Recently, an atheist friend inquired as to my religious beliefs.  Because I was tired, and because I didn’t want to bore him with all the complicated details of my spirituality, I said I was agnostic.   I regretted it as soon as I said it, because his response was very predictable.

“Oh, I get that,” he said.  “As Richard Dawkins says, you’re just an atheist who hasn’t made up his mind yet.”

I’ve tried not to be annoyed by this because he’s not agnostic, and therefore he doesn’t realize how profoundly ignorant that statement is.  But at the same time: he doesn’t realize how profoundly ignorant that statement is. Like any of Dawkins’ fans, and Dawkins himself, he’s an intelligent guy who has utterly failed to apply his intelligence to the subject at hand.

Agnosticism does not mean sitting on the fence between strong positions of theism and atheism.  It’s not some kind of half-assed, waffling maybe.  It’s a strong position that the entire question of theism versus atheism is a stupid one—that the fence between these poles ought to be torn down (because, despite fears to the contrary, tearing down that fence won’t make those poles identical).  It is the firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs (or non-beliefs, as the case may be).  It is the understanding that the reality of these ideologies, and of the universe, is far more complex and nuanced than this simplistic, either/or debate will allow for.

Many atheists will argue that scientific understanding is impossible unless there’s a clear line separating the world of faith from the world of physical evidence.  But if you follow the evidence, particularly in psychology, it’s clear that:

1. Human rationality is deeply bounded by intractable and inherent limitations in perspective and processing power;
2. Assuming those limitations don’t exist is foolhardy;
3. Spiritual traditions are ultimately just frameworks for dealing with those limitations.

And maybe 4:  Scientific materialism, by itself, is not a viable substitute for such a framework.

Does that mean religions should be followed blindly, or that atheism is an invalid position?  Of course not.  But it does mean that religious traditions have insights to offer if you know where to look, and that a smart person won’t discount religious stories and practices out of hand, simply because he finds them distasteful, or primitive.

So, on the contrary: Agnostics aren’t just atheists who haven’t made up their minds.  They are people who refuse to be limited to a single set of possibilities, or to be told which ideas they can and cannot explore.

I look at people with fixed concepts of God or the lack thereof, and to me they are like people standing in cages arrayed around an open field.  I can move freely around the field and still find my way back home, while they are locked inside prisons of their own making.  They could walk out any time, but they don’t.

So, no thanks.  My intellectual freedom / sovereignty is non-negotiable, and this business of sorting each other into ideological camps and then making war on each other is not for me.

You’ll note here that the use of the past-tense strongly implies that religion no longer has any value in evolutionary and social terms, and if you watch the talk you’ll see Dawkins imply that religion itself never actually did—that religion is just an unhealthy byproduct of healthy evolutionary imperatives. All of which is pure assumption / opinion on Dawkins’ part and nothing more.

But it got me to thinking I should write some more measured pieces about Atheism, considering my last one (the first post on metapunk written in anger, probably not the last, but hopefully one of only a few).

At the same time, Dawkins’ video led me to two far more intelligent discussions on the place of religion in the modern world.

The first, by SentientRaven, neatly sums up much of how I, and I think a lot of other spiritual people, feel about the subject:

SentientRaven makes three main points:

1) Concepts like Love and Democracy are words describing social conditions, not neurochemistry. It is the social context, not physiology, which is vital to understanding them. Likewise with God. God doesn’t have to exist physically to still be a relevant and meaningful social issue.

2) As concepts go, God is a really big, expansive one; bigger than any one religion, and something that no single work of scripture like the Bible or the Koran can do justice to. So, these works should be taken with a big grain of salt.

3) Religions (particularly Christianity and Islam), insofar as they rely on a single work of scripture as a source of eternal moral law, present a definite social problem. If these books are regarded as perfect and immutable, there is no way they can evolve and adapt to changing social conditions. There’s no way they can progress, or overcome the mistakes of the social & historical context they were written in. Human beings are not perfect, and there’s no way that our moral scriptures can be perfect either, so we should be able to revise them when we need to.

In other words: it doesn’t matter if God is real, a belief in God is not a problem, as long as you realize that God can’t be contained by a book, and that scripture shouldn’t keep us locked into antiquated moral and social systems.

This is an Atheist with an intelligent and informed opinion. One I really respect. I haven’t met many of those on the internet.

The second video is another one from ForaTV, this time by Sam Keen.

This is part of a larger video at: http://fora.tv/2010/03/11/Sam_Keen_In_The_Absence_of_God

I’ve never heard of Sam Keen before, but I’m going to pay more attention from now on, because again, here is a video that neatly sums up a lot of my own feelings about religion.

He basically says religions develop in 5 stages.

Stage 1: An individual person goes off by himself and has a primary, transformative experience of the sacred. These are people like Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus (and I would add, Mohammed, Rumi, Socrates, Heraklitus, and many others). Their experiences are symbolised by metaphors like Moses’ burning bush, or the ecstatic poetry of William Blake. Thus indicating that for whatever reason, these people have begun to see ordinary reality as something extraordinary.

To add my own thoughts here, this way of seeing things as sacred is perhaps best summarized by Martin Buber’s explanation of the two primary relations, an I to an It (secular, utilitarian reality), and the relation of an I to a Thou—the experience of boundless or sacred reality.

