A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Nothing demonstrates that better than the way some religious fundamentalists with little or no familiarity with science use random bits of information from the popular press or casual conversation to claim that science validates God and religious dogma. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a theist who had apparently heard about work being done in physical anthropology to trace the genetic ancestry of the human race. She ecstatically proclaimed that it had been scientifically proven that Adam and Eve were real. For anyone actually following the research this kind of statement is stunning in its ignorance. Of course I will say that many researchers tend to fan the ardent fire of these believers when they use Biblical names or Biblical references in their research. And journalists can’t resist headlines like; Have Scientists Discovered Adam and Eve? It’s a sure way to sell magazines. The problem is that many lay people don’t get past the title and a quick skim of the opening paragraph. Their conclusions aren’t really surprising. It actually seems that people are telling them that science has found Adam and Eve.
Of course, if they bothered to read the actual research (assuming they could understand it) they would see that it does not remotely support Biblical genesis stories – nor could it. Yes, we do all have common ancestors but no one is seriously claiming that two people suddenly appeared and started a family that led to the entire human race. Even if that had happened, this research is statistical analysis of a fairly small number of DNA samples and there is no way for it to trace back to specific people. It is abundantly clear that we did not all descend from one mated pair of humans a long time ago. However, this kind of research has concluded that all living humans have two common ancestors, one female who is a everyone’s common ancestor and one male who is a common ancestor of all living men. These are called our most recent common ancestors (MRCA). This does not imply that we have found their bodies. As I said, it has only been calculated through DNA analysis.
The analysis suggests that our female MRCA lived about 140,000 to 200,000 years ago and our male MRCA lived about 60,000 - 90,000 years ago (determined through molecular clock and genetic marker studies). They were obviously not contemporaries. They were separated in time by tens of thousands of years. I think it's safe to say that these two people didn't even know each other, much less have babies together. Mitochondrial-Eve is the female MRCA of all humans as traced via mitochondrial DNA passed only through the maternal line. Y Chromosome Adam is the male MRCA all living men as traced via the Y Chromosome passed only through the paternal line. We all have Mitochondrial DNA but only men have the Y Chromosome.
Another misconception theists take from this research is that it is tracing lines back to when only one set of people lived. However, Mitochondrial Eve was not the only woman in her day and Y Chromosome Adam was not the only living man in his day. If that had been the case, the human race would be extinct. The existence of a most recent common ancestor does not imply that there was a population bottleneck or a first couple. It is very likely that they were part of large populations. Each of these other people who were their contemporaries potentially has living descendents today although some lines have died out. As a matter of fact, the MRCA will change when a line dies out. This all might seem like a paradox but it can be easily explained, if the nature of genetic lineage is taken into account. I won't go into it. You can look it up if you are interested. There is something about this that theists can gloat about if they want. For what it’s worth this research does indicate that humans originated in Africa which is the continent where the Bible stories take place.
Note: I will be on vacation for the next week so don't expect any new posts or responses for a while. WF
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
The Question of the Soul
One of the basic tenets of religion is the idea that humans have souls (or spirits) that are separate and distinct from our physical bodies, integrated only during life and freed after physical death to some fate or another. It would take volumes to discuss all the dogma religions have contrived regarding souls but that’s it in a nutshell. However, “soul” is not an exclusively religious term so talking about it can result in misunderstanding. The soul is generally considered to be the unique, self-aware, inner essence of a living person. But in religion, it has a supernatural basis. It is implanted or “breathed” into the body by God. Thus it is thought by some to be part of (or akin to) the supernatural essence of God, including immortality. To avoid confusion, I will be referring to the immortal soul here and not the poetic or philosophical notion of soul unless I specify otherwise. Some of my readers have expressed a belief in reincarnation. So let me just say that the question of the soul’s existence is not affected by its possible migration to other bodies before attaining its final goal. If anything, this provides even more ways to disprove it. I don’t plan to discuss reincarnation further. If souls don’t exist, that point is moot.
The soul is generally considered to be the true basis of sapience and one’s sense of identity. In a secular context, soul is just a convenient name for these attributes. Aristotle described the soul as the core essence of a being - that which defines a being. Although he did not believe the soul could continue after death, oddly enough, he was inclined to believe the intellect was eternal. However, he didn’t have the benefit of our current understanding of the role of the physical brain in cognition, memory and reason which form the basis of intellect. Humans have long used the term “soul” in folklore, poetry, art and philosophy. It permeates our culture. While much of this is intended to be metaphorical, that is seldom clear. Considering all this, I think it’s easy to understand why the idea of the immortality of souls is so pervasive, especially since so few people are aware of the current scientific understanding of the human neocortex and its relationship to consciousness and higher brain function. But I think close examination shows that the immortal soul is a fundamental misunderstanding of what life is and, and even more importantly, what the mind is.
It is clear that humans are conscious and self-aware. Even with our advanced understanding of the brain, we still have many different theories, conceptions and misconceptions about consciousness. My view of consciousness is that it is really nothing more than perception - awareness of reality including self-awareness. I certainly agree that consciousness is a rare thing in nature. Other animals have varying degrees of consciousness but nothing like the primate ability to think in terms of “I” and “me.” Of the primates, humans have the most developed example of this kind of self-awareness. In evolutionary terms, the most significant recent development in brain structure is the highly developed human neocortex. But for all the mystery in which we shroud these concepts, the functions of perception, sensation, memory, reason and emotion as well as maintenance of bodily functions are performed by our physical brain. How else would we lose consciousness when the brain is shut down as during surgery, brain damage or simply from a blow to the head? There are volumes of information that demonstrate inconsistency in the concept of the soul. Skeptical literature often cites phenomena such as brain lesions (as in Broca's aphasia) and conditions like Alzheimer's disease as evidence that personality is material, and exists in discrete physical components, contrary to the philosophy of the immortal soul. Owing to its complexity, most people are completely in awe of the brain as an organ and consider it, and the very act of thought, significant mysteries. To discuss all of the scientific literature would turn this already lengthy article into an unwieldy project that few would have time to read. I will try to confine my discussion to the conscious and volitional part of the human brain as I think it is the key argument for the existence of the immortal soul.
It is important to note that we naturally have difficulty analyzing the nature of our own consciousness because of our perspective. We have the same difficulty as we do when analyzing the entire universe. We can't get a “bird’s eye view” or examine it under a microscope. We also can’t avoid the observer effect. We can only know that we are conscious and self-aware. It is the irreducible basis of who we are. We know we think, but we don’t really understand how we think. We can observe others from an external perspective. But then we lose the internal perspective. To view this problem circumspectly we must consider our internal perspective to be generally equivalent with that of others who we can observe externally. This is not really a problem. As I said in a previous discussion, humans vary only trivially in our genetic structure. Our physical bodies are essentially identical. This applies to our brains as well. Why wouldn’t our cognitive awareness be effectively the same from one individual to another? We may arrive at different conclusions based on different experience and other conditions but the underlying mechanisms are identical for the purpose of study.
