What Do Atheists Not Understand About Faith?

And are those lapses of knowledge really a problem? For example, we may not know the nuances between various faiths… but can’t we just say they’re all variants on superstitious belief, and that’s the bigger issue? (Or is that simply ignorant?)

No, I don’t think that’s “ignorant” (in the colloquial sense) or a problem at all. The fact that the various faiths are just variants on superstitious belief is absolutely the heart of the matter.

That said, I, too, would be interested to know if there are any issues relating to faith that religious people seem to think that atheists “don’t get.” I’m sure there are at least a few cases in which they would be absolutely right. (Think how many religious people don’t even have a proper grasp on what atheism is!) It may or may not be an issue of importance, but the phenomenon is still quite possible.

~David D.G.

And are those lapses of knowledge really a problem? For example, we may not know the nuances between various faiths… but can’t we just say they’re all variants on superstitious belief, and that’s the bigger issue? (Or is that simply ignorant?)

I think the nuances are less significant when a religion makes falsifiable claims: claims that do not stand up to inspection. If the basics of a religion are impossible, then I fail to see why we must become experts on the religion in order to reject it.

The difference, I think, between atheists and the faithful is that most atheists are former theists. Very few theists, I’d guess, are former atheists. Ergo, atheists tend to “get” both sides. BTW, I’ve noticed that here in the US, atheists are much more likely to have read the Bible than Christians, and are usually more knowledgable about it.

The average atheist was at one point in his/her life religious and/or a theist of some variety. Even if they weren’t they were likely brought up in a household with religious family members. Accordingly they “get” religion/theism quite well. In fact, it’s because they get it so well, in most cases, that they are atheists.

I’d like for a theist to answer how faith and gullibility are different.
I’m not being facetious. I really want to know.

i was raised in a non-religious family, my parents are agnostics.
i don’t understand religion, i find it facinating that people would seek things outside of reality. i’d like to believe in god, the concept is consoling and nice, but my brain tells me it’s stupid.
i get very irritated when some religious people claiming they can think like an atheist when putting out some arguement. if you can think like an atheist, you would BE an atheist.

I find most atheists have not studied the bible, therefore they pull out “contradictions” that really arent contradictions, but they are parts of a larger arc.

This is coming from an atheist btw

(Note: this is kind of long, skip to the last paragraph for “what I don’t get” stuff.)

I’m with chinaman above. I’m an atheist raised in a non-religious home. We didn’t go to church, my parents are both agnostic, although I think my mother is actually leaning towards full-on atheist. We did have a bible in the house, however it was never mentioned until I was old enough to be curious about it on my own. Before that it was just another book on the shelf. When I finally was old enough to be curious, the text was too florid for my young mind to really be interested in plodding through.

I attended a service or two with friends of mine, and my parents allowed it and never really questioned me about it. They let me come to my own conclusions.

It took a long time for me to come to them. I studied lots and lots of religions and tried to figure out which one of them, or even which combination of them might hold some truth. I sadly came to the conclusion that while they sometimes contained wisdom, they rarely contained truth. At 32, I’ve been calling myself an atheist for about 5 or six years, and agnostic for the rest.

What I “don’t get” about religion is how people can willfully set aside logic (like it’s some kind of gadget or toy to be packed up) and put so much time, effort, and money towards something that is clearly made up. I am especially baffled when it is someone who is a scientist or philosopher who exhibits this behavior. Is it intentional? I don’t get it.

I was going to suggest the same thing that ATL-Apostate wrote. How can one define gullibility and faith so that they are materially different? How can a person at once think of faith as a virtue and gullibility as a vice? Is it not gullibility to see the emperor’s clothes if a priest/pastor/rabbi/shaman/etc. tells you he sees them too? Why?

I think this is really where the rubber meets the road in the faith v. reason debate. This is the part of the irrational mind that baffles me. This is where they are demonstrably internally inconsistent.

It doesn’t even matter what exactly the theist is claiming, theologically. If they are a theist, their position is that god exists, which is incorrect. We don’t need to know the fine points of their theology to be able to argue against their theism.

