I’m not sure what it means to be a committed atheist other than, perhaps, that you don’t expect to wake tomorrow as a committed theist. To me, discussions of the truth or falsity of theistic belief systems have faded so far into my rearview mirror that I no longer consider myself to be opposed to them. To the extent that universe exists to me at all, it is as an unwelcome intrusion into my philosophical equanimity. Someone says something obnoxiously theistic and I am forced to confront, again, that the world is still ablaze with this legacy and that rivers of blood still flow in country after country in the name of one or the other interpretation of one or the other of these theistic religions.
I only care because people won’t stop committing violence in the name of this God.
But I’m beyond atheism, which going by the Greek means nothing other than “not a theist.” I can still get with being an agnostic, which literally means “not possessing divine wisdom.” But I’d rather not be called anything. I’m not part of a team. I’m not trying to convert anyone to anything more than being good to each other.
Everyone is at a different stage in the process, and I recognize many of those stages, having gone through them at a younger age. But, trust me, after a while these theological questions cease to exist. Among the last to fade to black is the question about why so many people you respect insist on clinging to something that they know better than to actually believe. Sometime after that comes the compassion which follows from truly understanding the frailty of all human beings and being happy that they find comfort in their theism. I’m talking about being actually happy for them. This is where you overcome your wish that things were different, not in the sense that you’ll give up trying to make the world a better place but in the sense that you personally can do a better job consoling the grief stricken than the time worn solutions we know so well.
This is rationalism coming to peace with its limitations. It’s not rationalism that is particularly limited, but people, and that’s okay. Because the measure of a person, and the worth you place on them, is not their capacity for being reasonable.
The journey doesn’t end here, though, because you can’t view the mass of humanity as mentally handicapped and deserving of the same compassion as a wheelchair-bound cripple without at the same time having a debilitating sense of arrogance and self-regard.
The cure for this is to realize your own handicaps. They may not be in your capacity for logic or even in your overall moral behavior. But perhaps you can’t control your appetites. Maybe you aren’t as honest as you’d like to believe. Maybe your word isn’t as good as your bond. Maybe you’re selfish in your personal relationships. I’m sure you’ve let some people down who had the right to depend on you. The last arrogance is the arrogance that being smart or rational makes you a better person. If you’re truthful with yourself, you’re a cripple like everyone else, and you need forgiveness and you need to make amends.
Anyway, you go along in this journey long enough and one day you wake up and realize that you are no longer living in the universe where theistic questions are even part of the debate. No one in your world would even ask a question like “does God exist?”
The answer isn’t “no.”
The answer is “what?”
I cannot agree with you here. The reason why I consider it important to discuss the irrationality of religious beliefs is that rationality is a desired trait in a working society, and people who cannot think rationally can’t use their weakened reasoning skills when the subject turns to politics or war or social justice or anything else that affects something besides themselves.
There are lots of cliches about this, such as “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” or “never try to reason a person out of a belief they didn’t reason themselves into”. The truth is that we need to encourage skeptical, rational, reality based thinking everywhere we can so that people have working brains. It’s really important.
Well, I believe that I am engaged in that battle everyday in my own way.
But not in the sense that I am trying to disabuse people of their religious beliefs.
Take the single issue of mourning.
I can’t reason you out of that. Grief breaks people.
It breaks them physically.
It breaks then mentally.
It can break them morally.
When I talk about the limits of rationality really being the limits of people, I mean it.
I’ll fight The Stupid with all I’m worth, but compassion comes first.
And not compassion born of pity and arrogance, but the compassion that doesn’t set one above and apart.
reduce your margins by at least 25 percent. your current margins cause eye strain. think “digby,” and thank you.
I’m a committed atheist.
I believe that not only is religion bullshit, it’s a huge problem, and it needs to be eradicated. Furthermore I believe that theists are not only idiots because of their beliefs, but that even those who don’t engage in the worst offenses of their kind share a good portion of the guilt for clinging to their beliefs in the face of the problems.
I also believe that because of this, it’s OK to treat the religious with hostility. To mock them, humiliate them, attack them, to cause them mental and financial pain. I think their beliefs not only make them lesser humans because of the stupidity, but make them immoral, inferior, and dangerous because of them.
