There has been a great deal of discussion about the question of whether I can “try on” atheism for a year, or any length of time. This question—the methodological question—seems to be the main concern about my exploration (aside, of course, from whether I engineered this as a huge media stunt). Over the next several weeks I will write more about my methodology, but today I want to begin by sharing what I understand to be the relationship between thinking/knowing and acting/behaving as best I can in a short blog post.
The nature of knowledge
I understand my basic knowledge or beliefs about the world to be deeply embedded in a narrative about that world. Beliefs are not, as we sometimes think, free floating ideas that we can take or leave at will and combine in any number or ways to create our own personal identities. Postmodernity presses us into this possibility, it seems, but I still think we live in a deeply narrated world where our beliefs and ideas are networked into a larger cultural tapestry. That being said, our most deeply held beliefs (for example, that people are essential good or evil, that freedom and hard work are unqualified goods and that love and justice will—or won’t—overcome hatred and inequality) can and do change over time. We have new experiences, encounter new people, learn new facts. All these things have a bearing upon our understanding of how the world actually is—what I’m calling belief.
Relationship of knowledge and action
The most common way people think about this relationship is a linear progression from belief/knowledge to action/behavior. We first get our ideas straight and then we live out of those ideas. If we want to act differently, we suppose we should change our minds first. Think different thoughts and your actions will follow. If I am convinced that those plastic bags that grocery stores use are terrible for the environment I will then start carrying recycled, reusable grocery bags.
As a Christian this is exactly the way I learned to share my faith with others. The goal was to get people to believe certain things about God and Jesus (God is holy, just, good, forgiving; Jesus is compassionate) and then Christian behaviors would follow (worship, prayer, giving, serving). As a pastor, this was a frustrating process because more often than not, it did not work. People would assent to the basic Christian beliefs and carry on living their lives as before. In spite of my disdain for those damn plastic bags, I still forget my reusable ones at home. It wasn’t until later that I discovered a more dynamic, dialectical relationship between thought/belief and action/behavior.
Laura Turner, who wrote a Christianity Today piece about my Year Without God, quotes Dallas Willard to this effect, “Indeed, no one can actually believe the truth about [Jesus] without trusting him by intending to obey him. It is a mental impossibility.” I’ve spent a great deal of time with Dallas Willard’s writing, which is likely one source of my beliefs about the relationship between thinking and acting. Our behaviors are predicated upon and indicate certain beliefs and knowledge about the world.
If this is true then change is not only achieved by believing our way into new ways of acting but also by acting our way into new ways of believing. Belief and practice, knowledge and action, are in a dynamic, dialectical, mutually reinforcing relationship. Which is why it is surprising and a little confusing when Turner goes on to say, “Were Bell to frame this simply as a thought experiment with no repercussions for his spiritual life, we could send him on his merry way, stacks of Dawkins and Darwin in hand. But he argues the Seventh-day Adventist teachings and conservative worldview of his church drove him to consider atheism in both thought and practice.” Right. Because, as the Willard quote she refers to above makes clear, thought experiments alone are insufficient. Our thoughts and our practices are intimately connected.
I know what you’re thinking: atheism isn’t a set of behaviors. Nor is it a belief system. It’s simply the non-belief in deities. I agree, to a point. While I understand what people mean when they say this (ie. there’s no atheist creed, no atheist sacred text—I said this tongue in cheek in my first post), atheism is, in fact, one single belief (or, atheists would say, fact): that no god exists.
So how does one come to such a (non)belief? Can it be “tried on” or “flirted with,” as Kimberly Winston put it? Can one simply take off their “God glasses” or “wriggle into” atheism like a pair of jeans, as Turner says? Beliefs are not something one takes on and off, like clothing, and it would be nearly impossible to make a large leap, authentically, from an intact, evangelical belief system to atheism overnight. If I were beginning this journey having been, up until December 31, 2013, an ardent fundamentalist Christian, I would say there is no way to suddenly disregard God. But that is not my story. Mine has been a slow erosion of the beliefs I was raised with. Unanswered and, indeed, off limits questions, knocking at the door of my mind, refusing, finally, to be ignored. Indeed, anyone who once believed in God, and is now an atheist, has walked this road. To finally take the God glasses off is not a heroic act or a herculean feat, but the logical next step in my exploration of faith. What if it were true that there is no god, as I have suspected for a very long time? My “trying on” atheism is more like taking the next step and allowing myself to embrace my serious doubts about God’s existence. By removing my “God glasses” (both beliefs and actions) I am freed to see the world in a different way.
But what of atheist behaviors? Certainly there are no unified atheist practices. I agree. No set of actions and behaviors unify people who simply, based upon the evidence, don’t believe in a god or gods. Still, in my case, stepping across a line and viewing the world from another perspective (inasmuch as this is possible, and I freely admit that it is no more possible than perfectly assimilating into another culture) involves forgoing the Christian practices and frames of mind that gave shape to my life as a theist and a Christian. This is why I have said I am not praying, worshiping God, attributing circumstances to God’s providence or asking God to intervene in the world. My acting is more a matter of not acting in particular ways; of ceasing or abstaining from certain behaviors.
This type of action is what we typically think of when we talk about formation or acculturation. Acculturation happens when a person takes on, to a sufficient degree, the practices of a culture such that they begin to feel at home in that culture, perhaps even thinking the way people in that culture think; seeing the world from the perspective of a very different group of people.
And so, I agree that I cannot “try on” atheism exactly. What I am attempting is to see the world from without the interpretive framework that I have had and which has slowly changed and proved insufficient over time. My exploration is more confessional, perhaps, but at the end of the day, I am still crossing a line to see the world from a different point.
Year Without God 
What a daring experiment! Not so much what you’re undertaking but the fact you’ve gone public with it therefore putting yourself at risk of criticism by all “believers.” It seems you could get to the same point by declaring yourself a Deist or agnostic which wouldn’t provoke the fundamentalists’ wrath. Anyway, it’s my opinion that most people don’t follow God’s or Christ’s love and compassion but rather prayer to them for favors and protection. They need to feel somewhat in control of their fate. Embrace your fate my friend and I look forward to reading about your experience.
“If I were beginning this journey having been, up until December 31, 2013, an ardent fundamentalist Christian, I would say there is no way to suddenly disregard God. But that is not my story. Mine has been a slow erosion of the beliefs I was raised with. Unanswered and, indeed, off limits questions, knocking at the door of my mind, refusing, finally, to be ignored. Indeed, anyone who once believed in God, and is now an atheist, has walked this road. To finally take the God glasses off is not a heroic act or a herculean feat, but the logical next step in my exploration of faith.”
This is exactly the road I walked. Sounds like you understand the process very well indeed.
I know Julia Sweeney uses the term “god glasses,” so I’m not sure if that’s where you got it, or if it just seems like a good analogy, but I thought I’d share a quote from her one-woman show, “Letting Go of God.” It feels like you’re on a very similar path that she, and a lot of us, followed to atheism. http://imgur.com/vnPFI
And while atheism literally means a lack of belief and that’s it, I think you’re finding there is definitely a community that revolves around that lack of belief. And just like any religion, we have our own “sects”, including the people-who-drink-micro-brews-and-talk-about-space sect, the fight-for-separation-of-church-and-state sect, the church of the Flying Spaghetti monster, and many more. But we all seem to share some basic tenants, including “treat everyone fairly”, and “morals should be derived from rational thought, not old books.”
Anyway, it’s interesting to read your perspective on this new worldview you’re coming to. Keep up the good posts.
I love that quote from Julia Sweeney. I’ve heard several people describe the initial response from belief to non-belief as “having the ground removed from underneath you.” It’s certainly how I felt as I made those final few steps from believer to nonbeliever.
Yes, atheism literally means a lack of belief and that’s hence; hence, it is not a religion, and there are no “sects.”
That said, of course, there’s plenty of diversity–just as there would be plenty of diversity with those who don’t believe in, say, UFOs.
I think the first step you should take on your journey is to understand what atheism truly is. I see in some of your posts, including this one, that you conflate two meanings of the word (one of which is not accurate). Those are, ‘there is no God’ and ‘lack of belief in God’. While they may seem identical to the untrained intellectual, I think you are well prepared to know the difference, and I am confident that in the year to come, you will know which one corresponds to atheism, and which one to the oft forgotten term ‘anti-theism’.
I would say the biggest contribution to “trying” it on would be to look for answers openly through scientific reasoning. I’d say do your research on exactly what it is to make a decision. (Our brains have decided what we’re doing several seconds before “we” are actually aware of the decision.)
Belief is too rooted in presumptions for my liking, it makes one presumptuous. The existence of a god is a presumption, the definitions of it and it’s attributes are presumptions. Presumption is a lazy person’s excuse to avoid deep and honest thought about reality. An atheist refuses to allow culture and tradition expectations to force the wearing of blinders to honest reasoning. It is not a matter of believing that there are no gods in spite of the threats and empty enticements used by those who would try to force people to believe. We have a duty to ourselves, our communities,, future generations, and to nature to be skeptical..
