An Interview with Sabio Lantz

The following is an interview with Sabio Lantz of Triangulations.

On your blog, you use the pseudonym Sabio Lantz to, in your words, protect your professional and personal relations. What do you expect would change if you went public with your real name? (I’m obviously not judging, I also use a pseudonym.) What is your advice for other atheists who are unsure if they should conceal this aspect of their identity or embrace it publicly?

As you know, Religionists look upon Atheists with great disgust (see here). I have significant personal experience with Christian bigotry both as a victimizer and a victim.  I’ve written here and here of incidences where I lost (or almost lost) jobs because Christians were disgusted by this atheist. Also, my children have lost many new friends over the years when their parents found that our family were not believers. And as a former Christian, I unfortunately totally understand why believers do this.

I work in medicine and most of my patients are very web savvy.  They not only look up information on their health but also pull up info on their medical providers.  So I need to be careful because the overwhelming majority of my patients are Christian.  Even at my place of employment I am careful about how I say things in our Christian dominated milieu.  If my colleagues could easily find my on-line writings —and they would— it  could present unnecessary challenges at my work place and possibly threaten to my livelihood and well-being.

My advice to other atheists on this issue is that they be simultaneously cautious and brave.  Religious folks can be dangerous.  A good balance between being quiet about your beliefs or out-front about them comes from wisdom and luck — and I wish them much of both.  The answers will be different for everyone.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  I have made many mistakes and hope others don’t make as many as I have.

You have mentioned that you’ve been banned from atheist sites in the past. What were the events that lead to this action? When your beliefs cause you to dissent from the common atheist worldview, how do you find the atheist reaction? What do you think can be done to keep free thinking at the valued over a pressure to conform to the beliefs held by the more prominent atheists?

I must start this reply by saying that I have also been banned on several  religious sites, but I am sure your readers can imagine why.  But it is odd to be banned by atheists.  Banning because of violations of commenting policies is one thing.  And indeed, based on my comment policy, I have banned one or two atheists who made personal attacks on my site.

Atheists come in all stripes.  Sure, we all share several traits: not believing in gods  and valuing empirical evidence more highly than anecdotal subjective evidence are the two that come to mind.  But short of those, differences abound — and thus the difficulties of an “atheist community”.  We all have different temperaments, religious backgrounds, political alliances and philosophical positions.  Mostly, we all have different experiences.  All these differences have caused me trouble with other atheists who expect more uniformity.

Put simply, many blogging atheists are so angry with the religions that they are familiar with, that they detest when I point out when they overgeneralize about “religions”.  These anti-Anti-religion atheists seem to prefer the echo-chamber of the back-slapping buddies in their comment threads.  When I question the over-reach of these atheists’ claims and challenge their self-righteous hyper-rationality, they usually counter with ad hominem attacks and eventual banning. Most of these atheists are more interested in rhetorical lambasting of religion than they are in careful analysis.  They will spare nothing to attack religion — including, ironically, their rationality.

The solution:  I think we will always have these sorts of personalities — both in religious and atheist circles.  This sort of personality is difficult to change.  Probably the best way to change each other is by in-person meetings and not on the web where our social skills are not activated in the same way as they are in face-to-face encounters. That said, most atheists I deal with are delightful, but blogging draws disproportionately from the angry, cloudy-thinking sort.  In your comments, I will let those who dislike me tell you their version —why they really dislike me. I am sure their evaluation will be far less glorious, for we are always the hero in our own stories — and I am sure I am no different.

According to your “Share Thyself” (I’ll link to this) table, you list your ontology as naturalist, yet your posts are often sympathetic of the supernatural, especially those that share mystical experiences. How do you reconcile naturalism while leaving the door open for something more?

As I have posted here, I have had, and continue to have, many very odd experiences. Though I use to , I no longer don’t believe in the supernatural, but I also don’t think that just because I have these experiences that I am deluded, silly, weak or stupid.  Some of them are indeed tough to explain.

Many atheist have never had these sort of experiences and look down on those who do. I actually feel a bit sorry for these folks because such experiences are fascinating!

So my goal in sharing my “supernatural” experiences is to loosen Atheist disdain for those who claim such experiences.  But likewise, I am trying to show theists that even atheists have these experiences and that we can interpret them in naturalistic ways or at least not jump to the supernatural.  I try to show that supernatural experiences, no matter how strange, are probably more natural than our minds try to tell us they are.

