Moral Objectivity, where art thou?

1) If  God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2) Objective moral values exist.
3) Therefore, God exists.

It is possible for me to conceive a creator god that does not lose sleep over the way we live our lives. What makes my conception less plausible than the Christian God? My conception actually seems more plausible when we take our moral experiences into consideration. However, implied in the argument is the idea of a God who is the ground for moral values. This argument is found in the ontological argument that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being. It is taken for granted that 'goodness' and 'existence' are great making qualities. Many, including myself, disagree with this wholeheartedly because 'great' is a subjective description of a thing and different people would have their own ideas of what makes a thing great. But hey, thank God that we have an accurate definition of God to work with.

Today, I make two arguments:
1) Divine Command Theory does not make morality objective.
2) Objective moral values do not seem to exist.

What is your name?

But, do you drink though? I know a cheap bar. 

Today, I gave myself a pat on the back because I think I am finally growing up. Last October, I became an atheist. By that I mean I stopped believing in the god that I used to and was left without a known deity that I could square with my knowledge of myself, others, and the universe. When a person gains a new identity, some new signifier that tells them what they are but also what they are not, they go through particular phases while growing into their new clothes.

There is the transitional stage where you are tempted to isolate yourself from everyone else. It seems as though we have a psychological bias toward believing we are alone in our existential problems. If fortunate enough to survive this desert period, we may happen across an online group of people who share unbelievably similar experiences with us. And so begins the adolescent idealism and group pride. We create an us vs them - us being the atheists, they, our enemies, theists. Fists are raised in the name of reason and war is waged on anything remotely resembling faith of any kind.

I am reminded of Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. We enter unwillingly into these stages and we are not guaranteed to emerge in favourable psychological states. How we respond to all that each stage has to throw at us directly affects how well equipped we enter into the coming stage. For my fellow, heathens, how well have you been progressing?

I know an unfortunate few who have been atheists longer than I have, yet are more worked up about the thing than me, the newbie. I am not devoid of source material enough to burn fires of disgust and hatred toward religion myself after having been dealt an unfair hand by the godly institution. Though it was seldom been said to me directly, many believe that it is this unfair treatment that lead to my 'falling away' in the first place and not any intellectual reasons at all. I won't be naive or arrogant to say they are completely wrong. Still, they are not completely right. My conversion was the result of an unholy concoction of hurt and intellectual curiousity. Either way, I am here now and I do miss the emotional connections I had with the divine as a believer, but I cannot bring myself to bend a knee because I think doing so is foolish.

Some people may disagree with me and, of course, all are free to do so, but I no longer care for the label 'atheist.' Now, I find it and its definition tawdry, thin and glaringly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Atheism is simply non-belief in a deity/deities. An atheist feels the same way a Christian feels about Allah, just this feeling is directed toward all gods. This is apparently an unimaginable fact to people who see the world through the eyes of faith. Even though their bosom buddy may not believe in their own god, at least he/she believes in some god and that seems to be enough. But to believe in none is ludicrous. But what does it matter, really?

There is a sub-community within the atheism camp that advocates the proclamation of the title 'atheist' from the rooftops. I was never comfortable with it, but I was never against it either. Today, I am still not against it, but I have grown enough to distance myself from it. The word 'atheist' says nothing that I consider important about me or anyone else. After all, the basic idea behind atheism is that theism has not yet presented persuasive evidence for their claim that their gods exist. But to think that I only possess this attitude toward the divine is misleading and the title 'atheist' does not help in bringing clarity.

Here is what I think causes this problem. Theism can be narrowly defined as a belief in a deity/deities. However, a belief in a deity hardly ever comes independent of a host of other things, eg. morality, philosophy, history. It is to be expected, then, that although atheism narrowly defined is non-belief in a deity/deities, atheists are lumped together on matters of morality, philosophy and history as well. This I am afraid of.

I have a skeptical eye and I look at all claims within my reach under the microscope of reason. Both gods and fossils have to make sense to me before I have anything to say about them. I am concerned about the future of the world. Questions like, how would religion and non-belief co-exist? Should I really be against the death penalty? What is important and how do we know? Should I lend my hand in the development of Trinidad and Tobago? If so, what is the best way to do so? These seem vastly more important than which side I stand on the thin line of belief. 'Atheist' just does not seem to do an effective job in conveying so deep a commitment to reason. I'm certainly not afraid of the term and if asked whether I am an atheist I would respond positively. But what am I going to call myself? By what name do I go? Do I need a name? I grow tired of the politics and label-gerrymandering and just wish to go on reading and writing.