I started my experience of exposing my non belief back in October of last year. In December I was able to say I was an Atheist. There was a lot of internal clarity once I openly admitted it. My journey was one with a lot of questions. Approaching everything with the realization that I could be interpreting everything wrong. I found asking questions brought forth a variety of answers. Consider throwing out some questions, with a little banter maybe open ideas that neither you nor those following the blog considered in such a light. Now for a basic question; are you okay and how is the family? When I married I was the preacher, thru my journey my wife watched me do a 180 on my beliefs. I was lucky, she got it. She kept me. She passed in 2012.
I am glad you understand the range of atheistic non-beliefs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability), but to start calling it a belief belies this fact.
One distinction I’d like to make, in case other commentators have not already (I have not read comments from all your previous blog posts, all media pages etc), is the difference between Atheism with a capital ‘A’ and atheism (Atheists being a subset of atheists). Most atheists in the world belong to the latter only. They have no belief in god(s) and just go about their daily lives not really engaging in any so-called atheistic activities (such as pushing for separation of church-state, asserting the power of the flying spaghetti monster etc). They might never have read any Dawkins, watched Stephen Fry debate, listened to an Atheist podcast. This is very much like how you go about your life being a-unicornistic, i.e. no belief in unicorns. It really doesn’t matter what the thing is we don’t believe in, it’s irrelevant here. However, Atheism with a capital ‘A’ is a direct reaction to activities of Theists. This is where you can get sub-cultures grouping around such ideas as rationalism and humanism, skepticism, separation of church-state activism, and even just atheism. Some simply need a support group due to being immersed in a religious culture, or having thrown off years of indoctrination, or dealing with people telling them they cannot be moral people. Some are reacting to threats to our secular governments/schools, or to anti-science in schools/media etc. My point is that Atheism is a reaction to, in the US and New Zealand (my home country) at least, Christianity. It is not just a result of not believing in something. So, my question is, are you trying on atheism, or Atheism?
Also, I’d like you (and your readers) to try to understand how people have, individually and as organisations, come to Atheism. For good or bad this becomes the public face of atheists in the West. Sometimes people may appear as being very angry, put perhaps, rather than simply writing them off as inherently angry people, ask yourself, and them if you have the opportunity and their trust, why.
I understand this can be a very difficult and painful experience for you, but have no real understanding of how this actually feels as my own disbelief began as a child when we are more adaptable. All I can say is “kia kaha” which means strength.
First time I’ve ever heard a distinction being made between “atheism” and “Atheism”.
Yes, group identity cannot be assumed. You might like this piece:
http://quinesqueue.blogspot.com/2012/10/not-all-atheists-are-pro-atheisma.html
Experience becomes the basis of cognition. This a good realization.
However, the experiences you’re choosing appeared to be based on some misconceptions about what atheists do and/or believers do.
* * *
For example, the implied idea that atheists don’t read the Bible. In my experiences atheists are often careful readers of religious texts so they know what it is that believers are saying and/or assuming. Or that atheists read Spinoza, Voltaire, Nietzsche, etc. Many believers may avoid atheist “sacred texts” because of religious reasons, but many atheists read religious texts to understand the religious influences on the trajectory of human thought. Atheists may avoid religious text for the same reason they don’t ready technical manuals, westerns, or mysteries – they find little utility or pleasure in doing so.
Groups of people who share a viewpoint aren’t necessarily informative about the viewpoint or even the majority of those who share the viewpoint. Atheists at gatherings of atheists aren’t necessarily particularly good examples of good atheists. Just as Christians in churches aren’t necessarily particularly good examples of good Christians. You may learn what some atheists do in groups, but that doesn’t remove the onus from you to answer the important questions for yourself.
Groups of atheists perhaps will have a sense of community, but perhaps community build around gaming, surfing, dancing, movies, pottery, jazz, etc are warmer and more comforting.
* * *
I get the sense that “doing as atheists do” is about learning about atheism, but at the same time it won’t hurt to think about that atheism is in its own light. Sometimes you learn by doing. Sometimes learning helps you do.
It is quite right that many of us atheists study religious texts. I am convinced that a careful reading of the Bible, without a preconception that it is the word of god, is likely to make one an atheist.
I think the best definition of atheist is someone who thinks there is no god. That includes everybody, whereas knows there is no god does not. Even those who know there is no god think there is no good, But not everyone who thinks there is no god knows there is no god. It’s like squares and rectangles. Rectangles have a certain set of rules (thinks there is no god). Squares have those rules as well as an additional set (knows there is no god). It is not improper to call a square a rectangle, but it is improper to call all rectangles squares.
I personally like the definitions where a/theist and a/gnostic are used to describe this difference. A/theism describes what you think, whereas a/gnostic describes what you know. But I understand that in popular use agnostic is used to describe someone who doesn’t have an opinion on whether god exists or not so the meaning has been muddled a bit. The important thing to realize is that not all atheists know with certainty there is no god.
I just watched this very insightful show on science and religion
It may help on your journey.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-neil-degrasse-tyson-on-science-religion-and-the-universe/
I’m following your journey with some interest, since I took a similar one myself a few years ago (though notably less publicly.) There are a few distinctions that were important to me in my journey that I see you so far taking the opposite tack on, so I’m going to share them.
The first is that belief and worldview are not quite the same thing. Belief is the substance of things not seen; that is, it presumes to make claims for which there is insufficient evidence. Christians claim to have perceived God and talked to God (or at least, in the holiness tradition that I grew up in, they certainly made that claim) but in nearly three decades of trying to reach God that way, I never once did. The evidence of my senses was insufficient to back up the claim.
Worldview is different. It forms through interaction with the world, starting (according to psychological research) in infancy, and each interaction with the world helps to build it. The view I have that people are essentially good, and when they’re not, it’s about their own insecurities and problems rather than something about me, has been formed time and time again by my interactions with people. My understanding of statistics – that there will always be people whose behaviour is outside the norm, and that their behaviour doesn’t change the norm but rather proves it – supports this. My worldview didn’t change from a Christian one to an atheist one due to a single event. It changed over the course of years, through many interactions, lines of study and questioning, and evidence (much of it acquired through a developing interest in and understanding of science.) The final nail in the coffin of my faith was the realization that I was not letting my worldview develop along the lines that made sense for the new understandings I was gaining. I was artificially stopping it, essentially subscribing to a God of the Gaps theory. The logical extension of a scientific worldview is that, beyond the answers we have is not something totally different from those answers; it’s more questions, that we can seek to answer the same way we’ve answered the ones we’ve already explored. The gap is not a scary place in that view; it’s a vast undiscovered country. A person who subscribes to a scientific worldview has to be willing to ask those questions, and has to be willing to say they don’t know, without trying to plug that knowledge gap with God.
I reject the word “belief” to apply to this worldview. It is not based on claims that I can’t substantiate with evidence. If I get new evidence, I will change that worldview; I’ve already done that many times as I was refining it. A Christian worldview based in belief didn’t allow me that flexibility.
My second quibble is your claim that atheism is a belief that there is no God. I help moderate a large forum of atheists on a crafting website called Ravelry, and while a few of them would make that claim, the overwhelming majority of them would say that their atheism is a lack of belief in any god. As the joke goes, atheism is a belief in exactly the same way that bald is a hair colour. I don’t need a positive belief that there is no god. That wouldn’t fit into my worldview above, because it would deny the possibility that new evidence would surface to prove that a god exists. I acknowledge the possibility that I may be wrong about God, and that I can’t know for certain. But I don’t believe in one. This is a very different thing from making a positive claim that there is no god.
I think your “experiment” is amazing and has been (and will continue to be) a great source of inspiration for me. I too was raised in a highly religious background that I found myself questioning more and more as I grew older. Now, I’m pretty much in the same boat that you are (albeit, without the highly controversial blog).
It seems to me that you’re catching a lot of flak for your “journey”. I say…so what. Let people antagonize and pick apart your methods or the fact that you’ve gone public. Trust me…you’re not doing anything differently than I am except that your voice and your experiment is now highly publicized.
It reminds me of the way I’ve seen Christians act when someone they’ve known forever comes out as gay or…Jesus forbid it…politically Liberal. They were absolutely ok with the person when they didn’t know what the person was. After the revelation it becomes pick-a-part time.
No work of art, no poem, no piece of literature, no song, no movie, no anything has ever been or ever will be absolutely and universally loved and accepted. Your journey will be no different.
Don’t let any of the negativity or backlash knock you down. You’ve got at least one person out here that is encouraged and inspired by what you’re doing.
Oh for sure there is a way of trying atheism!
Before i lost my religion, i spoke a lot with atheists, nonbeliever and also with religious people. i kind of “flirtet with the atheism”, well i saw god isnt doing anything against this, so i went deeper in the matter my mind changed, i lost any believe in any kind of god. And still nothing happends “god” did nothing to hinder me…cause he isnt there. Or better: I realised that when ever i prayed, i was talking to myselfe, i was my only god.
