This is the final part in a trilogy of defences for so-called ‘militant atheism’ – you can find the previous two articles, here and here.
The Problem of IDGAFS
As I have stated before, IDGAFS is an acronym for “I Don’t Give a Frack”. These are fellow nonbelievers who nevertheless treat “faith” as:
- something to be respected
- something to be treated with kid-gloves
- something that we, as critics of religion, don’t understand (in a psychological or “spiritual” way)
- something that, as non-theologians, we have no right/ no argument/ no knowledge to speak against because of the “deep” theological miasma we ought to traverse first.
We have seen that faith is not a virtue. However you define “faith”, however much you go into these notions, we can all agree that belief without evidence is not a good thing. When you can present clear, logical arguments and proof that the Bible is not true historically and is contradictory; that the Quran is as far from being a science textbook, as a can of baked beans; when presented with overwhelming evidence that events did not occur as the Bible said, there is only one thing to bridge that gap, to render that false-claim into a shining example of virtue. That takes the Kierkegaardian “leap of faith”.
Critics often claim that we do not understand faith – but we are only pointing out exactly what the faithful do, how they conduct themselves when faced with our claims, and what they actually write about. I’m trying not to reference, but forgive me this one point. Rick Warren writes in A Purpose Driven Life: “Surrendered people obey God’s will, whether it makes sense or not.” Several million copies fly off the shelves, yet we critics are called upon for not knowing anything about faith.
I have raised this point before: Why criticise the critics of religion? We do not need to be backhanded from those who are fighting for the freedom of humanity, to liberate ourselves from the chains in the shadow of a falling “divine” icon. I have said that I do not accept a middle-ground in this debate. And I reiterate: One side in this debate is going to be right.
We have seen that all the criticisms by IDGAFs are laughable and I will now present them in short bursts of debunking.
Claims Against the Critics
1. Active atheism/religious criticism caricatures all religious belief and thinks everyone is a fundamentalist – The Strawman Fallacy.
This is usually aimed at us when we ascribe religion as a motivator for a horrible act: Reverend Paul Hill’s murder of the abortion doctor Dr. Britton; the murder of Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, probably by fundamentalist Muslims; the proud martyrdom of many Muslim men and women, fighting for their “god-given” land; mothers sending their children out to test for minefields because, if their child dies as a martyr, Allah will put all the family members straight into j’ana (Heaven).
Notice I said “a” motivator, not “the” motivator. I’ve selected some horrible but nonetheless true examples. The criticism then is this: These are “fringe” groups and you can not attack religion because of that.
We do not have to: Look at the ‘holy’ books and look at the religious leaders. The Quran states you should kill, not listen, disassociate, and scorn unbelievers (4:89, 4:101, 4:76, etc. etc.). And the Quran is the literal word of Allah, according to Islam.
The Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious and nation-leader, issued a fatwa for the death of Salman Rushdie (and all associated with the book) for The Satanic Verses: because it caricatured Muhammad and disrespected Muhammad’s wives (and other reasons) – though it was a work of fiction and the only caricaturing was rendering Muhammad into a fallible human being. Khomeini did this without reading or even seeing the book.
Jerry Falwell was known for constantly saying floods and earthquakes were his god’s punishment on the world, because of human depravity (caused by homosexuality and other things Falwell deemed “evil”). His pestilential minions followed suit, by issuing similar decrees from their pulpits. Remember this goes to millions of viewers, not just those gaping from the pews.
And people lap it up, because Falwell and Khomeini are men the faithful consider their “spiritual” leaders. And let us not forget the “meek” Church of England, with Rt Rev Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle, saying in 2007 that the “floods that [...] caused chaos and death across the UK were caused by God after he was provoked by the introduction of gay equality.”
Somehow these men know the “mind of God” – and not even the poetic beauty ascribed by Hawking, but in a way to initiate their own perverse goals. If you are going to deny the link between religion and all these atrocities, please present your case. No one is saying religion is the sole cause, but you can’t deny its power in making “good people do evil things”.
We do not caricature the faithful, the faithful have caricatured human sensibility. It is this we attack, criticise and deem disgusting for our species. There is no Strawmen here, only failed human intellect and reason which we bring to your attention.
2. You are just as fundamentalist as those you attack – tu quoque (pronounced: to kwoh kway)
Can you be a fundamentalist atheist? First, IDGAFS and other critics must point out which books atheists uphold as absolute, perfect and infallible. And we must not forget the stupidity of considering atheism as some sort of group or movement: It is not. Everyone is an atheist – but presumably, being an atheist of the monotheist god is somehow different to other gods.
Though it seems unnecessary for this discussion, we must not forget where this term comes from. According to Karen Armstrong, fundamentalism is a recent phenomena. It was done to defend against the rational inquiry, promulgated by science and logic. But, as CP Farley writes, “Religious truths had always been considered beyond logic, but the fundamentalists transformed them into literal truths.”
In what way, do nonbelievers or atheist writers do this? I do not even know what is absolutely true, nor do I think I will ever know. Can the same be said for those who hold the Quran as the perfect word of Allah? Perhaps, but that would go against the teaching of Islam.
As nonbelievers, we do not work with certainty but remain impassive to absolutes. We have no books, gods or holy men who command us. You can not be absolute and dogmatic in your lack of belief in fairies, gods or goblins. It is also for this reason that atheism for the monotheist god can never be a religious movement, group or cause. (It is not even a thing in and of itself)
3. You can’t criticise that which you do not understand. You must first get to grips with the deep theological notions, which have hundreds of years of scholarship before you can dismiss it as nonsense – The Courtier’s Reply
We do not think religion is stupid, any more than we think a fiction-writer is a professional liar. I have a deep interest in religion because it is part of makes us human. We look at it anthropologically, study it objectively. (This is actually the reasonable proposal for every religious parent set out by one of the so-called Four Horsemen, Daniel Dennett.) But its truth-claims and claims to “divine” knowledge are what we question.
We do not ignore or deny the years of scholarship, but we fail to see how or why it’s necessary. Your average believer would not be interested in spending hours wading through tome after tome, on how their god is one but three. The majority of believers would not be interested in reading the annals of cognitive gymnastics, the gymnasium of which was set out by Aquinas, et al. Most of it is terribly unhelpful, uninteresting and – of course – untrue. The bottom line is simple: There is not a single good reason for believing that the monotheist god exists. And no amount of ancient gymnastics is going to change that.
And finally…
4. Atheism is a positive position – it is “There is no god”. I don’t think I can say that. I am uncertain and would rather remain agnostic – The Great Agnostic Mistake
As we’ve seen, we do not deal in certainty. We are inherently sceptical and critical of those who claim certainty. To say, then, that atheism is about certainty is to forget that atheism is simply a “lack of belief in a god/gods”. You can then slip in Allah, Yahweh, Loki, Tyr. To say that we are certain or positive of the non-existence of Allah or Loki is tantamount to saying we are endorsing that which we are against: Certainty and absolutism. That is bad logic. (This is similar to the claim that atheism is a religion, though critics are not silly enough to raise that point – see Claim #2)
Nevertheless, though an “agnostic” might acknowledge every point we make, they won’t declare themselves atheists. Yet, agnosticism says nothing about belief: It works on knowledge. I myself am agnostic about the existence of all gods, but I do not believe the god of the Bible or Quran – That makes me an atheist.
“Agnostics” are simply atheists who think:
1. If you are an atheist, you have to be an outspoken critic, hater, or debunker of religion.
2. That atheism is a movement or a positive position “There is NO god”, which is as bad as religious faith in god.
But this is not true. You are an atheist, but just hate that the label entails people treating you with the mindset of the previous two points. We should be working toward the notion that it’s okay not to be a monotheist. You can be an atheist (in a passive form), which means you never have to deal with any of the things we, as outspoken critics, have to.
It is just erroneous to think there is such a position as “I don’t know” with the monotheist god. There isn’t. Either you believe the monotheist god is watching you, loves you, hates your enemies, or you do not. Either the Bible is the word of god or it is not. Either Muhammad spoke to Gabriel, or he did not. You might take the latter as what you believe and that would be the reasonable position – but it does not mean you hate religion, or that you have to be outspoken. In these times however, every voice helps.
In these ways, the term ‘militant’ falls away. In these ways, with these thoughts, we can understand that saying ‘militant’ or ‘fundamentalist’ is a mistake when attributing it to atheism. You might not like what some atheistic-writers say, but criticise them for that. Do not criticise the notion of atheism as a faith-position, as a positive position, as a religious movement. There are better criticisms. IDGAFs must join our mission for the freedom and liberation of our species, where every man and woman can be respected, treated equally and find depth and beauty in reason. It is possible. But being backhanded by would-be allies only stifles our steps toward that goal.
