There is a Reason
Norm quoted a question the other day that I’ve been thinking about on and offishly. It’s from a theologian or professor of ‘divinity’ (wot?) called Keith Ward (who wrote a presumptuous godbothering book called ‘God is Better Than Science’ or some such thing which I’ve read and disliked very much). He wonders why Richard Dawkins can ‘only see the bad in religion’. (He means ‘see only the bad,’ but never mind). That’s what I’ve been pondering, as a general question, not a specifically Dawkins-directed question. Why do some atheists ‘see only the bad’ in religion? Or, at least, why do we (because I’m one, although I do in fact sometimes note what one could call ‘the good’ or at least the understandable in religion) choose to concentrate on the bad rather than offering a more mixed or ‘balanced’ view?
There are some not terribly interesting, what one might call pragmatic reasons, to do with the fact that there are thousands of voices yapping about ‘the good’ in religion right now and not all that many insisting on the other thing, so it seems not unreasonable for opponents to go ahead and be opponents, rather than scrupulously giving the religious side its putative due (especially since the religious side so often gives remarkably inaccurate and badtempered accounts of atheism and atheists). But never mind that for the moment; it’s not all that complicated or productive, and it’s related to contingencies which could change. The real reason is not contingent, and it is more interesting, I think – because it’s about something that matters, and that’s the point.
The reason I, at least, am not much inclined to talk about ‘the good in religion’ is because it comes at a price, and the price is too high. The good is inseparable from that price, you can’t get the good without the price, so if you think the good is not worth the price – then for you it is not a good. It can’t be a good because it’s so tangled up with the price – with the bad.
It’s not as if you can make two lists, good, bad, and judge each in isolation. Because the basic problem with religion, the thing that makes people like me adopt a fighting stance, is that it’s not true. That’s not just some minor or detachable problem that one can compartmentalize or bracket – it’s right smack in the middle.
It’s a corruption, a surrender, an abdication, and we don’t make it because – we don’t want to endorse a lie. That’s why.
In other words, yes, we can see that religion has some useful and beneficial aspects sometimes – consolation, solidarity, inspiration, motivation – but they depend on a supernatural belief system, on a systematic illusion, and we don’t consider and don’t want to consider that a good thing.
We think truth matters, and that the human ability to sort truth from fiction, and speculation from findings based on evidence, matters. If religion consisted of maybe, if it were about uncertainty as some of its defenders claim, that would be different – but it’s not. It’s assertive – it makes firm, coercive truth claims. (And then shifts the ground by saying that no one can prove them false. No, of course not, but that is not a reason to assert them as true.)
The pivot is the word ‘faith.’ It’s no accident that that keeps coming up – ‘faith’ is the problem, faith is where religion demands that we treat speculation and hope – invention and fantasy – as true. And that is a bad thing, and we do know that in other contexts. (You’re in the car. ‘Is this the right road?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Faith.’ ‘Err…’) If religion were about, and were named, hope, or speculation, that would be one thing – but it’s not, it’s ‘faith.’ So we don’t see how to cite the putative good aspects of religion without endorsing the lying and refusal to think. It’s all one fabric.
Yes and yes and yes, with the addition that even if it were all good – everything on the list – other than not being true (which isn’t the case), the fact that it isn’t true would be a huge black mark against it. But most believers don’t go around all their lives living with this knowledge; they convince themselves that the beliefs they need in order to get through life
anaesthetised from certain realities must, in fact, be true.
I looked at the Ward thing.
“When I watched the two programmes presented by Dawkins on Channel 4 this week and last, I could find only two reasons given by him for not believing in God. One was his misunderstanding that natural selection is an alternative to intelligent design… The other reason is that a creator would be as improbable or complex as the complexity he was supposed to explain, so would not really be an explanation.”
I haven’t seen the programmes, so I can’t comment on what Dawkins says or doesn’t say. But “no evidence” doesn’t seem to count as a possible reason for not believing in something, in Ward’s book, so we’re back in orbiting-teapotland again, aren’t we? Give me a good reason something – anything – might not exist and I’ll look into it sometime. As long, that is, as it doesn’t conflict with my faith.
There was also an insane reaction to letters reacting to the Ferguson review I pasted the link to previously, in which the writer says that being born atheist and arriving at such a position through reasoning are mutually incompatible.
I’m not giving up; I’m revving up…
“I could find only two reasons given by him for not believing in God.”
Typical theist ploy – pretend the default position is and should be believing in god, and that non-believers have to explain themselves. Pretend the burden of proof is on us rather than on them. Oh really – what is the reason Keith Ward doesn’t believe in Odin then? Eh?
We spend a lot of time in orbiting-teapot land. It’s our second home.
What we’re struggling with, I think, is that, for most people, rigorous investigation into reasons for believing a proposition to be true just is not a familiar activity, especially when it comes to emotionally comforting beliefs about gods, the afterlife, etc. How often, in their daily lives, do most people without scientific or philosophical training ask themselves, “Are there rigorously justifiable reasons for believing that p?” No, most people just accept what their friends and neighbors accept; it’s much easier and more sociable that way.