In my transition from being a Seventh-day Adventist to being an atheist, I too gradually asked the forbidden questions and when I found that it was no longer possible to answer the question, “do I believe that this is true?” with “yes”, I had to admit to myself that I was an atheist. I do accept the term agnostic atheist, I do not claim to have certain knowledge that there are no gods, but I do not believe that there are. I believe that there are god claims that we can know to be false, and until the time that a claim of divinity is made that is backed by evidence, clear and compelling, I will continue in my atheism, my lack of belief.
It’s interesting to me that so many people are insisting that Mr. Bell get this “right.” Whether it’s Christians who think that, if he can give up God, he was never a true believer; or atheists who say he needs to first understand what atheism truly is. This is an ongoing, *personal* journey, one that anyone who has ever questioned the assigned religious beliefs we acquired from our parents, has traveled.
I love these lines from his blog.
Mine has been a slow erosion of the beliefs I was raised with. Unanswered and, indeed, off limits questions, knocking at the door of my mind, refusing, finally, to be ignored.
He is now simply exploring those unanswered questions.
Personally, I’m not arguing that his journey is not valid because he’s got atheism wrong. I’m suggesting that he has had atheism misrepresented to him or has misrepresented it himself, probably without realizing it. However he chooses to “do” atheism or even if he chooses eventually not to, definitions do matter, not just to him but to other people. If he ends up being the (rare) atheist who believes firmly that there is no god, that’s up to him. If he ends up being the (much more common) type of atheist who simply doesn’t believe in any god, that’s up to him, too. But pointing out that they’re two different things is not insisting on anything except a common frame of reference.
I went to your church in Hollywood two times and liked it very much. I am a bit troubled by your journey though. Although I think it is fine to pursue religious beliefs and find ones own truth, I question making money on this experiement. I understand that someone else started a donation page in your honor, but now I see you have a donation lilnk on this blog. I fully undestand it being tough to lose three jobs with two kids to take care of, but what did you expect. You were a pastor and Christian teacher who wantted to “try out” athieism, do you think they were going to let you keep your job?? Why should we send you money? You should have contemplated the consequences this decision was going to place on you financially, especially having children to raise.
You say you are surprised this went public, but now it seems like you are enjoying the attention and now, the money it is bringing your way.
I have a question for you. Was there ever a time in your life when Jesus made himself real to you? If he never had, then you were never a true believer to begin with and if he had made Himself real, then why don’t you try to go back and remember that time.
“I have a question for you. Was there ever a time in your life when Jesus made himself real to you?” — There was a time Santa Claus was real for most of us, and some of us had imaginary friends that were quite real. Should we all try to go back to such a time, too? I’d love to feel the comfort of thinking a jolly fat man was watching out for me and was going to reward me for good behavior… that would be swell, mister.
First of all, my main point is that I don’t think it is right for Mr. Bell to attempt to make money on this venture. For me, it takes away from the genuineness of it.
Secondly, the apostle Paul made it clear when he says that the deciding factor of Christianity is not rules and works, but rather if ones life has been changed. I should have been more specific when I asked my first question about Jesus being real.
Unless Christianity has actually changed a persons life, then I can see how skepticism can develop.
Plus, my real question for all atheists is this, what if you are wrong? If I am wrong, then nothing is lost. If you are wrong……?
Well, if I am wrong, what has the “loving” God planned for me? Eternal torture? Sorry, I could never ever worship such a cruel, sadistic tyrant.
If it turns out that I am wrong and the church I grew up in is correct, then someday I’ll stand before God in judgement, and I’ll be able to respond to the question of why I didn’t believe. I’ll say that if he expected people to all believe the same thing, he should have been a little less confusing in his revelations, because there have been thousands upon thousands of different religious traditions all claiming to have the one single path to God, and clearly they can’t all be right. At the end of the day, I did my best to do justly and to love mercy, and to leave the world a better place than I found it each and every day, within the boundaries of my own reason and place in the world. If that’s not enough for this god, then he was never worthy of my worship.
That said, of course, there’s the issue of how many possible versions of “right” actually exist. Perhaps you’re right. Then again, perhaps the Catholics were right. Perhaps it was the Jews, or the ancient Greeks. The problem is not that either I’m wrong, or you are, and there are only two choices. The probability of you being right is infinity to one, because there are an infinite number of possible configurations of God. Personally, I’ll take those odds.
JAB – your question “what if you are wrong?” is a good one. Essentially it’s Pascal’s Wager. The problem with the standard form of the Wager is it’s implicit assumptions about the nature of God.
There may be a God. He may be ol Ugga Bugga of the Jungle or he may be the Great C’thulhu. In either case you and I are in the same boat. With untold numbers of different religions (or so it seems) it’s pretty presumptuous for you to think that yours is the only true one.
I have no particular reason to believe that any of it is true. So from my perspective, if you are wrong then you have wasted a goodly part of your one and only life on nonsense. While you are wasting your Sunday mornings in church I’m spending them flying my airplane, going for a drive or just being lazy. Instead of wasting money on a tithe I’ll spend it on avgas, thank you very much.
I much prefer my Sunday morning choices over yours.
Eric what I hear you saying is I’m not interested in any religion that demands anything of me just to avoid “HE’LL”. Is that correct? What if you could have a relationship with a superior being that you could benefit from in the here and now without the trappings of religion?
If I could have a relationship with a superior being, that might be a good bargain. The problem is that every attempt I made to have that relationship ended up feeling like I was talking to myself. There was a lot of guilt, a lot of expectations, a lot of responsibilities, all for no discernible benefit. I didn’t give up a relationship. I gave up the illusion of one. Now, I still have expectations and responsibilities, but they’re ones I chose myself that benefit real people, starting with the people I love and spreading outward from there.
As an aside, the incredible quantity of emotional manipulation that I was subjected to in an effort to make me feel like I was experiencing God would have been considered abusive in pretty much any other context. I’ll bear those scars until the day I die, but at least I’m not opening those old wounds anymore. I am happier and healthier without religion.
Linda, all I ask is for empirical evidence. If there is a Hell, give me empirical evidence of it and of how to avoid it and I’ll do what I need to do. If there is a superior being, again give me the empirical evidence and I will make adjustments.
What I care about is simply understanding the universe around me so that I can lead my life accordingly. That means examining the evidence and trying to make intelligent choices based upon that evidence.
If there were an omnipotent god he/she/it would be capable of putting a telephone boot on every corner with a direct connection so that our questions could be answered. The lack of those telephone booths indicates that said being doesn’t exist or doesn’t care.
What I do see has every indication of being a class of parasites telling fairy tales that are intended to manipulate people not bright enough to realize that they are being scammed. I reject their use use of a supernatural carrot and the stick. That would make me their fool. What we need in this world is more people asking pointed questions, not sheep.
JAB if you are worshiping the wrong god and there are an unlimited number of them, then you can be just as wrong as the person who doesn’t worship any of them.
What if you are wrong? You will have wasted your life and still not gotten what you think you would get from all that work and time. You either will not have an afterlife, or you will suffer the punishment from whatever god/goddess/god group meets out for you not guessing correctly.
As has been said many times, you are almost as atheist as all of us – we just believe in one god less than you do.
JAB, that’s a oft-used and never well-thought-out argument for believing. The believer says- “If I’m wrong, or we’re wrong, what have I/we lost?”. The answer you’re looking for is- you’ve lost nothing, but the non-believe has lost their ‘eternal soul’ or ‘chance to get into heaven’. That viewpoint, however, is *exceedingly* incorrect and short-sighted.
In fact, what you’ve lost by believing is what would have happened to you, *and humanity*, if you didn’t base all of your beliefs and actions on a false assumption- ie things would have been a lot different if you hadn’t believed in God, and you would have lived your life much differently… if humanity didn’t believe- we would all place an emphasis on a lot of other things rather than faith. Religion and faith are frequently abused by leaders of the religion, or politicians, or whoever, to cause people to do things that aren’t necessarily ‘good’.
For instance, in convincing people to be suicide bombers. That’s an extreme case, sure. So, maybe one that would be more realistic for the general believer- instead of giving money to a secular humanist organization that helps the poor, or refugees in other countries, you may give money to a church. And of course some of that money probably goes to good causes, and some of it is wasted on paying church workers and building/maintaining the church (I only say wasted in this scenario because of the assumption for this argument that there is no God).
Another example, which hits home for me, and I’ve seen time and time again (and really bothers me) is the assumption in many religions that there will be an Armageddon and this world will perish. Because of that belief, I know a fair number of religious people who don’t care about global warming or chemical pollution of the environment, or any number of other things which affect every person on this planet, because they assume- all the bad things happening in the world are just because it is ending and therefore they might as well not bother trying to make things better because it’s inevitable. (I know this isn’t necessarily derived from belief in God, but if you take a look at a lot of religions, many of them prophecy this type of thing, and perpetuate a large majority of these ‘world-ending’ beliefs) So, believing in many of the things that come along with religion can cause people to lose accountability for their actions and the effects that has on the world around them.
