In which we infer that the Oatmeal guy has neither faith nor kids

Why does The Oatmeal’s famous comic about religion bother me so much?  I’m not usually troubled by internet atheists [1].  At least, no more than by other varieties of internet ideologue, and often somewhat less, since they’re generally not pushing plans or policies that would be bad for the world.  They can be foolish and annoying, but they’re not my problem.

But I guess the thing that does tend to bother me about internet atheism [2] is particularly strong in that comic, namely the assumption that religious people are not serious, that we don’t actually believe what we’re saying.  Besides being a way of begging the question, it seems like a major failure to empathize with those on the other side of the position.  He sees religious claims as meaningless, so he assumes that anyone making them is just expressing team loyalty, and seems unable to imagine that someone would actually see such ideas as true.

The way I stated it there makes it seem a little different, but it reminds me of a phenomenon Paul Krugman occasionally talks about, whereby economists from other teams misunderstand Keynesian ideas or proposals in a way that makes them obviously stupid, then attack Keynesians for being so stupid.  His point is that they would do better to try to make sense of an idea by putting themselves in the position of a hypothetical intelligent Keynesian, because it makes them look foolish to fail so badly to understand the theory.  Though there, as here, it may be that the current approach works just fine with those economists’ target audience, so they’re not looking for advice from Krugman on how to sound smarter to him.

The part that has stuck in my head most from the comic is the panel where a kid asks what happens when we die and the hypothetical parent who’s doing it right says “I don’t know, sweetie, what do you think?”  So now he’s failing to empathize with both the believer and the kid.  The believer because he can’t imagine a person thinking seriously about the question and coming up with an answer besides his, and the kid because he’s treating what I would assume is a serious question as if it were an obviously fanciful one.  If the Wolverine asks me the name of a person she’s just added to one of her drawings, I might turn the question back like that (especially since she tends to have an answer in mind and reject all suggestions in those types of situations), but if she asks what happens when we die, I’m going to take her seriously and do my best.  (She has, of course.  Not an easy one, though not as tough as “What is God’s name?”)

Re-reading the comic today, I discovered something that had not stuck in my mind–that that exchange is part of a sequence in which he comes out and says that religious convictions are akin to favorite colors.  I.e. that they contain no truth claims and only the mildest subjective importance.  I’m surprised that didn’t stay with me, because it encapsulates the problem nicely.  So let me try to be clear as well: when I say something like “God loves you”, it has very little in common with saying “I like purple.”  I’m not making a statement about what seems aesthetically nice or where I observe my inclinations pointing more often than not, I’m saying that to the best of my ability to interpret the world, and according to how I understand truth and truth claims to work, it is the case that God loves you.


I kind of want to end there, but apparently the stronger part of me wants to talk more.  Which is pretty standard.  Specifically, I want to note that his notion of the evils of indoctrinating your children is just weird to me.  Where are kids supposed to learn things if not from the adults in their life?  Is he aware that after “keep them from becoming dead”, indoctrination is pretty much the primary goal of child rearing, because children left to their own devices will form value systems in which fairness and respect for others are way less prominent than we would like?

And yeah, the problem discussed above affects this, too.  Obviously he has a clear idea of what should be shared with the kiddos and what should not–teach your children true things, don’t indoctrinate them in falsehoods–but he’s forgetting that we’re not all working from the same list of which is which.


[1] I wasn’t sure if “internet atheist” was a standard term, but it seems like it is.  Obviously not all expressions of atheism on the internet would fall under it.  The word “troll” is not unrelated.  The first association for me would be with the Dawkinsian heroes who are always ready to share the gospel of What You See Is What You Get in the comments of any Humans of New York post that makes reference to anything religious.

[2] Aside from the smugness.  That is also exceptionally strong in this case, but smugness is more an intensifier than a problem in itself.  If something is unequivocally true, then stating it confidently is just normal.  Smugness happens when the tone reflects way more confidence than the substance of an argument supports, so it depends on what you think of the argument itself.

Life is a gift, hell is regret

So here's how I think about the meaning of life and the nature of the afterlife. It centers on a simple principle: Life is a gift.

To elaborate, this means that life is not:

• a misfortune to be endured. There are plenty of traditions that treat it that way. Unfortunately including, or perhaps mainly, Christian traditions.
• a prelude to the afterlife, unimportant except insofar as it affects the circumstances of what comes after. This is related to the above, but I think much more common. Like extremely widespread, possibly dominant across Christian traditions.

My main problem with both of those is that this is the life we were created for, and that God called "very good". And if the fall meant that no more good would come of it, I would think that would have been the time to burn it all down and call it a failed experiment. Yet here we are.

It also means that life is not: meaningless or valueless. There are a lot of ways to reach that conclusion, from the very simple but not universally appealing ("God said so") to the fairly direct (phenomenological experience of meaningfulness) to the more roundabout (the existentialist maneuver).

