Do you believe in God?
Jesus, surrounded by flies. Are they metaphorical as well as literal? Who knows?
There was an interesting article in today’s Observer: an extract from Martin Amis’s introduction to ‘The Quotable Hitchens’.
It’s full of fascinating quotes, rude (not quite as funny as Matin thinks they are) putdowns and perceptive observations, but the section that interested me most was an exploration of Hitchens’ forthright atheism:
Christopher’s personal devil is God, or rather organised religion, or rather the human “desire to worship and obey”.
Which I used to agree with more fully, but I’ve since converted to become a fundamentalist agnostic. Here Amis, clever bloke that he is, agrees with me:
My dear Hitch: there has been much wild talk, among the believers, about your impending embrace of the sacred and the supernatural. This is of course insane. But I still hope to convert you, by sheer force of zealotry, to my own persuasion: agnosticism. In your seminal book, God Is Not Great, you put very little distance between the agnostic and the atheist; and what divides you and me (to quote Nabokov yet again) is a rut that any frog could straddle. “The measure of an education,” you write elsewhere, “is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance.” And that’s all that “agnosticism” really means: it is an acknowledgment of ignorance. Such a fractional shift (and I know you won’t make it) would seem to me consonant with your character – with your acceptance of inconsistencies and contradictions, with your intellectual romanticism, and with your love of life, which I have come to regard as superior to my own.
The atheistic position merits an adjective that no one would dream of applying to you: it is lenten. And agnosticism, I respectfully suggest, is a slightly more logical and decorous response to our situation – to the indecipherable grandeur of what is now being (hesitantly) called the multiverse. The science of cosmology is an awesome construct, while remaining embarrassingly incomplete and approximate; and over the last 30 years it has garnered little but a series of humiliations. So when I hear a man declare himself to be an atheist, I sometimes think of the enterprising termite who, while continuing to go about his tasks, declares himself to be an individualist. It cannot be altogether frivolous or wishful to talk of a “higher intelligence” – because the cosmos is itself a higher intelligence, in the simple sense that we do not and cannot understand it.
This seems to be an illustration of another Hitchens quotation:
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
(Of course, I’m dismissing people’s ‘faith’, which by definition is belief without evidence.)
I used to be a reluctant atheist, who enjoyed the solidity of taking one side of a black-or-white argument. My reluctance came from the nagging doubt provided by many years of religion-based education (my school church was Westminster Abbey. We went there three times a week for half an hour of hymns, prayers and lessons and had a further morning of prayers elsewhere on Wednesdays. Thank God (sic) for Tuesdays and Thursdays) that never converted me to belief, but added enough to the existence side of the argument to make me doubt my doubt.
Anyway, a combination of Ricard Dawkins and (what I saw as) common sense convinced me that the idea of an omniscient, omnipresent uberbeing was, frankly, fucking ridiculous. But then I had dinner with Dave Trott a couple of months back, and he slipped in the agnosticism theory in a more succinct way than Amis did. He said that agnosticism was surely the only intelligent position to take.
I thought about that for a couple of weeks, and here I am, not believing in anything beyond my lack of belief.
But I’m curious: do you believe in God? And why?
There is no evidence of God.
There is evidence of the Universe.
I therefore believe in the brilliance of the Universe and of carbon atoms, of which we are the result of billions of years of evolution. There doesn’t have to be anyone behind that. Only the human mind needs to see things as having a creator. Of course if there is a creator, then jolly good show.
No.
Amis’ argument is this: “We do not know for CERTAIN there is no God, therefore it makes good sense to keep an open mind.”
Ok, let’s take this logical position and play with it a little. We do not know for CERTAIN that Dave Trott is not, in fact, God’s second son. So we should keep our minds open to that possibility and treat him with due deference. And we do not know for CERTAIN that the world will not end in 2012, so we should keep our minds open to that possibility and fuck each other relentlessly for the next 9 months.
But the fact of the matter is, there is zero evidence for the existence of some kind of all-knowing magic-man who has a big, bizarre plan for my life. Just as there is zero evidence to back up the argument that Dave Trott is said magic-man’s second son, and zero evidence to suggest the world will end in 2012.
It’s all very well to say “but what if you’re wrong …”, but if this is your reason for being agnostic about the existence of God, you should really apply the same logic to every other possible truth you manage to dream up (including Dave Trott’s divinity).
Or as Tim Minchin puts it, “if you open your mind too much your brain will fall out”.
Is there or is there not a God? I can understand someone being agnostic to this question. But is religion wrong? Almost certainly yes. All religions are man-made and clearly bullshit evolved from a time when they didn’t know what a germ was or a star or an atom.
