Perhaps it would be more accurate to call yourself an agnostic. You see no clear reason to believe in a god.
My father, who had been a firm agnostic in the above sense for a long time, considers Atheism to be a religion in that it posits a truth that it cannot possibly prove.
I think, if you read the Wired piece, you might understand better my preference for the word "atheist" (and antipathy towards the more virulent "antitheists") over the term "agnostic."
If you read Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith you will realize that all agnostics are really atheists. That is by what the word means as opposed to its common useage.
I've always applied the root word atheostic to those who believe that no specific god or gods exist (including some religions which provide no real deities), agnostic for those who don't think about such things (my head doesn't wrap around the idea of the world/universe not existing, and I have no soul, so the question of religion is moot to me), atheist for those who think about and then reject religion. I guess antitheist would a good phrase for those that actively oppose any belief in a deity.
I've never understood the antitheist movement's evangelical side. It provides no actual intrinsic value for truths, and the fact that we evolved lies into normal society suggests that an intrinsic value for those exists.
And Dawkin's main arguement, repeated in his book, that ""As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers."" is a bit of a non-starter. After all, we accept that logical thought and urge for public good is worthy of respect, but that doesn't make us respect Hillary Clinton.
I've always wanted to see an agnostic religion pop up, though : it'd be nice to see more beliefs that can't be supported or refuted by fact without a man in a white cloud and bright light behind the scenes.
I'm a theist, and I can respect, as you put it, atheists. If you don't have a positive belief in God, that is a coherent position, and logically defensible. I'd tend to call that agnostic, but I also think that your word choices are valid.
Antitheists, though, always make me laugh - they mock believers for believing in something without evidence...and they don't realize that they've enshrined in the center of their opinions an unprovable axiom (you know...a belief).
Excellent points as usual. I'd never really considered the difference between an atheist and an antitheist. I'd always just sort of lumped them together.
During the years that I was (rhetorically speaking) wandering in the wilderness, I was an atheist, not an Antitheist...though I probably would have used the term agnostic at the time.
I started to write a long and rambling explanation of my beliefs but this is really not the venue for that. This is your blog, not mine.
This subject has intrigued me so much though, that I may have to finally start my blog back up (as I've been threatening to do for some time) so that I can expound on this particular subject.
I'll fire you a trackback when I get something up.
Huffman, it's at least true for all human animals available : no major society on earth got to its current place without the existance and drive of a religion, even societies which don't share language constructs and even have significant perceptual differences. Even the 'best' early atheostic groups such as the Taoists and the Buddhists didn't really pop up until the 6th century BC, and even then still promoted a religion, just one without a god.
Up until the 18th century, there were almost no societies where one would be willing to call oneself an 'athiest' anymore than you'd call yourself any modern curse.
As for non-human animals, I doubt any of us are qualified to judge, nor would it be verifiable if we could, but the point is fairly moot : we're discussing only tribes, suggesting a construct limited only to humans and similar species.
Good start. I came to the same conclusion about the existence of anti-theists myself recently.
I'm also convinced that many modern liberals are anti-theist, and certain organizations like the ACLU are a danger to our first ammendment rights of free religious expression because they are filled with anti-theistic members.
Antitheists, though, always make me laugh - they mock believers for believing in something without evidence...and they don't realize that they've enshrined in the center of their opinions an unprovable axiom (you know...a belief).
In my opinion, there are three levels to such disbelief, and one label doesn't cover them all.
I, for example, have no belief in deities of any kind, simply because there is not the slightest evidence to support such beliefs. But, you are correct; such a notion can neither be proved nor disproved. On that level, I am an atheist.
What I mock, relentlessly so, is the notion that believers know an enormous body of knowledge about the deities for which they have no evidence. For example, by golly, I will go to "hell" for all of eternity when I die if I eat, or even touch, the feral hog that I will hunt and try to kill this afternoon. On that level, I am an Atheist.
Finally, I campaign against, and I urge other to do so, the notion that others have a duty to kill me because of what I believe or don't believe about deities. On that level, I am an ANTItheist in that I condemn such religious practices for the harm that results.
You are quite wrong about there being no evidence to support belief. While it is true that there is no conclusive proof either way, there is substantial evidence to support the existence of a supernatural creator.
gattsuru, I don't disagree that all "human tribes" predominately believe in god(s). But I think to claim "belief in a purpose" is the reason for their dominance is a stretch. It could be there were other reasons for their success--such as they were successful over the non-believers because they killed off all the atheists.
I bring up other species to point out that success as a species does not require belief in god(s). If other species can be successful without belief in god(s) then why must one conclude humans must believe in god(s) to be successful?
"If other species can be successful without belief in god(s) then why must one conclude humans must believe in god(s) to be successful?"
It would appear, based on the evidence, that a societal belief in god(s) is advantageous, else there would be evidence of successful societies that have or had no such belief - and there's not.
If other species can be successful without belief in god(s)
I guess that all depends upon your definition of success. If simple survival is the measure of success then I would agree with you.
I would submit, however, that, as sentient human beings, our success or failure is not measured by simple survival. Comparing the survival of a lower species with a completely different standard of success or failure of a human society is invalid.
I believe that human beings have an innate desire...possibly even need...to be a part of something greater than themselves. This is no less true of atheists or anti-theists than of monotheists. Being a part of something greater than ourselves fulfills our desire for a sense of purpose. It answers the age-old question: What is the meaning of life?
Some may consider that trait just an instinctive part of our genetic makeup as social beings (or herd animals, if you will).
Others, like myself, consider that desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves to be the calling of God to join Him. Those who have no understanding of God have no realization of why they want to be a part of something bigger, they may even deny that they have that desire; but the urge is there whether understood or aknowledged or not. Ever been on a bowling team? A shooting team? Member of a club or organization? Did you feel a sense of accomplishment when you helped those groups achieve their goals? Why?
Because it fulfilled the innate desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Being a part of a group that achieved a goal provides a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
You may disagree with my contention that the desire constitutes the calling of God, but unless you are an absolute Hermit that never interacts with other people (even on the internet), you cannot deny that the urge to be a part of something bigger is present even in the most individualistic of us.
Huffman : from an evolutionary standpoint, success is defined by getting rid of everyone that doesn't work with you. Whether you do this by out-reproducing them, by destroying them, or by assimilating them.
As to other species... we're going into speculation here... but there are many things that humans do that animals don't do, and vice versa. This includes entirely alternate communication methods, territorial constructions, and hierarchal concepts that directly contradict the methods humans develop without being taught. Humans also seem to be the only species on the planet able to anthromorphize our planet to the point of creating concepts of "created the world" and "before the world was here". Even if other mammals do not have some sort of belief system - I find it hard to believe that they do not - we still are required to assume that some aspect of humanity's current brain structure, developmental psychology, or neurology, all make some form of religion advantageous to our species to a point well beyond that of other species.
I also think I'm required to state that most similar mammals aren't successful : we are quite capable of driving them all to extinction if we so desire. From an evolutionary perspective, for those of us with a neocortex, it sucks to be anything but human or at least able to act like one.
It's not a matter of believing what I wish. You made an erroneous statement. If you want to be precise, you could say that there is no evidence of a deity that you are aware of.
Does this supernatural creator still get really pissed if you mispronounce his name?
A lot of atheists like to invoke the strange (to us) rules that were imposed on people by God long ago in order to show how silly faith is. For instance, your poking fun at the rule about not eating pork. Almost always the confusion arises from not placing the rule in context. Eating pig meat in ancient times was quite hazardous, because of poor sanitary conditions and the threat of trichinosis. We know, of course, that pork is no longer unsafe to eat, as sanitary conditions have improved immeasurably. But how do you effectively convince primitive, illiterate, backwards people that for their own good they shouldn't eat a certain kind of meat -- by trying to teach them bacteriology or by telling them that it will make God really mad?
As for mispronunciations, it was not punishable to mispronounce God's name, but to pronounce it at all. My understanding is that this rule was imposed by rabbis, not by God. In the early version of the Talmud there is no prohibition against speaking God's name. So this is just man-made silliness.
Despite this, just about every rule in imposed by the Jewish and Christian faiths can be shown to have a rational and beneficial reason. People tend to be very short-sighted in terms of what's good and bad for them, so religion is there to act as a store of wisdom. Long after people forget the hard-learned lessons about engaging in certain kinds of behaviors, they will start reverting back to them -- unless you can instill in them reasons not to that carries with them a huge emotional component. That is why religions are so successful -- necessary even -- in perpetuating populations and culture.
What I mock, relentlessly so, is the notion that believers know an enormous body of knowledge about the deities for which they have no evidence. For example, by golly, I will go to "hell" for all of eternity when I die if I eat, or even touch, the feral hog that I will hunt and try to kill this afternoon. On that level, I am an Atheist.
Trivia that you may or may not know: it is a sin for a Catholic to presume to know whether another person will go in the afterlife.
It would appear, based on the evidence, that a societal belief in god(s) is advantageous, else there would be evidence of successful societies that have or had no such belief - and there's not.
That does not necessarily follow.
Power fills a vacuum, damned nearly every time, right? Control of people by the invocation of religion-based superstition is, and has been, quite effective, and is just another methodology of filling that vacuum and excercising power.
Perhaps a more accurate observation is that societies abhor a power vacuum, such that there has rarely ever been a society that doesn't have a religion-based power structure in place. That it not evidence that it is advantageous, any more than, for example, any dictatorship is advantageous. It is simply evidence that it is effective.
TJIC:
Trivia that you may or may not know: it is a sin for a Catholic to presume to know whether another person will go in the afterlife.
Yup, I didn't know that.
Asking that specific question about my grandfather when he died was my epiphany. I became a skeptic at that time and a firm unbeliever shortly thereafter.
Sarah:
A lot of atheists like to invoke the strange (to us) rules that were imposed on people by God long ago in order to show how silly faith is.
A lot of rational people like to illustrate how silly the rules are that people impose on others in the name of imaginary deities in order to show how irrational faith is.
So this is just man-made silliness.
All of it is man-made, Sarah. All of it.
Despite this, just about every rule in imposed by the Jewish and Christian faiths can be shown to have a rational and beneficial reason.
Pardon my French, but that is pure bullshit. I mean no offense, rather I simply convey thereby how strongly I believe that.
I suggest you read The Closing of the Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman. He narrates, in gruesome detail, how the Christian church dogma came about, particularly in the fourth through sixth centuries. He documents, in detail, how people decided what to believe Jesus was, which led to so many different flavors of Christianity. I'm about halfway through it, as there is only so much of it I can withstand at one sitting.
A rational and beneficial reason FOR WHOM? In great measure such dogma is about the suppression of what Paul the Apostle, the founder of the Christian church, called "the empty philosophy of the Greeks", namely rational thought. It is about the suppression of reason, logic, and rational thought in favor of faith, dogma, and the power of the church, all to the benefit of those who make and enforce the rules. For example, a favored method is by telling them that it will make God really mad if the edicts of the anointed are not followed.
The absense of two really big buildings in New York is mute testimony to the power of faith over reason. I would not characterise such power, or the rules it generates, as rational and beneficial for anyone except those who exercise power thereby.
