Ignosticism 101: The Negative Space forms an Elephant or A Conversation with Rockhound570 theist

I am having a conversation with a person who goes by the name Rockhound570 theist about ignosticism and the implications of it as it relates to God. 

He brought up a point that many people, in my experience, often seem to be confused about. It seems there is an ongoing debate in theology as to whether or not we can fully comprehend God, should such a being exist. Or, as some contend, God is so far beyond our understanding that we cannot grasp him.

Before moving on, let's not forget that the first question relating to ignosticism asks, "What do you mean by God?"

This is a fair question, and a good starting place I might add, since human experience tells us that humans have invented a wide range of religious customs and beliefs, have erected competing religious ideologies, and have subscribe belief to a seemingly endless supply of supernatural deities and gods. 

So, as you can see, "What do you mean by God?" is a very good question to ask before getting too deep into theological discussions.

Now here's the thing. Ignosticism says it should be relatively easy to find an agreeable definition for God and what the term "God" actually means. Ignosticism holds that if God is real then all we need do is look at the referent (the thing itself) and simply describe it. If everyone's answer matched, then we'd all have a working definition for God. But this doesn't appear to be the case. 

So, naturally, theists like Rockhound (or Rocky for short) suppose that God simply isn't comprehensible. We just cannot understand or perceive God fully enough to explain in any greater detail. As such, we can only perceive God dimly, or as St. Thomas Aquinas suggested, we can only recognize him why what he is not -- sort of like feeling out the empty space in a room and determining that it is the ever illusive elephant in the room.

But I have a different suggestion. My suggestion holds that, if ignosticism is correct in its assessment, the reason nobody can agree as to what they mean when they talk about "God" is *not because they haven't fully comprehended God but because there are different competing definitions for supposedly the same thing.

In response to my article on Ignosticism being the best argument against God, Rocky stated that

I don't care about human definitions of God. I care about whether or not God exists as a reality independent from the capability of humans to adjudicate. That is a more fundamental question than any you have asked. That requires clarification from you before you can logically proceed.

Earlier, I suggested that all definitions of God are conceptually derived. In my book titled Ignosticism, I explain that we have two ways in which we ultimately settle on definitions. There is the first method, in which definitions are pragmatically derived -- that is, we observe a referent (i.e., the thing itself),  like an apple, and then we test and examine it thereby supplying the information we all need to recognize and reasonably describe what an apple is. 

As such, "apple" is merely the name we assign to the referent (the thing itself), and the description of its features or characteristics supply us with a working definition for it. In this case, we have a crunchy, juicy, greenish / or redish / or yellowish fruit with a delectable sweetness or sourness and an easily recognizable fragrance, which all people can agree upon whenever they stumble upon the thing in person, and can say quite emphatically that it is an apple.

I have mentioned that other cultures, and other languages, will name the referent (the thing itself) differently. This is to be expected. Thus, in Japanese, an apple is called "ringo." But the fact remains, the description of an apple, whether you are American, Japanese, or Russian, will always match everyone else's description since we are all reliant on the same referent (the thing itself) that we must derive our description from. 

Hence, we have pragmatically derived a proper definition from the referent (the thing itself) by observing, testing, and examining it.

Now, there is another kind of definition which is derived, not from any object, but from an idea or concept. 

These sorts of definitions are not explaining anything in the real world but, rather, these definitions are the combination of ideas and concepts which, together, form a conceptual framework in which we can better understand said ideas or concepts. 

An example of this would be the concept of a Democracy. Democracy isn't a thing unto itself that has any referent in the real world. Instead it is a political ideology regarding how we ought to organize societies and what rights citizens ought to be allowed in such societies. The democracies that exist today do not supply us with the definition of what constitutes a democracy, rather, the definition of a Democracy gives us the ability to descern and recognize what constitutes working democracies.

What this means is that the concept of a Democracy is a collection of specific, yet recognizable, political philosophies and ideologies collected together to form a conceptual framework for what we mean by the term "Democracy." Therefore, whenever we see a system of government that contains these specific political philosophies or ideologies, we will call it a Democracy.

This is what I call a conceptually derived definition, since we lack a referent to describe but we have, in essence, a well established or elucidated concept or idea. 

During our conversation, it seems that Rocky took umbrage at my suggestion that the term "God" was conceptually derived, although I don't see how it could be otherwise. Allow me to explain.

All definitions of God, if derived from a referent (the thing itself) would presumably match -- that is, they would be in agreement with one another about the thing they were seeking to describe -- just as we saw was the case with apples. But this we do not find.

Rather, definitions of "God" tend to vary drastically, since people are using religious templates to create their ideal God based on subjective experience, usually through the lens of their culture and/or religion, of what they feel or believe God to be. In my mind, God is clearly a conceptually derived idea.

We know this precisely because we can ask anyone what it is they mean by "God" and what it is any particular definition of God seeks to describe? If there was actually a referent (the thing itself) which people could experience first hand, as with apples, then whatever they might call God, whether it be Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, at least they would be explaining a tangible referent (the thing itself) and their definitions would align. But this we do not find. Which, I feel, is a big indicator that we are absent a referent and are in all likelihood dealing with competing conceptualizations.

Rocky went on to add that

You say that I must supply a third party referent. That implies that the human psyche can fully and adequately grasp the concept of God so clearly that all humans will agree upon it. How do you know this is so? 

