Why Atheists Should Consider Discussing Religion With Their Moderately Religious Friends

By Daniel Miessler on April 16th, 2007: Tagged as Atheism | Personal | Philosophy | Religion

This is an absolutely amazing post on perhaps the most important issue facing atheists today: how to deal with religious moderates (especially friends). You care for your friends, and you don’t want to push your views on them, but at the same time you don’t want them to believe in unfounded concepts such as life after death, castles in the sky, virgin birth, chupacabras, or teapots orbiting Mars. It’s a dilemma. How do you deal with it? How do you point out to a friend or aquaintance that this stuff is silly without being an asshole? Here’s an excerpt:

Certainly, religious moderates themselves don’t silently tolerate the obviously unsubstantiated views of others. Just listen to religious moderates speak up when they hear others publicly espousing beliefs in such things as Bigfoot, the existence of ESP or astrology. Imagine a public official talking about his use of astrology at a press conference. Can you imagine an audience of religious moderates staying politely silent, thereby broadcasting the false idea that there was nothing inappropriate about the official’s belief in astrology?

It encourages continued bad mental hygiene to fail to speak up when others make claims that aren’t based in fact. Failing to speak up harms society in yet another important way. Allowing each other to utter baseless things without protest degrades the quality of relationships. It erodes our trust in each other.

Consider this true-life example. Many years ago, an acquaintance I’ll call Karen had a tumultuous break-up with Joe, her boyfriend. She was deeply hurt by Joe’s refusal to see her anymore. For several years after that break-up, Karen repeatedly told me that Joe hadn’t really broken up with her. She held to this bizarre conclusion despite the fact that Joe completely stopped calling her and never tried to see Karen again. She held to her bizarre opinion despite the fact that when Karen took the initiative and called Joe, he repeatedly told her such things as “I don’t ever want to see you again” and “I’m dating someone else now” and “I’ll call the police if you don’t leave me alone.” She admitted all of this to me.

Despite the plain meaning of Joe’s words and actions, Karen continued to believe that Joe still loved her deeply. She claimed that Joe would call her and let her phone ring once then hang up (this is before caller ID), but she “knew” it was Joe. She claimed that Joe would sometimes sneak out to her house in the early morning to move Karen’s newspaper from her lawn up to her porch. She never saw him do that, but she “knew” Joe did it. He did these things, Karen said, because he was trying hard to subtlely communicate to her that he still loved her and he wanted to be with her. He just couldn’t get up the nerve to deal with this “difficult issue” face to face, she said. He was shy and introverted and confused, she said.

Karen was highly successful in her challenging profession, arguably brilliant. In our conversations, though, she periodically brought up Joe, and tried to get me to agree with her claim that Joe still loved her. I listened patiently at first, thinking that I was missing something, then I started expressing doubts, which caused Karen to become dramatically frustrated with me that I didn’t “get it.” She desperately clung to her belief that Joe still loved her and was still wooing her in these bizarre ways. No evidence would have convinced her otherwise. Outside of that single strange issue of Joe, Karen and I continued to have a fruitful (yet strained) friendship based upon intellectual ideas we shared.

It became apparent that I couldn’t easily convince Karen that Joe didn’t love her. Yet I continued to gently make my disagreement with Karen known to her. I owed that honesty to her. To push my viewpoint too hard would have driven her back ever more firmly to her totally unsupported belief (this happened several times). Therefore, whenever Karen raised the topic of Joe, I gently yet firmly told her that I disagreed with her and I took some heat for my honesty.

As a friend, it was my duty to let Karen know that her beliefs about Joe made no sense in light of the evidence. For several years, she intensely craved for me to agree with her or at least remain silent when she spoke of Joe’s continuing love for her. It annoyed her immensely whenever I refused to tell her the comforting things she wanted to hear.

It was my job, though, to help Karen identify her poor mental hygiene regarding Joe, even though her belief system caused her pain to bear that thought. Here’s why I had to speak up: as long as Karen made claims that Joe (long-gone Joe) still loved her, Karen was not fully able to be my friend, because I couldn’t fully trust her judgment.

