Does there have to be something more than our everyday existence?

And if so, does that something have to be God?

Or indeed, anything supernatural?

There’s a curious argument that gets made a lot by theists. It’s often called the “God-shaped hole in our hearts” argument, and it goes something like this: “Human beings have a strong emotional yearning for something more: something outside our ordinary experience. The fact that we yearn for it shows that it must be there. God has put a God-shaped hole in our hearts: a restless yearning that we long to fill with spiritual experience.”

Or, boiled down more succinctly, “Human beings want there to be a God. Therefore, there is a God.”

(Karen Armstrong refers to this argument in her “In search of an ultimate concern” piece that I recently fisked, and Ebonmuse recently wrote about it on his Daylight Atheism blog, citing a study showing that believers are no more happy or content than atheists. Which is why I’m thinking about it.)

So today, I want to look at some of the more obvious, practical problems with this argument. And then, I want to look at a different flaw: one that’s more subtle, but one I think is far more fundamental.

The most obvious problem with the “yearning” argument is this: Yearning for something doesn’t prove that it exists. I can rattle off a long list of things I yearn for that don’t actually exist. (Severus Snape leaps to mind…) The fact that I want something to be true doesn’t make it true… no matter how deeply or powerfully I want it.

In fact, I would argue the exact opposite. I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: When we really, really want something to be true? That shouldn’t be seen as evidence for why it is true. Quite the contrary. When we really, really want something to be true, that’s when we have to be extra careful, extra suspicious of our motivations, extra cautious about our thought processes. That’s when rationalization, and confirmation bias, and all those other mental processes that support us in believing what we already believe, seriously kick into high gear.

That’s exactly why the scientific method has so many rigorous cross-checks. Science is full of stubborn bastards who crave recognition and would love nothing more than to prove their theory correct. Hence, double-blinding, and placebo controls, and peer review, and publishing not just results but methodology, and replicating experiments, and all that good stuff. A rigorous application of the scientific method doesn’t guarantee that personal bias won’t affect results… but it’s the best method we have for minimizing bias and filtering it out in the long run. That’s the whole point.

But back to religion, and the yearning for God. Someone (I can’t remember who now) recently pointed out that the “no atheists in foxholes” argument, even if it were true (which it’s not), isn’t an argument for God’s existence. It’s actually a strong argument against it. It’s an argument for God as wishful thinking; for God as a sign of desperation in desperate times. If what it takes for atheists to convert is being faced with imminent death and the profound wish for that death to not be real… how is that an argument for God being anything other than a figment of our imagination?

What’s more, the “God-shaped hole” argument completely overlooks the people who don’t yearn for God: people who don’t have God-shaped holes in their hearts. Ingrid is a good example: she has never had the sense that there had to be Something Out There, something she yearned for outside the vast and freaky physical universe. She never thought that it had to be there. And she never wanted it to be there. Of course she yearns for transcendent, transformative experiences; but she finds them in Morris dancing and rock concerts and the fight for social justice and whatnot. And she’s hardly the only one. If God made us with the desire to seek him out, why didn’t he do that for everybody?

And now, we come to my main point: the profound, fundamental flaw in the “we yearn for something more, therefore God exists” argument.

It’s this: There is a far better, far more obvious answer to the question, “Why do people yearn for something more, something larger, something outside our everyday experience”?

That answer: People are restless.

We’re wired that way by evolution.

Human beings are curious and restless. We’re not barnacles, content to find one place and cling to it for the rest of our lives. Our evolutionary strategy is based on seeking, exploring, discovering, inventing. Our brains are wired by evolution to wonder if there’s better food behind that tree, better land over that mountain, a better way to gather roots and hunt gazelles.

And those impulses aren’t limited to survival. Like so many of our evolutionary strategies, they’re deeply rooted in our psychology, and they spill out into every area of our experience: into art, science, friendship and love, philosophy.

I can’t remember now where I read this, but I’ve seen studies showing that, despite our tendency to think otherwise, what makes us most happy is not relaxing on a beach with a cocktail in our hand and nothing to do. What makes people most happy is working at a task that engages us: a task that’s challenging, but within our reach. Our brains are not wired to sit still and be content. Moments of perfect, ecstatic bliss happen: but they’re fleeting, quickly replaced by the chatter of the mind and its constant urge to chew over what just happened and what’s happening next. And unlike many advocates of Zen and such, I don’t see this as a big problem. It’s what makes us special. We are wired to seek, to explore, to discover, to invent.

Yearning is our evolutionary niche.

