Somethingism
Newsflash: some people in the Netherlands go to church but don’t take goddy beliefs altogether seriously.
The Rev Klaas Hendrikse…[doesn’t] believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.
“When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that’s where it can happen. God is not a being at all… it’s a word for experience, or human experience.”
No it isn’t, actually. It may be a word that Hendrikse is using to mean that, Humpty Dumpty fashion, but it’s not a word for that, any more than “Anna Karenina” is a word for borscht, or mulligatawny. “God” is a word for a supernatural agent with omni-properties.
Not to say that I think Hendrikse should be more literalist in his preaching, just that it seems to be a bit silly to cling to the word while changing the meaning by fiat.
Professor Hijme Stoeffels of the Free University in Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion.
“In our society it’s called ‘somethingism’,” he says. “There must be ‘something’ between heaven and earth, but to call it ‘God’, and even ‘a personal God’, for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.”
“Somethingism.” Now that’s a good name for it.
I don’t get why these folks bother with the God-talk. Having looted the corpse of Christianity of anything of value (all the be-excellent-to-each-other and don’t-be-a-jerk bits), they should cremate the rest and go be plain-vanilla humanists.
You can’t help liking this though. I would much rather the clergy were describing “god” as a metaphor for natural experience rather than as a misogynistic sadistic reality any day.
I think this is what D. Dennett calls “belief in belief”, they are so nearly there but they just can’t accept that they don’t have to believe in “somethingism”.
Eamon:
I literally just now realized the answer to it. It is the same reason all those philosophers pretend that they have something important (rather than simply clever) to say: some people really don’t want to get real jobs! If they give up the ghost (pun intended), then they give up their cushy salaries and pensions, and they aren’t really fit for much of anything else.
Oh now Joe, don’t go sounding like Michael Kingsford Gray on the subject of philosophy.
I have no idea who that person is…
Frequent commenter at WEIT, always saying “philosophy is empty and useless” and the like.
I didn’t say anything about philosophy, just about philosophers. I don’t trust them, with their big words and giant blind spots and generally poor behavior in threads on B&W.
This is what the death of Christianity looks like.
It is the natural progression from iron-age superstition to just gathering on Sunday to appreciate ancient literature.
I don’t think the children of these church-goers are motivated to pass on the practice to their brood.
This reminds me of that quote from the Matrix.
Agent Smith: ‘You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound… of your death’.
Hurrah !
Joe:
Philosophers do generally have a lot of important things to say, which most people don’t know.
For example, most philosophers know that there’s excellent reason to disbelieve in God and in dualism, in souls and an afterlife, and in supernatural bases for morality, and a variety of actually quite important things that most people don’t know. Most are not political right-wingers or libertarians, are quite liberal on social issues at least—women’s rights, abortion, gay rights, race, etc.—and a bunch of other good stuff, too. (I don’t think many philosophers believe in homeopathy or astrology or conspiracy theory shit, either.)
I don’t think that’s because they don’t know anything important. It’s because the most important stuff is mostly taken for granted in philosophy, because the sane majority already knows it.
Philosophy is a bit of a zoo, for a variety of reasons, and one is that there’s affirmative action for Christians who bring down the intellectual tone of the joint. (Because of religious schools, and because philosophy departments generally don’t want to be seen as discriminating against religious boneheadedness the way they naturally would any other kind of boneheadedness.)
I also don’t think that philosophers generally have especially cushy jobs. Compared to my technical field, the salaries are lower, and the teaching loads are higher. It’s a lot of work for not great pay, and the competition for jobs is fierce. It’s actually a tough row to hoe.
Eamon, I’d agree with you, except that I played the same game for several years. There were perhaps more atheists in our congregation than believers, but part of the value that is preserved in such institutions is the community, coming together and telling a common story. And don’t forget — remembering the conversation that has been burning up the secular internet recently — that one thing that such communities try to create and enhance is civil behaviour towards each other, and to a very large measure it succeeds.
