VERSUS: Atheism and Agnosticism

I am an atheist. Most people know this. What they might not know is what an atheist actually means. In fact, I'd say most non-atheists don't have an accurate meaning in mind when they think about atheism so I'm going to clear this up. To be fair I also think a large portion of atheists are confused about the term as well. To clear this up I'll be clarifying a few terms but the main focus in this post will be Atheism Vs. Agnosticism. Don't be scared.

The first step is to break these words down to see what they really mean, not what some people assume them to be.

• Atheism – without a belief in gods
• 'a' – no or absence
• 'theo' – god or divine
• 'ism' – a practice of, belief in, condition of

• Agnosticism – without enough knowledge to know. And in this case “know” is in terms of scientific thought so it needs certainty.
  
  • 'a' – no or absence
  • 'gnostic' – know, learn, discern
  • 'ism' – a practice of, belief in, condition of

Most people have a sort of scale in regard to belief in gods. From what people say and from what I've personally experienced it generally looks like this:

atheist → agnostic → deist → theist

This is actually being generous as I find fewer and fewer people who are aware of deism. Deism is a belief in a creator who has, since creation, not interacted with the universe in any personal way. Deists don't believe in any sort of revelation from a god and tend to think of their creator as a sort of watchmaker who created the universe and then took a step back to observe. Theists believe in (at least one) god and that it/they have, since creation, interacted with the universe and communicated with humans in some way.

There are many more branches than this but I wanted to get out just the basics.

Let us say that there is a button. There is a group of people who think pushing this button is the right thing to do. There is also a group that thinks pushing it is the wrong thing to do. But not everyone falls into this dichotomy. Some people aren't completely sure. They say they currently don't know whether pushing the button is right or wrong. If you take that undecided group and look at them right now they actually fall into the non-pushing group. While undecided it would be stupid to push the button. It could do something great. It could do something terrible. But either way no one is going to push it if they're not sure.

Pulling this back over to atheism you can see that people who are agnostic are not fulfilling any sort of belief. They are not being theists. Someone who is unsure of whether to press that button is not a button-pusher. Someone who is abstaining from belief in a god because of lack of knowledge is not currently believing in any sort of god. That means they are being atheists. Agnostics are a subgroup of atheists.

Here's another way of thinking about it. Let's take a hobby, say, stamp collecting. Some people are stamp collectors. They collect stamps. I do not collect stamps. I really don't care about stamps one way or another. If I learned more I might either feel strongly that they are a good investment and become a stamp collector, or that it's a huge waste of time and become an anti-stamp collector. As it stands, stamp collecting is just something I don't do. Now replace “stamp collecting” with “believe in god”.

An agnostic isn't 100% set in either direction in regard to belief. This means that they are in a subcategory of non-believers since they are not actively believing. They could have a leaning (Richard Dawkins ranks himself at 6.5 on a scale of 1-7 where 1 is complete faith in god and 7 is complete rejection) but since even someone leaning towards belief still hasn't gotten there they are still an atheist. In fact, as long as there's any percent of uncertainty then that person is still uncertain. Inside of the term 'atheist' an anti-theist would be 100% sure and an agnostic would be 99%-50% sure that there are no gods (50% being an estimated tipping point of doubt. Actual tipping point between belief and doubt may vary). If you decide that you want to go out and buy a set of stamps to collect you're not actually a stamp collector until you do it. If you choose to press a button you're not a button pusher until your finger pushes down on that button. If someone doesn't think there's enough evidence either way to make an educated decision regarding the existence of a deity then they are an atheist.

One note on the above is that there's actually a much more complicated aspect to doubt than I put in. There is the possibility of harboring doubt and still being a theist. An example is someone who takes up Pascal's Wager, that if there is no god but you worship him then you still get into heaven but if there is no god and you don't then you go to hell. That means Pascal finds it a better bet to pointlessly worship than possibly damn one's self. Since the person might fulfill the acts of worship but not truly believe then there's the whole question of whether following the actions commanded by a religion is enough to fulfill that religion. Whether it is enough differs from faith to faith so the result of doubter being or not being a button abstainer/atheist is different from religion to religion. In most forms of Judaism the action is more important than the motivation. In Catholicism the opposite is true. So in the spirit of openness I am admitting that this post is written with the assumption that doubt stops one from pressing the god button, as this is true for the Christian majority.

