Sam Harris was in my freshman dorm (as were Gretchen Carlson and Debi Thomas). Idiot may be a bit harsh.
Technically, I only called him a twit, and his book idiotic.
I am willing to take the mere fact that he has a Ph.D. to be an adequate sign that he is obviously not an idiot.
… and I expect you all to extend me a like courtesy when I finally get mine.
I've only skimmed the first half of the attention provided at the "great" link, but yeah, it doesn't look good. Looks pretty grim.
The guy who showed up at my parents' house when they had carpenter ants was a guy from my freshman dorm. He say my picture on the wall. And he did a great job getting rid of the ants.
But does the NYRB call me to get my take on things? Assholes.
Hold out for the Supreme Court. Moby,
But does the NYRB call me to get my take on things? Assholes.
Well, do they?
I am willing to take the mere fact that he has a Ph.D. to be an adequate sign that he is obviously not an idiot.
You are generous.
There's some Ann Druyan quote that I love that I can't find now, which is uncomfortably close to what's being called twittified here. As best I can remember, something like "one of the great failures of humanity is not to recognize the Enlightenment as a spiritual revolution."
A few minutes of Googling have convinced me the book you call "accessible" is probably something closer to "utterly incomprehensible." If we were to ask almost anyone who claims to believe in God to tell us what would be left of their religious beliefs if they remove all supernatural elements from it, I doubt they would have much to explain.
I think most of these "undergraduate atheists" are boring and tiresome (and Harris's bullshit about science leading to an objective system of morality, or whatever, is just obviously dumb), but on the other hand the people they're fighting with are generally the kindergarten theists who pervade most of our culture. And if a philosopher with a rarefied notion of God that bears almost no resemblance to religious as she is practiced is grumpy that they're not addressing his belief system, I don't think it reflects badly on them.
religious s/b religion. Typing is hard.
Speaking of supernatural elements, Thor is OK. (Fast Five was more fun.) Asgard looks pretty cool. I wouldn't bother paying extra for 3D.
11: I sat through Contact and now I wonder if you haven't explained why it was as dull as a sermon.
Sweep Sweep SWEEP!
It seems unlikely to happen, but that would indeed be a state of affairs to be savored.
Harris is an Atheist on the Make. Just goes to show how far you can get with a brass neck and a winning smile.
The other book is written by the PoD, so it's hard for me to assess it objectively.
12.1 is right. 12.2 gives me pause: my first response to the Princeton write-up of Johnston's book neb provides was, yes, that most practicing religionists would find it unrecognizable, but second, that I myself don't feel any need to rehabilitate a conception of God, even if non-idolatrous (non-supernatural), so I can't manage to applaud.
"brass neck"
A new one for me. Has "a lot of brass" or other body parts, yes, but not "neck". It looks to be something of a Britishism.
19: The PoD? Prince of Darkness? Power of Destruction? Princeton of Department? Philosopher of, uh, uh, Dissertation?
20: You know how the Great Religious Authorities of the Public Sphere respond to the Loud Undergraduate Atheists by saying "No-one really believes in God in that way; your understanding of Theology and the Divine is sadly lacking", prompting a very angry and shouty reaction from the LUAs, which only serves to confirm the GRAPS in their belief that the LUAs are a bunch of uncouth striplings? Well, the book Neb refers to basically pulls the same rhetorical switcheroo on the GRAPS themselves, only from the other side, arguing that their conception of religious belief is sadly lacking and in fact very much of a piece with the LUAs in its impoverished conception of the divine.
21: The British have succeeded at sublimating castration anxiety.
[D]ull as a sermon.
No sermon is dull with a Sermon Bingo!tm card. Available in '70s ("radical," "trip," "man"), Evangelical ("sin," "family," "leader") and Church of England ("committee," "garden" and "roof") editions.
12,20:I've been at Wiki reading about "panentheism" and "process theology" The only name I recognize is William Kaufman, who I think I see at Kotsko's place sometimes. (neb apparently has been hanging there too much.)
...recognize the Enlightenment as a spiritual revolution.
Y'all know I am interested in this stuff, and my instinct is that every refinement or critique of theology is also an attack on science and empiricism from Spinoza, Baruch.
There was no enlightenment.
But right now I am into Shinto.
23: Right, okay. I'll consider it. As I said, it's not an argument I'm personally interested in -- rehabilitating conceptions of the divine isn't a high priority for me -- unless Johnston's conception has broader interest. All I've read of it is the Princeton U.P. blurb.
27.last: Remove two letters and you could be walking down the sidewalk by my house.
25: What do you have against Mark Johnston?
28:
1. Defend culture of books on Internet
2. Paper towels, olive oil, 75-watt light bulbs
3. Snake in house, still?
4. Lawyer bill (after I calm down a bit)
5. Cabin rent (call brother first)
6. Look up Tom Bombadil
7. Rehabilitating conceptions of the divine.
31 is very funny, but I do try to segregate my notes, you know.
I have an app that lets me organize my notes by topic. "Groceries or eschatology" is the most common topic in the listing.
The end is nigh, but my coupon is still good.
Also! I'll have you know that there's a somewhat interesting book by Steven Mulhall called Philosophical Myths of the Fall which I'm halfway through, so this is actually -- actually! -- something of passing interest.
But it is on a separate list. And the snake in the house is long gone.
If we were to ask almost anyone who claims to believe in God to tell us what would be left of their religious beliefs if they remove all supernatural elements from it, I doubt they would have much to explain.
Maybe they should read Johnston's book, then!
Johnston came to a workshop here to discuss the book mentioned in the post, and seemed quite congenial and good to talk to, but, that being the extent of my direct interaction with him, I should probably defer to Gonerill, even though I can't remember if he has greater grounds for judgment.
35: Mulhall is pretty interesting! I say this not just because when I was talking to him after a talk he gave here (which was v. good) and gave him basically a précis of a post on waste, he said that it seemed basically right.
I really hope it was the "they fuck you up" post.
Mulhall is good. Very, very smart guy.
… it's hard for me to precisely dispute Gonerill's description in 23, though I don't think Johnston is as interested in calling "gotcha!" on the GRAPs as that description makes him out to be. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.
An illustration of the adage "be careful what you wish for." In my teenaged years I wished for the existence of popular secular writers on religion. They're here, now: and the most prominent among them are people like Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins.
If we were to ask almost anyone who claims to
believe in God to tell us what would be left of
their religious beliefs if they remove all
supernatural elements from it, I doubt they
would have much to explain.
I am puzzled by this statement. As someone who believes in God, I find supernatural elements play a very small role indeed in my beliefs. Love your neighbor. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It just doesn't seem complicated -- and I don't say that about much lately. Maybe I am doin it rong.
Love your neighbor. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
These are excellent maxims and noble principles to live by, but I don't see how adherence to them involves belief in God. Certainly, in that form they are attributed to someone who is widely believed to be divine, but if they had been attributed to (e.g.) Paul of Tarsus, they'd still be pretty good ideas.
The supernatural bits include inter alia: "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary"; "On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven"; "...sitteth at the right hand of the father, from whence he shall come to judge both the quick and the dead." I think most Christians believe those statements, even if they don't have a vague memory of the Nicene creed as such. I'd have thought if you didn't accept them, that would make you a humanist heavily influenced by certain ideas in 1st century Judaic radicalism, rather than a believer in God.
Mutatis mutandis throughout for other religious traditions.
excellent maxims and noble principles to live by, but I don't see how adherence to them involves belief in God.
They are way too much work to do otherwise.
But isn't Harris right about adding to the world's total of boredom? I'd be interested in a link to a book on "deontologics, non-cognitivism" etc. written in the last twenty five years that's worth reading. If it doesn't exist, Harris wins.
re: 44
What's your standard for 'worth reading'?
And also, I thought neB's point was that Harris can't be arsed reading anything on the topic [written in the past 25 years or no]? You don't "win" through ignorance.
But isn't Harris right about adding to the world's total of boredom?
I'd rather see people add to the world's stock of boredom than see the likes of Harris adding to the world's stock of simple-minded, self-serving, fake-intellectual bullshit.
I thought neB's point was that Harris can't be arsed reading anything on the topic
Yeah--his line is "I have a PhD in neuroscience, and lo have at at the help of fMRI machines, therefore this allows me to spout off like a second-semester fresher on the topic of morality, religion, and the Good". There's a youtube video of some (possibly Templeton-sponsored) gabfest at Arizona State where you see his schtick in action about how Science has shown us that moral good is equivalent to things that increase the well-being of conscious animals. Simon Blackburn comes on at the end and politely points out how full of holes this is.
re: 48
Yes, I think I've seen the Blackburn clip. I'm broadly familiar with Harris' nonsense. There's an entire genre of "scientist discovers 'answer' to historical non-scientific problem, chooses to ignore 100/200/500/2000 years of literature on the failings of that particular answer to that particular problem."*
* not a general dig at scientific answers to venerable problems (philosophical or otherwise), just the glib lazy ones.
Further to 49, just to be clear, there's also a fairly large 'philosopher chooses to entirely ignore the rich array of scientific evidence that might be relevant to a particular problem' genre, as well.
I will define "worth reading" as "more worth reading than replacement extracurricular reading material." Right now that would be Modern Times by Paul Johnson, and it wouldn't take much for me to put that down. So that's my definition: better than Paul Johnson. And learning that Lenin was a monster is, I think, a pretty important moral lesson.
I wonder how Patricia Churchland feels about Harris's book? (Linked to only because I saw a review in the Guardian, btw.)
The equations of physics are true in the book, but there is a remainder, a surplus to metaphors and symbols and ritual that requires and exchanges with individual subjectivity. The crucible of the imagination, the created conscience of the race, Blake, Joyce, the religion of art(ifice). We can lie, we are kami.
Science sucks, art rules, these verbs to overdetermined.
45
What's your standard for 'worth reading'?
Well at a minimum something I don't have to force myself to finish.
Actually 51's definition of better than replacement level seems pretty good. At the moment my replacement level is Rubin's (Robert E. Rubin, Clinton's Treasury secretary) memoir, "In an Uncertain World", which I appear to have gotten stuck in about half way through.
51: You kids get off my lawn with your newfangled stats like Insights Above Replacement Author (IARA). Sales, citations and reviews in major newspapers and magazines were good enough for the author cards I collected as a kid and they're good enough for me.
42: They may be principles that do not require belief in God, but they are still a major part of the religious beliefs of people of faith the world over. If my brain were firing more better, I'd try to explain why that's still religious belief even if there's not a lot of fairy dust and magic to it. I am intrigued to check out this Johnston book re: a conceptualisation of God that is not so dependent on the supernaturalism, which presumably does a way better job than i could pretend to anyway.
And learning that Lenin was a monster is, I think, a pretty important moral lesson.
Well, they might be monsters, as Obama has recently resumed the drone strikes, killing 15, "some of whom were foreign militants"
But learning to call your tribe's enemies "monsters" is possibly the origin of morality, and you may feel improved.
43. Don't understand 43. These ideas are aspirational at best; why easier if enjoined by a supernatural authority than a flesh and blood one?
49/50, however, sums up my reaction to Harris and all his ilk pretty well.
55: I have my dad's George Orwell rookie card. Not worth much because he had it in the spokes of his bike for a while.
59: Because I really don't like it when other people tell me to be nice/etc. I assume they are trying to get me to do something to their advantage and they are probably just some asshole like me. The orders have to come from God.
Speaking of which, we haven't had a meta-thread on civility and tone in awhile.
That's not God, Moby, that's the right hemisphere of your brain. Or left, I don't remember.
61: So if I want you to do something, I should just tell you God asked for it? That would be a less offensive request?
63: Following myself? Still better than some other asshole.
61:But, Moby, included with every secular morality is one invisible handjob, absolutely free! This gently squeezes all unenlightened self-interest from the system leaving behind only mutual benefit and maximum efficiency.
64: But you'd have to find a way to embed it in a nearly two thousand year old book. That's an important safety feature.
61. So if it weren't for God, you'd be an amoral little shit? Sorry if I take leave to doubt this, not least because the most amoral little shits I can think of (Osama bin Ladin, the leadership of the US Republican Party, etc.) never shut up about God, whereas the world is full of unbelievers quietly doing the best they can.
Six decades' experience has shown me no correlation whatsoever between whether a person believes in God or not and whether they're a decent human being or not.
68: I think I would have been libertarian.
Everybody's entitled to fuck up briefly.
68 has a strange definition of morality, that seems to believe it has, or should have, any correlation with "decent human being." Salafists and Republicans are indeed very moral.
And if we define "amoral" as also "asocial" we are just making up our own very small if not non-existent tribe.
Nietzsche and me. Yes, that's delusional, and the point.
By briefly, I mean until they enacted their whole program and I was food for the Eloi.
Or you could be a libertarian like Balko or Abel, who I disagree with, but I don't regard as evil.
Troll fail. You are no fun, and eliminated any excuse I have to avoid yardwork.
The table of contents for the Mark Johnston book was informative and fascinating.
Also informative and fascinating is how weird some people get when they encounter a word like "God", while remaining confident and secure with a word like "representation." Apparently analytic philosophy has done its job.
73: H. G. Wells cannibalism fail. Oops.
73
By briefly, I mean until they enacted their whole program and I was food for the Eloi.
So your belief in God is the only thing holding the libertarians back?
No need to thank me. I'm doing it for my own benefit.
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Will Wilkinson on the hot political philosophy book of the forever so far. Gerald Gaus who's short an 's.'
Matt Yglesias thinks it's too expensive, but it must be good cause Will likes it. Tyler Cowen thinks it's drivel.
I think it is a leading indicator of the return to Le Maistre, libertarian contract theory being no longer sufficient to control the downtrodden.
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ps:66 really does rock, if I do say so myself. All secular moralities require an invisible handjob, including Kant's.
42, 56: This is sort of the discussion I keep on getting into with Kotsko, where I go in thinking I'm not saying anything that isn't obviously noncontroversial, and come out not understanding much of anything more than I had before, but feeling as though I'd been an ignorant jerk. This time, I'll read with interest if anyone else gets into it, but I'm clearly not good at talking about this stuff.
From the Symposium on Gaus
>The philosopher's stone that transforms individual goal pursuit into social restraints on goal pursuit is, like other alchemical projects, enticing but misguided" (547).
Now c'mon "invisible handjob" is better, isn't it?
80. I sympathise. I know Sue is frighteningly intelligent and almost certainly has a better grasp of theology than I do (not difficult), but "If my brain were firing more better, I'd try to explain why that's still religious belief even if there's not a lot of fairy dust and magic to it." makes me want to feed her the appropriate brain food, because it makes no sense to me as it stands.
Absent the supernatural authority, why are Christ's commandments more a religious belief than, for example, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."?
56: those are beliefs anchored by a belief or faith in god, which derive their moral stature from being endorsed by an all powerful god.
Ideally people should not need such a crutch to behave morally towards others, but we're not living in an ideal world.
It's interesting how often the same basic moral principles and 'commandments' crop up in different religious and philosophical systems which have, on the face of it, completely different metaphysical/ontological commitments. The Golden Rule, some sort of concept of filial piety, and so on. I'm not sure how much 'anchoring' those other metaphysical commitments -- to a belief in a pantheon of Gods, a single God, an endless cycle of death and rebirth, and so on -- actually do.
Nagarjuna argued that the proper way to practice Buddhism didn't just involve ridding yourself of supernatural beliefs. You had to rid yourself of all belief.
Christians tend to overestimate the importance of belief for religion. American Christians especially are fixated on the idea that being religious means believing something, at the same time their own beliefs are really quite vague because they aren't really important for what they are doing.
The one contribution made by an Undergraduate Atheist to this whole debate is Dennett's idea that American religion is really about belief in belief, without much first order beliefs at all.
Ideally people should not need such a crutch to behave morally towards others, but we're not living in an ideal world.
Maybe not, and yet people don't need such a crutch to behave morally. Non-believers, or believers in faiths without a judgemental God, behave morally! And immorally! It's almost as if morality isn't actually anchored in faith, but is a human property.
I am puzzled by this statement. As someone who believes in God, I find supernatural elements play a very small role indeed in my beliefs. Love your neighbor. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It just doesn't seem complicated -- and I don't say that about much lately. Maybe I am doin it rong
Except those precepts are part of my beliefs too, which aren't religious. Or at least aren't theistic. They're moral beliefs. And they're pretty much universal.
The NYRB piece raises an interesting question towards the end about the possibility that our species-wide ethical "intuitions" might in fact be wrong, and it's only by identifying those and assessing them critically that we can move forward, butI'm not seeing where they present any evidence for the existence of these ethical intuitions in the first place. I'm convinced by the summary of the fMRI evidence that capity for ethical thought is hard wired, and it seems likely that there are limits to the form that ethical thought takes unless something goes badly wrong in cognitive development, but I'm not seeing what Harris's evidence would be for a particular set of hard wired/intuitive ethical conclusions. Am I missing something?
In particular, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, performed by Harris and colleagues as part of his doctoral research, reveal that blood flow to certain regions of the brain increase during such judgments: believing the truth of factual and ethical statements involves increased blood flow to the medial prefrontal cortex, for instance, while disbelieving factual and ethical statements involves increased blood flow to the left inferior frontal gyrus, among other regions. (Uncertainty about the truth or falsity of such statements involves increased blood flow to yet other regions of the brain.) In the face of such neurological findings, it is hard, Harris says, to sustain the view that a divide separates facts and values.
This suggests, if it suggests anything along the lines of 87, that people can think about things, which we already knew. Presumably the most one could say about hard-wiredness is that the first potentiality of thinking has got to be there already if the second has a chance of arising, but the second needn't arise.
That Harris draws the conclusion he does from these results is risible.
85 Christians tend to overestimate the importance of belief for religion. American Christians especially are fixated on the idea that being religious means believing something, at the same time their own beliefs are really quite vague because they aren't really important for what they are doing.
I really don't think it's true that beliefs are not important for what most American Christians are doing. Just go to a funeral where most of the people are religious and listen to them saying things like "well, at least s/he is in a better place now" or "this isn't goodbye forever, we'll see him/her again in heaven" or "I'm just glad s/he's up there with Jesus and [other dead person] now." These sorts of supernatural beliefs might not matter much to people on a day-to-day basis, but they're there and they're important for how people react in adverse circumstances. And I don't think they're especially vague, either.
I know religion has a large component that's about practice and not just about belief, but I think in this country, at least, the two are pretty strongly linked.
Non-believers, or believers in faiths without a judgemental God, behave morally! And immorally! It's almost as if morality isn't actually anchored in faith, but is a human property.
But why, what need have you, to call this behavior "morality?" Cause apparently you really do, and would be offended if I equated your own "moral" behavior with that of dogs and octopi.
See 87.
85:Yeah. Nihilism is about abandoning justification.
I know religion has a large component that's about practice and not just about belief
There a lot of branches of Shinto, but one kind of immanence practice Shrine Shinto has no theory. It is all ritual, all the way down.An American underwent a waterfall purification, and he had to pronounce the words perfectly, and was probably granted way too much leeway, but that the only question or requirement.
Shrine Shinto would probably say Zen had too much dogma and theory.
That's why I don't much like to say "I believe in God" or "Don't believe in God" of "believe in morality" or "don't accept a morality" because I essentially consider those statements ritualistic, creating and maintaining a society, creating and maintaining an identity in a society.
Secular morality is exhausted libertinism, Rochester jerking himself off in the last throes of syphilis, pathetically seeking enough residual freedom to escape materiality.
makes me want to feed her the appropriate brain food
I'd be unbearably grateful. Or perhaps just unbearable.
92.2: That's the other thread. Or one of several other threads.
87: How on Earth is detectability in fMRI evidence for hard-wiring? Or would you say that chess is hard-wired?
--- I tried reading Johnston's Surviving Death, but couldn't make myself finish several hundred pages of prosy phiosopher's elaboration on "Oh, may I join the Choir Invisible". And started asking about whether a good Homo erectus survived death (per Johnson), or a good australopithecine; and what will happen when humanity is extinct.
96: I think you're misunderstanding me. Would you say that the cognitive capacities to play chess — pattern recognition and strategic thinking, as per the study — are not hard wired? That's the only claim I'm endorsing for ethical thought.
and what will happen when humanity is extinct
Per an implication of Rule 34, that can only happen after some other species can invent pron.
and what will happen when humanity is extinct.
Surely there's an easy answer to that? I haven't read that book but "surviving death" needn't be taken to mean immortality into eternity.
97: You hardly need fMRI to look at that type of claim.
But Moby! Blood was flowing in the brain!
But why, what need have you, to call this behavior "morality?" Cause apparently you really do, and would be offended if I equated your own "moral" behavior with that of dogs and octopi.
Because labelling is useful to distinguish things from other things. And no, I wouldn't be offended, depending on what you mean by equated. Certainly I think that some animals have a rudimentary moral code. I don't know enough about octopuses in particular to say either way though.
All people have a heart which cannot stand to see the suffering of others. ...Why do I say all human beings have a heart which cannot stand to see the suffering of others? Even nowadays, if an infant were about to fall into a well, anyone would be upset and concerned. This concern would not be due to the fact that the person wanted to get in good with the baby's parents, or because s/he wanted to improve his/her reputation among the community or among his/her circle of friends. Nor would it be because he/she was afraid of the criticism that might result from a show of non-concern. From this point of view, we can say that if you did lack concern for the infant, you would not be human.
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Watched the Kinoshita 1958 Ballad of Narayama last night, about a remote village at exact sustenance level, where babies are casually exposed and at 70 you are carried up to the top of the mountain by your son. At the first snowfall after the harvest.
The village was a democracy, and there were many characters and subplots with moral implications, but what fascinated me was the constant daily effort and kindness required to ensure that the traditions needed for survival were maintained. Granny had to give a lot of good love for her son to help her go, enough love and support that the son would be guiltless but not brutal after, and not resentful of the living.
It is left an open question at the end whether he will be willing, and whether his own son will carry him up to Narayama.
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Obama will make the path up the mountain wheel chair accessible.
As a religious person, I certainly don't think of ordinary morality as grounded in religion; the two are incredibly distinct. IMO the promise of religion (at least, the version I practice) is that it promises a kind of radical, transformative, egalitarian vision of life that transcends normal ethics; I don't think I'm ethically obligated to, e.g., love Dick Cheney as if he were my brother and forgive him everything, but I think that God loves him just as much as he does me, and there's a practice -- which is very much not "supernatural" or concerned with that, though it is based on faith -- set up to help reflect on that weirdness.
I also agree with a lot of what Helpy-Chalk is saying, though I think he overestimates the importance of "belief" to Christianity as a whole (though it's dead right as a description of a lot of the current bad US Protestantism that I take it literally everyone commenting here views with scorn).
Anyhow, I should shut up about this in that I think if religion means anything, it means it's something that can't be transcribed in a blog comment. And I should read the book Nosflow recommends. though I probably won't.
97: Then I fail to see what information is conveyed by saying that X is hardwired, because everything human beings could possibly do is hardwired in that sense.
97: Then I fail to see what information is conveyed by saying that X is hardwired, because everything human beings could possibly do is hardwired in that sense.
97: Then I fail to see what information is conveyed by saying that X is hardwired, because everything human beings could possibly do is hardwired in that sense.
I swear I hit "post" only once.
First sign of senility. Up the mountain now.
The distinction between being theistic and being 'religious' might be helpfu: one can be a-theistic, not particularly believing in a god or gods, while yet embracing an ultimately egalitarian etc. etc. deep worldview. (This is not unlike Ginger Yellow's 86.2.)
What's puzzling to a-theistic yet deeply moral people -- people who might share your radically egalitarian, transformative vision of life -- is why God's loving Dick Cheney has any operative or swaying power. If there is no God, is it then not the case that Dick Cheney and you and I are ultimately equal beings? I say nah. It's still the case. God is not needed here, and when theistic religious people advert to Him, it looks an awful lot like an argument from His authority, His love.
"helpfu" would be better rendered "helpful"
Cosma (107-109) is right. Perhaps the NYRB piece clarifies whatever distinction is being made between "hard-wired" and "soft-wired" (?) for these purposes, but I haven't finished reading it. fMRI results showing blood-flow to various areas of the brain hardly indicate anything other than that we think about things.
I have a hard time seeing how any religion wouldn't be in some sense an "argument from authority" but it's really a way of life, not a set of reasons for drawing particular reasoned conclusions. I'm not trying to "convince" you of a way in which God is "necessary"; you either are drawn to the message in some other way than that kind of philosophizing, or you aren't (and both are OK in my book). But I'm swimming so far out of my depth now that the lifeguards have given up on me.
We will try if you don't do the CPR/kissing trick.
116: Hm. I had a very weird and not very pleasant argument with a friend once in which he insisted that I am not properly called an atheist, because I do believe that all beings are equal, that, say, the deer out back in the woods, as well as the bunny and the groundhog, and the tree, have as much of a right to life as I or any human does. He felt that this meant that I was, at best, agnostic.
What? The most I could say was that I harbor something like a Gaia conception of the whole of creation (or existence, or the Earth, anyway), that we are all part of a web, an ecosystem, a harmony, one hopes, believes, and wishes, and that ideally we respect one another's selfhood and existence .... But! That I do not believe in any such thing as an actual Gaia mother/father/thing overseeing all of this, some authority orchestrating or endorsing it all, and so I insisted that this did not make me a theist.
In shorter form: There is no argument from authority here; I'm not sure there's a religion, though there are parallels.
119: I don't think you can there is nothing supernatural there either. I guess I would consider atheism to require materialism of some kind.
67: All right, go commit some genocide against the lord's enemies. (not really.)
I don't think that's a very good safety feature, more likely to inspire false confidence in the morality of an action than to actually keep your actions moral.
There's also the matter of deciding which parts of which books to listen to, which selection is usually primarily informed by the opinions of other human beings.
In other words, I don't think li/iting moral advice to sentences in sufficiently old books gets you much farther than limiting moral propositions to the words in the dictionary.
What I described partakes of materialism. What do you mean by materialism?
You wouldn't want to get hung up on a hard fact/value distinction according to which there is no "ought" from "is."
123: I am speaking of materialism in the sense of assuming reality is limited to what we can somehow touch (for lack of a better word) and saying you don't sound materialistic in that sense.
122: The Gospels really do close off a great number of options. The whole of the Bible is more contradictory.
125: I don't think vagueness is helping here. People mean so many things by "god," "atheist," "materialist," that any particular construction of a sentence using one of those words is more likely incorrect than correct.
Help me understand what exactly you mean. It sounds like you're saying that IF someone believes in ideas or forms or souls THEN they must also believe in a single very powerful agent that watches people, intervenes in the world, and promulgates the one valid moral law.
126: Yes, but on what basis the Gospels? If you're picking them because they sound moral already, then you're teaching morality to God, rather than the other way around. Which in addition to being presumptuous is implicitly an atheistic approach to morality.
127: I was just trying to guess where her friend was coming from. I don't really spend much time trying to descern the line between agnostic and atheist. Materialist/non-materialist could be a separate dimension.
129: OK. I have no objection if we agree that the dimensions are separate, and while theist ---> supernatural, supernatural -/-> theist. I do agree that pretty much everyone is at least an animist if not a platonist, in practice.
128: If the Gospels come from God, your objection is beside the point.
131: In theory, maybe. But in practice there's still the important epistemic issue of how you know that. You're relying on received opinion about which books contain the things God commands, in which case you might as well just rely on received opinion for your morality directly, since it amounts to accepting the same amount of control from the same people.
And of course deciding that morality is something you get from the written word of God, as opposed to an oral tradition or introspection or reasoning or meditation, that idea had to come from somewhere too.
BTW this is an old argument, Hobbes makes the same argument in Leviathan, so there may be adequate responses floating around somewhere, but I haven't seen them.
125: I am speaking of materialism in the sense of assuming reality is limited to what we can somehow touch
In that case, no, atheism does not require materialism (physicalism) in that strong sense. It's not as though the only options are atheism/physicalism versus theism (religiosity)/spiritualism. My and your emotions are real though they cannot be touched.
This is why I preferred to speak of a-theism, as opposed to atheism; the latter form of the term is misunderstood as relentlessly scientistic.
I don't agree that saying "emotions are real" is contradictory to materialism. I'm not going to deny the reality of abstract things like emotions, but I do consider myself a materialist, and think emotions are emergent properties of physical processes in our brains and bodies.
(And because it seems to get me into trouble around here, let me add that I'm using "emergent" in what I understand to be its ordinary English usage, not whatever technical philosophical use someone would use to pick on me and tell me I don't make sense.)
I'm unhappy about the recurrence of the term "supernatural" in Moby's 120 and repeated in Benquo's 130. I don't see anything supernatural in the belief I outlined.
137: Sorry. I switched to materialism, but that didn't help. I'm very open to a better word. A-theism doesn't seem to be it because you can't pronounce it differently from atheism.
As long as we're talking about fMRIs and whatnot, how about a schizophrenic computer?
135: There's also the fundamental problem that "X is real" means different things in different ontologies so it's hard to say whether & if so exactly where they disagree as a matter of fact (as opposed to emphasis). Someone who believes in final causes, or in Ideas, doesn't think that they explain events in the same way as a description of the prior material state and the laws of physics does.
So when the Platonist says that Ideas are real they don't necessarily mean that Ideas are bodies. And when the materialist says that Ideas are not real, they don't necessarily mean that Ideas are not important components of our day to day experience.
137: I didn't mean to imply that your view is necessarily supernatural. I am confused enough about the word "supernatural" that I don't really have any strong opinions about it. But I can easily imagine a sense in which your POV is construed as somehow "supernatural", while on the other hand the jump from "supernatural" to "theistic" is just bizarre to me.
135: Fair enough, but this is sort of a quagmire. Suppose I find someone really interesting, like really interesting, fascinating even, and really like talking to her or him, alot: my emotions wind up being bound up in that, but a large part of it is sheer intellectual camaraderie, enjoyment of one another's company.
You can, if you like, say that that's an emergent property of physical processes in our brains, but you might well only be supposing, in saying that, that nothing that happens in, to, or for us can be anything but the result of processes in our brains, or bodies as a whole; and you'd be right, given that that's the meat we're made of. But you haven't said anything, really.
132: I think of it as following the testimony of actual witnesses, but you are of course right that one never really hits knowledge in the same way as you might for what color a flower is or something.
142: It sounds like here you're straddling the domain of vague and tepid but philosophically defensible claims about the good and the divine (e.g. believing in God in order to have someone to obey w/r/t moral law), and the domain of particular, falsifiable assertions about specific events (e.g. Christ was the son of God born to this particular woman, said these things to these people, performed those miracles, died in such-and-such a way).
The latter domain may be epistemically healthier in some respects, but is vulnerable to Undergraduate Atheist style arguments.
It is unfortunately common for people to explicitly make arguments in domain 1, but insinuate that they support propositions in domain 2.
In particular I understand what it means to have witnesses (direct or indirect) to a particular event, but not what it would mean to have witnesses to a moral proposition (e.g. X is right, ~X is wrong).
I AGREE WITH 107, BUT 108 AND 109 ARE COMPLETELY WRONG.
140.last: But I can easily imagine a sense in which your POV is construed as somehow "supernatural"
I'm not seeing it. To clarify the view, it's that all beings on this earth contribute to and participate in the overall system and community in which we live, and thus deserve our deepest consideration and respect. (Even rocks and clods of dirt have their place and should not be disrespected; we know that the health of the soil, the body of the planet, is quite important. Maybe we don't have to respect lint very much, though on the other hand we should not try to disinfect everything all the time.)
I just don't see anything supernatural in this. I must be missing something.
147: Could just be you're not using respect in the sense I'd assumed. I guess I figured you meant something like that these things were ensouled & deserving of dignity. It also sounded somewhat similar to reincarnationist-style morality.
Now it sounds more like you're saying we shouldn't pretend that stuff that does in fact exist is less important than it really is. Which I agree is not a particularly supernaturalist view to hold.
144: I'm not trying to straddle anything, I don't think. I'm following different paths of thought with different sources and implications, not explaining my primary reasons for my religious beliefs. Those involve highly personal events that are not concerned with epistemology or moral reasoning.
149: I'm not trying to straddle anything
That's where you went wrong, dear.
(Having not read the thread at all, I kind of relish the idea that this might be somehow offensive? I live for risk.)
147: I'm worried about respecting lint lately because a bird keeps trying to nest in the exhaust of my dryer's vent. Or maybe he is just swiping lint to have the best ass/egg padding possible. Either way, I should probably make sure birds can't fly in there.
148: Ah. No, no reincarnationist-style morality. I am quite willing to go from that which is the case (global ecosystems, worldwide community) to the fundamental dignity of beings, and I probably do believe that what looks out from the eyes of a deer is 'ensouled' in the sense of not being akin to a rock, but other than that, I don't believe in an afterlife. We're born, we live, we die. Our collective memories live on.
104: bob, where the hell do you source your movies? Seriously. I've had a bitch of a time trying to find films nowhere near as random or rare as the ones you routinely cite while in nyc. Now that I'm more more nyc-adjacent, I don't even try. And yet watching the Criterion Collection on hulu with commercials is somehow very, very sad.
153: To clarify that horrible comment: I have a had a difficult time finding films while I was in nyc. Not while you were citing rare films in nyc. Goddamn fatigue.
149: OK, I take your word that you're not straddling that distinction. It sounds like we agree that there is in fact a distinction too. I am still kind of lost on reconciling the desire to be ruled by no one but God, with the willingness to accept received opnion about what God's commands are. You brought up some specific reasons why the bible might be more reliable, but I think I've explained why I don't think that actually saves you from the problem of picking a reliable source. Unless it's some sort of face-saving thing.
Though a way to trick yourself into accepting morality might still be better than nothing.
119.1: Wow, that's really the kind of question-begging horsepucky that makes me almost* sympathetic to guys like Harris. Believing in the value of all life would pretty obviously have nothing at all to do with believing in any form of deity, there are any number of routes by which you could arrive at that belief.
(* Almost.)
