...since several of my friends who are religious will take this link as a statement of my thoughts on the subject. However, let me make the link to Harris's atheist manifesto with the proviso that some of his backing evidence as to how religious nations are more violent, etc. is not completely solid. The notion of the lack of sensibility for the label "atheist", likening it to the terms "non-astrologer" or "non-alchemist" is especially interesting, and, in my experience, novel.
Posted by duver001 at December 15, 2005 03:16 PM | TrackBackIt is all a waste of time and effort. Atheist for the most part, who bother to post on the web, like fundies, usually have some sort of ax to grind, and because of that they come across as ignorant, bigoted and shallow; at least from the perspective of any thoughtful believer who takes the time to go thru their rants, for that is what they are.
Science has nothing to do with God or God's existence. If some want to misuse science and try to convince others of their atheism more power to them, but it would behooove them to stop their black and white thinking about those who disagree with them.
Rational people believe in God, simple as that. Also most believers do not think of God as Santa Claus, nor do they think of God as some man in a white beard looking down on us.
Athiest have had a bad track record of doing anything good for the world when they get any kind of power, in fact their track record is worse than religion, bad as that track record is.
Neither has much to brag on.
Peace
mitch
I might have once agreed with the "science in this corner and religion in this other corner" except that in the last decade an enormous amount has been learned about the neuropsychology of religion. It really looks to me that there is true hope in understanding the origins of the thousands of different beliefs, the origin of the individual beliefs rather than the organized faiths.
Anyhow...
Posted by: Mike at December 16, 2005 03:48 PMI hesitate to respond to this . . .
Perhaps I should be responding directly to this Harris fellow. But, I have two issues for your consideration as a science & politics guy.
*** 1 ***
" There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person’s acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other."
But, to the average layman (me), scientific "facts" are passed on indirectly through as much of a human filter as religious "facts." I have no more seen an electron, for example, or a chromosome than I have an angel.
Oh, you'll send me a photo taken through some powerful microscope? Thank you, how kind. But, I think I will see a grey blob (or perhaps times have changed) a computer-color-enhanced blob. I have no direct verification of what I am seeing.
Yes, but what about all that math that just works out so peachy neat because of this or that posited scientific entity? Well, in the first place I am no more qualified to evaluate the quality or veracity of your work than I am to evaluate the pope's. And second, that gets us pretty far from "evidence;" there are suddenly many layers between the "fact" and my understanding the truth of that fact, many places for error.
In freshman physics lab in 1987, our first experiment involved rolling metal balls down inclined planes. In each case, the actual data differed in some way from the prescribed results, and we kept explaining things away, forcing it to fit. Of course the theories of gravity and friction and momentum and all that are not wrong -- smarter fellows than I have established them, and I believe them as I believed my physics professor and as I believe you. And as I believe the teachings of the Church and the testaments of the saints.
Most of our more difficult knowledge is conveyed to us through other people. We choose whom we believe, as much as we choose what we believe.
*** 2 ***
My new theory as to why religion engenders violence. And it's none of Harris's stinkers:
"(1) People often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it (the inevitable psychopathic corollary being that the act will ensure them an eternity of happiness after death). . . (2) Larger numbers of people are inclined toward religious conflict simply because their religion constitutes the core of their moral identities. . .Many religious conflicts that seem driven by terrestrial concerns, therefore, are religious in origin. (Just ask the Irish.)"
It's exactly the Irish I have in mind. I have been reading modern Irish history lately, and I was surprised at how completely unrelated to religion were(are) the "troubles." The Catholic/Protestant division is a remote short-hand for the longer story: The British conquered and cruelly oppressed the Irish for centuries. The British were primarily Protestant and therefore so was most of the wealthy and powerful upper-class they put in place. The poor, working-class, and oppressed were by-and-large Catholic, and Irish republicanism arose from their frustration and rebellion. But, Wolfe Tone was Protestant, and there were Protestants in the IRA. The IRA only targeted Protestants (and Catholics) who were supporters of British rule.
What are the doctrinal differences between Catholics and Anglican Protestants? The Transubstantiation of the Eucharist, allegience to Rome, sanctity of Mary, maybe a few other things? The Irish struggles were about NONE of these.
Someday, scholars from an easy distance, may make out the Iraq War to be a war between Christianity and Islam, but is it?
No, my theory is this:
If you are authentically religious (of any religion, pretty much), you have paid a good deal of attention to teachings on goodness and sin, charity, compassion, sacrifice, etc. Not that atheists don't think about these things, but they don't force themselves to devote time daily or weekly to hearing about them; they can just sleep in or go shopping. So, I think religious people generally develop a sympathy for the underdog -- the poor, the oppressed, the discriminated-against, the wronged. And this sympathy can be turned to outrage, and outrage to just-plain-rage. You have all these examples from religious history of brave people, martyrs, who have sacrificed their own comfort, freedom and lives to fight injustice, and your own comfort gets itchier and itchier as you see it dependent on such wrongs.
I also think the desperate inability to bear oppression has nearly nothing to do with any hope of reward or fear of punishment in the afterlife. In fact, I think some folks who resort to violence in opposition to the teachings of their faith, feel they are making yet a further sacrifice -- to forfeit their own personal hope of heaven in furtherance of an earthly righteous cause.
What is bin Laden's motivation? Greed? Fame? Power? George Bush's refusal to acknowledge Mohammed as God's prophet? or overwhelming anger at the oppression and corruption of the third world by the first?
