God 1 or god 2
I kept going on arguing in that discussion at CfI yesterday, and in doing that I tried to boil down the point of contention to make it as clear as possible.
There are two possibilities for theists here.
1) There is a god who is transcendent, outside of nature, outside of the universe.
2) There is a god who is descendent, inside nature, inside the universe, and who makes things happen in our world.
There are different things to say about each. About 1, nearly everyone would agree that it’s not possible to offer evidence that such a god does not exist. But theists fail to draw the rest of the obvious conclusion: for the same reason that it’s not possible to offer evidence that such a god does not exist, it’s not possible to know anything at all about such a deity, therefore there is literally nothing to say about it. If it’s outside, it has nothing to do with us, and we have nothing to do with it, and there’s just nothing to say. There’s fantasy, of course, but fantasy can be about anything and everything, and most theists don’t consider theism to be fantasy.
About 2, agreement is much less likely – but that’s mostly because theists smuggle in aspects of 1 in order to defend their belief system. They hang on to 2 by claiming (literally nonsensically) that 2 has the attributes of 1 but is still the god of 2. Well, that’s a cheat. You can have 1, or you can have 2, but you can’t have both in one. You can’t combine them. It’s not like blending carrots and ginger to make soup. Your god has to be either 1, or 2; it can’t be both.
Once that is realized (and that of course is the snag, because theists and pretend-skeptics simply refuse to realize it), then it becomes clear that 2) is in fact entirely subject to all sorts of empirical inquiry. It’s also subject to common or garden skepticism, in which one declines to believe every blagger who claims there is an invisible magical being up in the sky answering prayers and punishing sinners.
That was yesterday. What I want to know is, is it wrong? The guy I was arguing with seemed to think that you can combine them – and that puzzles me; I don’t see why it’s not obvious that you can’t. G. probably knows, but he’s busy with other things.
The only reason I can think of for people to think you can combine the two is that they are thinking of ‘outside of nature’ as analogous to outside a house, or a room, or a city, or a country. You can be outside all of those and still make things happen inside them. You can be outside a house and throw rocks at it, or set it on fire, or paint it, or shout at people inside it.
But I don’t think that’s relevant to this god stuff because when theists say god is outside, beyond, transcendent, they don’t mean something analogous to outside a house or a city. We know this because they also say that god therefore can’t be tested by the methods of science, and that doesn’t apply to outside a house or a city. This outsideness is a special kind of outsideness that (usefully) confers total immunity from testing and questioning on this god. Well if it’s going to do that, it has to be a kind of outsideness that can’t be combined with being in the world and acting on it – because if it can be combined with being in the world and acting on it, it’s no longer some special magical kind of outsideness, it’s just geographic outsideness which is compatible with occasional (or frequent) visits. And a god that pays visits is back to being one that can be tested. So we still (as far as I can make sense of all this) have the same incompatability. If the god is ‘transcendent’ and permanently beyond human knowledge and testing – then it’s 1, and it can’t also be 2.
Can it? I don’t see how it can; am I missing something?
I think you’re right.
This is probably just the usual theist self-delusion.
I don’t think you’re missing anything. There is no meaningful definition of the word “god” therefore it’s not possible to talk sensibly with a believer about what they mean by that term.
But you probably knew that already.
There is a popular genre of computer game called the “god game” which allows the player to play the role of god in a simulated world. Simulated people run around building things, having children, fighting, etc. The world proceeds according to it’s own rules; it has laws of physics defined by the programmer that are meant to seem similar to real-world physics. The point is that a person playing the game is completely outside the space, time, and rules that define the game world, yet able to intervene in the game world at will. If the simulation were so good and complete that the people in the game, with fully functioning simulated brains, experience the game world as vividly as we experience our world, the player would be in the position of a god who is completely outside nature in the sense you’re describing but also completely able to intervene in it. I’m not saying this to argue that this is how things are, we all live in the matrix & god’s the programmer, I’m just saying that I don’t think the idea is logically incoherent.
Analogously, the theists seem to be saying: Some fellow in the future is influencing our world. The reason that we cannot detect him is that he doesn’t exist in our time.
But you’re right. It’s one or the other. If this fellow actually time-travels back to our time, then we’d potentially be able to detect him. If he doesn’t, on the other hand, then he cannot influence us.
I can imagine lots of things, JFK.
Zombies, people with no brains who can talk, men with very small wings who still manage to fly by beating them very fast, Borges’ library, Death’s library for that matter, the perfect island…
The fact that you can imagine something does not make it possible, I am afraid.
(You’d be glad of that fact if you could see my dreams… ;¬) )
Besides, your people of the computer (I hope they turn out better than the peoples of the book…) would still be able to investigate the player’s actions which take place in the game and from that speculate on the nature of their god.
Weirdly, neither my Creature nor my worshippers in Black and White have turned against me yet. They should though; I keep burning their villages!
The god game is interesting.
The world has laws of physics; so can the god break the laws of physics when it intervenes?
How does the god-person intervene when it intervenes? What does the person do?
I’m not sure the god-person is outside nature in the sense I’m describing – I think it’s outside nature in the sense that’s analogous to being outside a house. It can intervene because there are ways it can intervene – but those ways are not undetectable to science are they? Does it make sense to say of the person playing the role of god that it (the person) is transcendent and beyond the world of the game and thus is beyond scientific investigation? It doesn’t sound as if it is. You could design the game so that the simulated people don’t have any science – but then that wouldn’t answer any questions about our world.
In the god game, the gamer god intervening in the game must act in accordance with the laws of nature as they exist within the game, therefore she cannot be said to be transendent within the definition OB gives.
Of course, the gamer god could reprogramme the game, but in that case the game people would be unable to detect that things had changed and we would be back to the original problem.