And life is: good. As Leibniz and Pangloss knew, it has to be, because why would God give us a crappy gift? *

So that's life. What about the afterlife? Well, first things first: I don't really know that there is one. I think there is, and I hope there is, but I don't have any good arguments to offer someone who's not inclined to believe in it. Even someone who would accept biblical arguments—my understanding is that the Bible isn't particularly clear on this matter.

So my idea of the afterlife is one that's consistent with the little guidance I have but mostly based on what I want it to look like: continuation of consciousness and identity, basically still myself and human, but better, and with a much better grasp of life, the universe, and everything.

And now, the last important piece of the picture: judgement and punishment. I just can't get there. Here's one story: I follow Humans of New York on Facebook. Very often, one of the top-rated comments will be something to the effect that we should be good to the people we meet because you never know what their story is or what they're going through. Here's another story: my wife is a nurse working with long-term homeless adults, and she loves her clients, even (especially?) the ones who miss 80% of their appointments and aren't at all interested in reducing their crack consumption.

I just don't see how a God who loves us and understands us would be at all interested in making us suffer. And I don't see how it could be a necessary logical consequence, since "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy" seems like a pretty effective way to break out of any logical traps.

So: hell is regret. What suffering there is in the afterlife comes from looking back on the life just lived with:

1. A fuller appreciation of what a great gift earthly life is.
2. A clear understanding of what that means for how life should be lived, and how your actions and outlook differed from that ideal.

I end up with something sort of like purgatory—you suffer for as long as it takes you to forgive yourself for the wasted opportunities you now perceive, but eventually you get over it. Or maybe not everyone does. Or maybe it's actually really easy to adopt a very loving and forgiving perspective even towards your own past self, and it's only a fleeting pang.

Anyway, aside from generally fitting in well with what I believe, the thing I like best about this idea is that I find it useful in everyday life. Regret is a very powerful negative emotion**, so the question "Am I living my life in a way that reflects what a great gift it is, or are there things I can recognize now that I expect I'll regret?" has some emotional bite.

And finally, unlike in the "prelude to the afterlife" view, this one has the advantage that, if it turns out the afterlife is not all it's cracked up to be and consciousness goes out like a candle flame at death... well, you won't be around to care. But you won't have traded the good things of this life for a broken promise. You will have spent your life doing the best you could to live well.



* I have thoughts on theodicy, too, which I hope to write up at some point. Teaser: mostly Plantiganian. Woo free will! Natural evil? I don't think it exists. Actually maybe that covers it and I don't need another post.

** Could it be more so for me than for the average person? There are some ideas that I suspect I hold to because they fit my personality or preferences well, but I don't know if this is one. My impression is that regret is pretty strong for most people.

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host...

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all, on whom God's favor rests."*

That might be my favorite verse in the Christmas story, because of what I think is going on there.  (As with many of the thoughts I've written and will write down, I have every confidence that it's been said before, but I don't know where and I don't believe I've heard anyone else express it.)

Somehow the following is in my head:
1) That there are pretty strict regulations governing the behavior of angels, such that they're pretty much forbidden from doing things in the world that would make their presence evident.**  Except on assignment, and assignments are very rare.
2) That I got that idea from Madeleine L'Engle. I read books by her so long ago that I wouldn't know how to begin to track it down (besides re-reading everything I think I once read), but that's how I think of it: there are rules, like Madeleine L'Engle says.

So here's what I think is going on in the fields by night: a judgement was made that some shepherds would be a good group to announce the incarnation to, in keeping with the overall mission of bringing good news to the meek and lowly, and an angel was dispatched to deliver the message. That angel was So. Excited. to be picked. The other angels, to the extent possible, were bummed not to be. But also So. Excited. because, you know, the incarnation. The biggest deal in ever (to date).

So they tagged along just to watch. The designated emissary made the announcement, complete with standard attempt to calm the highly freaked out audience, and then somebody slipped. Maybe the angelic equivalent of an involuntary squeal of excitement. Probably that. Probably not an actual decision to talk out of turn. But once the silence was broken, nobody could hold back. Total angelic pandemonium as everybody gave voice to their overwhelming excitement about what was going on.

Hopefully nobody got in trouble. Seems like it would be hard to get too angry about something like that, under the circumstances.


*That's Luke 2:13-14. Pretty presumptuous of me to decide, after looking at a few different translations, to start from the NIV but tweak it to my liking. But that's what I did.

**Obviously that implies that I believe in angels. I don't have any particularly strong thoughts on that question, actually. They can each claim their own pin, or they can all dance on one pinhead at once if they don't feel it cramps their style. Though now that I've said that, I guess aside from generally being fine with the traditional portrayal, I think of angels as having less agency and possibly less psychological depth than humans.