Karen’s beliefs regarding Joe’s continuing and undying love for her eventually faded, but it took years. Eventually, she stopped discussing Joe, I was once again able to fully trust Karen’s judgment.

I hope that the parallels to religious belief are obvious. Moderate believers need to hear from freethinkers for the same reason that freethinkers need to hear from each other. Moderate religious believers need freethinkers to remind them to question outlandish propositions that they have been trained to say (through a lifetime of mostly thoughtless repetition) for the purpose of assuring each other and comforting themselves.

Moderate religious believers need to be reminded that claims of virgin birth and dead people coming alive are as absurd as claims that there are two suns in the sky or that giants live in huge castles on the top of clouds. They need to be reminded that it makes no sense to say that dead humans are sentient, because there is no evidence of this.

All suspicious claims deserve real scrutiny. That many Christian religious claims are based on the Bible should cause thinking moderate Christians to scurry to study the origin of the Epistles and Gospels. If they bothered to study what is known about these early Christian writings, they would be shocked. But the great majority of Christians, including most moderate Christians, don’t want to know about the gaps, errors and self-contradictions in the writings on which they base most of their religious beliefs. With very few exceptions, moderate (and fundamentalist) Christians consciously refuse to consider the extremely shaky basis of their extraordinary religious claims, yet they continue to proclaim their articles of faith as though they were supported by as much evidence the assertion that there is only one sun. Something is obviously wrong with this type of thought process. People who give a damn about their friends don’t sit in silence when their friends engage in such talk.

Wow, I’ve been working on a post like this myself, and this guy pulled it off beautifully. Thank you, Erich Vieth for saying what needed to be said. I will reference this piece for a long time, and will try and supplement it with my own thoughts sometime soon.:

[ Link: How To Deal With Religious Moderates ]

  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • description
  • Google
  • del.icio.us
  • TwitThis
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Print this article!

Viewing 18 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Dan - thank you very much for the kind words. As you can probably tell, this post emerged from decades of frustration. Now if only I could consistently practice what I preach . . .
    • ^
    • v
    You're welcome, and thanks again for the great post...
    • ^
    • v
    Wow, that was great. Think you could do a post sometime with a couple other good blogs in this sort of genre?
    • ^
    • v
    Indeed. As I see them I'll point them out. I'm going to be promoting them via Digg and Reddit too. THIS is the type of thought and commentary that needs to be promoted.
    • ^
    • v
    "You care for your friends, and you don’t want to push your views on them, but at the same time you don’t want them to believe in unfounded concepts such as life after death, castles in the sky, virgin birth, chupacabras, or teapots orbiting Mars."

    I don't get it, why can't I believe in heaven and hell or any of the claims made by Christianity? (I am Roman Catholic btw, but sometimes find myself questioning religion and church itself as well..) But don't tell me there are no facts supporting my reasoning and that because of facts, I shouldn't believe. As far as I'm concerned, you have no facts other than the fact you cannot prove supernatural beings.

    Not all of us Roman Catholics believe entirely in creationism, but evolution, though you still gotta wonder how the hell the big bang even came from.. Not all of us believe a lot of things in the Bible, but many of us do believe in Jesus Christ (who was a real man).

    -sigh, I will probably be flamed for my own beliefs. Try posting such an opinion on digg and you have a bunch of atheists dig you down just because they don't agree with you. You don't believe in God, I do... what's the problem? I can't compare that story of "Karen and Joe" to my faith; to me, it is something much deeper.
    • ^
    • v
    Hi thanks for visiting blog, I'm on the return run. Nice to see some more Ethics-Technology mashup going on.

    "You care for your friends, and you don’t want to push your views on them,"

    Well then do not push your views on them. You do not want to push your views on them *because* you care for them.

    "but at the same time you don’t want them to believe in unfounded concepts such as life after death, castles in the sky, virgin birth, chupacabras, or teapots orbiting Mars."

