Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart Read online

  We decided to take the time and energy to understand what our core beliefs are and where they come from. Not being able to clearly express our most important beliefs felt like an abdication of our responsibility to engage the world honestly. While our initial intent was to decide for ourselves which beliefs we should hold and the reasons for those beliefs, we also have another motivation: we hope to encourage and convince you to formulate and reflect on your own beliefs. After we walk you through our process, chapter 12 will guide you through the process of committing your own beliefs to paper. We hope this book will be the catalyst for you to seek out a deep understanding of your personal beliefs and for you to find your own Ten Non-commandments. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then the unexamined belief is not worth holding or acting on.

  A Brief Look at the Originals

  The Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments are described in the Bible in Exodus (20:1–17) and again in Deuteronomy (5:1–21). Many people are surprised (as you may be soon) when they read the actual passages. For such an important statement of beliefs, they’re a bit of a mess—nothing like the Ten Commandments most of us learned when we were young. The lists you’ve seen carved into stone monuments are loose abbreviations of the originals. The biblical commandments aren’t neatly demarcated into ten sections, and the passages themselves contain more than ten imperative statements. The original verses are also less restrained than the Sunday school version: they include colorful language about the consequences for those who do not follow them.

  Religious groups differ slightly in how they arrange the commandments, as well as how they rephrase them, although the differences are subtle. The full version of the biblical commandments as listed and grouped in Exodus (20:1–17) in the King James Bible10 is as follows:

  I.

  I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

  II.

  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

  III.

  Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

  IV.

  Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

  V.

  Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

  VI.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  VII.

  Thou shalt not commit adultery.

  VIII.

  Thou shalt not steal.

  IX.

  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

  X.

  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

  A bit different than you remember them? Take the second commandment. It’s usually abbreviated as, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” But, it actually goes on to enumerate much broader prohibitions, and further adds a less-than-veiled threat of God’s punishment for its violation.

  The commandments can be divided into two sections. The first four deal mostly with the relationship between God and humans, while the rest deal with the ethics of human relationships. Our Ten Non-commandments for the Twenty-first Century will also be divided into two sections. The first set will deal with beliefs about the world—what exists, what’s true, and what’s false. These beliefs will satisfy the atheist mind, which values reason, observational data, and evidence. The second set will focus on ethics—how we should behave and treat each other. These beliefs will satisfy the humanist heart, which values human interactions, community, and society.

  Now it’s time to start constructing Ten Non-commandments for the Twenty-first Century.

  I

  A Framework for Facts

  2

  The Paradox of Belief

  “Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  We begin by suggesting a framework of secular belief. It begins with the simple question, How can I justify any of my beliefs?

  When thinking about why we believe in anything, we quickly realize that every belief is based on other preexisting beliefs. Consider, for example, the belief that brushing our teeth keeps them healthy. Why do we believe this? Because brushing helps removes plaque buildup that causes teeth to decay.

  But why do we believe plaque causes decay? Because our dentists, teachers, and parents told us so. Why do we trust what our dentist says? Because other dentists and articles and books we’ve read confirmed it. Why do we believe those accounts? Because they presented many more pieces of information confirming the link between plaque, bacterial growth, and tooth decay. And why do we believe those pieces of information?

  There seems to be no end. It’s like the old story of a learned man giving a public lecture in which he mentions that the earth orbits the sun.1 At the end of the lecture an elderly lady approaches the lectern and sternly informs him that he is wrong: the world, she says, is actually resting on the back of a giant turtle. The learned man smiles and asks, “What is the turtle standing on?” The old lady doesn’t even blink and replies, “Another turtle, of course!” When the learned man starts to respond, “And what is that turtle—” she interrupts him: “You’re very clever, young man . . . but it’s turtles all the way down!”

  Just like that cosmic stack of turtles, the process of justifying beliefs based on other beliefs never ends—unless at some point we manage to arrive at a belief that doesn’t rely on justification from any prior belief. That would be a foundational source of belief.

  But this creates a paradox of its own: we can only justify a belief by basing it ultimately on source beliefs, and source beliefs by definition have no justifying beliefs. So the only way to justify a particular belief is to start with an unjustifiable belief.

  It’s like getting down to the last turtle to find it resting on . . . nothing at all.

  How maddening! Instead of clarifying how we can decide what to believe, we’ve instead proven that the only way to justify beliefs is to acknowledge that certain principles must be accepted without justification.

