…and this is a 
My story of faith
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: July 13, 2006 10:53 AM, by PZ Myers
Andy says the Washington Post is asking for personal "spiritual stories". They want it under 400 words, and they're looking for "a time of crisis that tested your faith, the person who most influenced your beliefs, a life-changing event that shaped your spiritual identity, or a religious teaching or ritual that you find especially moving." Awww, how heart-warming.
I sent mine in. I doubt that they'll accept it, so I've put a copy below the fold.
My story of faith
When I was a young man, I was a regular member of the Lutheran church. I attended Sunday services, I went to Sunday school, I was a member of the choir, I was even an acolyte -- I wore the funny robes and marched up with the minister to light the candles at the start of services. I signed up for confirmation classes and went every week. I read the Bible, I read the Lutheran catechism, I memorized the Nicene creed.
I also lived near the town library. I was there every day. I started reading Scientific American. Seriously, I'd read the whole thing, cover to cover, struggling with many of the articles, but it was worth it. I learned that the world was a wonder, and people could actually spend their lives trying to understand it. Science was like a laser that burned the superstition and empty rituals of the church out of my brain.
I suddenly realized something: in all the theological texts, in all the dogma I was committing to memory, there wasn't even the tiniest fraction of the beauty and joy and truth I could find in one short article on insect biomechanics, or cytoplasmic transport, or recreational mathematics.
I walked away from the church, unconfirmed, with no regrets, and happy that I'd replaced the burden of dusty, dead authoritarianism with participation in the living world. Apostasy tastes sweet and satisfying, and I can thank a local library and the good scientists who published in Sci Am.
Comments
I have one. It involves the "gravity well" at the science museum. I'll send it in. I think it's very touching!
Posted by: Kristine | July 13, 2006 11:02 AM
That was beautiful.
Posted by: j | July 13, 2006 11:02 AM
Thanks for admitting that your atheism is a matter of faith, PZ. Not many atheists have the guts to do that.
Posted by: Jason | July 13, 2006 11:07 AM
Just to be clear, I'm an atheist encouraging other atheists to write in, not some believer in fluffy feelgood magical myths looking to warm hearts. :)
Posted by: andy | July 13, 2006 11:08 AM
Hit counter been reading a little low Jason?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 13, 2006 11:10 AM
Jason, I think it was supposed to be ironic. Sending in a story about losing one's faith instead of a heartwarming story about a crisis that strengthed one's faith is irony.
Posted by: j | July 13, 2006 11:12 AM
I assumed no one would confuse you with a bible-thumper, Andy.
By the way, where did I "admit" that atheism was a matter of faith? The request was for a story about a test of my faith. I wrote about a time that tested my Christian faith.
It failed.
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 13, 2006 11:12 AM
I was a good little Catholic till I was 12, when I suddenly realized that the stuff I had been brought up on was no different from any other body of mythology. I've been sane ever since.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | July 13, 2006 11:15 AM
Who knows, they might publish it. They DO ask for "a life-changing event that shaped your spiritual identity, or a religious teaching or ritual that you find especially moving."
Just that yours was "moving" in a direction AWAY from religion.
Oooh, maybe we should ALL send ours in! A flood of atheism...
Posted by: kmarissa | July 13, 2006 11:15 AM
I hope some of the contributors will be inspired by the recent Johns Hopkins' study with magic mushrooms... ;)
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1682610.htm
Posted by: Hans | July 13, 2006 11:16 AM
Great story PZ, but you know it's not going to get published. The unspoken qualifier is 'but only stories that end up with you reaffirming your faith in spiritualism'. They might as well ask people to send in stories about how they fell for 419 scams, or how they joined a pyramid scheme.
Posted by: moonflake | July 13, 2006 11:17 AM
No doubt that psilocybin study will find its way into the 2nd edition of Dennett's book. ;)
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | July 13, 2006 11:18 AM
I was always an atheist, but my parents advocated religious tolerance. After reading the Bible and the Quran and talking to evangelical Christians, I abandoned religious tolerance.
Guess I have no story of faith.
Posted by: j | July 13, 2006 11:19 AM
Is it 'faith' to believe something supported by (or explicitly not contridicted by) objectively observable evidence? If the answer is 'yes' then Atheism is a Faith, if the answer is 'no' then atheism is not a faith.
Posted by: Christopher Gwyn | July 13, 2006 11:19 AM
Are you trying to DESTROY my faith in the WaPo, Moonflake?