Call me whatever you like. Ask me, however, and you may be met with this standard response.

"I'm batman."

The God of Intellectuals

Most of us have met our fair share of strange people, but each of us treats with these encounters differently. It is fortunate, then, that I have also met my share and I happen to be a collector of anomalous stories.

Let's call my friend Jim. Jim was not a very sociable person, but strangely enough, he was extremely likable. He would be invited to parties, limes, to play on the best football teams for the lunch time 'sweat', all without muttering more than a few inconsequential phrases and bad jokes. Once, during our weekly 'in -depth' classroom discussions, Jim shared what was his own religious philosophy. Jim believed that God was energy, and he referred to the Newtonian law of energy being un-created and indelible, but transformable. If I had the mind that I have now, then, I would have asked him if this energy desires our worship.

Now that you've met Jim, meet Suzy, whose story is more interesting. At the age of 16, around the time when the pouis trees were blooming or, more poignantly, CSEC was around the corner, she started having paranormal experiences. While folding her clothes one evening, her grandmother outside on the porch, she felt a 'thing' coiling around her left hand. This 'thing' was invisible. It slowly moved up her arm and eventually, the entire left side of her body. She rushed outside to tell her grandmother what was happening to her, and that's as far as she could remember.

Fortunately for my story, a memory was constructed for her by her grandmother. Her grandmother said that she, Suzy, fainted and began foaming at the mouth and trashing about on the floor. A doctor said, after all the checks and balances, that they could not find anything really wrong with her. Doctor after doctor said essentially the same until one finally diagnosed her with epilepsy. She got medication and returned to her 'normal' life.

The Arrogance of Philosophy(ers)

I'm not sure why we separate 'philosophical truths' from 'empirical truths'. Both epistemological systems are based on the same foundation of experience - our own existence and the usefulness of our five senses. All that we know, we know through our five senses. We have developed words that represent things we have experienced through our senses in order to communicate those experiences to other people and even communicate them to ourselves. 'Philosophical laws' like the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity and the validity of syllogisms, and even 'mathematical laws' of association and distribution have been discovered through our experience of the natural world, an experience that continues to grow. These laws do not come from some special, isolated part of the brain that reasons independent of experience.

I am not a linguist, nor have I studied the development of language in a university. However, from observing my own linguistic development and the development of people around me and having a bit of knowledge about the development of language as it relates to our brain, I have learnt a few things. When young, much of our experience is jumbled together in a few words. All trees are trees and trees alone. If you tell a child that this tree is a portugal (puteegal) tree and the other is a lime tree, it may be slightly confusing to them at first. They would either think that all of them are the same thing, or that they are all completely different. It is difficult for a child to appreciate subtlety. The ability to discriminate and categorise, analyse and synthesise are skills that develop with us as we grow and are aided by education. As our experience of the world increases, we create new words, and we apply the discovered laws of reasoning to these experiences to make sense of them.

Now, our brains have been able to take concepts from the natural world, combine them with others, expand them, twist them, turn them inside out to make them into something 'new'. However, these things are not new, but re-worked or re-done, exaggerated or reduced, old things. We call this ability 'imagination'. The end results of our imagination - like Superman, Batman, Pokemon or the Perfect Spouse - are built with old colours and concepts we have experienced but are not things we have experienced in themselves.

In and Out of God - How I try to live my life as an atheist

One of the most frequently asked questions I have had thrown in my direction since by de-conversion is "What is the point of your life now?" The question makes the assumption that I knew what the point of my life was when I was a believer and that that is different 'now', and it does so wrongly. When I was a Catholic, I never understood the idea of being made for a specific purpose. Although I didn't understand it, I did try to live my life guided by that belief and I surrendered all that I was to achieve this goal of doing God's will.

Obviously, God never came out and told me what he wanted me to do so I imagined that he was asking me to be a priest. I came to this conclusion because I was passionate about evangelisation, service, and leadership. It seemed like the perfect fit. I've given that up though because the whole concept of God having a plan for each of us is rendered implausible by the vast number of people who never achieve anything close to what they thought God planted in their hearts to do. Mother Teresa's crisis of faith shook my understanding of this from the core and I never turned back. We were told that 'peace' was the gift given to those who were doing God's will, and here was this usually inspirational woman, broken from within and questioning the existence of her beloved Saviour. Some call this the "dark night of the soul" and I love the poetry of the string of words, but having gone through it myself, I know it is the despair one feels confronting the unimaginable possibility that what you believed was truly unbelievable.