I got my blog back up and I will be addressing this in my next post.
In a nutshell, DJ (and many athiests, including myself when I was wandering through the wilderness so to speak) is pointing to human traits, imperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding and human manipulation of religious "dogma" for their own benefit or personal gain and saying "see, because those humans screwed up, there can't be God".
Sorry, but that's patently ridiculous. If there was a human being on this earth capable of perfectly interpreting God's will, perfectly living a Godly life and perfectly translating God's purpose, he (or she) wouldn't be human, (s)he would be God.
None of the things that you point out demonstrate the irrationality of faith in God, they demonstrate the irrationality of faith in humans.
Ahem, Sarah… those of us who still refrain from pork see no need to justify that prohibition on medical grounds.
Though it is an added bonus, one of many that we who follow the Torah enjoy.
The forbidden animals are denied to us for spiritual reasons, not medical. Otherwise, what would the problem be with eating camels, which are also forbidden?
In a nutshell, DJ (and many athiests, including myself when I was wandering through the wilderness so to speak) is pointing to human traits, imperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding and human manipulation of religious "dogma" for their own benefit or personal gain and saying "see, because those humans screwed up, there can't be God".
No, I'm not pointing that out or saying that.
[I]mperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding is simply sleight-of-hand, a convenient way to brush aside discussion of the contradictions that abound in the Old and New Testaments, and in the many versions of Christian dogma. Those contradictions ought to provoke rational thought, and in me, they do. In the faithful, they provoke either denial or "It's a mystery".
The imperfections of the human race and intellect are evidence neither for nor against the existence of God, and I do not state or imply otherwise. They do provide grist for the mill of realizing that all notions of deities and dogma originated in the imperfect minds of people, and observations about them help illustrate why those notions are so bizarre.
Trackback message
Title: Truth and Religion
Excerpt: I have to thank Kevin of The Smallest Minority. This entry is in response to his post on Atheist, Anti-Theists and such, which was a follow up to The Uber-Post. His thought provoking pieces are what prompted me to finally fulfill my threats and reope...
Blog name: Captain of a Crew of One
Perhaps one thing all of us CAN agree on is that it is necessary to the sociological and psychological health of humans to have an animating sense of purpose, a system of abstract concepts that constitutes a governing internal code concerning how we think about and interact with others and the world in general, and a sense that those abstract something or others are so real and so important that they transcend the immediate, even transcending death.
What we disagree in is whether or not it is necessary to have a personally interested omnipotent and omniscient deity in order to satisfy the above conditions. I see all of the above as necessary conditions for the existence of a species that can think on the levels of abstraction we do, keep histories, and see forward to the future as well as looking behind to the past. It's what makes us humans rather than speedy apes. I personally find that a satisfying enough explanation (and enough reason to uphold moral principles) without going to the "okay, now let's posit a deity and try and figure out what it wants" level. Obviously this is a simplification on a grand scale, and obviously others disagree.
In the spirit of outside reference material which this site generally embraces, Stephen Dutch has an excellent series of essays on science and religion. He's particularly good at eliminating what most needs to be eliminated from such discussions- focusing on the intellectually and morally sloppy and/or bankrupt on both sides.
The subtle, intangible voice of the deity speaks at a layer of abstraction, and the moment you start articulating what it is that the "voice" said, you've cast that voice into a form of concreteness that brings it away from its original meaning.
Write it down, and sooner or later people will gather around it and start arguing relevance and meaning.
Incrementally, whatever seed of truth and light the original insight had is lost, and when the lawerly types get involved, trying to square the whole thing up to be both internally consistent and congruent with current understandings of observed concensus reality.
By then, the whole thing has become an intractible mosh, and all bets are off.
As for eating pig and so forth, well, Jesus said it best:
10Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' "
12Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?"
13He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14Leave them; they are blind guides.[e] If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
15Peter said, "Explain the parable to us."
16"Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. 17"Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' 19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.' "
I can't find it, but I'm sure there's an exception for camel, because, yuck.
[I]mperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding is simply sleight-of-hand, a convenient way to brush aside discussion of the contradictions that abound in the Old and New Testaments, and in the many versions of Christian dogma.
It is not "sleight-of-hand" any more than insisting that anyone is capable of perfect understanding of something as complex and ephimeral as spirituality and religion is "sleight-of-hand".
It is also not an attempt to brush away discussion of anything. Apparent contradictions in scripture and interpretation NEED to be discussd rationally. That is the only way for us to continue to develop spiritually and to improve our (still perpetually imperfect) understanding of God's will.
The sleight-of-hand comes into play when someone takes two pieces of scripture or two interpretations of the same scripture and says "see, because they seem to contradict, the entire premise must be false".
There are some pretty large holes in the theories associated with Evolution (Disclaimer: I personally don't have a problem with the theory of evolution. Demonstrating scientifically the process by which something occured does not remove the possibility that a Higher Power caused the sequence of events to take place). Do those holes and apparent contradictions cause you to dismiss the entire premise of Evolution as a construct of Man's imagination? Or do those holes and contradictions simply indicate that our knowledge of the subject is incomplete?
Basically, you purport to know something that is unknowable. Therefore, you are patently wrong.
My blog (Captain of a Crew of One) is back up. I have posted my response to this piece. The link to the post is in the trackbacks if anyone is interested.
I'll have to look further into your links to discover if they use the same reasoning as some Postmodernist new-religionists: "Any god who commands mankind be fruitful and multiply is not a loving god."
I explain why understanding both the words evil and innocents can go either way depending on whether or not you agree with the postmodern conclusion.
First of all, you're making a big mistake by equating all faiths. Judeo-Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive.
In the world right now there are maybe a half dozen unique approaches to human social existence. Three are slugging it out for dominance, and a fourth is becoming a contender. Look at what the human race has come up with in one way or another over the millenia, all the different ways to organize human affairs, all the different cultures. In the competition of cultures, look at what has stood the test of time and social survival of the fittest. For instance, you had the Romans, who lived in a remote village in central Italy several centuries ago, but came up with something powerful enough to create a huge empire that still influences the course of events today. Why does one culture spring out of some corner of the world and have that influence? That's the question. Time provides the test for all these approaches. What we have today are things that had the ability to survive the forces that destroyed 99% of the cultures that have ever existed on this planet. You can argue about whether they were good or bad, but if it can't survive it's irrelevant. So, right now we've got the Protestant Christian faith, the Catholic/humanist faith (I lump them together, because they so often meld), the Islamist faith, and the Chinese/Confucian authoritarian culture. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant to the course of events. So these are the four great approaches to human existence that have so far survived the test of time. To date the greatest of these is Protestantism. With its ups and downs, it is still the most powerful in the world. It has produced all of the things that most of us value in the Western world. One of the things you must not do is lump all Christians together. Mainstream Protestant churches, which produced the United States from the industrial revolution onward, has been the driving force. Not distinguishing between that and Catholicism is a big mistake -- the analysis has to be deeper and more sophisticated than that. The Catholic approach, which can be seen in France, Italy, and Spain, is morphing into humanism, which is based on reason.
Lets compare the Protestant faith to humanist reason. The old saying goes, you can know something by its fruits. Whenever the human race has tried to apply reason to a situation and with no faith to guide it, unmitigated disaster follows. You cannot name one triumph of reason, and this is because there is something wrong with it. There is an organic-based irony in human existence, which reason has never been able to explain or control. When reason comes up against this organic irony it fails utterly. An example of this is the high-minded ideals of the French Revolution which then became the absolute horrors of the revolution -- the guillotines, the mass executions, the oppression, the emperor who inspired worldwide war and destruction. It's not to say that the architects of the revolution were stupid people -- they were smart -- but reason fails. It has never succeeded. You get things like the old Soviet Union with their endless five-year plans, the human mind working overtime to organize things and ending up causing the deaths of tens of millions of people. Same with China and Cambodia. All based on reason. Look, on the other hand, at the accomplishments of the United States, and you notice that the U.S. is (at least up until now) the product of Protestant faith. Pure and simple. What we have right now, unfortunately, is a situation that has been complicated since the time of FDR by the rise of humanism, based on reason, and which has caused all kinds of problems (e.g. the racial ghettos). It's not a product of Christianity, but of reason. If you're going to pit faith vs. reason and then look for historical evidence for superioritym faith wins hands down (unless one sees the French Revolution as some glorious thing).
Reason in the form of humanism, which says, obviously, the only thing that matters is enjoying the here and the now, has led to the point where people will make no sacrifice for themselves or others, including their unborn children and society in general. It's happening in Europe right now with disastrous consequences. It's happening in Japan, where young men and women have virtually no contact with one another and the Japanese birth rate is 1.3, far below the replacement rate of 2.1. It's all very reasonable -- people are maximizing their enjoyment (since this life is all you've got), so society and culture are dying off. And all of these once-great cultures will become irrelevant, because they will be replaced by cultures based on faith. It's all part of this organic irony. Something is built into us as living organisms that doesn't allow things to work out the way that reason says they should.
Let's take an extreme example of this irony -- Islam. Muslim culture is a political and economic failure of the most extreme kind. In the last 500 years Islam has not produced a single stable, free, prosperous society anywhere. Islamic nations are constantly in conflict with neighbors, always repressing their own people and condemning them to lowest possible standard of living without hope for anything better -- and yet Islam grows. It's against reason. There is something about Islam that causes people to act in ways to perpetuate and grow the culture, to motivate people within it to do the most extreme things like blow themselves up in the name of faith, to motivate women to have six or seven babies with the hope that all of them will some day blow themselves up. It goes against all reason -- and yet you cannot deny that it's happening.
If you're looking simply at the practical results in this world, you notice that some strange stuff is happening. But if we're talking about a test of whether a faith is true or not, then look to see if it leads people to a greater understanding. Is there evidence that's convincing about the existence of God? I know that the Protestant Christian faith has substantial evidence to support it. There seems to be a power behind it, that is not only enduring like the Muslim force, but on top of that produces good things. Protestantism produced the industrial revolution (the only thing that has lifted large segments of humanity out of poverty), the end of slavery, and the rise of individual rights. For a good primer on this read D'Souza's book. On the other hand, the worst atrocities have been committed in the name of reason. In Cambodia, where you had people committing the worst atrocities against their own countrymen, they were acting out of absolutely unrestrained reason. Listen to interviews with these people and you understand how chillingly reasonable they were. They wanted to make a break with the past, and to do that they knew that they had to take the adult population -- educated people like scholars and lawyers who are the embodiment of the old culture -- and kill them off. They went ahead and did it. Two million people slaughtered. That's reason. Unfettered by faith. The worst crimes in the history of the human race have been committed in the name of reason -- godless, atheistic, humanistic reason. And yet atheism is never taken to task for these horrible crimes, never held up to the same scrutiny that faith is, in spite of the fact that faith -- the Protestant Christian faith -- has produced just about everything that we value in the West.
Unfortunately, that's about all I can contribute to this discussion. I'm way too busy at work to get deeply involved in this discussion, much as I would like to. But I'm sure the topic will come up again (knowing Kevin ;)).
