Atheists, Please Stop Calling Yourselves Skeptics

By Editor |

Sunday, August 12, 2012

When I was a teenager, I was an atheist.  That lasted only a few years.  However, it gave me a certain amount of sympathy for atheists, who are generally reviled in our society.  But the sympathy doesn't go very deep, especially when atheists are aggressive and treat religious people as if they were fools.  Ironically, religious people also see atheists as fools.  Whereas atheists believe that religious people put their faith in figments of their imagination, religious people (and I include myself in this) see atheists as people who are spiritually color-blind (or perhaps just blind).  To the religious, atheists are people who can't see past surfaces, or who can't read between the lines, or who simply don't have any intuitive awareness.

When I talk about atheists, I'm not talking about agnostics, who are simply not religious and don't think about such matters.  And I'm also not talking about people who have given the topic a cursory examination and decided there is no proof of a God or an afterlife.  Rather, I'm addressing this article to people who cling to their atheism as if it were a religion in itself, and who spend time and energy trying to prove that everyone else is wrong.  Such atheism has more to do with egotism than anything else.  Such atheists are every bit as partisan and irrational as the most devout Christian, who represent another group of egotists.

Of course, atheists have every right to make their arguments, and to buy their billboards.  What bothers me (among other things) is that they've adopted the word "skeptic" to describe themselves.  They are not skeptics.  A skeptic is a person who doesn't accept every compelling idea that comes along.  A skeptic is a person whose beliefs in any given area have not solidified, pending further evidence or experience.  A skeptic is a person who is withholding judgement while he (or she) gets all the facts.  A skeptic is not someone who doesn't believe in this-or-that because it doesn't fit into his narrow scientific philosophy.  A skeptic is not someone who has made up his mind not to believe in something.

Any atheist who reads this blog will consider me to be a gullible fool because of my faith in the Seth material (the readings given by the psychic Jane Roberts, who died in 1984).  But I'm not a fool.  I don't believe everything I read, and I have settled on only a couple sources that I think are credible.  I am, in fact, a skeptic.  There are a lot of questionable ideas floating around in spiritual circles, and I am skeptical of many of them.  Right off the top of my head, I can think of a few:  astrology, numerology, the idea that crystals have power, and the idea that aliens have visited Earth.  There are legions of psychics out there whose talents are more than a little suspicious.  They are pretentious or pious or vague.  They channel Gabriel or some other famous biblical or historical figure.  They speak with authority instead of humility.  They promote themselves and make as much money from their abilities as they can.

But unlike atheists, I am not incapable of being convinced.  I am not rigid and inflexible.  The thing that started to change me in my teens was the writing of Hans Holzer, the "ghost chaser".  Holzer's reporting style made it immediately clear that he wasn't making things up.  He came across as honest and genuine.  Indeed, his reports about ghosts were underwhelming.  If he had been dishonest, he would have embellished his reports in all kinds of ways.  Using my best judgement, I decided that he was telling the truth, that ghosts were real, and thus that there had to be some kind of afterlife.  (Since then I have met people who have seen ghosts and had near-death experiences, and that solidified my beliefs.)

My experience with Edgar Cayce, the "Sleeping Prophet", was the same.  Cayce didn't publish his own readings, but rather books were written about him by others.  He was clearly authentic.  His diction while in trance was unique, and the point of view expressed in his readings was consistent over many years.  He was trying to help people.  He wasn't getting rich off his abilities.  There was also evidence that he knew things that he couldn't have known (like the health problems of people for whom he gave "health" readings).  There were reports of debunkers who went to Virginia Beach (where the archives of his readings are kept), and who came away convinced that he was genuine.  The evidence was overwhelming that Cayce was authentic, and so I believed in him.  I believe in Jane Roberts for similar reasons.


Confirmed atheists are, I've noticed, a rigid lot.  They are resistant to any kind of evidence -- even good evidence -- that might undermine their disbelief.  An example of such evidence is near-death experiences.  When Raymond Moody accumulated his anecdotes of near-death experiences in the mid-twentieth century, none of the subjects he interviewed knew each other; yet they all reported the same sequence of events (floating above the body, travelling through a tunnel, hearing music or noise, encountering a "being of light", and experiencing a life review).  The likelihood that people experiencing clinical death would all have the same dream is miniscule to non-existant, yet atheists discount such evidence.  What they want is double-blind studies, but very little of life can be subjected to double-blind studies.  If all empirical and anecdotal experience is discounted, then 95% of all the evidence that we rely on is meaningless.  Even the evidence with which we establish our existence -- "I think, therefore I am" -- is insufficient to satisfy most atheists.

Atheists have become very aggressive in recent years.  They will seek out information and evidence about a phenomenon in order to discredit it, not to understand it.  Approaching evidence from such a negative perspective as they do, naturally the evidence never convinces them.  True skepticism requires an open mind.  If your mind is already made up, you are not a skeptic.

I recently read a couple articles by "skeptics" about spontaneous human combustion (SHC), a truly strange phenomenon in which people burst into flames and burn up, usually without igniting anything around them.  SHC is not something new; there have been reports and stories about it for centuries.  It was clear that the intent of the authors was to explain away the phenomenon, not to understand it.  Their explanations were implausible.  They talked about something called the "wick effect".  Whether or not the wick effect can cause a body (which is at least 50% water) to burn up is debatable; but what struck me was that SHC is not a religious phenomenon, so why were the authors trying to debunk it?  No one is saying that God threw lightning bolts at the victims which caused them to be consumed.  SHC may simply be a phenomenon that we haven't come to understand yet.  Perhaps, for example, there is another kind of fire that science hasn't identified yet, a kind of fire that can consume wet things.  Who knows?  The point is, we need to examine such things instead of dismissing them.