    Well in that sense it is none of my business what they believe. If my friends believe in life after death, that the Queen is God's representative on earth, that my eating Pork is an abomination or that teapots orbit Mars, what difference does it make to me?

    What are friends for? Why do people make friends at all? If it is just to reclone them in my own image then why even bother? A true friend accepts me as I am. True friends should have not ulterior motives, not matter how much you care about those issues.

    I do not do Windows for ethical reasons, and if I friend asks for help with Windows then I say that I am sorry but I just do not do that. Likewise if a friend offers something for me to smoke or asks me to buy them cigarettes then I just say no thanks. I do not however reject them because they are different from me. Small children cannot tell the difference between themselves and their mothers, grown ups however do not need to throw a fit when someone else is separate and has different beliefs and objectives.

    "It’s a dilemma."

    No its not, just live and let live.

    "How do you point out to a friend or aquaintance that this stuff is silly without being an asshole?"

    I don't. The quoted example is a spurious comparison. The guy also sounds like he is "an asshole" already:

    >Karen was not fully able to be my friend, because I couldn’t fully trust her judgment.

    With friends like that, who needs enemies? The original poster does not seem to release that the past relationship is hard-wired into Karen's brain now, it is part of who she is, that will not change until she meets with someone new. Does that mean I would not trust Karen in other areas? Of course not, if I trusted her to look after my (hypothetical) kids before then I will still trust her now, if I trusted her with money before then I will still trust her now.

    Whatever your believe system, most rational people will accept that we are all human and in some sense flawed and a work in progress.
    • ^
    • v
    To love is to release. Without being willing to let go of our own ideas there can be no new knowledge. So I would like to claim that release/realise must have been an act of subconscious genius but actually I am doing a few things at once (the mouth of fools pours out folly).
    • ^
    • v
    I am also religious. Some would say not enough, but I am comfortable where I am at. I agree with Zeth. I do not preach at my Atheist friends and try and change there religion because I love them for being them. I would like the same respect.
    • ^
    • v
    I can understand both viewpoints, I don't think there is any simple answer here.

    On the one hand, I would expect friends to speak up if I started talking about taking precautions for a bigfoot encounter on my upcoming camping trip. Unfounded beliefs are unhealthy and they have to be challenged otherwise they are reinforced. This principle underlies the psychology of influence and persuasion: people have an innate need to be consistent. The more you restate your beliefs, the stronger they become and harder they become to break.

    On the other hand, my grandmother leans heavily on religion to cope with her husbands death. I am not going to challenge her -- even gently -- when she says a prayer in my presence or mutters some other statements of faith. I would compromise my honesty in this situation to protect her emotionally.

    I have many friends who are quite religious (they have built their families around their beliefs) and not very open minded so I am not sure how to handle those situations.
    • ^
    • v
    At the risk of being accused by those on both sides of this issue of missing the point, let me point out that people have "risen from the dead" many times in history .. indeed it happens all the time. In recent years, medical science has gotten quite good at bringing people back from "death." They even have little gadgets in airports and shopping malls so that everyone has the chance to bring people back from the dead. There are also cases of people being declared dead and then turning out to be alive (in morgues and even in coffins). Additionally, I'm willing to bet that there have been virgin births in the US within the past century. I'd rather not go into the details of how this could happen without any miracles .. but imagine a couple doing everything BUT .. and .. well .. it's actually possible -- and with modern techniques, it's quite a simple medical procedure. So, (if we assume that there IS free will) while anyone is free to believe or not believe whatever they wish, it is NOT true that the idea of the dead coming to life and virgin births are absurd.
    • ^
    • v
    Hey Daniel, Erich,

    Like others said before me, I too find absolutely no reason to try to convince my deist friends and acquaintances that their belief is false or otherwise defective.

    Let me also state this: I believe that the best way to make them reconsider their beliefs is to live a good, successful and moral life as an Atheist. Lay all the claims that Atheists are for some reason bad, immoral or disloyal to rest; be the anti-thesis to their stereotypes.