The sleight-of-hand comes into play when someone takes two pieces of scripture or two interpretations of the same scripture and says "see, because they seem to contradict, the entire premise must be false".
There is a quote from Heinlein that I can't find, so I'll paraphrase it in my own words: If you find yourself faced with a contradiction, or a paradox, then examine your premises. You will find at least one that is false.
When the plain words of scripture contain a contradiction, or a paradox, then the basic premise of the scripture, namely that it is infallibly the word of a deity, ought to be questioned first. If one can't get beyond that, then one can't realize scripture for what it is, namely the words of men, men who were sometimes just bronze age tribesmen, sitting in their caves and reckoning the age of the universe by counting their ancestors.
How is that sleight-of-hand?
Do those holes and apparent contradictions cause you to dismiss the entire premise of Evolution as a construct of Man's imagination?
No.
Or do those holes and contradictions simply indicate that our knowledge of the subject is incomplete?
Yes.
Basically, you purport to know something that is unknowable.
No, I contend that followers of religion purport to know something that is unknowable.
Decades of experience has shown me that, whenever a believer and a nonbeliever discuss the existence or nonexistence of God, almost invariably, the believer challenges the nonbeliever to prove the nonexistence of something for which there is no evidence. Well, that can't be done, can it? And equally invariably, the believer then smugly replies something to the effect of, "See?"
No, I don't see. Absent evidence, I don't believe, either.
I don't equate all faiths. If my rantings suggest otherwise, I apologize. Such was not my intention.
I don't think Judeo-Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive. My understanding is that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each revere the same deity, namely the Old Testament God of Abraham. And, they revere many of the same old testament prophets.
In my mind, the basic premise of each, namely the belief in a deity, is equally absurd with each. What they share with each other, completely, is the utter certainty that followers of any religion other than their own are dead wrong.
Overall, what you have done, and done remarkably well, is set up a straw man. You have compared the best of the best of Christian history with the worst of the worst of what's left. Such is interesting, but it misses a different, but very significant aspect of reason vs. faith.
Your statement:
You cannot name one triumph of reason, and this is because there is something wrong with it.
encapsulates a myopia about reason that often fills such discussions.
I'll give you a simple example of the triumph of reason over faith. I won't bore you with the details, as you probably already know them.
Galileo built a telescope and, with it, observed those little pinpoints of light in the night sky. He reasoned, from evidence to conclusion, that the Copernican notion of planetary motion, namely that the planets, including the Earth, revolved around the sun, was correct, because it agreed with his observed evidence, His trial was a paradox of faith. He was charged with heresy for teaching something that was not heretical. The point is that he was ordered, on pain of death, to recant his teachings because they disagreed with faith, with the teachings of the church. Reason simply was not allowed by the church because it conflicted with faith. The simple fact that Galileo was right, and could prove that he was right using evidence, didn't matter.
Now, try re-analyzing your writings with that notion of reason. You say that reason has never succeeded. That sounds quite odd coming from a physicist.
You state that Protestantism produced the industrial revolution, and indeed that revolution happened in Protestant Europe and America. But, I submit, that revolution happened because of the application of rational thought, of reason to evidence, which led to a remarkably deep understanding of reality in a remarkably short time. Indeed, that revolution happened because of reason and despite faith.
Faith, itself, shows a remarkable history of killing, too. The Islamic worship of martyrdom is only a current example.
Have you counted the number of people who were killed either by God, or in the name of God, or at the command of God? The Bible counts 2,270,365, plus a number of massacres left uncounted, plus everyone on the planet except for most of Noah's family. The Book of Mormon lists 19,578. The Koran lists four. Amazingly, Satan's death toll is only ten, namely the seven sons and three daughters of Job, and that was the result of God losing a bet with Satan.
The reality is that the use of rational thought was horribly suppressed because of faith, and millions of people were killed and are still being killed because of faith.
Now, why don't you compare the best of faith with the best of reason, and then compare the worst of faith with the worst of reason?
Wha? Why are you done for, DJ? Or at least why are you telling me? I just posted that you oughta eat anything that doesn't taste like Camel and won't kill you, except for maybe a few hundred gallons of ice cream.
I think he's right. When Iran, or < fill in the blank >, has the bomb, will Europe "submit" or "fight"?
Islam once rolled over much of southern Europe, being expelled finally in 1492. This time, Europe just might be handed over without a fight.
Next week, and two years later, we just might have elected a gubmint full of Neville Chamberlains. It's enough to make one sick, meaning sick with fear. The great difference between Europe and us is that we have no place to go. We fight, or we submit.
namely that it is infallibly the word of a deity, ought to be questioned first.
You obviously haven't read my post on this subject.
What the contradictions demonstrate is not that the deity doesn't exist, but that the scriptures aren't "infallibly the word of a deity".
My point is that any imperfections in the interpretation of God's word and will by man (in writing the scriptures) do not PROVE that a deity doesn't exist, they only prove that man is flawed and imperfect.
That is why I drew the comparison to the theory of evolution. Inconsistencies or lack of evidence in the support for evolution does not disprove the entire premise, they only indicate that our knowledge is incomplete and flawed.
That is exactly what I am saying about scriptural inconsistencies. They don't demonstrate enequivocally that the concept of religion is wrong or that the existence of a deity is false, they only demonstrate that man's understanding of same is incomplete and flawed.
YOU choose to interpret flaws and inconsistancies as proof positive that the entire premise is false; a standard to which you do not hold premises with which you agree.
Yes, most religions subscribe to the belief that their own scriptures are the perfectly rendered "word of God". The fact that the scriptures contain flaws demonstrates that they are wrong about that belief, not that there is no God The scriptures are, at their root, simply man's best attempt at writing down their interpretation of God's word. Man is fundamentally flawed and so, the scriptures are likewise flawed. That is a reflection upon the men who wrote the scriptures, not the deity about whom they wrote.
Religious fundamentalists will shrug the flaws in scripture off or rationalize them away because they have been taught that their bible is the inspired word of God. Just because they believe that fervently doesn't make them right.
Anti-religious fundamentalists point out the flaws in scripture (and sometimes use creative interpretation to invent new and improved flaws) and insist that that proves that the entire premise of God is false. Just because they believe that fervently doesn't make them right.
No, I don't see. Absent evidence, I don't believe, either.
No one says you have to. Not even God. So why do you insist that others should ascribe to your (lack of) beliefs? In my mind that is what makes fundamentalists so dangerous. It isn't what they believe...but that they feel that everyone else should be MADE to believe what they believe.
According to the accounts of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament (flawed though they may be), even HE didn't try to browbeat anyone into following him. He said his piece, asked them to follow him and, if they chose not to, let them go on their merry way.
That was very well stated, and I agree with nearly everything in it.
YOU choose to interpret flaws and inconsistancies as proof positive that the entire premise is false; a standard to which you do not hold premises with which you agree.
No, I interpret the flaws and inconsistencies of the Scriptures as proof positive that the Scriptures cannot be all correct. I hammer at the notion that dogma which is derived from the Scriptures and is not based on evidence is thus flawed at its core. There is nothing about such dogma that compels me to believe it, much less to accept it "on faith".
The scriptures are, at their root, simply man's best attempt at writing down their interpretation of God's word.
I've said that for more than four decades.
I contend that the Scriptures are wholly the inventions of the minds of men, and their inconsistencies and contradictions simply bear that out. But, the core of Christianity treats the Scriptures as being infallible, and directs that, where the Scriptures are inconsistent or contradictory, such must be "interpreted" as allegory.
When viewed objectively, as in "convince me that I ought to believe in Christian dogma", I cannot help but shake my head in wonder at the process by which it came to be. Christian dogma developed over centuries by many different people examining the same Scriptures in the most minute detail, often deriving the most profound, yet contradictory, beliefs from a single word or phrase that was translated from Aramaic and/or Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and is now read by millions after being translated from Latin to English.
Consider, for example, the split between the "Orthodox" Churches (Eastern, Greek, and Russian), and the Catholic Church, which occurred over 1600 years ago. It was over the notion that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father" (Orthodox) vs. "from the Father and the Son" (Catholic). Over this difference in interpretation of a single phrase, Catholic and Orthodox dogma each treats the other as heretical. Wars were fought over it. The Byzantine Empire rose and the Roman Empire fell.
So why do you insist that others should ascribe to your (lack of) beliefs?
I don't insist they adopt mine. I am not an evangelist. When I discuss religious beliefs with others, I ask them to justify theirs, as I try to do mine. How can there be a discussion of religious beliefs without that?
It isn't what they believe...but that they feel that everyone else should be MADE to believe what they believe.
I agree 100%. Other people are free to believe what they want in such matters. That's fine with me, so long as they extend to me the same courtesy.
Sorry, I was guilty of a little hyperbole there. I know you aren't trying to force anyone into your belief system and it was uncivil of me to imply otherwise.
As long as we agree that neither of us has the right to impose our beliefs on the other, I'm all for discussion.
I do realize that my beliefs are a bit unorthodox and many Christians would take umbrage at my views on the Scriptures, but I've come to those conclusions after many years of soul searching, thought and prayer.
Many of the things that you say are exactly the things that I used to say during the time that I was agnostic/atheistic whatever...Kevin's got me all screwed up now and I don't really know how I would have been defined.
I won't go into it here on Kevin's blog but I had my reasons for leaving the faith and I had my reasons for coming back into it. Suffice it to say that my belief system has been hard won and much agonized over.
Some of the issues with religion are very hard to work through. All I can say is that I have faith that there is a God. I would say that I KNOW it, but I only know it because I have faith in it. I have faith in it because I've seen His hand in my life.
The serenity and peace I've found since turning control of my life over to God, stopping trying to control the world around me and all the things that are really beyond my control, and following the path that He has set for me in stead of trying to force my own way through the world has been astounding.
Some people would say that I'm just weak minded and need a crutch to make it through day to day life. I say poppycock. I would have lived my life and been relatively successful regardless of my coming back into the fold. What my faith has given me is the intangible happiness, serenity, peace of mind....contentment is the word that comes to mind but none of that really nails it. I find myself not getting down or upset when confronted with challenges (otherwise known as "bad" things). I find myself to be extremely slow to anger. To have much more self control, much more confidence. I'm much more willing to spend my time and resources helping others rather than narcissistically hoarding everything for myself. Basically, I'm just a much better person. I was a good person before, and I thought I was as happy as the next guy. Now I'm a better person and I know that I'm as happy as I can be. And what a great life it is.
That's my testimony and why I believe. The nuts and bolts of exactly what each part of the Christian theology or dogma say are irrelevant to that.
I am struck by the appropriateness of Charles Freeman's statements near the end of his book I noted earlier, The Closing of the Western Mind, which is subtitled The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, so I am quoting them here. They hit harder if one reads the whole book.
