This is cultural relativism---
When embarrassing Bronze and Iron Age creation myths are given precedent over observation and evidence, human failure is assured.
This is total madness.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 10:11:15 AM
Well leaving work now, but your sigh of a response gets a big yawn from me Carlos. Give us a summary of this silver bullet, or give it a rest.
Posted by: Jesse | Mar 2, 2008 10:47:15 AM
No one knows that there was once nothingness,
Have you really thought this through?
A. Hypocritical as it may sound, I need postulate no alternative to disprove god. That adds an asymmetry to the situation I don't think everyone recognizes. Admitting that you don't know is not just as irrational as putting forth an answer that must be wrong.
Almost true. You need postulate no alternative to reject my thesis, even though perhaps you should want to. You would need to provide the same level of scientific evidence you require of the believers in order to disprove God or to be able to affirmatively state that my answer "must be wrong."
I think you and I may agree that the things we discuss are beyond such scientific evidence (other than, in my case, the unmistakable presence of the impossible universe and the laughable impossibility of its random development of mechanisms capable of loving its wonderousness, each other, and even non-physical ideas and ideals). There is even, due to God's desire for us to take a leap of faith, an explicit understanding in Christian thought that no clear physical evidence could or should exist.
There is the other kind of evidence, of course. The Scriptures contain some interesting prophesies. Specifically in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Against all likelyhood, they seem to have come to pass.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Sagan's* spokesperson here has stated. Well the fulfillment of those predictions is pretty extraordinary (though not quite so extraordinary, I agree, as the whole impossibility of existence thing). If you wish, you could demonstrate that they did not come true, or explain why they are not significant enough to be considered admissible evidence, say, before a jury, even if not in the lab.
*Not to namedrop, but I went to college with his wife Linda-she drew the plaque on the Pioneer spacecraft, perhaps humanity's most immortal work of art, and kind of a performance piece, really.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 11:38:40 AM
Well leaving work now,
Unitarian minister?
but your sigh of a response gets a big yawn from me Carlos. Give us a summary of this silver bullet, or give it a rest.
Jesus loves you. There is no silver bullet, by design. "You have to see it for yourself."
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 11:45:35 AM
Without causation, complete nothingness must once have been, and nothing can only beget nothing. At the very least, the exercise might soften a rigid certainty that mechanistics holds all the answers.
Carlos,
Didn't you get the memo? The origin of the cosmos can be explained by natural selection. The universes that failed to come into being could not compete with the universe that did. Poof, QED.
Dave, Anon, Jesse, Matt:
Carlos is making a serious point. Go sufficiently far into the past and the chain of causation stops. Perhaps at the big bang, perhaps earlier. Since the entire mechanistic model of the world is based on forces obeying laws over time, it clearly cannot have explanatory power beyond the first cause, and thus is an incomplete model.
To say there was "always" something is not a meaningful statement in terms of time and causality (though it may be true). Again, mechanistic models fail, given a broad enough context.
This is not the beginning of a proof of god, which is neither possible, nor, for most religious people, desirable. However, you should find that it chafes against the glibness of your dismissal of religion as not being reality-based. If you will be intellectually honest enough, and morally courageous enough to see it, you will admit that the rules of evidence are only logically valid within a given scale; that is, within the history of time and space.
Surely if everybody recognizes that there cannot be multiple correct answers to the question of "what does two plus two equal?", then they must also realise that there is a correct answer to the VERY simple question "does god exist or not?"
Matt,
Just because 2+2 is a "simple" (actually tautological) problem, it doesn't follow that all serious questions are just as simple. What is light? What is matter? What is time? All of these are concepts whose definition has changed over time. Is that because science has "moved the goal posts"?
Does matter exist? Yes and no. In the Newtonian description, and in everyday folk understanding, matter is that which has dimension, and mass, and "occupies" space. In a particle physics sense, what we call matter is just a macroscopic expression of forces and probabilities. It's not made of any "thing" at all. It's an illusion.
Do you exist? In several important senses you don't. In genocentric biology of the Dawkins stripe, organisms are illusory constellations of cells whose only unifying identity is their shared genome. And of course the stuff that makes up the cells is constantly being shed and replaced as food and waste. More goalpost-moving? Some philosophers believe that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of neural activity. So which part of you is the "real " part, the one that we could find evidence for?
Sometimes the goal posts appear to be moving because what one thought their correspondent was arguing was not accurate. Are you sure that you and Carlos, or anyone else, mean the same thing by "god"?
Is the idea that there was never nothingness any less comprehensible than the idea that there was? I don't think so (and yes, Carlos, I have really thought this through, thanks for asking). My point is that we don't know and thus can't resort to any therefore-God-must-exist arguments.
Do you really think the universe is impossible? Compared to what? What would a possible universe look like? I don't agree with that point. Likewise, as to your “laughable impossibility of its random development of mechanisms capable of loving its wonderousness” argument, I just saw a license plate outside reading RXT 2381-- what are the odds of that happening? 1/115,316,136. Yup, must be a god.
Existence is impossible? I’d be very careful talking with such certainty about that sort of thing.
Chris,
“Carlos is making a serious point. Go sufficiently far into the past and the chain of causation stops. Perhaps at the big bang, perhaps earlier. Since the entire mechanistic model of the world is based on forces obeying laws over time, it clearly cannot have explanatory power beyond the first cause, and thus is an incomplete model.”
I suspect that our understanding of time is far too simplistic and one-dimensional to draw these conclusions. I also do not find the idea of the universe having always existed at all difficult to imagine. Likewise, postulating God doesn't get you out of that problem, of course, because either you must explain what caused God or you must accept the idea that God always existed, and why is that any easier than excepting the universe always existed?
“However, you should find that it chafes against the glibness of your dismissal of religion as not being reality-based.”
Sorry, it doesn't.
“If you will be intellectually honest enough, and morally courageous enough to see it, you will admit that the rules of evidence are only logically valid within a given scale; that is, within the history of time and space.”
Right, so really I'm being narrowminded by not expanding my thinking beyond time and space… silly me.
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 1:03:07 PM
I think my main problem with the idea of a god/gods is this: it's far too anthropomorphic. If Frans de Waal's chimpanzees believed in a creator, it would be an omnipresent chimp, existing outside of space and time. Geckos would believe THEY were created in the image of god. It seems conceited to me, or at the very least unimaginative, that an organism with agency and cognitive awareness, such as ourselves, should believe that the universe was created by another organism with agency and cognitive awareness (and without those things would it count as a "god" to us?). We think so much in terms of purpose and meaning, is it really so hard to believe that the universe simply is and that we are neither the center of it, nor even of the same kind as a thing that created it? (i.e., if we can't be the center of the universe then at least it was made by something like us, something with our basic psychological attributes?).
Furthermore, the horrendously ill-defined concept of god doesn't actually answer any of the big questions; it just raises more. But nevermind...
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 1:48:21 PM
Barkley,
I'm not a theist. and have no interest in postulating god. Carlos, who is a theist, has also said multiple times that he is not interested in evidence for god. So there's no need to refute an argument no one is making.
The point is not, "rationalism fails, therefore god." The point is that rationalism fails, therefore demanding evidence for all beliefs is illogical.
It may be true that the universe has "always" existed, but it is not rational to say so. Time is a matter of sequence, by definition. To say we don't fully understand time is a copout. The word becomes a placeholder; it may as well be god.
Causality is necessarily linear. It is not consistent with infinity. This doesn't mean I object to your suggesting there has always been a universe, but such a statement is outside our current scientific mechanistic metaphysics, no less so than god is.
1. I maintain that it is not irrational to say that the universe has always existed.
2. We may understand time as a matter of sequence, but that may simply be due to our perspective of it. There are theoretical physicists currently coming up with models that work without the concept of time, so I'd keep an open mind on this. I wasn't using a copout; I was simply saying that we don't know these things well enough to draw conclusions based on them.
3. Causality is not inconsistent with infinity, or it's no less consistent with infinity then infinity is with itself. It's just a chain that keeps going, or a chain that loops back onto itself. Or whatever. All of this is pure speculation, of course, but the point is that we should not be so quick to conclude what is possible.
I also know a few theoretical physicists who are very comfortable with the idea of infinity, so I wouldn't be so quick to presume to say what is and what is not within "our current scientific mechanistic metaphysics."
But beyond all that is the pointlessness of using a concept (god) with no meaningful definition or explanatory power that cannot even be disproven.