I think the brain/body dichotomy seems obvious to us because we understand and relate to the brain and body in different ways. To us, our consciousness seems to be completely separate from our physical body. They appear to be in totally different categories. One is obviously material and the other seems ethereal. The body is measurable. Consciousness is as nebulous as thought. Furthermore, we cannot see a connection between our brain and our consciousness. We don’t feel ourselves think. We know our brain is connected to our body because we receive the messages of our sense organs. But even with the greatest effort of will, we cannot sense that consciousness is a mere function of our brain. It is more difficult than trying to look at the inside of our own eyelids. So it is natural to speculate that it might be something different and special. We are clearly more than the sum of our parts. So, when we hear about spirits, it seems to make sense. We begin to think that maybe the mystics are right. Maybe there is such a thing as an immortal soul. After all, it is intangible and mysterious but definitely real. It doesn’t seem to get hungry or thirsty like our body. And perhaps it has a supernatural existence independent of the old “mortal coil.”
Our brain does some things that appear magical or mystical until they are understood. For instance, in the eyes of vertebrates the photo-sensitive cells called rods and cones lie behind the optic nerves and a layer of blood vessels resulting in loss of visual acuity. These nerves and blood vessels must emerge through the back of the retina, leaving a hole in the organ with no light-sensitive cells, and forming a blind spot. But our mind compensates for these blind spots by extrapolating and filling in the missing data. We don’t do this consciously but completely without thinking about it. Our mind does this in other circumstances, also without conscious effort. In any scene of our experience there are many elements including visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory. And these are not all on one level. There are background elements and foreground elements as well as peripheral elements. There are also conditions that affect the amount of information received such as the level and intensity of each stimulus. If anything in the scene is incongruous or essentially missing, our mind can and usually does fill in the scene with what seems most likely based on our experience and expectations. If, for some reason, we are concentrating on certain specific details and don’t think about others at the moment of the experience, our memory may be a bit patchy on some details. But our mind helpfully fills in those details and sometimes when we recall the scenes for reexamination, we get the filled in details and cannot reasonably tell them from the clearly perceived data.
The cold hard fact of the matter is that when we die, our brain ceases to function. This is an observable and verifiable fact. We may be able to revive a dead body if we get to it soon enough, but dead bodies decompose rather rapidly if not preserved. Sometimes we can revive a dead body even after decomposition has started. But when we do this, we invariably find there is a significant loss of brain function. All victims of brain damage are observably not the same person they were before. The point is that all of our sensations, feelings, thoughts, memories and dreams are due to brain function. When that is damaged, there is often little left of the person we were. When we die, the body, the brain and the whole universe of matter continue to exist but the personality, intellect and consciousness of that person is gone. It is easy to see that a dead body is incapable of being aware of anything much less being self-aware. The more difficult concept to grasp is that a disembodied soul could not be self-aware. That is simply because it would have no self to be aware of. The question is: Why is this disputable? There is the notion promoted by such stories as the recent “Matrix” movies that say the mind retains a residual self-image. However, if the mind is the function of a physical brain, there is nowhere for this residual self-image to be retained. Even if we imagine a spiritual body, why can’t we detect the function of such bodies? For any information to be stored and processed requires power and substance. Where is this power and substance that allows a soul to perform the activity originally managed by the brain? If a spirit is invisible and immaterial, it cannot do what a brain can do. If it could, why would we need a brain in the first place?
I’m sure some will bring up the idea of Near Death Experience (NDE) and Out of Body Experience (OBE). Sometimes people who die are revived before any significant brain damage can occur. And some people report the ability to move their “soul” out of their body. Under these circumstances, odd things have been reported to occur. If you read the anecdotal evidence about these things, it can sound rather convincing. People are said to report all kinds of things they “couldn’t possibly have known” that occurred during their “death” or in remote locations. But all serious scientific studies into NDEs and OBEs have shown that the reported phenomena are fabrications, guesswork or otherwise easily explainable. If you believe in these claims, I suggest you read both sides of the issue and use critical thinking. If you are one who contends there is some kind of conspiracy on the part of scientists to cover up such real events, you don’t know much about scientists. Such a discovery, if sufficiently validated by double blind studies, could make the career of a scientist. It would be big news and guarantee the fame of anyone who proved it. But consider the incentives of profit and fame that might motivate the purveyors of such claims. Many people have made lucrative careers out of writing books and lecturing about this kind of thing. They are hucksters preying on the gullible and the hopeful people of the world. The idea of the soul as a separate ghostly occupant inhabiting the body also gives rise to other notions like haunting and demonic possession. I think it is obvious that we need to develop what Carl Sagan called a “Baloney detector” that will allow us to use knowledge and critical thinking skills to relegate these absurd ideas to the category of mystical quackery and pseudoscience where they belong.
Probably the main attraction of the notion of immortal souls is that it is comforting to think of loved ones continuing to live on in some peaceful way after their bodily death. This is perfectly understandable. When we lose a loved one, it’s natural to grieve and wish that things were different. Even the desire for personal immortality is natural. But wishing and hoping for things doesn’t make them happen. There is no correlation between desire and actuality. Facts are facts. We can’t change what is. The healthier thing to do is to come to terms with mortality. We all die. Life is too short. It sucks. Get over it. Sometimes we are left alone. Sometimes children die. It is heartbreaking, but it is reality. Besides, I think the notion of an afterlife causes people to put things off assuming there will be time later in another place to do things. Fortunately, they will never have the opportunity to regret this waste of their lives. But their children and friends might.
Personally, I find the whole idea of life after death to be demeaning to actual life. One of the worst examples of this is the idea that if you kill someone, it isn’t really that bad. That is how tyrants and terrorists can justify killing innocent people. They can just say that God knows his own and will give them a new life in heaven (or the paradise of your choice). It is actually an insidious rationalization. Religions sometimes even encourage this kind of thinking especially when it applies to unbelievers. The witch hunts are a good example. Ironically, this quick path to paradise doesn’t generally apply to suicides. This has to be a serious sin that would keep you out of heaven. The churches want you to believe in a glorious afterlife, but they don’t want too many people trying to take the short way out. That would seriously curtail their revenue if it got popular. They also depend on numbers of believers to give them power. Dead believers aren’t as useful as live ones. They can’t vote or protest or proselytize.
Most believers in the soul think of it as completely spiritual, supernatural and immaterial. However there have been those who think it has some material component. Some have even tried to establish mass or weight of the soul. Many of you may have heard it said that the weight of the soul is 21 grams. This was the inspiration for the title of a 2003 movie. The origin of this 21 gram weight comes from the work of one Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill Massachusetts in 1903. Believing the soul must have some sort of corporeal mass, Dr. MacDougall conducted a series of experiments to determine if the moment of the soul’s departure could be detected. He never concluded that the weight of the soul was 21 grams. In fact, he admitted that his experiments could not be considered conclusive of anything and no one has been able to duplicate his results. But 21 grams was his measurement of weight loss at the moment of expiration of his first test subject. While this is an interesting story, it clearly doesn’t help our understanding of the question of the soul. It also goes to show you that even if you rely on the claims of scientists, you still need to use critical thinking.
Of course, the only way to believe a God that is pure consciousness could give rise to the entire physical universe is to believe that consciousness can exist outside of a living body and is itself able to be a cause. First of all, we have no experience of such a thing. Every conscious being ever known is a living being. To the believer, disembodied souls are considered invisible and immaterial. In essence they are thought of as a force of some kind. But force is not a cause, it is an effect. Just like the mind is not a cause but an effect. The law of causality is how the universe works. You can’t have a cause, without an effect or an effect without a cause. No matter how attractive or popular these ideas are, they have no basis in fact.
