From the IAmAnAtheist feedback form:
I don’t visit often, but find I enjoy what I read whenever I do. I like your perspective and find myself agreeing nearly 100% of the time. I’m sure I would enjoy a long conversation about all the topics and would hope I could contribute as much as I gain.
I, too, am an atheist… but not an anti-theist. I believe there are people who get a lot from their faith and may be happier, healthier, better people as a result. As much as I’d like them to see the absence of logic in their faith, I’d rather have them be happy… and it is VERY rare to convert theists or atheists in my observation. Of course, I don’t know that taking someone’s faith would necessarily take their happiness or even part of it… but I don’t know that it won’t.
I agree with Richard Dawkins and others who cite the damaging effects of religion, but I’d be hesitant to take it away… even if we could. You argue effectively that atheists can be just as moral or more or less than theists, but I believe there are some theists who are ONLY moral because of their faith and I’d hate to take that away and unleash their immoral tendencies on the world.
But none of that is directly related to my question. Science has observed (or theorized) that nature has a way of balancing itself. I like that idea… it gives me hope in the event that global warming becomes critical. It’s possible that nature will find a way to balance the effect… Of course, it could be that nature eliminates most or all of humanity to do so, but let’s hope not. Of course, it’s certainly POSSIBLE that global warming isn’t the threat that some believe, just as it’s possible that we may find a way to reverse the effect. I digress. Back to the “balance” theory. I believe it’s possible that there is a generative force behind nature that keeps things in balance… maybe even an “intelligent designer” that created the balance in the first place. I think if such a force exists, that it isn’t any of the deities that theists believe in, but instead a force beyond our current comprehension… perhaps beyond anything we could EVER understand. And it might be that force that inspired the inventors of the deities in the world to create their gods.
I realize that doesn’t sound very atheistic, but as much as I enjoy the theories (and evidence) of evolution, it’s hard to grasp that the “balance” is random. Why did we evolve? Why is there life at all? These questions are always asked and I don’t believe any of us have the answer. But for now, I’ll settle for any wisdom that could help me let go of this theory of a godlike force.
I agree with you completely that there are people who are happier because of their faith. This is part of the reason that I generally am not anti-religion, but anti-bad-reasoning. I think that if people get used to reasoning well, they will tend to either grow away from religion gradually enough that they have time to find alternative means of dealing with life’s problems, or they will remain religious because it makes them happy but dull the harm that often comes with unexamined religious thinking.
I am not a huge fan of Dawkins myself, and I agree with you that there are some people who are moral only because of their religion. However, I’d wager a guess that this is not as many people as you might think. In my experience, people are much more likely to display religious morality only when it is convenient, use religion as a justification for what I would consider immoral acts, or behave differently than they would preach that others should behave. A rule of thumb I use is that if your moral system wouldn’t ever compel you to do something you wouldn’t want to do otherwise, then it’s probably incorrect, and I’ve seen far too many people pick and choose religious teachings to reach a desired end or turn to religious texts for justification instead of advice. In a nutshell, I think that religious people are, on average, no more or less moral than non-religious people, and just as likely as non-religious people to believe that they are moral. I think humanity in general has a lot of work to do in the morality department.
Now let’s get to your real question.
Imagine you are standing with a large bucket brimming with water in your hands and a smaller bucket on the ground braced between your feet so that it won’t move. Standing straight, you turn the bucket in your hands over as quickly as possible, aiming for the bucket between your feet. Water will plunge through the air, splash across your shoes, douse the ground, and fill the small bucket on the ground. If you stand there for a moment, staring at the water in the little bucket, something amazing will happen — the surface of the water will ripple for a bit and then still, becoming as smooth as glass. The chaos of falling water has resulted in something neat, calm, and organized.
What made the surface of the water so smooth? It would seem silly to say that God did it. It might sound better to say that some “balancing force” did it. It might even be tempting to ascribe intelligence and will to that force, considering how perfectly it made the water conform to the inside of the bucket and smoothed the surface of the water. It’s part of the human condition that we look for an intelligence behind any complicated occurrence that we don’t understand and seek patterns that may hint at living beings, but doing so often makes us walk right past sufficient explanations while searching for ones that “feel right.”
In this case, the balancing force is such a simple thing that it sounds just as foolish as calling calm water an act of God. The balancing forth is, in simple terms, math.
For most people, this is a boring, unsatisfying, explanation. It’s also completely sufficient for our purposes.
Given the laws of nature, math compels balance. Nature abhors a vacuum, rocks roll downhill, and the mathematics of consistent natural laws compel balance.
But that’s not all there is to it.
There’s one more element in this equation that many people ignore: the human mind. Our minds seek balance and regularity. We focus on the smooth water in the bucket and call it a wonder while ignoring the splashes of water all around us and the dampness of our shoes. Any time nature creates order in one place, it makes a mess somewhere else, whether it be excess heat, storms of solar wind, or the corpses on which every being that has ever evolved stands. Order really is a miracle of sorts, but it’s a miracle the mathematics tells us to expect, and it’s one we only notice because we’re looking for it.
I’d say that what created humanity’s deities is not any real work behind the scenes, but humanity’s need to seek out these islands of order, our compulsion to look for answers, and our distaste for accepting “I don’t know” as an acceptable solution to any problem.
Touching on your final, brief points:
“it’s hard to grasp that the ‘balance’ is random”: Perhaps that’s because it isn’t random. Nature plays by rules, and rules can turn random input into ordered output. If you’ll pardon a poor analogy, a game of Monopoly is set in motion by random rolls of dice, but in the end, it’s an orderly (if sometimes overlong and frustrating) thing.
“Why did we evolve?”: That depends on what question you are asking. If you’re asking what the reason behind humanity’s existence is, then you’re assuming a creator and I’d say we evolved for no reason. If you’re asking why humans evolved instead of something else, I’d say that it’s because that’s how it happened to work out and we should make the most of what our ancestors perished to create.
“Why is there life at all?”: This is another double question. Either there is no reason or Earth was lucky enough to be amicable to the formation of living things.
These aren’t profound answers, and they may do nothing to fulfil your emotional needs, but they have three things going for them: they are sufficient, they are plausible, and they are most likely true.
I hope this has been of some help to you. Thank you for writing.