Since most atheists are Skeptics you'll actually find that the large majority of atheists are technically agnostics. Skeptics use reason and the scientific method in refining their world views. This means that since the god concept has been set up to be unfalsifiable at least recognition of this has to be acknowledged. For those who don't know, unfalsifiable means "not capable of being proven false". This does not mean it is true but only that the concept has some built in self defense mechanism to negate any investigation as to its existence or not. The idea that a god created the world in 7 days but made everything to look as if it were billions of years old is unfalsifiable since the concept negates any test results showing the universe to be older The standard skeptic's atheism says “There is not enough evidence to believe in any gods, however if proof was ever found then it would have to be acknowledged and atheist belief reconsidered”.

A lot of people think of anti-theists when they hear the word atheist. The idea behind anti-theism is “against believing in a god”, usually because they think it's detrimental to the mental well being of the believers and society in general. Similarly, but different enough to make a note of, are anti-religionists. The idefa behind anti-religionism is obviously "being against religion".

Belief is an active state. If an agnostic has not taken the action to believe then they are without belief, without god, a-theist.

Since “a theism” means “without god” and all of this is without god. “With god” is JUST deism and theism. Another differentiation I have been seeing a lot recently is the term "non-theist". Often times I see it used when the author thinks that atheist is too strong a word and agnostic will open up, well, this whole can of worms that I'm addressing now. But there is already a word that means non-theist. It's "atheist".

VERSUS: Belief vs. Observance

Passover is has ended and it has made me think a bit. I recently heard an interview with Judith Shulevitz who wrote a book called "The Sabbath World" about the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest each week. During the course of the interview she said that while she does keep the sabbath she does not actually believe in god. My first reaction was a start of happiness that there is another Jew out there that has a similar practice as myself, of observance without faith. In her case it's keeping the sabbath and in my case it's keeping kosher. The interviewer's immediate response was one that I am very familiar with, to point out that many people would find this contradictory. In fact it's not.

The two concepts at play  here are belief and observance. For some reason most people seem to think that the latter requires the former and that simply is not true. The reason for this assumption is most people think that their motivation for observance is the motivation for observance. Most Jews that keep the sabbath do so because the god in the Hebrew bible commands it. Likewise, most Jews that keep kosher do so because their holy book says that it must be done. For some reason when it comes to religion, people for the most part work with the supposition that actions and motivations are of a 1:1 relationship; each single action has a single motivation behind it. If you look at any other sort of action this is never the standard. People save money for greed, prudent investments in the future or to donate to charity. People murder out of anger or jealousy or psychosis. People take prescription drugs in order to fix a disease, treat a natural condition or to simply get high, maybe even to kill themselves. A single action can have a number of reasons behind it ranging from healing to hurting. Why would religious practices differ?

The obvious answer is because they are religious actions and therefore are motivated by religion. Mystery solved. But there's more to it than that. If the human reaction to religious texts was that simple then no one would have a different interpretation or reaction to religion; Christians would never have schismed from Jews, no religion would have different sects and everyone would follow their religion in what people now think of as a traditional or fundamental manner. But religion is much more complicated than that, as it's both a combination of mythology and philosophy. It's that mix that creates a strange allure of magic, answers and sometimes even introspection. It's my practice, and I now know that I'm not alone, to use practice to exercise introspection without the handicap of magic and superstition or the presumption of predetermined answers.