So just how do I gain meaning from my life? Well I must answer this question with another question. What do you mean by having a meaning for life? Usually, the belief in a divine purpose that was destined before we were born is the source of meaning. Even in the absence of clear knowledge of what that purpose is, the mere idea of the possibility gives a person hope. Now, not believing in a deity does not afford me this right to believe in a divine purpose for my life. I do not think that I am born to do a task that only I can do well, and frankly, I am relieved. I'd hate to have such a pivotal, historical role and fail. It may be hard to believe when you are a believer - it was hard for me to believe as well - that living without God can be 'meaningful', and that very human emotions like hope and love are seen as illusory. All of this is utterly untrue.

In and Out of God - God and religious experiences

The Final Frontier


If you've been with me throughout this journey, this post is the penultimate of the "In and Out of God" series. My story of faith began with a religious experience and it is that experience that sustained my faith throughout the years of doubt and inner turmoil. As I stated in my last entry, God had receded beyond sight, but there remained this one thing, this one encounter that I had with Him which made me literally swoon, made me want to give all that I was to Him and Him alone. 

In 2005, a motley group of four young men all found one other in Presentation College San Fernando and formed a prayer group. Coincidentally, they had all come back to school with a new zeal for their faiths as a result of Confirmation classes and Life in the Spirit seminars. They started holding meetings in the chapel to read scripture, sing and pray. I was not in the least bit interested in the group until a friend of mine started attending their meetings. This came as a shock to me because he was notorious for his ease with obscenity and stories of sexual exploits.

One day, he asked me to come with him and I couldn't resist satisfying my curiosity. So there I was, standing in the second row, surrounded by no more than 8 young men, singing and clapping their hands in praise of Jesus Christ. Then, without any warning, they all stopped singing and started unmelodiously 'praising' God. This alone was too much to handle but they threw in some glossolalia to test my tenacity. What on earth was this madness? I wasn't a church-goer myself, but I had some respect for sacred things and I felt they were making a mockery of God. My friend saw the discomfort marked on my face and told me not to say anything. Let's just say, I didn't make the trek up to the chapel the next time around.

In and Out of God - God and Evolution

Just a theory

The only encounter that I had in my religious past with the theory of evolution was in Biology class. The teacher stood in front of the class and monotonously droned about black butterflies eventually outnumbering the white butterflies because they were the same colour of tree trunks and that natural selection was the vehicle for this occurrence and that this is what we meant by evolution. Did you feel as bored reading the last sentence as I felt writing it?

I did have a secondary encounter with the theory though, and surely enough it was in a Religious Knowledge class. I usually had docile, risk averse,  Religious Knowledge teachers as far as I can remember, but in Form 5, our teacher was very much involved in his faith. I remember him telling us that evolution was 'just a theory' and that it had recently been disproved. And just like that I was convinced. After all, he was a teacher, and I had much better things to worry about - like getting all 1's in 'CXC' (CSEC). How I got a 1 in Biology baffles me to this day.

It's not until I was 20 years old that the theory reared its head again like an atavism. What better a place to do this than in a group of young Catholic males, motivated from within and burning with passion for intellectual evangelisation. We wanted to save Catholicism from immature theology among the laity and defend Catholicism from creeping atheism. One in our bunch was fond of evolution and I would bounce my skepticism off of him. He dealt with them like a professional. Thanks to his responses, and that wonderful book by Jerry Coyne that he lent me, I now see that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life we see on earth.

Get this book.

My acknowledging the truth of evolution did have its accompanying problems, unfortunately. But first, let me give a simple explanation of evolution for those who misunderstand it. Then I will refocus on my struggle with accepting it alongside my faith.

"Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule - that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection". 


Take a deep breath. First of all, the theory of evolution does not say anything about the origin of life on earth. That's an entirely different question. Hopefully the following example would help to understand the theory better -

In and Out of God - God and prayer

One Unanswered Prayer

Even though I wasn’t as close to him as everyone else was, his passion for life impacted me enough to suck tears from my eyes when I heard about his passing. He was the first and only person I have ever cried for at a funeral. That probably says something.

I was sitting on a chair in my room one night. The memory is a bit hazy so I can’t say exactly what I was doing, unfortunately. What I do remember, was fearfully answering the phone at 3am in the morning only to have my fear hyperbolically realised. He was in a car accident and was now in the Intensive Care Unit of San Fernando General Hospital. The sleepy voice on the phone advised me, “Pray boy, pray. Jus’ pray.”