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[...] In Defense of Militant Atheism part 3 of 3 [...]
Some things…
If you want to really understand faith, simply substitute the word ‘hope’. Because that is what people need from faith and its what some people need simply in order to function in a world they can’t understand.
Faith isn’t going anywhere, any time soon.
Some atheists do caricature the faithful, and in order to understand fundamentalism you have to understand where it came from. Quite ironically it came out of the protestant reformation, which was a rejection of the catholic churches right to dictate what scripture meant. It was all about people actually reading the bible instead of accepting on faith what priests told them.
And much like with racism in our society its the exceptions and the fanatics that make the news. Or are you going to now accuse all black people of being like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakan?
This is a problem, controversy makes the news.
There are plenty of Christians who intelligently examine their beliefs.
Their evidence is not empirical, its emotional, but if you have ever been in love and acted on that love then you have used the same kind of evidence.
Some atheists ARE dogmatic about science, if you ask them if science is the path to truth, they will say yes. Science however says nothing about ‘truth’, its a very useful method for evaluating observations. But there is no guarantees. Still, some atheists view it as the final word on everything, even though we are no where near that level of understanding.
Some atheists believe that science will solve our problems… eventually. It could of course end up destroying us. We don’t know.
Some atheists value intelligence above all, even though high intelligence tends to correlate with more mental illness and social dysfunction.
Some atheists are dogmatic.
And Richard Dawkins does dismiss theology. He has no interest in studying it objectively or any other way. He has said its a waste of time.
Finally, there sure as hell is an ‘I don’t know’ position. You are creating a false dichotomy. Believing something and knowing something are distinctly different things.
I am an agnostic atheist, I don’t believe in lots of things, but I limit what I say I know to more mundane things… which is what science is really great at.
I can still argue against religious belief, but I can’t ignore that there are atheists who ‘hate’ religion in a completely emotional and irrational way. Quite a lot of it is bad, but it can also help people.
Being objective means recognizing both, despite my own lack of belief.
Religious people also do good things in the name of their religion.
Thank you for your comment.
“If you want to really understand faith, simply substitute the word ‘hope’. Because that is what people need from faith and its what some people need simply in order to function in a world they can’t understand.
Faith isn’t going anywhere, any time soon.”
- Some people needing it says nothing about whether it’s true. I’m interested in what’s true and the defence of faith as immutable and above logic is case in point. Substitute whatever word you want.
“Some atheists do caricature the faithful, and in order to understand fundamentalism you have to understand where it came from. Quite ironically it came out of the protestant reformation, which was a rejection of the catholic churches right to dictate what scripture meant. It was all about people actually reading the bible instead of accepting on faith what priests told them.”
- hence my reading of Karen Armstrong’s book, which deals with this time.
“And much like with racism in our society its the exceptions and the fanatics that make the news. Or are you going to now accuse all black people of being like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakan?
This is a problem, controversy makes the news.
There are plenty of Christians who intelligently examine their beliefs.
Their evidence is not empirical, its emotional, but if you have ever been in love and acted on that love then you have used the same kind of evidence.”
- “the evidence is not empiral” is a classic IDGAF notion (please see The Problem of IDGAFs. You are defending it as something good. It is not. I’m talking about truth and you keep referring to emotion. Once again, please read how we judge belief: their holy books and their leaders. There is no caricaturing. If angry anti-religious writers do so, beat it upon their door. I’m writing from what I perceive to be the most fair, logical and pesuasive form of analysis.
“Some atheists ARE dogmatic about science, ”
- Like overzealous emotional anti-religious people, I’m sure there are. But that has nothing to do with what I’m proposing and defending. I can not speak for all people who dub themselves critics of religion, but I certainly speak for those who are trying to do this intelligently, reasonably and with evidence at hand. If they are dogmatic about science, they are missing the point of scientific explanations and science as a whole. Science is, as an ideal, not about dogma – though I know in many cases where it might appear that way.
“Some atheists believe that science will solve our problems… eventually. It could of course end up destroying us. We don’t know.
Some atheists value intelligence above all, even though high intelligence tends to correlate with more mental illness and social dysfunction.
Some atheists are dogmatic.”
- Sigh. Yes. Thank you for this very obvious point.
“And Richard Dawkins does dismiss theology. He has no interest in studying it objectively or any other way. He has said its a waste of time.”
- come now, Joe. Now I *know* you haven’t read the previous two articles because I go into some length about this, especially concerning Daniel Dennett’s eloquent reply.
“Finally, there sure as hell is an ‘I don’t know’ position. You are creating a false dichotomy. Believing something and knowing something are distinctly different things.”
- Exactly. As I’ve stated, agnosticism works on knowledge and atheism on belief. As you say “distinctly different things”. And I’ve said that I don’t know. But when it comes to the monotheist god, no proof has been shown to say the creator of the universe is the god proclaimed from the Bible.
I have not set up a false dichotomy, because you either believe in the god of the bible or you do not. No one has explained to me how you kinda, sorta, semi believe in the monotheist god. It’s pretty clear-cut. And I’m not the one saying this: The Bible and its leaders say so. I know where I stand on this.
It’s not 50/50.It really is not 50/50. Perhaps you want to position yourself there, but I really cant fathom a single reason that might have you suspended at midpoint. There is not a single good reason for believing in the monotheist god. you could make the case for deism to a point, but that’s a huge leap to then embracing the fully descriptive jealous god of the bible.
“I can’t ignore that there are atheists who ‘hate’ religion in a completely emotional and irrational way.”
- yes once again emotion. Look, people are going to be emotional. We aren’t robots. But this says nothing about what’s true. This really is not a point at all.
“Being objective means recognizing both, despite my own lack of belief.
Religious people also do good things in the name of their religion.”
- and that says what about the truth of religious claims?
If you are interested in what is true, you wouldn’t discount something for lack of evidence, you would discount it when it is proven false. Until then, it is still possibly true. Before its proved, you don’t know the truth.
I am not defending anything as good, but its wonderful how you can explain everyone else’s point of view to them, that’s a real talent. You are trying to slot me into some argument you think you can easily refute. I am talking about experience only. Truth is a myth. I know nothing of truth, neither do you, and neither does science. Emotion is an experience, just like red or blue is an experience. How we interpret the experience has nothing to do with truth. Science is a way of interpreting experience and its a a very solid way of doing so. But it doesn’t, at least yet, explain everything. It is dogmatic to think otherwise.
Don’t think I ever claimed to have read your previous articles, quite frankly, you tend towards the verbose, and I haven’t seen much depth. I am responding to THIS article. You shouldn’t assume anything beyond that.
See, the problem here is, you seem to think that if you read the bible, or listen to some preacher, you know the truth about what people believe and don’t believe. The facts are, there are plenty of people who ’sort of believe’. Uncertainty is a huge part of actual religious belief. They see a lot of the stuff they read in the bible as symbolic and other things are literal, and believe in lots of things because it feels right, even if they don’t have carpet fibers and blood samples. But in order to understand what they actually believe you have to talk to them and not just dismiss them based on your reading of their scripture.
No proof of a monotheistic god doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. If you were really interested in truth, you would demand proof either way. Currently, all we have is different kinds of evidence. I can say for instance that, the archeology and historical records tend to contradict the bible. But that doesn’t give me TRUTH. It certainly gives me a good basis for non-belief. But so what?
As to the single good reason for believing in any kind of god, its simple. We evolved in small tribal groups, early on people would worship their ancestors because the older folk tended to have the knowledge and knowledge was power. Then we moved to bigger communities and this lead to a more abstract notion of power. God’s became the founders of civilizations. They gave credibility to the ruling elites. The divine right of kings. Nowadays however, power tends to be with science.. with new discoveries, not tradition, but new inventions. That means that religion is less useful. But for minorities in any culture, religion provides a common bond. And for those suffering under oppression or in poverty, it provides a common bond. And it does this, even when all rational analysis would tell us its best to give up. Every buy a lottery ticket? Every gamble? The odds are against you, but people still do it. They believe.
Science doesn’t give us truth. Religion doesn’t give us truth.
Both can, and have been useful to all kinds of people.
Useful in positive, as well as negative ways.
“If you are interested in what is true, you wouldn’t discount something for lack of evidence, you would discount it when it is proven false. Until then, it is still possibly true. Before its proved, you don’t know the truth.”
