A friend yesterday remarked that my article about faith and skepticism doesn’t really deal with the kind of faith that the religious fanatics have.

But of course it doesn’t. I’m not defending the religious fanatics. In fact, they are a part of the same problem as the skeptics, because skeptics summarily reject perfectly sufficient evidence just because they don’t like it, and the religious fanatics choose to believe in things for which no good evidence is provided. So the choice isn’t really between those two, it’s between them and a reasonable approach, where you believe in things based on the evidence that you personally have, but without expectations that others need to accept this evidence.

But first, let’s quantify faith.

Type 1 faith is the faith I have in the fact that my car is still parked in front of the house, if my wife didn’t take it to go somewhere. There’s always a possibility that it was stolen, or that the aliens abducted it, or maybe I’m completely crazy and I’m deluding myself that I have a car, but the reasonable assumption is that it’s where I left it. I can’t verify it from where I’m sitting right now because my workplace is across the building, but I believe it’s there based on my memory and application of reason. If you don’t have this kind of faith, you are mentally ill and you are incapable of performing any kind of common tasks, because in almost everything we rely on memory, and we don’t constantly go around the house to re-check that the kitchen is still there just because we don’t see it from the bathroom. If there is no valid reason to assume that something changed from the last time we established the facts, it’s reasonable to have faith that the gravitational constant is still what it was ten years ago, as well as the speed of light.

Type 2 faith is when you have two possible, equally valid interpretations of the same facts, and you need to choose one based on something other than reason. Reason brought you to the point where you can’t know for sure whether option A or option B is true, because in both cases the same facts remain valid, both solutions will have weak points, and in both cases you will need to ignore or disregard some problems in order to solve others. In order to solve the dilemma, you need to make a leap of faith in one direction or another, and proceed from there. If it turns out that you were wrong, you need to change your mind and admit you chose to believe in the wrong option, but since additional evidence brought you to that point, you actually made progress and you are no longer stuck at the same spot. This is the kind of faith people needed to have in order to adopt the heliocentric system when evidence for its validity was insufficient to make the model work. If you don’t have it, you can’t make progress in science.

Type 3 faith is when you believe in things contrary to evidence, based on strong belief in something that has no rational grounds. This is the kind of faith religious fanatics have, and in order to block the voice of reason that warns them that they are on less than solid ground, they resort to hysteria and borderline madness.

Type 4 faith is when you don’t know what the reality is because your brain is so severely malfunctioning, you’re hallucinating. In this state, you can have faith in things that are not only irrational, but they would be irrational to a type 3 believer.

Applied to religion, type 1 faith is when the disciples believed what Jesus told them because he just saw him rise from the dead, talk to them comfortingly and then ascend to heaven. The degree of confirmation of his supernatural power was such, that it would not be rational for them to doubt his statements. If the statements later proved not to be true in the expected way, they would conclude that they misunderstood him, not that he lied. This is the kind of faith in God that you have when you saw him, but you can’t repeat the experience at will. You trust your memory.

Type 2 faith is what people have if they didn’t directly experience God, but they believe it’s possible that someone did, they just can’t be sure. They therefore make a leap of faith and accept that God is real and can be experienced by some, and it would be great if everybody could do it, but it obviously isn’t that simple and one can’t just verify something like that at will, just like one can’t just decide to verify Moon landing at will, because it’s impractically expensive. You can’t go there yourself to verify, you can’t see someone go there right now because it’s impractical, but there are credible witnesses and documents and it is more irrational to doubt them than to trust them. But this kind of faith can only get you so far. You can’t really make life-altering choices based on some scripture written thousands of years ago if you don’t have a more personal, direct reason to believe it’s all true. This is why type 2 faith is not completely rational, nor is it completely irrational, but is a necessary transitional step from lesser to greater knowledge. It contains a risk of error, but without acceptance of this risk there is no possibility of change and learning.

