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Two cultures? This is a bit scary:
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
The study found 54% of Americans regard atheists as dangerous or threatening.
It is not just because I am an atheist that I find this disturbing. I would like to suggest that it is an example of a more general tendency among the populations of even advanced states to react more strongly to the imaginary dangers of things they don’t understand than to real threats. It is an inexhaustible fuel for authoritarian populism.
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But Atheists ARE a threat to the American Dream! The GREATEST MEN who ever lived got together and came up with the DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCE and something called a Conftitution, and something elfe called Congreff. They were Theists. If Theism is good enough for the FOUNDING FATHERS, The GREATEST MEN Who Ever Lived, then it should be good enough for anyone. Since Theism is so deeply embedded in the start of American history, A-theism automatically seems like an assault on American Values.
Article 11, Treaty of Tripoli –
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;
approved by President John Adams and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, and ratified unanimously by the United States Senate, June 10, 1797.
My understanding (based on the philosophical teachings of Karl Popper, and not inconsistent with those of Thomas Aquinas) is that atheism is as much a matter of faith as is theistic religion.
Thus, it can have its fundamentalists.
And is it not the fundamentalists, with their lack of tolerance, that are the problem.
Best regards
Nick,
But would the Founding Fathers have found atheists a threat? No, they were, for the most part, men of science and the enlightenment. They were not Mullahs.
It’s pretty clear that Thomas Paine was an atheist, and he was a driving force for the revolution against Britain and to many his works deserve more credit in relation to the constitution than many acknowledge.
The Theists are reacting to the 30 year centralization of the US government. Now every community has to kowtow to the Federal government or have their funding cut. Political issues like abortion and the sexual revolution have left the courts in the hands of the religion neutral. This structure now makes it simple for relatively tiny organizations like the ACLU to push a few buttons and go into Podunk Junction and a thousand other rural communities simultaineously to take their Chirstmas display away, or remove the 10 commandments from their courthouses or “separate church from state”. A great idea when the state was a tiny thing. When the state becomes so vastly powerful that it reaches into every part of life, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for the church.
Not surprisingly, they find this a threat. They blame the tiny subset of atheists, who are actively using this fulcrum to move mountains of religious tradition. What they should be chopping at is the tenticles of the state.
Maybe they’ve been reading too much Tocqueville, or possibly they just think there’s a threat to their eardrums from atheists constantly whining about their none existent persecution.
What is truly disturbing is that 97% of Americans think – or at least countenance the view – that everything exists because of some great ghost in the sky.
Tim
“What is truly disturbing is that 97% of Americans think – or at least countenance the view – that everything exists because of some great ghost in the sky.”
I’d say that this is an example of the trope under discussion, ie “a more general tendency among the populations of even advanced states to react more strongly to the imaginary dangers of things they don’t understand”
The British equivalent of Americans finding atheists scary is Brits assuming President Bush is a scary theocon about to implement a scary Christianist theocracy.
Most of the founding fathers were deists, which says there’s a god, but he hasn’t done anything much since creating the universe.
Before Darwin published the theory of evolution, it was as close to atheism as most people got.
I think that K has nailed it.
I call B.S. on these statistics.
3% may call themselves Atheists. But the general pool of people who are ‘non-believers’ that include those indifferent to religion, be they “agnostic” or just don’t think about the topic much at all, would be much, much larger. Maybe not a majority, but much larger.
I seriously doubt that so many people consider “atheists” a “threat”.
Then again, with so much of what passes for debate on religion these days, I’m not surprised some people would think the U.S. was dominated by zealots. To understand that it isn’t would require more understanding of both the secular and religious cultures within the U.S.
Faith is an important part of many peoples lives. For others religion is more of a social/cultural thing to form a community around. But in some people’s eyes the few who make the most noise politically (for and against religion) tend to define reigion and atheism.
Extremes get a lot of attention and distort perceptions, for both “sides”.
I question the methodology of, and possibly the motives behind, this study.
Following the money, this study was carried out by the American Mosaic Project(Link), principle sponsors of which are the The Edelstein Family Charitable Foundation. Thats where things run dry. I can’t find any more information about this foundation and whether its more general motives are theistic or not. Finding that out may give some insight into the motives behind the study.
Most of the founding fathers were deists…
Actually, of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, there “were 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown and only 3 deists–Williamson, Wilson and Franklin, this at a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith.”
And Thomas Paine’s works did not influence the Constitution so much as they did the war against Britain. And his works on religion were very widely denounced by many colonial leaders.
I do believe that atheism and philosophic naturalism are incorrect in their basic view of reality and will therefore prevent their adherents from making the best decisions for themselves.
I would even go as far as to say that I think that these worldviews are pernicious and damaging to society, but let me emphasize vehemently that I DO NOT support the use of force or government policy to suppress atheist beliefs. I am no theocrat. I believe in a liberal, pluralistic society and a free market of ideas.
Are atheists dangerous? Are theists dangerous? When these words have so many different kinds of people as their referents, it’s difficult to really affirm that either of these groups of people as a whole are dangerous, and I’d agree with the author of this post that the statistic in the study is disturbing. But I would say that atheism as a worldview is dangerous to everyone including atheists.
But once again I think the only proper place for such a statement is in the free marketplace of ideas where individuals are free to believe in what they want free from coercion regardless of who and how many disagree.
Dear Mr. Messamore
You wrote, “Actually, of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, there “were 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown and only 3 deists–Williamson, Wilson and Franklin”
I say this is a made up statistic. For one thing, you are missing at least one deist. You are probably counting him as an Episcopalian. I mean of course General Washington. He was nominally a member of the C of E but he was known not to take comunion and his own priest has testified to the fact that he was in fact a deist.
Whether the majority of the Founding Fathers were atheists, Deists, or whatnot, it is nevertheless quite surprising to me that such a high proportion of the US respondents to this survey (I’d like to see what the sample size was) are religious. It is funny how the word “atheism” is often carelessly attached to “liberal” or “socialist” or “communist” when there is no reason why, for example, a conservative/libertarian etc could not be an atheist. After all, conservatives like to point out how institutions evolve, which has certain parallels – not all that close, mind – with Darwinism.
I would be interested in your reasons for atheism being dangerous, W.E.
How can not believing in a superbeing who created everything and controls everything be dangerous??
I grew up and continue to live, in a society that is suffused with the tenets and morals of the Christian religion. Just because I dont believe in the Old bloke in the sky with his barmy rulebook, doesnt make me think that thou shalt not kill is a bad idea.
Around 0907 this morning (6+ hours ago), I posted a comment on this thread. It attracted the ever-impressive Smite Control zap, and has not appeared (formally clean) the other side.
Is there any chance that some Samizdatista might check for and correct any computer/administrative problems or, if appropriate, report back whether I have been labelled troll, raving looney, etc.
Best regards
I was smited three times yesterday Nigel. Yes it is bloody infuriating!!
Perry’s software thinks my writing style subversive for some reason.
As an atheist, I am always mindful of others feelings.Not wishing to cause offence with my outrageous views.
So the last time I was in the States, I was in a Saloon and the topic of religion came up. Wishing to hide my lack of faith, when asked, I said I was a Satanist.
I was looking forward to a spirited theological debate with my new friends, turned to pick up my beer, but when I turned back- they’d all moved down the other end of the bar!!!
You just cant win sometimes can you?
Smiting in a thread about God and Atheism just seems… appropriate.
Two of the Samizdata editors have been having rather a lot of hospital time in order to discover if they came back from Ethiopia with Typhus or just some more common-or-garden Afro-lurgy, so comment moderation may be a bit slow for a day or two.
Messamore, why do you think atheism is damaging to society?
““Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,””
Nonsense. Social tolerance is no greater than it ever was, perhaps less. The in and out groups have changed, but intolerance is as robust as ever.
Thomas Paine was not an atheist. He opens his book, “The Age Of Reason” with a “profession of faith”:
“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.”
I agree. Instead of ‘Catholics, Queers and Niggers’ the fashionable hate objects are different nonconformists such as free thinkers, gun owners, smokers (and anyone else who dares think they own their own body or property) and skeptics who dare challenge the preposterous environmental orthodoxy. The only accetable ‘old style’ bigotry that has carried over is dislike of Jews, just so long as you pretend it is anti-Zionism.
Well,
If atheists were better behaved they might have a better reputation. Communists (100M dead), Nazis (30M dead), ethicists like Singer, and cultural relativists like Rorty, don’t do much to give me faith in atheism. And I am an atheist myself. I think few can handle atheism, their inner spiritual needs driving them to find some half-baked rational substitute.
Perry,
Julie Birchill (yeah, I know!) nailed that one in an article about Prince Charles embracing(ish) Islam. Basically she argued that Islam is in this day and age the last refuge of the reactionary who wants to be seen as in some way as “progressive” whilst still believing the sort of stuff that people who right angry letter to the Daily Mail believe.
Messamore,
I’m an agnostic. Yet, I’m also married, faithful, (reasonably) responsible and fulfill a useful role in society. If the fact that a lack of religious belief is corrosive to society then how do you explain that given that I have never believed in any form of religion? Moreover, how do you explain how our devout Anglican/Catholic PM has been enormously corrosive to our society?
If you’re making some half-assed “the family that prays together stays together” type argument then I really couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff. Because, oddly enough, amongst my friends I have counted outright atheists and the devoutly religious.
So, if it’s possible to be a perfectly decent person without believing in God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah et al. then I suspect your “argument” is holed below the waterline.
Let’s just hope there’s enough lifeboats.
Sure. Why did I not think of that?
First, I would like to point out that the doctrine of religious separation is entirely a judicial construct and does not appear in the Bill of Rights. The injunction of religious establishment pertains only to the Federal Government, not the States; the Commonwealth of Virginia had an official State church until the 1830s, the Epicopalian Church naturally.
Second, many of the founding fathers were deists or agnostics; however, their belief or lack thereof in no way resulted in a diminished appreciation of the value of religious belief in the maintence of public morals and order. Jefferson may have tidied up his Bible and Koran, but he still considered the books’ best bits valuable works of moral philosophy.
Third, I think Truman or Ike once remarked that ‘America was built on faith. We just dont know what it is’. This ambiguous religious mythology is at the heart of the American self-conception: Connecticut is called the ‘Constitution State’ because of its written constitution based on the first chapter of Judges; Mormonism; Lincoln’s great speeches; Cotton Mather and John Winthrop’s sermons; and William Jennings Bryant. Every political party uses this fuzzy religious rhetoric with its main tenet of America as the new Israel, promised land, and eveny schoolchild imbibes it repeatedly at school. Another example is the ludicrous lengths the Armed Forces go to to retrive the dead from foreign shores. Political exgencies may force soliders to leave America’s shores, but no American or serviceman should suffer the indignity of eternal rest, if possible, from their heimat; hence, every American military graveyard abroad is American soil. The entire concept is atavistically religious. Consider regional slogans as well, such as “Live Free or Die”, “For God, for Country, For Yale” or my fav “American by birth, Southron by choice, Alabamain by the grace of God”. Dworkin et al.’s public campaign to re-educate the benighted threatens these two very important conncetions of the founding myth and loyalty to your birth State.
That’s why most Americans dont like atheists. It runs contrary to founding myth and Dworkin does not help himself or his cause by being a smug pratt either.
BTW, I do not for one second actually believe only 3% of the USA are atheists. Possibly 3% are self described atheists but I suspect a great many more are ‘shoulder shrugging’ atheists who simply get on with a God-free life without much thinking about it.
Of all the people I know very well in the USA (i.e. people I am very confident I know what they actually think), I have done a back of the envelope calculation and come up with 2 practising Christians (one is a Catholic priest), 1 practising Jew, 2 nominal Christians (i.e. “deaths-and-weddings only”), 2 nominal Jews, 5 completely non-practising “indifferents”, 1 self-described agnostic, 2 self-described atheists.
15 people is a small sample so take it for what you will.
That’s why most Americans dont like atheists. It runs contrary to founding myth and Dworkin does not help himself or his cause by being a smug pratt either.
How is he more smug than a person of faith? Dawkins doesn’t think he’s special enough to have to be the product of a divine, supernatural will. You don’t have to believe him, but he speaks with more reason, more humility about the extent of his knowledge, and threatens his audience less than the average priest.