(By the way, if "rationalism has failed," why are you worried about arguments being illogical? I admire the open-mindedness you have always shown for alternative explanations, Chris, but sometimes I wonder if you're a bit of a closet relativist--or perhaps I misunderstand)
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 2:18:17 PM
This topic gets the juices flowing here, doesn't it. Just so I am taken seriously by all and sundry, let me start by saying that I have been an atheist since 13. I see no reason to believe in god and the question for me is settled. In the West, this has been an unremarkable philosophical conclusion at least since Nietzsche. India has had a much older tradition of atheism.
As we mature, we realize that we, the people, believe in all kinds of things without evidence, or with conveniently selective evidence. What evidence do we consider to feel patriotic or nationalistic? What evidence do we examine to embrace capitalism, when it may be leading us to a mass extinction? How much evidence do we examine before letting fear grip us? What evidence do we seek for a "human dignity" that separates us from other animals, upon which we build human rights? Do we need evidence or vanity to think we are worthy of the girl next door? You get my point.
In a progressive, tolerant society, you learn to live with—even when you do not respect—the different views of others, as long as they do not cause you moral harm. Secular fundamentalism is defined by its intolerance towards those who believe in god. It is increasingly common; I see it in some views on this thread. They seem to assume (without clear evidence) that a society of atheists will be a better society.
So folks, unless you think that a belief in god is an automatic moral infraction on non-believers, it's time to move on to worthier debates. Accept that god will exist for some people because god fills a need for some in a unique way. Likewise for patriotism, etc. (hey, them patriots even subsidize the real cost of defending my way of life!). Our collective challenge is not to turn more people into self-righteous zealots like Sam Harris, but to figure out how we can minimize the moral excesses of both believers and non-believers, and to advance the cause of justice and liberal governance.
Well, nothing has changed---
Still no cards on the table.
This mental masturbation can only go on for so long---
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 5:00:25 PM
But beyond all that is the pointlessness of using a concept (god) with no meaningful definition or explanatory power that cannot even be disproven.
Well there may be the crux of it. For in fact the concept of God is anything but pointless, meaningless or ill-defined, whether it can be disproved or not. Adherents of the world's religions have had a profound impact on civilization and culture precisely because of the clarity of the explanation and the perceived usefulness of the concept as an organizing principle, answer to life's conflicts, and man's search for meaning and relevance. Much of the world's great art would never have been created but for worship of the Divine, and most of the rest would have been impoverished by lack of example. And it seems to have some small humanitarian benefit as well, as was most clearly revealed just during the last century, when the great social experiments in Godlessness: Nazism and Communism played out on the world stage to such grim effect. Nor, in reality, does love of God impede the love of knowledge. The world's great universities have roots in religion, many of the luminaries of science, including Leibniz, above and also his competitor/collaborator Newton as well as countless others were and are not at all diminished by their comprehension of God as Master of the Universe and the sense of responsibility and stewardship that engenders.
I suppose one could claim that, in the absence of allegiance to God's higher good, and in the absence of people setting that standard for goodness around us, universal atheism would engender an equal measure of self-sacrifice, temperance, and charity. I'm not sure how you would go about defending the position though. Were it not for my knowledge of a history filled with so many scientifically assured examples of equal folly, I wouldn't imagine there could be much interest in performing the experiment without some form of proof — Evidence — before proceeding.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 5:16:15 PM
Carlos--
Just show us your imaginary friend, and the problem is solved.
Is there a problem?
Inquiring mind want to know.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 6:12:52 PM
Carlos,
You really think it's only religion that differentiates the US from Nazi Germany, which, by the way was Christian and had ties with the Catholic Church of the time, if I'm not misinformed?
And communist states? You don't think maybe the fact that they had a terrible economic system had something to do with that?
Sigh. I don't have time for this.
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 6:35:47 PM
My last contribution:
"I suppose one could claim that, in the absence of allegiance to God's higher good, and in the absence of people setting that standard for goodness around us, universal atheism would engender an equal measure of self-sacrifice, temperance, and charity"
See Buddhist philosophy for a start. The Dali Lama is hardly a commi Nazi...
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 6:49:31 PM
Charity was praised by Buddha as the stairway to celestial realms. That's hardly a non-religious statement.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 8:16:07 PM
Carlos-
Your knowledge of Buddhism is only dwarfed by your knowledge of science.
Trust me-- stay in the shallow end of the pool on this one.
I'm off to meditation, so no more mental masturbation.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 8:32:46 PM
Yeah, that's working for ya.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 8:50:56 PM
I too will make this my last post for the thread.
Chris, great to see you're still around :-) It's yourself and Elatia that I most wish to address these final thoughts to.
While one cannot help but be impressed by the way you two manage to navigate the minefield of differing ideologies one encounters here and not tread on a single set of toes, I am left wondering.... Although it serves to very effectively keep the peace (no small achievement on our crowded planet) in the end, what power does such a position give for acheiving a shared progression for your fellow conversationalists? I have time and again been left thinking, after reading one of your comments "well, that was an insightful and quite eloquent expression of mutual understanding, but...."
Where does its usefulness lie with respect to achieving progress for each other? Indeed, in your minds, is human progress desirable? To put it another way, look at what has been achieved DESPITE the constant haranguing of the righteous and religious, by a mere 500 years of science. Only 500 years against a backdrop of billions! A tripling of life expectancy (with more to come no doubt - perhaps not an advantage to some, but I'll take it), an understanding of where we sit in the scheme of things that is orders of magnitude greater than where we were in the middle ages, a freedom from much of the drudgery of day to day toil such that time is freed up for thoughts such as those expressed here, etc etc. The list, you'd no doubt agree, is long. You'd rightly point out that perhaps a majority of the world doesn't yet enjoy these privileges. I'd posit that they'll get there, with our help, IN SPITE of religion, not through it. But my question remains, what use is it to just say, "everybody's right in their own way" when plainly, this is not true. I'd be the last to want to IMPOSE my views on anyone and would only violently defend them against a like violence from the superstitious, but I do feel it necessary to air the opposing point of view. I actually believe there is more than sufficient evidence (I'm sure Dave et al would agree) to put forward the theory that a rational world view would collectively serve us all a lot better. I don't see how you could argue against that proposition. It is very difficult to let go of some ideas precious to each of us (and I am speaking from experience) but that doesn't confer upon them equal validity.
Could you or Elatia mention one or two books that effectively outline your thinking so that I may perhaps better understand what you are getting at? Cheers.
Matt
Posted by: MattInOz | Mar 2, 2008 9:31:35 PM
Both religion and scientific rationalism have, in their turn, served to further the cause of civilization.
But consider also Walter Benjamin:
"There is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism."
Dave R. - you must know that Buddhism is extremely syncretic, and it seems a bit questionable to claim that your agnostic california flavor is superior to those of other cultures. In the 80's I met many many Cambodians whose simple Buddhist faith you would no doubt have sneered at. Yet I can't think of a better definition of Buddhism than the one given by Semdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, "the Gandhi of Cambodia":
"[What is Buddhism?] Knowing how to eat. Why to eat and where to eat and what to eat. And with whom to eat. And for whom. Life is a process of eating. We try to eat other people but do not let them eat us. And the Buddha cries when he sees this suffering."
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Mar 2, 2008 10:45:14 PM
Matt,
(I enjoy reading your comments, too -- very much.) I haven't a thing in the world against scientific progress except that in its absence we would have neither human-caused global warming nor a nuclear arsenal. But that's the very old argument that the search for knowledge is a fall from grace, dressed up in 21st century clothing -- and an impressive wardrobe it is, too. To pursue it is to invite observations that while religion has been good for poetry, music and art, it has been murderous to whole populations and hazardous in the extreme to the spirit of inquiry. Anything we humans can come up with is a double-edged sword -- even Buddhism, which Joseph Campbell classified among "disciplines of retreat." Maybe he thought too much disregard of samsara created its own kind of wretchedness.
You are not alone in wondering what my actual point of view is -- I wonder that too. When I was in college, the BBC did one of those marvelous middlebrow mini-series -- about world religions. The material was so baffling even to the cozy Oxford Don who spearheaded the series that he ended by saying he drew no conclusions and wanted only to make himself a pot of tea -- which he then did, on camera, a backdrop to the credit roll. To feel good about myself, of course, I need to take a position more coherent than that; I'd certainly like to be more "out there" than the BBC a quarter of a century ago. But one doesn't always get to feel that good about oneself, especially if one wants the shred of integrity that comes from recognizing how the craven, the irrational, the glorious and the adventurous are all combined in the contemplation of First Causes. My deepest sense tells me human beings are meant to think about these things, to change their minds, and to think again -- without necessarily knowing progress from a detour, knowing only that such confusion can and will take place, hence the certainty of having to think again. Richard Feynman famously said he thought we might well be reaching the end of the Age of Discovery, when all the great things that needed knowing would be known, were just about to be known. I have often wished he might have lived longer -- had he done, he would have gladly taken back those words, I think.