- I will sustain my disbelief in the 3-eyed, four legged, 38-breasted fish-monster of Sea Point – just because there is no evidence, I should be open minded for her existence. Which i created right now in this sentence. That’s just nonsense.
The point of seeking truth is to eliminate what’s false to try get to what’s true. I’m not sure what’s wrong with dismissing things, when the evidence does not stand in its favour. If we worked on your principles, I do not think we would get anywhere. We have to try our best to work with evidence at hand, and logic at fault. No one is talking about certainty, yet you keep equating certainty with truth-seeking.
I certainly am not. I do not know what’s true. But I know the best ways to get there, and discounting false-claims is one.
I am actually quite shocked you would say “If you are interested in what is true, you wouldn’t discount something for lack of evidence”. That truly must be one of the most confusing and worrying sentences. If this were the case, we could never put murderers on trial, never decide whether creationism was true or evolution false, never decide if someone is speaking the truth when they kill someone because god told them so. Well we don’t know, because sure the evidence is in favour of prosecution, in evolution’s-favour, that this man regardless of faith is mad, but according to you, we can’t DISPROVE them.
Surely you see the absurdity in your statement? And how about your belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn? Is that still on the table for you?
“its wonderful how you can explain everyone else’s point of view to them, that’s a real talent. ”
- Thank you. You should read my fiction at some point. Though in this case, I’m attempting to garner my critics point of view. If trying to counter and quanitify my critics point of view is seen as speaking for them, well then I do a lot of speaking for the other side. I certainly feel that sting.
“I am talking about experience only. Truth is a myth.”
- I’m not interested in experience in arguments. How many time’s do we need to raise this point. We are dealing with truth-claims and supposed arguments against atheism or critics of religion. You keep talking about the larger subject and people’s emotions. I’m not doing that. The title is “a defence of militant atheism”. You have not raised any points to say what’s wrong with atheism. You just attempting to poke holes for no good reason.
“I know nothing of truth, neither do you, and neither does science. Emotion is an experience, just like red or blue is an experience. How we interpret the experience has nothing to do with truth. Science is a way of interpreting experience and its a a very solid way of doing so. But it doesn’t, at least yet, explain everything. It is dogmatic to think otherwise.”
- What are you on about? I know “nothing” about truth. And you accused me of speaking for other people. I would claim otherwise. I know something about truth, because I am logically sound in my defences and I’ve worked and researched this long enough. If you, or any religious apologist, can actually tell us why our thinking is wrong we could deal with that.
You keep going on about truth and not knowing truth, but then you say “If you are interested in what is true, you wouldn’t discount something for lack of evidence,”. Either you know something about truth, or you don’t. I would say you do, it’s just wrong to a degree of being too open minded and suspended.
“Don’t think I ever claimed to have read your previous articles, quite frankly, you tend towards the verbose, and I haven’t seen much depth. I am responding to THIS article. You shouldn’t assume anything beyond that.”
- Why thanks. I will assume alot of things from my readers, thank you. I would assume that they made an effort as much as I did, in research. I find it interesting that you tell me i “shouldn’t assume anything beyond that.” For someone so open minded and suspended in judgement, you tend to tell me a lot of things about myself and my conduct. That’s called hypocrisy. I don’t expect you to like me, but at least deal with my arguments. I think that’s fair – even if you think I’m a waffler and verbose.
“See, the problem here is, you seem to think that if you read the bible, or listen to some preacher, you know the truth about what people believe and don’t believe.”
- I seem to think? Really? Amazing how you are telling me what I’m thinking again. I have not said this at all. I’m talking about how we, as critics, as nonbelievers judge religion and critique it. I’ve said nothing about conversion, about how to read the bible, etc. I know plenty of people who saw through their holy books, but that does not mean that I believe that “if you read the bible, or listen to some preacher, you know the truth about what people believe and don’t believe.”. – That’s not the point. There are many other factors.
Once again, I am judgint the holy books and their preachers from the point of view of truth-claims. I cant know what every person believes, but I am very familiar with their arguments. I also do not want to judge every person, because some people really are mad and use religious backing. Why would I critique them? That’s useless. I’m critiquing what I see as the most fair parts of an organisation that makes truth-claims. Science attempts to do the same, and similary, we would judge its books and its leading spokespeople. I think that’s pretty fair, but you are accusing me of something beyond the point and not even part of this discussion.
“there are plenty of people who ’sort of believe’. Uncertainty is a huge part of actual religious belief. ”
- I know. I was one of them for most of my life, as a Muslim believer. I was preaching for the death of Salman Rushdie. I still didn’t believe that much. But that’s not my point. I’m askign what’s a reasonable defence for being “sorta” believing. A reasonable defence,
This is what’s happening in this discussion between you and me.
1. I am asking for reasonable justifications for belief in god, for wavery elastic “i dont know positions”, for reasonable arguments against the critics of religion.
2. You are taking my defences and arguments and pitting them against emotion and experience. You are mistaking my asking for defences and evidence for these positions, for stating that those positions shouldn’t or don’t exist. I’m not. I’m sure billions of people are 50/50, but that means nothing as a defence to BE 50/50.
That’s what is the major disagreements we are having. If you could please focus on arguments from evidence and reason, instead of placing my arguments agaisnt experience (uninteresting and biased) and emotion (unhelpful).
“But in order to understand what they actually believe you have to talk to them and not just dismiss them based on your reading of their scripture.”
- Exactly. And I’m asking them or anyone to offer defences. I’ve done this for a long time, actively seeking conversations and public debates with believers. If I was dismissing them as idiots, I wouldn’t be doing that. I don’t think they are stupid, I think their beliefs are irrational. My best friend is a Christian and another is a Pastor. I talk to them more than anyone else for hours about their reasons for belief. It’s not like I’m not trying, Joe.
“No proof of a monotheistic god doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. If you were really interested in truth, you would demand proof either way. ”
- There is no proof for the sea-point monster lady or the invisible pink unicorn. Please, your sentence is false again. It makes no sense. And you are AGAIN telling me how i must conduct myself. This time by saying i would demand proof either way.
That’s exactly the point of writing these articles, of investigating, of studying. Atheism is not a thing, it’s nothing. The point of not believing is dealing with all the claims made by the theists and believers (Side A) and dealing with them, in what i see as a reasonable way. I find they are not true. The default then is Side B, because I dont believe in their god, as much as i dont believe in apollo or thor. Remember, this demand for evidence favours the theistic side because you can’t demand evidence for the non-existence of something. Therefore, this is already on your side (though I don’t understand your position because you are just speaking about emotion and experience the whole time, somethng I’m not interested in this discussion).
“Currently, all we have is different kinds of evidence”
- This smells too much of a postmodernist way of thinking.
“I can say for instance that, the archeology and historical records tend to contradict the bible. But that doesn’t give me TRUTH. It certainly gives me a good basis for non-belief. But so what?”
- Ah, but according to your standards you can’t say it says anything about your non-belief. You can’t say that! Because you must remain suspended.
But seriously, this is exactly the point. I’m not speaking about objective truth, im speaking about the claims of the monotheists. As they come, they fall into irrationality. Hence, I do not
believe in god of the bible. I’m not saying anything about TRUTH.
“As to the single good reason for believing in any kind of god, its simple. We evolved in small tribal groups…”
- I was asking for a good reason for believing in the monotheist god. You then gave me a reason how this belief arose (one of the many ways). You did it again: I asked for a justification, based on logic and reason and you turned that into an experience of our ancestors and ourselves. Logic and justification. Please realise I’m working on the level of logic, reason and philosophical justifications- not human experience, history or emotions as you are. We won’t get anywhere in our conversation. I hope if you reply, you will work on this level.
“The odds are against you, but people still do it. They believe.”
- And so? What? I must give up?
“Science doesn’t give us truth. Religion doesn’t give us truth.
“Both can”
- WHAT??? Dude, how does this make sense? You first say:
1. Science doesn’t give us truth.
2. Religion doesn’t give us truth.
C: Both can”
Terrible. You are making no sense.
“Useful in positive, as well as negative ways.”
- Wonderful. Yes. So what? It doesnt make it true.
your responses to joe are why i likely won’t be writing a response. you disregard what he’s saying without attempting to understand it and see where he is coming from. He is making perfect sense, but because all you do is spew exactly what Dawkin, Harris, Hitchens etc. have already written you don’t have a real response except to just repeat what you’ve already said.
I used to be on the side that said “personal experience” was not worth believing. But in the recent months, as I move further away from science and more into the fine arts, i find more validity in this statement. You can’t quantify someone’s emotional reaction to something. You can’t do controlled tests with someone’s emotional take on a piece of art. And in the same way you can’t tell someone, or assume, or think you know everything about someones faith. They are not all “blind followers”.
