My Kind of Atheist

I think I’ve mentioned somewhere in public that I’m now an atheist, even though I grew up in a very Christian family, and I even joined a “cult” at a young age (against disapproving parents). The proximate cause of my atheism was learning physics in college. But I don’t think I’ve ever clarified in public what kind of an “atheist” or “agnostic” I am. So here goes.

The universe is vast and most of it is very far away in space and time, making our knowledge of those distant parts very thin. So it isn’t at all crazy to think that very powerful beings exist somewhere far away out there, or far before us or after us in time. In fact, many of us hope that we now can give rise to such powerful beings in the distant future. If those powerful beings count as “gods”, then I’m certainly open to the idea that such gods exist somewhere in space-time.

It also isn’t crazy to imagine powerful beings that are “closer” in space and time, but far away in causal connection. They could be in parallel “planes”, in other dimensions, or in “dark” matter that doesn’t interact much with our matter. Or they might perhaps have little interest in influencing or interacting with our sort of things. Or they might just “like to watch.”

But to most religious people, a key emotional appeal of religion is the idea that gods often “answer” prayer by intervening in their world. Sometimes intervening in their head to make them feel different, but also sometimes responding to prayers about their test tomorrow, their friend’s marriage, or their aunt’s hemorrhoids. It is these sort of prayer-answering “gods” in which I just can’t believe. Not that I’m absolutely sure they don’t exist, but I’m sure enough that the term “atheist” fits much better than the term “agnostic.”

These sort of gods supposedly intervene in our world millions of times daily to respond positively to particular prayers, and yet they do not noticeably intervene in world affairs. Not only can we find no physical trace of any machinery or system by which such gods exert their influence, even though we understand the physics of our local world very well, but the history of life and civilization shows no obvious traces of their influence. They know of terrible things that go wrong in our world, but instead of doing much about those things, these gods instead prioritize not leaving any clear evidence of their existence or influence. And yet for some reason they don’t mind people believing in them enough to pray to them, as they often reward such prayers with favorable interventions.

Yes, the space of possible minds is vast, as is the space of possible motivations. So yes somewhere in that space is a subspace of minds who would behave in exactly this manner, if they were powerful enough to count as “gods”. But the relative size of that subspace seems to me rather small, relative to that total space. And so the prior probability that all or most nearby gods have this sort of strange motivation also seems to me quite small. It seems a crazy implausible hypothesis.

Yes, the fact that people claim to feel that gods answer their prayers is, all else equal, evidence for that hypothesis. But the other obvious hypothesis to consider here is that people claim this because it comforts them to believe so, not because they’ve carefully studied their evidence. Long ago people had much less evidence on physics and the universe, and for them it was both plausible and socially functional to believe in powerful gods who sometimes responded to humans, including their prayers. This belief became deeply embedded in cultures, cultures which just do not respond very quickly or strongly to recent changes in our best evidence on physics and the universe. (Though they respond quickly enough to make up excuses like “God wants you to believe in him for special reasons.”) And so many still believe that gods answer prayers.

In conclusion, it isn’t crazy to think there are powerful gods far away in space or time, and perhaps close but far in causal connection. But it does seem to me crazy to believe in gods nearby who favorably answer prayers, but who also hide and don’t intervene much in world affairs. That hypothesis seems vastly less likely than the obvious alternative, of slowly updating cultures.

I expect my position to be pretty widely held among thoughtful intellectuals; can we find a good name for it? Prayer-atheists perhaps?