I have no problem with the idea that God commutes to the universe during the day and spends evenings at His bachelor pad out on the etheric plane.
I just think that if His interventions are to be regarded as something He’s actually responsible for, they will be differentiable from non-divinely induced phenomena. So we are back to detectability.
The computer example is a good one. A self-aware computer program that I write on a self-contained computer system and do not tell about human beings will not be able to guess the colour of my hair no matter how much data it gathers from its own system. I am outside the system, I control the system and can modify it arbitrarily, and I input only what I choose to.
But the program will still be able to tell when data is coming in from the keyboard…
As with so many arguments about religious belief, the thread so far seems to miss something that religious people find important. Interestingly, in a fairly indirect way, Terry Eagleton put his finger on it in his review of Dawkins’ God Delusion.
Eagleton said a lot of silly things about Duns Scotus, etc., and what a pity Dawkins hadn’t read any of them. Dawkins responsed with something to the effect that that would be like reading a lot of nonsense about the spaghetti monster. There’s a toss-up between the importance of God (as traditionally understood) and the spaghetti monster. They’re both imaginary beings, so what does anything written about either really matter?
The problem with this is that, in case of God (let’s restrict ourselves to Christian ideas of God for the moment), this is a concept that has dominated people’s perception of the world for thousands of years.
As science came (rightly) to dominate discourse about the world, religion (and with religion, of course, the concept of God), began to go into retreat, occupying the spaces left by science. Gradually, of course, there didn’t seem to be any spaces left, no more gaps to fill.
So serious religious language tended to go underground. Sure, there were the fundamentalists who thought they could go on talking about God in pre-enlightenment ways — and this is where we find all the conflict between religion and evolution, for example. But serious religion went on a completely different tack. It learned that trying to sail with a fixed sail didn’t work, and so religious people began to tack.
Consequently, religious people tend to take contemporary atheism in its stride. It merely sets its sail a bit differently, and almost succeeds in sailing into the wind of criticism. Most of the religious people I know would not be able to understand the options between Gods 1 or 2. The concept of God no longer functions that way in most religious discourse.
Take Graham Shaw, for instance, who began as an Anglican priest and is now, I believe, a Quaker. In his book “The Cost of Authority”, which is a devastating analysis of the the rhetoric of Mark’s gospel and Paul’s letters, he goes from thinking of God as a being ‘out there’, whether transcendent or immanent (Gods 1 and 2), to thinking about God is more mythical, cultural ways. Though no longer considered a referring expression, it has deeply important things to do in human discourse.
Now, this may be an illegitimate move. Perhaps it can be shown that Shaw is now an atheist, since he doesn’t appear to believe in a being described in the way that atheists describe gods. On the other hand, perhaps the concept of God still has cultural work to do. Gordon Kaufmann, in his book “God, Mystery, Diversity”, seems to think so, as does Paul W. Jones in his book “Theological Worlds”.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in order to engage contemporary theology (other than the fundamentalist variety) you really do have to study what contemporary theologians have to say. I think this was Eagleton’s point, and he made it clumsily. It may be that all of modern theology can be dealt with in the way that Paul Edwards deals with several theologians, and dismissed as philosophically weak, confused and irrational. I believe they probably can be, but it needs to be shown.
I wonder, though, whether disagreements over propositions like those defining Gods 1 and 2 are really profitable in dealing with the questions that religions raise for many contemporary folk. Of course, you can get into a real donnnybrook over these questions arguing with a fundamentalist; but is it worth it?
Eric,
It may sound a nonsense, but I don’t think that the existence of god, or whether any such god interferes in human affairs is really the realm of theology. That was Dawkins’s point. The existence of god, and alleged evidence of that existence (i.e. evidence that god has interfered in human affairs) is a scientific question.
Your characterisation of modern religious types, of the non-fundementalist stripe, seems to be that the existence of god is not a central question for them. That the concept of god is merely a process used to understand the world – the antithesis of materialism, if you will.
For all religious people I know, god is more than a philosophical construct. They are perfectly normal people who believe in the literal existence of a supernatural being.
“Take Graham Shaw, for instance, who began as an Anglican priest and is now, I believe, a Quaker. In his book “The Cost of Authority”, which is a devastating analysis of the the rhetoric of Mark’s gospel and Paul’s letters, he goes from thinking of God as a being ‘out there’, whether transcendent or immanent (Gods 1 and 2), to thinking about God is more mythical, cultural ways. Though no longer considered a referring expression, it has deeply important things to do in human discourse.
Now, this may be an illegitimate move. Perhaps it can be shown that Shaw is now an atheist, since he doesn’t appear to believe in a being described in the way that atheists describe gods. On the other hand, perhaps the concept of God still has cultural work to do. Gordon Kaufmann, in his book “God, Mystery, Diversity”, seems to think so, as does Paul W. Jones in his book “Theological Worlds”.”
I think once a person has adopted this kind of worldview about gods they pretty much are atheists, although I suspect most of them would fight the label–they’re just atheists with a stronger-than-is-healthy attachment to certain old books of poetry. Of course, even big old boogeyman Dawkins has some nice things to say about the writing in the more coherent parts of the KJV.
Although I’m not sure what then separates these “theologians” from literary critics with a constrained focus.
Of course, in my experience of talking to theists, the addition of god(3) (the metaphorical, mythical critter) gives them another shell to add to the game and switch out when it’s advantageous for them to do so. Quite frustrating.
When people hold both those views at once – and are attempting to be consistent, really what they are saying is this.
The transcendent God is so transcendent and mindblowing that ACTUALLY logic no longer applies. So he could be 1 and 2 through some sort of bendy logic that you just don’t get.
