ZeaLitY asked me to make a contribution to this thread. Here it is:
Is atheism a valid position to hold?
Before getting to that, we must first establish what atheism itself is. It is not a self-contained concept. Nobody can take an atheistic position without first considering a divine premise of some kind—i.e., a god or other force whose existence transcends natural law. The divine premise itself must come first because otherwise there would be nothing to evaluate, and thus nothing to accept or reject. Consequently, the default logical position of any intelligent being, on the question of the divine, is one of unconsidered agnosticism.
Therefore, before declaring a position of theism or atheism, we need the premise. We need to know what definition of “God” we are working with. In this case, Krispin premises a singular, unknowable, supreme entity, unlimited in its facility, who is both the source and mechanism of the universe, who exists beyond human evaluation, and whose nature is all-perfect, inscrutable, and unquestionable, at least from any natural perspective.
With a specific divine premise now in hand, the evaluation can proceed. If the premise is discredited, then it must be rejected. Voila! Atheism.
(Here is an interesting epistemological footnote: A position of atheism, or theism, is only in regard to the underlying divine premise itself—not to the divine entity of that premise. Thus, a person’s atheism, or theism, is only as good as their definition of what “God” actually is. Get the definition wrong, and the conclusions are gibberish. Diligent observers will note that, for this reason, the evaluation of a divine premise is curiously irrelevant to the objective existence or nonexistence of “the divine.” This is an inherent quality of all knowledge: Intelligent beings are never able to evaluate phenomena directly. They must instead produce a conceptualization—a mental picture—and evaluate
that. Whenever the mental picture deviates from the physical reality (and it almost always does), it is possible for a divergence to occur between truth and comprehension, no matter how accurate or precise the evaluation.)
The awesome entity that Krispin describes is certainly imaginative, but the claim that such an entity exists is extraordinary. The true workings of our universe have shown themselves to be knowable through the scientific method, and describable through the language of math. These realities have, in their day, discredited countless human superstitions, beliefs, and ideas generally. Logic dictates that our process of understanding of the universe inherently acknowledge the means by which we have attained that understanding, which is to affirm that empirical evidence is the only currency of the objective truth. No amount of emotional intuition, casual speculation, philosophical postulation, or blind faith can provide us with access to the truth. At best, these can exist parallel to it, but empirical evidence alone is the arbiter of all facts.
Now along comes Krispin, bearing in hand a new message: God, the supreme being whose powers are beyond imagining, whose very existence renders all other truth arbitrary, has revealed itself (ahem, “Himself”) to us. This god is so fundamental to the nature of our existence that to not know him, is to know nothing.
That by itself is extraordinary, but what catapults Krispin’s claim beyond all reason is the final stroke: Faith. As Krispin himself put it, the road to this most heavenly and supreme truth of truths is completely, altogether opposite to the system of scientific inquiry by which we have attained all other factual understanding of our universe.
This is no merely counter-intuition, my friends. This is
spite. I look at such a claim and see only the desperation of a pious wretch who lives in an enlightened age where scientific discoveries have pushed his religious worldview into the realm of fantasy. In the past, the power of Heaven (or Hell) has always been the easy answer to explain anything outside of the most obvious human control. If a surgery went well, it was said to be “God’s” mercy to the patient, or “God’s” strength to the surgeon. If a tornado knocked down one’s home, it was said to be “God’s” wrath, or “God’s” unknowable plan, or perhaps the machinations of demons. If a composer wrote a particularly fine piece of music, that was “God’s” grace shining through.
Some people still believe those things, but today we know that successful surgery depends upon precise work and hygienic conditions, that tornadoes are the result of unstable, shifting air masses, and that human ingenuity in recognizing and creating patterns is biologically advantageous. So it is in all of our arts and sciences. Bit by bit, we have shone light on the world and discovered no god. No divine. No supernatural. Only the physical world, in all its wonder, glows back at us. In the face of this damning refutation of his divine claim, all that remains for the committed monotheist Daniel Krispin is to declare that his god exists outside all scientific inquiry. Inscrutable. Unquestionable. Beyond proof. Yet we must believe in him, worship him, and live according to his rules as written in some book, for any existence we might lead without almighty god is weaker, fundamentally inferior, and, some would say, deserving of eternal torture.
The scientist Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and now we see why. In any land where that principle is not upheld, people can establish whatever ethics they like, whatever customs they like, on any rationale, and call it religion. In the name of righteousness, they can make war or insurrection so as to force these customs on everybody else, constraining or subjugating entire societies under the specter of a deity whose supremacy allows its followers to commit any action. God is not a majestic force in the sky. God is the ultimate weapon humanity has ever conceived. God is an idea, so powerful and so corruptive that it brings people by the billions to condemn themselves to lives of ignorance, to spurn their neighbors and friends, to enslave, oppress, or destroy other humans, to antagonize all life on this world…and to feel good about it.
