To Believe is to Believe

No amount of belief will make something a fact.

--James Randi

Human brains are hard-wired to make connections and form conclusions that become beliefs. The weird thing is that we don't really get to choose what we believe; well, not so much as a conscious decision as choosing what to wear each day. Indirectly, it does seem that we can open our minds to new information, causing internal conflict which may or may not get resolved as a change in belief.

Take, for instance the 2013 case of Republican Senator Rob Portman's views on gay marriage. As a Republican, he was obligated to tow the line on defence of 'traditional' marriage. His personal views on the matter were likely in line with the party views as well. His world gets shaken up when his son reveals he is gay. Two years of cognitive dissonance and then the Senator announces that he supports gay marriage. This could have played out in a number of ways. Some people disown children that lead lives that are different than their own. Others attempt to ignore the elephant in the room and pretend that their own reality is the one true reality. But Senator Portman's stance on gay marriage changed. He said, "Ultimately, for me, it came down to the Bible's overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God." The fact of the matter is that we are all humans, whether or not you believe that we are children of any god. We should treat our fellow humans with respect and allow them every right that we would like to enjoy ourselves. You know, the Golden Rule (and the Silver Rule too.)

But sometimes it is hard to see the end game because of our own blindness. What blinds us? Belief. Belief is an irrational mess of neural connections in the brain that causes a person to link some concept with the notion of truth. It is the neural equivalent of a logical identity. It does not require any proof; it just IS. We fill our brains with these beliefs with one informing and changing the next, the whole of which becomes the basis for our world view. The world view filters and influences every new concept and event that enters the brain. These new filtered thoughts then affect our world view; sometimes reinforcing it, sometimes tearing it down for realignment. But it all boils down to the fact that our brains are squishy and fuzzy when it comes to logic and rationality; these two concepts rarely have much sway when we are encountering new ideas. Mostly we believe what we believe because we believe what we believe. People with degrees in this field call this confirmation bias.

So you see, to believe is to believe; it has nothing to do with facts, logic, rational conclusions, or reality. But just because you believe something does not make it a fact.

Once I understood the concept of confirmation bias, I was able to start to see instances where my own beliefs were influencing me, causing me to reject logical or otherwise rational thought because it did not mesh with my current belief system. And then as you know it all fell apart (i.e. my religious foundations crumbled) and I had to start questioning all my beliefs to see if they were founded in reality or if they were floating, supporting themselves by the power of confirmation bias. But I am in a better place now, mentally. I don't have to juggle so many things and my shelf, the things I have questions about, is much less about god and religion and more about life, the universe, and everything. This is not to say that I have conquered confirmation bias; that is not possible. My brain is still every bit as irrational and squishy as it ever was, but now I am much more open to the idea that my belief system might be systemically wrong. Maybe now, you might say that I have to take the periodic effort to prune my belief garden, looking for un-rooted beliefs and moving them over to the unfounded idea museum where live the invisible pink unicorn, Santa Claus, fairies, and yes, all the gods.

In Science We Trust

How can you trust quantum mechanics, if you haven’t done the requisite experiments yourself? ... Or how can you trust that the government isn’t putting mind-control drugs into the fruit you buy in the supermarket, etc. etc.

--Scott Aaronson

Along these lines, how can we know that God exists? Or Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. If you were anything like me, you figured out that the latter three were stories that your parents told you when you were young because they were part of your culture. You may have asked the right questions to figure it out or maybe a friend or sibling dropped the bomb and your world kind of unraveled for a bit. You may have needed to push a little farther to see exactly how much of your life up to that point was merely a lie.


When all your friends at school forsake Santa, the first is seen as the smartest of the bunch because he or she figured it out. Yet when someone forsakes God, it is a different story altogether. Anathema. Dissociation of friends and family. What is the difference here? Is it that God really exists and Santa doesn't? How can one make that claim? Scott Aaronson hit on the answer that sounds reasonable to me:

So we’re extremely lucky that science hit on a solution to these problems—the only workable solution, really—back in the 17th century. The solution is to open up every question to scrutiny, discussion, and challenge by any interested person. Assertions gain credibility by surviving public criticism—and that’s just as true in math as it is in experimental sciences. I believe many theorems even though I haven’t checked the proofs myself, because I know that if there were an error, then someone else could’ve made a name for themselves by finding it.

