Recently on Daily Kos I got into a long discussion (argument) with an atheist about the possibility of God. Think it pretty well distills my point of view (as well as the point of view of the hardened skeptic) so I’m posting it here. The discussion began in a post about 2012 – no doubt sarcastic and dismissive.  I’m not a great believer in 2012 being the End of All Things, but I still think it’s an interesting concept. I am always struck by the cynicism about any type of esoteric ideas on a site that’s the epicenter of liberal thought.  So I wrote:

God how I hate the condescension about spirituality here. Is the world going to end in 2012? Likely not. Is the concept of humans evolving to a new type of consciousness an interesting one? Yes.

A poster responded,

Since every “new layer” of spirituality so far has never been much more than another coat of paint on the structure of Stupid, I think the condescension is warranted.

Every religious person believes things that are as dumb and unprovable as the Mayan 2012 “apocalypse.” It’s just that most successful religions put a lot of those things in places and functions inaccessible to living humans. We normally avoid attacking such ideas in deference to everyone’s freedom to believe anything that doesn’t actively harm his or her neighbor, but if you do start the conversation, don’t expect to be treated gently.

I responded,

Atheism is unprovable. I actually think such an outright denial of spiritual issues shows as much willful ignorance as “the structure of stupid.”

My point of view: it’s a very big universe and humans’ current sense of perception is very limited. To not be open to the possibility of something else is – I don’t know – really fucking boring.

Here’s where it gets more interesting. I got into a long drawn-out dialog with an atheist that lasted well after the post had lost any more commenters. I’m posting our dialog here as Atheist and Believer. “Believer” brings to mind someone with unquestioning faith and that’s not really me, but I will admit that I want esoteric ideas to be true, just as the other commenter seems to want no existence of God.

A: Are you open to the possibility of atheism being on the money?

B: Of course.

A: What criteria do you use to determine which might be the right, or at least, more likely creed to be correct?

B: I can’t possibly have a criteria to say, “OK, now God has been sufficiently proven or disproven,” because there’s too much we don’t know right now – about both perspectives – to make a definitive statement. Until we’re able to travel to the 16th multiverse and see what exists there, we might be more informed. Right now, we’re not. My bias is my own enjoyment in exploring spiritual issues, rather than discounting them. I guess intuition plays a fair role, as does hope – which some might say clouds my judgment.

A: So, all beliefs of all kinds are equal in your vie? Belief in the Tooth Fairy, in Xenu and Thetans, in Zeus, in Jehovah, in Jesus, in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in Batman, in Harry Potter, in alien abductions and cattle mutilations, in vaccines causing autism, in 9/11 being an inside job and in flouride in the water being a Jewish plot to poison America – as well as in the nonexistence of gods or supernatural phenomena – which you called “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”?

I ask about criteria, because you say, “atheism is unproven”.

What belief of yours is “proven”, and, if none of them are, why are you so sure atheism is “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”?

If you don’t have any criteria to determine what is real and what is not, what is likely and what is not, what is consistent with what we know and what is not, then how do you decide on anything?

B: I didn’t say anything approaching that. I’m just saying you can’t make any definitive statements about the existence or non-existence of God. Sure, some things are more provable than others. But we’re not talking about the tooth fairy, we’re talking about God – and I think agnosticism makes a hell of a lot more sense.

And the term “flying spaghetti monster” is a perfect example of the kind of cynicism I’m talking about. The subtext is: if you entertain the thought of any kind of God, you’re a fucking idiot.

I’m sure atheism is more boring than theism because IF God exists and we can access it/harness it/whatever doesn’t this make life more “fun” than a world where it doesn’t? It increases life’s possibilities – atheism decreases it.

A: What is the difference in terms of probability of existence, between the tooth fairy and “God”? And which God is more likely – there are thousands of different versions of hundreds of different dieties? Are you agnostic about the tooth fairy? If not, why are you agnostic about God?

If anything, there is less evidence of “God” than of a tooth fairy. At least the tooth fairy leaves some physical evidence behind, even though adults usually accept the natural explanation that it is their parents leaving the coin, rather than a magical, invisible flying being?

How is that less credible than whatever your concept is of “God”? I ask not snarkily, but seriously. You make an assertion that one is more likely than the other, I ask, why? To me, the most rational position is skepticism, and it makes a lot more sense not to believe in the infinite number of things that do not exist, than to be agnostic toward all of them.

And, to single out one, just because it is a popular belief, for agnosticism, while disbelieving in all others (including all other versions of gods, like Zeus and Xenu) doesn’t seem rational at all. It is no more than the fallacy of argument from popularity.

History has taught us that just because a belief is widespread, doesn’t mean it is credible. Is that not so?