Like you, I’m a father of a boy and girl. I’m always interested in how fellow atheists approach teaching the concept of religion to their children. What do you tell them about God, if anything? Do you have any tips for me?

My wife, like you Grundy, was raised Catholic and was far more bitter about religion than I was — I have softened her over the years as she has observed more benign forms of religion.  Several of my atheist friends have taken their kids to local churches so they fit in and can learn about religion and then choose on their own when they grow up.  We have opted to not play that game — but if played well, I do think it can be an OK option.

Since I have lived all over the world, I read my kids stories from many religious traditions and try to make it clear that all religions have silly ideas but that they all can carry great morals and ideals within their mythology.  Nowadays, I don’t read books to my teenagers but I point out and discuss stupid, bigoted religious beliefs as they pop up in the news.  We also discuss the bigotry they feel from religious kids in their schools. But I don’t care if my children grow up religious, I just don’t want them embracing a non-inclusive flavor of any religion, but otherwise, I don’t care. Instead, I care that I maintain a close, affectionate, supportive relationship with my children if I can.  That is a challenge for all of us, no matter how we raise our children. I have no advice on this, however, because I am never sure I am doing the “right” thing.  :-)

As atheists, we often talk about the harm caused by religion. What do you see as the primary benefit of religion, if any? 

“Religion” is a broad fuzzy term, even if anti-religion atheists or even religionists try tell us they know the true definition.  Nonetheless, using that broad notion we can see philanthropy, social care networks, psychological comfort and many more potential benefits of religions.  There is no one “primary” benefit, there are lots of different potential benefits.  As for the potential harms, they are clear to all of us.  I wrote a post here that attempts to show a more sophisticated way to evaluate harm vs. benefit in religion.  You may enjoy the diagram.

A favorite mantra of anti-religion atheists is that “the harm of religion far outweighs any good”.  First, ironically, these self-proclaimed gloriously-rational atheists are making an empirical claim without evidence and without any way to clearly test their pseudo-science claim.  Secondly, their claim is based on their own very simple view of “religion”, but that is a long conversation.

Would we be better without religion?  Well, not if it meant everyone would instantly be turned into the nasty sort of atheists.  Being a good person is not dependent on being atheist vs. theist and I only care about good people. Grundy, your blog’s subtitle is cute and clever: “One Day we’ll all be atheists, I’m just an early adapter”, but I don’t think religion (or things like it) will ever disappear — so I am for always improving religion for those who are unable to leave it.  I think theists can improve their theism to be more inclusive and kinder.  For example, see my post on “My Favorite Kind of Christians”. Likewise I think atheists can improve their worldviews.  Hell, we can all improve ourselves.

Is there anything that would once again convince you that there is a god? If so, provide an example.

Probably like many atheists, for me to again believe in a theist god, it would take amazing, overwhelming evidence. After all, the theist God is suppose to be all-powerful, all-caring, all-knowing, personal and interventional, so evidence for such a being should be able to blast us out of the water with clear evidence. The story books tell us that once God did give amazing signs and wonders, but that was before there were cameras, recorders and such.  But I am open to have my opinion changed yet again.  For if nothing else in my life,  I am a master of embracing ridiculous beliefs.  Se my post: “Confession Tales”.

But re-embracing God would be difficult.  For as my post call “The God Switch is Off” shows, there are several obstacles to my believing again.

In my post, “Most Christian’s Don’t Believe”, I again try to illustrate that “religion” is something much different than the mere declaration of supposed doctrinal truths that many religion-is-evil atheists try to maintain. With that in mind, my post on “A God I could Believe In”, tries to get behind the word “god” to show the complexity of how religious people hold their beliefs.

So, sure, in some kind of highly qualified way I believe in “God” today.  Heck, in my post “Monkey Religion vs Cat Religion” I try to show theists that there are many versions of “God”.  The monkey religion version is still one that my mind has echoing about without much cognitive dissonance. To understand that sentence, the reader will have to understand my view of “Many Selves”.

As this post illustrates, my atheism is an accidental epiphenomenon.

