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X Amish Atheist

~ fighting dogma from behind the lines…

X Amish Atheist

Tag Archives: philosophy

A Letter to my Friends

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by xamishatheist in Coming Out, My Story

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

atheism, Christianity, philosophy, science


Some of my Christian friends have recently discovered my true beliefs about God and I will likely be telling more of them over the coming days and weeks that I do not share their faith and love for God. Understandably, some of my friends do or will feel hurt and betrayed by some of the things they read on this blog. This post is intended to be an honest and heartfelt letter to those friends.

I know that I’ve said some harsh and condescending things about you on here. I humbly apologize for that. With this post, I want to give you an honest look at who I am, why I felt the need to keep some things hidden from you, and what my hopes are for the future now that you know my true beliefs.

It was almost a year ago when I realized that I was an atheist. My transition from Christianity to atheism didn’t happen overnight. It took about 12 years–during most of which I still considered myself a Christian. The path from Christianity to atheism was so long that I don’t think of the two as being black and white opposites like most people do. In fact, I sometimes have a hard time understanding why Christians think atheists are so different from themselves. I’m still a moral (or I hope so), person with desires, dreams, and fears.

Toward the last of those 12 years, I began thinking of myself as agnostic. I was comfortable admitting to myself that I don’t know if God exists or not or what his true nature really is. It was less than a year ago that I began self-identifying as an atheist and that was more of a semantic thing than a radical shift in belief. At the time, I didn’t like thinking of myself as an atheist but I realized that my agnosticism was so complete that almost everybody else would define me as an “atheist”.

There were no significant life events that caused me to question the existence of God. I didn’t become an atheist because someone died, or because I was depressed, or because some other traumatic event occurred that made me hate God. I am not an atheist because life was hard on me, or because I’m weak, misguided, ignorant, or in need of help. I am an atheist because I spent 12 years seeking truth. During those many years, I probably spent more time thinking about God and religion than I did thinking about any other subject.

I do not reject all of Christianity. I still believe that there are a lot of good things in the teachings attributed to Jesus. Just to be clear, here are a few ways that my beliefs are different from yours:

  • I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists. I believe that if this universe was “created” it was most likely via some process or event that bears little resemblance to the God of the Bible.
  • I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God or that he will return to save us all.
  • I believe the Bible was written by fallible man. I do not believe that the Bible is as historically accurate as most Christians assume that it is.
  • I do not believe that one must have religion to be a good, moral person.
  • I believe that if the world (as we know it) ends in our lifetime or our children’s lifetimes, it will be because man is a stupid animal and not because an omnipotent being decided it was time for it all to end.
  • I believe in making the most of this life because I believe that death is complete–I do not believe there will be an afterlife.
  • I believe that admitting ignorance is fine and that it is much better than preaching as fact, that which one has no evidence for.
  • I prefer natural, scientific explanations for all things. I find natural explanations far more helpful and meaningful than supernatural ones.

I am not searching for God anymore. I am, however, still seeking truth, and I hope that I will always be learning new things. But to say that I am still searching for God, would be like you saying that you’re still searching for Santa Claus–as if you’re still hoping that he exists.

There are many reasons why I haven’t told you about my lack of belief in God, most of them have to do with the fear of losing you as my friend. I was afraid if I told you, your respect for me would plummet. I was afraid that you would begin to think of me as evil. I was afraid you would begin to think of me as stupid. Worst of all, I was afraid that you would consider me in the clutches of Satan and would try to “help” me. I was afraid that you would be fine with it, that you would still call me your friend but that you would find less in common with me and over time I would see less and less of you. I was afraid that every time I said something, you would know that you can’t believe everything I say, because I’m an atheist. I was afraid that I would lose you instantly, but worse yet, I was afraid the process of losing you would occur over months or years.

The Amish and ex-Amish are fairly intolerant of alternative beliefs and practices. Most of them talk condescendingly about gays, atheists, and pretty much any person or group of people that thinks or acts in a manner that does not conform to their specific Christian belief set. I am barraged non-stop by words like “sad”, “pathetic”, “ridiculous”, “evil”, “Satanic”, “stupid”, “ignorant”, etc. Of course they don’t realize that they’re talking about me and they probably wouldn’t say those things if they realized that I was an atheist (at least they wouldn’t say it to my face), but I have to assume that it is what they think of me. If any of you could admit to your friends that you’re something that most of them think is “sad”, “pathetic”, “ridiculous”, “evil”, “Satanic”, “stupid”, “ignorant”, etc., then you’re a truly courageous person.

I am a deeply introverted person, and as a result, it is difficult for me to talk to people that I’m not comfortable with. Obviously, you know that about me, you’re my friend after all and I am more than comfortable talking with you about most things. What I find truly difficult to talk about, even with the very best of my friends, are subjects that I believe will cause confrontation, controversy, or could in some way damage our friendship. That is one reason why I haven’t been open about my religious beliefs with you.