Then add to that all the other psychological wiring that leads us to believe in God: such as our tendency to see intention even when no intention exists, our tendency to see patterns even when no pattern exists, our tendency to believe what parents and authority figures tell us. And then add to that the massive array of armor and weaponry that the religion meme has built up to perpetuate itself. When, for all these reasons, we’re already predisposed to believe in God or the supernatural or whatnot… then of course the part of us that yearns for something more, something larger, something different, something outside our ordinary experience, etc., is going to fixate those yearnings on God or the supernatural or whatnot. What could be larger, more different, more outside, more more, than purported beings and worlds whose entire existence is separate from our own, and that we never see and never will?

But that still doesn’t make it real.

Augustine was mistaken. Our hearts are not restless until we find our rest in God. Our hearts are restless, period. We don’t have a God-shaped hole in our hearts. We have a hole-shaped hole in our hearts. And if the study cited on Daylight Atheism is correct, the hearts of atheists are no more restless or empty than the hearts of believers. We have simply chosen to focus our yearnings on this world, the one we can see and hear and touch… the one we know exists.

There’s plenty to yearn for right here.

Why are so many believers so strongly opposed to the mere act of atheists making our case? Why is so much anti-atheist rhetoric focused, not on flaws in atheists’ arguments, but on our temerity for making those arguments in the first place?

I was recently directed to this screed against the so-called “new atheism” by Karen Armstrong: In search of an “ultimate concern”: How the new atheists fail to understand what religion really means, an edited excerpt from her book The Case for God. I was directed to it by an old friend on Facebook (btw, if you’re on Facebook, friend me!), who posted the link with the comment, “I hope some of my atheist friends will read this. (Granted I’ve given up on reading a lot of theirs…)”

Now, given that he himself acknowledged that he wasn’t paying attention to our ideas anymore, I certainly was under no obligation to follow his link. But I was curious. This is not a stupid guy, and I wanted to see what he considered a nice knock-down argument against the “new atheists.”

And I was struck, not just by how bad and tired Armstrong’s arguments were, but by the degree to which they were entirely focused on trying to get atheists to shut up. I was struck — as I am often struck lately — by how much anti-atheist rhetoric has been focusing, not on why the case for atheism is incorrect or inconsistent or unsupported by the evidence, but on why atheists are bad people for making our case at all.

So let’s take this a step at a time. Let’s proceed with the fisking of Armstrong.

1: It is simply not the case that the so-called “new atheists” believe that “religion is the cause of all the problems of our world.” Many of us believe religion does harm, even great harm; but I’ve never yet encountered an atheist who thought religion caused all our problems, and that a world without religion would be a blissful utopia. Of all the straw men I’ve seen in critiques of atheism, this is one of the most absurd. That’s just a way of making our case look ridiculous… so you don’t have to deal with the actual case that we’re actually making.

2: I’ve said before, and I will say again: Thinking that you’re right about something, and making a case for it, does not make you “hard line,” “intemperate,” “ideological,” “fundamentalist,” or someone who believes “they alone are in possession of truth.” It makes you… well, someone who’s making their case.

It’s called the marketplace of ideas.

Why are so many believers so resistant to it?

Why do so many believers critique atheism, not by saying “Here’s why we think we’re correct and atheists are mistaken,” but by saying, “It’s bad for atheists to even make their case at all. How dare they that they think they’re right? How intolerant and dogmatic!”

3: It is simply not the case that atheists only critique fundamentalist religions. I, and many other atheists, have read and critiqued both progressive religion and modern theology. And we have found both to be very much wanting. They either make the same bad arguments apologists have been making for centuries… or they define God out of existence, reducing God to a metaphor (or a “symbol,” as Armstrong puts it), and reducing religion to a philosophy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with metaphors and symbols and philosophies. I just see no need to call them religion.

I can’t help but notice that Armstrong doesn’t actually make a case here for her “modern God.” (As if there were only one, which all theologians agreed on.) I can’t help but notice that she subtitled her piece, “How the new atheists fail to understand what religion really means”… and yet somehow neglected to explain what religion really means. All she says is, “There’s a better version of religion out there, and you mean old atheists aren’t paying attention to it.” All she does is carp at atheists for making our case… without actually making hers.

4: It is not the case that atheists see reason as an “idol,” and we do not see reason as our “ultimate concern.” We’re not Vulcans. We see the deep value in powerful subjective emotional experiences of art, love, etc., as Armstrong describes. We simply see reason, and the careful investigation of evidence, as the best way to evaluate what is and is not likely to be true in the external, objective world.