Ha! I think that’s about it, Borboski.
Eric, about the need to read modern theologians…to the extent that they do move from 1 and 2 to 3, I don’t see the need to read them. I suppose that’s because I don’t feel any need to call 3 ‘God,’ and I think it’s obfuscating to do so. That’s like the definition that Nussbaum gave to Moyers; it’s pleasant and everything, but it has nothing to do with the bossy god that everyday believers talk about when they talk about god.
“it has deeply important things to do in human discourse…perhaps the concept of God still has cultural work to do.”
I wonder what, though. (That would be a reason to read modern theologians! I would find out.) If it’s not God as traditionally understood, then what important things can it do that other concepts can’t do? In other words (to put it a tad crudely) if it can’t do magic, what can it do by being still called ‘God’ that is unique to itself?
Perhaps something about ‘the good’ or the human struggle to find the good or to enact the good? But if that’s it, it seems to me it would make more sense to call it the good; plus there’s the problem that (optimists to the contrary notwithstanding) humans don’t agree on what ‘the good’ is. Maybe the purpose ‘God’ performs is to disguise that fact? But it’s not a good idea to disguise it, because then you get people signing up to bad things without realizing they’re doing it (though I suppose you also get them signing up to good things without realizing – but is there any reason to think the balance would come out for real ‘good’?).
‘can you define your “god’s” properties, so we know what we are arguing about?’
Those who subscribe to “negative theology” would argue that asking the question demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of God. I tend to agree with George when he says that there is no meaningful definition of “God”.
As for having it both ways, I have met people who partially believe both in what is possibly a consistent manner. They hold that God does act in the world and we can and do see the results of those acts. They also claim that God is transcendent in the sense that we cannot possibly truly know God or what God is. For Judaism and Christianity there is scriptural support for this position. One example that comes to mind is the case where God tells Moses that Moses can only see his “back” which is usually interpreted as seeing only where God has been, not where God is.
Arguing with a believer, particularly someone who claims direct experience, is likely to be pointless. As Dawkins points out, the argument from personal experience is unlikely to be persuasive to an atheist or to someone who doesn’t already hold that position. For the individual, however, no amount of logic or argumentation is likely to convince him that what he *knows* is wrong. He is more likely to believe that something is wrong with the logic.
“They hold that God does act in the world and we can and do see the results of those acts.”
Fine – but to the extent that that’s true, that God is indeed open to scientific inquiry. People who believe that cannot at the same time believe that God is transcendent and therefore beyond the ken of science. If we can and do see the results, then they are subject to empirical inquiry.
I’m not sure if I agree that ‘there is no meaningful definition of “God”‘, Jeff. This sort of tactic often seems to be employed when people (theists in this case) realise their position is untenable: it’s shifting the goalposts, surrounding the arguments in smoke and mirrors, and is a rather obvious and old trick. I’d agree that there is not one universal, clear definition across the world and over time, and there are whole areas of philosophy dedicated to the idea of meaning in language, but I think it is more the case that there are a few definite meanings of ‘god’, and that theists often try to argue for the traditional, anthropomorphic interventionist god while maintaining that they believe in a hazy, mythical god in order to look intelligent and modern.
The latter meaning is significantly different from the former: it’s god as a symbol for ‘good’ or ‘moral’ and is more of a guiding principle/social construct/ethical idea, completely at odds with the actually-existing being of traditional theology, and one can’t argue that the former exists while maintaining that the latter is the actual ‘thing’ believed in.
Religion since the advent of science has had to retreat, whittling away at its own magical claims: firstly the miracle becomes a parable; then an event becomes a metaphor; then (to choose Christianity for instance) Jesus wasn’t an immaculate conception; till you get to the point where some theologians view the resurrection as somehow metaphorical, which rather defeats the whole point. Religion without supernatural elements is no more than an ethical system, and a mixed-up, at times barbaric, one at that – yet some modern theologians don’t seem to realise this.
This analysis is vulnerable to the whole cartesian doubt canard.
If “there is a god who is transcendent, outside of nature, outside of the universe” who is the source of the rules governing the universe, then it is quite conceivable for him to operate it in a manner that we cannot readily detect, and to do so whenever he please regardless of the initial rule conditions (he can, essentially, switch them at any time). Neo only figured out the existence of the Matrix, because an external agent pointed it out to him &c.
“Fine – but to the extent that that’s true, that God is indeed open to scientific inquiry.”
Not necessarily. Because the nature of the universe for which we have developed our scientific inquiry is completely dependent on the whims of its creator. By natural extension of such a God’s power, he could affect everything we see, hear, touch, feel, smell and think. Just as Descarte’s Demon can. And manipulate our memories.
Now, of course, if that is the God we’re dealing with then theists come tumbling down at a quite different hurdle; squaring a God that is capable of fitting the description of 1 and 2 with the concept of Free Will.
Doc Inc,
Well, yes, but I suppose I think that ‘possibility’ (possible to imagine, not necessarily literally possible) comes to the same thing as 1; if it’s all a trick we don’t and can’t know anything, so what theists say is of no more value than what anyone else says. It could all be mice, it could be a transcendent god; whatever. The ‘whatever’ places it on the 1 side of the ledger rather than the 2 side; at least I think it does.
Eric,
No I don’t necessarily think you believe all this. And I know, about the experiences. I do get that a certain kind of experience can change one’s feeling about life the universe and everything – and I don’t think that’s necessarily irrational. Arational maybe but not irrational. I can imagine experiencing a sense of irradiation, of glory – the kind of thing Wordsworth talked about for instance – that simply would saturate one’s experience of life afterwards. (And possibly make one a better person – though Wordsworth wasn’t particularly better.)
