Atheist Meme of the Day: Religion Is Still a Hypothesis

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Religion is a hypothesis: the hypothesis that things are the way they are, at least in part, because supernatural entities or forces affect the physical world. And it is no more intolerant to argue that it’s mistaken than it is to argue against global warming denialism, or the theory of the four bodily humours. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Religion Is Still a Hypothesis
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Atheist Meme of the Day: Death Is Part of Nature

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Atheism does have comfort to offer in the face of death. Among other things, it lets us view death, not as a conscious decision of God, but as physical cause and effect: a natural process, one that connects us with the universe even as it separates us from it. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Death Is Part of Nature

Atheism and Diversity: Is It Wrong For Atheists To Persuade Believers?

This piece was originally published on AlterNet.

Do atheists hate diversity?

Metropolis_drones
Is the very act of atheist activism — the act of trying to persuade people that atheism is correct, the act of working to change the world into one without religion — is this an act of attempted conformity? Are atheists trying to create a drab, gray, uniform world, where everyone else is just like them?

It’s probably pretty obvious that I think the answer is a big fat “No!” (Probably said in the Ted Stevens voice.) But it certainly is the case that many atheist activists — myself among them — are working very hard indeed to persuade religious believers out of their beliefs. Not all atheists do this, of course; many have the more modest goals of religious tolerance and separation of church and state, including tolerance of atheists and recognition of us as equal citizens. But a good number of atheists are, in fact, trying to convince religious believers to become atheists. I’m one of them.

And since many believers see this as an intolerant attempt to enforce conformity — particularly believers of the progressive, ecumenical, “all religions perceive God in their own way and we have to respect them all” stripe — I want to take a moment to address it.

The Intolerant Bigotry of the Germ Theory

Probably no god
If there’s one single idea I’d most like to get across to religious believers, it would not be, “There is no God.” Or even, “There is probably no God.” I want believers to reach that conclusion on their own. Upon being awestruck by my brilliant arguments, of course… but ultimately on their own, after thinking it through, after looking at the reasons for belief and the reasons for atheism, and finally concluding that atheism makes more sense and is more consistent with what we know about the world. I don’t want people to stop believing in God just because I say so.

If there’s one single idea I’d most like to get across to religious believers, it would be this:

God failed hypothesis
Religion is a hypothesis.

Religion is a hypothesis about how the world works, and why it is the way it is. Religion is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, at least in part, because of immaterial beings or forces that act on the material world.

Religion is many other things, of course. It’s communities, cultural traditions, political ideologies, philosophies. But those things aren’t what make religion unique. What makes religion unique, among all other communities/ philosophies/ etc., is this hypothesis of an immaterial world acting on the material one. It’s thousands of different hypotheses, really, positing thousands of immaterial beings and/or forces, with thousands upon thousands of different qualities and temperaments. But all these diverse beliefs have this one hypothesis in common: the hypothesis that there is a supernatural world, and that the natural world is the way it is because of the supernatural one.

Religion is not a subjective opinion, or an ethical axiom, or a personal perspective. (These things can be connected with it, of course, but they’re not what make its unique core.) Opinions and axioms and personal perspectives can be debated — but ultimately, they’re up to each person to decide for themselves. Religion is none of these things. Religion is a hypothesis. It says, “Things are the way they are because of the effects of the immaterial world on the material one.” Things are the way they are because God made them that way. Because the Devil is making them that way. Because the World-Soul is evolving that way. Because we have spiritual energy animating our consciousness. Because guardian angels are watching us. Because witches are casting spells. Because we are the reincarnated souls of dead people. Whatever.

Seeing religion as a hypothesis is important for a lot of reasons. But the reason that’s most relevant to today’s topic:

If religion is a hypothesis, it is not hostile to diversity for atheists to oppose it.

Geocentric
It is no more hostile to diversity to oppose the religion hypothesis than it is to oppose the hypothesis that global warming is a hoax. The hypothesis that an unrestricted free market will cause the economy to flourish for everyone. The hypothesis that illness is caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humours. The hypothesis that the sun orbits the earth.

Arguing against hypotheses that aren’t supported by the evidence… that’s not anti-diversity. That’s how we understand the world better. We understand the world by rigorously gathering and analyzing evidence… and by ruthlessly rejecting any hypothesis that the evidence doesn’t support. Was it hostile to diversity for Pasteur to argue against the theory of spontaneous generation? For Georges Lemaitre to argue against the steady-state universe? For Galileo to argue against geocentrism?