With delicious irony, the first is on page 316:
The effects of Paul's condemnation of "the philosophers" could not have been put more clearly than by John Chrysostom, an enthusiastic follower of Paul. "Restrain our own reasoning, and empty our mind of secular learning, in order to provide a mind swept clear for the reception of divine words." Basil echoes him: "Let us Christians prefer the simplicity of our faith to the demonstrations of human reason ... For to spend much time on research about the essence of things would not serve the edification of the church." This represented no less than a total abdication of independent intellectual thought, and it resulted in a turning away from any speculation about the natural world as well as the divine. "What purpose does knowledge serve -- for as to knowledge of natural causes, what blessing is there for me if I should know where the Nile rises, or whatever else under the heavens the 'scientists' rave about" wrote Lactantius in the early fourth century. One Philastrius of Brescia implicitly declared that the search for empirical knowledge was in itself a heresy. "There is a certain heresy concerning earthquakes that they come not from God's command, but, it is thought, from the very nature of the elements ... Paying no attention to God's power, they [the heretics] presume to attribute the motions of force to the elements of nature ... like certain foolish philosophers who, ascribing this to nature, know not the power of God."
He continues on the next page:
One of a group of bishops asked by the emperor Leo I whether they wished to reopen the declaration of the Chalcedon, he replied, "We uphold the Nicene creed but avoid difficult questions beyond human grasp. Clever theologians soon become heretics." It was a shrewd appreciation of the limitations of intellectual debate. There was no longer any joy to be had in the cut and thrust of discussion -- the penalties for transgressng the boundaries, in this world and the next, were too great.
He ends the chapter:
This reversal of traditional values became embedded in the Christian tradition and was, amongh other things, used to sustain the authority of the church. Intellectual self-confidence and curiosity, which lay at the heart of the Greek achievement, were recast as the dreaded sin of pride. Faith and obedience to the institutional authority of the church were more highly rated than the use of reasoned thought. The inevitable result was intellectual stagnation. It is hard to see how mathematics, science or associated disciplines that depended on empirical observation could have made any progress in this atmosphere. The last recorded astronomical observation in the ancient Greek world was one by the Athenian philosopher Proclus in A.D. 475, nearly 1,100 years after the prediction of an eclipse by Thales in 585 B.C., which traditionally marks the beginning of Greek science. It would be over 1,000 years -- with the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus in 1543 -- before these studies began to move forward again.
And so began the Dark Ages, the triumph of the founding of Christianity.
Look; throughout all my younger years I repeatedly heard the refrain: "So many people died in the name of God." But throughout the twentieth century that included my youth, look at how many many more died in the name of men's isms.
Isn't it clear that the problem then isn't with God, but that the problem is with mankind?
So then, why all this never ending assault against belief in God? I believe in love. I believe in happiness. I can conceive of ideals. None of those are tangible or threatening of their own accord. So why not conceive of God?
Pascal, it's not the conception of God, it's what men do with what are purportedly His scriptures. When they're good, they're very good. But when they're bad, they're heinous.
The same can be said for humanism, but as I among many have pointed out, humanists have just had less time at it. We've only got the 20th (and now 21st) century. You've got everything prior. I don't think we're ahead on body count - certainly not by sheer percentage - and we had the advantage of industrial-age technology.
I think the thing that rubs me the wrong way is the denial. The "those people aren't Christian/Muslim/Hindu/whatever" disclaimer for actions taken under philosophies that are traceable directly to scripture.
Sarah has repeatedly pointed out that logic and reason have lead to guillotines in the public square, mass starvations, and death camps. She's right. But faith has lead to pogroms, crusades, and sectarian warfare on equally massive scales.
Frankly, I don't see the advantage of faith, especially when its adherents are loath to admit that faith is just as easily twisted (at least not their particular flavor).
What DJ illustrates is what I and most like me object to: Too often the faithful are told to reject reason and just do what they're told in order to achieve eternal life. And they do, believing that they are being faithful and will be rewarded.
In "Why I Am an Atheist" I noted that the lay-person is dependent on some Authority figure to tell them what it all means - and that this is true for both the atheist with science, and the faithful with religion. At least with science, the basic premise is to question. Not so with faith.
I understand the antitheists. I disagree with them primarily because I think they gloss over the history of the 20th century and humanism's appalling failures. I am not an antitheist because I believe that faith can be a good thing - as long as its adherents keep out of trying to govern by faith.
In short, we need both: faith backed by reason. If you want a rule made law, there'd better be a better reason than "because Yaweh said so," and I'd like to see some data to back it up. And there needs to be some understanding that the tenets of some (I'd say most) religious faiths are incompatible with personal liberty and individual rights.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
I don't either, but much of modern Christianity still does. What else should I think about efforts to stifle the teaching of evolution, and of the passion such efforts involve?
Pascal, I don't engage in an assault against believing in God. I realize, given the ink I have spilled on Kevin's blog, that might be hard to see. The assault I wage, if assault is what it is, is against the refusal to think. It has been a life-long passion.
Kevin's plea
... as long as its adherents keep out of trying to govern by faith
and his principle
If you want a rule made law, there'd better be a better reason than "because Yaweh said so"
are dead on.
It is not about keeping score. It is about noting cause and effect, and about learning from the past. It is a good thing to learn from the past and, by doing so, provide for a good future. We all stand at a cusp in that effort. We'll know Wednesday whether we've made any progress.
I find consolation in your entire response. Thank you. I hope you can add some more hope by your reaction to what follows.
In varied ways your first five paragraphs touched on the point to which I repeatedly return: anti-humanism joined with fear of over-population.
Paragraph 5: Of what use is faith? To start, as a fount of optimism, as a foil against pessimism.
But faith also provides one a trump card. Certainly, at the brink and hopefully long before it, the concept of God makes the smallest minority every bit as important as any collective or any tyrant. It gives you the strength to spit in the eye of those who would not only try to squash you but would even try to convince you to help them: a variation on Room 101.
Paragraph three perfecting matches the wide avoidance (even by you for whom it seems most important?) of the logical conclusion I keep pointing out: if world population is going to be "managed," certainly self-defense must be eliminated.
Post-modernism, including post-modern religion, has a decidedly jaundiced tint against human life. They believe they have the only rational approach to human population "management." Ancient pre-Abrahamic creedists, Abrahamic creedists who really didn't believe in Him, and modern anti-religionists share a similar pessimistic vision: fear of too few resources and too many people. Their joint pessimism concludes that human intellect and technology will be inadequate to solve the "inevitable crisis."
Just look at Postmodernism: it consistently buries all history and decries all reason that's in disagreement with it's determined conclusion: Malthus must inevitahly be right. Their central belief is: in a world lacking a supernatural God who will provide in the pinch, someone must make "difficult" decisions.
You say you fear the illogic of religionists. What I see developing will make those guys look mild. Simply perusing a review of Explaining Postmodernism yields:
Postmodernism rejects, or is deeply suspicious of, truth, objectivity, and progress, and is characterized by a distinctive anti-science, anti-capitalist mentality.
Couple that with our anti-culturalists' avowed assault on language, and you get "Progressives" who fear progress, "Liberals" who oppress free speech, and some leading scientists who admire the scientific method not so much less, but rather love more the funding they protect when they align with political consensus -- including doomsaying.
Faith can help, but if it remains tied to unyielding dogmatism, incapable of reacting to old threats that only appear to be new, you're right, it can't help. But that could mean we're not adapting too. Too? Yes. For I think you see faith could help based on your last paragraph.
Faith and reason, I agree Kevin. Why did God (or nature) give us His mind for anyway? What more does the rational man need in order to understand why he is a target? How could he be surprised that his counterparts in Cambodia were slaughtered?
And yes, it is very difficult to get religionists to understand that rational reasons must be offered rather than just pure faith. But it is not impossible. Ask them: "Don't you belief that God gave you a brain that could solve that dilemma for the rest of us?"
Well (now for somehting completely different), while crickets have been chirping -- now there's something I can lay claim to: I left Kevin Baker speechless -- Francis W. Porretto read "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Dawkins' prize student, Sam Harris.
Yesterday Fran wrote the first of his "comprehensive refutation" of that "religious fundamentalist"'s rationalism.
In the process, FWP also answers the question inherent to your "Frankly, I don't see the advantage of faith..." where his address goes beyond the religious aspect of faith into faith in general (something I've been lobbying him to do for a very long time).
I'm going to use a dirty word here. At least, the word has been treated as dirty by a substantial number of persons in recent years. It's the bedrock upon which any forward-looking culture must rest, so quite naturally, those who desire that we live solely for our own present pleasure have sought to demean and destroy it. The word is faith.
Normally, when I write about faith on a Sunday, I'm specifically speaking of religious faith: the willingness to believe a proposition that can neither be proved nor disproved, but which can inspire devotion and personal commitment to a set of associated ideals. I have that in mind today, but not exclusively. Faith is also a requisite for nearly all forward-looking undertakings: it's the attitude that says, "Yes, I know things might not work out as planned -- that my efforts might not be sufficient, that my enemies might prove too strong or too numerous, that unforeseeable developments might wreck it all -- but I shall proceed even so. I shall do my best to build the future I desire, a queendom for my wife and a patrimony for our sons, and leave the outcome in God's hands."
That sort of faith flies in the face of everything we know from human history. At the best of times, under the best of circumstances, the majority of human undertakings eventuate in failure. Those are not gambler's odds; they're a gauntlet to be run where the prize at the end is as likely to be dragon's teeth as a victor's cup. It takes faith and will to shoulder one's lance and charge into that maw.
Without faith, we seek sinecures, niches that will require little to nothing from us, and we hide in them. [think of Eutopia and its decline here Kevin] We reach only for the low-hanging fruit; if it's overripe, or infested with worms, we remind ourselves of the hazards of climbing higher. We settle for easily obtained, prepackaged mediocrity in our public services, our corporations, our schools, our entertainment, even in our food. We shrug, say "What's the difference? You can't change anything", and settle for what we're given. We "make do."
All kidding aside, it is my guess you'd do well to add a dose of Fran's thinking to yours and see how well you can synthesize a raproachment between faith and reason.
I do not believe in God.
Here is the sum of my beliefs:
Q: Do you believe in life after death?
A: No!!! I believe in death after life.
Q: How can an atheist bring up a child to be moral and law-abiding if one does not believe in God?
A: ??? strange question. A child needs only to learn: Be truthful; be tactful; harm none; strive for excellence in all you do; walk softly upon mother Earth; respect life, i.e.: animal & plant kingdoms; kill only in self-defense.
Q: Kill only in self-defense? Hmmm, what about killing animals, plants, etc for food???
A: Accept that some are Omnivore, others are Herbivore, and still others are Carnivore. Humans who are omnivore or carnivore must be ethical when killing animals for food [causing the least pain to the animal]. Cannibalism is a no-no. Hunting is not a sport because prey have only natural defenses of their species. From what I see, most prey don't have guns or crossbows in their defensive arsonol.
It puzzles me when people I find to be rational and smart believe in magic like life after death, god, unicorns, vampires -- you get the idea -- I can't figure that out!
It's ok to farm animals for slaughter, but not OK to hunt them? Humans using tools (archery, firearms) is wrong, but wolves using pack tactics and teeth is alright?
I'm having a little trouble here.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2006/10/atheists-and-anti-theists.html (56 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to call yourself an agnostic. You see no clear reason to believe in a god.