These are benefits not to be lightly sniffed at. We talk a lot about values here, and about the accessibility of moral value to those who do not believe in God, but the truth seems to be, sometimes, that we fail in simply human courtesies to each other, and that is a serious failing. I don’t mean to say that religious communities are all like this, light on belief, and heavy on polite and civil society, but there are elements of this which should not be deprecated. If the unbelieving community is as full of jerks who don’t know how to treat each other, and especially women, with respect and dignity — as recent events seem, I am sorry to say, at least in some measure to illustrate — then people could do worse than allying themselves with an unbelieving religious group, where belief has become, in some measure, just an expression of their common humanity.
Joe, cut it out. Russell Blackford is one philosopher, not all of them.
>We talk a lot about values here, and about the accessibility of moral value to those who do not believe in God, but the truth seems to be, sometimes, that we fail in simply human courtesies to each other, and that is a serious failing.
Definitely. It’s difficult to be caring and angry at the same time.
Not all philosophers are like that. Some are critical of cleverness for its own sake, and they provide good arguments to oppose bad ones. Overall I wouldn’t class philosophers with theologians, because they don’t swear allegiance to nonsense even if they sometimes produce it. They are professionally committed to reason and evidence and following where it leads, at least as an ideal.
Steve Bowen (#2) said
Yes, but the problem with liberal religion is that it blurs an important distinction between true or probable statements on one hand, and false, highly improbable and absurd statements on the other. Liberal religion helps by civilizing believers, and it hurts by providing cover for the evildoers who use it for their ends. Whenever anyone argues that religion is a destructive force the argument is then made that no, these believers here are good, it’s just those bad ones over there that we have to worry about. And we see continuously that many liberal religionists will side with religion generally in any conflict, and even some atheists will go along, all to promote the idea that religion is not to blame for the destruction it causes, only an extremist element. I think this is plain false. Religious extremists would get nowhere if they didn’t operate in societies that provided a strong preference for religion, and a distrust and dislike for the nonreligious.
Folks, calm down… I was mostly teasing. I didn’t realize that it was verboten to suggest anything negative about philosophers.
Once, in the coffee room at work, I asked “What do you call an atheist who goes to Church?” Without a moment’s hesitation, a colleague replied “The organist.”
(Need I mention that my colleague enjoyed playing the organ).
Yes, there are indeed reasons to attend Church, while not actually believing in any god. It can be a bit like joining the neighborhood quilting club or the local library’s book club.
@Improbable joe
Are you mistaking theologians for philosophers?
@Deepak
There’s a difference? :P (I’m KIDDING!!!)
Surely there’s an overlap in the type, of course. But my specific point was that priests and theologians have a vested personal interest in preserving the institution of religion even if they don’t believe a word of it. If you work at a vitamin shop, you’re going to push the stuff that keeps you employed even if you think some of it doesn’t have any real value. In this economy especially, it is hard to hold the value of honesty over the value of keeping yourself (and maybe family) fed and housed.
Tough if you’re older, you’ve devoted your life to something that you maybe no longer believe in, you have to try to find ways to justify your life’s work… right? The folks in the pews may go through a similar situation, where they have a hard time accepting decades of wasted weekend mornings.
@Eamon Knight: they don’t want to give up the religious language because religion still comes with a certain status. Even when believing in a personal god no longer has status, being “spiritual” or at least being “open minded” about spirituality still does. Especially as long people still associate religion with morality.
I liked John Wilkins’ recent series on atheism and agnosticism, where he described philosophy as “what you do when you have a question that can’t be resolved by facts”.
http://evolvingthoughts.net/2011/07/atheism-agnosticism-and-theism-the-landscape-part-1/
;)
Nobody’s excited, Joe, and it’s not verboten, but I (for one) have seen it before, and it is slightly irritating. It also reflects a misconception that philosophy and theology are pretty much the same thing. That’s just wrong.