Militant atheism is fine once in a while. But it is not okay to apply everything that is said in the terms of a militant atheist to believers who are unsure…and are just looking for their own version of truth in the world.
As a previous christian, I went through a period where yes, everything that is said by Dawkins applied – but then i went through like a 2 or 3 year period that he just wouldn’t understand without having been there.
If all “militant atheists” want to do is be a “critic” of religion – thats fine. There are a lot of things to be critical about. but that’s not the case, they’re critical of the religious, and making sweeping generalizations about them. There are so many various degrees of religion, so many definitions of “god” and so many ways of “connecting” with said “god” that its impossible to understand all religion and be a valid critic of it.
as for the “fundamental” comment – no you can’t be a fundamental atheist. but you can be a closed minded asshole very easily. Which is what many “haters” of religion are.
If what you were posting were all true, which I don’t think it is – I think its what you want to be true and you’re just speaking for all militant atheists blindly, then it wouldn’t be so bad. But you have people like Brian Sapient and his little crew that call their own parents “retarded” and “stupid” for being even remotely religious. I don’t see the value in actively pushing people away without attempting to understand their worldviews by being jerks. I see how religion in politics, and religion in public schools etc — is dangerous. But I don’t see how my mother, sitting at home asking questions about the afterlife and the feeling that she feels about a “god” is particularly dangerous. Not everyone has a bomb strapped to them or is actively converting other people… and these are the people that a lot of militant atheists do not understand – and this lack of understanding really is a problem.
Your fish-monster is a strawman. Most religious people do not create their religion on the spur of the moment. In fact, they are relying on books, personal ‘experiences’, and testimony of others. All of these are ‘evidence’, some of which science can cast doubt on, but no necessarily disprove. Disbelief is reasonable, denial is not, unless you have proof.
Science deals with consistency and inconsistency in observation.
Lacking knowledge of something, I can still have beliefs about it. If those beliefs rely on evidence, then faith is not required for the belief. What constitutes valid evidence varies.
The legal standard for evidence is completely different from the scientific.
Scientific evidence deals with predictive value, legal evidence relates to reasonable belief. They are VERY different. When you conflate them as you have done, it shows you don’t really understand them.
The kinds of evidence scientists accept is different from the kinds of evidence religious people accept. If you are going to address religious belief you have to address that type of evidence, not just dismiss it, as people like Dawkins does.
The point of the IPU is to showcase the inherent contradictions implicit in certain religions. The unicorn is therefore “invisible and pink”, an inherent contradiction.
Having a lack of evidence for something is completely different and not what the IPU is about.
I am attempting to show that radical atheism can be as dogmatic as religion. As an agnostic about gods, I simply accept what I don’t know. Gods could exist, whether they are described in the bible, whether they appear contradictory to me or not. As an atheist, based on my best judgment I don’t believe. Not believing does not imply denial.
As to onus of proof, of course its on the theistic side. But denying something exists, is different from simply not believing. And denying something when you don’t have proof is just as foolish as affirming. Believing or disbelieving is something different entirely. One can believe something and still reasonably acknowledge it might not be true.
The problem with militant atheists is that they tend to oversimplify and down right ignore the points of view of religious people in favor of reductionism and ignoring everything that isn’t scientifically testable… and then hypocritically turn around and make unproven statements and declare them to be truth.
“I was asking for a good reason for believing in the monotheist god.”
I stated that very clearly: “it provides a common bond”, which can be very useful.
Please re-read the paragraph.
“Both can” is followed by a comma, NOT a period.
You misread it.
I agree with this whole thing. I’m in love with your writing, Tauriq! Can’t wait to see more from you.
Dear Katie
I am a bit saddened that you aren’t going to be writing a response. I’m also disappointed that you think I’m rehashing arguments. I plead: Guilty. As this was pretty much the basis for all three articles, defending those guys from criticisms.
As I said to Joe, I’m patently not interested in emotional aspects. The very reason for that can be seen for you not replying. Allow me to clarify the major point: I am sure there are billions of people who believe wholeheartedly in a creator-god, maybe millions who DO really feel 50/50, maybe some who believe because its consolling. I’m sure and I know of many for whom it is central to their lives.
However, when I say I’m going to disregard that for the arguments that are laid out, I do so not to disrepect those people. What I am arguing against is the philosophical and logical arguments for these positions. That is something completely different to the fact, the plain fact, that people hold them. People can have any belief they like, but I am dealing with the logical reasoning behind the apologetic reasoning and the criticisms made against so-called militant atheism.
I frankly have no respect for a belief in a god and why should I? It certainly is not my grandmother’s belief in god that has had her volunteer at churches for the last 20 years, but her genuine compassion. Perhaps the belief in god helps to some degree, but I do not think it is solely responsible for it,. Niether do I think that religion is solely responsible for war and atrocities.
Let me reiterate: There is a difference between people holding a belief and then defending that belief in philosophical, or logical ways. Most people do the former without the latter (see Shermer’s books). I’m not particularly interested in the former, since most of those people do no harm (and may do lots of good). I’m interested in the latter: The actual reasoning behind holding a belief in a god and the justifications for monotheisms. What you are doing is forcing my arguments agaisnt the former group, which I am NOT doing. You will notice that not one theist has commented on this article so far. And they do not have to.
I hope this clarifies why I think it’s a mistake to pit me against the actual people and then the ideas behind the logical reasoning.
You said: “But you have people like Brian Sapient and his little crew that call their own parents “retarded” and “stupid” for being even remotely religious. I don’t see the value in actively pushing people away without attempting to understand their worldviews by being jerks. I see how religion in politics, and religion in public schools etc — is dangerous. But I don’t see how my mother, sitting at home asking questions about the afterlife and the feeling that she feels about a “god” is particularly dangerous. Not everyone has a bomb strapped to them or is actively converting other people… and these are the people that a lot of militant atheists do not understand – and this lack of understanding really is a problem.”
Consider this paragraph and what I’ve said. Who said anything about your family or your mom? You are taking this too personally, as I’m dealing strictly with the arguments. Raising your own personal and emotional history only bedevils the points – You’ve made me seem like I want to go into people’s homes and poke them, chastitise them for believing. And to raise Sapient and his “crew” is exactly WHY, EXACTLY WHY I don’t deal with emotion.
It works both ways: I remove emotion and experience from this because that leads to being closed-minded and calling people “jerks” and “idiots”. I have nothing against the millions of people who are quietly passing their lives, in the best way they can. But I’m NOT DEALING WITH THEM – I’m dealing with the realm of ideas. And for you to misunderstand me, caricature, and take this personally is the very reason why I don’t and won’t deal with emotion. This is not an attack against you or your experience – It’s a defence against using that, against the use of emotion. It just won’t do in rational discourse. We need to deal with logic and unemotional use of our intellect.
I hope that you will write an extended response telling me exactly what is wrong with my arguments against the reasoning for the belief in god. Not the believers, not their emotions, not their experiences. That helps no one. Or perhaps, you can tell me why I’m wrong to discard those. I know why but I’m wondering if you think that it is a stupid idea. But, I would like an argument laid out, spelled out for me and other readers.
please see comment #4 below as your reply (i didnt want to add more in-layers to this, it will look silly!)
Tauriq, you still haven’t answered what you HOPE TO ACHIEVE by being aggressively anti-religion and using inflammatory rhetoric. Nine times out of ten, society advances through building consensus, not by isolating yourself from those who disagree with you.
Why is Barack Obama (hopefully) going to be the next President of the United States? Why does he show almost no concern about affirmative action, police brutality, or the Jena Six? Is it that he just doesn’t care about issues that matter specifically to the African-American community?
Absolutely not; however, if he is to gain the support of the majority of Americans, he is going to soft pedal such issues so they alienate as few people as possible and frame them in a way that appeal to as many people as possible. This is also why we need to frame issues like separation of church and state in an intelligent way that must also appeal to religious people. We need to challenge how people apply their religion in real life before even considering challenging that religion itself.
Also I’m curious to see your take on Communism… It was probably the only vehicle in history where religion was successfully suppressed both in the East and in Russia. However, physical force and repression was used to achieve this, so would the ends justify the means?
Thanks Chris! That means a lot =)
Hey Joe,
* That “Hey” is meant in a hello-like manner.
There are well understood phenomena for how subjective experience can be predictably deceiving. In fact, this is the only reason stage magic exists at all.