And as a final argument- because faith is an entirely different way of thinking than reason, and in many ways they are directly at odds with eachother- by having faith, one is inevitably diminishing their capabilities to reason. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that a faithful person can’t have extremely high reasoning capabilities- moreso than anyone else around them. But, their reasoning is diminished compared to what it could be if they didn’t base many of their decisions on an untestable assumption.
If you add up the number of people in the world who are religious/faithful, and think about incrementally how that affects peoples decisions and actions, I think it is fairly easy to see that if there is no God- there is quite possibly a *huge* negative drawback on individuals and the world for believing in one.
For the record to all of you who keep mentioning my God who tortures. I do not believe in a God who tortures.
Unfortunately, that is the misconception that many Christian churches put out there and it is unfortunate. It has turned many away and it is sad.
If there’s not a god that tortures then I’m set; I don’t need to believe in something that there’s no evidence for… I already embrace love of humankind as a high ideal, using Jesus as a model of how to treat others instead of needing to believe he was divine (or even existed; a good story is a good story, you can find wisdom anywhere). Many atheists are, like me, Humanists — and don’t feel any gaping hole in their lives where they need to plug supernatural mumbo-jumbo. We just care about making the world a better place and treating other people as we’d want to be treated.
I find it curious that some believe that a superior being would need to threaten eternal torture to get humans to convert to believe in him. I find it equally strange that an all powerful and loving God would need to torture I order to forgive sins. I would say those are more human characteristics than superior or divine. It occurs to me that we don’t know the characteristics of a superior being that exists outside the 4 dimensions in which matter exists
You know erintheoptimist, there is no argument. I can never argue about the CROSS. It makes no sense.
You have to have Faith. If you don’t have faith in Him you will never believe in Jesus. Jesus healed people right in front of them and they did not believe.
So it is not strange that we who have never seen Him don’t believe.
The problem people make, is that they associate the teachings of Jesus, with the teachings of a particular church. Jesus loved and embraced everyone. If anything he shunned the church when he was here.
Might as well believe in the Buddha, who taught that suffering is born of not seeing reality as it truly is, and to have compassion for all sentient beings. Or you could be a Jain who goes so far as to filter their water so as not to kill microscopic organisms. Or just be a Humanist and try to make the world a better place for everyone. You don’t seem to be offering any compelling reason to believe in Jesus _particularly_, so there’s really nothing to debate here. Societies all throughout time have come up with versions of the Golden Rule because it’s so basic to the functioning of a society and its people’s happiness and well-being… and many people also exercise their empathy to go a step further. That’s enough; that’s more than enough, and Jesus is not required.
I tried for thirty years to see it that way. I couldn’t do it.
Did you know there are now online support groups for pastors who lose their faith, and in the process lose their family, social connections, support network, and income? Just think about what you’re suggesting here. You’re pretty much saying that pastors who are questioning their faith need to lie to keep their jobs. It may be true – and in my experience, many pastors do exactly that – but what does that say about the Church, especially about the Christian commitment to honesty and integrity?
As for your question: I grew up in a church where I was told Jesus would make himself real to me. I prayed for that constantly. I did everything I was supposed to do and when it didn’t happen, I blamed myself and tried harder. When I finally decided that God wasn’t showing himself to me because he wasn’t actually there at all, I felt exactly the kind of freedom that I was always told I could get through Christ. Over time, I left behind most of my contacts in the Church to the point where I could leave the faith with few repercussions of that sort. I’m incredibly glad that I didn’t follow one of my earlier career plans into the ministry.
I was a believer. I never had that experience, though, and your question is deeply offensive to me for that reason. You don’t get to determine who is and isn’t a believer. You don’t get to negate the experiences of my life as a Christian because they don’t fit in with your view of your faith. It’s not universal, you know. The majority of Christians in the world (Roman Catholics, all branches of Orthodox Christians, the Coptics, Anglicans/Episcopalians, to name the biggest denominations involved) do not subscribe to the idea that you must have a personal experience of Jesus to be a Christian.
Eric, I’m glad you brought the point up about wasting time on Sundays. It makes me laugh how you reply to things I never said.
Anyway, I will tell anyone who believes in Jesus that if worshipping Him seems like a waste of time, then get out.
For me Eric, worshipping Jesus is not a waste of time, it puts my time in perspective and allows me to reflect on what really matters in life. What really matters in life is LOVE.
If I am wrong about my beliefs then so what. I would have lived a life of loving other’s and how could I ever regret that.
If you are wrong, I hope your airplane flying was fully satisfying for you.
My atheist life is so full of love it’s hard for me to grasp how incredibly lucky I am. I love deeply, and am deeply loved in return. I have a wonderful partner, deep and fulfilling friendships, two wonderful children who work hard to make the world a better place, and a career built on nurturing others. My life wasn’t half as rich when I was directing that love to a being that never returned it in any way that I could detect.
So I’ll skip the religion and the love of a supernatural being, and stick to the wonderful, fulfilling, RECIPROCATED loves I already have. They’re real and trustworthy, unlike God’s (if he even exists. No proof of God’s love is really part and parcel of having no proof of God’s existence.)
There is no atheistic dogma so I don’t think that it’s fair to say that atheism is necessarily a belief that there is no god. Some may see it that way. Other’s such as myself don’t necessarily make that strong assertion.
I’ve considered this and other “big” questions ever since I was a boy. I’m 60 now. My position is simple. I believe that empiricism is the only verifiable (and thus trustworthy) way to understand the universe. By this criteria there is, and never has been, any evidence supporting the supernatural.
Do I believe that there could not be a supernatural world? I do not deny that the possibility exists. I simply have never seen any evidence supporting that possibility.
So how does this affect how I live my life? I don’t fight against the idea of the supernatural. I really just don’t put any time or effort into something that I have no reason to believe has any validity.
If I have an argument with believers it’s not about their beliefs, it’s about the harm caused by their actions. Belief does motivate action and it is true that many different beliefs motivate many different harmful actions. Religious beliefs are not unique in this regard. But when one sees harm being done it is fair to speak out against it and that may mean also speaking out the underlying causes that causes people to do harm.
Look at the biblical nonsense, the talking snake, the ‘flood’, the slaughter of the innocents. What is lacking in the book is evidence, yes, evidence. Did Moses really exist? Did 20,000 people wander the desert for 40 years and not leave a trace?
Either you believe that tripe or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick it and find what you like and call that the “word of god”. It’s the word of man, and a lot of it is filled with errors. Don’t waste your time, once I left religion behind me it was like a huge weight lifted off my back. Its a wonderful freedom.
Could not agree with you more, Mike! Thought you might like this quote:
“Because you know, when the bible was written, and then rewritten, and then edited, and then re-edited, then translated from dead languages and then re-retranslated and re-edited again, then re-re-re-edited, and then re-translated, and then given to Kings for them to take their favorite parts out, and then re-edited and re-translated and given to the Pope for him to approve, and then re-edited and re-written— all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years after they had happened to people who didn’t know how to write… I guess what I’m trying to say is, the bible is literally the world’s oldest game of telephone.”
– David Cross
Beliefs can be taken off and tried on, but once a belief is removed, its much more difficult to put back on. The fit will never quite be the same, because anyone with intellectual honesty cannot simply “un-know” the things we learn. If we remove our santa-belief, its pretty difficult to put that santa belief back on. The fit will never feel quite right. I think the closest we can come is to allow others to believe in their innocence without putting them to question. I think this is why so many adults encourage their children to believe in santa. They themselves are no longer able to believe so joyously, but its a delight to watch children believe wholeheartedly.
I see belief as more like love – you love until you realize it’s not being returned and then you lose it – slowly and painfully as one after another hard truths hit you.
You don’t go back to it, just because you want to. You cannot unlearn hard truths.
What a great way to describe belief in God O might add there is a difference in falling in love with love which is how I define religion and falling in love with a being
For me, I was not raised Christian. I was living a life of sex, drugs etc… and Jesus rescued me from myself at 22. Now I am a completely different person from the inside out. So, I can’t just stop believing in Jesus. It would be like divorcing my husband or like telling my best friend to piss off.
Ah, the sad thing is, you rescued yourself. You just can’t give yourself that much respect.
I would venture she doesn’t respect or trust herself still.
Seeing the world from a different point is a process that happens whether we seek it or not. One doesn’t grow up, one doesn’t develop as a person by remaining static in a point of view. Life has a tendency to boot us around.
I have to say I’m very interested in this experiment you are doing, and this post epitomizes my interest. I was raised Jewish (now I’m an atheist), and I was very involved in my faith. When I was being taught comparative religions, it was explained to me that one of the main differences between Judaism and Christianity was that in Christianity, belief was the most important thing. However, in Judaism, “action” was more important. In fact, there are very few beliefs that Jews are supposed to believe. It is rather difficult to be a heretic. The reason why action is so important is that it is thought if you act a certain way, i.e. keep kosher, follow the commandments, etc., belief will follow. If you give up the behavior, belief will likewise suffer. It made a lot of sense to me, so when I read about atheists who think “trying on” atheism is a bad idea or simplistic in some way, I have to disagree. I know for myself that when I stopped going to synagogue, keeping kosher, etc. it was easier for me to slowly allow my life to be opened to new ideas. My journey to atheism was extremely rewarding, and I am so grateful for this new life. The universe is so much more exciting now. I hope your journey is fruitful no matter where it ends.