Type 3 faith is irrational, but not completely insane. This is the kind of faith people have when they decide to become suicide bombers in order to get their virgins in afterlife. You can talk to them, but it won’t do much good, because people snap out of this only because when something changes in their internal reasoning and their inner motives for embracing the irrational faith subside. This is not really religion, it’s fanaticism and hysteria.

Type 4 faith is pure madness, and there’s not much one can say about that. It’s the kind of faith you have when you’re so stoned you see dragons in the kitchen.

The problem with the atheists is that they assume that religious people have type 3 and type 4 faith, because this is easy to ridicule. They occasionally argue with type 2, but they are on loose ground there and they usually argue as if they are talking to a type 3 person, using emotional arguments. They completely dismiss the possibility of type 1 faith in religious matters, because if they accepted that, they wouldn’t be atheists, they would be type 2 believers.

You can notice how I never mention certain knowledge as an option? You’re right, I don’t. Because there’s no such thing, or almost. Even when you directly perceive something, there’s the question of interpretation. So even in that case you need to have type 1 faith that you understood it correctly. Certain knowledge is the domain of type 3 and type 4 lunatics.

A short guide to understanding religious texts for atheists.

When a religious text mentions that a snake told someone something, it’s a metaphor. Nobody thinks that an actual snake talked. A snake is a metaphor for a dangerous, sneaky, untrustworthy entity which gives crafty advice that is to be the downfall of those who embrace it.

When I say “embrace advice”, I don’t literally mean to hold it against my body with my arms.

When I say “crafty advice”, I don’t mean advice related to carpentry and masonry.

When “hand of God” is mentioned, it doesn’t imply that God is an ape-like entity with hands. It means “influence”.

Human language is complex, and it used to be even more complex in the ancient times, where literal and metaphoric meanings were so deeply interconnected it is difficult to tell them apart, and the best example of this is a myth.

A myth is something that never happened but keeps occurring. No Cain ever killed his brother Abel and said “I’m not my brother’s keeper”, but things like that keep happening. However, some things can be based on factual history and are later mythologized. An example of this is the great flood; it keeps occurring in so many places in mythological form it is quite likely one of the earliest racial memories of mankind, of the great meltdown at the end of the last glacial period, when the global sea levels rose by about 125m.

When Odysseus is said to have heard the voice of Athena counseling him, it is the poet’s way of saying that the guy had a clever, strategic idea on how to solve a conflict to his advantage. Psychological activities and states were anthropomorphized; when one was ruled by sexual desire, it was said that he’s under the power of Eros or Aphrodite. In war, when one was experiencing a certain pattern of bully/coward behavior, it was said that he’s influenced by Ares. If one approached war and problem solving strategically, he was said to be under the influence of Athena. The natural phenomena were anthropomorphized in similar ways; for instance, the known, familiar sea was thought to be under the influence of Poseidon. The unknown, wild sea beyond their reach was thought to be under the influence of Titan Okeanos, in a “hic sunt dracones” manner of the medieval maps.

When it is said that Eve talked to the snake, it means that an evil external spiritual force created a line of thought in her mind, and that she succumbed to temptation.

The fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil isn’t an apple. It’s suffering the trials and consequences of choice. Similarly, the fruit of sin isn’t a cherry. It’s punishment. If you think a tree of knowledge of good and evil grows in a garden and bears fruits that can be eaten physically, you’re stupid. If you think religious people believe that, you’re much more stupid than you think they are.

Not all religious imagery comes from the same place. Some of it is a metaphor for emotional states. Some of it is a personification of natural phenomena, like weather. Some of it is a lesson in ethics, and some of it is an attempt to say something about the nature of reality. Some of it is silly, like the cult of Priapus, the god of erect penises. Some of it is quite sophisticated, like the cult of Hecate, goddess of magic and illusion. In all cases, it is meant metaphorically, in the same way in which colors of the quarks are not meant literally, and “red matter” isn’t really red, and there’s nothing really charming about the charming quark. There is also nothing remotely amber about an electron.