Why do god-believers always argue for religion on the basis of its outcomes rather than whether or not god actually exists?
Surely the point about Nazis and Communists is that they are as anti-reason and as deluded about reality as those who think there’s a god in the clouds?
The disturbing point about the 97% statistic is not that it implies Bush is about to implement a theocracy, but that so many people in the most advanced country in the world can be so divorced from reason and reality.
I never said he was more smug than a person of faith. I remarked that his on-screen demeanor is supercilious and often rude and denigrating to those espousing different view points. A confrontational snide style is expected in the UK, but doesnt wash in America. Dawkins may be light to enlighten Americans’ igorance, but he is not humble by any strech. As for threathening priests, I have heard of the church militant, but the church ‘argy-bargy’?
This thread is about why Americans, religous and non-religious, instinctively distrust atheists, not about atheism itself.
[yawn]
Next topic.
Thomas Paine was a Deist – like many of our founding fathers – that’s not the same as an atheist by a long shot. He believed in God, not religion – a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.
Among Washington and Franklin in the Constitutional Congress, were 9 other members of the Freemasons. The ‘masons *used* to teach/believe in a deist concept which they refered to as the “Divine Architect.” IMHO, the ‘masons were a *secret* society specifically because they taught non-christian ideas of a “Divine Architect” that set the universe in motion and that’s it.** It would be in the interest of *any* such person to continue identifying himself as protestant.
**Note, I don’t think they do this anymore, but I’m not sure.
Thomas Paine was a Deist – like many of our founding fathers – that’s not the same as an atheist by a long shot. He believed in God, not religion – a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.
Among Washington and Franklin in the Constitutional Congress, were 9 other members of the Freemasons. The ‘masons *used* to teach/believe in a deist concept which they refered to as the “Divine Architect.” IMHO, the ‘masons were a *secret* society specifically because they taught non-christian ideas of a “Divine Architect” that set the universe in motion and that’s it.** It would be in the interest of *any* such person to continue identifying himself as protestant.
**Note, I don’t think they do this anymore, but I’m not sure.
Not only is your sample small, Perry, but I suspect it’s anything but random, as they’re your acquaintances.
I’m inclined to sympathise with Bob. Perhaps the best reason people think atheists are “dangerous” is that the vocal atheists tend to be complete asshats who propose daft or actively threatening things.
The issue, it seems to me, is more that those who actively (or even professionally) profess atheism might actually be dangerous, at least to the social order as it stands.
In other words, that majority who think atheists are dangerous are wrong perhaps only because they confuse “those idiots who do nothing but rail at God all day, and Stalinists, and anarchists who throw bricks through windows in protests” (all either actively professing atheism or reasonably associated with it as an almost necessary condition of their behavior or beliefs) with atheists-qua-atheists.
Perception bias, that is.
(It’s often occurred to me that people who make a religion of hating God do more damage to “atheism” than anyone else…)
(Full disclosure: I’m an atheist, myself.)
I’m with Chuck. I consider atheism to be a threat (different than a danger) because of its history. In the only states where it has been the Established Religion (i.e., ones that usually contain “People’s Republic”), the people have been treated very poorly.
At least other religions have some positive examples of where they were the Established Religion and they didn’t run rampant murdering and torturing.
A plague o’ both your houses. Faith belongs in one’s personal sphere and among people who share a particular one. This applies to fundamentalist Atheists as well.
Militant Atheism is just one more fundamentalist theology making assertions and demands about something not known and probably not knowable. Whether ‘God’ or ‘no-God’ true believers, all ‘true knowledge’ theologies are just a bunch of flat earthers making cosmic claims based on their visible horizons and things they feel inside. The Christian definition of faith applies to atheists as well.
Do I have personal feelings and intuitions based on what I see and what I feel inside? Of course. And that is what they will stay. Personal. Anybody here is welcome to hold me to a strict standard of agnosticism because it is the only way for people for people to interact in regard to things not proven.
Perry, I’m guessing that 3% figure is about right for militant atheists. I think the big numbers claimed for atheists are actually people who could better be described as agnostics but have never cared enough to self identify accurately.
Ah, Perry,
We are not talking about the 17’th wars of religion or the anti-Albigensian crusade , we are talking about *our* time.
Apart from the 3% figure, which I think is totally bogus — I suspect the true believers are probably more like 60-70% — the reason for distrust is clear: people trust those they know and those who belong to the same cultural traditions because they know what to expect and where the loyalties lie. There is really nothing strange about that, it is a nasty world, full of scams and deceptions, groups seeking power and what not, and knowing whom to trust is important. It is not an infallible guide, of course, many a con artist poses as devout and honest, but it is a clue in a diverse world. People are inherently tribal for good reason and, although that facet of humanity is obscured in the modern state, it still pays to know who is family, clan, tribe, or ally. Indeed, the Samizdata parties from which you post pictures no doubt serve a similar social purpose in a less formal way.
Thomas Paine was a Deist – like many of our founding fathers – that’s not the same as an atheist by a long shot. He believed in God, not religion – a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.
Among Washington and Franklin in the Constitutional Congress, were 9 other members of the Freemasons. The ‘masons *used* to teach/believe in a deist concept which they refered to as the “Divine Architect.” IMHO, the ‘masons were a *secret* society specifically because they taught non-christian ideas of a “Divine Architect” that set the universe in motion and that’s it.** It would be in the interest of *any* such person to continue identifying himself as protestant.
**Note, I don’t think they do this anymore, but I’m not sure.
RAB said:
It’s God. He’s filling in as editor, I guess.
“God, Root, what is difference?”
And yet, when the time came to give back some of that watered-down psuedo-pilsener, I bet you didn’t have to wait too long in the washroom. The only thing that would clear that line out faster than claiming to be an atheist is announcing that one is gay and out loud and proud. Which works quite well, ask me how I know.
I never could keep straight (dagnabbit, there’s that word again) which ear got the earring, though.
This thread is about why Americans, religous and non-religious, instinctively distrust atheists, not about atheism itself.
Your belief that Richard Dawkins has a personality fault is integral to this issue. I don’t know him personally, but, from what I’ve seen of him, he does not appear especially smug relative to anybody else who talks about faith.
And, so, here’s a simple, relevant question: Dawkins does not tell people that they’ll go to Hell and burn for eternity if they don’t do what his book says (more or less in direct contrast to, say, an imam), so why are do most Americans think he is smug and dangerous?
My working assumption is that most people are intellectually conservative. I do not believe you could generate mass faith in modern America if you started from a point of mass disbelief. The argument has little more to it than ‘it’s what we believed yesterday.’ It goes some way to explaining why Americans would associate a revolution in spirituality with genuinely dangerous political revolutions.
Well there is some support for Paine being an atheist.
Who cares? In the Judeo-Christian tradition one’s path to God is a personal one. I am a lapsed Catholic and I am agnostic. Perhaps an atheist. I am not sure. I question myself over it constantly.
However, I recognise and respect my Judeo-Christian upbringing and I certainly respect Christianity and most of the other faiths. I see Islam as a threat to my way of life and in that respect probably share a lot in common with some American Christians. I would describe myself as a Republican in political outlook. I have no desire to impugn Christianity at all.
And I am a threat? Or close to being a threat? Funnily enough both my last and current boss are devout Christians, one an evangelical protestant the other a traditional Catholic. We share the same views on abortion and many other issues. Neither of them have a problem with me at all. And yet the sentiments I have read somehow place me in a category with mad Islamists.
Perhaps I am being lumped in with militant atheists? What a terrible shame.
Good to see some people sticking up for agnosticism and deism here, concepts which often get forgotten in the athieist-religion brawling.
You see, what I find odd in that survey is that pretty much 100% of Americans have made up their minds about the presence or absence of an intelligent agent behind the creation of our Universe based on no evidence whatsoever (the existence or otherwise of an interventionist deity is another matter entirely).
D. Monroe’s post is interesting. Although the Masons have constructed a downright weird set of ceremonies around it, their central idea of a non-interventionist “Divine Architect” comes closest to what I will only go as far as saying are my suspicions about the origins of the Universe. I don’t know. The current state of scientific knowledge means nobody knows. We may never know. I accept this, shrug my shoulders, and get on with something else. The religious accept it, but believe in a creator, and call their belief “faith”. Atheists don’t accept it, believe there was no creator, and call their belief “reason”. Sorry, but I like reason, and that ain’t it. Reason tells us simply that we don’t know. Perhaps my fellow fans of rationalism find it hard to accept there is a limit to our capacity to know.
so why are do most Americans think he is smug and dangerous?
I suspect the vast majority of Americans have never heard of the man and don’t care. People, by and large, have better things to do than attend to the academic tempests stirred up by folks with too much time on their hands.
Can I boil this down for you all.
The Big Bang is the start of all life and existence.
But who lit the blue touchpaper?
God ?
Nope. Still dont buy it. Sorry!!!
de re Ham: ‘And, so, here’s a simple, relevant question: Dawkins does not tell people that they’ll go to Hell and burn for eternity if they don’t do what his book says (more or less in direct contrast to, say, an imam), so why are do most Americans think he is smug and dangerous?’
What I attempted to thresh-out above was the political aspect of aetheism amongst the citizenry and its relationship to the American national self-conception. Accepting a complete aethiest worldview, separates Americans from the motives of the founding fathers and the very reason for America’s founding. It is seen by the majority as a political attack, not non-religious proselytizing. That is why I cant imagine an outed aetheist in the House or the Senate. They did a pole a few years ago which reported that amongst independents, dems and republicans only five or ten percent would vote for an aetheist.
As for Dawkins being dangerous, he is not. It is a political judgment. Half of America is protestant. Ergo, the other half of America is going to hell. Yet somehow block parties continue and the PTA survives.
See Dawkins on Charlie Rose or Booknotes with Charles Lamb. Tit.
There’s a whole world of difference between reason and rationalism.
Oh yeah I was a little non-specific on Thom Paine and perhaps I was too strong on him being an atheist. However, he would probably be lumped in with me.
Paine did believe in God, but said of the Bible: “[it] is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind”…and yet Paine understood that Christianity kept alive an ethical tradition vital for nurturing republican democracy.
I think Paine saw the dogma of militant atheists in decreeing the death of God (when he was in St Denis) as another means of corrupting man.
Perhaps I like Paine because he would never be a mullah.
See Dawkins on Charlie Rose or Booknotes with Charles Lamb. Tit.
Very nice. And Chuck, too, with that dig about people being interested in hearing Dawkins having ‘too much time on their hands,’ also good.
Have a nice day.
Sorry. That was meant to be a semi-colon, referring to Dawkins. I apologize.
I hate to generalize, but I honestly have not met or read about an atheist who could simply say, “I am an atheist” without almost immediately beginning to rant about how anyone who wasn’t an atheist was stupid, evil, foolish… that is, when they didn’t start whining about their religious parents. If a Protestant started ranting about how Catholics are wrongevilbad, even Protestants would probably think twice about voting for him.
I mean, just glance above: “Big ghost in the sky,” “all Founding Fathers were actually not religious, just like me, despite everything they ever wrote to the contrary”… All that is okay on a blog comment, but it’s not going to put you in the Oval Office or 10 Downing. “Vote For Me, You Superstitious Fools, So That I May Destroy You!” doesn’t work as a slogan, except maybe in Latveria.
Just John,
Do you know anyone who could just say “I am a Libertarian” without immediately going on to rant about big government, socialists, nanny-statism, politicians, people who want to ban guns, … ?
🙂
“I hate to generalize, but I honestly have not met or read about an atheist who could simply say, ‘I am an atheist’ without almost immediately beginning to rant about how anyone who wasn’t an atheist was stupid, evil, foolish…”
Well, you have now. I have no use for religion, and I never have. Oh, you’ll see me use a phrase now & then like, “God bless ’em,” but that’s nothing but connotation: I personally think it might be nice if there were some almighty entity looking down on human affairs with at least some sort of interest that goodness be taken care of, somehow, at one point or other. I do not believe it, however. Never have.
Nonetheless: my father was a lifelong Catholic. I and bless the Church for whatever comfort it brought him at the end of his life, which was considerable.