Good point, Eric.
There’s this thing – what I take to be a misconception – that skepticism has to mean skepticism about commitments like feminism and that that has to mean that skeptics should be as rude to feminists as they can possibly manage to be.
Ophelia:
Those are two separate things though… right? We SHOULD be skeptical of claims made under the umbrella of feminism, the same as we are of any other claims. Skepticism of anything doesn’t involve rudeness as a requirement, and rudeness isn’t a replacement for skepticism.
Sure, they’re a lot of things all jumbled up and not leading to each other.
But there are some claims made under the umbrella of feminism that I don’t think we should be skeptical about. Not many, but some – but they’re not truth claims, they’re ought claims. That’s where the “we gotta be skeptics” get confused – and why Sam Harris’s morality book is a dud.
Secularization is a process that happens 1000 different ways, and for some people it means putting on the social trappings of religion even after they no longer believe in supernatural beings. It’s a fascinating religious phenomenon, but it has no generational staying power. The children of Somethingists will not go to church. It’s the same reason that mainline religion is massively shrinking in the United States.
Rorschach – what did you like about it?
:- b
I can see the appeal of the social trappings of religion. They don’t appeal to me, but I can see why they appeal to other people. I can see that a lot better than I can see many other putative attractions of religion. I can get a whiff of the appeal by thinking about things like Folklife – or even just watching the “Blue Angels” rehearsing in a view park among a small crowd (30 people? 50?), as I did an hour ago. Shared awe – it’s a thing. It’s something, it’s not nothing.
The best bit was when we were all looking south and/or east, over the lake in the distance or the bay right in front of us, waiting for them to reappear from wherever they were, and they suddenly appeared over the tree tops a few yards away, all six in tight formation tipped sideways, and zoomed past us and over the bay. Collective gasp.
It seems like an excuse to just make stuff up, which I’m sure philosophers wouldn’t care to admit to.
I don’t know… what I do know is that if something doesn’t “map” to something in reality, it doesn’t serve any purpose for me. And if that something in reality is too narrowly defined, can be defined by some other term in a simpler way, or doesn’t serve any real purpose in my life, I don’t see the value in it. Religion doesn’t fulfill my standards, so I don’t see the purpose of it.
Why don’t all those ‘Christians’ become Buddhists? Most of those atheist ministers are probably not trained for any other occupation and they have to earn a living,don’t they.
#10 Paul W,
In reference to your list, there are many people with no philosophical training that ‘know’ the same things, so philosophy is not a necessary condition to arrive at the same conclusions. An average IQ and education and perhaps lack of the ‘religion gene’ are all that is required.
Philosophers are more or less harmless cultural relics, but I wish they would keep away from scientific subjects, for example, Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained is incomprehensible, yes, I know, he’s also described as a ‘cognitive scientist’, however I couldn’t find any scientific qualifications in his CV.
Joe, no, it’s not just making stuff up. Simon Blackburn explains it as “conceptual engineering.” It’s good to know if some concepts just don’t make any sense to begin with. It’s also good to know if some do.
Dennett is described as a cognitive scientist? Are you sure? That’s news to me.
Ophelia, I didn’t say it “was” I said it “seems like”… and I’ve got little doubt that it has been used that way. Or, maybe more accurately, I’m sure that some people have created very clever thought experiments and claimed validity before bothering to check to see if those experiments actually matched anything in reality. It is the same problem I have with certain schools of economic thinking, which is that they create really clever models that are complete, complex, and don’t match the real behavior of real people in the real world.
I see your point about eliminating possibilities with thought experiments, but depending on the subject that can be a futile and ultimately incorrect method.
Oh just drop it, Joe. You do sound exactly like MKG. You also sound as if you don’t know a thing about it. Talk about “making stuff up”…
Daniel Dennett is Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and is a University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy. He works with philosophers and other scientists, he is not one himself.
edit.. he is not a scientist himself.