And that includes the question of whether God does or does not exist. The God hypothesis is not a subjective experience like art or love. It is a question about what is or is not true in the real world. Why shouldn’t be apply rational thinking to that question? Why shouldn’t we make our case for why our conclusion is more likely to be correct?

And atheists do not “deny the possibility of transcendence.” I, for one, have written about atheist transcendence at great length, many, many times. We simply don’t see that transcendence as having anything to do with a supernatural world. I find it fascinating that Armstrong speaks so rapturously of curiosity and seeking outside one’s self… and yet wants to shut off an entire avenue of inquiry and possibility: the possibility that the physical world is all there is.

Again: Why is she arguing that people shouldn’t apply rational thinking to this question? Why is she arguing that it’s “hard line,” “intemperate,” “ideological,” “fundamentalist,” and believing that we alone “are in possession of truth,” to come to a conclusion based on a rational evaluation of the evidence… and to then make a case in the public forum for our conclusion?

5 (and finally, for now):

Armstrong shows a gross misunderstanding of the process of science. She seems to think that, because scientific hypotheses rely on some assumptions and can’t be proven with 100% certainty, that therefore it is “faith” in the same way that religion is faith. This is flatly untrue. Science doesn’t say, “This is absolutely true, no matter what.” Science says, “This is probably true, based on the evidence we currently have.” Science is always provisional. But saying, “This hypothesis is consistent and supported by all the available evidence, and until we see different evidence contradicting it we’re going to proceed on the assumption that it’s true”… that isn’t faith. Not by any useful definition of the word.

And that’s exactly what the so-called “new atheists” are saying about atheism. We’re not the ones saying, “We have faith in atheism that cannot be shaken; no possible argument or evidence could make us change our mind.” We’re saying, “The atheism hypothesis seems to be the one that’s best supported by the available evidence. The God hypothesis doesn’t make sense, and there isn’t any good evidence for it… so we’re going to proceed on the assumption that it isn’t true. If we see better evidence or better arguments for God’s existence, we’ll change our minds.”

And again, I ask: Why are so many believers so strongly opposed to the mere act of atheists doing that? Why is so much anti-atheist rhetoric focused, not on flaws in atheists’ arguments, but on our temerity for making those arguments in the first place?

I can only assume that it’s because, on some level, they know they don’t have a case.

If they had a case, they’d be making one.

They don’t have one.

And so they’re reduced to trying to get us to shut up about ours.

Who’s going to the Atheist Alliance International conference in LA in October?

Ingrid and I are going, and on the Thursday night before it starts, we’re thinking of going to this great restaurant, called — get this — Church & State.

Come on — how could we not?

We’ve actually been to this place, and it’s amazing. And ever since, we’ve been harboring fantasies of going with a whole gang of atheists.

So are there any blog readers out there who are going to the conference, and who want to join us? If so, let us know! Let us know ASAP, as we would need to make reservations, and we’d need to do so reasonably far in advance. (Note: The restaurant isn’t wildly expensive, but it’s also not cheap. You can check out their prices and drool over their offerings at their website.) The conference is Oct. 2-4, so we’re talking about going to Church & State on Oct. 1. Speak up in the comments, or email me, greta at gretachristina dot com. Hope to see you there!

Does the Unitarian Church magazine have the right — not just the legal right, but the moral right — to reject an ad from an atheist organization, an ad that criticizes religion and asks people to reject it?

You might have heard about the recent kerfuffle, in which UU World — the free denominational magazine for the Unitarian Universalist Association — printed a paid ad (PDF) from the Freedom From Religion Foundation… and then, in response to complaints from some readers, apologized for the ad, said that it was a mistake to run it, and is declining to run it again.

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist has objected vociferously to this decision, saying (I’m summarizing here) that the decision goes against the UU’s purported commitment to religious freedom and diversity of ideas, and is an unreasonable squashing of atheist expression in a forum that should be open to it.

I’m going to go out on a limb here.

I’m going to disagree with Hemant, and with other atheists who have criticized the UU over this.

I’m going to defend the church.

It’s easy to draw the obvious parallel between the Unitarian Universalists’ decision, and the ongoing controversies over atheist bus ads that bus companies keep trying to find feeble excuses to reject. That’s the most obvious context that this kerfuffle took place in, and I can see why people who got irate over the bus ad controversies might jump to irateness at the Unitarian Church.

But there are two enormous differences between these situations: differences that make the situations not parallel at all. Tangential, in fact. Maybe even perpendicular.

One: The magazine of the Unitarian Universalists is a private publication, expressing the viewpoint of a private organization.