I vote Democratic largely because the party is the least religious we have. Because our leaders are willing to take this on head on, and because I believe in Bill Maher style liberalism of openly attacking the religious.
That’s what it means.
You and I are political opponents.
For a non-religious person, you have a lot of beliefs in just a single comment!
Let’s see, neoliberal asshole who wants to destroy all religions, or a liberal Christian eager to work with an atheist (and UU) like me for the kind of social justice causes thats(ick) i(n) DC regularly shows up here to mock. Which one is my ally? Gee, that’s just not a tough question. Eff you,wanker.
“Liberal Christian” An oxymoron.
Your ignorance is showing.
probably a kid, didn’t live through the Civil Rights Movement.
and speaking of which, I was reading this wikipedia entry just yesterday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker
Seventy year old kid. And spent far too much time in church with these Christian bigots.
You reference the Civil Rights Movement. Are you aware that the Bible says that black people are inferior because Ham “saw his father’s nakedness”? That’s what they taught me in that Protestant Church. A friend of mine was not so “lucky”. He was a Catholic altar boy and was raped by a “Brother” at parochial school.
There’s your “Liberal Christians” for you.
Your ignorance is still showing. So is your ass.
You want a piece of it?
what you write is not stated in the Bible it is the slaveholder circular reasoning on Genesis 9:18-27, – the sons of Ham were cursed to be slaves, therefore, “black people”, who were at the time enslaved, must be “sons of Ham”
This is a good translation
http://bible.oremus.org/
I realize this, Errol. It is an example of Christian thought. In fact, even at the time, as a pre-teen, I questioned why God would condemn all of Ham’s descendants forever.
So is yours. http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2015/2/14/205934/243/29#29
n/t
Given the challenge our grandchildren face, if we don’t stop bickering ore whose imaginary dog has the bigger dick, we’re not gonna’ make it.
We are but fleas agitating the hide of a far greater organism.
If I understand you here, the answer has to do with those slippery words “believe”, “God”, and “exist”? Each one of them is an informational black hole.
Take “believe”. What is so important to you about what I believe? That’s not a taunt, that’s an open question that needs to be explored about a social relationship between the questioner and the respondent.
Take “God”. In your question (asks you to the inquisitor of all things godly), to what are you pointing with you use the verbal symbol G-O-D? How is that different from what you are pointing to with the verbal symbol A-L-L-A-H? There is a very superficial level at which all the reference is is to a literary character in the collection of books that Christian tradition calls The Bible (although that tradition cannot agree among themselves which books are in and which are out.) Or the literary character referenced by Mohammed. At a deep level, it is an intentional conceptual abyss beyond language designed to interrupt an internal chatter and beyond philosophy itself (or orthogonal to philosophy). There are quite a few religious thinkers who understand the impulse to idolatry in all religions as an error which interrupts a pointing through a hole in language. The fallacy of easy answers. Which is why religious literature always comes in poetry or drama instead of in straight-up prose.
Take “exists”. What the heck does it mean to exist? In what sense does a question about the existence of God have any meaning at all? Even if you accept philosophical theism, there is some reflexiveness or recursion in the notion of the existence of God that makes the question very problematic from the start.
What exactly happened in Western intellectual history that created a self-consciously secular symbolic life? My suspicion is that it was the shock of war. The religious wars of the 15th-17th century spawned the Enlightenment project that set anti-clerical philosophy on its way, scientific philosophy on its way, and social philosophy on its way. And World War I and the nature of modern war fully established the new mindset of a secular world. And common schools and public schools by dealing with mundanity saw the world in its secular framework with empirical methods and critical thinking.
The religious reaction ensued. And now, anti-clericalism adopts the label of atheism.
In the 1960s, a theologian named Leslie Weatherhead wrote a book, The Christian Agnostic, which examined that topic. (Around the same time that the theologian Thomas A. J. Altizer was shaking up the popular media with his statement “God is dead”–another of those “What does that even mean statements. And Richard L. Rubenstein had written After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism.) All of those in their own ways were struggles of very religious thinkers to see if philosophical theology had any useful insights left or had degenerated into an empty and defensive game of denial the modern transformation of Western culture.