But I’m still not sure I want to go to theologians for more understanding of that. Why them in particular? Why not poets, mystics, writers of memoirs?
“Religion without supernatural elements is no more than an ethical system”
And an ethical system doesn’t need religion, so…
“Fine – but to the extent that that’s true, that God is indeed open to scientific inquiry.” Not necessarily. There is the logical (if not actual) possibility of a miracle. The meaning of such an event would be open to interpretation, but that is more of a role for philosophy/theology than for science. In such a case there would be action in this world with no real access to the actor that caused it. As an aside, I once came across some theology which states that God works in this world through a completely deterministic framework. Rather than interfere, the world was created in such a manner that it was guaranteed that we would be having this web-based discussion. With respect to how this works in conjunction with the notion of free will, I recommend reading “Elbow Room” by Dennett.
Perhaps Dave is right and the claim that there is no meaningful definition of God is a bit strong. I find, however, that there is little agreement as to what the word God actually means. Without several qualifiers (such as the ones offered) the use of the word God tends to obfuscate rather than illuminate. Once the qualifiers are put in place, it then becomes too easy to say that the described God isn’t what is “truly” meant by God.
“Religion without supernatural elements is no more than an ethical system” ignores traditions, institutions, and history. Theology seems to play a fairly minor role in the day to day practice of religion. Religion can also be an aesthetic choice.
“There is the logical (if not actual) possibility of a miracle.”
Hmmm. Okay, but it’s the actual I’m talking about. If the possibility is only logical, the whole thing still belongs in 1. (Or do I mean I have to redescribe 1 so that the logical possibility belongs there?)
The fact that the possibility is logical rather than actual amounts to the same thing as saying it’s transcendent – at least in the actual world it does. It’s possible to imagine all this, but imagining is all it is. Or to put it another way, how does one know the difference between a miracle and a hand-wave?
Still; maybe I’m being obstinate; maybe this is the something I’m missing that I asked for. Yet it totally fails to convince me of anything.
Wow! That was quick! Here I am trying to set up a laptop, and betweentimes trying to keep up with the blogs! And there it all is in living colour!
OB, you end up by saying: ‘Why not poets, mystics, writers of memoirs?’ Of course, why not? I’m not saying you’ve *got* to go to the theologians. All I’m saying is that if you leave out the theologians – and Wordsworth and many mystics qualify – you leave out a very prominent aspect of human experience. It’s not about god. That’s the one thing I’m finding out as I talk with old friends. God’s the least important thing in the mix. But there is a dimension of experience that people are referring to when they talk about God that, if you miss it, you’ve missed the main point of so many people’s understanding of their lives. I’m trying desperately to find a way to talk to people who keep saying: ‘The god you deny is not a god I believe in.’
That’s all. And it seems to me that a lot of the atheist rhetoric misses the point entirely, and so doesn’t even begin to dent the conviction of so many people that a religious form of life and belief is important to them. Atheists spend so much time arguing about God 1 and 2, and miss the point. That’s not where so many religious people are. That’s the point that Eagleton got right (almost the only point he got right) in his critique of Dawkins.
I know it’s very hard to understand, and you’re quite right that poets are a good place to start. But somehow, if we’re going to begin to make some impression on all the hard-headed religious belief out there, it has to encounter people where they are. And Dawkins and Russell and Harris and Hitchens don’t even begin to approach it. Read something like Holloway’s “Looking in the Distance”, for example, and you will see a kind of religious consciousness which doesn’t depend at all on belief in gods or transcendent or even immanent (supernatural) beings. Perhaps it is, as you say, arational, rather than irrational.
I guess my question still is: is there a place in philosophy for this kind of experience? If there’s not, then religious misdirection will keep on its merry way, without even a glance at those who are trying to find a reasonable way of understanding what it means to be human. And if non-religious people keep trying to bring a fullstop to religious believing by arguing (as Alister McGrath puts it, so smarmily) in a 19th century way, about fairies at the bottom of the garden, they’ll be ignored. I think philosophy should be able to do better than this. Indeed, I think it’s vital that philosophy do better than this.
Ah, well, if Wordsworth is a theologian, then I have no problem consenting to read theologians.
It’s funny about Wordsworth, because I don’t (at least intellectually) accept the conclusions he draws from his experiences, yet his experiences resonate with me. I think that’s mostly because I grew up in the country and was a kind of baby wordsworthian about it. I get it about intense experiences with skies and landscapes etc. (Though to be fair, I think Dawkins does too – he has that childhood in Kenya to draw on, you know.)
I think there is a place in philosophy for this kind of experience. Read Ron Aronson’s essay on gratitude in TPM for instance. Read Jonathan Rée’s essay in the current TPM.
But the religious people who aren’t there…aren’t the issue, are they? Dawkins has said and said and said that he’s talking about theists and theism as commonly understood. He’s not disputing mystics and transcendentalists.
Ja! Ich verstehe. And I know that Dawkins has this deep resonating sense of (dare I say it) the awesomeness of universe and of human experience within it. But then he goes and writes about God 1. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the book, and it’s very often light and humourous. But often it misses the point. Not the point of the fundies who won’t read it anyway, but the point of a lot of people who keep saying to themselves, or who hear a nagging voice saying that there’s something missing here. (That’s not to deny the immense attraction his voice has for many.)
I know, I know. He keeps talking about the wonders of the world that science shows us. And it does. Carl Sagan said the same thing, and yet, reading through “The Meaning of Scientific Experience”, one has a sense that Sagan actually did have an inkling of ‘something far more deeply interfused.’