I didn't figure out that God was no different than the Santa Claus, but why? Because everyone else around me believed in God too. Maybe they were Catholic or Presbyterian instead of Mormon, but it's the same God. I didn't figure it out so soon because early on, all my elders believed in God (but not Santa Claus) so it was acceptable (and somewhat expected) for me to believe. If I had been born in Iran, I would no doubt have believed the good word of Islam (one variety or another).

If you move a continent or two over, you will find that their God may not by your God. Since both are making the claim that they are the one and only true God (I mean really, who wants to worship a God that says other gods are cool too), at maximum, only one of them can be true. It is still possible that neither are true. If we take all the gods of humankind and sit them in a room with each other, then use this idea that only one of a pair of them can be true until we have reduced the room to only one god, which god would that be? Then we take it a step further and invite someone into the room that does not recognize that god as his or her God and suddenly there are no gods in the room. Just like with science, we crowd source the best solution by having all interested parties attempt to debunk and find holes in theories, we have used the people from all over the world to show that none of the gods are the one and only true God. What are we left with then? Teapots, flying high in orbit, painted with invisible unicorns.

What are we really left with if nobody can really show that any supernatural power exists? Nature. How do we explain nature? Science. How can we trust in science? Test it again and again. Poke holes in it and disprove it where possible. Every time we tear down a theory or hypothesis, we count down one fewer thing that might be true. As each theory and hypothesis is confirmed by another test, we put one more nail in the coffin of the gods. Because the theories are repeatable and not merely the 'revealed truth' from god, others can experiment and show that they are real. No religion can do the same for their gods or beliefs.

Thus, in science we trust.

Q.E.D.

American Gods

This is a bad land for gods.... The old gods are ignored. The new gods are as quickly taken up as they are abandoned, cast aside for the next big thing. Either you've been forgotten, or you're scared you're going to be rendered obsolete, or maybe you're just getting tired of existing on the whim of people.

--Shadow in American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods was a really fun read. I like the strange world that Neil Gaiman came up with. Or was he just writing the reality that he saw? That is what I would like to discuss here. Ever since the possibility that God may not be what I think He is, I started to wonder why religion and gods exist at all. This story explains many of my thoughts in a very artful way.

Gods started out as a way to explain all the things.

 At some point in our prehistory, one of our ancestors found the mental capacity to think about something besides survival; food, protection, and reproduction. They had questions like: why lightning? or what after death? or cause of random event? Maybe the first questions were even more basic than these. "Some external power makes it so" seems to be a reasonable answer when you don't have any other answer. As one person told another person this idea, it spread like wildfire because there was no evidence to the contrary.

People believe. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.

--Shadow in American Gods by Neil Gaiman

We believe not because we want to believe, but because the evidence compels us to believe. It would have made my life a lot easier to just believe that God exists and not deal with the fallout with my believing family, but the evidence compelled me to believe that there probably (very, very, very likely) is no god, thus my exodus from religion. But when fire still seems like magic, and lightning can only be explained by supernatural powers, believing in a god only makes sense.

There are fewer things that need explaining.

 The gods (and mostly Yahweh, because he was the main God in the region at that time) started to loose their mighty grasp on the minds of their creators sometime around the Renaissance. People started to think, reason, and understand; science started to explain the mysteries of God. Copernicus, in my opinion, though he was a Christian, pried back the first finger of God, allowing later freethinkers to finish Him off. Stating that the earth is NOT the center of the universe starts one thinking about why God would have created humankind, the pinnacle of His creation, off to the side, putting the sun at the center of our galaxy instead. So maybe we aren't as important as we thought? As science and reason advanced, we found that lightning (and all weather in general) is not caused by a vengeful or loving god, but rather it is a natural part of the earth's ecosystem, water cycle, etc. The same goes for earthquakes and volcanoes, tsunamis and hurricanes. Not a vengeful god that is trying to punish us, but rather the earth, doing what it does without malice or forethought. Medicine has come a long way from humours and leeches to antibiotics and DNA sequencing. Thanks to Darwin, humankind no longer has reason to doubt that we are cousins to every living thing on earth.

Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.

--American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The gods are going extinct.