Stage 2 of a religion, according to Keen, is when disciples are so inspired by this primary figure that they begin to mythologize them. The individual becomes a legend, a superhuman being, born of a virgin or under auspicious star signs, or whatever, with miraculous powers and insight.

Stage 3 occurs when the holy individual’s revelations are turned into a theology—a systematic examination of the implications of the original experiences.

Stage 4 is the creation of a religious institution, a church or whatever, to preserve, continue, and communicate the theology.

Stage 5 is when the religious institution ends up competing with secular institutions, and thus sets its sights on notions of Empire and domination.

Of course, it’s never as clear cut as all that, but Keen feels that it’s in these later stages that religions become a problem. “Religion,” as a concept, is typically identified with the latter four stages; the mythology & theology, the institution and the drive to dominate. But that’s missing the point. “The essence of religion is none of those things,” Keen says, “The essence of religion is a series of primal experiences which belong to us only because we are born human and we share the human condition.”

In other words, the important stage—the primary experience of stage 1—is typically ignored by believers and non-believers alike, overshadowed by the other four. The implication of this is that we can all learn to experience the sacred; to see the world as awesome and extraordinary in a profoundly transformative way. We don’t need churches (or scientists or atheists, for that matter) to interpret these experiences for us or to tell us how to live as a consequence–especially if these people have not had these experiences themselves.

Heady stuff. But Keen is right on the money.

I guess this is why I’m personally so drawn to religions like Sufism and Buddhism and Aboriginal spirituality. In most forms of each, while there is some mythology & theology, and a tradition/institution, the institution remains communal, never reaching an authoritarian stage 5. And instead of overshadowing the primary experience; the mythology, theology, and community are all in the service of that first stage. They exist not to tell people what to think or how to behave, but to give people a path to discovering their own experience of the sacred; their own humanity.

It’s also why I get so annoyed at evangelical Atheists: they’re so preoccupied with the negative, stage 5 aspects of religion, that they’re wildly intolerant of the stage 1, without comprehending it much at all.

That’s enough for now. Look for part II later this week, when I will discuss these misconceptions in more detail, and outline why I believe this kind of vitriolic Atheism itself often sounds like a stage 5 religion, having started from stage 3, and skipping 1 and 2 altogether.

Okay, so I know, I know. Arguing on the Internet is pretty much always a waste of time. Every time I do it, I feel like I just crawled through a sewer pipe, looking for the elusive source of the world’s bullshit. But sometimes you just sorta get sucked in, y’know?

Before I go on, I should point out that atheists are not the problem. If someone chooses to believe in God, Gods, the flying spaghetti monster, the bloody timecube, or nothing at all… well, hey, that’s cool. I respect that decision—follow your experience where it takes you, I say. Be empirical. But those Richard Dawkins wannabe, down-with-spirituality-in-every-form, capital “A,” Atheists—well, I’ve got no time for them, because every one I’ve met is an arrogant asshole.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I had a long discussion with one such individual over the last few days and it went roughly like this: He disliked the very notion of God, all possible definitions of which he felt were nonsensical. When I told him that God can’t be defined, and is ineffible, of course he became quite upset; because that doesn’t fit the basic philosophical assumption of the scientific method—that everything in nature can be grasped by the intellect. The harder I tried to explain to him—referencing scientific examples—that this may not be the case, the more hostile and irrational he got.

It’s my fault, really, for trying to explain God to someone who really doesn’t want to understand it, only hate it.

But this is a common experience I’ve had talking to capital “A” Atheists. They respect science, except where it means questioning their assumptions. They say they respect evidence and precision, but make sweeping generalizations about religion as an evil; and then get nit-picky when examples of atheism gone wrong emerge. They believe they’re open-minded and immune to prejudice; but they think everybody who professes spirituality of any kind is some sort of bible-thumping apocalyptic Jesus freak (indeed, because all religions are hellfire Christianity, apparently).

And believe me when I say that I’m just as concerned about the bible-thumping Jesus freaks as they are; but I also happen to believe, due to direct experience, that there’s more to life than what my limited, mortal brain can intellectually analyze. And I believe people should be able to explore the edges of understanding more or less how they choose, so long as they don’t impose their view on others.

I mean, I agree with a lot of the things the secular scientific community is saying about how mainstream religion has failed. But big-A Atheists, just like crusading religious zealots, see—and create—enemies everywhere they go. Because I believe in God (without even qualifying what sort of God), I supposedly belong in the other camp. They’re turning away potential allies in the task of dealing with failed religion, because they’re far too hateful of religion in general.

I’m pretty sick of being caught in the middle of the culture war, as I think most people are. But to Atheists, I make it possible for religious fundamentalists to get away with inhuman atrocities, and to evangelical Christians I make it possible for those evil sinning atheists to summon the devil. They can both kiss my ever-loving pantheist ass, for all I care.

Not very enlightened, I suppose. *sigh* Okay, may they both find peace; hopefully without killing each other in the process. Or something like that.

There are two major lessons to be learned from this: Crusading Atheists, despite how rational they think they are, are no more immune to prejudice, emotionalism, cognitive biases, and all other forms of hubris, than any other human being. And they certainly don’t like to be reminded of that fact.

The other lesson: don’t argue on the Internet.

I wonder when that one will sink in.