Naturally, my suggestion that a third party should be capable of describing a referent (the thing itself) in virtually the exact same way was to point out that regardless of culture or background, everyone knows how to describe an apple to someone else of a different culture or background -- and that between the two of them they can agree on what apples are. 

But when it comes to God, this kind of semantic agreement is virtually lacking. Why? Because there is no centralized source to derive a common definition from. Rather, it seems to be the case that all definitions of "God" are conceptually derived, thus lending to a divergence in opinion on what "God" is or what attributes he (or she) has. What this means from the point of view of the ignostic is that God is a semantically confused term.

Continuing in our conversation, Rocky goes on to say:

That just leads me back to what I asked before. How do YOU know that such a definition is even possibly attainable? Why is such a definition needed if the real project is to try and decide if a transcendent reality that gave rise to all that exists is possibly there. By implication, it must be, or God is just an individual concept. OK. Well and good. That is a truth implication that you must clarify before we can proceed. If you cannot, your thesis is founded upon a non-provable supposition and it fails. I am quite certain that I can supply more challenges than this first simple one that comes to mind. If just really seems that you are trying to evade the deeper question of God's existence simply by citing the cloud of confusion of defining something that may not be fully available to limited human perception.

To which I replied:

**We know, at least, that humans can recognize other intelligent minds. If God is not an intelligent mind, of a sort, then what is it you claim to be experiencing -- when by your own admission it is not comprehensible? 

If it's incomprehensible to you, and you cannot makes sense of it, then how do you know it's God? If it is truly incomprehensible, then I have to say ignosticism is justified by the very fact that what is incomprehensible cannot also be coherent, since the prior nullifies the latter.

In other words, you cannot have a logical and consistent argument for that which is incomprehensible except to say that it is incomprehensible, and you've gotten nowhere. Are you saying God is incomprehensible? If so, the problem seems obvious. There can be no suitable definition for God, since any experience we may have of him would be meaningless since it is incomprehensible to us.

If, on the other hand, God is comprehensible, then my prior claims with how to approach this information still holds. If God is comprehensible, then we should expect, at the very least, to be able to come to agreement of that which we have comprehended. Otherwise, the problem of dissimilarity arises all over again, and we just come back to God being incomprehensible, and thus irrelevant to human experience.*

Please keep in mind that ignosticism doesn't disprove the existence of God, per se. Rather, it simply observes that there is an undeniable semantic confusion, and that in all likelihood this confusion is caused by God being conceptually derived rather than pragmatically derived. 

One possibility is that all anyone has are their individual conceptualizations, in which case, God is a figment of human imagination, a mere fancy. On the other hand, there is a real possibility that God exists but there is simply no way to know him,  that the referent (the thing itself) is out there but simply beyond our perception or understanding, in which case the ignostic's claim would revert back to the theological noncognitivist's position that it is meaningless to talk about something which cannot be talked about meaningfully. 

I think that addresses the theist's confusion as to whether or not God is comprehensible. If the theist is to believe in any God that is a Personal being or a Perfect being, then God has to, by his very nature, be discernible to us. Otherwise we could not know him and he would be rendered irrelevant to human experience. Similarly, anything said about such a God, such as him being a God of love, or him being a transcendent being, would all be lies. Unable to know anything about God, we wouldn't know anything about his basic attributes except to say he was supremely illusive. And such a God cannot be anything but irrelevant to us.

I rather think the simpler explanation, however, is that God is a type of conceptualization -- and people simply have conceived of different, often competing, ideas and concepts for what they feel God is and what the term "God" means to them personally.

Mocking Atheism

Ever since Randal Rauser kicked me off his blog three years ago, I have rarely gone back. This year my book The Swedish Fish, Deflating the Scuba Diver and Working the Rabbit’s Foot, a response to Rauser’s The Swedish Atheist, The Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails was released. Soon after, I was directed to a post on his website in which a reader asked if he’d respond to my critique of his book.

Needless to say Randal acted as I have come to expect from him, childish, overly defensive and not very professional. He went on to disparage me by slinging not one, not two, not three, not even four, but FIVE ad hominems against my character for the initial comments that got me banned three years ago.

Even so, I couldn’t help but venture over to Randal’s blog again when an interesting April 9, 2015 blog post came up in my Disqus news feed simply titled “Mocking Atheism.”

I read Randal’s comments, in which he basically sets out to defend atheists from mockery and ridicule by believers. A very noble thing for a Christian apologist to do, if you think about it!

This is one of the things that initially attracted me to Randal’s blog three years ago. He seemed like a breath of fresh air in that he was, to his credit, so unlike any of the other Christian apologists I knew. Randal does have a knack for boldly engaging with subject matter that would make most apologists uncomfortable, to say the least.

But here was this interesting blog post where Randal appeared to treat atheists with a modicum of respect and come to their defense against some nasty Christians who were mocking atheists, and that instantly set off red flags. After all, darn near every experience I have had with the guy informs me that he actually doesn’t care one iota about atheists, he certainly isn’t against calling them names, and he will straw-man atheists and what they may believe every chance he gets while banning every single atheist who tries to engage with him on his blog in honest discussion but proves to be persistent enough in their beliefs to pester Randal with differing points of view that he cannot easily dismiss.

So was Randal really being open minded and considerate, or was something else going on here?

In the post “Mocking Atheism,” Randal asks, “So is it ever appropriate to treat an atheist with ridicule, contempt and/or derision?”

Personally, I think it sort of depends on why you are ridiculing them in the first place. Randal seems to agree, when he says, “This prompts the question: to what end?”