Judging by the interview it seems that Shulevitz and I are observant for similar reasons. We have chosen to practice something traditional in order to set apart a certain time within our lives in order to break up a pattern that could form monotony and habit. I know this is true for me, that performing a practice that is non-intuitive and a little unnatural breaks up my day and forces me to think in a situation where I would normally act without thought. In my case that is eating. How many people actually think before every item they eat? How many people end up putting food in their mouths out of habit? For Shulevitz, she and her family try to limit their control and manipulation over the world on the Sabbath. She avoids the phone, TV and driving as much as she can. But it's not an act of leisure. It's an act of willful limiting of one's self, a forced break in the pattern of normal life.  Meditative asceticism.

I would even argue that the secular observance can be more meaningful than a religious one.  Not always, but can be. When religious Jews keep the sabbath or rules of kosher eating their thought process may kick in but it stops one step in, that the reason for it is god. Done. In a secular mindset the thought process doesn't drop the responsibility of practice on anyone or anything other than the practitioner. I don't keep kosher because I think a god will punish me if I eat pork. I do it as an ascetic practice that makes me consider my actions. And since the path of thought stemming from this observance leads to me then I must follow it, every time, to evaluate myself. Since I always have the freedom to stop my practice and eat normally I must reevaluate the value of the observance every time. I think self-analyzing every day of life is a bit more productive than a simple “god said so”.

I'm betting that keeping the sabbath, for Shulevitz, is similar. Each Saturday she and her family get together and change how they live for an entire day. What they do for entertainment as well as weekend productivity changes drastically and it's not because it's something they should do. It's because it's something they make themselves do.

I've studied a number of philosophies and religions and this sort of practice independent of belief is not nearly as common as I would have expected. Buddhism comes close but doesn't quite fit. While it technically does not necessitate belief in any gods Buddhism does have a lot of celestial superstition to go along with its philosophy. I also find the ideal of balanced karma cringe inducing, as to be done right positive karma is to be avoided just as much as negative karma. Both are traditionally “bad” and no impact in the world at all is the ideal. While avoiding any bad or good impact without the belief in the karmic system of reincarnation (the standard superstitious motive) is possible I think avoiding actions to help people would be difficult if one did not think that this was the way to improve their cosmic standing.

As far as institutionalized secular observance goes, the only one I've that comes close is Taoism. Taoism is the secular, philosophical half of Taoism/Confucianism. While Confucianism focuses on ordering your life around pleasing dead relatives Taoism is a a series of mental practices for expanding understanding. In fact, there's a whole branch of Taoist practices that revolve around breaking down sense and motivation in order to carve out new interpretations. It's an ancient and traditional set of practices engineered to break down dogmatic repetition. To top it off, there's not mystical revelation behind it. The incentive isn't to embrace an established “truth” but to find truth through one's self. There's no god to appease, no prescribed dogma to adhere to for the sake of dogma.The fact that it is usually tied with a system of superstition such as Buddhism or Confucianism is relevant but since that's not actually essential to Taoism it isn't a negating factor here.

As for why I chose the laws of kashrut (laws pertaining to being kosher), well, that too has secular philosophical value to me. While I am a secular Jew I still consider myself very Jewish. Picking kosher out of all practices let me do a number of things. The most obvious is feeling a many thousand year old cultural connection every time I eat and that is a powerful feeling. Another reason is that Judaism has an intrinsic element of debate in establishing practice. Since Judaism is a legalistic religion it is more important to follow laws than it is to believe in them.  For example, to be a good Jew it is more important not to worship other peoples' gods than it is to worship the Jewish god as long as you keep the laws.  Every element of Jewish law has a debate behind it consisting of at least two sides. Being kosher is no different and in choosing to be kosher I took it upon myself to research what the different debates were regarding each rule. This let me judge them myself and create a set of laws that I found acceptable. While the practice is not an exercise in logic it is an exercise in taking myself out of the mundane. Knowing not only what my rules for eating are but also why is empowering and adds another lever of awareness to my secular observance.