Movemental atheism seems to me to be a politicized reaction to the politicization of religion that has intensified since the collapse of the Soviet Union created a vacuum of ideological struggle.
Being political, it tends toward polemics just as its antagonists do. Likely with the same disastrous results. And likely comes, ironically, with its own share of idolatry just like radical political Wahabism, which in the name of iconoclasm has destroyed old Mecca to replace it with shopping malls for pilgrims at which are shops of Cartier, Tiffany, and Louis Vuitton. Just outside of the billion-dollar redevelopment of the infrastructure for the holy sites of the Kaaba and Great Mosque. The idolatry for the “new” and “modern”.
Yes, to a degree you are right to target the elusive meaning of theistic terms.
It’s important not to dismiss the weight on the answer NOT being ‘no.’
But then it is even more important not to place much weight at all on me not being willing to say that the answer is ‘no.’
Sorry to speak so strangely, but there isn’t an actual language for communicating from my universe back to the universe of theism, so it gets to be a koan thing pretty quickly.
One way of trying to communicate this is to look at the old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes.
This is commonly understood to mean that atheism is a luxury people give up immediately when faced with the imminence of their own death or the harsh reality of their own powerlessness.
But it’s not literally true that there are no atheists in foxholes.
The truth is that rationality is fragile because people are fragile. And people break, all the time.
And when they break, their ability to reason breaks along with the rest of them. And when they are broken, cold reason doesn’t have all the answers nor does it often have a cure.
If you are dying from an addiction, I don’t care what you find or use to cure yourself. Just cure yourself.
Confront your powerlessness. Offload your guilt. Seek forgiveness. Make amends. Lead others along the path that works.
Theism is a great track record of healing the broken. Cold logic does not. That doesn’t make theism the only path to repair but it makes it an important path for many people.
How do you console the grieving mother? The bereaved widower? The confused child?
Start with the fact that people in need are broken people and stop expecting them to be rational, and stop thinking reason is going to save them.
The limits of rationality are the limits of people, not reason.
But, then, why can’t I speak that language?
Because I’m basically on another plane of consciousness where asking me whether God exists or not doesn’t make any sense.
It’s not a question that has an answer, whether positive or negative.
Ask me if a unicorn exists and I’ll tell you that they exist all over the place in countless books, movies, and knick-knack stores, but they don’t exist as an animal in nature.
Ask me if God exists and I just don’t know what to tell you. You aren’t saying anything that I can answer. God definitely exists in the sense that unicorns exist. But that wasn’t what you were asking me.
Whatever it is you mean by God and why ever you think it matters whether he exists, I can’t possibly know. But to ask the question like that without telling me why it is supposed to matter means that I can’t tell you one way or the other.
My answer really is, it doesn’t matter. If you think it does matter, you’re probably wrong.
And my advice is, forget about it. Treat other people well.
…Sometime after that comes the compassion which follows from truly understanding the frailty of all human beings and being happy that they find comfort in their theism. …
I have yet to get to your point of progress on the continuum. I find steadfast theism to be troubling. It holds too many folks back from accepting the world as it is and not as it should be according to the theist view. It also seems that steadfast theism has a correlation with a certain conservative viewpoint.
A lot of things are troubling about human beings, boran2.
Maybe my point about talking about a continuum is that rejecting theism is the beginning of a journey and that the path curls back on itself.
In many ways, it isn’t until you have traveled a long way and arrived back where you started that you learn humility and compassion.
Maybe the biggest error of all is to put your self-worth in the brains basket and think you’re better than other people because you can think better than they can.
This is the conceit of the rationalist, and one they recognize in every other circumstance, whether it be good looks, immense wealth, tremendous luck, perfect health…
But they take forever to see it in themselves because they value reason so highly that they judge harshly all those who aren’t good at it.
I think it’s no accident that so many more rational than thou “movement” atheists are libertarians or libertarian-leaning. They have a hopelessly shallow and inadequate model of the human psyche which is very close kin to Homo oeconomicus.