Is atheism a valid position to hold? What do you think? Krispin’s divine premise offers no evidence in support of itself, and instead declares itself beyond evidence entirely. It tacks a supernatural force onto the natural workings of the world. It claims to exist beyond your rational comprehension, yet refuses to take your questions or your scrutiny. It insults you, calls you filthy with sin, and says you are incapable of acting virtuously on your own, but will deign to lift you up from your pitiful squalor and fill you with proper ideas. It craves your obedience, your eternal obedience, and it wants you to sign on the dotted line.
Would you accept any other premise, on these same terms?
We are a species that has only known civilization for a few thousand years. We ourselves have not changed at all, biologically. Each of us is born with the genes of a wild human, yet the structured world in which we are raised has been around long enough as to be governed by particular laws and customs, very constraining, to which we have little choice but to adapt. In essence, in our childhood years we are domesticated. Trained. Yet society is imperfect, and our animal passions are strong. We lash out at authority and seek to establish our own influence. We often neglect our high-minded principles and behave with raw emotion. We seldom think things through rationally, when given the choice. We are suspicious, greedy, and often cruel to others, in stark contrast to our laws but in suspicious concordance with our social mores. We are egotistical, and we fancy ourselves to be more than perhaps we are. We seek acceptance, accomplishment, and fulfillment, but rarely determine how to achieve even one of these at a time. We are intensely curious, which drives us to ask fine questions, but also to accept even the most notorious answers. And, as we are domesticated, sometimes our passions get deformed in terrible ways. So many of us become superficial, others neurotic, and still others turn to destruction.
In the end, we barbarize society as much as society civilizes us. Our weaknesses manifest themselves culturally. Some bad ideas get set in stone and last for a very long time. And, with every generation, wild humans are again born into the world and must be brought up through millennia of cultural evolution in a few short years, by imperfect people who themselves never really figured it all out. It repeats over and over again; change is so slow.
Religion arose because of what we are. People want values to live by and a sense of fulfillment. Religion provides that handily, eliminating the work of developing these things for oneself. People need a way to adapt their tribal instincts to the larger world of modern times, so that they can know who is with them and who is against them. Religion provides that common identity. And, of course, the unscrupulous elite always need a way to control others. Religion lays out a system of rewards and punishments used to structure people’s energy so as to control their behavior, often very effectively.
Which do you suppose is more likely? Is there actually a supreme deity among us who is all-powerful yet invisible and unknowable, until we
believe we know him? Or are we humans quite alone here, and prone to using our imaginations as a way of explaining what we don’t know for sure?
In the end, the god of Daniel Krispin is a contradiction. He is an almighty deity who has no power beyond those actions we take in his name. He is an ineffable supernatural force sustaining a universe whose entire contents are describable and natural. He is an all-perfect father, yet failed to prevent the fall of his children and doomed them to live wretched lives until the Judgment. He is loving and compassionate, yet routinely inflicts eternal torture on his own creations. He is supreme, yet was thwarted in his intentions at Eden by the Devil. He is merciful, yet allowed his progeny to be caught up in a struggle far beyond their means to fight. He entrusted his holy message to a book overrun by factual errors and ancient politics.
It doesn’t make much sense.
Just about the only kind of atheism with regard to this god that
isn’t logically valid is the faith-based kind: Some atheists have faith that God does not exist, similar to the theistic and deistic faiths that God really does exist, based on life experiences and personal interpretations of the world. That is an illegitimate position. But every other argument has a lot of support.
The only concession I can offer to Krispin is that his divine premise cannot be unequivocally disproved. To put it the other way: The atheistic position on his divine premise cannot be unequivocally proved.
This might sound important, as far as concessions go, but really it is not: Just because something is not impossible does not make it true. Krispin’s god is a possibility with near-zero probability, suffering from internal contradictions, no supporting evidence, and considerable refuting evidence. The only reason it cannot be disproved unequivocally is that, by postulating a god beyond our scrutiny, the premise asserts an unverifiable claim. Untestable claims are both logically and scientifically invalid, but, strictly speaking, they are not inherently false. It’s a technicality. A good example would be that no one can disprove the claim that there is some alternate universe where
Chrono Trigger actually happened. There is no proof for such a thing, but there are no means available for us to
disprove it, either.
In contrast to the binary idea that a premise is either true or false, the scientific world allows for judgments of approximation. When taking this into account, the scales tip decisively (albeit not totally) in favor of the atheistic position.
For all these many reasons thus far outlined, I propose that atheism toward Krispin’s divine premise is a perfectly valid position to hold. In fact, if I may, it seems very nearly a sure deal.