B: This would take a book to write but good questions. All I can say is my research into quantum theory, psychedelics tapping into other realms – which being a pure physical hallucination or something else is up for argument – the size of the universe, near death experiences… Yes, I’ll admit – I’m a little credulous, but I find the implications for these things too interesting to cast aside.

The tooth fairy doesn’t count – that’s a story. Let’s not bring religion into this either – the storybook versions of God. I’m interested in the actual concept – a Theory of Everything that could perhaps incorporate a spiritual underpinning.

Equating the Tooth Fairy – or any other fictional construct – with God is discounting the pages and pages of actual research on the potential of God’s existence by non-hacks and non-charlatans. For instance, books like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind_of_God.

I like this from Tolstoy: “Belief that everything originates in ‘matter’ is as silly as a belief in the Trinity.”

A: How does one conduct research on potential existence? And what is the outcome of that research? If no evidence has actually found of God’s existence, then pages of pages would suggest that the hypothesis has not stood up to research.

Can you point to a single citation – I’m not asking for you to write a book, nor to cite “pages and pages” of this alleged research – that provides a scintilla of evidence of the existence of a God?

And, if not, why is that belief any more credible than any other belief of any kind in anything? What research have you conducted in to quantum theory or psychedelics that is in any way relevant to belief in a God?

Then you say,

Let’s not bring religion into this either – the storybook versions of God. I’m interested in the actual concept – a Theory of Everything that could perhaps incorporate a spiritual underpinning.

That’s very interesting, but

1. atheism is about lack of belief in a God;
2. you called atheism “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”;
3. why would a Theory of Everything need to incorporate a “spiritual underpinning”, whatever that means, any more than the theory of relativity, of gravity, of evolution, or any other scientific theory?

You are aware of the fact that the scientific method has not found any evidence whatsoever of the existence of any kind of “spiritual underpinning” to anything, and no “theory” in science depends on it or even recognizes it as either necessary or real.

As Laplace apocryphally said to Napoleon, when he explained the motion of the planets without reference to God, “there is no need for that hypothesis.”

What role would this “spiritual underpinning” play? What would it explain that could not be explained by natural causes? It is a completely arbitrary, blind belief – precisely the kind of “willfully ignorant”, “fucking boring” thing you called atheism.

B: What can I say, I find the evidence compelling. I pointed to a book earlier. Fascinating stuff. No, it hasn’t proven anything, but Sam Harris hasn’t proven the non-existence of God either.

Take the fucking out of fucking boring, and all I’m saying is atheism is more one-dimensional than the alternative. The fact that God has yet to be proven using our current scientific method means perhaps that our tools of measurement are limited – which is why I think psychedelics have possibilities as a new tool of research: a different kind of microscope. DMT: The Spirit Molecule is fascinating as well – http://www.rickstrassman.com/DMT – a sober-minded and scientific account.

If God does exist – and it’s possible for us to tap into that “infinite” power because God is part of our own consciousness – then this has other implications beyond just what would be proven by a new scientific theory. Another book could be written about what this implies.

I mentioned religion because too often people mention the corruption of religion when defining their atheism. So it’s “Sarah Palin is why I don’t believe in God.” They have nothing to do with each other.

A: I don’t want to offend you. You have a very different worldview than mine, and the snarky comments can be very cutting and dismissive. But, I must ask, what makes you think that psychedelic drugs have any ability to reveal anything useful? If I cross my eyes, my vision is altered in a way that makes the world look different, but it isn’t a different “dimension”; it’s just a misperception of the world around me. The same world I was looking at before I crossed my eyes.

Similarly, if I take a powerful hallucinogen, it may screw up my visual cortex and cause me to see something different, just as crossing my eyes did. But again, it’s just a perception of the exact same physical world around me. Only now, I’m perceiving it (even more) poorly (than I usually do).

B: That’s why I said earlier that the veracity of psychedelic experience is up for argument. I can’t say I have limitless experience with different psychedelics, so I’m relying on the research of very smart people: Huxley, Strassman, Pinchbeck, Grof, others. It comes back to intuition again and many people say that they feel they have entered a different universe – it’s not just a fabrication of the brain, not just chemistry.

Given that we can’t travel the universe yet, traveling consciousness is something that should be open to serious study. We don’t know what may exist in other dimensions – or how to get there – but we do have some proof that there are other dimensions. Everything I believe is based on the possibility and the implications of that possibility. Including things like UFOs – if we’re going to get really far out. Who knows how an advanced intelligence a billion years more advanced than us might travel or appear to us. “What if” is so fascinating to me that I keep looking.

I also think skepticism is healthy but can also be a closed circuit because people come to a new idea with a preconceived notion about what is and what isn’t real and then look for clues to support that worldview. My preconceived notion is obviously being open to fringe ideas – perhaps to a fault – but skepticism can see fault even before further study.