Yeah, Ophelia… so much for “not verboten” and “no one is excited.” Have I been rude, hateful, or disrespectful? Have I called anyone a name?
Your site, your rules… bye.
Dean, right, I knew that…Maybe that misleads some people into calling him a cognitive scientist. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that though.
Joe – “just drop it” isn’t the same as “verboten.” “You’re being a dogmatic uninformed bore” is neither banning nor disemvowelling. Sorry but that kind of sweeping dismissal of all of philosophy is just…well it’s like some goon in a bar ranting about all this here sissy eddication stuff. It’s not edifying and it’s not interesting.
“that kind of sweeping dismissal of all of philosophy”
I didn’t do that. I specifically and explicitly said I wasn’t doing it. I stated that I was criticizing some philosophers, not all. I used qualifiers at every step once I realized that you have zero sense of humor on the subject. I agreed when I saw your point, but also pointed out an exception to it.
For you to come at me for making a “sweeping dismissal” when I’ve very clearly done no such thing seems really unfair to me. I don’t care what someone else you dislike may have said or done… I’m not him, and I won’t be judged by a superficial comparison. And yeah, I’m just some dumbass 36 year old undergrad without all the fancy degrees your friends have, but I’m not stupid or ignorant or just making shit up… but feel free to make me feel like a piece of shit over it. Thanks a fucking ton for making me feel stupid.
Silly statement to make, based on ignorance. As an example my wife recently completed a MSc in Neurological Rehab. Her dissertation was based on two series of qualitative surveys. In the preamble to her dissertation she needed explain her approach with regards to phenomenology. Phenomenology is entirely within the remit of philosophy, its assumptions are used by scientists to frame their research. People studying science need to base their science on sound philosophy, and I have read many scientific papers where philosophical topics are discussed. If Dennent is writing about conciousness from a philosophical angle, only a fool for a cognitive scientist would ignore it because it wasn’t science. Heck Dennent is probably trying to explain what conciousness is, how useful would that be for someone working in the related scientific field?
Scientists like Stephen Hawking are saying that philosophers in the area of cosmology have got a lot of catching up to do, so that they understand the current science and can contribute more to it.
Just for the record, philosophers and theologians may seem to be doing a very similar task, but in reality there is a big difference. Theologians are allowed to just make stuff up. Let’s try a theological type question. eg “If heaven exists, how would this be seen in the mind of God?” They will dive right in and warble away to their hearts content. If a philosopher tried to tackle the same question, he would try to do it in a very different way. First he’d have to define ‘heaven’, ‘existence’, ‘seeing’, ‘mind’ and ‘God’. For a philosopher there’s five lifetimes of work just tackling that one question.
I like reading a mix of philosophy, politics, and science. They go together well and inform each other.
Re: Dennett, I am kind of disappointed at my first look at the Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies. It is a ‘research unit’ that provides ‘an administrative home for various research projects’ conducted by the co-directors. and associates. The list includes, by my count, 4 philosophers, 7 psychologists, 1 child development professor (psychology?), and 1 neuroscientist.
The web page design is really bad, by any definition.
Improbable Joe said:
“I don’t know… what I do know is that if something doesn’t “map” to something in reality, it doesn’t serve any purpose for me. And if that something in reality is too narrowly defined, can be defined by some other term in a simpler way, or doesn’t serve any real purpose in my life, I don’t see the value in it. Religion doesn’t fulfill my standards, so I don’t see the purpose of it.”
Your aversion to philosophy and/or philosophers is itself a philososphical position. Ayn Rand once said that you have no choice as to whether or not you engage in philosophy. The only choice left open to you is whether your philosophical positions will be consciously or unconsciously chosen.
Putting aside for the moment my personal disagreements with many other statements made by Ayn Rand, she made a valid point here. If you take ideas seriously, if you endeavor to reflect upon your thoughts and conclusions and inform your actions on the basis of reason…you have engaged in philosophy.