    Beliefs are like a house of cards. Take a card away, and the house becomes unstable. Take the right one away and tumble it will. One such card in a deist's belief is that Atheists have unfavorable properties. Take this card away, and they will start questioning other components of their belief.

    Lead by example, Daniel and Erich. Be the reason. It's a very gentle, subliminal and powerful persuasive tool.

    -- Arik
    • ^
    • v
    Some cats are black. This does not mean that there is not a brown cat on the planet.

    "Beliefs are like a house of cards. Take a card away, and the house becomes unstable."

    Well some beliefs are, i.e. fundamentalism, that all beliefs are equally important because it all has come from God, or dug up by Joseph Smith or fallen out of the orbiting Martian Teapot. It is unstable because in this fundamentalist case all beliefs are equally divine/inspired. When the house has fallen down, you can realise that actually there are better ways to build a house.

    If I kick a football at the house of cards, even a full-sized house of cards, then it falls down, because all the cards are the same and interdependent. So the strategy would be defence, keep people away from it, do not let one thing come near it.

    However, real houses are not like that. Some bits are made of glass, some of brick and there are steel girders, foundations and neighbouring houses. If I kick a football at my house, then it does not make the house fall down. Even if it takes out a window then the bricks are still there. Even if I get a sledge hammer and knock down a wall, then the girders are there, and so on.

    So I am arguing that there are at least two kinds of faith. One that is based on everything being equally inspired and a complete and perfect system that dropped down from God. The other is different, it is a mix of different elements: experience, history, reason, community and so on. Yes it may seem less satisfying on the outside, and it requires a lot more work, but the end result is far more satisfying.
    • ^
    • v
    Uuuh Zeth, Git off ma propty! Stop messing with my metaphors!!!!1

    Now seriously, you took it too far. What I meant is that, rather than shoving the fact that, rather than shove the fact that I'm an Atheist in people's face and argue unarguable points, I prefer to let people face to the fact that indeed there is an Atheist in their vicinity who is leading a life which is - surprise - at least as moral, full, satisfying as they do, without the need for a deity.

    What you're talking about is realizing you need faith in your life and choosing your path according to the factors you've mentioned. Most people are not like that. I'd say 99% of deists are not like that. They loosely believe in some deity and its power over them, for better - or most likely - for worse. The fact that there is a life possible without it is news to them, hence my metaphor.

    Now look at you - you're writing in an Atheist's blog in a civil way. It means that whatever your faith is, you recognize other people's faith as well, which means that you don't need this lesson anyway. You are at least willing to accept that other people have their own truth.

    -- Arik
    • ^
    • v
    >Now look at you - you’re writing in an Atheist’s blog in a civil way. It means that whatever your >faith is, you recognize other people’s faith as well, which means that you don’t need this lesson >anyway. You are at least willing to accept that other people have their own truth.

    Yup I agree with you completely, wherever you believe truth comes from, no one has a monopoly on it, that is not a rationally sustainable argument in any worldview (except inside a Hollywood movie).

    >I’d say 99% of deists are not like that.

    Well the number is probably less that that but I think we basically agree on 'most'.

    It is also an interesting idea about how we define deists and atheists. I sure the amount of people in the world that consciously describe themselves as 'atheists', in the deep and eloquent way you have described, would easily fit into one football ground with space to spare, (i.e. Manchester United total capacity: 76,212), but if even 1% of those who believe in religion are as I have described, then we are still talking about 40 Million people or more.

    So if we think about the major problems facing the world today, climate change, HIV, poverty, wealth imbalance, war and corruption.

    So given that it is just a few highly educated intellectuals in the west, it is quite unlikely that Atheism has any real hope of making a major difference/improvement to the world. Whereas if we can get 5% or 10% of religious people to care about these issues and act differently, then you have hundreds of millions of people working to make the world better.
    • ^
    • v
    So what?