When it’s a harmless and innocent faith, I have no serious problem with it, and am content to leave it alone. I’m with Christopher Hitchens when he wrote, “Those who persecute religion are to be avoided at all costs. Antigone taught us to trust the instinct that is revolted by desecration.”
(“Letters To A Young Contrarian”, 2001, p. 65)
Liam — “Well there is some support for Paine being an atheist.”
I guess so, if we ignore what the man actually wrote about his own life and beliefs.
If atheists are such a threat, where are the atheist suicide bombers, threatening to blow themselves up in order to force people to believe that there is nothing after death….oh, wait, atheists believe there is nothing after death.
What I find persistently fascinating about this whole “debate” is that many people examine the manifest flaws of one particular religion (e.g. Christianity), and then generalize out from there that the entire concept of a God is flawed.
One does not imply the other. Nor does abusing a particular religion do anything to prove the validity of atheism in general.
One advantage of the times we live in is that the question, “What is so dangerous about atheism?” should be conclusively answered within the next century. Some of us might even be around to see it.
1) I’d be interested to see the actual methodology of the phone survey.
2) As has been touched on before, when people thing of atheists, they tend to think of (A)theists, those people who insist on scrubbing religion from every aspect of the State landscape. More alarming, of course, to the average believer is they see most Atheists as a type of political/Statist movement, with an agenda of their own to force on others, and most of the time I think they are right. Many, if not all Atheists, are socialists who support a large State construct. So it is a double whammy of wanting the State to have a far reach and be invasive, but must be scrubbed clean of religion.
But then again I’m not brimming with sympathy for the average religious supporter of a wide and invasive State either, certainly not wanting a Theocracy to develop. In fact I think most of the antagonism between Atheists and the religious in the halls of power is the power struggle of what axiomatic philosophy is going to be shoved down people’s throats by force. The most depressing thing is that during these mulitfaceted struggles it doesn’t occur to anyone that since life and property are not directly at risk, then perhaps they should quit using the corridors of power to debate philosophy and which will be the order of the land.
3)I do believe that atheism and philosophic naturalism are incorrect in their basic view of reality and will therefore prevent their adherents from making the best decisions for themselves.
I am 180* to the opposite in that a belief in God is a manifestation of superstition, and superstition is the product of a clouded mind. If one has a clouded mind, and draws incorrect conclusions, they will likely make poorer decisions for themselves. Of course people are welcome to whatever they need to motivate themselves through life. It is when one’s own affirming constructions become so adored that they wish that they be accepted by all, even so far as to legislate it.
Quite right, Gabriel. Slip of the brain. 🙂 I don’t like repeating myself and I’d already had three “reason”s in a row, so I plucked the word out of the air, only realising what I’d said after I posted it. I don’t think it invalidates my point, though.
Mastiff,
We can quite cheerfully analyse the flaws of Astarte, Odin, Zeus, or Isis if you like – would that help to convince? Or Danu, Adrammelech, Apocatequil, Kamarong, Tumatauenga, the Jade Emperor. Why not check out GodChecker.com, your guide to over two thousand eight hundred Gods, deities, immortals, heroes, and mystic pixies.
Such an argument would have no point, since Christians would readily admit that a firm belief that Mictlantecuhtli does not in fact exist is not outrageously unreasonable, especially as he appears to be “a grinning maniac with a bit of liver hanging from his chest” which sounds quite unlikely. Granted, we can’t prove absolutely that he does not, but I think that to give believers in such a figure a privileged voice in our governance might be taking ‘respecting beliefs’ a little too far. It is only the current Gods that are still believed in, and so it is only current Gods that there is any point in criticising.
If you are going to respect religion, then surely you must respect all religions equally? The podium at the next public debate is going to be a little crowded…
Well, I hope Perry and Adriana are diagnosed with the least of illnesses, and recover speedily.
Concerning Perry’s:
could this be interpreted as at least slightly more in favour of the God camp?
Concerning Dawkins, clearly a rational man (and perhaps no more), I just think he is just selling a book.
Finally, my comment of June 20, 2007 09:00 AM has now been released by Smite Control, and is in its place as third comment on this thread. It is good to see much agreement, unsolicited, in several of the intervening 55 comments.
Best regards
By the way, there are said to be 330 million Hindu Gods. At least one of them must be real, surely? What are the odds that every single one of them doesn’t exist?
This is one of the problems with the Pascal’s wager type of comparison where you are offered a choice of Christianity and Godless Science – it makes it look as if the alternatives are comparable or even equal. If instead you put up this whole range of thousands of monkeys and beetles and people with the heads of elephants and six arms each, against Godless Science, the theism/atheism debate takes its proper perspective. You can’t argue for theism but only put Christianity up as a representative example of it. Theism is a far broader phenomenon.
My wife mentioned to a neighbour that I didn’t go to church because I was an atheist. The neighbour responded “but he seemed so nice.”
On a long car journey with a co-worker I was asked what my religion was. I answered that I was an atheist. Three weeks later I was fired.
I now avoid answering these type of questions.
There are two kinds of atheists in the US, and I expect, elsewhere. The first is the non-believer who gets along with his neighbors and is comfortable talking to, interacting with or dating religious people. They go to Lutheran fish fries for the food. They attend wedding and funerals, participating in social interactions in a religious context without being upset about it. They send their kids to private Catholic schools because they are better than public schools. They politely remain silent while other people pray. One would never know they were an atheist unless it came up in conversation, and then they would express the view that freedom of religion is a good thing – part of freedom of concience, and that religious people can certainly vote or believe however they chose like anyone else.
The second kind of atheist is what I will call the “proslytising atheist”. This type of atheist has a bug up the ass. They are not comfortable in social situation with Christians in particular even when God isn’t even being discussed. They are usually rude, condescending, insulting, and talk endlessly about their atheism trying to convince others – generally not politely or effectively. Often, their atheism is coupled with a belief in some other -ism. Communism, socialism, statism, etc.
Madolyn O’Hare was one of this type. She was the founder/president of the American Atheists and an outright communist. She made a living begging other people for money to spread atheism, and at one point tried to ‘defect’ to the USSR with her family. They wouldn’t take her, I suspect, because she was an obnoxious loudmouth with no useful job skills.
“He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.” – George Orwell
“The various left-wing ninnies who are running around bleating about theocracy are, in effect, hoist on their own petard. Having spent generations destroying the idea of limited government and creating an all-powerful national state, it ill becomes them to complain now that their tool is being turned to different ends.” – Robert Clayton Dean
“chuck” in an above post makes a good point. Atheism is tarred by its open adherents.
While one can point to religious persecution and persecution BY religious types. Atheists have no grounds to claim moral superiority on these grounds. Further, as I noted above, many open atheists really were threatening, because they were commies. Frankly, if I have a choice between the Baptists and the Reds, well, splash the water on, praise the Lord and pass the ammo.
It won’t come to that, of course, I have NEVER felt threatened because I am an atheist. From the article: “Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.” Cultural elitism, that means they are snots.
OK, I take back until further research my claim that “most” founding fathers were deists…
W.E. Messamore’s comment “I would even go as far as to say that I think that these worldviews are pernicious and damaging to society” at first surprised me quite a lot. But, I suppose if you believe in the big sky fairy, then you might believe that he casts hurricanes and other disasters at the earth, trying to hit atheists..
chuck, bringing up the Nazis ? Really ? That wasn’t the outcome of being atheist by any stretch. You should really investigate that. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, mentioning god many times in Mein Kamf. The hatred of the Jews is historically due to the whole killing Jesus thing (not the reason they gave at the time, true). The catholic church gave their blessing to Hitler. Many of the Nazi leaders were Christians, as was the populus….
bob, Dawkins only seems rude and denigrating because he’s talking about religion. If he was talking about any other belief, like economics, his tone would not be seen as rude at all. Why should religion have a special respect granted to it ?
Sigivald, how can you claim that there are any atheists that make a religion of hating God ? You know that atheists don’t believe in god, right ?
Midesterner, claiming that atheists have faith is mixing up a couple of meanings of the word “faith”. Your claim that agnosticism is “the only way for people to interact in regard to things not proven” is also quite wrong. It’s not proven the sun will come up tomorrow. Do you go around interacting as a sun-coming-up-agnostic ? I don’t, I go with the overwhelming odds.
Mastiff, the entire concept of a God is flawed not because Christianity is flawed, but because the concept of a God is flawed in itself. The universe doesn’t need one. Claiming we might be around to see what is dangerous about atheism ? I really hope some of us are around when there’s enough atheists in the world to enable us to answer that question. I’m betting on the answer being “nothing”. And if there were something dangerous about atheism ? There’s something to be said for living dangerously with knowledge, compared to safely in ignorance.
LargeCanine,
Yes, of course. But doesn’t that go for any belief?
There are some quiet and unassuming Libertarians who believe in small government, but uncomplainingly pay their taxes, meekly obey totalitarian laws, fill in the forms correctly and promptly to put themselves on the databases, and nod politely when their neighbours extol the virtues of the welfare state and forcing people to recycle their garbage.
And their are other Libertarians who are not comfortable in social situations with Socialists. Who proselytise for gun ownership, mention it even when politics isn’t being discussed, are rude about people who want the government to ban things, and are generally pushy and obnoxious with their beliefs. Some of them even set up blogs to get a bigger audience for their rants. 😉
If it is just a matter of personal belief – it doesn’t matter to a Libertarian whether you believe in Yahweh or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Where the issue arises is when believers get privileged seats in the government (the British House of Lords has a number of Bishops), when legislators consult the churches for their opinion on new laws, when any public debate on a topic of ethical controversy has representatives of the religions, whose opinions are respected and ethical expertise and authority unquestioned, when you can insult someone’s political views freely but will get a visit from the diversity police if you slag off their religious ones.
Believe what you want. But don’t ask for any special privileges over the rest of us because you do so.
Glib,
So I must presume from your statement and its context that you place the same probability on the sun not “coming up” (you have heard of Copernicus?) as of there being a God. And you have the same quality of knowledge available to make those two presumptions?
Care to share it?
For those of you who aren’t from the US, it should be pointed out that for most of the 20th century, and certainly since the late 1940’s, two words were almost always found together—“godless communism”.
I know the european attitude was that Americans were hysterical about communism, as it now is that we are hysterical about islamic fundamentalism, but it is worth noting that most churches in the US preached against godless communism on a regular basis.The Catholic church held May Day rosary marches every May 1st to counter the soviet celebrations.
Going to church and participating in a faith community are second nature to the vast majority of Americans. The condescending attitudes of cosmopolitan elites, whether from the US or elsewhere, only reinforces the feelings of commonality and solidarity among those who find great inspiration and solace in religious faith.
A great many of the world’s most renowned philosophers and scientists have also been devout believers in some religious community. There is nothing about faith that is automatically incompatible with intelligience and rationality, except for those who define the latter in terms of opposition to the former.
My advice to atheists is the same as my advice to Jehovah’s Witnesses—if you don’t want people to cringe when they see you coming, just keep your pamphlets in your pocket and your beliefs, no matter how passionate, to yourself. Religious debates are pointless, and pointlessly antagonistic.
Argue about books or movies instead. Everybody pretty much accepts that those are just matters of opinion anyway, so there’s not such a big emotional investment.
Of all the nonsense usually bound up in a discussion like this, that is surely among the most completely despicable for its equivocation of a rational dealing in the facts at hand with manifestly irrational dreams.
There is not one fact demonstrating the existence of a supernatural deity, and to have plain observation this fact called “a matter of faith” is a grotesque outrage upon the principal device that we have for making our way through this world.
Now; someday, somehow, there might be discovered a fact which demonstrates the existence of god. Until that day, however, people who believe, now & nonetheless, would do well to not go about insulting their counterparts’ stand on what we know of reality with such rubbish. If there is a case to be made, then let them bloody make it with evidence, but nobody with a brain in their head is obligated to stand for such ridiculous assertions without taking offense.
To call atheism a “faith” is to destroy both the concepts of “faith” and “reason”.
This is the part where I could get goddamned mean about some religious people, but they started it. Not me.
Mid,
I can give you mine, if you like.