The impression that I get from atheists is that they are afraid of the unknown, or, in some cases, hostile to the idea that an authority figure (God) is in control of their lives.  Atheists feel most secure in a world which is predictable and definable, so anything that cannot be explained is perceived as a threat.  It's one thing to take the position that there is no God or afterlife (things which cannot be proven), but it's another thing to dismiss unexplained phenomena simply because there is no ready explanation.  Atheists, it seems to me, have developed a limited world view in order to quell their anxieties.

Yet atheists feel free to point their fingers at religious people and accuse them of using a psychological crutch.  If it is true, as I believe, that atheists cling to a narrow scientific view in order to feel secure, then they are using a psychological crutch also.

As for being gullible, that works both ways too.  Atheists are contemptuous of religious people for putting their faith in the unknown, yet I view atheists as fools because they believe in only the obvious, and can't "read between the lines".   In my view, to look at the world and see only its surfaces is very gullible indeed.

So to all you die-hard atheists out there, I say:  Call yourselves what you really are -- atheists or scientists or secularists or nonbelievers or frightened people or closed-minded people or obstinate people -- but don't smear the good name of skeptics.  Whatever you are, you are not skeptics.

*     *     *

After posting this article, I started to visit a forum frequented by atheists.  I was curious to see what they would say about the word "skeptic", but I was also trying to understand them.  Several things were discussed, including the Seth material.  Their constant insistence on proof or irrefutable evidence for the things that they didn't believe in struck me as childish.  Most people understand what faith is, and why faith is valid, but the atheists on the forum didn't understand that at all (even though many of them put their faith in science, though science is often wrong).  My impression was that they were somehow stuck in their development, unable to make the leap from the proof that children demand to a deeper understanding of reality.  I finally figured out what was going on, at least for some of them.

Atheism, for some, is a way of saying "no" -- specifically, "no" to their parents.  Anyone who knows anything about psychology knows that most people's attitudes and beliefs are formed in childhood.  Like children who refuse to eat in an act of obstinacy, though they are hungry, many atheists reject religion in an act of defiance, though secretly they might want to believe.  This explains why so many atheists are obsessed with the very things (God, psychic phenomena, etc.) that they profess to reject.  It bears pointing out that atheists don't just reject religion, they reject anything that is seemingly supernatural or unexplainable by science.  They are, without a doubt, contrarians.

All parents invade their children's heads, telling them what to think and believe, and try to shape their thoughts and attitudes.  For some children, saying "no" becomes an act of self-preservation, a way of declaring their independence -- and there is no more powerful way to say "no" than to become an atheist, especially since God is the ultimate "parent".  As such, their atheism is tied in with their identities, and giving it up represents an act of capitulation and a loss of integrity.

Atheists seem to be more focussed on what they don't believe than on what they do believe.  As I said, the posture of atheists -- "prove it to me" -- is essentially childish.  A mature person looks for his own evidence and doesn't rely on scientists with their tests and studies -- and this is the way it should be since science is still groping in the dark when it comes to understanding reality.  It also strikes me as immature when atheists go out of their way to dispute other people's beliefs.  Children who felt put-upon by their parents grow up to feel put-upon by society.  And if such people are atheists, any public expression of religion will make them feel put-upon.  In other words, trying to push their atheism on society is an attempt to control their environment.  (Of course, religious people who try to push their religion on society are doing the same thing.)

In short, I think that many atheists are acting out their resistance to parents who told them what to think.  Not all atheists fit into this category, of course -- especially those who had atheistic parents and are trying to emulate their parents.  Also, as I said above, some may be afraid of the unknown, while others dislike the idea of an all-powerful authority figure controlling their lives.  And then there are those who lose their faith after suffering a great tragedy or injustice, as happened to many holocaust survivors.

I can respect the atheism of the latter, and I can also respect the atheism of people who just don't see any evidence of God, and who don't really care one way or the other.  It's the angry, self-righteous atheists who annoy me, the ones who see religious people as fools, the ones who put up billboards promoting their atheism (as they're doing in some cities), and the ones who crawl all over Wikipedia, censoring articles about religion, psychic phenomena and "pseudoscience" that they don't like -- and in the process depriving other people of their right to express themselves.

Die-hard atheists are a conceited bunch.  Like all other human beings, they have only their experience and judgement to guide them, yet they feel free to dismiss the experiences of other people.  They presume to tell the person who had a near-death experience that the experience was a dream.  They presume to tell the person who saw a ghost that the ghost was a figment of his imagination.  They presume to tell the person who had a premonition that the premonition was a coincidence.  They presume to tell the person who had a transcendental religious experience that it was just her imagination.  Just because an atheist doesn't experience these things doesn't mean that they aren't valid.  Atheists feel completely free to substitute their judgement for ours, and all because they have a resistance to the unknown.

Indeed, the great irony of this is that subjective experience may be the only valid experience.  According to the Seth material, there is no objective reality in our plane of existence, but only the melding of subjective experiences into what appears to be an objective reality.

As a devotee of the Seth Material, it astonishes me when they dismiss Jane Roberts (the psychic who channelled Seth) as a fraud.  Roberts and her husband conducted the Seth sessions in a very open and public way, with many witnesses.  Their books were written with great specificity; all the readings were annotated with dates and times and footnotes, and the names of witnesses were given.  The Material itself is full of deep insights into human behavior, and it contains brilliant new theories about reality and religion.  Yet atheists feel free to dismiss the twenty years of readings as a con job, and the life work of Roberts and her husband as simply irrelevant.  It's such an offensive thing to do, especially since they know next to nothing about Roberts or the readings.  That, in fact, is their weakness:  They dismiss the things they don't like without fully understanding them, which is hardly an objective thing to do.