The soul is generally considered to be the true basis of sapience and one’s sense of identity. In a secular context, soul is just a convenient name for these attributes. Aristotle described the soul as the core essence of a being - that which defines a being. Although he did not believe the soul could continue after death, oddly enough, he was inclined to believe the intellect was eternal. However, he didn’t have the benefit of our current understanding of the role of the physical brain in cognition, memory and reason which form the basis of intellect. Humans have long used the term “soul” in folklore, poetry, art and philosophy. It permeates our culture. While much of this is intended to be metaphorical, that is seldom clear. Considering all this, I think it’s easy to understand why the idea of the immortality of souls is so pervasive, especially since so few people are aware of the current scientific understanding of the human neocortex and its relationship to consciousness and higher brain function. But I think close examination shows that the immortal soul is a fundamental misunderstanding of what life is and, and even more importantly, what the mind is.
It is clear that humans are conscious and self-aware. Even with our advanced understanding of the brain, we still have many different theories, conceptions and misconceptions about consciousness. My view of consciousness is that it is really nothing more than perception - awareness of reality including self-awareness. I certainly agree that consciousness is a rare thing in nature. Other animals have varying degrees of consciousness but nothing like the primate ability to think in terms of “I” and “me.” Of the primates, humans have the most developed example of this kind of self-awareness. In evolutionary terms, the most significant recent development in brain structure is the highly developed human neocortex. But for all the mystery in which we shroud these concepts, the functions of perception, sensation, memory, reason and emotion as well as maintenance of bodily functions are performed by our physical brain. How else would we lose consciousness when the brain is shut down as during surgery, brain damage or simply from a blow to the head? There are volumes of information that demonstrate inconsistency in the concept of the soul. Skeptical literature often cites phenomena such as brain lesions (as in Broca's aphasia) and conditions like Alzheimer's disease as evidence that personality is material, and exists in discrete physical components, contrary to the philosophy of the immortal soul. Owing to its complexity, most people are completely in awe of the brain as an organ and consider it, and the very act of thought, significant mysteries. To discuss all of the scientific literature would turn this already lengthy article into an unwieldy project that few would have time to read. I will try to confine my discussion to the conscious and volitional part of the human brain as I think it is the key argument for the existence of the immortal soul.
It is important to note that we naturally have difficulty analyzing the nature of our own consciousness because of our perspective. We have the same difficulty as we do when analyzing the entire universe. We can't get a “bird’s eye view” or examine it under a microscope. We also can’t avoid the observer effect. We can only know that we are conscious and self-aware. It is the irreducible basis of who we are. We know we think, but we don’t really understand how we think. We can observe others from an external perspective. But then we lose the internal perspective. To view this problem circumspectly we must consider our internal perspective to be generally equivalent with that of others who we can observe externally. This is not really a problem. As I said in a previous discussion, humans vary only trivially in our genetic structure. Our physical bodies are essentially identical. This applies to our brains as well. Why wouldn’t our cognitive awareness be effectively the same from one individual to another? We may arrive at different conclusions based on different experience and other conditions but the underlying mechanisms are identical for the purpose of study.
I think the brain/body dichotomy seems obvious to us because we understand and relate to the brain and body in different ways. To us, our consciousness seems to be completely separate from our physical body. They appear to be in totally different categories. One is obviously material and the other seems ethereal. The body is measurable. Consciousness is as nebulous as thought. Furthermore, we cannot see a connection between our brain and our consciousness. We don’t feel ourselves think. We know our brain is connected to our body because we receive the messages of our sense organs. But even with the greatest effort of will, we cannot sense that consciousness is a mere function of our brain. It is more difficult than trying to look at the inside of our own eyelids. So it is natural to speculate that it might be something different and special. We are clearly more than the sum of our parts. So, when we hear about spirits, it seems to make sense. We begin to think that maybe the mystics are right. Maybe there is such a thing as an immortal soul. After all, it is intangible and mysterious but definitely real. It doesn’t seem to get hungry or thirsty like our body. And perhaps it has a supernatural existence independent of the old “mortal coil.”
Our brain does some things that appear magical or mystical until they are understood. For instance, in the eyes of vertebrates the photo-sensitive cells called rods and cones lie behind the optic nerves and a layer of blood vessels resulting in loss of visual acuity. These nerves and blood vessels must emerge through the back of the retina, leaving a hole in the organ with no light-sensitive cells, and forming a blind spot. But our mind compensates for these blind spots by extrapolating and filling in the missing data. We don’t do this consciously but completely without thinking about it. Our mind does this in other circumstances, also without conscious effort. In any scene of our experience there are many elements including visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory. And these are not all on one level. There are background elements and foreground elements as well as peripheral elements. There are also conditions that affect the amount of information received such as the level and intensity of each stimulus. If anything in the scene is incongruous or essentially missing, our mind can and usually does fill in the scene with what seems most likely based on our experience and expectations. If, for some reason, we are concentrating on certain specific details and don’t think about others at the moment of the experience, our memory may be a bit patchy on some details. But our mind helpfully fills in those details and sometimes when we recall the scenes for reexamination, we get the filled in details and cannot reasonably tell them from the clearly perceived data.
The cold hard fact of the matter is that when we die, our brain ceases to function. This is an observable and verifiable fact. We may be able to revive a dead body if we get to it soon enough, but dead bodies decompose rather rapidly if not preserved. Sometimes we can revive a dead body even after decomposition has started. But when we do this, we invariably find there is a significant loss of brain function. All victims of brain damage are observably not the same person they were before. The point is that all of our sensations, feelings, thoughts, memories and dreams are due to brain function. When that is damaged, there is often little left of the person we were. When we die, the body, the brain and the whole universe of matter continue to exist but the personality, intellect and consciousness of that person is gone. It is easy to see that a dead body is incapable of being aware of anything much less being self-aware. The more difficult concept to grasp is that a disembodied soul could not be self-aware. That is simply because it would have no self to be aware of. The question is: Why is this disputable? There is the notion promoted by such stories as the recent “Matrix” movies that say the mind retains a residual self-image. However, if the mind is the function of a physical brain, there is nowhere for this residual self-image to be retained. Even if we imagine a spiritual body, why can’t we detect the function of such bodies? For any information to be stored and processed requires power and substance. Where is this power and substance that allows a soul to perform the activity originally managed by the brain? If a spirit is invisible and immaterial, it cannot do what a brain can do. If it could, why would we need a brain in the first place?