After giving an example where a Christian mocks an atheist and then Randal goes to show that the Christian was acting immature by mocking the atheist simply because he disagreed with the atheist’s position, Randal concludes that

If you have the need to mock other people then you do nothing more than reveal your own emotional immaturity (as mom said, you can’t build yourself up by tearing others down) and your inability to grapple seriously with the ideas of other people. Mockery is little more than a warning flag for insecurity, xenophobia and provincialism.

Suffice to say, I feel there are more than a few things I need to say here with respect to mockery and ridicule, and I am going to preface this by saying I don’t just think Randal is plain ole wrong here – I thinks he’s being dangerously wrong and simultaneously completely naïve.

It seems that Randal has a hidden agenda. He wants to ban mockery and ridicule NOT to protect hapless atheists, mind you, but to safeguard himself and his beliefs – to protect his religion from criticism and scorn. 

Ah, and here lies the rub. The apologetic trick Randal employs here is the ole bait and switcharoo. You see, if you agree with him about not wanting these poor atheists to be mocked and ridiculed, then surely you must agree with him when he says religion must not be mocked or ridiculed too.

First, let’s go back to the example Randal gave in the post about a Christian theist ridiculing the atheist simply for thinking differently. Randal was right to call that behavior offensive and condescending, because such ridicule isn’t meant to draw attention to any greater point. It’s merely a bit of grandstanding meant to make yourself look superior while making the other side feel bad about themselves. And that’s clearly wrong. I agree.

In fact, I find such behavior bothersome and I’ve been known to call out conceited theologians who call their readers nasty names and who act condescending to their commenters because they have a superiority complex, and I won’t be nice about it. I might even mock or ridicule them. Ah-ha! But you see the difference, right?

Obviously, I have to part ways with Randal where he puts a full stop after saying that all mockery and ridicule is offensive and wrong, and promotes xenophobia and provincialism. Unlike Randal, I firmly believe that mockery and ridicule have a place. Meanwhile, it may or may not denote a kind of underlying insecurity – it really sort of depends on the context.

Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, there are other reasons to mock or ridicule someone, or something, than just to be mean. It seems that Randal goes out of his way to ignore such a possibility because he is attempting to do what all apologists do, build up his faith and protect it from exacting criticism, derision and ridicule.

But, in my view, mockery and ridicule are necessary because without these tools we could not have satire. As the literary critic Dustin Griffin reminds us in his book Satire: A Critical Reintroduction, “Some satires are of course more topical then others. At one extreme is the lampooning attack on an individual, and the other a ‘satire on mankind.’” (Griffin, p.121) So it seems that ridicule, another term for lampooning, is built into the very fabric of satire.

Randal says that mockery and ridicule of people are wrong, period. But then there are other uses for mockery and ridicule too, as is evidenced by their heavy use in satire.

In the opening paragraph of his blog, Randal defines what “mockery” means, but he neglects to give the full definition. As the Oxford Dictionary of English says, mockery can also be an absurd misrepresentation or imitation of something. This falls into the category of humor, of satire, and polemics.

The French satirist Voltaire, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment (along with other notable figures such as Descartes, Locke, Newton, Kant, Goethe, Rousseau, and Adam Smith) was infamous for the mockery and ridicule of others. But we might wonder how could such a person ever write something as morally profound as “‘Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime,’” or, in English, “Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.” 

Was Voltaire just a mean bully who sponsored xenophobia, provincialism, and all the terrible things Randal thinks comes out of the practice of mockery and ridicule? I think not.

Quite to the contrary, Voltaire was drastically opposed to such things, which is why he satirized them and used his fair share of mockery and ridicule when lampooning them.

Furthermore, as the author and intellectual Salman Rushdie has said, “The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.”

He’s not wrong.

After all, Rushdie is quite familiar what the end result of cultures which have become too overly sensitive, too insecure, and too thin-skinned that any trifling disagreement might just be enough for the oppressive authoritarians and conformists to call for your death. Taken to its logical conclusion, the desire to ban criticism and ridicule is the same desire that compels one to want to ban the opinions of others, calling it a blasphemy, while simultaneously attempting to turn one’s own opinions into sacred objects that must never be ridiculed.

In such a culture, a silly or irreverent satirical cartoon drawing could spark outrage and end in embassies get burned to the ground and countless innocent people being murdered. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the cartoon wasn’t offensive, it very well may have been, but perhaps it was drawn offensively to do as Voltaire said, crush the infamous thing.

I’m sorry, I have to strongly and emphatically disagree with Randal. Mockery and ridicule are powerful tools which keep the sacred in check by balancing it with the profane. For we have all seen what happens when those who honor the sacred try to criminalize the profane, who try to make blasphemy illegal, and who try to shield themselves from any form of criticism at any cost, they grow to despise the simple threat of other ideas and opinions different from their own, so much so that they are willing to kill others out of the simple fear of hearing words they may not appreciate or find offensive, hurtful, or irreverent.

I don’t know about you, but I personally find that killing people for their opinions is a far worse crime than mockery or ridicule used to stress a valid criticism or point. Now, if you’re mockery and ridicule is malicious, and simply meant to tear others down for the sake of tearing them down, like an evil stepmother constantly nagging the stepdaughter and making her feel worthless, then yeah, I feel this makes you an asshole, but it’s not worth killing somebody over.

The bottom line is this…

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

Actually, this is a quote from the film V for Vendetta. But you can see why I chose it.

