FADEW
Get Your Muzzled Words Spoken
Fadew's inaugural edition
Spring 2022 Vol-1 March 2022
Published articles represent the views of the author and may not reflect the opinions of all contributors at Fadew.
14 Reeves Mews, London W1K 2EG, UK e-mail: support@fadew.eu.org
CONTENTS pg.03
pg.10
NO GOD REQUIRED
IS ‘DEIST’ OR ‘AGNOSTIC’ MORE PC THAN ‘ATHEIST?’
No, god is not the key to meaning and purpose in life.
Atheism, Deism, Agnosticism: Which philosophy is more politically accurate culturalized?
pg.08
pg.14
THE SNEAKY THREAT OF PASCAL’S WAGER
MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
If your religion really is true, then you’ll have something more than a threat at hand when I ask you why I should believe.
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
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Photo by Jonathan Borba from Pexels
Who we are, our goal, what's to come.
MEANING AND PURPOSE WITH 'NO GOD REQUIRED'
Let’s take a look at some studies which indicate that religion correlates with a strong sense of life meaning. A case study of the population of Memphis found that when religion played an important role in someone’s life, they had a heightened sense of life meaning and purpose.1
Is god the key to meaning and purpose in life? It seems that way if we trust mainstream opinions typically presented in the media and in bestselling books such as Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. Moreover, there is some scientific support for that viewpoint.
A nationwide study found that those who had more confidence in god had a higher sense of life meaning and purpose compared to doubters and nonbelievers.2 Global studies found similar outcomes.3, 4
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D.
Plenty of studies show that a deep sense of meaning and purpose correlates with strong religious belief, and religious fundamentalists use these studies to support their perspective. As a professor who researches the intersection of psychology and history, including life meaning and purpose, I was very surprised when I first learned about these studies. I found their conclusions hard to believe. So I started digging deeper into the data and found a much more complex story.
For example, forms of worship that don’t promote social connectedness do not correlate with a heightened sense of satisfaction or meaning in life. One study showed that affiliation with a religion practiced in a communal setting leads to a higher degree of life satisfaction than when religious devotion is practiced in private settings.5 Another investigation also found that deeply personal religion, as opposed to group-oriented religion, did not correlate with a greater sense of happiness and life meaning.6 These results should give pause to any intellectually honest person examining the ties between religion, meaning, and purpose.
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I want to share my findings with you and tell you what the research actually says about how we, as reason-oriented, secular people can use a science-informed approach to gain a deep sense of purpose with no god required.
However, after I read these studies carefully and took in all of the information, some questions arose in my mind.
After all, the data seem to show that socially-oriented religion practiced within a community leads to a stronger sense of life meaning and purpose, while private and inner-oriented religious practice does not. In that case, is it religion alone, or are there other factors included in religious affiliation that lead to a deep sense of life meaning? There are additional studies that conclusively demonstrate that social affiliation is key to a deep sense of purpose, regardless of religious belief. Take, as an example, four studies that show a significant correlation between a person’s sense of belonging and their perception of life meaning and purpose. When researchers in two of the studies asked participants about a sense of belonging and purpose, they found clear correlations. When the tricky researchers in the other two studies used priming techniques to cause participants to artificially experience a sense of belonging, they found that their methods resulted in a much higher perception of life meaning.7,8
A sense of meaning and purpose is neurologically wired to social connectedness because our ancestors who had this sense outcompeted the ones who did not. In the United States and many countries in the world—especially in South America and in Africa—religious communities are currently the main venue for reflecting on questions of meaning and purpose in life, as well as the main source of community bonds. This supports the studies indicating that religious belief is correlated with a strong sense of purpose. But contradictory support is provided by research on societies that are less religious and more secular. For example, my research on the Soviet Union illustrates how Soviet civic groups and cultural centers, all non-religious, offered citizens many opportunities to find meaning and purpose in life, as well as fun and pleasure.9,10 Present-day societies with a more secular orientation than that of the United States have similar stories to tell, as illustrated by research on contemporary Denmark and Sweden.11
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Such findings should not be surprising. Quite a bit of recent neuroscience research underscores the vital role that social bonds play in how our brains function.
Our brains are inherently sociable as a result of our evolution.