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 13, 2006 11:21 AM
Hum diddle diddle dum. Just realized that I'm browsing from a different computer today that doesn't have the anti-troll killfile installed. I hop over and install it and begin merrily humming They Might Be Giants: "After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts. . . ."
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 13, 2006 11:23 AM
"Thanks for admitting that your atheism is a matter of faith, PZ. Not many atheists have the guts to do that."
I don't see how "Scientific American > Church", or his other point, "science is beautiful" is equal in meaning to "Atheism is a matter of faith".
Posted by: Alexander Whiteside | July 13, 2006 11:23 AM
PZ: not at all. By the way, my husband is a very rich Nigerian refugee and i am trying to find someone to help me get his money out of the country...
Posted by: moonflake | July 13, 2006 11:26 AM
I think Kmarissa has a good idea.
I would think that if they got a good number of atheists writing in about their positive 'conversion' to logic and reasoning - at the very lest it might encourage them to either publish a few or perhaps do a follow up article about the rise in atheism.
I would love to remove atheism and liberal from the current list of socially unacceptable words. We need to take our language back from the thugs that keep changing their definitions. Once we start speaking the same language again than MAYBE we can have some reasoned debate and conversations with theists and conservatives and get America back on track.
Posted by: flame821 | July 13, 2006 11:30 AM
NO, no, no ...
It's JASON and the Arguments -yes it is, no it isn't ...
( Anyone else out there come across Les Barker? ... )
Posted by: G. Tingey | July 13, 2006 11:37 AM
My problem is that I wasn't "converted" to logic and reason. I just grew up that way because my parents weren't interested in filling their child's head with Preprocessed Faith-o-Flakes. This godless-all-along attitude has stood the test of life, including the deaths of loved ones. Instead of a single conversion moment, a pointlike instant frozen on my personal timeline, I have a history of discovery. Maybe I could pick out a highlight and write it up in 400 words, but that's not really what the WaPo is asking for. . . .
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 13, 2006 11:42 AM
Jason:
Jason, thanks for conceding that faith is an inferior epistemological basis to reason.
Not that there is anything unusual in that. If theists and atheists agree on one thing, it's that faith is a pretty weak reason for believing anything.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 11:43 AM
I'd like a definition of the word "faith".
(I'm serious, I know my dictionary definition of "faith" and "belief", but I need the english native speaker's one)
Posted by: cp | July 13, 2006 11:43 AM
PZ: I have no idea if WaPo would publish it, but I could see it running as a "This I believe" segment on NPR if you shoehorned it into the format. They ran a segment by Penn Jillete that was less circumspect about his atheism. True, they probably have some kind of atheist quota going on and have not run anything similar to my knowledge. I can picture WaPo also publishing you as "token atheist." Go for it!
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 11:49 AM
"...a time of crisis that tested your faith, the person who most influenced your beliefs, a life-changing event that shaped your spiritual identity, or a religious teaching or ritual that you find especially moving..."
... and we might condescend to publish your little story IF it passes muster with the corporatized, upper-crust, white Protestant, church-attending, superior editors of the Washington Post.
Posted by: George | July 13, 2006 11:49 AM
cp:
Belief is a more general concept. I can believe that my foot will hurt if I drop a brick on it. That's not a matter of faith, but something with a substantial weight of evidence behind it (not to mention the weight of baked clay). I can believe that 2+2=4, and this one is even provable given an axiom system for the natural numbers. I have exceptionally good cause for that belief unless I want to start doubting my own rational capacity--and maybe I should, but that doesn't leave me with a lot left to go on from there.
Faith covers the set of beliefs that are not back up by anything else. Where it gets hairy is that even religious people will distinguish between "blind faith" (the bad kind that would cause you to decide it was a good idea to jump off a bridge if all your friends did it) and... err... some other kind of faith that is supposed to be good (and involves being "filled with the spirit" or some similar thing that isn't really evidence in the traditional sense, because if it were then you'd have rational belief rather than faith). OK, that's where I have to turn over the microphone to a religious person because 12 years of Catholic education never quited nailed that one down for me.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 11:59 AM
Since you brought up that earlier greasemonkey killfile script, Blake Stacey, I'll plug my version, which works on all of scienceblogs.com, on anything that hosts comments on haloscan, on most livejournal pages, on the Panda's Thumb, and on anything else I wanted to scrub trolls off of.
Posted by: Daniel Martin | July 13, 2006 12:03 PM
There you go, PZ. Trying to destroy religion...again!
