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The Path of Reason:
A Philosophy of Nonbelief |
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A white dove hovered over the baptistery. It was frozen amid a stained glass mosaic of yellow, red, and blue. The window served as the backdrop to choirs and sermons, and it dominated my view as I sung my heart out, a seven-year-old boy happy to be in church on a Sunday morning. I would be baptized under that window after professing my faith, and for years I would know no other religion than that of the conservative Baptist churches I attended. My childhood was filled with church bus trips, youth camps, and Bible studies. By the eighth grade, I had decided to either become a minister or to find a way to use my artistic talents to spread the gospel. A turning point came when I was in high school. One Sunday morning, in my church's youth group, I asked a question. The answer I received didn't make any sense at all. The issue was predestination and I questioned the idea that God already knew what we were going to do. If that was right, then it could not truly be said that we have free will. It would be years before I realized the full implications of the argument. Meanwhile it opened up a floodgate. Questions poured out of me, and I began the great search for answers. In college, I learned of possibilities - so many possibilities that I finally came to doubt that the answers could ever be found. I still believed in God, but it was not the God of my childhood. It was a benevolent God, to be sure, but what form this great consciousness took and how he, she, or it interacted with our world were other questions entirely. Late one afternoon in the family room of a house in England, where I was living as an exchange student, I sat down to write a paper called, "My Philosophy." It wasn't for a class; it was a project I had taken on for myself. While the wind outside swirled snow around the trees, I scribbled words down on paper, trying to make sense of what I believed. My ultimate conclusion was "I don't know." I lived for twenty-five years with that mindset, thinking that the universe was so complex, vast, and amazing that although somebody might know the answers, I definitely did not. With each day it seemed decreasingly likely that I ever would. Still, I continued to hope and look. Along the way I learned computer programming. I learned principles of logic through computer games. I began to appreciate science and what those who were involved in it did. They were looking for the same answers I was, but their methods were different. I often felt that those methods were so limited that it kept researchers and scientists from seeing greater truths. In my early forties, I began several writing projects and one of them turned out to be a continuation of the paper I had begun when I was in England so many years before. The conclusion was the same, but I had a lot more to say about what I didn't know. While writing, I challenged myself with a rule that would not only change what I wrote, but would change me as well. It would cause me to undergo the biggest transformation I had undergone since I left Christianity in high school. The rule was quite simple - whatever I wrote about my philosophy had to be consistent. Anything self-contradictory was not allowed. I made a list of principles that aided me in maintaining consistency. They functioned as guidelines for separating truth from falsehood, and were ideas like "personal attacks upon people have nothing to do with what the truth actually is. What's important is the idea, not the person." I did not realize it at the time, but what I had begun to compile was a list of logical fallacies and what I was learning was critical thinking. As I employed these principles, I found that certain ideas had to be eliminated from my philosophy, many of which turned out to be pure speculation anyway. As part of the project, I began researching many issues that had confused me over the years, everything from reincarnation to out-of-body experiences. I studied evolution and the Biblical prophecies of the "End Times" that had always frightened me. I learned repeatedly, as if it were being pounded into my head, that I had given far too much credence to unfounded ideas. But the big shocker came when I reanalyzed the concepts of God and the soul. There were fewer reasons to believe in these things than I thought. It was only when the number of reasons for not believing in these things far outweighed the reasons I had for believing in them, that the scales tipped, and I found that I - who had once been a boy singing "How Great Thou Art" with such reverence and joy - had become an atheist. I felt as if I had sat on a mountaintop for years awaiting enlightenment, only to give up, come down off the mountain, and have the answers handed to me by a passerby. It seemed an unlikely conclusion, even to me, but despite the stigma that the "A" word held, there was something to be said for my newfound philosophy. It had answers to some of the biggest questions I had ever asked, and even though those answers weren't what I expected them to be, they were satisfying in their own way. I realized, after the fact, that there was no reason the answers should have matched my preconceptions in the first place. Reality doesn't work that way. Meanwhile, I had a book to finish and this new development meant a significant rewrite. The