(cont’d)

The only reason that Christianity in particular comes up in this blog and elsewhere in the atheist blogosphere so often is that most of the netizens here live in the West where Christianity is the dominant religion. I don’t think I’m alone among atheists when I say that my beef is not with Christianity specifically, but with mysticism in general. I don’t think it is necessary for someone with a reason-based worldview to know anything more about a particular belief system than that it employs supernatural explanations in order to make the most damning of criticisms, namely that it’s just making shit up as it goes along.

I occasionally like to get further down in the weeds as an intellectual exercise, such as asking Christians to provide an explanation for the similarities between Old Testament myths and Sumerian myths that doesn’t invalidate their whole religion (“What are Sumerians?”), or trying to explain to them how evolution does not mean “everything came from nothing magically”. But this is not where our fundamental difference lies and I don’t think it serves our purposes to debate them on the details of their fairy tales. You don’t have to know whether a particular Hindu believes that avatars are wholly separate entities or merely different aspects to determine that their worldview is bullpucky. Unless you have the opportunity to pit a Catholic versus an Anglican on the issue of divorce, or somesuch, knowledge of the details doesn’t really come in handy. I personally know Christianity better than any of the Christians of my acquaintance but that doesn’t matter whenever we debate because their perspective assumes faith is a virtue and mine does not. It is the indoctrination of ‘faith as a virtue’ that damages minds, not any particular doctrine.

[/soapbox]

Theists often disagree with me when I state that faith is belief without evidence, but then they usually end up confirming this later.

You’re getting apologist, Hemant! My take on where a lot of religious people come from is a considered position. I volunteered with the Boy Scouts of America for many years, and thought about why a parent would abdicate authority to a “leader” in a uniform, even when that alleged leader was an outlier in the statistical distribution of sane, to put it mildly. People tend to engage in a form of mental sloth and acceptance of authority figures. You try to pull one over on me, stand by! But some a lot of people are either too beaten down or too mentally lazy to defy the consensus reality they see, even if they do see some alternative that makes a whole lot more sense. We need more enlightened upbringing in the world! Wouldn’t that be nice.

I don’t think this is really the same thing. It is very rare for a trained biologist becomes a creationist. So few scientist, actual scientists turn to creationism that they are heros of the creationists. However, most atheists start out as theists of one stripe or another and then turn their backs on religion for a life of rationality.

@RichardWade- here’s my take on why theists will often accuse atheists of “choosing to believe” that there is no God. Simply put, I think they’re scared. As several others have stated, many atheists used to be theists- born-again, even (myself included). Somehow or other, we managed to come around to a more rational, reasoned way of thinking. I think for a lot of us (I know it’s true for me, anyway) we weren’t exactly planning on that happening- we fully expected to live out our lives and die as a Christian (or theist). So if something like that could ‘happen’ to some of us, it could also ‘happen’ to them– they could conceivably find themselves facing the same questions and doubts that us former believers faced, and maybe even have to face the fact that they, too, can no longer believe. It really is an unpleasant thing to go through, losing your faith, so I think they accuse us of ‘knowing the truth’ but choosing to deny it anyway so that they can feel safer- ‘He just doesn’t want to answer to anyone higher than himself’, etc. That way it becomes about us sinful atheists ‘wanting to be our own masters’ rather than, ‘Is there any evidence for God or not, and if not, let’s move on’. So as long as they can say they have no problem ‘answering to a higher authority’ then they don’t have to worry about pesky things like logic and reason- we’re atheists because we ‘choose’ to be, not because we honestly can’t believe.

Hemant:

. . .but can’t we just say they’re all variants on superstitious belief, and that’s the bigger issue?

Nathan;

I don’t think so. I think that supposes that any belief without physical evidence is “superstition”. I think when it comes to a question of first cause it’s a harder question to answer than those of you who rule out a creator acknowledge, which is why faith is so compelling.

I wouldn’t say that I “rule out a creator”; rather, I’d say that I see no evidence for a creator, and so I don’t believe in one. So I disagree that I have to deal with a “[hard] question” of whether there’s a creator. I generally don’t believe in things that I don’t have evidence for, and only start to seriously consider the question when presented with evidence that reaches some minimal bar.