Posted by: evolvealready | July 13, 2006 12:06 PM
Having been brought up by largely rational Catholics who were also either accomplished musicians or scientists, I grew up with a sorta Jesuit mindset where the spiritual and scientific co-existed peacefully. Then, when my son was two, the double whammy of Srebenica following close on the heels of McVeigh's fertilizer escapades in Oklahoma City pretty much sealed the deal for me against God. I figured any deity that either was powerless to stop senseless suffering or chose not to wasn't worth my time. Now I've joined the ranks of recovering Catholics, along with, strangely, most of those musicians and scientists who raised me in the first place.
Posted by: boltgirl | July 13, 2006 12:17 PM
Thanks for admitting that you don't know what the word "faith" means, Jason.
Posted by: Lya Kahlo | July 13, 2006 12:18 PM
Thanks for the memory. Substitute Episcopal for Lutheran, and Sci Am as a gift from my parents about 6th or 7th grade, and I have pretty much the same story. I still remember an article from the first issue, dealing with the chemical basis for firefly illumination. Some of your readers will appreciate this joke -- the chemical involved is called Luciferase.
Posted by: dd | July 13, 2006 12:28 PM
Faith means believing something that is untrue or can't be disproved.
Posted by: Hal20 | July 13, 2006 12:32 PM
Has anyone seen that bumper sticker:
God WAS my copiliot, but we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat Him
?
Posted by: CrispyShot | July 13, 2006 12:32 PM
Hal20:
Sorry, that's too restrictive. You accept something on faith if you don't have a proof but believe it anyway. That doesn't mean that it cannot be proved or refuted, just that you personally possess neither a proof nor a refutation. It also has nothing to do with whether the item in question is true. It could be true and possible to demonstrate with evidence, but if you belief it without having evidence, then your belief is a matter of faith as opposed to reason.
In practice, faith is often applied to beliefs that are either untrue or unfalsifiable, but this is not a definition.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 12:40 PM
For me, it was kind of gradual: I always kept my religiousity fairly low, with my concept of God being, ironically, secular in outlook, with him favoring the spirit of the First Amendment, among other things. Needless to say, he was opposed to his presence in the Pledge and on our monies.
Got to thinking about omnipotence: If God is incorruptible, he wouldn't really be much of a person. If God is a person, absolute power corrupts absolutely. So I dumped the omnipotence for that reason, in addition to ye olde problem of evil.
God got a large set of such downgrades over time. Then I thought to myself, "What purpose does he serve?" He was unnecessary, since materialist science covered all the big jobs just fine without him, and I didn't need some big invisible babysitter (a job he'd be opposed to, Prime Directive, and all). So, either he was on par with the Parking Space Fairy, or didn't exist. The latter was more dignified for the both of us.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | July 13, 2006 12:46 PM
I have always known gods are myths. I think it's obvious to any child unless 'converted' to religion.
My Mother (You notice I capitalize that, but not god? She is worthy of it.) was brought up in an English christian school run by nuns. She was about 9 years old. In a discussion of the fish in the sea that included pictures fisherman pulling huge catches from the ocean, she asked "What will happen once the fisherman have taken too-many fish?"
Her answer? She was beaten with a ruler across the hands until all her fingers bled. She was locked in a closet for the day without water or a break for the restroom.
How dare she question god's bounty! Evil child!
She says she remembers how clear it was to her even then that it was all fantasy and lies. She had suspected to that point, but how could so many important people be wrong? She knew that the only reason to answer her question with such abuse was because she had let a bit of the truth spill out.
She was tested against faith that day, and won. Thanks, Mom!
Posted by: Frac | July 13, 2006 12:50 PM
Thanks for the definitions. I think I'd translate "faith" and "belief" with the same word, but there would be implicit meanings according to the context.
Posted by: cp | July 13, 2006 12:51 PM
OK, since we're doing personal statements here. I consider myself an agnostic rather than atheist. That means if God wants to talk, He's got my number. Operationally speaking, this is doesn't differ significantly from being atheist, nor did being a practicing Catholic really except for having to be places to do things at certain times.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 12:53 PM
Let me add that I agree with much of what PZ wrote. Religion and science both involve many wondrous things. The difference is that in science, you don't have to devote a great deal of effort to pretending to see these wonders because they are really there and can be observed directly.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 1:05 PM
I never got agnosticism, really. I found the idea not too disimilar to thinking: well there isn't any really compelling evidence for sasquatch, or fairies, or unicorns...but ya never know! I do not believe they exist. I'm not agnostic about it. I am an a-sasquatchist, a-fairieist and a-unicornist. Also, I do not believe in god. I'm an a-theist.