1. Organised religion is definitely a BAD THING. Opiate of the masses and all that. A load of daft nonsense created to keep the stupid cowed. How much misery has come down to the ridiculous notion, ‘My invisible friend is better than yours’?
2. Science is only the most recent theory yet to be falsified.
I don’t spend any time altering my life to the possible existence of god. I just feel that ‘knowing’ in one way or the other is impossible, just as it is about most things.
Agnostics don’t believe in God. They just think it’s impossible to know one way or the other.
But being Agnostic is not a belief is it? Its a rational between two beliefs. Its a neutral statement. Its like refereeing an argument over the existance of God. I mean, I don’t believe in God because whoever said that there HAS to be a creator behind the universe? Man did, because as humans we can’t comprehend anything without a creator. Just like we couldn’t comprehend the earth being anything other than flat until science showed us the reality. The universe us constantly being understood more and more by science and it fucking amazing why does it need a creator and why do we need to hypothosise over whether it does or not?
“2. Science is only the most recent theory yet to be falsified.”
Which science are you talking about exactly?
Seems to me all science is proved right. That makes it science.
Theoretical Science can be wrong, obviously, it’s only a theory.
However, many theories over the last few hundred years have been proved right (I understand many haven’t). Some have been overtaken by new theories which just makes people argue about which is right.
The theory of God has been around for thousands of years. Possibly tens of thousands.The Jews were still worshiping many Gods even as recently as 400BC thats 500 years after Moses went up the hill and talked to that tree.
Jesus was not even invented until 400 years after he supposedly died.
Theory theory theory. Not science.
It’s like believing in research groups.
apply the same agnostic logic to the existence of unicorns. to take the ‘i don’t know’ stance suddenly doesn’t sound quite so intelligent.
i like to think of it like this: atheists = agnostics, plus an extra tea spoon of common sense.
If you think science is ultimate, unchangeable proof, then that’s an interesting position to take.
Of course it isn’t. New theories come along all the time to make older ones look very stupid indeed.
Do you think we understand even a billionth of what the universe has to offer? Of course we don’t.
A decade ago, we discovered that the fundamental constants of physics might not be so constant after all. These are the numbers that describe just how strong the forces of nature are, and make the laws of physics work when we use them to describe the processes of nature. Light that has travelled across the universe from distant stars tells us those laws might have been different in the past. Though the physical laws and constants have helped us define and tame the natural world, they might be an illusion.
And here’s how great science is: it tells us that we are apparently 99% the same as a hippo.
Thanks for that.
And I have no idea whether or not unicorns exist. I’ve never seen one, but their possibility doesn’t seem that odd to me. There are animals with horns and animals that look like horses. Could an animal have combined these traits? I don’t see why not.
I’d love to have seen your face when dinosaurs were first explained to you.
And could you please define ‘common sense’?
The universe, our place in it, our very existence – all of these things are way beyond our comprehension.
Until you say that there is a God.
And then it all begins to make sense.
Anon 10.10am,
If, on the one hand, we accept science as true then we live in an infinite universe.
If it’s infinite there’s nothing that’s impossible, if there was it would be finite.
So, presumably, unicorns and everything else you can think of (and everything you can’t) should exist.
Science proves our perception isn’t the limits of what’s possible.
Also there’s Hume’s point about the black swan.
Suppose through all of human history every swan we’ve ever seen is white.
The evidence says that must be a fact, that all swans are white.
Then one day someone, somewhere discovers a black swan.
And all that evidence isn’t a fact anymore.
Hume’s point was that you can never prove anything, you can only ever disprove something.
In which case “I don’t know, I’ll keep an open mind” seems a pretty sensible position to take on most things.
Like Dave said (but wasn’t the black swan theory Popper’s?).
Mike H: I’m not sure anything I’ve thought, experienced or heard makes any sense of god.
Could well’ve been Popper’s Ben.
In an infinite universe anything’s possible.
Ben, If there is a God, then that explains how the universe came into being: He created it.
Why did he create it? As a gift to us. Life itself is a gift.
If He gives us such a gift then obviously He somehow wants to make us aware of the fact. He wants us to know that we are special. So just look around – not a single extra-terrestrial life form of any sort has ever been found. Yet on earth, we are surrounded by billions of species.
And just as our planet is unique so, too, is each of us. Of all the billions of people on the planet, no two are identical. (Even identical twins have differences.)
Why would He make each of us unique? To show us again that we are special.
In the face of all this, we still doubt, so He sends Christ to explain. There’s plenty of evidence regarding Christ’s existence and plenty of evidence regarding his stature as a miracle worker, healer and preacher. You can find it with google.