Meanwhile, there are other divine premises out there, which is why I am an agnostic rather than an atheist in the cosmic sense, even if I am atheistic toward the gods of the world’s religions.
~~~
Now, since I am here, I might as well address some quotes from the topic.
God lies entirely out of our both apriori and aposteriori understanding.
You cannot say that an unknowable being
might exist, because you cannot prove that an unknowable being
can exist. Such a proof would require retracting the
a priori qualification, but to do so would mean that the being is no longer unknowable.
To put it a bit more simply, your statement is false because you cannot define “God,” and your use of the word “God” is gibberish. You might as well replace it with a question mark.
So my first statement wishes to annul a common atheistic position that belief in God is irrational.
But it
is irrational. Belief is inherently irrational, because it requires the acceptance of premises that have not been verified.
I'll hold my stance that for atheism to be in any way a reasonable belief it must allow for the possibility of God…
Notwithstanding your use of the “belief” terminology, what you are referring to is called agnosticism.
…but can nonetheless by faith claim that there is no God.
That happens to be the only form of atheism under discussion here that is
not valid.
After all, since both the statements that God exists and God doesn't exists are statements made without proof, then shall we dismiss them both. But what are we left then with? A paradox, wherein we cannot say if God exists or not.
“Without proof” is a red herring. As I said earlier, the atheistic position on your divine premise enjoys considerable proof, even if it cannot be proved unequivocally. However, if you will settle for nothing less than absolute certainty, then we come to your above quote, at which I would point out that what you are talking about is not a paradox. It is an unanswerable dilemma. A question with no resolution, if you will.
That is well and good, but if we were to accept it, it would nullify the theistic position along with the atheistic one. A lot of good that does you, eh? However, we needn’t come to that point at all. The two statements (e.g., “god exists”; “god does not exist”) do not have equal priority, and thus cannot be evaluated at the same time. The positive claim always has the burden of proof. In this case, the positive claim is the theistic one. The evaluation of that claim turns out inconclusive, owing to the unverifiable qualification inherent in your divine premise. Therefore, the theistic position cannot be taken with certainly.
That’s the end of the story. Since we cannot say that god exists, we do not need to consider the atheistic position.
A practical way of understanding it is this:
A theist must base his or her behavior upon the stipulations of the divine premise to which he or she subscribes. Therefore, a theist cannot (logically) effect his or her behavioral modification until the divine premise is proved.
An atheist, meanwhile, has no such restriction on his or her behavior, and thus does not require the divine premise to be disproved in order to proceed.
Why can this not be dismissed, saying 'even as you do not have proof for saying it is so, I needn't have proof for saying it is not'? Simply because asserting something does not require full knowledge, whereas dismissing does.
You are right. ZeaLitY’s quote is mistaken. It would do better to read, “What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without evaluation.”
That which is asserted without proof may or may not be true, and it may or may not be important, but it is in violation of the tenets of philosophical discourse. Specifically, all logical statements must be reasonable, and those which are asserted without proof are not reasonable—excepting
a priori statements and “given” statements—and can therefore be dismissed without due consideration.
All that one CAN do is raise a contrary assertion, which is something altogether different than having dismissed it. So Atheism is not the dismissing of Theism, but instead a contrary faith claim.
You are correct that atheism is not the rejection of the (theistic) acceptance of a divine premise. It is a rejection of the divine premise itself.
However, you seem to be confused about that means. As I said at the beginning, nobody can take an atheistic position without first considering a divine premise of some kind. The premise has to come first. Atheism is a rejection of the premise; it is in opposition to the theistic position, which accepts the premise. Comparatively, there is no opposite to the underlying divine premise itself. Divinity is a special concept, and it has no “anti-divine” counterpart. Nobody sits around postulating the nonexistence of non-deities, and certainly nobody builds a worldview around that. Yet you seem to be confusing atheism with this premise. Incorrect.
Simone de Beauvoire wrote that, since the ethical atheist believes that no God exists, then the ethical atheist must be on his or her best behavior because there's no God to forgive him or her. It might seem like a copout explanation (if there's no God to forgive sin, then there's no God to define sin), but if "sin" can be defined objectively, then it could work
Interesting, but a faulty premise. Unless you are operating from within the confines of specific religious worldviews, god is not the only one who can dispense forgiveness. In fact, contrary to the old maxim, to forgive is human.
(Beauvoire got around the definition issue by adopting the promotion of freedom as the rubric by which to judge good versus evil behavior).
Freedom is a disaster whenever people do not have the means to utilize it to their benefit. Would you grant your children sovereignty to behave however they liked within your house? How would that possibly be a good idea?