Posted by: evolvealready | July 13, 2006 1:08 PM
Hey, if bigfoot wants to look me up, I'll buy him a beer. I don't really see why it matters whether I have some definitive view on bigfoot until I have to act on that view. I call this the lazy-evaluation approach to belief. I'm aware that my brain is filled with falsehoods and even contradictory beliefs, and that I'll never get rid of them all, so I focus on the ones that actually matter.
I probably wouldn't spend any money looking for bigfoot. I might go on a bigfoot finding trip if it sounded otherwise amusing, though.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 1:13 PM
PZ,
Speaking of Scientific American...I just pulled the latest issue from my mailbox! Yippee!
Posted by: evolvealready | July 13, 2006 1:13 PM
I have, and it's pretty badass.
Posted by: steve s | July 13, 2006 1:18 PM
Actually, what tested (and later ended) my faith was reading the Bible. I was a rather straight laced young Catholic, who was starting to question the Word. As a remedy some family suggested that I read the Bible. So I did. There's a passage in the OT about two young girls who can't find any suitable men, so they get their father drunk and.... You can imagine how this might have seemed to a rather straight laced Catholic. The rest of the OT was no better, in terms of the raping, the killing, the genocide.....
Between the OT and the miracles of the NT, it was over.
Posted by: No Nym | July 13, 2006 1:22 PM
Here's mine - sent to Wash Post ...
I was brought up in the established Church of England - I can still see the same church tower from my front windows, but the local vicar was something of a fundamentalist.
One day, he started preaching about the coming end-times (this was about 1960), and how there was an (unspecified) crack in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and how one small earthquake could signal the end of the World. I remember thinking "is that right? Is that true? Where's the evidence?"
Then, next week, he started on about how the PLO (who are "respectable now, but Fatah was into terrorism then ...) were the descendants of the Philistines (which I knew to be dubious) and how the Israelites were the "Children of god who would soon see the true way"
I had jewish friends at school, who nearly hurt themselves laughing when I told them of this.
About a fortnight later, I found out why my godmother, a district nurse, no longer went to church, especially that one.
She was in the congregation one day, when the same vicar started a sermon on the subject of "The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children" and she knew that there were people in the congregation who had what were then called "Mongol" (Downs' Syndrome) children, and they were looking distinctly uneasy. She stood up in the middle of his sermon, denounced him, and walked out - this had been back in 1954.
This information, and this christians' preaching certainly started me thinking on the value of religion.
Then, about a month later, he denounced evolution from his pulpit.
I stopped going about a week later, and I've not been back.
If religion rots your brain as badly as that, I wanted nothing to do with it.
I've been a lot better without the crushing burden of irrationality ever since.
^^^^^^^^^
And, since then we've had the US-led brain-dead moving in, and the Taliban, and the Irish xtians killing each other and .......
Posted by: G. Tingey | July 13, 2006 1:22 PM
"Belief is a more general concept."
to continue beating a dead (perhaps still-born) horse, it's not clear to me that the belief process we tend to think of when we use the term "faith" is as evidence-independent as you (and many others) suggest. for example, yesterday I spent a fair amount of time tracking down some of the references posted by mr vargas in an earlier post, and found them all to be lengthy discussions of the "evidence" supporting the "truth" of the bible. to reiterate (from previous comments in this fora), I view belief in X as being essentially a conditional probability (not explicitly but implicitly calculated) of the truth of X given a weighted set of input "evidence" sources. some choose as input sources SciAm articles, writing/talks by established specialists, et al; others choose religious books, assertions by jerry falwell, the manifest wonders of nature, et al; and we all apply our own weights and compare the resulting conditional probability to our own belief thresholds. ie, I see the process as much the same with similar evidence source classes but different specific sources, weights, and thresholds.
consequently, I try to be a little more accepting of the well-behaved who have "faith" (ie, evidence from sources to which I personally would assign low - typically zero - weight) because I consider that they do base their belief on evidence. it's just that I consider them to be putting unjustifiably large weights on some very questionable sources or to have some remarkably low belief thresholds.
this "idea" is my own creation based on no professional status or input, so I'll abandon in a second given credible controverting evidence, or even cogent counterargument. I've floated it several times around here, and to date no one has challenged it - perhaps, of course, because it's seen as too naive to warrant a response.
Posted by: ctw | July 13, 2006 1:22 PM
Why do so many people think that atheism is a kind of faith? Name one atheist who, upon seeing the body of Jesus Christ trace its endless orbit through our solar system, would not come to believe in the Assumption?