It depends on who you’re asking.
An atheist will say that they are committed like you stated… in essence, they aren’t going to go and start believing in a God tomorrow because something good or bad happens to them. They’re committed to the notion that there is no God. Their social or economic ideology is separate. They just don’t believe in a God. My brother is an atheist, and he’s also a conservative. They exist.
A theist or religious person who only understands the concept of “believing in”, will say that Atheists (capital A) are a tribe of people who have particular beliefs against God. Kinda like Devil-worshipers lite. Again, because they only understand believing in something, they project their tribal identity onto atheists as if atheists are a tribe.
As an agnostic, I would define my belief/lack thereof as committed in the sense that unless I have some personal experience that cannot be explained otherwise, I won’t assume one way or the other. Mostly because my entire consciousness rests here in observable reality. Give me some DMT and I might change my mind, but that’s another blog post entirely.
If I had to guess, the whole Committed Atheist (capital A) thing is about trying to pin some crazy gun nutter who killed 3 Muslims on Atheism, the same way religious people love bringing up Stalin’s genocide and atheism, even though Stalin wasn’t murdering people because they weren’t Atheists (capital A).
As per usual, there’s a whole lot of projection, because conservatives are simple-minded folk. They can only describe others as they themselves are. So, since they identify as “Christians” or “Muslims” or however they describe and cordon themselves off from everyone else, they apply it to “Atheists”, so that Atheists are a group with common beliefs…even though the very definition of atheist is a disbelief.
Projection and cognitive dissonance are a real bitch. I’m starting to think of the pair as trained cognitive deficits intended to get conservatives to be useful idiots. I used to think of them as defense mechanisms to protect the psyche so that someone doesn’t want to admit they were wrong, but I think it’s more trained then self-defense, because if you do it very carefully, you can actually deprogram conservatives.
Flying Monkeys.
One of my grandson’s fathers is a flipping genius. A medical researcher, practicing physician, university professor. An expert in grandfather clocks (he makes his own), cut crystal (he’ been supenaed as an expert witness in a crystal fraud case), the Lindesfarne Gospels (he found an error in the British Museum’s interpretation of a passage), a recorded pianist AND cigars.
And he’s Hindu. White as a lily, southern accent, and Hindu. Believes in flipping Flying Monkeys. Its enough to drive you to drinking.
I hate religions.
There was a time when I considered myself agnostic. Raised in a home where religion was seen as a crutch for the stupid and weak, I was encouraged to be rational and reject religion as superstition. There was just one problem: my experience.
As a very young child, age three and under, I felt like I was on fire with something that wasn’t me. It came through me. I can remember that feeling.
That experience faded away to memory but others replaced it. As a twelve year old, I would contemplate reality in a way that broke open my mind and would put me in these states of bewilderment and ecstasy. Soon after, my uncle taught me to meditate. I would sit in a chair, meditating, and a stream of tears would involuntarily run down my face. Something was touching me.
Later on, I experimented with drugs. I was a top student in high school and later an undergrad at Johns Hopkins. Having been raised in a lower middle class home, I worked hard to earn my place in elite academia. In other words, I was no intellectual lightweight. And yet psychedelics put me face to face with the most beautiful experiences of unity (or God if you prefer).
As an adult, I experimented with many faiths. First the Judaism in which I was raised. Later all sorts of new age stuff. Then liberal Christianity. Then Buddhism. Then Hinduism. Each was valuable. But I was just dabbling.
Ultimately, I found the most amazing teacher among the Sufis. Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam. There’s so much more to Islam than the vast majority of Westerners realize. The teachings are very deep and holy and beautiful. Those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam do not understand the religion they claim to love. Same for Christians who kill in the name of Jesus and those on other paths who commit atrocities.
Religion gets terribly twisted. It’s frequently used to harm people. But to reject religion itself is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s so much richness to an inner spiritual life.
When I was younger, I wanted so much to experience the world. I would travel and dive into novel experiences. Once I discovered how rich spiritual experience could be, all of that outer stuff faded away. Not that it’s wrong to travel the world. Doing so might be even richer now. But I no longer need it the way I once did. Everything’s right here, right now — whenever I turn within.