Suppose for any particular God(ess), we can assert that (s)he has a probability p of not existing. Then ask, as I did above, whether it is possible that every single one of the 330,000,000 Hindu deities does not exist. The probability is of course p raised to the power of 330,000,000 which means that either p is a really teensy tiny number, I mean really mind-bogglingly tiny, or that it is virtually certain that the many Gods that do exist are Hindu ones. And since Christianity (or monotheism generally) is inconsistent with both the belief in millions of Hindu Gods and the very tiny p, Christianity is necessarily false with ultra-high probability.
I expect devotees of the Goddess Namagiri might be able to poke holes in that argument, but it is certainly as good as any argument given for theism.
I call this argument “taking the p out of theistic belief”. Enjoy!
Sorry, I mucked that one up, didn’t I? The first two p’s should be (1-p)’s.
Nevermind.
This thread sums up why, no matter how bad the UK becomes, I would never emigrate to the US.
So let’s see if I’m getting this right.
You are asserting that the same quality of knowledge can be had about the ultimate nature of the possibility of existence that can be had about the Newtonian mechanics that predict the motions of the planets?
Incidentally, you left out one God. ‘None of the Above’. Which I believe is infinity minus your 330,000,000.
That kind of makes the uncertainty of it all a little more obvious.
But the slip illustrates an interesting point. Reason doesn’t cause atheism, there is nothing especially reasonable about it, but rationalism certainly can and does. Theists are perenially being told thay are irrational because they do not describe to the delusions and hubris of rationalist philosophy.
Analagously advocacy of the free market and a voluntarist society is the most reasonable position one can take, but it is no surprise to find that most people who whitter on about ‘Reason’ are advocates of central planning because it is the logical consequence of viewing human societies in a rationalist manner.
I may be getting ahead of myself, but I think establishing the clear distinction between the two intepretations of reason, reasonableness (though I’m not sure that’s quite right either) and rationalism, may be the single most important intellectual task of our age. Or not, I don’t know, but it’s pretty important, even Popper got confused about it from time to time.
No, I’m saying that if your only evidence for God’s existence is that you can’t prove he doesn’t, then the same principle applied to the Hindu Gods implies either that a large part of the Hindu pantheon is virtually certain to be true, or that the probability of any particular God existing has to be a number smaller than 0.0000000… a little bit short of 330,000,000 zeros… 0000001 for there to be any reasonable possibility that the Hindu Gods might not exist.
In other words, the argument for theism on “you can’t prove otherwise” probability grounds predicts either lots of Gods, or none at all (when p=0). It’s not an argument that works for monotheism, unless you cheat like Pascal did and only consider the two options: Christianity or bust.
A mere absence of disproof is no basis on which to found or even allow a particular belief – only beliefs based on positive evidence can be rational.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I find atheists “dangerous” or “threatening.” But, as pretty much of an atheist myself, I will say that I perceive an increasingly strident atheist sub-culture developing that I’m uncomfortable with. I think the zeal with which some atheists now state their arguments, and the extreme intolerance some have for other points of view, are not only damaging to the debate itself but also to the cause of atheism overall.
With even respected atheists like Richard Dawkins promoting “militant atheism,” the word “atheist” may be re-acquiring the emotional baggage that prior generations of atheists managed to throw off. At one time the word “atheist” provoked the kind of response that “feminist” or “environmentalist” sometimes do today. I’d hate to see those days return.
I wonder how the findings of this survey affect views toward atheists and agnostics:
So where is your “positive evidence” that there is no god? You are in the same boat as the theists. You are making claims for which you have no positive evidence. Unless you are arguing for agnosticism.
You and I have had this debate before. Mathematics is your theology. Your ‘proofs’ that there is no god are circular. They are of equal merit with angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debates in other centuries. Any claim to knowledge of the origin of the possibility of existence that starts by analyzing human beliefs is prima facie a waste of time.
In the first place the original post constructs a straw man based on a poll or suryvey, which may or may not have any validity whatsoever.
Secondly, if there is validity I would suggest that atheists may be viewed as a threat because there is a militant element to present-day atheism. They are not content to believe in their non-belief, they must attack the beliefs of others. They find any historical symbols that are contrary to their non-belief offensive and attempt to use the power of government to obliterate them. Perhaps some folks think that if you destroy a nation’s historical identity and symbols, you are on the path to destroying the nation.
Anyone who pays any attention to history knows that the United States of America was founded on certain principles. These principles have been modified, some might say eroded, over time; still the atheist wants to obliterate the principles from the history book and pretend that they have no role in the development of the country.
English folk may justifiably look at the role of religion in their origins differently, as it was so often an excuse for power grabs and strife–not to mention intolerance of he worst sort. Hmmm! Although revisionists try so very hard to deny it, I believe that these different views of religious (freedom) played a significant role in the early settlement of my country.
Critical difference: It’s possible to explain the mechanism by which the sun will come up somewhere around 5:30AM tomorrow. This explanation has been consistently reliable every day for decades if not centuries, with no exceptions known.
I have yet to see any firm and unequivocal evidence at all that would illuminate the God-vs-no-God debate. So far, the best that the pro-God side has produced is “look at how complex the eye is” and “here is my book of Hebrew fairy tales from long ago.” The best that the atheists have produced is “it’s a book of Hebrew fairy tales from long ago” and “Genesis bears no relation at all to the actual fossil record.”
That’s not enough to have an intelligent discussion. Plenty of deeply-held belief, sure, but nobody actually KNOWS a damn thing. None of this is subject to empirical proof or disproof, or can even be tested in such a manner. Nobody’s hypothesis about God has yet been shown to have predictive power.
..or when you consider that any one of the X number of gods may exist and the others don’t. Where this gets sticky is, there is no empirical method for assigning probability to one over the other, nor for assigning probability to polytheism over monotheism. The whole thing makes assumptions and the assumptions can’t be tested either.
The atheists who act like everyone else, but sleep in on Sundays tend to be normal human beings like everyone else, I’ve found. So are the Catholics, the Protestants, the Jews, the Mormons, the Buddhists, and the Pastafarians who get up on Sunday/Saturday/whenever and do their thing and take whatever they get from it and act like civilized human beings like everyone else. The ones who insist on driving competing belief systems from the market of ideas tend to be the same sorts of assclowns as the ones who wave signs like “Behead Those Who Insult the Prophet Muhammad” at rallies.
What makes me mistrust atheists is that, with rare exceptions, whenever a current radical Muslim atrocity comes up, their response is only that religion is the problem, not radical Islam in particular. They seem not to realize that if radical Islam does triumph, they will be in as much hot water as believers. In addition, their mention of any specific religion is almost always Christianity. The Inquisition and the Crusades are often mentioned; but the Muslim domination of the mideast, north Africa, and Spain isn’t, as if it came about by reasoning or elections.
In practice, atheists seem to be anti-Christian, not anti-religion. To a slight extent, that effectively favors radical Islam. That’s why I (as an agnostic) mistrust them.
Gib:
“bob, Dawkins only seems rude and denigrating because he’s talking about religion. If he was talking about any other belief, like economics, his tone would not be seen as rude at all. Why should religion have a special respect granted to it ?”
What I said was:
” I remarked that his on-screen demeanor is supercilious and often rude and denigrating to those espousing different view points. A confrontational snide style is expected in the UK, but doesnt wash in America. Dawkins may be light to enlighten Americans’ igorance, but he is not humble by any strech.”
Hence experimental spelling aside, it is not Dawkins’ arguments per se that I objected to but his condescending manner and swotty patronisation. Somewhat similar to people who tell me that my appreciation of the man is inherently colored by my own patent ignorance and that like a spotty four former, working herself into a lather at a Robbie Williams concert, my emotions have gotten hold of me.
I didn’t set out to start a debate on the relative merits of atheisim and faith. I was much more interested in the popular misperception of threat. If I had pointed to a survey appearing to show a majority of Americans believe that Jews or Koreans are a threat, would the point have been missed so comprehensively, I wonder?
Jim C,
I suggest you’ve not been paying attention. Atheists tend to be rather more robust in standing up to Islam than believers, who frequently have the soppy attitude that the nasty Islamists are categorically different from ordinary peaceable believers, when actually there’s a continuum and complexity. Christian upon Christian talks about Islamist belief as “a perversion” of Islam, when it starts from precisely the same basis in revelation as other forms.
It is in that context you’ll often find athiests pointing to Christianity’s murky past, when Christians start making excuses for Muslim savagery on the ground that faith itself is a good, and that the faithful should be respected for it. If you start from the position that religion is false – or even that monotheism is false – you are in a considerably better position to evaluate particular cults and believers against one another.
I am anti-Christian; but I am rather more anti-Islamic. They are both wrong. But it is pretty clear which is more dangerous at the moment.
To Midwesterner’s argument, which I hope I don’t too unfairly characterise as, “But we just don’t know,” my answer is that we know very little with the implied firmness of knowledge, but God is a very unsatisfactory theory, because – contrary to Billy Beck’s demand for just one fact proving the existence of God – to a believer the entire world is a demonstration of the existence of God. The trouble being that any state of the world would do as well, and God would be just as necessary and sufficient to explain them. (The same goes for morals: Muslims hold that Jews and Christians have spotted God lurking in the universal woodwork correctly but misinterpreted what He wants and mislaid the instruction manual – but they can’t fuly agree among themselves either.)
An answer that’s the answer to any question whatsoever is of no value. It isn’t that there is specific information missing that the existence of God might supply – or something else might. God has entirely arbitrary and contingent properties and supplies no information.
I seriously doubt that so many people consider “atheists” a “threat”.
That correlates with my experience. Many people consider atheists- especially the militant atheists who file lawsuits to have religious symbols removed from public places- to be quite obnoxious, but a threat? Not in any sense but a very abstract ‘damaging the fabric of our society’ sense (right up there with Grand Theft Auto and if Britney shaved this week).
—–
I hate to generalize, but I honestly have not met or read about an atheist who could simply say, “I am an atheist” without almost immediately beginning to rant…
We exist, we just don’t think religion is something worth arguing about. You’re not going to change our minds, we’re not going to change your mind, what’s the point of arguing about it? It’s a lot easier to just let other people assume you’re like most of the other people out there (‘generic xian’, in the US), especially when most people consider the militant atheist types to be obnoxious pr!cks.
As far as the ‘atheist’ commies and their murderousness are concerned… those guys aren’t atheists, they just claim to be atheists. You see, it’s an easy way to deny the premises of their ideological competitors (religions) without getting into a detailed debate.
The commies have a god (the state), a high priest (Marx), numerous prophets (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc) a holy book that predicts the end times (Das Kapital/Communist Manifesto), they punish heretics harshly (numerous examples), they don’t like competition (also numerous examples), and they’re completely willing to kill vast numbers of people to spread their faith (millions and millions of examples).
You say Communism is a science? Okay. Where are the testable hypotheses? Where are the reproducible results? Do they correlate to what the Manifesto or Das Kapital predict? No? So you’re taking Marx’s word on faith, then?
…..
Of course, there’s also disproofs of Noah’s flood, the sun standing still… The God hypothesis doesn’t help explain anything about how things work, there’s no proof of him, and there’s no explanation for where he came from if he were to exist…
The ones you meet and talk with mostly would be, because they’d be from Christian countries, quite possibly ex-Christians. When it’s one religion that is dominating them, or that they escaped from, and they know best, then they will tend to focus their energies on that one…
Sure. There’s just no evidence for a god, and very few places he can hide in the gaps in our current knowledge. Evolution gives him nothing to do in creating us, abiogenesis gives him nothing to do in creating life, and astronomy gives him noting to do in creating the galaxy, sun, our planet. The only thing left in his hypothetical job description is to create the universe. And there are many hypotheses about how that happened that are much more likely than a complex god already existing to do it..
And, if god paid any attention to human affairs, things wouldn’t look as random as they are now, and one religion would have some knowledge that doesn’t look the same as human invented fairy tales.
Guy,
To follow your lead back onto topic, you said:
and in support of whoever said
Alan K. Henderson, in his June 21, 2007 01:50 AM comment, linked to this far more current article (yours is well over a year old) that contained some interesting and very on topic information.
and
which certainly could suggest that atheists tend more towards big government and redistributive programs.
To your’s and Gib’s related beliefs that we know enough to know God ‘ain’t so’, I’ve had four year olds tell me how cars work. They were interesting theories and fit well enough into the limits of a four year old’s knowledge. But when you or anyone else can explain gravity, not describe it but explain it, you have my attention, and when you have understanding not of a mere big bang, but of how possibility itself came to be, I am most definitely listening.