Does this all make total sense? On one level yes and on another no. I realize that if I had been born into a Christian or Muslim or Hindu household I would have a different practice that I would follow. On that level my observance is completely arbitrary. But like the koans of Zen and Taoism, that illogical and meaningless practice makes me take stock of other things I do and think.  It pushes me to analyze what intrinsic meaning actions really have and what I simply assume them to mean. In that respect the meaningless secular observance gives meaning and sense to the rest of my actions, letting me cast aside what is thoughtless habit, assumption and superstition while embracing what is valid, true and factual. And that gives meaning to my arbitrary practice.

VERSUS: A New Take on 'Science Fiction vs. Fantasy'

Recently I’ve noticed that there’s been a lot of writing regarding science fiction.  As a genre dear to my heart I took notice.  Topics included whether sci-fi and speculative fiction should embrace a post-genre view, rules of reading that differ when it comes to sci-fi and so on.  Some of these articles were wonderful but the tendency was to move away from genre and towards a more inclusive literary view.  Even in the rules of reading sci-fi there were comparisons to using the casual acceptance of certain points and trying that perspective with literary fiction.  That’s all fine.  I have no problem with sci-fi/spec fiction moving away from strong genre and towards a wider audience.  But I want to touch on something that travels in the opposite direction, delving deeper into the genre rifts.

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

How this will diverge from the usual argument of literary value between the two types of writing is that I will address the problems that come up between sci-fi and fantasy audiences, mainly being that I’m seeing more and more people not know the difference.  So here’s a cheat sheet to distinguish the two by way of the worlds created for their settings:

• Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction: If advanced science plays a large part in the world or plot then it is science fiction.
• Fantasy: If magic exists in the world it is fantasy.

NOTE: Fantasy supersedes science fiction.

“Why?” You may ask.  That’s simple.  The reason is that magic is a bigger world shift than advanced science.  The leap between the present and any new technology will be a much smaller, more likely shift than one to magic.  In short, magic is more of a world shift than new science discoveries; the change in worlds between our world and that of Star Trek is more minor and feasible than the change between our world and that of Harry Potter.  While we are 70% of the way to tricorders since the ‘60s and now we are 0% of the way to harnessing magic since, well, ever.  And in case you want to argue that we do have access to magic/vampires/transworld wardrobes then I invite you to write your own essay and support it with real world examples.  I can show you an iPhone, the aforementioned 70% tricorder.

Let’s take a little quiz and see how you do.  Name That Genre:

• Harry Potter – fantasy
• Star Trek – sci-fi
• Chronicles of Narnia – fantasy
• Planet of the Apes – sci-fi
• Star Wars – sci-fi?  WRONG.  This one is fantasy.

And this gets to my point.  Star Wars is fantasy.  You may cry out about hyperspace, fleets of starships, interplanetary commerce, lightsabers!  Cry all you wants but you’re forgetting one thing: The Force.  The force is a mystical energy that permeates all living things (and apparently rocks and robots as well).  You can call it ‘sci-fi fantasy’ but the core of the Star Wars universe, the biggest divergence from our world is this mystical, magical Force.  We can travel to other planets and we may one day create a hyperdrive, or not if it necessitates some fictional but physical element (unobtainium, dilithium, etc) but as of now our world doesn’t seem any closer to divulging evidence of The Force than it was millions of years ago.

To pull in another genre to illustrate the difference between these two, let us look at the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for a moment.  They take place in the past, have pirates, use magic, have sea monsters and zombie/ghost/damned people, Aztec curses.  Are these fantasy movies?  Yes.  Are they historical fiction?  Only by the most liberal definition of historical fiction.  In the same way, Star Wars is very much fantasy and only science fiction by a very generous classification.

All of this started to form in my mind when one of my friends saw the Shane Acker film 9.  He said he felt betrayed because the whole film established for him a science fiction world and then at the end (SPOILERS) the story suddenly focuses on the existence of a fantasy element, a soul.  The problem I had with that criticism is the rag doll characters are animated in these burlap bodies without any sort of mechanical elements to move them.  From the beginning I saw 9 as a fantasy film, and indeed the plot seemed like a mini version of Lord of the Rings.