There’s an arrogance to those who see those who appreciate religion as weak or stupid. They may be seeing something that you’re missing. The Sufi poet Rumi spoke of the enormous blessing it is to be touched by a yearning to taste God. Consider some of the brilliant men who were religious. Thomas Jefferson wrote his own version of the bible. He studied many sacred texts, including Qu’ran, and had a real appreciation for the message. Einstein was, like Jefferson, a deist. Newton was deeply religious. There were then, and are today, countless brilliant people of religion.
Interesting…it was experimentation with drugs that led me to finally reject the last bit of religious faith. Mystical experiences, I reasoned, must be just people getting high at best and a form of mental illness at worst (hearing voices etc). Meditation and intense prayer seem to elicit some sort of response from the brain similar to hallucinogens. It seems to me the difference is only a matter of degree.
I guess your experiences highlight the different ways people use religious belief. Is it a way to achieve states of bewilderment and ecstasy or is it a moral framework for living life on earth so as to achieve eternal life in some sort of heavenly paradise?
Had it been just drugs, I too might have turned away. Drug experiences confirmed earlier mystical tastings. The mind can dismiss anything. But just the fact that the universe exists the way it does, where something like life could come into being, seems bizarrely unlikely absent some sort of intent.
Bewilderment is necessary because there’s so much we do not and cannot know. It’s possible for religion to create a moral framework without being driven by a desire for reward. In a way, sincere religion forces one to make existential choices about the kind of person he wants to be. If there’s a right and a wrong, what do I want to strive for? One could make those same choices absent a belief in anything beyond this world. Many do. However, I’ve met many who define themselves as atheist or agnostic who carry within their hearts great love of that spark which is beyond words. Sometimes I meet such a person and consider them to be true lovers of God, even if they themselves don’t see it.
One of my oldest and best friends considers herself an atheist. However, again and again, I see evidence of a heart that carries enormous light. At those times I’ll say, “You know this idea that you’re not religious is complete bullshit.” Occasionally she’ll agree.
Very interesting. I am Jewish and some Sufi writers were a fundamental influence on me as well.
The deeper I delve into Sufism and Islam, the more I understand Judaism. That there really is no difference becomes quickly apparent when Sufis hang out with Kabalists.
Another consequence of defining yourself as an antagonist of theism is that it is perceived as a rejection of religion.
Rejecting theism is not the same thing as rejecting religion or religious experience. You can give up theism without becoming an antagonist. And no one is forcing you to think that theism=religion.
By definition, theism is religion.
theism
[thee-iz-uh m]
noun
1.
the belief in one God as the creator and ruler of the universe, without rejection of revelation
religion
[ri-lij-uh n]
noun
1.
a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2.
a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects:
When one gets into definitions of God, one is in territory impossible to navigate. To say there is a God is in a way no different from saying there’s not — in that if God is beyond understanding, then anything we say about it has to be false.
You wrote, “Among the last to fade to black is the question about why so many people you respect insist on clinging to something that they know better than to actually believe. Sometime after that comes the compassion which follows from truly understanding the frailty of all human beings and being happy that they find comfort in their theism.”
I read this as a statement that to have faith is a form of weakness or stupidity, a sort of mindless grasping for comfort in a painful, dangerous and hostile world. I cannot help but see that as arrogant.
None of us knows anything when it comes to theology. But it’s every bit as much a statement of faith to reject religion, including theism, as it is to embrace same. Right in the center of existence stands the question, “why?” Why is the universe here, which leads to why are we here, which in turn leads to how are we supposed to spend our time here. One can ignore the question. But the question never goes away.
Arrogance is the biggest hazard for a rationalist.
But it’s not the arrogance of thinking better.
It’s the arrogance of thinking you’re better than other because you think better.
You’re trying to say that I think everyone who is religious or “has faith” is stupid and weak. You assume I think this both because you’re equating theism with all religion and faith, and because you think it makes people lesser people to have childish or unsophisticated beliefs systems. It actually makes them normal.
There are many, many people who are better friends, husbands, fathers, writers than I am who have very silly belief systems. I wish I were more like them.