If we allow such censorship, then we lose more than just our freedom to object, to think and speak as we see fit, to go uncensored and unpunished for expressing ourselves as we wish – we lose our very vitality as human beings, we lose our ability to deliberate, argue, and confide and worse than all of this … we lose the ability to discern the truth from fiction.

Xenophobia, provincialism, censorship, and making the opinions of others unlawful, that is what comes from saying all mockery and ridicule is wrong and that all opinions, as well as the people who utter them, should be immune from criticism, derisive or otherwise. Again, as Salman Rushdie said, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

All this to say, I think Randal is entirely wrong on the matter – mockery and ridicule should not be banished from the ongoing discourse, rather they should be embraced precisely because they are necessary tools for fighting xenophobia, provincialism, and totalitarian and tyrannical censorship. Contrary to what Randal may believe, the very things he so despises, things like xenophobia and provincialism, are not the end result of mockery and ridicule. Rather, the fact is, mockery and ridicule are the immunization against things like xenophobia and provincialism!

So, returning to the question at hand, is mocking atheists okay? As I said, it depends on what your goal is. Is it simply to be mean or is it meant to raise a bigger point? Perhaps the more important question we all should be asking is: Am I, an atheist, deserving of your mockery and ridicule?

I sure hope not, but if I’ve earned it—take your best shot!

As someone who needs his ego deflated on a regular basis, I can assure you, when someone mocks or ridicules me in a way that points out my character flaws, after the initial sting of it, I find that I come to appreciate the underlying message (not always, but a lot of the time).

Needless to say, if I ever get too big for my britches I’d hope someone points it out in such a way that we can all laugh about it later. No hard feelings. After all, the only people who stay perpetually butt-hurt after receiving exacting criticism are those who can’t seem to admit that they might have flaws and, if it wasn’t obvious by now, those who simply cannot take a joke.

Finally, I wish to share with you an extended quote by the little known but influential Freethinker G.W. Foote from his essay “On Riddicule.”  

Goldsmith said there are two classes of people who dread ridicule—priests and fools. They cry out that it is no argument, but they know it is. It has been found the most potent form of argument. Euclid used it in his immortal Geometry; for what else is the reductio ad absurdum which he sometimes employs? Elijah used it against the priests of Baal. The Christian fathers found it effective against the Pagan superstitions, and in turn it was adopted as the best weapon of attack on them by Lucian and Celsus. Ridicule has been used by Bruno, Erasmus, Luther, Rabelais, Swift, and Voltaire, by nearly all the great emancipators of the human mind.

 All these men used it for a serious purpose. They were not comedians who amused the public for pence. They wielded ridicule as a keen rapier, more swift and fatal than the heaviest battle-axe. Terrible as was the levin-brand of their denunciation, it was less dreaded than the Greek fire of their sarcasm. I repeat that they were men of serious aims, and indeed how could they have been otherwise? All true and lasting wit is founded on a basis of seriousness; or else, as Heine said, it is nothing but a sneeze of the reason. Hood felt the same thing when he proposed for his epitaph: “Here lies one who made more puns, and spat more blood, than any other man of his time.”

Buckle well says, in his fine vindication of Voltaire, that he “used ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly.” And he adds:

His irony, his wit, his pungent and telling sarcasms, produced more effect than the gravest arguments could have done; and there can be no doubt that he was fully justified in using those great resources with which nature had endowed him, since by their aid he advanced the interests of truth, and relieved men from some of their most inveterate prejudices.

 Victor Hugo puts it much better in his grandiose way, when he says of Voltaire that “he was irony incarnate for the salvation of mankind.”

Voltaire’s opponents, as Buckle points out, had a foolish reverence for antiquity, and they were impervious to reason. To compare great things with small, our opponents are of the same character. Grave argument is lost upon them; it runs off them like water from a duck. When we approach the mysteries of their faith in a spirit of reverence, we yield them half the battle. We must concede them nothing. What they call reverence is only conventional prejudice. It must be stripped away from the subject, and if argument will not remove the veil, ridicule will. (Seasons of Freethought, p. 260-61)

--Sincerely,

The Advocatus Atheist

Atheism X Agnosticism X Ignosticism

According to The Oxford Dictionary of English (2005):


Agnosticism - n. a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God. [from a- 'not' + gnostic.]


Atheism - mn. the theory or belief that God does not exist.  [from Greek atheos, from a- 'without' + theos 'god'.]


The question we often hear is can an atheist be an agnostic? The answer is yes. An atheist can freely lack a belief in a specific god such as Vishnu, Thor, or Yahwey yet still be open to the possibility that a Deistic entity may or mayn't exist.


The reason for this is two fold.


First, with personal gods come personal attributes. Believers usually define their chosen [G]od's attributes in terms which are testable, meaning, the claims they make about the nature of their god are either verifiable or falsifiable. When looking for the evidence of these claims, one can either rule or belief or form belief based on the reliability of these claims. If the claims are weak claims, then one may disregard the belief in the god on the basis that the claims do not have adequate support and are not likely to be true.


Second, atheism deals with belief, or the lack thereof, predicated on whether or not the belief can be established. Gnosticism deals with the question of knowledge. What do we know about the god in question, and do we know enough to formulate something more than a philosophical construct? Usually the answer is no, but in cases where there just isn't enough evidence to rule out the god, then belief does not automatically follow.


When you don't have enough information to make an affirmative claim, the default position is simply not knowing.