It’s been interesting reading Ryan Bell’s blog about trying a Year without God. He is still very confused by what his journey entails. Part of his problem is that it is something that he has decided to undertake later in life. He appears to be in his early forties. It’s hard to change one’s perceptions at that age. Religion has always been a part of his life even though he has come to question its role. It hasn’t just been a part of his personal life. Religion has also been his job. I don’t think he is going to understand his faith, or lack of faith, by trying on atheism. Just the fact that he is trying to do that shows that he does not understand what atheism is. It is not an alternative form of faith. It is not a change of beliefs. It is a lack of belief. Not believing in God is no different than not believing in Zeus, Odin, Jupiter, or any other God(s). For a person who has accepted the traditions and rituals of faith for decades, the shift of not practicing them is major lifestyle change.
My turn to atheism was less momentous than most because I did it at an early age before I even knew there was a word for not believing in God. There was no big decision. I don’t even remember the day I stopped believing in God. It almost seems that there was less a point where I stopped believing than that I slowly stopped having a need to believe. My family did not practice their faith strongly, so there was no strong sense of there being a change in my life. Younger people can be more receptive to change because they are still in school and in a learning mode. People become more set in their ways as they get older.
I tried to Google the different ways that people become atheists and didn’t find any sites, after looking through a few pages of results, that documented the many ways that people lose their religion, and didn’t find any comprehensive listing. I’ve tried to think how it can happen.
The easiest way to become an atheist is to be born an atheist. Actually, that’s a bit of a misstatement. Every baby is born an atheist. A baby is not born with an inherent belief in God or gods. Babies are taught religion.
Religion is a learned behavior. That is why there are tens of thousands of different religions and denominations. If religion was an instinctual birthed behavior, there would only be one religion. There are a multitude of religions and denominations. That’s because children are taught the religions of their parents. Most of those children remain in the faith they were raised to believe for the rest of their lives because people are creatures of habit. With all the different religions and variations in those many religions, It’s very unlikely that a baby will be born to the family that is observing the only correct faith.
The simplest route to atheism is to be raised by parents who are atheists. Most atheists do not preach their lack of faith. They simply raise their children without the habits and rituals that religions impose. Few children with atheist parents will be directly indoctrinated into the practice of atheism. Atheism has nothing to teach. Atheism has no longstanding traditions or rituals to be regularly practiced. There are no atheist holidays observed by all atheists. Children of atheist parents aren’t taught atheism. In the absence of not being taught a religion, those children will grow up as atheists.
Science can woo people away from religion. Science is not in direct opposition to religion–unless a person wants to fundamentally believe that their millennia old religious books are absolutely accurate in the few areas where they touch on scientific subjects versus a more allegorical approach that primitive peoples could comprehend. Some of the greatest scientific minds in the world retain religion. Albert Einstein once said, “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” Fundamentalist religious people do more to push people away from religion than science ever does because they preach a faith of ignorance. Science only seeks to answer questions. Science can never prove there isn’t a God.
Even though many religious people refuse to accept evolution as a reality, it is not a concept that prevents a belief in God. A fundamental view of every word in Genesis being given a literal meaning does contradict science. A less literal interpretation. of God gently sparking the genetics of mankind through evolution, does not contradict what is known by science. That interpretation is still not science, so cannot be taught as such since it is not something that can be proven as a fact. Fundamentalists tend to focus on aspects of the Bible and ignore the rest. They focus on this King James passage about Adam’s creation in Genesis: “2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” They forget about this earlier one of what God did on the fifth day: “1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Yet, man does not exist a few passages later in 2.4: “…and there was not a man to till the ground.” If the Bible cannot be completely consistent within the brief section on God creating the universe, it’s silly to expect that this should be taken literally. Besides, if everything in the Old Testament is to be taken literally today, sacrifices should still be performed to the exacting rituals defined in Exodus, people working the Sabbath should be killed, as should gays, adulterers, and women who aren’t virgins at the time of their marriage. If people aren’t willing to live by every word in the Old Testament, then let’s stop treating it as if every word and concept has a timeless meaning when they clearly don’t.
Reading the Bibles can make one question whether they represent the absolute word of God. Inconsistencies within the books, as well as conflicts of requirements between the Old and New Testament certainly brings into question whether they can truly be divinely inspired. Interestingly, deeply religious people can read the conflicts and ignore them. A religious person can read that God said people working on the Sabbath (Sunday for Christians versus Saturday in the Old Testament) should be killed and it doesn’t bother them. Christians generally view the crucifixion as absolving the need to observe all the requirements of the Old Testament. That still doesn’t take away the fact that there was a time when these things were a requirement from God. If God is perfect and timeless, He would not craft laws that aren’t perfect. Either God is not perfect or the Bibles are not perfect. It’s impossible to believe that both are perfect when the Old and New Testament are not in perfect agreement with God’s mandates.
Sometimes a tragedy in life will alienate a religious person from God. Some religions leave the impression that God answers prayers to help people when they are in need. When a tragedy occurs in spite of praying, there can be a feeling of betrayal. It may be a temporary loss of faith or it may be the beginning of a greater question of how faith works.
Possibly the greatest factor that pushes religious people into losing their faith is how their church and community practices that faith. Just as America’s political arena is becoming more and more polarized with extremist views, many religions are becoming similarly extreme. Even the Pope has criticized the Catholic Church for losing itself in the focus it places on homosexuality and abortion. Part of what has pushed Bell into his exploration of atheism was his fight within his own church/community to treat women and gays on a more equal footing. While a focus on controversial topics will angrily galvanize a group to action faster than more pastoral topics, such as helping the poor, that approach is driving others away from their faith.
The many generous works being performed by religious people in America are becoming drowned out by the more visible and publicized homophobic and anti-abortion rhetoric of politicians. It leaves the perception that religion is about hate and intolerance. It’s not surprising that more and more religious followers are beginning to question their faith with the way politics has perverted that faith. While the occasional atheist converts to religion, the shift is more often in the other direction.
Ryan Bell’s statements that he is “trying on atheism” is less a matter of trying atheism than shedding the many habits and rituals that were part of his religion. That is not atheism. It is more a shift in how he practices his belief in God. That’s not very different from how most Americans observe their faith.
That’s certainly an approach that can lead to atheism. A person that is not attending church, praying, and performing the typical behaviors taught for their religion, has a smaller shift in a belief towards atheism than somebody regularly and faithfully practicing all the behaviors of their religion. It is by no means an inevitable road to atheism. The majority of people that aren’t heavily invested in their religious faith never convert to atheism.
Richard, regarding religion no being innate in humans I believe is true but there are folks who think we are ‘wired’ for spirituality via the ‘God Gene’…”From the Book of the same title–“The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God; this conviction has existed since the beginning of recorded time and is shared by billions around the world. In The God Gene, Dr. Dean Hamer reveals that this inclination towards religious faith is in good measure due to our genes and may even offer an evolutionary advantage by helping us get through difficulties, reducing stress, preventing disease, and extending life. Popular science at its best, The God Gene is an in-depth, fully accessible inquiry into cutting-edge research that can change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Written with balance, integrity, and admirable scientific objectivity, this is a book for readers of science and religion alike.”
What is more likely being seen is the innate need for human beings to have answers. For primitive societies, gods provided answers to the many questions they had about their environment. There were sun gods, moon gods, elemental gods, animal gods and many more. A single society could have many gods to explain many phenomena. The belief in a single god is a comparatively recent concept that only seems to go back a few thousand years. Even today, the third largest religion in the world, Hindu, continues to worship multiple gods and has a billion followers. Instead of laying a claim to a God Gene, it might be safer to say that there is a Gods Gene. It would be even safer to say that there is a need to believe in something big to explain what isn’t readily answerable. The need to create gods would be only one aspect of the instinctual desire for answers.
If there really were a God Gene, it would be more specific than it is. A bird’s instinctual behavior to build a nest is fairly specific with minor variations based on what is environmentally available. Newborn kangaroos automatically know how to crawl into their mother’s pouch–there isn’t any variety in that birthed behavior. Religion has always had a vast variety of gods to worship. If one looks at the historical variety of gods, it can be seen how many of the gods fell by the wayside when the societies that created them had a greater understanding of the phenomena that the gods were believed to control. Once the elements were better understood, the need to believe that gods were behind them evaporated. There still remain many unanswered questions about life and the universe, so there will always be a place for gods to exist.
