Belief and Denial

I've been reading a few atheist blogs, forums etc lately. They would be lovely to read and debate if it weren't for the constant intrusion of True Believers, trying to remind everyone that there's, you know, one true god, his son died for our sins, and he loves us. You know, the usual sales spiel.

It has got me thinking on the whole nature of belief and denial and how it affects all of us in one way or another.

Belief is a hard enemy to fight. Its very nature is to thrive despite, possibly because of, opposition and evidence to the contrary. The stubborn, bull-headed character of belief has - as its flip side - the equally stubborn trait of denial. Combined, these traits create an irrational and dangerous disruption to almost any debate or discussion we need to have that affects us as human beings or as a community.

Belief creates an impermeable barrier, a wall that cannot be crossed or broken down. The arguments it poses cannot be countered or negotiated with because they come from an invisible, unverifiable and thus static source. The other problem with unquestioning belief is its conflation of fact, authority and opinion.

Fact: If you throw a bowl of petunias out of the window, gravity will cause it to fall to the ground.
Authority: As the deputised officer of National Mandatory Throw Petunias Out The Window Day, I order you to throw petunias out the window or face a hefty fine.
Opinion: I like the crashing sound bowls of petunias make when I throw them out the window.

But on many issues, when debating with a believer, the line between these is muddied, and the same point is taken as fact, authority and opinion.

The Beliver's Fact: Homosexuality is a sin, it says so in the Bible.
The Beliver's Authority: Homosexuality is a sin, it says so in the Bible.
The Beliver's Opinion: Homosexuality is a sin, it says so in the Bible.

You can ask for an opinion and get a claim of assumed authority. You can ask what authority that person has, and you get an opinion. You ask what merit that opinion has, and you get the opinion handed back as fact. This is no way to debate anything. If a believer wants to debate a social issue, a question of law, or anything else that affects the broader public sphere, then they really do need to set up an argument that involves not only opinion, but authority and fact.

So let's say there's a big public debate about whether all gingers are criminals, this is what you need to do;

1) Opinion: Have you suffered the tyranny of ginger criminality, or do you know many decent, law-abiding gingers?

2) Authority: From what position do you claim your opinion? Have you worked ceaselessly with ginger anti-discrimination groups? Are you part of the police force's anti-ginger taskforce?

3) Fact: You need this for your opinion to hold weight. Have you done a survey that shows that at least 70% of gingers have committed one serious crime in their lives? Have you done an exhaustive investigation to show that the majority of ginger crimes were a beat-up - that police officers couldn't be bothered going after the ash blonde who was responsible because there was a convenient ginger scapegoat handy?

Your authority and your facts have to be definable. Others need to look at those credentials and see that the opinion you've reached is a reasonable one to reach. Testimonials, surveys, academic studies, statistics, empirical evidence.

The authority of believers - their holy texts or customs and traditions - are often not verifiable, or at the least not truly relevant. It may have been considered bad to be gay in 20CE in one part of the world, in one community, but so what? No really, so what? You need to do much more than say historically, this community that believed in this one superstition said no. We view opinions from 50 years ago as out of date. Why should anyone trust opinions two millennia old?

Likewise any appeal to a supernatural authority. That being is only an authority to those who believe in it. To those who don't, it doesn't exist. We can all see testimonials from people, still alive, and still affected by the issue. That's a weight of fact you cannot ignore. An injunction from a being whose existence is contested is much less relevant. If one person says they have been mistreated because of some factor of their existence - ethnicity, orientation, gender, that's verifiable. It has weight, it has credence. If a million people say that's acceptable because an unseen entity says it is, that isn't verifiable. It doesn't matter that there's a million people against one, a million baseless opinions are not worth more than one verifiable opinion, backed by fact and authority.

The howl of the mob does not equal veracity.

Denial causes it's fair share of problems too. When faced with the irrefutable, some believers simply stick their heads in the sand. The problem simply does not exist. Some truths can be hard, uncomfortable, awkward or unwanted, but it doesn't make them less true.

Climate deniers are a good example of this. To be perfectly fair, climate denialism is not embraced purely by theists. There are many people, who each have their own pet conspiracy theories about why climate change isn't real. Among the more hardcore religionists however is a tendency to deny climate change. The denialist cannot see evidence. The flip side of conflating opinion, fact and authority to present a viewpoint is to conflate opinion, lack of fact and lack of authority when presenting a denial.

Fact: The overwhelming concensus of the global scientific community is that climate change, caused by humans, is real.
Authority: 98% of the world's most accomplished and expert scientists agree. The higher the rate of disagreement, the higher the correlation with less expertise.
Opinion: Climate change is real.

The Denialist's Fact: Multiple arguments subsequently disproved, including by other - now former - denialists. Facts are scarce, flimsy or just not present.
The Denialist's Authority: Non-peer-reviewed scientists, non-scientists, energy industry spokesmen, Christopher Monckton, Andrew Bolt. No reliable authority can be found.
The Denialist's Opinion: 'But climate change is still a lie! I can't provide facts and I have no reliable authority, but it's a hoax because I believe it is!'

While people cling to these errors of argument, little headway is made. We find ourselves stymied time and again by the fervent rants of the believer or the denialist. As a society, we need to disregard opinion disguised as fact or authority and embrace opinion that is backed by fact or authority. The believer and the denialist slow us down, present unnecessary hurdles to issues that need to be addressed quickly and/or efficiently. They confuse and frustrate social discourse. They distract the public view away from fact and authority towards opinion and invective.

I think we need to be much more curt when these opinions present themselves. Apart from selling a few more newspapers or getting a few more clickthroughs, Margaret Court's latest rantings did nothing. They contributed no opinions that weren't already known, and weren't already irrelevant. We know that fervent christians are homophobic. Two millennia of cultural domination by indoctrination, torture, fear and murder have taught us this. Their opinions are, however, irrelevant. They bring no fact and an unverifiable authority to the debate. So, therefore, the views of the fervent christian in that debate are irrelevant. Sadly, they are the loudest voice of opposition and the most prevalent voice stifling the rational progress of the debate. I think it is time we all recognised that faith has its place, but that place is not to trample over and infringe the well-being of others on the basis of claims that cannot be verified.

When belief and denial are not backed by fact and authority they are simply opinion. It's like the old saying - 'Opinions are like arseholes - everyone's got one.'

So, please, bring more to the debate than just an arsehole.