I’ve never been a fan of the metaphysical. I, for example, have overcome my own upbringing to become very liberal. Astrology didn’t do that, god didn’t do that and it wasn’t made inevitable by a series of prior events and manipulations. I have spent my adult life, (or since I was 13 anyway), only believing in that for which there is irrefutable evidence. Now that doesn’t mean I’m closed to new things but those new things have to to be strongly based on evidence for me to believe in them. Let’s take a few examples:
1) Sasquatch. (Bigfoot, Yeti, abominable snowman, etc.) Giant Hominidae have been reported in many independent cultures an continue to this day with a huge number of reports but bafflingly little evidence. Due to it’s seemingly independent and widely spread occurrence, I am willing to concede that there MIGHT be something behind them but until there’s a live specimen or a carcass, I’m not buying it.
2) Coelacanth. The coelacanth was known in the fossil record but thought to be extinct, despite persistent rumors of sightings. In 1938, a specimen was discovered off South Africa. The coelacanth then, is real. It exists.
3) Unicorns. The unicorn is a mythical creature which was referenced widely in antiquity but has since been accepted as never having existed. No fossils, no bones, no footprints in the mud or volcanic ash. There never was any such thing as unicorns.
4) Conspiracy Theories. You knew we were going to get to CT eventually, right? Conspiracy theories are those theories which are based primarily in ignorance, paranoia or manipulation of the evidence for some ulterior motive. Sometimes it is based on cherrypicked, ripped out of context data, sometimes it’s made up out of whole cloth. 9/11, vaccines cause autism, Hillary is cadging votes, all of these are CT based on nothing but peoples’ own prejudices and ideologies. Other than a lack of evidence, what unites conspiracy theories is the necessity of keeping silent the implausibly large number of people who would have had to be aware of it.
5) Pseudoscience. You know what pseudoscience is. Things like Astrology, Numerology, Palmistry, Clairvoyance, Extrasensory Perception, etc. These have absolutely no basis in fact and are not science but a large number of people desperately want them to be. Superstitious nonsense, you might as well avoid black cats and stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Crackpottery with a patina of artificial respectability.
The difference between what is real and what is not is evidence. (Now, I’m not knocking peoples’ faith. I acknowledge that an omnipotent being would certainly be capable of existing while erasing every scrap of evidence of that existence. That’s not enough to sell me on it but I’ll make that concession.) Without evidence, it’s hokum or at best, in the same marginally possible but unproven category as Sasquatch and god(s).
Again, that isn’t to say that I’m not open to new things. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I fully believed my dad’s philosophy that poor people wanted to be poor because they were lazy and wanted a free ride. I believed that people from other places and of other ethnicities were different, (the implication being “inferior) than me. That race even exists. Then I got out into the word and learned that people were pretty much just people. That language and culture aside, we all pretty much are motivated by the same things and try to achieve them with just a few very similar strategies.
Let’s take race for example. There is no such thing as “race”. We are all just the human race. A few years after I reached my observational epiphany on that subject, I learned just how closely related all humans are. I learned that we experienced a genetic bottleneck thousands of years ago and that we are all related and come from a small section of the southern African coast. I think people only use the word “race” because they don’t want to say “breed”. Our diverse surface traits are very recent developments in the history of our evolution. I am much more closely related to an Australian Koori than a Beagle is to a Great Dane. The construct of race is only exaggerating diversity where almost none exists for various, (almost always self aggrandizing) reasons. (edited for clarity: I know a lot of people use the word “race” and that racial issues are very real things and I’m not dismissing that. I’m using the word and construct as an example of something for which there is no rational basis. “Race” certainly exists as a social construct but not really as a genetic one.)
People change, people grow, people become more than the sum of their knowledge and experiences. For me at least, there has to be something tangible, something that I have unequivocally experienced, evidence that is empirical for me to change my mind. Haranguing me won’t do it, nor will threats, intimidation, snark, sarcasm, dismissal, belittling, etc., etc. Even during the two occasions in my life when I was very close to being dead, (one of them had them preparing to open me up and harvest my organs. Yikes! Glad they waited until I was done with them!), I saw no lights, no old friends, felt nothing except oblivion. Void. Nothing. I saw no evidence of god. Not a hint.