I agree – I think that most people don’t use critical thinking when it comes to religion. And therein lies the problem I’ve had in trying to explain to religious people the main reason for my lack of faith. I refuse, as OB puts it, to surrender or abdicate my reason to faith and these people simply can’t understand this. It’s completely outside their view of the world. Even people with backgrounds in science who have become born-again fundamentalists have changed their views and no longer think critically. One response to me from one of these latter was to challenge me to read the Bible – if the truth mattered then I would see the “truth” in it. My refusal to read it showed that I was afraid it might change my life. The “truth” of the Bible would trump anything derived through objective reason and analysis.
It aggravates me that the religious describe the insistence on reason and evidence as arrogance – as if their insistence on the primacy of their personal faith and revelation was any less arrogant.
“Orbiting-teapot land” – recent article in the New Scientist on the critical threshold in space junk gives hope that an old Thor booster may knock that orbiting teapot right out of the sky.
It’s also that the ‘good’ usually ascribed to religion is readily available outside of religion, while the ‘bad’ of religion is something that can only take place when large numbers of people are convinced that abandonning reason and abdicating personal responsibility is a virtue. Which, as keeps being pointed out, is not something that is acceptable in any other aspect of life, so why on earth wouldn’t I attack something that produces no unique ‘good’ but plenty of unique ‘bad’?
(This is not to say that bad things are only caused by religion, of course, but that the very nature of the religion makes such things not only possible, but, human beings being what we are, almost unavoidable.)
“Okay, so the guys’ a wifebeater – why does no-one ever mention all the good work he does for charity? They only see the bad in him..”
I’ve got Ward’s “God, Chance and Necessity” floating around on the shelves somewhere. It’s rubbish. He complains that really good science writers don’t believe in God and should be using their talents to convert people. Or something.
Dawkins obviously has him worried.
Well OB, here we are, the guts of the question of faith vs non-faith.
Please allow me to compliment you on putting it with such clarity.
When we talk about treating believers with respect, this is what it should be like – not pandering to falsehood, and abstaining from personal denigration. Well put!
It’s not going to be easy to use, but I think we have the upper hand, and for one very simple reason: I think we can understand their reasons for belief better than they can understand our reasons for non-belief. They have had to blinker themselves, limit their mental horizons, artificially restrict their capacity for real thought, in order to be able to continue to believe. It isn’t a question of out-arguing the other side. Their weapons to promote belief are less effective on someone who is already doing his own thinking. Or, to put it another way, we possess more rational tools to understand what lies at the root of their beliefs. I consider that a strategic advantage. I have yet to see someone arguing for the religious point of view who actually understands atheism properly. Those who do have crossed over (with the obvious exceptions of the complete frauds for whom religion is a racket engaged in with eyes wide open).
Accept the positive aspects, don’t focus on the bad, see the good, drink the Kool Aid. Drink it.
Interesting: this Ward chappie has degrees in Divinity, and yet he is Regius Professor of Theology. I am as keen on separation of Divinity and Theology as I am on separation of Church and State.
Divinity maketh a divine: no one would study Divinity who did not intend to offer him/herself to a church as priest or minister. Ward is, of course, a C of E priest.
Theology, OTOH, might be a useful outside minor for a student of Anthropology or Sociology, even if that student were her/himself an athiest.
I think we can safely leave it to religious people to point out the good things about religion. Even so, those good things do come at a price. Even christian charity workers would probably say they do their work of charity because Jesus commanded them to do so, not because it was the right thing to do, apart from any supposedly divine command. This of course makes morality arbitrarily dependent upon faith in something non-evident, even if there are benefits as far as motivation goes. Enhanced motivation to act is a benefit only when the deeds happen to coincide with the right thing to do, not when they are acts of terrorism, for example. To add a comment on the Rushdie material about shame and honour vs. guilt and redemption: the problem with the idea of christian redemption is that if everything is forgiven, then everything is permitted- except despair that one may not be redeemed (=lack of faith and hope) – that is unforgiveable. Do you still want to point out the good?
‘God, Chance and Necessity’ – that’s it! That’s the one I meant. Rubbish indeed.
‘Do you still want to point out the good?’
Well, all those steeples can be quite pretty…
Ok, the steeples…
Our freedom of belief is protected… so that we can belief in faiths that take away our freedom of belief by telling us we can get away with pretty much anything other than not believing in the claims made for a certain individual whose historical existence is very dubious, because that will lead to eternal hellfire. Hooray for conscious torment!
And that, dear friends, is why there is so much good on that list.
I don’t think the comparison with being on the right road works very well. Neither does Bertrand Russell’s tiresome ‘flying teapot’ analogy.