Conclusion

Thank you for the invite to write out replies to your questions.  I never dreamed I would spend so much time addressing atheist’s opinions of me.  I thought my insights and opinions were fairly bland and uncontroversial among atheists until I started blogging.  My blogs is full of posts pointing out the problems with theism, atheism, Buddhism, Hinduism and myself.  For indeed, nothing should be sacred!

When Life Gives You Objectively Good Lemons

The moral argument for God is very convincing to Internet apologists because they believe in something called transcendent morality. It comes up by many names including objective morality, absolute morality--and as I prefer, cosmic morality and magical morality. Regardless of the name, it is seen as a moral standard that exists somewhere independent of the minds of mere mortals and supersedes alternative judgements.

That’s the claim. Is there proof? No. Is there evidence? No. The defense for the claim is essentially finding a moral value agreed upon between the apologist and the non-apologist, such as “murder is wrong,” and using that shared common ground to say all other assessments aren’t just wrong from their perspective, but wrong independent of perspective.

What do you think, is murder wrong independent of perspective? In my experience, “wrong” means different things to different people. It is like saying not murdering is better than murdering. “Better,” like “wrong” in this case, is imprecise language that the apologist can leverage during these exchanges. Analogy time. What if I said lemons are an objectively better fruit than blueberries? This seems laughable because we understand taste preferences are opinions. However, we can say something is objectively true here if only I use a clear metric. I value sour flavor. Lemons are objectively more sour than blueberries. This isn’t a matter of taste, we can actually compare pH levels and know for a fact that lemons are more sour and are therefore objectively more appealing to one who values sour flavor.

Apply this to morality. Instead of saying something imprecise like not murdering is better than murdering, which could be subjective or objective depending on the metric used to judge something as “better,” let’s say not murdering allows for a safer world than murdering. This specification allows us to say not murdering is better for those who value safety. That is an objective fact and an instance of an objective moral.

I cannot say anything about one’s morality without saying something about one’s values. Because the majority of us value human life, safety, and equality (at least to some degree) the discouragement of murder is near universal...but transcendent? No, that is neither justified nor demonstrable.

Debates & Misdemeanors

When I started Deity Shmeity my intension was to use it as a record of my exchanges with theists. Long time readers know that never really happened. My first attempt to publish a debate resulted in so much editing that I concluded my time was better spent taking the topic discussed and simply writing an article informed by the theistic objections. Why so much editing, you might ask? Well, debates, especially those on-line, have a way of branching off into new topics before the previous are resolved. Like the Hydra of mythology and Marvel comics, chopping off one head of a crappy argument just results in two more crappy arguments taking it’s place--all without an acknowledgment that the first head lies resting at my feet. More so, debates get personal. I don’t just mean they get all ad-hominemy, although that certainly happens, but also that elements from both my and the theist’s lives are brought up which I feel are either too intimate to post or too irrelevant to make public. Top that off with having to censor out the peanut gallery or else post pages of nonsense in an effort to be a balanced completionist! No, I quickly learned my lesson. The debates are for me, the posts are for you.

That said, the fact that all my posts are informed by at least one theist’s objections is true to this day. My workflow usually goes like this: I post an idea on Twitter or Google+ and let my surprisingly high number of theistic (usually Christian) followers attempt to take it apart. If they fail outright, I post it addressing some of their objections. If they somewhat succeed, I revise the idea to make it tighter, more objection-proof, and clearer. My argument is then also, I like to think, closer to being true--even if it comes down less on the side of “God is obviously bullshit” than I originally intended.

It’s a valuable process to me and one I encourage fellow atheists to take up. Thinking critically about gods and religions will likely give you all kinds of ideas. Most will have been already thought up by someone else, but coming to them organically speaks volumes of their power. Some will be logically true and serve as ironclad takedowns of indoctrinated superstitions. And others will be flawed, inconsistent or fallacious--in which case entering them into the intellectual area for battle and being open to the possibility of being wrong and losing an argument will make you better. It will make you more right in the future, and that’s all that should really matter.

Hercules Fish

Gods are Very Likely Human Inventions

Historically, gods have gone in and out of favor among humanity. Thor, for example, isn't believed today outside of the possible fringe and huge Marvel comics fans, but he had his time of popularity. Same goes for Zeus, Ra, Cupid, y'know...a bunch that seem quaint now. Each represented the values of the culture in which the belief in them was first took root. Where belief first took root, and where the gods themselves were first conceptualized.