Very well said! Basically there are two ready answers for why there are so many religions and gods. The religious person will just chalk it up to there being a real god and all these societies trying to capture that as best they could. Sure that’s one possible answer… however it denies that the number of higher powers, their nature, what they’ve done or what they stand for, what they want (and don’t want) for human beings — many different answers to the same questions, including philosophies. If it’s to be said that humanity somehow senses a higher power, it certainly doesn’t sense anything coherent about it. And ever since the time of the Greeks there has been doubt as to the existence of such supernatural beings; probably even sooner. The further along we come in our own inquiries, AKA science, the more sense it makes to stop believing these things. That humans seem built to make up answers to those “deep” questions that concern all of us, and then convincingly lie to themselves by creating a domino chain starting with the first indoctrinated generation of children, seems to fit the insane-number-and-variety-of-religions fact best!
Now here is something to chew on!
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/22/physicist-says-hes-solved-the-big-mystery-how-life-came-from-matter-and-he-may-be-right/
Fascinating! It will be interesting to see if the scientific community comes up with additional proofs. That doesn’t address the issue of sentience and how that attribute came into existence.
Linda,
The existence of the attribute of sentience is explained by evolution.
I did some googling for the physicist, who solved the mystery of life, and an article in Nature doesn’t quite see it as being that grandiose. It was more of a mental experiment run through a computer model to see what happens. The experiment did not specifically define what life is. The model was set up to look at whether living systems are defying the laws of thermodynamics. It’s a long way from solving the mystery of life.
http://www.nature.com/news/bacteria-replicate-close-to-the-physical-limit-of-efficiency-1.11446
The hope of an afterlife beyond death does offer another reason to want to believe in God. Oddly, I’ve got a friend who is somewhat of an agnostic that has a greater belief in ghosts than God. It’s still essentially a hope for a life after death. His need to believe in ghosts makes him very uncritical of any ghostly tale he hears. He related a true ghost story he got from a friend. That friend could not find his car keys. He looked all around the car and house and could not find his car keys. The next day, he found the car keys left on top of his car by a ghost. Let’s not get into the more likely prospect that this tale doesn’t remotely have a supernatural explanation. My friend followed this story with another about the time that he brought a new record LP to the same friend’s house so that they could both enjoy listening to it. His friend immediately told him that he could feel that the LP was possessed by a demon. He could dispel the demon by washing the record with Joy dish-washing detergent. My friend knew that the second story demonstrated that his friend was a little crazy. He wanted to believe the ghost story so badly that he could not extend the same logic, of his friend’s delusional behavior extending to the first story. To this day, he still doesn’t see the connection even though I’ve pointed it out to him. He cannot disbelieve what he wants to believe even though he has sufficient information to draw a more accurate conclusion. I’ve seen similar behaviors when discussing religion with deeply religious relatives. Deeply held beliefs can overcome reality. People don’t like to question those beliefs.
Why do people feel they need explainations for the unexplainable? There are somethings we understand and somethings we don’t. Why does it matter? We can’t know everything and isn’t that OK? We can’t prove the existence of God nor can we disprove it simply because we don’t have complete knowledge of the universe. To me the real question is do I find meaning in this life by embracing the God concept or not. For me I have chosen to embrace the God concept and it contributes to my happiness and isn’t that really what we all want?
I’m willing to accept that some things are currently unexplainable. I completely reject the idea that seeking to explain the unexplainable is a bad thing. It’s curiosity, and it’s integral to my being. I can’t live without questioning. I wouldn’t if I could. As the Unitarian Universalists say, the answer is to question.
I’m not suggesting we don’t question and don’t seek out answers to our questions but we also need to acknowlege that we can’t know everything and that’s ok
Absolutely. That’s what I’m doing, by being an atheist. I’m rejecting the notion of, “I don’t know, therefore God did it,” and just sticking with, “I don’t know, but I’m going to keep trying to find out because knowing things is fun.”
Linda said: ‘we have to acknowledge that we can’t know everything’….I can ack that I can’t know everything but I’ll never ack that the collective we must continue it’s long journey to know everything else we’ll perish as a species….
If your into science as the tool to investigate the unknown, here are a couple of links.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/news/chris_silver_atheism/
edge.org
Religion exists today, because of people’s fear of death.
Great discussion! Let me add another key factor, death! I believe humans are only creatures aware of their own death and of coarse don’t want to die. Enter the greatest invention of all time: Heaven. Heaven provides the hook for most Christian religions and may be the most single factor for their continuance! And of course the major control factor, especially pre-reformation, was pay me for forgiveness of your sins and I’ll get you into Heaven.
Richard, wow…you certainly make a lot of assumptions and proclamations.
” He is still very confused by what his journey entails. Part of his problem is that it is something that he has decided to undertake later in life. He appears to be in his early forties. It’s hard to change one’s perceptions at that age.”
Having been a very devout christian for 30+ years, and becoming an atheist well into my 40s, I believe you are WAY off base. And who are you to proclaim Ryan is confused about what his journey entails? It is, after all, HIS journey.
People come to be atheist in a plethora of different ways and for different reasons. There is no right or wrong way. What one finds easy, another may find difficult.
Basically it is an individual’s journey. No one gets to take it for another. It is right for him, and that is all that matters.
Janine, there are personal journeys and public journeys. Ryan Bell chose a public one. That means it will be publicly discussed and debated.
Based on Bell’s description of what he is doing, his journey is more an experiment than a journey into atheism. He makes it clear in his Dec 31 post that he is not trying to become an atheist: “It’s important to make the distinction that I am not an atheist. At least not yet.” All he can do, to live life as an atheist, is shed his duties and obligations as a religious person. That basically means he will live his life for a year as an average religious American. Although 85% of Americans are religious, only about 20% attend church regularly. By the time I was a teen; my family did not practice religion in any meaningful way, but retained their personal religious beliefs. That is no different than what Bell is doing.
I only offer my opinion that this experiment is confused based on my understandings of faith and life. To me, this is a flawed experiment. In Bell’s own words, “I will ‘try on’ atheism for a year. For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.”
Why a year? That tells me that Bell is not entering a serious exploration of his faith because it is time-based. His starting and ending conditions are not based on goals, but on a calendar. At the end of the year, he will presumably go back to practicing his faith the way he did before and probably hopes he can get his old faith-based jobs back. This is a temporary shift in how he practices his faith in God. The starting condition of what he is doing only points to this as being a year sabbatical from the normal practices of his religion.
What can Bell learn by living a year without God while still internally believing that God exists? I’m not sure that he understood from the start that he is not living as an atheist. I’m not sure that he recognizes even now that he is living as an average religious American. More importantly, I do not see what can be learned by trying on atheism.
Bell’s journey is sort of an undercover exploration of the atheistic lifestyle along the lines of John Howard Griffin’s experiment to live as a black man in the South for six weeks in 1959. With the help of a dermatologist, Griffin darkened his skin so that he passed as a black man and personally experienced the horrendous hardships faced by African Americans in that period of segregation. Griffin’s diary of his journey formed the basis of his book, “Black Like Me” that was made into movie a few years later. The difference between Bell’s journey and Griffin’s is one of the cultures being examined. Griffin was exploring a culture that was being treated horribly as a lower race and forced to live separately from whites in bad conditions. Atheists don’t have any identifiable group identity.
If I wanted to do a reverse journey and live my life as a Christian for a year, I could learn much more than Bell can by his journey into atheism. I can go to a church and see how mass is conducted. I can go to bible study groups to see how Christians read and interpret their bible. I can attend their social gatherings and visit their schools and colleges. I can look into their faith based businesses and how they prefer to buy from such businesses. Religious groups develop their own vocabulary. “Praise” is a word that has a religious significance and one translation of the Bible changed all uses of the word “hallelujah” to praise. Religion is a culture. They have their own gestures for praying and making the sign of the cross. The most deeply religious people will cluster themselves into their own societal groups and minimize their interactions with the rest of the world to the smallest practical extent. Atheists have none of that.
Atheists have no church, no schools, no zero-faith businesses where they shop, no study groups, and so on. Atheism has nothing to teach because it is not a belief in anything. There is no more to be learned by studying somebody who does not believe in God than there is by studying somebody who does not believe in Zeus or Ra. There is essentially no difference in how an atheist lives versus a non-practicing religious person. It’s religious people that have different lifestyles based on the traditions, rituals, and practices of their religion and denomination. Atheists have no traditions or rituals. Atheists don’t regularly gather in groups to discuss what they don’t believe in.
When I say that Bell is confused in his quest, it is because I believe that the parameters that he has set up for his journey are faulty. I am not using the word “confused” in a negative fashion. Bell is dealing with a crisis in his faith. It is commendable that he is trying to do something to get answers and has an open mind. There is nothing wrong if he started his journey. It’s a brave thing to take that first step. I hold no blame against him for not understanding atheists because he has lived and worked in a religious environment for most of his life. Frankly, being an atheist carries very little meaning. Not believing in God is a very low-maintenance activity.
The real challenge Bell has is figuring out what he really needs. I don’t think there are any answers in atheism. I suppose that a person can learn something by reading why an atheist doesn’t believe in God, but explanations for why a person doesn’t believe in something aren’t terribly profound. It’s more enlightening to learn why a person believes in something. There is a greater conviction to beliefs than lack of beliefs.