120: You would be wrong.
So Moby found God due to personal life events? Huh. Well, that's okay.
155: You still have problems picking a reliable source (assuming you're going to think of faith as face saving). It's kind of unavoidable in any epistimology that is going to cover some kind of moral statement. Or any kind of epistimology as near as I can tell.
153:Ballad of Narayama 1958 ...at Amazon
157: DS, you're just saying that because you're Canadian. You guys are all with the tree-hugging and shit.
162: In truth, it could be plausibly argued that Canadians only hug trees to lull them into a false sense of security before unleashing the lumberjacks.
Could God write a pun so bad that he couldn't laugh at it?
163: Speaking of which, and this is a topic change late at night, but: I haven't known what to make of the recent electoral results there. Can you say briefly: is this good or bad?
That is, my understanding is that Harper's party won the majority for the first time in a while (which is bad), but the chief opposition party has shifted significantly from the Liberals (Ignatieff's failed bid) to the NDP. Which is good.
Forgive me if it's too late to ask such a thing, or if it's too complicated a thing to ask. The Canadian system is different enough from the US, and/or I'm stupid enough, that I haven't been able to tell what this might mean for your overall prospects policy-wise. Is it at all clear, or is it just a jumble?
because I do believe that all beings are equal, that, say, the deer out back in the woods, as well as the bunny and the groundhog, and the tree, have as much of a right to life as I or any human does
Wait, as I recall you're not even fully vegetarian. Unless you're hunting and eating the occasional hobo I call shenanigans.
165: In the short term, unequivocally bad. Many Canadians are quite deluded or simply ignorant about how radical the conservative movement emanating from Alberta really is. They're about to get a rude shock. Probably a number of them.
In the longer term, the rise of the NDP is, however, good. Provided they perform well in opposition, they could form the nucleus of a new left-of-centre partisan consensus that is actually progressive instead of just pretending to be (the flaw that sunk Ignatieff's Liberals). That they crushed the sovereigntist-on-paper Bloc Quebecois is also a good thing, heralding the reentry of Quebec's progressive electorate into true federal politics, where they are desperately needed.
166: It would be medically impractical to hunt and eat hoboes, or heck, even people who'd deserve to be hunted and eaten like investment bankers or neo-lib economists; kuru sees to that. This needn't imply any inconsistency.
Does agneistic already exist? It seems there are issues with atheists as some seem to want to be realer than others and, I mean, agnostic does sound a bit chicken, doesn't it?
170: Whereas "agneistic" sounds like lamb.
So Moby found God due to personal life events? Huh. Well, that's okay.
Can Moby then confirm or refute Ludovic Muggleton's claim that God is 5' 1" in his stockinged feet?
I do prefer lamb to chicken: agneistic it is then.
168: I know people like to on about the "rational animal," but you do realize that the there are edible body parts aside from the brain, right?
A somewhat on-topic pot from EvolutionBlog, "The Perils of False Certainty", in which he reviews the intro of an essay on the history of agnosticism and decries how it follows the general pattern of distorting what the "undergraduate atheists" actually have written*:
But there are rules to this sort of thing, and one of them is that any discussion of agnosticism must contain lots of bashing of the New Atheists for their dogmatism and false certainty.
*I am, however, fully willing to believe that Harris has gone to pretty stupid place on the evidence from neuroscience front.
Joey just announced that "The way to find out if God is real is to sit quietly for one hundred and ninety nine minutes!"
And now we are off to Meeting.
Progress in neuroscience is likely to be slow, partially due to ethical concerns. The best way to speed things might be to allow helmetless motorcycling only if you consent to enrolling in a well designed study should you smash an interesting part of your brain.
174: The easy way to know Harris has gone to a pretty stupid place is when he declares his intention to discuss moral philosophy without reading any previous contributions to the field... because the books contain big words whose meanings he's not clear on.
The New Atheists are a collective embarrassment to atheism and deserve every bit of the bashing they get. The shame is they're not getting enough.
178: Bashing, that is. They're not getting enough bashing. Used in the sense of the original quote.
There really need to be more atheists putting that work in, out of self-preservation. These guys are providing the planet with excellent excuses to dismiss "atheism" as intellectually sloppy, proudly incurious, dishonest, dogmatic in its own right and hypocritically obsessed with its own supposedly superior rationalism. If the "atheism" one knew was the "New Atheism" all of those contentions would be uncontroversial... because about those guys*, every one of them is true.
(* Manifestly so of Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, anyway. The Fourth Horseman I'm less sure about, he may well be better, but at minimum it certainly doesn't speak well of him that he allows himself to be associated with company like this.)
178 179
So what you are saying is that the New Atheists are too shrill?
180: Oh, shrill, I can handle. It's ignorant shrill that I have a problem with.
Who or what is the fourth horseman? Coyne?
shrill, I can handle. It's ignorant shrill that I have a problem with.
I want a t-shirt with this on it.
Canonically, the Fourth Horseman is Dennett.
It could also be that what really chaps my ass about that group is that they've hijacked the "Four Horsemen" appellation from far worthier men.
Dennett is capable of saying some ignorant things himself.
178: These guys are providing the planet with excellent excuses to dismiss "atheism" intellectually sloppy, proudly incurious, dishonest, dogmatic in its own right and hypocritically obsessed with its own supposedly superior rationalism. If the "atheism" one knew was the "New Atheism" all of those contentions would be uncontroversial... because about those guys*, every one of them is true.
A statement that is admirably "intellectually sloppy, proudly incurious, dishonest, dogmatic in its own right and hypocritically obsessed with its own supposedly superior rationalism".
The shame is they're not getting enough.
Maybe that's why they bash bishops.
<rimshot>
186: Oh noes! They R rubber and I am, like, totes glue! I did not see that one coming.
A penetrating insight well delivered, Mr. Stormcrow. Can you similarly refit such unblemished gambits of monkeybars debating style as "I know you are but what am I?" and "Double punch-buggies no returns infinity plus infinity?"
183: Yeah, wow. Sure is a good thing Dennett came along to lay that groundwork. What have people been doing without him, all this time. Wow.
(Awwww, can we keep the deranged Troll of Sorrow comments up just this once, BTW? The little guy works so hard at them.)
188: Oh noes, the patented DS "my argument from authority" is valid yours is juvenile" comeback! I did not see that one coming.
192: You're two for three! Now for the punchbuggies! Go!
(BTW, if you would like to know my reasons for saying what I did... you could try this wacky thing called "asking." I might just tell you! But truth to tell, I'm down to see what you'll do with the punchbuggies.)
189: Sorry, DS, I deleted them before I saw your comment.
194: Thanks anyway. Fade to black as poor ToS trundles sadly away from the sandbox yet again. 192 to 190, now.
Oh yes, I did forget to ask. The tone of 178 did not seem to call for such an approach.
And so now we're into the "I dare you to persist in the face of my amazingly insulting meta-analysis of the back-and-forth" phase. How novel.
To me, Harris is easily the weakest of the four, and now with his PhD. worse now than before. Hitchens is generally an ass, but on this subject better than usual. Dawkins' writing I find quite good, he mostly gets attacked on caricatures of his positions such as discussed in the article I linked. He is less careful in his appearances and while taking questions. I'll note that Neb links a publisher's blurb to trash Dennett. However, in the face of the massive asymmetry of unreason on this subject I'm willing to cut them all a bit of slack--except maybe Harris.
166: Wait, as I recall you're not even fully vegetarian. Unless you're hunting and eating the occasional hobo I call shenanigans.
Nah. Cycle of life and all that: the raptor and the cat and the wolf kill the bird and the bunny; the bird kills the worm; etc. We all gotta eat. What follows from the view I described isn't that we shouldn't eat meat, but that we shouldn't treat other animals as lesser beings put on this planet to service us or be eliminated as we see fit. That means protection of habitats, avoiding infliction of unnecessary suffering, and in general declining to treat the entire planet as our personal property.
I'll note that Neb links a publisher's blurb to trash Dennett
I believe the blurb was actually written by the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics at Stanford. It's true, though, that I haven't actually read Breaking the Spell (and looking through what of the bibliography I can look through on Amazon I see reference to James, Eliade and Durkheim—so maybe I was a bit unfair).
168: Recalled this when I saw a crow eating what looked to most likely be a dead turkey on the side of the road yesterday (but which could have been a crow--a large blackish bird corpse). Not sure to what scavengers avoid the carrion of their own kind or even whether they have "prion diseases"--or if they did whether their defense systems (which most be pretty comprehensive) could handle it. Did not find anything on crows specifically, but there seem to be about 140 species in which cannibalism is observed. Vultures* seem to avoid carnivores for the most part so I suspect they don't.
*In researching this, came across the interesting fact that vultures had on at least one occasion pinpointed a natural gas link because the odorant mercaptan is one of the compounds given off by rotting corpses.
199: To me, Harris is easily the weakest of the four
If the NYRB piece is reasonably accurate and fair, that sounds right, and in fact an understatement. Contra DS in 177, 178, Hitchens and Dawkins at least are not fools. I've read only reviews and discussions of them, though, not the primary works themselves.
My own mild eye-rolling over the New Atheists isn't about sloppy, embarrassing thinking (with the exception of Harris), but over why they feel the need to engage in these projects in the first place: why produce an extended argument for atheism? Is it because (some) atheists feel embattled? It's annoying in the first instance because the question "Does God exist?" has (a) been raked over the coals for centuries at this point, and (b) cannot be answered through reasoned argument.
Engage in a sort of anthropological discussion of the phenomenon of belief in God, if you like -- talk about the nature of the belief instead of the alleged fact of existence -- but even Dawkins (not a stupid man) is quoted in the post JP linked upthread in 174, thus:
"That you cannot prove God's nonexistence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable. That is another matter."
Now, why do we want to get into whether his existence is even probable or improbable?
Dennett and Dawkins have both written good stuff in the past, even if much of it isn't stuff I'd personally agree with (either in the philosophy of mind, or the philosophy of biology). I haven't read Dennett on religion, though, so am not able to comment. I have read some woeful shit from Dawkins, however.
I'd expect nworB would be a good person to comment [if he's around]. This being his 'thing', so to speak.
And so now we're into the "I dare you to persist in the face of my amazingly insulting meta-analysis of the back-and-forth" phase.
Well, since it got you to finally desist from the juvenilia and provide something worth engaging with, I'd call that a win.
I take it the ungracious "tone" excuse for not asking means you're now asking? In that case, to break it down:
Intellectually sloppy:
Hitchens: Claims that the God of Moses "never mentions human solidarity and compassion at all" on p. 100 of God Is Not Great. One needn't be holding a particular brief for the Old Testament version of deity to know that this characterization of it is simply wrong in a way that suggests the author hasn't familiarized himself with the most basic of source material. (And this kind of breezy, casually-delivered whopper is routine for Hitchens. A correction of every such arrogantly-delivered error and misstatement in GING could fill a volume of its own.)
Proudly incurious:
Hitchens' sloppiness is arguably indicative of incuriosity, as is the Sam Harris enterprise that occasioned this thread, obviously. Eagleton's assessment of the Dawkins enterprise also remains convincing five years on (the short version: Dawkins has mistakenly persuaded himself that refuting low-grade fundamentalism is the same thing as refuting Religion, and has done so because it's evident he hasn't done the kind of reading that would give him something more interesting to say).
Dishonest:
I'll use Islam as an example. In The End of Faith, Harris draws largely at second hand for his characterizations of Islam, and on an incredibly biased stable of authors like Alan Dershowitz and Bernard Lewis (both still defenders of the discredited attempt in From Time Immemorial to airbrush the Palestinians out of history), and also on Paul Berman's ahistorical, crude analogy-mongering in Terror and Liberalism, a book which may have failed to establish "Islamofascist" as a serious analytical category but certainly established it as a commonplace of xenophobic demagoguery.
This kind of behavior -- and the pushing of similar kinds of sources -- is common in Hitchens, too. These are not just sloppy or incurious behaviors. They are, I would argue, fundamentally dishonest ones. Harris and Hitchens habitually push forward heavily-charged and biased perspectives from a very specific echo chamber whose priorities it's not possible to be unaware of on reading the source material... but, in using this inflammatory material, they disguise its partiality from the reader and try to persuade them that what's really going on is careful, scholarly religious critique. That is not just a mistake. It is a lie. (Dawkins is, mercifully, not guilty of this offense that I've seen. Or not as guilty of it, anyway.)
Dogmatic in its own right and hypocritically obsessed with its own supposedly superior rationalism:
In at least three out of the cases of the Four Horsemen, we have a collection of incomplete, often ignorant or sloppy, in some respects downright dishonest critiques of "religion." And yet they've generated a fandom that, oblivious to these flaws, talks incessantly to itself about how rational it is and how awesome it is to be so much more rational than those stupid theists. (If you doubt this, have a look at Sam Harris' reader forums just for starters, though that's not the only place this mentality manifests. "New Atheist" fandom also has a heavy presence on, say, PZ Meyers' blog that manifests these same habits.) And why wouldn't they behave that way? The authors they're idolizing engage in much the same thing, albeit in more genteel fashion.
So, with the above in mind:
To me, Harris is easily the weakest of the four, and now with his PhD. worse now than before. Hitchens is generally an ass, but on this subject better than usual. Dawkins' writing I find quite good, he mostly gets attacked on caricatures of his positions such as discussed in the article I linked.
I find Harris and Hitchens equally repellent, and neither of them of any great deal of value. Dawkins I think is a more honest and conscientious sort than the other two, but still disastrously arrogant and under-informed and rendered less effective thereby. The one I know the least about is Dennett, all I can say about him at this point is that his publisher is prone to over-the-top blurbage.
So, that's why I said what I said.
"the truth-finder, having raked out that jakes, his own mind, and being there capable of tracing no ray of divinity, nor anything virtuous or good, or lovely, or loving, very fairly, honestly, and logically concludes that no such things exist in the whole creation."
200: Contra DS in 177, 178, Hitchens and Dawkins at least are not fools.
That Hitchens is no fool is precisely what makes his schtick repellent instead of just annoying. He knows exactly what he's doing.
Dawkins and Harris are surely no idiots within their specialties. Being good in a specialized field does not mean that you can't make an ass of yourself in venturing outside it, no matter how "smart" you may be. Dawkins is an example of this. Harris, too, although he's much uglier than Dawkins.
Being good in a specialized field does not mean that you can't make an ass of yourself in venturing outside it, no matter how "smart" you may be. Dawkins is an example of this.
I haven't read Dawkins, only various reviews of him, and I've seen some videos and quoted bits floating around the web. My impression is that Dawkins's goal is to argue that a worldview without religion is perfectly able to explain the world around us and to still allow for a moral existence. Maybe this impression is wrong. It seems to me that it's not so much attacking religion as explicating how to get on without it, something that one shouldn't have to become a specialist in religion to do. From my point of view, his message is a triviality. But for the vast numbers of people in the world who think that we need God to stop us all from killing and eating each other, I think having someone who's willing to explain these trivialities over and over again is a useful thing.
Anyway, religious people over the centuries have contributed vast amounts of thought and art that's still a vital part of our culture, so I think any educated person would do well to familiarize themselves with aspects of religion. But I don't really understand why someone selling a secular worldview should have to engage in detail with religious thought, anymore than I should have to try to seek out the most rigorous and thoughtful argument for the existence of the Easter Bunny before I tell you that I think it's a pointless belief that we can get along perfectly well without.
So you're saying I should continue to leave the Hitchens book in the pile at the bookshop where it has sat for nearly three years? Well, if you insist.
But what if you were studying anthropology and attempting to write a dissertation on the holidays and rituals of a particular society? You needn't believe in, say, the Easter Bunny to consider the Easter Bunny an interesting topic of research and discussion. Philosophy students are encouraged to imagine various systems of thought without having to adopt them for themselves, because those systems of thought have actual effects on the world around us. I don't think everyone has to be interested in religion, but I think an incurious attitude toward religious experience and thought is pretty ignorant and boring. This is my attitude toward my religious students who can't be made to give a shit about Buddhism, though we're reading ancient Buddhist texts. I feel the same way about my non-religious (usually "culturally Catholic") students who can't differentiate between different kinds of Protestant doctrine because like OMG when you go on about that Jesus stuff it's all blah blah blah.
209: No, I agree that religious behaviors and beliefs are interesting and important cases of how people behave and think, and people are intrinsically interesting, so I think that by all means they're worthy of study. I'm just saying that I think this is orthogonal to (my, possibly wrong, impression of) what Dawkins is up to, which is attempting to persuade people that a secular worldview is a viable option, and I don't think Dawkins has to engage in a systematic study of religious thought to be an advocate for an irreligious life.
I understand that one is supposed to be able to say, tit for tat, if religious people aren't interested in intellectual topics (which, guess what, plenty are not feces-flinging sitcom dads) then we intellectuals shouldn't have to learn anything about their stupid culture! Hmph! It's fucking childish. I took a course on terrorism in college, not because I want to become a terrorist or I think terrorism is an appealing worldview, but because I wanted to learn how political violence works and how it affects my world.
I've also seen some pretty ridiculous shunning of completely rational religious people in my field. One particular book that I think is probably the best thing ever written about literature in my period is particularly excellent because the author has a deep and thorough understanding of religious experience. After years of feeling like he was not in a positive environment at Public School, he left to go to Super-Religious School. When I recommended the book to a friend in my field, he gushed and gushed until he discovered where the author had gone to teach. He lamented that he wouldn't be able to recommend the book to anyone because no one would take a religious literary critic seriously, or understand the content.
211 posted before I saw 210. Fine, if Dawkins wants to coach people into secularism, I think that's great. He seems less childishly nose-thumbing than the rest. My personal thought about religion is that most people are repressed atheists desperately hoping that they will one day have faith. There are not many people, I think, who really live in what they believe to be the presence and knowledge of the divine. And people pretending to believe in God are the most manipulable by faux-religious rhetoric, which is super-dangerous.
210: Your impression of what Dawkins is up to is wrong. What, for example, The God Delusion purports to deliver is the following:
"In this provocative must-read, the preeminent scientist--and world's most prominent atheist--Richard Dawkins asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight on the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster. With rigor and wit, Dawkins eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. "
If you're going to claim to offer proof that theism is inherently destructive, that atheism is more moral and is preferable, and that you can "eviscerate" the "major arguments for religion," then you had better be able to deliver. At the very least you ought to know what "the major arguments" are. SPOILER: Dawkins does not deliver.
213: Yeah, some of that seems to strong. It's true, of course, that people have claimed religion as justification for all sorts of terrible behavior, but people in general behave terribly, so it's not clear to me that one can blame religion for that.
As far as I'm concerned, engaging with "arguments for religion" is the wrong approach. Better just to present an example of how an irreligious worldview works, and let people realize for themselves that it accounts for the world they see around them far better than a belief in God does.
"the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster."
That's pretty obnoxious, and I wonder again what motivates such a project. It seems entirely wrong-headed, and actually not unlike Gonerill's description way upthread in 23 of Johnston's rhetorical method:
Theists: We are in possession of the right and best way to conceive of existence! Without us, everybody would be killing and eating each other!
Dawkins (in this case): No, we are! You people killed each other all the time! Our approach is most advantageous and true!
How can any participant in modernity or capitalism possibly not have experience with living without a religious worldview? If that is in fact Dawkins' project, it's a trivial one, including for essentially all religious people (as all but the most dishonest, and of course there are lots of dishonest ones) will admit. The default of at least modern life (probably premodern life too) is that one lives outside of religion on a daily basis.
re: 214
I have no problem with people arguing for atheism. I'm an atheist, I think my world view is pretty fine, thanks. That hasn't been Dawkins' project, at all. I'm actually quite sympathetic with bits of the case he wants to make (although arguing over the terrible effects of religion in the UK is a little like arguing about the terrible effects of the Hagakure on 21st century Japanese culture). However, he hasn't really helped himself much of the time. It's not the shrillness, as DS says, it's the lack of engagement with the best case the other side might be able to offer.
I have a similar problem with his advocacy for science -- the advocacy for which I'm strongly in favour of -- which is similarly lacking in nuance or understanding.
218: That doesn't sound consistent with my childhood. I don't think I met anyone who was openly not religious until my 7th grade biology teacher, and the way people talked about him was, well, not very polite.
I mean, there's a difference between being a religious person who doesn't think much about it except on Sunday mornings, which sounds like what you might be getting at, and a person who is genuinely not religious.
re: 221
I could probably count on the fingers of both hands the number of religious believers I've met, more or less ever. Not including the period when I did some part time work for a religiously affiliated college. The UK and the US are very different countries.
It may well be that Rob considers someone whose religious life to be confined to Sunday morning to be genuinely not religious.
I guess I should say "Halford", not "Rob".
My 217 was glib, and ttaM's 219 makes me reformulate: the Dawkins presented in the blurb from 213 is making what sounds like an essentially utilitarian argument, against a faith-based argument presented by theists.
Some people -- the closeted atheists AWB refers to -- might eventually be convinced by that, but the true theists won't be remotely swayed, or even engaged, especially if Dawkins shows himself to be insufficiently informed about the faith-based worldview.
I think it is difficult for non-religious people to hear the difference between someone who knows and speaks the rhetoric of religion, which, yes, is wound especially tightly around all aspects of life in the US, and what it's like to hear someone who lives within a religious worldview. From the outside, those two things look very much the same, and from a certain postmodern perspective, they are indistinguishable. But I'd agree with 222, and I grew up in the Southern Baptist church.
222: The UK and the US are very different countries.
In the US, it depends very much on where you hang out. When I was a child, religious believers were many, because my parents decided to raise me Catholic. Once I finished with that procedure (achieving confirmation at age 13 or so), I met, and have met, next to none, except the occasional ritualistic Sunday-church-only types, who do it for reasons entirely unclear to me.
I think it's spooky to some to consider not observing religious occasions: charlatanism.
Dawkins has always struck me as a poor advocate (ironic in a "Professor of the Public Understanding of Science), except in the rhetorical forensic sense. He writes engagingly and fluently, and might well sway a jury. But, and I've found online that I'm far from alone in feeling this, he's far too prone to predefining the terms of his discourse to favour his position, so that if you try to follow his argument rigorously it appears dishonest, or, more charitably, superficial.
I'm sure he's a smashing bloke and bring his mother flowers and that, but he's not the front man for secularism I want in any fight.
I find it funny, for example, that most of my colleagues at Public School would describe our students as super-religious people because they have a weird combination of personal morality (most will happily give you a speech about how important innocence is, and how once you get into sex or drinking you die unemployed and alone, etc.) and vague political liberalism. But when I start conversations about religious belief, they tend to be completely blocked about going beyond "Um this author talks about Jesus? So I guess he's like some kind of Christian probably?" A few have some slightly more specific ideas, but it's rare.
Endorsing 202 and 228. The New Atheism (so that's the thing to call it now?) seems like a shallow enterprise devoted to pointing out the obvious, creating straw men and generally missing the point. I say "seems" because what I've read of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris makes me disinclined to read any more (Dawkins is especially a disappointment, as I quite like some of his other writing).
vultures had on at least one occasion pinpointed a natural gas link because the odorant mercaptan is one of the compounds given off by rotting corpses.
Fascinating. It raises the intriguing possibility that vultures might be used to detect hydrogen sufide-tainted wines.
And in talking to formerly religious people, I tend to find that most people who have left their religions have done so by attempting to learn everything about them, and in trying to solve the deepest and most meaningful problems, they discover that they no longer have faith. YMMV.
Your colleagues say "Um this author talks about Jesus? So I guess he's like some kind of Christian probably?"
I'm surprised it's so rare that they can say anything more. You've mentioned this many times. I take it these colleagues are not familiar with the sheer prevalence of Christian themes in Western literature. Maybe they don't know their field very well (sorry).
the difference between someone who knows and speaks the rhetoric of religion, which, yes, is wound especially tightly around all aspects of life in the US, and what it's like to hear someone who lives within a religious worldview
Either I'm not fully understanding this distinction, or my experience has just been way different. I have known many truly religious people, even if I don't count family, other people from the community where I grew up, or people I have known through church-related activities. (I was pretty religious until 19 or so.) Even teaching at my current institution, I get students who are quite earnest and articulate about their religious beliefs.
I've never known a truly religious German, though.
IIRC, Dennett's book really isn't that polemical or focused on culture war issues (certainly less than his op-ed crusades to rename atheists "Brights"). The bulk of it is more like an existence proof for the claim that the scientific study of religion--in the sense of providing mechanistic explanations for religious phenomena--is possible and worth pursuing. He focuses a lot on describing the distinctive way religious beliefs and practices show an "optimal design" for replicating themselves across different societies and generations. It's basically a survey of a lot of other people's research, interspersed with directly addressing religious believers who don't think what he's talking about should be relevant to them.
222: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. But Halford lives in the US, so it surprises me from him. Of course, not everyone grew up in the same part of the US I did.
Though, AWB, I'm pretty confused by your take, unless you're using "religious believer" in an extremely strong sense. Basically everyone I grew up knowing was a Southern Baptist who believed they were saved, believed they would go to heaven and meet Jesus when they die, believed that anyone who didn't accept Jesus would suffer eternally in hell, etc. I'm sure a lot of them had occasional or even frequent doubts, but I don't see that being strong enough to say they didn't have a religious worldview or that they weren't religious believers.
I will admit there's a big gulf between people who fundamentally live with a religious worldview at every moment, and people who are just ordinary religious types. But there's an equally big gulf between the latter and people with a fundamentally irreligious worldview.
231 was absolutely the case for me. It was the double whammy of taking Intro to Christianity and reading The Concept of Dread the same semester.
Your colleagues say "Um this author talks about Jesus? So I guess he's like some kind of Christian probably?"
No, her students do.
231 And in talking to formerly religious people, I tend to find that most people who have left their religions have done so by attempting to learn everything about them, and in trying to solve the deepest and most meaningful problems, they discover that they no longer have faith.
For me it was more that I just sort of gradually realized that none of this religion stuff seemed plausible to me, and that it wasn't really doing anything for me.
237: Yes, my students, but my colleagues aren't much better sometimes, and do tend to ignore or gloss over the religious aspects of texts in favor of talking about something else.
231:and in trying to solve the deepest and most meaningful problems, they discover that they no longer have faith
231 was absolutely the case for me. It was the double whammy of taking Intro to Christianity and reading The Concept of Dread the same semester.
Some people could read Soren K. a little more carefully. He explicitly and repeatedly says he lacks faith, and explains why that is not what religion is about.
...
I have a hard time explaining how I personally feel about religion and spirituality. I could use ideas like perspectivism and "as-if" maybe. It isn't really that I believe the content of the last book I read, but I try to believe it as I read it, and try to retain a certain empathy afterwards.
There are many books and a lot of history, and that gives me a lot of religious people to talk with. Bach wasn't just about math.
237: Okay. I could have read 229 either way, and didn't know what to do with the anti-sex sentiments on the part of the students, if they don't have fairly strong and/or informed religious views. Youth! It is difficult to work with.
didn't know what to do with the anti-sex sentiments on the part of the students, if they don't have fairly strong and/or informed religious views
This could also just be youth talking and not necessarily religious views. For the inexperienced, those things (sex, drugs) can seem really scary.
242: I guess, but the students AWB is talking about are college-age, and as she said, "most will happily give you a speech about how important innocence is, and how once you get into sex or drinking you die unemployed and alone, etc."
That sounds either younger than college-age, or heavily influenced by religiously inflected talk.
The other side of 240 is that if you are the kind to say hey Maxwell with an assist from lil Al and a pick from the Quants have determined THE WAY IT ALL IS you will have a hard time getting religion. OTOH, if you think the Hindus and Buddhists might have had a point...
Also, if you are the kind that believes we have all been getting better and better in every way every day and the few hundred million dead in the last century was just some small hitch in our headlong race to moral perfection, then you will have no need for religion and you will not understand another's need for it. Pessimism helps compassion a ton.
re: 228
Yes, that's more or less my take. Some of his writing on biology is extremely engaging, but his writing on other topics is often lazy and glib, at best.
239: At least the discussion of The Brothers Karamazov gets done quicker.
The World, The Flesh, and The Devil are not a problem to solved. You will not reason them out of it. You cannot go all Gaia and make a deal.
They are going to kill you, maybe tomorrow. You can pretend, but you cannot doubt it.
I hate my Present Age.
I hate my Present Age.
The early 21st century or your early 60s?
250:I lack civilized words for what the Mavericks have done.
This, at least was a series played at a championship level. When you are up 3-0 and no team has ever come back, you might relax a little. Sweeps are not easy, even against weak teams.
A championship team never relaxes.
2) Dirk Nowitzki has been working for this for several years. He is still capable of scoring 30-50 points a game, every game. But he learned in 2006 that you turn your team into a supporting cast and get good defense. So he dialed it back.
Kobe is learning that today. Crummy hotdog.
...
Odom just tried to dislocate Nowitzki's shoulder.
Anyhow, I'll take the past four years (hell, the past 10, or th past 50) over anyone else's, and Dallas, OKC and Chicago are likeable teams. Sad to see Phil's career end in this manner, though, or for that matter Lamar's season. Should fuel the fire for next year, when they should be pretty good again, but we'll see about the coaching situation and another year done on Kobe.
Bynum's going to get a multiple game suspension for that, right?
I've gotta say good on Artest, who'd have thunk that he'd be the one keeping his cool?
...certainly less than his op-ed crusades to rename atheists "Brights"....
It is odd, to me at least, that I believe both that one should call others what they wish to be called (e.g., w/r/t race. ethnicity, sexual preference, sports fandom, etc., etc.) and that renaming proposals like this are usually just ridiculous, no matter who proposes them. (I hope no one else cares enough to remember A/ndrew S/ullivan's asinine proposed "Eagles" category; Christ, what a charlatan.)
I think the anti-sex stuff is mostly because they live with their parents here until they're well into adulthood, many way past college. They're infantilized by their situation perhaps more than by some kind of theological certainty.
That is, a real theological position on sexuality might be something I could understand, but what they worship is their own innocence.
...but what they worship is their own innocence.
Nietzsche, for one, would probably agree with you.
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I cannot fully express how disgusting I find Emily "Prudence" Yoffe's title for this column: "My Husband's Other Wife. She died, so I could find the man I love." Yup, thank God that woman died of fucking breast cancer so you could get what you want, you narcissistic asshole.
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261: She probably could have put it better, but the headline isn't always the writer's fault. I found the various points of contrast that Yoffe draws with the deceased (e.g., paraphrasing, "she was kind and gentle; I am a sarcastic bitch") a little too revealing.
Well, at least there's religion.
My experience losing my religion involved a combination of the following main factors:
1) Some theological issues (mostly centered on the issue of why Paul's writings are scripture).
2) The implausibility of the biblical historical account of the world. Aside from issues of creation/evolution (which are easier to fudge as figurative), it just didn't seem very plausible historically that religion *started* monotheistically before decaying into polytheistic/animistic beliefs.
3) The increasing realization that I disagreed morally with many aspects of the religion I was raised in. This involved mostly ways in which my religious beliefs excluded non-believers and stopped me from interacting with people the way I thought was most moral. But it also involved questioning whether the God I'd learned about was good. As one of my best friends put it, God's most notable property seemed to be his pettiness.
4) That I wanted to date non-believers.
261: It isn't like she gave the first wife a bunch of money to go to Miami.
261: The article is tactful enough that I don't think that the subtitle was hers.
266: Emily Yoffe gave you a bunch of money to go to Miami?
I wouldn't leave Cleveland for any money no matter how much it sucks.
You shouldn't stand in the way of Yoffe's happiness. She's already taken advantage of one death to get what she wants. You could be next.
269 - What if you got the opportunity to be Dwyane Wade's sisterwife?
I'm ambivalent about wading into this, given the tone of things, but I read The End of Faith a few years ago and had a positive reaction to it. I'm sure it wasn't wholly rational or something to proudly identify with. I think it had to do with the sense of hearing someone forcefully and articulately (well, the writing is good as writing) deny something I've felt at the mercy of most of my life. Not that people beat down my door and punish me for being an atheist, but just having it everywhere presumed that one believes certainthings, and having to come out, so to speak, or just sit and nod. It isn't the gravest injustice, but it isn't the least.
I haven't read any of the others. Reading books about atheism does indeed seem kind of pointless, having read one. It is something I'm invested in but/so I don't need any more convincing. I'll admit that I like the fact that they seem to have whipped up some kind of public presence for atheism, but from what I'm reading here, it's mostly wrongly done and comes with ugly baggage, brings out a sort of fundamentalist atheist that's as bad as a fundamentalist anything. And that's a shame.
273: I sympathize. Per my comment in 40, the sense of subtle social oppressiveness you describe was the reason I once yearned for the existence of prominent superstar "secularist" authors about religion. It's also the reason the "Four Horsemen" have proven such an appalling disappointment; foolishly, I now see, I never considered the possibility that people would actually go forth essentially proclaiming the equivalent of the talk.origins FAQ to be the last word on religion as a whole, and would win a rabid following by doing so. It shouldn't have suprised me because obviously "secularism" and "atheism" are subject to all the same flaws of human nature that any religion is. It shouldn't have surprised me that the Michelle Malkin who used to be on my hotmail contacts as the administrator of the old Usenet group alt.atheism developed into this. But it did surprise me. I was naive.
Experiences like that eventually persuaded me to my current view, which is that while I'm an atheist, the simple fact is that the number and types of gods one worships or doesn't worship are just not all that important to the kind of person one becomes. There are way more factors that go into that. I've met evangelical Christians I wouldn't trust further than I could throw them, and other I could trust with my life, and the same is true of virtually every other persuasion. People are far better defined by what they believe -- and act upon -- than by what they say they do or don't believe.
So I don't have all that much invested in "atheism" as a "movement." But still being an atheist, I would vastly prefer the public faith of atheism to not be ignorant, or sloppy, or deceptive of itself or others, or a veiled excuse for indulging crude prejudice or xenophobia (one of the unspoken reasons I strongly suspect "New Atheists" like Hitchens and Harris have managed to sustain their celebrity).