My father, who had been a firm agnostic in the above sense for a long time, considers Atheism to be a religion in that it posits a truth that it cannot possibly prove.
I think, if you read the Wired piece, you might understand better my preference for the word "atheist" (and antipathy towards the more virulent "antitheists") over the term "agnostic."
If you read Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith you will realize that all agnostics are really atheists. That is by what the word means as opposed to its common useage.
I've always applied the root word atheostic to those who believe that no specific god or gods exist (including some religions which provide no real deities), agnostic for those who don't think about such things (my head doesn't wrap around the idea of the world/universe not existing, and I have no soul, so the question of religion is moot to me), atheist for those who think about and then reject religion. I guess antitheist would a good phrase for those that actively oppose any belief in a deity.
I've never understood the antitheist movement's evangelical side. It provides no actual intrinsic value for truths, and the fact that we evolved lies into normal society suggests that an intrinsic value for those exists.
And Dawkin's main arguement, repeated in his book, that ""As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers."" is a bit of a non-starter. After all, we accept that logical thought and urge for public good is worthy of respect, but that doesn't make us respect Hillary Clinton.
I've always wanted to see an agnostic religion pop up, though : it'd be nice to see more beliefs that can't be supported or refuted by fact without a man in a white cloud and bright light behind the scenes.
I object to this claim of lack of "belief in purpose" on the grounds that it presumes facts not in evidence. It's a strawman.
Good post.
I'm a theist, and I can respect, as you put it, atheists. If you don't have a positive belief in God, that is a coherent position, and logically defensible. I'd tend to call that agnostic, but I also think that your word choices are valid.
Antitheists, though, always make me laugh - they mock believers for believing in something without evidence...and they don't realize that they've enshrined in the center of their opinions an unprovable axiom (you know...a belief).
Excellent points as usual. I'd never really considered the difference between an atheist and an antitheist. I'd always just sort of lumped them together.
During the years that I was (rhetorically speaking) wandering in the wilderness, I was an atheist, not an Antitheist...though I probably would have used the term agnostic at the time.
I started to write a long and rambling explanation of my beliefs but this is really not the venue for that. This is your blog, not mine.
This subject has intrigued me so much though, that I may have to finally start my blog back up (as I've been threatening to do for some time) so that I can expound on this particular subject.
I'll fire you a trackback when I get something up.
Huffman, it's at least true for all human animals available : no major society on earth got to its current place without the existance and drive of a religion, even societies which don't share language constructs and even have significant perceptual differences. Even the 'best' early atheostic groups such as the Taoists and the Buddhists didn't really pop up until the 6th century BC, and even then still promoted a religion, just one without a god.
Up until the 18th century, there were almost no societies where one would be willing to call oneself an 'athiest' anymore than you'd call yourself any modern curse.
As for non-human animals, I doubt any of us are qualified to judge, nor would it be verifiable if we could, but the point is fairly moot : we're discussing only tribes, suggesting a construct limited only to humans and similar species.
Good start. I came to the same conclusion about the existence of anti-theists myself recently.
I'm also convinced that many modern liberals are anti-theist, and certain organizations like the ACLU are a danger to our first ammendment rights of free religious expression because they are filled with anti-theistic members.
TJIC:
Antitheists, though, always make me laugh - they mock believers for believing in something without evidence...and they don't realize that they've enshrined in the center of their opinions an unprovable axiom (you know...a belief).
In my opinion, there are three levels to such disbelief, and one label doesn't cover them all.
I, for example, have no belief in deities of any kind, simply because there is not the slightest evidence to support such beliefs. But, you are correct; such a notion can neither be proved nor disproved. On that level, I am an atheist.
What I mock, relentlessly so, is the notion that believers know an enormous body of knowledge about the deities for which they have no evidence. For example, by golly, I will go to "hell" for all of eternity when I die if I eat, or even touch, the feral hog that I will hunt and try to kill this afternoon. On that level, I am an Atheist.
Finally, I campaign against, and I urge other to do so, the notion that others have a duty to kill me because of what I believe or don't believe about deities. On that level, I am an ANTItheist in that I condemn such religious practices for the harm that results.
DJ,
You are quite wrong about there being no evidence to support belief. While it is true that there is no conclusive proof either way, there is substantial evidence to support the existence of a supernatural creator.
Believe what you wish, Sarah.
Does this supernatural creator still get really pissed if you mispronounce his name?
gattsuru, I don't disagree that all "human tribes" predominately believe in god(s). But I think to claim "belief in a purpose" is the reason for their dominance is a stretch. It could be there were other reasons for their success--such as they were successful over the non-believers because they killed off all the atheists.
I bring up other species to point out that success as a species does not require belief in god(s). If other species can be successful without belief in god(s) then why must one conclude humans must believe in god(s) to be successful?
"If other species can be successful without belief in god(s) then why must one conclude humans must believe in god(s) to be successful?"
It would appear, based on the evidence, that a societal belief in god(s) is advantageous, else there would be evidence of successful societies that have or had no such belief - and there's not.
Yet.
Evolution continues....
If other species can be successful without belief in god(s)
I guess that all depends upon your definition of success. If simple survival is the measure of success then I would agree with you.
I would submit, however, that, as sentient human beings, our success or failure is not measured by simple survival. Comparing the survival of a lower species with a completely different standard of success or failure of a human society is invalid.
I believe that human beings have an innate desire...possibly even need...to be a part of something greater than themselves. This is no less true of atheists or anti-theists than of monotheists. Being a part of something greater than ourselves fulfills our desire for a sense of purpose. It answers the age-old question: What is the meaning of life?
Some may consider that trait just an instinctive part of our genetic makeup as social beings (or herd animals, if you will).
Others, like myself, consider that desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves to be the calling of God to join Him. Those who have no understanding of God have no realization of why they want to be a part of something bigger, they may even deny that they have that desire; but the urge is there whether understood or aknowledged or not. Ever been on a bowling team? A shooting team? Member of a club or organization? Did you feel a sense of accomplishment when you helped those groups achieve their goals? Why?
Because it fulfilled the innate desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Being a part of a group that achieved a goal provides a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
You may disagree with my contention that the desire constitutes the calling of God, but unless you are an absolute Hermit that never interacts with other people (even on the internet), you cannot deny that the urge to be a part of something bigger is present even in the most individualistic of us.
Huffman : from an evolutionary standpoint, success is defined by getting rid of everyone that doesn't work with you. Whether you do this by out-reproducing them, by destroying them, or by assimilating them.
As to other species... we're going into speculation here... but there are many things that humans do that animals don't do, and vice versa. This includes entirely alternate communication methods, territorial constructions, and hierarchal concepts that directly contradict the methods humans develop without being taught. Humans also seem to be the only species on the planet able to anthromorphize our planet to the point of creating concepts of "created the world" and "before the world was here". Even if other mammals do not have some sort of belief system - I find it hard to believe that they do not - we still are required to assume that some aspect of humanity's current brain structure, developmental psychology, or neurology, all make some form of religion advantageous to our species to a point well beyond that of other species.
I also think I'm required to state that most similar mammals aren't successful : we are quite capable of driving them all to extinction if we so desire. From an evolutionary perspective, for those of us with a neocortex, it sucks to be anything but human or at least able to act like one.
DJ,
It's not a matter of believing what I wish. You made an erroneous statement. If you want to be precise, you could say that there is no evidence of a deity that you are aware of.
Does this supernatural creator still get really pissed if you mispronounce his name?
A lot of atheists like to invoke the strange (to us) rules that were imposed on people by God long ago in order to show how silly faith is. For instance, your poking fun at the rule about not eating pork. Almost always the confusion arises from not placing the rule in context. Eating pig meat in ancient times was quite hazardous, because of poor sanitary conditions and the threat of trichinosis. We know, of course, that pork is no longer unsafe to eat, as sanitary conditions have improved immeasurably. But how do you effectively convince primitive, illiterate, backwards people that for their own good they shouldn't eat a certain kind of meat -- by trying to teach them bacteriology or by telling them that it will make God really mad?
As for mispronunciations, it was not punishable to mispronounce God's name, but to pronounce it at all. My understanding is that this rule was imposed by rabbis, not by God. In the early version of the Talmud there is no prohibition against speaking God's name. So this is just man-made silliness.
Despite this, just about every rule in imposed by the Jewish and Christian faiths can be shown to have a rational and beneficial reason. People tend to be very short-sighted in terms of what's good and bad for them, so religion is there to act as a store of wisdom. Long after people forget the hard-learned lessons about engaging in certain kinds of behaviors, they will start reverting back to them -- unless you can instill in them reasons not to that carries with them a huge emotional component. That is why religions are so successful -- necessary even -- in perpetuating populations and culture.
Trivia that you may or may not know: it is a sin for a Catholic to presume to know whether another person will go in the afterlife.
Kevin:
It would appear, based on the evidence, that a societal belief in god(s) is advantageous, else there would be evidence of successful societies that have or had no such belief - and there's not.
That does not necessarily follow.
Power fills a vacuum, damned nearly every time, right? Control of people by the invocation of religion-based superstition is, and has been, quite effective, and is just another methodology of filling that vacuum and excercising power.
Perhaps a more accurate observation is that societies abhor a power vacuum, such that there has rarely ever been a society that doesn't have a religion-based power structure in place. That it not evidence that it is advantageous, any more than, for example, any dictatorship is advantageous. It is simply evidence that it is effective.
TJIC:
Trivia that you may or may not know: it is a sin for a Catholic to presume to know whether another person will go in the afterlife.
Yup, I didn't know that.
Asking that specific question about my grandfather when he died was my epiphany. I became a skeptic at that time and a firm unbeliever shortly thereafter.
Sarah:
A lot of atheists like to invoke the strange (to us) rules that were imposed on people by God long ago in order to show how silly faith is.
A lot of rational people like to illustrate how silly the rules are that people impose on others in the name of imaginary deities in order to show how irrational faith is.
So this is just man-made silliness.
All of it is man-made, Sarah. All of it.
Despite this, just about every rule in imposed by the Jewish and Christian faiths can be shown to have a rational and beneficial reason.
Pardon my French, but that is pure bullshit. I mean no offense, rather I simply convey thereby how strongly I believe that.
I suggest you read The Closing of the Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman. He narrates, in gruesome detail, how the Christian church dogma came about, particularly in the fourth through sixth centuries. He documents, in detail, how people decided what to believe Jesus was, which led to so many different flavors of Christianity. I'm about halfway through it, as there is only so much of it I can withstand at one sitting.
A rational and beneficial reason FOR WHOM? In great measure such dogma is about the suppression of what Paul the Apostle, the founder of the Christian church, called "the empty philosophy of the Greeks", namely rational thought. It is about the suppression of reason, logic, and rational thought in favor of faith, dogma, and the power of the church, all to the benefit of those who make and enforce the rules. For example, a favored method is by telling them that it will make God really mad if the edicts of the anointed are not followed.
The absense of two really big buildings in New York is mute testimony to the power of faith over reason. I would not characterise such power, or the rules it generates, as rational and beneficial for anyone except those who exercise power thereby.