In the meantime, you can drop the “but” and attribute the rest of the sentence to me if you like. “We just don’t know.” It is a matter of personal intuitions, not scientific knowledge.
“…contrary to Billy Beck’s demand for just one fact proving the existence of God – to a believer the entire world is a demonstration of the existence of God.”
No thinking person can take that seriously. That’s simply out of the question. It’s ridiculous. The word “believer” appears in that proposition for a good reason: it’s because of the difference between faith and rational conviction on a foundation of facts.
“I’ve had four year olds tell me how cars work. They were interesting theories and fit well enough into the limits of a four year old’s knowledge. But when you or anyone else can explain gravity, not describe it but explain it,…”
One obvious difference is that there is no question but that gravity exists.
Which colour is more pleasing, what the best type of car is, whether that girl loves you, which football team you should support. These are things that Personal intuition will help you with.
The existance of gravity, life on other planets, phsycic powers, flouride in your drinking water, god, the flying spaghetti monster. These are all scientific questions, which scientific enquiry is extremely valuable to help figure out.
Whilst some things are defined in such a way to make them impossible to disprove (especially when the goalposts keep getting moved), it doesn’t mean that they can’t be ruled out as unlikely, or their known properties can’t be constrained.
In the case of a god for instance, traditionally he was seen as having created the world recently. Geology and astronomy shows that’s not true (or he’s deliberately tricking us). He was seen as having created humans, which evolution shows isn’t true. When you take away all the stuff that we now know isn’t in the domain of a god, then all we’re left with is a small gap in which a useless god can live. What’s the point in believing in that ?
Billy,
It was a nod to Clarke’s third law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
A four year old can very accurately predict what will happen when you push various peddles in the car. But they generally don’t have a clue about internal combustion engines or turning friction into heat to slow a car. That is the difference between describing and explaining.
My point is that the origin of possibility is not known, and may not be knowable. Any claims to knowledge of that origin are indistinguishable from religion.
Gib,
Perhaps you missed my earlier statement, “Any claim to knowledge of the origin of the possibility of existence that starts by analyzing human beliefs is prima facie a waste of time.”
limits of a four year old’s knowledge. But when you or anyone else can explain gravity, not describe it but explain it, you have my attention, and when you have understanding not of a mere big bang, but of how possibility itself came to be, I am most definitely listening. says Midwesterner.
But what extra does God add to the explanation or indeed what does it add at all? It’s just putting one more unknown into the equation without any benefit.
JR
“…Clark’s third law…”
So what? It’s impertinent to what we’re talking about. Look: neither the case of the four year-old at the gas pedal or the inexplicability of gravity address the fact that both cars and gravity exist.
Yep, I missed it. But, you need to know what you’re questioning the possibility of existence of. In this case it’s “God”. If we’re just analysing one particular definition of God that has been presented and defined, then you’re right we don’t need to look at other human beliefs.
If there was such a definition presented somewhere in the thread, I missed it. Meanwhile I’m arguing against God as currently believed, and so will analyse human beliefs for my starting point.
The history of science is filled with understanding that was much delayed because ‘common sense’ said something couldn’t be so and unnecessary stipulations were placed on possible explanations. For example, the concept of space and time as flexible rather than fixed is counter intuitive to most people and violates ‘common sense’. And yet …
The principle of agnosticism allows one to entertain all possibilities without having to accommodate doctrinal stipulations. One of those doctrinal stipulations is the qualification that only solutions that disallow God may be entertained.
The better question is ‘what does banning God from the possibilities add?’ Clearly nothing. The purpose of banning God is to reduce, not add to the number of possibilities. Which would be good in the presence of supporting evidence, but there is none. Not in either direction.
Banning God from sources of possibility is an unnecessary complication. As is stipulating the existence of God. Agnosticism as a research tool allows one full scope to consider all of the evidence (or lack thereof) without having to test it against a pre-determined doctrine.
No Gib. I think you misunderstand my statement. When I say “the possibility of existence”, I don’t mean “of God”. I mean of existence. Whether you believe The Big Bang™ or The Seven Days™ or something else, where did ‘possibility’ come from?
As for the definition of ‘God’, it pretty well is infinity minus the 330,000,000 that can apparently be disproved so far. Which is one big reason why saying ‘it ain’t so’ is as unfounded as saying ‘it is so’.
In my mind, ‘God’ in any definition will need to be transcendent to anything covered in a physical theory of ‘everything’. But in agnosticism, one doesn’t worry about it. We look for truth without inventing unnecessary rules about whether or not ‘God’ exists. We accept our intuitions for what they are.
Banning God from the equation is vitally necessary because otherwise enquiry is stopped dead in its tracks. For the uneducated and ignorant almost everything that is not a common every day happening is ascribed to God. I remember well working in Kenya with local labour. The common expression they used for almost all happenings they didn’t understand or denied doing was ‘Shauri ya Mungu’ — ‘Trouble of God’.
We have to stop thinking like that; it doesn’t get us anywhere.
JR
A psychiatrist would claim that when we ‘accept our intuitions for what they are’, we have lost insight and he has the moral and legal imperative to lock us up and force us to take the drug of his choice.
JR, that same reasoning can apply to wave, quantum uncertainty, etc. Yet I will wait for scientists to work past those rather than banning them. My intuition tells me that wave theory is statistical, not physical. Similar for quantum uncertainty. But I do not propose to ban them because people abuse them in the same way that the Kenyan laborers use ‘God’. They should stand in the analysis on their own merits, not my intuitions that they are wrong. I suspect Schrödinger’s beliefs to be very flawed, but I don’t propose to ban them.
Pietr,
Intuitions. They are what they are. How’s about we only grant certainty to our intuition the psychiatrists chose that field because of the self perception that they themselves needed so much help it would be a good investment? 🙂
“The principle of agnosticism allows one to entertain all possibilities without having to accommodate doctrinal stipulations. “
On that premise, it’s sensible to “entertain” fairies under a bridge and the practice of throwing salt over one’s left shoulder.
Let me put the thing this way: I occasionally “entertain” such outright rubbish, but it never entertains me.
Some people put questions before answers. Some people put them the other way around.
Asking a question does not equal accepting a wrong answer. Only the truth matters.
There was a time when light turning corners and time changing speed were the “fairies under a bridge” of the day. It was absurd to entertain the possibility.
There appear to be a lot of people out there who equate asking a question with accepting a wrong answer.
I will keep open the possibility that there is another layer of existence of which ours is only a subset. We could be like two dimensional beings denied full access to a three dimensional world. I neither believe or disbelieve it. But I keep that possibility open.
I’m bored.
“There was a time when light turning corners and time changing speed were the ‘fairies under a bridge’ of the day.”
No, they weren’t, no matter what anyone misunderstood. Don’t confuse a metaphor with reality. What happened was that knowledge was updated with new facts.
That’s all in the world I’m standing for when it comes to the existence of god, and there is nothing unreasonable about it.
Not by people who categorically rejected those facts as possibilities before hand.
Midwesterner,
your’s and Gib’s related beliefs that we know enough to know God ‘ain’t so’… I don’t think that’s my position. My belief is that God makes no difference: that there is no factual question to which God is not an unhelpful answer, and that the Christian priest William of Ockham therefore has done for Him.
By rules of logic that I know, that is the equivalent of knowing ‘it ain’t so.’
By Occam’s razor, putting unnecessary restrictions on what the answer is allowed to be, is a complication not a simplification. It appears the motive that views like your’s JR, Gib, etc, is to stop flawed and/or lazy thought by eliminating the answers those thinkers usually resort to.
My opinion is that it is far sounder (only sound) to reject the mistaken answers when given, not the questions which can yield them. There are far too many belief systems that proscribe the asking of certain ‘profane’ questions. By declaring certain answers off-limits, you are declaring questions that may yield them to be off-limits.
I should add, Guy, that I don’t care what anybody choses to believe. That is quite emphatically a personal matter. My only reason for carrying on so long here is that I want the ‘rules of engagement’ in our debates to be agnostic.
If we can agree to that, then I am a happy camper.
“Not by people who categorically rejected those facts as possibilities before hand.”
They were facts “before” anyone ever knew or understood them, and this means that once they were known and understood, every thinking person was bound to integrate them. Here is an important fact: facts exist whether humans acknowledge them or not. The question here turns on whether humans know that any given fact exists, but they cannot be taken as fact until they are known.
Shall I offer you the possibility that a leprechaun is going to gather up the United States congress in one big bag and wisk them away over the hills where they’ll never be seen or heard from again, and have it all done before dinner-time this evening?
“Possibility” simply does not have the metaphysical or epistemic standing of a fact. A person who rejects a fact is known as a bigot. It is outrageous to equate a person who will not guide his affairs by something unknown with a person who will not integrate facts.
Now, anyone can believe any damned thing that they want to believe. “Everybody gets to go to hell in their own go-cart.” That’s what I always say. My issue in all this is the attempt to sidle up to reason with abject speculation absent facts. That’s a much bigger deal, with direct implications for the efficacy of reason. I could respect an honest admission from the faithful that they’re working without facts, instead of these sorts of utterly horseshit charades of reason.
Okay, try and see if you understand it this way.
Knowledge was not updated by people who, a priori, ‘knew’ those facts to be impossible. Knowledge was updated by people who, while perhaps retaining great doubts, were at least willing to consider those facts to be possible.
I disagree. Completely refusing to entertain the possibility of a god is unfounded, that’s true. But to claim that saying “it ain’t so” is _as_ unfounded as “it is so”, assumes both ideas are of equal merit. Rarely are two ideas of equal merit, except perhaps in a coin toss. There are often good reasons to prefer one possibility over another. Would you think that my claim to have a pink elephant living in my car is as “unfounded” as someone else’s claim that I don’t ?
Just because there are two possibilities to something, doesn’t mean the chances are 50/50.
You’re of course right, that God should not be banned from consideration, but that’s not what any atheist I know does. Anyone who assumes a-priori that there is no god, and refuses to entertain it as an alternative before giving it any thought is as bad as those who believe in God due to faith.
But, all the atheists I know are either below 5 years old, or have given it consideration, weighed the facts, and not found enough evidence that there is one. An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in a god. I am personally a strong atheist, in that I believe the evidence shows that there is no God. But even I would change my mind if there was extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim.
Agnosticism has a veneer of logic about it, but actually undermines logic. It states (with certainty) that certainty is impossible. It has no use, since it simply says that any fantasy that one might imagine could actually be true.
Much of the discussion in this thread seems to suggest there is a question that must be answered – how did existence come about? The question is invalid. What exists, exists. Since existence is the totality of everything, there can’t be anything that precedes it.
By the way, I have enjoyed reading this thread, no matter what all the grizzle grouches say. If you can’t discuss this issue among libertarians who can you discuss it with?
Err… No. When used in the same context, atheist means “Noun 1. atheist – someone who denies the existence of god”, and agnostic means “1.
b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.”
(See the part of my comment addressed to Tim in reference to definition 1 a.)
When there is no evidence for either case, claims for probabilities are based on intuition. Flat earth is very intuitive to someone standing in a forest somewhere. That doesn’t have any effect on the ‘odds’ of it being true.
Tim, I have tried to avoid that definition of agnostic by saying ‘may’ be unknowable. I think the ultimate knowability of it is as yet unknown.
Your second paragraph sounds kind of meta-physical. You got evidence for that claim? How do you know existence for us isn’t confined to one or more less dimensions than to higher beings. 🙂
“Knowledge was updated by people who, while perhaps retaining great doubts, were at least willing to consider those facts to be possible.”
When it comes to what we’re talking about, I do not happen to be in that business.
I am a fairly well-known net.kook, and not difficult to find. Have your people reach me when you have the data in hand.
I do not think that many people are hostle to athiests because they do not believe in God.
So they do not believe – well that is sad (think some religous people), but more of a reason for pity for people who have no hope after this life than a reason for anger (although some religous people hold that athiests go upstairs even though they do not believe in God – as they hold that it good conduct, rather than belief in God or an afterlife, that is what a person is judged on).
So why the hostilty then?
Has it occured to you that it might be connected to how many athiests behave?