Interesting typo in the second sentence of that last para: "public faith" s/b "public face"
a veiled excuse for indulging crude prejudice
This reminds me that my dad mentioned he was recently at a funeral where the Fred Phelps's people had their signs out.
I'm not unsympathetic to what DS says in 274, but I do ask myself: is this a little bit like all those otherwise-liberals who don't like calling themselves liberals? Or, the same phenomenon with feminism? (Someone here just recently said something like, "This isn't a big feminist line or anything, I just think that ....")
Let's not let the so-called New Atheists give atheism an altogether bad name.
Oh! Which is what DS said earlier, upthread. And no, I don't know why I'm talking about him/you in the third person. I tend to expect that you're gone shortly after commenting, I guess.
276: In a sense the Westboro Baptists don't strike me as being "veiled" about their prejudices. OTOH it's hard to escape the sense that there's an entirely different con going on, there.
278: It just came to mind. I shouldn't have tied them together as if I was comparing.
277.last: Understandable, I often am.
I do think it's worth being wary of the atheist counterpart of the "I didn't leave the left, the left left me" syndrome. But I don't think the beefs I have with the "Four Horsemen" are minor or petty, like former "leftists" of the Althouse variety who complain about relatively minor forms of college douchebaggery as a justification for major decisions like voting Bush in 2000. I think they go to the heart of the program and of major social currents that are making themselves felt. There's nothing minor about the surge of Islamophobia that led to headscarves laws in France or that helped justify wars on Iraq or Afghanistan.
Still and all, it's something to be aware of.
(I, in fact, don't identify as feminist, because I don't think men -- not having been female -- are really in a position to do so. I do identify as feminist-positive and as someone who thinks masculinism needs to be reformed with an eye to the insights of feminism. It's possible that's mere casuistry, but currently it's where I'm at.)
274 strikes me as surprisingly naive. No one has ever become a celebrity author through their incredible displays of nuance. If there is to be a celebrity secularist, then that person will traffic in crude caricature -- the market for subtlety is just too small.
And, having lived in the Bible Belt has made me appreciate the value of there being a certain number of atheists who punch back. For every one person who will admire you for your interpretive generosity, there will be ten who will think you are too broad-minded to take your own side in an argument.
274 strikes me as surprisingly naive.
What can I say, I was young once.
People are bad, DS. I hope you see that before it's too late. Parsimon is actually the worst; she just hides it very well. You can trust me, though. I'm not like the others.
I trust you, Walt! I like the cut of your jib. What are we doing?
280: Althouse is a former leftist?! I had no idea. Color me dumbstruck.
Regarding the Four Horsemen (New Atheists), I do appreciate that you've reminded me at least of Hitchens's agenda, which is, no, not merely hamfisted, but actually insidious, and has been displayed in other of his writings.
having lived in the Bible Belt has made me appreciate the value of there being a certain number of atheists who punch back.
This, I can see, and I support.
What I was trying to get at above is that even most outwardly religious people, i.e., even those who go to Church every Sunday and pray regularly, etc., (at least the honest ones) have experience of living in a fundamentally secular way, most of the time; it takes work and an enormous amount of practice to actually take religious commitments seriously, or to try to "live in" the religion in any serious way. I don't mean this just as an accumulation of knowledge about the religion and I'm not just making another criticism of religious folks for failing to read enough about theology; I mean that, no matter who you are, as a matter of daily practice,honestly living in the context of religion (OK, I'm thinking of Christianity, which is what I know) as if you thought it were real is an enormous challenge, and is meant to be an enormous challenge. Faith, if it's at all honest, implies both a lot of work and an awful lot of doubt; that's why it's faith, and not knowledge.
I actually see this as a potential opening for dialogue between religious and non-religious people; most honest religious folk really do get what it's like to live a meaningful life without religion, and most atheists would be surprised by how similar the minds of even outwardly super-religious folk work. I view the Christian theocrats as shutting down that space, and in a much less important but still significant way, the atheist theocrats like Hitchens doing the same thing in reverse. Which doesn't mean that in contexts where atheists really are being oppressed and excluded, they don't need polemicists.
I'm also always reminded in these discussions how far I've always lived from the Bible Belt; where I live, it's a bit embarassing to admit that you go to Church at all, and it's certainly something I would never bring up in any remotely professional context, or any social context I'm in except Church, unless pushed to do so. The USA is big place.
/end ridiculously long rant
286.midpoint: Which doesn't mean that in contexts where atheists really are being oppressed and excluded, they don't need polemicists.
All of 286 is well said, and some of us atheists probably need to hear it.
That said, the 'oppression' of atheists is not just a matter of outright discrimination on a local level: the entire culture is pretty much saturated with the expectation of a christian identity. What chance would an atheist have of winning the Presidency in this country? None chance, none at all. Don't even try.
Given everything you say about the extent to which religious folks live secular lives on a day-to-day level, why would this be? Why no atheist President, that is. I suggest that religious folks need to give a little (as in, relax) just as much as secular folks should, you know, speak to their religious neighbors as though they're not multi-headed Hydra.
(/obviousman)
ridiculously long rant = blogcomment version of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. Which is really long, though not ranty, and well worth reading, imo.
The Four Horseman don't bother me much (but perhaps because I don't take them as seriously as I should?). These guys are polemicists, writing for a non-specialist or non-academic or layperson (if that is not too clerical a term) audience. To the extent that they present their opinions as "findings" in some sort of quasi-scientific sense, yeah, that's a bit irritating. But the deference to Religion is so all-pervasive in American life, and is often so shockingly stupid and unreflective, that I'm inclined to cut the Atheists (who are often British imports, interestingly enough) a bit of slack, if only in the interests of a bit of pushback against the dominant frame of reference.
That said, I'd pay good money to see Charles Taylor take on Dawkins or Hitch in a public debate (which would never happen, though).
K. Anthony Appiah has interesting, i.e. nuanced, things to say on multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism (as they relate to, say, the headscarves laws in France) as well. I'm forgetting right now which thing of his that was. Will check.
288: But the deference to Religion is so all-pervasive in American life, and is often so shockingly stupid and unreflective, that I'm inclined to cut the Atheists (who are often British imports, interestingly enough) a bit of slack, if only in the interests of a bit of pushback against the dominant frame of reference.
I'm not, because the selectively indulged and celebrated variants of atheism generally prove to be providing a semi-sophisticated veneer over some of the stupidest and most unreflective portions of mainstream American culture. This was true in the day of Ayn Rand and has apparently remained true in the day of Hitchens, Harris and Malkin.
some of the stupidest and most unreflective portions of mainstream American culture
You sent us Howie Mandel. What were we supposed to do?
Turn the other check, obviously. Sorry.
The Appiah would be this. That's not the greatest write-up.
Huh. Having just looked at the link to the Taylor book: I'm actually tempted to read it. Sources of the Self irritated me in ways I wouldn't be able to articulate, unfortunately (it was just too long ago), and I began to wonder about Taylor.
287
... What chance would an atheist have of winning the Presidency in this country? None chance, none at all. Don't even try.
This isn't really true. You mean open atheist. It is easy enough to pretend to believe.
Yes, I mean open atheist. How does this change my point, or Mary Catherine's point in 288.2?
Everything is easier if you don't tell the truth. Like Thanksgiving dinner and politics and relationships.
295: By my reckoning you probably have to go back to Carter to get a President who surely believed to any significant degree--and maybe George HW or Obama*, but I'm pretty sure not for Reagan, Clinton or George W. We are at an interesting point in the long slow death of the Abrahamic religions.
*On second thought, nah.. and not HW either.
296
Yes, I mean open atheist. How does this change my point, ...
Mostly just nitpicking. Although the religious requirement is really pro forma, you don't have to go to church or know anything much about doctrine.
And it's not totally clear an open atheist has no chance, if you asked in 2000 who would have a better chance, an open atheist or a black man named Barack Hussein Obama it's not clear Obama would have been the pick.
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Friday night I went to an improv show that used, as its audience-suggestion point of departure, a long interview with an audience member. The volunteer, it turned out, was a personal assistant to "a famous comedian." When pressed, he admitted it was Pauly Shore.
I'm pretty sure that for a split second, I wanted to ask him why Pauly comments on our blog all the time.
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That is just so grim, Moby. I realize you're joking, but I'm tired, man.
if you asked in 2000 who would have a better chance, an open atheist or a black man named Barack Hussein Obama
Yet with the luxury of hindsight, it appears that one of them has a 100% chance of election to the presidency, and the other less.
Wait what? W totally came to Jesus.
You mean open atheist.
Yes, James, this point had to do with openly acknowledged in terms of whatever affiliation you might care to name (Catholic or Protestant; gay or straight; or what have you). Obviously, a lesbian Muslim in a wheelchair might just squeak by in an election if she managed to stage a photo-op which made her look like an able-bodied and respectably heterosexually married Episcopalian. Good work pointing out the theoretically possible (if ludicrously unlikely) possibilities; and thanks for coming out, there's always a B team.
299: One can doubt whether people are telling pollsters the truth, but polls say way way more people say they won't vote for an atheist than anything else. Fewer than a gay president or a muslim president.
202: So after the preliminaries, well done.
Thanks for the link on the Four Horseman, when I hae some time I will watch it through--five minutes in and no outrages yet ....
Hitchens: Claims that the God of Moses "never mentions human solidarity and compassion at all" on p. 100 of God Is Not Great.
As a somewhat off-point addendum to a parenthetical. But, yes, that kind of gratuitous flourish is something Hitchens does frequently and it can be of-putting. Actually, I think the greatest contribution to the "cause" from Hitchens is his putting together The Portable Atheist and be willing to call it that.
Eagleton's review of Dawkins strikes undoubtedly played well among the scholarly but strikes me as pretty well missing the point on the aims of Dawkins' book somewhat per Walt in 281.
A very partial response to be sure. But off to bed.
304: I mean he has a point. Obviously Bill Clinton doesn't actually believe in God, but he can speak christian better than almost any other politician. And that counts for something.
303: Yes, it was very convenient for him.
I guess you can't know these things before, but W always struck me as a true believer.
before s/b "for sure"
304
Yes, James, this point had to do with openly acknowledged in terms of whatever affiliation you might care to name (Catholic or Protestant; gay or straight; or what have you). Obviously, a lesbian Muslim in a wheelchair might just squeak by in an election if she managed to stage a photo-op which made her look like an able-bodied and respectably heterosexually married Episcopalian. Good work pointing out the theoretically possible (if ludicrously unlikely) possibilities; and thanks for coming out, there's always a B team.
Faking belief is quite a bit easier than faking being married etc. And as pointed out in 298 it is quite plausible that some of our recent Presidents have in fact been atheists so this isn't really a ludicrously unlikely possiblility.
But anyway James point (though true) is irrelevant. The fact that a closeted gay person could become president in the 1860s doesn't change the fact that gay people were discriminated against publically.
I am perhaps overly cynical about George W--but in just about every other way you could not be too cynical about him. Karl Rove called him "the perfect candidate" and in many ways he was, and I think mostly because he utterly lacked any considered opinions of his own* and was a willing vessel for whatever was needed to Win.
*Other than the rights of incompetent sons of wealthy men to their full measure of success and inherited wealth.
Gawd, James's woolen-headedness is freaky sometimes.
My Bush cynicism runs more towards the "he was secretly still drinking" or "he had some sort of early onset dementia" or "he was wearing a wire for that debate", certainly not "he was the perfect candidate."
George W was and remains an empty shell and a complete mystery to me. In other words, what Unfoggetarian said.
I don't know if I should wonder about 283, by the way.
That's to Walt.
What's to wonder about? He's clearly flirting with you.
I think if I were surrounded by fundies, it would be comforting to know there were "athiests who punch back". But it would be even more powerful to know what religion was, and that the people surrounding me were bad at it.
You say there's God, I say there's none, and we both regard each other over an unbridgeable gulf with suspicion and contempt. But to know your terms better than you either gives me the ammunition to come to your side and either eat your cake in front of you, or even, on occasion, to understand something different than my assumptions.
As someone who doesn't believe in any religious metaphysical claims but would never be so gauche as to say he was an atheist (at least without a prefatory I guess I'm an), I've always wanted some instruction on what's so beautiful about it all, but never quite known where to start. (St. Augustine?) It doesn't seem as though it would be a waste of time.
For Jews it's easier. Nobody gets all that hung up on the existence of God.
318: Ah. I think he's married, though.
Off to bed.
For Jews it's easier. Nobody gets all that hung up on the existence of God.
Except the weirdos that want you all to hurry on back to a slice of land on the Mediterranean, so the Rapture can happen.
As an atheist, I have trouble with the "undergraduate atheists." They sell their work as trying to sell people on atheism as a logical and moral choice. But all of their works read as polemics preaching to the choir. If you really wanted to convince people, that's the worst possible way to do it. I would never recommend Dawkins (for example) to a believer because they would never make it through the first chapter.
I guess you can't know these things before, but W always struck me as a true believer.
We've had this discussion before, and I said he's an atheist, but that seems strong in retrospect; he never gave the sense that it occurred to him either way. I certainly think he's not Christian in any meaningful sense of the word.
W seemed to me to be a complete cypher, which is presumably what Rove found so attractive in him. He exudes a personal emptyness that I've seen in other adequately but not notably bright people who have stopped doing their drug of choice. I don't suppose it's ever occurred to him to question whether he's a Christian, since he was told he was at the age of three.
His complete disappearance since January 2009 does suggest he may be drinking again, but whether he was all the way through both terms is a known unknown.
I met what I said. "Hippie who runs a bookstore" is the perfect cover story for a life totally dedicated to evil. DS needed to be warned.
Essear has me figured out. I still flirt with women by punching them in the arm, too.
re: 325
I was always struck by video footage of him before he ran for President, where some of the same verbal tics are present, some of the same faux-downhome folksiness, but he comes across as consistently less damaged and blank than as the Presidential Bush. The 'stopped doing the drug of their choice' explanation might be a decent one, I suppose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrvy9sNP-A
Wow, 326!, The Four Horsemen beat Osama hands down!
(& 322: now finally I understand that bit of modern history, thanks)
325: he probably discovered breezers and is doing a bit of catching up.
For Jews it's easier. Nobody gets all that hung up on the existence of God.
True, they get hung up on the existence of women instead. Hilary Rodham Clinton, a Trotsky for our times.
Disclaimer: no Jew I have actually met would regard this as other than insane.
264: My experience losing my religion involved a combination of the following main factors:
Reading Secret Wars II and realising that the completely ridiculous over the top theology/cosmology there was in fact not that much more ridiculous than what I was taught to believe in real life....
ObNew Atheism: A lot of the criticism of Dawkins et all seems to be of the type of "why don't they engage with my beautifully constructed logical arguments about the nature of God" when they don't agree with the most basic premise. Do you need to delve deep and know much about theology/philosophy when your argument is that you don't need a god to explain the universe and there's no evidence for such an existence so why bother?
More New Atheism criticism: there also seems to be a lot of "No True Scotsman" arguments against them, that true Christianity isn't X, but Y, when in real life most of those Christians one does encounter are fake Scotsmen. So P. Z. Myers is blamed for going after the obvious loons, but it's them that's actually setting the debate for the most part.
re: 330
There's a lot of 'pointing at idiots', too.
"Look at what these idiots believe, how could anyone believe shit like that? Luckily, I, as an Enlightened rationalist believe nothing of the sort."
Qua philosopher of science it'd take me about 5 minutes to drive a whacking great truck through a great many of their supposedly rational and well-founded beliefs. I take science over religion any day of the week, as a tool for understanding the material world -- there's a level at which the 'new atheists' and I are on the same side -- but I'm also profoundly fucked-off when people talk about science but evince no apparent knowledge of the history of the same, or make utterly absurd self-aggrandising claims about their own rationality or Enlightenment.
332 somewhat beating a dead horse, since this is my perennial complaint about a great deal of popular meta-science writing. See also, Brian 'peer review conveys magical powers of epistemic certainty' Cox.
332.1 , see 331... When the most publically visible Christians are loons like the Christian Voice asshats protesting the Jerry Springer musical, no wonder critics point to them.
332.2 otoh, I agree completely. There's a lot of Enlightenment mythology in Dawkins et all.
333: my theory is that that's all the BBC's Fault, for getting those young and trendy scientists and let them do the same simplified scientific pablum with pretty pictures programmes year in year out; after a while they can't do anything else.
re: 334
Oh yeah. I'm happy enough to point the mocking finger at the likes of them, too. But there's also an established Church here, the religious leader of which is quite a long way away from a Christian Voice asshat. Dawkins has, to be fair, said (qualified) quite nice things about him in the past, but he still carries on in much of his public pronouncements as if he and his ilk don't exist.
302.4, 330.2: Walt's 281.1 works fine as a cynical point about the kind of charlatans who can thrive as "public intellectual" celebrities. It does not work as an actual defense of charlatanism, however.
And (in defense of my younger self's idealism for a second) it is in fact possible to be a populist writer pitching to a lay audience and still:
a) know what the hell you're talking about and what claims you should and shouldn't be making, and
b) be able to engage with reasonably sophisticated subject matter and make it intelligible to your audience.
There are lots of "popularizing" writers about science, or history, or religion, or philosophy, who manage both just fine without peddling fakery or nonsense. Hell, Dawkins himself used to be able to do it, brilliantly and honestly and while selling boatloads of books, too. It was called The Selfish Gene, and it was one of the best populist works about science of the last half-century.
"Oh he's writing for a popular audience" is just not an excuse for what the Four Horsemen are doing, or what they represent. When Eagleton pantsed Dawkins for being an ignoramus about his subject matter, it wasn't just on the grounds of his failure to engage with the leading edge of theology today, but of his failure to engage with any theology at all, his apparent inability to imagine that there might be actually fairly large swathes of the religious who don't literally believe in God as a big, bearded dude in the sky. If you're purporting to write about religion -- and especially to be imparting grand, sweeping insights about it -- there's just no excuse for that kind of ignorance, arrogance and carelessness.
(Lest I make an unwarranted implication with 337.4, Dawkins' science writing is still top notch. It's just his careless foray into religious polemics that's shit.)
What would people think of this over at
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/
?
If I were Charles Simonyi, I would be taking Dawkins' career over the last twenty years as a pretty hard-earned lesson against endowing Professorships Of The Public Understanding Of Science without clear job descriptions, quantitative performance indicators and regular reviews.
What would people think of this...
Also, Templeton is a dangerous prat, but in itself that doesn't make the four horsemen wonderful
339: Precisely the sort of thing Dawkins has left himself wide open for, I'd say. Which is unfortunate.
340. The job description was perfectly clear - it's on line somewhere. And it was drafted by Simonyi's good friend Richard Dawkins. Your point about performance indicators therefore falls.
We've moved on, DS. Now that we've established I'm the only one you can trust, we're now discussing what we should do. We're going to recover the body of Osama bin Laden, and use it Weekend at Bernie's style to take over Al Queda. Our own paramilitary organization! Think of the possibilities! You were right to trust me!
There are two kinds of Christianity. There's the thoughtful kind that has a long and rich intellectual tradition. That kind is dying, both in the US and in Europe. There's the kind that's hateful and ignorant, and that kind is growing, at least in the US. The arguments an atheist would make against the first kind would be wasted on the second kind, because the second kind regards the first kind as de-facto atheists anyway. It doesn't matter if Dawkins can't beat Eagleton in an argument, because in a generation the tradition that Eagleton speaks for will be gone. Dawkins probably couldn't win a theology argument with a Shaker, either.
344: Sweet! I'll get my wetsuit and meet you at the Indian Ocean in twenty.
345: There's the thoughtful kind that has a long and rich intellectual tradition. That kind is dying, both in the US and in Europe. There's the kind that's hateful and ignorant, and that kind is growing, at least in the US.
I don't think this is so: the anti-science, anti-modernity, anti-pluralist, siege mentality "religious right" has been the dominant face of Christianity in America for so long that it seems permanent, but AFAICT it's not the growing and vital part of the American religious landscape: this is.
The arguments an atheist would make against the first kind would be wasted on the second kind
Doubtful, since "the second kind" is not a hive-mind and presumably the atheist hopes at some point to peel off some undecided believers if he's bothering with argument. Having some sophisticated knowledge of the subject is useful and indeed necessary to this enterprise.
As I've already said, Dawkins' problem is bigger than not being able to win an argument with Eagleton. As Eagleton correctly points out, even the most basic forms of religion as practised and talked about in ordinary, daily life are more sophisticated than Dawkins is willing to allow. If Dawkins were to set his sights on the average neighborhood pastor, it's doubtful that he'd win an argument with them.
At any rate, careless caricature and uninformed polemic is an absolute boon to the hateful forms of fundamentalism, conveniently confirming its suspicions about the hostility and intellectual dishonesty of atheists and allowing it to reinforce the siege mentality on which it thrives. For a long time, the religious right had to largely invent atheists like the Four Horsemen* apocryphally because there was nobody in the public sphere actually behaving that way. No longer: now they just have to point and say "behold."
* Maybe we should call them the Three Groomsmen or something. I'm somehow increasingly uncomfortable folding Dennett into all this.
344,346: always nice to see young love blossom. Also, you know this is going to be the plot for the next Family Guy special.
347: I think people overestimated how much sophistication there is in theology in this sort of debate; don't need to worry about the City of God if you don't believe in God.
More to the point, Dawkins and all are not trying to win theology debates, nor convince people through rational argument of the soundness of atheism: you cannot reason somebody out of a position they did not reach through reason. What they do is to provide those who already doubt with a --pun intended-- "bible" for enlighenment. Most conversions after all happen not through showing the flaws in an old belief, but seeing the strengths of a new one...
348: You know, I do have this snappy arrangement of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" lying around here somewhere...
349: I think people overestimated how much sophistication there is in theology in this sort of debate
In the sort of debate where you're going to claim to prove that theism is dangerous and atheism superior, yes, you need to know some theology.
I mean, even assuming that this is your purpose:
What they do is to provide those who already doubt with a --pun intended-- "bible" for enlighenment.
... then you're going to have to reckon with some of your doubting flock actually having been raised in and studied the religions you're talking about, sometimes in a limited way, sometimes more extensively. That's not even factoring in those who've gone to college and taken courses on religion and history and philosophy and things like that. Your "Bible" for "enlightenment" is going to have to be good enough to convince these people that it is not shit.
Now, obviously as it is, the New Atheism has managed to peel off a certain part of this constituency. But at the cost of making atheism in general even less liked than it was, and producing a "movement" atheism that even other atheists find hopelessly stupid and obnoxious. It may move units, but in every other sense it's a losing proposition and a negative contribution.
339: ah the sweet pure reason of Butterflies and Wheels. The whole piece depends on the idea that Templeton has bought a place for nutty Lennox, but I'm pretty sure nutty Lennox has been doing his thing at Green College since well before it took over Templeton College (which, being devoted to executive education was not doing well).
347: If Dawkins were to set his sights on the average neighborhood pastor, it's doubtful that he'd win an argument with them.
Yes, this.
In the sort of debate where you're going to claim to prove that theism is dangerous and atheism superior, yes, you need to know some theology.
No, you don't. The details of religious belief are irrelevant here. If you were writing a book that claimed professional football was bad because its fans tended to commit acts of violence, you wouldn't need to know the details of the offside rule. Analogy ban. Sorry.
A more apt analogy would be if you wanted to argue that football is bad because it's just a bunch of random running back and forth and why don't you read a book sometimes?
355: "tolerance of religion is bad for society regardless of its truth value" is one of Dawkins' arguments, though, isn't it?
347.1: hmm; one New Yorker article does not a nationwide religious upheaval make. In any case, the really vital and growing part of the American religious landscape these days is atheists; number of non-religious people in the US has doubled in the last ten years and it's now 15% of the population.
my theory is that that's all the BBC's Fault, for getting those young and trendy scientists and let them do the same simplified scientific pablum with pretty pictures programmes year in year out; after a while they can't do anything else.
It's better than the apparent alternative, which is to have non-scientists doing programmes about how the LHC could destroy the world or incredibly facile programmes with a tenuous relationship to science that you'd expect to see on E4. Seriously, look at the Horizons not presented by Cox or al-Khalili or someone like them and tell me they're not orders of magnitude worse.
No, you don't. The details of religious belief are irrelevant here.
I don't get that at all. If you are arguing that religion is fatally flawed because of X, Y and Z, it's pretty much on you to check if X, Y and Z actually hold. Particularly if X, Y and Z are, in fact, not beliefs held by a significant majority of the religious thinkers one has as one's target. If you are arguing against a particular world view you don't do so by picking the thickest, most poorly thought-through, unreflective and metaphysically unsophisticated version of it and making that stand-in for the rest. Just the same as one wouldn't argue against, say, evolutionary theory on the basis of some crude social Darwinist take on the same.
re: 357
I like both Cox and al-Khalili when they are doing their science advocacy thing. My annoyance at Cox is largely restricted to the Royal Television Society lecture he gave earlier this year which was poorly thought through special pleading on the behalf of science.
352: yes, it's what converted me to agneism. I will be forever grateful.
crude social Darwinist take on the same
Hey my grandparents weren't monkeys, you dope. And how did dinosaurs know how to get two eyes if Jesus didn't make it so? Riddle me that, genius.
Not social Darwinism. But brain-damaged anti-evolution arguments are pretty much my favorite thing. I tend not to find horrifying ignorance funny except in this one delicious case.
If you are arguing against a particular world view you don't do so by picking the thickest, most poorly thought-through, unreflective and metaphysically unsophisticated version of it and making that stand-in for the rest.
You might do if that's also the most widely-held and most politically powerful version of it. And particularly if the more sophisticated bits are in the business of giving intellectual top cover to the unsophisticated bit rather than policing their own side by pointing out where they've gone wrong.
re: 363
That might be somewhat true for the US, but it's certainly not true here, which is, after all, where Dawkins and Hitchens are from. I think you are right, though, that there could be more criticism of the more headbanging strands of religion from the less headbanging end of the spectrum, but it's not hard to understand why church leaders might be reluctant to stoke sectarianism, given, say, the history of the past 500 years or so.
I share ttaM's puzzlement at 354. As for 356:
one New Yorker article does not a nationwide religious upheaval make.
It's what's called an example, ajay. I wouldn't have brought it up if the only evidence were seriously one lone New Yorker article. Come now.
number of non-religious people in the US has doubled in the last ten years and it's now 15% of the population.
Well, numbers of people unaffiliated with churches have skyrocketed. Of those, "atheists" count for about one percent -- hardly claim in itself to being "the really vital and growing" anything -- various flavors of "secular" and "agnostic" for another nine or so, and "religious unaffiliated" for the final third according to this. Which is all quite interesting in its own right, but hard to see that it trumps the potential breaking of the "religious right" stranglehold on the quarter of the population represented by Evangelical Protestant churches.
But, for what it's worth, here's some wiki links to things the current Archbishop of C has said:
re: creationism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_Williams#Creationism
re: islamophobia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_Williams#Opinion_about_hijab_and_terrorism
[contrast his view with Dawkins' views on the same topic]
re: gay asylum seekers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/28/archbishop-gay-asylum-seekers
[I could also find a bunch of public pronouncements by him with which I'd disagree, I have no particular axe to grind on his behalf]
I'm a bit puzzled by the latter part of this thread... like, am I really witnessing people defending and/or proposing some sort of pressing need for ignorant, shitty arguments? Why? I am too tired. I should be in bed.
I do wonder what people are thinking when they're ticking the box 'agnostic' and not the one 'atheistic' or vice versa? Someone should do a survey on this or make a dissertation on it because I sure as hell wouldn't know what to tick and 'unaffiliated' does at any rate sum it up for me.
So, I do think that the fact that 'unaffiliated' grows is more telling than the details of subcategories. It is after all not because you collect numbers that all of them are meaningful.
(366: But it is interesting that Rowan Williams is equipped to see scapegoating while it happens, whereas the chief purveyors of the New Atheism are largely not. So much for all that superior rationality.)
Hmmm, lovely old Rowan Williams and all that, but I think that the relationship between
1) our exquisitely sensitive and tolerant Archbishop
and
2) a bunch of horrendous gaybashing Nigerian assholes
is pretty much exactly what ajay describes as "the business of giving intellectual top cover to the unsophisticated bit rather than policing their own side by pointing out where they've gone wrong"
(specifically, ttaM's last link above is one where Dr Rowan is calling for the state to do more to provide asylum to people who are fleeing persecution from his own damn church!)
362: I love these. You know what is the awesomest of this subgenre of awesome? Creationist science fairs. Like, put a multivitamin and some water in a petri dish for 6 weeks. If nothing crawls out of it, evolution is officially disproved. First prize! I think what I love about this is the obvious thought and creativity that goes into supporting an extremely fragile worldview. That and it comes from children, so the combination of head-smacking stupidity and earnest cheerfulness nearly always overshoots despairville and lands in hilarity town.
And now I disappear again. This is like drive by commenting.
Well, yeah. He's spoken out against homophobia, and called for gay asylum seekers to be granted it, but he hasn't exactly called out the members of his own church who are stoking it. Or, to the extent that he has, he's done it in a pretty milquetoast way.
Of course, here's Dawkins on Christianity in Africa:
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/624093-support-christian-missions-in-africa-no-but
[FWIW, I agree, the CoE's position is dubious. They are prepared to fling quite a bit under the bus for church unity.]
what people are thinking when they're ticking the box 'agnostic' and not the one 'atheistic' or vice versa?
Don't ask. It's dull and time-consuming. Myself, I just don't find the existence or non-existence of God/gods to be a meaningful, useful, or interesting question.
They are prepared to fling quite a bit under the bus for church unity.
Including their co-religionists in the United States, apparently. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to give a shite about Anglican politics, but AFAICS Williams basically had to choose between the Yanks and the Africans, and he picked the Africans although he's personally closer to the Yanks. Why? Fucked if I know. Perhaps an angel appeared to him and said, "You know that bishop in Uganda who wants to massacre gay people? He's your boy, the big man says so."
365.3: I was drawing on the ARIS survey which gives different figures from Pew. That 15% figure is for everyone who described themselves as "None, No religion, Humanistic, Ethical Culture, Agnostic, Atheist, or Secular."
It's not surprising that so few American atheists call themselves atheists with the bad press atheism's had for the last century or so. "Godless Communism" and all that.
That might be somewhat true for the US, but it's certainly not true here, which is, after all, where Dawkins and Hitchens are from
I don't know that it isn't true for the UK to be honest. Yes, god-botherers of all stripes have much less influence here than in the US, but I wouldn't look at, say, Northern Ireland or the Clause 28 business or the Bezhti riots and say "here is a country where the moderate and thoughtfully religious have far more power and influence than the headbangers".
I just don't find the existence or non-existence of God/gods to be a meaningful, useful, or interesting question.
You're an apatheist.
Myself, I just don't find the existence or non-existence of God/gods to be a meaningful, useful, or interesting question.
Once you get rid of the superstition and the possibility of being punished by an exceptionally petty yet all powerful being, the remaining questions amount to some pretty dry metaphysics that leaves most people cold. I find it fascinating, but it is pretty disconnected from religion as it is generally lived.
I once had a cow-orker who said he was an apathiest. His research was on the metaphysics of color perception. I can't imagine how he arrived at his priorities.
the Clause 28 business
That would be Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, and its later repeal? I don't think that proves much; specifically, it showed that Christian multimillionaires like Brian Souter could throw the kitchen sink at a campaign without moving the needle measurably. By 2003, even the Tory Party couldn't be bothered with a whipped vote (missus) on that one.
I do wonder what people are thinking when they're ticking the box 'agnostic' and not the one 'atheistic' or vice versa?
Partly for apo's reasons, partly for the 'you can't prove or disprove the existence of god' thing and partly to distinguish myself from the Harris/Hitchens/Dawkins types. I find the proselytizing aspect and its associated argument that disbelief in god is morally superior to be a mirror image of the god-botherers.
re: 381
This is where I am still happy to describe myself as an atheist. My belief in the non-existence of God* is as well supported, I think, as any other belief that I have. There's not an ounce of doubt in my mind that we live in a God-free universe. I don't have any great desire to try and persuade other people of this view, though.
* unless we are using God in some quasi-Spinozist sense, or something.
You're an apatheist.
Huh, I suppose I am. I'd somehow never encountered the term before now, though the internets tell me I probably should have.
(just to confuse people more - Bills have Clauses, Acts have Sections. So the original campaign in 1988 was against Clause 28, but the 2000 and 2003 campaigns for to repeal or keep Section 28).
unless we are using God in some quasi-Spinozist sense, or something.
Well, that's the point. I always say atheists define God in a way that makes Her easiest to not exist.
And as a Nietzschean ( and Kierkeggardian) rejection of grandbearded Nobodaddy is merely the beginning, just the easiest part of an understanding of the rejection of faith, transcendence, immateriality.
As Nietzsche says, when the imaginary world disappears, the empirical world disappears with it. I still consider most of you superstitious, just disingenuous about it.
384: You could try to become an Apotheiest. I don't think it will catch on, but you might get a compound or two of people out of it.
I mean honestly, people fucking with theology should at least accept that nominalism and the impossibility of ontology, and the implications for ethics, is at least a 1000-year-old problem. The "Four Horsemen?" I can't be bothered.
Y'all are just rejecting Jerry Falwell and Pope Ratzy and thinking yourselves liberated.
382 I have no real doubt, but my conviction isn't particularly strong. Also, IANAP, no training in it either. So to me the question 'is their some higher being outside the material universe' is an unanswerable one, except to say there seems to be absolutely no evidence, I personally feel no sense of spirituality nor need for such, and it is of no relevance to my life or concerns.
351
... But at the cost of making atheism in general even less liked than it was, ...
This seems unavoidable. It is difficult to tell people that they believe a bunch of obvious nonsense without provoking defensive opposition.
387: I thought about that but then discovered that somebody already beat me to to it.