Public buses are… well, public. They’re supported, at least in part, by taxpayer dollars. The rules that apply to them and their ad policies are therefore more stringent. They’re supposed to have consistent ad policies which they apply fairly, across the board, to anyone who wants to advertise, regardless of whether the company agrees with the message. If they rent ad space to churches saying, “Christianity is cool,” then they have to rent ad space to atheist organizations saying, “Atheism is cool.”

That’s a pretty solid legal principle. And I think it’s a good moral principle as well. Publication spaces that belong to all citizens should provide equal access for all citizens.

But a private organization is under no such obligation. Its publications don’t belong to all citizens. They belong to the organization, to publish its own opinions and views.

Yes, there are laws about public accommodations and such, and businesses that are open to the public can’t reject customers based on race, gender, religion, and so on. But this principle is balanced by the First Amendment right of publications to control their content. Even large, publicly-sold, widely-read magazines have the right to reject ads whose content they think is offensive or in direct opposition to their mission. (As someone who’s tried to place ads for a sex toy company in the New Yorker… believe me, I know.) And an internal magazine of a private organization has pretty close to free rein. They are under no obligation whatsoever to accept an ad whose content is explicitly hostile to their central function.

Legally — or morally.

Which brings me to:

Two: The content of this particular ad was actively hostile to religion.

This wasn’t one of those kinder, gentler atheist bus ads saying something like, “You can be good without God,” or, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” or even, “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The message of this ad was not, “Hey, there are other atheists out there, it’s okay to be an atheist, atheists can be good and happy people.”

The message of this ad was, ‘Religion sucks.”

And it is entirely reasonable for a church magazine to decline an ad with the message, “Religion sucks.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a message I more or less agree with. Some of the specific quotes are ones I might quibble with… but I basically agree with the message that religion (a) isn’t true and (b) on the whole does more harm than good. I’m not saying that the FFRF were bad people for trying to run this ad.

I’m saying that the Unitarian Universalists were also not bad people for rejecting it. It was totally reasonable for them to reject it. In their place, I probably would have done the same.

Let me put it this way. Would it be reasonable for the magazine of an atheist organization — or an atheist blog, for that matter — to reject an ad saying, “Atheism is immoral, atheists will be condemned to hell if they don’t repent, the only true path is the path of Jesus”?

And if that would be reasonable — then why are this church’s actions any different?

I actually ran into this very situation myself a while back. The United Church of Christ was running an ad campaign plugging themselves as a science-friendly church, with the tag line, “Science and faith are not mutually exclusive.” It’s a message that I ultimately don’t agree with, that I pretty strongly don’t agree with (I think religion and science can uneasily co-exist, but are fundamentally different approaches to understanding the world that will eventually conflict). And after much searching of my non-existent soul, I decided to reject the ad.

I’ve since come up with a different solution. I’ve put an “Ads Don’t Necessarily Reflect My Views” disclaimer above my ad space (thanks to Ebonmuse for that suggestion!), and I now would probably accept the UCC ad with that disclaimer in place. But I think I was entirely within my rights — not just legally, but ethically — to reject an ad in my personal, “this is what Greta thinks” free-speech space that I felt ran completely counter to one of my most central values.

And I think the same holds true for the Unitarian Church.

The Unitarian Church is… well, it’s a church. Yes, it’s a church with a pretty lukewarm and inconclusive position on the existence of God. But it is a church, and at least part of its mission is to provide a home and a place of worship for people who believe in God. Religion is a central part of its mission. It is under no obligation to provide space in its own publications for the message that religion is a terrible institution that should be done away with.

There’s an old saying that free speech advocates use a lot: “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” Well, that applies here. If the Unitarian Universalists don’t want to say “Religion sucks” in their in-house magazine… well, I may not agree with what they don’t want to say, but I’ll defend to the death their right to not say it.

Finally, and maybe most importantly:

If we atheists are going to be ethically consistent — if we’re going to be models for the principle that you really can be good without God — then we have to not be reflexive cheerleaders for people who are on our side. We have to judge these questions, not by choosing up sides between atheists and non-atheists, but on the basis of the ethical principles involved.*

In the coming decades, there are going to be a lot of conflicts between atheists and believers. And the atheists aren’t always going to be right. We’ll have a lot more credibility if we don’t always stand up for the atheists… and, instead, always try to stand up for what’s right.

*(To be both fair and clear, I don’t think Hemant is doing that. He’s shown himself plenty willing to criticize atheists when he thinks it’s warranted. I’m talking about general principles here — not Hemant’s particular arguments.)