Nor has being frightened for my life yielded any “coming to Jesus” moments. I seem to become calmer when I think I’m about to die and yes, that has happened a few times. I don’t want to die but I don’t believe I am especially afraid of it. I don’t fear roasting in Hell forever or oblivion or an afterlife I can’t imagine. It’s just that I can’t imagine not being here the day after I die. Maybe we make our own realities and this reality I’m experiencing will come to a close when I die. But that idea also smacks up against the wall of no evidence to support it.
I am willing to concede that the universe is stranger than I can imagine. I have no doubt that there are things, laws, properties, phenomena, places, creatures, etc., out there of which I have no knowledge nor ever will. But those things which I will come to believe in are going to have to be grounded in solid, irrefutable, unequivocal evidence before I believe in it and right now, the god idea doesn’t meet that threshold.
What is evidence? Evidence are facts and data that support an observed phenomenon or theory, though now we need to define what a fact is:
fact (plural facts)
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(archaic) Action; the realm of action. [quotations ▼]
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(law, obsolete except in set phrases) A wrongful or criminal deed. [quotations ▼]
He had become an accessory after the fact.
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(obsolete) Feat. [quotations ▼]
- An honest observation.
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Something actual as opposed to invented. [quotations ▼]
In this story, the Gettysburg Address is a fact, but the rest is fiction.
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Something which is real.
Gravity is a fact, not a theory.
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Something which has become real.
The promise of television became a fact in the 1920s.
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Something concrete used as a basis for further interpretation.
Let's look at the facts of the case before deciding.
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An objective consensus on a fundamental reality that has been agreed upon by a substantial number of experts.
There is no doubting the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
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Information about a particular subject, especially actual conditions and/or circumstances.
The facts about space travel.
I have bolded the relevant definitions in order to clarify their use in this context. Facts are indisputable and unalterable realities.
Maybe what would be more useful is if I defined what is not evidence. Anecdotes are not evidence, nor are conjectures, youtube videos, books dedicated to mythology and the pseudosciences, what your mom told you, what somebody dressed in an impressive robe says, almost anything that appears on the internet or comes out of Bill O’Reilly’s mouth. You cannot base a claim on made up evidence. You can’t post a youtube video of some clown wearing a tinfoil hat in his basement as evidence. You can’t cite a person who has been discredited as evidence. You can’t say that IF a whole series of extremely unlikely events occur in exactly the right order it may make your theory remotely possible, it therefore proves your theory. You can’t make assertions based on ignorance, (I’m looking at you, anti-vaxxers and 9/11 CTers). Finally, correlation does not always equal causality.
This brings us at long last to religion. Earlier, I put religion in the same category as Sasquatch and generally that may be true because they share superficial similarities. They both are multi cultural and neither has any real evidence associated but a plethora of unverifiable “evidence” to “support” them. Some of that evidence is data that has been misinterpreted, some deliberately faked and some compelling but unproven. I put religion in it’s own category though for several reasons. First, it’s widespread and accepted enough to make the Bigfoot enthusiasts extremely envious. But for me it’s more a matter of respect for it’s adherents. A respect that I didn’t always feel for otherwise reasonable people who nevertheless believe in some degree of supernatural phenomena. A respect I’ve learned right here at Daily Kos, (shout out to ya, wee mama). A respect that I feel for it’s adherents, if not it’s tenets.
But that respect came to me with difficulty. For one thing, since I was a young child, I’ve always had people bullying me when it comes to religion. They want to force me to be respectful of a belief that I don’t share or they want to believe I am somehow less than they because I’m atheist. I didn’t learn those things here but I’ve certainly encountered them here. They want to make laws that allow, even encourage people to hate me, to treat me as less than human, to restrict me and my ability to live in society. I’m sure as hell not going to respect that. Instead I’ll give my respect to those who earn it, to those who respect me and my right to not believe in the metaphysical. You want to believe in god(s), (Buddha, Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Krishna, etc., etc., ∞)? Be my guest, I’m not here to judge you. The only judgments I’m fit to make are what do and do not rise to my threshold of proof. I try to keep that threshold as OBJECTIVE, demonstrable and provable as possible.