Seriously, atheism is about evidence. When God, or Yaweh, or Elohim, or any of his buddies from Psalm 82 gets off his ass and comes down and knocks on my door, I'll be open to the idea. It's not that god is impossible, just that there's no evidence. Faith is the opposite of this.
Posted by: No Nym | July 13, 2006 1:25 PM
here's my email:
Posted by: steve s | July 13, 2006 1:29 PM
This kinda reminds me of when Al Franken solicited members of the Bush administration to share their personal stories of abstinence.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | July 13, 2006 1:32 PM
I loved Frac's turn of phrase: "She was tested against faith that day, and won."
On the not-so-funny side, I know just what we'll see when the letters are published: every crisis of faith involves suffering on the part of the writer or their loved ones. I'd be astonished if we see even one letter where someone's faith was tested by hearing of AIDS in Africa, war in the Middle East or Chechnya, or any other amount of suffering which occurs safely far away.
And we'll be told this is inspiring stuff.
Posted by: Scott H | July 13, 2006 1:33 PM
Jason's confusion isn't surprising. Wingnuts don't do irony, or they think it's the same thing as sarcasm.
Also, they have so little basis for their beliefs, they assume it must be the same for everyone else.
Posted by: George Cauldron![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 13, 2006 1:35 PM
By the time I was 5 years old I found something unsavory and unseemly about those people who went to church. I found it had an alarming 'cultlike' aspect to it that bothered me, and mind you that at five years old the word 'cult' was unknown to me.
I still believed in the concept of a 'fatherly figure' who answered prayers, but the way the followers chose to respond and to act in reference to this fatherly figure bothered me more than the notion of actually believing.
Since that time I have come to accept that the moment this subject becomes a matter of religion rather than faith the whole thing loses it's meaning and is bastardized into something more to the liking of those who claim to be the worhippers than to that of the worshipped. Rather than man made in god's image it became god made in man's image and that is why I oppose it today.
MYOB'
.
Posted by: MYOB | July 13, 2006 1:36 PM
No Nym:
Oh, if that's the question... what tested my faith is pretty simple. It was never science. That can coexist easily enough as far as I'm concerned.
What strains my belief is that if you took a truly uniform random sample of the space of people around the world who purport to be religious, and are also decent, smart, and behave as responsible adults, you'd find that they agree on some basic ethics, but have wildly different views on allegedly important dogma.
There are two ways to resolve this: One is that all of these seemingly nice people are wrong and are going to hell (or maybe just some sort of re-education camp in purgatory) and it's my duty to spread my religion, which is the one true one. The other is that none of it makes a great deal of sense and is largely a matter of tradition. I was brought up to respect diversity, so the first resolution was not an option. I also thought it would be pretty improbable that I just happened to be lucky enough to be born in the correct tradition.
The second option, on the other hand, seems to fit all the available data. Shared human beliefs usually have some reasonable basis, while those that differ arbitrarily can almost always be attributed to some kind of received wisdom spanning generations. If I think all these other people believe some weird stuff, I have to assume that they think the same about me.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 1:36 PM
We don't go to God's house anymore
Saw the light and walked right out the door
We don't go to God's house
It's more fun in the doghouse
We don't go to God's house anymore -- chumbawamba
Posted by: just john | July 13, 2006 1:38 PM
If *I* had written that essay, PZ, I could have started out with the same two paragraphs you did. I was so strongly influenced by Scientific American while growing up that I still am more proud of my own article in Scientific American than I am of my articles in Science.
However, I would have diverged at that point and written that my insight into science assured me of a creator much wiser and grander than anything imaginable or creatable by mankind. I do not base decisions about faith in God on what I observe in human organizations such as a church - that kind of faith would have no more validity than faith in George Bush, Enron, or Hezbollah. Instead, my decisions are based on what I observe that has not been corrupted by the ignorance or arrogance of mankind. I have observed indescribably magnificent things in nature, and am certain that I see only a miniscule fraction of what is magnificent.
All this humbles me to the point that I am driven back into Church, where I accept that I am a product of forces and intelligence that I will never fully understand, where I understand the difference between worshipping the creator rather than the created, and where those rituals are no longer empty. At work in my lab, I feel joy and privilege at often being the first person to see some bit of glorious truth about nature.
Of course I work and study hard, but the ability to do those things was given to me, as was my education, skills, and position. Under these circumstances, it seems quite imprudent to assert, with an understanding of the universe as small as mine, that there is no "giver".
