Learned Heredity?
I tried to believe in nothing. And I failed. It was simply too difficult for me to let go of a belief in God that is as innate to me as the English language.
[Lauren Cahn, "Why I Failed As an Aethist", Huffington Post, 31 August 2009.]
I find this last statement very odd. The author evidently wants to express that her belief in God is something that she has not learned but something that is inborn and deep in her natural programming, and yet she chooses as her analogy of this "innateness" something that is universally recognized as a learned skill: her native tongue.
I'm afraid I didn't find her argument for why she was a failed atheist very compelling. Perhaps it was because, to look at the above excerpt again, she doesn't realize the difference between trying to "believe in nothing" versus not believing in something.
The spurious law of the excluded middle rides again!
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on Wednesday, 2 September 2009 at 22.02
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Jeff, I think you're holding Cahn to a literal definition of "innate," while she's using the word broadly, for something internalized so thoroughly and early in life that it seems as natural to her as speaking English.
" . . .she doesn't realize the difference between trying to 'believe in nothing' versus not believing in something."
Nail hit squarely on the head. In fact, not believing in a deity seems to me to be what atheism is all about. Had no God or gods ever come up in mankind's collective experience, I don't see how anyone would've been moved to proclaim his or her atheism.
But the funny part is picturing Cahn in the mind's eye as she struggles to not believe. It's something like trying to argue with someone who began by expressing' a double negative, so that you can't readily tell what the person really thinks, You can't be sure if they are arguing a specific point or just got tangled up in trying to express what they think.
on Wednesday, 2 September 2009 at 22.31
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Indeed, I am holding Cahn to a literal definition of "innate", i.e., what the word actually means versus what she might like it to mean in her Humpty-Dumpty usage. I think I can reasonably guess what she was trying to express, but 1) I don't think I, the reader, should have to guess what she's trying to say; and 2) this way makes it easier to mock her fuzzy-headed and naive thoughts.
Speaking now as the atheist that I am, you're quite right that atheism simply means not believing in any gods. Some people seem to find such a simple idea so deep and inscrutable that they just can't comprehend it somehow. Got me on that one: I thought it was about the simplest thing to understand.
I suspect that she didn't really know what she was trying to argue, but perhaps I should meditate on it. I will spend the next five minutes trying to believe in nothing.