Essay:Odinism is more rational than atheism

“”Give me that old-time religion, give me that old-time religion. Give me that old-time religion; it's good enough for me.

—Old Gospel hymn

It has recently been brought to my attention that there are disproportionate numbers of Odinists who are editors of this Wiki, myself included. Given that it is "RationalWiki," that might be surprising to some people, because rationalism has been so conflated with atheism that it is often difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

This is not good. Although, in my opinion, atheism certainly stands the test of a rational religion (i.e., nothing contradicting its metaphysical premise has been found by reason or observation) it is not the only such rational religion.

In this essay I argue that Odinism is a valid choice of religion for a rational person who is opposed to the Abrahamic excesses, by showing that it is more rational than atheism in several respects.

Definition of atheism

Before I start, I shall make a definition of atheism. I use the word in the broad sense, meaning the belief that there are no Gods — whether this belief is held to be intrinsically provable, implied from observation, inferred as a consequence of some other premises, whatever. I also categorize as atheism the belief that any possible existence of Gods is irrelevant.

Gods one can see

The largest question to be settled is that of the Gods. Rational people argue endlessly that reason and observation fail to turn up even one God; how can a religion claiming an entire pantheon of Gods possibly be rational?

This argument is entirely valid with regard to a God that came out of a holy book, as YHVH did. Those who subscribe to the Abrahamic religions are expected to have faith in a God they cannot see, yea, who deliberately remains hidden; and if they use their eyes and ears and see something that contradicts the holy book, well, it means they have not been reading the holy book enough!

“”When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.

—Henry Morris

But the Odinist Gods are not of this sort. Instead of a holy book containing the ravings of a few desert-rats with what must have been very severe cases of heatstroke, the entire Odinist pantheon is grounded in observation. Although we now know that lightning is caused by thermal phenomena inside clouds, this does not make Thor any less real, nor the peals of thunder at storm-time any less majestic. The world was made when the ice of Niflheim and the fire of Muspelheim collided? Fairly good allegory for the Big Bang, there. Anyone who has ever been wildly inspired to great heights of creativity can identify with the story of the Mead of Poetry. And one can loop the loop on free will vs. determinism, but "free will" is limited to some degree in the sense that the machinery by which decisions are made — the neurons of the brain — are subject to the laws of physics. In this way the Norns, not we, control our fate.

And if some observation did turn up that challenged current practice, there is nothing preventing a reinterpretation of the Norse myths or an addition to the pantheon, in an analogous manner to how the body of scientific theory is altered.

Religious opposition to Abrahamic universalism

One problem with being an atheist and against the universal Abrahamic religions is that one has no religious motivation for opposing them: one can simply stay silent and allow them to spread like hellfire over the land, whether for the first time or as a revival burning over the tender sprigs that have cropped up since the last blast of the brimstone.

This is why Jews and Nonconformist Protestants have done far more of the grunt-work in aid of religious tolerance within Christian lands than atheists have; they could not in good conscience pretend to practice the majority religion, and unlike atheism where such a conscience is based simply on personal convictions, it was grounded in something far more unshakable.

Digression: It is for this reason that I find the argument of Thomas More in Utopia, in favor of stigmatizing atheists, an absurd one. The argument runs: "Since atheists do not fear hell, there is nothing to prevent them from violating laws and morals in secret; therefore, atheists cannot be trusted." Unfortunately for that argument, there is also nothing to prevent an atheist lying about his atheism, and pretending that he is a theist. Stigmatizing atheism, therefore, has the effect of making pariahs out of honest atheists and welcoming the stinkers of that persuasion to the fold.)

Odinism provides this more solid basis for opposing the Abrahamic religions, without falling into the trap of being universal itself. It is not a religion for everyone, and in pagan times, varying degrees of adherence were accepted in theory as well as practice (see below).

By contrast, there is a certain universal quality to atheism; the pipe-dream of many atheists is a world in which myth and superstition have been banished beyond the pale — see below.