Posted by: Alan | July 13, 2006 1:38 PM
I'm a process oriented person. I follow the processes of the natural world around me and watch how things work and change. I think it is this approach to life that differs from the faith-based approach. I don't have "faith" that the world works the way it does, I simply know that it does. And I see no need for any "higher" power to direct that process. The process itself is the process itself.
Religions are wonderful if taken as tools to produce psychological growth. But eventually, you inevitably grow beyond them if you follow them correctly. When you reach that point, the methodology and the belief used to get there aren't needed anymore. The mythology is beautiful, but it is mythology. I think reading Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey was probably my turning point, realizing all these religions really pointed to the same thing.
The other fascinating thing to me is the brain studies showing religion activates the amygdalya, the same area of the brain involved in love. Perhaps the real need for those who believe is to get their fix, their spiritual high. You can do the same thing with many different drugs, with physical activity, with sex. There are many, many paths. To say religion is the only acceptable one is very, very limiting.
Posted by: donna | July 13, 2006 1:39 PM
Technically, "atheist" just means "one who does not believe in God or gods" -- it's not specifically nonreligious.
I consider Buddhism and Taoism to be atheistic religions because they have no deities. The whole idea that "atheists" are amoral, or immoral, is ridiculous twice over when that fact is considered.
What the whole theism thing is about is ably explained today by Jesus' General: Kim Jong-il, patron saint of the Glorious Conservative Christian Cultural Revolution
... Christians are good citizens. We're commanded by the scriptures to obey those that are in authority over us whoever they may be. -- Franklin Graham
Ultimately, this religion thing always boils down to who gets to play God-the-Father here on Earth. The fundies are infuriated by people who think for themselves. They couch it in moral terms to engage a knee-jerk reaction whenever possible.
I was given the choice to continue practicing Catholicism or quit after my first Holy Communion. My dad was the head of a research lab for an East Coast chemical company, and while my mom is still a Catholic, she is wise enough not to push it on anybody else.
To this day every time I have to be in a church for a wedding (or, worse, a funeral in which the dead person's memory is supplanted by all kinds of Christ talk in the name of "comforting the afflicted") it still gives me the creeps.
Posted by: meridian | July 13, 2006 1:41 PM
No Nym:
Actually, based on my understanding (Catholic education), I would call that a disproof of the Ascension (nitpick: Assumption refers to Mary). Heaven is not supposed to be part of the observable universe. I grant that the distinction between heaven and outer space might not have been as clear at the time the New Testament was written.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 1:43 PM
Hmm.. this topic does seem to be making the rounds. The thing is, I've *had* plenty of magical/mystical spiritual experiences, from synagogue to Neo-Paganism, and yes various drugs. I still occasionally do shamanic journeys. And yet I now consider myself atheist.... Because "experience" begs the question of "meaning", and others as well. Also because the special effects didn't actually seem to be helping other people solve their problems, let alone helping with mine. (What has helped? Psychopharm, Cognitive-Behavioral work, and NeuroPsych.) Indeed, among the Neo-Pagans it's generally recognized that the magical experiences themselves can be addictive, with peculiar consequences.
Oh, yeah -- I'm with PZ on the wicked waffliness of the word "agnostic". ;-)
Other comments I've recently made on this topic:
Cooment 15 at http://www.decrepitoldfool.com/index.php/weblog/comments/a_cold_and_broken_alleluia/
and http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=151#comment-1513
Posted by: David Harmon | July 13, 2006 1:49 PM
The best definition of faith I know of is this:
Faith is believing something to a degree of certainty which exceeds that warranted by the available evidence.
Posted by: steve | July 13, 2006 1:50 PM
ctw: I half agree that "faith" can be based on some kind of secondary evidence. The problem as I see it is the basis for giving that evidence any weight in the first place. Any rational belief has to carry some implicit qualification: e.g., provided these observations were made accurately, provided our system of peer review is functioning, provided I'm of sound mind as I work my way through this argument. There's no reason for anyone to accept one particular ancient tome as evidence of anything, particularly since there is nothing unique about it. There are many ancient sacred texts.
So I think the matter of "faith" is still there in giving your own sacred text preferential treatment. That kind of faith is absent when one continues to insist on objective measurement and repeatability.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 1:54 PM
Jason,
Whether or not it was intended as a simple troll, I guess you aren't aware just how revealing your post was. You manage to fire off a stock talking point without apparently noticing that:
1. You appear to be agreeing with us atheists that "faith" is generally pejorative
2. There is nothing in PZ's post which supports your claim. If you read it at all, it's a reposnse to requests for stories about "events that tested your faith" with an account of how such a test was failed. Just how carefully did you read it before reaching for your list of talking points?
did you really not get any of that?
