I've gotten out of the habit of making posts (and checking those my friends make--I'm sorry!), but I have some thoughts. They aren't related to things that are actually happening in my life. That's not something I want to talk about.
So, in the spirit of avoidance, I am currently watching "The God Who Wasn't There," which is... well. It's basically an orgy of atheist thought, and most of the heavy-hitters in the atheist world are featured. Sam Harris is the one who might sound familiar to people who... er, didn't study theological issues from an atheistic point of view in college.
Like most atheist-made documentaries, it holds no punches. I'm enjoying it overall, as it does point out several of the fallacious claims that modern Christians make (usually unwittingly) and points out some of the facts that I don't think many Christians are ever taught (I wasn't taught these things during Sunday School or Confirmation). It pulls out some of the Bible verses that don't get thrown around and likely wouldn't be accepted by most Christians. It doesn't demonize Christians or assert that they're crazy.
It does, however, portray Christianity as a whole as--in its current form--a religion of ignorance. Individuals aren't considered ignorant, which I do appreciate. It's the approach, though... the mention of unicorns being just as believable as Jesus, the cartoony devil graphics, the disrespectful attitude. You can speak out against Christianity without indirectly mocking its believers.
But it's better than most documentaries in this vein. It was made by a former Christian fundamentalist instead of a diehard atheist who isn't familiar with the inner workings of the religion, which, I think, makes it a bit more fair. There's this bitterness, though!
One thing I really like is the following point that Harris made:
"When the President says 'I plan to appoint commonsense judges who know that our rights are derived from God,' I think that someone in the White House press conference should be able to stand up and say, 'How is that different from saying you're going to appoint commonsense judges who think our rights are derived from Zeus?'"(This comes after a thorough dissection of the Bible, its timeline, and a very intelligent comparison of Christianity and other religions that would be considered "mythical" or "pagan." The Bible is, essentially, symbolic folk literature, which was quite popular in the time in which the bulk of it was written.)
As is usual in these films, any and all attempts that the documentary-maker makes to engage in an actual philosophical discussion with Christians (moderate, intermediate, fundamental alike) doesn't go well. Christians just... aren't equipped to go head-to-head with these guys who have backgrounds in analytical and critical thinking, Biblical history, debate--and it's not their faults. The documentary places the blame primarily on what Christians are taught about their own religion as well as the religion's general discouragement of investigation and questioning.
I like this quote from Brian Flemming, the fellow who made the documentary:
"I was born again at least, like... three times, I think."Anyway, I thought it was a relatively thoughtful documentary. Four of five stars. It didn't attack individuals, but it could have been less tongue-in-cheek. Honestly, I think that atheists would be more widely-accepted if they stuck to the facts and presented them outright instead of placing them in a cheeky narrative. But I will stick by my four-star rating because it brought up the most salient arguments against Christianity, presented actual facts (with references), and didn't paint the Christians interviewed with the crazy brush.
My favorite atheist work is still Richard Dawkins'
The God Delusion. It's brutal. I wish Dawkins would stop being a scientist every now and then and consider the people who believe in the things he dissects, but it's the most thorough book I can think of--and it's less brutal than some of the books it gets shelved with in bookstores. I respect it for its factual value, I guess. It helps that I've heard Dawkins speak in person and met him briefly, I'm sure; his presentation was far more human and gentle than his book and I thought he was rather charming and polite.
My choice to call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist came about in college. I entered college an atheist, but studying philosophy softened my anti-Christian sentiments. And I don't mean that I was ever against Christians as individuals; it's the institution and the misinformation it spreads that disgusted me.
Further history on my experience with religion is probably necessary here. First, Christianity is my target solely because I was raised in the faith, took it seriously, read the Bible, and did everything I could to become a Christian at heart. I don't want to say anything against religions that I'm only vaguely knowledgeable about and haven't experienced first-hand.
I was born into an extremely moderate Christian family. My father was a Methodist (not practicing) and my mother was a Lutheran (of the Christmas and Easter variety). My grandparents on my mother's side, however, were vigorous enough in their beliefs to be considered properly moderate. I was baptized in the Lutheran church because my mother, while not an active Christian, was Christian enough to insist upon that (and, of course, my grandparents wanted me baptized in their faith).