I grew up in the Himalayas (not Hima-layas, but Himal-yas), and I have something of the Wordsworthian sense of the deep mysteries of the mountains and the cataracts. And I know that Dawkins begins his book by evoking the mysteries of the African night. Nor do I want to harp on this. But you can talk and talk and talk about Gods 1, 2 and 3, and 4 and 5, if you like, but somehow, it simply doesn’t touch what religious people are talking about.
Let me quote just a few words from Holloway’s “Looking in the Distance.” I don’t know what he’s doing nowadays, but he was the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Here’s what he says:
“The religion I encountered … was of the high romantic variety, heavy with incense and laden with mystery. I had no clear sense about what it meant except that it suggested heroic adventure, an endless quest after an object flying from desire.”
Now, that may not make a lot of sense, but that is the place where religion gets its power. You may call it arational or irrational. It doesn’t really make a lot of difference. But it does resonate with so many people that – it seems to me, anyway – it would be worthwhile for non-religious or anti-religious folk to take a closer look.
It’s a bit like Canada, really – two solitudes trying to get into some sort of relationship. And each of them seems to fire over the heads of the other, thinking they’ve scored direct hits. My concern is not for religion as such. By and large it’s a meretricious amalgam of outworn myth. But it still appeals to people who, if they had an alternative, might adopt it, but in the absence of the alternative will go on believing the lies. I’ve seen it all, right up close and personal.
The latest spoutings of the ‘paedophiles’ friend’, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Conman, seem entirely appropriate to this thread:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390941.stm
“God is not a “fact in the world” as though God could be treated as “one thing among other things to be empirically investigated” and affirmed or denied on the “basis of observation”, said Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor.
“If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative.
“I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe.” “
Pass me the having-yer-cake-and-gorging-on-it condescending brrstard sick-bag…
Why do so many people immediately connect their awe of the mountains and stars with religion? I’m sure a major contributing factor to that is pretty much all western thinkers grew up with the existence of ‘god’ as a given. This is no small thing.
People grow up being told “god bless you” and “god damn it” and “I’ll pray for you”, etc. As a result, individuals don’t come to religion in this world – it is given to them in relentless batches. What else to you expect?
When I am arguing/discussing religion with people, I often ask them to think about the hypothesis of the existence of God independent of the lessons from their upbringing. (ex: Would you or I attribute rainbows and roses to God (or gods) without the idea being put in our heads in the first place?) Most people insist that their belief is independent of society (and the ‘god’ meme), but I positive that they are full of it.
Tillich wrote about faith as the ultimate concern, which I found somewhat compelling, but he disregarded atheism outright. When thinking about the possibility of there being a supernatural power in the universe, there are plenty of possibilities, including none. But if you begin your search for theological understanding without considering the possibility that a godless universe is equally possible, I don’t know if you are being honest.
Yeah, I’m busy with other things – but you had to know this would draw me in, OB. ;-)
The people who read Tillich et al, or Wordsworth or Rumi or whomever, aren’t the ones whom vocal and public atheists have a problem with. They aren’t the ones trying to control public policy based on hateful “moral” views driven by the desire for control over women (especially women’s reproduction) and control over every aspect of human sexuality. People who explore Whitehead’s process theology as a way of relating to the Divine aren’t the ones who are warring on every positive aspect of the Enlightenment, on the freedom to think for ourselves that lies at the very heart of classical liberal society. Neopagans and Western Buddhists and Tillich-reading Quakers aren’t pushing to have their religious beliefs taught public schools in place of real science, or fighting against the basic human and legal rights of non-heterosexual citizens, or putting their money and political weight behind global warming denialism and every other aspect of the right-wing political agenda in existence. That, I think, is why Dawkins doesn’t really CARE about those people or address his criticisms in their direction at all. I know *I* don’t have any beef with them.
Unfortunately, those flexible, liberal, thoughtful religious explorers and mystics are a distinct minority amongst religious believers, even if they are widely represented amongst Eric McDonald’s well-educated friends. Maybe they are addressing an important aspect of human experience, or at least some humans’ experiences: I’m inclined to think that they are, Although I have serious doubts that their approach is at all likely to reveal any interesting new truths when all is said and done, I say let them have at it – and I’d be just as happy to be proved wrong about the emptiness of their approach.
But frankly, I just don’t care much about the religious mystics and explorers. I’m much more concerned about the war mongers and suicide bombers and science underminers and so on. There is a very broad segment of religious believers and institutions – a large minority if not an outright majority – that are actively and directly opposed to almost every value I hold dear, such as genuine positive equality, freedom of speech and inquiry, and universal human rights. The ways they think about and define God – incoherent and self-contradictory as they are (for the reasons OB raised, among others) – are worth analyzing and criticizing exactly because they are the ways of thinking about God that are used to justify and motivate these believers’ war on core Enlightenment values. Specifically, the concept of a decidedly immanent God who intervenes and judges and punishes in this life (as well as the next) is used to justify and motivate believers in all sorts of heinous acts, and the idea of a transcendent God is used as a shield to hide that immanent God from all the arguments which clearly demonstrate that there are no good reasons whatsoever to believe in its existence.
Which leads around to my take on why 1 & 2 are seen to be compatible by believers despite their obvious mutual exclusivity. The primary reason that definition 2 exists at all, besides its inherent poetry and rah-rah-ing about God’s greatness, is to quash tough questions about the nature and behavior of God as defined by 1. As God asks Job in response to the latter’s very justified complaints about his treatment, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.” In other words, I’m all-powerful and unquestionable and in all ways beyond the your puny mortal ken (i.e. I’m transcendent God 2), so don’t you dare even ask why I royally screwed you over (clearly the action of interventionist God 1).