Posted by: Millimeter Wave | July 13, 2006 1:55 PM
On the matter of Atheism as faith, I would ask Jason if my disbelief in Zeus, Odin, and Thoth is a matter of faith. If so, then by his definition, I suppose my faith is the same as his only I add the story of one more god to the pile.
Posted by: Erik | July 13, 2006 1:57 PM
Steve, I think your definition sums up PZ's faith. He has faith that science will puzzle out the mysteries.
Posted by: NatureSelectedMe | July 13, 2006 2:00 PM
I actually did write something like this recently (but it's longer than 400 words, so I won't bore you with it)(OK I lied: I'm too lazy to type it all in). The local Humanist Association, at our AGM, holds an "Undoctrination Ceremony" as part of which new members can tell the story of how they became an atheist (it's pretty light-hearted). This year there were 5 of us giving our "anti-testimonies" ;-).
Posted by: Steve Watson | July 13, 2006 2:03 PM
steve:
Nobody took me up on it, but I'd like to repeat that religious people usually make a distinction between this view and what they value as faith. Anyway, as a Catholic, I was taught that merely accepting something uncritically was "blind faith" and not really the point (although for all that, probably enough to get you a ticket to heaven--you know, like an old peasant woman lighting a candle and saying her rosary). The kind of faith associated with saints was something achieved through contemplation. You don't just say, OK, I believe this, but after long and disciplined practice, you find that you really do believe it. So it is thought of as the result of hard work rather than the lack of work.
I don't mean to suggest that it has value; I just mean to make a distinction between the rationalist definition of faith and the notion of faith as a virtue within religious tradition.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 2:07 PM
I don't like that Steve. From my experience, Faith is not only knowing something is true without any evidence, it's knowing it's true DESPITE the evidence. Very dangerous.
Posted by: Alex | July 13, 2006 2:09 PM
Atheism is not necessarily the same thing as materialism, though. My denial of God says nothing about my reasons for denying his existence. So in that sense, atheism is not a form of faith but rather a general matter of not finding any evidence--whether natural or supernatural--to believe in God.
Materialism does though constitute a form of faith. Just as it's impossible for those who believe in God to accept evidence that God does not exist, it's also impossible for those who believe in materialism to accept evidence of the supernatural. I think of the Amazing Randi's famous "reward" as a good example of this mindset. I.e., he will only believe in supernatural phenomena if he's provided scientific evidence that it exists, which of course would render the phenomena "natural." The faith--in the scientific method--is still there but just takes a different form from what we're used to thinking about.
Posted by: Christopher | July 13, 2006 2:12 PM
Paul,
I think you're talking about rationalization. People have to rationalize their faiths, either introspectively or outwardly, in order to remain steadfast. Don't confuse rational thought with rationalization. Many years ago the church rationalized that the Earth was at the center. Clearly irrational. The rational stance at that time would have been, "gosh, we don't know where the Earth sits in relation to the other heavenly bodies". But not knowing something is too uncomfortable for many people, clearly. So we make it up.
Posted by: Alex | July 13, 2006 2:14 PM
Alex, I agree that one property of faith is that strong faith is supposed to hold up against experience that would appear to contradict it. I think there is usually a loophole in that you're not literally saying it's true despite evidence but that you disbelieve the evidence. This can, of course, be taken to levels of absurdity, though mature religions tend to keep their beliefs unfalsifiable in order to avoid such contradictions.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 2:16 PM
I guess I got excited by the topic and didn't realize this thread was mostly a response to the troll.
Anyway, good essay and I hope the Post accepts it.
Posted by: Christopher | July 13, 2006 2:16 PM
He has faith that science will puzzle out the mysteries.
Where did he say that? That there's no evidence for the existence of God doesn't necessarily mean that science will one day be able to explain everything. It's entirely consistent with atheism to believe that there may be some things beyond the ability of science to ever explain.
As it is, though, science definitely manages to explain a heck of a lot more than religion does...
Posted by: an anonymous coward | July 13, 2006 2:18 PM
here's what I submitted:
I was raised in a liberal Lutheran church, and confirmed in it. Attended church, Sunday School, even other church-related activities.
But as I worked my way through college, I developed a curiosity about religion and spent some time investigating several beliefs, and maybe more importantly, belief systems. during that time, while I fell away from organized religion, I certainly maintained a belief in the spiritual realm, and in God.