Just because a person crosses a certain age threshold does not mean that they are suddenly competent to wield the unruly power of freedom. That is why we have laws. “Freedom” for freedom’s sake is pointless, and dangerous. Ask not, “Freedom from what?” but “Freedom for what?” Then you’re in business.
As for why I'm personally religious, I take a bizarre Occam's razor approach: it's so much easier to explain the origins of the universe if an unknowable Being gave birth to it.
I agree with you that it is “easier” to explain the universe by resorting to the involvement of a supernatural entity. However, it is not more sensible. Invoking the supernatural never is. Occam’s Razor states not that the simplest solution is usually the best one, as is commonly believed, but that variables ought not to be multiplied needlessly. (In other words, the simplified form of something is better than the complicated form of it.) If it could be applied at all here, it would suggest to us that the universe works fine on its own and does not require a supernatural factor to explain its origin or function.
Now, whether religion is "evil" is a lot harder to state. The root of this is in the definition and/or interpretation of the word evil.
My definition of evil is this: “Ignorance, or willful ignorance.”
It has never let me down.
Religion, with its predication upon faith, is an institution of willful ignorance, which qualifies it as an evil. You may evaluate that for yourself.
Though I can not refute the evils that have occurred under the name of God, how can we trust that the same won't happen under atheism?
There is no such thing as “under atheism.” Atheism is a non-religious condition, not an anti-religious one. In other words, atheism does not require that the atheist be hostile to religion; only that she or he reject the underlying divine premise of the given religion. Any atheist who acts against a religion is not doing so because they are an atheist, but because of some other aspect of their personality; possible examples include feminism, as liberated females and their allies have every reason to oppose religious influence over society, and secularism, which advocates for the excision of religious influence from the public parts of our society, i.e., beyond private homes and places of worship (or their proxies).
Atheism, in comparison, provides no anti-religious impetus of any sort. How can this be? Think of it this way: Atheism is a kind of like a hole—defined by what it is not. The label of “atheist” tells you one thing that a given person is not; it tells you nothing about who they are. This is in contrast to the “theist” label, which, by researching the specific religion to which the theist subscribes, can tell you a great deal about that person—or at least give you a place to start looking.
Atheism does wish to destroy religion, just like religions wish to destroy every other faith.
Simply untrue, for the reasons above. Perhaps some anti-religious people style their anti-religious behavior as “atheism,” but in a strictly logical sense, this is incorrect. Atheism is limited to the rejection of a divine premise. It can prevent some human behavior (as relates to the observance of religion), but it cannot cause behavior.
On ethics, and we'll use the Islamic god in this example. He says violence is acceptable under certain conditions. Now, you may say this is wrong, and evil, and that violence is never acceptable. Fair enough. However, this can only be said if the God doesn't exist, and that can not be proven. What if you die, and you wake up, and you're standing in front of this God.
Just as I remember, Zeppy: You are limited in your ability to participate in the discussion by your chronic difficulty conceiving of scenarios where your god is not real and his law is not in effect.
Logically, nobody is required to disclaim their statements with “provided this does not contradict Islamic law.” Such a requirement would not be limited to Islam, and we would all be stuck disclaiming our actions on behalf of every deity in human mythology. Such requirements are not justifiable, and so the opposite case remains in effect by default: Religious claims need not be taken into consideration in our everyday lives unless they are proven true.
Well, what I am basically saying is that until God is without a doubt, proved or disproved, the question of ethics is up in the air.
You’re mistaking ethics with morals. In fact, I think everybody in this thread so far has mistaken ethics with morals. Understandable, since nobody outside of academia ever seems to bother to distinguish between the two, but it is important to me because ethics are something I embrace closely, whereas morality is a convention that I reject on principle.
Ethics in the singular is a code of conduct that derives from one’s character. The word itself derives from the Greek word for “character.” (“Professional” ethics reflect the character of the institution, rather than the professionals themselves.) We don’t use “ethic” in the singular much anymore, but the concept is retained in the phrase “work ethic,” to describe one’s attitude toward how industriously he or she ought to work. As expressions of character, ethics are based in personal judgment, and, while they have come to imply virtue, they are not necessarily virtuous.
Morality, in comparison, is a code of conduct consisting of specific statements of good and evil that that, together, prescribe behavior. The key difference between ethics and morality is that, whereas ethics derive naturally from one’s personality and are an expression of self, morals are brought in from an external authority—usually religious, otherwise social—and are used to constrain one’s self-expression. The word “moral” derives from an older word meaning “custom.” Morals are not statements of character, but displays of obedience.
Oddly enough, in popular usage the two concepts are so confused as to have nearly switched places. Ethics are often seen as restraining guidelines, and morals as statements of character. (Not surprisingly, this is exacerbated by the Southern expression “That person has morals,” an illiterate construction resulting from overexposure to church rhetoric in an uncritical society where people seem to have forsaken the human brain.) If you value articulate expression, you will eschew this misuse of the concepts of ethics and morality, as I did when I pointed out your mistaken use of “ethics” when you mean “morality.”