I’m sure some will bring up the idea of Near Death Experience (NDE) and Out of Body Experience (OBE). Sometimes people who die are revived before any significant brain damage can occur. And some people report the ability to move their “soul” out of their body. Under these circumstances, odd things have been reported to occur. If you read the anecdotal evidence about these things, it can sound rather convincing. People are said to report all kinds of things they “couldn’t possibly have known” that occurred during their “death” or in remote locations. But all serious scientific studies into NDEs and OBEs have shown that the reported phenomena are fabrications, guesswork or otherwise easily explainable. If you believe in these claims, I suggest you read both sides of the issue and use critical thinking. If you are one who contends there is some kind of conspiracy on the part of scientists to cover up such real events, you don’t know much about scientists. Such a discovery, if sufficiently validated by double blind studies, could make the career of a scientist. It would be big news and guarantee the fame of anyone who proved it. But consider the incentives of profit and fame that might motivate the purveyors of such claims. Many people have made lucrative careers out of writing books and lecturing about this kind of thing. They are hucksters preying on the gullible and the hopeful people of the world. The idea of the soul as a separate ghostly occupant inhabiting the body also gives rise to other notions like haunting and demonic possession. I think it is obvious that we need to develop what Carl Sagan called a “Baloney detector” that will allow us to use knowledge and critical thinking skills to relegate these absurd ideas to the category of mystical quackery and pseudoscience where they belong.
Probably the main attraction of the notion of immortal souls is that it is comforting to think of loved ones continuing to live on in some peaceful way after their bodily death. This is perfectly understandable. When we lose a loved one, it’s natural to grieve and wish that things were different. Even the desire for personal immortality is natural. But wishing and hoping for things doesn’t make them happen. There is no correlation between desire and actuality. Facts are facts. We can’t change what is. The healthier thing to do is to come to terms with mortality. We all die. Life is too short. It sucks. Get over it. Sometimes we are left alone. Sometimes children die. It is heartbreaking, but it is reality. Besides, I think the notion of an afterlife causes people to put things off assuming there will be time later in another place to do things. Fortunately, they will never have the opportunity to regret this waste of their lives. But their children and friends might.
Personally, I find the whole idea of life after death to be demeaning to actual life. One of the worst examples of this is the idea that if you kill someone, it isn’t really that bad. That is how tyrants and terrorists can justify killing innocent people. They can just say that God knows his own and will give them a new life in heaven (or the paradise of your choice). It is actually an insidious rationalization. Religions sometimes even encourage this kind of thinking especially when it applies to unbelievers. The witch hunts are a good example. Ironically, this quick path to paradise doesn’t generally apply to suicides. This has to be a serious sin that would keep you out of heaven. The churches want you to believe in a glorious afterlife, but they don’t want too many people trying to take the short way out. That would seriously curtail their revenue if it got popular. They also depend on numbers of believers to give them power. Dead believers aren’t as useful as live ones. They can’t vote or protest or proselytize.
Most believers in the soul think of it as completely spiritual, supernatural and immaterial. However there have been those who think it has some material component. Some have even tried to establish mass or weight of the soul. Many of you may have heard it said that the weight of the soul is 21 grams. This was the inspiration for the title of a 2003 movie. The origin of this 21 gram weight comes from the work of one Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill Massachusetts in 1903. Believing the soul must have some sort of corporeal mass, Dr. MacDougall conducted a series of experiments to determine if the moment of the soul’s departure could be detected. He never concluded that the weight of the soul was 21 grams. In fact, he admitted that his experiments could not be considered conclusive of anything and no one has been able to duplicate his results. But 21 grams was his measurement of weight loss at the moment of expiration of his first test subject. While this is an interesting story, it clearly doesn’t help our understanding of the question of the soul. It also goes to show you that even if you rely on the claims of scientists, you still need to use critical thinking.
Of course, the only way to believe a God that is pure consciousness could give rise to the entire physical universe is to believe that consciousness can exist outside of a living body and is itself able to be a cause. First of all, we have no experience of such a thing. Every conscious being ever known is a living being. To the believer, disembodied souls are considered invisible and immaterial. In essence they are thought of as a force of some kind. But force is not a cause, it is an effect. Just like the mind is not a cause but an effect. The law of causality is how the universe works. You can’t have a cause, without an effect or an effect without a cause. No matter how attractive or popular these ideas are, they have no basis in fact.
Monday, July 23, 2007
The Question of Morality
As an atheist, I am often asked about morality. Specifically, religious people ask if I have any morals and if so, what I base them on. To most believers, all morality comes from God. I not only disagree with this, I find it repugnant. If I do something considered immoral, I certainly get the blame. And that’s fine with me because I accept responsibility for all my actions. But if I act morally, it is all God’s doing and I get no credit. I am responsible for those actions too. But God even gets credit for my good deeds. I hate it when I go out of my way to help someone just to have them say “Thank God.” That is just ridiculous. We are all responsible for what we do for good or ill. We deserve the blame and the credit.
A lot of religious people find it inconceivable that an atheist can have any moral standards. They often assume that we choose to be atheists specifically to avoid having to follow any moral code. Some bizarre people even ask why we don’t just run around killing and raping indiscriminately. This demonstrates a profound ignorance that I find nauseating. One wonders if that is what they would do if they didn’t feel constrained by God. They are basically saying that only God is capable of caring about people. Thankfully, these people are in the minority. But even those who accept that atheists can be moral usually make the assumption that if an atheist does have moral standards they are invariably due to religious upbringing or at least exposure to the religious influence permeating society. Some find it to be validation of the theory that God built a conscience into all humans so we would know right from wrong. And since religion has been monopolizing the arena of moral ethics worldwide for thousands of years, I can see why they are confused. But, if anything, atheists are more moral than religious people. And we have better reasons to be so. As my Dad used to say, “Don’t shit in your own backyard.” It’s crude but makes a point. We atheists know that this is our only chance at life. There are no mulligans, no do-overs. We don’t expect a glorious afterlife. If we foul the social climate or wind up in jail, we have wasted the gift of life on nothing. Not to mention that if we take a life, we know it is gone forever. There is no heaven and no ultimate justice. There is no reward.
Thinking themselves experts on morality, religious people often decry what they call moral relativism - the notion that what constitutes right and wrong or good and evil are not absolute but depend on the individual, group and circumstances. In some respects, they are right. All human cultures have developed strikingly similar moral codes. But moral questions don’t fit in categories of absolute black and white. There are many situations that even people of good conscious disagree about such as the death penalty, war, foreign aid, criminal justice and abortion. Even in the Bible and other scriptures there are clearly situations that demonstrate moral gray areas.
We humans do certainly view some specific behaviors as good or bad with fair consistency. But does that indicate the existence of a god-given moral law? Superficially, it is easy to see how one might think so, especially if one is predisposed to accept the notion of God in the first place. But I think we need to look at humans as a species and consider the long history of human evolution along with our interaction with our environment and each other. Looking at the miniscule variation in our genes from any individual to any other, one will realize that there is no reason to infer supernaturally mandated moral law. It seems reasonable to say that we think alike because we are alike. Humans vary no more than 0.2 percent in the active coding regions of our DNA. For all practical purposes, we are identical on a functional level. The major differences between human cultures are due to effects of our environment and experience.
I don’t want to perpetuate a false dichotomy. I’m sure there are other schools of thought. But let’s consider the two possibilities mentioned so far. One says that humans have a God-given, universal system of moral laws somehow imprinted on us that gives us the ability to tell right from wrong. It tells us how God wants us to act. This has nothing to do with what we value but what God values. It is a spiritual thing unrelated to our physical being or even our cognitive process. The common religious view is that people are naturally evil and can only act appropriately through the good graces of a benevolent deity. All wrongdoing is due to the conflict between our immoral nature and the divine spirit of God he puts inside us. Like I said, if we are good, the credit goes to God. If we are bad, we get the blame. Why we couldn’t be made with a better nature is not explained.