We live with tremendous uncertainty, with mind-bending paradoxes, and we live in the face of the very great dangers, of all kinds, that we have created for ourselves and our children. To live in a world where half the people are -- by any historical standard -- pretty much okay, and the other half are in a daily survival drama is to live with a very great moral danger that we divert insufficient mental and material resources to confront. If One Hundred Percent Rationality were overtaking us, would we see this in sharper focus? Or just continue to exalt scientific progress as, luxuriously, we shed our personal and cultural superstitions? My point of view, although it is not so philosophically coherent as could be wished, is that we should think about these things and not run from them, and then ask ourselves how best to act. That we need not obsess over deciding in Whom to believe or disbelieve, that we should not spend time and energy requiring that others drop their metaphysics. I'm not sure the dizzying vistas of atheism are quite the ticket or quite the point. If you ask me -- and you did -- there is an intersection of intellectual might and moral life that we have not reached, that some of the best minds among us do not even struggle to reach. For me, that's a problem that implies we should not be so eager to write off 5000 years of human yearning and imagination as less-than and rear-guard. We are still stumbling and wondering as they did, knees bent at our own hill-top shrines marked with saffron-daubed rocks. Man's inhumanity to man might be better tempered by an appreciation of this long and common struggle than by an arid attempt to live at a distance from it.
Admittedly, that's not a philosophical position, nor are these thoughts exclusive or original to me. But, I didn't get them from a book, I got them from thinking and feeling for myself -- which is all I would ask of anyone else before they decided what to do. What to DO. Because that's how the difference can be told between one person and another, one world view and the next.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 3, 2008 12:19:31 AM
(this doesn't count as a contribution--I said I wouldn't make another to this conversation--but it's such an entertaining and thoughtful piece, I thought it would do a nice job of showing a more profound way in which "atheists" and "believers" share common ground. You might have read it before, I think it's always worth reading again. I wish I were as lucid as God is in this piece.)
I maintain that it is not irrational to say that the universe has always existed.
We may understand time as a matter of sequence, but that may simply be due to our perspective of it.
It’s possible that there’s no such thing at all as time, that it’s just a function of how we organize events in understanding them. That’s all fine; but causality and logic rely upon our current understanding of time as a sequence. If we change our perspective, we may not be able to take causality with us. Or we might say that time is a way to look at history, but cannot be applied beyond known or imagined events, past or future.
The point is that consequentiality almost certainly has limits, just as Newtonian mechanics does. Just as all explanations do.
I also know a few theoretical physicists who are very comfortable with the idea of infinity, so I wouldn't be so quick to presume to say what is and what is not within "our current scientific mechanistic metaphysics."
I would suggest these physicists are not mechanists, then, or that they allow that mechanical models have limited explanatory power. Physicists as a rule are far ahead the other sciences on these things, since determinism as an absolute has been untenable since the 1920s. Most of the major figures of particle physics during the first half of the 20th century explicitly rejected classical materialism and mechanicalism not just in their experiments but in their metaphysics. Unfortunately the Hawkings and Weinbergs that succeeded them seem bound to return to more comfortable old-fashioned narratives.
By the way, if "rationalism has failed," why are you worried about arguments being illogical?
What I wrote was that rationalism fails at the point where there are no premises on which to evaluate conclusions, such as an infinite regress. Rationalism works just fine if the rules are of logic observed. We have a lot of arguments on this thread that insist that God-belief is silly because it’s not evidence-based. The implication is that these arguers only believe things which are evidence-based, and are therefore not silly. This is not a defensible position.
I’ve never meant to propose that "everybody's right in their own way." I think that some world views are better than others, and I’ve tried to argue that here and elsewhere.
This is a very big topic and perhaps we can bring it back around on another thread. In the meanwhile, some notes toward that possibility:
1) The scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and the religious traditions they grew out of are not separate things. Our contemporary scientific picture owes a great deal to Christian philosophy. For example:
The idea that nature is passive and inert until acted upon by external forces
The supremacy of the masculine over the feminine, as seen in the modern desire to “control” nature; likewise as seen in the (false) conception of the “active” sperm potentiating the "passive" ovum.
The idea that human beings are separate from nature; that good things come from our own ingenuity and cleverness, and bad things come from outside of us.
These are all—at best—partial truths, and not universally shared by historical human cultures.
2) Science and capitalism have a very profound relationship that is rarely examined. Because of this we tend to exalt our own technological prowess, and devalue that which exists outside our involvement. It has harrowing implications for our environment, as Namit has written, and blinds us to moral concerns we would take more seriously if we considered the human race as more intimately connected with nature.
3) We shouldn’t over-value lifespan extension. For one thing, confusing life expectancy with lifespan creates a false impression that people life longer now than in times past. In fact the upper limits are more or less the same, though today more of us get there. Secondly, what kind of life are we extending? An honest comparison of quality of life between the present day and the 15th century could be made to show that the average European of that time worked less for more wealth, and had greater social autonomy (there’s a lot of misinformation about the medieval quality of life—and if you think modern industry is free from drudgery, you need to get out more). I’m not making a Luddite argument here, just saying that science and technology present us with choices, and that quantity can never be its own goal.
Also, if you do the math there is simply no way to spread the Western Lifestyle to all the continents which don’t yet enjoy it, so the sort of “progress” you feel we are due is not tenable for humanity as a whole, without a major reduction in population, and probably not even then.
4) The modern scientific ideal that we can get closer and closer to objective reality has been a disaster for us, by distracting us from the question of what we want, what we need, and what we value. This has to be the first step of any “rational” world view with the obvious criteria that it work for us. The modern scientific worldview has not worked for us very well at all, leaving us overpopulated, unfulfilled, and on the brink of ecological meltdown on a global scale. One half of the world colonizes the other half and tells them (and itself) it’s for the best, though this best has not come to pass, and the disparity between the worlds grows ever worse.
There’s no single book or author I would point to as elucidating my worldview (which I hope will continue to evolve as long as I remain alive). Rather I would suggest you read everything that interests you, and do it in a spirit of openness and questioning. Think about what you truly want for yourself and the world, and be ever on the guard for moral precepts which just happen to echo and perpetuate the culture as we know it. To what goal do you wish for civilization to progress, and why?
Chris--
Modern science grew out of Greek thought, not Christianity.
Capitalism, I agree, grew out of Christianity, and arouse no where else.
It was the combination of Christianity, and it's ability to compartmentalize and separate itself from (and fear of) life, sensuality, and nature, and Greek mastery of science and reason that brought capitalism into being in the 15th century, in the Italian city states.
Just a observation, but capitalism only arose under christian thought.
Vicki-- I admired Ghosananda also, and Jack Kornfield, who I regularly sit with, worked with him in the refugee camps in the 1970's.
We lost him last year----
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 4, 2008 2:48:12 AM
Dave Ranning,
Jack Kornfield, eh? It's all starting to make sense. Now I see where you get your deep insight, your generous heart, and your compassion for those less fortunate than you.
Also: Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle and Harvey were Greek? Who knew. There's got to be a history book around here somewhere...
Ah, the sputtering fizzle and halt. Back at work now and just wanted to say thanks to Carlos for going into more detail (I’m not a Unitarian Minister by the way, but Huehuecoyotl and Ahura Mazda send, not quite love, but a warm hello).
Chris I find much to agree with in the various thoughts you’ve shared. Given that I was lumped in the group that you took to task for a glib dismissal of “religion as not being reality-based”, allow me to quickly clarify before leaving this thread’s dead landscape. Within the scale of space and time the positive claims of religion do not pass muster. That said, I think much of religious teaching contains intuitive truths about the world and an unquestionable beauty of imaginative power. Science has sublated some aspects of Christianity as you allude to and is hardly a pure endeavor of objective discovery. I have no patience for those who take an insipid line of materialist deflation and think that religion has been replaced by science.
I wonder if people are really upset at the futility of conversations like these, or just uncomfortable with what they find to be a violation of manners. Religion is still a political force in the world and to address it, to engage in critique, is to give it the deserved honor of being taken seriously. I much prefer that to the waspish polite silence, the patronizing “well of course we don’t believe in that, but how nice for them, don’t you agree darling?’