I am also an intellectual–I enjoy thinking about things that most people find boring or of little consequence in real life. I have always found comparatively easy, those subjects that many people find difficult to understand. I have many questions about life and the universe and when after long periods of sustained thought on one of these questions, I reach a new understanding, I experience a most wonderful emotion. It is probably an emotion that most people would experience if they won the lottery. I get all excited and jittery, become absurdly happy and playful, and my heart flutters and skips beats. It is this feeling that drives me to seek more of an understanding of this amazing universe. On my path from Christianity to atheism, I encountered a few of those wonderful feelings.

I am often told by those few that I talk to about my ideas, that my perspective is utterly unique. Sometimes I feel (perhaps wrongly) that there is a large intellectual gap between me and those I’m talking with, and I feel that it would be very difficult to really explain myself–and that’s at least partially because I am simply not good at explaining things. Furthermore, I find it much easier to explain myself in writing than in spoken conversation. For these reasons I will often remain silent during a religious conversation, rather than giving my perspective on the subject.

All that being said, I would like nothing more than to tell the world that I don’t believe in their God. It would be a huge weight off of my shoulders. However, I am not the only person whose life this revelation would complicate. Because of that I will continue to keep my beliefs to myself except on the semi-anonymous world of the internet.

My lack of belief in God is founded upon a greater than average knowledge of philosophical subjects such as logic and epistemology, and scientific subjects such as biology, complexity, chemistry, and cosmology. I have always been a thinker and the nature of and existence of God has been one of the things I’ve focused on. I’ve been thinking this through for 12 years or so and only in the last couple years have I made what I believe to be true breakthroughs in understanding.

Most of you, I believe, know little about and have very little interest in these subjects. Since my beliefs are founded upon my knowledge of these subjects, I hope you understand why I might be skeptical that you would understand what I’m talking about without making a determined and long-term effort to learn about these subjects. I often feel that it is useless for me to begin explaining my beliefs because I don’t think I can explain it to someone that hasn’t been thinking very, very hard about it for many years like I have.

That being said, I am more than willing to discuss my beliefs with you if you’re interested. You may simply want to learn more about my beliefs and that’s fine. On the other hand, if you wish to go into deeper discussion and analyze the validity of my reasoning, I think it would benefit both of us if you developed an interest in learning more about science and philosophy.

I grew up believing that atheists are the most evil people that exist–that they’re worse than murderers–right up there with Satan worshippers. Now that I’m an atheist, I realize that most of the people I’ve ever known will probably rank me a little lower than murderers. They can believe what they want. I may have lost my religion but my morality only grew. Most of you probably think morality and religion are so intertwined that I could not possibly believe that I could be an atheist and still be a good person. I guess I can only hope my actions are those of a moral person and that you will consider only my actions and not my metaphysical beliefs when deciding whether or not my intentions are good.

Some of the things that I write on this blog will be truly offensive to you. I know this because I was once a Christian. It may seem like I am belittling your beliefs and mocking your God but that is not my intention. To remain honest to myself, I must write these things. I cannot continue using this blog as an emotional and intellectual outlet without occasionally writing things that some will think is blasphemous. I just hope that you’ll understand. I hope that you don’t take these things personally, and I hope you know that I still value your friendship.

My goal with this blog is not to convince Christians that they have it all wrong. If you read my posts, please don’t take them as an attempt to convert you. I use this blog as an emotional and intellectual outlet, as a way for me to share my experiences and knowledge, and as a way for me to record and clarify my thoughts. I also hope to help bridge the seemingly tremendous gulf between the atheist and Christian mindset. I hope I can give a few Christians and a few atheists a glimpse into the mindset of the ‘other side’ and help them see that we’re not all that different from each other.

I believe that we can remain friends. I won’t try to convert you and I hope you’ll give me the same respect. I don’t want your “help” or your pity. If your desire is to help me “see the light” then I feel that you are not giving me the respect that an intelligent person with well-reasoned beliefs deserves. In exchange, I won’t try to convince you that your beliefs are wrong.

I hope you can forgive me for betraying and insulting you. I would like nothing more than to remain your friend. If what I’ve done or who I’ve become is unforgivable, I understand. If that’s that case then I’m truly sorry to see you go.

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The Nonexistence of Undetectable Things

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Epistemology, My Philosophy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

burden of proof, detectability, existence, God, nonexistence, philosophy


Why is there no proof of God’s existence? If you ask a Christian this question, you get a barrage of “proof” that after a little digging, turns out to be nothing but faith.

However, some of the Christians I have met (I even entertained this idea at one point in time as being the reason I couldn’t find proof of God’s existence) claim that there is no proof of God because God is in principle, undetectable.