But in the end, for me, it boils down to this: am I willing to risk an eternity after death for a single question born out of curiosity?
Ah. Pascal’s Wager. And coupled with an attack on curiosity, no less. Let me address the curiosity part first.
Curiosity is the beginning of all human excellence. It is the first of the Five Great Virtues. Without our curiosity we would simply not be human. Our civilization would never have been born. We would not be able to see the world. Of all the destruction that religion causes to the human personality, the snuffing out of a person’s curiosity is probably the hardest to watch.
Any religion that spurns curiosity is at odds with the very heart of the human condition. This is why I find it so preposterous whenever religious doctrine dismisses curiosity as impudent or destructive. Any god who sentences a person to eternal torture for being curious is not a god, but a fool—and a coward.
As for Pascal’s Wager…
The beauty of Pascal’s wager is that it is an entirely probabilistic argument in favor of faith, thus sidestepping the thorny question of whether god exists. As it goes: “If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing—but if you don’t believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to Hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist.”
Of course, Pascal’s Wager was debunked centuries ago. In fact, I remember writing my own refutation of it for my philosophy of religion class in college. That Pascal’s Wager survives to this day is a testament to its deceptive simplicity more than its theological effectiveness. My argument against it is simple as well, but manages to be completely effective. I use the
reductio ad absurdum:
1) Pascal’s Wager presumes the subject is a skeptic and does not already have definite knowledge of god.
2) Pascal’s Wager does not say which god to believe in.
3) To avoid Hell, one must determine which is the correct god without having definite knowledge.
4) There are an infinite number of possible gods to choose from.
5) Therefore, one’s odds of choosing the correct one without definite knowledge are zero.
6) Therefore, if god exists, everybody who applies Pascal’s Wager is going to Hell.
The reason Pascal’s Wager results in an absurd outcome, is because Pascal’s Wager itself is absurd. No specific god is mentioned. Heaven and Hell are thrown in arbitrarily as rewards and punishments for believing or not believing in some god. No mention is made of the possibility of god bestowing Heaven and Hell for reasons other than belief in god. No consideration is given to the mutual exclusivity of an infinite subset of possible religions, or the mutual inclusivity of another infinite subset of religions, or the partial exclusivity of another infinite subset of possible religions. It’s a mess.
Also, your criticism of religion, that it is illogical because it calls itself illogical, is illogical in itself. Just because you do not understand something, does not make it illogical.
No, she is spot on. What she said is that “Religion protects itself from logical criticism by being illogical.” She is talking specifically about faith, and, in formal logic, faith is illogical and inadmissible. No philosophical discussion can employ articles of faith without forfeiting its validity.
Yes, when you look at your religion and you say "I believe because I believe", yes, that may be illogical. However, what else can you say when you are arguing against an equally bullheaded and stubborn foe? Someone who has put their faith in other matters, such as their faith in science, the word of men, the structure of experimentation.
This is a logical fallacy. Whether or not one’s opponent in debate employs illogical arguments, has no bearing on whether one’s own arguments are illogical.
Quantum mechanics was born out of metaphysical bullshit, and yet it is becoming more and more accepted, even though it proves theories with more theories, and so on.
You do not understand quantum mechanics. At best, you have had a preliminary introduction to the subject. You are not qualified to say that the field was born out of “metaphysical bullshit,” or that “it is becoming more and more accepted,” or that “it proves theories with more theories.”
In my book, abusing science by speaking as though you are an expert of it, but are in fact ignorant of it, is one of the worst breaches of etiquette.
I believe in science.
To make such a statement is to reveal a lack of understanding of science at the most basic level. Science is not about faith. It is a process for gathering and interpreting facts.
You are forgetting many of the evils religion extinguished.
The interesting thing about religion is it has never achieved an act of good that could not also have come from outside any religion, but in comparison has caused a great many evils that are truly unique to religion. This is because religion justifies customs that otherwise might be unjustifiable, and of these customs which have no justification outside religion, all are evil. This goes back to the tenet that religious faith is a form of willful ignorance, from which all manner of wrongs can derive.
What God wants you to do is beyond that, believe so much that you feel as though you can see God, and that god is as close to you as, quote, "your jugular vein".
In other words, god wants to be as undetectable as possible so that the amount of delusion it takes to believe in him is maximal. Uh huh…
Now, say there is no God in the end. No one loses.
Not true. Those who followed a religion lived a lie, constraining their behavior, sacrificing their intellectual integrity, and quite probably influencing other people to similarly demean their own lives. That’s another flaw in Pascal’s Wager: It completely ignores the penalties that one pays in this life for being religious.