I’m not of a religious disposition myself but I don’t think this approach does much good for two reasons:
1) The role of faith, for Dawkins giving mental assent to ideas for which there is no evidence, is not nearly as important to religion than Dawkins et al assume. They usually fail to understand the importance of ritual and identity is religious systems – the reason being they’re *protestant* atheists (if you’re thinking, “That’s an oxymoron”, that is – I would suggest – a big part of the problem with the average atheist analysis of religion).
2) Why is religious faith so often (in your case, a driving analogy) compared to the most trivial examples that the anti-religious can think of? There are plenty more weighty examples of humanity using faith to reach beyond the empirical. The belief that I assume most people have when they get married, for example, doesn’t strike me as being particualrly ‘rational’ in the narrow sense in which you define it.
“Why is religious faith so often (in your case, a driving analogy) compared to the most trivial examples that the anti-religious can think of?”
It’s not always. Really – I have talked about that. I do see the point of ‘faith’ in some contexts – faith in people, in progress, in the future, etc. But that kind of faith is slightly different from religious ‘faith’ as commonly understood. At least, if and when it’s not, that surely needs to be stipulated. Usually it means believing in the existence of an entity without evidence – it means making a ‘leap of faith’ as Deborah Solomon so banally said to Dan Dennett in the Times.
I think I also get the ritual and identity thing. But the trouble is, they are inseperable from these pesky ideas (truth-claims, I would say) with no evidence. And if those are not important – why do so many believers seem to think they are? Why do they want them taught in school and alluded to in political campaigns?
Shuggy, I think you are right that the question of faith is not merely, and not even mostly, a question about systems of proof. Faith functionS more as a legitimating device in social action. In fact, I would imagine that you would get farther, in examining faith, by asking about it as a form of distribution game. Because I think that is essentially what it functions as — it rounds out a set of characteristics that might put one at distinct disadvantage in a social setting by adding one element that evens out all players — in this, faith acts much like the “fairness’ factor in Ultimate games.
I think OB is quite right to spot the problem of faith if it is really offered to us as an epistemological model. But it isn’t an epistemology – if I know “x,” I do not gain an advantage from that simple fact in epistemology. Faith in God isn’t about “knowing that there is a God” — it is about the ‘fact’ that belief in a God is actually rewarded by that God. Why God should do that requires another story — one that puts God in a reciprocal relation with the believer.
This, to my mind, is why the atheistic critique of religion sometimes seems, well, crankish. It is because the attack is mounted on religion as if it were science, in which a set of truths is proposed for our objective judgments. But how many religious people enter into a religion with the same set of epistemological goals as, say, students entering into the natural sciences? I’d guess the number is nearly zero.
What is the belief that you “assume most people have when they get married”? If it’s that their mate is the most incredible thing before, after or between a couple of pieces of sliced bread, that’s just plain chemically induced temporary insanity. If it’s that they hope the union will work out in the long term, it’s comparable to most decisions that are partial gambles because we just don’t have sufficient information to make one that doesn’t hinge on a lot of guesswork (and hope). I don’t see a lot of basis for comparison with religious faith. Or did you mean something else completely?
I came across a staggering sentence, relating directly to the truth/faith business, and guaranteed to get up all our noses, in an unexpected context today:
“Truth can sometimes be very unpleasant and uncomplimentary but that is precisely what makes it authentic and believable and the basis of genuine faith.”
I’ll resist the impish impulse to play silly quiz games about the source of this nonsensical horseshit masquerading as wisdom. It’s from a piece on Spielberg’s “Munich” put out by the “Israel Hasbara Committee.” Granted, there are issues of truth that discussion of the film inevitably raises, despite its disclaimer, but where does anyone get off dragging something unconnected to truth – like faith – into it?
“At least, if and when it’s not, that surely needs to be stipulated. Usually it means believing in the existence of an entity without evidence – it means making a ‘leap of faith’ as Deborah Solomon so banally said to Dan Dennett in the Times.”
I take your point but I think perhaps focusing on the idea that you consider absurd – i.e. the idea of an invisible deity – has the effect of losing sight of the way other forms of belief function in much the same way. I’m really not sure Dawkins’ analysis of what he considers essential to faith is quite right. My own view is that one of the crucial elements of faith is an attempt to reach beyond the sense-world to something greater than themselves. It can be the notion of God that does this but I think some forms of fundamentalist Marxism and also nationalism are really not as dissimilar as people tend to assume. Is it not part of the human experience to find a place in this world by this kind of means?
Which is not to say that I don’t broadly share your position, particularly as it touches apon political power – which is my principle concern with religion. However, I’d have to say, although irredeemably pagan and agnostic as I am, I don’t really take the view that the notion of God is intrinsically absurd.
“because the attack is mounted on religion as if it were science”
This is not a personal jab, but it’s kind of irritating that the language makes it possible to say that at all. The word “science” has had so many negative connotations foisted on it, as if it automatically represents a worldview in the way that religion really does. Take a few steps back and remember that what really separates “science” from “religion” can be expressed in the following conversation:
“God just spoke to me and he told me what to do.”