And if not — then why is it hostile to diversity for atheists to argue against the hypothesis of God and the supernatural world?

How is it any more anti-diversity for atheists to argue against religion, and to try to persuade other people to change their minds about it, than it is for anyone to argue their case against any other hypothesis, on any other topic?

100_percent
Now. Many believers will argue that religion doesn’t fall into these categories. They’ll argue that religion can’t be proven true or false with 100% certainty… and that therefore, it’s reasonable for people to believe in any religion that appeals to them. (And that it’s unreasonable for anyone to make an argument against it.)

But… well, for one thing, that’s not entirely true. Many religions, from young-earth creationism to astrology, do make testable claims. And every single time those claims have been rigorously tested, they’ve folded like a house of cards in a hurricane. They can’t be disproven with 100% certainty… but almost nothing can, and that’s not the standard of evidence we use for any other claim.

Much more to the point, though:

When you start seeing religion as a hypothesis?

The fact that it’s unverifiable suddenly stops being a defense.

In fact, it’s completely the opposite. The fact that religion is unverifiable becomes one of the most devastating arguments against it.

Popper- Logic of Scientific Discovery
One of the most important things about a hypothesis is that it has to be falsifiable. If any possible evidence could be used to support a hypothesis — if your hypothesis will be shown to be true whether the water in the beaker gets hotter, gets colder, stays the same temperature, boils away instantly, turns into a parrot and flies out the door — it is an utterly useless hypothesis. If any event at all can be fitted into it, then it has no power whatsoever to explain past events, or predict future outcomes. It is, as they say, not even wrong.

And that’s just as true of religion as any other hypothesis. If any outcome of, for instance, an illness — recovering dramatically for no apparent reason, getting gradually better with medical intervention, getting worse, staying the same indefinitely, dying — could be explained as God’s work… then the God hypothesis is useless. It has no power to explain the world, or to predict the future, or to tell us how our behavior will affect the outcomes of our lives. It serves no purpose. (Except, perhaps, psychological ones.)

The fact that religion is unfalsifiable doesn’t mean we have to accept it as a reasonable possibility. It means the exact opposite. It means we should reject it wholesale.

And it is not anti-diversity for atheists to point this out. Any more than it’s anti-diversity to point out how any other hypothesis is unfalsifiable, or unsupported by evidence, or directly contradicted by evidence, or in any other way mistaken and flawed.

A New Model for Diversity

Intolerance
I know that a lot of people will still have problems with atheist activism. Even if they know in their minds that atheist activism is fair and reasonable, they still have a strong, instinctive reaction against it. For a lot of people, it just seems like religious intolerance to say, “Your religion is wrong, and I think you should change your mind about it.”

And I think the problem comes from how we think of diversity.

Historically, we pretty much have two models of dealing with religious beliefs that are different from ours. We have (a) intolerant evangelism and theocracy — forcing religious beliefs down other people’s throats, through social pressure at best, through legal strictures and even violence at worst. And we have (b) uncritical ecumenicalism: the idea that all religions are at least a little bit true, that they’re all part of a rich, beautiful spiritual tapestry, that they’re all perceiving one little piece of the truth about God… and that even if they’re not, it’s intolerant religious bigotry to criticize them or try to persuade people out of them. It’s a model created largely in response to intolerant evangelism and theocracy… and therefore, it’s a model in which any criticism of any religion automatically gets slotted into that ugly category.

Atheism is offering a third option.

We’re offering the option of respecting the important freedom of religious belief… while retaining the right to criticize those beliefs, and to treat them just like we’d treat any other idea we think is mistaken.

FirstAmendment
The atheist movement is passionate about the right to religious freedom. (With the notable exception of a few assholes on the Internet. Name me one movement that doesn’t have its share of assholes on the Internet.) We fully support people’s right to believe whatever the hell they want, as long as they keep it out of government and don’t shove it down other people’s throats. We see the right to think what we like as a basic foundation of human ethics, one of the most fundamental rights we have — and we have no desire whatsoever to overturn that.

Yet at the same time, we see the right to free thought and free expression as including the right to criticize other people’s thoughts and forms of expression. We passionately defend people’s right to believe what they want… but we defend with equal passion our right to think what we want about those beliefs, and to say so in the public square. We express our disagreement in a variety of ways — some more polite and respectful, some more insulting and mocking — but we damn sure think we have the right to express it.