#40. Pogsurf,
I should have made my point more clearly,when I wrote that philosophers should keep away from scientific subjects I wasn’t referring to philosophy as an adjunct to science but expressing my skepticism as to the value of philosophy itself in explaining nature.
So your comment “Silly statement to make, based on ignorance” is based on arrogance.
Joe I didn’t mean to make you feel stupid. Really I didn’t. I hate doing that. I’m sorry.
It’s not about fancy degrees. I don’t have any fucking fancy degrees! I know lots of people who do, but that’s not really a fault. I wasn’t pulling rank, because I don’t have any rank. But your claims were very general, and I really have seen that kind of thing quite a lot, and I’m sorry but it does get on my nerves. You cited no particulars at all. It’s not snobbish or trying-to-make-someone-feel-stupid to find generalization of that kind…unhelpful. It looks to me exactly like just making stuff up.
But I’m sorry I made you feel stupid.
#39,Improbable Joe,
Stop sulking, if you criticize people’s favorite intellectual positions you should expect (1) a lot of flak and (2) to occasionally crash in flames, it’s all part of the fun.
#43
Philosophy is not merely an adjunct to science…it is an essential practice alongside science. Think of the way scientists frame and construct theories. In other words, once the data is in…once the process of actually accumulating data from experiment and mathematical extrapolation is done (for the moment) on a given subject and we begin forming a new hypothesis or constructing a theory around which to house all of this data…philosophy is used.
A great example would be the field of Quantum Physics. The data is what it is…but the conclusion that particles don’t actually exist in definite places until the wave function collapses is a philosophical conclusion not a scientific one. Likewise, the conclusion that particles do indeed exist in definite places before the wave function collapses, we just don’t know where they happen to be…that is a philosophical conclusion.
Improbable Joe, you did make sweeping statements — every time you used the word “philosophers” as the subject of a sentence. Philosophy, for all sensible intents and purposes, is the oldest field of academic study, and it covers an extraordinary breadth of subjects. Since your comments give a very clear impression that you don’t know anything about philosophy, your criticisms based on what it “seems like” to you are bound to strike some people — say, a professional working philosopher with a PhD in the subject like myself — as not just ill-informed, but as a somewhat insulting display of willful ignorance. Your contributions on philosophy here have irritated me in the same way that a typical creationist’s parroting of confused, ignorant, long-since-dismantled criticisms of evolution are irritating to anyone who is scientifically literate.
You can choose to learn more about philosophy and make informed criticisms — there are certainly many worthwhile criticisms to be made of the profession in general and about specific arguments promulgated within it. Or you can choose not to learn more about philosophy and not express opinions about the field and its practitioners. Either of those choices would be reasonable and respectable. But don’t expect a lot of respect if you choose to remain more-or-less completely ignorant of the subject and still express your uninformed judgments about it.
No, Ophelia… what you meant to do is shut me up and shut me down as hard and fast as you were able, and you succeeded. You weren’t interested in giving me any benefit of the doubt, and you DID mean to make me feel stupid if that’s what it took to make me stop poking at something you value and don’t think it up for debate.
I wasn’t hugely specific, but I kept saying things like “some” and “but” and “I don’t dismiss philosophy, just some philosophers” but since I sounded like someone else, you decided I WAS someone else. Someone who is stupid and ignorant and most importantly incapable of being reasoned with. You didn’t try to reason with me, you decided to shut me down instead. And I even almost believe you’re sorry that you hurt me… but not so much that your apology wasn’t chock full of reasons why you believe you were RIGHT to hurt me. My hurt is less important than you showing that I’m wrong without trying to show me why or have a conversation with me.