Today, we still have a variety of gods and their central points of popularity follow governmental and cultural borders. If you are born in the US, you are likely Christian--this probability goes up further in the south, among conservatives, among whites of a European background, ect. Likewise, if you are born in India you're likely Hindu. Just like the historical examples of the past, the values of the gods believed fall in line with the cultures in which they were created. It's also true that, in the case of long-standing faiths, the morality attributed to a particular god and therefore as the standard to be followed shifts as it is adopted by new cultures or as the culture progresses. A possible reason for this is congregation retention. If a value goes out of favor that is a staple of the religion, the religion must adjust it's staples or lose their members to competing religions that have that more popular value. Or, as we atheists prefer, they defect from faith-based worldviews entirely and start a secular life.

The adoption to something like Christianity can be traced from the conversion of social/political leader to social/political leader who, in turn, either forces or encourages the adoption of the faith among his followers. Religions tend to ramp up in popularity when the leaders gain more territory and influence.

All this shows that the idea of Yahweh/Jehovah/Christ/whoever is not spontaneous, but the product of systematic indoctrination from culture to parent to child. The genesis of the idea of the god is harder to nail down because it goes so far back, but the imagination and creativity of humanity is well documented. We have covered every story I can imagine. (Admittedly, this is why I'm not a novelist.) What else is well documented is that charismatic individuals can convince a following so completely that they are willing to kill or be killed over ideology. Religious faith is more often than not the drive for this absolute compliance--just Google "cults" or "suicide bombers." I'm not equating Christianity in general terms to the harm caused by most of these groups, but think of how easy it would be to convince someone to believe some strange things, donate a little money and go to church Sundays compared to convincing people to take their own life. Jesus, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith are possible examples of these charismatic people.

The religions of this or that time of conception also take into account the scientific knowledge of the day as a base to start filling in gaps with faith alone. More modern religions deny or contradict less of what we (at least most of us :-) now understand. That could be another whole rant, and I've probably typed enough for now.

God Offers No Choice

God's judgment, as seen by most theists, can only be just if those judged choose to sin or be saved. I believe we are not free to choose anything if our present and future is known by an omniscient being. Allow me to show my work by analogy.

Just before his death, Lincoln seemed to have made a choice to go to Ford's Theatre. From the President's perspective he felt he had a choice, but look at it from our perspective. Lincoln's action is an historical event which is known. Lincoln, essentially as a character in a history book, has no choice but to go to Ford's Theatre because any action on his part has been acted. Even if we went back to Lincoln's time, armed with our fore-knowledge, Lincoln would still be bound to the actions that we know he will make (providing we don't interfere, of course.) This means that Lincoln's perceived choices, and our own, are an illusion if a being is capable of viewing us as history either in the present, future, or independently of time.

Set up a camera on someone. They will do a variety of things that you probably wouldn't be able to predict in the moment if you were there. However, if you watch the video later, then watch it again, upon second watching you will be able to predict perfectly their every move. The person on camera, while acting, perceives free will from their perspective. However, the recording of the person, from the perspective of the omniscient video watcher, is not free to act. To anyone who knows our future, we are essentially a recording.

A being with all-knowledge of an event, whether it be God or a well-studied time traveler, would view the present as a history or recording. There are no surprises to this being because there is only one way for the events to unfold. Each person involved follows only one path. No choices are made because choice deals with the availability of options and there are none.

If choice is only an illusion of our limited perspective as this shows, then a god's sentence of eternal reward or eternal punishment is exacted upon helpless people with no ability to change their fate. It is exactly as fair and just as arbitrarily and immediately sending newborn babies to heaven of hell.

An Interview with Tjaart Blignaut

The following is an interview with Tjaart Blignaut of Massive Activity.

Over time, your blog has taken a much greater focus on atheism. Why this change of focus? Have you always been an atheist?

