LSP40: Atheism: Blindness to the Question of Scale

The National Post has been very brave in the past few days.

First, it ran a major story on the current religious beliefs of Canadians. The article, called "A God? That's complicated. Canadians hanging on to personal faith as organized religion declines: poll," was published on April 5, 2015 and was based on a new Angus Reid poll.

Second, the Post offered readers a chance to answer the question "Do You Believe in God?"  Not only did the Post print a selection of the letters it received, it allowed 966 on-line comments before finally closing the debate.

It was great to see such an enormous spectrum of thought in one place.  Comments ranged from extreme atheism to extreme fideism, with everything in between.  It was refreshing and encouraging to see an actual debate with thoughtful and cogent offerings from regular Canadians on a topic that matters to many.  The Post editors, bucking the current trend of sanitizing and pre-packaging controversial ideas so no one's feelings will be hurt, took the audacious approach of allowing breadth in the debate.  I applaud the editors for their courage.

Something that emerged for me as I reflected on the varied comments was a better understanding of the schism that exists between atheists and theists.*

One comment, written by a prolific comment writer named Life's Traveller, really drew my attention and prompted me to reply.  In part, this is what he (she?) said:

In terms of religions, I just can't accept anything that my equally (and in many cases, greatly over-achievingly) ignorant fellow humans have to say about this. When we all hear the same, clear and consistent, story, straight from god with no human mediation (prophets, etc.), with ample amounts of irrefutable direct evidence, and explanations, testable under the most rigorous conditions that the brightest among us can devise, then I'll conditionally accept it ... perhaps.

I challenged this line of reasoning a couple of times, then Life Traveller came back with this:

"The God I trust and the God who sustains me every day is the God I see everywhere around me in the world of science" [quoting my previous comment]
Please be specific, and include your reasoning as to why exactly the god that you speak of in personal terms (who you trust and who sustains you), is absolutely necessary for whatever example that you choose to produce as a valid demonstration of the presence/existence/influence of "a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity" (according to Oxford).

It took me all night to figure out why this line of reasoning (a line of reasoning shared by many atheists) is so psychologically and spiritually abusive when aimed at those of us who believe in God.

It's abusive because of the implicit assumption it tries to force on me. (I'm using myself here as an example of a person of faith, but I think other people of faith feel this way, too, in the face of militant atheism).  It tries at the very outset to force me to agree to take on the "burden of proof" for someone else who is either too lazy or too narcissistic to accept the responsibility for using his or her own brain in the most balanced, holistic way possible.  It tries to force me to put on blinders (as if I can't see God in the world "out there").  It tries to force me to use only human laws and human reasoning (as if I can't see God uses universal laws, not human laws).  It tries to force me to agree with the fairy tale imaginings of human minds that worship Materialism (and worship themselves).  Then, when I balk at these unfair starting assumptions (because they're not based in scientific reality), I'll be blamed for bringing mouldy bread to the table instead of the pure goblet of "truth."  It will all be my fault, according to the atheist.  And because it's my fault, I'll deserve to be punished.  This will make it okay for the atheist to deride me, deride God, and raise himself up on a pedestal of smug superiority.

All the while, he's assuming his interpretations of the laws of physics are "right."  He's using his "right to be right" as a foundation, a starting place, and he intends to sit in his comfortable place of "rightness" and feast on the imperfections and inadequacies of humans who believe in God.  Sure, it's schadenfreude disguised as the pure goblet of truth, but if the atheist can keep me from noticing that -- if he can keep me thinking it's all my fault that he's so miserable -- then can he enjoy a lasting banquet of guilt, shame, inadequacy, and unworthiness from those of us who buy into his Materialist fairy tale.

But, you know, it's not my fault.

It's not my fault that the atheist has consciously and willingly chosen to believe that the Materialist laws of cause and effect govern everything in the universe.  It's not my fault that the atheist has chosen to deny that the laws of physics governing baryonic matter represent only a small fraction of the total number of laws of physics in the universe.  (Baryonic matter, which makes up the atoms and molecules we think of as "real" while we're on Planet Earth, represents only about 4 to 5% of the total energy of the known universe.)  It's not my fault that the atheist can't -- or won't -- see the complexity and weirdness and relationships that govern quantum interactions.

It's not my responsibility to bring to the atheist's table a "proof" based solely on Materialist laws of cause and effect.

It's especially not my responsibility that the atheist simply can't cope with the questions and complexities that arise from scale.

It isn't possible to talk about God without always bearing in mind the question of scale.  God the Mother and God the Father are very, very big.  They're also very, very smart.  To ask anyone to describe God using only their own personal experiences and their own personal scientific knowledge is not fair, not justifiable, and not even a tiny bit humble.  Each one of us can provide only a small piece of the overall portrait of God.  Each small piece is important and valid, but no one piece (and no one person) can provide everything we hope to know. 

For those of us living as human beings on Planet Earth, we can't begin to get a sense of who God is unless we're willing to approach the question of God with scale in mind.

Moon in a daylit sky.  (The moon is in this photo, but it's small and hard to see).  If you're not filled with awe and wonder when you look at sky like this, you're not paying attention to what your soul finds beautiful.  Photo JAT 2015.

To get a true snapshot of who God really is, we'd have to take a poll of all living creatures on Planet Earth and then collate all our individual experiences and insights in a vast meta-study.  It wouldn't be sufficient to poll only human beings.  Human beings represent a small portion of God's children on Planet Earth, and human experiences are necessarily narrow in scope compared to the whole picture of God's relationship with Creation.  Humans don't have all the answers.

Humans who want to know God and be in relationship with God have to get over their own human self-importance. They have to accept with humbleness and courage that about 95% of the laws of physics governing their lives are not straightforward and not predictable and not within their complete and utter control.  (Have you met any atheists who aren't controlling Type A perfectionists?  I haven't.)

You're only human, and the fact that you get to play with even 4–5% of the laws of physics while you're here is really quite something (when you think of the whole scale of Creation, that is).

But don't be thinkin' God is required to squeeze into that small little packet of baryonic reality (like the Genie in Aladdin's Lamp) so you can be spared the challenge of "thinking bigger." If you want to know God, you're going to have to go outside your comfort zone and you're going to have to accept that what you find out there won't be designed from a neat and tidy human point of view. 

As the X-files used to say, "The proof is out there."

Or maybe, more properly, in there -- where quantum reality lies.

God bless.

(* Sorry for all the editing I had to do on this piece.  Sometimes new ideas take a while to "gel" and the relevance of "scale" is new to my philosophical paradigm.  Plus I found scads of typos!  Sorry if I created any confusion.  I hope today's additions to this post have made my thoughts clearer. Jen, April 11, 2015)