1,001 Heathen Posts: The Nature of Evidence

As we live in a world full of evidence, I think we should consider listening to that evidence rather than doing our best to bury it away, deny, reject, and ignore it.

What evidence do I speak of? Given the gist of some recent conservations here, I’ll speak of the evidence of what for want of a better expression we will call “divine truth”.

What do I mean by this? There is an idea current among Americans that there are many paths to the divine. We can call this salvation, reincarnation, Elysium, the Halls of our Ancestors, or whatever we wish. The point is that most people who are not atheists seem to accept that there is something beyond this current life. There is an “other” and that “other” partakes of the divine.

How we choose to define that divine is where we get into difficulty. Socrates himself did not profess to know what awaited him. He simply pointed out to his friends that if there was something there, he would continue, and if there was not, he would cease to be:

Now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition . . . I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of use who think that death is an evil are in error . . . . Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things:–either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. . . . Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? . . . What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. . . . Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. . . . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways–I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows (Banjamin Jowett translation [1892]).

I would argue that there is evidence for the divine all around us, in the world we live in. We have evidence of the divine in the lives of our ancestors, who stayed true to the customs and traditions of their own ancestors. Atheists will argue otherwise but I’m not interested in the objections or rejections of atheists. A simple dogmatic refusal to acknowledge evidence, or an insistence that the absence of evidence is evidence, leads to endless argument and gets you nowhere. While this is certainly not true of all atheists, I can honestly say that in my experience some of the most anti-Christian atheists are as dogmatic as the Christians they criticize. I’ve been down that road and I will not go down it again; it is a waste of time.

Christians, on the other hand, will argue that their own beliefs are true because of the contents of their Bible. I can counter with this numerous accounts of miracles and divine interventions in polytheistic history, dating from long before anyone had any notion of a single god. I can (and have) demonstrated that much of what is contained in the Bible did in fact appear elsewhere first, as part of polytheistic religion. There is nothing new in the Bible beyond an unreasoning intolerance. In the end, if you want to insist the Bible is literally true, I will simply insist that the Iliad is literally true. It would be a silly argument since neither of us can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that either is literally true. Belief in the Biblical account amounts not to an adherence to evidence but to belief. As German scholar Jan Assmann writes,

“Biblical monotheism is based not on evidence but on revelation. It is not a matter of cognition but of commitment. It requires adherents to make a conscious decision to accept revealed truth and reject deceitful evidence. Natural evidence is debunked as seduction, as luring people away from revealed truth into the traps and pitfalls of the false gods, that is, the world” (“Monotheism and Polytheism,” in Ancient Religions, Sarah Iles Johnston, ed. 28-29).

True believers do not live in an evidence-based world and in the end, presented with piles of evidence which contradict Biblical claims, the questioner will be told one of the following silly things:

1. Only a believer can understand the Bible;
2. The differences are inconsequential;
3. It is true because it must be true;
4. It is true because I can witness that it is true
5. etc.

Nowhere does evidence make an appearance here. Indeed, the most often put forward “evidence” for Jesus’ existence is that so many people have believed he existed. Ignore entirely the fact that no author of the first century, including Jewish authors living in the area, seem to have noticed either his existence or the existence of the cult named for him. Yet we are told that Pagan holy men of whom we have attestation did not exist or are fictional characters modeled on Jesus or invented as a counter to Jesus. We are assured, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that morality is impossible without belief in Jesus, or that the American system of government is based on ancient Jewish ideas of the individual rights of man or ideas of democracy that nowhere exist in ancient Judaism, which was monarchical. Evidence, obviously, is meaningless when spoken of in a Christian context.

Polytheism, on the other hand, is not faith-based; it is not revealed religion. We do not possess some holy book the precepts of which we must adhere to or be declared heretical. We do not have to worry about some fiery hell to which we’ll be consigned if we fail to adhere to the dogmatic requirements of a clergy. Our religion is based upon the simple act of worship. This worship can take many forms, including dance, song, poetry, athletic contests, sacrifice, prayer, feasting, and so forth. Our religion is not defined by what we believe about our gods but how we show our devotion to them.

The gist of my argument is this: there is no evidence for the efficacy of monotheism’s claims. Therefore, no good reason ever existed to abandon the practices of polytheism, which had functioned well for a period of thousands of years, and which continued to function well right up until the last polytheist went into hiding or was coerced on pain of death to forswear the gods. If polytheism had not worked, people would have abandoned it in droves for monotheism. That they did not is evidence enough that the traditional cults are, as Celsus claimed, the “true doctrine.”

The customs of our ancestors served us well for millennia. Our ancestors did not willingly abandon them. They clung to them through torture and death for centuries of oppression and persecution. And guess what? Nobody had to be killed to impose these customs and traditions. People practiced them joyfully and willingly. There were no holy wars, no jihads, no inquisitions, no witch hunts, no savage conquistadors forcing a belief system on a native people at the point of a sword.

I ask you: what more proof do you require of the efficacy of polytheistic traditions?
If all gods exist, there is nothing to fight about. If all the gods are in reality only a few known by different names in different lands, what difference? It’s not about what we think of them but about how we honor them. You honor them in your way; I honor them in mine. We are both happy. No one comes to my door trying to shove Pagan gods down my throat.

I will leave you with a final thought:

The faith required to believe in the Bible despite all the evidence to the contrary is a faith in the absurd. It is by its very nature something very difficult to believe in for the simple reason that its so unlikely to be true. Faith is needed – it is essential – for that type of belief. After all, faith is not required for belief in simple things, things easily demonstrated. For instance, we all have faith that iron sinks and that wood floats. We all have faith that the sun will set at the end of the day and that it will rise again the next morning. Robert M. Pirsig speaks of the nature of this faith. In his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he says:

The explanation I’ve come to arises from the discrepancy between his lack of faith in scientific reason in the laboratory and his fanatic faith expressed in the Church of Reason lecture. I was thinking about the discrepancy one day and it suddenly came to me that it wasn’t a discrepancy at all. His lack of faith in reason was why he was so fanatically dedicated to it. You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, its always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

I could not have said it any better myself.