There’s a lot going on with the analysis in this video. It turns out, just like with Christians, non-believers are not a monolithic group and a lot of data can be missed if you lump them all into one group. That should be easily understood in that under the surface humans are rarely just one thing or the other. So, if gathering data on non-believers is going to be attempted, one needs to allow for a wide spectrum of characteristics for their non-belief. 

I downloaded a copy of the 20-plus-page survey mentioned in the video (see link in the Sources section below) and it looks quite complete in terms of offering the survey-taker a wide variety of ways to categorize their feelings about the possible existence of a god or gods. Most former believers whom I’ve spoken to tend to tell stories of just running out of the ability to buy the crazy supernatural stories they were told growing up or the bad reception they received when they sincerely asked for explanations for these things that seemed to contradict every day life. Not too many would say that they would like to believe as much as it was all beginning to feel too much like a fairey tale but without the happy ending. The more vocal ex-believers I’ve encountered tended to register that it was a more rational decision. But I’m intrigued by the research about the emotional contend of a change from belief to non-belief (which would coincide with my own personal journey). 

I can see how some who came from strong religious communities, like those who have left Mormonism, would have a huge social/emotional hurdle to overcome in that the practice of that church and similar ones can dominate ones whole social existence. And that even after one chooses to label oneself as a non-believer their certainty about the existence of god or gods can not be strictly categorized as logical or rational. 

The thought experiment about what one would do if they encountered god, how would they feel and would they approach god, flee or do nothing was quite interesting. The analysis that agnostics were more likely to approach and have a positive feeling if that were to happen versus atheists and that atheists were more likely to be angry and/or move away seems interesting. This makes me think about the conversations I used to have with the Tuesday night “bible study” group in Las Vegas, where we’d contemplate the problem of consciousness which led me to think that we cannot understand or encounter a god as just another consciousness, like just another human, just bigger and more “powerful.” That doesn’t make any sense to me. Two fictional stories that attempted to end with encounters with the divine, His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass and Warrior Nun, were both very disappointing when it turned out that “god” was just an “advanced” human from a different dimension. But that’s a completely different problem. Or is it?

We try to organize reality into manageable categories, in part, because this affords us the ability to quickly navigate this world assuming that we “know” what’s going on and avoid situations where we might be preyed upon. We do this automatically whether survival is at risk or not (the ol’ “flee, fuck or feed” equation). At some point, we needed to add a category that could explain the unknown or unexplainable and it “worked” for centuries, in a lot of ways because there will always be unknowns out there for those who look and pay some level of attention. I guess that makes me an open agnostic in as much as I know that we understand so little of our universe and a human lifespan is just too pathetically short to even begin to appreciate this reality. 

And as far as religions go, I understand and appreciate them as incredible human attempts to capture and organize this reality, but at the moment, language and culture and our level of consciousness just isn’t there yet and is pretty unlikely to “get there” in my short lifetime. At the same time, I’m pretty amazed at what I’ve experienced and remain hopeful with whatever time I have left to add to this beautiful human story attempting to understand reality. 

Sources:

Tags: agnosticism, atheism, in bad faith, meditations on, video Fridays

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