GodDelusion
And we see no reason to treat religion with any more deference than any other idea. We see religion as — yes, you guessed it — a hypothesis about the world. We see it as a hypothesis that has never once in all of human history been shown to be correct. We see it as a hypothesis that at the very least has been falsified numerous times, and at worst is unfalsifiable and should be therefore rejected on that basis alone. And we see no reason to treat it any differently from any other deeply flawed, completely unsupported hypothesis. We see no reason not to criticize it, to ask hard questions about it, to make fun of it, to point out flaws in it, to point out the good evidence contradicting it and the utter lack of good evidence supporting it… and to do our damndest to persuade people out of it.

Most atheists would probably be okay with a world that included religion, as long as it was tolerant of other beliefs and stayed the hell out of government. (Some of us are skeptical about whether this is possible… but we’d be okay with it.) Many of us even enjoy some of the rituals and traditions of religion, as long as they don’t involve actual religious belief (a la secular Judaism). But yes, many atheist activists would like humanity to eventually give up on religion. We think religion is a mistaken idea about the world. We think we can make a good case for that position. We think it’s entirely reasonable to try to persuade people that we’re right.

And this is not an attack on diversity.

It is a defense of reality.

Atheism and Diversity: Is It Wrong For Atheists To Persuade Believers?

Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheists Face Crises Without Converting

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

To say “You atheists will give up your atheism in a hurry when you’re facing death and disaster” is simply not true. Many atheists have suffered great loss and faced terrible crises without turning to belief in God. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheists Face Crises Without Converting

Geek Girls, Go Where I Send Thee: A Christmas Song Parody for Math Nerds

It’s that time of year again — the time for Christmas song parodies!

A Very Scary Solstice
So there I was at a holiday party I go to every year, a party at which the singing of Christmas carols is a central feature. And yes, I go to this party voluntarily. I love Christmas, and I’m one of those freaks of nature who actually likes Christmas music. (As long as it’s not drippy Muzak versions being forced into your ears at the supermarket.) And this party takes a very irreverent attitude towards the whole thing, with an entertaining emphasis on the more gruesome and depressing carols (“Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying/Sealed in the stone cold tomb”), and lots of nerdy song parodies. (The Christmas-themed “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the H.P. Lovecraft ones are the best.)

So there we were, lustily singing “Children, Go Where I Send Thee,” one of those endless counting songs (here’s a nice version of it on YouTube if you don’t know how it goes), and we were getting silly about the endlessness of it all (“I’m gonna send thee 127 by 127” ), when somebody — it may even have been me — chimed in with, “I’m gonna send thee pi by pi…”

And a song was born.

Complex_conjugate_picture.svg
Or rather, a song is being born. Here’s the current draft. Suggestions for new verses or revisions on these verses are welcomed. Quick ground rules: The numbers have to be actual numbers: I regretfully rejected c (“c for the speed of li-ight”), as it’s a constant that would change depending on the units of measurement being used. They do not, however, have to be real numbers. Hence, i and aleph (yes, it should be “aleph null,” but that doesn’t scan, so suck it up). And I looked it up, and the concept of imaginary numbers seems to have been born in Renaissance Italy. Woo-hoo!

Geek Girls, Go Where I Send Thee

Geek girls, go where I send thee
How shall I send thee?
I’m gonna send thee i by i
i for the ‘maginary
Was born in Renaissance Italy

Geek girls, go where I send thee
How shall I send thee?
I’m gonna send thee phi by phi
Phi for the golden ratio
i for the ‘maginary
Was born in Renaissance Italy

(Repeat, with these additions)

e for the logarithm
Pi for the perfect circle
Google for the hundred zeroes
Aleph for the weird infinities

Any suggestions? Bring it on!

Geek Girls, Go Where I Send Thee: A Christmas Song Parody for Math Nerds

Atheist Meme of the Day: If God Affects This World…

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

To say that God or the spiritual realm exist outside our ordinary plane of existence, and can’t be understood by reason or evidence, makes no sense. If God or the spiritual realm exist and have an effect on this world, we should be able to observe that effect. If they don’t have any effect on this world, their existence is a moot point. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: If God Affects This World…

Hey Religious Believers, Where's Your Evidence?

Evidence
What evidence do religious believers have for their beliefs?

And when they’re asked what evidence they have, how do believers respond?

In my conversations with religious believers, I’ll often ask, “Why do you think God or the supernatural exists? What makes you think this is true? What evidence do you have for this belief?” Partly I’m just curious; I want to know why people believe what they do. Plus I think it’s a valid question: it’s certainly one I’d ask about any other claim or opinion. And if I’m wrong about my atheism — if there’s good evidence for religion that I haven’t seen yet — I want to know. I’m game. Show me the money.

