With whom are we debating?

Over the years I’ve had the privilege of being able to discuss religion frankly and openly with a number of religious people I count as friends, from a few different religions and a variety of different denominations and traditions within those religions. They don’t mind when I ask challenging questions — some of them even encourage it, relishing the challenge as an opportunity to “grow in their faith.” I value learning about their beliefs and why they believe them, because I think it’s really important that we try to understand each other as much as possible; this is a central part of working towards a healthy society. I also value the opportunity to express the reasons why I am an atheist, and the reasons why I don’t buy their religions’ particular claims.

That’s where we run into a bit of trouble, though — the particular claims. When I mention to a Christian my encounters with aggressive street preachers who tell me to fear for my soul because nonbelievers go to hell, they tell me that they don’t share those views about the afterlife. When I ask a Jew why they avoid pork and shellfish but have no problem with trimmed sideburns and poly-cotton blends, I get some mumbled incoherence about how God didn’t really mean those commandments. When I talk to a Muslim about how some believers quote the Qur’an to justify suicide bombings and the attacks on cartoonists, they say that’s not what jihad really means, and that real Muslims believe in peace. I hear a lot about the religious beliefs they don’t have. It’s hard to pin them down on specifics they’ll actually stand behind. You know … people make mistakes, they’ll say, and people wrote the scriptures. You have to think of that metaphorically. Things are lost in translation. God is beyond human comprehension and therefore indescribable in human terms.

When I do manage to find a particular belief we can actually talk about, I end up encountering a lot of deflections. If I raise a good question — one which my friend recognizes is important, but which they are unable to answer — I’m told, “I’ll ask my [pastor/rabbi/imam].” Or better yet, “I read something that addressed exactly this issue. I’ll try to find it for you so you can read it.” Actual answers rarely materialize. It’s hard to know whether they honestly forgot to look into it, or whether they are just ducking the question (consciously or subconsciously).

I think we experience a very similar dynamic as atheist bloggers. When we find an article or a video defending a perspective that we want to respond to, it’s hard to know how representative of believers it truly is. And you’ve probably read — on your own blog, or on blogs you read — reply after reply from offended members of whatever religion the piece claimed to represent, upset because it wasn’t “true [insert religion here]” and the atheist response was attacking a straw man. Or they’ll make vague assertions that you’ll keep questioning until they try to foist you off on somebody else’s supposedly more authoritative answer, which they assume is a satisfactory refutation (even though it’s just more of the same vague assertions).

This phenomenon comes about, I suspect, because what we are advocating is a lack of belief. We are not exactly arguing for one set of beliefs over another set of beliefs. Atheists have a wide variety of opinions; there is no single “atheist worldview.” However, we are unified in that when we advocate atheism, we are arguing that people who believe in god/s should stop believing in them. On the other hand, believers are not a unified group. According to christianity.about.com, there are approximately 38,000 denominations of Christianity alone. And that says nothing of the fact that people often “belong” to a particular denomination but have their own personal nuanced interpretations that may differ from “official” doctrine. You can try to dispute “the tenets of Christianity,” but good luck figuring out exactly what those are in the mind of the person you happen to be talking to at the time!

My point is — if two believers from different traditions debate each other, they know at least roughly where their religious beliefs differ, and they can focus on those areas. They can’t cede points to each other without effectively converting to the other religion. But in the case of when an atheist debates a theist — since the atheist is basically just saying, “Probably not,” in response to any particular religious belief — the theist can shift around (again, consciously or subconsciously), claiming to agree with the atheist on any one instance of “probably not” but leaving their precise beliefs unspecified.

Additionally, most atheists — well, most of the ones who debate religion — have spent a lot of time working out for themselves exactly what they do and do not believe. On the other hand, aside from the fact that many religious traditions actively discourage independent critical thought regarding one’s beliefs, many many believers were brought up in relatively homogeneous communities and just always assumed that the religion they inherited from their parents was worth believing. Many of them have never even considered why they are the religion that they are. (Don’t believe me? Ask around.)

It’s not so surprising that traditions that rely on the unquestioned authority of ancient scriptures, or on the power of a hierarchical structure to discern holy truths, tend to foster an attitude in believers that it’s okay to pass tough questions on to someone who probably knows the answer. Don’t worry about it. The answer must be there somewhere. Some smart person must have figured it out, right? Right? But atheism has no high priests and no holy scriptures.

So. When we debate faith with the faithful, what are we really debating and who are we really debating with? It’s important to figure out whether you are arguing with (for example) a “Christian,” a “Ukranian Greek Catholic Christian,” a “reformed missional evangelical Christian,” a “New Apostolic Pentecostal Christian,” or a “quasi-agnostic Presbyterian-by-default who thinks the Bible is pretty cool and thinks Jesus was a guy who said some good stuff a lot of the time.”  It’s important to figure out whether you are arguing with the actual individual you are talking to, or with some as-yet-unmentioned book by a famous theologian, or with every leader of every congregation that that individual’s been a member of.

The thing is, I know I’m not going to convince Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Rabbi Hillel to be an atheist. And I’m not going to convince Gregory Koukl and people like him to be an atheist. It’s hard to see the point in arguing over their writings directly. That’s why I also think that it’s good for us atheists to decide — each of us, for ourselves — what our goals in debating actually are. Are you trying to “evangelize” to individuals, to pull them out of their religion and “deconvert” them personally? Or are you trying to get a bunch of information out there  so that those believers who are already starting to question their belief will get some further prompting, some food for thought? Or something else altogether? There’s room for many different goals, but I find that if I don’t have a clear one in mind before engaging in a conversation, it’s easy to be disappointed — almost any outcome will feel like a “failure.”

Tell me in the comments — how do you define your goals for debate with theists? With whom do you usually find yourself actually debating, and is that meeting your goals?