And before anyone trots out supposedly more subtle and sophisticated (and therefore somehow innately truer? Bull!) interpretations of Job, it’s just an illustration of the principle. The fact that modern believers use God’s transcendence as a “Get out of jail free” card against arguments exposing the implausibility of God’s immanence is what’s at stake here, not the “true intentions” of the authors of the Book of Job.
“I grew up in the Himalayas (not Hima-layas, but Himal-yas), and I have something of the Wordsworthian sense of the deep mysteries of the mountains and the cataracts. And I know that Dawkins begins his book by evoking the mysteries of the African night. Nor do I want to harp on this. But you can talk and talk and talk about Gods 1, 2 and 3, and 4 and 5, if you like, but somehow, it simply doesn’t touch what religious people are talking about.”
The problem is that most religious people don’t know what they’re talking about either–but they insist on slapping a name and a laundry list of properties on the thing they don’t know anything about. In almost every other field of human knowledge we’ve been forced to come to terms with new discoveries and construct new concepts and ways of thinking.
But for some reason when it comes to the questions that, for lack of a better word, I will call “religious”, we insist on casting them in terms of incoherent, ancient, and outdated concepts that are clearly not up to the task. It’s as if we were trying to discuss the Big Bang theory in terms of Aristotelian cosmology, or explain cell division as the action of homunculi.
The “god” business is a dead end. It’s a fruitless line of inquiry. We need to abandon it and come up with a better vocabulary. I just hope that as a species we are capable of it.
“it suggested heroic adventure, an endless quest after an object flying from desire.”
Now, that may not make a lot of sense, but that is the place where religion gets its power.
It is? That doesn’t sound anything like religion to me, not even religion of the wordsworthian kind. It sounds like various human feelings and thoughts that are particularly intense in adolescence. I remember them fondly, but I sure don’t see what’s religious about them.
Sorry about drawing you in, G! :- )
I take it that you mean moral views that you do not share by hateful moral views G.
Well, that was as clear as ever, Richard. I take it by that obscure comment that you are accusing me of simply putting every moral view I don’t happen to agree with in the “hateful” box. Well let me spell out some of what I mean, which should have been pretty obvious because I said very clearly that I was talking specifically about the sort of religious “morality” that seeks absolute control over human sexuality and women’s reproduction.
By hateful “morality,” I meant the kind of “morality” that thinks women are property and their duty is perpetual pregnancy. Whatever your views on abortion, the Catholic Church actually opposes CONTRACEPTION, fer cryin’ out loud! They tell murderous lies about condoms that have exacerbated the HIV crisis in Africa, all in service of their obsession over whether and how and whom can bump uglies – and they are hardly the only Christian sect to oppose contraception and generally deny a woman’s right to decide for herself whether or not to get pregnant. And let’s not even talk about Muslim views of women, and American Christian fundamentalists who are only better-behaved because they can’t get away with it here (unless they hole themselves up in a religious compound and don’t let too many people know what they’re up to). Oh, and let us not forget wonderful religious traditions like female genital mutilation in Africa, and the abandonment of widows to starvation in India (when they aren’t just burned to death in their husband’s funerary pyres), and… Hell, I lose track of all the crimes against women (and sometimes men as well, especially gay men) which come directly from or are tacitly authorized by religious authorities – all intended to ensure that everyone (men and women, girls and boys) obeys strictly defined sex roles that keep women locked into the role of brood mares.
That’s the hateful “morality” I’m talking about, Richard. Anyone who doesn’t find such views and their consequences appalling is a moral idiot of the first order. Whatever your failings, I’m sure you think forced marriage and murdering gay men and burning widows and all the other stuff I’m talking about is appalling. So what are you getting at?
I’d bet even money that you read what I wrote and all you could think of was your own anti-abortion-focused hobby horse as if it were the primary thing I meant – because you don’t read carefully, and you don’t reflect on what you read before you form an opinion.
I do read your posts carefully G. usualy twice because I find them intresting,I of course would agree with you about the things you have just cited but that is not how you phrased it in your previous post. (have their religious beliefs taught public schools in place of real science, or fighting against the basic human and legal rights of non-heterosexual citizens, or putting their money and political weight behind global warming denialism and every other aspect of the right-wing political agenda in existence). Is what you said G.and I took it to mean right wing christians and their oposition to abortion and gay marriage,which may be mis guided but hardly hateful?
G. I support legal abortion must I also applaud it as well?
‘Whither has fled the visionary dream….’
Only adolescence, Ophelia? But, you see, Holloway’s not talking here about young idealism, or anything like that, he’s reflecting on what is left when everything else has fled. What is left is sitting in a chair and looking in the distance. Here’s the whole quote:
“I gave my life to that search. I became a priest, then a bishop, then a primate. Now, forty years and many battles later, it has passed and I am left sitting in the chair looking in the distance.”
Of course, God language is all washed up. It’s come to an end. It’s not useful any more. No question. Perhaps it’s just sentimentality, but there is something left, something that leads people like Don Cupitt to say that we need to begin the religious project all over again without the dead weight of gods and supernatural agencies.
Perhaps it is a matter of wishing for a kind of comfort or assurance that’s not there. Possibly it does consist in a degree of self-deception – one always felt that Tillich had pulled on a blindfold at some point and forgot to take it off again. And it is no doubt true that the type of religion that concerns us is the god-bothering type that tends to make outrageous intrusions into public space in all sorts of ways. (The Archbishop of Canterbury has the art of intrusiveness down to a science.) But, really, the arguments for or against the being of a god are really beside the point. Those who believe in a god won’t find them compelling, and those who don’t address the issues with a kind of embarrassed stridency, knowing as they do that there isn’t a plausible argument to be had. It’s always a bit odd listening to atheists arguing against the existence of a being belief in which they consider to be as implausible as belief in the tooth fairy. As Peter Strawson said in his book about Kant: “It is with very moderate enthusiasm that a twentieth-century philosopher enters the field of philosophical theology, even to follow Kant’s exposure of its illusions.”