But when I ask these questions, I almost never get a straight answer.

What I typically get is a startling assortment of conversational gambits deflecting the question.

I get excuses for why believers shouldn’t have to provide evidence. Vague references to other people who supposedly have evidence, without actually pointing to said evidence. Irrelevant tirades about mean atheists. Venomous anger at how disrespectful and intolerant I am to even ask the question.

Today, I want to chronicle some of these conversational gambits. I want to point out their logical flaws. I want to point out the fiendishly clever ways that they armor religion against the expectation — a completely reasonable expectation, an expectation we have about every other kind of claim — that it back itself up with evidence.

And I want to talk about why believers resort to them.

*

Thus begins my new blog post up at AlterNet, Hey Religious Believers, Where’s Your Evidence? In it, I point out some of the specific ways religious believers dodge the simple question, “Why do you believe what you believe?” I point out the holes in these arguments, and point out how they aren’t actually arguments — they’re simply armor against the entirely reasonable expectation that religion support its claims with evidence. And I talk about why, exactly, believers resort to these deflective gambits, instead of just explaining why they believe what they believe.

This is the fourth in a four-part series about atheism I’m writing for AlterNet. I’ll be reprinting all these pieces here on my own blog eventually; in the meantime, enjoy this one on AlterNet!

Hey Religious Believers, Where's Your Evidence?

Atheist Meme of the Day: Freedom of Belief /= Freedom from Criticism

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

The right to believe what you want is not the same as the right to never have your beliefs questioned. And that’s just as true for religious beliefs as anything else. Atheists can respect and passionately defend believers’ right to believe what they like, while still claiming the right to question and criticize those beliefs. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Freedom of Belief /= Freedom from Criticism

Trekkie Religion and Secular Judaism: What If Religion Really Were Just a Metaphor?

This piece was originally published on AlterNet.

Jesus storybook bible
If religion really were just a metaphor, just a comforting and inspiring story that gives shape and meaning to people’s lives… what might it look like?

One of the most common tropes among progressive religious believers is Religion As Metaphor. “Religious beliefs don’t have to be literally true,” the trope says. “They’re just useful metaphors: stories that give shape and meaning to our lives.”

I’m not buying it. I’m not buying it for one simple reason: If religion is just a story, then why does it upset people so much when atheists say it isn’t true? Any more than it would upset a fan of “Alice in Wonderland” if someone told them it wasn’t true?

I’m seriously not buying it. I think the “metaphor” trope is just a disingenuous way for believers to slip away from hard questions about their beliefs. But it’s got me thinking: If religion really were just a story — a story that people found comforting and inspiring, a story that people sincerely knew wasn’t true but still enjoyed telling and re-telling — what would that look like?

And would atheists have a problem with it?

I was debating the other day with a believer who was getting bent out of shape about how religion was just a story people found comforting. People didn’t have to believe religion was literally true for it to make a difference in their lives, he insisted. So why was I being so intolerant and mean and trying to take it away? And it suddenly struck me:

The version of religion he’s talking about?

Trekkies
It’s Trekkies.

Think about it. Trekkies are devoted to a story that they find entertaining and inspiring, even though they know it isn’t factually real. And there’s great diversity in their devotions, similar to those among religious beliefs. Some Trekkies are intensely dedicated to the story, to the point where it takes up a substantial part of their lives: going to conventions, making costumes, buying memorabilia, watching the shows again and again. Others are more casual followers: watching the shows when they happen to come on, maybe taking in a convention or two. And different Trekkies follow different variants of the story. Some are more interested in the original show with Spock and Kirk; others care more about The Next Generation. Some weirdo fringe cultists even follow Voyager.

But they all have one thing in common: They know that “Star Trek” isn’t real. Unless they’re certifiably mentally ill, they know that the story they’re devoted to was made up by people. And they act accordingly. Avid convention-goers don’t treat casual fans as apostates; Original Showians don’t treat Next Generationists as sinners and blasphemers; and none of them write editorials lambasting people as immoral sociopaths if they prefer documentaries to any sort of science fiction. And they — okay, fine, we — don’t insist that “Star Trek” is just a story… and then get bent out of shape when people point out that it is a story, and hence that it’s not true. Trekkies have a good time trying to fit the inaccuracies and inconsistencies into some sort of continuity (that’s half the fun); but we understand that the show is a fictional story, with all the flaws that fiction is heir to, and we don’t treat it as a divinely-inspired guide to reality and life.