A place for the "spiritual"

One could say that the rationality of a religion is measured not by how loudly its theory proclaims the excellence of being rational, but how well its system of practice accommodates those of the rational persuasion.

Atheism falls short here, because its system of practice provides no place for those who are of a particularly religious bent — the so-called "spiritual" people. Although a rational analysis may indicate that these "spiritual" people have their heads jammed where the sun does not shine, they are nevertheless with us in society.

In a system that frowns on "spirituality," they will rebel; if they latch onto a universal religion, they will start insisting that everyone can either: (1) be as "spiritual" as they are, or (2) go to hell (literally). A religion with a system of practice that allows people to be just exactly as "spiritual" as they want would accommodate both rational people and not-so-rational people with very little strife at all; also, historically, in pagan lands there were a diversity of cults at the disposal of the curious spirituality-seeker, which greatly lessened the number of people who had to look outside the system to indulge themselves. In Odinist practice, for instance, one could become a Berserk or a magician.

No fear of what lies beyond

Since Odinism is based on observation, further observation can only refine it and make it deeper and sharper, as described above; an observation cannot be "blasphemous" or "heretical" and upend the central tenets of the religion, as one sees with the Abrahamic traditions.

It is in this area that atheism makes its greatest break with rationality. The assumption that no Gods exist is a very big step that is often not made in a very rational manner. Even assuming that no truths of relevance lie "beyond" the reach of reason and observation, the history of mathematics shows that our understanding of what is within the reach of reason changes from year to year. As for the reach of observation, it consistently increases both in breadth and precision; Overwhelmingly Large Telescopes, particle accelerators, and paranoia about a secret black hole factory all testify to this. Not to mention that certain truths that can be gained by observation at one time might not be able to be gained at another.

I have heard a story about Charles Babbage, in which he stated a belief that so-called "miracles" could also be the operation of some natural law of higher order hitherto unknown, and demonstrated this by setting his Difference Engine to wind from 2 to 4 to 6 to 8 to 10 to 117. If the world at present is in the state where it is winding from 6 to 8, how could we possibly know that it will or will not jump from 10 to 117 later?

Atheism often dodges that question, flatly denying that the proverbial 10-to-117 transition could ever occur. Therefore, the whole belief of atheism (along with its cousin, agnosticism) is on tenterhooks lest some unknown God poke its nose into the world and say hello. Many atheists, myself at one point among them, live in a certain fear of such a thing happening, for if it did, atheism would be demolished as a system of belief. Christianity and other revealed religions fall into this trap as well.

Odinism, by contrast, cheerfully accepts the possibility that the 10-to-117 transition might occur, while allowing that it is highly unlikely; this avoids the non-rational big step described above. If some new God did manifest itself, the practice of Odinism would probably go on much as before, just adding a new cult. There is no reason for an Odinist to have a categorical fear of what lies beyond.

Links to the past

One argument made against atheism by wingnut Christians is that atheism flies in the face of tradition, trying instead to carve out a new and untried world-view. This is rather a ridiculous complaint for Christians to be making, since Christianity once flew in the face both of Jewish and of Greco-Roman tradition; however, Odinists can make it with more credibility, since Odinism was the original tradition and never had to fly in anything's face.

That being said, a religion that draws on the past, on tradition, on the collective wisdom of the ages, is completely invulnerable to that sort of criticism. A widespread return to the practice of Odinism would not be a revolution, but a reaction, a reaction against the Christians' sanguinary revolution that they are so eager to forget.

Although it is not a fault per se not to incorporate tradition into a system of religious practice (and "tradition for tradition's sake" is a poor principle, demonstrably fallacious in the case of inconsistent traditions), neither is it wise or rational to throw away the past because it is perceived to slight the principles of the new religion, as Christianity did to pagan traditions.