You won’t get an argument from me on that score. However, it seems to me that some contemporary philosophers enter the field with a tad too much enthusiasm, as though the inaneness of religious belief was just being discovered. But then you encounter someone like Tony Blair who so recently and so publicly alligned himself with the whole package, and you have to ask what it is that makes this sort of thing possible, given the arguments. It suggests to me, at least, that we’re missing something, and in order to deal with it – since religion is a enormous problem just now – we’re going to have to try to think around the corners.
That’s why Dennett is so important, because he actually offers a programme of investigation and study which tries to take seriously the experiences of believers, and what it is that gives religious beliefs their power, especially their power to hold on to the minds of those infected by them, and their power to replicate so insidiously. That’s my point.
Ophelia, you say that Holloway’s ‘endless quest after an object flying from desire’ doesn’t sound like religion to you. I think, however, if you look closely, it’s a lot more like religion than you may suppose, and the fact that, after forty years as priest and bishop this is what he ends up with, says something terribly important about the kinds of experience that people find religiously valuable. It is this that atheists or humanists have to address if we’re going to get rid of this incubus (or succubus – take your pick) of religion.
I put it to you that for every beatific vision that persuades those who have it of the existence of god, there is a malific vision that persuades its holder that “This is hell, nor am I out of it.”
Why should a third party find either convincing? Mere anecdote.
Hey I’m not trying to be glib, but what are we chatting about here? As far as I can tell, it is the rationalizations believers in the supernatural make for belief in the supernatural. Somehow because they are making a case for “god” and not “UFO Driving Overlords” (or “gods” – who believes in them anymore?), we treat them as if they are serious thinkers. All of a sudden, this stopped making sense to me.
Is it some kind of moral good for someone to make their life’s work the defense of a belief system into which they were born? I appreciate the value as a philosophical exercise, but what other value is there? (My father said “because I say so” plenty of times when I was a kid, but I’m not aching to buy a book about the inherent value of a father’s orders.) What gives?
Even if the development of more and more labored arguments for the existence of god1, god2 (and god(x+1)) has some value, does any of this matter to the every-day believer who thinks Jesus and Mohammed command them to lock their daughters in the closest? Not really. It’s just distraction.
I was on that CFI thread with you making much the same argument … though not as clearly as you state it here.
I totally agree with you!
The guy we were arguing with might not have been a genuine skeptic I think.
Among other things, after he accused Dawkins of “misusing science” he then basically admitted to never having read anything by Dawkins, and never bothered to present any evidence (e.g. quotes from Dawkins) to back-up his accusation. How do you suppose he could have reached the conclusion that Dawkins misuses science?
Hi Riley!
I don’t know, I thought HH was a pretend skeptic at first, but then for awhile he seemed to be genuinely engaging questions, but having just read his new comments I’m back to thinking he’s a pretend skeptic. I just wrote a comment for him, pointing out that he keeps mis-stating what Dawkins says, though I haven’t posted it yet. He keeps attributing certainty to Dawkins that Dawkins himself doesn’t claim – and this without having read the dang book he’s arguing with!
I weighed in on this topic in this CFI thread starting here:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/3985/P75/#37674
It’s the argument that I find best reaches people of faith:
The “God of the Bible” takes actions that alter “nature” (e.g. answers prayers, sends floods upon the earth, etc.). So, for example, if the “God of the Bible” flooded the earth with water, this impact upon nature should be measurable (geological record, fossil record, etc). We have technology sufficient enough to detect the remnants had such a flood occurred, but there are no remnants. So this is one bit of positive scientific evidence against the existence of the “god of the bible”. Many such pieces of positive scientific evidence exist. The fact that there is no evidence to support *any* of the deeds of the “God of the Bible” is itself enormous evidence suggesting that the “God of the Bible” does not exist.
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Also, there is logical evidence that we can use to determine what types of gods might exist, for example:
If there existed a god that:
1) cares about the welfare of humanity
2) has a message vitally important to the welfare of humanity, and
3) is capability of delivering that message unambiguously to all of humanity
we should have received that message. The fact that we haven’t received such a message is positive evidence (logical evidence) that such a god does not exists.
EXPLANATION: in a world full of incompatible claims, false-prophets and deceit, a message purporting to be of “God” that exists in form susceptible to counterfeit and mimicry (e.g. a “holy book”, an “experience”, and any other form where the mere possibility exists of other explanation), provides reason enough to know that the message is not of “God”. The ability to reliably authenticate the source of a message is as important as the message itself.
Good luck with that argument, Riley! It’s surely a good argument, although I’ve found that it works no better than any other with believers.
And Richard, your reading skills don’t improve much even when you directly quote me. After all, I listed a whole bunch of different things, and you say that you took me to be talking about right wing opposition to abortion and gay marriage, which is surely just a tiny fraction of what I indicated. But let’s go ahead and address those two issues.
What you fail to see, I think, is that the right wing Christians are, in general, not opposed just to abortion and gay marriage – but are also in favor of ignorance (the scientific ignorance of creationism, keeping teenagers ignorant about sex) and bigotry (yes, their position on gay marriage IS hateful) and oppression in general (men rule the home and similar b.s.). It’s all of a single package, with a united agenda – absolute control over women and women’s reproduction. Even the anti-gay nonsense is about enforcing traditional gender roles and punishing anyone who violates them.