After reading Bell’s starting post again, there is nothing in it that specifies his spiritual lack of faith and I don’t recall anything in his later posts. All his issues are with the more earthly concerns of church administrators and the specific beliefs of the faith he was raised in. Maybe the Seventh-day Adventist Church isn’t the best match. Just because he grew up in that denomination doesn’t mean it’s the right religious fit. There are many liberal denominations that he can pick and choose from that will be more compatible with his beliefs. Being located in Southern CA provides him a plethora of choices. There is no guarantee that the administration of these churches will be any less irritating than what he’s dealt with at his old church. If he winds up getting a job outside of the church, he is just as likely to be frustrated with his secular bosses. There are many different ways that he can practice his faith ranging from his former position as a pastor to the nearly non-practice of most Americans, to giving up his faith entirely. Since Bell hasn’t talked to his spiritual issues, there is little that can be discussed in that area. He will probably find more in the Bibles to help him make up his mind than pretending to be an atheist.
It may seem odd for me, as an atheist, to be suggesting that Bell’s solutions may lie within his religion and Bibles. I don’t have a problem with religion when it is used to make people better. The only religious people I argue with are the ones that use their religion as a justification for their hatreds and prejudices.
I was having a bit of a think the other day about the word Atheist while commenting in another forum. It occurred to me that the word Atheist, which is seen as the most extreme of positions is really more inclusive than most non believers and believers think that is. The word it self literally means “to reject the notion of as Theistic God”. If you expand on that thought process you could easily be an Atheist and a Deist, an Atheist and an Agnostic, and even an Atheist and a spiritualist at the same time. While I know that this is a bit rhetorical play, the underlying principle is sound. An Atheist which in essence is someone who rejects the notion of a personal God who writes books and asks human beings to follow certain precepts is actually a very rational and even conservative way of thinking. This is because Theism is actually a concept that is very easy to disprove. The hard work seems to be the steps that follow it. Deism is difficult if not impossible to disprove, as is spiritualism. This is why you find Buddhists as an example that are Atheists while still believing in the idea of surviving consciousness and reincarnation. As for myself I think I would have to classify myself as a materialist as I do think that even consciousness is derived from and is the direct result of physical phenomenon (the brain). This world view is constantly under attack from Theists and Deists alike as depressing or lacking meaning. I don’t think that that is true. As a materialist one can still explore consciousness and how that shapes the nature of our existence. We can explore love, compassion, and empathy as real tangible realities. The fact that emotions and consciouness come from physical phenomenon in no way makes them any less relevant. In fact if consciousness is a direct result of how our Universe works, than life is even a more wondrous phenomenon than we ever imagined.
Sorry for the grammar. I’m on my lunch break.
I love this comment, and I empathize with it. I’m constantly finding myself laughing at people whose response to my atheism is some variation on, “why do you have no hope/joy/wonder? Aren’t you depressed?” The world as we can experience it through our sense is a wondrous place; I don’t need belief in the supernatural to experience wonder, love, hope, or joy. In fact, since belief in the supernatural is so often tied up in belonging to a community with rules for my behaviour, I had a lot less joy, love, and hope when I was a Christian than I do now.
My wife and I were discussing that the other night. Although you do lose some of the comfort initially, what you gain is joy, love, and hope and most of all real peace.
YES. I have moments when I would go back to Christianity if I could – for example, at family funerals full of people who never think to question whether or not I’m still a Christian, and express platitude after platitude about “he’s in a better place” or other things I don’t believe. But except for those rare moments, I’m at peace with the idea that this is my one and only life, and I’m setting about making it the best it can be and leaving the world a little better than I found it every day. Oh, and I’m having a helluva lot of fun on the way.
Maybe you don’t believe in “the better place” but how about life transforming into another dimension. We know matter recylcles into a different form why can’t “life” recycle into a different form. Physics now has mathematical proofs of other dimensions could it be that elements from our 4 dimensions morph into another? Possibilities…..
Linda, at the moment I can’t believe in that, even if I want to. Most of the time, I don’t want to and it’s not a problem. I want hard evidence before I change my worldview to include that; until I get it, I’m going to go with, “This is all there is that I can be sure of, so I’d better make the most of it.”
Possibilities always exist. Nothing is certain and one has to be content that we cannot and do not understand. I can’t prove with my eyes the 11 dimensions that are currently accepted yet mathematics convinces me. Not all truths can be observed and that’s OK with me. I don’t need a black and white God exists or God doesn’t exists. It’s the possibility that fascinates me. Possibilities…. Mmmmm
If you believe there are 11 dimensions because some scientists/mathematicians think so (that’s not mainstream scientific knowledge), then I suggest skepticism. Mathematics is an invented language that we use to capture the essence of what we observe, but theoretical meanderings can go far from what we can test or know… and just because something works out in math doesn’t make it so.
Honesty, I don’t know why feelings come into this. One searches for facts because one want’s understanding, not for any particular feeling.
I search for facts because I want understanding, and because I experience wonder at the answers and the resulting new questions that come out of them. Emotions have a purpose in intelligence. Negative emotions create stress, which stifles learning, while positive emotions open up the brain to more neural connections and allow for better retention. I would submit that we do indeed need feelings when searching for facts, from the point of view of neurology. Ask anyone who has clinical depression how well they retain new information if you don’t believe me.
In any case, the trend to remove emotion from learning ended about thirty years ago, when researchers realized that relaxed, happy people engaged in learning activities more easily and retained more of their new knowledge; that knowledge is constructed of prior experiences, including emotional experiences; and that emotion drives intellectual responses in the form of new questions and connections. I have no interest in intellectual pursuits devoid of normal human emotion. I need intellectual rigour like I need to breathe, and I also need that sense of wonder and excitement that comes with learning new things.
This message brought to you by the teacher whose single greatest accomplishment in the classroom was to convince her students that math centres are all games. My kids can add circles around kids two grades ahead of them, and as far as they know, they’re just playing games during play time! Activating those positive emotions – the sense of wonder when they make a new connection between two ideas, the joy of figuring things out, the fun interaction of playing a co-operative game – has led my students to develop math skills way beyond their grade level. I couldn’t do it if I taught math as an intellectual search for understanding devoid of feeling.
We need more teachers like you. If more adults could look at life as full of opportunities rather than trials they would be able to find happiness
Velvet Page, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my message about emotions. Certainly emotions motivate us. But it is my opinion that the true seeker of knowledge follows the evidence and does not filter or interpret that evidence in a way that satisfies emotional needs.
A number of years ago a couple Mormon missionaries knocked on my door and I invited them in. One of them said something that stuck with me – that he believes in his god because it makes him feel good.
What he said is alien to me and I consider it to be nothing more than self delusion. It’s the kind of thing that children do – and adults who have never grown up.
BTW John, it’s mostly only Tibetan Buddhism that subscribes to reincarnation at all (and Hinduism is the parent of that idea; something the Buddha rejected) — other forms teach “rebirth”, an impersonal process that does not preserve a unique identity or individual (or individual consciousness), but explains the causal link between this life’s suffering and the past/future (even within the context of one lifetime).
I agree, I was not trying to paint all Buddhists into one philosophy. My point was that it is possible to be both an Atheist, reject a personal god, and still believe in metaphysical ideas like reincarnation. In my view Atheism is a very conservative starting point. Disproving the existence of a Theistic God is actually quite simple.
On a separate note, what I think is interesting about the Tibetan tradition is that the Dalai Lama is on record stating that if the holy scriptures and science collide, he must rely on science. I wonder what the world would be like if all Popes, Pastors, Lamas and Mullahs felt the same way…
“I agree, I was not trying to paint all Buddhists into one philosophy.” — I didn’t think you were, just wanted to make sure you were informed (in case you knew little about the variety and depth of “Buddhism”).
“In my view Atheism is a very conservative starting point. Disproving the existence of a Theistic God is actually quite simple.” — It’s even simpler than that, because you don’t need to disprove a Theistic God any more than you need to disprove Faeries or UFO Abductions… it’s on the believer to “put up or shut up”. =) Those who would claim there are no gods, and seek to prove that in myriad ways, actually make up the minority atheist position; the majority position are those who don’t believe, but aren’t making their own claim (“I don’t believe you that Bigfoot exists, but I’m not saying Bigfoot doesn’t or can’t exist… I just don’t believe.”)
…”the Dalai Lama is on record stating that if the holy scriptures and science collide, he must rely on science”… — The Buddha is quoted as saying much the same thing, even though it’s often paraphrased. That, to me, is the hallmark of a truth-seeker; one who will give up their belief when it is shown to be wrong.
” If you expand on that thought process you could easily be an Atheist and a Deist, an Atheist and an Agnostic, and even an Atheist and a spiritualist at the same time.”