Typically theists will make the mistake of making a Kirgardian leap of faith, taking them from the default position of agnosticism into belief. Meanwhile, atheists simply make the proposition that since none of the claims have been met, then it appears as if there is no god and therefore no reason to believe is justified.


As a proposition atheism does fall into the belief category. But it's not a positive claim because it only arises as a response to theism. If there was no theism then there would be no atheism, as atheism would be the default position. It would simply be called reality.


Although I call myself a firm atheist, and I am agnostic with regard to the general question of the possibility of god, I actually would consider myself Ignostic.


Ignosticism is the theological position that every other theological position assumes too much about the concept of God.


Ignosticism holds two interrelated views about God. They are as follows:

• 1) The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of god can be meaningfully discussed.

• 2) If the definition provide is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God is meaningless.

In other words, a) a definition which is incoherent can’t be about anything, and b) a definition which isn’t about anything cannot be said to be meaningful.


Additionally, Ignosticism is not merely concerned with definitions by themselves, but rather, is concerned with competing definitions which are all attempting to define the same referent.


Referent: Definitions refer to things. A thing in the world that words and phrases are about is called a referent.

Was America Founded As a Christian Nation: Part 1 The Founding Fathers

It is often preached from the pulpit that America was founded as a "Christian Nation." Perhaps worse than the blatant fallacy behind this is that so many people buy into it. However, to anyone who has spent a little time investigating the matter, the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation is unequivocally false.

It is not really a claim which needs to be refuted since, the simple fact of the matter is, America was the first country founded on the principle that all religions deserved equal respect and none deserved unrequited favor. The Christian doctrine of exclusivity was, to the minds of the founding fathers, incompatible with their loftier principles of a united republic, a United States. The vision they had was one of an autonomous nation where your religion was just one part of what defined you--but at the end of the day--each and every citizen, man or woman, could proudly call themselves free--they could call themselves--Americans.

In the minds of Christians, however, many tend to make-believe an alternative history where America was founded as a Christian nation and the term American is just a synonym for Christian. This could no more be further from the truth than if I were to claim that a centimeter was just a synonym for an inch. Yet such falsehoods are often preached as a matter of fact within the folds of the Christian faith. Sadly, the insistence of these falsehoods as truths has persuaded many to believe it and perpetuated the myth that America is a Christian nation.

In the first part of this series I will investigate a few of the founding fathers in order to follow up on the question whether or not all of the founding fathers were Christian. It stems to reason that if America was truly founded as a "Christian Nation" then all of the founding fathers would ubiquitously subscribe to the religious and moral ideals of Christianity. If we should find exception to this rule, then it would be safe to assume that, contrary to popular opinion, the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, let alone on Christian principles. The claim would hence be refuted. 

The freethinker Thomas Paine was one of the primary voices of reason in the early United States. His letters urging Thomas Jefferson to emancipate the slaves in lieu of the booming sugar trade, as well as his writing calling for equal rights for man, something Paine believed to be common sense, would greatly affect the thinking of the founding fathers. Paine's personal calls for the abolition of slavery also greatly impacted Abraham Lincoln who wrote a defense of Paine in 1835 (Lincoln by the way was, as far as anyone knows, a nonbeliever--at least after the death of his son--and claimed he did not belong to any Christian denomination and had to face charges of impious infidelity). 


Spending most of the 1790's in France, Paine was deeply involved in the French Revolution. Upon being arrested and imprisoned, Paine suspected he would be executed as a revolutionary radical, and so was motivated to write his scathing attack on the Christian religion, his last hurrah so to speak. This infamous book is better known as The Age of Reason. In this influential work Paine calls for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects. Paine was a self professed Deist.

Here we shall look at some of Paine's most recognizable quotes and see whether or not he adhered to Christian principles to help us discover whether this founding father was of the mind of someone who would help forge a nation in the name of Christianity.

When asked by Dr. Manley, "Do you believe, or do you wish to believe, that Jesus Christ is the son of God?"

Thomas Paine succinctly replied, "I have no wish to believe on that subject." (As quoted by Robert G. Ingersoll in A Vindication of Thomas Paine, 1891) 

Paine once stated that Christianity was merely "atheism dressed up as mannism." This scathing remark was followed by his comment that, "The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun."

As for the Holy Scripture, the religious text all Christians revere as divinely inspired truth, Paine had this to say:

"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man." (A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason. The Age of Reason. Boston: Josiah L. Mendum. 1797-05-12. p. 205)

These (above) quotes are telling for several reasons. It proves that Paine did not believe in Jesus Christ as anything other than a mere mortal and that he despised the teaching of the Bible, renouncing it as contemptible, cruel, and vile.

Many of Paine's quotes echo the sentiments of modern day atheist and religious critics. It should come as no surprise, for the shared belief among all freethinkers of any age has been that of free and rational inquiry, which has always, in every age, rubber religion the wrong way.

Paine once prophetically quipped:

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics." (The Age of Reason, Chapter III: Conclusion)

So clearly Paine was nothing like the Christian theists of today. In many instances Thomas Paine sounds more like the atheists, freethinkers, and skeptics of today.

The question becomes--was Thomas Paine likely to have sponsored, let alone allowed, for the United States to be founded as a "Christian Nation" knowing his sheer repugnance toward Christianity? It doesn't seem likely. With respect to Christianity, Paine was an atheist. He did not believe in its god or its message.