379 maybe pwns, but I happen to think:
some pretty dry metaphysics that leaves most people cold. I find it fascinating, but it is pretty disconnected from religion as it is generally lived.
is dead wrong, and could be corrected by a reading of Nietzsche and some committed nihilists. Really, seriously disconnect metaphysics, and you are at the border of Poland or staging show trials. Now get offended.
But even more simply, everyone gets thru the day with the superstition that the "Good" exists, can guide behavior, even that it might be rewarded. They, we, are all meta-physicians.
Now, everyone, jump on the troll.
"No, no, we have gotten rid of God but kept the Good. It's so easy, we can't understand why it wasn't done three thousand years ago. Must be progress helped liberate us."
Y'all are just rejecting Jerry Falwell and Pope Ratzy and thinking yourselves liberated.
And all this time I'd thought I was rejecting Augustine and Origen and Athanasius and Clement and Paul. Thanks for putting me straight.
Really, seriously disconnect metaphysics, and you are at the border of Poland
Been there, done that.
or staging show trials.
That would be my granduncle. A very nice man to his family other than the philandering. Never kicked puppies AFAIK. An atheist.
Now get offended.
No, but maybe I'm missing something here?
394:You are really, or should be to be consistent and as rational as you think you are, also rejecting Kant, who believed the ding-in-sich was absolutely necessary.
Hell, whatever, next time some Towers come dome, waves your anti-foundationalism or volunteerism or meta-whatever at the masses and stop the carnage.
Has torture and a million dead in Iraq really cost us according to your consequentialist calculations or whatever? Looks like we and leaders have skated fine. I know I'm ok.
And all this time I'd thought ...
Don't worry, it also turns out I've been reading Kierkegaard all wrong.
That would be my granduncle. A very nice man to his family other than the philandering. Never kicked puppies AFAIK. An atheist.
Religion wasn't created to control individual behavior.
I watched you in the early aughts against the monsters. You had no arguments, nothing. And you lost.
I am no believer. But Strauss and Schmitt were really smart.
397:Yes, you were.
Try Sickness instead of Dread.
Try Sickness instead of Dread.
I would, but the Double Down is so much better than anything at Taco Bell.
And now Obama wants the widows of bin Laden. Just a little interrogation.
300 years of "Enlightenment?" Laugh til I cry.
I'd somehow never encountered the term before now, though the internets tell me I probably should have.
Huh. I honestly thought that "apatheist" was a word I'd made up.
seriously disconnect metaphysics, and you are at the border of Poland
If metaphysics is anything, it is the eternal struggle to stop us all from becoming Lithuanian.
396. Bob, if you want to talk to me go ahead, but stop imagining that I'm an American liberal. I am neither.
If metaphysics is anything, it is the eternal struggle to stop us all from becoming Lithuanian.
Ruthenians of all countries, unite!
||
"I don't think I've seen a team play to that level in a series," said Jackson
The best sustained basketball performance in a series that Phil Jackson has ever seen. Think about it. Better than Jordan's Chicago, the Shaq-Koby Lakers, better the the 80s Celtics, 80s Lakers, the best Phil Jackson has ever seen. He said it.
|>
Ruthenians of all countries, unite!
Seeking to subvert the territorial integrity of Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary?
408: And it's conveniently self-serving--that's OK he's earned it but I don't have to believe it. Dallas really did play a great series.
409. What have you got against Belarus?
387 384: You could try to become an Apotheiest.
I think the Apotheosis happened here.
330 Reading Secret Wars II and realising that the completely ridiculous over the top theology/cosmology there was in fact not that much more ridiculous than what I was taught to believe in real life....
Could the Infinity Gauntlet create a Cosmic Cube so heavy it couldn't lift it?
371: There's a more interesting question at play there, which is to ask why religion (Christian or otherwise) appears generally to be an totally different trajectories in the "developed world" and the (almost invariably far more conservative) "global South." The C of E is not the only manifestation of this; the same phenomenon is at work in Catholicism, Islam, pick a faith. (And there would seem to be a glib answer to hand, like "tolerant faith is a luxury of the affluent," but I'm not sure that's the reason.)
I don't really know that Rowan Williams has much practical leverage given that the C of E as a whole appears to be about one sneeze away from global schism. He could start excommunicating people if he doesn't want to have a church anymore, I guess, apart the dwindling few thousands of active parishioners in the UK.
That kind of dilemma -- similarly faced by the Papacy -- is one of the big problems of religion in the 21st century. There's lots of interesting and urgent debate to be had there.
377: It's not surprising that so few American atheists call themselves atheists with the bad press atheism's had for the last century or so.
And the Three Groomsmen have sure been a big help on that score, haven't they?
There's lots of interesting and urgent debate to be had there.
We could take turns callling each other racists for a while.
There's a more interesting question at play there, which is to ask why religion (Christian or otherwise) appears generally to be an totally different trajectories in the "developed world" and the (almost invariably far more conservative) "global South." The C of E is not the only manifestation of this; the same phenomenon is at work in Catholicism, Islam, pick a faith. (And there would seem to be a glib answer to hand, like "tolerant faith is a luxury of the affluent," but I'm not sure that's the reason.)
I think the fairly glib (and generally true) answer is female literacy/education.
And the Three Groomsmen have sure been a big help on that score, haven't they?
Well, the number of Americans who call themselves atheists, although still small, has grown incredibly fast in the last decade or two, so: yes, it seems they have been. Can you imagine Obama saying "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God"? His predecessor did back in 1990.
Having highly visible, outspoken atheists who are very obviously not ashamed of being atheists is a good thing for people being accepting of atheists, and for people being comfortable calling themselves atheists. That's the way it worked for lots of other previously unacceptable minorities.
why religion (Christian or otherwise) appears generally to be an totally different trajectories in the "developed world" and the (almost invariably far more conservative) "global South."
Nitpick: different trajectories implies that Northern Christians are getting more tolerant and Southern ones are getting less tolerant. Is this true, or is it just that the Northern ones are getting tolerant faster than the Southern ones?
That kind of dilemma -- similarly faced by the Papacy -- is one of the big problems of religion in the 21st century.
Power vs. morality. What a dilemma.
I think the fairly glib (and generally true) answer is female literacy/education.
What do you mean by that? The pattern I'm aware of in continental Europe is that women were considerably more religious than the men. You also had a religious polarization between militant anticlericals and right wing religious fundies.
417: Interesting; maybe so.
418: Can you imagine Obama saying "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God"? His predecessor did back in 1990.
His predecessor had to reckon with a cohesive religious right. Obama, less so. The New Atheism has little or nothing to do with that.
Well, the number of Americans who call themselves atheists, although still small, has grown incredibly fast in the last decade or two
I take it we're using the term "incredibly fast" rather loosely. But to say that atheists have "bad press" in America is putting it mildly, and that fact hasn't changed for any value of "incredibly fast" since Teh New Atheism set up shop. Seems to me you'd want visible, outspoken atheists in a situation like this who are actually admirable and knowledgeable rather than the reverse. The mere fact of being "visible" and "outspoken" is worth little of itself. Other "previously-unacceptable minorities" did not gain acceptance by settling for the "visibility" of a few blowhards.
Is this true, or is it just that the Northern ones are getting tolerant faster than the Southern ones?
Good question. I'm not sure.
Power vs. morality. What a dilemma.
Wrong and glib. The dilemma is schism vs. cohesion and has lots of quite serious implications.
Hang on: His predecessor did back in 1990.
I thought you were alluding to Clinton here, but of course 1990 would be Bush Senior, who was pandering to the religious right as part of his political base. Comparing Obama to him actually makes no sense at all. What were you thinking? The relevant comparison would be: can you see a Republican president in the future saying this sort of thing? And yes, I could.
The dilemma is schism vs. cohesion
Yes. As in "if the C of E does the moral thing and splits with the Africans, suddenly it's a tiny and shrinking church based on a single island in the North Atlantic".
I take it we're using the term "incredibly fast" rather loosely.
Tripling in 20 years is fast.
Seems to me you'd want visible, outspoken atheists in a situation like this who are actually admirable and knowledgeable rather than the reverse.
Chicken and egg problem here: any outspoken US atheist will (still) not be regarded as admirable, simply because he's an atheist.
1990 would be Bush Senior, who was pandering to the religious right as part of his political base. Comparing Obama to him actually makes no sense at all. What were you thinking?
Yes, you're quite right. How stupid of me to think that a Democratic president might ever try to pander to the religious vote. Such a thing would be unheard of!
From the survey on anti-atheist bias:
The most recent study was conducted by the University of Minnesota, which found that atheists ranked lower than "Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in 'sharing their vision of American society.' Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry."
Whoa. "Allow your children to marry"? Nice.
422: Yes. As in "if the C of E does the moral thing and splits with the Africans
Is it the moral thing? Does the C of E enjoy means of influencing events and producing good outcomes that it would lose as an insignificant, isolated church? I don't know the answer and frankly doubt that you do.
Tripling in 20 years is fast.
From just under half a percentage point to just over one percentage point? No, not really. Islam in America outpaced those gains over the same period.
any outspoken US atheist will (still) not be regarded as admirable, simply because he's an atheist.
Strikes me as excuse-making for people who are not regarded as admirable because they simply aren't admirable. A genuinely admirable outspoken atheist -- one who doesn't commit the mistakes noted in 202, for example -- would have a reasonable shot at changing that equation, at the very least at gaining general support among the unaffiliated.
423: Such a thing would be unheard of!
In that way, of course it would. Try finding a comparable quote from any Democratic president at all since 1964.
What do you mean by that? The pattern I'm aware of in continental Europe is that women were considerably more religious than the men. You also had a religious polarization between militant anticlericals and right wing religious fundies.
Well I was responding to a question about the difference between northern and southern countries. I'm not sure the glib answer works so well intra-regionally, as you suggest. For the inter-regional question, see for instance this random paper plucked from Google. Others more familiar with the literature may be able to provide better material. And of course the correlation/causation problem rears its head in this context. I'm not saying that female literacy and education necessarily leads to more liberal religious beliefs/practices, but it's hard to dispute that the lack of it helps sustain traditional patriarchal conservatism.
425: Dawkins does a decent job, despite making some serious errors. He screws up some important points by putting polemic above attention to detail, but it's not like the other side doesn't have equally flawed thinkers who are held in high regard. Just the fact that he's standing up and fighting back against the fundamentalists is praiseworthy. Demanding higher levels of rigor from him than are present in the arguments of the other side in order to receive basic respect is unfair.
Data from US 1972-2010 from the General Social Survey on religious affiliation (And yes none does not equal atheist.)
Taken from this discussion centering on Catholicism.
428: Just the fact that he's standing up and fighting back against the fundamentalists is praiseworthy.
No, not if he's doing it badly. But the funny thing is that if he were just fighting the fundamentalists, he'd come off far better than he does. His real mistake was choosing to broaden his attack beyond them without having the tools to do so.
Demanding higher levels of rigor from him than are present in the arguments of the other side in order to receive basic respect is unfair.
I disagree. Once you claim to be working to a higher standard than the people you're arguing against, there is nothing unfair in judging your efforts by the higher standard you claim to be upholding. If you fall far short of it -- and for that matter of the lower standard you claimed to be superior to -- someone ought to tell you this. Atheists do not owe some form of misguided solidarity to this kind of sophistry, quite the reverse.
429: (And yes none does not equal atheist.)
I've spoken to many otherwise very intelligent people who were raised going to church and could not tell me whether that church was Protestant or Catholic. I would suspect that a significant of the "None" responses are from fundamentalists who have fallen so far away from anything resembling actual Christianity, that they might have some idea of the distinction between Catholic and Protestant, but argue that it does not apply to them.
Somewhat related: Happy John Brown's Birthday! I still maintain he was one of the few Christians this country has ever produced who actually took his faith seriously.
431.1: From the Pew data DS linked above for an unaffiliated total of 16% , Atheist was 1.6%, Agnostic 2.4%, Nothing in Particular 12.1% split between Secular unaffiliated of 6.3% & religious unaffiliated of 5.8%. The chart from GSS data had 18% none--so probably 1/3 of those are of the sort you are describing.
"significant plurality" was what I meant to say, but I think that was fairly clear from the context.
Re: Rowan Williams discussion above
As one of Rowan Williams' American minions, I've been of three minds about him, and have recently been siding more towards respect for the guy. He's a thoughtful academic caught in a pretty severe organizational bind; the vast bulk of the membership of his Church is now in Africa and is violently, and outrageously anti-gay; the American Episcopal Church has tons of money, very few members, and fewer young priests, but has found new life and new energy by being a place that takes the message of acceptance seriously, including for gay people. Meanwhile, the Church of England seems caught between a wing of Anglo-Catholic conservative weirdos, an American-like liberal majority, and the general lethargy that comes from being the established Church in a totally anti-religious country.
The optimal choice for Anglican unity would have been to allow the Nigerians and the Americans to simply ignore one another on the issue of gay rights, and this is what the CofE tried to do for years. Unfortunately, a small but vocal minority of American Episcopalians decided to hook up with the Africans in making an affirmative anti-gay line the basis for a schism. Personally, I wish that Rowan Williams' response to the anti-gay folks had been to tell them to get fucked, and my position for years was that's what he should jus do, end of story. But he'd risk cutting off the biggest part of his Church's membership, perhaps permanently, and cutting off the liberalizing influences that remain in the African Angilcan church. Rowan Williams' response has largely been to issue stern statements about the American Church to appease the Africans, stern statements about anti-gay discrimination to not cut off the Americans completely, and generally try to muddle through in a way that will preserve Church unity and avoid kicking out either the USA or the Africans until everyone stops freaking out about the gays. That's not exactly a bold display of conscience, but that strategy seems to be working for the long term, and in some ways there's really nothing more Anglican than muddling through. So, maybe, 2 1/2 cheers for Rowan Williams?
But a big part of me still wants him to tell the Africans to get fucked, and see if the loss of donations given by generations of super rich American WASPs can swing them around to the side of humanity.
I'm well endowed, just like my denomination's parishes.
436: The politics of the split are playing out as local news around here and it is kind of fascinatingly uncomfortable to watch.
435: Not surprising. The untended look of Williams' facial hair gives him a paleo vibe.
Isn't Wicca mind-bogglingly on the ascendant in the Occident? Somewhat should write an essay on this question, if only to deploy the title "The Wicca'd Switch of the West."
Mime worship is increasing faster. Soon, the whole Supreme Court will convert. A switch to mime saves the nine.
320: As someone who doesn't believe in any religious metaphysical claims but would never be so gauche as to say he was an atheist (at least without a prefatory I guess I'm an)
It's gauche to say you're an atheist because?
I'm honestly curious about this, or at least idly curious. I can come up with all sorts of reasoning behind the sentiment, but would rather not guess.
Can you imagine Obama saying "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God"? His predecessor did back in 1990.
He mentioned atheists in his fucking inaugural address. It meant a lot to me, even if he did go on to tremble before the religious right in a lot of ways. Small steps. I can't entirely blame him.
Also, what you said in 418.2. Yes. The first loud voice is not rarely the subtlest. Yesterday I saw the current revival of The Normal Heart and had this fact brought forcefully to mind. Larry Kramer was loud, something of an egomaniac, and more of a bully than an ambassador, but important despite/because.
430.1: Who is out there with anywhere near the access to the media that Dawkins has who meets your standards? I'm serious - I'll throw my support behind them as long as they are able to make war on the fundies with any sort of effectiveness.
I avoid saying I'm an atheist unless I'm with people I trust fairly well.
On the question whether the Four Horsemen -- or Three Groomsmen -- are successful ambassadors for atheism (leave aside whether they're endorsable): I strongly suspect that the majority of Americans, anyway, has never heard of any of them.
A pro-atheism message, however dimly heard, most likely registers with most as: 'Ah, yeah, well, the leftists are trotting out their atheists now. Figures.'
In other words, I seriously doubt that any increase in atheism in this country has to do with the Horsemen/Groomsmen.
445: You live in a highly religious area, though; k-sky, who made the remark about gaucheness, lives in LA, which is Godlessness central, from what I understand. So I wondered.
Obviously one doesn't want to needlessly antagonize people who may be believers. Maybe that's all k-sky meant.
'Ah, yeah, well, the leftists are trotting out their atheists now. Figures.'
Gingrich explained that the secularists are actually in bed with Islamic extremists, which totes makes sense. If you're a moonbat.
444: Who is out there with anywhere near the access to the media that Dawkins has who meets your standards?
My standards for what? What I'm looking for is decent scholarship and honest popular writing, authors who have something worthwhile and interesting to say about religion. I'm not invested in an atheist "movement" and I'm not looking for atheist authors to lead "war on the fundies," nor looking for activists who see sloppily assaulting religion in general as a small price to pay for "war on the fundies." It's hard to tell who will produce that scholarship until other people start writing books and getting access to the media. I have a feeling it's not going to be PZ Meyers, though.
I do think it's good to have anti-fundamentalist strategy in mind (though also to realize the threat of movement conservatism is far larger than this). I just think a little realism goes a long way. The people in America who are best-placed to fracture and defeat the fundamentalist movement are in churches at this juncture, not outside them. It's therefore folly for "atheism" to pursue a stridenly anti-religion-in-general stance or to imagine itself as the anti-fundie vanguard in this climate. As a strident "movement" inattentive to the finer points of fact and argument, its far likelier role will be to provide semi-sophisticated cover for unsavory phenomena like Islamophobia than it is to strike down "the fundies." (As I've noted above, that they provide such cover is likely a major reason the New Atheists are indulged and attended to as much as they are.)
I guess I'd like to see some strident voices in favor of atheism as an intellectually and socially respectable position, not morally or rationally inferior to any given religion. I haven't actually been reading any atheist polemics, which don't sound as if they're filling that niche, but someone should.
And I don't think it should be necessary for them to have anything worthwhile or interesting to say about religion. Personally, I'm interested in religion pretty much only as it drives (or has in the past driven) people's behavior, rather than in itself. I find theology sort of entertaining in the same way astrology is -- as complicated systems that people have put a lot of mental effort into -- but in the absence of any thing I've ever seen that I'd accept as evidence for belief, that's mostly just intellectual tourism.
452: And I don't think it should be necessary for them to have anything worthwhile or interesting to say about religion.
If the topic at hand is, say, irreligion and the reasons it is socially and intellectually respectable, talking about religion is pretty much not avoidable, and talking about ineffectively or ignorantly not desirable.
The people in America who are best-placed to fracture and defeat the fundamentalist movement are in churches at this juncture, not outside them.
This is certainly right, and no, I don't support the veiled agenda in the work of the Groomsmen (which you have me taking much more seriously now); BUT there is absolutely something to be said for 'outing' oneself as an atheist, in much the same way that coming out in gay and lesbian communities is valuable.
We also have that thing called separation of church and state: that's another point of push-back. Social conservatives and culture warriors are doing their best to erode the separation, and we do have the means to combat that, legally, legislatively, and electorally. Multi-pronged front, then; and while I don't like the language of war, increasing fundamentalism in this country is a serious problem, so.
The regional variations within the US in church attendance really are quite striking (Gallup results on "attending weekly or almost every week."--linked here before, probably by me.)
10 states over 50%, led by Mississippi 63%, Alabama 58%, South Carolina 56% (all 10 except Utah in the South, Texas is 10th at 50%). Bottom 10 (23% - 32%--Vermont lowest) are the six in New England, Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington.
454: BUT there is absolutely something to be said for 'outing' oneself as an atheist, in much the same way that coming out in gay and lesbian communities is valuable.
True enough.
Nevada in the low group as well.
the reasons it is socially and intellectually respectable, talking about religion is pretty much not avoidable, and talking about ineffectively or ignorantly not desirable.
The reasons it is socially respectable is that rates of irreligion aren't correlated with anything bad -- the fact that the UK is swarming with godless heathen hasn't called down fire from the heavens or raised the crime rate. You need social science to back that up, but I don't think you need to say anything interesting about religion.
The reasons that it is intellectually respectable don't require a lot of engagement with religion as far as I can see as well -- for me, and for most atheists I'm familiar with, it comes down to lack of evidence.
I thought I read that actual church attendance varies way less. It's just that in the south people lie and say they go to church weekly. Though this was a US vs other countries thing, not regional.
455: Freakin' New England and the Pacific Northwest: what is it with those heathens? I can't believe they manage to conduct an actual society.
The argument "it's fine to write about something without learning the first thing about it" is totally baffling. Particularly when it's not being made by Matthew Yglesias.
459: That is ringing a bell ... and we might have discussed it. Too bad there aren't any Archives to check.
461: But I don't want atheists to write about religion. I want them to write about their own beliefs about the existence of the supernatural (that it doesn't) and about the effects on society of the existence of large numbers of people who agree with them (that they're harmless).
455: I'm always cautious about church attendance as a synecdoche for fundamentalism. I know right-wing Christians who are significantly-less-than-regular churchgoers. And when I was growing up, going to one of the most liberal churches in a liberal city in a liberal denomination, there were plenty of people who never missed a Sunday except for serious illness. And there were a bunch of people, my family included, who practically lived at the church.
In the case of states in the Deep South, it does seem likely to me that many of the regular churchgoers are attending significantly right-of-center churches, but I'm not sure that that correlation implies causation.
Has there ever been a character on a popular American television show who was an atheist? Or in a movie?
I think most of the characters on Bones are atheists. Isn't House an atheist?
465: You missed the episode of the Brady Bunch where Alice and Sam the butcher almost split over her "opiate of the people" remark.
465: What springs first to mind because it's recent: Glee, season II, somewhat infuriating but also somewhat gratifying episode about Kurt's dad being in the hospital, several atheists. I imagine there are better examples.
458: LB, you're making a utilitarian argument against a faith-based argument (or position). Religious believers will not be remotely swayed, much less converted: they are not weighing social scientific evidence for or against belief in God in virtue of the ramifications of doing or not doing so.
And now this thread has come full circle.
463: The minimal conversation -- about how irreligion doesn't necessarily lead to cannibalistic anarchy and is based on respectable regard for the role of evidence -- is already part of the atheist literature, even of the Groomsmen. Granted, in the latter it's somewhat obscured by overreaching and various other distractions, but strip those out and what you have is basically a dry pamphlet.
Which might be a useful exercise. Once. Twice, maybe, if done as a child's primer. But it won't sustain a literature.
And 469 is true, of course. Which takes you into why social scientific evidence should trump expectations of salvation, which leads swiftly into fairly complicated philosophical thickets heavily-populated with religion.
I was about to type House. The Mash fuckups, Clint Eastwood's post-Unforgiven heroes, explicitly including Gran Torino. Sonny Crockett, but not Tubbs.
465: Pretty constant topic of discussion on "Six Feet Under".
470: irreligion doesn't necessarily lead to cannibalistic anarchy
Oh man.
469: I haven't got any interest in converting religious believers. I'd like some aggressive spokespeople arguing that my ilk aren't contemptible, that there's nothing intellectually lacking about our beliefs, and that we don't cause social harm by existing.
Expecting atheist spokespeople to be scholars of religion before they speak out in public seems doomed to me -- obviously, there's a huge risk they're going to sound contemptuous. It's not a subject that they're likely to be sympathetically interested in.
474: I know. What's the point of an expanding new belief system if it won't?
I haven't got any interest in converting religious believers.
Me either. I just want them to keep their filthy religions out of my government.
Michael Stivic (aka Meathead aka Rob Reiner) was an atheist on All in the Family which was the most popular tv show in the U.S. for several years back in the 1970s.
I'd like some aggressive spokespeople arguing that my ilk aren't contemptible, that there's nothing intellectually lacking about our beliefs, and that we don't cause social harm by existing.
You can plausibly do (i) and (iii) without mentioning religion (although the point is trivial: atheists aren't necessarily mass murderers? awesome), but for reasons that have been explained ad nauseum in this thread you can't do (ii) without engaging with the arguments people have been making for centuries about religion and what it does and doesn't entail. Or rather, you can do (ii) without doing that, but you can't do it well.
475: I'd like some aggressive spokespeople arguing that my ilk aren't contemptible, that there's nothing intellectually lacking about our beliefs
I suspect that the religious fear not that your ilk are intellectually lacking, but that you're spiritually lacking. The task would be to come up with a way to respond to that charge.
respond to that charge
The New Yorker's a weekly, isn't it? 30 Rock as well. What more do people want?
480: This is where Hitchens might be on to something. He always seems to have spirits around.
Oh also every Woody Allen character ever.
I agree with 475 and disagree with 479. Although I know a lot about one particular strain of one particular religion, I really don't think atheists need to know anything about the history of religion or theology. Brilliant people thinking about something made up for millennia is going to result in a huge body of "knowledge" but that doesn't change the fundamental fact that it's make-believe.
Well, I don't think that atheists "need" to know anything. But if you seriously want to argue that "that there's nothing intellectually lacking about our beliefs" you pretty much are required to size up the competition seriously.
484: Which is different from just saying "I'm right" in what way?
The same is true in reverse for non-atheists, of course.
480: The task would be to come up with a way to respond to that charge.
"Define 'spiritually.'"
To be clear, saying "I'm right and you're wrong" is your right, but you can't start a discussion with a theist on those terms and then wonder why they went 'meh' and wandered away.
But the point *isn't* to start a discussion with a theist.
It's to give atheists, especially young atheists, a sense that they're not alone or screwed up.
And to give atheists some visibility in the public sphere so that one day being publically atheist will be accepted in the culture.
Maybe atheists could do a series like the "it gets better" videos. But that returns to the problem of who would appear in them.
(although the point is trivial: atheists aren't necessarily mass murderers? awesome),
You know, given all the polling data about the hostility toward atheists out there, the attitude that it's contemptibly trivial for atheists to work on opposing that hostility seems misplaced. I find it kind of depressing that unless something changes, my kids can't run for office unless they find Jesus or start lying about their beliefs.
They can run for office if they move to the bay area! Actually, I bet there's places in NYC you can be an atheist and run for office... Though there's the weird issue that it's ok to be atheist as long as you're Jewish.
But if you seriously want to argue that "that there's nothing intellectually lacking about our beliefs" you pretty much are required to size up the competition seriously.
And really. The implication of this is that there's a proof of the existence of God out there that has an intellectual claim to be taken seriously (where 'taken seriously' means 'accepted as conveying something true about the nature of reality'.) I'm not saying anything negative about people who do believe in a god or gods: they have faith for whatever their reasons are. But there isn't a body of argument for the existence of the divine out there that there's any reason for someone who doesn't start out with faith to take seriously.
497: You can keep asserting that, if you'd like, but it's really just a version of "I'm right." Which may have its place as poelmic, but is pretty boring in terms of actually engaging in a convincing discussion of religion ("conveying something true about the nature of reality" is not as simple as you seem to think). Which is exactly the problem with the Undergraduate Atheists that started off this post.
I am sympathetic towards atheists who feel excluded in communities where atheists aren't common.
One of the weirdest things about religion is the idea that we have choices about factual beliefs. That is to say, theists often consider my unbelief a moral failing on my part, rather than an intellectual failing.
Belief in God simply isn't one of my available choices. People who are facile about choosing factual beliefs (as opposed to factual conclusions or moral beliefs) are very scary to me. (Though, of course, many of them are very nice people.)
So what's the positive argument for why I need to know about theology. What is it that we need to know which would raise doubt about atheism? The claim of a particular God is a wildly strong unusual claim which requires a lot of evidence. Just thinking there's not extraordinary evidence for such an extraordinary claim isn't something that requires tons of study.
You can keep asserting that, if you'd like, but it's really just a version of "I'm right."
No, it's a version of saying that you have no arguments that illuminate or undercut the nature of my beliefs. I'm sure you have all sorts of intellectually fascinating intellectual disciplines internal to the religious world view, once you're talking about the nature of the divine that you have faith in. But there's nothing out there that has any intellectual heft in relation to establishing that the divine exists at all in any meaningful sense.
Note that I am not saying that I have a compelling argument that I'm right about the non-existence of the divine that you should accept. I don't. I can't disprove the existence of God to you, and I'm not interested in trying. But you don't have any way of proving the existence of God or anything divine to someone like me who doesn't come into the discussion with belief.
If you think such an argument exists -- that someone who really understood it should accept that the divine exists, that atheists are simply wrong, and if they were more intellectually curious and respectful they would learn enough to change their minds -- I'd like a citation to somewhere I can find it. I expect you to react to this request as if I were being an aggressive asshole: that's not my intent. I just want to make it clear that compelling evidence and arguments for the existence of the divine aren't out there.
Once we agree on that, I don't see any real point, for an atheist, in engaging with theology, or with religion on any level other than the sociological.
500:So what's the positive argument for why I need to know about theology.
You don't need to know anything, gracehoper, but only enough to sit under the tree, eating one mulberry leaf a day, and the itchy place behind her ears that makes the dog's head go sideways.
All else is vanity.
Anyway, I'm off to ride my bike.
I especially have no interest in learning about "theism." If you can point me to the specific religion that's right and the specific claims it makes and evidence it has to support it, then that's something that'd be worth studying.
re: 500
As mentioned above, what a lot of religious thinkers believe about God isn't anything like the simple caricature that it's often presented as. There's a lot of different strands of thinking about God and many of them aren't of some personified Middle-Eastern sky god who overextended himself. FWIW, none of those versions of God have me convinced either, and I don't think anyone has to have explored a bunch of theology to feel comfortable in their non-belief. My own reading on the topic is cursory at best* and I'm entirely comfortable in my atheism.
However, if you are setting yourself up as someone with an authoritative take on some of these questions, and _writing_ about them for a wide audience, I think it probably does behoove you to make a bit of an effort.
* I've studied philosophy of religion, but as I'm sure Kotsko would argue, analytic philosophy of religion isn't much cop.
If you can point me to the specific religion that's right
Catholics will give you free wine. That doesn't necessarily make them right about anything, but, hey, free wine.
442 and 448: It's gauche to say you're an atheist because?
'Gauche' is me being a bit silly, but here are my reasons:
1. I live in a vastly, comfortably secular world.
2. Where I find religious people, it's usually in the context of allegiances, so I have no interest in picking fights about first principles not relevant to material struggles...
3. ...or, as a creative writer, I'm more interested in how people experience religion than telling them they're wrong to.
4. I'm Jewish, and as long as no one says that God meant for me to live in Zion, I don't really need to bring it up. OT Yahweh is such a freak that I'm more interested in his role in the story than in the question of his existence, about which apatheistic fits the bill.
5. Even on the level of national politics, I think it's much more important to have a pluralistic public sphere than to delegitimate the foundations of other people's moral systems.
If I really had to interact with hateful, restrictive religious practices, I'm sure I'd be much more attracted to the Horsemen. Anyone who's had to suffer under fundie assholes, I do not begrudge them admiration for that sort of thing. Me, it doesn't turn me on.
Also, it doesn't seem like there's very much to say about atheism. To the extent that science contradicts religious dictats, trumpet loud and clear, but to know that someone like Halford believes in God strikes interests me much more than the fact that I don't.
I find the resistance to being informed about what you want to dismiss completely mystifying, to be honest.
that someone like Halford believes in God strikes interests me much more
You mean lightning? I believe in lightning.
It's when the ball hops out of the gutter to knock out all ten pins.
ttaM, is your 509 to LB's 501? I could make a stab at defending that, but I don't know if that's what mystifies you.
509: (Got interrupted before leaving.) It's not resistance to being informed, so much as resistance to the assertion that atheists are boring and intellectually lacking if they aren't scholars of religion. There's nothing wrong with religion as an area of study, but in the absence of pre-existing belief, there's also nothing wrong with being uninterested in religion, or with talking positively about atheism despite being uninterested in religion.
someone who really understood it should accept that the divine exists, that atheists are simply wrong, and if they were more intellectually curious and respectful they would learn enough to change their minds
I'm tempted to say Mark Johnston in the book linked in the original post, but of course I haven't read the book. But there's something of a survey here, which may indicate that the question is (at least) complicated, whatever side you come down on.
I should certainly leave this to the philosophers, which I most certainly am not (not even an undergraduate philosopher), but there's also a difference philosophical justifications of religion, which (my understanding is) there is a long and rich philosophical tradition of, and Christian Apologetics. The latter, of course, does rely onfaith (though a robust atheism would also need an explanation of the rejection of faith).
I do agree with Ttam that "I don't think anyone has to have explored a bunch of theology to feel comfortable in their non-belief" which may be all that you're saying, and which is fine. Certainly my own non-atheism does not rely primarily (or even secondarily) on reading theology or philosophy. But if I wanted to become a responsible popular writer explaining why atheism was bunk, I'd probably want to familiarize myself with the best available arguments for atheism, and I'd expect an atheist arguing against theism to do the same in reverse, which is all I am saying.
re: 513
But that wasn't my point. I don't think common-or-garden atheists need have any need or desire to read theology. I don't think people have to make that effort if they don't want to. I largely don't myself -- I've read enough to have some sense of the level of my own ignorance, and also enough to know that I probably can't be arsed reading enough to become deeply informed about it either.
What I think is mystifying is that some people think that _those people putting themselves forward as public critics_ of a particular area of our culture and history needn't be bothered to learn anything about it either. I apply the same standard to every other area, too. If you are putting your head above the public parapet, do the fucking work. If not, shut up.
The 'shut up' directed at Harris, et al, not people on this thread.
500: My point wasn't a need to learn about theology, but that eventually you have to anchor a normative argument on some premise. I'm guessing this premise will be something like the universal equality of humans or what have you. There are a variety of secular arguments for this, and while one hopes the sentiment spreads, it isn't obvious to me that these are at the core emperically supported more than the religions you call make believe.
The 'shut up' directed at Harris, et al, not people on this thread.
And with this comment, I dodge that bullet.
In the real world, in my experience, people who actually believe in a religion aren't persuaded away either by the "LOL SKY FAIRY" sort of argument you get from PZ Myers, or by logic. It happens more likely because of the tyrannical or unreliable behavior of one of their religious leaders.
488: "Define 'spiritually.'"