I attended Sunday School with great irregularity until some point in elementary school. I started going to the Christian summer camp; I took Sunday School just as seriously as school (which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with my devotion to academics, was very serious). I sang the songs, read the Bible, tried to understand, and tried
so hard to believe in what I was being taught. I wanted to believe in the caring God and gentle Jesus that my church told me about. I wanted to believe in heaven and forgiveness.
Some of this wanting was due, I'm sure, to my tendency to overanalyze everything. When I really thought about what the church was telling me, I kept finding inconsistencies and evidence that God was maybe not so caring and that hell was, perhaps, a real place that I would go for my lack of belief. I was too shy to put any of my questions forth; in retrospect, I don't think they would have been answered to my satisfaction even if I had been bolder. I was hung up on the significant difference between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God; I was bothered by the assertion in the Bible that it's forgivable to not believe in Jesus but damnable to doubt the Holy Spirit. I was nervous when
Jesus Christ Superstar made more of an impact on me than any readings or lessons had.
I also wanted to believe because I was depressed. I'm using that word loosely in this case since I wasn't "formerly diagnosed" (what does that even mean) with chronic melancholic depression until the age of fourteen, but I was never happy, took very little joy in anything, and had a hard time conceptualizing the future as it applied to me because I didn't like the thought of still being around in The Future.
One thing that my Lutheran church--I don't want to generalize and say that all Christians or even all Lutherans are taught the same things, since they're not--pushed was the notion that accepting God and Jesus was the way to peace and joy. I wanted peace and joy. It seemed so simple! Believe and be happy!
I remember one summer camp experience--it must have been in middle school--where I thought I was on the verge of believing. There was a terrible thunderstorm, but it wasn't terrible enough for us to leave our tents for the safehouse. The other girls in my tent were in various states of panic. I wasn't. I've liked storms for as long as I can remember, and I was watching the lightning. It was a fierce and beautiful electrical storm and, watching the lightning and listening to the thunder, I felt this strange calm. I thought that it was finally the peace I had been promised if I believed.
But I couldn't hold on to the feeling. Confirmation began and I grew more and more skeptical. The more I studied, the less what I was being taught--the less Christianity itself--made sense. I read about the history of Christianity on my own time and couldn't understand why Jesus, if he was so significant, didn't have any actual biographers. I didn't know why the gospels contradicted each other and I couldn't find an answer in any books except for--surprise!--my first atheistic book. I don't even remember what it was or who it was by, but it had explanations for my questions. It also talked about other religions and I was immediately fascinated by all of the other Jesus-like gods that predated the savior I'd been taught about.
I declared myself an atheist shortly after I was confirmed, but only to myself and my mother. Atheism seemed to involve a lot of commitment and it was very frowned upon (welcome to the Midwest). I'm an indecisive individual, so the "atheist" title wasn't bandied about. I even went to church and took notes on the things I found questionable so I could look into them later.
Throughout high school, I did a lot of theological reading. Egyptian gods, Grecian gods, Hindu gods. I read about Judaism and Islam and their relationships to each other and to Christianity. I didn't encounter any other pro-atheist books since I was simply going for facts, but I did feel slightly better about my own skepticism.
And then college hit. I didn't declare a major until my junior year, but I was advised to take classes that interested me and those were invariably in the liberal arts college. I went into college fascinated by psychology, literature, and thinking in general (I was also very interested in biology and cosmology, but, as my interests were so varied, I thought it wise to focus on the ones that would work together. If only someone had told me how much grief I'd get for going the way of humanities!). I fell in with the "philosophy" crowd, where atheism was the norm. I dropped psychology with nine credit hours to go until I would have had my B.A. in that field once I took a very philosophical class on neurology where the professor admitted what no other psychology professors were willing to admit: they call psychology a science, but it's a science that's based largely on conjecture.
Literature and philosophy it was.