I got my blog back up and I will be addressing this in my next post.
In a nutshell, DJ (and many athiests, including myself when I was wandering through the wilderness so to speak) is pointing to human traits, imperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding and human manipulation of religious "dogma" for their own benefit or personal gain and saying "see, because those humans screwed up, there can't be God".
Sorry, but that's patently ridiculous. If there was a human being on this earth capable of perfectly interpreting God's will, perfectly living a Godly life and perfectly translating God's purpose, he (or she) wouldn't be human, (s)he would be God.
None of the things that you point out demonstrate the irrationality of faith in God, they demonstrate the irrationality of faith in humans.
Ahem, Sarah… those of us who still refrain from pork see no need to justify that prohibition on medical grounds.
Though it is an added bonus, one of many that we who follow the Torah enjoy.
The forbidden animals are denied to us for spiritual reasons, not medical. Otherwise, what would the problem be with eating camels, which are also forbidden?
"got my blog back up and I will be addressing this in my next post."
Damn, but I do love being inspiring!
Long road trip today. No posting for a while.
Sailorcurt:
In a nutshell, DJ (and many athiests, including myself when I was wandering through the wilderness so to speak) is pointing to human traits, imperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding and human manipulation of religious "dogma" for their own benefit or personal gain and saying "see, because those humans screwed up, there can't be God".
No, I'm not pointing that out or saying that.
[I]mperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding is simply sleight-of-hand, a convenient way to brush aside discussion of the contradictions that abound in the Old and New Testaments, and in the many versions of Christian dogma. Those contradictions ought to provoke rational thought, and in me, they do. In the faithful, they provoke either denial or "It's a mystery".
The imperfections of the human race and intellect are evidence neither for nor against the existence of God, and I do not state or imply otherwise. They do provide grist for the mill of realizing that all notions of deities and dogma originated in the imperfect minds of people, and observations about them help illustrate why those notions are so bizarre.
Trackback message
Title: Truth and Religion
Excerpt: I have to thank Kevin of The Smallest Minority. This entry is in response to his post on Atheist, Anti-Theists and such, which was a follow up to The Uber-Post. His thought provoking pieces are what prompted me to finally fulfill my threats and reope...
Blog name: Captain of a Crew of One
Perhaps one thing all of us CAN agree on is that it is necessary to the sociological and psychological health of humans to have an animating sense of purpose, a system of abstract concepts that constitutes a governing internal code concerning how we think about and interact with others and the world in general, and a sense that those abstract something or others are so real and so important that they transcend the immediate, even transcending death.
What we disagree in is whether or not it is necessary to have a personally interested omnipotent and omniscient deity in order to satisfy the above conditions. I see all of the above as necessary conditions for the existence of a species that can think on the levels of abstraction we do, keep histories, and see forward to the future as well as looking behind to the past. It's what makes us humans rather than speedy apes. I personally find that a satisfying enough explanation (and enough reason to uphold moral principles) without going to the "okay, now let's posit a deity and try and figure out what it wants" level. Obviously this is a simplification on a grand scale, and obviously others disagree.
In the spirit of outside reference material which this site generally embraces, Stephen Dutch has an excellent series of essays on science and religion. He's particularly good at eliminating what most needs to be eliminated from such discussions- focusing on the intellectually and morally sloppy and/or bankrupt on both sides.
>>So this is just man-made silliness.
And therein lies the rub, for many.
The subtle, intangible voice of the deity speaks at a layer of abstraction, and the moment you start articulating what it is that the "voice" said, you've cast that voice into a form of concreteness that brings it away from its original meaning.
Write it down, and sooner or later people will gather around it and start arguing relevance and meaning.
Incrementally, whatever seed of truth and light the original insight had is lost, and when the lawerly types get involved, trying to square the whole thing up to be both internally consistent and congruent with current understandings of observed concensus reality.
By then, the whole thing has become an intractible mosh, and all bets are off.
As for eating pig and so forth, well, Jesus said it best:
10Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' "
12Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?"
13He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14Leave them; they are blind guides.[e] If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
15Peter said, "Explain the parable to us."
16"Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. 17"Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' 19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.' "
I can't find it, but I'm sure there's an exception for camel, because, yuck.
[I]mperfect human interpretations of a being that is beyond understanding is simply sleight-of-hand, a convenient way to brush aside discussion of the contradictions that abound in the Old and New Testaments, and in the many versions of Christian dogma.
It is not "sleight-of-hand" any more than insisting that anyone is capable of perfect understanding of something as complex and ephimeral as spirituality and religion is "sleight-of-hand".
It is also not an attempt to brush away discussion of anything. Apparent contradictions in scripture and interpretation NEED to be discussd rationally. That is the only way for us to continue to develop spiritually and to improve our (still perpetually imperfect) understanding of God's will.
The sleight-of-hand comes into play when someone takes two pieces of scripture or two interpretations of the same scripture and says "see, because they seem to contradict, the entire premise must be false".
There are some pretty large holes in the theories associated with Evolution (Disclaimer: I personally don't have a problem with the theory of evolution. Demonstrating scientifically the process by which something occured does not remove the possibility that a Higher Power caused the sequence of events to take place). Do those holes and apparent contradictions cause you to dismiss the entire premise of Evolution as a construct of Man's imagination? Or do those holes and contradictions simply indicate that our knowledge of the subject is incomplete?
Basically, you purport to know something that is unknowable. Therefore, you are patently wrong.
My blog (Captain of a Crew of One) is back up. I have posted my response to this piece. The link to the post is in the trackbacks if anyone is interested.
Thanks for pointing out this development Kevin. I'm sorry I came so late to this thread.
In August I wrote about the inevitability of many religionists becoming endangered entirely due to what is at core to their beliefs.
I'll have to look further into your links to discover if they use the same reasoning as some Postmodernist new-religionists: "Any god who commands mankind be fruitful and multiply is not a loving god."
I explain why understanding both the words evil and innocents can go either way depending on whether or not you agree with the postmodern conclusion.
DJ,
First of all, you're making a big mistake by equating all faiths. Judeo-Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive.
In the world right now there are maybe a half dozen unique approaches to human social existence. Three are slugging it out for dominance, and a fourth is becoming a contender. Look at what the human race has come up with in one way or another over the millenia, all the different ways to organize human affairs, all the different cultures. In the competition of cultures, look at what has stood the test of time and social survival of the fittest. For instance, you had the Romans, who lived in a remote village in central Italy several centuries ago, but came up with something powerful enough to create a huge empire that still influences the course of events today. Why does one culture spring out of some corner of the world and have that influence? That's the question. Time provides the test for all these approaches. What we have today are things that had the ability to survive the forces that destroyed 99% of the cultures that have ever existed on this planet. You can argue about whether they were good or bad, but if it can't survive it's irrelevant. So, right now we've got the Protestant Christian faith, the Catholic/humanist faith (I lump them together, because they so often meld), the Islamist faith, and the Chinese/Confucian authoritarian culture. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant to the course of events. So these are the four great approaches to human existence that have so far survived the test of time. To date the greatest of these is Protestantism. With its ups and downs, it is still the most powerful in the world. It has produced all of the things that most of us value in the Western world. One of the things you must not do is lump all Christians together. Mainstream Protestant churches, which produced the United States from the industrial revolution onward, has been the driving force. Not distinguishing between that and Catholicism is a big mistake -- the analysis has to be deeper and more sophisticated than that. The Catholic approach, which can be seen in France, Italy, and Spain, is morphing into humanism, which is based on reason.
Lets compare the Protestant faith to humanist reason. The old saying goes, you can know something by its fruits. Whenever the human race has tried to apply reason to a situation and with no faith to guide it, unmitigated disaster follows. You cannot name one triumph of reason, and this is because there is something wrong with it. There is an organic-based irony in human existence, which reason has never been able to explain or control. When reason comes up against this organic irony it fails utterly. An example of this is the high-minded ideals of the French Revolution which then became the absolute horrors of the revolution -- the guillotines, the mass executions, the oppression, the emperor who inspired worldwide war and destruction. It's not to say that the architects of the revolution were stupid people -- they were smart -- but reason fails. It has never succeeded. You get things like the old Soviet Union with their endless five-year plans, the human mind working overtime to organize things and ending up causing the deaths of tens of millions of people. Same with China and Cambodia. All based on reason. Look, on the other hand, at the accomplishments of the United States, and you notice that the U.S. is (at least up until now) the product of Protestant faith. Pure and simple. What we have right now, unfortunately, is a situation that has been complicated since the time of FDR by the rise of humanism, based on reason, and which has caused all kinds of problems (e.g. the racial ghettos). It's not a product of Christianity, but of reason. If you're going to pit faith vs. reason and then look for historical evidence for superioritym faith wins hands down (unless one sees the French Revolution as some glorious thing).
Reason in the form of humanism, which says, obviously, the only thing that matters is enjoying the here and the now, has led to the point where people will make no sacrifice for themselves or others, including their unborn children and society in general. It's happening in Europe right now with disastrous consequences. It's happening in Japan, where young men and women have virtually no contact with one another and the Japanese birth rate is 1.3, far below the replacement rate of 2.1. It's all very reasonable -- people are maximizing their enjoyment (since this life is all you've got), so society and culture are dying off. And all of these once-great cultures will become irrelevant, because they will be replaced by cultures based on faith. It's all part of this organic irony. Something is built into us as living organisms that doesn't allow things to work out the way that reason says they should.
Let's take an extreme example of this irony -- Islam. Muslim culture is a political and economic failure of the most extreme kind. In the last 500 years Islam has not produced a single stable, free, prosperous society anywhere. Islamic nations are constantly in conflict with neighbors, always repressing their own people and condemning them to lowest possible standard of living without hope for anything better -- and yet Islam grows. It's against reason. There is something about Islam that causes people to act in ways to perpetuate and grow the culture, to motivate people within it to do the most extreme things like blow themselves up in the name of faith, to motivate women to have six or seven babies with the hope that all of them will some day blow themselves up. It goes against all reason -- and yet you cannot deny that it's happening.
If you're looking simply at the practical results in this world, you notice that some strange stuff is happening. But if we're talking about a test of whether a faith is true or not, then look to see if it leads people to a greater understanding. Is there evidence that's convincing about the existence of God? I know that the Protestant Christian faith has substantial evidence to support it. There seems to be a power behind it, that is not only enduring like the Muslim force, but on top of that produces good things. Protestantism produced the industrial revolution (the only thing that has lifted large segments of humanity out of poverty), the end of slavery, and the rise of individual rights. For a good primer on this read D'Souza's book. On the other hand, the worst atrocities have been committed in the name of reason. In Cambodia, where you had people committing the worst atrocities against their own countrymen, they were acting out of absolutely unrestrained reason. Listen to interviews with these people and you understand how chillingly reasonable they were. They wanted to make a break with the past, and to do that they knew that they had to take the adult population -- educated people like scholars and lawyers who are the embodiment of the old culture -- and kill them off. They went ahead and did it. Two million people slaughtered. That's reason. Unfettered by faith. The worst crimes in the history of the human race have been committed in the name of reason -- godless, atheistic, humanistic reason. And yet atheism is never taken to task for these horrible crimes, never held up to the same scrutiny that faith is, in spite of the fact that faith -- the Protestant Christian faith -- has produced just about everything that we value in the West.