So I think it’s reasonable to say that all religions are “variants on superstitious belief” (although “superstitious” is a little more insulting that I would have chosen to phrase it), and that it’s not particularly important for an atheist to be familiar with many or any of those variants. I don’t need to know the details of the Oceanic mythologies of Maui to have a reasonable suspicion that they’re not going to meet even a minimal evidentiary bar. And it might be strategically useful for an atheist to know about the Bible if he/she wants to argue with Christians, but it’s not logically necessary.

I too, echo ATL-Apostate’s question. Todd gives the correct answer as to how faith and gullibility can be semantically distinguished, but I think it doesn’t really answer the question that puzzles me and other atheists, so let me rephrase/state what I “don’t get”: “If faith is a decision to believe something without evidence, then how is that sensible or desirable, let alone virtuous?”

I think many atheists notoriously do not understand the role of faith. Even for atheists who came from religion, there seems to be this disconnect. This was discussed at a Mormon blog I sometimes read. To quote a relevant part of this entry:

Many people believe that religion exists solely to make your life better. Many militant atheists, in particular, seem to believe this. Religion, in this thought, is there to soothe pain, to explain the mysterious, and to comfort the weak. “We, noble, brave, and strong, don’t need those consolations, but it is nice for those nincompoops out there to have something to cling to if they won’t be rational. At least, it is nice unless they decide to use religion to kill people…nevermind, let them suffer until they get it.” In this worldview, if a particular religion holds views or makes demands of you that you find potentially offensive or inconvenient, then you just go find a new religion. It is all about finding the religion that justifies the way you already live and causes you to have the most certainty regarding the meaning of your life and your place before God. In other words, choosing a religion and choosing an outfit are essentially the same act.

This is stupid.

It is stupid, primarily, because it denies the critical element that brings most people into religion, which is an experience with the ineffable. Most people who believe believe because they have felt, heard, seen, experienced some event that they feel is best explained by recourse to supernatural forces. Something happens in your life (you say a prayer, you cry out in pain, you wish for your mother’s love) and, a little unexpectedly, you get a response, an overwhelming response that doesn’t seem to come from within you. It tells you things; it opens your eyes and ears; it makes you want to be better; it makes you better. The initial faith experience is, I think, almost always like this. You don’t choose faith initially; it chooses you.

Personally, I do not fully understand faith either. So, I know I’m guilty of downplaying it. And as I read some of the comments, I think many commenters here continually downplay it. Other posts at this site or at others have commented on it too. It’s just something many of us don’t get.

I try to reach at a half-way point…I suppose…but accepting that there is something genuine that true believers sense. However, I do not believe this is indicative of anything external (like God), because 1) everyone doesn’t get this thing, 2) people can get this thing for irreconciliably different ideas.

“Choose to believe”?? I just can’t get that.

Maybe you can, it just needs to be put in perspective. Humans excel at fooling themselves, they do it all the time. Try some of these on for size:

Sure, he hit me once, but he says he won’t do it again and I believe him.

I can have just one handful of potato chips, then I’ll stop.

Sure, it will be a bit of a stretch, but I can afford that mortgage and the balloon payment. It’s not like I’m going to suddenly lose my job.

Ok, that lump is a little weird, but I’m sure it’s nothing.

I don’t care what the evidence says, my son could not possibly have done that.

The distance from the examples above to religion is only a very small step. People are astonishingly good at denial and self-deception, and a lot of people can believe almost anything that they truly want to believe.

It a spectrum, of course – from the people on one end who effortlessly decide what’s true without ever checking in with reality, to the people on the other end who have to work to convince themselves that the sun will (probably) rise tomorrow. Atheists cluster toward one end of that spectrum, believers toward the other.

The extremes probably are what they are, but I think the majority in the middle actually can choose to believe, if they really want to.

Andrew S.

Thanks for posting that bit from the Mormon blog, most interesting. Wrong of course, but interesting.

Most people don’t come to religion after an experience with the ineffable. Most people are simply raised to believe its true and never really have the motivation or inclination to really test their faith.

