Courtesy of gavinsca

[digitaldiscipline]

There is No God (And You Know It)
-Sam Harris

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings.

The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

This is an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto, to be published at www.truthdig.com in December.

More, in the same vein, is Penn Gillette's soliloquoy on NPR's This, I Believe series. Well worth listening to.

Comments

[helcat.livejournal.com]

Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value.

This is akin to saying that "Only myself and those like me know the truth." How that is any different from the fundamentalists?

I am open to the possibility that God does not exist. But I'm not sure that there are many atheists open to the possibility that he might exist after all.

[xany.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that there are many atheists open to the possibility that he might exist after all.

that's because there aren't any. atheism is, by definition, the lack of belief in any religious dogma.

I believe the word you're looking for is agnosticism, which is similar, but different.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

*nod*

"I'm a Militant Agnostic - I'm not sure if there is a God, AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

"I'm a Militant Agnostic - I'm not sure if there is a God, AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

How can anyone make this statement?

One would have to reside in the head and heart of another person to know what they are and are not "sure" of.

Faith is not about irrefutable evidence. But, faith can be sure in itself.

Does that mean the person who is sure is right? That is entirely another debate altogether.

One does not have to be right to be sure.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I think it was something I heard a comedian say a few years back.

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

Okeedoke then. That would explain it. It reminds me of the militant feminist joke;

"Have you heard the joke about the militant feminist?"

"THAT'S NOT FUNNY!!!!"

[helcat.livejournal.com]

I was an atheist for about 15 years. I know the difference. :) It was someone making the above observation that allowed me to become more open. Twas a good thing, because I came to doubt my lack of faith, eventually.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I wish there was an easy mechanism to get a lot of the folks I know together to talk over stuff like this - you'd love K's uncle John (semi-Episcopalian chaplain). We were up until 3am Friday batting the subject of faith, and the loss thereof, around the dining room table.

I took the cited statement to mean, "Atheists feel their own compassion towards others; religious folks feel it by proxy - either by sharing what they see as "God's Love" or by acting in a manner they believe will raise them in the sight of their chosen deity."

Compassion without religion lacks the potential 'taint' (for lack of a better word) of being motivated by a far-from-certain divine reward as motivation on the one hand, and on the other hand, is granted as solace in the face of simple suffering, not any divinely-bestowed calamity.

This isn't to say that all atheists are compassionate, nor that compassion from religous folks is bogus; I know that, on the whole, I sure ain't.

[helcat.livejournal.com]

Well, to debate the nature of God, we must be open to the idea that there may be such a thing. That involves a tremendous amount of letting-go, which to the atheist, can be a terrifying thing. It certainly was for me.

Now, my Christian faith is laced with a certain amount of Buddhist tenets that makes it easier for me to see the call for compassion within Scripture. I had to leave to come back and see it like that. I had to read it with those eyes to understand it. And I had to come to understand that a lot of things I thought I knew about faith were wrong.

Everyone's mileage will vary. But once you're closed, you might as well be fundie.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

[motherfucker, lj ate my post]

K's uncle made a good point (the subject at hand was my role in the life of a born-again friend of mine from high school - i'm her reminder that not everyone shares her faith, and some of us traffic in doubt on purpose) - doubt is the flip side of faith. Without doubt, faith is blind, which makes a persone one of those fundamentalists everybody loves, no matter what stripe.

That's part of why I play Devil's Advocate so much when it comes to conversation - I may or may not care whether or not I win an argument, or even whether or not I'm right - but I want to make someone expressing an opinion examine it, especially for cracks, to make their understanding and position stronger.

So, thank you, Helen, for doing exactly the same thing for me. *hug*

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

Exactly. We are dangerous when we know we are "right".

[jmoriarty.livejournal.com]

Interesting article and follow-up, thanks.

I'm not sure, however, that I believe that all (or perhaps most) compassion from religious folks is intrinsically linked to said belief. Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc and all that. It's possible that the behavior/belief developed in parallel.

[jmoriarty.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, and for the record - I don't know where exactly I fit in the grand scheme, but I've often thought of myself as a intelligent flavor of Deist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism) (note: believers in " 'intelligent' design" need not apply.)

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

I think that, whereas there are plenty of religious people who act in a compassionate way in order to earn a reward, or because they are doing as they are told, some come to truly love others through their experience of their faith. It's just not a simple thing, as, if you have a hundred different people, you may get a hundred different answers.

This is a subtlety that I think is hard to perceive from the outside, and is debated even amongst people within the same denomination. The "faith vs/works to gain salvation" debate addresses this very thing.