The second of these possible explanations for our general agreement about moral rules is that humans have evolved as a species with specific common instincts, behaviors, desires and values that cause us to care about our fellow humans and our own life. We have also evolved a complex intellect that allows us to see the benefit to ourselves in creating and abiding by moral laws and ethical codes so we can live in peace and happiness. The result of all this is that our moral codes turn out to be amazingly similar across cultures. In this view morals and ethics are evolved behaviors which give our species a better chance of survival. It doesn’t mean we are mindless meat puppets without choice but that we are predisposed to cooperate and value not only our lives but the lives of those of our social groups and, to some extent, all members of our species.
As biological organisms, humans cannot compete physically with most other species because we don’t have claws, fangs, armor, speed, size or strength like they have. Our major asset is our superior brain. We are tribal creatures that live and work together cooperatively for the mutual benefit of all. We don't operate totally on instinct. We can recognize that this behavior is necessary and it should be reinforced with rules. We can sympathize with the problems and needs of others. This is true even now when we are competing with other humans more often than wild animals. Not only do we have little genetic difference, but most of coding differences in our DNA are very minor and superficial. We are amazingly like each other no matter how outwardly different we appear.
Given these facts, and that the biggest determinant for differences in moral viewpoints is the heterogeneity of our cultures, it seems that the more compelling of the two possibilities is the scientific one. And even if the two possibilities were equally feasible, the scientific one invokes no unverifiable, unexplainable supernatural entities. On the level of pure reason, the religious notion of morality is unsupportable.
There is a very good website that explains morality from a logical and rational perspective that you might want to peruse. I covers a lot more than I did here and has some excellent references that can be helpful in your study of this question. It is called, The Bible of the Good and Moral Atheist I highly recommend it.
A lot of religious people find it inconceivable that an atheist can have any moral standards. They often assume that we choose to be atheists specifically to avoid having to follow any moral code. Some bizarre people even ask why we don’t just run around killing and raping indiscriminately. This demonstrates a profound ignorance that I find nauseating. One wonders if that is what they would do if they didn’t feel constrained by God. They are basically saying that only God is capable of caring about people. Thankfully, these people are in the minority. But even those who accept that atheists can be moral usually make the assumption that if an atheist does have moral standards they are invariably due to religious upbringing or at least exposure to the religious influence permeating society. Some find it to be validation of the theory that God built a conscience into all humans so we would know right from wrong. And since religion has been monopolizing the arena of moral ethics worldwide for thousands of years, I can see why they are confused. But, if anything, atheists are more moral than religious people. And we have better reasons to be so. As my Dad used to say, “Don’t shit in your own backyard.” It’s crude but makes a point. We atheists know that this is our only chance at life. There are no mulligans, no do-overs. We don’t expect a glorious afterlife. If we foul the social climate or wind up in jail, we have wasted the gift of life on nothing. Not to mention that if we take a life, we know it is gone forever. There is no heaven and no ultimate justice. There is no reward.
Thinking themselves experts on morality, religious people often decry what they call moral relativism - the notion that what constitutes right and wrong or good and evil are not absolute but depend on the individual, group and circumstances. In some respects, they are right. All human cultures have developed strikingly similar moral codes. But moral questions don’t fit in categories of absolute black and white. There are many situations that even people of good conscious disagree about such as the death penalty, war, foreign aid, criminal justice and abortion. Even in the Bible and other scriptures there are clearly situations that demonstrate moral gray areas.
We humans do certainly view some specific behaviors as good or bad with fair consistency. But does that indicate the existence of a god-given moral law? Superficially, it is easy to see how one might think so, especially if one is predisposed to accept the notion of God in the first place. But I think we need to look at humans as a species and consider the long history of human evolution along with our interaction with our environment and each other. Looking at the miniscule variation in our genes from any individual to any other, one will realize that there is no reason to infer supernaturally mandated moral law. It seems reasonable to say that we think alike because we are alike. Humans vary no more than 0.2 percent in the active coding regions of our DNA. For all practical purposes, we are identical on a functional level. The major differences between human cultures are due to effects of our environment and experience.
I don’t want to perpetuate a false dichotomy. I’m sure there are other schools of thought. But let’s consider the two possibilities mentioned so far. One says that humans have a God-given, universal system of moral laws somehow imprinted on us that gives us the ability to tell right from wrong. It tells us how God wants us to act. This has nothing to do with what we value but what God values. It is a spiritual thing unrelated to our physical being or even our cognitive process. The common religious view is that people are naturally evil and can only act appropriately through the good graces of a benevolent deity. All wrongdoing is due to the conflict between our immoral nature and the divine spirit of God he puts inside us. Like I said, if we are good, the credit goes to God. If we are bad, we get the blame. Why we couldn’t be made with a better nature is not explained.
The second of these possible explanations for our general agreement about moral rules is that humans have evolved as a species with specific common instincts, behaviors, desires and values that cause us to care about our fellow humans and our own life. We have also evolved a complex intellect that allows us to see the benefit to ourselves in creating and abiding by moral laws and ethical codes so we can live in peace and happiness. The result of all this is that our moral codes turn out to be amazingly similar across cultures. In this view morals and ethics are evolved behaviors which give our species a better chance of survival. It doesn’t mean we are mindless meat puppets without choice but that we are predisposed to cooperate and value not only our lives but the lives of those of our social groups and, to some extent, all members of our species.
As biological organisms, humans cannot compete physically with most other species because we don’t have claws, fangs, armor, speed, size or strength like they have. Our major asset is our superior brain. We are tribal creatures that live and work together cooperatively for the mutual benefit of all. We don't operate totally on instinct. We can recognize that this behavior is necessary and it should be reinforced with rules. We can sympathize with the problems and needs of others. This is true even now when we are competing with other humans more often than wild animals. Not only do we have little genetic difference, but most of coding differences in our DNA are very minor and superficial. We are amazingly like each other no matter how outwardly different we appear.
Given these facts, and that the biggest determinant for differences in moral viewpoints is the heterogeneity of our cultures, it seems that the more compelling of the two possibilities is the scientific one. And even if the two possibilities were equally feasible, the scientific one invokes no unverifiable, unexplainable supernatural entities. On the level of pure reason, the religious notion of morality is unsupportable.
There is a very good website that explains morality from a logical and rational perspective that you might want to peruse. I covers a lot more than I did here and has some excellent references that can be helpful in your study of this question. It is called, The Bible of the Good and Moral Atheist I highly recommend it.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Just God, Hold The Religion
One of the most frequent comments I have heard from believers regarding this blog (and my arguments in general) goes something like this: “Sure religions cause a lot of problems but it’s not God’s fault. There’s nothing wrong with believing in God. You should be arguing against religion, not God.” I have to scratch my head when people make such statements. Where do they think the concept of God comes from? What do they think religion is? The fact of the matter is that belief in God IS religion. God concepts are codified and perpetuated by organized religions. Left to themselves people would never come up with a consistent view of God if they did it at all. And organized religion is nothing more than groups of people who agree on a certain definition of God. The beliefs are their religion. The organization is secondary. The dogma that goes along with belief in God merely differentiates the groups.
