Definitions

Probably one of my best defined qualities is my use of definitions. I have a large catalog of words which hold very specific meanings to me, and which I use in very precise ways. You'll often hear me re-wording other people's sentences to make sure that we're using the same meaning*, or I'll define or ask for a definition of a word. This may seem odd, but it means a lot when your debates are as technical as some of the ones that I have. For example, I once had a debate about morals that ended before it started when we realized that I was using an objective scale (saying that there are no true universal morals), and my opponent was using a subjective scale (saying that there are societal accepted norms).

That is why, a few weeks ago, when someone told me that Christianity was not a religion, I had to re-work my entire vocabulary on the subject and even change my own personal stance.

As it happened, I was atheist, ex-catholic and strongly anti-clerical. I held, and still somewhat hold, a grudge against Catholicism, Christianity, and organized religion in in general.

Being told that Christianity wasn't a religion meant that I had the wrong idea about it, and had to re-define both religion and Christianity.

I spent the next few hours I had re-searching the subject. After several badly written websites on the subject, I came to an agreement that Christianity was not a religion, but a faith, a faith being a belief in (and including one's relationship with) deity. Religion, on the other hand, encompasses faith, but for an entire group of people and includes ideas such as morals, traditions, ceremonies, hierarchies, et cetera. So sure, Christianity isn't itself a religion, though I must add that there are many religions within Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, et cetera).

Then I noticed something that annoyed me. Atheism was classified as a religion. It seemed like a contradiction in terms, but I found it to be true. Atheism has it's beliefs in the lack of a deity, and while there are no churches of it, it has many similar qualities to religion, including religious rights under law.

Realizing this lead to a personal dilemma. I disliked religion and didn't want to have any part in it. I quickly looked at my own beliefs: that I couldn't believe in any form of god I had ever hear presented. I had recently been thinking about pantheism and was using it in practice for a better definition of god**.

This motivated me to re-evaluate my position. Luckily, at the same time, I was working on a definition of science, because I had seen people debating whether science itself could be considered a belief system. So I focused on re-defining science.

After much rationalization, I decided that the main factor was that science was based on verifying through doubt, whereas religion was purely based on faith.

In other words, faith works by by finding a way to make sense of an observation based on ideals of god and the faith itself, and you can never disprove faith, though you can dis-verify it***.

In opposition, science works by coming up with theories and any time that the theory doesn't work, it is disproven. Also, a theory is always just a theory, there is no way to truly prove anything. I've also added to my definition that science requires the assumption that the universe can be modeled by theories, and that if somehow this is ever disproven, science as a whole must reject itself.

That last point is what I believe to be the most crucial point: it is possible to disprove science, but it is impossible to disprove faith. For this reason, I accept science, because faith does not allow for the possibility of being wrong.

It is important to get this point, science**** might not be right. Just because science says this today, doesn't mean that that's what science will say a hundred years from now, or even tomorrow. In fact, science might not even be right, science can be wrong, and we have to allow for that. Many people seem to take science as fact. It's not, it's just our best estimate. We're often wrong, and we might never get the right answers, but the scientific method is (at the very least, in my opinion) the best way we have of learning about our world.

This also means that nothing is absolutely knowable. There is no way to know anything absolutely. This means that the most scientific perspective might be agnosticism, but this is unappealing for two reasons. First, it's impractical to simply state that something is unknowable and leave it at that. We can still try, and most of us do. The second is that I'm not sure if god is knowable or not. I've found it hard even to simply define god. How many names, entities, personae, phenomena and ideals have been affixed to this "god" thing? I don't know what god is, I don't see why this idea of a higher being exists. There's no reason to ask the question "does go exist?" because we have no idea even what "god" is.

Hence, I've taken to ignosticism (which can be characterized my my latter two sentences). I don't see a point in asking whether god exists. Maybe someday there will be, but for now, I don't see any real reason to address it.


*For example, when someone has an idea that is along the same lines, but not exactly the same as my own, I'll say, "precisely," then correct myself and say, "well, actually I should say, 'accurately.'"

** Pantheism is the view that god is the all of the universe (as opposed to the supreme being outside the universe of most theisms). It worked well for me practically because I could use the term god in my vocabulary without a conflict. It's hard to blaspheme without some kind of "god."

*** For example, you can ask people to pray for something, and if it doesn't happen, then you can add one more point against the belief in god, but you can never entirely disprove god.

**** In this paragraph, I'm not talking about the scientific method, but the conclusion of science.