Christ’s explanation broadly mirrors what I’ve been trying to say above.
All of which is what I meant when I said that things start to slot into place if you accept the existence of God.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and The Bed of Procrustes, has pointed out that the “black swan” example comes from John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic. If you use the Find function of your browser to find “swans” in this text of A System of Logic, you’ll find JSM’s references to swans in a discussion of the problem of induction:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/system_of_logic/complete.html
Back in the day we couldn’t explain fire, so we made up a fire god. That’s what we do, for stuff we can’t comprehend we play the god card. It’s just lazy.
Mike, did this God create the recent tsunami and earthquake as a gift to us? How about AIDS?
Seems like a nice god.
And who gives a shit if we’re unique or not? That seems to be utterly without intrinsic value.
There’s also a lot of doubt about Christ’s existence and the truth of his reported miracles.
And why doesn’t he just send Christ again if he wants to stop the doubt? seems like that would be pretty easy.
The whole thing has more holes than a tramp’s pants.
Maybe Arsenal will win a trophy in the next life.
I could write forever on this. I won’t. I do. I didn’t want to. But I do.
All I will say is that it is weird to be against a creator when you are a creative.
It’s all about efficient cause.
Does an ad exist merely because a camera shot it.
Mike, using God to explain everything we don’t understand may well ‘fit’ but it certainly doesn’t make it right. It’s an abstract concept that acts as a place holder until we find out how things really work.
Check out God of the Gaps theory.
I also used to be a committed atheist but now I’m agnostic. There’s no other option. I haven’t a clue why we’re all here. I have a sneaking suspicion we came from outer space actually, a theory that’s rapidly gaining traction.
On a slightly different note, I just had sesame oil on my salad. You should all try it.
MikeH:
“There‚Äôs plenty of evidence regarding Christ‚Äôs existence and plenty of evidence regarding his stature as a miracle worker, healer and preacher. You can find it with google”.
Hilarious. If its on Google it must be true. You’ve converted me.
‘All I will say is that it is weird to be against a creator when you are a creative.’
How so, Anonymouse?
As an ex-child boat boy (little dude who shovels incense to the man who swings a hot thing about) who’s flittered between Atheist and Agnostic since my teens, I’m still not sure where I fit. But I think that’s a good thing. Makes the rest of life a bit of an adventure. Maybe that 99.9% of the universe we can’t figure out is a bit magic, maybe it’s comparable to a kebab house in Stoke-on-Trent – either way it’ll be pretty fun to figure out. Don’t want to sound like a fluffy on-the-fence bunny, but isn’t it great there’s such a thing as string theory, yet a book that discredits it as ‘not even wrong’? Let’s keep digging and see what weird shit we figure out.
I have to agree with Mr. Vonnegut, we’re here on Earth to fart around.
Ben, the God you don’t believe in also gave us free will. So we, in our wisdom, then built nuclear plants by seismic fault lines, tower blocks in earthquake zones, seafront communities in areas likely to be hit by tsunamis, cars than can crash, planes that can fall of the sky and all the rest of it. People talk about ‘acceptable risk’, and that’s fine – but we can hardly then turn round and blame God when the very thing that we thought might happen then goes and does.
Ben. When you say ‘God’, do you mean a supernatural being who intercedes on our behalf? (Curing cancer, helping us locate missing car keys or scoring vital penalties.) Or is ‘god’ a word that attempts to describe the bewildering complexity of the Universe? Or something else altogether? I’m a bit confused, but fascinated.
Ben, lots of people have a talent to write but only you can write in the way that you do – which is why you’re selling all those books and getting hired by agencies instead of the other freelancers people could choose. Do you still think that your uniqueness is “utterly without intrinsic value”? The value is right there in your bank balance.
But there are people who contribute things that are identical to the contribution of others, (people on factory lines for instance) who also have an improved bank balance to show for it. Where does their uniqueness demonstrate a value?
Ben.
It just strikes me that if you are an artist and you involve yourself with the act of creation, then one look at the beauty of the world, it’s design, it’s perfection should lead one to the conclusion that the creative process has been at work – though at some non-understandable level.
If nothing else, its fun to think the world was created. It makes the whole arena a work of art and all the more splendid as a result.
Think of the best work you ever did. How sad, then, if someone boiled it down to a lucky progression of mental synapses and coincidences.
…it’s apostrophes.
Sorry. I’m not back in pro mode yet. 🙁
Can science please explain why I’m eating a chocolate egg to celebrate the resurrection of a man and his ascendance into the clouds?