The Creator, for me, is the "end of the line," so to speak -- the unknowable source from whence everything knowable sprung. The universe paradoxically defies itself if all the matter in the cosmos sprung out of nowhere. Therefore, the source of the universe must lie in something that does not operate according to the laws of physics. Gah, now I'm just confusing myself.
What you are talking about is the unknown…the earliest history of our universe, and whatever process began our universe. It is perfectly wise to admit ignorance in this case, because I don’t think anybody yet knows the exact nature of the beginning of the universe.
But to take that humongous question mark and call it “God” is one hell of a leap. First of all, it seems unnecessary. The universe has shown itself to work just fine without a holy puppeteer. Why would the beginning of the universe be any different?
Indeed, the fact that the universe and we humans are here at all suggests that, unless god exists, it all happened naturally. Since we do not know that god exists, the natural explanation bears consideration.
The UofA gets all the funding; the Lutheran university gets nothing public.
Nice to see that the institution of learning is getting the public education money. Why would we want it any other way?
Religious universities are only as good as their religiosity is limited. Why fund academic misbehavior?
Fact is, religion is part of our history and what makes us human.
Ah…almost right. Religion is not what makes us human. Our humanity is what led to the development of religion.
I'd really challenge your view that religion holds back humanity. Most of the great artists and thinkers have been religious.
Yes. Do you know why this is? It is not because religion improves the artistic or intellectual fiber of a person. Religion, if anything, limits one’s ability to achieve artistically or intellectually, because it inhibits human creativity, and also causes no end of trouble with its many conventions of how people should or should not behave.
Nay, it is because most of the world has been thickly religious since the ancient times, that so many of our greatest historical figures were themselves religious. Even those people who were not religious might never have admitted it for fear of the problems it would bring them. Straying from the local religion often meant punishment or death, and most people didn’t have the knowledge, perspective, or experience to question their religion anyway, let alone refute it. Non-religiosity did not exist in the modern sense; humanity’s growth beyond the limitations of religion took time, from the Dark Ages, to the Enlightenment, to the present day…theism to deism to agnosticism (or atheism).
No, we should most certainly not be surprised that many of history’s greatest figures were religious. We should also not be surprised that, as religion has waned over the past century, that share has changed—now a great many of our finest people are nonreligious, or belong to alternative religions.
Lastly, as has always been the case, I find it deeply disturbing that such a religiously involved man as yourself, whose father is supposedly a religious figure of high intellect, so ardently denies the religious nature of the untold atrocities both great and small that history so well documents.
See, a lot of people think 'the church held things back.' Held us back in the dark ages. No. Look, dark ages are not a religious occurance, they are a socio-political one. (…) That wasn't religion. That was war, and people movements. Did the church cause the dark age after Rome? Certainly not, and to think so is rather naive. Rome was falling long before Constantine or anything like that. Look at the incoming peoples, the political fragmentation of the empire... that's what caused it's fall. As for prolonging the dark age... did the Church rule Charlagmagne, or was it the other way about? As I recall, it was he that forced the Pope to bless his rule. Where is the control there? ZeaLitY, it was the volatile and fragmentary nature of Europe in that era that held it in darkness, and afterward the feudal system which turned the common people into slaves.
Oh boy, this is the kind of blatant historical revisionism that can only be refuted through exhaustive documentation. Fortunately, I would fall back to that earlier quotation we discussed: That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without evaluation.
I will say, simply, that “naïve” is to speak of the war, famine, mass migrations, pestilence political fragmentation, feudalism, economic stagnation, and technological decay that gripped Europe for a thousand years, and suggest that the mighty Christian religion had no part in any of it, that Christianity somehow existed separately from all the miseries of the era (while still managing to be the major cause of whatever few advances were made). That, my dear Krispin, is wishful thinking of the most egregious caliber, and more than a little naïve.
My religious view would be, I think, described as rather devout. But this doesn't stop me from keeping an open mind and learning. I suppose I'm trying to set myself up as proof that religion doesn't poison our human spirit nor weigh us down. How does knowing God exists and that He cares for me keep me from learning? It's my bloody duty to learn. That's my calling, you know. To think, to question.
Charming, and quite true, for all the ill I might speak of you. (I’ve been writing for a long time at this point, and as fatigue grows, so does the desire to be a prickly pear.)
You yourself are by all appearances an intelligent, inquisitive person. I wonder sometimes how much further you would go if you weren’t limited in your beliefs.
Yet your own case is proof only that religion is not a total stopper on human curiosity and intelligence—proof that we already had in the form of some of those historical figures you mentioned, who were also religious.