This is why subjective experience is generally considered as weaker evidence than objective (or intersubjective if one is a post-modernist) proof with good scientific controls.
I would argue that any one who is being true to scientific thinking is “agnostic” and even Dawkins admits this in “The God Delusion.”
If one says all imaginable gods don’t exist, well that is simply non-falsifiable.
So granted, many concepts of God or gods may exist.
The Christian biblical God, as well as his pal the Islamic God, has specific attributes which are spelled out in the scriptures of these religions. At some point it seems to me that the arguments against people like Tauriq, Dawkins, and myself are based on how many Christians and Muslims choose to ignore their own scriptures.
If your argument is that religious people should be left alone because many of them ignore and disregard their scriptures, I wonder how respectful that defense is.
I just find it strange that some non-believers would feel the need to advocate for the religious when nothing is being done to them other than having their ideas, and the consequences of their ideas criticized.
The sin of the “militant atheist” is ultimately nothing more than editorial critique.
“Consider this paragraph and what I’ve said. Who said anything about your family or your mom? You are taking this too personally, as I’m dealing strictly with the arguments. Raising your own personal and emotional history only bedevils the points – You’ve made me seem like I want to go into people’s homes and poke them, chastitise them for believing. And to raise Sapient and his “crew” is exactly WHY, EXACTLY WHY I don’t deal with emotion.”
Lol. You can say this is “why” you don’t “deal” with “emotion”, but this is exactly why I am against militant atheism. Because emotions exist. Because people get hurt. And I am not so naive to think that christians don’t emotionally hurt others aswell, there is bad in both sides.
See I live in the real world, where every day I face emotions, people getting hurt, people being happy and people trying to belittle others because they think their ideas are the best. I don’t live in this world of yours where there is no emotion.
Hey Rodrigo,
One of the big problems in philosophy is the use of words and definitions. Anyone whose had any sort of discussion on the internet has probably run into this phenomena, two people who disagree will start quoting dictionaries. Its a sure sign the discussion has reached a dead end when both people have begun resorting to ‘argument from authority’, usually in an attempt to ignore the other persons argument, instead of address it. In fact much of the history of philosophy (which is really the history of ideas and includes science) is about defining things. Science relies on this heavily, as you can’t really repeat an experiment unless you know exactly what was done before.
One of the big criticisms of the enlightenment is that scientists simply replaced the absolutist theology of the christian tradition with a similarly rigid object centered model. This allowed racist ideas about dark skinned humans to continue to thrive, as white people could be shown to be superior in an objective sense. All one had to do was look around and see the objective evidence. Just look who the slaves are, and who the masters are. Simple. Anyone can see it.
One of the other words that gets thrown around is ‘post-modern’, which can refer to certain types of philosophy, but also paintings, literature, and architecture. The thing to understand is that, like ‘atheist’, the word has generally been used to describe ‘other people’ who don’t generally share one’s views, so its become a catch-all term in some circles for ‘bad things’.
I’d say the valid post-modern criticisms of science can generally be summed up by use of those two words you mentioned: objective and inter-subjective.
E=mc^2 was just as descriptive of reality when Einstein subjectively thought it up as it was later when it was objectively verified as descriptive of the way certain things in the world work. Problem is, a lot of scientists, because they are taught to look for objective facts, start to see objective facts as ‘good’ in the old absolutist way. Calling it inter-subjective (not a term I like actually, but its useful) is a way of pulling ‘objective’ down off its pedestal and reminding people that objective facts are based on subjective observation and like the racism example can often be erroneous.
Postmodernism came into being after the first world war, when people saw with brutal clarity what ’scientific progress’ could lead to. The cultural impact of the atomic bomb and cold war had a similar effect. And quite a lot of academics have gone off the deep end, in terms of post-modern thinking, as a result. There is a valid discourse in there somewhere however.
As to Richard Dawkins, I actually liked the God Delusion more than expected. He can be a very compelling writer and you are correct, when he is being rational, he’s a lot more moderate in his thinking than he is generally given credit for. When Dawkins is talking about science, I love to listen to him. When he starts talking philosophy though, he’s not on such solid ground, and then when he starts talking about scripture, it can become rabid hatred. As a science advocate he is top notch, as an atheist advocate he has good days and bad.
As to moderates ‘ignoring’ scripture, I think this is where you are being unfair. A person may believe in the bible because they are told its the word of god, and still honestly not understand parts of it. For them, those parts are a mystery, but there are enough scriptures they do understand and agree with, that belief is still something they don’t want to give up. When this is the case, one must have an education in their theology in order to be convincing to them. Its not hypocritical to set aside Leviticus or a literal interpretation of Genesis, while still believing in a creator. There are all sorts of perfectly valid reasons for doing this, even within a christian context. Jumping into atheism is just not something many are prepared to do. It can be very traumatic for some.
As for defending scripture and religions, I’m not. I find a lot of militant atheism to be irrational bigotry and some atheists falling into the same trap of ‘us v. them’ that is a very human failing. And I find that embarrassing and counterproductive. Calling people stupid is never a good way to get them to understand things. And arrogance is often associated with science types for good reason. Being critical of others is easy, being critical of ourselves is what helps us learn and improve. Science teaches that.
Joe,
I agree with much of what you say.
I do, however, feel that it is important to criticize others. We live in an interdependent society and no one is an island.
My view is that at the very least Christian and Islamic fundamentalism has caused much harm.
I find postmodernism to be basically right in its premises, but I feel that pragmatism
ultimately has to outweigh these merits.
One post-modernist buddy of mine made an eloquent argument for truth existing only in language. I was very impressed with his argument and could find no good rebuttal.
But then again, when I can’t find my keys, I don’t just write down “my keys are in my pocket” and expect to find them there. I still have to look for them in the material world.
Science has changed a great deal over the centuries, and undeniably will change even more as the centuries proceed. But I think its a fair assertion that it gets better and better with time at approximating truth.
I write this just to say that I respect the post-modernist position, but not enough to abandon all of my current positions. I am also not interested in debating naturalist vs. post-modernist epistemiology.
Suffice it to say, that if you are arguing that I should not criticize the religious because post-modernist epistemiology argues that they have at least as much a chance of being right as the naturalist assertion that science at least suggests there is no God, we are going to have to agree to disagree. I have thought a lot about this in my life, and have found myself carefully persuaded that naturalism is the best epistemiology for me.
Where you may be able to sell me, is on the ethical argument about how atheists should treat religious people. I would be interested for you to expand on that, and for us to proceed more down that path.
I do want to treat people fairly and justly while working towards a better world.
I disagree that to state that one has a positive belief in the absence of a God (positive/strong atheism) is to be a fundamentalist any more than your absence of belief. You can apply many of the arguments you have listed here to our position, and then we have a few arguments of our own. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at our position or not, but you may find it interesting if you haven’t.
I’d like to submit that perhaps one can be certain enough to align with a position, while being skeptical on a lower level. For example, I am a strong atheist because of my belief that a good mix of empiricism and rationalism leads to truth. However, my belief that this is absolutely true can not be completely certain, because I don’t currently (and perhaps never will) have the ability to verify it, although I can argue that it is historically more useful to consider it true than false and a few other things. Yet, even if I was able to justify it, I’d then have to justify the system that verified it. Anyways, my point is, is that even when uncertainty exists, categorizing everything at the top level as uncertainty is not necessarily helpful when you are trying to communicate a belief.
Alright, can we stop misusing the word “militant?” Dawkins is not a militant. Hitchens is not a militant. Even when I actually called myself a “militant atheist,” I was no militant.
The Weather Underground, the American Revolution, the FARC (Colombia), the League of the Militant Godless (early 20th century Russian)- those are examples of militants. Notice they share one common factor: militarism. Show me organized militarism among atheists, and then you can use the word “militant” correctly.
I was actually beginning to think of writing something similar. Well put.
It also feeds into this false dichotomy that one can either not criticize religion, or want it to be banned like it was in the Soviet Union.
I like rational debate, but I’ve also studied rhetoric and psychology. I think there is more to making a good argument than just the facts.
I view pragmatism and consequentialism as problematic but useful. I don’t object to methodological naturalism, just ethical naturalism.
I think Roy would add Mathematics to the list of places truth exists, but I’d qualify that, by saying math is just another language.
If by ‘post-modernist epistemology’, you mean Constructivism, I do see value in it, but I’m not wedded to an epistemology.
I think scientists have to be careful to limit themselves to only talking authoritatively about science. Modern physics doesn’t rule out a deist god. And while Fundies are easy targets, claims that: “everything must have a rational explanation” and “that god moves in mysterious ways” are, for me, a bit too close for comfort.