Posted by: Jesse | Mar 4, 2008 4:33:28 PM
Caffeine delay - waspish should have been WASPY
Posted by: Jesse | Mar 4, 2008 5:27:39 PM
Chris-
The all came during or after the Renaissance--
The re discovery of Greek thought, after the dark period after the collapse of Hellenism ,and the dark period of Christianity (read Gibbons).
Freedom at last from small, suppressed empoverished minds!
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 4, 2008 11:33:43 PM
Dave, there are people who hear the word "Buddhism" and think "idol worship" - and they're not totally wrong about really-existing Buddhism. How can you be sure that your knee-jerk "talking snake" response isn't a similar prejudice?
Also, I think you're distorting history quite a bit trying to tease out a single untainted thread that will lead us to the promised land of "progress." Next I expect we'll hear about "medieval" witch burnings.
Anyway, it's fun needling you. Maybe some metta practice is in order for both of us?
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Mar 5, 2008 12:20:25 AM
Dave-
As a fellow atheist, I find your ranting to be quite possibly the best argument in this thread. Sadly, it's a slanderous one, slanderous against your fellow atheists. Let this be a plea for you to desist in your name calling and childish bickering, and to come back when you've matured enough to hold a conversation and present cogent points. Enough with Bill Maherisms, talking snakes, and magically underpants. They're funning as jokes, but they make truly atrocious arguments.
In general, it seems like the back and forth in this thread is it's downfall. Posters seem to stop typing before fully exposing their arguments, leading to endless bickering over what the other actually believes. A Lincoln-Douglas style debate is in order between the three sides. Maybe 3QD would be willing to host such on the front page so that the authors would take it seriously?
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Mar 5, 2008 4:55:31 AM
Viki--
Yes, metta practice for all beings (especially yourself!) is always skillful. As far as Talking Snakes, at least the ones in Bronze Age texts that are the basis for 2 billion people creation myths, one has to practice examination and equanimity on the subject, then make a skillful decision and act on it. My action stand up after long examination.
Talking Snakes are delusional. Christians are delusional.
I'll leave out the possibility that christians could be right, as I leave open the possibility that a drunken dwarf riding a unicorn will fall through my ceiling 30 seconds from now. I think the odds are better with the dwarf and unicorn.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 10:03:19 AM
Cyris-
When one takes out the talking snakes, the virgin births, the walking zombies, then subtracts a few thees and thos, what is left?
Other than a history of violence and intolerance?
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 10:11:13 AM
Dave-
Your last statement exemplifies my problem with your argumentative style.
What's left? Much art and music. Large portions of modern Western Philosophy. Could much of it have been derived in a world without religion? Sure, but it wasn't, and to act like religion hasn't given us much that is, indeed, positive is like trying to ignore the positive influence of drugs on culture. Both have deleterious effects, but both have inspired some of the most respected works in the world.
I'd also like to mention abolition and suffrage, two movements which have given western secularism much, yet have deeply religious roots.
So, like I said, feel free to stop making such ridiculous rhetorical sweeps of the pen and start making real arguments. Calling people stupid/delusional/crazy/suppressed because they currently believe something you don't is about as likely to change someone's mind as leaving a burning bag of shit on their front stoop.
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Mar 5, 2008 10:55:46 AM
Cyris---
Yes, the feedback loops from religion did produce some great music, and some less so art.
Just what am I ignoring? I'm not out to change anyone's mind, as religious meme's would not that happen in a infected host. I know it is uncomfortable to look at essence of these camp fire stories from ignorant bronze age herders, but that is exactly what they are.
Please enlighten my thinking. I see religion a a natural phenomena , a product of evolution that was not penalized for heuristic jumps in logic. Unfortunately, this strategy that has kept humans alive, is a liability in the current world.
Humans are cognitively irrational, and this is not a good survival strategy.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 11:19:51 AM
Jesse,
Apologies for the improper lumping.
Certainly some people are uncomfortable with manners violations. I think they are right to be, not because we should all be Victorians, but because certain rhetorical tacks are destined to have no power of persuasion, and once that is gone all that is left is war, and there is already too much war.
I think this is what Cyrus is saying, above.
The only person that takes Dave Ranning seriously is Dave Ranning, bless his heart. But the Dawkinses and Weinbergs of the world have great intellectual influence. They don't make the case that their way of looking at things is valuable, they just declare the conversation has ended.
Many writers and academics--e.g. Scott Atran, Timothy Garton Ash, Mary Midgley, Karen Armstrong, Bruno Latour--make the convincing case that this type of intellectual imperialism has the predictable effect of actually increasing religious fundamentalism; and indeed, fundamentalism has exploded since the metaphysical shocks introduced by Nietzsche and Darwin.
It may be depressing, but it's also instructive that The Purpose Driven Life and the new Eckhart Tolle book are such hot sellers. People want purpose and meaning. If the modern scientific worldview makes no room for these things people will find them where they can. (I know the argument that science doesn't preclude meaning and purpose; but not everyone wants to be a Benthamite utilitarian.)
Chris---
"Intellectual Imperialism"-- I like that! As far a s Tolle, I agree it is depressing to think that peoples lives are that desperate to cling to these simple outlooks and solutions.
But it is better than talking Snakes, and examination is encouraged.
Science makes room for these people, they just need the curiosity and education to liberate them selves.
With a little work, the awe and wonder of evolution will make embarrassing creation myth pale as a impoverished view of their origins.
Posted by: dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 12:06:17 PM
Dave-
If you have no interest, or believe it impossible, to change minds, why choose to say anything at all? I fail to see the point, unless you wish to do nothing but antagonize others. And if there is one thing the world needs less of (besides religion), it's antagonism.
Basta.
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Mar 5, 2008 2:44:42 PM
Cyrus --
Not being a mind-reader, I can't say why Dave says the things he does. But certainly people spend plenty of times saying things for other purposes than to change minds.
Some of us (the general "us") do, as you say, want nothing more than to roil the pot and antagonize other people. Sometimes we just want to perform for our favorite and most appreciative audience (ourselves). Sometimes we are reinforcing our own self-image or prejudices. Sometimes we think we are trying to change minds, but since we haven't done the hard work of self- and other-awareness that might lead our communications to actually be effective in that way, what we write actually pushes people further away.
And on and on.
Mostly I do no more than skim threads like this now -- slowing down for certain commenters, ignoring others completely since they never seem to say anything different from one time to the next -- just happy to run across a new thought or perspective or approach now and then. To modify an old saying... "So many blogs, so little time...."
Posted by: JanieM | Mar 5, 2008 7:09:48 PM
Cyris---
It is very simple-----
We have now come around on this thread that Talking Snakes. Virgin Births, and Resurrected Zombies are metaphors for, well good music and art?
The jury is still out on Psychopathic Sky Daddy's, and everyone must "have a belief in the belief in religion" (that it is essentially good).
And of course, we can't practice "Intellectual Imperialism" because someone one may need to defend female genital mutilation in a cultural debate.
What have I missed?
Oh- buddhism-- One must have pity on the christians, as because most buddhist are superstition based, like all religion, and some christians may also be.
What have i left out?
I sure there is something--
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 7:35:48 PM
JanieM, you are so right. I used to be invited to dinner parties in San Francisco given by Ji-ing Sun, one of the legendary daughters of Sun Yat-Sen. Her English comprehension was second to none, but she never achieved fluency, so she would announce a topic at table, and guests -- under extremely polite pressure to contribute an original thought or three -- would take turns. Er, I don't think we are like that here. I think lots of people write not because they have a well known point of view and figure it's time to trot it out again, but because they find out what they're thinking in the act of writing -- always interesting to one person, at least. And often to many more.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 5, 2008 7:36:35 PM
Elatia -- yes, great point, I forgot to include in my by no means exhaustive list the process of writing to find out what I think. I do that a lot, but being a very private person I tend to do it in early "shitty first drafts" (to borrow Ann Lamott's lovely phrase) that I keep to myself. Not that I don't learn still more about what I think by bouncing things around with other people...
Posted by: JanieM | Mar 5, 2008 8:26:50 PM
As far a the cultural contributions of religion, I can't help wondering what the great artists might have created if not restricted in subject matter by the Church?
Posted by: Christopher | Mar 6, 2008 11:52:46 AM
We have now before us the smoking gun evidence of the collapse of religious apologetics. Hedges' criticism of the New Atheists is entirely about their style.
He does not argue about substance because religious apologetics has nothing to say about the substance of atheist criticism : that religion is a historical lie; its teachings, when they are not positively despicable, are useless, the rattlings of old bones; and it's madness.
Hedges thinks he hears threats of violence and intolerance in the New Atheists. What he hears is drowned out by the drums of a religious establishment that is em>all about power and violence.