What I took from this perceived betrayal was the importance of discerning the two genres.  I realize that a lot of people must have the same confusion at times.  It’s evident as even in book stores the two types of books get lumped into one section despite the fact that there’s the easy test one can put to any item to figure out its proper classification.

There are a few  other instances of this confusion that has led to issues with the audience between these two genres.  One is the famous Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate.  There are many aspects of the two that can be debated, respectively: character vs. plot, romance vs. drama, archetypes vs. contemporary cultural and political deconstruction.  The one that people don’t really look at this in light of, but should, is fantasy vs. science fiction.  People sometimes get a little bothered when you say that one of these franchises is better than the other (by people I mean nerds and geeks).  You don’t really find the same irritation if you claim either fantasy or sci-fi to be better than the other.  Instead you usually get either agreement or simple disagreement, but the divide on that preference is so large and fundamental (magic vs. science) that it rarely goes any farther than agreement or acknowledgment.  The irritation really comes when people feel that Star Wars vs. Star Trek is a value judgment  within a treasured genre and it’s not.

The other example where this creates trouble, and this one has perhaps come to eclipse the Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate, is the Star Wars vs. Star Wars debate.  I’m talking about the Original Trilogy verse the prequels.  IV-VI vs. 1-3.  The same problem occurs here as it does in the previous example because a false dichotomy is created; people start arguing about the value of two genres without realizing it.  The original movies have The Force, a mystical energy that flows through all living things and binds them together.  Jedis and Sith are warring factions of an ancient religion.  When we get to the prequels the force is actually a manifestation of blood parasites called midichlorians.  These are measured and studied by the Jedi Council, a political collective that is fighting against the totalitarian Sith.  Arguing between the originals and the prequels isn’t like arguing between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  In the latter the argument is within the same fantasy setting, but told differently.  In the former the argument is really between two nearly unrelated worlds where one is a fantasy adventure and the other a political science-fiction drama.  A lot of the points people clash actually puts them on the same side; both sides saying the weakest aspect is the awkward connecting of these two barely related trilogies.

More recently Battlestar Galactica has suffered from this muddled distinction.  I was lucky enough to start the show after it completed its full run, with only the half-spoiler that the finale didn’t fit the hard science fiction of the previous episodes.

(For readers not familiar with ‘hard sci-fi’ it is a sub-genre recognized but a focus on realistic and usually well explained speculative scientific developments.  The lack of lasers and realistic plotting of battles, along with the lack of multiple faster than light travel speeds pushed this series closer towards ‘hard sci-fi’ than most television.  The lack of sound in space in the show Firefly is another example of this realistic approach.)

I went in knowing that it was like Star Wars, a fantasy world full of technology.  Knowing this the finale of the show was much more in line with the world I perceived the series to take place in.  While religious beliefs were often a discussion point in the show knowing that the actual religion played a part in their reality helped ground my watching in something somewhat closer to their “reality” and farther from the “reality” that people expecting science fiction assumed to be true.

I’m not coming out to say that between fantasy and science fiction there is a better genre, though I do have my preference.  The point I want to make is that even recognizing the difference between the two is an oft missed aspect in the genre debates.  And seeing this split early on simplifies a great deal when looking at these two uncomfortable siblings.  Being aware of the fundamental differences can even help outside of head to head issues.  Take the current Steampunk trend.  The reason I think it’s so widespread among both sets of fans is that a fictionalized Victorian setting has the potential to grow into either, or both) genres.  Coal powered automatons have just as much potential to exists as do the Ancient Ones, perhaps even to both show up and battle.  In addition, the science of brass pressure tanks and steam power have already been surpassed so any retroactively advanced technology becomes just as indistinguishable from magic as sufficiently advanced technology would.  The suspension of disbelief required for Steampunk is much more akin to that required for fantasy than science fiction.  Could a Terminator ever be built?  Possibly, and that’s science fiction.  Could a steam-powered Terminator be built?  Infeasible and it is closer in likelihood to a Golem than a cyborg, thus pushing closer to the realm of fantasy.