‘Tis The Season For… What?
Posted on | December 22, 2007 at 11:17 am | 24 Comments
Pet Peeve of the Day: A certain religious family member, whom I will not mention by name, asked me a question via e-mail a little while ago when I put The Portable Atheist on my Christmas list. The question was “Just wondering – If you’re an athiest [sic] who claims not to believe in God, then why are you celebrating his birthday?” My reply was “I like to keep an open mind”. But the more I thought about it, the more the question irritated me. So, was this family member saying that non-Christians are not allowed to celebrate the holidays? Does that mean I should work on Christmas Day? Does that mean that members of other religions are not able to enjoy or celebrate the trappings and meanings of the holidays? Are the Jews going to have to move Hanukkah to a different month? Does this holiday belong only to Christians? Can I not celebrate the intent of the holiday, which I was led to believe had something to do with goodwill toward men and the spirit of giving and all that? Can I not believe in the teachings of Jesus if I don’t believe in his supernatural origins? Am I to be excluded because I tolerate and respect your beliefs but you don’t extend me the same courtesy? No wonder I’m so cynical about the holidays.
Perhaps the family member is right and I’m just a damn hypocrite. I should not partake in any holiday festivities or traditions, and I should not take the day off from work. Believe me, I have considered it. But If I did that, then I would catch all sorts of crap from the family and others about what a Scrooge I am. And I’d be very lonely and even more depressed. I can’t win.
I admit I’ve been doing a lot of reading and viewing about religion and God and theology lately. I think I may even know more about Christianity than the family member quoted above. In that spirit, I’m interested in how my friends and readers stand on the belief scale. If you would be so kind as to answer this little poll, I would much appreciate it. Please don’t vote more than once from different IP addresses. I promise to respect the believers among you and not ridicule or make fun. This is just for my own edification. Thanks!
[12/31/07: Poll closed. Please see this post for the results. Here's the original poll question and choices:]
Which answer below most closely matches your beliefs about the existence of a supreme intelligence?
- I believe in a personal God, one who in addition to having created the universe, takes an interest in individuals, hears and answers prayers, is concerned with sins and transgressions, and passes judgement.
- I believe in a God who created the universe, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe, one who does not intervene in human affairs.
- I do not believe in a God per se, except as a metaphoric name for the forces and laws that bind the universe together.
- I do not believe in any kind of God.
Jogged Today: Nope, snow on ground again.
Today’s Weight: 164.4 lbs
Lunch Yesterday: Medium Roast Beef Combo at Arby’s.
Latre.
Comments
24 Responses to “‘Tis The Season For… What?”
December 22nd, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
I’d sorta argue the last two are synonymous…in that when people say “God,” they usually don’t mean a metaphor. To turn that around: if you say “I believe in God – but all I mean by that is that there are forces and laws that bind the universe together,” well, who doesn’t believe in those? Any non-believers in gravity out there? I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn for you to jump off of… I guess my real point is: start defining “God” like that, and you’re no longer really talking about any sort of God that fits a reasonable definition: you’re just holding on to the notion of God without any obligations attendant thereto. It’s a bit chickenshit, in other words: such a person is afraid to let go of the concept, even though it’s nothing but an empty shell at that point.
I do sometimes wonder how many people who loudly proclaim their belief in God actually, you know, have read the Bible. There’s some weird, weird stuff in there. Then again, it could be worse: you could be the sort of literalist who actually recognizes that, say, the Bible appears to condone incest…and then tries to argue that’s okay. (That link is seriously a hoot.)
December 22nd, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
My comment is “awaiting moderation”? Hell – it’s the holidays, and I believe in excess!
About your main point: tell your religious family member that Christianity stole the date from existing religions anyway, and that you’re celebrating the solstice. You can lie and say that in fact, you dance naked in the moonlight on that night. At least I hope you’d be lying.
December 22nd, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
I guess my real point is: start defining “God” like that, and you’re no longer really talking about any sort of God that fits a reasonable definition: you’re just holding on to the notion of God without any obligations attendant thereto. It’s a bit chickenshit, in other words: such a person is afraid to let go of the concept, even though it’s nothing but an empty shell at that point.
Gee, thanks 2fs, you’ve just blown the cover off one of the things I was trying to examine with this poll… guess I shouldn’t have approved the comment after all…
December 23rd, 2007 @ 7:10 am
You can lie and say that in fact, you dance naked in the moonlight on that night. At least I hope you’d be lying.
But only because of the snow on the ground.