What drives an Iraqi suicide bomber? the posthumous payout to his family? some quackery about 70 virgins after death? whether Friday or Sunday is the holy day of the week? or anger at the checkpoints and civilian deaths and torture?
How about the IRA hunger strikers? Did they die because Margaret Thatcher didn't believe in papal infallibility?
The point is: religious belief is not generally the starting point of political and socio-economic conflict, but it does give the participants the strength of will to commit desperate acts, and perhaps that is a bad thing.
Posted by: j.h. at January 1, 2006 11:08 PMMaybe it's just my upbringing in the United Church of Christ and the Methodists, and maybe it's that I do attend church every Sunday, as a Unitarian-Universalist, but as someone who's been an atheist for about a decade now I have to say that I do take it seriously and follow the philosophy that we have to practice compassion and generosity precisely because there's no "better world" coming. And I think my faith was finally lost precisely because of my moral outrage over a religion that, in the end, allows one to get off scot free as long as one repents on one's deathbed and that contorts itself into pretzels in order to get out of following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. (Yes, I know that rejection of belief in an afterlife makes "getting off scot free" meaningless, but what sickens me is the damage that they feel entitled to do without ever truly atoning for their sins against humanity and the planet.)
An erroneous assumption on the part of religious folks is that atheists don't have value systems, or that somehow those value systems are weak or are formed as a mere reaction to religious value systems. In the first instance, I think they confuse atheists with hedonists or nihilists--the hedonist world view prioritizes pleasure-seeking over all else; the nihilist world view argues that all such value systems ultimately come to nothing.
In the second instance, I'd say that atheists--true atheists, not just high school and college students trying to shock and annoy their parents and teachers--begin with the assertion that there is no God. This is something they've probably come to as a result of disillusionment, lack of evidence, and/or weak "hardwiring" for religious faith (something I personally don't think I ever had). From that premise, they do respond to religion, but it's hardly a kneejerk reaction--I know that in my case I think of religious teaching as something that challenges and strengthens my own rationalist philosophy. And because atheists are bombarded by religion all the time--believe me, you may not think so, but it's EVERYWHERE if you're "other"--we are forced to think constantly about ourselves in relationship to hegemonic monotheism.
I think it would be naive to argue that bin Laden was acting entirely out of the hope that he and his followers would reach heaven through jihad. He is probably influenced by all the motivations you suggest...but he also knows the value of two things in recruiting al-Quaeda members and getting them to carry out terrorist attacks. One is that first great deadly sin, pride--the sense that one is an elitist, one is "not of this world," one is better either than the average Muslim or the secular "offal" that is to be destroyed (and that's how the 9/11/01 hijackers were taught to think of the Americans they would kill, as offal). The other is, yes, belief that one can achieve a better world, on earth through Islam and, in the afterlife, through a falsely literal Jihad. Whether or not bin Laden truly believes these things himself, he knows how to use them to achieve his ends, be they secular or religious.
I'd say the same thing is probably true of a lot of political leaders in this country. I don't believe for a minute that GWB is really a born-again Christian, but he knows exactly what buttons to push to get a rise out of the truly devout. In many cases the leadership's chief motivation may not be visions of paradise, but that's precisely what they use to manipulate their followers and get them to do their dirty work.
And if you don't think that religious belief is the starting point of political and socio-economic conflict, you must not know anything about dominionism. Read and be very, very frightened. And, too, you might also read Jon Krakauer's excellent, enthralling (and, if you'll excuse the continued alliteration, evenhanded) Under the Banner of Heaven, the central subject of which is a gruesome double murder committed by converts to the FLDS, but which also provides a clear history of Mormonism and its shaping by cultural and political forces and motivations.
Posted by: tully monster at January 2, 2006 12:04 PMIt was very wrong of me even to imply that atheists lack a well-developed system of values. And, I am oddly delighted that you reject nihilism, hedonism and parent-annoying, all of which I generally (wrongly) consider companion philosophies to atheism.
But, as to your outrage over deathbed repentance . . .? Do you have children?
If you grant the wildly unacceptable premise that there is a God who did make each man and woman and who loves them as a parent, who is grieved by sin and who is merciful, well, how would you expect Him to receive the repentant?
I suppose you'd like the doctrines of Hell and Purgatory, but one of the core ideas that reconciled me with religion is the Tolstoy story about the wicked woman and the onion: she had been wicked all her life but had once given an onion to a starving person, and an angel came to her pit-of-fire in Hell and extended the onion to pull her out and up to Heaven. And, of course, all the other folks in the pit latched onto her and were pulled up with her, which she could not bear, and in her spite, she let go of the onion and they all fell back into the pit.
I loved the notion that God would give up on no one that had one small spark of goodness, and that He would even accept, albeit unfairly, those hangers-on. I like the Orthodox idea that at the end of time, the gates of Hell will be opened, and even the devil would be welcomed back into Heaven, if he's willing.
No one goes through life planning to live rotten and repent at the end under a technicality. And, if one or two get away with it, well, what is that to us?
Now, would you please explain to me, because I really do want to know, why the concept of "no better world coming" entails "we have to practice compassion and generosity"? Doesn't it rather require "we have to get as much bang as possible out of our time here and extend our lives as long as possible"? What happens when generosity and compassion directly conflict with that?
Thanks, Michael, for the forum.