Am I sometimes wrong? Oh, gosh yes! Often. Spectacularly, even breathtakingly. But when I am, I try to admit it and I try to do that humbly. It’s hard but I’ve been training myself to not fall into the internet habit of always having to be right at all costs, evidence be damned. This is why I don’t often participate in the pro Sanders or pro Clinton diaries. Because when I get among partisans, I am still going to point out reality. I am still going to say that one’s claim is hogwash or misinterpreted, etc. In those diaries, that kind of thing is always met with hostility. Then the discussion becomes useless because out comes the dismissal, the invective, the accusations of shilling…. Those environments are exactly counter to the conversations I want to be engaged in. I’m not a secret Hillary supporter because I don’t hate her or point out that no, she didn’t actually say/do something being claimed, nor am I trying to attack her or damage her because Sanders’ position on several issues, (healthcare, foreign intervention, financial malfeasance, etc.) much more closely match my point of view than Clinton’s. These things are differences of subjective opinion and we are entitled to them. What we are not entitled to do is base advocacy for those subjective opinions on subjective “facts”, and I make no apologies, I will point that out.
Daily Kos has, after all, long prided itself as being the “reality based” community and for many years I have been proud to say I’m a welcomed and accepted, (and since DK3 or 4 with mojo!), member of this community. I don’t participate as much as some, I’m much less well educated than most, and I’m less well regarded than many. But I have always been proud to be a part of this community, even when I spent most of my time when I first started regularly using the internet at the old Americablog site and later, at Firedoglake. The reason for that pride was the discourse here. My admiration of awesome people who trade in reality and not flights of fancy. I guess it’s for that reason that I’ve clashed so obnoxiously with some posters who want to call something subjective or disproved “real” and then base their philosophy on it. Nothing can be more antithetical to someone who is trying to remain grounded firmly in the objective reality than partisan primary war diaries.
Except religion.
So many people believe it, so many people espouse it, so many people want to force others to believe it. People legislate it, they base their whole lives around it and where my orbit intersects theirs, I get a dose of it, whether I want it or not. Let’s take “souls” for example. Unless we are talking about the 40 watts or so that is our electrical potential, what is a soul? Has it been measured? Has it been empirically verified? Has it and it’s properties been scientifically described? Peer reviewed? No to all of those things, yet people chatter on about souls as if they were brains or hearts or livers, things universally accepted as real. But as they are part of the vernacular, to point that out every time it comes up would be annoying indeed, (not to mention laborious!), so I’m not here to quibble over religion related minutia.
In summation, I am not atheist because I have a philosophy, (along with books at Amazon!), to sell like Sam Harris or Bill Maher, I’m not atheist because I’m mad at my dad. I’m not atheist because I’m all self righteous about my lack of religion. I’m not atheist so I can come to Daily Kos and poke a stick at the theists. Peoples’ opinions of me are entirely irrelevant to my atheism. How many people share atheism is not the reason I’m atheist. I am atheist because I do not believe in god(s) and I do not believe in god(s) because there is no empirical evidence to support the existence of god(s). My atheism is not a philosophy I espouse or a weapon that I wield upon others who do believe in god(s), my atheism is just a fact of who I am and have been for decades.
IF there ever comes a time when somebody comes out of the Oregon woods with a Sasquatch, I’ll believe in Bigfoot. If somebody breaks open a rock in a quarry and out drops a unicorn fossil, then I’ll believe unicorns once existed. If there were peer reviewed studies showing unequivocally that card reading is more accurate than random guessing, then I’ll believe in Tarot. IF an omnipotent deity which created the universe and everything in it makes it’s presence undeniably known, then I’ll believe in god.
Thanks for allowing me to use this platform to express myself. I’ll respect your right to believe in god if you respect my inalienable right to not have other peoples’ religious tenets forced upon me. I am not saying that you can’t talk about your belief in god(s), no. I’d never be that arrogant. What I’m saying is don’t use your belief in god(s) as a weapon or a tool to persuade me to support your position. Don’t base what you’re saying upon your subjective belief in god(s) and then get upset when I point out that your belief doesn’t automatically = my reality.