December 23rd, 2007 @ 6:31 am
God is supposed to fit a reasonable definition?? I guess that’s just another of those crazy anthropocentric things atheists believe in.
Celebrate whatever you want, Flasshe, for whatever reasons you want. Your relative is not forwarding the dialogue. And turn on NPR for Weekend Edition this morning – as I type they’re running a story about atheists and Christmas. It’s basic but thoughtful, from what I can hear over the kids’ constant murmur.
December 23rd, 2007 @ 9:41 am
God is supposed to fit a reasonable definition?? I guess that’s just another of those crazy anthropocentric things atheists believe in.
Well, the Bible sometimes seems intent on doing so, including attributing a lot of very human… attributes to him.
December 23rd, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
You left out an option that would match my position on the subject. But then, so does everyone else.
I think it shouldn’t matter whether there’s a God or not, you should live your life the best way you know how – either way. I don’t think there’s a name for that view, but I call it “don’tcareist”. Apart from an implicit denial of the notion that God wants worship, it doesn’t really touch on any major religion.
That said, I bet religion is like anything else – the mainstream ones are OK for most people, but if you really want to get the good stuff you have to go digging. It’ll probably turn out that a small tribe of indigenous hunter-gatherers in Outer Ecuador actually got it right all along, and the rest of us will be first against the wall when the “Great Wani-B’g[click] Whooptido” finally arrives…
December 23rd, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
You left out an option that would match my position on the subject. But then, so does everyone else.
My plan wasn’t to include every possible religious position. You were just supposed to vote for the one that most closely matches your belief. Even if your position is that you don’t care (or don’t know) if there is any kind of God, you still probably have some idea/belief about His existence.
But I agree that everyone should live their life as if it doesn’t matter.
December 23rd, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
God is supposed to fit a reasonable definition?? I guess that’s just another of those crazy anthropocentric things atheists believe in.
No – humans that use language are supposed to define their terms – but they are not free to do so without regard for the limits established by other users of language. What people mean when they say “God” has certain generally consistent characteristics: that’s what the word “God” means. If someone believes that in the middle of the eleventh night of the seventh month, in a certain circle of trees in a forest in Idaho, a blue salamander pops its head out from beneath a rock and looks directly at a particular star for exactly 3.2 seconds…well, that’s a nutty belief, but what would be nuttier is the person insisted that that event is “God.” That’s simply not the way human language uses the word “God” – any more than I can say that that event is “pepperoni.”
The laws of physics, collectively considered, is not what the word “God” designates…except for people who don’t actually believe in God but do not want to let go of the concept (for whatever reason).
Presumably, if it’s important that God exists, it’s important that a particular definition of God is being used in the making of that assertion and belief…and that the person making that statement know what that definition is. Otherwise, how could it matter? “I know God exists, but I have no idea what I mean when I say ‘God’…just that God exists” is an almost completely meaningless sentence. You can substitute “Inguwtyogukuzuq” for “God” and the sentence is exactly as meaningful.
Actually, I’ve been wondering if the real problem isn’t what people mean by the word “God”…but what they mean by the word “exist.”
December 23rd, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
What doesn’t exist is me closing my HTML italics tag properly.
I think I fixed it to be what you intended. If not, let me know.
December 23rd, 2007 @ 9:32 pm
What doesn’t exist is me closing my HTML italics tag properly.
December 23rd, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
Man created God, not the other way around. It doesn’t make him any less real.
December 24th, 2007 @ 12:56 am
You can lie and say that in fact, you dance naked in the moonlight on that night.
We sing rather than dance.
At least I hope you’d be lying.
Sorry!
December 24th, 2007 @ 5:22 am
Presumably, if it’s important that God exists, it’s important that a particular definition of God is being used in the making of that assertion and belief…and that the person making that statement know what that definition is.
From our perspective this is right on. From God’s, it may be unimportant – I doubt God needs a definition of “God”. When you write ‘That’s simply not the way human language uses the word “God”‘ I’m reading you being anthropocentric. You would say so what? My belief is incoherent to you.
December 24th, 2007 @ 11:26 am
Whether or not God exists, God isn’t participating in the question of whether God exists. So it’s irrelevant, in a sense, whether God needs a definition of God: we do.
I mean, it’s one thing to argue that God is beyond human definition; it’s another entirely to argue that, therefore, he must exist since we can’t define him (we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something we can’t define).