You are partly wrong here John. You have, John, made a mistake that is all too common, even among many atheists. An atheist is a person who rejects the existence of any god or gods. A deist believes in the existence of a god. But a deist god is one that is not active in the world or the affairs of humans. You can’t be a deist and an atheist at the same time. You can be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time, but not for the reasons I suspect you think. Agnosticism is not a position along the continuum between theism and atheism (between belief and non-belief). Agnosticism is a statement about knowledge. It is a term that refers to a branch of philosophy known as epistemology. One can be an agnostic atheist (I know there are no gods) or a gnostic atheist (I don’t know if there is a god but I believe there is not.) See the difference. Agnosticism is a claim or statement about knowledge whereas atheism is a claim or statement about belief. One can also be an agnostic theist (I don’t know if there is a god but I believe there is one) or a gnostic theist (I know there is a god and so I believe in god.)
You got Agnostic Atheist and Gnostic Atheist mixed up in your post. =) The A.A. is the one who says they neither believe nor know of any gods, while the G.A. goes the extra step in claiming knowledge of the non-existence of any/all gods.
Thanks for catching my error aldrisang.
Pingback: Life is like a game of Jenga | Year Without God
Pingback: Life is not a Meme | Out From Under the Umbrella
first of all, your “Journey” is a very interesting idea.
BUT i don´t think it will give you enough information.
as you are saying, you cannot just change what you believe because you WANT to.
(which is one reason why i don´t believe in christianity: i am going to hell for not believing??? that´s not my fault!)
the difference between knowing that there is no god (1) and just not believing in god (2) is the following:
(1) means to think that you are SURE that a god does not exist.
(2) means everything but KNOWING THERE IS A GOD. that´s the only thing that cannot describe an atheist. an atheist could just be a baby, that never thought about god (or an adult), someone that never heard of him, or someone that reads a lot about religions but just doesn´t think they tell him the truth.
he may think that they COULD be right. but he doesn´t think “they ARE right”.
that´s what theists do.
an atheist could think that many arguments for theism are convincing. but not all. so he isn´t sure. therefore he doesn´t believe in god.
an agnostic IS an atheist, because an agnostic doesn´t believe in god. an agnostic isnt sure. so he doesn´t make a statement about any believe, he just says he cannot be sure about it.
so he doesn´t believe “there is no god” but he also doesn´t belive “there is a god”.
not believing in “there is a god” already makes him an atheist, although he isn´t saying that there is no god.
i don´t believe there is a god. but i am not sure.
i believe there is no god, but i am certain that there COULD be a god. i just don´t think that this makes more sense than the opposite. i think it makes more sense that there is no god. but i am not sure.
i am an atheist. (and agnostic. but, if you really think about it: not being SURE to KNOW things (definition of agnostic) is something that SHOULD be describing everyone. noone should claim to KNOW things without a big amount of proof)
While I’ve never actually spoken with Ryan Bell, I have attended a conference where he spoke. And for five years I was the organist at the same church he most recently pastored, though our times there were separated by 20 years. I find his experiment and his writing interesting. However, I’ve always thought actual atheism is as much a presumption of belief as any form of religion. To assume that there is no God (or “god”–take your pick) seems to me an act of hubris. The atheist can no more prove the non-existence of something he or she can’t test, measure, experience with the senses, etc., than the Christian can conversely prove that God’s existence! To me, the only intellectually honest position for a non-believer is agnosticism. The best statement that person could make would be to say, “I don’t know.”
I classify myself as an agnostic atheist. I admit the possibility that I might be wrong, since as you say, there’s no proving a negative and I can’t be 100% certain. However, there is a distinct lack of evidence in favour of a god, and at the end of the day, I don’t believe in one, so I’m also atheist. Since knowledge and belief are on two different axes, there’s no contradiction in that.
This is the position taken by the vast majority of atheists I know – and I help moderate a large forum of them, so I know quite a few.
As for acts of hubris – I find lack of belief to be far less presumptuous than, “This omnipotent being who created the vastness of the universe, in which our planet is no more than a spec of dust, is personally interested in me and my doings and has a deep personal interest in my sex life.” On the hubris scale, belief that an all-powerful god would care one whit for some apes on a backwater planet without so much as a full entry in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is many, many steps beyond the belief that we happened by chance and make our own meaning.
“However, I’ve always thought actual atheism is as much a presumption of belief as any form of religion.
Then you have thought wrong for all the years you have held this thought. Try real hard now, read carefully and think about this: atheism is the absence of belief, therefore it is not and cannot be a belief.
“To assume that there is no God (or “god”–take your pick) seems to me an act of hubris.”
Again, your thinking apparatus has malfunctioned. You really should have it looked at. We atheists, many of us anyway, reject the existence of god because of the lack of evidence for the existence of any god. It’s about the evidence. Hubris has nothing to do with it. I should think the real hubris is in believing the claim that God exists despite the fact that there is not a shred, not one iota of empirical evidence for its existence. And don’t come back with personal anecdotes, revelation or faith as forms of evidence. They are not reliable methods of determining the truth of any claim.
“The atheist can no more prove the non-existence of something he or she can’t test, measure, experience with the senses, etc., than the Christian can conversely prove that God’s existence!”
Logic failure! Basic logic and argumentation requires the claimant to provide the evidence and “prove” the claim. The burden of proof for any claim is never on the person who rejects the claim. It is always on the person who makes the claim. Christians claim there is a God. It is their burden to provide sufficient evidence that is both compelling and convincing to establish the claim. They have failed to do this. Atheists don’t have to prove God does exist. The theist has to provide sufficient evidence to warrant accepting the claim.
“To me, the only intellectually honest position for a non-believer is agnosticism. The best statement that person could make would be to say, “I don’t know.”
You obviously don’t understand the meaning of the word agnosticism. Agnosticism is not a position along the belief spectrum between atheism and theism (belief v. nonbelief). Agnosticism is an epistemological statement, a statement about the state or degree of knowledge about something.
Here is the definition of agnosticism taken from the dictionary on my laptop: “a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena”
Note that agnosticism refers to whether one can know a thing or not. It says nothing about whether one can or should believe a thing. It is possible for a person to say that they have no knowledge of God yet they choose to believe God exists. They would be doing so on the basis of faith. Such a person would be referred to as an agnostic theist. Conversely it is possible for a person to say they have no knowledge of God’s existence, yet choose not to believe there is a God. Such a person would be called an agnostic atheist. A person who claims to have knowledge that God exists and also believes that God exists on the basis of that knowledge is a gnostic theist. A person who claims to have knowledge that God does not exist and disbelieves in the existence of God on that basis is a gnostic atheist.
I hope the above has now cleared up your misunderstanding and that you will have the intellectual honesty to stop repeating the statement that the “only intellectually honest position for a non-believer is agnosticism.” I hope you’ll do this because the statement is simply false.
Oops. “Atheists don’t have to prove God does exist”
That should read Atheists don’t have to prove God does not exist.”
Peltonrandy, I’m an atheist, and I agree with most of what you’re describing here. My only discomfort might be with the idea of “choosing” to be an atheist (or perhaps on the other side of things,”choosing” to be a theist). It been discussed to an extent here by people who can make a better argument than I. I don’t think of my atheism as a choice.
If you want to get into a discussion of free will and whether we actually have it or not, then your comment does makes some sense and I understand your discomfort with the use of the word choose. If we do not have free will, at least in the sense in which it is understood by most people, then it would be true that we don’t actually choose our beliefs. There is something to be said for this argument. I personally think that free will is, to borrow from author and social scientist Michael Shermer, a “useful fiction.”
But I was using the word choose in the sense that it is typically understood by most people who do believe that we have free will. This was simply a convention on my part to make a point without derailing the conversation into a philosophical debate on free will.
Pelton, see my response posted below at February 2, 2014 at 9:37 am. I clicked the wrong reply button, so my response didn’t nest under yours.
Perhaps nobody is reading this section now, but I simply wanted to further explain what I mean when I say that atheism, or even theism, is not a choice, without giving the impression that I’m trying to open up a semantics discussion or debate free will. I know I’ve read some good comments about the subject of atheism not being a choice in this blog, but I have searched in vain through the numerous posts and can’t find one to quote here. So I am referring anyone interested to the following Psychology Today article from 2011, “Disbelief is Not a Choice.” http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201109/disbelief-is-not-choice The author compares and contrasts sexual orientation with disbelief in deities (as well as belief in deities), and maintains that while the sexual orientation is determined almost entirely by biology while belief or nonbelief derives from a combination of biology and environment, neither is actually a choice.
As the author of the article says
Yes, I know what you’re saying. But I don’t mean it discomforts me in quite that way. Using the conventional meaning of choice, I feel that we do make choices in our lives. Perhaps a theist chooses to be Lutheran or Mormon. Perhaps an atheist decides that he wants to attend Unitarian meetings or Humanist gatherings. As far as belief in a diety, though, I don’t know if it can be said to be an active, conscious decision. I was brought up as a Baptist, and never did I actively choose belief in God. Conversely, my transition to atheism was gradual, and I simply eventually realized I was an atheist. It’s not like I said, “I’m going to be an atheist from now on.” I suspect many, if not most, atheists would feel the same.
Peltonrandy, I meant the above as a response to your last comment. Argh, nested comments!