Good answer (as you know perfectly well)! I think if my religious-believer interlocutor provided a working definition of "spirituality", I'd try to go about showing that atheists are quite well in possession of that. I'd probably talk about principles like fundamental human dignity, responsibility for one's actions, protection of the innocent, charity toward the needy, generosity of soul, forgiveness and understanding, reverence for the elders, and so on and so forth.
If their definition of spirituality required the harboring of a belief that God exists, we'd have a problem.
I take it the Johnston that neB linked to is engaged in a project something like that, though he apparently wants to make the case for a non-supernatural theology, while I don't see the point of retaining a conception of God at all.
475: Expecting atheist spokespeople to be scholars of religion before they speak out in public seems doomed to me
Well, fair enough. I guess I'd really just settle for expecting atheist spokespeople to be scholars of religion when they claim to be scholars of religion.
520:I'd probably talk about principles like fundamental human dignity, responsibility for one's actions, protection of the innocent, charity toward the needy, generosity of soul, forgiveness and understanding, reverence for the elders, and so on and so forth.
Chu Hsi would like you, but he would say spirituality has nothing to do with those things, and those things are better for it.
Or, congratulations you have achieved, or can see, the Ethical. You are the good comma, pleased with your place on the page between words, satisfied with doing your job. But you can't see the Spiritual, apparently don't want to, and will never become a Self.
A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self?
Bad commas like me have a better shot.
I don't know what Chu Hsi has to do with the discussion, bob.
Meanwhile, in reflecting on the whole "spiritually lacking" argument coming from the theist (which argument I invented), I realized that there's really no approach whatsoever that might gain respect from those whose cars -- or churches -- bear legends like "Accept Jesus as your savior" and whatnot.
I've never told anyone this, but I really like that song about how "What if God was one of us, too?" It sums up my feelings well, and, personally, I identify strongly with the failure to deploy the subjunctive correctly.
524:Okay you don't know what the things listed in 522.1 have to do with Chu Hsi or rationalist agnostic Neo-Confucianism, or what raNC could have to do with this discussion. Right. Boring. This thread is so boring.
Hmmm...thinking of Three Stages
1) Emotional - Aesthetic
2) Rational - Ethical
...
...
Not Emotional + Rational, K was the anti-Hegelian.
Spiritual = Unemotional and irrational?!
The Sociopath! The Seducer.
I don't think common-or-garden atheists need have any need or desire to read theology.
Which implies that public critics of religion should have that need or desire. But I think this is a viewpoint which somehow privileges Christianity, no? I mean, if Dawkins presented a (this remark will draw fire, but I don't mean it nastily) brilliant analysis of the Kabbalah as the backbone of his critique, that would seem pretty weird. The whole point is that many, or even most, religions do have strong factual claims about the world and the existence of God, and those claims have no credible supporting evidence. And each specific religion has its own brand of intelligentsia, and ways to understand those claims as metaphors about the human condition, but that isn't what this is about.
(this remark will draw fire, but I don't mean it nastily)
Strike that. I originally wrote Greek mythology and then thought better of it and substituted Kabbalah.
religions do have strong factual claims about the
world and the existence of God, and those claims have no credible supporting evidence.
Oh, just fuck you.
531: We've been so worried about you guys!
Someone help us tell apart the saved and the dammed.
What exactly is required to tell a Dominican nun or a Mennonite child that the evidence they think they have for the existence of God is not "credible" even though they believe? "I know in my heart..."
"Your heart lies! But my atheist heart is true"
Arrogant, hating, fanatic elitists are so fucking full of hate for the human race and its history that I might light the bonfires. You are scary and dangerous.
This thread has been pretty limited in its entertainment value, but bob really manages to put the kibosh on it. Once again. To nobody's surprise, he managed to take it from sort of 'meh' to grindingly tiresome in a jiffy. Such a jolly, delightful ghoul is he.
And Stanley should be medicated before he strikes again.
I was about to give a serious answer to 531, but then I saw that bob wrote it.
Fuck you too, bob.
All we wanted was a chance, but Jason committed the sin of Onan.
461
The argument "it's fine to write about something without learning the first thing about it" is totally baffling. Particularly when it's not being made by Matthew Yglesias.
The first thing about religion is that it is full of obvious nonsense. I don't see much need to learn more than that.
537:TJ's only other comment in this thread:
10I am willing to take the mere fact that he has a Ph.D. to be an adequate sign that he is obviously not an idiot.
You are generous.
We are so appreciate your scintillating contributions to the discourse, TJ.
Like I said, the entertainment value was low.
AEIEIIEEEIEIIAIAIIRIRIR!
535: tell a Dominican nun [...]Arrogant, hating, fanatic elitists are so fucking full of hate for the human race
Umm, yeah, well, if I ran a clinic for poor people that got millions of dollars in donations, I would give them morphine when they needed it. That's the kind of fanatical elitist I am though, arrogantly and hatefully trying to help people out.
469
LB, you're making a utilitarian argument against a faith-based argument (or position). Religious believers will not be remotely swayed, much less converted: they are not weighing social scientific evidence for or against belief in God in virtue of the ramifications of doing or not doing so.
It appears to me that many religious people are just taking the path of least resistance, following the customs of their parents. They are not deeply invested in the doctrine of their religion but may like the social aspects. Which means they are open to evidence based arguments.
544 is more hate. Can you people see yourselves?
I hope I've killed this thread. It's ugly.
Sorry about the hate, bob. Ever since we dropped that hydrogen bomb on the nuclear reactor in Japan, I think the radiation has been affecting my brain.
495
... I find it kind of depressing that unless something changes, my kids can't run for office unless they find Jesus or start lying about their beliefs.
They can run. And atheists have been elected to offices other than President. And I think seriously running for President necessarily involves lots of lying.
535
... are so fucking full of hate ...
You aren't especially well positioned to criticize other people for being haters.
More looms! We need more looms!
Speaking of running, now that I'm running and walking more, I keep getting the foot fungus. It's only on the three smaller toes of each foot. I figure that is because those toes are so pressed together that there isn't enough ventilation to stop fungal growth. The gap between the big toe and the next toe is significant and there isn't a problem there. So, rather than giving all my money to Big Clotrimazole or wearing sandals, I'm thinking of getting the second from the smallest toe removed. I don't think it does anything and then the other toes would get more air.
I don't think it does anything and then the other toes would get more air.
Doable but it looks a bit weird in open toed sandals and it does make it a bit harder to get comfortable shoes. Or so says my mom who had an unfortunate incident with a lawnmower way back when.
551: Alternately, you could get the toes fused together, so there wouldn't be any spaces for the fungus to grow in. But obviously you're too much of a arrogant, fanatic elitist to do that.
Moby I think you should just clutch an older penny between those last toes, in order to kill off the fungus. Shouldn't interfere much with your day-to-day.
552: Your mom lost her second toe but not the little toe to a mower?
I don't see much wrong with the naive atheist view.
555: that little piggy went AHHH AHHHHh ahhhhahhhhHhHH
I hear Madison Avenue was fun, back in the day.
As usual, LB says what I want to say better than I can say it myself.
501: No, it's a version of saying that you have no arguments that illuminate or undercut the nature of my beliefs. . . . there's nothing out there that has any intellectual heft in relation to establishing that the divine exists at all in any meaningful sense.
To establish this in any convincing way, your hypothetical atheist go-to guy or gal would probably have to provide some samples of arguments that are commonly thought to illuminate or undercut the nature of their beliefs. You're back to talking about religion. So, better bone up.
If your hypothetical defender of the unfaith were actually to say something like that business about "there's nothing out there that has any intellectual heft in relation to establishing [etc]," they'd be manifesting exactly the self-undermining overconfidence that the Groomsmen do. It's the rawest form of question-begging to define "intellectual heft" as that which already supports your position, and it's fairly obvious that religious traditions continue to have the "intellectual heft" to win converts even among the educated. The Defender of the Unfaith might think his arguments are better, but would have to put in the work to demonstrate why he thinks so.
Again, which brings you back to talking about religion.
ttaM has it exactly right at 515.
Note that I am not saying that I have a compelling argument that I'm right about the non-existence of the divine that you should accept. I don't. I can't disprove the existence of God to you, and I'm not interested in trying. But you don't have any way of proving the existence of God or anything divine to someone like me who doesn't come into the discussion with belief.
Whoops. The last paragraph is obviously LB's, not mine.
Arg. To argue for a particular position, you do not have to exhaustively survey all possible alternative positions, especially if they obviously invoke entities that are not hypothesized on the basis of any evidence whatsoever.
562: Arg. To argue for a particular position, you do not have to exhaustively survey all possible alternative positions,
No, you just have to eschew making extravagant claims about your own arguments in relation to others that you cannot actually support. This involves actually studying others' claims so that you know where those boundaries lie. A good author will put in that effort. A bad and counterproductive one will not.
563: But I feel like that's a criticism not of the overall goal of the writers in question, but just of infelicitous phrasings in which they might have claimed things they shouldn't about what other people say. Since I haven't actually read these people, I should probably shut up, though.
564: just of infelicitous phrasings
Giving your readership the false impression that their worldview is in sole possession of "intellectual heft" (just to take LB's formulation as an example) would be a matter of serious and damaging distortion, not "just of infelicitous phrasings." The sins of the Groomsmen are on a similar order.
My vague sense is that back in the day, when publicly expressing atheism was just becoming politically possible in Europe and America, the atheists who were making arguments in the public sphere were both (a) probably either recent dropouts from Christianity or at least educated in a Christian context, and (b) operating in a culture in which the default assumption was religious belief. So they were both more familiar with religious history and theology than most atheists today, and more inclined to engage seriously with religious arguments. After a while, a self-sustaining intellectual culture that was largely atheistic became established. You could be an atheist pretty much by default, depending on your upbringing and education, and you didn't have to deal with the details of religion. That's the milieu that the Four Horsemen come from, a baseline of a fundamental lack of knowledge.
Which doesn't make their ignorant blathering about religion okay. But we (atheists) need people to do for atheism what progressive theologians try to do for God: express it in new conceptual terms that respond to the concerns of the day. I'm tempted to say (as a few people have said upthread, I think) that the fundamentalists and other spiritually and intellectually impoverished believers that are so numerous and visible these days essentially invite responses like Harris's. He's crude and ignorant, but so are they. That doesn't excuse Harris's faults. He's not worth reading if you want any kind of nuance or even care all that much for facts. He's like an atheist Joel Osteen or something.
The problem is, the pool of atheists who are smart, nuanced in their thinking, knowledgeable about religion (because they used to be religious or else somehow developed enough of an interest to do the required work to learn about it), and interested in writing polemics against religion is probably small to nonexistent. Nonbelievers who study religion have interesting things to say about it as scholars, but sociology or history aren't theology or atheology.
565
Giving your readership the false impression that their worldview is in sole possession of "intellectual heft" (just to take LB's formulation as an example) would be a matter of serious and damaging distortion, not "just of infelicitous phrasings." ...
See I think this isn't false, I don't believe elaborate rationalizations of nonsense constitute intellectual heft.
568 is missing "Despite what I usually write here."
568: elaborate rationalizations of nonsense
Question-begging again. You don't get to assume this.
I should have thought of her earlier, but catching up on today's comments made me think of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her extremely provocative and public atheism (""the most hated woman in America." per Life magazine in 1964--and she was certainly widely known and widely mocked, and somewhat effective.). I honestly don't know how to assess her impact; but if anyone was going to break through on that the way she did at the time it was probably going to be someone as unhinged as she.
567: The problem is, the pool of atheists who are smart, nuanced in their thinking, knowledgeable about religion (because they used to be religious or else somehow developed enough of an interest to do the required work to learn about it), and interested in writing polemics against religion is probably small to nonexistent.
Exactly, and with good reason. Because being nuanced in your thinking and knowledgeable about religion makes "polemics against religion" a genre of limited interest, and increases awareness that atheism is merely a potential component of belief systems that can themselves vary widely in sophistication and things like intellectual heft. I don't feel any common cause with people merely because they happen to share the single trait of atheism with me; atheism can be and often is compatible with any number of worldviews as eminently silly, or dangerous, or hateful, as anything the dregs of religion ever had to offer. What's of interest to me (and to many of those who aren't impressed by the Four Horsemen approach) is the broader context. And if there's anything likely to benefit the repute of "atheism" in the current day and age, this kind of awareness -- a frank acknowledgment of this reality -- is it.
Apart from the childish satisfaction of tit-for-tat, having someone like Harris of your party is a liability. The "fundies" have an entrenched religious establishment behind them, "atheism" doesn't, it should be fairly easy to see who's going to benefit most from the ignorance vs. ignorance game and it's not the atheists.
Thanks to Halford for 434, by the way. Interesting stuff, and I tend to agree with the tentative conclusion, though I'm nowhere near knowledgeable enough about the internal dynamics of the Anglican confession to feel certain.
To some extent you do get to ignore the elaborate justifications of transparent nonsense. The whole point is that the elaborate justifications are just that: elaborate justifications. Magic just doesn't exist no matter how much effort you put into explaining why it's never there when you look.
I mean I'll admit that in a formal sense it's question begging, but it's a question begging that has a long history (it's basically the reverse of what Paul does in the end of Romans 1).
At any rate, I think ideas that appear to be transparent nonsense need really strong evidence not elaborate justifications. If the justification is too baroque and intricate it's just not very compelling.
To some extent you do get to ignore the elaborate justifications of transparent nonsense.
You just don't get to automatically assume this is all The Other Worldview consists of.
I mean, you can. It just makes your opinion worth little.
Ok, tell me something concrete that is not elaborate an elaborate justification. Just one small thing that's clearly true and doesn't require me spending years of study.
Oh, and tell me which religion you're picking. Cause there's certainly no reason for me to study all of them, given that the vast majority must be wrong.
576
You just don't get to automatically assume this is all The Other Worldview consists of.
How much nonsense do you have to plow through until you can assume that's all there is?
And "The Other Worldview" is misleading in that there is not a single religious viewpoint. There is a host of completely incompatible viewpoints. As someone said, the world's religions can't all be correct but they can all be wrong.
I mean I personally enjoy knowing things like the difference between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism or why it's not kosher to cook chicken in cow's milk as much as the next person. But I also enjoy knowing why Balrogs have wings (and why anyone who disagrees is a heretic). Elaborately invented worlds are interesting and fun, but they're just that: elaborately invented worlds that aren't the one we live in.
(Or to put it another way, someone who puts snake-handling and "speaking-in-tongues" on the same plane of "elaborate justifications of nonsense" as a theological concept like Ayn Sof, on the grounds of their both being tied to theism, is simply announcing ignorance and incuriosity and should not be surprised that their views are correspondingly devalued and treated lightly.)
How much nonsense do you have to plow through until you can assume that's all there is?
Question-begging yet again.
Stop accusing us of question begging and give us some evidence of your position. Or tell us what your position is!
Oh, 579: And "The Other Worldview" is misleading in that there is not a single religious viewpoint.
I know. But tell that to the atheists who imagine themselves being pitted against "theism," and not a host of varied belief systems. It's a shorthand for that attitude, which I obviously don't agree with.
Speaking in tongues is wrong, Ayn Sof isn't even wrong.
578: Cause there's certainly no reason for me to study all of them, given that the vast majority must be wrong.
Why? This only holds if you accept the exclusivist framing of certain variants of Abrahamic religion. Actual curiosity about the subject of belief would require you not to do this.
583: Stop accusing us of question begging
Stop begging questions and I will.
I've written far more on this thread than I should have done, and repeated my position ad nauseam. Just do a search for my nick through the thread and you shall be enlightened, grasshopper.
About what subject of whose belief? Clearly it's ridiculous to think that it's the requirement of atheists to know everything about every belief that anyone has ever had.
587: I think it's a requirement of people who purport to be rational inquirers into belief to be interested in a broad range of belief. Many "atheists" of course do not fall into this category, and yes, I respect them less because of that.
"I respect them less" as commentators on belief, that is. Otherwise they may well be perfectly nice people.
586
Why? This only holds if you accept the exclusivist framing of certain variants of Abrahamic religion. Actual curiosity about the subject of belief would require you not to do this.
I think it is an empirically true fact about actually existing religions that there is no large fraction that are mutually compatible.
586: I think history disproves that contention many times over.
Could you give some examples of compatible religions?
(I disagree slightly with Shearer on this point... I think all the comprehensible religions are incompatible, but that there's a bunch of mystical religions that I find incomprehensible and that may be compatibly incomprehensible.)
589
I think it's a requirement of people who purport to be rational inquirers into belief to be interested in a broad range of belief. Many "atheists" of course do not fall into this category, and yes, I respect them less because of that.
I don't see any great virtue in being knowledgeable about a wide variety of superstitions.
594: Buddhism and Shintoism would be an obvious example, as would Hinduism and Jainism, as would Buddhism and Confucianism (punctuated by periods of conflict, but the conflict is not the bulk of the story). The compatibility between various forms of pagan and Christian belief has shaped the very nature of Christianity's evolution.
One of the major Abrahamic religions explicitly advocates toleration of the other two (that would be the much-reviled Islam) and has frequently behaved as such for very long stretches of history. Variants of Christianity and Judaism have also managed long periods of profitable and peaceful coexistence despite direct apparent incompatibility, as have seemingly mutually-incompatible versions of Christianity (including the modern-era entente between Catholicism and Protestantism). All these creeds have also had periods of vicious conflict, but focusing on the conflict to the exclusion of the coexistence is an incomplete perspective that's quite dishonest to the history as a whole.
I don't see any great virtue in being knowledgeable about a wide variety of superstitions.
Qwest. Chun. Begging.
That believers manage to coexist is not the same thing as saying that the beliefs could *both be true.*
598: So, for example, one of the useful features of having actual curiosity about belief is that you know about things like "ecumenicalism." Which are sort of important to know about, because they play a major role in how the modern faiths interact with each other and are part of the reason why it's possible to have terms like "Judaeo-Christian Tradition."
That's another one of many reasons why being incurious is foolish.
Fuck you. I'm not incurious. I'm arguing for why ignorance is a reasonable point of view here, not actually ignorant myself.
(599 is to say nothing, of course, about how many traditions in fact do not lay claim to exclusive truth, which again is an increasingly-localized feature associated with subsets of Abrahamic tradition.)
601: I'm arguing for why ignorance is a reasonable point of view here
And that's a doomed enterprise, and you shouldn't be. Especially not in defense of a "tradition," if "atheism" may be termed such, that disproportionately claims to value reason.
592
I think history disproves that contention many times over
We are talking past each other, I meant in 591 "mutually compatible" in the sense that their tenets didn't contradict each other not in the sense that their adherents could co-exist.
604: Their adherents co-existed in no small part by finding common ground between their creeds, which is a significant part of the story to this day.
I'm having a hard time seeing why most of these arguments couldn't also be applied to, for instance, astrology or alchemy. They're interesting bits of history, which have counted intellectual giants among their defenders and contributed to embryonic stages of intellectual disciplines that are still viable today, and yet I can safely say that there is nothing interesting to learn from them without having to go to the effort of seeking out the most advanced and authoritative versions of their claims.
606: I'm having a hard time seeing why most of these arguments couldn't also be applied to, for instance, astrology or alchemy.
Well, I dunno, maybe some study of the modern religions in question could provide some clues. Wacky notion, apparently.
We're done here! We're between banks right now, just make those cheques out to "Cash."
Did 606 somehow imply, in contradiction to comments earlier in this thread, that I have managed to live my life in total ignorance of all modern religions? 'Cause I'm not seeing that in what I wrote.
609: 607 was perhaps unjust, I'm just completely sick of / depressed by this thread at this point. Carry on.
I think the issue, whether you're talking Christianity or astrology, is the same. The distinction is between being interested in learning about it for its own sake (which I agree there's no reason to expect) and learning about it in order to be more persuasive in your arguments against it. Maintaining an open willful ignorance of it betrays contempt for them which will render you less persuasive, not to mention assholish.
I don't think LB or anyone here (even James!) is being assholish in not being interested in religion, because they're not not making public arguments and proselytizing for atheism. 515.2 puts it well.
564:
Giving your readership the false impression that their worldview is in sole possession of "intellectual heft" (just to take LB's formulation as an example) would be a matter of serious and damaging distortion, not "just of infelicitous phrasings." The sins of the Groomsmen are on a similar order.
Well, when you build your house on sand, a somebody once said. No matter how sophisticated your beliefs and well crafted and logical your arguments, in the end religion comes down to belief in supernatural forces there is no evidence for. If that's what gets you through the nights, fine, but don't kid yourself that that's a greater intellectual triumph than obsessively working out the chronology of the Star Wars universe.
Speaking of religion and people who have no business putting their heads above ramparts: the judgment day billboard phenomenon has gone from slightly wtf-disturbing to hilarious for me. Deeply confused people, doubling down for all they're worth.
The greatest annoyance in Dawkins for me is the fact that he pretends that nobody will notice that he's rigged the rules of the game. viz:
Dawkins: There is no evidence at all for the existence of God.
Randomly selected believer: What about all those incidents of direct divine relevation?
D: Those were just loonies having hallucinations!
RSB: Most of them showed absolutely none of the usual symptoms of mental illness you know.
D: Well unless you can prove that they weren't just hallucinating, that can't possibly be taken as evidence! I want OBJECTIVE evidence, for I am a man of SCIENCE!
RSB: So unless I can prove something which is actually the entire point, you are going to discount the only kind of evidence for my point that there could possibly be?
D: yup
RSB: This was a lot more interesting a conversation when David Hume was doing it.
Sam Harris: Would anyone like to have a go in my MRI scanner?!
re: 606
I'm having a hard time seeing why most of these arguments couldn't also be applied to, for instance, astrology or alchemy.
They could, and should.
If you were writing a book on why astrology or alchemy were wrong and running, say, a public campaign against astrology or alchemy, of course you would. It'd be intellectually dishonest in the extreme to think one could do this without putting in the study. Particularly, if say, some prominent alchemist was saying, 'look, we don't literally believe we can make gold from base metals, that's just a metaphorical way of talking about the changes substances undergo in chemical reactions, and we aren't metaphysically committed to the existence of the philosopher's stone, it's a way of thinking about matter which we intend should be interpreted instrumentally, rather than literally. The fundamental goal of alchemical study isn't the changing of the material world, but a transormation in the psyche of the alchemist.'*
Someone writing such a book _would_ need have some idea what alchemists were saying about alchemy, the ways in which say, those things were compatible with post-Lavoisier chemistry, the ways in which they weren't, what the metaphysical commitments of alchemy might be, the ways in which the pro-alchemy arguments might be flawed or dishonest, or difficult to hold in combination with a bunch of other seemingly well-supported beliefs, and so on. As DS says, endless question begging and 'pointy hats! LOL!' finger pointing isn't doing the work.
Of course most people aren't writing such a book, or running such a campaign, so there isn't any reason for them to do so.
* [or whatever the alchemical equivalent of some sentence like that might be]
No matter how sophisticated your beliefs and well crafted and logical your arguments, in the end religion comes down to belief in supernatural forces there is no evidence for.
But that isn't, in fact, what a lot of religious people believe. You can keep saying, 'in the end it comes down to ....' but it isn't actually true.
There are non-theistic religions, and non-supernatural versions of the theistic religions, and any number of ways of interpreting a commitment to the existence of the divine that don't reduce to some belief in the Middle-Eastern sky fairy.
612: in the end religion comes down to belief in supernatural forces there is no evidence for.
I keep trying to get out, but they pull me back in.
Again, no. Just no. This is a spectacularly ignorant and stupid thing to say about religion. Pick just about any religion you may, there is far more going on in it than this. But of course, you have to have enough curiosity to actually research the damned subject first.
At base there seems to be a strong current of:
"I don't need to know what those people believe in order to know that their beliefs are stupid."
617:There are two different conceptions of God floating around -- the God of the people and the God of the theologians. As as I can tell, you seem to be saying that arguing against the God of the people is necessarily a dishonest activity, and that arguing against the God of the theologians is the only correct path to take. Religion is a mass phenomenon more than a top-down intellectual edifice, and its the mass phenomenon that is the threat, at least in the US.
619: I think that's an entirely useless and patently false dichotomy, actually.
618: But sometimes that attitude is just correct. To take something that matters less to most people than religion, there's a subfield of research not all that far from my own that is, to put it mildly, misguided. It's a community of a hundred or so people who write papers that mostly refer to each other and claim to have solved a big problem. Now, plenty of other people have thought about this big problem, and firmly established that any solution to it has to address a certain key issue. If you ask the people in this particular subfield how they address the key issue, they respond with a long string of technicalities that doesn't appear to answer the question. So if you ask them to explain to you in broad terms the conceptual underpinnings of their solution, they again refer to technicalities, and inadvertently reveal that they don't understand the basic underlying issue. Arguing with them for a while, one always reaches a point at which they say "to go any further, you must read this long list of highly technical papers; otherwise, you haven't done your homework and I'm not willing to discuss it with you." Which, to me, seems somewhat analogous to what's being claimed about how critics of religion should approach it.
But, in the example I have in mind, learning the full details of what these people are doing is an obvious waste of time, because they're clearly lost in details and totally missing the big picture that firmly establishes that they are wrong.
I think astrology is similar; you don't need to know any details of what astrologers say beyond the broad claim that the positions of celestial bodies at the time of one's birth influence one's life significantly to make an argument that this is inconsistent with the way the world actually works. (Of course, the last time I said something like this here it was about ESP, and dsquared vehemently disagreed with me, so there's a can of worms here I don't want to re-open.)
So, it's often the case that even a superficial understanding of something is sufficient to reject it out of hand. Of course, religion is a much messier subject, which is harder to distill down to any core idea that one can dispense with, because two religious believers might have almost no overlap in what they think.
That believers manage to coexist is not the same thing as saying that the beliefs could *both be true.*
I'm a little out of turn here, but I don't want to let 598 pass without noting that profitable and peaceful coexistence may indeed be made difficult by a dogmatic insistence that others share your belief in what is and isn't true.
Of course, religion is a much messier subject
Which just happens to encompass numberless cross-currents in virtually all of human philsophical, scientific, political and moral endeavor, so that's putting it a tad mildly.
So do you think these sophisticated views you keep mentioning are widely held? That's definitely not been my experience. I've seen a couple go-rounds of this argument, and people will quote a Christian theologian who holds views that I have never heard any person in the flesh advocate. These theologians never seem to come knock on my door and hand me a pamphlet explaining why I'm going to hell.
re: 621
So, it's often the case that even a superficial understanding of something is sufficient to reject it out of hand.
It takes some work to show that religion is one of those, particularly when a lot of people making that claim don't have the slightest idea what the religious views they want to reject out of hand actually say.
If someone is saying:
"Look, you are committed to the existence of X, and that's patently absurd."
and the other person is saying:
"I'm not using 'existence' in the way that you think I am, and what I believe about X isn't what you say I do."
You don't get a free pass to then turn round and say, "I don't care how you are using the words, I don't need to know the details to know you are wrong."
624: So do you think these sophisticated views you keep mentioning are widely held?
I think the caricatures being repeatedly defended and advanced in this thread are carefully selective and largely avoidant of most actual religion, sophisticated, populist or otherwise.
That believers manage to coexist is not the same thing as saying that the beliefs could *both be true.*
With respect to a lot of Eastern religions, this is exactly the case. People who practice several religions are entirely comfortable with the view that both [or more than two] can be true. We even have a word for it: syncretism.
624: I would post links explaining how the most vocal proselytizers are neither sophisticated theologians nor mainstream believers, but I think I already did a little ways upthread.
As mentioned above, you take on the best version of some scientific/religious/philosophical viewpoint, not the worst.
Lots of people have entirely erroneous views about evolution, even those who believe in it, but that doesn't mean a Christian critic of evolutionary theory gets a free pass for attacking some 'humans are descended from monkeys' caricature of evolutionary theory, even if some version of that caricature is widely believed.
I think astrology is similar; you don't need to know any details of what astrologers say beyond the broad claim that the positions of celestial bodies at the time of one's birth influence one's life significantly to make an argument that this is inconsistent with the way the world actually works.
Except that they don't, not any more. They say, "It's obviously absurd to suggest that positions of celestial bodies at the time of one's birth influence one's life significantly, but there does appear to be a correlation, cf. yadda yadda, so without speculating on why that correlation exists we can use the positions of celestial bodies as an approximate placeholder for whatever is causing it." Which is also rubbish, but harder to argue with, because you are then reduced to an infinite "is/isn't" about supposed instances of this hypothetical correlation.
Syncretism seems like a weird example if I'm understanding what is meant by "compatible." To take an annoyingly obvious example because it has salient characteristics I think make my case, Voodoo/Vodou is hardly compatible with Christianity at least from the point of view of Christianity. I'm not well versed in Christianity, but I believe I'm correct in saying that a belief in various deities who aren't the Christian god or Jesus Christ is deprecated. I can quote very little scripture but isn't " "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me" fairly central? It seems to get toted out a lot. So what I'm trying, perhaps clumsily, to say is that the fact that religions combine and influence each other doesn't demonstrate that they're compatible.
re: 630
My understanding (probably wrong) is that there _is_ some sort of very loose correlation but at a level of specificity vastly below what astrology requires, and the best explanation is something to do with how one's birth date affects the age one is when one starts school, whether it's winter or summer when one reaches particular development stages, and so on.
re: 631
FWIW, there's also a fair bit of scripture that seems to allude to other Gods, and residual polytheism among the Israelites, as well. However, in the case of, say, Taoism, Chán, and Confucianism, I think the adherents would say that they are perfectly compatible. Ditto with some others.
So do you think these sophisticated views you keep mentioning are widely held?
Do you think Naomi Klein (for example) ought to be allowed to get away with arguing against a version of "capitalism" taken from the unanalysed ramblings of local Chamber of Commerce members or the Congressional Republican Party? Should, in general, anti-capitalists avoid learning anything about neoclassical economics, because after all it's not this "sophisticated" version that really has the power?
632 is my understanding too. But my point was really that you can't helpfully denounce astrology on the strength of the Mystic Meg column any more than you can helpfully denounce Christianity on the strength of the Left Behind series.
re: 631
Further to this, years ago I read a book by a Buddhist 'theologian'* arguing that Christianity and Zen were entirely compatible, and that, in fact, you could find explicit endorsement of much of the Buddhist world view in the works of various Christian mystics. He, iirc, went on to dissolve some of the apparent points of contradiction through some argument, textual comparison, and so on. You don't have to think he was right to do so to see that there are quite sophisticated syncretic positions out there that don't come down to 'let's just practice both of these things and ignore the differences'.
* if that's the correct term for someone who isn't a theist
||
In other news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13343824
Bastards, the lot of them.
>
"Critics would argue the wealthiest families would be able to buy a place on a degree course," she said.Well, yes. They would. Because it will apparently be the case.
630: After the third or fourth iteration of this, though, I think you'd be forgiven for concluding that Astrology Guy is really just trying to save his pet theory by stripping it of actual content. How this might apply to sophisticated theology is anyone's guess.
I think you'd be forgiven for concluding that Astrology Guy is really just trying to save his pet theory by stripping it of actual content. How this might apply to sophisticated theology is anyone's guess.
I think in some cases, at least, that pretty much is exactly the case. I have no axe to grind for theism, I'm not one. My point, and DS and other's point, isn't that one ought to be persuaded by this view, but that one can't triumphantly trumpet one's victory in the battle of ideas without, you know, engaging with the ideas.
I guess I don't see why this is a rule:
As mentioned above, you take on the best version of some scientific/religious/philosophical viewpoint, not the worst.
The theory of evolution isn't comparable because science is a top-down intellectual activity. The people who believe the crude version think they believe what the experts believe. If the experts tell them different, then they'll switch.
Religion is a mass activity. There was a craze in India a couple of years of purported miracles where Hanuman statues drink milk (there's even a youtube video of it). More sophisticated Hindus will tell you this is stupid, that Hanuman is a symbol and symbols don't drink milk. I don't see why the first group is necessarily the inauthentic one.
Apart from the childish satisfaction of tit-for-tat, having someone like Harris of your party is a liability.
There's a phrase for this sort of argument - where you express concern about the tactics your opponent is using - but I can't quite remember what it is.
639: quite. And it's especially annoying if you are trying to deal with the manifestly unsupported beliefs that 99% of religious people hold, and then you get told that you're being lazy because you haven't engaged the (far more complicated and vaporous) beliefs of the intellectual 1%, and these are real religion.
There are a lot of Christian theologians who don't believe in (for example) the reality of the physical resurrection. But this is not, to put it mildly, the party line.
560:To establish this in any convincing way, your hypothetical atheist go-to guy or gal would probably have to provide some samples of arguments that are commonly thought to illuminate or undercut the nature of their beliefs. You're back to talking about religion. So, better bone up.
I'm not claiming to have done this since college, so I'm not fluent in these arguments, but say our hypothetical atheist spokesperson bones up on the major philosophical arguments for the divine, the sort of thing Halford links in 514, and concludes that they're all unconvincing. At that point, she doesn't necessarily know jack about religion historically, theologically, or so on. But I do think she's at a point where she can say that there's nothing out there that undercuts her beliefs -- not with perfect reliability, can't ever prove a negative, and obviously it's simply not possible for her to be well enough acquainted with every religious belief across the world and the span of history to be sure that there's nothing that would shake her atheism. But she can at least say that she's not aware of anything out there that's been recognized outside it's own faith community as such an argument.
At that point, I don't think she needs to know anything more about religion as religion, whether or not religion is a belief in supernatural entities or whatever ineffably sophisticated alternative to such belief characterizes the spiffier religions, before being entitled to say that her atheism is as well founded intellectually as most religion.
Once again, saying that there are no compelling disproofs of an atheistic worldview is not a claim that all religious people are stupid or deluded. It's a claim that whatever the various reasons for belief are, they don't include a disproof of atheism.