“I didn’t hear anyone speak.”
“Well, he told me that I’m to take charge of you and all the others.”
“You’re hallucinating. Over my dead body will you take charge of anything.”
“Some of the others already believe me.”
“Then they’re ga-ga too.”
“You can choose not believe me, but god said that if you don’t you’ll burn in hell and I already have enough followers to kill you and guarantee that your children will be educated my way.”
[more or less the way it must have happened about 111.5 trillion years ago]
Dignifying one side as “religion” and villifying the other as “science” is missing an awful lot of the point. Some people think in terms consistent with the information conveyed to them by their senses (when they’re not hallucinating); others either hallucinate or let themselves be persuaded by hallucinators or their followers and are resistant to what the gaps between reality and their beliefs ought to be shrieking at them.
“I don’t really take the view that the notion of God is intrinsically absurd”
It is on the one hand so easy to understand how an idea like a god can suggest itself, seem attractive and take root and yet, when you write the above, I have to wonder: is the case of god unique? Do you (for example) require higher standards of evidence than exist for god for anything else you might not class as “intrinsically absurd”? Is the orbiting teapot “intrinsically absurd” and if so, how do you pinpoint what makes it different from the notion of god? Genuine, serious question that I think needs to be addressed.
It’s not the notion of God that’s absurd (and not intrinsically, but once one starts looking for a little confirmation – a footprint? a phone bill? anything?), but the notion that it really is there, and people really can make strong claims about it, and that it’s ineffable and supernatural and metaphysical and transcendent, but still gets to make us and tell us what to do. Not to mention the benevolent/omnipotent stuff – but you know all that.
“It is because the attack is mounted on religion as if it were science, in which a set of truths is proposed for our objective judgments.”
No, the attack is not mounted on religion as if it were science, but as if it were trying to be science – because it is. If religions don’t make truth claims that are intended to compete with and trump science, what is all this ID stuff about? Why does Sacranie reach for his ‘faith’ when he can’t come up with another way to ground his dislike of gays?
“Now, I don’t merely ‘believe’ in God. I know.”
See? I rest my case.
Thanks, Chuck! Very helpful.
“Is the orbiting teapot “intrinsically absurd” and if so, how do you pinpoint what makes it different from the notion of god? Genuine, serious question that I think needs to be addressed.”
I don’t know but I’d imagine most people would find the idea of an orbiting teapot even more unlikely than the notion of a benevolent diety. It would seem so because devotees to the flying teapot in history have been conspicuous by there absence. For you there is no difference between believing in God and a flying teapot but this has not been the general opinion of mankind. If we ask why – why is it that people believe, we’d be more likely to advance our understanding of this phenomenon.
“Not to mention the benevolent/omnipotent stuff – but you know all that.”
I do – and I think the difficulties raised by the theodicy question gives an insight into how religion functions: the paradox of faith is while it raises logical problems it finds difficult – to some impossible – to answer, yet the paradox is that one of the most important functions of religion is that it gives meaning to suffering.
“I’d imagine most people would find the idea of an orbiting teapot even more unlikely than the notion of a benevolent diety”
Thank you. That is precisely what I meant when I said it is so easy to understand how these things got started and took root. Why wouldn’t our primitive ancestors be more likely to envision something like them, but infinitely more powerful etc., rather than a not-yet-invented accessory used in preparing a beverage (of course, I used that word deliberately, because I know it teases) no one had yet thought of drinking? If an idea is deemed acceptable just because most people accept it, then there’s no more question: god exists. Why can’t we rise above that and try to see if we can understand what is actually the case beyond the things most of us are likely to believe?
“That’s just one instance. I’m familiar with a couple more.”
Chuck, I don’t want to get dragged into the kind of discussion I think you’d like to have here, but the weight you are placing on a few coincidences that give you certainty, does that mean that you are prepared also to take into account every case of a believer who died a horrible death, every infant killed in a natural disaster, every prediction made in the bible that has not unambiguously (I stress that word) come true and give them all equal weight against the things you may well have personally experienced that give you faith? Are the good things proof of god and the bad things only proof of his mysterious ways? Are you prepared to look at things in an even-handed way, or only in one that supports the beliefs you have?
“They are, in other words, merely claiming that there are other ways of knowing things.”
One that doesn’t work for any other facet of our lives. Or shall we qualify “knowing things” to read as “thinking one knows things.” Is knowledge not connected in any way to truth? I’m not denying that all of us can feel things we can’t explain or that could be interpreted as something outside our ability to explain. The question is, do any of them necessarily extrapolate to what gets turned into dogma?
I didn’t want to forget to mention how dreadful I thought Deborah Solomon was in the Dennett interview. If it sounded the way it read, than the man has – pardon the expression – the patience of a saint. “Religion is the default” incarnate, that’s what she was in that interview.