That’s what “it’s just a metaphor” religion would look like.

And if religion looked like that, I would have no problem with it at all.

Now, if you’re a religious believer, maybe you think this analogy is trivializing your faith. Maybe you think it’s insulting to compare centuries of serious religious practice and thought to nerds wearing Spock ears at convention centers. So let’s take a different example.

Dickens fair
Let’s take historical re-creation societies. Not re-enactors of real historical events like the Civil War, but re-creators of historical fiction. Let’s take communities who like to act out the characters and worlds of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.R.R. Tolkien, William Shakespeare. Let’s take communities who find these stories beautiful and inspiring, and who devote a significant portion of their lives to reading them, studying them, discussing them, re-imagining them, dressing up like the characters in them, and attending ritual and celebratory events dedicated to them.

You don’t like that analogy, either? But those are wonderful stories! Rich, complex, highly respected stories! Stories with decades and even centuries of tradition behind them! Are you saying that historical re-enactors are giant nerds and that you resent being compared to them? How dare you insult my faith! I declare jihad!

I kid, of course. I do enjoy some occasional historical fiction re-creation events; but I’m not going to start a war, even an Internet flame war, defending them. (Although this kind of proves my point: if believers get offended at their religion being compared to other stories — even if those stories are serious literature — then the “religion is just a story” trope can’t be very sincere.)

But I’m off on a tangent. Let’s come back to the main point. And let’s get a bit more serious. Let’s look at a genuine, religiously- themed example of my Trekkie model of religion.

Judaism without god
Let’s look at secular Judaism.

For plenty of Jews, Judaism is much more of a cultural/ historical/ familial identity than a religious one. In fact, for many Jews, Judaism is entirely a cultural and historical and familial identity, and not a religious one at all. The phrase “atheist Jew” has a non-absurd, readily- comprehensible meaning… in a way that “atheist Baptist” doesn’t. Many Jews cherrypick the Jewish rituals and stories that they like, and reject the ones they don’t — not as a slippery way of trying to shoehorn an obsolete and untenable faith into a modern worldview, but entirely openly and without shame or pretense, in an “I don’t think God gives a damn about this, I don’t even think God exists, this is all just mangled history at best and totally made-up at worst, so I have no qualms about picking the parts I like and ditching the rest” approach. Questioning the tenets and texts of Judaism is part of the rabbinical tradition, and many secular Jews view their selective observance, not as a rejection of the Jewish tradition, but as part of it. They treat sacred Jewish texts the way we all treat philosophers and political writers who aren’t purportedly passing on the divine word of God: they read them critically, they embrace the ideas that make sense, they actively oppose the ideas that are barbaric, they ignore the ideas that seem silly.

Exactly the way “Star Trek” fans ignore and reject “Spock’s Brain.”

I guess I’m saying that secular Jews are the Trekkies of religion. And good on them. I’m totally serious. If I could convert to secular Judaism and not feel like an idiot, I’d seriously consider it. Secular Jews have found a way to (mostly) take what’s good about religion and (mostly) leave what’s bad about it. And that way is to not treat it as religion. That way is to not treat it as the divine word of God. That way is to treat it as a story: a fascinating story, a story with a powerful tradition behind it, a story worth telling and caring about and getting involved in… but a story. A story with parts that are inspiring and useful, and parts that are gruesome and ugly, and parts that are just plain batshit.

Now, there is, of course, an important difference between secular Judaism and Trekkies. And that’s the deep, intense connection many secular Jews have with family and history. It’s not just about being invested in the story, and the rituals connected with it. It’s about the fact that the story and the rituals are ones that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and so on were invested in.

They tried to kill us 1
And of course, much of that investment has to do with how Jews and Judaism have historically been treated by the rest of the world. As a friend pointed out when I ran this piece by her: Plenty of Jews in Germany were very secular, didn’t even particularly think of themselves as Jewish… but that didn’t change how the Nazis saw them. Practicing the rituals of Judaism is a way of acknowledging this reality. And it’s a way of defying it, a way of saying “Fuck you” to it: to Nazis, to pogroms, to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to ghettos, to forced conversions, to being barred from all professions except money-lending and then being vilified as money-grubbing usurers, to expulsions and massacres, to the blood libel, to the Spanish Inquisition. Secular Judaism isn’t just about the fact that your great-grandmother practiced these rituals. It’s about the fact that she was put in a concentration camp because of them.

