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Strange email
I had an odd email this weekend. Someone mailed me about a couple of minor points on my website, and then added at the end of the message that he found it curious that I hadn't written anything about religion. He said, in particular, that he thought knowing something about what I believed in that area might, in his words, ‘shed some light on an important aspect of [my] personality’.
Well, I was willing enough to answer his question in private email. It's true that I've never bothered to mention on my main website that I'm an atheist, but that's not out of any strong feeling that it's Nobody Else's Business; partly it's because I'd expect any such mention to attract too much email flamage to be worth the trouble, but mostly I've just never felt that I had anything particularly interesting or original to say on the subject. (And if I did, it would more likely be a vague musing to mention in passing in this diary, rather than something to publish on my permanent website as a Serious Essay intended to attract ongoing widespread interest.)
But it struck me as particularly strange that someone might feel their understanding of me as a person was noticeably incomplete without knowing my religion. I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find there are people whose religion is responsible for significant aspects of their personality (e.g. if their personality changed noticeably when they converted). And I certainly know there are people who at least believe their religion is the most important thing about them: I occasionally come across LJ bios saying faintly nauseating things like ‘The most important fact about me is that I love God’, or ‘I'm a Fooist, and once you know that, you know everything you need to about me’. (My general feeling tends to be that if they say everything else about them is even less interesting than their religion, I'm willing to take their word for it.)
But it's always seemed to me that such people are a small minority: for the most part I wouldn't have said there was any particularly noticeable divide of personality between the various theists and atheists I know. So when I meet somebody new, I've never felt a particular need to know about their religion, beyond finding out whether or not they're the sort of person who makes an overwhelmingly big deal of it. Sometimes I've managed to know people for years before finding out that they've been a devout Fooist all along and I'd never known –
Am I unusual in this? Does anyone else round here feel that their understanding of someone's personality is necessarily (or even usually) incomplete without some knowledge of their attitude to religion?
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I think I feel something like that. I will have a go at explaining why, but it might not make much sense.
If you look for evidence for the existence of God there isn't really any, and I think that how you deal with that fact forms a major part of your personality. Accordingly, I divide people into three groups:
1) People who disagree with that (in my opinion, these people are mistaken, so I tend to see them as not being very good at thinking, or not having bothered to have thought about it very much).
2) People who accept this as a fact and do not see any reason to go beyond it, so call themselves atheists (or agnostics if they want to emphasize the fact that if any evidence did turn up they'd be open to hearing about it)
3) People who think one's approach to God needs to be radically different from one's approach to finding out about phenomena that exist in the universe, so think it's true but at least partially irrelevant that there's no convincing evidence for God's existance.
I divide 3 into 3a (people to whom this comes naturally, who are a bit like 1s) and 3b (people for whom this is a struggle, who are a bit like 2s).
[Edit: when I think about it, perhaps there's also a 1a and a 1b: 1as think there's evidence they can communicate to other people which makes it significantly more likely than not that God exists; 1bs think their personal experience of God makes it more likely than not that he exists, but acknowledge there's no reason why anyone else should believe on this basis.]
I'm a 3b, so feel an affinity towards other 3bs. I like and admire 3as and sort of want to learn from them and be like them, but also worry that they're woolly thinkers and no different from 1s, who I rather look down on sometimes, though I'm comfortable about talking about religion with them and indeed find it relaxing and refreshing and delightful [particularly if they're 1bs]. Most of my close friends are 2s, and I like them, and feel an affinity towards them, but sometimes feel uncomfortable discussing religion with them.
More relevantly to your post, I think that which line you take has an effect on the way you see the entire world, which is why I think it's an important part of 'personality'. Though more strictly, perhaps I'm really talking about peoples' attitude towards reason (which will lead to particular religious beliefs) as the thing that's important to personality, but asking questions about religion is quite a good shortcut to finding out what that attitude is, since not everyone thinks within the same terms of reference.
[Disclaimer: I currently think this is the way I see things, but I did just make the tripartite division up off the top of my head, and might find I don't think like that tomorrow.]
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Isn't that a bit harsh? I happen to agree with your basic premise (I think I'm a "3b" too), but I don't want to write off all the people who do perceive such evidence as unthinking. Some of them are people I know well and who do seem to be very good at thinking.
I tend to reckon that the evidence is obvious to some people and not others, just like music or maths or whatever come naturally to some people and not others. And most of the people who don't see it are atheists, but some aren't, like you and me.
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For a start, writing someone off is a conscious decision, whereas 'tending to see' them in a particular way isn't something I can really help, though of course I have a choice about how I act on my tendencies, and I definitely try to act on them by telling myself that there's a valid argument that there are many kinds of thinking and they might be good at others.
My head is always far kinder than my heart.
Secondly, writing someone off is very strong and absolute, whereas 'tending to see them' in one way doesn't preclude having other, opposite tendencies, though obviously it implies these are weaker.
Similarly, I don't see 'being unthinking' as the same as 'not being very good at thinking'. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to have said 'not being very good at at least certain types of thinking' though, if that helps.