Perhaps another way to put this (and one aspect of what I meant when I said the definition of “exist” is more important) is: what follows from anyone’s belief in God? I believe that such-and-such a piece of music is utterly transcendent: it creates emotions and feelings in me that did not exist, could not have existed otherwise, and even if I can persuade no one else of this, even if everyone else is utterly indifferent to this piece of music, that feeling still exists…for me. I believe people believe God exists – that’s not in question. What follows from that?
The problem is that most people, it seems (certainly most religions, as Flasshe points out above in his response to Janet’s initial “anthropocentrism” comment), approach God as if they’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope: it’s all about do this, don’t do that; be this, don’t be that; we’re in and they’re out. When it’s about behavior (i.e., “morality”), it rarely seems to make any sort of argument either rational or even ethical; it simply asserts. The scariest thing in the world is a believer who says “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”: such a person apparently has never thought through the grounds of their moral behavior, and if their “God” (by which I mean, here, their church) suddenly tells them to start bombing people…well, “God said it” etc.
All of this is, of course, old news – religion’s a human institution, nothing necessarily to do with God, etc. But the moment I try to enforce my belief in, say, the transcendent character of that song I’m talking about above, am I not imposing my experience, my emotions, on someone else, and making a religion of it?
If God is truly beyond human definition, each human needs to find God for him- or herself – and there can be no religion, since everyone’s experience will differ. We certainly shouldn’t look to religion for ethical guidance. I’m not even sure we should look to it for fellowship. To me, that should come from a belief (which is my own) that fellow-feeling is an absolute necessity for any sort of ethical behavior (the key aspect of which is the recognition that others feel and experience, but not necessarily the same as you: sounds obvious, but I can’t tell you how often I run into people whose actions clearly indicate that they simply do not believe other people genuinely feel differently than they do), but then what follows from that is that for other people, a religion makes sense.
Apparently I’m arguing that one thing we mean when we say “God” is that God universally exists, not exists only for individuals. That’s the part I’m stuck on, maybe.
I’ll say more about this later – I’m off to worship Inguwtyogukuzuq (not his real name).
December 24th, 2007 @ 11:50 am
I was the very first voter on this poll, and it was weird to see something I voted for winning at 100%. Not used to winning… Looks like a tight race, now….come on # 4!!!
December 24th, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
I was the very first voter on this poll
Ah… I was wondering who that was! Po’buckra!
Looks like a tight race, now
Indeed, pretty even…
December 26th, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
As a previous commenter said, “You left out an option that would match my position on the subject.”
I can’t really vote for any of these.
December 26th, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
I can’t really vote for any of these.
Paula, please explain if you can/will. I still think that everyone’s beliefs (except perhaps for polytheists, whom I would then tell to substitute “Gods” for “God” in the answers) can be matched peripherally to one of these. Even the “not sure” people really fit into one of these categories even if they don’t admit it to themselves.
December 27th, 2007 @ 10:35 am
I have to second Paula’s second of my remark. I don’t feel I can put my name to any of the choices as worded. I don’t merely happen to lean towards the idea of “everyone should live their life as if it doesn’t matter” as you paraphrased it; it’s something I have a pretty concrete position about.
It may help to boil it down to what I mentioned in passing as the big difference between my don’t-care-ism and other people’s belief (or lack thereof): whether or not God wants us to worship. I see that as a key line of demarcation for the discussion. You offered 4 out of many distinct philosophical positions on the spectrum, but none captures my feelings accurately and I can only give firm “no” answers to two of them.
I might add that you also left very little room for dedicated agnostics in your survey. But I’m sure you’ll be forgiven, as will I for posting this insomnia-fueled rambling at 4:30am (local time)…
December 27th, 2007 @ 11:31 am
I might add that you also left very little room for dedicated agnostics in your survey.
That was intentional, as I think I’ve mentioned a few times above. The wafflers are people who just don’t want to admit what they believe. I should know – I used to be one. I still think most agnostics fit into one of the categories in the poll.
December 29th, 2007 @ 3:02 am
Well then I’ll just say this – my belief is that whether or not God exists is the wrong question to be asking.
Google tells me it was Edsger Dijkstra who first said what I feel puts it best: “The question of whether computers can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim”
Sometimes you’re looking for answers using the wrong question as a starting point.
December 29th, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
Well then I’ll just say this – my belief is that whether or not God exists is the wrong question to be asking.
Well then you can run your own poll. I’m not looking for answers, I just wanted to know how my readership fell on a certain scale.
December 31st, 2007 @ 5:09 am
> Well then you can run your own poll.
Not if I don’t have a blog and don’t much care about other people’s responses anyway, Mr. Smartguy…