For every hardcore, bible reading, true-believing christian there are ten others who don’t really know much about their faith, who go to church sundays, say the prayers, believe in the nice bits of the bible and try not to think about the nasty bits too much. Its this vast mass of otherwise sane, well balanced people that give religion the respectability it has. If it were just the bible thumping section it would be a very fringe movement.

Over here in England its very much this case. The anglican church has a very old average age of those just raised as christians but who only really do the religion thing on sunday. Even the christians i personally know are like this. They don’t think too hard about it and their faith only gets dragged out into sunlight everynow and then.

This is certainly the path i was once on as a child. My mother took me to church, i believed in the same way that i believed in Santa claus and i was even an acolyte, wearing a white robe, carrying candles, swinging the censer, all that jazz. I grew out of it and i credit my doing so largely because my parents also gave me a very strong fondness for reading while very young, which gave me an active curiousity and exposure to other viewpoints.

I think that we atheists actually “get” pretty much everything about religion, but i sometimes think our questions don’t appear this way. For instance, when i speak with my liberal christian friends about the “fact” that when i die, according to their faith i’ll be roasting in hell with gandhi and Buddha, while its entirely possible that they’ll be living it up in heaven with a bunch of bigots like Martin Luther, Torquemarda, the borgias, etc, they tell me that these people will be in hell because they were “evil”. They um and arr over where i’ll go. They ignore the nasty parts of their own faith (such as wicked true believers going to heaven, and good unbelievers going to hell) because it makes them uncomfortable.

I was brought up Mormon which has seemed quite practical, i.e. God and Jesus are very physical and distinct, especially compared to the Trinity of mainstream Christianity (and nothing about clover makes the Trinity make sense).

As I “discuss” Christanity with Christians they seem to back into the very mystical “God is Love” and “God is Life”. I don’t “get” that.

It doesn’t challenge my disbelief but statements like “God is Love” bring the conversation to a stalemate.

“i get very irritated when some religious people claiming they can think like an atheist when putting out some arguement. if you can think like an atheist, you would BE an atheist.”

I disagree. I’m a theist. But I reject all Gods but one. I think that means I’m at least capable of empathy when it comes to the atheist approach to every other concept of God – and particularly to “spiritual” people who can’t actually nail down what they believe.

I can see why it would be compelling to believe nothing – sometimes I don’t like the God I believe in. Hell is a hard concept to fathom when someone you love is a non-believer and dies. That’s not a reason not to believe though.

do you understand why you rejected all the other gods?
also, atheists don’t ‘dislike’ god, that’s not why we don’t believe in gods

I think many atheists notoriously do not understand the role of faith. Even for atheists who came from religion, there seems to be this disconnect.

Not to pick on the one person who said this, but this is the type of attitude that infuriates me. I grew up as straight-arrow fundamentalist as it is possible to do. Every spiritual bit of my life was as real as for any other zealot, to the point that I seriously considered being a missionary for several years. Every time I mention that I used to be religious, the retort is always that I wasn’t into it “enough”. That I didn’t really understand. That I wasn’t “really” saved. That I didn’t understand the Bible quite well enough. That I was somehow, in some magic way undetectable to anyone including myself, not a Real True Christian, because if I had been, I never would have become an atheist.

It is a way for Christians to insulate and inoculate themselves – if they can convince themselves that I wasn’t really one of them, then it’s impossible that they might follow the same path and one day fall away from the faith too. I understand that. But what it does is swipe away thirty years of my own existence. It says that nothing that happened to me really happened, that it was all an illusion. And that makes me angry.

I’m a theist. But I reject all Gods but one. … sometimes I don’t like the God I believe in. Hell is a hard concept to fathom when someone you love is a non-believer and dies. That’s not a reason not to believe though.

I don’t get how someone like Nathan can distinguish his “real” god from the made up ones. I don’t get how someone like Nathan can differentiate between myths from his religion and those of other faiths. I don’t get how someone like Nathan can believe two contradictory ideas simultaneously, namely a literal hell and a loving god.

Rasmus Paulsen wrote:

But it sometimes seems like religious folks can derive some comfort from religion. That would be nice, I guess. But how do they do it?

