An article this morning in the Post-Gazette begins, “In a city where the local football franchise rates on par with the sacrosanct trinity of God, family and country….”
First off, I don’t mind this. They’re making a good, humorous point about the prevalence of both Christianity (“trinity of God”) and Steelers fanaticism in the Pittsburgh area. And they’re right.
But reading this quote made me think about a question I’ve heard a number of times this summer: “Come on, isn’t it just obvious that God exists? Look around you!”
Yes. And isn’t it obvious that the earth is flat? Just look around you! Isn’t it obvious that the sun rotates around our stationary planet? Isn’t it obvious that maggots spontaneously generate from rancid meat? Isn’t it obvious that when thunder claps, it’s a large man with super powers named Zeus getting angry?
The best way to know things isn’t to sit back and think about what’s obvious. The best way to know things isn’t to believe whatever you’ve been told on faith–while somebody else believes something entirely different and incompatible, also on faith.
The best way to know things is to examine the evidence. Develop verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses that can be tested. Learn how the world works. Ask “how.” Don’t accept dogma. Etc.
Brandon’s recent post on the Large Hadron Collider (and String Theory) is a good example of how very little advanced science is intuitive. Tests have to work closely with observations to make sure that hypotheses are true and based on results. In the meantime, “I don’t know” is always a more valid answer than a made-up answer.
Essentially, if you think that anything is “just obvious” but are not able to provide any additional support for your claim, you should question why you accept what you believe as “true” over fairy tales or fantastic myths. Is there a way to tell one from the other when you take “I-just-believe-it” out of the question?
Mikhailovich -
If der iz no Ceiling Cat, iz der also no Floor Cat?
Andrei, from Cisco
Well, it’s more than faith. It’s psychology. People in general will reject anything initially that doesn’t jive with their particular worldview. It’s like a defense mechanism in the brain because otherwise we’d go into shock or a crisis of some kind. I think this is why I have more sympathy for people who revert to the “gotta have faith” argument. They’re worldview is set up on the idea that “god” is taking care of them and that is a HUGE emotional commitment.
I was talking with my sister-in-law last month about how I’m an atheist. When she was 9 years old, her 12 year old brother and grandmother died in a plane crash. She told me she could never be an atheist because that means they died for “no reason.” That she’ll never see them again. That it all meant nothing. I could really sympathize with her.
It can be scary to have that much agency in your own life – and I think that’s what atheism can provide. It offers you this painfully beautiful freedom to realize that you have to create your own meaning, not wait around for the meaning to make itself. Some people don’t want that and/or aren’t emotionally capable of handling that kind of worldview.
I didn’t know what to tell my SIL – she’s obviously dealing with emotional issues much larger than I can handle. Personally, I think it’s MORE effed to think that it was “god’s plan” that her brother and grandmother die, but that’s the kind of illogical reasoning that religion serves us to keep us afraid and emotionally dependent on them. I think past a certain age or a certain level of experience, unless you have a really big crisis of faith, most people will reject whatever logical argument you throw at them because they just simply can’t handle it.
Ah, the beauty of the virtue of “faith”…
The thing I hate most about I-just-believe-it reasoning is that when people are faced with evidence that directly contradicts their claims they just shove it off like it doesn’t matter.
No one is worse at this than 9/11 Truthers. You can give them a 1000-page government report that goes into tremendous detail, but they won’t even consider it. They’ll take it as evidence of a government cover up.