    Well what I am trying to say is that we are not all the so do not write us all off. For every Osama bin Laden or Dick Cheney, there is a Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi. For those of us that want to make the world a better place, atheists included, need to be willing to accept each other as individuals and to form alliances as communities.

    I personally am not an Atheist. I was brought up in a deeply religious context and it is woven into my soul (/neural pathways), I would feel empty without the rhythm of bread and wine, Christmas and Easter, weddings and funerals, scripture readings, prayer and silence.

    However, as a middle-of-the-road English Christian, I would be considered as liberal heretic by most fundamentalist Christians in the US. For example, I do not believe in the death penalty (which is state murder), I do not believe in gun ownership (which is nuts), I do not believe in withholding abortion (which just leads to backstreet and dangerous abortions) or withholding contraception (which leads to teenage pregnancy), I do not believe in static gender roles (or even in static sexualities), I believe in Darwinism and Evolution and so on and so on.
    • ^
    • v
    All good points, and thanks to Zeth and the other first-timers for showing up and sharing your thoughts...
    • ^
    • v
    As a devout Christian (I'm a practicing Mormon), I found this article very interesting. Not because it made me see myself in a new way, but because it helps me understand how I am viewed by atheists. Apparently, atheists see my belief in God as rational or as founded as a belief in Santa Claus. For me, such a view misses the mark.

    My belief in God is not based on willful delusion, but on empirical (i.e. experiential) evidence. In fact, my acceptance of the religious principles I adhere to are logically built on this evidence. The issue is what you are willing to accept as valid evidence.

    As a trained scientific researcher (in the field of information systems), I have strong respect for the scientific method and consider it to be the best means available have for acquiring knowledge. In using the scientific method, scientists make epistemological decisions to only accept as evidence those predictions of phenomena that are measurable, testable, objective, reproducible, and so on.

    However, not all phenomena are measurable, etc. However, the fact that a certain phenomenon cannot be assessed using the scientific method does not mean that it isn't real. It simply means it is beyond the scope of what science can validate. To claim otherwise would be an obvious fallacy.

    Many human experiences fall into this category. Most personal experiences are not objective or testable. In my case, my acceptance of the existence of God is based on several instances in my life in which I have experienced or "felt" a communication from God. None of these experiences are verifiable using the scientific method, yet they were as real as anything else I have experienced in my life.

    Simply put, I have made a decision to accept these experiences as evidence of the existence of God. In other words, I have broadened my epistemological criteria to accept as valid these profound and highly individualistic experiences.

    The willingness to accept spiritual experiences as evidence is a great divider of theists and atheists. Knowledge gained through spiritual experiences is obviously not scientific, but millions if not billions of people have accepted such knowledge as the basis for their belief. Such acceptance is not unfounded or thoughtless, but rests on experiences that these people consider very real.
    • ^
    • v
    Zeth,

    I like your reasoning but I think your numbers are way off.

    I think that if you look closely you'll find that a lot of the great minds of the 20th century are actually Atheists. I don't agree to your football field theory (although it does make me pretty unique - one in 3 million).

    Moreover I think that there are great people out there that are totally Atheist in much the same I am but don't talk about it or reveal it. When I find someone who's an Atheist in the US, I broach the subject after probing gently for a while. And when we both affirm we're Atheists it's like we both share some sort of a secret. It's not easy to be an Atheist in a more then 90% Deist country. I think there are more closet Atheists among us and you can't really tell. Heck I invoke God every now and then, just to maintain rapport.

    My friends obviously know. Not many others do, even people I'm in constant contact with.

    Now as far as contribution - I would risk going out on a limb and say that I think Atheists contribute more than their relative number in the general population. Here's my half-baked and lame rationalization: If you take all the people who don't question their faith - how can they ponder questions of global magnitude when they don't know themselves? Atheists living in a Deist world must be holding their faith after pondering the possibility of being a Deist and finding it lacking. These vary people are at least capable of independent thought and hence capable of contemplating other problems. I believe then that per capita Atheists contribute more.

    -- Arik
 

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus

My Twitter Microblog

    Discovered Content