The next day, a large group of us were gathered in the prayer room, on our knees, wailing before the Blessed Sacrament. We sang, we danced, and we beat the life out of the goat skin drums in some infantile, ironic hope that it would be transferred to him. We literally begged God, with tears in our eyes and bruised knees as the modern replacements for sackcloth and ashes, to save him. He died that day. Quicker than a thought.

In and Out of God - God and the Bible

These Golden-Brown Pages

Ever since that fateful Saturday morning when the Holy Spirit arrested me and laid me prostrate in his presence, my love for the Bible has never waned. Even today, though I don’t believe in God, I still appreciate the Bible for its wisdom and interesting stories, just not as a holy book. There are some parts of it, however, that could be done away with.

The Bible was the first thing I fell in love with after my conversion experience. I remember rushing home to tell my mother that I had gotten ‘slain’ in the prayer meeting I went to and that I needed to get a Bible of my own. She ridiculed me, saying that I was just playing the fool, but gave me an old, golden-brown paged Bible never the less. I guess it made her happy to see her son actually interested in things holy.

The pages were well oiled, so to speak, and one of them was sticking out of the middle as though trying to get out. It was the beloved Psalm 23 - “Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” Half of itself was missing, sadly. An old wives’ tradition was to place a copy of the Word of God at the foot of a child’s crib to ward off any uninvited spiritual guests – emphasis on the word ‘foot.’ The Psalm was unceremoniously ripped across its centre by my own baby-feet, probably while crying for ‘tea-tea’.  

I love that story for its irony. The same feet that were used to tear the Bible apart, were the same feet I would use to “Go forth and preach.” “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!” Isaiah 52:7. My feet were made lovely, thank goodness.

In and Out of God - God and Morality

God is good all the time and all the time God is good.


It is a central tenet of traditional Christianity that God is omnibenevolent or all-good. This very complicated philosophical claim has been neatly packaged into a popular opening line used by many preachers for their homilies/sermons. I am not certain of this, but I think it is a uniquely Caribbean refrain, a testament to our creativity.


Priest/Pastor/Brother/Sister - God is good!
Congregation - All the time!
Priest/Pastor/Brother/Sister - And all the time!
Congregation - God is good!
AMEN!


For about two years of my life as an active Christian, I would join wholeheartedly in this back and forth, call and answer ritual between leader and led. The feeling that one gleans doing something in unison with a large crowd is like no other. You become part of something larger than yourself, so large that you actually lose yourself entirely after being subsumed into the crowd; you're at the mercy of the preacher.



If you remember well from the introduction of this series, I related to you that I had become somewhat of a preacher myself. Being part of the prayer group in a Catholic school, the Principal was more than willing to give some of us the opportunity to lead the school's morning prayers once or twice each week. I also helped other, more experienced preachers, with their own ministries around the country. Eventually I started getting calls to do ministry on my own. I couldn't resist using the refrain to start many of my talks because it gave me a sense of power over the audience. It brought excitement and centered everyone around what I was about to say when the excitement subsided. 

Me giving a talk in my old parish. 

In and Out of God - God and Suffering.

This marks the beginning of a most uncomfortable story. I will be sharing my journey through life, a journey where I moved 'In and Out of God'. Most people know me as a devout Catholic. I was a leader in a prayer group, preached at many retreats, defended the faith publicly without shame, seriously considered becoming a priest, did missionary work, and I became the editor of Vision, the youth supplement of the Catholic News in Trinidad and Tobago. 


I was hoping to save this bit for the end but I realised that some people can't read between the lines very well, and I prefer to be understood than anything else. My journey took me from agnosticism to Catholicism to a hippie-type Catholicism to pantheism back to agnosticism and finally, today I'm an atheist. To be clear, I am an agnostic atheist. I do not think that the existence of God is knowable, at least not currently, but I do not believe in the God I once did or any proposed for me to believe in thus far. 


The journey was not as linear as it would appear to be in the series but it was written this way for clarity and so that a greater number of people would find themselves within the pieces. The titles in the series all take the form 'God and....' because I have noticed that throughout life, we always find ourselves trying painstakingly hard to reconcile our ideas of God with some element of our experience of reality. It results either in a redefining of God, a new perspective on our experiences, or blocking out reality all together and having eyes only for heaven. I experienced all three. And so with that, we begin...

Topics
1) Frosted Flakes and Bloated Bellies - God and suffering.
2) God is good all the time! - God and morality

3) These Golden-Brown Pages - God and the Bible 

4) One unanswered prayer - God and prayer 
5) Just a theory - God and evolution
6) The Final Frontier - God and religious experiences
7) How I try to live my life now