Also, I disagree ‘postmodernism’ always implies: “all claims are of equal value”. Quite a lot of the criticisms with regards to cultural relativism and ethical relativism revolve around ‘context dependent’ issues and judging things using an inappropriate or arbitrary standard, the absolutist trap. That said, there is plenty of cowardice, and relativism inspired paralysis.
The scientific method is the best method we have for evaluating the natural world, but the method itself is a fusion of rational and empirical thinking, and there is more to “modern science” than just the method.
Criticism of science is important too.
As to ethics, ugh, this is getting long and that’s a thorny issue.
I’ve listened to Dacey on Point of Inquiry, and seen him lecture, but I’ve never been impressed by his ‘naturalistic’ ethics. To his credit, he seems well versed in all the relevant philosophy, and he’s a compelling speaker, but he doesn’t address the is/ought problem to my satisfaction.
That said, ethics really is not my motivation for how I deal with religious people. For me, its more about successful strategies. Dawkins is a good motivator of people already disposed to atheism, but I don’t think he’s going to convert anyone. Not really. The strategy that works for me, is what they call ‘tit for tat’, which basically means you give people the benefit of the doubt, and after that, you give what you get. Which means not attacking people until they earn it, but responding to them in kind, and consistently so.
I don’t have ideals, because I find idealism to be empty. What I do have are goals. And they are completely my own, I learn as I go, but I don’t apologize for what I want. Others may want similar things, and when they do and they provide assistance, I call those people allies. Its as simple as that.
Is that what you wanted?
Thanks. I hope I didn’t come on too strong, I was trying to be succinct about it instead of my usual verbosity, and it was 2 AM.
Isn’t that the whole point of the scare quotes in the title…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
You’d think.
Yet, I know that Tauriq and I both feel sometimes that people are reading our articles like we are asking people to join some kind of atheist gestapo which throws anyone with any superstition into a work camp.
AH.Thanks. My point was not to belittle the author of this particular post at all, I just think that many of us have a tendency to throw around the word “militant” without actually thinking about what it really means. Dawkins and Hitchens for example might be called (and ignore the value implications of the word in honor of its actual meaning) “aggressive” atheists, but unless they’re leading a rag-tag atheist army against a theocratic dictatorship, or are in another similar situation, I don’t even see why we are using the word, period.
As for a comment by Robin, I am not alone when I say that yes, while blind faith is a serious social ill, it is hardly the only source of fundamentalism and wrongness in the world. Frankly any explanation of authoritarianism and/or totalitarianism of any form- secular or religious- has to take neurology and evolutionary psychology into account. It is my pet theory- which I hope shall be proved or disproved some day- that as much as we have a sex drive in our brains we also have a kind of authoritarian drive, the strength of which obviously varies. Rodrigo knows a lot more about the brain than I do, it’s his specialty (I’m a physical anthro major, so I do know a bit about evolutionary psychology), but it seems like a plausible idea for the time being. I think to claim that religion or any other social institution, like capitalism or other ideologies- is directly responsible for anything shifts the focus away from human beings who come up with the ideologies in the first place.
It was a fascinating response, and again I agree with much of what you say.
*hopefully some day we will run into each other in a conference, and we can talk in person, I think I could learn a lot from you.
As to your conclusion about successful strategies, I’m with you there 100%. I even agree that Dawkins has not been his most effective with the religious.
Though an interesting anecdote is that I, myself, am a Dawkins de-convert. I was persuaded to walk away from my faith by “The God Delusion.”
What I argue is that the project of trying to get people to question their faith is a worthwhile project.
I think that to make this an effective project it would require experts to weigh-in. Advertising, marketing people. Campaign consultatnts, communications experts. I think the biggest problem is that those of us who are trying to carry this message are not particularly good at it. (myself included).
I read Matt Nisbett’s blog “Framing Science,” which you might like. He argues that new atheism is hurting the efforts to garner public support for science.
But what I get the most from his blog is that communications is a refined field which has lots of little facts, and counter-intuitive findings, about what makes a message most effective.
Nisbett has decided to put his efforts in favor of science, which I admire.
What I would like to see is someone like Nisbett putting his efforts into promoting skepticism of religion and faith.
Definitely not it, I don’t get that sense, but I think you and I, and probably Tauriq would all agree that there is a double standard when it comes to superstition and mental illness, particularly when superstitious memes are organized into doctrines and theologies that are at odds with reality.
A personal anecdote: a few weeks ago I was on the subway and a drooling man walked on, who looked homeless, and who was talking to himself. He dropped (intentionally?) a folded piece of paper with crazy, very clearly schizophrenic run-on, largely incoherent statements written on it that read like a Wesley Willis song, only with Wesley Willis on drugs. Wierd things about “space aliens” and “angels” and other things I’d rather not get into here. As time went on I noticed a bunch of these, all in the same or similar handwriting with similar subject matter left on the seats in the subway. Almost like this guy was making his own versions of the near-ubiquitous Jesus lit that I often find on the train. Like he was trying to evangelize/lit-drop his own, clearly insane worldview.
I should add, as almost goes without saying, my opinion is that this guy is only dangerous to himself because no one is listening to him. But seeing minorities, for example, passing out Chick Tracts when they should be well aware of the fact that the guy is a frakking racist, is always disheartening.
Sorry, that should have been a reply to my other post on this thread (about the schizophrenic man).
“A double-standard about superstition and mental illness” is pretty accurate, Barry. It was no coincedence when I was studying psychopathology, we dealt alot with religious belief. But that’s for another time. It was actually a big issue for us as students and scholars of human behaviour.
By “another time,” I assume I can look forward to a post from you about your experience dealing with religion in psychopathology. One thing I have strongly considered as a career, provided I were to go for a psych PhD, is the use of cognitive behavioral therapy in helping cult members to regain their personal autonomy.
Oh definitely =) I’m really glad to hear that. Counselling these folks was one of the most rewarding things to do (anyone who has participated in this website has the heart to do it. It takes all of an hour a week and really changes lives).
It was particularly one of these people that got me into writing against religious and faith-based agendas. If you ever get your cult help going, keep me informed.
Thanks, but I warn you, once I start drinking, its all epistemology. (I think Roy even has pictures, damn him)
God Delusion is a good book, my atheism is rooted elsewhere, but if it worked for you awesome.
And I agree, science needs better PR. Scientists are terrible at it. But I’m hoping things like blogging will help sciencey types get a better handle on, and appreciation of, the value of communication skills.
I also agree that the new atheism is bad for science, but there are two separate issues there. “Promoting science” and “waking atheists up and getting them active” are two different projects. Both are worthwhile in my opinion. But they have different requirements and can sometimes conflict.
Its also important to remember that some people shy away from atheism because of an aversion to science. They tend to see science as cold and soulless. They come by their lack of belief for reasons other than science. These people tend to think in terms of emotion (spirituality) and believe ‘atheism’ as too rigid, confrontational and negative.
A lot of people on the ‘left’ politically, gravitate toward agnosticism and Humanism for this very reason. Science isn’t ’spiritual’ enough for them.
Understanding peoples emotional needs is also an area we need to work on.
And yeah, we must stay positive. Being critical can be useful, but it can get bitter and negative really quick. That we need to avoid.
There are some interesting points here, but there are also many fallacious arguments.
Citing Gerry Falwell and Ayatollah Khomenei (deceased) as “men the faithful consider their “spiritual” leaders” is wrong and misleading. SOME of the ‘faithful’ consider these men their ’spiritual’ leaders. Many, indeed the majority, do not. There are enormous amounts of Muslims and Christians who are appalled at these people, even in their own countries. Just as many atheists don’t like Dawkins for his bigotry, many Christians and Muslims view these men as betrayers of their faith. Khomenei is dead, but his even stupider successor, Ahmejinebad (I can’t even spell his name!), is charicatured by the Iranian press openly for being an ignorant, superstitious bigot. We in the West are told everyone unconditionally supports this clown in Iran and the Muslim world. Nothing could be further than the truth. Neither Falwell or Khomenei are/were regarded as iconic within their faiths in general. And lest it should be forgotten, Khomenei’s popularity was due to his steadfast opposition to the corruption of the super-secular Shah and the American authorities who installed him. Within Iran there is a vigourous reforming movement which consists of both Muslims and secularists. They are opposed for political reasons, religious reasons being used as justifications for their exclusion from the voting process. Iran is a much more complex place than we think.