Yes, there’s a certain arrogance involved in thinking my son’s belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy is childish, but I don’t think less of him for it.
And if someone came up to me today and told me in all sincerity that they fervently believe in Mithra or Zeus or Quexalcote, I wouldn’t think of them any differently, really, from how I view most theists. I’d only wonder why those chose to go in a different direction.
I once was in a car with a very intelligent friend of mine who has a couple of college degrees. He saw a bumper sticker that said “Starfleet Academy” on it. He asked if there was really a Starfleet Academy.
Maybe you’ll ask me if there really is an Easter Bunny.
But, again, the answer to these questions isn’t ‘no.’
And the response shouldn’t be contempt.
So, yeah, arrogance is a problem, but not because we have all the answers. It’s because being rational is actually overrated both in terms of what it can accomplish and in what it means about you as a person.
Or as Dostoyevsky put it: Prince Myshkin.
My favorite book and my best eduction.
Martin, I respect you tremendously. Your political insights are uncommon and I come here frequently to learn from you. But on this score, forgive me in my arrogance if I think you’re missing something important.
Not all religious people think like five year olds. One can value spiritual texts for their insights without taking mythological stories literally. One can turn to a higher power using spiritual techniques and tools that have been around for hundreds of years, that change one’s state of being, without imagining there to be an old man with a beard behind it all.
Religion is about opening up to the mysteries of life and standing in awe, though many who claim to be religious (as well as those who oppose religion) prefer to avow certainty (and close down any sense or appreciation of mystery).
Having walked on many spiritual paths, I can attest to the reality that one can behold the mystery in a variety of ways and that various mythologies (seemingly in opposition to each other) work. I’ve had epiphanies as a Muslim and as a Hindu. I see religions as channels, each presenting a means of approaching the infinite. I don’t care if one approaches through Christianity or Buddhism, through Judaism or Islam, through a love of science or nature or art, through a near death experience, or for that matter if one chooses not to approach at all. People have freedom and that gladdens my heart. To me, that’s evidence of a loving, generous intelligence. I don’t even mind if others consider religion stupid or silly; that too is their right. But I do worry about what happens when liberal perspectives get wedded to religious intolerance and/or intellectual arrogance — because then we split apart and alienate each other.
I personally what people say about religion as mysterious in itself. I’ve met many wonderful people who claim to be atheistic. When I look at their hearts, that’s often not what I see. It’s of course not my place to tell people what their personal philosophies are or should be. And yet I cannot help but notice that some of the people who speak out most strongly against religion have hearts that are pure. Such people seem to me to be lovers of the divine.
I think sometimes people reject religion because they’re deeply offended by the ways its twisted and misused. What’s underneath that sense of outrage is a love of what’s at the core of religion. One of my very good friends claims all the time to be an atheist. Yet when we get into deep discussions, it becomes clear there’s a real love of something beyond words, even a yearning. In those moments, I’ll say “In my book you’re not an atheist but rather a lover of God.” My friend, in those moments, does not disagree.
Second to last paragraph . . . first sentence should begin “I personally see . . .”
Also, by way of clarification, my reference to an intelligence was intended to signify what some choose to call God. I don’t much like the word because it does not even begin to approach the reality, which is why orthodox Jews refuse to write it. If God is beyond definition, then anything humans say about it must be at least grossly insufficient.
I never said all religious people think like five-year olds.
How did you mean this sentence?:
Among the last to fade to black is the question about why so many people you respect insist on clinging to something that they know better than to actually believe.
The same way I mean it about smart kids who are late to give up on Santa Claus.
It sure seems like you’re equating faith with a literal reading of mythology. Kids give up on Santa because they realize he’s not real. But mythological stories can hold great value even if one gets that they’re not literally true. For example, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There was no Adam, no Eve, no Garden. Even the most rudimentary understanding of science makes that clear. And, still, the teachings around the tree of life vs. tree of knowledge are deep and powerful. That’s just an example. Sacred texts are chock full of insights about the nature of man and the nature of life.