What do you think the ratio of good to bad might be in a world without god? Radically different? Would only the bad coincidences happen? I’m about to go off-line till some time tomorrow; I’m not vanishing as in vanquished, though I will not let myself be dragged into time-wasting by someone else’s certainties ad infinitum.
“People are always looking for proof. Or so they claim.”
No. Not proof, evidence. Different thing. You won’t find me saying a word about looking for ‘proof’.
“But it is, as I have found, a very small price.”
No. It isn’t. Your posts give all the evidence that is needed of that. It is beyond rubies (or, if you prefer, Ruby’s).
Shuggy, I have to disagree with you about Christianity. When you say about my comment:
“Faith in God isn’t about “knowing that there is a God” — it is about the ‘fact’ that belief in a God is actually rewarded by that God.”
“Both of these ideas are wrong, in my view. What religion rewards faith per se?”
I don’t see how that can be maintained, even if one narrows the claim to theology. Regardless of whether the disputes are about faith without works, etc., both Protestant and Catholic essentially magnify the saying of Jesus, ‘he who believeth in me shall not perish, but have ever lasting life.” And in fact the question of belief in God has been treated, when the Church had a judicial arm, as of such importance that atheism could be punished with death. How do you think Dante sorted out who stays in Limbo and who reaches Heaven? Etc., etc. The evidence is so overwhelming, in my opinion, that your notion that faith is not, qua faith, rewarded simply can’t account for the history of Christianity.
If I do or do not believe, for instance, that photosynthesis causes grass to look green, my believe will not ever be treated as a matter of “redemption,” nor will this belief subject me any trial beyond that of taking a test in a biology class. This simply is not the context in which I am to treat believing in Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
If you think that, say, your average Baptist church service consists of a minister holding forth on various reasons he might have come upon an interesting, albeit rather weird notion that there was this guy in Roman times who turned out to be a deity, although there have been many candidates for that post and one should examine each claim to see if it can be disproved — you have a very detached view of the emotional content of religion.
However…
I do think that the discussion about science and religion, if it is sincere, has to focus scientifically on the functions of religion. OB’s claim seems to be that the ID-ers give us an essential insight into what religion is: a set of truth claims, much like the truth claims of, say, dentistry. Myself, I think that if this were true, the ID organization would be vastly more powerful than it is. If it were true, then the elections in Dover, Pa., to use a small example, in which the ID ticket was driven from office would be an indication that the voters were, somehow, anti-Christian. I don’t think that is true at all. ID-ism is a very minor part of the Christian spectrum, and one, in my opinion, having much more to do with politics than religion.
So if we are to be scientific, I would imagine that we would want some scientific view of religion, and that view would not treat faith solely as a function in polemical discourse between believers and non-believers.
Which is why I’d propose another model — that of legitimation – and make the claim that faith, viewed solely as an epistemolgical question, misses the point.
There are religions, however, where faith is either underconceptualized or plays no role at all. Is there anything remotely like faith in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic sense in Daoism? It would be easier to talk about faith by comparing faith-conceptualizing religions to non-faith religions, in my opinion, before contrasting faith to science.
“and that view would not treat faith solely as a function in polemical discourse between believers and non-believers.”
Sure. I’m not claiming that the truth-claims are all there is to religion – that that’s an exhaustive definition. I’ve nowhere said that, and it’s not what I think. But I do think they’re important and central, and also that ‘religion’ that doesn’t make truth claims is not what I’m talking about anyway. But I really do not believe that religion that does not include belief that god exists is what most people mean by religion in, say, Anglophone culture. Theistic religion is what I’m talking about – not some other kind.
“And in fact the question of belief in God has been treated, when the Church had a judicial arm, as of such importance that atheism could be punished with death. How do you think Dante sorted out who stays in Limbo and who reaches Heaven? Etc., etc. The evidence is so overwhelming, in my opinion, that your notion that faith is not, qua faith, rewarded simply can’t account for the history of Christianity.”
Rodger – of course faith is vital to religion, and has been enforced in the past absolutely ruthlessly by eccessiastical authority whereever it has managed to establish temporal political power. But the very fact that it is related to temporal political power illustrates why Dawkins’ concept of faith as simply a matter of believing in something for which there is no evidence is inadequate. Through the Dark Ages and into the medieval era obviously ‘faith’ had a great deal to do with allegience, ‘fidel’, solidarity with the ecclessia – not merely the mental assent to abstract dogma.
On this, and also on a narrow doctrinal level, I would maintain the argument. In Roman Catholicism, ‘keeping the faith’ has always been understood to demonstrate itself in works. This includes the observance of ritual, participation in the performance of magic and crucially, allegience to the institution which claims to be the custodian of the ritual. Dawkins is wrong to think it’s all about mental assent to ideological abstractions.