These findings offer much hope for secular people who want to develop and enrich their sense of life purpose. One way to do so is through social connections, especially ones that allow us to engage with other secular folks. One example is a series of discussion events I co-founded and led with my wife, Agnes Vishnevkin, as part of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, a local affiliate of American Atheists. Our “Values and Meanings” series provided a reasonoriented venue for secular people to communally reflect on life’s meaning and purpose, as well as personal values and ethics from an evidence-based perspective. At one of the meetings, we were sitting around a table in our home with about eight guests discussing the nature of truth and morality. Some said that truth is generally black and white— whether something is true or not. Others insisted that truth has many gray areas. Folks also disagreed on whether it is always moral, to tell the truth, or whether there are sometimes higher morals than telling the truth.
One participant in his fifties stated that for him, family bonds are more important than sharing one’s real feelings, and although he has been an Atheist for two decades, he has not revealed this to his extended family because that would cause a major rift. Another woman talked about her own experience of coming out gradually to various family members and friends over time in private, personal conversations. She found that doing so helped her preserve the relationships and helped the people in her life feel respected and acknowledged.
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One scenario was brought up by a participant in her thirties—let’s call her “Anna”—who became an Atheist about six months ago. She comes from a deeply religious household and is openly Atheist with her nuclear family but not with her extended family. She had a big annual family reunion coming up in two weeks, and Anna didn’t know what to do.
Should she just conform and pray aloud over dinner along with everyone else? Should she bow her head silently without praying along with the others? Should she keep her head up and refuse to do anything to appear to conform? Should she walk out of the room when the others were praying? She also didn’t know what to do about the family tradition of everyone dressing up and going to church on Sunday as part of the reunion. She wasn’t sure how to handle conversations with extended family members about her faith perspective. Anna was lost and confused. While she didn’t want to cause a scene, she did want to be authentic with the people in her life. She asked everyone for advice and feedback on her dilemma, and other participants provided her with empathy, as well as diverse perspectives from their own backgrounds and life journeys.
They both advised Anna against making any sort of public statement at the reunion, either through words or actions. Several others disagreed. One participant described how she came out publicly to family members at just such an event to get it over with quickly. She said there was a burst of drama and emotional pain, but then it ended— like ripping off a Band-Aid. Another participant suggested that Anna get the job done by e-mailing the family members beforehand in order to prevent any drama at the reunion. That way, anyone who wanted to talk to her could do so privately.
Such findings indicate that religious communities which generally expect adherents to stick to an externallyimposed dogma do not allow for the deepest sense of life meaning and purpose. So believing in god and going to church is not the only way to attain a strong sense of life meaning and purpose. You can gain it through personal selfreflection, perhaps by journaling about your own sense of purpose. You can also join a local secular group for community ties and the chance to reflect on life’s purpose and meaning from a reason-based perspective. You can use science-based strategies to find meaning and purpose in life—with no god required!
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Two other participants simply refused to acknowledge any value higher than being true and authentic to oneself and one’s perspective. They stated that Anna should do only what would reflect the truth. In the end, Anna decided to write an e-mail to her extended family members. I talked with her at a subsequent gathering, and she described how e-mailing family members in advance worked out really well. Those who cared enough about the issue to have a private conversation pulled her aside to do so. Others simply accepted it. She sat in silence without bowing her head at the dinner and did not go to church with the others. No drama, minimal pain, and she still got the truth out there. Participants gained a great deal from attending this event. On the anonymous feedback sheets passed around after the event, one participant wrote, “I gained greater insight into how other people navigate difficult discussions regarding truth and values when not all parties agree.”
Another wrote that they will now “always question ‘my truth’” and will engage in “thinking more about what I hold true.” A third wrote that “building a sense of community is what I gained.” Does it matter what kind of meaning and purpose you come to? The research on this question suggests that when it comes to gaining greater mental and physical health, it doesn’t. The process is what’s important, not the outcome. The research also indicates that those of us who ask this question in a setting that does not expect conformity to a specific dogma are the ones who are more likely to gain a deeper perception of meaning and purpose. In other words, the most impactful sense of meaning and purpose stems from an intentional analysis of one’s selfunderstanding and path in life along with a subsequent experience of personal agency and empowerment.