What the New Atheists really threaten is the edifice of privilege that provides Hedges and thousands like him with a comfortable living -- an edifice that has has been built from the bricks and mortar of religious oppresssion.
And what does he place in the balance aginst that? He doesn't like their tone?
"I couldn't tear myself
away from 3 Quarks Daily, to the point of neglecting my work. Congratulations on
this superb site."—Steven
Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.
"I have placed 3 Quarks Daily at the head of my list of web bookmarks."—Richard
Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
"Just wanted you to know I’m one of many who reads and enjoys 3 Quarks....almost daily."—David Byrne, musician, former lead-singer of the Talking Heads, artist, intellectual.
Comments
This is cultural relativism---
When embarrassing Bronze and Iron Age creation myths are given precedent over observation and evidence, human failure is assured.
This is total madness.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 10:11:15 AM
Well leaving work now, but your sigh of a response gets a big yawn from me Carlos. Give us a summary of this silver bullet, or give it a rest.
Posted by: Jesse | Mar 2, 2008 10:47:15 AM
Have you really thought this through?
Almost true. You need postulate no alternative to reject my thesis, even though perhaps you should want to. You would need to provide the same level of scientific evidence you require of the believers in order to disprove God or to be able to affirmatively state that my answer "must be wrong."
I think you and I may agree that the things we discuss are beyond such scientific evidence (other than, in my case, the unmistakable presence of the impossible universe and the laughable impossibility of its random development of mechanisms capable of loving its wonderousness, each other, and even non-physical ideas and ideals). There is even, due to God's desire for us to take a leap of faith, an explicit understanding in Christian thought that no clear physical evidence could or should exist.
There is the other kind of evidence, of course. The Scriptures contain some interesting prophesies. Specifically in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Against all likelyhood, they seem to have come to pass.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Sagan's* spokesperson here has stated. Well the fulfillment of those predictions is pretty extraordinary (though not quite so extraordinary, I agree, as the whole impossibility of existence thing). If you wish, you could demonstrate that they did not come true, or explain why they are not significant enough to be considered admissible evidence, say, before a jury, even if not in the lab.
*Not to namedrop, but I went to college with his wife Linda-she drew the plaque on the Pioneer spacecraft, perhaps humanity's most immortal work of art, and kind of a performance piece, really.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 11:38:40 AM
Unitarian minister? Jesus loves you. There is no silver bullet, by design. "You have to see it for yourself."Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 11:45:35 AM
Carlos,
Didn't you get the memo? The origin of the cosmos can be explained by natural selection. The universes that failed to come into being could not compete with the universe that did. Poof, QED.
Dave, Anon, Jesse, Matt:
Carlos is making a serious point. Go sufficiently far into the past and the chain of causation stops. Perhaps at the big bang, perhaps earlier. Since the entire mechanistic model of the world is based on forces obeying laws over time, it clearly cannot have explanatory power beyond the first cause, and thus is an incomplete model.
To say there was "always" something is not a meaningful statement in terms of time and causality (though it may be true). Again, mechanistic models fail, given a broad enough context.
This is not the beginning of a proof of god, which is neither possible, nor, for most religious people, desirable. However, you should find that it chafes against the glibness of your dismissal of religion as not being reality-based. If you will be intellectually honest enough, and morally courageous enough to see it, you will admit that the rules of evidence are only logically valid within a given scale; that is, within the history of time and space.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 2, 2008 11:46:25 AM
Matt,
Just because 2+2 is a "simple" (actually tautological) problem, it doesn't follow that all serious questions are just as simple. What is light? What is matter? What is time? All of these are concepts whose definition has changed over time. Is that because science has "moved the goal posts"?
Does matter exist? Yes and no. In the Newtonian description, and in everyday folk understanding, matter is that which has dimension, and mass, and "occupies" space. In a particle physics sense, what we call matter is just a macroscopic expression of forces and probabilities. It's not made of any "thing" at all. It's an illusion.
Do you exist? In several important senses you don't. In genocentric biology of the Dawkins stripe, organisms are illusory constellations of cells whose only unifying identity is their shared genome. And of course the stuff that makes up the cells is constantly being shed and replaced as food and waste. More goalpost-moving? Some philosophers believe that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of neural activity. So which part of you is the "real " part, the one that we could find evidence for?
Sometimes the goal posts appear to be moving because what one thought their correspondent was arguing was not accurate. Are you sure that you and Carlos, or anyone else, mean the same thing by "god"?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 2, 2008 12:16:14 PM
Carlos,
Is the idea that there was never nothingness any less comprehensible than the idea that there was? I don't think so (and yes, Carlos, I have really thought this through, thanks for asking). My point is that we don't know and thus can't resort to any therefore-God-must-exist arguments.
Do you really think the universe is impossible? Compared to what? What would a possible universe look like? I don't agree with that point. Likewise, as to your “laughable impossibility of its random development of mechanisms capable of loving its wonderousness” argument, I just saw a license plate outside reading RXT 2381-- what are the odds of that happening? 1/115,316,136. Yup, must be a god.
Existence is impossible? I’d be very careful talking with such certainty about that sort of thing.
Chris,
“Carlos is making a serious point. Go sufficiently far into the past and the chain of causation stops. Perhaps at the big bang, perhaps earlier. Since the entire mechanistic model of the world is based on forces obeying laws over time, it clearly cannot have explanatory power beyond the first cause, and thus is an incomplete model.”
I suspect that our understanding of time is far too simplistic and one-dimensional to draw these conclusions. I also do not find the idea of the universe having always existed at all difficult to imagine. Likewise, postulating God doesn't get you out of that problem, of course, because either you must explain what caused God or you must accept the idea that God always existed, and why is that any easier than excepting the universe always existed?
“However, you should find that it chafes against the glibness of your dismissal of religion as not being reality-based.”
Sorry, it doesn't.
“If you will be intellectually honest enough, and morally courageous enough to see it, you will admit that the rules of evidence are only logically valid within a given scale; that is, within the history of time and space.”
Right, so really I'm being narrowminded by not expanding my thinking beyond time and space… silly me.
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 1:03:07 PM
I think my main problem with the idea of a god/gods is this: it's far too anthropomorphic. If Frans de Waal's chimpanzees believed in a creator, it would be an omnipresent chimp, existing outside of space and time. Geckos would believe THEY were created in the image of god. It seems conceited to me, or at the very least unimaginative, that an organism with agency and cognitive awareness, such as ourselves, should believe that the universe was created by another organism with agency and cognitive awareness (and without those things would it count as a "god" to us?). We think so much in terms of purpose and meaning, is it really so hard to believe that the universe simply is and that we are neither the center of it, nor even of the same kind as a thing that created it? (i.e., if we can't be the center of the universe then at least it was made by something like us, something with our basic psychological attributes?).
Furthermore, the horrendously ill-defined concept of god doesn't actually answer any of the big questions; it just raises more. But nevermind...
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 1:48:21 PM
Barkley,
I'm not a theist. and have no interest in postulating god. Carlos, who is a theist, has also said multiple times that he is not interested in evidence for god. So there's no need to refute an argument no one is making.
The point is not, "rationalism fails, therefore god." The point is that rationalism fails, therefore demanding evidence for all beliefs is illogical.
It may be true that the universe has "always" existed, but it is not rational to say so. Time is a matter of sequence, by definition. To say we don't fully understand time is a copout. The word becomes a placeholder; it may as well be god.
Causality is necessarily linear. It is not consistent with infinity. This doesn't mean I object to your suggesting there has always been a universe, but such a statement is outside our current scientific mechanistic metaphysics, no less so than god is.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 2, 2008 1:49:06 PM
Chris,
1. I maintain that it is not irrational to say that the universe has always existed.
2. We may understand time as a matter of sequence, but that may simply be due to our perspective of it. There are theoretical physicists currently coming up with models that work without the concept of time, so I'd keep an open mind on this. I wasn't using a copout; I was simply saying that we don't know these things well enough to draw conclusions based on them.
3. Causality is not inconsistent with infinity, or it's no less consistent with infinity then infinity is with itself. It's just a chain that keeps going, or a chain that loops back onto itself. Or whatever. All of this is pure speculation, of course, but the point is that we should not be so quick to conclude what is possible.
I also know a few theoretical physicists who are very comfortable with the idea of infinity, so I wouldn't be so quick to presume to say what is and what is not within "our current scientific mechanistic metaphysics."
But beyond all that is the pointlessness of using a concept (god) with no meaningful definition or explanatory power that cannot even be disproven.