And I really don't see that any deeper theological knowledge is required for our hypothetical atheist spokesperson to either defend her atheism as intellectually well-founded, or to criticize religion and the religious from a sociological perspective. If Mother Theresa was depriving people in pain of painkillers that she could have provided for them, there is no requirement that Christopher Hitchens go to seminary before pointing out that that's ghastly behavior from his point of view and the point of view of anyone who shares his values. If he's wrong about the realworld facts of her behavior, that's one thing, but that's not a wrongness that depends on his qualifications as a scholar of religion.
And it's especially annoying if you are trying to deal with the manifestly unsupported beliefs that 99% of religious people hold
this would be more convincing if it was accompanied by any seeming interest on the part of Dawkins et in the actual sociology of religious belief, rather than taking at face value the claims of people like Jerry Falwell to speak for the majority of religious believers. This matters a lot because there are plenty of questions like "If someone doesn't believe in God but has lived a good and moral life, will they go to hell?".
re: 642
Again, you are just asserting this claim. It's certainly NOT how many religions are structured. It's why there are things like the credo, or the Westminster Confession, and so on. If you want to make some further claim about the actual relationship between believers and creeds, then you are back to the need to do some actual work, on the sociology of religion. Also, what makes you think science is top-down in that way?
This is just a load of hand-waving.
re: 644
Jesus H. Crispy Fucking Christ. Repeated a zillion times above, no-one is saying your ordinary atheist has any need to do more than just what you describe. But if said ordinary atheist starts publishing extensively on the subject and appearing regularly in the media as a person who speaks with authority on the subject, that's completely different.
I know very little about economics. Enough to know that some of what certain economists say seems obviously nonsensical to me, but also enough to know that there's an awful lot I don't know on the subject. I don't feel any great urge to change that situation. However, if I rocked up in the Guardian, or whatever, writing on the topic, I'd be an idiot.
There's also a tu quoque, in that I doubt PZ Myers would consider it a victory for creationism if they demonstrated (as they could) that human beings and monkeys have sufficiently material anatomical divergences that it is utterly impossible for human beings to have evolved from apes. Which, of course, is what 99%[1] of people who believe in evolution think. Once we've dealt with that we can have a go at "The Earth moves round the sun" and thence on to Newtonian gravity.
[1] I have not checked the exact percentage but why would I?
And, for what it's worth, a big part of the Nu-Atheist schtick isn't just that religious institutions have had pernicious social and economic effects -- which they obviously clearly have -- but that they are delusional, wrong-headed, and irrational. It's the latter claim -- which is a claim about ideas -- that needs engagement with the ideas themselves.
It's the difference between saying Lysenkoism led to reduced agricultural yields in the Soviet Union, and saying that Lysenkoism is wrong. The latter claim requires engaging with the theoretical commitments of Lysenkoism; some understanding of how Lamarckianism differs from modern evolutionary thinking, and so on.
The latter claim requires engaging with the theoretical commitments of Lysenkoism; some understanding of how Lamarckianism differs from modern evolutionary thinking, and so on.
Not a fuck of a lot, ttaM, which is, I think, where essaer was going (and even Unfogged commenter above, though I think her contention was that supernatural:yes/no was a sufficient filter).
I personally am not a fan of Dawkins, so I can believe that he's failing at the task he's set himself. I object to the idea that the task itself is illegitimate.
646: Believers are not some sort of exotic bird. I was raised a Christian, I was confirmed, I was in my church youth group. I'm surrounded by Christians. I've discussed Christianity at great length with Christians, some of whom I know personally, and some of whom were just annoying people who came to my door. I've known exactly two people for whom theology was important: one is a theologian, and one was the son of a theologian. Maybe my experience is totally atypical, but as far as I can see, the lived experience of a Christian in America is untouched by the thinking of sophisticated modern theologians.
The relationship between science and non-scientists is top-down. Science is what scientists do. Religion is what believers do, not what theologians do.
re: 649
Well obviously Lysenkoism is just a mickey mouse example, ffs.
I've been thinking about the neoclassical economics analogy, and it's a good one. Apparently I'm dividing everything into two cases today, but I would divide the mainstream academic literature into two parts -- the empirical literature, and the theoretical literature. If you're interested in understanding the economy, then you'd be crazy to ignore the empirical literature. They've actually gathered data, tested theories, learned various facts about the world. I suspect that you could ignore the theoretical literature completely, with no loss of ability to understand the economy. The theoretical literature is of a higher level of intellectual sophistication than the empirical literature, but I'm not sure it helps you actually understand the economy. The theoretical literature is the theology of capitalism.
The theoretical literature is of a higher level of intellectual sophisticationabstraction than the empirical literature, but I'm not sure it helps you actually understand the economy.
But if said ordinary atheist starts publishing extensively on the subject
On what subject? If they're publishing extensively on religion and how it's stupid, sure. If they're making a positive case for atheism, and discussing religion and the religious only from a social-science perspective, how does a lack of interest in or knowledge of theological claims disqualify them?
re: 654
On what subject? If they're publishing extensively on religion and how it's stupid, sure.
We are talking about Dawkins, Harris et al. Who are doing precisely that. And they aren't discussing it from a social-science perspective. They have no shitting interest in the social-science either.
Actually, I was talking with DS about how I'd like to see some atheist polemic out there, and how such polemicists shouldn't be disqualified from speaking on the subject by not having anything interesting to say about religion. I believe he disagreed -- see 451-453 and later comments following on from them.
I wasn't addressing Dawkins et al., who I haven't read on the subject (see 451). If you're only talking about what's wrong with Dawkins' writings, I can't speak to that.
re: 656
You mean apart from all the bits in all the comments where I've explicitly adverted to the fact that I'm not talking about what atheists in general should or shouldn't do, and only what those atheists who are setting themselves up in public as authorities on a particular topic ought to do?
I think there's been some profound wire crossing.
I doubt PZ Myers would consider it a victory for creationism if they demonstrated (as they could) that human beings and monkeys have sufficiently material anatomical divergences that it is utterly impossible for human beings to have evolved from apes. Which, of course, is what 99%[1] of people who believe in evolution think.
I don't think this makes any sense at all. Apes and monkeys are different, for one thing; you seem to be using the terms indiscriminately. For another, you couldn't demonstrate that human beings couldn't have evolved from apes, because human beings are apes (hominoids) and so were their immediate ancestors. And, of course, we have a rather more distant common ancestor with monkeys; whether it was itself a monkey is really a matter of rather sterile debate (it probably ooked more like a tarsier IIRC). (Typo noted but left in for reasons of merit.)
they aren't discussing it from a social-science perspective
Dawkins in particular is pretty keen on discussing the real-world harm that religion does.
It's certainly NOT how many religions are structured. It's why there are things like the credo, or the Westminster Confession, and so on.
See 643: are you saying that sophisticated theologians still agree with every part of the Creed? Not in my experience they don't.
652:We understand the economy and economics well enough.
We are also a good analogy for the religious.
only what those atheists who are setting themselves up in public as authorities on a particular topic ought to do?
Which is where my 754 came in, questioning what precisely the 'particular topic' in question is. An atheist writer setting themselves up in public as an authority on why religion is stupid should certainly know some theology. An atheist writer setting themselves up as an authority on atheism and the arguments supporting it, as well as the social implications of atheism and of religious belief, doesn't, as far as I can tell, need to know anything particular about theology.
Dawkins and so forth may not be filling that niche, but I'd like to see it filled.
re: 658.last
No, I just meant that a lot of religions think of themselves as top-down. They might be wrong to do so [sociological claim, needs evidence can't just be asserted], and it's almost certainly the case that a great many believers don't believe much of what is in the creed they officially profess, but it's certainly the case that religious doctrine isn't something that's emerged out of the collective practice of the believers, or at least not in some sense that doesn't need argued for at great length. The major western religions are largely hierarchical both in terms of their doctrinal orthodoxy and their practice. There's clearly a lot of interesting things to be said about how that might pan out in a real world sense, which is the sort of thing I have in mind as 'sociology of religion'.
I hate sounding like some defender of religion. I'm not. I'm an atheist who is completely convinced of the real-world pernicious effects that some religious doctrine and practice has upon the world. I just think Dawkins, Harris et al are ignorant fucks who need to show a bit more intellectual curiosity and a fuckload more intellectual humility.
I don't think this makes any sense at all. Apes and monkeys are different, for one thing; you seem to be using the terms indiscriminately. For another, you couldn't demonstrate that human beings couldn't have evolved from apes, because [...]
What-ev-a! Most evolutionists[1] just believe that human beings descended from monkeys and that is wrong. Why should I get into the "sophisticated", "technical" debates about things only believed by a tiny minority of eggheads? We clearly weren't descended from monkeys, so evolution (by which I mean what most people think of as "evolution", not some nerdy theoretical version only believed by half a dozen people in universities) is wrong. You can read more about this in my forthcoming book, "EVOLUTION IS WRONG!!!", in which I sensitively attempt to open up a space for theism in the public debate.
[1] I reserve the right to switch between "most" and "99%" as my estimated proportion, without ever supporting either figure or indeed giving much impression that I understand there is a difference.
(this is by way of a demonstration of how irritating the argumentative technique of "arguing against the weakest version of a case while asserting it to be the view of an unspecified uneducated minority" can be; as a satire of "Butterflies and Wheels" it's not even that inaccurate).
DS has been working hard, but is trying to appeal to the intellectual side of intellectual atheists by waving "complicated" at them. I like that stuff too, and spent an hour on "That Paragraph" in Sickness Unto Death" trying to see if I could explain why it "converted" this hardcore skeptic to a degree of magnanimity, compassion...and humility
But that still abandons the 4.9 billion humans who see statues drink milk and Mary's face in a waterstain to the vicissitudes of your contempt, and I will not do that.
Especially since we are living thru a time when the "cold equations" of rationalist economics are making so many suffer.
why are wages too high (at this level of NGDP) to restore full employment
Fuck your science, Matt's favorite economist
"Religion is the opiate of the masses"
What did Marx mean? Was he talking about a luxury good, a frivolity, an irresponsible escape from easily solvable problems?
Marx was talking about necessary pain relief.
Why do the bourgeois love their science and reason, especially neo-classical economics and liberal democracy? Because it allows them, with some level of self-satisfaction and social approval, to shift the pain to those below them in ways the major religions generally forbid.
What does reason really say about inequality and injustice? Not much.
why are wages too high (at this level of NGDP) to restore full employment ...Scott Sumner
Science is the of bullwhip of the bourgeois.
And to say "Well, I have my own Keynesian religion economics that will bring full employment without driving labor to sustenance levels"
...is to completely miss the point, and be condemned to futile arguments over deficits and aggregate demand and sticky wages and risk premiums. While the people suffer.
You have to get crazy. You give people food and jobs and human dignity and fuck what the scientists tell you. This is where you start. This is not negotiable and not arguable.
Why can't you people look at the world and see that your reason and science is a huge fail and always will be? Because it is your religion
You have to get another religion, a religion founded on love rather than cold equations.
It seems that dsquared knows much less about the US religious experience than he thinks. Please, mock away. It isn't as though research shows that folks in Walt's country are very much like what he's claiming.
Oh.
Wait.
That is precisely what it shows.
Fuck your science, Matt's favorite economist
I don't even know what this means, Bob. I probably shouldn't ask, though. Can of worms and all that.
But that still abandons the 4.9 billion humans who see statues drink milk and Mary's face in a waterstain to the vicissitudes of your contempt, and I will not do that.
It's admirable how you don't spend every day expressing your contempt for others at great length.
668:I do my best to kick up instead of down, especially at the targets who get off on stomping those below them.
Why can't you people look at the world and see that your reason and science is a huge fail and always will be? Because it is your religion.
It's strange because only a couple of weeks ago Bob was extolling the virtues of Marxism, which is the most explicitly scientistic approach to social analysis ever devised. Engels actiually proposed that all philosophy would be gradually eliminated by increased scientific knowledge.
So, you will take that irrational religious stuff away, replace it with your science, and that will give them and easier life and more happiness?
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Factories making sought-after Apple iPads and iPhones in China are forcing staff to sign pledges not to commit suicide
My preferred insanity is socialist revolution, and I don't care if my, or the woman with the torch on the right and the dude with the pitchfork on the left, have got our scientific Marxism wrong. "Burn shit down and take their stuff" works just fine.
671 written before 670
There are a lot of socialists I have no use for.
I do my best to kick up instead of down, especially at the targets who get off on stomping those below them.
Your judgements are showing.
and I don't care if my, or the woman with the torch on the right and the dude with the pitchfork on the left, have got our scientific Marxism wrong.
This is not socialist revolution, it is Jacquerie. And it leads inexorably to the death of a great many good, brave and committed (poor) people, and hideous consequences to their loved ones. Fuck off.
This is not socialist revolution, it is Jacquerie. And it leads inexorably to the death of a great many good, brave and committed (poor) people, and hideous consequences to their loved ones. Fuck off.
Ever and always the correct response to bloodthirsty wankers.
Once again, saying that there are no compelling disproofs of an atheistic worldview is not a claim that all religious people are stupid or deluded.
No, it's not, and I don't have a problem with someone making the "positive case for atheism" that you describe. But, focusing on the part you emphasize here, I rarely hear a positive case for atheism that doesn't imply, or much more commonly explicitly and gleefully assert, that religious people actually are stupid or deluded. It's been said explicitly about 100 times in this thread, even. Contrast this with what you might call a "positive case for theism". It's much less common for this to include an explicit or implicit claim that atheists must be stupid or deluded. Although certainly you hear that sometimes. But virtually everyone (apart from the nuts making those claims) agrees that theists saying that about atheists are ignorant and uninteresting. I don't think the reverse is true at all.
662 is a bit of an ANALOGY FAIL tbh, which is probably why the ban was introduced in the first place.
674,675:How has your scientific socialism, Bernstein incrementalism, been working out lately?
Just more bourgeois self-satisfaction.
640
I think in some cases, at least, that pretty much is exactly the case. I have no axe to grind for theism, I'm not one. My point, and DS and other's point, isn't that one ought to be persuaded by this view, but that one can't triumphantly trumpet one's victory in the battle of ideas without, you know, engaging with the ideas.
Sure you can, particularly when most of one's opponents are unaware of these ideas. You may find this unsatisfying but you aren't the target audience.
I rarely hear a positive case for atheism that doesn't imply, or much more commonly explicitly and gleefully assert, that religious people actually are stupid or deluded.
Well, a positive case that there are no gods will, logically, imply or assert that people who think there are gods are wrong. There's no real way around that, I'm afraid.
And I dispute that a positive case for theism rarely includes an implicit claim that atheists are stupid or deluded. Theists have been calling atheists stupid or deluded ever since Ps. xiv.1.
The distinction is between being interested in learning about it for its own sake (which I agree there's no reason to expect) and learning about it in order to be more persuasive in your arguments against it.
Somewhat OT (but only somewhat): re: "learning about it in order to be more persuasive in your arguments against it", this is generally a terrible idea, IME (deliberate use of "e" for experience rather than "o" for opinion). I suppose it can be better than not learning about something at all, although I'm not even sure that's always true. Human cognitive biases seem to be such that this sort of motivated learning is very likely just to cause one to latch on to anything that will confirm pre-existing biases and discard the rest. IMO (deilberately switching to "o"), it's far better just to learn about something, full stop. Having done so, you'll then be in position to argue more persuasively against it, should you choose to do so, but you'll likely have a far better understanding of what you're arguing against than if your learning had been driven by that goal.
Well, a positive case that there are no gods will, logically, imply or assert that people who think there are gods are wrong. There's no real way around that, I'm afraid.
You shifted from 'deluded' to 'wrong'. Yes, a positive case for atheism will necessarily at least imply that in the author's opinion theists are wrong (and vice versa).
And I dispute that a positive case for theism rarely includes an implicit claim that atheists are stupid or deluded. Theists have been calling atheists stupid or deluded ever since Ps. xiv.1.
Sure, they have, although I repeat: "virtually everyone (apart from the nuts making those claims) agrees that theists saying that about atheists are ignorant and uninteresting."
Honestly, can you point to any educated public voice today who claims that atheists are necessarily stupid and deluded people?
644: I'm not claiming to have done this since college, so I'm not fluent in these arguments, but say our hypothetical atheist spokesperson bones up on the major philosophical arguments for the divine, the sort of thing Halford links in 514, and concludes that they're all unconvincing.
Well, "the sort of thing Halford links in 514" is an entire sub-discipline called the Philosophy of Religion. If our hypothetical spokesperson has studied it to the extent of being able to conclude thus, and defend their conclusions effectively, then it would seem my requirement that they put some effort into learning about religion is pretty well satisfied. They'd be better off to do some historical reading, too, but at least we're no longer having the "it's only fair that our atheist spokespeople should be able to put the barest minimum of intellectual effort into their polemics" conversation. And that's good.
682:who claims that atheists are necessarily stupid and deluded people?
Well, Soren K what say you about disbelievers?
The lowest form of offense, the most innocent form, humanly speaking, is to leave the whole issue of Christ undecided.... The next form of offense is negative but in the form of being acted upon, of suffering. It definitely feels that it cannot ignore Christ, is not capable of leaving Christ in abeyance and then otherwise leading a busy life. But neither can it believe.... The last form of offense...the positive form...declares Christianity to be untrue, a lie; it denies Christ (that he has existed and that he is the one he said he was).... This form of offense is sin against the Holy Spirit.... This offense is the highest intensification of sin, something that is usually overlooked because the opposites are not construed Christianly as being sin/faith (p. 129ff.).
Golly, that's offensive, dude. And yet you made this unbeliever cry. Howfor?
Because you wrote this book as an Act of Love, to show by doing the absolutely necessary connection of irrational unbounded unfounded Faith to Love.
My interpretation is even more offensive. Can't Love without Faith? How dare you? Hater!
Irony's a bastard.
Faith in what? Doesn't much matter, as long as you consciously embrace its infinite irrationality. This is the relation's relating itself to itself, and so becoming a subject.
But existentialism is as passe as communism.
Honestly, can you point to any educated public voice today who claims that atheists are necessarily stupid and deluded people?
The Pope?
""Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."
How has your scientific socialism, Bernstein incrementalism, been working out lately?
Bob, you're writing this on the frickin' internet.
I disagree that the research on sociology of religious belief actually does show anything like the unsophisticated caricature version is generally or even commonly held. Hell-as-a-physical-place is about 33%, virtuous-unbelievers-cannot-be-saved significantly less than 50%. About 80% of Americans believe that miracles happen, but they have a very low standard of what constitutes a "miracle" indeed. Belief in bleeding statutes is below 10%.
687: link for those? I would search, but I ran across a US survey which found that "56% believe in the devil having tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Among Atheists/Agnostics, this was believed by 8%" and was dumbfounded.
80% of Americans believe that miracles happen, but they have a very low standard of what constitutes a "miracle"
Really, 1 in 3 of believers doesn't clear the bar of "commonly held"?
686: I don't have time to dig for quotes now, but no. I'm sure there are historic popes for whom this would be true, though--I'm not sure exactly when the shift would have occurred. It's an interesting historical question.
646 But if said ordinary atheist starts publishing extensively on the subject and appearing regularly in the media as a person who speaks with authority on the subject, that's completely different.
I know very little about economics. Enough to know that some of what certain economists say seems obviously nonsensical to me, but also enough to know that there's an awful lot I don't know on the subject. I don't feel any great urge to change that situation. However, if I rocked up in the Guardian, or whatever, writing on the topic, I'd be an idiot.
But, as I was trying to say in 621, it isn't always the case that one has to familiarize oneself extensively with something to explain why it is wrong. There are subjects that are studied by apparently serious academics for which I have only a cursory familiarity with the literature and yet would feel that I can speak with enough authority to tell a journalist why their claims are wrong. I probably wouldn't, not only because a reporter would probably call someone famous instead of me, but also because I wouldn't want to risk pissing people off in departments where I might want to get a job. And if I did, I would probably tiptoe around the issue by saying something like "any claim to have shown X has to deal with objection Y, and I am not aware of any way that group Z does this." But, I wouldn't feel like I was being unreasonable in publicly claiming these people are wrong without reading their latest technical developments.
687 Hell-as-a-physical-place is about 33%, virtuous-unbelievers-cannot-be-saved significantly less than 50%.
These numbers look plausible to me, but you have to remember that there's strong geographic dependence. Among people I encountered for the first 13 years of my life, these numbers were probably something like 95% and 80%, respectively.
Among people I encountered for the first 13 years of my life, these numbers were probably something like 95% and 80%, respectively
I would say these numbers look more plausible for where I live right now. I have also gotten more exposure to philosophy of religion reading unfogged threads than I did for the 18 years I was a practicing Christian.
Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance is an example of a Gnu-Atheist who writes much more persuasively than Dawkins while (largely) sharing his basic worldview (he's not a fan of Harris either, though). Here, for example, is his take-down of the Eagleton take-down of Dawkins, which I find pretty damn persuasive.
I could have used Levinas in 685, and this crowd would be more receptive to the language of Levinas, but I got 50 pages into Levinas, thought:
"Nobody is gonna hate this guy."
(well, almost nobody)
and put him away. So I don't know much about Levinas.
Bourgeois existentialist.
691: the quote given there is a quote from the current Pope. He said it in a speech during his visit to Britain last year.
695: The Carroll link is excellent -- very much the sort of thing I was thinking of.
Carroll picks up very nicely the sort of bait-and-switch that you get quite a bit; going between "God-the-condition-of-possibility exists, but not in the same way as Al Gore, and you could even say he doesn't exist in a real sense" to "God loves us, he was incarnated in first-century Palestine, he makes miracles happen on earth and gets angry with people who get divorced, mean people, greedy people, and the occasional fig tree".
For the record, Eagleton, whether on religion or any other subject, is infinitely more annoying, pretentious and condescending than any of the Four Horsemen.
OK, actually, I haven't read Harris. Maybe Harris is worse. But I really doubt that.
>>Fuck your science, Matt's favorite economist
I don't even know what this means, Bob. I probably shouldn't ask, though.
I'm not sure why I'm attempting to interpret mcmanus, least of all on this minor point many comments back, but I think bob was talking about Yggles, not nattarGcM.
For the record, Eagleton, whether on religion or any other subject, is infinitely more annoying, pretentious and condescending than any of the Four Horsemen.
I knew Eagleton when he was in the (British) Socialist Workers Party. A more self satisfied idealogue I have yet to meet. I think his membership overlapped significantly with Hitchens'. I wonder if they still send Christmas cards to each other.
695: I'd give it a B. He has to end his attempt at rebuttal by grudgingly conceding one of Eagleton's major points, that Dawkins is arguing against an un-sophisticated form of belief (for which he makes a lame excuse familiar from much of this thread, and tellingly avoids engaging with Eagleton's -- correct -- contention that the belief Dawkins is engaging with is not just 'un-sophisticated,' but is so in a way that fictionalizes large swathes of everday belief).
He acknowledges the awkwardness of the task Dawkins sets himself -- also a good sign, though he really soft-soaps how problematic it is -- but then sort of wants to pretend that the book is obviously about just one thing and is suddenly squeamish about acknowledging that Eagleton's critique is of the enterprise as a whole:
"Right out of the gate, Eagleton bashes Dawkins for dabbling in things he doesn't understand.
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology...
What, one wonders, are Dawkins's views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?
These questions, of course, have absolutely no relevance to the matter at hand; they are just an excuse for Eagleton to show off a bit of erudition. "
Exactly wrong. Dawkins set himself the task not just of disproving the existence of God, but proving that belief in God is pernicious and dangerous and morally inferior. That does put him in the position of engaging a huge mass of cultural tradition, and Eagleton knows it, Dawkins did not and Carroll's excuses on the Dawk's behalf are unconvincing.
His cuts at the awkwardness in Eagleton's own theology are far more interesting. I really like his historically-grounded account of the attempt to marry Greek and Hebrew models of monotheism (indeed a major problem). His attempt to breezily dismiss pantheism is... well, whatever; it's an Op/Ed piece, cut him some slack. Generally speaking he shows knowledge of and engagement with the subject matter, and seems on this exposure to be the kind of atheist I could actually identify with.
The discussion of casuality, though... brutal. Even granting the oversimplifications that will be inevitable with an article of this style and the space constraints it involves... still brutal.
The discussion of casuality, though... brutal. Even granting the oversimplifications that will be inevitable with an article of this style and the space constraints it involves... still brutal.
This is interesting. What's the issue you have with it?
699: Louann Miller has memorable analysis of the personal-god/philosophical-god bait-and-switch.
704: I think trying to talk about causality as something we've "downgraded" and no longer really concern ourselves with is a bad call. Our concepts of causality have grown far more complicated since Aristotle, but causality remains one of the basic identifying features of modern science. As regards physics specifically, Carroll's attempt to imply that causality is now a sideshow seems really problematic.
Sure. He describes a more modern concept of causality as follows:
The notion of "causality" is downgraded from "when I see B happening, I know it must be because of A" to "given some well-defined and suitably complete set of information about the initial state of a system, I can use the equations of motion to determine its subsequent evolution." But a concept like "cause" doesn't appear anywhere in the equations of motion themselves, nor in the specification of the type of matter being described; it is only an occasionally-appropriate approximation, useful to us humans in narrating the behavior of some macroscopic configuration of equation-obeying matter.
And he does so to make the point that Aristotle's claim that there can be no effect without a cause doesn't make sense within the more modern concept of causality. I guess I can see that "downgraded" might not be an ideal word for the change in conceptions of causality, but your reaction seems a little over-the-top condemnatory.
I don't think he's saying causality is "a sideshow," exactly. It's still a technical requirement we impose on theories -- roughly, that things can only influence those future events to which they can propagate a signal at the speed of light or slower. This is a pretty strong requirement. But it's very different from saying that a given identifiable thing is "the cause" of something else; events are influenced by everything in their past lightcone, which corresponds only indirectly to our everyday English use of "cause."
At any rate, though, I wouldn't quibble with "Every effect has a cause" so much as "Nothing can cause itself" or "A causal chain cannot be of infinite length," which are silly.
703:
"I'd give it a B. He has to end his attempt at rebuttal by grudgingly conceding one of Eagleton's major points, that Dawkins is arguing against an un-sophisticated form of belief (for which he makes a lame excuse familiar from much of this thread, and tellingly avoids engaging with Eagleton's -- correct -- contention that the belief Dawkins is engaging with is not just 'un-sophisticated,' but is so in a way that fictionalizes large swathes of everday belief). "
Well, part of his point is that so-called sophisticated forms of belief like Eagleton's aren't really any better. And he's right. I actually think that on some level this wishy-washy theological stuff is even sillier than the more naive forms of belief. Say what you want about the bearded, anthropomorphic sky-dude who loves me, but that's an idea about the way the world works that could a priori be true, and IF it WERE true, it would have some fairly profound consequences for how I live my life and understand the world around me. If, on the other hand, Eagleton is right, and God is the "condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever," then that would imply... absolutely nothing at all. It's an idea with literally no useful content. You could define God like that if you want, but... why would you want to?
Ditto for the view expressed above by Robert Halford in 106. There's nothing there that couldn't be recast in purely secular terms; "All people have an intrinsic and inviolable worth, even Dick Cheney" strikes me as laudable bit of moral philosophy, but there's no reason to bring the divine into it at all. It adds nothing new to the idea, while adding considerable confusion, since mentioning "God" does kinda invoke the supernatural to most speakers of English, which Robert says he doesn't mean.
697: yes I am aware of that but you'll note that, while expressing hostility toward atheism, nowhere in the quote does he suggest that atheists are necessarily stupid or deluded people, and when I said I'd have to dig for quotes I meant quotes showing clearly that he most certainly does not hold that view. It's hard to find anything quickly since the first five+ pages of search results on "ratzinger atheism" are almost entirely reactions to the very quote you cited.
710: This is quibbling, Urple. Atheism leads "ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny". In terms of offensiveness to atheists, it's close enough.
Saying that the claim "All people have an intrinsic and inviolable worth" is especially weird because human equality is an idea that is completely alien to the people who founded Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Real equality doesn't even become a common moral tenet until Enlightenment, which is also where a lot of this "new" atheism business started.
Also, I like the idea of the Enlightenment as a spiritual revolution. If we view it that way, it is much more continuous with the Protestant Reformation, which makes sense to me.
I don't think it is possible for anyone to have no been offended somewhere in this thread. Leaving aside bob, even.
re: 708
FWIW, there's quite a large philosophical literature on causation that looks at this problem. The problem of the ambiguity/tension between our ordinary talk of 'the cause' of something and the vast number of past events which might actually have influenced that thing.
713: to have no been offended
This is a thinly veiled anti-Scottish slur, right?
713: The Apatheist Front has taken no offense thanks to not giving a damn.
707: My reaction is condemnatory because Carroll is rather stepping around the fact that modern causality -- via quantum mechanics -- hasn't simply moved beyond the Prime Mover. It has, as is quite popularly known, introduced other avenues ("of attack," one might say) for theistic beliefs. Visibly avoiding that fact is a bad call, and if he just didn't have the space or means to deal with it adequately, then getting that deep into the causality tangent was a bad call.
709: Well, part of his point is that so-called sophisticated forms of belief like Eagleton's aren't really any better. And he's right.
"Sophisticated" belief is nevertheless far harder to assail and dismiss than a bearded dude in the sky, and "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated" belief are not separate from each other. One draws on the other constantly. The way you really know "unsophisticated" belief is not that it's never heard of an abstract idea and can be boiled down to believing in an invisible spaghetti monster; it's that it is not concerned about logically squaring away the personal and "philosophical" conceptions of deity. It just uses them interchangeably, often quite unaware of the contradiction because popular belief just flat-out doesn't tend to notice contradictions. That's what the "bait-and-switch" in 705 is really describing -- the relative disinterest of popular belief in consistency. (Even more "sophisticated" belief, which does concern itself with consistency, typically has huge blind spots in this regard, as Carroll notes with Eagleton.)
The problem remains that assailing such an edifice is an incredibly complicated and mostly unrewarding task, and focusing on caricatures of one part of it gets you absolutely nowhere and makes you appear (or exposes you as) ignorant, which Dawkins fell foul of. Carroll's approach is more congenial and smarter than Dawkins', as far as it goes, but still doesn't really want to acknowledge that the exercise of "disproving the existence of God" is a foray into an endless morass (hence, I suspect, the telling omissions in talking about modern causality).
It has, as is quite popularly known, introduced other avenues ("of attack," one might say) for theistic beliefs.
Neat. Link?
717:The Agape Nihilist Front doesn't believe anyone meant to give offense
713: Leaving aside bob, as an atheist and a Gemini, I have not only not been offended by this thread, I can see some strong points to both arguments. Even taking bob into account, I am not offended so much as perplexed by all the vitriol. Are all the 1.1 billion non-religious people in the world spitting in the face of nuns and little Mennonite girls every day? Very confusing.
719: Countless. Google "Quantum mechanics" and "God." It's a very popular theme.
711? First, I didn't claim that no educated public voice says anything offensive to atheists. That's obviously not true. I claimed that no educated public voice, including the current pope, claims that atheists are necessarily stupid and deluded people.
Also, closer to quibbling, maybe, but not there yet, the pope didn't claim that atheism leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny, but that "exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life" leads there. Which is a markedly more nuanced statement.
In re offensive statements generally, if you want to claim that the ignorance with which atheists typically label theists is offset by the immorality with which theists typically label atheists, I'd probably say we have comity, as long as we can agree that the two charges are roughly equally false.
722: Sure is, but when I google it I get all sorts of contradictory stuff. You were thinking of something specific and relevant enough to what Carroll was saying that his omission of it was "brutal", and I'm not sure which of the many things people say about quantum mechanics and God you meant.
707: My reaction is condemnatory because Carroll is rather stepping around the fact that modern causality -- via quantum mechanics -- hasn't simply moved beyond the Prime Mover. It has, as is quite popularly known, introduced other avenues ("of attack," one might say) for theistic beliefs.
Um, speaking of not attacking things you don't understand....
724: Sure is, but when I google it I get all sorts of contradictory stuff. You were thinking of something specific
No, I was thinking of the general controversy. I'm not stumping for any of it, I'm pointing out that pretending it isn't there is a bad idea.
723 but that "exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life" leads there. Which is a markedly more nuanced statement.
Yet, it's clear from the phrasing that he considers virtue to be something bound up with God and religion, not an independent thing. Of course, I agree that excluding virtue from public life leads to all sorts of bad things, but this isn't the thrust of his remarks.
if you want to claim that the ignorance with which atheists typically label theists is offset by the immorality with which theists typically label atheists, I'd probably say we have comity
That's no fair: why isn't it worse for them to say I'm a bad person than for me to say they need to read the fucking book they supposedly base their lives on?
Undoubtedly the apostle Paul says that atheists are stupid and deluded (Romans 1:18-32).
Personally, although I think people who believe in a personal supernatural God who intervenes in the world and cares about our behavior are deluded, I certainly wouldn't say they're stupid. Smartness comes in a lot of different flavors, and some people (me for example) are better at inventing elaborate justifications than they are at detecting bullshit. This doesn't make them dumb people, but also doesn't make the belief any less delusional.
Anyway, FHD seems to be making most of the points I want to make better than I can.
So, in Carroll's response to Eagleton's essay, which doesn't raise any quantum mechanical argument, it's a "brutal" "telling omission" that he doesn't raise and respond to some argument for the existence of God based on quantum mechanics. You're not sure which argument specifically he should be responding to, but he should at least have acknowledged that there are QM-based arguments for theism out there, whether or not he's aware of any that make sense.
You're a tough audience, Doc. That B you gave him was a pretty high grade for you, wasn't it?
The Apatheist Front has taken no offense thanks to not giving a damn.
Word. We're going to need some other commandments to go with "thou shall not give a fuck". Maybe something like "thou shall partake of wine and grilled meats".
727: For one thing, you're complaining about the meaning of causality in physics without knowing how the word is used. Since, oh, 1940 or so, the current version of quantum mechanics is causal in precisely the sense I spelled out in 708.1, which is surely the meaning that comes to mind for Carroll when he hears the word "causality" in a physics context.