Not just the endless snears and smug little stories one can find in books like “The God Delusion”. One story was about how the evil George Walker Bush laughed as he wickedly denied a women a parden from the death penalty in Texas – Governors of Texas do not actually have such a parden power, but let us not let facts get in the way of our “scientific” book.
And remember “Hitler’s Pope” about Pius XII (a man who hid many thousands of Jews from the National Socialists – including in the Vatican itself). Or the claim that Hitler was Catholic or Protestant believer made by R.D. and others (a lie – see Michael Burleigh “Sacred Causes” 2006) or that Mussolini was (again false).
It is a lot more than this.
Remember all the clever people laughing at the silly Bill O’ Reilly claiming that there was a “war on Christmas” – accept that there was a war, with the (wildly misnamed) American Civil Liberties Union (an organization founded by Marxists who put how they would PRETEND to be patriotic down in writing – for information see “The ACLU vs. America” by Alan Sears and Craig Osten) trying to crush all celebration of Christmas (or even use of the word) whereever it could (by law cases and the threat of them) – it is carefully documented in his book “Culture Warrior” (2006).
Nor is this an isolated case.
It is traditional Chrisitans and Jews (not athiests) who are more often persecuted in the United States (even though they make up the vast majority of the population).
Even organizations like the Boy Scouts are constantly under attack for their Christian beliefs from the A.C.L.U. and the rest of the athiest shock troops (“discrimination” is the standard opening for such attacks, and if they get out of hand such as the booing of boy scouts at the Democrat National Convention in 2000 the mainstream media just cover it up by not broadcasting it).
And then there is the vast government school system.
The debate is not really over biology. James McCosh and Noah Porter were conservative “Common Sense” school philosophers and Christians and they both supported evolution – and that was back in the 19th century.
Evolution upsets some people, but the political and moral ideology taught in the government schools upsets many more.
In fact the cause and effect goes the other way round. It is a matter of people hating the government schools on political and moral grounds and then deciding that everything that is taught in them must be wrong (which leads to the antievolutionism). It does not spread to such things as mathematics, because the government schools do not make a big thing of teaching that subject (when they do teach it) and it does not tend to be part of a political and moral agenda.
The rejection of all Christianity (indeed of all religion) by the government schools leads some people (in reaction) to accept the most militant form of religion they can find.
In theory the government schools are under the control of elected school boards – but these boards have been covering wider and wider geographical areas over the last century, and more and more money has come from State governments (rather than being local money only – which is one reason why mass immigration has become a problem, but that is another story) and even the Federal government.
So local control has partly died out. And when there is some effort at it the teachers unions and the courts crush it. Creationism used to be confined to some Southern States but it is much more widespread now. People are saying “if you reject, indeed attack, everything we believe – we will reject everything you believe and teach”.
Think about what it is like to be forced to pay taxes for schools that teach a moral and political view that you utterly despise, and snear at your basic beliefs (I repeat this need not have anything to do with biology).
And then you turn on the television and (unless you have cable) you get more snearing contempt and hatred in everything from the news to the sitcoms and cartoons.
Perhaps you go to watch a film – a Hollywood film? Not exactly a good idea in most cases. Of course pro Christian films get made from time to time – but the major Hollywood organizations do all they can to prevent them being made, and all the newspaper reviewers will either ignore or attack them (are there any non leftist film or T.V. reviewers?).
So the great majority of the population (and I repeat quite outside any question about biology) feel persecuted – because they are being persecuted.
It is not what the athiests think that bothers most people, it is what they say and do. The endless snearing attacks and the taking of vast sums of money to spend on their “public schools” and so on.
“But what about non leftist athiests? For example, so many of us here at Samizdata?”
There you have a point Guy. I doubt that most Americans know that non leftist athiests even exist – but then they never here from them.
It is quite true that many athiests share the political and moral opinions of traditional Christians and Jews (and have done for centuries), but these are not the athiests who have so much power in the United States (they and there “progressive” friends in the Churches [i.e. the athiests in fancy dress] control most schools, universities, the mainstream media, and they have vast power in the legal system).
I say again that I doubt most Americans even know that non leftist athiests exist. How would they know?
There are no such things as non leftist athiests.
Nor do Athiests exist anywhere.
Atheists are another matter, called antimatter.
Hey, Bill, if you can show me a gravitino, I’ll think that gravity might exist. Until then, not!
Mid
Thanks for your comments.
How do you know existence for us isn’t confined to one or more less dimensions than to higher beings. 🙂
The notion is not worthy of consideration because the claim is arbitrary. You have just dreamed it up.
The proper application of reason is that knowledge should only be updated when there is evidence that prior knowledge may be incomplete or incorrect. In this case there is none.
It is up to the person making a claim to prove their position by reference to verifiable facts. If there are no such facts, then the claim must be rejected as arbitrary.
Existence is axiomatic. You cannot go beyond it. Hence, for instance, I’m afraid your notion of the “possibility of existence” is meaningless! 🙂
nick g,
Gravity exists whether you like it or not and rather than show you an intermediate gauge boson I suggest you go to the top of a tall building and drop something off it. 9.81m/s/s. I worked the depth of the Corinth Canal that way and got to within 10% using nothing but counting and a few stones.
Paul,
I have suffered a certain level of cognitive dissonance from many of your posts. I’m a product of 1970s to 1990s UK state education and I’ve never felt that I had too much leftism shoved down my craw at school or Universities. I guess that’s because I only ever selected sciences and languages. I’m a pretty fair mathematician and I can honestly state that I utterly fail to see how anybody could add a political slant to mathematical education – beyond the simple expedient of downplaying it’s importance because it’s hard and therefore “elitist”.
Have you seen the stats for the number of media studies graduates versus physics graduates? They scare me rigid. And the great irony is that while they can produce an essay on why Corrie is better than ‘stenders they haven’t a hope in hell of getting a bust telly to work. Yeh, even unto replacing a fuse. I have no idea why it’s socially acceptable to say physics is dull but it isn’t to say you can’t stick Dickens or Austen. I have absolutely no idea how anybody can get away with (and I have heard this one many times) “physics isn’t relevant”.
Course it ain’t. I mean it’s just the study of matter, space, time and energy.
Well, one edifying statement came from this discussion; Toryboy has no intention to emigrate to the United States.
When Americans say their prayers tonight, we may well give thanks for small blessings.
OTH I have no intention of emigrating to the UK. I have, in fact, spent a good bit of time working there and although it is not a “bad” place, I am quite happy here.
First Nick G.
There are nonleftist athiests – at least if we define “leftist” as someone who believes in more Welfare State spending and opposes such things as traditional families.
I know many people who are both economically and socially conservative (opposing not only high taxes and lots of regulations, but also such things as abortion and homosexual “marriage”), but do not believe in the existance of God, are they leftists?
True Americans do not tend to hear from such people. But British people are quite used to the idea of the athiest conservative (for example one of the few good writers in the Daily Telegraph newspaper is an athiest – Mr Simon Heffer – spelling alert).
It is true that many nonleftist athiests would like to believe in God (it is just that in all honour they do not – and therefore will not pretend to), but that is not true of all of them.
Nick M.
You were lucky.
I had leftistism shoved at me from day one at school (and I went to school in Britain – not the United States). Such things as reading and writing were not considered important (an old lady in a village near here helped me learn to read) but “careing and sharing” (compulsory “caring and sharing”) was considered very important indeed.
It was much the same at all three universities I attended (again all of them in Britian).
However, yes, you are correct I did not tread the path of the natural sciences. But, sadly now even the natural sciences are under attack – did you see the front page of the Daily Telegraph the Monday before last? The story was correct.
Not just such subjects as History, but also Physics and the other natural sciences are being transformed into political indoctrination sessions at schools (supposesdly political “debate” is more “relevant” than lab work).
Already “A” levels are being undermined because G.C.S.E.s are worthless – and so the universitites will soon face a choice.
Do they watch the continued decline of the number of students opting for the natural sciences (as 18 year olds simply will not have been educated to a level to cope with undergraduate work) or do they turn such things as undergraduate physics into a form of “media studies”.
Tim S.
Actually, no. That was just something I heard from the field of physics. Serious physicists were putting forth the theory of a lot more dimensions than the one we exist in. It was in conjunction with a discussion of string theory and both ideas could likely be utterly bogus. But the idea came from the field of physics, not from religion and certainly not from me.
That makes no sense whatsoever. It is completely reasonable to wonder how existence can be. You have taken something that IS axiomatic, ‘existence exists’, and slid that label inappropriately to the question ‘why?’ This is just sophistry preventing questioners from asking ‘profane’ questions.
But all is not lost.
You finally admit to agnosticism. 🙂
Mid- you ask for ‘positive evidence’ of the non-existence of god.
That is a logical inversion.
You can’t have positive evidence of a negative.
Only the total absence of evidence for the positive.
Pietr,
I think Mid was responding to my earlier statement that belief shouldn’t be allowed on a mere absence of evidence against, and that you should require positive evidence in order to believe in things.
What I was saying was that with no positive evidence for Gods, one shouldn’t believe in them, but I think Mid’s point is that not believing Gods exist is distinct from positively believing that Gods do not exist. Agnosticism versus atheism, depending on your definitions.
It’s a fair point, and I would have responded with the positive evidence if I had been in the mood for an extended digression and argument, because I’m pretty sure Mid wouldn’t have let it stand.
(And if Mid was willing to accept that the probability of any particular God existing was less than ten raised to the minus three hundred and thirty million and that it was only reasonable not to believe in them, it would be only fair to give a bit. 🙂 )
The positive evidence is first that physics doesn’t work in an arbitrary, God-like way; Gods would have to be enormously complex and physics arises from simplicity. And second, theories about Gods show all the characteristics of having been made up as part of the human fantasy life and none of the characteristics of being an independent physical reality. They are often actually human shaped, they have human emotions and needs, a human-style intelligence (and the goal-driven architecture of the human mind is by no means inevitable), they get involved in particular human cultural traditions, and they do the sort of things humans spend a lot of time thinking and caring about.
This is only really made clear when you see the full range. Read your way through a few of the other pantheons – most people have some idea of the Norse and Egyptian cosmogonies, but there are hundreds of others. A religion standing on its own taps into a certain psychological effect where all the detail makes it seem more credible than a vague ‘and why not?’ speculation – where did all this information about what the Gods said and did come from if it isn’t true? It’s the same effect at work when spurious statistics make an argument seem stronger. But if you simultaneously have to resolve a hundred different histories, all of them different, the effect vanishes. And when you see that every theistic religion fits into the same sort of pattern, and the same pattern as fantasy literature, it is pretty apparent where it comes from.
Does Tolkien’s Middle Earth exist – with its orcs and hobbits and wizards? Well, obviously there is no absolute way to prove that it doesn’t, but it is still reasonable to believe positively that it does not exist because we know where it came from. We know it was made up, and understand the process by which this took place, and we know that such a process does not give access to any external truths. Middle Earth isn’t anywhere around here, but it’s too much like here to be anywhere else. We know where Gods came from too; they are too much like us to be anyone else.
Claims about morality fall into two categories: those which seek to identify entities that we are obliged to refrain from harming, and those which seek to identify entities (deity, the State, one’s parents, Karl Marx, etc.) that we are obliged to obey.
Most atheists in the West believe that we are bound to respect the welfare of other humans. They can cite evidence that X is harmful to Y, but they cannot prove that we are duty-bound to value Y. Similarly, they can prove only what happens as a result of disobedience, not that it’s wrong.
Is belief in right and wrong irrational?
pietr,
Precisely. Yet to an aboriginal standing in a forest there is a “total absence of evidence for the” round world theory. By atheist reasoning, he must therefore believe that the world is flat. I say he can wait for evidence of the edge or non-edge of the world. His flat earth intuitions are merely that. Intuitions. And while intuitions can be very good, I rely heavily on mine, they are not certainties.
Oh Most Annoyed One, you are making so many assumptions and stipulations to make your theory work that it is difficult to pick just one. How about we choose your stipulation that all possible definitions of God must be of something “arbitrary”? With that one little flick of the assumption, you have conveniently discarded those pesky Deists and your slate is free to obsess only about deities needing liver chests or something.
Feynman had a lament that his students, while unable to be even approximately right, where able to be precisely wrong to the umpteenth position. He believed they had learned math and nothing else. They lost the connection to reality so when they made a mistake and generated a preposterous answer, they had no clue.