Many new scientific ideas were considered fringe blasphemy at first. They jailed Copernicus. This started as a comment about how a liberal site is actually fairly conservative when it comes to ideas like this. A disbelief in God may be more reasonable, given our lack of firm proof, but there’s a whole lot more out there to be discovered.

A: You reveal a misunderstanding of skepticism. How many of those people are neurophysiologists, neurobiologists, neurochemists? We know that in many instances what people “feel” is an error of interpretation of sensory input.

An amputee “feels” an itch on a missing limb.

A dehydrated person lost in the desert “sees” an oasis, can even “smell” the water.

We know that we can generate a whole range of “spiritual” experiences in a laboratory, by applying magnetic fields or electrical impulses to specific regions of the brain. We can induce a feeling of “divine presence,” of being “out of body,” of ecstasy, fear, etc.

When you bring up Copernicus as evidence that skepticism equals closed-mindedness, you are misunderstanding the nature of scientific inquiry. First of all, the primary objections to Copernicus came from religious followers, not scientists (same with Galileo, same with Darwin, etc., etc).

Second, skepticism is an essential part of the scientific method. without it, there is no science. Skepticism is not rejection of the new; it is application of rigorous, consistent standards to the new – standards that have proven effective in weeding out false from valid assertions.

Third, failure to embrace every new idea is actually a virtue of science, not a failing. Science is about avoiding the error of believing false beliefs, not about failing to believe something out there that might be true. If it is true, in the scientific sense, then eventually the evidence will prove it so.

As I’ve said numerous times, there are zero examples of a supernatural explanation replacing a natural one, while the entire history of the past 200 years in particular, have been an accelerating process of replacing supernatural explanations with natural ones.

There is simply no evidence to support what you choose to believe.

Believe it if you will, but don’t pretend it is grounded in any kind of rational, scientific approach. It is just as arbitrary and irrational as any religious dogma.

Finally, to put this back in the context of a political and policy discussion forum – What we need is more skepticism in our society, not less. We need to train our citizens to apply rigorous and consistent scientific methods, aka critical thinking, in evaluating the claims of politicians against their performance, and the ideals of an ideology against the reality of its consequences.

Skepticism in citizens is an unalloyed good. It doesn’t reject hope or new ideas or better things; it just says, as we used to say about the Soviets, “trust – but verify.”

B: Yes, but “Flying spaghetti monster” et al. reveals a bias of skepticism, a closed-mindedness. As I said, skepticism is good, but it can be corrupted by fanaticism like anything. For some, skepticism is a belief system, which is narrow. Disbelieving before study even occurs – not saying you do that, but some do.

I’m all for the scientific method. I just think our current measuring instruments are limited and other answers are still out there. And regarding the “true” nature of psychedelic experience – that’s why it needs rigorous scientific study. Note: I pointed you to Dr. Rick Strassman, a scientist, and not Timothy Leary. The same goes for UFOs – universally ridiculed. But – my God – the implications are so astounding that it should be treated seriously.

Copernicus lived in a different time, but right now scientists do not have the freedom to explore some of the more fringe subjects for fear of losing funding. So there is a sort of “religious” kind of dogma dictating what can and cannot be subjected to scientific inquiry.

Curious, though, about the evidence that there isn’t a God. Aside from the fact that people mistreat each other, because that’s just one definition of what God could be: a benevolent, guiding presence. Think that’s a bit too easy. Just because science is revealing the vast complexity of the universe on its own does not mean some kind of divinity is not also at play. And science has yet to disprove all supernatural phenomena. It could – that might be the Theory of Everything – but we’re not there yet.

A: Straw man. You keep asserting that claims about supernatural phenomena, about UFOs, about psychedelic experience, have not been studies scientifically.

That simply is not true – in fact, these are among the most studied claims of all unsubstantiated claims – by scientists all over the world. Billions of dollars have been spent on research, funded by the military, funded by government science operations, funded by private eccentrics, funded by foundations.

All claimed evidence has failed to prove valid. Either anecdotes can’t be replicated, or natural explanations are readily available, or evidence was faked. It’s simply dishonest to claim these things have not been researched. Scientists reject them because they have been so exhaustively researched, and because evidence is so breathtakingly absent.

Forget scientists for the moment – millions of lay people over the years have tried their best to prove their beliefs, to capture reliable evidence of their beliefs.

They have failed.

There is NO evidence. At which point, the rational approach is NOT to keep a perpetually gullible approach, but to say, “time to move on to more interesting things.”

B: Now we’re going somewhere else. This isn’t true, especially re: UFOs -

All claimed evidence has failed to prove valid.

I don’t know how much you’ve read about the subject, but there are a huge number of cases that can’t be explained in rational terms. Some things have been explained, but all? There’s just no way to make that kind of blanket statement. World militaries have admitted that much of the phenomenon is unexplainable. To say there’s NO evidence does reveal the bias of a skeptic I was talking about. There’s absolutely no way you can make this definitive statement.

