House of Eratosthenes

This blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, is proud to have a “spinoff” of sorts called Rotten Chestnuts. It’s a side-project within a side-project. It was supposed to be a group-blogging thing, and I don’t want to disparage the efforts of some others involved, depending on your point of view it still is one. Another legitimate point of view is that it is dwindled, or yet another legitimate point of view would say it has exploded and blossomed, into a fountainhead of the thoughts coming from severian.

If there was some kind of “publish or perish” quota in place, the other four or five of us would be in big trouble. Fortunately there isn’t, we offer up something that might be worthy here & there, now & then, about whatever. This is in accordance with the original design intent when we started the thing, so that’s a success in my book. But, one might say it has kinda-sorta morphed into becoming severian‘s blog, or at least, he has become the primary contributor.

Anyway. The Christmas season just past, started up a big ol’ debate both on the Hello Kitty of Blogging (somewhere), and on RC (here), about atheism. Because severian went after atheism. Note that a debate about atheism is not the same thing as a debate about the existence of God, although these two things are related and certainly do arouse the same passions. As G. K. Chesterton famously said,

Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion. [emphasis mine]

It’s a good thing to bear in mind when one reads and evaluates this comment…oh my…I’m just dazzled. Bedazzled. Not only impressed, but bowled-over, mind blown, at what a splendid — what other word could I use — chestnut it is. How fitting that it fell where it did.

You know that Atheism isn’t the BELIEF that no god exists, but the LOGICAL CONCLUSION that no god exists, right? Atheism is as much of a religion as off is a TV program.

I do believe the cuttlefish have been out-cuttled! Not that this is all anything new. The second half of it certainly is not. I grew up in a college town, and if I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a thousand times: “Atheism is a religion the way bald is a hair color.” There are even bumper stickers.

The first part is the part that fascinates, that is the “business end,” like the lit end of a match. The move is mundane: Let us tease out this minuscule difference, this distinction so fine it requires an enlightened mind to see that it’s there. Not a belief, but a logical conclusion. Oh yes, the scales are falling from my eyes, the atheists don’t believe differently, they simply have noodled out the proper and logical answer to the question while the rest of us continue to stumble around & bump into each other…

This brings to mind when a young father and his two very small children sat next to me at Starbucks. I was engrossed in some project on my laptop and wasn’t paying much attention to them, then I realized he was playing the same game with them that I played with my own lad back when he was about six or seven. The daughter, who was the older of the two but still on the light side of five, it seemed, was fixated on the meaning of the word “opinion” so the father was teaching them the difference between opinion and fact. Then he started teasing her: “It is a fact that Star Wars is great!” She looked at him a little bit sideways, started to figure out this was so much balderdash, but wasn’t quite sure. Being a fan of Star Wars myself, I thought it not out-of-bounds to interject: “Hey, that’s not a fact, that’s an opinion! Although it happens to be quite correct.”

And the capital-dee Dad completely got it, rolled with it, and the kids got it. Lucky kids. There is a difference between an opinion being correct, versus an opinion going through some transformation like a caterpillar into a butterfly and becoming a “fact.” Kids who are taught this at a very young age, have an advantage. It is an advantage not shared by the “atheism is just a logical conclusion” people.

They are the ones who lack the ability to tease out subtle but meaningful distinctions. This is proven easily. If we start out with the premise that they “get” something, and everybody else is stumbling around in this cloud of ignorance failing to grasp it, we remain in the smug-atheist’s comfort zone but that’s about all we manage to accomplish, and in so doing we encounter one contradiction after another. It’s a mess. Start with: How many other “beliefs” should we find, by applying this magical elixir of transformation-of-belief-into-fact, are not beliefs at all but actually logical conclusions? Well, just about all of them. In fact, I have a tough time thinking of any exceptions to it. Even the cargo cult people, who “believe” that building a replica of an airplane out of wood and straw will summon food and supplies from the sky. We would have to elevate that, along with all other beliefs benefiting from supporting evidence, to the next threshold of “fact,” or “logical conclusion.”