After my dad passed away I tried to believe and just couldn’t, I wanted it to be true for his sake and I wanted the comfort of knowing it for mine. Didn’t work, I couldn’t do it. But my dad only “hoped” it was true, he never claimed to “know” it was true and he was okay with it if it wasn’t true. That has always been my parents way with faith.

I got to the heaven part and thought what a bunch of BS and it only made my non belief stronger. If my dad was in heaven it actually gave me no comfort at all. If he was there and I was sure to go to hell my dad’s heaven would not be heavenly at all. If god took away the memory of me so he wouldn’t know I’m in hell, then that wouldn’t be my dad. If god made him okay with me being in hell, then that wouldn’t be my dad. If god just made him deal with it then that is not heaven. After those questions popped in my head I was done. I will never understand religion or how it can actually comfort someone, it doesn’t comfort me one bit and I will never “try” to believe again. But maybe people don’t ask themselves the types of questions I do.

I pretty aware of religions, particularity the Christianities. I think I know more than the average Christian. If I want to know something I look it up. The thing I don’t get, as an atheist, doesn’t have anything to do with the tenants, but more with motivation. Hows can anyone believe the Bible is inerrant? What would that even mean? When they say God saved a plane from crashing, what do they think he did? How can they deny the fossil record? Have they ever looked up at the Jesus on a Cross at church and thought, “That could be replaced with a giant bull and there would still be people praying to to it”.

Why do Catholics get upset if you point out that the central event of their religion is an act of human sacrifice, and that their sacrament of the eucharist is an act of ritual cannibalism?

Nathan:

I can see why it would be compelling to believe nothing – sometimes I don’t like the God I believe in. Hell is a hard concept to fathom when someone you love is a non-believer and dies. That’s not a reason not to believe though.

This statement demonstrates to me that you cannot, in fact, think like an atheist. That is not at all why I don’t believe in your god. I don’t believe in your god for the same reason I don’t believe in Santa Claus. He’s not real. It’s as simple as that. Now if Santa or a god shows up at my house, I’ll gladly reconsider. But until then, I’m not buying it.

Responding to the post itself…

“but can’t we just say they’re all variants on superstitious belief, and that’s the bigger issue? ”

I don’t think so. I think that supposes that any belief without physical evidence is “superstition”. I think when it comes to a question of first cause it’s a harder question to answer than those of you who rule out a creator acknowledge, which is why faith is so compelling.

I would call any belief that has no supporting evidence whatsoever “wishful thinking” at best, “superstition” or “delusion” at worst.

re Autumnal Harvest:

This is exactly the point. For people who have those kinds of experience, faith is very much as real as falling in love (and as inexplicable). The problem is…everyone doesn’t fall in love for the same thing, and falling in love, even as a generalized common experience is not objectively indicative of everything…while theists want to say that what they call spiritual experiences that lead to faith are indicative of external, objective things.

re Gribblethemunchkin:
Actually, this is one of my points. My points are not to speak to the people who are seemingly enraptured in faith, because it would be like suggesting to someone who’s fallen hopelessly in love to reconsider the object of that affection (who may have blemishes and may be downright unworthy of that love.) Rather, I do think that many believers are apatheistic…they believe in such a poor way because they don’t have any strong spiritual anchor like the born-agains or whoever…and you can see it because it doesn’t really change their actions.

But I think, as a general case, the difference between atheists and theists is some kind of spark. You don’t have to be hyperzealous to have something within you (which I think is “faith”) that INCLINES you to explain things in one way or another. With faith, people suppose god…and we don’t understand that, because we don’t have faith. It doesn’t make sense to us to say, “I really don’t know, and there’s not a lot of evidence, BUT I BELIEVE IN GOD NO MATTER WHAT.” So, we as atheists can’t comprehend it, because we don’t have faith. But I don’t think faith is chosen and it’s not rebuked — you can’t just say, “OK, I’ll start making god the “assumption”” or “OK, I’ll stop assuming God.”

re Carlie: Sorry, I didn’t mean to actually point at any particular person. Rather, I mean that a lot of times, many theists-turned-atheist can say, “Oh, yeah, I was always a believer,” but when they say this, they reveal more of what Gribblethemunchkin described as generic-believer-who-hasn’t-really-had-experience-with-the-so-called-divine. So, yes, they can seem to be just as active as anyone…after all, I was just as active as anyone, and my bishop and my ward members thought I would go on to serve a full-time mission and everything (I’m ex-mormon)…but if I look at it, who was I kidding? I never had such a spiritual experience, and I cannot comprehend it of others. From all the things I could do, I was into it. But I don’t think faith or spiritual experience is something you can “do.” It’s something that happens to you or it does not.