There is an old (Japanese?) saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Math is your “hammer”. It appears to me that for you, Mathematics, with its wonderful ability to deliver amazing things, has become a religion. But like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific, believers of Math as a religion are confusing the means of delivery with the source. Math describes, it does not define. And like all descriptions, it is of necessity secondary to the thing described.
You have first stipulated a very narrow and carefully qualified definition of “God” and only then proven it wrong.
AKH,
To qualify as a “moral” code, I think something needs to be coherent in its pursuit of an objective. To the extent that it is internally consistent, it is moral. To the extent that it sets up internal conflict, it is immoral.
Islam is amazingly coherent (if not transparent) in pursuit of its goals. I believe it is one of the purest and most successful efforts of collectivization of the human being in history. It IS a moral code. But it is one that is the antithesis of the moral code held by most people here. Their “morally good” is our “morally evil” and vice versa.
I believe atheism only becomes immoral when it becomes Atheism and sets out to compel belief and ‘respect’. But I hold this view about any religion.
Most personal morality is intuitive by people who do not have a clear picture of what their own values are. If you have a clear enough picture of what you value, you moral code becomes self evident to you. On the other hand, if you prefer your morality handed to you on a platter, then you might as well save time and become part of a collective.
Hi Mid,
I didn’t think you’d buy it. 😉
Deism has exactly the same problem – rather than explain why the laws of physics are as they are, they call on the non-explanation of the arbitrary choice/design of a personal God (or Gods, although most Deists somehow seem to deduce a singularity, quite on what basis I’m not sure). God is a way of avoiding having to explain complicated stuff by shifting it out of the discussion – since you supposedly don’t have to explain God. Where do Deists claim God came from? When? How did such a complex and thereby unlikely thing arise? What is its nature? How does it work? What are its limitations and abilities? Why does God act as he/she does? By what means? And most importantly, how can the Deists possibly know?
However, you’re right that I’m only arguing here against a limited conception of Deity – it would require an entire book to address the topic properly. It’s the same sort of moving goalpost that the religious use. When arguing with secularists, theists retreat to a sort of invisible, undetectable, featureless and inactive God and say you can’t disprove it. True. But as soon as that point is acknowledged, they’re back to the narrowly stipulated miracles and magic version to pack in the congregations. So all I’m doing is silently shifting the argument from the undetectable one back to the magic. Annoying, isn’t it? 😉
Feynman was only talking about the importance of developing a physical understanding over mere technique and rote learning, and he most definitely did not see maths as the wrong way to describe the universe, quite the reverse. He was also an avowed atheist from an early age and believed this followed logically from a scientific understanding of the world – not exactly the most supportive authority for you to quote!
Mathematics might be only a hammer (although I think you underestimate it), but it is just about the only tool we’ve got that works. The religious have handfuls of grass and twigs, which they assert can fix any complex machinery you like, you’ve just got to have faith. And when they are done with their rituals they declare the machine fixed, and one must have faith that it is so. It is like a five year old playing at ‘mechanic’ with pretend tools.
When one has no tools at all, some people refuse to recognise even the nails. Religion is the Cargo Cult here, not mathematics.
But I have to say, it doesn’t actually bother me if people want to be religious – so long as they have no special privileges in the way society is governed as a result of their belief. I’m firmly of the belief that there are good reasons to believe that there are no Gods, and that the very idea is silly. Other people clearly are not. That’s their business, and their loss. If church and state are firmly separated, I don’t see it as much of an issue.
Midwesterner,
So you’re saying that right and wrong are ultimately human inventions and not objective truth, right?
I think right and wrong is the invention of purpose. Whether that purpose is contained in a human thought process or a school of newly hatched fish, right and wrong applies to actions which further or defeat one’s purpose. We humans believe we are the only things that can choose our own purpose or goal. Perhaps so.
That would make right and wrong objectively judged even if purpose was subjectively chosen.
First, on the original topic. I would have to agree with some of the other posters here that atheists aren’t the boogey-men for the God-fearing here in the USA. Rather it’s the Atheists. The ACLU’s various law-suits for the separation of church and state have led to some interesting rulings in the courts that are quite outrageous to the common folk. Case-in-point: my alma mater, a state university, was sued because of the invocation prayer given at graduation. Fine. Point taken, thank you. (Never mind, of course, that the school’s motto is Deo Volente) So, the next ceremony replaced the invocation with a moment of silence. And my school GOT SUED AGAIN! Under the claim that the only purpose of the moment of silence was for prayer. One might speculate that’s not the ONLY reason to have such a moment, but even if it is, the gov’t is supposed to be neutral to religion NOT antagonistic to it. Making reasonable accomodations for the believing to practice their faith doesn’t seem to violate the intent of the “no establishment” clause.
Anyway, no love gained for the Atheists, there.
Another thing on America in general. For all of the Christian theocrats that everyone seems to think that we are, in the political realm, yes, religion is very important to us as a whole. However, it’s not a stretch for a politician to be Jewish, Muslim, or even Hindu (which I expect in the not too distant future)…all flavors of the same prime motive, in a sense. Agnostics, too, would find favor, I think, as one can respect someone not having the One True Answer to such an important question. An Atheist, though? Boldly asserting that there is no God and the rest of us are delusional twits? I don’t see it happening.
On to the next point. Alan had a very interesting comment. Where do we justify right and wrong. For instance, in the point of civil liberties, the Founders (of the USA) draw upon God. Consider these critical lines from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
(The preceding paragraph is equally respectful of God.)
Now, wrt Alan’s point, once we take out God, I ask for what aim is Libertarianism (or any other political -ism)? How do we justify that independent action, limited gov’t, etc. is a Good Thing? How can we objectively say that Communism/Totalitarianism is bad? Granted, you make invoke the Calculus of Piles of Corpses, but already you’re making life axiomatically more valuable than the consequences of Communism. Reason doesn’t seem to help us much there.
As for mathematics and logic, (I’m not exactly a dunce in the area; I’ve forgotten more math than most people learn over the course of their life) there dragons lie. Math doesn’t tell us much about reality. (Yes, Science does, though…more there in a minute.) There are fundamental entailment problems in (axiomatic) logic and consequently mathematics and computing.
Mathematics would seem to be agnostic (in the literal sense of the word) and even knows that it’s agnostic. (see Godel’s incompleteness theorems, etc.)
As for science. It seems that much of the preceding conversation was implicitly Judeo-Christian vs. atheistic science. If we look at it as a more general problem of theism vs. atheism and which does science support, once again, I would say that science seems rather neutral. However, myself, I’ll take Pascal’s wager. As a theory “ghost in the sky” seems to be a better explanation than there was nothing, then something with a bang and all this complexity stuff gelled out of it.
(yeah, yeah, weak anthropic principle and all that…) However, when someone comes up with better evidence to the contrary, I’m willing to adopt a new theory.
One final note, regarding the P(God) thing with the 330M Hindu gods: (1) the Hindus regard all gods as a manifestation of one…not wholly unlike the Trinity of Christianity. Likely, the Hindu would look at P(Shiva) = P(Vishnu) = 1.0 which would be difficult to explain when you assume that the existence of Shiva and Vishnu are independent events. (2) You’re assuming that given N choices under uncertainty that we must assign equal probability to all possible events. Just because you’re uncertain, doesn’t mean the distribution is uniform over the event space. I believe (uncertainty!) that Bayesian reasoning would assign a uniform distribution ONLY in the absence of ALL a priori evidence — a condition which certainly the more religiously inclined will dispute.
Maybe we did ‘invent’ right and wrong.
But if we hadn’t given our real thoughts those real names to deal with reeality, we would all have died out as soon as the species appeared.
Pietr:
I don’t know about that…ants seem to have been around for a while and they seem to be rather the model of communism, don’t they? Similarly, although the Soviets made a pretty good go of offing a lot of people, they failed to kill EVERYONE. So, in terms of OUR right being the one that species needed to *survive*….you haven’t convinced me. What makes our right way to organize society better than theirs? (Without falling back on “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”)
Paul- I was having fun at your spelling. athIEst/athEIst pick one. Athiests don’t exist in any variety. since the word for ‘God’ is ‘Theo’ in greek.
Q. How many atheists would it take to change a light bulb?
A. First you have to convince them that enlightenment is possible!
I was just about to give a definitive thesis that would have resolved the question for all time, and turned everyone into believers, but my favourite TV show is just coming on. See you later!
Nate,
Right and wrong are a mixture of instinct and culture, like language. What counts as grammatical English is neither the free and unconstrained choice of the individual speaker, nor fixed for all time. Neither totally subjective nor totally objective. Morality is similar. But I’ve done that one here at much greater length previously.
On the 330M Gods, yes the Hindus do, theoretically, consider them aspects of one God, I was just using the example to humorously illustrate the fallacy in Pascal’s wager. Pascal only offers a binary choice, and in the absence of information makes it seem reasonable that the two could be assigned more-or-less equal probabilities. But there are an infinite number of mutually exclusive alternatives, none obviously better than any of the others, and so the probability of any of them is one over infinity, or zero. This is just a restatement of the obvious: you can’t just make complex arbitrary hypotheses up with no evidence at all and have any confidence that they’re true. Unknowns are unknown. Pascal’s wager is a fallacious argument.
You’re right that with evidence you can assign different probabilities to the alternatives, but that was the point I was trying to make. An argument where evidence is not even mentioned has to be iffy.
Is the “ghost in the sky” a better explanation than “first there was nothing, then there was something”? (Which isn’t necessarily how it happened – the usual model is simply “first there was something”, when time itself started.) Ok, let’s take it seriously for a moment. We have gotten rid of the ‘what caused the universe’ problem by saying ‘ghost in the sky’. Now, what caused the ghost in the sky? Was it always there? Was it created? Did it evolve? When? How? From what?
You see, all you’ve done is to push the question back one step; you haven’t answered it. But of course, now it is in a place where you don’t need to answer it, where the question can’t be answered. Maybe God just felt like doing it. Who knows? The question hasn’t been answered, but is now in a place that we feel psychologically comfortable with. We’re used to people doing things for reasons we don’t understand, or for no reason at all, and so our invisible friend can take care of all those inconvenient questions and we can relax.
What caused time and space to start is one of those questions like “what’s to the north of the north pole?” in that it isn’t clear whether it is that our everyday intuition breaks down in such extreme circumstances and the question is meaningless, or whether there is a sense in which the question really could be answered and we simply haven’t thought of it yet. But it is quite clear that God isn’t an answer, it is an end to questions and enquiry.
I don’t have a problem with schools leading prayer, following religious traditions and festivals, or with the ten commandments appearing in public buildings. All that sort of stuff is trivia. (And I personally quite like Christmas carols and decorations.) If there is a problem with the school treatment of religion it is that it doesn’t show enough of it, and colludes in keeping the darker side away from the children. That’s not to say I’d necessarily do the story of Lot’s daughters, or make the school play the story of Moses and the Midianites (along with Balaam and his amazing talking donkey! Great story!), but part of the reason that many people grant religion its privileges is that they have only been taught what I call the “fluffy bunny” version of religion. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice.’ Now that may well be a good system of morals to teach them (arguably), but it isn’t the entirety of what most religions actually teach. They should know the full range of what religions there are and what they have and haven’t claimed, and be able to see how their own religion fits into it. Otherwise, you just get a Pascal’s wager effect: fluffy-bunny or really-hard-maths-homework are the only two choices they get to see.
But as a matter of principle I don’t see it as any of my business to object to how other people bring up their children, or what they choose to believe. It’s a free country. The only bit where I get Atheist rather than atheist, as you put it, is on the topic of the special privilege religious representatives get in public debate. In Britain, the bishops of the Church of England have permanent seats in the House of Lords. On any ethical debate or government panel about where society should go or what we should be allowed to do, you always get representatives of the religions to give their views, treated deferentially as experts on morality simply because they believe in some ‘ghost in the sky’. People who believe in pixies are not invited on TV, nor are people who believe that alien visitors fly around our countryside in ufos invited to tell us what is right and wrong. I do not wish to ban such beliefs – I respect people’s right to hold them. I support their right to talk about them. I wouldn’t have a problem with schools having a “pixie day”. People can dress up as Klingons at conferences and conventions if they like. (Prime Directive, or Komerex tel Khesterex? You decide!) And I don’t even see the former Canadian Defence Minister publicly denouncing George Bush for threatening to trigger an interstellar war as a problem, any more than a religious Minister. But I wouldn’t want them given a prominent place in deciding the fate of the nation purely because of their beliefs. If people vote for that, fine. But their ideas should be as open to criticism as anyone else’s. Their ideas need to earn our respect, and not get a free pass simply because it is a religion.