(By the way, if "rationalism has failed," why are you worried about arguments being illogical? I admire the open-mindedness you have always shown for alternative explanations, Chris, but sometimes I wonder if you're a bit of a closet relativist--or perhaps I misunderstand)
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 2:18:17 PM
This topic gets the juices flowing here, doesn't it. Just so I am taken seriously by all and sundry, let me start by saying that I have been an atheist since 13. I see no reason to believe in god and the question for me is settled. In the West, this has been an unremarkable philosophical conclusion at least since Nietzsche. India has had a much older tradition of atheism.
As we mature, we realize that we, the people, believe in all kinds of things without evidence, or with conveniently selective evidence. What evidence do we consider to feel patriotic or nationalistic? What evidence do we examine to embrace capitalism, when it may be leading us to a mass extinction? How much evidence do we examine before letting fear grip us? What evidence do we seek for a "human dignity" that separates us from other animals, upon which we build human rights? Do we need evidence or vanity to think we are worthy of the girl next door? You get my point.
In a progressive, tolerant society, you learn to live with—even when you do not respect—the different views of others, as long as they do not cause you moral harm. Secular fundamentalism is defined by its intolerance towards those who believe in god. It is increasingly common; I see it in some views on this thread. They seem to assume (without clear evidence) that a society of atheists will be a better society.
So folks, unless you think that a belief in god is an automatic moral infraction on non-believers, it's time to move on to worthier debates. Accept that god will exist for some people because god fills a need for some in a unique way. Likewise for patriotism, etc. (hey, them patriots even subsidize the real cost of defending my way of life!). Our collective challenge is not to turn more people into self-righteous zealots like Sam Harris, but to figure out how we can minimize the moral excesses of both believers and non-believers, and to advance the cause of justice and liberal governance.
Posted by: Namit | Mar 2, 2008 3:29:13 PM
Well, nothing has changed---
Still no cards on the table.
This mental masturbation can only go on for so long---
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 5:00:25 PM
Well there may be the crux of it. For in fact the concept of God is anything but pointless, meaningless or ill-defined, whether it can be disproved or not. Adherents of the world's religions have had a profound impact on civilization and culture precisely because of the clarity of the explanation and the perceived usefulness of the concept as an organizing principle, answer to life's conflicts, and man's search for meaning and relevance. Much of the world's great art would never have been created but for worship of the Divine, and most of the rest would have been impoverished by lack of example. And it seems to have some small humanitarian benefit as well, as was most clearly revealed just during the last century, when the great social experiments in Godlessness: Nazism and Communism played out on the world stage to such grim effect. Nor, in reality, does love of God impede the love of knowledge. The world's great universities have roots in religion, many of the luminaries of science, including Leibniz, above and also his competitor/collaborator Newton as well as countless others were and are not at all diminished by their comprehension of God as Master of the Universe and the sense of responsibility and stewardship that engenders.
I suppose one could claim that, in the absence of allegiance to God's higher good, and in the absence of people setting that standard for goodness around us, universal atheism would engender an equal measure of self-sacrifice, temperance, and charity. I'm not sure how you would go about defending the position though. Were it not for my knowledge of a history filled with so many scientifically assured examples of equal folly, I wouldn't imagine there could be much interest in performing the experiment without some form of proof — Evidence — before proceeding.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 5:16:15 PM
Carlos--
Just show us your imaginary friend, and the problem is solved.
Is there a problem?
Inquiring mind want to know.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 6:12:52 PM
Carlos,
You really think it's only religion that differentiates the US from Nazi Germany, which, by the way was Christian and had ties with the Catholic Church of the time, if I'm not misinformed?
And communist states? You don't think maybe the fact that they had a terrible economic system had something to do with that?
Sigh. I don't have time for this.
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 6:35:47 PM
My last contribution:
"I suppose one could claim that, in the absence of allegiance to God's higher good, and in the absence of people setting that standard for goodness around us, universal atheism would engender an equal measure of self-sacrifice, temperance, and charity"
See Buddhist philosophy for a start. The Dali Lama is hardly a commi Nazi...
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 2, 2008 6:49:31 PM
Charity was praised by Buddha as the stairway to celestial realms. That's hardly a non-religious statement.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 8:16:07 PM
Carlos-
Your knowledge of Buddhism is only dwarfed by your knowledge of science.
Trust me-- stay in the shallow end of the pool on this one.
I'm off to meditation, so no more mental masturbation.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 2, 2008 8:32:46 PM
Yeah, that's working for ya.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 2, 2008 8:50:56 PM
I too will make this my last post for the thread.
Chris, great to see you're still around :-) It's yourself and Elatia that I most wish to address these final thoughts to.
While one cannot help but be impressed by the way you two manage to navigate the minefield of differing ideologies one encounters here and not tread on a single set of toes, I am left wondering.... Although it serves to very effectively keep the peace (no small achievement on our crowded planet) in the end, what power does such a position give for acheiving a shared progression for your fellow conversationalists? I have time and again been left thinking, after reading one of your comments "well, that was an insightful and quite eloquent expression of mutual understanding, but...."
Where does its usefulness lie with respect to achieving progress for each other? Indeed, in your minds, is human progress desirable? To put it another way, look at what has been achieved DESPITE the constant haranguing of the righteous and religious, by a mere 500 years of science. Only 500 years against a backdrop of billions! A tripling of life expectancy (with more to come no doubt - perhaps not an advantage to some, but I'll take it), an understanding of where we sit in the scheme of things that is orders of magnitude greater than where we were in the middle ages, a freedom from much of the drudgery of day to day toil such that time is freed up for thoughts such as those expressed here, etc etc. The list, you'd no doubt agree, is long. You'd rightly point out that perhaps a majority of the world doesn't yet enjoy these privileges. I'd posit that they'll get there, with our help, IN SPITE of religion, not through it. But my question remains, what use is it to just say, "everybody's right in their own way" when plainly, this is not true. I'd be the last to want to IMPOSE my views on anyone and would only violently defend them against a like violence from the superstitious, but I do feel it necessary to air the opposing point of view. I actually believe there is more than sufficient evidence (I'm sure Dave et al would agree) to put forward the theory that a rational world view would collectively serve us all a lot better. I don't see how you could argue against that proposition. It is very difficult to let go of some ideas precious to each of us (and I am speaking from experience) but that doesn't confer upon them equal validity.
Could you or Elatia mention one or two books that effectively outline your thinking so that I may perhaps better understand what you are getting at? Cheers.
Matt
Posted by: MattInOz | Mar 2, 2008 9:31:35 PM
Both religion and scientific rationalism have, in their turn, served to further the cause of civilization.
But consider also Walter Benjamin:
"There is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism."
Dave R. - you must know that Buddhism is extremely syncretic, and it seems a bit questionable to claim that your agnostic california flavor is superior to those of other cultures. In the 80's I met many many Cambodians whose simple Buddhist faith you would no doubt have sneered at. Yet I can't think of a better definition of Buddhism than the one given by Semdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, "the Gandhi of Cambodia":
"[What is Buddhism?] Knowing how to eat. Why to eat and where to eat and what to eat. And with whom to eat. And for whom. Life is a process of eating. We try to eat other people but do not let them eat us. And the Buddha cries when he sees this suffering."
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Mar 2, 2008 10:45:14 PM
Matt,
(I enjoy reading your comments, too -- very much.) I haven't a thing in the world against scientific progress except that in its absence we would have neither human-caused global warming nor a nuclear arsenal. But that's the very old argument that the search for knowledge is a fall from grace, dressed up in 21st century clothing -- and an impressive wardrobe it is, too. To pursue it is to invite observations that while religion has been good for poetry, music and art, it has been murderous to whole populations and hazardous in the extreme to the spirit of inquiry. Anything we humans can come up with is a double-edged sword -- even Buddhism, which Joseph Campbell classified among "disciplines of retreat." Maybe he thought too much disregard of samsara created its own kind of wretchedness.
You are not alone in wondering what my actual point of view is -- I wonder that too. When I was in college, the BBC did one of those marvelous middlebrow mini-series -- about world religions. The material was so baffling even to the cozy Oxford Don who spearheaded the series that he ended by saying he drew no conclusions and wanted only to make himself a pot of tea -- which he then did, on camera, a backdrop to the credit roll. To feel good about myself, of course, I need to take a position more coherent than that; I'd certainly like to be more "out there" than the BBC a quarter of a century ago. But one doesn't always get to feel that good about oneself, especially if one wants the shred of integrity that comes from recognizing how the craven, the irrational, the glorious and the adventurous are all combined in the contemplation of First Causes. My deepest sense tells me human beings are meant to think about these things, to change their minds, and to think again -- without necessarily knowing progress from a detour, knowing only that such confusion can and will take place, hence the certainty of having to think again. Richard Feynman famously said he thought we might well be reaching the end of the Age of Discovery, when all the great things that needed knowing would be known, were just about to be known. I have often wished he might have lived longer -- had he done, he would have gladly taken back those words, I think.