But the religion part of it did not figure as heavily. In fact, when I got married, we did it in a Catholic church because it was very important to my wife's mother. Critically important, and I figured it was a minor deal to make an old woman happy. "As long as God is there" I said at the time.
My crisis occurred on September 11, 2001.
I came into my office on that beautiful fall day to find my colleagues gathered around the TV, watching the disaster. Shortly after starting to watch the coverage, and after showing the poor wretches leaping to their deaths rather than burn, the first tower fell. Then the second.
As I watched the second tower fall, I could feel the remnants of faith drain from my mind like water in a toilet. In the face of senseless tragedies like this, occurring all over the world, time and time again; with the characters on both sides claiming the Blessings of God, I could no longer maintain any pretense that God existed.
It became painfully obvious that all of mankind's evil, as well as the brilliant, stemmed from within ourselves.
Since then, my parents have died, and atheism made it simple to be at peace. Since there was no 'better place' for them to be in, we could celebrate the lives they lived, the good things they had done, and the people they were. Their time is done, as all of ours will be, and it is up to each individual to make sure their time is valuable on its own merits.
Posted by: Brian | July 13, 2006 2:19 PM
Alex, I don't think it's so much a matter of rationalization as it is a process that a cynic would call brainwashing. The belief becomes so internalized over time that it is untouchable by reason. This can actually be a source of strength for people, provided it happens to be the right belief to have at the right time (e.g. I might be wrong about going to heaven, but maybe my martyrdom served some other useful purpose). Obviously, it can be an absolute disaster as well, particularly when people of "great faith" find themselves in a position to dictate the actions of an entire nation.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 2:20 PM
Just FYI, everybody: Trolls are attention whores, plain and simple.
I've seen scores of them in chat rooms, and the pattern is always the same: Human relationships are turned around in their heads so that they can't relate to others in any normal fashion.
Somewhere earlier in a troll's life experience, he learned that negative attention is better than being ignored. Being slapped down is painful, but at least it's SOMETHING.
Believe it: to a troll like Jason, a verbal punch in the face is indistinguishable from a hug.
He practices the only way he knows to gain attention, and eventually he gets so good at it that he gets attention from everybody. A troll presented with an unwary audience can take over a chat room or discussion forum the instant he enters. Whatever the topic was before, HE becomes the new topic.
Every time you feel the barbs of Jason, or any other online troll, ask yourself:
Do I want to respond and help reinforce this sick personality trait? (Considering that it wounds both the person who has it AND the society around him?)
Do I want to waste MY time on THIS guy?
...
...
Any of you in the psychology fields, I can picture a fairly interesting book coming out of the subject of trolls. I'd like to know if the really toxic trolls get to where they can no longer feel affection at all. And considering that some of them might actually have no real human contact beyond the computer screen, I'd like to know what eventually happens to them.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 13, 2006 2:21 PM
FWIW: I'm not responding to Jason, though you will see exactly one brief reply above. I think it's interesting to discuss what motivates people to believe whatever it is they believe.
Posted by: PaulC | July 13, 2006 2:23 PM
Paul, I like that "mature religions tend to keep their beliefs unfalsifiable in order to avoid such contradictions" statement. It always amazed me how, in reading these various blogs, how well the fervant religous use intellectual dishonesty in there debates, books, and discussions (rationalizations). It seems to me that your statement illustrates the fundamental use of intellectual dishonesty by those who can't compete with the scientific method. I feel somewhat enlightend.
Posted by: Alex | July 13, 2006 2:23 PM
@ PaulC:
Sorry, but Catholic theology is no escape. The fundies take a literal reading, which makes testable predictions, that Mary and Jesus are somewhere in orbit, either around the earth or on some longer orbit. I would expect their albedo to be low enough to exclude all but the most fortuitous discovery.
And yes, my former Sunday school teachers would be angry at my confusing the Assumption and the Ascension, but I did get very bad grades in Sunday School.
But my point isn't about what a true Christian President might do with the Hubble, but rather that atheism per se is not a faith, since evidence of God would sway anyone fit to call themselves a scientist into believing. The debate over ID is about what counts as evidence.
1) Look at this starfish, lying on the beach.
2) Wow, how amazingly improbable!
3) Therefore, God.
Posted by: No Nym | July 13, 2006 2:24 PM
And considering that some of them might actually have no real human contact beyond the computer screen, I'd like to know what eventually happens to them.
"The neighbors of the suspect all agreed, that he seemed very quiet and kept to himself."