It doesn’t seem as though Rev Klaas Hendrikse is actually privileging religion as such, if he’s openly acknowledging that “God is not a being at all.” If a church is merely a place where like-minded people gather periodically to step out of their daily lives, consider questions of a wider scope than they normally encounter, hold hands, sing a few songs together and pass the hat for the needy, take care of friends when they’re sick and celebrate life’s milestones, then it’s arguably a societal good for those who choose to participate.
(I’m describing my local Unitarian group. Truth be told, I’d rather sleep in, then visit my favorite cafe, but my mother has been a member for forty years and would not be able to attend without me. It’s not that bad. The old-timers are fairly staunch atheists and there are some professional musicians in the choir.)
Improbable Joe, stop making broad attacks and accusations and then whining you didn’t mean them and that everyone should understand that. Either say what you mean or shut up. Either defend your ignorant attacks on what you don’t understand or shut up. Either take back your errors or shut up. But pissing on an entire discipline because you feel insecure when you can’t keep up with the technical distinctions which you don’t understand because you have not followed the debates that made people realize they were important is a bullshit thing to do and gives other people every right to push back against you and call you out on your ignorance. And whining and protesting people are being unfair for disagreeing with you is not going to help.
If you want theology to go the way of the dodo bird, then don’t attack philosophy, study it and use it to dispatch theology because it is ONLY philosophy that banishes theology. Science gives the ammunition but it takes philosophical understanding of the implications of that science to make the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical conclusions that undermine theology. And it takes philosophical rigor in the questions theology tries to answer with confusion and superstition to clarify the inferiority of theological answers for explaining what it purports to.
@Eric et al: Oh, I definitely understand the social benefits of a local congregation — I did, after all, spend about 25 years in church, for the latter part a liberal mainline one that practiced much this kind of barely-there religion. That’s why my wife wants to re-create that kind of community with our local CFI group (of which she is president-for-life, ie. until someone else really wants the job). Every so often we have to argue with other atheists (Larry Moran for example) that this sort of institutionalized social group has real value.
What I don’t get is why it still has to be dressed up in Jesus-talk. If you want to support each other and do Good Works (because there are excellent practical and emotional reasons for doing that), then just do it. If you really need inspirational texts to inspire your activities, surely there are plenty of extra-Christian ones you could invoke, along with the Bible. As someone said, the whole thing seems to motivated by Dennett’s “faith-in-faith”.
For me, discovering the falsity of my fundamentalist Christianity made it completely pointless and irrational to cling to the outward forms of Christianity or to overestimate Jesus as somehow still important and special even though not really God, etc. I was done with it all and haven’t missed it since. I’ve very nostalgically missed being a Christian camp counselor because I loved working with the kids and the spirit of comradery with the fellow staff and the hard work and adventure activities, etc. But I’ve never missed being a believer or worshipping or praying or any of that stuff. And, who knows, maybe some day I can go be a counselor at Camp Quest and have all that fun again without being part of something I’ll regret later.
But for all that, I don’t begrudge the persistence of halfway houses for those who need them, and I especially appreciate the potential they have for moderating and liberalizing their faiths from within in a manner that we rock throwers on the outside cannot.
#46 Jynx,
You’re really drawing a longbow here. Since science uses some of philosophy’s methodology it doesn’t, by virtue of that process, become philosophy, you’re confusing ‘tools of the trade’ with the trade itself.
“[B]ut the conclusion that particles don’t actually exist in definite places until the wave function collapses is a philosophical conclusion not a scientific one.”
Surely it’s a scientific conclusion based on contradictory and ambiguous experimental data. No amount of philosophizing alone will reconcile classical physics with quantum mechanics without the use of the scientific method. I’m not disputing the fact that philosophy has and will, make an essential contribution to science, however that doesn’t make science philosophy or philosophy science.
The only quasi-philosophical theory in science I can think of is String Theory since, as far as I understand, it’s not,so far, falsifiable experimentally.