I would guess you're mixing this up with "determinism," which is another can of worms that's been hashed out in these comment threads already, but the short version is that quantum mechanics is deterministic, even if for all practical purposes it leads to a world that appears to contain intrinsic randomness.
Anyway, if the idea is to try to fit God in to the large-scale emergence of classical mechanics from quantum mechanics, this is a "God of the gaps" argument if there ever was one.
731: The Eagleton essay doesn't mention any number of things that Carroll does choose to mention in talking about it, so I don't buy your attempt to affect that I'm being unreasonable here. Segueing into modern physics and causality without mentioning QM is bad practice, yes, given that in terms of the popular culture being addressed it's a huge elephant in the room and there are reams of arguments for and against it available at the touch of a button.
... and sure, B is a pretty respectable grade. Yeah.
734: You're complaining about a straw man AFAICS, sorry.
Gotta run. I'll check in later.
I'm trying to envision what exactly you want him to have said about quantum mechanics -- could you spell that out?
I've always found the "God picks how all the wave functions collapse" idea to actually be pretty under-rated in terms of the religious ideas it can "explain." Miracles? Is it actually *impossible* for water to turn into wine? Or is it only *very very unlikely*?
734: You're complaining about a straw man AFAICS, sorry.
So again the real argument that should be addressed is out there, somewhere, in a location you can't point to, but infinitely more sophisticated than anything I can imagine. Wonderful.
740: If you weren't so intellectually incurious you'd know where it was already.
728: I don't disagree with this, but it's still a much more nuanced statement, even excluding the word "virtue". It's not clear to me, for example, that using totalitarian means to forcibly exclude God and religion from public life doesn't ultimately lead to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny. Or at least lead to bad results of some sort. That's not at all the same thing as saying that "being an atheist" leads to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny, or "allowing atheists to participate fully and freely in public life" leads to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.
Well if you believe that God is out there somewhere in a location you can't point to and is infinitely more sophisticated than anything you can imagine, it's a very small jump to believe that the arguments for his existence have the same properties!
but infinitely more sophisticated than anything I can imagine
C'mon, that's not a reason not to enage with it--since there are these legions of unbearably sophisticated religious folks *not* calling the 700 Club or the Hour of Power.
744 cont'd
... it is incumbent upon you to address their amazing arguments.
by the immorality with which theists typically label atheists
You want to take all my fun away.
"Say whatever you want, dude, but at least atheism is not an ethos."
Atheism is an uninteresting subbranch of nihilism, and is not and cannot provide an ethos, save a pernicious scientism.
Look if people want to claim they are materialists, existentialists, Marxists, consequentialists, humanists, utilitarians, pragmatists etc ad infinitum (and this is the superior way to answer "God"questions" they can lay claim to a morality and we can have an argument.
And nihilism or nominalism can be interesting.
But atheism as an end in itself and any kind of answer to any kind of question is puerile rebellion. Which is why it has always been associated with libertinism and other anti-social behaviors.
Walter Kaufman dismissed the question in exactly this way. "Do you believe in God" is a tribal test, and is either and only answered with a competing affiliation or an upraised middle finger.
But I grow snippy. Mostly, I want to say, and should have remained polite in doing so, that if your reaction to the Carroll post is typical, your standards for evaluating pro-atheist writing are asymmetrically, and inappropriately, high -- seeing a failure to affirmatively bring up a vaguely defined category of theistic arguments which may or may not include anything credible as a telling omission in a particular piece of atheistic writing seems very peculiar to me.
Based on your reaction, I should go pick up a copy of The God Delusion just to find out if it really is as dumb and offensive as all that.
The thing about the four horseman, which that Carroll post nicely captures, is although I have no interest in reading them and I'm sure they're annoying, I find their critics more annoying. Of the four: Hitchens I find annoying when he writes in Slate, Dawkins I have a big soft spot for because "The Ancestor's Tale" is one of my all time favorite books, and I don't know anything about the other two.
But I grow snippy.
I grow snippy... I grow snippy...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rippy.
I'm walking away from this thread, because, frankly, it's convinced me that a bunch of you really are pro-ignorance assholes. But maybe I'll change my mind later.
Ya know, what exactly does proclaiming "Jesus was not the Son of God!" do for you and the world? As opposed to "man is the measure" or greatest good for greatest number" or sumpin.
Where is the "good' in this? Does it make you feel free?
(This is what Soren K is getting at above)
It is gratuitousness wickedness for its own sake. The wickedest. Ummmm...deliciously demonic.
Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but if you going all anti-social and immoral, don't try to take all the fun away by claiming this rebellion should be a new conformism.
That's like smoking pot with your teenaged kids. Damaging for life.
Or answer "There is no God but Allah" or "The Great Mother loves all Her Children" or something more amusing and constructive than "Fuck You"
Christ on a Stick, even Nietzsche said God was dead, not eternally non-existent. Nietzsche, like Jung, recognized God as a "psychic fact" that needed to be replaced, not ignored.
And the corpse of God was a great dance platform for the honest immoralist.
I can't believe you people are still arguing about this.
695, 698: Let me say "me too" to thanking FHD for the Sean Carroll link and his discussion in 709. Especially since I had a significant hand in stirring the shit way upthread and have not had the time since to "help" the discussion in any substantive way (not to mention not having the knowledge, temperament or rhetorical skillz either ...).
755, 757: I say kill them both.
740: So again the real argument that should be addressed is something I'd love to go into greater detail about, but right now is not a good time. I'm afraid real life must occasionally take precedence over Unfogged. Sorry if that inconveniences you.
748: if your reaction to the Carroll post is typical, your standards for evaluating pro-atheist writing are asymmetrically, and inappropriately, high
I've already discussed that upthread.
I should go pick up a copy of The God Delusion just to find out if it really is as dumb and offensive as all that.
Hey, it's your money.
I was asked by hospital admission people: "religious preference?"
Sadly, "tell them to stay away from me" wasn't an option.
760:"No preference" is always my answer.
I don't cut my beard or hair, so I wonder how close I am to meeting Sikh entrance requirements.
I'm shocked and dismayed that we're not going to be able to reach comity on the fact that Terry Eagleton should be punched in the balls for that essay. His argument is so transparently in bad faith that it's the best argument for the New Atheism. This quote from above is total douchebaggery:
What, one wonders, are Dawkins's views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?
It's like saying that you can't decide that Nazism was bad without reading Heidegger or Schmitt, or grappling with Marge Schott's argument that Hitler had some good ideas, but he just went too far.
Whether or not religion has been a bad influence on the world is an empirical claim about mass behavior. If you want to argue that Christianity is responsible for a whole host of crimes, then replying "What about Aquinas' critique of Anselm?" is not a reply at all, but an attempt to change the subject.
I know I should ban myself for violating the analogy ban, but fuck it. This is too important. Terry Eagleton needs to be punched in the balls. I've been practicing passive resistance techniques, I've tied myself to a post, and I'm going on a hunger strike. I just had a really big candy bar, so I should be good for a couple of hours. I'm staying right here until we reach comity on this.
761: Not to single you out or anything, bob, as I think we probably all would be in trouble on this one, but this prohibition might be a stumbling block --
Worthless talk: Bragging, gossip, lying, slander, "back-stabbing", etc. are not permitted. The Guru Granth Sahib tells the Sikh, "Your mouth has not stopped slandering and gossiping about others. Your service is useless and fruitless."
762: I agree, Walt. Now for God's sake, eat!
I should say, since I'm sad that we've made Halford sad, that I think the argument that religion is a bad influence is basically wrong. American fundamentalists hate gays because they want to hate gays. Christianity is just the ex-post-facto rationalization for what they already decided to do. To say "it takes religion to make good people do bad things" is to take the claims of religion as moral arbiter seriously in a way that I find peculiar coming from an atheist. Islam demands that women have their clitorises cut off in Somalia, but does not in Indonesia. It's almost as if in some cultures they just like cutting off the clitorises of little girls, and in an incredible coincidence God tells them to do what they wanted to do anyway.
I can't believe you people are still arguing about this.
For reals. Me, I'm imagining Simone Weil punching this thread in the face.
I haven't read the thread but were the academics picking on Halford?!?!?! Do I need to send the lawyer bat signal out?
762: I'm pretty much on board with that.
765: It's not like replacing all the fundies with randroids would be much of an improvement.
Hola, amigos! I'm eating a Jello Pudding Pop!
767: No. He was just appalled by pro-ignorance atheists. We were just trying to overcome stereotypes.
The Wisdom of the East
"Long nose hair is a sign of long life and my master believes they should never ever be plucked. My master's nose hair is extremely long. Five or six have grown out of both nostrils and are so long that they are indistinguishable from his moustache. The master takes great care of that nose hair."
...Atsutane quoting Torakichi about Sugiyama Sanjin
762: Terry Eagleton needs to be punched in the balls
Maybe it could be arranged that Eagleton and V.S. Naipaul could trade ball-punches until whenever. I'm sure each would be up for it.
762: Whether or not religion has been a bad influence on the world is an empirical claim about mass behavior. If you want to argue that Christianity is responsible for a whole host of crimes, then replying "What about Aquinas' critique of Anselm?" is not a reply at all, but an attempt to change the subject.
I'm not heavily invested in whether Eagleton's balls should be safeguarded, but Walt (and you know I love you), the above is disingenuous on your part. Or something. That is, Eagleton doesn't ask "What about Aquinas?" in answer to Dawkins' claim that religion has a bad influence on the world, but in order to provide, a bit later in the essay, one of several examples of Judeo-Christian conceptions of God according to which his existence, which Dawkins keeps hammering away at, is really not the point. See this from Eagleton, for example:
The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe - even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound. [... a couple of paragraphs later ...:] To be dependent on him, as to be dependent on our friends, is a matter of freedom and fulfilment. Indeed, friendship is the word Aquinas uses to characterise the relation between God and humanity.
I don't deny that Eagleton is snotty in this essay, but so what? His point, and I don't see any way around it, is that Dawkins is obsessed with one formulation of religious belief: the (factual) existence of God. And there he's just being bone-headed.
Now maybe I should actually finish the Eagleton piece, though. I feel what I've said above is obvious and therefore annoying, since it's right there in the essay.
Hey, remember that thread a while back on Unfogged where the religious (or spiritual, if you prefer) tried in vain (and here I refer to at least myself) to explain their beliefs? That thread was way more interesting than this one.
Hey, remember that thread a while back on Unfogged where the religious (or spiritual, if you prefer) tried in vain (and here I refer to at least myself) to explain their beliefs? That thread was way more interesting than this one.
Was DS more forthcoming there, or did he drop Fermattian bombs and scurry in that one, too?
I had to read Eagleton as an undergraduate [English Lit], so I'm all in favour of punching him in the nads; irrespective of how I feel about Dawkins.
re: 775
I thought DS was clear above that he's an atheist?
776.1: Now, now. I probably know what you mean, but let's let the guy speak individually and separately on a distinct topic (Dawkins in this case).
To be dependent on him, as to be dependent on our friends, is a matter of freedom and fulfilment. Indeed, friendship is the word Aquinas uses to characterise the relation between God and humanity.
That's kind of funny juxtaposed with the Old Testament God. I mean, the OT God as a friend makes bros icing bros look like Achilles and Patroclus.
I'm sure no one cares, but having now read the Sean Carroll essay in 695, I'm with DS in finding it to be basically a fine essay but sort of laughably unpersuasive. I mean, for example:
We are left with fundamentally incoherent descriptions of what God is, which deny that he "exists" in the same sense that hummingbirds and saxophones do, but nevertheless attribute to him qualities of "love" and "creativity" that conventionally belong to conscious individual beings. One might argue that it's simply a hard problem, and our understanding is incomplete; after all, we haven't come up with a fully satisfactory way to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, either. But there is a more likely possibility: there simply is no reconciliation to be had. The reason why it's difficult to imagine how God can be eternally perfect and also occasionally wistful is that God doesn't exist.
Why is that a more likely possibility? This is just flat assertion, without even an attempted argument to back it up.
The Tao that can be caricatured on blog comment threads is not truly the Tao.
I thought DS was clear above that he's an atheist?
I read 775 to be more a reaction to DS mentioning some vague quantum mechanical stuff and then in the same breath not to have time to even say who or what he was referring to (combox:DS::margin:Fermat?).
773: You better love me, because I just went back and looked at that Eagleton article even though it triggers my worst ball-punching tendencies. What bugs me about it is the "meta-ness" of it. I'm perfectly happy if someone wants to argue that Dawkins is doing a shitty job of what he's trying to do, but Eagleton is arguing that what Dawkins is trying to do is somehow illegitimate on its face -- apparently trying to refute the beliefs of the stupid is somehow unsporting, even when the stupid are a majority.
781: (Just to note, I don't begrudge DS a life outside of Unfogged. I can't follow threads realtime anymore, because Unfogged is not something my IT professionals need to see me reading).
782: I don't get that at all. He's saying that Dawkins is trying to refute a caricature of the targeted body of believers. He's saying that Dawkins is talking past many of these believers by focusing on belief in the existence of God, as though this 'existence' is considered by believers to be on the same plane as rationally, scientifically-supported, evidence-based belief in actual entities (whatever we mean by that). And yes, that's just thick-skulled on Dawkins' part. It's scientistic, when in fact large numbers of the faithful are using different forms of reasoning altogether to support their beliefs.
I don't get at all that Eagleton is saying that it's unsporting to defend atheism: in fact he says that there are quite a few reasons one might reject religious belief:
Now it may well be that all this is no more plausible than the tooth fairy. Most reasoning people these days will see excellent grounds to reject it. But critics of the richest, most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive, rather than grabbing themselves a victory on the cheap by savaging it as so much garbage and gobbledygook. The mainstream theology I have just outlined may well not be true; but anyone who holds it is in my view to be respected, whereas Dawkins considers that no religious belief, anytime or anywhere, is worthy of any respect whatsoever. This, one might note, is the opinion of a man deeply averse to dogmatism. Even moderate religious views, he insists, are to be ferociously contested, since they can always lead to fanaticism.
Maybe you're reading the "is to be respected" there as "shouldn't be questioned," but I don't think that's what he's saying.
Sorry for the rather lengthy quote there, but I take it to cover Eagleton's fundamental point. I also think that we're repeating points made numerous times upthread, but I wasn't following the thread earlier, so sorry for the probably tedious go-round.
I was sooooooooo sad when they stopped making Jello Pudding Pops. I wrote five letters to Cliff Huxtable asking for his help, but he never even wrote me back! Screw that guy!!! Did you know he's not even a real baby doctor? He just said that to get on the TV show!
Anyhow I found a recipe and now Mom makes them here and we don't even have to go to the store! How awesome is that? She uses pencils instead of popsicle sticks, though. PAULY'S PENCIL-PACKIN' PISTACHIO PUDDING POOOOOPS!
Ha ha! That looks like pudding poops! I don't like those!
apparently trying to refute the beliefs of the stupid is somehow unsporting, even when the stupid are a majority.
Walt, the stupid believe a lot of different things. Some are atheists, some belive in some kind of god or gods, others still believe that these questions are needless distractions from the important work of foot scratching. You can't reductively charicature the beliefs of the stupid that way.
Anyway, I don't see any way around the observation that a focus on belief in the existence of God (as entity, Middle Eastern sky god) utterly elides the fact that numerous people of faith may believe in God -- never mind his existence -- as force, presence, animating or inspiring spirit, condition of possibility, what have you.
I don't buy into it myself, but arguing in the way Dawkins does can't begin to make a dent in the latter forms of belief, and I frankly think a case would have to be made in the first place for the point of arguing against the latter forms of belief.
Shorter me: Argue against fundamentalism. Don't argue against any religious sentiment whatsoever.
Yes the existence of God is not the focus of all people of faith, but the non-existence of God is the point of atheism!
788: Yeah, but you ask them to prove it and they start evasively whining about epistemological impossiblities.
In the interests of retroactive commity, I would like to endorse the general principle of punching Terry Eagleton's testicles. Lousy Althusarian apologist.
Once we've abolished capitalism and the state, all the gods will wither away.
779: Agreed.
Also, I've decided to keep all my toes. In the 24 hour period that ended a couple of hours ago, I covered more than 10 miles on foot* and all my toes hurt. I'm taking that to mean they all do something useful.
*10 miles in actual outdoor going distances walking/running, not counting whatever I do just around the house or office.
Walt, I hope it was a big candy bar. Not only do I agree with parsimon's defense of Eagleton's article, I rather enjoyed Literary Theory. Though it's no Sexual/Textual Politics.
(What ever happened to Toril Moi? Did she start a band?)
I'm taking that to mean they all do something useful.
You bet they do. I managed last night to utterly wrench my lower leg/knee and bash my foot, rather badly, by catching my foot under the edge of a rug *while carrying a bowl of hot soup*, and I instinctively went for trying to save the soup, which meant that I twisted about, went down hard on one knee, smacked my foot against the corner of the stove ... but saved about half of the soup, the rest splashed across the floor. Fuckin' A. I'm limping quite badly now, and the big toe on the left foot doesn't work very well. Hurts like a motherfucker, actually.
And I really don't see what's so awful about the Eagleton thing! Granted, he does go on, but I think we're able to protect ourselves against any perceived rhetorical excesses, and the case he wishes to make for Dawkins (potentially, anyway) harboring a neo-liberal, progress-progress-onwards-and-upwards worldview counts as fair warning, about which I'd like to be alerted. Eagleton's snotty tone just doesn't bother me.
What ever happened to Toril Moi?
I read and liked an article of hers once.
795: Ouch. If your toe keeps hurting, you might want to get it looked at. My sister once broke hers just by walking, at a normal pace, into the sofa.
797: Yeah. Thanks. I don't know. I'm desperately hoping it's just a deep bruise -- there's no swelling or black-and-blue, I just can't bend it (walk on it with full bending action), or even put much weight on the foot, without it hurting pretty much impossibly. So I'm walking in a kind of club-footed manner. Terrific. I figure, give it a couple of days before looking into an x-ray? I really don't need this right now.
I'm trying not to whine or whimper, honestly.
I figure, give it a couple of days before looking into an x-ray?
That's what I'd do, unless the pain got very bad. You'd probably have some swelling if it were broken.
Ice it down, Parsi. 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off. Not too many times all in a row.
I figure, give it a couple of days before looking into an x-ray?
Unless something's crazy wrong with it it's usually not worth getting toes looked at because all they do with a broken toe is tape it up.
My sister got a plastic boot-thing. I assume it was padded and what not.
I thought that icing was called for just if there was swelling. But alright. Icing now.
... That feels pretty good!
If you hold the ice bag in place with your other foot it's "toes icing toes".
One remedy, common in parts of Canada, involves immersing the injured digit in the bag of ice, and then hurtling oneself down a chute carved into a snowy mountain. This procedure is known as a "toe bag and slide".
I'm going to get some sleep before I start to find that amusing.
Stanley sleighs 'em in the aisles.
The description in 795 sounds more like something that would tear a ligament or what not -- which I understand is the sort of thing you fix promptly or not at all. So, may a sort of overcautious vote for see a real doctor rather than the Mineshaft on this one, with the caveat that I am a big baby and ginormous worrywort on matters medical. Hope you feel better!
I'm pretty fucking hungry now, so I'm prepared to narrow my demands. If you're not already on-board for the Eagleton ball-punching, what about just punching him in the balls for the first two paragraphs of that essay? The part where he acts like theology and religion are synonyms, and then makes fun of Dawkins for his shitty knowledge of medieval theologians.
I should go pick up a copy of The God Delusion just to find out if it really is as dumb and offensive as all that.
I think I've got a copy somewhere if you can wait a bit and send me an address.
Anagram of KD! Does this mean the potential problem is sorted?
811: One ball only and you have a deal.
Wow, I was gonna come back and flesh out the QM thing. But here we are, with Walt still trying to pretend the Dawk is defensible, and it is goddamned dispiriting. I can feel the enthusiasm leaching out of me just looking at the screen. (Although I'll come this far toward comity: based on 762 I certainly agree someone deserves a good, hard punch in the balls. Let's just... leave it unspecified.)
I'll try back tomorrow morning before work. Have a nice night everyone.
Ameliorating factor: given 765, we can probably scale it back to a punch in one ball. For whoever that is.
What, one wonders, are Dawkins's views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?
It doesn't matter because it all argues from premises not proven. Above us only sky, dude.
re: 816
I you know this because what? You don't get to help yourself on the falsehood of the premises in other people's arguments without knowing what the premises are, ffs.
Look, I get it, everyone thinks they are so fucking clever because they don't believe in God, and they assume that everyone who ever talks about God is working from the same conception of God as them, using whatever sort of argument they imagine they must be using, and running some sort of straightforward, 'Here's my empirical evidence, and from this I conclude that sky fairy' bit of reasoning, and then they can just congratulate themselves on their rigor. Well, bollocks.
I was trying pretty hard to lay off the ad hominem, but Jesus, the level of know-nothing self-satisfaction is fucking depressing.
817,818:The way to understand it and get less depressed is to see it as just another irrational tribal religious dispute, like Calvin vs Zwingli, sprinkling vs immersion, monophysite vs whatever.
Of course the atheists believe themselves holders of the true scientific truth, but so did Arian and the rest.
And thank goodness, the atheists aren't burning people like the other cults and sects, yet, though apparently they want to keep believers from gov't positions, and keep their views out of the schools.
818 probably somewhat ill-tempered.
they want to keep believers from gov't positions, and keep their views out of the schools.
That would appear to be coming straight out of your rectum.
ttaM, I guess I would say that (pace the Four Hors d'oeuvresmen) the high-end theology is probably not pernicious in and of itself. On the other hand, like Walt and essaer, I grew up in a place where the believers really really didn't sample that end of the spectrum. And I swear they were always a tiny goad away from re-instituting lynchings or rediscovering the Malleus Maleficarum.
re: 823
Yeah, and I get hostility to a lot of forms of theism -- there's a lot of pricks out there. I'm also down with those who think that actually existing religions, particularly in your country (which isn't much like mine), can have a lot of negative real world effects.
My anger is directly almost entirely at the 'I don't need to know shit, I know what I know, and I know that I'm right' thing, which is infuriating. Your* opponents might be wrong [I think they probably are] but you need to do them the courtesy of at least engaging with some of what they say. I've gotten equally annoyed on behalf of all kinds of other things in the past, I'm a fairly equal opportunity critic of glib self-satisfaction.
* non specific generic second person 'your'.
822: now now, you can't just dismiss bob's firmly-held beliefs like that unless you've engaged with the philosophical basis behind them.
825: Only his proctologist knows for sure.
I also think that books railing against the wrong things that 99 percent of people believe do also have some value whether that be evolution or religion, even if they are whacking strawmen. If nothing else it can get some people to look for the refutations which hopefully make them understand their own position better. If Dawkins' writing resulted in 0 atheist converts, but some people who fleshed out their understanding of their own religion better I would still consider that a win.
I don't know if that has happened with Dawkins, but I know it has happened for me and evolution when I was starting to turn godless.
822:Creationism?
You know, it wasn't as if Luther justified his Reformation on the basis of dart-throwing or coin-flipping. He claimed science and reason was on his side, as do they all.
Reading now about Atsutane (c 1815), who wanted to remove Neo-Confucian and Buddhist influence from Shinto. Atsutane had a new more scientific method than the old philological analysis. He used an actual eyewitness who had been kidnapped by a supernatural being (Tengu) and taken to the magical mountains.
Look like science to me.
823, Having myself been privileged to grow up in a relaxed Anglican environment where most of the clergy admitted to some degree of agnosticism, you have my sympathy. But from your description the believers in your home town wouldn't have been open to the kind of reason tempered by mockery offered by people like those we're discussing; they'd be more likely to tar and feather them. So, what's the point? They avoid talking to the people who might engage with them; they speak an inappropriate language for talking to the broad mass of believers. What's left? Comfort literature for their fellow atheists? Is this a genre worth caring about?
dismiss bob's firmly-held beliefs
I keep telling ya I don't have any, but you never believe.
The real scientific and objective attitude requires a firm skepticism toward not just assumptions and postulates, but methods, like induction.
829: Dawkins, at least, makes it clear that he's aiming at the class of people who are not (or only very vaguely) religious themselves but who still offer unjustifiable privileges and support to religion by allowing things like faith schools, bishops in the House of Lords, etc.
829: An effort at breaking the solidarity between the sort of believers who do believe in a factually existing god with pernicious social effects (the people in AG's town, the people Unfoggetarian grew up with), and the sort of believers with religious views that are sophisticated enough to be difficult to refute on a Dawkins-like level?
If theologically sophisticated believers think that believers who actually believe in a personal God who factually exists have no good evidence for their beliefs, I'd like that out in public.
FWIW, I'd ban faith schools. Or, rather, I wouldn't allow state-funding for them.
[This is where I'm very much not on the side of the religious believers.]
But from your description the believers in your home town wouldn't have been open to the kind of reason tempered by mockery offered by people like those we're discussing; they'd be more likely to tar and feather them.
The thing is, they'd likely give much the same reception to the sophisticated philosophers of religion--that would certainly be in line with the heritage of the mass religion.
831. The class of people you're talking about, as was explained to me by one of the few genuine movers and shakers I've had the questionable privilege to know, don't believe in God; they believe in religion as part of a political stategy (one which I deplore). They're not going to pay any attention to Dawkins unless he can argue that religious forms are no longer useful to High Toryism, and if he tried to do that he'd look a fool.
834:Look. of course I'm partly kidding ( tho not completely sure myself) and partly trolling (but what else can a radical skeptic ever do).
But the better point is that the sooner you accept the emotional and irrational basis of your own beliefs (like that ever happens) the more quickly you realize that public reason and evidenced arguments are never gonna work on your enemies.
Then you can clear the town square for the public burnings.
835: Is it possible to make people in that class look bad by clarifying that their support for forced religious observance is purely cynical?
Is it possible to make people in that class look bad by clarifying that their support for forced religious observance is purely cynical?
I don't think so, because they don't really care.
Tories are utterly ruthless about power. They don't especially care who knows it, and may at times cultivate it, so basically what 838 said.
If theologically sophisticated believers think that believers who actually believe in a personal God who factually exists have no good evidence for their beliefs, I'd like that out in public
I have good news - it's been out in public for rather more than a thousand years. The debate between people who think that the truth of Christianity can be established by rational argument, and those who believe that religious belief is a matter of faith alone is known as "natural religion" (as in, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion). For a very large part of European history, believing that there was good rational evidence for the existence of God was heresy and saying it too loudly and too vehemently could quite easily get your books burned and your neck stretched.
It's all rather interesting, which is why it's a bit of a shame that people like Dawkins who claim to be interested in the general subject matter aren't more interested in it.
(heresy, of course, because if the existence of God and the divinity of Christ can be proved by rational argument, then it would be possible to have a religious life and attain salvation without any involvement from the Church).
817
Look, I get it, everyone thinks they are so fucking clever because they don't believe in God, and they assume that everyone who ever talks about God is working from the same conception of God as them, ...
If these people are talking about a non-standard conception of God perhaps they should use a different word to avoid confusion.
There is a limit to the amount of nonsense I am willing to examine looking for a few hidden nuggets.
Which conception of God is the "standard" one?
There is a limit to the amount of nonsense I am willing to examine looking for a few hidden nuggets.
And yet here you are! How puzzling!
843: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/blake/ancient.jpg
Which conception of God is the "standard" one?
Good question. If I suggest that within Christianity it's the one described by the Apostles' Creed, people are going to start shouting that that's too sophisticated. Angry dad?
http://www.unfogged.com/StandardGod.jpg
Atheist mom contemplates why it's sticky to talk frankly to her kids about atheism - she thinks of herself as a nice person, and it at least feels like an inherent insult towards others in her belief.
it would be possible to have a religious life and attain salvation without any involvement from the Church).
Awesome. Do I need to read the Articles to see if the CoE accepts that you, with your Bible and reason alone, can achieve Grace unassisted? Salvation is not "attained" or "achieved." Am I mistaken? Protestantism is not the ultra-rationalist's only reasoned choice, and I can point to enough Brits who switched to supply arguments.
What is awesome is the residual anti-Catholicism, from a resident of the nation with its glorious history of ultra-violent religious suppression and quite recent virulent anti-Catholicism (and anti-semitism, but thats' another story).
If we are talking about the fostering of indivudual independence by the nation that enslaved the half-world it didn't addict to opium...just awesome.
844
And yet here you are! How puzzling!
Yes I find Unfogged more interesting than theology.
845, 847: I'm rather partial to this one. The God of Abraham doesn't have enough arms.
849. Bob, I don't think you really want an answer to your question - you just want a thin excuse to hurl abuse at people you don't know, but since you ask:
Article VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
I'm not sure what 849 is getting at, but I think "Oh noes! Eight hundred years of oppression and now this!" is a suitable response.
Also, any god wither her salt has blue hooters and a necklace of human heads.
See, regarding sophisticated takes on religion, a sophisticated Hindu once explained to me that the multi-armed pictures of the god(esse)s aren't to be taken to imply that the deities actually have multiple arms, but should be seen as dynamic representations of deities whose hands are everywhere at once.
Now that seems to me to be quite a simple point and doesn't require believing that the deities are symbolic or anything hard like that. But half the world, and I suspect a few Hindus among them, still think nof the deities as having six or eight arms.
So where do you draw the line?
dynamic representations of deities whose hands are everywhere at once.
Like Dorothy Hodgkin.
840: I know the issue of faith versus reason has been a live one. I'm annoyed that in all the ire about how simpleminded Dawkins is for arguing with people who think there's evidence for the existence of God, I don't see a lot of wholehearted agreement with him on that point -- Eagleton isn't saying "Of course, with regard to Dawkins' claim that believers who think they do have real evidence for the existence of God are mistaken, he's perfectly right: I agree with him that people with that category of belief are mistaken and that that they misunderstand how belief should be formed."
The bait-and-switch whereby it's contemptible of an atheist to engage with a simpleminded conception of God when there are more sophisticated levels of belief out there, but it's not contemptible for more sophisticated believers to maintain argumentative solidarity with people holding that more simpleminded conception irritates me.
It's iconography. Of course it's symbolic, and recognized by nearly everyone except small children as such. It's not like Catholics think that the saints walked around all the time giving particular hand gestures and carrying the symbolic items they were associated with.
If people literally thought Kali had six arms, they would at least draw her with a consistent number of arms. Instead, its six or eight or as many as the artist could fit on the page.
re: 855
And a lot of polytheists don't believe that multiple gods really exist, they are just ways of accessing different aspects of a single divine nature. Or Vajrayana theologians who don't really think that the whole cosmology of demons and demigods exist in some substantive sense of exist, and so on.
There's a lot of it about. Whether that's a manifestation of the human tendency to want to have its cake and eat it, on the other hand ...
The "more sophisticated" believers have for most of the last millennium had a relationship with heretics which isn't really one of argumentative solidarity.
Even today, the basic relationship between someone like Rowan Williams and yer average hell-is-a-physical-place-and-cats-have-souls churchgoer is more like "well, you're wrong, and I think I can prove you wrong, and if you ask me I'll tell you you're wrong, but I'm not going to make a big deal of it and write books telling you what an idiot you are, because NNTBACAI". This is not a good or moral way to deal with the third world maniacs who make up the majority of his church, but it seems like a perfectly sensible way to deal with yr average church lady.
I mean, as I pointed out upthread, in something which I don't believe is even an analogy, when Dawkins argues with creationists, or global-warming denialists or whoever, he expects them to argue against the best, current, state of the art in scientific thinking, not erroneous popular conceptions. He recognises this sensible and correct principle in every other case except the one in which it is massively convenient for him and his publisher to do so.
Okay, so for form's sake, to address the QM thing that somehow became such a big deal upthread: I was not claiming to disagree with, say, essear's summary in 708. Nor, as I hoped would be sort of obvious, was I claiming that there is some killer argument for God being made from QM. But due to new complexities introduced into the study of causality by modern physics, there are common arguments for God being made from phenomena like quantum indeterminacy, which is something I take to be popularly known -- maybe I'm wrong about this, since the allusion apparently proved so very mystifying here, but given what's gone on this thread I'm not sure it really constitutes the best gauge -- and something you should discuss if you're going to go on long tangents about modern causality and its relationship to God. And I said it was a bad call for Carroll not to do so.
That's really it. Missed opportunity, he could have even used it as an added chance to complain about the "God of the gaps" phenomenon like essear does later on. Calling this "brutal" was perhaps an "infelicitous phrasing." Maybe it was more just... meh.
Having hopefully cleared that up somewhat, I'd like our "in defense of polemics with minimal intellectual effort" contingent to spend less time thinking about Terry Eagleton's testicles and more time taking a good look at the following major take-aways about "atheism" this thread has provided:
1. "Atheism" is more rational / less "silly" / better answers to scientific evidential criteria for the establishment or disestablishment of entities than "theism*." Because it adheres to this higher standard for establishing knowledge of the world around us, we should hold our heads high as atheists and say so.
(* 1a. Somebody keeps pointing out that this formulation assumes its way around a major philosophical problem of utilitarian vs. faith-based argument, but we can safely ignore that.)
2. However, there's only so much time** we need to spend learning anything about "theism"*** to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that point 1 is true****.
(** 2a. The Shearer Formulation: As in, none. Everything else is nonsense because because. And don't ask us what "everything else" is, don't know, don't care.)
(*** 2b. The More Common Formulation: Come on, we already know that [insert questionable caricature here] is true of most of believers, and we all know that's silly, right? And don't ask how we know that. We just do. What, you're saying that's not true? Well... fuck you. That thing you're talking about is probably only known to theologians.)
(**** 2c. The Walt Someguy Clause: This is true even for people who are going far beyond evidentiary standards for God and claiming "theism" is pernicious and morally inferior. Who wants to punch Terry Eagleton in the balls?)
3. There's no dissonance at all between points 1 and 2, so stop saying so; that's holding us to an "unreasonably high standard." What's important is that our spokespeople get out there in the public eye and really take the fight to "the fundies" and/or push the "intellectual respectability" of our worldview without worrying about any such dissonance.