I have been an atheist since about the age of twenty one or twenty two. I spent quite a lot of time being quiet about my atheism, because I thought that beliefs were something personal that shouldn't be disturbed. My mind was changed gradually when I became aware of Richard Dawkins' out campaign. When I came out I realised that atheism was very much misunderstood, and I became troubled by the fact that Christians would totally ignore the fact that I was an atheist. My position was readily dismissed as a phase, or I was told that I would eventually turn back to belief. This thoughtless dismissal frustrated me, and I turned to blogging and engaging with believers online to say all the things I felt needed to be said, and pave the way for more atheists to feel like they could come out and speak out. If I could help one person to find a way out of faith, I would have accomplished my goal.

What would you recommend to a believer who is starting to question their faith to ease them further down the road to atheism or critical thinking?

I would recommend not seeing it as all or nothing. Questioning your faith does not mean you will become an atheist. If your beliefs are true you have nothing to worry about, if they are not true you need to think about whether holding false beliefs is good for you. The problem is that if you never honestly engage with yourself, you will never really know. There will be all these unanswered questions in the back of your mind that you will have to ignore or push away. A second piece of advice is just the attitude that you take toward questioning. The best way to prove a true belief is to try and disprove it. This is not an easy attitude, because it is natural and easy for people to want their beliefs to be true. A great way to think through your attitude is to learn about psychology. Psychology lays bare our biases so we can guard against them when we engage in thinking exercises. It is also fun and interesting, and it will help you generally improve your understanding of yourself and others. You have nothing to lose by learning an questioning.

My audience is mostly based in the Americas. What is the believer to nonbeliever ratio like in South Africa? What are the most common beliefs? The most irrational?

South Africa did not ask religious affiliation questions in the last national census. Wikipedia pegs non-religious at 8% in 2007, but this number seems questionable, the source at least is missing in action. The 2001 census shows more than 6 million non-religious people, but the term non-religious is not particularly useful, and based on observation this is probably not very indicative of the number of atheists. I have a few atheist friends, but I think they are overrepresented among software developers.

Calvinism has a strong influence here among white Afrikaners, and they had considerable influence in the Apartheid government. Many people here are falling into evangelical churches though, and many of these churches are US brands. There is a massive Rhema church in Johannesburg, and Joseph Prince and friends feature prominently on the religious channels on our satellite TV provider. There is a Christian book store in every mall!

Christianity dominates, but Islam is growing, Hinduism is ever present (I attended a Hindu wedding recently), and traditional African beliefs are still quite popular in rural areas. Traditional beliefs are probably the worst, because many young teenage boys die in a tribal tradition where they are circumcised in an unhygienic way, although society is kicking back hard, and they probably won't be able to do it for much longer. Muti (magical medicine) is also still practiced, and wildlife like Lions or Hyena can sometimes be mutilated for this magic medicine. Surprisingly, medical insurance companies in South Africa are required to pay for treatment at witchdoctors (not a leap from homeopathy I guess, which is also covered).

South Africa is an immensely plural society, and I could probably write a book on this topic alone. South Africans are pretty tolerant of each other because there are just too many groups for any one group to assert its religious authority in government and get away with it. Even though lots of people despise each other, we manage to get along. Here is a video of a gay Zulu wedding, I think it is something beautiful, tradition without backwards dogma. It is not representative of South Africans, but it does give me hope. Gay Couple Marry! Traditional African Zulu gay wedding a first.

You are very involved with counter apologetics and debate on Google+. What do you find is the best way to interact with apologists?

The best way I've found to approach apologists is to take them seriously. I think that they feel threatened by a growing atheist movement, and get the feeling that atheism is this new silly fad. A lot of them are clever people, but often they are conservative thinkers. The same kind of phenomenon shows with people who refuse to get smartphones and show off with their old monochrome Nokias, or in professional work people who insist that newer programming languages and paradigms are stupid and that old dependable ones are better. The behaviours are very similar, and it involves a lot of confirmation seeking and cognitive dissonance. The comparison isn't perfect, but I think the overlap is striking. We humans can become emotionally attached to ideas just like we do to tools we use that are outmoded or even fashion items. That's where I think apologists are mistaken. They think that fluidity in thinking and beliefs amounts to being disloyal or unpredictable.