The idea goes something like this… God transcends time, space, and even the universe itself. Our science instruments are limited to the universe, so that’s why we can’t detect God. We will never be able to detect God because our instruments will always be limited to the natural things that are lurking about in the universe. Since God can exist and be undetectable, we must take it on faith that he does exist.

Something that can in principle never be detected, is by definition, nonexistent and I’ll explain why in the next few paragraphs.

We detect things by the way they affect other things. For example, we directly detect the moon because of the way it reflects particles of light. We also indirectly detect the moon by the gravitational force that it exerts on the Earth and its contents.

The only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no effect on anything else in the universe. In other words, it cannot have mass because then it would exert a gravitational force which could in principle be detected with gravity gradiometers. It cannot have any sort of electrical charge because then it could in principle be detected with a variety of electromagnetic detectors. For any other property of something that exists, there could in principle, be designed a detector which detects that property, otherwise the property isn’t real. In other words, the only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no real properties.

And let’s not forget statistical analysis. Even if something real could not be detected by scientific tools, if it affects real objects or events, then its influence could, in theory, be statistically calculated using our knowledge of the affected objects or events and our knowledge of how the universe works.

In conclusion, the idea that something could be said to exist and at the same time be undetectable in principle, doesn’t make sense. It is a contradiction. On the other hand, if you decide to drop the idea that God is in principle undetectable while maintaining that he does exist, then the burden of proof is on you. If you claim the existence of something which has heretofore not been verified, then it is your burden to propose a method of detection that would reasonably prove its existence.

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Free Will versus God’s Omnipotence

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Questioning

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

amish, free will, God, omnipotence, philosophy, rationalization


Growing up Amish I was taught that God was omnipotent (all-powerful). I was taught that God had the power to make anything happen and that he did – everything from making a leaf fall from a tree to deciding that it was time for someone to die. I grew up believing that God did not start the universe and then sit back as it unfolded, but rather, that he fully controlled every event.

But as I became an older child, things didn’t make quite as much sense anymore. If God made everything happen then why did I sometimes do bad things? I knew that God didn’t want me to do bad things but still I believed that he controlled it. Also, when somebody died, everyone in the community would say “Well, it was his time to go.” Everyone believed that God had chosen that day as the day for that person to die. Then we heard about a suicide in some other community. Everyone was so sad. Everyone knew that the person would go to hell – suicide was the worst possible thing to do because it was defying God’s will of when you must die, and it leaves no time to repent afterwards.

Wait a minute!

This might have been the very first time that I recognized a logical contradiction. On the one hand, God was omnipotent but on the other hand God didn’t seem able to control the desires of man.

So I asked my Dad about it and I talked to my Mom about it. Their consensus was that God is omnipotent except when it comes to the free will of man. Of course they didn’t use the term “free will”. Either they had never heard about it or they wanted to simplify things for me.

After a lot of thinking, this made sense to me. After all, God made us in his image. It made perfect sense that he “made” us but that he couldn’t fully control us. We were left to decide some things for ourselves and to pay the consequences for any bad choices that we made.

It didn’t take long for the nagging thoughts to return. If God was omnipotent why did he choose to give us free will when he made us? Wouldn’t it be more fair if he made us like the animals – with no free will? Why did he choose to give us a characteristic that would end up causing so much pain when he could just as well have done everything but give us free will?

This time when I asked for help with my questions, I couldn’t find anyone to help. For my parents, and even for the Amish preacher I asked, my questions were apparently too deep for them.

So of course they defaulted to an explanation that goes something like this; “I don’t know the answer to that but you know, the Bible tells us that God’s ways are so mysterious. Maybe we’re not meant to understand all these things.”

That wasn’t good enough for me. If God didn’t want me to understand things, he wouldn’t have given me a questioning mind.

So of course, I developed elaborate rationalizations. I had always believed that the purpose of life was to get to heaven. Upon wondering why God even made a heaven and why he wants humans in it, I decided that he probably got very lonely and just wants some company. At this point I decided that God had free will and that he wanted to socialize with other minds that have free will and by giving us free will, he had to relinquish some of his omnipotence. Therefore, we have choices and we have pain and suffering.

Sometimes I suspected that we were an experiment orchestrated by God. I imagined him up there in heaven taking notes as he watched his experiment unfold. I even went as far as imagining that it would be like me looking curiously down upon an anthill and watching the ignorant ants go about their lives. Whenever I couldn’t understand some facet of God I would imagine once again the ants on that anthill. I imagined that God’s intellectual superiority was like the difference in intelligence between humans and ants. Of course the ants had no hope of understanding even the smallest fact about us humans. In much the same way it made sense that we humans don’t have a hope of fully understanding the smallest fact about God.

In retrospect, I still suffer a little from a variation of the question, “Is there free will or is God omnipotent?” This variation is, “Is there free will or is there determinism?” But that’s a question to tackle on some other day.

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