So I’m not trying to say anything about anyone in particular, but a lot of times, people think, “I devoted my life to this just as anyone, studied the scriptures, proselytized just like anyone else” = “I had an experience with the (so-called) divine,” and they miss the distinction. Many atheists continually do not realize that some people experience what they actually think and feel is confirming evidence of communion with the divine.

(From http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/05/28/the-consumer-model-of-religion-and-why-it-is-stupid/ , quoted by Andrew S. , June 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 am )

Most people who believe believe because they have felt, heard, seen, experienced some event that they feel is best explained by recourse to supernatural forces. Something happens in your life (you say a prayer, you cry out in pain, you wish for your mother’s love) and, a little unexpectedly, you get a response, an overwhelming response that doesn’t seem to come from within you.

I have had experiences of that sort. So have many other atheists. Many atheists authors – such as Michael Shermer – have written about them. People who think atheists are necessarily unfamiliar with these experiences have not done their reading.
The brain is flawed. Some of our interpretations of our experiences are not accurate representations of the real world. We must examine our own feelings skeptically as we would any unusual claim. It is well known that these experiences can be reliably reproduced by various methods (some of which rely on chemicals – and some which do not). The fact that they can be consistently reproduced without appeals to supernatural forces indicates that supernatural forces have nothing to do with these experiences.
Dan Barker, speaking about his supernatural-seeming experiences on Free Thought Radio has said:
“Personal religious experiences are very powerful, and I used to have them. In fact, I can still repeat them if I want to. But all religions have these experiences, and as real as they are, like a nightmare, a personal religious experience points to nothing outside of the mind. “

Before I bring on my actual argument, I have to state that I was a religious person for the first half of my life. I never had any personal experience of christ, no miracles, no religious hallucinations, but I still bought this s**t.

Now, if you are an intelligent person (and most atheists I meet seem to be), you are locked out of the world of stupidity. You simply are unable to see the world the same way a truly stupid person does, as you are unable to pretend that you have lost your sense of sight, smell, or touch. It is natural to you to use your brainmeat in the exact same way that it is natural for a stupid person to not use it. You can intentionally decide to act stupid, but you still know that you are doing so…
Same goes for religion. Once you’ve lost your connection (or never had any), you simply don’t know how it is done properly.
So the answer to your question is: There are probably tons of things we don’t understand about faith (anymore), and there’s no way to change it.
We have sufficient evidence to be arrogant enough to assume that we are a tiny, little bit closer to truth than the faithful. We just don’t have to slap it in their faces (yet). 😉

And I would like to emphasize that I do not generally consider theists as stupid (some certainly are), but that I used stupidity as another area where it becomes clear that different people have different ways of perceiving and dealing with reality.

It is disingenuous and misses the point to think they are consciously deluding themselves or trying to avoid the way the world “actually” works. This is just another atheist misunderstanding of theism.

You left out the third alternative. It is entirely possible to subconciously or unconciously delude oneself. It’s a lot easier than concious self-delusion, and I don’t think it’s a misunderstanding to think that happens.

Richard Wade:

“Choose to believe”?? I just can’t get that. To me that means I know it is false but I choose to keep running a set of thoughts in my head that it is true, like a game, a fantasy. But I know it’s a fantasy, and I can’t forget that part!

YES! I don’t get that at all either!
I had to spell it out to my inlaws that I can’t just force myself to believe something that I think is untrue. I then offered to “fake it” for them (and in front of their friends and church) and assured them I could be very convincing as I knew more about Christianity than many Christians I’ve met, but they needed to know that it wouldn’t be at all honest or true.
Thankfully they were completely horrified at the prospect and have pretty much stopped trying to convert me (at least overtly).

re Andrew S

A subconscious and uncontrolled self-delusion cannot be helped, whereas a conscious one might have been

I have to disagree. If that were true, wouldn’t all psychologists be out of business? With questioning and honest self-reflection, some people can figure out what’s going on in their own minds and hearts, and they can change. That’s where all those former theists come from.

