A Fragment on Insufficiency

Stepping into the violent shore of opinion to wade smugly in conflicts roused by the opposing winds, I want to take on an argument against the religion/science dichotomy. The proclaimed arbiters of belief have minimized in two camps the boundaries in which it is conventional to accept one claim over another. On the one hand the common argument against religion is science (evolutionary, geologic, physical). On the other is the idea that faith transcends irreducibility. These false duels perpetuate a conflict that is self-generating, and that in its consumptive vitriol it spawns a misguided enmity that satisfies neither party. The disparity of “proof” on both sides is a different understanding of misunderstanding. It is a shouting match between deaf-mutes discussing different topics.

First, let’s dispense with the misnomer “atheist”. I do not disbelieve in God. I do, however, believe in the non-existence of God. My believe is a positive, and the prefix-negation belongs to what does not exist. Positing the denial of a certain belief through the negative runs counterintuitive to most traits. Does writing with my right hand make me “a-sinistral”? No, it makes me dextral. (Once started, you can take this negative modification to absurd stretches: a Republican is an “a-Democrat”, someone with no preference to fish is an “a-pescetarian” and so on.) Of course the term was not coined as a positive description. Atheism can be seen as a disability (and often it is perceived as such). Disability, no matter how much it may or may not hinder a person, is a negative descriptor despite the protests some individuals might announce. If we must insist on terms positing one’s certainty on the fictionality of a God, how about “irreligious”. Of course this term does not address any deity, but one can justifiably assume one’s indifference to religion may lead to no adherence to God-beliefs (not always, of course; there are many non-denominational believers, but those beliefs become so benign, so selective doctrinally, that attention isn’t much merited). Eschewing “atheist” for irreligious takes on a more precise, positive quality.

Just as God springs from the imagination of men, so does the determination that science refutes God’s existence takes on an equally Athenian origin. With the ubiquity of creation stories and its positing of history, it is understandable why one would use science to counter the claims of religion. But the claims of religion are not God, not entirely anyway. Certainly, science is useful to us in that childish absurdities like a young earth model, Noah’s ark, the resurrection, et al. can be utterly dismissed as actual occurrences and taken the imaginative stories they are rather resolutely. Science, therefore, becomes a handy tool against the babbling constructs of religion’s various aspects. But, reliance on one tool has become all too common. It gives ammunition to the believers in God in adjusting their arguments. Where science has a (false) sense of rigidity because its most pure standards disallow more than allow, religion has a ridiculous flexibility which renders it inscrutably amoeba-like. Any attempt to pin it down will slip it away smiling. No consensus in God-belief is necessary, where consensus and proofs are absolutely needed in science.

Not in the pejorative sense is belief in God irrational. It is irrational in that no standards are given into what such a belief means. And, of course, rationality can be seen as limited in its scope of comprehension when one posits God. So what ground does my irreligious conviction stand? Well, and this is where people’s satisfactions have to be disconsidered, it has no ground, no basis of rational inquiry beyond my own beliefs. I’m not writing this as a treatise in which to dissuade others of their belief in fictive creators, but as an outline into why the onus is not on the irreligious to provide satisfactory answers for the religiously minded. I am not held to any burden of proof because I have not posited anything more than “I do not believe in God”. It’s circularity is its own proof, and anyone’s assertion against it is an unreasonable doubt. Arguing against such would be beyond absurd, equally as absurd as arguing against another’s conviction in the opposite belief.

Of course, those who hold science as the beacon guiding the path to an enlightened irreligiosity may object. “It is not personal convictions that we are arguing. It is the existence and probability of a creator.” Certainly, this is granted and commended. There is a nobility in exasperatingly fighting the stubborn to whom no standards are necessary (this is only a semi-facetious statement). But let’s not be reluctant to fit the argument to our own needs. God and religion is an unnecessary, though intriguing, byproduct of the imagination. To us, the prospect of God diminishes the wonders and joys and pains of existence. A creator is only an exacerbating dilemma of our individuality, a paralyzing force that delimits achievement and increases separation. It’s a mechanism in which to shirk the everyday for the unattainably hopeful. It’s an alibi as useful as a dream in a court case. It’s a justification to forgo analysis and accept dogma. It’s a problematic illusion of convenience. One does not need God to excuse one’s good deeds, but God and religion have been so required to justify atrocity. In fact, to be stubbornly rigorous, no reason should be necessitated in my irreligiosness.

A problem arises, however, because we are conditioned into acceptance that the so-called Three Big Questions are of the utmost supremacy to all others. We tend to veer toward the patently absurd and obviously fictitious because it easily rests these supposedly troubling questions:
1. Where did we come from?
2. What is our purpose in life?
3. What happens after we die?
Religion can provide some pretty pat answers - though thankfully there is a long tradition of theology that doesn’t treat them with the flippancy of a youth-group minister or televangelist - and so it becomes obvious why so many are willing to accept the strangeness of deities. In no way do I want to suggest that these questions are a waste of time. Some have devoted their lives to unraveling for themselves, and for the dissemination to others, these questions in rather profound and beautiful, if not perplexing and interesting, ways. Many are theologians or theological, like the great Medieval devotional writers: the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Hildegard of Bingen, Dante, etc. Their futility of purpose does not diminish their intellectually stimulating, existentially informative and wonderfully imaginative works. We hold them to the highest esteem because of their worldly greatness, not their insight into fictitious beings (just like we esteem Chaucer for his poetic/historical contribution and not as an exemplary stratification of society). Let it suffice, though, that there are those of us who view such intellectual pursuits as labyrinthine journeys that lead utterly nowhere. We are no less analytical, imaginative or creatively endowed; nor are we hopelessly mired in some Sartrean disposition. No, it is more that these Big Questions reek more of Big Distractions. More often than not they’re proclaimed as philosophical, yet wrapped unknowingly in the rags of sophistry.

The inscrutability of existence is just that, inscrutable. But the facets of existence are more than worthy of our attention - they demand it. Does one really require a wherefore and why to live meaningfully, to be charitable and civilized? Perhaps I might be deaf to the overall resounding Yes to that question. Perhaps I am an outlier too entrenched in materialism to simply “get” the yearning for answers and origination theories. But that strikes me as incredibly unlikely. We interact in too many ways to rely on ultimate meaning. Let’s forgo relying on science and religion as anything more than they are. Their generative and destructive contributions to our common history are unfathomably huge; their interpretation mutable and transformative over time. One cannot answer the other because the questions are incompatible.