So that’s an important difference from Trekkies. But my basic premise still remains. Which is that secular Judaism is a way of preserving religious tradition, without needing to believe in God or the supernatural. Secular Judaism shows that you can take religious observances seriously, as a connection to family and history… without believing that you’re doing it for God.

Judaism may not be alone in this, either. I’m beginning to hear of secular Catholics, too: Catholics who are following the “we think these rituals and images are beautiful, and they’re an important part of our family history handed down through generations, but it’s not like we actually believe it” pattern laid out by secular Judaism.

Ocean_beach_xmas_tree
And, of course, there’s one of the most classic forms of secularized religion: Christmas. Christmas is ostensibly a celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; but for many people, it’s simply a celebration of the fact that the days are dark and cold, and we need to feast and light lights and give presents and generally schmooze with the people we care about. It’s becoming a secular holiday for many, and hard-line atheists from PZ Myers to Richard Dawkins have spoken cheerfully in favor of it.

And you know what?

I love this.

Secular
I would love to see more of this. I would love to see a secular Catholicism that preserves the soothing ritual and rich pageantry, without the sex-hating dogma and the authoritarian hierarchy. I would love to see a secular Baptism that preserves the wild oratory and soaring music, without the hateful obsession with hellfire and judgment. I would love to see a secular Hinduism that preserves the magnificent imagery and generous diversity, without the rationalization for the caste system. I would love to see a secular Wicca that preserves the passionate love of nature, without the dismissive contempt for science that is so contradictory to that love. I would love to see a secular Methodism that preserves the Jello salad. (Actually, I could do fine without that… but if other people want to preserve the grand tradition of Methodist Jello salads, more power to them.)

I probably wouldn’t practice any of this myself. My own familial religious tradition is “boring Middle-American Protestantism” from my grandparents (hence the Jello salads), agnosticism and atheism from my parents. The former isn’t interesting enough for me to preserve (except for Christmas), and the latter I’m already running with. So no secular religion for me.

But I could totally see it. I could see it as a way for humanity to preserve the cool stuff about religion — the ritual and the tradition, the narrative and the imagery, the community and the connection with family and history — without the active disregard for reality that causes so much trouble.

And as an atheist, I could be totally happy with it.

So what’s the difference?

What’s the difference between this secular Trekkie Judaism that I respect, the secular Trekkie Catholicism that I’m encouraging… and the “Religion is a useful metaphor” trope that I’ve argued against so hotly?

The difference is this:

Slip n slide
Progressive religion says, “This is simply a story”… but it isn’t sincere. You can tell that it isn’t sincere by how bent out of shape it gets when people point out that it’s just a story, and therefore isn’t really true. Progressive religion uses the “metaphor” trope as a slippery way of avoiding hard questions when engaged with skeptics… and as soon as the skeptics turn their backs, it slips right back into actual, non-metaphorical, “belief in immaterial entities or forces that it has no evidence for” religion. Progressive religion is ultimately just as willing to ignore evidence that contradicts its comforting story as hard-line conservative religion.

Truly secular “religion,” on the other hand, says, “This is simply a story” — and means it.

The difference is this:

If you say to a “Religion is a useful metaphor” believer, “Your religion is a story, it isn’t factually true, a lot of the history is mangled and some of it’s flatly wrong, and all the God stuff is totally made up”… chances are they’re going to get seriously defensive. They’ll tell you how intolerant you are, how you’re just as dogmatic and proselytizing as religious fundamentalists, how disrespectful you are to point out the flaws in religion and try to persuade people that it’s mistaken, how close-minded you are to reject ideas just because they’re not supported by dumb old evidence.

If you say to a secular Jew — a genuinely secular, non-believing, atheist Jew — “Your religion is a story, it isn’t factually true, a lot of the history is mangled and some of it’s flatly wrong, and all the God stuff is totally made up”… they’ll say, “Yeah, I know. So what? So are you coming to Passover or not?”

Trekkie Religion and Secular Judaism: What If Religion Really Were Just a Metaphor?

Atheist Meme of the Day: "Atheists Aren't Open" Is a Bad Argument

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

To say that atheists are closed off to the spiritual world is a terrible argument for the existence of that world. All it does is reiterate the very claim being discussed — the claim that there’s a supernatural world to be open to — without offering any evidence for it. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: "Atheists Aren't Open" Is a Bad Argument