Before we proceed with our investigation of the founding fathers, and what they purportedly believed, I wish to share two of my favorite Thomas Paine quotes:

"It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them." (The Age of Reason Part 1, 1793)

"The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing." 
(The Age of Reason, Chapter III: Conclusion)

[Note: Clearly Paine believed [G]od could be discovered by the tools of science. A deist, in the proper sense, but one who was highly critical of Christianity none-the-less.]

If Thomas Paine, "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination," was our archetypal religious critic, then Thomas Jefferson was our archetypal freethinker. What was Jefferson's mind when it came to Christianity?

Jefferson writes in his correspondence that his greatest success was in drafting the the Virginia statute, the article which would go on to provide the basis for America's Constitutional division between Church and State. This separation of Church and State is commonly referred to as: "The Wall of Separation between Church and State."

Jefferson, one of the original drafters of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, believed all Religion deserved equal respect, and that to favor one over another was one of the worst forms of bigotry. Needless to say, such an opinion is incompatible with traditional Christian orthodox thinking. 

Additionally, like Paine, Jefferson was also critical of Christianity. Like Paine, he felt that Theology had no place in the University, stating in his 1814 letter to Thomas Cooper about establishing the University of Virginia that "Theology should have no place in our institution." 


It is no secret that Jefferson placed a higher importance on the difference of opinion than on the orthodox conformity to a dogmatically conditioned like-mindedness.

"Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?" (From Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII)

Still, I have been privileged, if you could call it that, to meet several Christians who have told me to my face that Thomas Jefferson was a Theist in tune with Christian morals and thought. Many people have often used the following quote to prove Jefferson was a Christian:

"I am a Christian, in the only sense he [Jesus] wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other." (Letter to Benjamin Rush, 12 April, 1803)

[Note: technically speaking, by his admission that Jesus was merely human and not divine, Jefferson would be deemed a "Gnostic," which by orthodox Christian standards is viewed as heretical.]

Apparently modern Christians weren't the only one who made the mistake of thinking Thomas Jefferson to be a Christian though. A reporter made the same mistake, to which Jefferson wrote a letter to set the record straight, informing, "Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was "I say nothing of my religion." (Letter to John Adams, 11 January, 1817)

In his letter to Ezra Stile Ely, Jefferson stressed the point, "You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know." (25 June 1819)

Those familiar with Jefferson's original writing will be keen to note that in his original writings Jefferson never capitalized the term god. It is always written in the lowercase. Only later did editors correct for this obvious "error" to put the proper reverence back into the term, and so too Jefferson's own writings, once again, wrongly assuming he believed in their concept of god. He did not. Luckily, the original writing, in his own hand, has survived for posterity so as to allow us this invaluable lesson.

Even so, the question becomes, to what is this self proclaimed sect to which Jefferson subscribed? 

Perhaps we find clues in an unsuspecting letter of encouragement to his nephew, Peter Carr, about the young man's investigation into religious faith and of his beliefs. Jefferson writes:

"Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you." (10 August 1787)

In not so many words, Jefferson tells his very own nephew, whom he loved, that it was perfectly alright to become an atheist! This should shed some light on perhaps what Jefferson meant by this unmentioned sect he was so guarded about.

Would any decent God fearing Christian instruct their very own flesh and blood that it was perfectly acceptable to become an atheist? No. This line of reasoning is wholly at odds with the teachings and doctrines of Christianity. 

Like Tom Paine, it seems that Thomas Jefferson would not have been  likely to have sponsored, let alone allowed, for the United States to be founded as a "Christian Nation." Although less critical of Christianity than Paine, it is clear that Jefferson's thinking was in tune with modern religious critics and modern day atheists. Jefferson even went as far as to instruct his own nephew that it would be perfectly acceptable, even virtuous, to find a belief in no god at all--i.e., atheism.

After having given it fair consideration, I am inclined to think Jefferson was not a Christian, since he frequently denied the virgin birth, Jesus's divinity, and all the miracles of the Bible. On top of this, he instructed his nephew that atheism was a perfectly virtuous conclusion, not even a Unitarian would have said this!

As for the public claims that he was a practicing Christian, he denied them all, and simply kept his religious beliefs a closely guarded secret. As I quoted earlier, Jefferson denies being a Christian whenever that assumption was made of him. 

For his denial of the miracles of the Bible, many are found in his his letters to John Adams. Additionally, he addresses the issue in his introduction to his defense of editing the Bible and writing The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

We know that Jefferson was against the idea of immaterial and transcendent beings: 

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise ... without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820)

Moreover, Jefferson found the idea of a virgin birth archaic and little more than fable and mythology.

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823)

If this wasn't enough to disprove Jefferson was in any way a Christian, Jefferson also denied the Christian notion of the Holy Trinity for logical reasons, equating the dogma of the Trinity with polytheism and calling it more unintelligible than paganism.
 

The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere relapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible. The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly, gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. (In his letter to Rev Jared Sparks; November 4, 1820)

Another instance where Jefferson denies Christian theology, comparing it to an absurd myth and calling it "hocus-pocus," is in a bold letter to James Smith.

The hocus-pocus phantasm of a god like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, December 8, 1822)

By Jefferson's own words we learn his exact level of disillusionment with Christianity. Although he may have found a strong sense of Platonism in the many teachings of Jesus, it is clear that Jefferson felt the majority of Christianity was founded upon absurdities and myths.

Conclusion

After closer inspection, we find that not all of the founding fathers subscribed to the religious and moral ideals of Christianity. In fact, we find two prime examples of two founding fathers being vehemently against Christianity, and therefore could not presumably have been part of any agenda to sponsor, let alone create, a "Christian Nation." 