It seems that a lot of people these days are noticing the hypocrisy, oppression, bigotry, intolerance, cruelty and greed associated with organized religion. But instead of questioning the core concept of God, they simply take their God with them and step away from the organization. (Julia Sweeney has recorded a great comedy routine where she talks about this) Some people are even raising their children with this God-only religion. They think this somehow makes them non-religious. And it is important to note that the God concept they take with them is almost invariably the one their religion gave them. When you ask them to describe God and what he wants or what he does, their answers usually sound just like the religion they left. If they were Christians, they usually keep Jesus and all the dogma of virgin birth, resurrection and salvation. They may be physically disassociated with the group but mentally they might as well be right back in church.
I can certainly see the attraction in this approach. You only have to give up what you don’t like. The great thing about this is that no one can question your beliefs because they aren’t tied to some label with all its ancient dogma, ritual and pageantry. It is appealing because it allows a person to modify their beliefs anytime they feel like it. You can say Jesus was gay if you want to because it’s no one’s business but yours. Too bad most of these people don’t change their beliefs noticeably. That seems rather pointless to me. For those who have the confidence to actually make a real change it turns out to be one of the first steps in becoming an atheist or agnostic. Whether consciously or not, what they have usually done is switch from thinking emotionally to thinking rationally. They have analyzed the claims of religion and cleared away a lot of unexplainable and incoherent nonsense. That is a good thing, but it’s only the beginning.
I think there are several reasons people hang onto God when they abandon organized religion.
It seems that a lot of people these days are noticing the hypocrisy, oppression, bigotry, intolerance, cruelty and greed associated with organized religion. But instead of questioning the core concept of God, they simply take their God with them and step away from the organization. (Julia Sweeney has recorded a great comedy routine where she talks about this) Some people are even raising their children with this God-only religion. They think this somehow makes them non-religious. And it is important to note that the God concept they take with them is almost invariably the one their religion gave them. When you ask them to describe God and what he wants or what he does, their answers usually sound just like the religion they left. If they were Christians, they usually keep Jesus and all the dogma of virgin birth, resurrection and salvation. They may be physically disassociated with the group but mentally they might as well be right back in church.
I can certainly see the attraction in this approach. You only have to give up what you don’t like. The great thing about this is that no one can question your beliefs because they aren’t tied to some label with all its ancient dogma, ritual and pageantry. It is appealing because it allows a person to modify their beliefs anytime they feel like it. You can say Jesus was gay if you want to because it’s no one’s business but yours. Too bad most of these people don’t change their beliefs noticeably. That seems rather pointless to me. For those who have the confidence to actually make a real change it turns out to be one of the first steps in becoming an atheist or agnostic. Whether consciously or not, what they have usually done is switch from thinking emotionally to thinking rationally. They have analyzed the claims of religion and cleared away a lot of unexplainable and incoherent nonsense. That is a good thing, but it’s only the beginning.
I think there are several reasons people hang onto God when they abandon organized religion.
- To let go of God is like saying goodbye to an old friend or a family member. They have normally grown up with this God as their ready companion or confidant or confessor. Even if they don’t always think about God, he has been a fixture in their lives - albeit an imaginary fixture.
- It’s built in. God concepts are part of human evolutionary development. It is a basic human instinct to anthropomorphize things like forces of nature and infinity that we don’t understand. But being a rational, civilized human means we have to overcome many of our natural instincts.
- The problems of religion are obviously the fault of people, not God. They think God is as much a victim of religion as they are. But if God does exist, who are they do decide this for him and if God doesn’t exist they are just keeping their imaginary friend.
- They are hedging their bets. According to many, the one truly unforgivable sin is to turn your back on God once you’ve known him. Leaving a church is bad enough but leaving God is like worshipping the devil. So they are covered if it turns out there is something to this God thing. These people probably aren’t very committed to it. They need to just fish or cut bait.
- They are worried about what their family would think if they were to announce that they had become atheists. That is a serious concern. Many families have disowned people for becoming atheist. I remember the story of a young man who told his mother he had something to tell her about himself that she wasn’t going to like. When he finally got to the point and said he was an atheist, she said she could have accepted it if he said he was gay or a pedophile or a gangster but he was no longer her son if he insisted on being an atheist. She would have rather found out he was terminally ill. In some parts of the world it is legal to kill your child if they deny God.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Without a Prayer
I was raised from birth as a Christian and taught to believe in a God that cared about people. Naturally I believed it was true. Our culture was steeped in Christian beliefs and virtually no one questioned them. I had no reason to doubt the authority of my parents, relatives, pastors, and teachers. As a kid I just accepted it all without question. In my early teens I began trying to establish a personal relationship with God and Christ. Prayer was a huge part of this process. At that time, it was an integral part of life for our family. We said grace when we sat down to eat. We prayed for help when times were hard or when someone was ill. We also said bedtime prayers. It was part of our daily routine. In those days, we even said prayers in school.
I’m not looking for sympathy here but I had a pretty rough childhood. Sometime during my youth, I began to think of prayer as a way to try to escape my problems. We were poor and times were hard. My parents fought a lot. Dad drank too much and was abusive. Also, I was not popular as a kid. I had a weight problem and kids picked on me. Dad was a marine and we moved a lot. I had very few friends. And none of my friends were girls although I began thinking romantically about girls at an early age. I didn’t fit into most groups because I wasn’t athletic and I didn’t follow the fads. I drew pictures, read books and wrote poetry or short stories. I was a daydreamer and not really very interested in the real world most of the time. I usually lived in a fantasy world.
Religion was much like the other fantasy worlds I created in my mind. It was exciting because it was full of emotion, stories and camaraderie. I could feel accepted there. It was magical. One could have the power to change the world. I believed what Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 "For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." I recall several times when I prayed for specific things in my youth. Praying gave me confidence because I thought God was on my side. I prayed to get out of trouble. I prayed for a girlfriend. I prayed to succeed in sports. When these things eventually happened I believed that my prayers were answered. I prayed that my Dad would survive Viet Nam and he did. Lots of people survived Viet Nam but, in true Christian fashion, I considered this an answer to my prayers.
Looking back on it I can see that it was having confidence that enabled me to make some things happen. If people had been teaching me how to build self-confidence and how to believe in myself as a child, I wouldn’t have needed religion. I don’t need it now. Other than what I made happen myself, what happened was pure chance. My prayers were naïve. I trusted God to be there for me and I was shaken when I began to realize that it wasn’t really so. When prayer failed, I was confused. I prayed for God to help my parents resolve their problems and stay together. But they got divorced. I prayed for my baby brother to get well. But he died before he was a year old. I didn’t see the difference between the prayers that I believed were answered and those that were not answered. I knew that the things I was asking for were good things. I didn’t ask for riches or fame. I wasn’t trying to test God.
I had not yet learned the rationalization that God sometimes says “No” to prayers. It wouldn’t have made sense to me even then because I had read the scriptures that made it clear that God would give you whatever you asked for in faith and righteousness. These and many more scriptures say it in no uncertain terms.
Matthew 7: 7-8; “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened”
Mark 11:24;"Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
John 14:12-14 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it."
I believed that then. For God to refuse such a request made no sense. How could God say “No” when I asked for my baby brother to get better? I had no idea why God would want him to die. What conceivable plan could God have in letting an infant die? And if everything is going to happen the way God wants it to happen, what’s the point of prayer?