About the author A member of the Decision Sciences Collaborative at The Ohio State University, where he is also an assistant professor in the History Department, Newark Campus. He is the founder and president of Intentional Insights, which empowers reason-oriented people to refine and reach their goals by understanding their patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior. Endnotes
Also available tp read online at:https://www.fadew.eu.org/2021/12/meaning-and-purpose-with-god-required.html
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1. Petersen, L.R. and A. Roy, “Religiosity, Anxiety, and Meaning and Purpose: Religion's Consequences for Psychological Well-Being,” Review of Religious Research, vol. 27, no. 1 (1985), pp. 49-62. 2. Cranney, S., “Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 52, no. 3 (2013), pp. 638-646. 3. Okulicz-Kozaryna, A., “Religiosity and Life Satisfaction Across Nations,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture, vol. 13, no. 2 (2010), pp. 155-169. 4. Crabtree, S. and B. Pelham, “The Complex Relationship Between Religion and Purpose: Worldwide Data Show Religious Conviction isn’t necessary, But It Helps,” Gallup.com, December 24, 2008. 5. Bergan, A. and J.T. McConatha, “Religiosity and Life Satisfaction,” Activities, Adaptation & Aging, Vol. 24, no. 3 (2001), pp. 23-34.
Sillick, W.J. and S. Cathcarta, “The Relationship Between Religious Orientation and Happiness: The Mediating Role of Purpose in Life,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Vol. 17, no. 5 (2014), pp. 494-507. Lambert, N.M. et al., “To Belong Is to Matter: Sense of Belonging Enhances Meaning in Life,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 39, no. 11 (2013), pp. 1418-1427. M. F. Steger, “Making Meaning in Life.” Psychological Inquiry Vol. 23, no. 4 (2012), pp. 381385. Tsipursky, G., Find Your Purpose Using Science, Intentionalinsights.org (2015). Tsipursky, G., “Having Fun in the Thaw.” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies no. 2201 (2012), pp. 1-67. Zuckerman, P., Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment. New York University Press (2008), pp. 57-75.
THE SNEAKY THREAT OF PASCAL’S WAGER J.T. Eberhard
In 2010, I visited a different church every week. Since I’m in the US, most of them were some denomination of Christianity. During these services, I never joined the congregation in standing, singing, or praying because it seemed the natural thing for a nonbeliever to do (or not do). Of course, this always gave me away as an outsider. I suspect this is why, after almost every service, people migrated toward me like white blood cells to infection, welcoming me and asking my name. “I’m JT,” I would respond warmly. “I’m an Atheist. Could you tell me why you think I should believe?” I enjoyed these chats, though I must admit none of them ever managed to convince me that god or Jesus is real. Far and away, the most common reason people offered was Pascal’s Wager. Pascal’s Wager says that you have everything to gain by believing in God and everything to lose if you don’t.
Alternately, if you choose not to have faith, then your best-case scenario after death is that you were right, and you will simply cease to experience the world. Your worst-case scenario is that you were wrong and will go to hell. So whether it’s reasonable or not, why not go with the first option just to make sure you’re covered? I came up with these possibilities on my own when I was eight years old, long before I ever even heard of Blaise Pascal and long before I learned that lots of people ponder this question early in life. There are several solid rebuttals to Pascal’s Wager, with Sam Harris’ response being the one I hear most often: “If the wager were valid, it could be used to justify any belief system (no matter how ludicrous) as a ‘good bet.’ Muslims could use it to support the claim that Jesus was not divine (the Quran states that anyone who believes in the divinity of Jesus will wind up in hell); Buddhists could use it to support the doctrine of karma and rebirth, and the editors of Time could use it to persuade the world that anyone who reads Newsweek is destined for fiery damnation” (SamHarris.org/site/full_text/the-emp).
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In other words, if you choose to have faith, the best-case scenario after death is that you were right, and you will go to heaven.
The worst-case scenario for someone with faith will be nothing more than ceasing to experience the world after they die.
But I’ve never heard anyone else respond to the wager the way I do. This shocks me because the one thing I’ve learned of philosophy is that every good “original” idea you have was already conceived by someone else at least a few centuries ago. Pascal’s Wager doesn’t argue that a proposition is true, it just promises more benefits than the alternative(s). If the standard for your beliefs is for them to be true, then Pascal’s Wager doesn’t help you. The wager applies equally to any proposition that includes a threat (and/or promise of a reward). For instance, what if I told you that invisible, incorporeal Smurfs are everywhere, waiting for you to die so they can tickle your soul for all of eternity? You’d probably say I was mad (and rightly so). But what if I added that your soul could be ferried off to an eternal paradise as long as you also believed in an equally invisible, equally incorporeal knight named Cletus— and, if you want, give me $10 every week so I can continue to try and save other souls from the clutches of the Smurfs. Again, you’d probably say I was mad. (Again, rightly so.)