The problem with religion is not the great minds that it produces but the weak minds, and the social terrors that perpetuate them. You may have it better, as a Canadian, than we do in America, where conservative Christian fundamentalism shapes our national policy and influences the lives of hundreds of millions of people directly. And as a strict Lutheran you may be apt to simply dismiss all these other denominations as silly, but you have to understand that from my point of view, it’s all the same. The same god who is responsible for your denial of Christianity’s role in the Middle Ages is also responsible for the firebombing of abortion clinics and the boycotting of children’s books. All the same.
You know what it means when it says that God made people in his own image? Creatures with reason and with free will.
I don’t accept the line that we are created in god’s image, obviously, but if there were a god, it would be comforting to think of it as an entity of reason.
And sometimes He destroys us. It's just the way things are.
Never. I will never accept that. Remember that, from the nonreligious point of view, god is the creation of humankind, and not vice versa, which means that statements like that one are creepy and deeply unsettling. We all know the horrors of which people are capable, and when religious faith brings some people to postulate divine ambivalence with such fatalistic resignation, all I can see are the religious genocides that have enveloped our world since the beginning, from the Old Testament to Darfur.
I'm just tired of having religion knocked down as irrational and weighing us down and all that sort of thing. Take religion out of Shakespeare; take it out of Aeschylus; take it out of Tolkien. It is the heart and soul of art, ZeaLitY.
Human creativity, and human passion, that is the heart and soul of art. Your god, nor any other, can ever lay claim to that honor.
And if you are tired of religion being knocked down, then consider yourself in good company. We non-Christians have to put up with a good deal of ridicule, marginalization, harassment, and other forms of prejudice, all the time. I bet your scabs and bruises at the hands of a cunning anti-religious minority are nothing compared to the stumps and gaping wounds your god and his minions have inflicted on society at large.
Actually, no, reason can't tell us that ZeaLitY. All we can say is that when we throw a rock off a cliff, it happens to fall down. That there's a connection... well, can't be proven. 'Causality' is merely a category of understanding. So reason tells us we really can't know, for certain. We're just taking that on faith.
Before I am depleted I wish to make one, last, great argument: It is the unending folly of the believer to interpret all things through that insidious lens of religious devotion. You, and many like you, have never truly understood the elegant simplicity of science. You are forever bound to an absolutist mentality that closes your mind to the understanding of the real working of things.
In science, there is no such thing as absolute certainty. The evidence always has the last word, and so no theory can be as conceptually secure as even the weakest article of faith. All of science is, instead, a game of close estimations. By observation, experimentation, and theorization, and with a dollop of serendipity, we continually move toward a more perfect understanding of the world. When we drop a rock, it falls, by the same principles, every time. It is theoretically possible but statistically impossible that there is
not a connection there. We know of this connection not
a priori but through the benefit of experience. The action is consistent. The rock always falls. It always falls in the same way. If we are in another place, such as underwater, or an in special circumstances, such as in a strong wind, it falls differently or not at all…but in a measurable, predictable way, every time.
You say reason tells us we cannot derive knowledge from the recognition of patterns. Reason tells us no such thing. Reason tells us the opposite! Brace yourself while I come to an opinion here: You are many things, Krispin, but a scientist at heart is not one of them, and I don’t care what your degree says. If you came out of college without understanding the beautiful, simple power of scientific inquiry, then you should demand your money back, for they have failed to teach you the most important thing there is to learn: Facts speak the truth.
The scientific method is the very opposite of faith. There is no starker difference than the one between that which is learned empirically and that which is taken on belief. History is a witness to the power of scientific application to amplify human power beyond the imagination of earlier generations, and history is a witness too to the power of religious faith to unhinge all that is good, and throw down the ambitions of tomorrow.
What are you getting at, when you call the description of rocks falling off cliffs an act of faith? When these physical phenomena occur all around us, and we measure and test them so as to deduce the common principles that in turn allow us to predict the behavior of any rocks falling from any cliffs, we are not creating threads of belief. We are not weaving articles of faith. We are
deciphering the universe, and that is an impressive boast.
With all that reason, um, how do you explain things like, oh, remote viewers? The police use those guys, and they work. How does that happen? Some 'reasonable' explanation you assume? What qualifies you to make that assumption? You're clinging then to reason and evidence all too like a faith.
Surely you are not suggesting that there will be
unreasonable explanations. Do you know what qualifies ZeaLitY to claim that everything has a reasonable explanation? It is the fact that everything actually
does have a reasonable explanation. A reasonable explanation has only one requirement: That it accurately describe, in physical terms, the phenomenon it claims to describe. That is all.
Do not for a minute think you can fool anybody by confusing the state of one’s understanding of a phenomenon, with the physical description of that phenomenon. Just because ZeaLitY doesn’t understand how something works, does not mean that god is giving law enforcement technology to the police. That is precisely the kind of errant fundamentalism that gives religion such a bad name.