  But if we can’t justify these source beliefs, how can we figure out which source beliefs are the right ones? How do we know it’s this belief and not the one inside the next fortune cookie? The usual answer is simple: we choose the beliefs that we want to be true. But if we really care about justifying our beliefs, that’s hardly enough. We’ll have to wrestle with the paradox.

  One approach to this challenge is to treat the problem t
he same way mathematicians approach proofs: they determine a core set of assumptions and then prove theorems based on those assumptions. Instead of presuming source beliefs are beliefs based on faith, let’s instead regard them as the starting assumptions for a logical proof. We can put forth a set of core assumptions and then develop a broader system of belief based on those assumptions. If the resulting system fails to create a cohesive and comprehensive system of belief, then we can start over. The initial assumptions can then be reformulated until a set is found that does lead to a consistent, meaningful “theorem of life.”

  As an example of this process we can look at an age-old question confronted by mapmakers: what is the maximum number of colors needed to color a map so that no two regions—whether countries, counties, or any other shapes—share both a border and a color? In 1852, a student at the University of London named Francis Guthrie took on the challenge while coloring a map of English counties. He realized that, despite the convoluted shapes of some counties and the fact that each shares borders with many other counties, no more than four colors seemed necessary. If he would alternate colors between adjacent neighboring counties he found that he didn’t need more than four colors to complete the map. So he made an intuitive assumption that only four colors were sufficient for any map or combination of shapes, real or manufactured, no matter how complex or how arranged. If his assumption were correct, you could throw a handful of cutout shapes on a table—triangles, snowflakes, wavy lines, whatever—and need no more than four colors to color the resulting mess.

  The four-color theorem, as it was known, was simple to test but devilishly hard to prove. Generations of mapmakers after Guthrie tested it with every map they made and, sure enough, no one ever needed a fifth color. But this was not the same as proof, of course. There was always the possibility that the next map would need more than four colors. Still, even though the assumption could never be entirely proven by real-world testing, with every successful application of the theorem the odds of such an exception diminished, and confidence in it justifiably increased.

  It wasn’t until 1976 that a team of mathematicians at the University of Illinois finally harnessed the power of a computer to solve the theorem.2 (Interestingly, another, more powerful computer was required to test the solution of the first, and that wasn’t achieved until 2005.)3

  Like the four-color theorem, an unproven assumption can be tested to see if it generates a coherent result. The more it does so, the more the confidence in that theorem may increase—even if it is never fully proven.

  The approach of treating starting beliefs as assumptions removes the predicament of not knowing how to pick and choose between unjustifiable beliefs. If these beliefs are going to be rudimentary enough to form the basis of any belief system, no other system can be used to pick them because such a system would then become a core belief itself. By adopting the notion of starting assumptions, there’s no need to be forced to choose source beliefs. Rather, different combinations of these beliefs can be evaluated in light of the results they yield.

  As you will see, the heuristic of this entire book is that we need to be willing to reassess our lives with empirical checks. We need to continuously test our assumptions rather than presuppose them. We must look at everything with fresh eyes and not adopt the biases of others.

  Tools for Evaluating Assumptions

  Two other ideas may be useful in selecting a set of starting assumptions. The first is to favor simplicity. This is called Ockham’s razor, after the fourteenth-century philosopher and theologian William of Ockham. The “razor” refers to any principle that helps narrow possibilities. This principle states that the answer that requires the fewest assumptions while explaining all of the facts is most likely to be correct.

  For example: after taking a stroll one evening, you notice that the lights are on in your apartment. You come up with two possible explanations:

  You forgot to turn them off when leaving the house.

  Your neighbor was baking cookies and didn’t have milk at home, so he came into your apartment to borrow milk, turned on the lights when he came in, and never turned them off when he left.

  The first hypothesis requires only one assumption—that you forgot to turn the lights off. The second hypothesis requires several assumptions—that your neighbor was baking cookies, wanted milk to go with the cookies, didn’t have any milk, thought your apartment was the best place to get some, was able to get into your apartment, and left the lights on when he was finished. Both would explain the facts you can see, but if we apply Ockham’s razor, we would favor the first hypothesis since it requires fewer assumptions.