J.T. Eberhard is the co-founder of the Skepticon conference and served as the event’s lead organizer for its first three years. His blog, What Would J.T. Do?, is at Patheos.com/Blogs/WWJTD.
Available to read onlinehttps://www.fadewblogs.eu.org/2021/12/thesneaky-threat-of-pascals-wager.html
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The absurdity of these propositions does not change if there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by believing—and nothing to gain and everything to lose by not believing. And even if you could turn a belief into truth by threatening someone, these claims are still silly.
Forming our views around threats is a terrible way to determine what’s true. We should believe things because they are reasonable, because they are supported by evidence, and because they are consistent with how we know the universe to work. A man who walked on water and rose from the dead doesn’t fit that bill any better than spectral Smurfs. We’re usually contemptuous of people who threaten us. But slide a threat beneath the promise of infinite paradise, and it becomes the most popular argument for god’s existence. If your religion really is true, then you’ll have something more than a threat at hand when I ask you why I should believe. Sadly, though, it’s what I hear from most from believers, who usually couch their argument in assurances of Christian love. Even as they threaten me.
IS ‘DEIST’ OR ‘AGNOSTIC’ MORE PC THAN ‘ATHEIST?’ By Gil Gaudia, Ph.D.
I believe that almost all the freethinking skeptics I know who refuse to call themselves Atheists do so for one or both of two reasons—one emotional and the other intellectual. I’ll try to spell these out in some coherent manner, although they are not easy to separate. In fact, emotions frequently influence the intellectual, and in the relatively rare instances when the reverse is true, another Atheist may be born.
Atheists like Einstein, Hawking, Gould, and Spinoza are unable to overcome the religious indoctrination of their childhood, so decades later and despite achieving great intellectual stature and scientific acumen, they grope for a connection between the absurdities of their traditions and the common sense of their reason and apply to themselves descriptions like “pantheist,” “agnostic,” “deist,” and other philosophical disguises.
At times it is hard to say which is which. Is it ever possible to make an intellectual decision that is not mediated by our emotions? The fear of renouncing or rejecting the Christian god is a powerful one and its roots run deep into the psyche of even the most logical of scientists like Albert Einstein.
Fear that is implanted early and deeply, usually by priests, nuns, and parents who need a weapon to encourage compliance, is virtually impossible to eradicate. It need not, however, be imposed overtly by some maniacal nun or parent.
He claimed he believed in the god of Baruch Spinoza, a well-known pantheist philosopher who said that “God” was “Nature.” Stephen Hawking, the worldrenowned cosmologist, whom I greatly admire, plays the same game.
I still respond emotionally to the “Ave Maria” and the soaring strains of the “Intermezzo” from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, because of mysterious but pleasant early childhood associations, and have to remind myself that “It’s only music, Gil.”
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The late Stephen Jay Gould went so far as to advocate NOMA—Non-Overlapping Magisteria—by which he meant that there are two domains of knowledge, the religious and the scientific, an absurdity in which “never the twain should meet.”
Even people like me who were raised without formal religious instruction, manage to absorb it early on through the culture where it is conveyed through friends, schools, the media, music, art, and literature.
One Atheist professor friend of mine who enjoyed reading my American Atheist Magazine refused a gift subscription from me because he did not want the mailman to see the word “Atheist” on mail being delivered to him in the Mississippi town where he taught. The word itself carries with it a subtle negative tone like “communist” or “homosexual” because of repeated cultural and political portrayals of undesirability and deliberate connections with “evil.” Fear of being tarred with the brush that smears radical Atheists like the reviled Madalyn Murray O’Hair, or the abrasive Christopher Hitchens—does not help to allay the general fear that leads almost invariably to many Atheists saying more politically correct things like: “I’m really an agnostic, I just don’t know,” or “I’m a Deist like Thomas Paine,” or “I believe in the Great Watchmaker who created the universe and stepped back to allow it to run” and, of course, the banal “I think there has to be something that started the Big Bang.”