Unfortunately, that's about all I can contribute to this discussion. I'm way too busy at work to get deeply involved in this discussion, much as I would like to. But I'm sure the topic will come up again (knowing Kevin ;)).
Sarah, that should have been a blog post. Very well stated.
Ben:
I'm done for, apparently. I killed my first-ever wild hog yesterday. I actually touched it, and got some of its blood on me, too.
Sigh. I hope it tastes good.
Sailorcurt:
The sleight-of-hand comes into play when someone takes two pieces of scripture or two interpretations of the same scripture and says "see, because they seem to contradict, the entire premise must be false".
There is a quote from Heinlein that I can't find, so I'll paraphrase it in my own words: If you find yourself faced with a contradiction, or a paradox, then examine your premises. You will find at least one that is false.
When the plain words of scripture contain a contradiction, or a paradox, then the basic premise of the scripture, namely that it is infallibly the word of a deity, ought to be questioned first. If one can't get beyond that, then one can't realize scripture for what it is, namely the words of men, men who were sometimes just bronze age tribesmen, sitting in their caves and reckoning the age of the universe by counting their ancestors.
How is that sleight-of-hand?
Do those holes and apparent contradictions cause you to dismiss the entire premise of Evolution as a construct of Man's imagination?
No.
Or do those holes and contradictions simply indicate that our knowledge of the subject is incomplete?
Yes.
Basically, you purport to know something that is unknowable.
No, I contend that followers of religion purport to know something that is unknowable.
Decades of experience has shown me that, whenever a believer and a nonbeliever discuss the existence or nonexistence of God, almost invariably, the believer challenges the nonbeliever to prove the nonexistence of something for which there is no evidence. Well, that can't be done, can it? And equally invariably, the believer then smugly replies something to the effect of, "See?"
No, I don't see. Absent evidence, I don't believe, either.
Sarah:
Well done!
But ...
I don't equate all faiths. If my rantings suggest otherwise, I apologize. Such was not my intention.
I don't think Judeo-Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive. My understanding is that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each revere the same deity, namely the Old Testament God of Abraham. And, they revere many of the same old testament prophets.
In my mind, the basic premise of each, namely the belief in a deity, is equally absurd with each. What they share with each other, completely, is the utter certainty that followers of any religion other than their own are dead wrong.
Overall, what you have done, and done remarkably well, is set up a straw man. You have compared the best of the best of Christian history with the worst of the worst of what's left. Such is interesting, but it misses a different, but very significant aspect of reason vs. faith.
Your statement:
You cannot name one triumph of reason, and this is because there is something wrong with it.
encapsulates a myopia about reason that often fills such discussions.
I'll give you a simple example of the triumph of reason over faith. I won't bore you with the details, as you probably already know them.
Galileo built a telescope and, with it, observed those little pinpoints of light in the night sky. He reasoned, from evidence to conclusion, that the Copernican notion of planetary motion, namely that the planets, including the Earth, revolved around the sun, was correct, because it agreed with his observed evidence, His trial was a paradox of faith. He was charged with heresy for teaching something that was not heretical. The point is that he was ordered, on pain of death, to recant his teachings because they disagreed with faith, with the teachings of the church. Reason simply was not allowed by the church because it conflicted with faith. The simple fact that Galileo was right, and could prove that he was right using evidence, didn't matter.
Now, try re-analyzing your writings with that notion of reason. You say that reason has never succeeded. That sounds quite odd coming from a physicist.
You state that Protestantism produced the industrial revolution, and indeed that revolution happened in Protestant Europe and America. But, I submit, that revolution happened because of the application of rational thought, of reason to evidence, which led to a remarkably deep understanding of reality in a remarkably short time. Indeed, that revolution happened because of reason and despite faith.
Faith, itself, shows a remarkable history of killing, too. The Islamic worship of martyrdom is only a current example.
Have you counted the number of people who were killed either by God, or in the name of God, or at the command of God? The Bible counts 2,270,365, plus a number of massacres left uncounted, plus everyone on the planet except for most of Noah's family. The Book of Mormon lists 19,578. The Koran lists four. Amazingly, Satan's death toll is only ten, namely the seven sons and three daughters of Job, and that was the result of God losing a bet with Satan.
The reality is that the use of rational thought was horribly suppressed because of faith, and millions of people were killed and are still being killed because of faith.
Now, why don't you compare the best of faith with the best of reason, and then compare the worst of faith with the worst of reason?
I suggest that everyone read this Brussels Journal post, and think on it.
I believe I'll be getting another post out of that one.
(Found at Kim's.)
Wha? Why are you done for, DJ? Or at least why are you telling me? I just posted that you oughta eat anything that doesn't taste like Camel and won't kill you, except for maybe a few hundred gallons of ice cream.
It was tongue-in-cheek, Ben. Just a poor attempt at humor.
Kevin:
I think he's right. When Iran, or < fill in the blank >, has the bomb, will Europe "submit" or "fight"?
Islam once rolled over much of southern Europe, being expelled finally in 1492. This time, Europe just might be handed over without a fight.
Next week, and two years later, we just might have elected a gubmint full of Neville Chamberlains. It's enough to make one sick, meaning sick with fear. The great difference between Europe and us is that we have no place to go. We fight, or we submit.
Labrat:
Thanks for the pointer to Steven Dutch's web site. I've been reading there quite a bit. Very, very interesting.
namely that it is infallibly the word of a deity, ought to be questioned first.
You obviously haven't read my post on this subject.
What the contradictions demonstrate is not that the deity doesn't exist, but that the scriptures aren't "infallibly the word of a deity".
My point is that any imperfections in the interpretation of God's word and will by man (in writing the scriptures) do not PROVE that a deity doesn't exist, they only prove that man is flawed and imperfect.
That is why I drew the comparison to the theory of evolution. Inconsistencies or lack of evidence in the support for evolution does not disprove the entire premise, they only indicate that our knowledge is incomplete and flawed.
That is exactly what I am saying about scriptural inconsistencies. They don't demonstrate enequivocally that the concept of religion is wrong or that the existence of a deity is false, they only demonstrate that man's understanding of same is incomplete and flawed.
YOU choose to interpret flaws and inconsistancies as proof positive that the entire premise is false; a standard to which you do not hold premises with which you agree.
Yes, most religions subscribe to the belief that their own scriptures are the perfectly rendered "word of God". The fact that the scriptures contain flaws demonstrates that they are wrong about that belief, not that there is no God The scriptures are, at their root, simply man's best attempt at writing down their interpretation of God's word. Man is fundamentally flawed and so, the scriptures are likewise flawed. That is a reflection upon the men who wrote the scriptures, not the deity about whom they wrote.
Religious fundamentalists will shrug the flaws in scripture off or rationalize them away because they have been taught that their bible is the inspired word of God. Just because they believe that fervently doesn't make them right.
Anti-religious fundamentalists point out the flaws in scripture (and sometimes use creative interpretation to invent new and improved flaws) and insist that that proves that the entire premise of God is false. Just because they believe that fervently doesn't make them right.
No, I don't see. Absent evidence, I don't believe, either.
No one says you have to. Not even God. So why do you insist that others should ascribe to your (lack of) beliefs? In my mind that is what makes fundamentalists so dangerous. It isn't what they believe...but that they feel that everyone else should be MADE to believe what they believe.
According to the accounts of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament (flawed though they may be), even HE didn't try to browbeat anyone into following him. He said his piece, asked them to follow him and, if they chose not to, let them go on their merry way.
No problem, Kevin. I've really had yet to seriously disagree with the man, and he often makes points I wish I had.
Plus his movie reviews are hilarious.
Sailorcurt:
That was very well stated, and I agree with nearly everything in it.
YOU choose to interpret flaws and inconsistancies as proof positive that the entire premise is false; a standard to which you do not hold premises with which you agree.
No, I interpret the flaws and inconsistencies of the Scriptures as proof positive that the Scriptures cannot be all correct. I hammer at the notion that dogma which is derived from the Scriptures and is not based on evidence is thus flawed at its core. There is nothing about such dogma that compels me to believe it, much less to accept it "on faith".
The scriptures are, at their root, simply man's best attempt at writing down their interpretation of God's word.
I've said that for more than four decades.
I contend that the Scriptures are wholly the inventions of the minds of men, and their inconsistencies and contradictions simply bear that out. But, the core of Christianity treats the Scriptures as being infallible, and directs that, where the Scriptures are inconsistent or contradictory, such must be "interpreted" as allegory.
When viewed objectively, as in "convince me that I ought to believe in Christian dogma", I cannot help but shake my head in wonder at the process by which it came to be. Christian dogma developed over centuries by many different people examining the same Scriptures in the most minute detail, often deriving the most profound, yet contradictory, beliefs from a single word or phrase that was translated from Aramaic and/or Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and is now read by millions after being translated from Latin to English.
Consider, for example, the split between the "Orthodox" Churches (Eastern, Greek, and Russian), and the Catholic Church, which occurred over 1600 years ago. It was over the notion that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father" (Orthodox) vs. "from the Father and the Son" (Catholic). Over this difference in interpretation of a single phrase, Catholic and Orthodox dogma each treats the other as heretical. Wars were fought over it. The Byzantine Empire rose and the Roman Empire fell.
So why do you insist that others should ascribe to your (lack of) beliefs?
I don't insist they adopt mine. I am not an evangelist. When I discuss religious beliefs with others, I ask them to justify theirs, as I try to do mine. How can there be a discussion of religious beliefs without that?
It isn't what they believe...but that they feel that everyone else should be MADE to believe what they believe.
I agree 100%. Other people are free to believe what they want in such matters. That's fine with me, so long as they extend to me the same courtesy.
I don't insist they adopt mine.
Sorry, I was guilty of a little hyperbole there. I know you aren't trying to force anyone into your belief system and it was uncivil of me to imply otherwise.
As long as we agree that neither of us has the right to impose our beliefs on the other, I'm all for discussion.
I do realize that my beliefs are a bit unorthodox and many Christians would take umbrage at my views on the Scriptures, but I've come to those conclusions after many years of soul searching, thought and prayer.
Many of the things that you say are exactly the things that I used to say during the time that I was agnostic/atheistic whatever...Kevin's got me all screwed up now and I don't really know how I would have been defined.
I won't go into it here on Kevin's blog but I had my reasons for leaving the faith and I had my reasons for coming back into it. Suffice it to say that my belief system has been hard won and much agonized over.
Some of the issues with religion are very hard to work through. All I can say is that I have faith that there is a God. I would say that I KNOW it, but I only know it because I have faith in it. I have faith in it because I've seen His hand in my life.
The serenity and peace I've found since turning control of my life over to God, stopping trying to control the world around me and all the things that are really beyond my control, and following the path that He has set for me in stead of trying to force my own way through the world has been astounding.