4. 3 is very important to do because "theists" don't respect us, or at least many of them don't, so it's about time we took the gloves off. Who cares if we look a little ignorant? Lots more of them look more ignorant, so this proposition is an easy win for us and we don't need to worry about having higher standards.
5. There is also no dissonance between points 4 and 1. Really.
Those five basic points, repeated ad nauseam, are a large part of what constitutes this thread, excepting a few relatively bright spots like the Carroll link. Everyone's caught up with defending themselves by now, but give it a retrospective viewing a few weeks from now and I don't think it should surprise any one of you why Halford eventually had to say "screw the lot of you." This is probably one of the most agonizingly embarrassing displays the Unfoggedtariat has ever put on in its own comments section; it at least has to be in the top five.
"well, you're wrong, and I think I can prove you wrong, and if you ask me I'll tell you you're wrong, but I'm not going to make a big deal of it and write books telling you what an idiot you are, because NNTBACAI".
But then why isn't the response to Dawkins et al.: "Sure, with respect to the unsophisticated concept of God you're addressing, you're right, and if someone who held that conception of God asked me about it I'd tell them they were wrong and you were right, and certainly with respect to certain classes of lunatics with such an unsophisticated belief in God and who use that belief as leverage toward bringing about bad ends you're right about them too, but there's NN for you TBACAI with respect to the harmlessly unsophisticated, who are wrong but should be left alone because it's just mean to tell them they're wrong. And with respect to more sophisticated believers, now I can get snotty at you about how little you understand about theology (who knows, maybe if I feel really generous by talking informatively about where you've gone wrong rather than merely listing names I think you're unacquainted with)."
For anti-atheist spokesmen who are relying heavily on the sophisticated conceptual nature of their beliefs, I'd like to see some concessions of the common ground they share with atheists.
824: I don't know how many people on the "pro-Dawkins" side I'm speaking for, but it's really just the meta-argument that bothers me. If you want to argue specifically that Catholic natural law theology is wrong, then you pretty have to know what it says to argue that it's wrong. But if you want to argue that the Catholic church is a bad influence on the world, then you can pretty much leave the Aquinas versus Duns Scotus argument unexamined.
864: Another excellent contribution from Walt. Obviously if you want to argue the Catholic Church is "a bad influence on the world," examining any of its intellectual contributions to the world is irrelevant "meta-argument."
You're only making it worse, guy. Just stop.
If you want to argue that a church is a bad influence on the world, you don't need to talk about god at all. You just need to talk about things like crappy attitudes toward women & birth control, sheltering child molesters, oppressing gays, and the general problems with closed, authoritarian power structures.
Doing that is actually much more important than silly arguments about metaphor and metaphysics.
Funny, what he said made perfect sense to me. What use is theology to anyone who's not a believer or a theologian?
867: Could it be the development of theology was inextricably intertwined with the development of science and is a pretty important part of assessing the Catholic Church's impact on the world? Do you seriously imagine that all theologians did was speculate about angels on the heads of pins or something?
re: 864
Speaking for myself, I've personally said, repeatedly, and ad fucking nauseam, that one can talk about the pernicious influence of current religious orthodoxy/practice without doing a shit load of work on theology. You need to do a shitload of other work but they aren't the same thing, and fine one can do one without the other.
If you are arguing, on the other hand, that religious belief is wrong, not just a bit wrong, but delusional; lets say you put that claim in the title of your fucking book then people are entitled to look askance at it. Fucksake.
862: yep, I think I agree with points 1 to 5.
NN for you TBACAI with respect to the harmlessly unsophisticated, who are wrong but should be left alone because it's just mean to tell them they're wrong.
It's not terrifically ethical, it seems to me, to be in a position where other people look to you to keep them straight on the nature of God and similar topics; to be aware that most or all of these other people are fairly seriously mistaken about these topics; and not to at least try in some polite way to put them right.
If most people in Britain believed, and said publicly, that the sun went round the earth, you can bet that the Astronomer Royal would be trying his best to push back.
862.1 looks a lot like what I summarily dismissed in 734.2 and was told was a strawman. Oh well.
868: Could it be that 'inextricably' is a bit of stretch there, and that what you really mean is that the development of science involved many Christian scholars educated in theology? That's pretty far from supporting a claim that the theology itself is something that ever did anyone a bit of good -- the Catholic Church can have credit for all the Jesuit scientists it likes.
871: So you're clinging to the straw, then? You do that.
872: Could it be that 'inextricably' is a bit of stretch there,
No, not really.
A parallel argument.
You/Me/the Gatepost: Invading Iraq is a stupid idea and will lead to disaster.
Michael Ledeen: We're going to create a democratic libertarian utopia!
YMG: No. It's a stupid idea. It will be a disaster.
ML: We're going to transform the Middle East! We're going to bring the world cheap oil and ponies, ponies, ponies as far as the eye can see!
YMG: No. It's a stupid idea and will be a disaster. Also, you have no idea what's going to happen once you start the war and you really shouldn't be making promises about the nature of a future Iraq.
ML: Why won't you ENGAGE WITH MY IDEAS?
David Broder: Why on why can't we have a more serious and sophisticated debate on the future form of government of Iraq?
YMG: There's no point in engaging with your ideas about the future of Iraq because there is no reason to think you can keep control of things once you start the war.
"Harry's Place", in chorus: Fascists! Fascists!
Binyamin Netanyahu: Wanna pony!
Broder: With a pale mane, and bells on!
YMG: Asking for a pony isn't a plan. Therefore, there's even less point debating what kind of pony to ask for. There is no pony! And therefore there is no reason to argue about what kind of pony it is, or who'll feed it, or how AWESOME it would be to have the pony, or whatever!
I am not a believer or a theologian, and I like theology. It's a productive way to think about ethics, which is much, much more interesting IMO than unfalsifiable plausibility arguments about causation.
I love Dawkins' biology books. IMO his public atheism is a way to get on television, he's not a humble man.
875: A parallel argument which turns out not to be parallel at all, or even relevant! QFS.
No, not really.
I love your detailed rebuttals, DS.
But even granting the 'inextricably,' it says something about a positive role the Church played historically, which has very little to do with any assessment of its role in the world today.
This is probably one of the most agonizingly embarrassing displays the Unfoggedtariat has ever put on in its own comments section
Boy, that sounds like a challenge.
Is argumentum ad butthurt a term of art? It should be.
After a previous thread here I checked Theology and the Scientific Imagination out of the library (at Halford's suggestion, I think?), but then someone promptly recalled it, so I remain ignorant of the historical theology/science link. I should check it out again sometime.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13361130
By way of light relief ...
>
It's not terrifically ethical, it seems to me, to be in a position where other people look to you to keep them straight on the nature of God and similar topics; to be aware that most or all of these other people are fairly seriously mistaken about these topics; and not to at least try in some polite way to put them right.
It depends; if you have a view of the world under which faith is more important than reason (and if you believed that people who got confused by erroneous natural theology and lost their faith would be literally damned), you wouldn't necessarily have the same ethical intuitions. Even the Astronomer Royal, when asked directly to his face "Tell me the truth, does my bum look big in this?", might sometimes consider that allowing someone to persist in serious error is on balance the right thing to do.
This is probably one of the most agonizingly embarrassing displays the Unfoggedtariat has ever put on in its own comments section
it's not really, it's just one of the longest.
Even the Astronomer Royal, when asked directly to his face "Tell me the truth, does my bum look big in this?",
"No, no, it's just the looking through the telescope that makes it look like that."
878.1: At a certain point, there's little to be said beyond go read. This thread isn't an online course.
it says something about a positive role the Church played historically, which has very little to do with any assessment of its role in the world today.
Yes, history and the present day are entirely divorced from one another and one cannot have any significant bearing or shed any light on the other. That's a great point, I can tell you really thought that through.
884: And I'm being an enabler, aren't I?
Well, I'd better stop that. See you all later.
tl; dr:
What bothers me about this discussion (and Eagleton, and other replies to Dawkins et al.) is, as LB says, that there is no specific acknowledgement of what the sophisticated theologians are talking about when they talk about God. I'd very much like it if we could have some thread (probably not this one, since everyone's riled up) where theists could explain what they do mean by references to their belief. I've tried on several occasions to have versions of this discussion with believers whom I consider very intelligent, educated, wise, but I really never got an answer that was satisfactory to me. For example, Eagleton's references to 'a condition of possibility' seem way to vague, and he really doesn't try to make anyone understand what he's supposed to be talking about. To ban myself: I really like reading discussions about the 'reality' or 'existence' of math, and in most such discussions, I know and acknowledge that there's been plenty of philosophical or mathematical literature that I haven't read. But still, in those discussions, I do come away with something besides the realization that there's lots to read. Enough people, whether in laymen or expert disputes, speak clearly about what it means for e.g. the real numbers to exist, how we can take the claim apart, what clashes with our intuitions, etc. And then give supporting arguments for different positions. Now, I may agree with the arguments or not, but at least it is relatively clear what's at stake.
On the other hand, in Eagleton, as well as throughout this thread, I didn't get any clear picture of what the sophisticated versions are, or why people would want them, except for perhaps one short remark by Halford about the transfiguring vision, which was interesting, but still didn't help me understand how, specifically, his beliefs relate to God or religion. Or why it is stupid/naive to think about the question of whether God exists. Or in what sense we should be thinking about that question.
I have more to say, I think, but I'll see if this comment gets some kind of response before continuing. I'll just note that I don't want this to be read as some sort of 'the burden is on you, theists'. I'm genuinely interested.
885: yo mamma so fat that we were able to detect her by looking for the periodic Doppler shifting of light from the star around which she was orbiting.
yo mamma so fat that she had to get a restraining order to keep passers-by out of her Roche limit.
yo mamma so fat that everyone thought she had four identical husbands, until they realised it was simply an Einstein's Cross-type anomaly caused by gravitational lensing.
you know, current models of spiral galaxies can only be made to comply with the law of gravity if we assume that approximately only 10% of the galaxy's total mass is made up of stars, and the other 90% - nine times the total mass of all the stars in the galaxy - is made up of something else.
I'm just saying.
888 is what I was going for in my glib 774.
This was a long thread and I haven't read all of it, but the general consensus (cf. 817, 840) seems to be that, properly understood, religion makes no empirical claims, and so Dawkins (an empiricist) completely misses the target when he attacks the quality of the evidence for the claims made by religions.
This seems like a straightforward knock-down argument against Dawkins when expressed like this--an empiricist like him can't lay a finger on someone who isn't making any empirical claims--and I'm surprised that the argument is not normally made so clearly and in these terms.
A conversation along the lines of 888 would interest me, too. Not here in this thread, I think, yeah.
891: I think the reason that the argument isn't made so clearly and in those terms is that it would be perceived as shockingly hostile and contemptuous toward believers who do think that religion makes empirical claims (that is, they're not just wrong, but their beliefs aren't even religion as properly understood), and those arguing against Dawkins et al. would prefer to be able to remain socially affiliated with unsophisticated believers.
the general consensus (cf. 817, 840) seems to be that, properly understood, religion makes no empirical claims
That seems to be the argument; though it is radically opposed to (for example) the Credo, which is largely a series of empirical claims.
We've had a couple of attempted conversations along the lines of 888 -- the first one was me and Labs irritating the bejesus out of Kotsko by having trouble grasping what religious faith was to the extent that it's not acceptance of the truth of various factual propositions about the universe, and there was a later one as well, that was equally unsuccessful and annoying to Kotsko, but I don't think Labs was around for it.
I can't remember enough key words to search for either, though.
832: I wouldn't say the people I grew up with were "unsophisticated," in fact I knew several theologians. They just weren't of the hand-wavy "the bible doesn't mean what it says"-"all religions are true"-"we don't make any actual claims about the universe" type. You can be quite sophisticated about religion in many different ways.
840: Could you give a reference for when that was considered heresy? Given the prominence of St. Thomas Aquinas that really seems implausible to me, but presumably there's just something more subtle going on (as the orthodox position can often be quite close to heresy).
888 is a nice idea. I would happily submit to some kind of "questions for clarification only, not for attack" policy for a thread in which people tried to explain clearly what it means to have sophisticated religious beliefs.
Here's one such old thread. I didn't come out of it feeling as though I understood much, but it might be helpful to someone else.
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This might be interesting material for a front page post.
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888,892:where theists could explain what they do mean by references to their belief.
Atsutane wrote about 3000 pages in attempting to justify a sort of irrationalist Shinto freed from Neo-Confucianist rationalism and ethics and Indian obscurantisms. IOW, the scale, the scale...
And I am only indirectly interested in theism, but in "faith" as a subset of the existentialist project of re-attaining subjectivity and authenticity through a re-cognition of non-rationalism or irreducible materiality blah blah. The existentialism tradition starts with Kierkegaard* and passes through Nietzsche for most excellent reasons.
Or Kant's ding-in-sich, that which "exists" but can't be spoken of without undermining reason itself. Or something
Wow. 891 is true revelation. It made more sense than all of DS's fuming ad hominems combined. So what looked like constant goalpost shifting to me is really a totally fundamental misunderstanding about the claims made by each side?
The claim that "God exists" is certainly a factual claim about the universe, but it's not necessarily an empirical claim about the universe. The claim that "some people have had direct experiences of God" is an empirical claim", but not one of the kind that is necessarily accessible to science.
DS's fuming ad hominems
Oh, since I'm poking my head back in: here's a helpful article on the "Ad Hominem Fallacy" Fallacy, to help you use this term correctly in future. You're welcome.
explain clearly what it means to have sophisticated religious beliefs.
And I find this pointless and pernicious.
I know of no serious religio-philosophical ethicist who would willingly limit grace or wisdom to sophisticated intellectuals. Wrong, badly phrased, but there has been and always is an equal path to enlightenment for the ordinary, illiterate and unsophisticated people.
And I find this to be an essential problem for modern rationalists, scientists, economists...that they say of course you don't understand molecular genetics or quantum mechanics or DSGE you just gotta trust us high-priests that everything you know and care about is wrong.
Another old thread with Kotsko, teo, and Weiner talking about religion not based on belief in propositions, and me being aggressively confused.
This seems like a straightforward knock-down argument against Dawkins when expressed like this--an empiricist like him can't lay a finger on someone who isn't making any empirical claims--and I'm surprised that the argument is not normally made so clearly and in these terms.
893 is a good point, but it's also the case that a lot of people would consider this to be a somewhat unsatisfying argument and something of the order of saying that because Stoke City beat Manchester United earlier in the year, and my team beat Stoke, therefore for my money we really won the league.
"All this stuff we claim to believe to the point we expect to be DAMNED if we stop....well, we don't believe it in the sense that we think it is any more right than any other view or that we hold it to be true. Just that it's incredibly important and, you know, SAVED vs. DAMNED. So you can stick your claims of truth up your arse! Take that, Dawkins!"
Declaring that there exists an alternative realm of logic in which you just happen to be right and in fact you can only be right is quite the trick. It's a bit like having your own proforma non-IFRS accounts that show you're incredibly profitable - the opposite would be more convincing.
Further, if you describe this realm as being more "sophisticated", you may risk coming across as a wee bit arrogant, and some smartarse may remind you that the word "sophisticated" comes from the same root as "sophistry".
Of course the world would in fact be a better place if more religious people did actually consider religion to be a purely interior mystical experience that informs their notions of ethics, rather than something as material as a punch in the mouth. So, y'know, knock yourself out...
901: "Each side" is, I think, the wrong formulation. Part of the problem here is that there are (at least!) three sides here: theists who think that there religion makes true empirical claims, atheists who think that the first groups empirical claims are false, and theists who do not think that religion makes empirical claims. (Of course the first group splits into several large groups based on the actual claims involved, and within those large groups into thousands of smaller groups.) I think a lot of the feeling of goalpost shifting comes from shifting alliances within these large groups. Depending on the subject you can have an alliance between any of the three groups (2 and 3 vs 1 on evolution, 1 and 3 vs. 2 on whether religion is bad for the world, 1 and 2 vs. 3 on "relativism").
Within atheists there's a big difference between the people who want to try to emphasize the differences between 2 and 3 and those who want to hide the distinction (the two great modern populizers of evolution, Gould and Dawkins, fall strongly into opposite camps here).
907.last "2 and 3" s/b "1 and 3"
A "sophisticated" understanding of religion has to include the Nembutsu
I'm also interested by the distinction between dsquared's position on this and his position on everything else. As a stylised fact, his approach to every other issue I can think of is basically "welcome to t'Northern Union.....smack!". Progressive politics? Demand bigger pies and shorter hours and shout down anyone in the way. Foreign policy? Smack a neocon in the chops, then look at the detail. Beer? well, we all know about that story.
Religion, though? Suddenly it's all "well, I understand you have a point, but I don't like the shrill tone of this debate, the lack of civility offends me, and we should engage with their very real concerns". Basically, all the stuff he claims to despise in every other debate he gets into.
907:"empirical claims" seems question-begging and aggressive framing
"In most Pure Land traditions, mindfully chanting of the name of Amitābha Buddha is viewed as allowing one to obtain birth in Amitābha's western pure land called Sukhāvatī"
There is a western pure land. It exists. Do I have to use your methods to prove that it exists?
But your methods, frankly, were created in part to prove that Sukhāvatī" is not "real."
911:I would claim a greater, principled, consistency.
Not that it will be appreciated.
Wow, this is still going on.
I just want to underline rob's 866. Unfoggedtarian and AG and others who are complaining about the perniciousness of religious beliefs are .attributing all the beliefs of religious folks to religion in a way that they would specifically deny in the case of other kinds of belief. The desire of AG's childhood coreligionists to bring back lynching was probably not based on religious beliefs at all and likely did not include a sophisticated or unsophisticated analysis of biblical authority on the need for (racist?) extra-judicial mob killings. On the other hand, even if it had been based in religious thought, it is just as simultaneously seperable from and intrinsic to religion as ethics or charity or whatever other good things religious people occasionally believe or do. Hitler was a believer, Mao and Stalin atheists. In each case what allowed them to be murderous bastard was a fundamentalist certainty that their action were right and justified whatever the cost, not the religious or irreligious basis of the certainty. So go ahead and argue that this or that belief is wrong, having taken a moment to make sure that it's something that some identifiable group of people actually believe, but don't make the mistake of thinking that religious belief itself leads to bad values or politics and that eliminating such belief will in any way help you to avoid such bad results.
Oh, and I'd be happy to discuss my beliefs in a different thread (I'm in that American 12% with a higher power but no personal god). If you ask me to prove what I believe in, though, I'll tell you that I can't and that I'm not particularly bothered by that. I don't care whether folks believe what I believe.
Religion, though? Suddenly it's all "well, I understand you have a point, but I don't like the shrill tone of this debate, the lack of civility offends me, and we should engage with their very real concerns".
Theists don't, in general, write books about their damn fool arguments (or at least, they do, but the books don't get reviewed or discussed in the papers I read). If one of the fuckers ever crossed my path I dare say I'd be just as rude. Also, it's close to zero marginal cost for me to unload arguments of the general schema "Dawkins and Dennett talk a hell of a lot of smack about things that they really don't understand and this is bad", because I had a bunch of them assembled back in the 1990s when it was a) literary theory and b) Stephen Jay Gould that was in his gunsights.
895: the first one was me and Labs irritating the bejesus out of Kotsko ... and there was a later one as well, that was equally unsuccessful and annoying to Kotsko, but I don't think Labs was around for it.
And now we here we have this unsatisfying thread. Hmm, other than the topic, the common element would be?
<insert man fleeing graphic (which does NOT count as a smiley) here>
Labs' later comments about Islam seem to me to indicate something of a change of heart.
I have theorised in the past that the explanation of your (and Nwerdna et al's) War On The Ben Goldacre In D^2's Head is actually some impossibly tedious argument that occurred while you (and allies) were at Oxford (Oh...Oxford, as Uncle Monty said) in the early 1990s and that you're still refighting.
Yes, you have. Although whether or not you were right about the origins of my concern with them, the fact that both of them regularly make amazingly ignorant and self-serving statements about science and its position in society would independently justify my views, even if I hadn't also been prescient in the 1990s that Dawkins would turn into an international-standard tool. For what it's worth, my dislike of Freakonomics is also rooted in similar tedious debates of the same period, and I think we can all agree I was spot on there.
905: Wow. I have way more sympathy for Kotsko's position on that thread now than I appear to have done at the time.
And, D^2, how did you get on with the lass you were trying to impress by being "really deeply into...*intake of breath and look soulful*...THEORY. And science studies" back in '92?
I mean, the underlying issue that concerns me here is that it is not just religion where the specific self-styled "Enlightenment Rationalist" intellectual approach of Dawkins and Dennett (Harris I've never read and Hitchens is a bit sui generis) has lead them down a massive blind alley. They were together on the wrong side of the Adaptationist Wars against Gould & Lewontin. They were together on the wrong side of the Evolutionary Psychology wars back when "Sociobiology" wasn't quite a dirty word. They were together on the wrong side of the "Literary Theory wars". Together on the wrong side of the Sociological Studies of Science wars. Even when they happen to be on the right side (as Dawkins was on Iraq and the war on terror), they are occasionally a hefty liability (Dawkins' polemics about George W Bush and the religion of some of his advisors).
There's a common thread running here. This approach to believing in a single scientific method which allows you a short way with all sorts of difficult issues (Dennett has actually referred to the theory of evolution in print as a "universal solvent") really doesn't work. I think it reflects well rather than badly on me that I've been consistently on the other side for my adult life.
And now, to the delight of the publishing trade (which, in fairness, needs all the help it can get), the monumentally fucked approach of Dennett & Dawkins has been trained on the religios. But it's the same thing that they're doing. Whether Terry Eagleton says so or not, it is actually fundamental to Dawkins' approach that he doesn't learn about the things he's attacking; any more than he made a good faith effort to understand Derrida, or Latour, or experimental psychology, or even Richard Lewontin. He doesn't do it, because the idea of doing so is inimical to his basic intellectual approach. Stephen Levitt has a different toolkit (he thinks it's price theory that explains everything rather than natural selection), but he's Dawkins' logical successor in more ways than just on the Random House nonfiction catalogue.
(This is cobbled together from my notes for the intellectual biog of Dawkins I am planning to write, along with John Birt and Nigel Lawson).
Much as I disagree with evolutionary psychology as an explanatory framework, I'm determined to plough on with it in this case until I get a rise out of dsquared, chiefly because I am excruciatingly bored.
So I'm guessing the answer was "not very well, especially not in any sense with potential evolutionary consequences".
Anyway, for the sake of your readers, may I suggest that prioritising either Lawson or Birt, but especially Lawson due to his continued political role as the UK's no.1 climate change denier, over Dawk would be advisable?
Hmm, not joking here, I literally don't know what Richard Dawkins might think about the subject of multiculturalism ... my theory predicts that he will most likely be a bit of a dick about it. Let's google ... yep.
Together on the wrong side of the Sociological Studies of Science wars.
Although I'm inclined to agree, I feel obligated to note that there were in fact some extraordinarily ignorant and silly things being written about science by some fairly prominent (in Cultural Studies more than Sociology proper) folks back then. Even the liberal New York Times Micheal Berube concedes that.
For the record, I rather like Latour.
You are trying to enter into a competition with me to see who has the highest tolerance for boredom? Curious choice of recreation.
No, any intellectual biography of Fat Nigel Lawson ends in 1992, with the final collapse of the doctrine of the "benign and self-correcting" current account deficit. Thin Nigel is just some uninteresting afterlife - I wasn't even aware that he was a climate nut.
(in Cultural Studies more than Sociology proper)
Yes that's true, although of course in order to know this you'd have to be aware of important distinctions within the field and to focus your arguments on the best examples rather than nutpicked ones which you asserted to be typical ... it's almost like there's a modus operandi here, isn't there?
Actually, I quite like boredom-endurance contests.
You're always making plans for Nigel.
929: I've been in one for 50+ years. Winning!
I'm sure everyone is goddamn sick of this thread, but fuck it, I'm continuing until enlightenment dawns in DS' poor addled brain.
I'm not objecting to religion, or defending Dawkins or any of the other New Atheists (who I haven't read -- other than PZ Myers who I find irritating). I'm objecting purely to Terry Eagleton's transparent bullshit. In a significant fraction of that article, he's not defending religion. He's trying to set up some sort of Marquess of Queensberry rules of engagement so that he doesn't actually have to do the work of arguing against Dawkins. I have no idea what's wrong with the God Delusion, since Eagleton doesn't tell me. All I learned from it is that Dawkins is some sort of bourgeois thick-fingered vulgarian who doesn't even read Latin. Apparently there are awesome arguments that Dawkins doesn't address, but I don't actually know what they are, because Eagleton doesn't tell me.
If we're going to argue about religion, then let's have the argument. None of this bullshit about nobody can bring up Ian Paisley because he's a stupid asshole. If we're going to have the argument, then everything is on the table. Paisley, American fundamentalists, the Nazi Concordat with the Vatican, the fact that Tori Amos must have a really fucked up relationship with her dad, everything. Don't just allude to the totally awesome argument of how Christianity led to the scientific method. Actually make the goddamn argument. Eagleton wants to live out the dream of lazy academics everywhere -- putting off actually make the argument by assigning more reading.
He's trying to set up some sort of Marquess of Queensberry rules of engagement
They're called "the rules of arguing well and knowing what you're talking about."
Sorry man, you have had this explained to you about fifty different ways by multiple people; there just isn't a lot more to say. Your complaint about Eagleton doesn't work. You'll have to either get over it, or punch his family jewels on your own.
I notice that your table seems selectively laden. If you want to have a debate where the theist has to defend or refute every act taken by someone claiming religion and the atheist isn't required defend anything at all (because the atheist got to set the burden of proof on the other side), you basically asking for somebody to engage in a debate were they can't lose or draw, but not win.
933: There isn't a lot more to say because you don't actually have an argument, and you never did, just an obscure desire to stuff the entire world into a seminar room. I suppose Eagleton has an argument, since he's sincerely religious, but he finds Dawkins too intrinisically irritating to make it. Dawkins may in fact be intrinsically irritating, but I didn't learn anything else from his review.
934: No, clearly pro-religion arguments are on the table too. If an atheist wants to argue that religion is bad, then the religious get to bring up the Sistine Chapel, the Thomistic conception of the relationship between faith and reason, the abolitionists, Martin Luther King, and the crimes of Stalin and Mao. I thought about including those, but instead I went with a joke about Tori Amos. (I probably should have included non-Christian examples as well, but at some level of generality I start to find the whole category of "religion" confusing, since some forms of Hinduism or Buddhism are completely compatible with atheism, so I find the idea of drawing a clear theism versus atheism distinction much more problematic.)
936: There isn't a lot more to say because you don't actually have an argument, and you never did
This thread is hip-deep in my arguments which AFAICS you have done nothing but dance around, so, you know, piss off. Which I say with love.
No, you have meta-arguments about the proper behavior in the gigantic seminar room in which we all live. It's just my bad luck I got sat in the back between Ian Paisley and James Dobson. Those fuckers won't shut up, so I haven't heard anything the speaker at the podium has said for hours.
No, you have meta-arguments about the proper behavior in the gigantic seminar room
That's dancing around, Walter, sorry. Everything you need to know to recognize that what you're saying is bullshit is already on this thread, you just have to go back and read. I'm not repeating it.
Sorry, but nothing you've said is persuasive. Since you are in total agreement with Eagleton's attitude, of course what I'm saying sounds like bullshit. It's weird to me that you share Eagleton's attitude, but I guess that's just the human condition writ small.
(Hint, if needed: your complaining about "meta-argument" is just another species of the defenses of ignorance and minimal intellectual effort on the part of atheist spokespeople that has populated the thread from end to end. Your version of the argument -- and your specious contention that holding authors to standards is the same as trying to "stuff the world into a seminar room" -- is worth about the same as anyone else's version. It's been exhaustively explained why I and others think that worth is "nothing.")
940: Sorry, but nothing you've said is persuasive . . . It's weird to me that you share Eagleton's attitude . . .
And it's weird to me that the value of knowledge and competence in an author has to be explained to you, but those are the breaks. Are we done here?
That is a mischaracterization of my argument, so apparently not. Eagleton doesn't want to demand just knowledge and competence. He wants to say what's on-topic and what's off-topic, so that he gets to be the expert, and Dawkins gets to be not-the-expert.
Was 940 a mischaracterization? I was aiming to be fairly neutral.
943.1 would only be interesting if Eagleton's assessments of relevance were in fact inexpert, but unfortunately that's harder to demonstrate than you appear to imagine.
To put the last sentence of 942 last tactfully, I'm done here, since work must regrettably intrude. But anyway, isn't a lonely warrior quest to punch him in the balls more heroic? I can picture you now (I sort of picture you looking like Lee Majors, for some reason) slogging across the windswept wastes of Tibet shaking your fist at the horizon and roaring: "Terry! TERRY!" I think we should run with that.
I notice that your table seems selectively laden. If you want to have a debate where the theist has to defend or refute every act taken by someone claiming religion and the atheist isn't required defend anything at all (because the atheist got to set the burden of proof on the other side), you basically asking for somebody to engage in a debate were they can't lose or draw, but not win.
To be fair, mutatis mutandi, that's exactly what DS has done this entire thread. Which Walt tried, repeatedly, to point out.
So the title of the post got to come true. That's kinda neat.
With the last word, Estanley, you should delete this and close the thread.
862
(** 2a. The Shearer Formulation: As in, none. Everything else is nonsense because because. And don't ask us what "everything else" is, don't know, don't care.)
Because I accept as a premise that something like the scientific method is the correct way to think about the world. By this standard religion appears to offer nothing much of value. Of course you are free to reject the premise.
945: DS has never peddled the illusion that anyone can "win" a debate about the existence of God. That would be even more stupid than what's happened on this thread. He has just declined to be impressed by people claiming their belief systems originate from a higher standard of rationality and rigorous thought, and then squalling about it when someone actually holds their arguments to such a higher standard. DS' point has been throughout that, aside from defending ignorance just being a generally stupid thing to do, atheists cannot have it both ways and should not want to.
When DS advances any arguments rather than saying simply that other arguments of impressive sophistication and rigor exist and its such a shame the simpletons don't address them...
950: When DS advances any arguments
Pull the other one, Turgid.
All you did the entire thread was shake your head sadly saying "poor fools, if only you knew...something I don't have time to talk about now."
It surprise you that's frustrating?
All you did the entire thread
Your claim is nonsense, sorry, re-read the thread.
953: sorry, no, once through your ridiculous obstructions was enough.
954: Isn't that convenient! Ties in with the subject matter of the thread nicely, though. "X is true because I say so, how dare you actually ask me to work to demonstrate it." Sounds about right.
Eh, I swore to leave this thread, but DS is obviously right. Do you really need a syllabus before you realize that there might be something more to the philosophy or study of religion than a simplistic "assume an incredibly simplistic materialism. Now what?" that might be worth engaging? The whole thread really is a classic example of "the less they know, the less they know it."
Anyhow, my main takeaway from the thread is that Ttam should get cracking on his pop philosophy of science book ASAP.
That's my takeaway, too-but I would guess the parties are switched in our minds. Shall we meditate on the fact that folks have been saying exactly the same things to you that you've been saying to them?
957: That's deep, TJ. You're really on fire tonight.
Well, in this thread, my "side" hasn't been the ones saying it's fine to going around writing purportedly super rational critiques about a subject without learning a thing about it (while assuming, wrongly, that there's no philosophical support for that subject due to an unexamined naive understanding of science and/or materialism). But this makes me mad so I should drop it.
As responsive as ever! Nicely done!
Not you Halford. Your point is clear, whereas DS is just having fun.
961.last: of course so am I.
With the last word, Estanley, you should delete this and close the thread.
That might have been timely, but I missed this comment (something came up for work) plus I either don't have the permissions or the know-how to cap a thread. I blame Ogged.
Apparently no amount of rephrasing the point will make a difference, but this is not in fact what we've been arguing: it's fine to going around writing purportedly super rational critiques about a subject without learning a thing about it. I apologize if I'm such a shitty arguer that it sounds like this is the point I'm making, because I don't believe it. I mean some different other point that I seem to be too inarticulate to make. Eagleton doesn't get to say "Well, Dawkins doesn't address X, the relevance of which I have not actually explained." He can actually explain X, and explain why X demonstrates the falsity of Dawkins' point Y, but in his review he mostly doesn't. Instead he tells us how
These are not just the views of an enraged atheist. They are the opinions of a readily identifiable kind of English middle-class liberal rationalist.or
There is a very English brand of common sense that believes mostly in what it can touch, weigh and taste, and The God Delusion springs from, among other places, that particular stable.Really, fuck the English middle class. God belongs exclusively to those who have read Eriugena in the original Latin. I'm trying to be very specific here, and stick with Eagleton. Maybe there's an argument that Eagleton meant to make (but in my opinion didn't) that wouldn't be so objectionable.
I'm really just mad at Walt because I trekked all the way to the Indian Ocean and he never showed. Our Weekend at Bernie's al-Qaeda Training Camp came to naught.
WTF, man? I trusted you. I was pro-the cut of your jib and everything. Shit.
964: God belongs exclusively to those who have read Eriugena in the original Latin.
Funny, I didn't see anything about "the original Latin" in there, did I miss it? Sort of seems likelier that Eagleton is twitting Dawkins from precisely the other direction, for producing bourgeois-agreeable pap that passes as being comprehensively educated without actually being so, or having troubled to read about Duns Scotus whose work is available at least in summary to people of any class and should have come across the desk of someone purporting to refute and establish as pernicious all of religion.
Which, again: 100% correct. That's exactly what Dawkins was doing, and Dawkins' ignorance is exactly that risible, and your attempts to defend it are still foolish, and get your foot out of your damned mouth already, it's lodged in there right up to the calf.
(And you never showed at the Indian Ocean, fucker. I hate you. I bought a whole new wetsuit and everything.)
Wait! I figured it out (with neb's help). What does this button do? Kill fun? Okay.