They fall back on what is sometimes called the God of the Gaps. What caused the Big Bang is currently unexplained, so it is not able to be a complete theory and therefore a god must be the answer. The implication is that a god was the ‘uncaused first cause.’ This is a frequent ploy of liberal Christians who have a motive for such equivocation, but agnostics and other freethinkers should know better. There are numerous refutations of this ‘argument from personal incredulity or ‘argument from ignorance.’ For me, the best reason is that it is pointless to substitute one mystery for another. If the Christian god could have always existed, then why couldn’t the universe have always existed? One ‘uncaused cause’ is as good as another. The meaning of ‘god’ as it has been conveyed to us through countless religions including the contemporary few major players—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism—is not consistent with any of the tenets of science, reason, logic, or mathematics, to name a few products of human intellectual potential.
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These terms like agnostic and deist have more acceptable connotations because they allow for some theistic possibility, hence they elicit a more likely positive response from believers, or to put it another way, they are less likely to be rejected.
Harsher critics than I might call it pandering. It reminds me of a gangster who is basically a decent guy who rubs out a store clerk just to gain respectability with the gang. Many nascent Atheists hesitate to accept Atheism because of what they see as the limitations of scientific knowledge or gaps in science’s ability to explain the cosmos.
To remain compatible with educated, information-oriented human intelligence, strategies like renaming or redefinition the meaning of terms has to be employed.
It is a platitude that derives from ‘without knowledge’ or ‘to not know,’ and while it is usually applied to theological subjects, one can be agnostic about anything.
As Stephen Hawking’s assistant wrote to me in response to a query about Hawking’s frequent references to “God” in his wonderful book A Brief History of Time, published in 1981, “When Professor Hawking uses the term God, he is referring to the laws of the universe.”
In fact, in the strictly empirical sense, almost everyone is agnostic about almost everything. We simply cannot know very much, as René Descartes so famously pointed out when after tortuous introspection in the first two of his six “Meditations on First Philosophy” he concluded, “Cogito ergo sum” . . . “I think, therefore I am.” No one knows if there is a god. Not even the Pope. You either believe there is or you don’t. In either case, you do not know. Knowing is not the same as believing.
Straws have to be grasped at, like the invocation of quantum physics (which none of the invokers understands) or quasi-scientific proposals of neurobiologists who find trivial electronic indications on sensitive brain-monitoring instruments sufficient reason to proclaim biological proof of a god. All of this derives from fear in the broadest sense, meaning response to a perceived present or future threat, occurring in the face of danger. Fear is probably one of a few innate emotions.
In my opinion, the most inept description in all of philosophy, and probably the most widely invoked, is the word ‘agnostic.’
Despite this obvious fact that no one knows if there is a god, many Atheists, rather than saying simply and unequivocally, “I do not believe that a god exists,” adopt the evasive strategy of calling themselves agnostics, which saves their proverbial hides while allowing them to retain an illusion of acceptability. .Because everyone “doesn’t know” if a god exists, we are all agnostics, which of course illuminates nothing and renders the description useless.
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It may be the fear of Hell, the fear of gods, the fear of retribution, the fear of Karma, or any of a number of imaginary consequences, as well as rational fears like accident, disease, or venomous snakes. In any case, it influences the intellectual process.
You can believe in anything you want, including Bertrand Russell’s famous celestial “china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit,” but to know that it exists is another matter.
Think about it. I think that what most people who reject the appellation “Atheist,” seem to want is the luxury of having the intellectual satisfaction of not believing in absurdities, along with the emotional comfort of protecting their image among those who might matter, and most importantly, they want to have an insurance policy against some god’s wrath.
A former professor emeritus at State University of New York and an ex-editorial assistant at American Atheists magazine. He used to reside in Eugene, Oregon, with Jeanne Gaudia, his wife until she passed away in 2015, and he on April 2021. He was an amateur astronomer and still used to play handball at the time of writing this article in 2015.
Blaise Pascal said it best in what is known as “Pascal’s Wager” when he advocated: “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is . . . If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” To which I add, “and call yourself a deist, or better yet, an agnostic." Published posthumously in memory of Gil Gaudia, Ph.D., Orginally written in 2009. Available to read online at: https://www.fadew.eu.org/2021/12/is-deist-or-agnosticmore-pc-than.html
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IT'S JUST THE START
-SHOAIB RAHMAN Editor
Cover images by: Photo by Anna Shvets
FADEWE | SPRING 2022
This is the very first issue of our printed magazine, Fadew will be published quarterly every year. We advocate free expression and liberalism in society. We seek to be a platform where your muzzled words get spoken. Our future editions will be much thorough in size. Hope you stick around. Please visit our website www.fadew.eu.org for more information.
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