Well, one day the manager walked in and found knives and forks stuck in the ceiling. He assumed the guy had been high and had done it himself, but he goes 'it wasn't me'... and as the manager watches a fork leaps off the table and gets stuck in the ceiling. Now, tell me, where is the reasonable explanation in THAT? Reason can't tell you, and if you go 'well, I'm sure there's some explanation', you've made the mistake of putting FAITH into something.
It is not a statement of faith, but of expectation, that there is a reasonable explanation for everything. Again, this is because all phenomena have a reasonable explanation, a priori.
As to the “miracle,” people think they see weird things all the time. Sometimes, what they are seeing is really happening, and they simply do not comprehend the mechanism. Other times, they are not seeing what they think they are seeing. And occasionally they are even lying. If a fork that jumps into the ceiling were enough to smash my confidence in the scientific method or the tenets of reason, I would be quite the weak-minded fool.
Not faith. Confidence. Confidence borne of evidence.
My dad was once in a room with some other people, and he says that the table floated into the air on its own accord, and it took all of them to push it back down. Did that actually happen? With so many people there, it very likely did. And I admit some curiosity! That’s a rather unusual occurrence. But who are you to charge that, because it is unusual, there is no reasonable explanation for it?
Blue, fluid... these things are all just ways the human mind sees things. They might not be how they really are.
I mentioned earlier that whenever our mental picture of something deviates from the physical reality of it, there can be a divergence between truth and comprehension. So what you are saying is not without interest. However, to introduce a divergence where no underlying deviation exists is not logical. Whatever we call it, water is blue. Water is chemically blue. And so whatever we see when we look at ordinary water, that is blue. If the apparent color varies from person to person, or does not show up at all, then that is a function of our individual processing of the visual information, and does not reflect the condition of the water, which is blue. Not orange. Not red. Blue. Nor is our inability to achieve a perfect physical melding with the phenomenon under observation, grounds to dismiss the human evaluative process as flawed and out of touch with reality.
You would do well to study my theory of concepts and objects.
Fact is, there's always been a concept of an 'original' God... people have always understood that, even amidst the pantheons. Tell me, where does THAT come from?
That comes from the human desire to ascribe a comprehensible, causal beginning to the world.
Seriously, faith polarizes? People polarize, constantly. Rich and poor; black and white; young and old. It is in the way we think. To pin it on religion is grossly erroneous.
Yet you are so quick to point to religion as the source of all human good. You are a hypocrite, Krispin, and you see only what you wish.
And yes, humanity is inadequate in its current form. If you think it's adequate, or can make itself adequate... isn't that delusion, when all the evidence of five thousand years of human history speaks against it?
Now I see that I am beginning to repeat myself. You are foolish to expect profound change in the human condition in a few thousand years, especially when our genome has changed little if any during that whole time.
Would you care to learn something new? Humanity is
perfectly adequate. We are flawed, weak, petty, and all of those other things, but what we have achieved, in gruesome fits and starts, is something any thinking creature should gape at in amazement. We have risen up from our animalistic history and taken the reins of the world. Tell me that is not remarkable, Krispin. Tell me we are too small and dumb to achieve what we have achieved.
Times will change, and so will humanity. This is not faith but observation. Nothing remains the same but the laws of the physics, and sometimes not even them. Time will pass, and we will change. Perhaps it will be sooner than you think: With our advances in cybernetics and genetics, we are now on the cusp of seizing evolution into our very hands. I won’t pretend that such a future is not without its risks and doomsday scenarios, just as you will not acknowledge that such a future could end in something
other than doomsday scenarios.
But meh, I know you have hopes otherwise, but if Christianity has withstood the persecution of Rome, it'll sure survive this persecution.
Oh, dear me. The mightiest religion on Earth is being persecuted. Pardon me while I laugh. Oh, dear me…I need a glass of blue water to calm down after that one. Krispin, you’re a hoot.
Ah…I tell you what: Christianity will not be defeated by force. You are right about that. It will be defeated from within, as has begun in Europe and in our liberal cities in America. It will pass from people’s lives, as greater interests take its place.
Sure, there will probably be Christians for as long as there are human beings as we know them. But I foresee a decline in the relevance and influence of your religion in the coming century…a good thing, to be sure.
Ah! At last I am finished. Forgive me, I have not got the time to do a comprehensive review or edit, so perhaps you will catch me unawares somehow. But even if you do not, worry not, Krispin and others, for I did not mean to return this place before, and I do not intend to return again. Any rebuttal you might wish to make will go unanswered, at least by me, for ZeaLitY asked me here as a favor and I was happy to oblige, but I am not planning to stick around for a dialogue. In fact, I am long overdue for some tea and a nap.
Good Day.