These questions haunted me for a very long time. However, I didn’t give up on God. I thought it would make sense some day when I learned more. I was told; “God works in mysterious ways.” And everyone else seemed to accept it as normal. I continued to be faithful and even felt that I had received a call to the Baptist ministry when I was fifteen. Looking back on it I am sure that I was responding to suggestions in the pastor’s sermons but then I attributed it to a call from God. I eventually got ordained. However, it was in a different religion. My questions about religious dogma had caused me to switch religions a couple of times by then. I was never a pastor because I entered the military under a different specialty but I did work as a lay minister for several years. I taught classes, counseled people and helped with the services. All this time I read the Bible and the scriptures of other religions. I read apologetics and religious discourses. And, of course, I prayed. I wanted to be sure I was doing what God wanted and serving the right church.
I struggled on with my questions and growing doubts for many years. The more I thought about the results of prayer, the more I realized that it just didn’t seem to make any difference. People were always praying and these prayers were about as effective as wishing on a star. I had thought that God would answer the prayers of those who were truly faithful and sincerely believed. What I began to see was that people could rationalize anything into an answer for a prayer. I talked to a lot of people about prayer and they all had different ways of looking at it. But their experiences were all the same no matter what their faith. When they prayed, whatever happened was the same thing that would have happened by sheer chance. Statistically speaking, there wasn’t any difference.
When I talked to people about what they experienced as answers to prayers, some people said they heard a voice in their head. Others said they felt a warm feeling in their chest or other part of their body. Some people just said they felt calm. I had never experienced that kind of answer. I wondered if there was something wrong with me. When I prayed, I just talked to God silently or vocally but never got any response. The only way I ever had to determine if a prayer was answered was by the results. And I could see that was no help. When I told people this they sometimes said that I wasn’t faithful enough or that I needed to pray for God’s will to be done. As for the faith part, I knew that I had at least started out with unquestioning faith. And to pray for God’s will to be done seemed pointless. If no one ever prayed, wouldn’t God manifest his will anyway? There seemed to be no end of suggestions for rationalizing away the failure of prayer.
One of the most common things people said that confirmed prayer to them was the miraculous remission of disease they had actually seen as the result of prayer. Well my family and I had often prayed over sick people and the recovery rate for all diseases in my experience is precisely the same with prayer as it is for the disease normally. People died from the diseases that were fatal and they recovered from those that weren’t. I never saw a miraculous cure. People have said they believe in the power of prayer because one of their friends or family members recovered from something like cancer when the odds were 1000 to 1 against it. But that doesn’t prove anything because if a disease is not 100% fatal, some people will survive. It might seem miraculous but it is just that some people will recover even given terrible odds. That’s just the way it works.
A lot of people have told me of experiences where they or their loved ones were destitute and prayed for help. Lo and behold someone just came to the door or stepped up to them and gave them money or some other kind of aid. They always say it was just out of the blue and that no one had any reason to help them out. They say; “it must have been from God.” I guess they lived in a vacuum and no one had any idea they were poor. But I’ve been on both sides of this kind of situation. When we were poor there were times when people just showed up with food or money. And since I’ve become relatively successful in my life, I’ve done the same thing for others. People know who the poor people are. There are many groups who take up collections for the poor and, if they don’t already have someone in mind, they find them by checking with welfare organizations or churches or they just drive around until they see someone in need. It’s not a miracle. It is just people caring for people.
Some say that since most of this aid comes from churches, that makes religion a good thing. They say that in effect it is God who is helping. I applaud the humanitarian works of churches especially when there are no strings attached. But I don’t think it takes religion for this to happen. It would be hard to determine the difference in the amount of humanitarian work done by non-religious people and religious people. But since more than 90% of the people in this country believe in God, no one can use the fact that most aid is given by churches as an indicator of anything. For example, if 90% of the people are religious and they provide 75% of the aid, then the 10% who are non-religious people are providing 25% of the aid. That would mean non-religious people are more generous and would not look good for religion. Even if we could determine the exact amount of humanitarian aid provided by churches, it is not clear whether the people who contribute are themselves believers. Many non-religious people donate to religious charities. There are also secular sources of humanitarian aid and we cannot know whether religious belief motivates those who donate to those charities. Anyway, who cares about the source of aid provided when you are in desperate need? The point is that good people care about others and that is who is providing the help. It doesn’t matter if they believe in God. To attribute humanitarian work to God is gratuitously crediting God for what people do.
The Bible and the scriptures of other religions make it clear that those who follow a religion other than the “true religion” will not receive help from God. In fact they are reviled. They are sinful unbelievers. Their prayers will fall on deaf ears. Christians are told in the Bible by Jesus to hate even their family members who don’t follow him (Consider Matthew 10:35-37 and Luke 12:51-53). Even so, the efficacy of prayer is the same no matter the religion of the person praying. If there was a true religion then the followers of that religion should benefit more from their supplications. But there is no difference. So there is no one true religion and it is quite obvious that they can’t all be right.
Recently there has been a lot of buzz among people of faith about studies that supposedly show the efficacy of prayer in helping people overcome disease. I’ve seen many an article by the likes of Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto touting 1,200 studies at research centers around the world that show a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. While Siemon-Netto has a Ph.D, it should not surprise anyone to find out that it is a theology degree. That’s like being a doctor of astrology. I don’t know why people can get a doctorate in a field that is based completely on superstition. But this is getting to be a long article and I’ll save that for another day. What I’m saying is that there is no scientific evidence of the efficacy of prayer. The studies people refer to and that you may have read about in the news are not scientific. They are not double-blind studies that can achieve meaningful results (even when they claim to be). I’ve read as many as I can find and even the most hopeful ones have a margin of error that makes them statistically insignificant. They also totally ignore the placebo effect. For more on this see:
Straight Dope about Prayer Studies
For those of you who are tempted to say that God should not be tested I refer you to the Bible: Malachi 3:10 "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."
God doesn’t appear to have a problem being tested.
For more in-depth discussion of the failure of prayer see:
WhyDoesGodHateAmputees.com
I’m not looking for sympathy here but I had a pretty rough childhood. Sometime during my youth, I began to think of prayer as a way to try to escape my problems. We were poor and times were hard. My parents fought a lot. Dad drank too much and was abusive. Also, I was not popular as a kid. I had a weight problem and kids picked on me. Dad was a marine and we moved a lot. I had very few friends. And none of my friends were girls although I began thinking romantically about girls at an early age. I didn’t fit into most groups because I wasn’t athletic and I didn’t follow the fads. I drew pictures, read books and wrote poetry or short stories. I was a daydreamer and not really very interested in the real world most of the time. I usually lived in a fantasy world.
Religion was much like the other fantasy worlds I created in my mind. It was exciting because it was full of emotion, stories and camaraderie. I could feel accepted there. It was magical. One could have the power to change the world. I believed what Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 "For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." I recall several times when I prayed for specific things in my youth. Praying gave me confidence because I thought God was on my side. I prayed to get out of trouble. I prayed for a girlfriend. I prayed to succeed in sports. When these things eventually happened I believed that my prayers were answered. I prayed that my Dad would survive Viet Nam and he did. Lots of people survived Viet Nam but, in true Christian fashion, I considered this an answer to my prayers.