It would take hours to list all the things that were once ascribed to gods that we now have non-supernatural reasons for. The tenacious grip of god has turned tenuous. The gods of yesteryear are merely the stuff of myth and legend today. If it were not for the vast quantity of writing and digital caching of the Internet, they would fade away even faster. For this same reason, it seems that Yahweh (and Allah for that matter, though they are really just two names for the same God) have had a strong grip on the world because their stories are immortalized in the written word.

If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father....

--American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Someday, I expect, that even though it says in the writing that those books of scripture are the word of God written by his holy prophets, people will come to realize that it is just a story (and not a very good one at that). They will realize that religion is a metaphor, a tool that was used to calm the doubts and fears of the masses to allow civilization to flourish.

What is religion anyway?

Yes, I believe that we are genetically inclined to believe in religion. I think that Richard Dawkins has some great points in The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.  I think that religion evolved as a social mechanism to help mankind form societies where intelligence, peace and prosperity could thrive, thus further separating us from our cousins and reaffirming the dominance of our species. But, as Dawkins says in The Selfish Gene, "Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends." This is one of the dangers of religion: leaders wielding their power for their own ends, usually with detrimental effect to many others. Now that science has squeezed all the gods into the cracks of the unknown, another one of the issues I have with religion is that it reinforces ignorance and praises blind faith. I find it hilarious that many Mormons (members and leaders) are terrified of reading "anti-Mormon literature" because it can pull you away from the true teachings of the church. Yet, if there are things that are that dangerous to your "truths" you may want to examine those truths again to see if they match up with reality.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.

--The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

As terrible as the phrase sounds (and I think the pointed wording was on purpose, because we all know that Richard Dawkins is an ass), it really rings true to me. I believed as a child with all my heart in the truth of the gospel as taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I knew it was true because I was taught that it was true. I had become a carrier to pass it onto my children as well. And I did. Isn't that how viruses spread? Or how 'viral marketing' works? One person to the next because of how great it is. When you are a believer, your religion is the one true religion and it is great, so you want to pass it on. The newly indoctrinated take over the cause and make it their own.

Now if religion did no harm, I would not have so much problem with it. But you saw how the gods in American Gods fought each other. Their subjects do as well. They are commanded by their gods to conquer other unbelieving nations and impose the good word on the infidels. Nearly universally, they oppress women and homosexuals (and every other minority). Because of this, I am somewhat anti-religious. Yes they do great good, but until we can convince the leaders of these religions of the need for HUMANITY, that there is no "us and them," that we should not be fighting, but helping, lifting up instead of oppressing, most all religions should be torn down.

Now I get off my high horse.

The Impossibility of Atheism

Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

--Isaac Asimov

Logically speaking, it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something. Or is it? Where is the logical flaw in:

1. If A then not B
2. A
3. Not B

Where A is some natural phenomenon, B is the existence of God.

All we have do is find something that is incongruous with the existence of God and poof! God formally no longer exists. Philosophically speaking, I am in way over my head here.  People have been working on this problem for thousands of years. So really all this does is show that my thoughts really aren't any higher than your thoughts.

The book "36 Arguments for the Existence of God" gives way better proofs than I could come up with. Well, it rebuts all the proofs for the existence of God that are very clever, showing that none of them hold water. But still, none of them prove that God does not exist. It just shows how hard it is to prove that God does exist (even though logically speaking, that is supposed to be the easier case to prove.)

In the end, I don't think it is necessary to prove one way or the other. God has failed to give sufficient proof of his/her/its existence and science has done a great job of providing evidence that God did not take part in X physical law. Or more correctly, science has provided evidence that God was not required to take part in X physical law. When I look at the human eye, I see a very flawed, yet quite wondrous organ. But when a intelligent design believer looks at the human eye, they see the hand of God. We see what we want to see, believe what reinforces what we already believe and leave the rest of it outside our boxes.

So I think I will join Isaac Asimov and say that for all intents and purposes I am an atheist. If God really wants people to believe, he/she/it will have to do a lot better job of providing evidence of existence. And don't tell me that God can't provide evidence of existence without taking away our agency. An all-powerful, all-knowing, omni-present God should certainly be able to provide a way. If not, they lack the power to convince me.

Comedy v. Tragedy

God's sense of humor is very different from our own.
He does not laugh at the simple
"man walks into a bar" joke. No, God needs
complex irony and subtle farcical twists
that seem macabre to you and me.
All that we can hope for is that God
God got his good laugh and
a tragedy such as this will never happen again.