Undercover Atheist

A friend of mine who I know from my Evangelical Christian days, and who I worked with at a leading Christian Bible camp no less, has been struggling with her recent change of heart and subsequent switch over to atheism. She has started a new blog Undercover Atheist in the Bible Belt to vent her frustrations anonymously.

You see, she's not free to express her true beliefs, because religion has encased her in a community of highly volatile irrationality. She cannot openly be atheist. If she comes out of the closet, she will likely lose her job, her friends, and possibly even her husband.

She lives in the Bible Belt--a literal hell for those who don't share the Christian faith--because as she reminds us on her blog--you are expected to go to Church. She tells us the harsh truth of the matter and the relentless Churchianity she endures, stating, "if you're not invested in the community... you're a bad person."

In other words, if you don't make a show of your Christianity and appear in Church, like a good little disciple, you will be viewed as a bad person. This is the harsh reality that closet atheists under the oppressiveness of religion face everywhere.

She's happily married, but she's married to a Christian. Nothing wrong with that... but it does raise some obstacles. Trust and acceptance can become hot topic issues when the person shares a dissenting view or opinion. Like I tell others, in my house we don't talk religion or politics--period. The only thing we fight about in the home is what television channel to watch. Luckily, both my wife and I are currently addicted to the American version of The X-Factor. 


Wanting to test her husband's reaction to atheism, to see what his acceptance of her new found belief system would be should she one day choose to come out of the closet, she told him she had a dream that she had become one of those rationally minded... what do you call them... oh yeah... atheists. She wanted his thoughts.

In her words:

I explained that I had a dream that I became an atheist and was wondering what he thought. He said "what would be the point in having children if we aren't raising them as Christians?" He even carried resentment and anger towards me for even asking the question in the first place.

What a let down. When I read this I was literally beside myself--picking my jaw up off the floor--and downing some Tylenol to numb the headache such religious retarded reasoning inevitably brings me.

Let me briefly explain why this form of reasoning is not only painful but intolerant and so hurtful.

What if were were to reverse the roles. What if she was the Christian hiding in the closet and her husband was the mainstream atheist? Would his reaction, upon her telling him that she had come to believe in Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior be, "what would be the point of having children is we aren't raising them as atheists?"

*Gasp--Christian children?! God forbid! I mean... no... cuz god isn't real. Uh... wait... thinking hurts my thoughts!

[Never mind that all children start out as atheists anyway! Religion is something acquired. You don't come out of the womb quoting scripture with preconceived theological considerations already fully advanced. No. First your parents teach it to you--acquisition--then they take you to Church--indoctrination--and then you get it reamed into you again and again every single week--inculcation. Eventually you come to believe it--most probably because you live in the Bible Belt where everyone thinks the same and have no one to challenge your beliefs--and God knows you certainly won't be doing it. Ignorance is bliss--but it's still ignorance.]

Okay, so her husband's reasoning is... well... nonexistent. There is absolutely no good reason to give up hope because someone else has a difference of opinion.

From my perspective, her husband is simply having an emotional reaction--and he probably doesn't even realize how insensitive of an emotional outburst it really is. He, in not so many words, said he wouldn't want to have children with her if she didn't think exactly like him. It's insensitive. Cruel even. 


But it's not her husband's fault--he's just not thinking--he was raised in the Bible Belt, after all. But the despair of having to be "unequally yolked" with a non-believer (as the Bible says) is exactly what I went through when I was still a raging Christian. It was the catalyst to my deconversion.

Still, I can't imagine getting the response my friend did and still feel like there is enough love between myself and my significant other to feel comfortable "coming out" and letting the world see the real me. I know why she has to be sneaky about it--she doesn't really have any other alternatives. 


Maybe she needs to invite a hardcore atheist like me over to dinner sometime so I can "soften" her husband up a bit. Hit him over the head with, oh... I don't know... a ton of rationality maybe? I just hope she keeps blogging--and keeps sharing her views and opinions--because unlike those zealots living in the echo chambers of their trumped up faith--in the civilized world we try not to reject and ostracize people for holding different worldviews.

The Many Faces of Atheism

As I have gone from theist to atheist the one thing that keeps coming up in discussions about what atheism is and how to better define it is whether or not there is such a thing as a strong or weak atheist, or a militant atheist, a naturalistic atheist, a Christian atheist, and so on and so forth.

Some people add descriptors to their atheism, to help define what they believe, or which worldview they lean toward. While others claim the description of atheism depends on which form of theism your are responding to. Both camps may turn out to be right.

On its surface, atheism is like a chameleon, it adapts to its surroundings, the situation, indeed, to the god it states it is rejecting or the theistic claim it is denying. But as many atheists have observed, at its most basic, atheism is just theism without.

Interestingly enough, however, I find that this revelation makes atheism all the more appealing to me--because it means we have here a highly adaptive belief (yes, believe it or not atheism is a form of belief) which contributes to a greater understanding of the world around us. But unlike religion, it doesn't claim to be a divinely revealed truth. In fact, atheism would happily confess its grand mistake if a supreme deity ever did come out with it and reveal "himself" to us. However, it is because atheism doesn't claim to be a revealed truth that it is in no danger of having to prove itself according to the claims it makes. Briefly, let me explain what I mean by this.