difference was now I had a conclusion. I had something to say... In addition to providing philosophical insights and fresh presentations, it is my hope that this book can help those who are seeking answers in the same way that I was. If they have found that religion, ideologies involving the supernatural, and spirituality in general, are in some way lacking or unsatisfactory, perhaps they may find an alternative here that they had not previously considered. If I could have had this book in my hands as a teenager, it could have prevented a tremendous amount of confusion, internal conflict, unnecessary guilt, and wasted time. Section one starts with some basics. I explain a fundamental assumption that underscores my philosophy (and any practical philosophy, for that matter) and then I jump right into the issue that is at the center of many contemporary philosophical debates. The issue is whether faith or reason is the best way to understand our world or if, possibly, a compromise can be found. By comparing faith and reason and by exploring how they work, I show that they are not compatible. In many ways, they contradict each other. The result is that a choice must be made. While faith is always an option, the only rational option becomes reason. This is the choice I made, and it is used as the foundation for the sections that follow. In section two, I apply reason to some major philosophical questions. The conclusions are not statements of absolute certainty, but there is good reason to think that they are extremely likely. Those conclusions are that there is no God, we don't have souls, and that although life can have great meaning, it is not assigned by any external force. I was shocked that I had reached these conclusions, but once I got over my emotional objections to them, as well as the societal attitudes towards them that had been ingrained in me since youth, I discovered that these ideas could be remarkably liberating. Section three provides a cursory review of some of the principles involved in logical and rational thought. Much of the emphasis is on the logical errors that people make while involved in philosophical debate (as well as in their everyday lives). Several of these logical fallacies come into play in other sections of the book, and an awareness of them becomes indispensable in more ways than one. With the tools of reason (such as science, logic, and critical thinking) one can achieve a better understanding of the world. Without these tools, achieving clear understanding is almost hopeless. Section four shows what happens when you take these tools and use them in an examination of many mystical and New Age ideas. This section directly address the questions and concerns of believers (of many different sorts) that must sometimes be resolved by individuals before they are able to completely accept the conclusions I reached in the previous sections. This was the case for me as well. When I discarded my religious heritage, I wasn't at all ready to discard faith altogether. Instead, I took a good look at a wide range of beliefs because I was convinced that there had to be something out there that gave me the answers I wanted. It was this process of examination and elimination that spurred me towards my eventual destination. Those who read this book may find that they have gone through (or will go through) a similar process. No doubt, readers will come from a variety of backgrounds and each will have his or her set of ideas about how the world works. It is because of this that I cannot lay out a straight and narrow path that explains how to get from where they are to where I am, but by addressing an eclectic assortment of beliefs and principles, I can provide some examples of how reason can enable one to make sense of it all. Section five is brief but important. As I make the transition from New Age and supernatural beliefs to the faith of Christianity, it helps to address two things that conservatives who believe in "God the creator" have difficulty with - evolution, and how, without some kind of guiding hand, our universe came to be. Section six deals specifically with Christianity. This section is akin to section four in that it again shows how reason is the key required to solve some tricky problems. Like the individual chapters in the section four, the importance of this section varies depending upon the reader's background. For those of us who were indoctrinated into Christianity at a young age, it becomes crucial to work through the ideas here, despite the validity of the arguments that take place in the first few sections of this book. Section seven does what few, if any, books on these topics do; it examines the implications of a skeptical philosophy. Having deconstructed many worldviews, it is here that I begin the work of building a new one. I draw upon concepts borrowed from eastern ideologies such as acceptance and living in the moment. These are offered as potential solutions for the existential angst that is sometimes associated with a philosophy of nonbelief. Also explained is the idea that although understanding the world requires reason, when it comes to dealing with the world, we are not confined to a life of strict rationality. A philosophy based on realism by no means has to drown in it. Rather, it allows for creativity and provides an appreciation of what it truly means to be human. |
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