden, become more creative, or join a social club.

       As a whole, people in America are becoming less religious every decade. I think that education is a determining factor. As people become more educated, they tend to become less religious. This trend will hopefully continue. In sociological studies, there is a correlation between a nation’s income inequality and religiosity. Countries with higher income inequality generally tend to be more religious. This is particularly true with countries in the old Soviet block and Latin America. Studies have shown that religiosity in America has correlated with the decline of income inequality.

       I'm optimistic that America may very well be able to solve two problems at once- kill two birds with one stone, so to speak- by simultaneously reducing income inequality and religion. The caveat is that this must not happen forcibly. We cannot go the route of communism by forcing redistribution of wealth, banning religion or by mandating a set of beliefs for people to follow. This must happen organically, through education, love and understanding.

The God of the Gaps

       In my opinion, there are much deeper questions in life than contemplating an invisible undetectable God, for example... 

"What is the meaning of life?” “How did we evolve?” “What is consciousness?” “What is our purpose in the universe?” “What happened before the Big Bang?…"

There are things in life that are truly unexplainable (or possibly unknowable) but this does not require a ‘god of the gaps’ which is a placeholder for our ignorance. The ‘god of the gaps’ argument is invoked when there’s something we can’t explain, so the logic goes “it must be God’s work.” No. Why can we not admit that there are things which we do not know? What’s wrong with revealing our ignorance? With doubt we can strive towards finding the answers. When convinced and reassured of a god that superficially explains everything then we might sit complacent in our ignorance. 

       We’re all human. We can all agree that there is a natural beauty in a sunset, a mountain-top view, the freshness of the air in a lush forest, the feeling of falling in love, or listening to our favorite song. These are all qualities of life which flow from our human experience. They are integral parts of being human. We do not need God to understand the intricacies of human-ness. In fact, the methods of science are much more useful in answering the questions of how and why the universe works the way it does than the hollow and meaningless answer of “because God made it so.”

+++

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question. Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? 

-Carl Sagan, 'Cosmos'