So yes, the abortion and anti-gay crusades are just as hateful as the rest. If the self-styled “pro-life” movement’s war against abortion consisted in initiatives to oppose poverty and ignorance, provide free or cheap birth control to everyone, and educate teenagers to reduce teen pregnancy rates – all RATIONAL, EFFECTIVE strategies to reduce abortion rates – then perhaps their morality would merely be misguided rather than hateful. But since the same religious/political people and institutions which call themselves “pro-life” also promote completely and demonstrably ineffective abstinence-only sex education in schools, oppose the HPV vaccine which could save women’s lives, support the right of pharmacists not to provide their professional services to women seeking birth control for “religious reasons,” and so on and so forth – why yes, I do consider them outright immoral. They do a great deal of real harm in the name of their made-up God.
And frankly, there is just no excuse for anti-gay bigotry for any reason, religious or otherwise. Humans are humans, whomever they love, and deserve equal treatment as a simple matter of moral consistency. Human rights means rights for all humans: It does not mean rights for some humans, but not for those people over there who do things that make me feel icky. The denial of basic human moral equality is not merely misguided, it is wrong.
Re: Terry Sanderson’s “I don’t believe it” (CiF 1335960)
“Catholicism is a choice.” so says HappyClappy, anyway.
What a whole load of baloney, say I.
Catholicism was never ‘a choice’ with babies, from all over the world that were without their consent baptised by their parent/s so soon after arrival on this planet.
Moreover, from the split second they could open their mouths the Catholic clergy “Dogmatic Catholic Doctrine” fed them. They were not by it given a choice.
“People no more have to follow its tenets than they have to follow any other belief systems”
Regrettably brainwashed (from birth) Catholics have ‘NO choice at all. Choice, albeit – from birth/death has by the Catholic Church from them been stolen. They follow its tenets because they have no other choice – because of not knowing from birth anything better.
That is of course to say only – unless they are sufficiently auspicious at some stage in their lives to see the light of day.
“(Though there will be consequences if they don’t).”
Yes, you can be sure. There will be life-long psychological and very damaging penalties to pay indeed!
With “deep esteem” I treat all of you @ B&W – who are atheist.
I have no choice. I am only following orders.
I have run into this idea that “If you can understand it, it isn’t God” before. It has usually been a nice way to say “Shut up and stop asking me questions that I can’t answer!” But I still have some pesky unanswered questions.
Now, I know that it would be a logical fallacy to assume that the converse is true – if you can’t understand it, it must be God. But that would have the humorous consequence that for most creationists’ evolution must be God. ;^)
But seriously, what do people actually mean when they say this? Is it a tacit admission that the concept of God under consideration is inherently nonsensical? It seems to me that if you say God cannot be understood in principal (not just in practice, I accept that there are many things that my own limitations prevent me from knowing, but are in essence knowable) you are saying that the concept behind the word God is at fault and does not seem to gain the theist any advantage in these arguments.
But if they are saying that God is only unknowable in practice, not in theory, then how do they know? Presumably all it would take is someone more clever, insightful, and just plain smarter to try and wrap their head around it and Ta-Da!
So, what is the claim that is actually being made here?
Whew, that’s funny – I’ve just been asking much the same questions of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor – even including the ‘But seriously, what do people actually mean when they say this?’
If you think about it that claim is downright insulting – or an indictment of god, or both. It’s insulting to humans to say there’s this wonderful [ ] but of course you’re not supposed to understand it. It’s an indictment of god to say god is overflowing goodness but of course it’s also hiding.
After a bit more thought I’m almost tempted to conclude that whole “If you can understand it, it isn’t God” bit might be nothing more than a “cover your butt” move by some theologians.
They know that some people will take the converse to be true. Of course, they do take into account their own limitations (all due humility and so on – just regular folks like the congregation). For instance, as I just learned this evening, I cannot seem to fathom the workings of the carburetor on my lawn mower. However, I am fairly confident that I can find someone, an expert, who can. But for God, these people are the experts (self appointed mind you).
In the end, is this nothing more than an eternal gap for the God of the gaps to hide in?
G. so how did I mis read you you have just said again that right wing christians are hateful,what you are basicly saying is that an entire movement in American politics is nothing more than a large hate group,and because this group attach themselves to the G.O.P.I take it they would also deserve the label? since when did gay marriage become a human right? do any of the great rights documents even mention it. I would also point out there are at least reasonable secular arguments against abortion as well.
This is hateful http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/index.html
Also G. if right wing christians engaged in measures like you sugest to reduce abortion you would just say it was gesture politics in furtherance of their anti choice agenda?
Ah, but Richard. That last hypothetical question rather misses the point. The fact is, the anti-choicers DON’T take those rational measures that would actually prevent unwanted pregnancies (and therefore abortions). So your extremely hypothetical “Well wouldn’t you just say they were faking it if they did as you suggested?” is bullshit on the face of it – because they aren’t doing that. In fact, as Katha Pollitt pointed out in a story OB linked to from the B&W news page today, the anti-abortion movement in America is being more transparent than ever that it is also anti-contraception – because in our current political climate, they think they can get away with it.
And, by the way, the few people who are strongly morally opposed to abortion but DO promote universal comprehensive sex education and readily available birth control are people I can respectfully differ with. But I say “few people” because I know of NO active anti-abortion organizations that actively promote sex ed and contraception as the best way to end abortion, only some sensible and consistent individuals.
And if equal treatment before the law is a human right, then gay marriage is a human right. If equal treatment before the law isn’t a human right, then nothing is – because no rights are “human” rights when some humans are denied them as a matter of course. It’s that simple.
Seriously, Richard, have you considered getting a position at Fox News? Come to America, you’ll be a nine days’ wonder. The Brit who walks like Sean Hannity.
He’s like some kind of “forum Domestos”…
“New, improved, Richard – kills 99.8% of all known threads – dead!”
:-)