I started to question my position as an atheist around my junior year. I had, by that time, met Dawkins and taken all of the theological/philosophical classes that were offered, and I just wasn't was sure as my fellow philosophers. Atheism is itself a stance--a stance that there isn't a god. On what basis? There was no way, in my mind, to conclusively prove that some kind of divine something-or-other
didn't exist. I was baffled by my peers' acceptance of atheism when we were taught in all of our classes to think critically and analyze and pick apart and seek truth, if truth existed.
To be fair, I was the only person in philosophy (and in the English department) with a concentration on Medieval and Renaissance studies, so I did fall out of line with the modern atheists. My favorite philosophers were Plato (so mainstream, I know) and Boethius. I also loved metaphysics and contemplating things with no known answers. (Needless to say, I was typically the odd man out in the classes where we were expected to take a position on an issue and argue it to the death. Do good and evil exist? How am I supposed to side on that? Sophie's choice? They're both terrible. I respect you, strict Utilitarianism, but we aren't meant to be.) I liked seeing both sides of an issue and, usually, once I could see both sides, I decided that both sides had merit and ended up undecided. That's fine in metaphysics and ancient philosophy. Not so much in other courses.
Plato's Apology was my favorite. "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing." That's a convenient paraphrase of a more accurate translation (which I pulled from Wiki, but it sounds very close to the one provided by the book that my Greek-speaking teacher swore by):
"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
I generally cut out the "I am wiser" part from my thinking because I think wisdom is too subjective, but this is what really convinced me to be openly agnostic. It made me feel that my position in most philosophical debates ("Seriously, there's no objective truth here! How can I pick a side on anything when we can't even trust our perception of reality?") was justified.
I did try to explain the benefits of agnosticism as I saw them to my fellow philosophers. The ones who weren't exactly my friends dismissed me outright; my friends respected my devotion to knowing nothing, but decided that they'd go crazy if they didn't convince themselves that they knew a few things. (With my friends, the discussion went beyond agnosticism.) The three professors I respected the most had no problems with my indecisiveness as long as I could provide a compelling argument for remaining undecided in my papers.
This is also around the time when I found myself particularly drawn to the Dharmic religions--something that came bout after I began meditating to reduce stress. Being me, I had to go and do some independent research on meditation, which led me to the religions previously mentioned (and others, but those were the two that stood out). I adopted Buddhism (you can be any religion you like and still practice Buddhism!) and took a liking to the symbolism and imagery in Hinduism. Jainism also struck me, but the physical impossibility of being true to it baffled me and scared me away. The concept of "om" (or "aum," if you prefer) in all of these was... I don't know. The sound of the universe. Learning about the sacred sound sparked a mini epiphany.
The fact that om is all over Vedantic literature didn't discourage me from latching on to this in particular. My name is Veda,
om appears in the Vedas...
And that is the long version of how I became an agnostic with Buddhist philosophies.
The draw of agnosticism, to me, is largely in it's lack of confrontation. Atheists can be just as bad religious extremists (I would argue that Atheism is its own religion, but my philosophy friends and Bill Maher wouldn't appreciate that), and documentaries and books that are pro-atheist tend to be too confrontational for my liking. The one I watched today, "The God Who Wasn't There," is one of the gentler ones. I do enjoy Maher's
Religulous, primarily for its humor and the adorable ex-Vatican-priest who is interviewed (he's so adorable). I don't agree with Maher on a lot of fronts and he can be too cutting for my liking.
Which is why I like being an agnostic.
I don't know. Yes, the burden of proof is on religious folk, but the fact that they can't prove their beliefs to be true doesn't exclude the possibility of
something existing. Likewise, it doesn't prove that something exists at all. We're very limited in our knowledge of the universe and I'm not certain enough to claim to know anything (that's on a purely philosophical level; I claim to know things all the time when I'm operating in The Real World).
I also feel that agnosticism, overall, is less critical of others. As long as no one is hurting anyone with their beliefs, they're welcome to them as far as I'm concerned. (It's not harmful, but getting in my face and trying to convert me does irritate me. Sidenote.)
That said, I do have some concerns about Christianity and its influence on America, but that's more political than philosophical and I've typed quite enough.
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