Practitioners of any religion that flies in the face of tradition have the tendency to do this, and too often, atheists show a hearty categorical disrespect for tradition and for old things; for example, I have caught ridicule from an atheist for my taste in music, on those grounds, the exact phrase being, "Do you have to listen to that sanctimonious cr**?"

Values

Atheism is, pardon me, agnostic on the subject of a value system. This is a difficult thing for most people, who expect their religion to provide them with a value system, and have trouble with the prospect of hashing out their values for themselves. It is also an open invitation for some people to put forth twaddle of this kind.

I will discuss here some specific problems that, again, do not pertain to atheism in general, but have arisen as possibly necessary consequences of many atheists' opposition to Christianity.

Secular humanists and other sanctimonious atheists

Many atheists are thin-skinned when it comes to this sort of thing, which gets on their nerves so much that in their desperation to beat Christians at their own game and prove that "atheists can be moral too," they end up signing onto a good deal of the more saccharine side of Christian morality, the side that does not involve locking anyone up in jail but still manages to make more cynical people reach for the vomit bag. A common moral precept with them is to "affirm the equal dignity of all human beings;" one can almost hear them working up this philosophy: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in ... um ... er ... HEY, WHAT DID WE SAY WE WERE GOING TO REPLACE 'CHRIST JESUS' WITH?!"

And too often atheists try to spread these precepts in conjunction with their atheism, as if the two were inseparable; the Council for Secular Humanism is an institutional culprit here.

Value-based atheism

When I was an atheist, it was simply because I believed the metaphysical premise of atheism (that there are no Gods) to be a true one. This apparently made me unique among atheists; every other atheist I talked to was either an apathetic apatheist who had not bothered to think out his position, or an axe-grinder who had renounced his previous adherence to Christianity on the basis of moral or political differences, then adopted atheism and taken up other atheist arguments.

One person epitomized this approach with an argument for atheism running as follows: "I don't like Christian morals; therefore, God does not exist." For this argument to hold up one must believe firstly that the Christian moral code is wrong, and secondly that no other Gods exist, even allowing, for the purpose of the argument, that YHVH might. This is essentially circular reasoning, not very rational at all.

Another example of this is atheists who make use of communism, or some derivative of it, as a system of morals, whining on with one of the endless variations on the phrase, "Religion is the opiate of the masses," and harping that all religion is "oppressive" — whether that "oppression" be of workers, freedom of thought, etc. — and ought to be abandoned so as to enable humanity to "solve its own problems." Atheism is then seized upon as the solution with little thought as to whether its metaphysical premise is true or not; actual evidence for the truth of atheism is brought in after the fact simply to bolster what has already been ordained as the proper belief, as described above. We see this kind of thing all the time.

And, of course, whenever they can get away with it, communists do not bother to use actual arguments against religion; gun barrels suit them just fine. This is approximately as rational as concluding that 2+2=5.

Odinism does provide a value system, but it is much more rational than those of the Abrahamic religions. To compare atheism and Odinism in this manner is rather like comparing apples and oranges, but for the above reasons, the Odinist value system is also more rational than those of many atheists:

• Its moral principles generally take the form of advice, rather than high-handed commandments or precepts. This is more rational because such principles do not pretend to come from observation, and reason alone does not give us any absolute statements of this sort.
• In the same vein, its morality mostly considers context; for example, one is advised to visit true friends often, lest the friendship fall by the wayside (Hávamál 119). This is more rational because there are far fewer conclusions that can be drawn using arguments in vacuo.
• Much of its morality is just common sense; most people do not need a holy book to see that it is bad to stab one's friends in the back or that it is good to be modest, for example. There is a certain rationality about common sense that does not show itself in high-handed proclamations.

Conclusion

Every religion has its rational and irrational points, just as it has rational and irrational adherents. This is true of atheism as well, and I have demonstrated several points on which Odinism's rationality is greater than atheism's, especially when considered in the context of opposition to the Abrahamic religions.

If anyone would like to take the bother of showing facets for which the opposite is true, I would like to hear about it.

Endnotes

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