When it is said that Jesus rose from the dead, it doesn’t mean he’s a zombie. A zombie is a dead body animated by an external magical influence. The Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead because he’s God, in order to show disciples that his power reigns supreme over death. This conveyed a very deep meaning that was absent in antiquity, that afterlife offers a form of existence that is not a mere shadow of the physical one, inferior in every way (as Achilles says to Odysseus who called his ghost, “it’s better to be the slave to the lowest peasant in life, than to reign over the dead”), but is in fact glorious and full, the true life to which this one is merely the cave of Plato, the existence of hints, guesses and hopes, and not the fullness of knowledge.

The Christians don’t see Satan as an ugly, repulsive goat-like entity. They see him as a powerful spirit that seduces one to evil, and you can’t seduce one if you take on a repulsive form. In fact, they think he is quite capable of looking like one of the angels of heaven; that is, holy and beautiful. They also don’t think Satan lives in hell. They think he is the prince of this world and has temporary dominion over it, and that hell will be his final destination after the hour of final judgment.

They also don’t think that good people will experience only good things and that evil things will happen only to evil people. They think this life is the valley of tears, filled with suffering and injustice, and if one is to survive all this and keep faith in the Lord, that fullness of true life awaits him on the other side, in eternity beyond space and time.

If you have a problem with understanding those basic concepts, you’re too stupid to offer any kind of commentary on religion, and furthermore, I would place you firmly on the autism spectrum. Personally, I am tired of intellectual and emotional invalids who attempt to claim the smug position of superiority. Also, the religious people who don’t understand the metaphoric imagery of their own religion are too stupid to be religious, and their emotional age is 7. When they reach the emotional age of 8, they’ll become atheists, and when they reach emotional maturity they’ll be able to understand religion. I’m not saying they’ll necessarily adopt it, but they will at least be able to understand it.

I often encounter the “creationist Christian vs. atheist” debates everywhere and I must admit that I find them quite disturbing, in a way one would find it disturbing to hear zombies and vampires arguing at night in front of his house about whether to drink his blood or eat his brains.

Essentially, what it’s all about is that the creationists use arguments like “this or that tiny little thing in science isn’t right, therefore Adam and Eve”, and the atheists use arguments like “there is no spirituality outside of matter, and we should get rid of religions and other historical relics and go forth into the bold future of science and space exploration”.

The problem is, they both argue for the approaches to civilization that have already been tried before. The creationist religion produced the darkest period of the dark ages, when scripture was given priority over any other form of evidence, and atheism already tried to get rid of the primitive past. It’s historically known as “enlightenment”, and produced the bloody reign of the guillotine during the French revolution, where all the “reactionary elements” were purged in a very literal sense. But that was only the modest beginning. When the ideas really took hold, in the age of modernism, the concept of the “new age” for mankind, whose time has come to claim its destiny from the hands of darkness and ignorance, resulted in the terrible genocides of Communism and Nazism in the 20^th century. So, when the atheists say that the world would be much better if we sent all the priests to Mars, know that it’s been tried before, only Mars was out of reach so they used ordinary graveyards. So, when the creationists argue for God they in fact argue for the dark ages, and when the atheists argue for science they in fact argue for Stalin. Atheists often invoke the argument of horrible crimes committed in the name of religion, but what is actually true is that the crimes, committed in the name of “modernity” and “enlightenment” in the centuries where science showed itself on the map, were so brutal and massive, it’s almost without a historical precedent. In fact, only Islam showed to be the equal of atheism in sheer cruelty, and it’s probably because they both think that being on the “right side” justifies them in everything they do.

I think we need a different approach to those things, because we can’t leave things of such importance to those idiots.