(And the same goes for any other unchallengable orthodoxy, political correctness, environmentalism, charity/welfare, whatever. I’m not just singling out religion.)
In protecting Christianity this way, you have inadvertently given the impression that Islam is all about fluffy bunnies dancing holding hands, too. Extremely dangerous.
When the item is the individual all methods of organising collections of that must be subject to correct identification of the nature of the individual, and what is more, when the individual is the sole moral agent(which it is), the importance of the colleciton comes a very, very distant second.
I brought up ethics to test PA’s comment that “only beliefs based on positive evidence can be rational.” In every morality discussion I’ve ever been in, at the root of all the arguments of all participants – including atheists – is an assumption for which direct and obvious evidence does not exist. We have clues, however, and from those clues we seek assumptions that come closest to reality. Call it rational faith or Occam’s Razor or whatever.
Faith is irrational when it has little to no clue base. Like Rosie O’s “fire doesn’t melt steel” remark, or certain religions popular among couch-jumping celebrities.
Pa:
You’ve fallen back to the Judeo-Christian God vs. Atheism, again. Atheism is the denial of the existence of God, which would conceptually cover essentially all religions, not just those of a Judeo-Christian flavor.
If talking donkeys and divine proclamation of genocide seems a little hard to believe, fine…can’t say that I necessarily argue with you there. However, I don’t see how that has much relation on the belief in God (or Gods) or not. Theism vs. Atheism.
Accepting the existence of God does not easily push creation outside the realm of human thought. Indeed, some rather smart people have invested a great deal of thought into the properties of God (in the abstract) and the consciousness that may have gone into creation.
The Big Bang as a singularity is rather frustrating to science due to the limited amount of information that can flow from pre-Big Bang into the present (meaning any time after the Big-Bang). So, in essence, it seems that science is the one that tends to scoff at what was around before the universe.
Pascal’s wager wasn’t just about odds, it was about utility. Even if the odds of God existing are extremely remote, the expected value of the end game could still be much higher than the alternatives. The point could (and has been) been argued over and over, but from a perspective of decision making, we don’t make decisions based on odds alone.
Now, on another note, and please understand, I’m not trying to convert you (or anyone else here) to Christianity or any other form of religion, but instead to demonstrate how reasonable people come to different conclusions in the face of scant evidence.
If you, in your daily wanderings in some forest, come across an object, say….a very highly integrated computer processor or some other such object — an artifact of such amazing complexity, I don’t think it unreasonable to come to the conclusion (lacking other evidence) that object is in fact an artifact of conscious design and embodies the architect’s intention. It is certainly possible that matter may have condensed into this particular object through the randomness of quantum fluctuations, etc. The odds of this can be computed, I believe. If someone were to make a bet with you, which would you wager?
The Universe around us looks pretty complex and seems to work really well. (Apparently if God does exist, he doesn’t work for Microsoft.)
Pietr:
You still haven’t convinced me.
How do you justify that the individual is the sole moral agent? What evidence do you have for this? Is this a boolean assertion, a finite set of values, or is the property of “moral agency” distributed across a continuum?
Is an ant an individual? Is it a moral agent?
Note, I’m playing Devil’s Advocate or….umm….just being contrarian. Myself, I am a libertarian and I agree that it seems to be the best at maximizing many aspects of society. But those aspects that it maximizes, I hold in high value. From where do those values originate?
Something else to consider- they call it spacetime because space and time are mixed together. That implies that causality, a function of time, must be different beyond the universe. Thus ‘Who created God? is one of those questions whose built-in assumption is that time flows the same way ‘outside’ the universe. A Chaos that embraces space and time would be one eternal NOW! By definition, chaos must be everything happening all at once, since chaos cannot ‘choose’ what to manifest. Thus God must arise from Chaos, just as Microsoft dominance arose from the unfettered free market.
Such a God is not the same as a caring Creator God, but it might listen to petitions, all the same, just for its’ own amusement.
Nate, I could care less about whether you are convinced.
Nicholas if you want me to be able to spell you will have to get a time machine and go back and teach me when my mind was still flexible (if only Mrs Williams had taught me to spell when she taught me to read – still it was kind of her to teach me to read).
Of course the latest round in the “Culture War” is about the athiest or atheist (or whatever) Philip Pullman – who is great foe of a traditional education and does not believe that children should be taught spelling and grammar, even though he was (this is one reason I dislike the man).
Still the B.B.C. announced the other day that Mr Pullman’s atheist propaganda books for children (about such things as the “Republic of Heaven” with the evil senile God is overthrown [how he can be evil and not exist at the same time…… oh well] and the books ending with lead characters dying off and becoming raw material for the universe) have been declared the greatest children’s books for the last 70 years by a “public vote”.
This is odd because I can remember a public vote on people’s best liked book some years ago – and, in spite of Mr Pullman’s people trying to rig the vote, Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” beat him.
I do not know whether the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit would win today (in a children only thing anyway), but what about the “Harry Potter” books – surely the children would have voted for them?
And then I understood. The powers-that-be and held a “public vote” WITHOUT TELLING THE PUBLIC (either children or adults).
In this way Mr Pullman’s stuff was bound to win.
Philip Pullman annouced his victory as the most important thing that had ever happened in his life. And now no doubt the “greatest childrens story of the last 70 years” will be shoved in every school library and be a series of set texts (and all in time for the “Golden Compass” film in December).
You see Guy – these days atheism (and the rest of the culture war) is very political indeed, at least in the United States. The “atheist reply to C.S. Lewis” Philip Pullman (although he might prefer that typed philip pullman in line with his belief in equality) is hardly an non political person who just happens not to believe in God. Mr Pullman is British – but his atheism is of the American type.
This is linked to history. Modern American “liberalism” (inculding atheism) grow out of the “social gospel” movement.
This goes back to trying to build Heaven on Earth (rather than putting it off till after to death) and slowly moved from worshipping God to worshipping the collective.
Americans are profoundly religious people – including the atheists, they (as stated above) worship the collective (which the call “society” or “the people” or whatever), and they hate God (as a rival to their religion) whilst claiming that they do not believe that God exists.
Philip Pullman (British though he is) fits this well.
Pa Annoyed – reading Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” might interest you (although you may well have already read it).
By the way, I get the impression from “Leaf by Niggle” that Tolkien expected to see Middle Earth in Heaven. Although (yes) it is inspired by this world – including (in the case of The Shire) the Midlands – although Tolkien thought of himself as a Worcestershire man, not a Northamptonshire person like me.
Although he was born in South Africa (if it comes to that I was born in London).
Nate,
I’ve only discussed the Judeo-Christian God in the context of schools and other institutions, which all teach the Judeo-Christian version to the exclusion of all other theologies. In fact, that was exactly what I was complaining about!
I’ve mentioned a wide variety of other gods and religions further up the thread, and much of my discussion is more generally applicable. If you will give examples of Atheists making lawsuits against all the university memorial prayers made to in Ra and Horus, I will discuss the shortcomings of public education in the ancient Egyptian religion.
Some rather smart people have also given considerable thought to how ther big bang might come about without the need to invoke a deity, and to give reasons why things are as they are. Such speculations are necessarily short of evidence, which is why I assumed you said you required something more satisfactory, but it’s not as if God was a hypothesis we couldn’t do without. On the whole, I don’t take the fact that smart people have said or done something as necessarily good evidence for its truth or wisdom. Too much argument from authority, if you know what I mean.
The problem with Pascal’s wager applies just as well with utility included. OK, the rewards are infinite if you believe in God and he turns out to exist, but which God? If you get the wrong one, you’re as much a loser as the atheist. And who knows, maybe God wants you to be atheist, and will punish you with eternal damnation if you are not. It’s possible. The argument is not quite as clear cut in that one is now comparing the sizes of various undefined and probably rather poetic infinities, but I think it should be clear to a reasonable person that the argument still doesn’t fly.
Oh, and don’t think I haven’t come across the Argument from Design before. If I were to come across a computer processor I would see that as possible evidence for a designer, because processors are not self-replicating (or otherwise involving recursive/iterative mathematics). However, were I to find a replicator, there would be another possibility, and the deduction of a designer does not follow.
Consider a similar question: suppose in this forest you come across a lake full of water, and you find the surface to be perfectly flat. What are the odds of every bit of randomly moving water across the entire surface simultaneously settling at exactly the same level? Surely there must be a Flattener; a super-fast intelligence who came round while we weren’t looking and moved all the individual bits of water in precisely the way required to bring them to a dead stop dead level. Can you just imagine the calculational abilities of such a being? Navier-Stokes is hard! Or maybe you could posit some simple rules – fluid motion and viscosity – and a general principle that these combine to tend towards minimising free energy in closed systems, and suggest that this fantastically unlikely result occured because a flat surface has minimum free energy. (Like evolution finds solutions giving locally maximum survival.)
Next time you make a cup of coffee, take a moment to watch out for The Flattener. His wondrous works are manifold. 🙂
Paul,
Yes, I agree Phillip Pullman’s books were less than impressive, and there was a certain amount of literary pretension about such an award. I have no particular opinions on the man himself, except that he was evidently badly damaged by a Catholic upbringing and has a lot of issues as a result. That’s not necessarily a reflection on the religion generally either.
I have read Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories, but many years ago. Yes, he had some interesting thoughts about it. Of the psychological importance of fantasy for humans I have no doubt. But as Tolkien said, one question the children ask, and which is not to be answered lightly, “Is it true?”
Oh, yeah, and while I remember…
“(Apparently if God does exist, he doesn’t work for Microsoft.)”
Oh, really?
😉
I’d like to see how the children voted.
I looked up his Wikipedia entry, and found this amusing:
Now there’s a glowing endorsement. (snort)
Nice to see that the Chief Druid is acting as normal. No doubt “in a very real sense” Mr Pullman’s works are Christian. Bring back George Carey as Archbishop, what is wrong being from a working class background anyway (after all I am from such a background – well, O.K., I can see some people might have a problem with me).
Pa Annoyed – yes “is it true”.
And, you will remember, that Tolkien held that even for fairy stories the correct position was not that “it is not true” (not even “lies breathed through silver” which was the position of C.S. Lewis before Tolkien convinced him in their talk).
Firstly the children know that Rohan and so on did not exist (one is not telling them lies), but they also know (as you point out) that elements of the real past and present are there to be found – AND that what is created by “subcreators” (intelligent beings) is (if any way good) is something worthy of respect. Tolkien position was that it was also blessed by God.
Of course (as I have said many times) nonleftist atheists might well say “we wish we could believe that, but it is simply not true – there is no God to bless anything”.
That (for example) would have been the position of Enoch Powell (at least till his last years), and is the position of Simon Heffer (spelling alert).
To return to Guy Herbert’s post.
The reason that 54% of Americans admit to regarding atheists as threatening (I would guess it is a rather higher percentage really – admitting stuff to a pollster can be difficult)- is because the atheists they come upon (in positions of power or influence) are just that.
In short it is not what the atheists believe, it is what the (leftist) atheists do that makes them disliked.
For example, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”, which was intended to prevent a Federal Established Church being shoved on the States (many of which had established Churches of their own – for example the New Hampshire list of five town churches that lasted till 1819) gets twisted into the war on Christmas, the war on the Boy Scouts (and all the rest of it).
And all by the same people who think that “or abridging the freedom of speech” does not apply to campaign finance contributions, or to paid ads by groups of citizens (when it was POLITICAL speech that the Amendment was supposed to protect, no the First Amendment is not just about protecting porn).
The leftist atheists are power hungry, persecute those who do not share their religion (the worship of the collective) and are corrupt and off-the-chart dishonest.
For example, where was my “public vote” for Philip Pullman’s work?
If the atheists that Americans were used to meeting in positions of power and influence were not leftists there would not be a problem.