Some people would say that I'm just weak minded and need a crutch to make it through day to day life. I say poppycock. I would have lived my life and been relatively successful regardless of my coming back into the fold. What my faith has given me is the intangible happiness, serenity, peace of mind....contentment is the word that comes to mind but none of that really nails it. I find myself not getting down or upset when confronted with challenges (otherwise known as "bad" things). I find myself to be extremely slow to anger. To have much more self control, much more confidence. I'm much more willing to spend my time and resources helping others rather than narcissistically hoarding everything for myself. Basically, I'm just a much better person. I was a good person before, and I thought I was as happy as the next guy. Now I'm a better person and I know that I'm as happy as I can be. And what a great life it is.
That's my testimony and why I believe. The nuts and bolts of exactly what each part of the Christian theology or dogma say are irrelevant to that.
As my brother says, "Whatever floats your boat."
I've heard lots of people give much the same story. My mind simply doesn't work that way.
I swear, I have the best commenters in the blogosphere.
I am struck by the appropriateness of Charles Freeman's statements near the end of his book I noted earlier, The Closing of the Western Mind, which is subtitled The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, so I am quoting them here. They hit harder if one reads the whole book.
With delicious irony, the first is on page 316:
The effects of Paul's condemnation of "the philosophers" could not have been put more clearly than by John Chrysostom, an enthusiastic follower of Paul. "Restrain our own reasoning, and empty our mind of secular learning, in order to provide a mind swept clear for the reception of divine words." Basil echoes him: "Let us Christians prefer the simplicity of our faith to the demonstrations of human reason ... For to spend much time on research about the essence of things would not serve the edification of the church." This represented no less than a total abdication of independent intellectual thought, and it resulted in a turning away from any speculation about the natural world as well as the divine. "What purpose does knowledge serve -- for as to knowledge of natural causes, what blessing is there for me if I should know where the Nile rises, or whatever else under the heavens the 'scientists' rave about" wrote Lactantius in the early fourth century. One Philastrius of Brescia implicitly declared that the search for empirical knowledge was in itself a heresy. "There is a certain heresy concerning earthquakes that they come not from God's command, but, it is thought, from the very nature of the elements ... Paying no attention to God's power, they [the heretics] presume to attribute the motions of force to the elements of nature ... like certain foolish philosophers who, ascribing this to nature, know not the power of God."
He continues on the next page:
One of a group of bishops asked by the emperor Leo I whether they wished to reopen the declaration of the Chalcedon, he replied, "We uphold the Nicene creed but avoid difficult questions beyond human grasp. Clever theologians soon become heretics." It was a shrewd appreciation of the limitations of intellectual debate. There was no longer any joy to be had in the cut and thrust of discussion -- the penalties for transgressng the boundaries, in this world and the next, were too great.
He ends the chapter:
This reversal of traditional values became embedded in the Christian tradition and was, amongh other things, used to sustain the authority of the church. Intellectual self-confidence and curiosity, which lay at the heart of the Greek achievement, were recast as the dreaded sin of pride. Faith and obedience to the institutional authority of the church were more highly rated than the use of reasoned thought. The inevitable result was intellectual stagnation. It is hard to see how mathematics, science or associated disciplines that depended on empirical observation could have made any progress in this atmosphere. The last recorded astronomical observation in the ancient Greek world was one by the Athenian philosopher Proclus in A.D. 475, nearly 1,100 years after the prediction of an eclipse by Thales in 585 B.C., which traditionally marks the beginning of Greek science. It would be over 1,000 years -- with the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus in 1543 -- before these studies began to move forward again.
And so began the Dark Ages, the triumph of the founding of Christianity.
I can hear the response now: "But those people weren't really CHRISTIANS!"
I'm reminded of Galileo's quote:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
Look; throughout all my younger years I repeatedly heard the refrain: "So many people died in the name of God." But throughout the twentieth century that included my youth, look at how many many more died in the name of men's isms.
Isn't it clear that the problem then isn't with God, but that the problem is with mankind?
So then, why all this never ending assault against belief in God? I believe in love. I believe in happiness. I can conceive of ideals. None of those are tangible or threatening of their own accord. So why not conceive of God?
For goodness sake, address that!
Pascal, it's not the conception of God, it's what men do with what are purportedly His scriptures. When they're good, they're very good. But when they're bad, they're heinous.
The same can be said for humanism, but as I among many have pointed out, humanists have just had less time at it. We've only got the 20th (and now 21st) century. You've got everything prior. I don't think we're ahead on body count - certainly not by sheer percentage - and we had the advantage of industrial-age technology.
I think the thing that rubs me the wrong way is the denial. The "those people aren't Christian/Muslim/Hindu/whatever" disclaimer for actions taken under philosophies that are traceable directly to scripture.
Sarah has repeatedly pointed out that logic and reason have lead to guillotines in the public square, mass starvations, and death camps. She's right. But faith has lead to pogroms, crusades, and sectarian warfare on equally massive scales.
Frankly, I don't see the advantage of faith, especially when its adherents are loath to admit that faith is just as easily twisted (at least not their particular flavor).
What DJ illustrates is what I and most like me object to: Too often the faithful are told to reject reason and just do what they're told in order to achieve eternal life. And they do, believing that they are being faithful and will be rewarded.
In "Why I Am an Atheist" I noted that the lay-person is dependent on some Authority figure to tell them what it all means - and that this is true for both the atheist with science, and the faithful with religion. At least with science, the basic premise is to question. Not so with faith.
I understand the antitheists. I disagree with them primarily because I think they gloss over the history of the 20th century and humanism's appalling failures. I am not an antitheist because I believe that faith can be a good thing - as long as its adherents keep out of trying to govern by faith.
In short, we need both: faith backed by reason. If you want a rule made law, there'd better be a better reason than "because Yaweh said so," and I'd like to see some data to back it up. And there needs to be some understanding that the tenets of some (I'd say most) religious faiths are incompatible with personal liberty and individual rights.
Ah, you've nailed it again, Kevin.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
I don't either, but much of modern Christianity still does. What else should I think about efforts to stifle the teaching of evolution, and of the passion such efforts involve?
Pascal, I don't engage in an assault against believing in God. I realize, given the ink I have spilled on Kevin's blog, that might be hard to see. The assault I wage, if assault is what it is, is against the refusal to think. It has been a life-long passion.
Kevin's plea
... as long as its adherents keep out of trying to govern by faith
and his principle
If you want a rule made law, there'd better be a better reason than "because Yaweh said so"
are dead on.
It is not about keeping score. It is about noting cause and effect, and about learning from the past. It is a good thing to learn from the past and, by doing so, provide for a good future. We all stand at a cusp in that effort. We'll know Wednesday whether we've made any progress.
DJ, It was a common occurance in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged not a Heinlein book (that I know of) that said what you were looking for:
Joe:
You're right, and many thanks. You've jogged my memory quite solidly. That explains why I couldn't find it searching Heinlein notes.
Two things happen as you get older. One is that your memory fails, and I have already forgotten the other one.
Kevin,
I find consolation in your entire response. Thank you. I hope you can add some more hope by your reaction to what follows.
In varied ways your first five paragraphs touched on the point to which I repeatedly return: anti-humanism joined with fear of over-population.
Paragraph 5: Of what use is faith? To start, as a fount of optimism, as a foil against pessimism.
But faith also provides one a trump card. Certainly, at the brink and hopefully long before it, the concept of God makes the smallest minority every bit as important as any collective or any tyrant. It gives you the strength to spit in the eye of those who would not only try to squash you but would even try to convince you to help them: a variation on Room 101.
Paragraph three perfecting matches the wide avoidance (even by you for whom it seems most important?) of the logical conclusion I keep pointing out: if world population is going to be "managed," certainly self-defense must be eliminated.
Post-modernism, including post-modern religion, has a decidedly jaundiced tint against human life. They believe they have the only rational approach to human population "management." Ancient pre-Abrahamic creedists, Abrahamic creedists who really didn't believe in Him, and modern anti-religionists share a similar pessimistic vision: fear of too few resources and too many people. Their joint pessimism concludes that human intellect and technology will be inadequate to solve the "inevitable crisis."
Just look at Postmodernism: it consistently buries all history and decries all reason that's in disagreement with it's determined conclusion: Malthus must inevitahly be right. Their central belief is: in a world lacking a supernatural God who will provide in the pinch, someone must make "difficult" decisions.
You say you fear the illogic of religionists. What I see developing will make those guys look mild. Simply perusing a review of Explaining Postmodernism yields:
Couple that with our anti-culturalists' avowed assault on language, and you get "Progressives" who fear progress, "Liberals" who oppress free speech, and some leading scientists who admire the scientific method not so much less, but rather love more the funding they protect when they align with political consensus -- including doomsaying.
Faith can help, but if it remains tied to unyielding dogmatism, incapable of reacting to old threats that only appear to be new, you're right, it can't help. But that could mean we're not adapting too. Too? Yes. For I think you see faith could help based on your last paragraph.
Faith and reason, I agree Kevin. Why did God (or nature) give us His mind for anyway? What more does the rational man need in order to understand why he is a target? How could he be surprised that his counterparts in Cambodia were slaughtered?
And yes, it is very difficult to get religionists to understand that rational reasons must be offered rather than just pure faith. But it is not impossible. Ask them: "Don't you belief that God gave you a brain that could solve that dilemma for the rest of us?"
Well (now for somehting completely different), while crickets have been chirping -- now there's something I can lay claim to: I left Kevin Baker speechless -- Francis W. Porretto read "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Dawkins' prize student, Sam Harris.
Yesterday Fran wrote the first of his "comprehensive refutation" of that "religious fundamentalist"'s rationalism.
In the process, FWP also answers the question inherent to your "Frankly, I don't see the advantage of faith..." where his address goes beyond the religious aspect of faith into faith in general (something I've been lobbying him to do for a very long time).
All kidding aside, it is my guess you'd do well to add a dose of Fran's thinking to yours and see how well you can synthesize a raproachment between faith and reason.
I do not believe in God.
Here is the sum of my beliefs:
Q: Do you believe in life after death?
A: No!!! I believe in death after life.
Q: How can an atheist bring up a child to be moral and law-abiding if one does not believe in God?
A: ??? strange question. A child needs only to learn: Be truthful; be tactful; harm none; strive for excellence in all you do; walk softly upon mother Earth; respect life, i.e.: animal & plant kingdoms; kill only in self-defense.
Q: Kill only in self-defense? Hmmm, what about killing animals, plants, etc for food???
A: Accept that some are Omnivore, others are Herbivore, and still others are Carnivore. Humans who are omnivore or carnivore must be ethical when killing animals for food [causing the least pain to the animal]. Cannibalism is a no-no. Hunting is not a sport because prey have only natural defenses of their species. From what I see, most prey don't have guns or crossbows in their defensive arsonol.
It puzzles me when people I find to be rational and smart believe in magic like life after death, god, unicorns, vampires -- you get the idea -- I can't figure that out!
Hope my spelling is ok. No spellcheck here.
So...
It's ok to farm animals for slaughter, but not OK to hunt them? Humans using tools (archery, firearms) is wrong, but wolves using pack tactics and teeth is alright?
I'm having a little trouble here.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>