Looking back on it I can see that it was having confidence that enabled me to make some things happen. If people had been teaching me how to build self-confidence and how to believe in myself as a child, I wouldn’t have needed religion. I don’t need it now. Other than what I made happen myself, what happened was pure chance. My prayers were naïve. I trusted God to be there for me and I was shaken when I began to realize that it wasn’t really so. When prayer failed, I was confused. I prayed for God to help my parents resolve their problems and stay together. But they got divorced. I prayed for my baby brother to get well. But he died before he was a year old. I didn’t see the difference between the prayers that I believed were answered and those that were not answered. I knew that the things I was asking for were good things. I didn’t ask for riches or fame. I wasn’t trying to test God.
I had not yet learned the rationalization that God sometimes says “No” to prayers. It wouldn’t have made sense to me even then because I had read the scriptures that made it clear that God would give you whatever you asked for in faith and righteousness. These and many more scriptures say it in no uncertain terms.
Matthew 7: 7-8; “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened”
Mark 11:24;"Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
John 14:12-14 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it."
I believed that then. For God to refuse such a request made no sense. How could God say “No” when I asked for my baby brother to get better? I had no idea why God would want him to die. What conceivable plan could God have in letting an infant die? And if everything is going to happen the way God wants it to happen, what’s the point of prayer?
These questions haunted me for a very long time. However, I didn’t give up on God. I thought it would make sense some day when I learned more. I was told; “God works in mysterious ways.” And everyone else seemed to accept it as normal. I continued to be faithful and even felt that I had received a call to the Baptist ministry when I was fifteen. Looking back on it I am sure that I was responding to suggestions in the pastor’s sermons but then I attributed it to a call from God. I eventually got ordained. However, it was in a different religion. My questions about religious dogma had caused me to switch religions a couple of times by then. I was never a pastor because I entered the military under a different specialty but I did work as a lay minister for several years. I taught classes, counseled people and helped with the services. All this time I read the Bible and the scriptures of other religions. I read apologetics and religious discourses. And, of course, I prayed. I wanted to be sure I was doing what God wanted and serving the right church.
I struggled on with my questions and growing doubts for many years. The more I thought about the results of prayer, the more I realized that it just didn’t seem to make any difference. People were always praying and these prayers were about as effective as wishing on a star. I had thought that God would answer the prayers of those who were truly faithful and sincerely believed. What I began to see was that people could rationalize anything into an answer for a prayer. I talked to a lot of people about prayer and they all had different ways of looking at it. But their experiences were all the same no matter what their faith. When they prayed, whatever happened was the same thing that would have happened by sheer chance. Statistically speaking, there wasn’t any difference.
When I talked to people about what they experienced as answers to prayers, some people said they heard a voice in their head. Others said they felt a warm feeling in their chest or other part of their body. Some people just said they felt calm. I had never experienced that kind of answer. I wondered if there was something wrong with me. When I prayed, I just talked to God silently or vocally but never got any response. The only way I ever had to determine if a prayer was answered was by the results. And I could see that was no help. When I told people this they sometimes said that I wasn’t faithful enough or that I needed to pray for God’s will to be done. As for the faith part, I knew that I had at least started out with unquestioning faith. And to pray for God’s will to be done seemed pointless. If no one ever prayed, wouldn’t God manifest his will anyway? There seemed to be no end of suggestions for rationalizing away the failure of prayer.
One of the most common things people said that confirmed prayer to them was the miraculous remission of disease they had actually seen as the result of prayer. Well my family and I had often prayed over sick people and the recovery rate for all diseases in my experience is precisely the same with prayer as it is for the disease normally. People died from the diseases that were fatal and they recovered from those that weren’t. I never saw a miraculous cure. People have said they believe in the power of prayer because one of their friends or family members recovered from something like cancer when the odds were 1000 to 1 against it. But that doesn’t prove anything because if a disease is not 100% fatal, some people will survive. It might seem miraculous but it is just that some people will recover even given terrible odds. That’s just the way it works.
A lot of people have told me of experiences where they or their loved ones were destitute and prayed for help. Lo and behold someone just came to the door or stepped up to them and gave them money or some other kind of aid. They always say it was just out of the blue and that no one had any reason to help them out. They say; “it must have been from God.” I guess they lived in a vacuum and no one had any idea they were poor. But I’ve been on both sides of this kind of situation. When we were poor there were times when people just showed up with food or money. And since I’ve become relatively successful in my life, I’ve done the same thing for others. People know who the poor people are. There are many groups who take up collections for the poor and, if they don’t already have someone in mind, they find them by checking with welfare organizations or churches or they just drive around until they see someone in need. It’s not a miracle. It is just people caring for people.
Some say that since most of this aid comes from churches, that makes religion a good thing. They say that in effect it is God who is helping. I applaud the humanitarian works of churches especially when there are no strings attached. But I don’t think it takes religion for this to happen. It would be hard to determine the difference in the amount of humanitarian work done by non-religious people and religious people. But since more than 90% of the people in this country believe in God, no one can use the fact that most aid is given by churches as an indicator of anything. For example, if 90% of the people are religious and they provide 75% of the aid, then the 10% who are non-religious people are providing 25% of the aid. That would mean non-religious people are more generous and would not look good for religion. Even if we could determine the exact amount of humanitarian aid provided by churches, it is not clear whether the people who contribute are themselves believers. Many non-religious people donate to religious charities. There are also secular sources of humanitarian aid and we cannot know whether religious belief motivates those who donate to those charities. Anyway, who cares about the source of aid provided when you are in desperate need? The point is that good people care about others and that is who is providing the help. It doesn’t matter if they believe in God. To attribute humanitarian work to God is gratuitously crediting God for what people do.
The Bible and the scriptures of other religions make it clear that those who follow a religion other than the “true religion” will not receive help from God. In fact they are reviled. They are sinful unbelievers. Their prayers will fall on deaf ears. Christians are told in the Bible by Jesus to hate even their family members who don’t follow him (Consider Matthew 10:35-37 and Luke 12:51-53). Even so, the efficacy of prayer is the same no matter the religion of the person praying. If there was a true religion then the followers of that religion should benefit more from their supplications. But there is no difference. So there is no one true religion and it is quite obvious that they can’t all be right.
Recently there has been a lot of buzz among people of faith about studies that supposedly show the efficacy of prayer in helping people overcome disease. I’ve seen many an article by the likes of Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto touting 1,200 studies at research centers around the world that show a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. While Siemon-Netto has a Ph.D, it should not surprise anyone to find out that it is a theology degree. That’s like being a doctor of astrology. I don’t know why people can get a doctorate in a field that is based completely on superstition. But this is getting to be a long article and I’ll save that for another day. What I’m saying is that there is no scientific evidence of the efficacy of prayer. The studies people refer to and that you may have read about in the news are not scientific. They are not double-blind studies that can achieve meaningful results (even when they claim to be). I’ve read as many as I can find and even the most hopeful ones have a margin of error that makes them statistically insignificant. They also totally ignore the placebo effect. For more on this see:
Straight Dope about Prayer Studies
For those of you who are tempted to say that God should not be tested I refer you to the Bible: Malachi 3:10 "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."
God doesn’t appear to have a problem being tested.
For more in-depth discussion of the failure of prayer see:
WhyDoesGodHateAmputees.com
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