I also think that people who are bad at maths are not very good at at leat certain types of thinking. Music is more complicated, because it involves lots of skills, some of which aren't much to do with thinking.
Though reading your last paragraph again, I think I might have misread it when I wrote my previous one. I really think there's no 'evidence' for the existence of God that doesn't have very solid arguments against it, and the solidity of these arguments isn't just a matter of opinion. I suspect many people are willfully deceiving themselves if they see it any other way. In fact, I'm pretty sure I used to do the same myself, and I also have a friend who has just stopped believing in God who said he did the same when he was a Christian.
Furthermore, I think that acknowledging the fact that there is no convincing evidence is a vital first step in persuading atheists to consider stopping being atheists,* and as such it's probably quite an important thing for Christians to understand if they're going to be effective evangelists.
(I say probably, because obviously people *are* convinced on the basis of supposed 'evidence', but that, being untrue, always seems to me like a very shaky basis for understanding Truth.)
* Note for passing atheists. I have plenty of atheists in my life who are interested in talking about this with me and who start the conversations all by themselves, and they've filled all the slots in the 'making disciples of all nations' part of my timetable. This means you're not really in any danger of me trying to start an unsolicited Serious Chat about Jesus with you.
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OK, fair enough; sorry for over-interpreting what you wrote.
I also think that people who are bad at maths are not very good at at leat certain types of thinking.
Yes, but I was using mathematical and musical ability as analogies for seeing the evidence, not as analogies for not seeing it. I'm raising the possibility that you and I are the innumerate or tone-deaf or colour-blind ones, and that the thing which other people can see and we can't might be real, rather than a delusion on their part. I try to remain open to that possibility.
Furthermore, I think that acknowledging the fact that there is no convincing evidence is a vital first step in persuading atheists to consider stopping being atheists
Doesn't work that way for everyone - I had an atheist friend who I tried to talk to about choosing to believe, and about faith being more about allegiance than intellectual assent, and about choosing to be on Aslan's side even if there isn't an Aslan to lead it; and he's now a type-1 Christian, convinced the evidence is there for anyone to see.
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But I don't think an innumerate person would be able to articulate why mathematics as we understand it doesn't work (because it does!) or a tone-deaf person why all notes are actually the same (because they're not!), or a colour-blind person that there's no physical difference between red and green paint (because there is!)
However, I have never seen an attempt to prove God's existence where the 'evidence' offered can't be attributed to a cause other than God with more probability than it can be attributed to God. Richard Dawkins is rather good at articulating specific examples of how this can be done. I contend there's a good reason why there isn't a Richard Dawkins of colour-blind people writing books called The Colour Delusion!
In response to your last point, this is what I was getting at in the last paragraph of my previous comment, the one in brackets. What I said only applies to Type 2s (of course you get other sorts of atheist), and to really quite intelligent ones. And there probably *are* super-intelligent Type 2s who turn into Type 1s - if you say your friend is one I believe you - I just think they're rare.
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I'm definitely not super intelligent.
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Kind of... I think people are blinded / biased such that they won't accept that belief in Christianity is reasonable (if not absolutely certain). I think that revelation from God is generally required to bridge the gap from there to proper belief.
I think I'd classify myself as being partly a type 1 person and partly a type 3 person.
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I can certainly see that someone's attitude to reason might be an important thing, in principle. However, my general impression is that it's less important in practice than it looks: even people who speak strongly against reason being the be-all and end-all in spheres like religion don't (in my experience) seem to let that affect their willingness to be basically, well, reasonable in any tangible real-world matter. To take an extreme example, one doesn't tend to see the ignore-reason-and-follow-your-heart type of theist crossing roads without looking on the basis that God will protect them; put them in a practical situation like that and they'll look both ways just like anyone else.
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Although your extreme example is clearly false, I have plenty of friends who think that alternative medicine is better than clinically proven medicine, and I don't doubt that if it wasn't for the fact that in this country conventional medicine is free and alternative medicine practioners are (thankfully) good about telling people not to eschew the normal kind, that they would choose it even in situations when it could be as dangerous as crossing the road without looking.
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The best attempt I've had at explaining it so far is here (http://wildeabandon.livejournal.com/213154.html?thread=2450338#t2450338).
Also, I think there's quite a large chance I'm so much happier as a Christian than as an atheist, and also make other people happier, that I'd rather delude myself.
And thirdly, I think the common arguments why Pascal's Wager is wrong are stupid, so I see no reason not to follow it. I do plan to write about this in my lj at some point, but don't have the time now.
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I look forward to this post.
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(Also, I find it really annoying that the English language isn't better at distinguishing these things.)
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I mean, I could declare that my laptop and Bigfoot are the same thing, and of course I have good evidence for the existence of my laptop; but that wouldn't really make it reasonable for me to do what everyone else calls "believing in Bigfoot".
In general, I'm very very suspicious about anything that amounts to a claim to have resolved a notoriously difficult or controversial question *by definition*.
Your laptop does not stomp around the mountains