Sturgeon’s Law, Plausibility of Religious Stories, And Why I’m an Agnostic/Atheist
A momentary lament: I suck at writing introductions to what are essentially rants about religion and atheism. I pretty much write what I’m thinking as I go along, so there is no intended structure to this, nor an ultimate point sometimes. I’m just trying to get these thoughts in my head out in the world so new ones can fill in. I certainly wish the writing could be better, but I hope of what I write that at least someone will find it insightful and interesting…
I watch a lot of atheist vs. theist debates (via youtube or otherwise), and I’ve seen various cards pulled by both sides that are somewhat vacuous, or at least don’t have much visible, developed meat behind them (e.g., I hear the line… and it’s a good thought, but the thought is never developed further).
One of these lines is the Christian retort that being religious does not necessarily imply that a person is irrational. Or at least, they aren’t making an irrational decision to believe in their particular religion (they may be highly irrational in other areas of their life.. since we can all compartmentalize quite easily.. atheists do this too). In other words,They believe in their religion for perfectly rational, good reasons that convinced them. Shouldn’t they convince me too then?
I’m not really convinced of this idea that belief in a religion can be rational. But somehow, it seems wrong and insulting to say that all religious people are irrational in their belief. Nonetheless, I find the idea of a virgin birth or resurrection to be, frankly, ridiculous. I have no compulsion to respect someone’s belief in this, or other miracles. Occam’s razor quite easily excludes them from rationality. I’m not interested in the debate that easily ensues from this line of conversation however – what is good historical evidence, why one should believe writings that are 2000 years old and have been badly translated along the way, etc.., because it requires a vast amount of expertise in a broad array of historical information and analsyis and the debates that still rage over small phrases and quotes. It ends up being a hair-splitting contest that goes nowhere.
However, there are a few Christians who are willing to concede the point of historical accuracy or literalism, and are capable of discussing the more important metaphysical and sociological consequences. I can have a more interesting discussion about metaphors, theology, or why they even really believe in Christianity in particular… I consider them to be the real intellectuals of Christianity that deserve respect, because they face the fact that to anyone outside their religion, the evidence is really quite poor for a solid foundation of belief in their religion involving true supernatural intervention by God.
This type of Christian is rare, and as a consequence Sturgeon’s Law applies to the Atheist-Christian conversation going on: around 99% are about establishing the basic factual crap that should be resolved in 5 minutes with a literate, thinking person. About 1% is actually spent talking about the more interesting metaphysics. I think it’s disappointing that we remain at this level of sophistication in our debate, that we must still battle the idea that 2 millenia ago God incarnate came to earth to save us from ourselves by letting us murder him.
This also brings me to plausibility analysis of stories we tell. I’ve always found it to be a fun mind game to think more about the general plausibility of various aspects of religious stories in order to evaluate their truth content, as an alternative studying where the text came from, what original copies, we have, etc. etc.. mostly because this can all be done by thinking, and I’ve got plenty of spare processor cycles ;).
It makes me wonder why anyone really believes in the Adam & Eve / Garden of Eden story. I’ve hashed this out a few times before in a manner that could be rebutted rather easily (implausibility doesn’t necessarily mean disproof of a story’s historical accuracy, after all). It just seems inscrutable to me that someone could simultaneously believe in the “loving, caring, kind, fatherly” type God and that Eve *really* did eat that apple even though it obviously wasn’t in her best interest. Any way you hash it as far as how innocent she was (e.g., didn’t know what it would do), or whether she knew what would happen, God ends up being a rather cruel bastard overlord given our current situation.
It also makes me question God’s method of bring us back into his fold. Why couldn’t he have forgiven Adam and Eve, or perhaps allowed them to feel the consequences (child-birth pain, weeds, mosquitos, disease, injury, etc.) for a few years, and grant them the mercy to go back into Eden? Why the millenia of suffering and pain of generations of people who never did anything wrong but be the descendents of two phenomenally stupid humans? It makes me question the very humanity of Adam and Eve, and the very humaneness of God. Where is his infinite mercy? Why are there all these weird rules about how he can forgive us, and heal us of the wound we brought upon ourselves?
All these theoreticals I can play out in my mind quite easily… mindgames of pretend, of hypothetical cause and consequence predictions are something I have been playing out since I was a kid… a hobby of sorts. Of all the things that possibly could, I believe it is my imagination that has made me an atheist of the Christian God. He would seem to be a psychotic if He were real. And I have never had reason to think there is something supernatural to the world that matched with christianity, or any other religion… so I remain, fundamentally, an agnostic of spirituality. I simply don’t know how to explore this realm while holding onto rationality.
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