We live with tremendous uncertainty, with mind-bending paradoxes, and we live in the face of the very great dangers, of all kinds, that we have created for ourselves and our children. To live in a world where half the people are -- by any historical standard -- pretty much okay, and the other half are in a daily survival drama is to live with a very great moral danger that we divert insufficient mental and material resources to confront. If One Hundred Percent Rationality were overtaking us, would we see this in sharper focus? Or just continue to exalt scientific progress as, luxuriously, we shed our personal and cultural superstitions? My point of view, although it is not so philosophically coherent as could be wished, is that we should think about these things and not run from them, and then ask ourselves how best to act. That we need not obsess over deciding in Whom to believe or disbelieve, that we should not spend time and energy requiring that others drop their metaphysics. I'm not sure the dizzying vistas of atheism are quite the ticket or quite the point. If you ask me -- and you did -- there is an intersection of intellectual might and moral life that we have not reached, that some of the best minds among us do not even struggle to reach. For me, that's a problem that implies we should not be so eager to write off 5000 years of human yearning and imagination as less-than and rear-guard. We are still stumbling and wondering as they did, knees bent at our own hill-top shrines marked with saffron-daubed rocks. Man's inhumanity to man might be better tempered by an appreciation of this long and common struggle than by an arid attempt to live at a distance from it.
Admittedly, that's not a philosophical position, nor are these thoughts exclusive or original to me. But, I didn't get them from a book, I got them from thinking and feeling for myself -- which is all I would ask of anyone else before they decided what to do. What to DO. Because that's how the difference can be told between one person and another, one world view and the next.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 3, 2008 12:19:31 AM
(this doesn't count as a contribution--I said I wouldn't make another to this conversation--but it's such an entertaining and thoughtful piece, I thought it would do a nice job of showing a more profound way in which "atheists" and "believers" share common ground. You might have read it before, I think it's always worth reading again. I wish I were as lucid as God is in this piece.)
http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/IsGodTaoist.html
Posted by: Barkley | Mar 3, 2008 7:35:13 AM
Barkley writes:
It’s possible that there’s no such thing at all as time, that it’s just a function of how we organize events in understanding them. That’s all fine; but causality and logic rely upon our current understanding of time as a sequence. If we change our perspective, we may not be able to take causality with us. Or we might say that time is a way to look at history, but cannot be applied beyond known or imagined events, past or future.
The point is that consequentiality almost certainly has limits, just as Newtonian mechanics does. Just as all explanations do.
I would suggest these physicists are not mechanists, then, or that they allow that mechanical models have limited explanatory power. Physicists as a rule are far ahead the other sciences on these things, since determinism as an absolute has been untenable since the 1920s. Most of the major figures of particle physics during the first half of the 20th century explicitly rejected classical materialism and mechanicalism not just in their experiments but in their metaphysics. Unfortunately the Hawkings and Weinbergs that succeeded them seem bound to return to more comfortable old-fashioned narratives.
What I wrote was that rationalism fails at the point where there are no premises on which to evaluate conclusions, such as an infinite regress. Rationalism works just fine if the rules are of logic observed. We have a lot of arguments on this thread that insist that God-belief is silly because it’s not evidence-based. The implication is that these arguers only believe things which are evidence-based, and are therefore not silly. This is not a defensible position.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 3, 2008 11:49:58 AM
Matt,
I’ve never meant to propose that "everybody's right in their own way." I think that some world views are better than others, and I’ve tried to argue that here and elsewhere.
This is a very big topic and perhaps we can bring it back around on another thread. In the meanwhile, some notes toward that possibility:
1) The scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and the religious traditions they grew out of are not separate things. Our contemporary scientific picture owes a great deal to Christian philosophy. For example:
These are all—at best—partial truths, and not universally shared by historical human cultures.
2) Science and capitalism have a very profound relationship that is rarely examined. Because of this we tend to exalt our own technological prowess, and devalue that which exists outside our involvement. It has harrowing implications for our environment, as Namit has written, and blinds us to moral concerns we would take more seriously if we considered the human race as more intimately connected with nature.
3) We shouldn’t over-value lifespan extension. For one thing, confusing life expectancy with lifespan creates a false impression that people life longer now than in times past. In fact the upper limits are more or less the same, though today more of us get there. Secondly, what kind of life are we extending? An honest comparison of quality of life between the present day and the 15th century could be made to show that the average European of that time worked less for more wealth, and had greater social autonomy (there’s a lot of misinformation about the medieval quality of life—and if you think modern industry is free from drudgery, you need to get out more). I’m not making a Luddite argument here, just saying that science and technology present us with choices, and that quantity can never be its own goal.
Also, if you do the math there is simply no way to spread the Western Lifestyle to all the continents which don’t yet enjoy it, so the sort of “progress” you feel we are due is not tenable for humanity as a whole, without a major reduction in population, and probably not even then.
4) The modern scientific ideal that we can get closer and closer to objective reality has been a disaster for us, by distracting us from the question of what we want, what we need, and what we value. This has to be the first step of any “rational” world view with the obvious criteria that it work for us. The modern scientific worldview has not worked for us very well at all, leaving us overpopulated, unfulfilled, and on the brink of ecological meltdown on a global scale. One half of the world colonizes the other half and tells them (and itself) it’s for the best, though this best has not come to pass, and the disparity between the worlds grows ever worse.
There’s no single book or author I would point to as elucidating my worldview (which I hope will continue to evolve as long as I remain alive). Rather I would suggest you read everything that interests you, and do it in a spirit of openness and questioning. Think about what you truly want for yourself and the world, and be ever on the guard for moral precepts which just happen to echo and perpetuate the culture as we know it. To what goal do you wish for civilization to progress, and why?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 3, 2008 12:43:35 PM
Chris--
Modern science grew out of Greek thought, not Christianity.
Capitalism, I agree, grew out of Christianity, and arouse no where else.
It was the combination of Christianity, and it's ability to compartmentalize and separate itself from (and fear of) life, sensuality, and nature, and Greek mastery of science and reason that brought capitalism into being in the 15th century, in the Italian city states.
Just a observation, but capitalism only arose under christian thought.
Vicki-- I admired Ghosananda also, and Jack Kornfield, who I regularly sit with, worked with him in the refugee camps in the 1970's.
We lost him last year----
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 4, 2008 2:48:12 AM
Dave Ranning,
Jack Kornfield, eh? It's all starting to make sense. Now I see where you get your deep insight, your generous heart, and your compassion for those less fortunate than you.
Also: Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle and Harvey were Greek? Who knew. There's got to be a history book around here somewhere...
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 4, 2008 12:00:17 PM
Ah, the sputtering fizzle and halt. Back at work now and just wanted to say thanks to Carlos for going into more detail (I’m not a Unitarian Minister by the way, but Huehuecoyotl and Ahura Mazda send, not quite love, but a warm hello).
Chris I find much to agree with in the various thoughts you’ve shared. Given that I was lumped in the group that you took to task for a glib dismissal of “religion as not being reality-based”, allow me to quickly clarify before leaving this thread’s dead landscape. Within the scale of space and time the positive claims of religion do not pass muster. That said, I think much of religious teaching contains intuitive truths about the world and an unquestionable beauty of imaginative power. Science has sublated some aspects of Christianity as you allude to and is hardly a pure endeavor of objective discovery. I have no patience for those who take an insipid line of materialist deflation and think that religion has been replaced by science.
I wonder if people are really upset at the futility of conversations like these, or just uncomfortable with what they find to be a violation of manners. Religion is still a political force in the world and to address it, to engage in critique, is to give it the deserved honor of being taken seriously. I much prefer that to the waspish polite silence, the patronizing “well of course we don’t believe in that, but how nice for them, don’t you agree darling?’
Posted by: Jesse | Mar 4, 2008 4:33:28 PM
Caffeine delay - waspish should have been WASPY
Posted by: Jesse | Mar 4, 2008 5:27:39 PM
Chris-
The all came during or after the Renaissance--
The re discovery of Greek thought, after the dark period after the collapse of Hellenism ,and the dark period of Christianity (read Gibbons).
Freedom at last from small, suppressed empoverished minds!