Monotheism, like the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all teach that there is one (and only one) God. Now, how do they know? Well, this is the revealed part of religion. A voice from the heavens supposedly came down to them, and said, "I am."

They responded, "Who?"

"I the Lord," the voice declared.

"Who are you Lord?" the multitudes inquired.

"I am who I am," said the Lord.

Nobody ever thought to ask the obvious follow-up question, which would have been, "Oh, Lord, pray tell, art though a smart ass or just a dessert wrought hallucination?"

Instead, these few desert dwelling folk, amid their bouts of heat stroke and fending off dehydration, clustered together in sun scorched caravans far from any recognizable oasis, and cowered in the dirt and worshiped. Nobody knows why for sure, or whether the God which appeared to them was real or just a figment of their sun baked imaginations, but regardless, they erected entire religions based on some very dubious accounts of what constitutes evidence. Indeed, to the modern educated man, these accounts all look like ridiculous myths, and rightly classifies them as such.

Even so, some forms of religion are resilient to skeptical inquiry and doubt. Not because they are true--but because they have become so good at adapting themselves that they have evolved into religions which can survive the environment around them. If the cultural environment becomes enlightened and free thinking, the religion becomes theologically sophisticated and liberal. If the environment consists of mainly uneducated women living under the patriarchy of uneducated and highly conservative men, then their religion reflects this too.

But no matter how much religion adapts itself... it will always be limited by the tenets and articles of faith which help to define it.

Monotheism, for example, must maintain a strict definition of what it means to believe in God. You can't believe in many gods, because that would be polytheism. You can't believe that god is everywhere and everything, because that would be pantheism. What this means, I think, should be clear enough. Religion is always defined by the sort of God (or gods) it presumes to be real. Whether or not these deities exist or not is besides the point--because the believer believes it without question--and in turn their beliefs are dictated by the type of God they imagine to be real.

It is for this very reason that belief in God so often interferes with the truth. If God is said to be a Creator being, and said to have created it all, then when science postulates creation happen perhaps another way, then the religious grow weary of science--not faith. Subsequently, superstition overrides common sense and metaphysical assumptions trump knowledge. The reason, I think, is obvious. If the religious questioned their faith every time they had a doubt, then their belief in God would likely prove meaningless. Not because their concept of God is no longer seemingly compatible with the view of reality they are asked to consider, but rather, because to question the type of God you believe in in the first place is to question the very thing which, as a believer, defines who you are and how you see the world.

Religion is highly adaptive, perhaps for this very reason, because when faced with contradictions or dilemmas, and sometimes even hard evidence which complicates or compromises the believer's faith--they set about attempting to rationalize ways to harmonize the current information with the information they hold to be sacred, revealed, truth. Truth is truth, after all.

This explains how religious defenses truly work. If God created it all, but then science postulates the "Big Bang" singularity spontaneously caused the universe to pop into existence from a previous state of nothingness--these conflicting theories lead to the harmonization that--through no fault of the believer (who pleads ignorance in the face of understanding something as magnificent as God)--it was God who sparked the big bang into existence. Thus faith is salvaged and science, which directly conflicted with their premise, has now become fully compatible. So much so that many believers are quick to use it as support for claiming things like "God is all powerful, beyond understanding, and transcendent, he is immutable, existing beyond the boundaries of space and time." The only problem is, there is no real way to argue against such claims, accept to point out that it seems awfully suspect that the religious, and religion in general, has to continually keep making them.

But somewhere in all this apologetics which try to save the truth from itself, is the crux of the matter. Because eventually you start to see the pattern in what religion can and cannot be. Then one day, you stop to realize that if the God which is claimed to be real was at all real, then the religion would not be limited in such a way. In other words, religion is bound to the limits of human understanding and imagination. Typically speaking, of course, the more primitive the human minds behind religion, the more primitive the religion. On the other hand, atheism is free to be anything--well--anything except for theism that is.

As such, atheism is not bound to human understanding or imagination the same way religion is. In fact, it seems to me to be the opposite. Understanding directly feeds atheism--whereas the lack of understanding, and the ignorance it generates, is what feeds religion.

Atheism, is for the lack of a better word, undefinable--it's unlimited. This makes it difficult to define, perhaps even futile (which is why I don't see the point in adding descriptors to the type of atheist you happen to be--but that's just me) yet at the same time, atheism makes is rather expansive in what it can be--or what it can become. Is there militant atheism? Sure there is. Is there naturalistic atheism? You bet. Christian atheism? I personally know few people who consider themselves Christian atheists. But to me, all of these facets of atheism merely represent different faces of the same thing (another reason I don't specifically feel the need to classify each category or variation of atheism). I think it's time we start to grow comfortable with the idea that there are many faces to atheism.

As atheism grows, matures, and adapts I am sure we will see many more varieties of atheism. I for one, see this as a good thing, because atheism offers more for less, and once people start realizing this more fully--well then, religion will really have to start to compete. Robert G. Ingersoll once sated, "No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."

I think this description rings true. I've never once heard of a group of brilliant scientists holding a summit and then everyone walking out of it with a firm belief in some kind of deity. But you hear of primitive tribes, shamans, and occasionally uneducated charlatans concocting religions all of the time. All this goes to show that understanding is when we know enough to admit we really don't know that much at all,  while religion is pretending to know more than we really can. Conversely, if there was enough evidence to establish the existence of a deity, of God, beyond an inkling of doubt, then atheism would never come to be. The very fact that atheism arises in the first place is a very strong indicator that God probably does not exist.

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