On the religious side of things, I think we need to understand that the issue is much deeper and more intellectual than the American Christians make it sound. Their main problem is the idolatry of the Bible, and very poor understanding of what they are actually talking about. I am going to use the arguments of St. Augustine, who had a much wiser approach, and I am going to modernize his points in order to make them more comprehensible to the audience. You see, what he would say is that God didn’t create the Bible. It’s not the word of God. It’s history of the Jewish nation’s understanding of its relationship with the transcendental. Since they were inherently sinful and therefore unable to receive God’s point of view in the purity and fullness of its truth, their understandings remained flawed and limited until the appearance of Jesus, who revealed God for what he truly is, which is not God of the Jews, but God of certain principles: reality, truth, love, kindness, forgiveness. Furthermore, St. Augustine is not a deist, he is a theist. It’s an important distinction, because a deist sees God as the distant creator of the Universe who involves himself with the matters of men only to reveal the Law and to judge men at the end of their earthly lives. A theist, however, doesn’t see God as distant, but sees God as pervading the world with His being, as eternity beyond space and time that nevertheless pervades space throughout time and guides the beings from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge and from selfishness to love. A theist sees God as a presence in his life, a presence that guides him and tries to reveal itself to him, a presence that left breadcrumbs of truth and reality for him to find in the world and, if willing, to accept guidance and be lead out of the confines of this world, and into the infinity for which there are no mortal words. For St. Augustine, God’s word isn’t limited to the Bible. In fact, God never ceases to speak to us, his word is not limited to the people of the past who wrote some of that down, for other people to include into the biblical canon. It is good to know how other people perceived God, and that is what Bible is for, but for each of us individually God has guidance and a destiny and a plan, and He is the silent yet very vocal presence in each person’s mind, and in each person’s life. The crucial part is that we are free to choose what we are going to do about it. We are free to refuse or to accept. We are free to ignore and to ridicule. Each of those choices puts us in a certain relationship with the truth and the light, and each of those choices determines our fate in eternity, beyond space and time. So, instead of adopting idolatry of the Bible, you should rather adopt the attitude that Bible didn’t do mankind much good in the dark ages, and that this literal approach did not serve to reveal the depths of the reality of God to mankind. It was a failed attempt. However, you should also understand that science revealed much more about the nature and functioning of the world than religion, and it is quite likely that science is actually a better way of understanding the ways and intents of God than worshiping ancient scripture. Science has the attitude of actually listening to what the world has to say about itself, instead of trying to find some simplistic explanation that would fit the world into some nice intellectual drawer. So, how about trying that with God? How about trying to listen what God has to say about himself, instead of trying to jam him into some narrow intellectual drawer? How about listening to what the difference in the spiritual taste between gentle kindness and indifferent cruelty has to say about God? That, too, is a way of listening what the reality has to say.

As for the atheists and their faith in the way science “disproved” God, just let me remind you that science today is actually closer to disproving materialism and atheism. It suffices to invoke Occam’s razor, which the atheists routinely use to reject God as a superfluous supposition, and remember that the choice of scientific cosmology today is to either assume that the Universe was deliberately fine-tuned to an incredible degree in order to allow for our existence, or to invent the concept of Multiverse, an infinity of Universes with an endless number of variations in basic constants, for which there is no evidence whatsoever and is a mere figment of imagination.

So, basically, it’s a choice between saying that the Universe was created in a deliberate act by a conscious entity which you cannot directly prove, or that there is an endless number of Universes with endless number of variations in basic constants, which you also cannot directly prove. So essentially, since you can’t prove any of it, just shut the fuck up about science disproving God, because you simply chose to believe in one interpretation you couldn’t prove, while the others chose to believe in another, equally valid interpretation which they, too, cannot prove.

For all you know, this entire Universe could be a virtual reality that runs on some graphics card that’s only a few years ahead of our current technology*, and this interpretation could completely encompass everything science showed us so far, and could actually be proved if at least some people could temporarily wake up from the simulation and return to bear witness, and various spiritual experiences of the yogis and saints, as well as the near-death testimonies, are actually proving this hypothesis quite nicely, while the official materialistic science has no explanation for them other than pretending that they are not what they obviously are.

So, both the religious people and the atheists have quite an abundance of reasons to shut the fuck up and learn some humility for a change.

* For those who don’t believe that computers could render convincing universes, this can, as of today, be rendered on a $200 graphics card, and the real-time render is actually much better than the video:

https://youtu.be/8R5DOUXvBo0