The protestant position is rather different. The sinner is justified by faith alone, as Luther would have it. But faith saves only because it allows one to acquire through grace atonment from the finished work of Christ. And this faith, as St Paul said (in Romans, I think) is not of your own but the gift of God. I really think if we understand faith more in its social context, those of us who are agnostics and atheists – and above all, secularists – would get further. To illustrate (finally, sorry) with the protestant example: as the Scottish historian JD Mackie wisely observed, the antithesis of justification by faith is not works “but rather the idea that absolution could be given by a priest”.
Dawkins is too cerebral – too damn *protestant*, whether he recognises himself in the description or not. I disagree with both of them often but Marx and Weber are much better on this subject – yet everyone seems to have forgotten about them.
“However, what do you mean by “in its social context”?”
I mean – for example – the protestant evangelical’s claim to believe every word of the Bible shouldn’t be taken at face-value. How the text is interpreted depends on the history and the institutions of the particular context (i.e. the country) in which it operates.
For instance, American evangelicals, will often abstain from alcohol yet get divorced. They claim to believe the Bible but it’s the other way around; alcohol is not forbidden for the Christian but divorce, except in the case of adultery, isn’t. Obviously the interpretation of the text is being mediated through cultural traditions like the prohibitionist culture of the US and the fact that divorce is so readily available.
Another would be the ‘Health and Wealth’ snake-oil salesman. I’d suggest that this focus has more to do with America’s strong capitalist tradition rather than anything the Bible actually says. So, for example, when Jesus commanded his desciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel, the hot-gospeller will say, “That means *you*” – but when he says to sell all you have and give to the poor or that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, the interpretation changes subtly, actually not very subtly: “Oh, he only meant the rich young ruler – ain’t talking about me; God wants me to prosper”. Handy bit of New Testament exegesis that one.
I don’t think Dawkins etc. should take people’s fundamentalist protestations as seriously as he does. I mean, to fundamentalists *really* believe that everyone who doesn’t believe as they do (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the human race) is going straight to hell where “their worms dies not, nor is their fire quenched”? I doubt it – but if so, why are they so damn cheerful about this? Bit sick if you ask me…
Sorry, that should say, “but divorce, except in the case of adultery, IS.”
Chuck,
You said you didn’t believe in god until you had a certain experience. Yet, you want to convince us of the truth of your beliefs recognising that god has not seen fit to give us that kind of experience. Why should we be more credulous than you were?
I don’t know whether you’ve lurked here before starting to participate, but if you have, you should know that to bring even the most inexplicable event or amazing coincidence and try to argue that if we cannot fathom it at all, it must mean something specific (i.e. god) by default, is not going to win you any followers. Rational thinking does not allow for such a thing and it’s your right to be both irrational and proud of it, but that’s not going to change the meaning of the word “rational.” To say “So in my proclaiming God is real, I expressed Truth. And you have given up?” is to us a non sequitur. We most certainly differentiate between proof and evidence. You told us some things you thought constituted proof, we “quibbled,” you said “Change the word ‘proof’ to read ‘evidence’.” The things you were prepared to call proof does not, for us, even remotely qualify as evidence.
“Just because bad things happen, it does not mean that God doesn’t exist.” I agree with that statement. Can you provide us with anything that, in the absence of prior belief, will mean that he does? And of course, I don’t mean something inexplicable, a gap into which you insert god, but something which can not (by anybody) be interpreted as anything but clear evidence for the existence of god.
“From my perspective, the Universe and life itself are proofs of God anyone can see for themselves, if they are willing to see.” I hope B&W has helped you to see that there are some radically different perspectives out there.
“If the world had always been without God and His little interventions, e.g., my personal experiences. I guess, I wouldn’t be here.” You seem convinced nothing that happened to you could have happened without god. Can you appreciate that there is another way of seeing things?
And if the atheists are wrong? That will be interesting, won’t it? Whatever else you do, Chuck, please don’t waste time trying to convert me. I appear to have a natural immunity to faith.
Rational Theist,
Please don’t make straw men out of us. Who are these atheists who are out to “prove” there is no god? Are these some of your best friends? Can you cite quotations from the guilty parties? “I have an intuitive sense that God exists and is present in the world, hence my belief. I am not obligated to justify this belief on empirical grounds to you, because it is not a belief I arrived at empirically, but that doesn’t make it false.” Believe what you like. There is no atheist police force out to ransack the contents of people’s minds. You may not think it’s false, but why should anyone else share it with you unless you give grounds beyond your intuitive sense? And if it goes further and turns into an assertion, why should any assertion expect to gain acceptance without evidence?
As far as Darwin and Pol Pot go, are you claiming the Nazis could have done what they did without nearly two millennia of softening-up work by the church? Did the Nazis invent Jew-hatred and suddenly spring it upon an unprepared German public? “Pol Pot slaughtered thousands of religious Cambodians because of his atheism.” That’s quite a sentence. Believing and non-believing humans have been slaughtering each other for at least as long as recorded history. Why single out the relatively few without religious belief for most of the opprobrium?