Check out Jacques Vallee’s journals. My favorite writing on the subject.

A: “There are a huge number of cases that can’t be explained in rational terms.”

In which case, why is that evidence in favor of UFOs?

Perhaps it’s psychic fields projected by mice, who are the true overlords of the universe?

Perhaps it’s sentient gas beings posing as weather balloons?

Perhaps it is the World Government poisoning the air with psychic fumes?

Or, perhaps, like the bazillion of claimed cases that have been shown to be the product of natural causes, illusory errors of interpretation, brain farts, or swamp gas, the small percentage of anecdotes for which we don’t yet have any evidence either way, may also be the result of natural causes, illusory errors of interpretation, brain facts or swamp gas.

One can’t expect to have a scientific researcher with measuring equipment on hand every time some claims to have seen funny lights in the sky.

Until there is clear evidence – and there is no reason that there would not be, if the phenomenon were real (and this applies to “God” as well), there is no reason to ascribe it to miraculous causes.

That is just the archaic “Goddidit” superstition of pre-scientific humanity. Anything we didn’t yet have a cause for, we ascribed to gods throwing bolts of lightning down to the Earth, or demons making people sick, or witches cursing villagers, or black people contaminating white people, or atheists bringing hurricanes down on American while prayer deflects (oh, wait, that last one is a current belief, and most of the others are still believed to one extent or another, even by “Westerners” like Sarah Palin with her witchdoctors).

There is no evidence of alien visitations, of angels or fairies or crystal power or dead spirits speaking to us or psychedelic trips being anything other than chemical hallucinations or gods in the heavens or anywhere else. None.

When you have some, come talk. Until then, your belief is no different than Sarah Palin’s – utterly irrational and arbitrary.

I say to you today, I am God. Prove me wrong. Wait, you don’t believe me? Why? Can you prove otherwise?

You know that trouble you had sleeping the other night? That was me.

You know that time you fell and hurt yourself as a child? That was me.

Everything you believe and attribute to other gods was actually me, using squirrel proxies and snail slime trails to intoxicate your cerebral corpus colossus and bamboozle your beezlebub so you’d think it was some other god.

Prove me wrong. Prove I am not your god.

And, since you cannot prove it, I command you to stop believing in all other things but me.

You’re not a closed-minded “skeptic”, are you? You’re not a priori rejecting what could be the greatest revelation of your life, are you?

I am your God.

Prove me wrong.

B: I don’t know how to respond to this one. There IS evidence. Not conclusive, but quantum theory didn’t exist 100 years ago, now it does. Our total conception of reality was rewritten. That can happen again and perhaps the new science will explain the old mysteries. I’ll be happy when it does.

But you are revealing your bias outright. What I see is: you don’t WANT to believe in these things because it gives you a little jolt of superiority to think that you’re rational and those with faith aren’t. What this boils down to is misguided faith in your own perspective and depth of knowledge. In fact, you are determining yourself to be God by making such sweeping proclamations as if you have the answers to so many unanswerable questions. That to me sounds more like Sarah Palin than someone who’s saying: the jury’s still out.

All I’m arguing for is the possibility. Not the existence, the possibility. It’s hardly a fundamentalist position.

A: Quantum theory has no bearing on either god or spiritual dimensions. None.

All I did was present you with the absurdity of saying that “God” is a credible assertion because I can’t prove it to be false.

My absurd claim was meant to illustrate that “God” is not a privileged assertion. Just like any other assertion, it does not need to be believed, or even thought credible, in the absence of any evidence, just because someone uttered it.

“God” is no more credible than saying that my left over candy from Halloween created the universe.

“Spirits” are not more credible than saying that the squirrel outside your window is controlling your thoughts.

That is what you refuse to consider.

That the only reason you think god, or spiritual dimensions, are any more credible than any other unsubstantiated assertion, is because it is popular, held by many people.

There is nothing that makes it any more credible than any other claim.

B: Well, I think there is more proof for God than there is that candy created the universe. So that’s where it does come down to faith for me: believing in something not yet fully proven, given some compelling evidence available. And yes, I think the magical complexity of quantum/string theory is part of that evidence.

I don’t believe in any of this because of its popularity. And in fact I was raised by some pretty militantly unmystical people. But, yes, I do think there’s something to be said for the power of collective belief and what that might signify. I don’t discount Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes either. That said, I think my perspective is a little less deluded than your run-of-the-mill religious zealot.

Posted on November 15, 2009 at 8:20 am
http://www.theamericanbookofthedead.com/2009/11/15/atheist-and-believer/
Categorized under: Blog
Tags: Atheism, God, Psychedelics, UFOs