That said, I have had some good discussions with them, and I respect them as thinkers insofar as they at least attempt to learn what their position entails. I've found that their arguments are not meant to convince atheists though, their arguments are meant almost exclusively to convince themselves and their fellow believers that they don't have to rip the existential carpet from under their feet. It's fun to engage with the arguments though, because you get to learn how to better think critically and evaluate what people are telling you. Of course there is the hope that the apologists will change their minds, but I'm not sure if this is possible. There is a fundamental shift required in how someone thinks before they can evaluate a foreign position. The other remote possibility is that an apologetic argument will sway me back to the believer side. I am open to this, as most of their arguments only account for a deistic god anyway, and I don't have a problem with there being a universal creator. The practical difference between an atheist and a deist is almost negligible, because a deistic god has no demands on its creation.

Do you use a different approach with classic apologists versus presuppositionalists?

Absolutely. You can have a really good time discussing arguments for the existence of god or the nature of knowing with classicalists sometimes, but with presuppositionalists you are basically dealing with someone who is deluded. Someone who is delusional will not change their mind under any normal circumstances. Presuppositionalists are not people who are putting forward an argument, they are putting up a mental barrier to refuse to let any arguments in. They are dependent on certainty in what we know to be a changing and uncertain world. I think that a godless world scares them to their core, and they are engaging in denial in order to avoid trying to address their insecurities about it. My focus with presuppositionalists has been an abject failure, but what I have tried to do is to just break through their certainty so that I can have a discussion with them to begin with.

To what extent do you now believe Jesus was real? Did he exist? Did he perform miracles? What do you base this on?

I don't have a problem with Jesus existing, but I think that question is odd, because we know other historical figures that were admired often had their history highly embellished by their followers. Not having a corroborated account of the man, it is hard to say anything about who he was. In that way then, it may be that Jesus as people understand the historical figure, may not exist. Maybe such an account will still show up. History is after all never complete. As for claims of his divinity, those claims are difficult to believe, not only because they are fantastical and contrary to what we know about reality, but also because the symbolism of suffering is totally unnecessary for an omnipotent god. He could forgive instantly, so the display of the crucifixion seems contrived and melodramatic. It is consistent with the kind of things we see in mythology, not of the kind of things we should expect from an all powerful, all knowing, all good deity.

The other problem I have with Jesus is that the trinity was a huge cause of violent conflict for Christians. If Jesus had taken some effort to clear up what the trinity meant all of that could have been avoided.

Who is your favorite atheist public figure and why?

I would have to say that Peter Boghossian takes that position for me currently. I was extremely disillusioned with the interactions I was having with believers until I picked up his book. The idea of having discussions instead of debates, delivering small micro inoculations against faith, the socratic method, treating believers with respect and the readiness to change ones mind are all things that have a great potential to make our interactions with believers more civil, productive and honest. I have been guilty of talking at believers instead of with them, but I am changing that. Shock value and mockery have their place, but ultimately we will push people away if that is how we define all our interactions with people exclusively.

What do you see as the most beneficial aspect of religion? The most harmful?

Religion brings people together. I think that can be a good thing. Some churches genuinely support their members both financially and psychologically. Some churches also preach positive messages and are genuine in their attempts to do good. My sex education class in high school was done by a religious group in a church building, and they delivered good education, telling kids that masturbation was okay, that you could do other naughty things besides sex, that condoms were good, and that sex was natural and not shameful. It wasn't perfect, but it is a far cry from the abstinence only education that some believers try to push on horny teens. Of course I think that secular groups can accomplish all the same things, but I think that those churches that do good deserve credit where its due.

What I find most damaging about religion is that it is a gateway belief. My scepticism certainly did not start with religion, it started with medical quackery. I could see how people were spending a great deal of time and money on ineffective medical treatment, and I wanted to change that. The problem that believers face is that they have been taught this idea of faith being a virtue. It can be trivially easy to lead many of them astray.

A church is a con man's best chance at a payday, because there is no other place where people will willingly call themselves sheep. It is this understanding of the world that makes it easy for believers to fall for so many other traps. In my view this is why politicians can hijack religion, why pastors can suck their congregations dry, why a believer will indulge in astrology, believe in witches, demons and satanic conspiracies, or spend the last of their savings paying for homeopathy instead of seeking treatment at real medical institutions. I don't think the world will be capable of destroying superstition if religious superstition is allowed to flourish and faith is encouraged as an essential trait of a good person.