Eamon Knight: to the extent this sort of thing has value, it doesn’t have to be dressed up in Jesus-talk or in God-talk. In fact, for those of our delicate sensibility, it shouldn’t be. Some of the lessons of the various religious traditions have general value, and those of us raised in one culture may even benefit from the insights of the god-drunken nutcases of other cultures. I suppose I’m like most here in coming from a Christian-pagan culture, and find every so often there’s a nugget of generosity or insight or even practical wisdom to be discovered in the clutter of other traditions.
It’s sad that there’s so little to be gained from such a collected effort to be the best that one could be, but the occasional surprise makes it not entirely worthless. It’s perhaps like Etruscan art, not all that compelling by itself, but if you’re in Orvieto what else are you going to look for?
Sounds very swedish.
#43 RJW
My first reaction was to respond to your passive-aggressiveness and reply that I thought you are a berk. Then I thought about ‘berk’ being derived from a member of the Berkley Hunt, and hence rhyming slang with ****. Having read some of Ophelia’s earlier threads I realise this is bang out of order, so I won’t do it.
So you believe philosophy cannot describe nature? And that to express some little knowledge about something is to be arrogant. What wonderous fool magnets blogs can be, what a joy it is to watch moths crashing into burning lightbulbs.
Here’s a question for your superbly developed mind, which has learnt everything, whilst eschewing education itself. If philosophy doesn’t describe nature, what does it describe? Don’t reply to me though, I’m not actually interested in extended conversations with wilful fools. Why not draw up a (short!) mailing list of all the philosophers in the world who deal with topics which touch on science. Send it to them along with your demand that they stop practising, because you don’t like it.
RJW (age 9 and a half) good luck with your quest!
Neil Rickert wrote:
I suppose the other punchline answer for that would have been “A Unitarian.”
:^)
This “hey it’s no big deal” response to atheist clergy in the Netherlands is much different from the situation that Daniel Dennett reported in his research of North American atheist clergy:
“Preachers who are not believers”
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/Non-Believing-Clergy.pdf
Dennett’s response to this and the responses of others from various perspectives on religion can be found here:
“Disbelief in the pulpit”
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/2010/03/disbelief_in_the_pulpit/all.html
Re Camels @52, last paragraph: Yes, very much. For me, the United Church was a half-way house (I described myself at the time as a “refugee from fundamentalism”), a good place to have a long think, in a familiar environment, where orthodoxy was not enforced. I entered with a moderately conservative theology, and left 15 years later as an atheist who was bored with church. (Yes, that was a long think, but I had a good deal of Real Life going on at the same time.)
I also like your linked post: the role of religious moderates deserves a more nuanced analysis than the brisk “But they enable the extremists!!!!” dismissal so often heard in the atheist blogosphere. It’s not entirely false, but there’s more going on than that.
Jeezis, Joe.
You’re wrong; I was sorry yesterday, because I fell for your guilt trip. I’m certainly not sorry now.
Don’t you tell me what I think or mean.
Yes, I “value” philosophy as I value any rational intellectual discipline; that doesn’t mean I have some kind of tribal loyalty to it. And of course it’s up for debate, but what you were doing doesn’t rise to the level of debate. As G Felis said (and I wanted to say yesterday but I was walking on goddam eggshells because you are so damn prickly), what you said gave no indication whatever that you’d ever read any philosophy.
Once again I feel the need to point out that if religion becomes better–more compassionate, more tolerant, more moral–the less seriously it is believed in and practiced, then that’s a pretty good argument against religion, not for it. Whatever virtues liberal religion may entail, they are necessarily muted by the degree of religiosity left unpurged.
People like Klaas Hendrikse are just infuriating to engage with. They seem incapable of discussing religion in normal language. It is as if they can only discuss religion talking in code. They say things like: “I believe in God” but what they mean seems to be closer to something like: “I get warm fuzzy feelings when I contemplate everyone being connected to each other”.
Thank you Steve “hey it’s no big deal” describes the Dutch culture most accurately.
Boy, am I ever so proud of being one of them (Dutch).