On the other hand. If we proceed from the assumption that it is the snotty-atheist who has missed out on something, and his deniers are the ones who get it — a funny thing happens. Everything falls into place. The first satisfying “click” we hear is this: The secular dude, along with everybody who agrees with him for the most part, is swimming eyeballs-deep in a brine of self-satisfaction which he’s all too eager to display to his opposition. There’s no uncertainty at all, not even trace amounts of it, no inquisitiveness. It is a zenith to which I have only rarely ascended, myself, and there’s something that impresses me about this, too: I do not think back on these occasions of ascension with the self-satisfaction, now, that I had back then. Learning did not follow; ignorance did. How can learning follow from an intellectual state in which one denies the necessity of learning anything? We should expect the arrival of new knowledge to be a happy occasion, enjoyed exclusively only by those who are ready for it. The first step is to say “I don’t know.”

Atheists, at least atheists like this guy, are just people who aren’t ready to say that. Somewhere they’ve picked up on this credo, that the first step to answering any question is to eliminate the option of saying “I don’t know.” That’s my impression anyhow. They seem to be saying “Okay when we’re done puzzling out this thing, we’re going to know the answer, whatever it is, with complete, absolute certainty, with not even a trace residue of question.” Now then with that out of the way, what’s the answer?

It’s silly. I don’t know how they get started on that. It must be from taking written exams, maybe? It’s like the storm being endured by the hardened brittle dead tree versus the mighty oak that bends. Those who have preliminarily excluded any reckoning with the basic human-knowledge concept of uncertainty, time after time, reach some laughable conclusions. Not only that God does not exist, but other things. Like the planet is in danger and we can save it only by unplugging our cell phones and coffee pots, those are two of my favorites. But those are not the only ones, there are others. We can end racism in this country by electing a black President, and treating Him more like a movie star than an elected official. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Conclusions so risible, they can arouse feelings of fidelity only from those who have preliminarily disclaimed any reckoning with this basic human-knowledge concept of uncertainty. They are bad ports, docked only by boats whose captains have sworn off any other port.

But I was particularly fond of this rejoinder:

No wait, hold on. This is bull****.

Let’s take your metaphor and run with it. So in this metaphor, religion would be like a fandom (or Star Trek or Supernatural or Firefly etc) and fandom does all sorts of things like hold conventions and hang out at websites and clubs and read material related to the show (so all that would be faith conventions, websites, church, holy text etc).

So atheism is like the “Off” tv ‘program’? But there’s conventions going on that are all dedicated to “Off”. One can find entire campus groups all devoted to “Off”, they even have buildings and incorporations. There’s countless websites devoted to “Off” and large amounts of fanfiction on it. That’s not even getting into the spokespeople that bill themselves as the biggest fans of “Off”.

In other words, if people can’t really have any devotion to the “Off” show, THEN WHAT THE HELL IS THAT HUGE GROUP OF PEOPLE DOING EXACTLY THAT???

To play with a Chris Rock quote: “Atheism may not be a religion, but it’s wearing the uniform of one.”

Seems to me it’s not the religious that need to be convinced atheism isn’t a religion, but the atheists themselves.

He devastated the claim simply by taking it seriously.

Nicely put.

That “swimming eyeballs-deep in a brine of self-satisfaction” (what a phrase!) has always bugged the crap out of me about atheists, even when I was one. Because I’ve been to college, see, and I actually did the assigned reading in that one Intro to Humanities course they make everyone take.

To say “I have logically concluded there is no God” entails “I am better at logic than Thomas Aquinas.” To say “There is no God, because science” entails “I am better at science than Isaac Newton.” To say “Religion is just a bunch of superstitious hooey” entails “I am a clearer-eyed observer of reality than Thomas Hobbes.”

I am not better at logic than Aquinas. I am not better at science than Newton. I am not as sharp as Hobbes. And I can’t convince myself that I am, no matter how strong my beer muscles get. Even on the internet.

Now, none of that means those guys are right about everything, or anything — I’m not committing the appeal-to-authority fallacy (I think that subject, at least, has been thoroughly hashed out right here on this site). It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about humility. And while declaring myself not-as-smart-as some of humanity’s greatest minds isn’t all that humble, it’s a start. It allows that crucial sliver of doubt, that just maybe the opinions of others are worth listening to, because they might know something I don’t.
- Severian | 01/22/2015 @ 10:54

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