  If we apply the razor to our search for source beliefs, it follows that a system of beliefs that requires fewer source beliefs has a greater likelihood of being valid. In other words, the fewer leaps of faith (unjustifiable source beliefs) required in order to create a system of belief, the less faith we need and the more confident we can be in the outcome.4

  Of course, it’s possible to misuse this concept—typically by ignoring the requirement to explain all the facts. For example, the hypothesis that height alone determines a person’s weight is a lot simpler than the notion that the complex interplay of a few dozen genes, diet, and exercise does so. But the simpler explanation fails to explain all the facts—namely, the stunning range of actual variation we see in real-life height-to-weight ratios. The five-foot-five sumo wrestler who weighs a hundred pounds more than the six-foot-nine basketball player presents an instant (and fatal) problem for the simpler answer. Thus, simpler is better so long as it explains all the facts.

  A second tool for choosing basic source beliefs is to think about what it would mean to deny a particular source belief. In other words, if a particular belief were not true, would the resulting worldview make sense? To return to the mapmaker’s problem, the very first map that required five colors would have rendered the four-color theorem invalid.

  There are often logical consequences to accepting or rejecting an assumption, even if it can’t be justified with prior assumptions. Evaluating the consequences of beliefs can be helpful in determining what type of assumptions may be needed to form a valid system of belief.

  We have to be careful with this tool as well. The best example of its misuse might be the “argument from consequences.” God’s existence is often assumed to be true because so many people think the consequences of his nonexistence would be terrible.5

  But you can’t argue that something is false solely because it produces consequences that are not good. Otherwise you’d have an argument that the Holocaust never happened because the world would be better if it hadn’t. On the other hand, you can argue that something is false because it produces consequences that are not true.

  The Most Basic of Assumptions

  At this point, our discussion is limited to beliefs about what facts we should believe. Later we’ll approach the more complex but essential question of how we should behave.

  We propose that to develop a coherent framework of factual belief, we need to accept three core assumptions:

  An external reality exists.

  Our senses perceive this external reality.

  Language and thought are tools for describing and understanding what our senses perceive.

  In the study of philosophy, the belief in the above three assumptions is known as “perspectival realism.” These three assumptions are so elemental that we take them for granted in our everyday lives. But it’s worth examining them in some depth since they will form the cornerstone of all subsequent beliefs we will discuss.

  External Reality

  A belief in an external reality is the acceptance that the world, universe, and everything in it physically exist and are real. It is a belief that the world is independent of the way any individual thinks about it.6 The opposite would be to believe in a mind-created reality, or a reality that resides sole
ly in our minds or our dreams.

  It is not possible to definitively prove that the world we exist in is indeed an external reality. Reality is perceived only through the perspective of the mind, so the whole thing could just be an illusion.7 But the reality is that in daily life, we all assume that objects we see actually exist and that our fellow humans can also interact with and perceive them. Anyone who feels uncomfortable with accepting the notion of an external reality should ask why, when leaving a two-story building, he or she would rather walk down the stairs than take a shortcut by just hopping out the window.8 In real life, we don’t jump out of windows thinking we’ll just float down to the sidewalk unharmed, and we certainly don’t behave as if reality were just a figment of our imaginations. Rather, our daily actions show that we take for granted that the world around us is real and that we exist within it.

  The existence of an external reality allows for a much greater concept —that “truth” is simply an accurate description of what is. It is our contention that reality and truth are the same thing. The world that exists around us right now is a truth. The fact that the air we inhale with each breath consists mostly of nitrogen and oxygen is a truth. The audible words that someone says are a truth. What that person actually means by those words is a truth as well, whether or not others know it. A truth or fact is simply an accurate account of reality. A belief in the contrary—in a subjective view of reality—would deny the existence of facts or certainties. From that perspective, truth becomes a relative concept. My truth—not just my opinions or experience, but my actual truth in apprehension of the universe—could be different from yours.

  Consider an example of two friends, both passionate fans of a college basketball team that finished an exciting, record-setting season but lost the conference championship in a squeaker. One claims that the season was a huge success because the team won most of its games and played better than ever before. But the other claims that the season was a failure because they lost the most important game—the championship. Each friend offers differing interpretations of the season, and they even offer different views on what events actually took place in some of the games. But a set of facts exists and is real, whether or not the friends see eye to eye and regardless of their different interpretations—games won and lost, points scored, assists, fouls, the works. The facts happened, even if people differ on what those facts meant.