The Problem With Anecdotal Evidence. 

This is a tough blog to write, not because I don't know the information or how to convey the message, but because this is a very "heart on my sleeve" type of post, and I haven't done anything like that yet on here. I will be sharing two personal experiences of mine that I rarely ever talk about, but I think it's important to show why anecdotal evidence isn't evidence. But first, what is anecdotal evidence?

Anecdotal evidence is evidence based on personal experience or observation. Anecdotal evidence isn't taken seriously in the science community for a variety of reasons, a couple of them being; your experience and my experience of something may be polar opposites, but they're both equally valid, and personal experience often contradicts empirical evidence (evidence based on experimentation, research, and observation, usually done by an entire team of researchers). 

Anecdotal evidence is often trusted by people who don't understand science, and there are a number of ways it's impacting our society, but today I want to talk about religion. (I mean this is an atheism blog). 

Many religious people use personal experience as proof of god's existence, or that their religion is the right one. I know that it's really all they have. There is no other evidence, just personal experience and faith. And that is why I want to shed some light on the problem with anecdotal evidence by sharing two experiences of my own. I don't share these to try to take anyone's faith away but to hopefully get them thinking.

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I was 14 years old at the time, I went to Falls Creek (a Baptist church camp in central Oklahoma), I had already been going to church my whole life, and I already considered myself a believer in god. I thought I was a good person throughout my life, and up until this one night, I believed I would go to heaven as long as I believed in god and was a good person, (and didn't ask too many questions) because I was still a kid. I thought I had my whole life to worry about anything else. 

Every night at Falls Creek we had an evening service before we went off to bed. Our youth minister talked to us about how we aren't promised tomorrow. About how we don't know, when or how we're going to die. He started mentioning things that could happen (the cabin could catch fire, a storm could hit the cabin, or we could get in a bus accident. These were just a few that I remember him mentioning). Of course, he didn't end with scaring us that we could die, at the end he said that if we ask Jesus into our hearts we wouldn't have to worry about an eternity of suffering. 

After he spoke, we were led in singing the song I Surrender All and encouraging people to come forward to have someone pray with them. I had tears in my eyes, I was shy, so going forward was not an option. I stood there, paralyzed in fear. But before the song ended, I was somehow down in front of everyone. I didn't walk there. I didn't know how I got there. (I now know that there are a number of psychological reasons as to why and how I walked to the front seemingly "unwillingly")

I remember praying with one of the members of our church that was there with us, and as I prayed I felt a sense of peace and joy come over me. I felt as though a burden had been lifted. I slept great that night and the rest of the time we were there. I "knew" I was doing the right thing. I could feel it. 

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If people are interested in my full story, I'll go into more detail about it in a separate blog. For now, I'd like to try to keep this as brief as possible, so I will not be giving a whole lot of details about why I felt how I did.  

After some time, I started to become skeptical. I mean, I was always somewhat skeptical, but I became really skeptical. My questions weren't being answered, and I could no longer take it. I still believed in god, but I had so many questions. 

I spent years in an emotional storm; I believed in god, didn't believe, didn't know what I believed, hated god, felt abandoned, and felt like I somehow still wasn't doing enough, I cycled through all of these emotions. I was overwhelmed. I felt like I was alone, "everyone else has it all figured out". In my mind even the atheists KNOW what they believe, why can't I know? (I didn't even know agnostic was a thing.)

After praying for years and searching for god(s) via other religions, I didn't believe, I couldn't. I wanted to, really wanted to, but it was all absurd to me. It was nonsense, I couldn't believe. But I "wasn't an atheist, I just didn't believe in god."  

I got caught up on a question; "what caused it?" "who created god, who created the universe?" "how did we get here?" "Big bang, what caused it?" "god, what caused it?" "what caused it, what caused it, what caused it?" That question kept me up. Restless nights, feeling alone. Not knowing and needing that simple question answered. "What caused it?" I of course couldn't find any answers that were good enough, because anytime I found something that "may have caused it" I then wanted to know what caused that.

One night, so mad at myself for overthinking this existential crisis I seemed to be having. I finally thought to myself "Why does this even matter? We're never going to know anyway. What? We find something that caused the universe, we'll then need to know what caused that. But it doesn't mean god did it, science will get us closer to the answer anyway." 

It was like a light bulb was turned on in my brain, and the storm in my mind began to clear. I no longer felt like I NEEDED for god to exist, and I no longer wanted to force myself to believe. I sat up and said out loud "It doesn't matter, we don't know, but it doesn't mean god did it" I repeated that to myself a few times, and as I did it felt right. I had never felt so right in my life, even in my experience at 14. 

As I sat there finally accepting that there is no evidence for god and that it's ok to not believe, that the Christian idea of god almost certainly doesn't exist. It felt right to say "there is no god", it lined up perfectly with what I knew about science and history. Religion conflicts so much with science, history shows how awful Christianity was. It felt good to think about. 

I then thought to myself "Does this mean I'm an atheist?" This is the point at which I decided to start reading atheist blogs and watching atheist YouTubers. 

Accepting that I don't have to believe in god, that I don't have to stifle my curiosity, and that I'm not alone, or somehow "broken" for not believing, has actually been the single greatest realization in my life. 

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I also now, know the psychological reasons behind each of my experiences and I'm able to take the emotions behind them with a grain of salt.

I share this to show that if one person can have two very conflicting experiences, then multiple people across multiple different beliefs and cultures are also going to have different, conflicting experiences. If anecdotal evidence is sufficient, then all religions are correct. But I think everyone would agree that they can't all be correct. However, they can all be wrong.  

If you believe in god, think about what evidence you have outside of faith and personal experience, if you have any. If not, maybe you should ask yourself why you hold so dearly to something unproven. 

Thanks for reading! If you’ve enjoyed this, don’t forget to like and comment, and follow me on Facebook, or help me buy more books to read, and remember; question everything and never stop learning.