As for Falwell, figures like he and Pat Buchanan are extremely sinister figures opposed by many Christians (Catholics, for instance). You are right for challenging them for claiming they ‘know the mind of God’, but this has a) nothing to do with the existence of God and b) is in direct contradiction to the Scriptures they claim to follow. John’s Gospel tells us ‘no man hath seen God at any time’, at a stroke undermining anyone from Falwell to the Pope to Sarah Palin who claims they have a direct line to ‘God’ and know what his ‘will’ is.
Whatever the case, let us be honest. Why take Falwell as representative of religion? Why not Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa whose moral sense politically is unimpeachable and whose Truth And Reconciliation Committee has done much to prevent a bloodbath in his country while also providing a bulwark against ‘forgetting’? Or Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, whose Christianity and Islam were key to their humanistic vision (should we speaking of people who, like Khomenei, are no longer with us)? Everything is more subtle than the extreme suggests. To characterise every Christian as being a follower of Gerry Falwell and every Muslim as the Ayatollah Khomenei is like claiming every football supporter is a violent idiot because of football hooliganism or every German is an anti-semite because of Neo-Nazis. There are millions of men and women of conscience whose religion leads them to a more thoughtful view of humanity just as there are millions to whom it means reaction and bigotry.
Next, is there such a thing as an extremits atheist? Well, maybe not at the moment, but there have been. Dawkins likes to pretend that no atheist has ever done anything unpleasant in the name of atheism. Well, alas, go and have a chat to Tibetan Buddhists, Mongol Muslims or Russian Orthodox Christians. ‘Militant atheism’ was, I’m afraid, a very real and bloody element of Communist/Marxist ideology. Churches were closed, priests were harrassed, Jews were imprisoned for not renouncing their faith and Muslims were deported or massacred in Stalin’s Soviet Union. In Communist China, religious belief has been persecuted for decades until recently. Tibet’s culture as a repository of Buddhism has been smashed up until recently and members of the peaceful Falung Gong have been persecuted for a long time. Over the border in Cambodia, Communist leader Pol Pot hardly behaved better. And whether Dawkins likes it or not, all this WAS done in the name of Atheism. Communist Atheism maybe, but still Atheism.
Similarly Dawkins’s feeble argument that Hitler was ‘a Catholic’ cuts no ice. Hostility to religion was a central tenet of Hitler’s Nazism as well as his henchmen. Christianity was regarded as a pollution of the Aryan ethic by the Jews (cf MEIN KAMPF). Under the Nazis, Christians were arrested if they opposed him and all the Churches were amalgamated under one National Church. Meanwhile a total of probably 0% of Hitler’s rhetoric consisted of Catholic imagery. Hitler was as much a Catholic as Trotsky was an orthodox Jew. I wish Dawkins had a smidge more intellectual honesty on this score. Meanwhile, opposition to Hitler often came from Christian quarters. I would refer you to Pastor Niemoller and Sophie Scholl and the Weisse Rose movement who were inspired by a Lutheran Bishop’s speaking out against Hitler and Nazism. No doubt most German Christians did not speak out, but if we are to cite Falwell as a ’spiritual leader’, isolating him from his context and suggesting he ‘represents’ Christians, then why not say the same of Sophie Scholl?
Even worse than all that, Nazism’s racial ideology took direct inspiration, like it or not, from Atheism’s reluctant Prophet, Charles Darwin. Darwin’s view was more subtle than anyone likes to admit. He ended up hating Christianity for ethical reasons (he loathed the doctrine of Hell) but started out training as a Minister in the Anglican Church. He is said to have ‘converted’ on his death bed but this is disputed. Closer to the truth is that he wasn’t sure what was out there. Nonetheless it was a cousin of his who came up with Eugenics (a huge influence on the Nazis, the South Africans and American Segregationists) and Social Darwinism was a hideous offshoot of Darwin’s ideas. Now, we may say that this wasn’t Darwin’s fault, that these were things done in his name but which were perversions he would not have sanctioned, but I’m afraid we could say the same for Christianity, all the excesses of which have next to no connection with Christ’s teachings and which he would also not have sanctioned. The only conclusions one can make is that there is no idea, however pure or noble, which cannot be perverted for nefarious ends. Atheism, or atheistical ideas, have lead to as much misery thanks to unscrupulous or ignorant people as Belief.
REAL Militant Atheism had a gun in its hand and a Concentration Camp/Gulag behind it. I suggest that the ‘Militant Atheism’ you are talking about is an Atheism which challenges hypocrisies and complacencies. But HISTORICAL Militant Atheism has caused untold bloodshed as well. To be fair, you call it ’so-called Militant Atheism’. In fact it isn’t at all. I think what you mean is outspoken Atheism.
To turn to the issue of not needing to look into the Scriptures or works of theologians to understand or explain Faith. Well, I am very sad to see ignorance championed on a site which claims to be defending Reason. Ignorance is what makes conflict happen. If one is to challenge complacency and hypocrisy, one cannot, in all honestly, claim that one doesn’t have to find out about the other side’s point of view. That is at least as complacent and hypocritical as a Muslim condemning the Satanic Verses without reading it or a Christian condemning the Life of Brian without seeing it. If you want Reason to be taken seriously, do not celebrate willful ignorance. The best way of defeating someone is demolishing them on their own terms. This argument is as prejudiced as the prejudice you are attacking.
You say these works are, anyway, ‘untrue’. Well, how can you know this if you haven’t read them? I read anti-Darwinists saying ‘Evolution doesn’t fit with the known facts’. Well I want to know from them what they are referring to. I don’t get it, because they don’t know. But that doesn’t make an Atheist who doesn’t know what he is talking about any better than them. I am sure you see what I am saying. And a member of a religion who does not bother to inform themselves about what they are supposed to believe or what their greatest minds believed gets as little sympathy from me. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is dangerous, whatever ideology, Atheist or Believing, Marxist or Fascist, it is attached to.
You say that there is no proof of the ‘monotheist God’, but what do you mean by this? Are you referring to the ‘monotheist God’ of Plato, Descartes. Spinoza (to leave out religious thinkers)? Or are you challenging the Kabblistic idea of ‘the monotheist God’? Or that of Orthodox Christianity (a VERY subtle idea of God)? Or the limitless Brahma of the Hindus? Or the God of 99 Names of Islamic Sufism? Never heard of these? Haven’t read them? Well may I recommend you do – as unless one defines what one means by ‘the monotheist God’ or, indeed, what different Believers have defined by it, one cannot possibly claim that ‘it doesn’t exist’. If one doesn’t know what one is referring to, then how can one know what would be ‘evidence’ for it? This goes for Believers to. It is there job to inform themselves. And if they don’t, it is even more the job of whatever religious authorities who inform them to inform THEMSELVES and thus keep a more sophisticated understanding of their values alive.
Dawkins often challenges Believers to ‘go and read a few books about how Evolution works’. And so he should. But he should also inform HIMSELF of the other side too, as should everyone. Otherwise one is guilty of intellectual arrogance, willful ignorance (a shameful position) and complacency as much as one’s opponents. For me, the best attacks on religion come from figures such as Nietzsche and Simone Weill who actually KNEW what they were talking about. Thus they destroy their enemies with their own weapons, instead of posturing without their foes’ city walls. Likewise I would take a Believer who argued with a full knowledge of Evolution much more seriously than one who just said it was a load of nonsense ‘because the Bible tells me so’. Claiming ignorance is ok because something one hasn’t looked into ‘isn’t true’ must, surely , be a contradiction in terms. It means you’re operating out of prejudice, making a valued judgement before you even open a book. This is as backward as any prejudiced Believer who won’t open a Science Book.
You should also be aware that in my country it is the Muslim community who have no problem with Evolution and Scientific Discovery. They don’t have a Seven Days of Creation view in the way SOME Christians do…
The REAL reason why it IS important for BOTH sides of this debate to find out about their opposing sides is because, like it or not, Religion and Science have a lot in common. Both are Thought Systems which the human race has used to try and understand itself. Both delude themselves that they have ‘the Truth’. We don’t need to go into the inherent problems with Religion in this way but it still astonishes me how little so-called Rationalists seem to be aware that, since Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg, the Scientific Method has become a very blunt and imprecise instrument indeed. Science has moved on from Classical Physics. Newton, Descartes and Hume – even Darwin! – are as much dinosaurs as Aquinas, Maimonides and Avicenna. Dawkins is operating in the dark. Even Hawkings is admitting he doesn’t know. Empiricism and the Scientific Method has given way to pure Mathematics as the means to understand how the Universe (or even Multiverse!) really operates. In a discussion with a Quantum Scientist the other day it was revealed to me that using the Hadron Collider in CERN to unravel the secrets of the Cosmos was actually like trying to use an old-fashioned microscope to look at an atom.