I guess I don’t understand why you think just because atheists don’t have faith that we can’t understand it. Possession is not a prerequisite to understanding, although it can be helpful. Let me borrow a comparison that you already used – being in love. Been there, done that, I know exactly what it’s like. Just because I’m not there at the moment doesn’t mean I don’t understand it or that it was never real.

Thank you, GullWatcher and Andrew S. Both of you make sense. When I look at the self-deception angle and the falling in love analogy, they both make sense (or are at least understandable) when I see them from my background of counseling thousands of people who were addicted to alcohol and drugs. I’ll think about that more and maybe write something about it.

In the meantime, with my apologies to Percy Sledge:

When a man loves a god
Can’t keep his mind on nothing else
He’ll trade the world
For the good thing he’s found
If it’s bad he can’t see it
It can do no wrong
Turn his back on his best friend
If he puts it down

When a man loves a god
Spend his very last dime
Tryin’ to hold on to what he needs
He’d give up all his comfort
Sleep out in the rain
If it said that’s the way it ought to be

When a man loves a god
Down deep in his soul
It can bring him such misery
If it plays him for a fool
He’s the last one to know
Lovin’ eyes can’t ever see

re Andrew S

If you are not in love with a particular person and someone else is, you cannot understand why they are willing to do certain (highly irrational) things for/with that person.

This is where I’m still getting lost, because I do understand. I’ve been that irrational person on occasion in the past. If someone I know is in love, I may not see the attraction they see toward that particular person, but I totally understand the feelings and how and why they might do irrational things for that person. I get that it’s not about the object of the affection and whether he or she is worthy, it’s about the feelings the individual has toward that person. The same (or similar) goes for faith. What more is there that I need to understand?

re Andrew S.

Ok, next question – having established that I do get it, does that do anyone any good? Is any christian going to believe that I get it? I am a lifelong atheist. If former christians (ones who were true believers, not just raised that way) can’t convince current believers that they understand about faith, how can I?

And even if I did, will that further the conversation? It’s nice to think that understanding is a good thing in and of itself, but this is one time when I’m not sure how it helps. And understanding doesn’t always bring greater appreciation or acceptance. Was it Heinlein who said “Some things, the more you understand them, the more you loathe them”?

re Richard

I would be interested to see your thoughts when you get around to posting them, especially if you end up discussing the part where falling in love and self-deception come together, which is the making excuses bit. People spend a lot of time making excuses for themselves, for the people they love, and for their gods. Cutting people (including yourself) some slack is a good thing, but spending a life making excuses for bad behavior is way beyond the healthy part of that spectrum.

From the apologists who try to explain that all the bad stuff god does is really good stuff if we only understood it, to the people who simply say ‘he created us, he has the right to do anything he pleases’, that’s the thing that drives me nuts. Why should anyone be making excuses for a supposedly perfect god?

And the song? The song was spot on.

I liked Richard’s re-write of the song.

I think faith is love misdirected.
Just as people can love without having (or needing) supporting logic, so can people have faith. One can even be in love with someone who is obviously bad. Just like faith in the genocidal God of the Old Testament or the hell-condemning God of the New Testament.

Love directed appropriately is Good. Love directed to something that isn’t there can be dangerous.

re llewelly:

one well-placed subjective event that could reach past beyond everything else.

If you can find a subjective event that can reliably and repeatably do that, good for you. Of course, keep in mind that theists also are looking for subjective events that can reliably and repeatably instill faith in skeptics (looking at former atheists, so to speak).

Instead, I’m going to suggest that we are far off from pinpointing this events…and well-thought arguments don’t cut it, like we’d hope.

The question isn’t if it is possible for someone who was on one side to go to the other, because this *does* happen…but if we can find a way to reliably do it again and again. And for this, we aren’t close to an answer. We KNOW it’s not sheer willpower. We know it’s not just well-thought out arguments. But we know something can do it.