Please don’t make straw men out of us. Who are these atheists who are out to “prove” there is no god? Are these some of your best friends?
Dawkins for one, it would seem. But by definition “atheism” means “believing in the nonexistence of a god or gods” – that’s the etymology of the word. It does NOT mean “not believing in the existence of a god or gods”. The two statements are not logically equivalent. If you wanna be a real atheist, you are putting forth a positive belief, which in your epistemological system requires proof. Otherwise, don’t claim the title – admit that what you are is a nonbelieving agnostic and acknowledge that it’s possible for people to disagree with you and still be rational and intelligent.
Believe what you like. There is no atheist police force out to ransack the contents of people’s minds.
Thank God for that, no pun intended. When such police forces have existed they haven’t given nonbelievers a good name.
You may not think it’s false, but why should anyone else share it with you unless you give grounds beyond your intuitive sense?
I differ from some religious people in that I don’t particularly care if everyone I meet shares my beliefs – in fact I think the world is a richer, more interesting place for having a variety of beliefs and atheists have a welcome place in my worldview – provided they are respectful of those who disagree with them, which incidentally is the same standard to which I hold believers of all types. You want to talk about straw men? By painting all believers as intolerant fundamentalist zealots, you ignore people like me, of whom there are a lot. All that said, I find that spirituality enriches my life immensely and not just at times of crisis but on a daily basis. I don’t intuitively understand why anyone wouldn’t want to experience something like that, but it’s different strokes for different folks I suppose.
And if it goes further and turns into an assertion, why should any assertion expect to gain acceptance without evidence?
It depends on what you mean by “acceptance”. If you mean “is universally agreed upon”, it shouldn’t. As I said, I respect people who refuse to believe something that reasonable people may disagree on unless it passes their personal burden of proof. But if you mean “is tolerated and respected even by those who disagree with it”, then it ought to be accepted simply because tolerance and respect make the world a better place for atheists and believers alike.
As far as Darwin and Pol Pot go, are you claiming the Nazis could have done what they did without nearly two millennia of softening-up work by the church? Did the Nazis invent Jew-hatred and suddenly spring it upon an unprepared German public?
Of course not. The Christian church ought to be held accountable for its long history of anti-Semitism. But the coin is two sided – would a modern, secular concept of human rights exist without centuries of religious tradition asserting the dignity and worth of human beings? The abolition of slavery, pacifism, social welfare, the civil rights movements in both the U.S. and South Africa, and many other admirable movments were all pioneered/led by religious leaders. Like any human institution religion has been used for both good and bad.
Believing and non-believing humans have been slaughtering each other for at least as long as recorded history. Why single out the relatively few without religious belief for most of the opprobrium?
I wasn’t singling out nonbelievers for most of the opprobrium – just pointing out that atheists hardly have a claim that nonbelief hasn’t been misused to justify violence and oppression just as belief has. If you want to go sheerly by numbers, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and Stalin, who all subscribed to systems of thought of which atheism was a fundamental pillar, killed far more people in 50 years than the Crusades, the Inquisition, the wars of religion, and the colonial conquests put together did in 500. Of course I don’t think that it’s fair to atheism as an idea to do that – reality is more complicated. My point was merely to illustrate that one of the most popular antireligionist charges – that religion has been the sole cause of millions of deaths – is facile and overly simplistic as well. Any ideology has the potential to be poisonous if it’s carried too far, and that goes for atheistic ones too.
Rational Theist,
The nearest dictionary I had at hand (Chambers 1914) had atheism as “disbelief in the existence of God.” I don’t know what your source was for “believing in the nonexistence…” Funny that there are no words for disbelief in tables, chairs etc. Not believing in god is the default. We’re all born like that; the shit only hits the fan later. There’s no question of proof or evidence against it involved; there’s none for it. I wouldn’t use “agnostic” for myself as, for me, it carries a connotation of not having a definite opinion one way or the other. I do have a definite opinion, it isn’t one I can prove, but it is one that fits the lack of evidence.
For the record, I do not think all believers are “intolerant fundamentalist zealots,” although I do think they are all mistaken and inadvertently do a lot to help the “intolerant fundamentalist zealots.”
“tolerated and respected even by those who disagree with it”
Tolerated, in the sense of no one having the right to interfere with the private beliefs of anyone else, yes. Respected, in the sense of being more protected from criticism than, say, political views, no.
On the good/bad issue, I refer you to a later discussion thread (“A Mingled Yarn”) where it has been continuing. For the same reason as I don’t see my lack of belief as a belief, I also do not regard regimes without religion as explicitly atheist regimes in a way that reflects on atheism in the same way that religious regimes do reflect on religion, though I do condemn all crimes of repression against the private beliefs of any individual.
