From the Doubting Uncle

An uncle of mine, who shall remain anonymous, is either agnostic or atheist. He is a great guy, though I fear for any would-be evangelists who knock at his door, as this soft-spoken Iowan would probably take their Bibles, beat them with them, and the ask them to kindly return to the Middle Ages. Or to Texas. Or wherever. (I'm from Texas. I get to say that). Anyway, this uncle is a little pissed about the election, and the good folks here at Mustard Seed (read: me) can hardly blame him.

Clearly, though, we don't agree on religion. So when my uncle sent me an email with a bunch of religion quotes today, I got to spout off. And now that I have a blog, I can spout off to a larger audience. So here goes my attempt at philosophy. I'm not too sophisticated or well-read in this regard, so those of you who really know philosophy, feel free to tell me I'm a moron. Anyway, here's a sample quote from my uncle's e-mail:

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

And here's my long-winded response, edited a bit:

I may take time to reply to specific quotes, but will here only state that all of us live by faith in some way. If you love your children and raise them accordingly, for example, you implictly assume that human life is valuable and worth perpetuating. But why would you assume that? In a world obviously full of suffering (tsunamis, a second Bush term, etc.) is human life inherently enjoyable? For many Americans, perhaps. But to most of the world's people, it's clearly not much fun.

Is human life inherently GOOD or VALUABLE? "Good" and " valuable" imply moral claims that can have no scientific basis. After all, what is life, scientifically speaking, but an odd, self-perpetuating arrangment of molecules? Rearrange our atoms, and we're no different than the dirt (to which we return).

Is caring for children simple evolutionary instinct? Probably at least in part, but taking that position risks your claim to rationality. Just like human brains seem to be wired to resist rationality (evolutionary theory, in your examples) and embrace religion, your brain is wired to mindlessly perpetuate meaningless life. Both, it seems, involve a sort of innate human need or instinct. To have children, to me, implies one of two things: 1) an irrational, unproveable assumption that human life is worth preserving. This is some variety of faith; or 2) a callous disregard for bringing into being a creature that craves meaning that it can never have, at least without engaging in self-delusion. Add in the physical cruelty of life in most of the world, and an atheist might argue that only the relatively affluent (those able to expeience at least sensual pleasure) have any business living.

Although I'm no philosopher, I can think of at least one consistent atheist option -- sort of an existentialist position. As I understand it (and I may have it wrong), you must order your life around an sense of meaning that you choose, then will yourself into believing. Otherwise, life remains unliveably absurd. Again, perhaps. But is your own willful delusion really any better than the "delusion" you inherit from your parents?

My point is not that you can prove God. You can't. But most of us live by faith that some things are just true -- freedom is good, oppression is bad, human life is valuable. Believing those things involves irrational assumptions -- faith. Of course, you can always declare those things meaningless delusions, too. Life may be meaningless. But then you may as well drop your work for the Democratic party, your concern about the direction of our country, your worries for the environment, etc. After all, the destruction of all human life, scientifically speaking, would just be a relatively minor rearrangement of atoms.