In terms of earthquakes and AIDS and shit like that
Have you ever seen Eastenders? What kind of a creator would ever let that shit happen?
Or what about Bambi? How could a creator so cynically kill the mother?
In your book (sorry, not read it yet, will do!) does anything bad happen? If so, why did you create it that way?
Does it matter if there’s a god or not (there isn’t, by the way)?
Their uniqueness is also in their value as people, not just in the work that they happen to do. People may value one factory worker for his endless store of jokes, another for his charity work, another for the help he gives his ailing grandmother, another for his lunatic, laughable support for Coventry City Football Club. Everybody’s different, everybody’s unique, and that’s one of the things that make life such a wonderful experience.
I don’t think it matters if there’s a god or not. Most people seem to tick along one way or the other, suggesting that neither belief seems to make much of a difference.
Mike: I was just replying to your explanation to the value of my uniqueness. I do see that there are other values beyond the bank balance, but am not sure they are bound up in uniqueness. What if we were all divided into one of 1000 identical groups? Would that be worse? I don’t think we’d see it that way.
And you haven’t explained why God bothered to build seismic fault lines. Seriously, why add them in? Massive waste of time unless he wanted to destroy what he created.
Anonymouse, the best work I ever did definitely just boiled down to a lucky progression of mental synapses and coincidences. So did the worst (unlucky progression). It IS fun to think the world was created, just like it’s fun to think of unicorns galloping down Oxford Street.
By the way, thanks for all the replies.
An interesting discussion, which was just what I was hoping for.
I believe in God, I also believe he is a complete wanker. Lets have a little look shall we? We can start off in the garden of eden, where god decides to put an apple tree with a bright red shiny apple which, if adam or eve decide to eat, will cast human kind into an eternity of sin. What kind of supreme being would do such a thing? Why not put a big bag of sweets infront of some toddlers and tell them never to eat them? Wanker!
What about poor old moses? After leading the slaves from egypt he taps on a rock with his staff, forgetting for a moment to thank god for supplying the water that came rushing out. Well moses, youve served me well but you wont be going to the promised land now.
Speaking of Egypt, did God really have to murder all of the first born children of all the Egyptians? Could he not just kill the pharoah himself instead of murdering thousands of innocent children? Wanker!
This list goes on and on….
Imagine the conversation Joseph and Mary had when she found out she was pregnant… “Erm… Joseph dear, sit down I have something to tell you. Dont know how to say this but erm, while you were at work the holy spirit nipped round and got me up the duff, you do believe dont you?”
Good old Joseph, naive but good heart. Could God not have chosen a single girl? Wanker!
Ben,
I’m 100% with you. Even down to the Atheist turned Agnostic. (Although, I was more agnostic to atheist and back to agnostic again recently).
But, with regards to your fault lines, and anonymouse’s more relevant East Enders, quandary… If I did believe in god then I would accept death as much as I would life and I would imagine that god made this world to evolve and grow. Some shit just needs to happen. Sad shit and good shit. They help each other. We grow from both. An’ all that.
But anyway, my mental synapses are telling me to get back on my fence and stop writing about stuff I have no idea about.
Ben, you’re quite right: most people probably go through life not much caring whether there’s a God or not and not giving much thought to why we’re all here either. But as you get older those questions – in some of us, anyway – start pushing through. And on one’s deathbed, the thought of a loving God is probably quite a comforting one – better than a sort of “well, that’s it, lights out!” ending anyway. To answer your question about seismic faults, God created the planet as a living thing, which is one of the things that gives it its beauty. The seas have tides, winds become hurricanes, rivers become floods – and the great plates move. It think I’d prefer that to a static place where nothing ever changed, no seasons, no day or night, nothing. Makes it a dangerous place to be though, admittedly….
No one’s arguing with seasons, and no one’s saying that it’d be better if nothing ever changed, but he could just turn the hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis down a notch so that they don’t kill hundreds of thousands of people.
Surely? I mean the planet would still be ‘alive’, just not as a deathly monster.
And I didn’t say it’s not worth wondering why we’re all here. I said ‘I don‚Äôt think it matters if there‚Äôs a god or not. Most people seem to tick along one way or the other, suggesting that neither belief seems to make much of a difference’. Not really the same thing.
I believe that life is empty and meaningless in a good way: you can fill it with whatever you want and you don’t have to keep finding meaning in things which have none.
“I believe that life is empty and meaningless in a good way: you can fill it with whatever you want‚Ķ”
You can even support a team a that just buys the championship year after year. I mean, since Arsenal won it in 2004, it’s been the sole preserve of teams willing to play ¬£20-30m for their players, no matter what the debt. It’s a real shame, I suppose, but that’s what football has become these days.