--South Park (Season 7, Episode 10, Grey Dawn)

After I finished watching all 16 available seasons of South park, I thought I should mention one of the more striking quotes. When I watched season 7, it was much closer to the Newtown, CT, massacre than now. But I still think the quote is applicable. Trey Parker and Matt Stone both say they are not atheist, but they do freely poke at all things, including religion. I think that is a fairly healthy habit to do; poke and prod at things that don't make sense.

Anyhow, this episode was about old people driving cars and killing people. But really, any tragedy, disaster, terrorist attack, etc. will work fine in this situation. If you believe in God, it makes it very hard to explain some of these tragic events. How could a loving God allow that kind of stuff to happen to His children? The LDS theology says that He cannot interfere with mankind's agency, so bad things happen because of bad people. But that doesn't account for natural disasters. Do they happen because of bad people too? I suppose some of the stuff in scripture did. That does not sound like much of a loving God; vengeful, jealous, and hateful, more like. You know, the kind of God that this quote so aptly describes.

I personally reject the notion of a God that is just messing with us. I refuse to worship such a being. I also reject the notion of a God that supposedly loves us and yet allows such terrible things to happen. Hell, I am a mere mortal and can get my kids to not kill each other. I can teach them love, respect, honesty, and all manner of goodness BECAUSE I AM HERE. God would get a lot farther in His desires for all mankind to worship his great name if he were physically here doing good things for His children that He supposedly loves.

In the meantime, I will just have to give credit for all the terrible things that happen on this planet to the same place I give credit for all the wonderful things that happen: mankind. We as a species span the spectrum from unbelievably horrible to spectacularly wonderful. And I will attribute to any God the same credit I give to Santa Claus: nothing.

Telling Mom: Revisited

Mom, it's okay. I'm okay. I'm an atheist.

--The Thinking Atheist

This is the sort of conversation I had with my mother in person. It hurts more than words can say. People can say terrible thing (me included) in situations like these. I wish sometimes that it hadn't gone down like it did. I hope when my kids come to me with something, I can react differently.

Yes this is staged, but it rings so true.

Target practice

As the gun debate rages across the country, the snarky part of me says that we should forget about regulating guns because bad guys are bad marksmen.

Have you ever noticed in an action film that the villains have terrible aim? They don't seem to be able to hit the broadside of a barn at point blank range.

In real life, we now have an example of comic-book villains. A pair of thieves tries to rob a store. They have handguns. The owner has a baseball bat. The owner wins with only a shot to his LEG. One of the thieves was also hit (by 'friendly' fire?) Watch the video. Either the thieves are not trying very hard or they forgot that villains can't shoot.

The shop owner credits his survival to God's help. I credit the thieves for being idiots. Or maybe the mystical comic book power that makes villains unable to shoot straight. Either one is more likely than requiring a god to exist to save the man.  I mean really, what are the odds that a person is not killed by nine shots from less than 6 feet away? One in a million? One in a billion? I am pretty sure that the odds that a god exists are a lot longer.

Green Tea and Nachos

We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.

--David Richo

I needed to use the facilities. I walk to the nearest location, but lo and behold, they are closed for cleaning.  I turn around and hit the down button on the elevator. I was planning on only going down one floor, but a lady walks up to use the elevator too. Guessing that it is more likely that she is headed to the ground floor, I press that button because there are facilities that I can use on the ground floor too, right next to the elevators.  Once I have finished with my business, I head to the café, thinking that while I am down there, maybe I can grab a cup of tea and let my brain unwind a bit. Tea instead of coffee both because of the hour and because if I choose green tea, it is zero calories instead of half-and-half plus sugar in my coffee. I get a cup of green tea (which tastes like alfalfa hay in my opinion,) and run into a co-worker while waiting for the tea to steep. We talk for 15 minutes, during which time I empty my cup. As we are leaving, it turns out that the café has out a table with complementary DIY nachos. I can't say no to free nachos. I get some. So green tea and nachos for me because I had to use the facilities at exactly the time they were closed and happened to have a fellow elevator passenger that was probably headed for the first floor.

Was I meant to get tea and nachos today or was it just a coincidence? No matter what you believe, I thought it was an interesting cascading chain of events.