Look at the ideas of the pioneers of Quantum Physics (the guys mentioned above as well as de Broglie & G N Lewis and many others) and then at David Bohm, Hiley and the originators of String Theory and you will find that all your linear views of the Cosmos are dead as a dodo. Scientists have been panicked by the discovery that 2 + 2 does not always equal 4. All the big contortions of Quantum Science have been about trying to find a way of squaring the real behaviour of the Cosmos with our DESIRE for 2 + 2 to equal 4.
Although I am not a Scientist I have bothered to look into this. I have also bothered to look into the Thought Systems that call themselves Mysticism. And this is where informing oneself is important. QM is the Mysticism of Science. Mysticism is the QM of Religion. Bohr, Heisenberg, Rutherford and Schroedinger all informed themselves in Mysticism – the Upanishads, the Vedas, Kabbalah, Hermeticism etc etc because they found in those texts parallels and metaphors for the new scientific models of the Universe they were finding. David Bohm, when asked if the implications of QM were not different to Mysticism said “I don’t know that there is necessarily any difference”. Heisenberg himself supervised and proof read every chapter of the book THE TAO OF PHYSICS by Fritjof Capra (dismissed as ‘pseudoscience’ by ‘hard-headed’ Scientists. So much for Heisenberg!). What unites QM and Mysticism is that both are the same as the ‘Cosmic Religion’ spoken of by Einstein (which Dawkins says ‘we can all sign up to superficially’, having not actually read what Einstein meant by it). Mysticism and QM deal in the nature of Reality, the Cosmos and Consciousness’s role within it. The Mystical definition of God is VERY close, nay, almost identical to many of the QM ideas of the Universe. As Einstein points out, Scientists AND ‘the religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image’. Similarly, Bohm said, when asked about his theory of the Implicate and Super-Implicate Orders in an interview with Renee Weber:
“WEBER: Is the super-implicate order a euphemism for God?
BOHM: I don’t know what the meaning of the question is since the super-implicate order is in turn part of a still greater implicate order. It’s not a euphemism for God because its limited.
WEBER: Then let’s shift the question to the ultimate super super-implicate order.
BOHM: But we can’t grasp that in thought. We’re not saying that any of this is another word for God. I would put it another way: people had insight in the past about a form of intelligence that had organised the universe and they personalised it and called it God. A similar insight can prevail again today without personalising it and without calling it a personal God.”
If you look into what they are talking about you will find that there is disputed but considerable ‘evidence’ for the Mystical notion of God held by Mystics in all traditions. Thus there is, potentially, considerable meeting ground between Science and Spirituality, one only has to look into it. Indeed, it may be the means to find common ground and begin to move the debate forward from simplistic school-room arguments. There is a point of communication here which could open everyone’s minds. But this would mean informing oneself about things which ‘weren’t true’ so why bother?
You will note that I used the term ‘Science and Spirituality’ here and not ‘Science and Religion’. That is deliberate. It seems to me here that you are arguing about a number of separate things which are ending up being confused. The existence or non-existence of God is NOT the same thing as the value or lack of value of Religion. God and Religion are related but they are not the same. Religion being a load of rubbish does not ‘disprove’ the existence of God. Likewise, I hate to say it to religious people, but the existence of God does not validate the existence of Religion. Religion is an INTERPRETATION of what God might be and is culture and date specific. God, by his/her/its very definition is above culture and date. If Religion fails, its largely to do with human nature, not God. And you will even find built into most Religions an awareness that Religion and even Scripture is a feeble approach to understanding God, not that the majority of Believers would know that…
I mentioned ’specific to culture and date’. Criticism of Religion has to take this into account. Only through willful historical ignorance can Religion be characterised as a static thing. If you look at the history of every Religion you will find that, like anything else, it evolves through time. Not only that but you will find that in its early phases it is incredibly dynamic and progressive socially, spiritually AND scientifically. Most of our Western Science is based on Muslim learning (we got our number system, algebra and algorithms from them, they also worked out the world was round long before we did) which in turn was filched from the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Zoroastrians, the ancient Egyptians and the Byzantine Christians. Only mugs like Dawkins dare to pretend that Science started with the Enlightenment. The foundations of Science lie in millenia of experimentation carried out by cultures which believed in Gods and/or God. Even the doyens of the Enlightenment, Descartes and Newton, were firm believers in God, Newton militantly so (he regarded Atheism as ‘irrational’). Dawkins feebly claims that Newton ‘professed to be religious’ . This is pure wish-fulfilment. Newton was a Militant Believer who despised Atheists and actually felt his Scientific investigations were secondary to his studies of Alchemy, Astrology and Bible Codes (I kid you not!). Even the Royal Society which recently got into trouble when its President, an Anglican Minister, suggested teachers should be prepared to discuss Creationism in class, was founded by a group of Freemasons, including Elias Ashmole, a keen follower of Dr John Dee and fervent Alchemist who believed he had the secret of the Philosophers’ Stone. The poor schmuck who spoke about Creationism was misrepresented as having said it should be taught as Science and was forced to resign (Dawkins himself, when asked, described his appointment as ‘like a Monty Python sketch and voiced his hostility to him). In fact what he had said was that Teachers should be prepared to talk about it if it came up so that they could explain how it wasn’t scientific. So it seems witch-hunts and forced resignations are not just the privy of Militant Believers…
You may be just as surprised to know that Aquinas and Augustine speculated about ideas of evolution, while the Sufi genius Rumi and the Kabbalists of the Jews had firm and clear beliefs that we had all evolved out of lower forms of life. And yet these people were, as we know, all ‘deluded’ or ‘psychotic’, as Dawkins likes to say. Alas, if all cultures which believed in God(s) were collectively mentally ill, somehow they still managed amazing feats of engineering and architecture (the Pyramids anyone?), art (the Cistine Chapel?), literature (the Mathnawi, the Divine Comedy, the Mahabarata?) while simultaneously laying down the foundations of modern Science. One of Dawkins most mendacious lies is that if we had left things to the Religious authorities we would all be moving around in horses and carts. Science did not begin with the 18th Century.
At the same time, Believers have to take the culture and date element of Religion into account. Your average modern Muslim or Christians is a pale imitation of his predecessors with a much less sophisticated view of their Scriptures than even 1st and 2nd Century AD commentators! You will find Origen in the early centuries of Christianity pouring scorn on people who think the story of Genesis is literal truth and figures like Heracleon saying that to view the Gospels as historical fact is to mistake their meaning altogether, thus falling into ‘flesh and error’. Ignorance is not a virtue and it never will be, whatever one’s value system.
I should just add that the assertion that Belief is not compatible with Reason is also not true. Kant, Leibniz, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, Descartes and Hegel all regarded belief in God and/or other realities than the material as perfectly Rational, as did Aquinas, Bishop Berkeley and others…
Does any of this ‘prove’ anything? No it doesn’t, except for the fact that none of us can know the ‘truth’ about any of these questions. Religion didn’t produce ‘Heaven on Earth’, Reason has not produced a Utopia or Peace and Harmony. We’re stuck with the intransigent reality of human nature. So far we haven’t come up with a solution to that. We will have to go on trying, but misrepresenting and remaining ignorant of the Other is not going to get us a step forward in any direction! Our great enemy is the closed mind. Don’t lets undermine claims to Rationality by using the weapons we think our opposing side use. The reality is that we are all human beings. The human mind is our common denominator and no-one is immune to falling into self-serving delusions. Everyone, Atheists and Believers should make an effort to understand the other side, because the reasons for each of us taking are view have something to offer. I will always oppose Religious dogmatism, particularly when it reactionary and right wing, but I will also resist the patronising tones of self-appointed ‘Rationalists’ who don’t or won’t inform themselves or properly ask why people have these beliefs. There is a saying ‘Nothing human is alien to me’. The key word there is ‘human’. Atheists and Believers should remember that whatever their creed, that is the common denominator. Atheists who don’t believe this of Believers are going to have to go and reeducate themselves and READ some stuff, I’m afraid. Similarly, Believers who believe humans can be sacrificed to their Gods should reeducated themselves in the Scriptures and Teachings they claim to follow…
“No man hath seen God at any time’ should be everyone’s motto…
And ‘Know thyself’ should be the next…
Thank you for listening! I hope I have remained courteous on this!
One more thing…
We have talked about ‘faith’ here… What do we feel about Gnosis?