Look at the Euro semi finals: Four teams so ridiculously in debt to the off-chance of a trophy that it makes the whole thing a joke.
I think I’d better have a serious think about all this and maybe support a team that operates within its means.
Did you go to Westminster ? I didn’t realise you were so posh ? By the way I like the ‘ fundamentalist agnostic ‘ line but may be ‘ agnostic fundamentalist’ has a bit more rhythm to it.
If it was just synapses etc would you say that you are without talent? That you, yourself, have no say in your ideas? I find it hard to believe anyone could believe in such randomness.
Again, I am not question the effective cause. Science is right.
It just leaves the question of the efficient cause. What is the cause of bread? Yeast and Flour? Or the Baker?
Trott is correct also. We are all agnostics. That is an indisputable truth.
I agree with Carl Sagan http://youtu.be/p_naQhynOg0
John W. Good to see you raging against teams buying the title. 2004 was indeed an age of footballing innocence and purity. Just look at this band of North London lads…
Jens Lehmann
Ashley Cole
Patrick Vieira
Robert Pirès
Fredrik Ljungberg
José Antonio Reyes
Dennis Bergkamp
Robin van Persie
Lauren
Thierry Henry
Cesc Fàbregas
Mathieu Flamini
Edu
Pascal Cygan
Gilberto Silva
Philippe Senderos
Gaël Clichy
Sol Campbell
Manuel Almunia
Emmanuel Eboué
Kolo Touré
Jérémie Aliadière
Justin Hoyte
Patrick Cregg
Johan Djourou
Sebastian Larsson
Quincy Owusu-Abeyie
Daniel Karbassiyoon
Good old Arsenal. Keeping the game close to its roots.
I think it’s all a search for the moral high ground: “god worshippers are unthinking morons, atheists are morons, so agnosticism is the only intellectually comfortable place to be.”
So I have decided to become an agnostic agnostic, uncertain as to whether I should be uncertain. I thus revel in the luxury of ultimate uncommitment. Mind you, there is a little old beggar on Sunset and Vine who looks as if he might know something…
i just watched Dawkins 2 part doc on 4OD this weekend, listened to another doc about ghosts, and went to mass for Easter Sunday. I’ve now concluded that there’s definitely something beyond life, and a friendly God would be sweet. So yeah count me in for the believing thing. Who else made the big bang, and science is arguably a toy left by God to keep us entertained.
Anonymouse, I don’t think John W was talking nationality, just cost.
But then he is a diehard gooner, so you never know.
Where’s Professor Brian Cox when you need him?
Pascal however thought it made sense (pragmatically and cynically) to believe in God: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
I’m a diehard gooner as in Spike, Harry and Peter meet John McClane.
http://vimeo.com/22439234
In that film many marvel at the science. But I can see only the art.
“Ying-tong-ki-yay, motherfucker.”
Ben, no doubt tomorrow you’ll put up something about advertising again. I wonder if you’ll get another 48 comments, though…!
If God is true and the Bible is real then…how did Adam and Eve poplulate the Earth? I mean, they had two sons. Caine and Able. And then what?
(nb incest is a sin in the bible).
Religion and a belief in a creator or all powerful god, and the organised religion that ensues is just part of the evolution of our species.
As we become more intelligent and self aware, we seek meaning in our lives and our world. As we become more civil, we need a moral code to guide our and others’ actions. Religion and belief provide that sense of direction and meaning. It’s similar to patterns of society building up. It’s all just a natural part of evolution you see.
Our species is still relatively young. Our descendants will look back in another 10,000 years (if we don’t destroy ourselves before that) at this era like we look at our ancestors worshipping the sun. Nothing that weird, just understandable beliefs for that point in ou evolution.
I believe in God ‘cos I saw him score and it was good.
Hello all. I reckon Larkin nailed it in his poem, Aubade (as quoted by Martin Amis in the piece on Hitch):
“Religion…That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade/
Created to pretend we never die”
Ben, if we were all divided into 1000 identical groups, all but one of the people in each group would be expendable, with nothing new or different to offer. A pleasant thought?
Why does being the same as someone else make you worthless?
For a start, you could both dig a hole.
‘Cos you only need the other one, that’s why.
MikeH that doesn’t make sense. But don’t worry, your faith is a perfectly understandable behaviour at this point in our species’ evolution, with our current (very small) understanding of the universe and its component parts.
A.Writer: I think you’re missing my point but don’t worry, I wasn’t worried.
I’m all for science. If someone could just explain consciouness to me scientifically, we can put all this talk of the soul to bed.