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 4, 2008 11:33:43 PM
Dave, there are people who hear the word "Buddhism" and think "idol worship" - and they're not totally wrong about really-existing Buddhism. How can you be sure that your knee-jerk "talking snake" response isn't a similar prejudice?
Also, I think you're distorting history quite a bit trying to tease out a single untainted thread that will lead us to the promised land of "progress." Next I expect we'll hear about "medieval" witch burnings.
Anyway, it's fun needling you. Maybe some metta practice is in order for both of us?
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Mar 5, 2008 12:20:25 AM
Dave-
As a fellow atheist, I find your ranting to be quite possibly the best argument in this thread. Sadly, it's a slanderous one, slanderous against your fellow atheists. Let this be a plea for you to desist in your name calling and childish bickering, and to come back when you've matured enough to hold a conversation and present cogent points. Enough with Bill Maherisms, talking snakes, and magically underpants. They're funning as jokes, but they make truly atrocious arguments.
In general, it seems like the back and forth in this thread is it's downfall. Posters seem to stop typing before fully exposing their arguments, leading to endless bickering over what the other actually believes. A Lincoln-Douglas style debate is in order between the three sides. Maybe 3QD would be willing to host such on the front page so that the authors would take it seriously?
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Mar 5, 2008 4:55:31 AM
Viki--
Yes, metta practice for all beings (especially yourself!) is always skillful. As far as Talking Snakes, at least the ones in Bronze Age texts that are the basis for 2 billion people creation myths, one has to practice examination and equanimity on the subject, then make a skillful decision and act on it. My action stand up after long examination.
Talking Snakes are delusional. Christians are delusional.
I'll leave out the possibility that christians could be right, as I leave open the possibility that a drunken dwarf riding a unicorn will fall through my ceiling 30 seconds from now. I think the odds are better with the dwarf and unicorn.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 10:03:19 AM
Cyris-
When one takes out the talking snakes, the virgin births, the walking zombies, then subtracts a few thees and thos, what is left?
Other than a history of violence and intolerance?
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 10:11:13 AM
Dave-
Your last statement exemplifies my problem with your argumentative style.
What's left? Much art and music. Large portions of modern Western Philosophy. Could much of it have been derived in a world without religion? Sure, but it wasn't, and to act like religion hasn't given us much that is, indeed, positive is like trying to ignore the positive influence of drugs on culture. Both have deleterious effects, but both have inspired some of the most respected works in the world.
I'd also like to mention abolition and suffrage, two movements which have given western secularism much, yet have deeply religious roots.
So, like I said, feel free to stop making such ridiculous rhetorical sweeps of the pen and start making real arguments. Calling people stupid/delusional/crazy/suppressed because they currently believe something you don't is about as likely to change someone's mind as leaving a burning bag of shit on their front stoop.
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Mar 5, 2008 10:55:46 AM
Cyris---
Yes, the feedback loops from religion did produce some great music, and some less so art.
Just what am I ignoring? I'm not out to change anyone's mind, as religious meme's would not that happen in a infected host. I know it is uncomfortable to look at essence of these camp fire stories from ignorant bronze age herders, but that is exactly what they are.
Please enlighten my thinking. I see religion a a natural phenomena , a product of evolution that was not penalized for heuristic jumps in logic. Unfortunately, this strategy that has kept humans alive, is a liability in the current world.
Humans are cognitively irrational, and this is not a good survival strategy.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 11:19:51 AM
Jesse,
Apologies for the improper lumping.
Certainly some people are uncomfortable with manners violations. I think they are right to be, not because we should all be Victorians, but because certain rhetorical tacks are destined to have no power of persuasion, and once that is gone all that is left is war, and there is already too much war.
I think this is what Cyrus is saying, above.
The only person that takes Dave Ranning seriously is Dave Ranning, bless his heart. But the Dawkinses and Weinbergs of the world have great intellectual influence. They don't make the case that their way of looking at things is valuable, they just declare the conversation has ended.
Many writers and academics--e.g. Scott Atran, Timothy Garton Ash, Mary Midgley, Karen Armstrong, Bruno Latour--make the convincing case that this type of intellectual imperialism has the predictable effect of actually increasing religious fundamentalism; and indeed, fundamentalism has exploded since the metaphysical shocks introduced by Nietzsche and Darwin.
It may be depressing, but it's also instructive that The Purpose Driven Life and the new Eckhart Tolle book are such hot sellers. People want purpose and meaning. If the modern scientific worldview makes no room for these things people will find them where they can. (I know the argument that science doesn't preclude meaning and purpose; but not everyone wants to be a Benthamite utilitarian.)
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Mar 5, 2008 11:47:19 AM
Chris---
"Intellectual Imperialism"-- I like that! As far a s Tolle, I agree it is depressing to think that peoples lives are that desperate to cling to these simple outlooks and solutions.
But it is better than talking Snakes, and examination is encouraged.
Science makes room for these people, they just need the curiosity and education to liberate them selves.
With a little work, the awe and wonder of evolution will make embarrassing creation myth pale as a impoverished view of their origins.
Posted by: dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 12:06:17 PM
Dave-
If you have no interest, or believe it impossible, to change minds, why choose to say anything at all? I fail to see the point, unless you wish to do nothing but antagonize others. And if there is one thing the world needs less of (besides religion), it's antagonism.
Basta.
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Mar 5, 2008 2:44:42 PM
Cyrus --
Not being a mind-reader, I can't say why Dave says the things he does. But certainly people spend plenty of times saying things for other purposes than to change minds.
Some of us (the general "us") do, as you say, want nothing more than to roil the pot and antagonize other people. Sometimes we just want to perform for our favorite and most appreciative audience (ourselves). Sometimes we are reinforcing our own self-image or prejudices. Sometimes we think we are trying to change minds, but since we haven't done the hard work of self- and other-awareness that might lead our communications to actually be effective in that way, what we write actually pushes people further away.
And on and on.
Mostly I do no more than skim threads like this now -- slowing down for certain commenters, ignoring others completely since they never seem to say anything different from one time to the next -- just happy to run across a new thought or perspective or approach now and then. To modify an old saying... "So many blogs, so little time...."
Posted by: JanieM | Mar 5, 2008 7:09:48 PM
Cyris---
It is very simple-----
We have now come around on this thread that Talking Snakes. Virgin Births, and Resurrected Zombies are metaphors for, well good music and art?
The jury is still out on Psychopathic Sky Daddy's, and everyone must "have a belief in the belief in religion" (that it is essentially good).
And of course, we can't practice "Intellectual Imperialism" because someone one may need to defend female genital mutilation in a cultural debate.
What have I missed?
Oh- buddhism-- One must have pity on the christians, as because most buddhist are superstition based, like all religion, and some christians may also be.
What have i left out?
I sure there is something--
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 5, 2008 7:35:48 PM
JanieM, you are so right. I used to be invited to dinner parties in San Francisco given by Ji-ing Sun, one of the legendary daughters of Sun Yat-Sen. Her English comprehension was second to none, but she never achieved fluency, so she would announce a topic at table, and guests -- under extremely polite pressure to contribute an original thought or three -- would take turns. Er, I don't think we are like that here. I think lots of people write not because they have a well known point of view and figure it's time to trot it out again, but because they find out what they're thinking in the act of writing -- always interesting to one person, at least. And often to many more.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 5, 2008 7:36:35 PM
Elatia -- yes, great point, I forgot to include in my by no means exhaustive list the process of writing to find out what I think. I do that a lot, but being a very private person I tend to do it in early "shitty first drafts" (to borrow Ann Lamott's lovely phrase) that I keep to myself. Not that I don't learn still more about what I think by bouncing things around with other people...
Posted by: JanieM | Mar 5, 2008 8:26:50 PM
As far a the cultural contributions of religion, I can't help wondering what the great artists might have created if not restricted in subject matter by the Church?
Posted by: Christopher | Mar 6, 2008 11:52:46 AM
We have now before us the smoking gun evidence of the collapse of religious apologetics. Hedges' criticism of the New Atheists is entirely about their style.
He does not argue about substance because religious apologetics has nothing to say about the substance of atheist criticism : that religion is a historical lie; its teachings, when they are not positively despicable, are useless, the rattlings of old bones; and it's madness.
Hedges thinks he hears threats of violence and intolerance in the New Atheists. What he hears is drowned out by the drums of a religious establishment that is em>all about power and violence.
What the New Atheists really threaten is the edifice of privilege that provides Hedges and thousands like him with a comfortable living -- an edifice that has has been built from the bricks and mortar of religious oppresssion.
And what does he place in the balance aginst that? He doesn't like their tone?
Posted by: Bob Crispen | Mar 8, 2008 3:53:55 AM
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