Chuck,
You answered my questions and I don’t see enough overlap with my terms of reference to permit useful discussion. Please excuse my being very lazy in responding to your Hitler remark. I have not gone and checked out everything on this site (http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm), but from all I have read over the years, it is by no means as straightforward as you seem to think.
Chuck,
One tiny addition on the matter of Hitler. Richard Dawkins makes a brief reference to it in this “Diary” piece in next Monday’s “New Statesman” (http://www.newstatesman.com/200601300002): “We don’t judge Christians by Hitler’s claim to be one, and it is equally irrelevant that many Christians, like many atheists, are nice people.”
There are reasons some people automatically count Hitler as a representative of atheism and there are reasons other people automatically see him as a believer continuing a Christian tradition. Whether or not you accept the side with which you seem to be less familiar (“are they considering him a non-atheist because of his occultist leanings?”), I would hope you would be open enough at least to glance at the record on that subject.
Chuck,
You’re not going to get anywhere with a non-believer by basing anything at all on a text you consider sacred but he doesn’t. What can I do but shrug my shoulders? That’s what I meant by insufficient overlap.
Chuck,
While I was very open about not having double-checked everything appearing on the link I posted, the quotes provided did at least claim to be from primary sources. The quote you provided is from a distinctly secondary source. Obviously, everything should be verified, but I think History Channel interviews with SS officers say less about Hitler’s beliefs than direct quotes from Hitler. Is this a proposition with which you disagree?
Wishing to know more of the secondary source through whom the Hitler comments were filtered, I found the original at the following link (http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2006/01/25/atheists-arguing/) and I have to say that I didn’t find Rev. Sensing’s arguments either convincing or well-argued. I do not claim to have respect for religion, first and foremost because it seems to me absurd to respect something unable to offer rationally acceptable evidence for the truth of its most basic claims. OB and Norm disagree on something other than whether there is proof for religion’s truth claims. Rev. Sensing unsurprisingly sees more merit in Norm’s view, but Norm, as far as I know, does not agree with Rev. Sensing that OB’s argument is “pure hogwash.” Incidentally, it would have been easy to avoid the (in my view) disparaging description of OB as “fellow atheist Ophelia (no last name given).” OB’s surname is hardly a secret and no harder to ferret out than the above-linked discussion was for me. The way Rev. Sensing referred to her seems an unnecessary contribution to the perception of a human being with opinions as a cipher representing an ideology with whom “we” disagree. A long way of saying “dehumanising.”
That Sensing thing is interesting. A bit illiterate – and relies, as theist ‘argument’ so often does, on telling lies about what the atheist has said. A stupid tactic, because what on earth is the point? Surely the issue is what people do say, not what they don’t say.
Chuck,
Though there’s much on which we don’t agree, we probably do agree that people make variously informed choices about which sources they consider reliable. In this case, when I, a non-believer, see someone with a very religious bent (Sensing) characterise someone else (Hitler), who is (almost) universally considered the very incarnation of evil, as a non-believer, when I have seen direct quotes from Hitler that make this claim dubious, well, yes, it does affect my perception of Sensing’s reliability. I don’t think you were even trying to argue that secondary sources are always to be preferred to primary, were you?
As to your suggestion that I get more directly involved with Sensing: I participate in discussions at B&W because I find it stimulating in a way that does not pit me against assertions with which I simply don’t agree. While I am interested in better understanding the underpinnings of the non-belief I’ve always had, I have never sought discussions or arguments with believers. I have had more than enough that I didn’t seek out and even those that didn’t begin with an immediate dead end were ultimately unproductive.
“I do tend to venture out to see what the rest of the world is thinking, and engage them in their own lair”
“I’m just here to (1) testify”
Anti-religious as I am, it would never occur to me to seek out religious people in order to “engage them in their own lair.” As I mentioned, I’ve had more than enough encounters of that kind I did not seek out. I don’t know what brand of Christianity you represent, but your use of the word “testify” suggests to me that you believe it is your duty to spread your faith among those who do not share it. I have no sympathy for such an attitude.
Last volley, I think, because you want to discuss this with me, whereas I’m usually too polite not to reply to something directed towards my attention. I don’t intend to offend by not replying any more, but I have a life which is full enough without discussions from which nothing can come.
It’s been an experience watching your tactics, from implying I can’t see what you can because I haven’t opened my eyes to daring me to take a leap into something that makes no sense to me.
To do something because “it is written up in there like that” obviously works for you and I’m sure you don’t feel you’re not thinking for yourself by doing so. I agree that you have made your choice.
“Maybe not you, but perhaps someone else who stumbles upon these discussions will have their curiosity pricked and try to find out things for themselves.”
Not me. I was brought up with religion and finding out things for myself has been and still is very liberating.
TO: Stewart
RE: Is It Something I Said?
Interesting…
…it looks like something has come through and deleted all of my postings in this thread.
How is that?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Makes it look like you’re having a conversation with yourself.
Thank you!
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