Here’s Robert Oppenheimer reading from the Bhagavad Gita, quoting the Hindu deity, Vishnu, after the Trinity explosion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac
Einstein was a deist who didn’t take religious stories at face values. Karen Armstrong, a brilliant comparative religion author, scholar and historian claims that fundamentalism is a twisting of religion which accelerated around 1600 in reaction to the emerging science of the Renaissan. The Greeks and Romans understood that the domains of mythos and logos stand apart. Each has tremendous value but they cannot be conflated.
Science and technology have allowed us to live longer, healthier and more comfortably. However, they don’t do much to give our lives meaning. My shaykh lives in Jerusalem. He sees enormous poverty in the territories and even within Israel among his followers. And yet he comes here and witnesses spiritual poverty. Life has atomized to the point that people rarely know their neighbors. We measure out love with teaspoons to those we deem most worthy. There’s little generosity or open heartedness.
There, extended families may share a single dwelling. People sleep on thin mattresses on the floor. When they wake up in the night to use the bathroom they must tiptoe around and over others. But there’s much love and connection. Throughout the day, people join together in work and prayer. They have enormous problems. They suffer greatly. But their burden is eased by connection, love, community and religion.
One of the reasons I enjoy Islam is the sense of community. People are so kind and generous. Go out to eat together and people race each other to pay the check. Even those who have nothing dig deep to give. Children are given time and attention. Love, politeness and generosity are woven deeply into the culture. When we pray together in community, the heart soars compared to praying alone. As Jesus said, “Whenever two or more are gathered in my name . . .” This principle applies beyond Christianity.
We in the West have enormous wealth. Food is ubiquitous. If we want clean water, we turn on the tap and there’s an endless supply. Even the poorest among us are wealthy by any reasonable world standard. Yet people struggle to find meaning. Despite our many advances, Thoreau’s words still ring true: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Science is about making life outwardly better and it works. Religion is about making life inwardly better and it works. To be whole, we need a place for both logos and mythos.
Part of the reason we’ve lost sight of the value of mythos is that science and technology create so much clear and unambiguous good. Not that there aren’t drawbacks too. But there’s no question that material wealth is far more abundant because of technology and that people live longer and healthier lives.
Religion is effective only to the extent that people are sincere. Because it has always been misused by those who wish to manipulate and control, the value is often obscured. At times it can seem obvious that the value is less than zero — such as when people kill in the name of doctrinal differences. But that’s not religion. That’s tribalism. Religion is about opening oneself to the enormous mystery that’s all around us. When we stand in that place, our hearts open and fill with awe. To the extent our hearts remain open in community, we experience love, connection and meaning.
A world devoid of religion is one starving for spiritual sustenance. We may love our family and friends but, compared to a truly religious life, it’s like wandering in the desert.
You don’t need to explain the richness of religious life or spiritual experience to me.
I have never disputed this.
There’s also a reason that I used the word ‘theist’ rather than the words for any particular theistic religion.
If you are still thinking that there is a man in the sky, heavens above, and that life is a dress rehearsal for a grand judgment, then you’re on the spiritual level of a five year old.
To the degree that you’re understanding of theistic religions is more sophisticated than that, you’re making progress.
But my greater point is that rationalists overvalue reason in the same way that some people overvalue material possessions or physical beauty. We’re not arrogant because we realize that most people are not good at thinking about religious matters. We arrogant because we think we’re better than people who aren’t as logical or rational as we are. We’re arrogant because we look down on people who are weak mentally, even when the reason for that is in no way their fault or even in their control.
This was intended as a rebuke to “atheists” rather than a diss of theists.
The one and only one: ‘In God We Trust’.
> The answer isn’t “no.” The answer is “what?”
Booman, it sounds like you may be an “ignostic”, neither affirming nor denying propositions about God, but recognizing that such propositions have no objective meaning.
Probably more of a utilitarian objection than a protest about elusive objectivity.
There are many straightforward propositions about God that I’m willing to deny.
I just don’t see what is accomplished by denying them.
Do you want to have a conversation about the makeup of the universe? Great! Let’s talk to these guys in a few months. But let’s not go to the press conference and ask them whether or not God exists. It’s impertinent.
More than that, though, this idea that we can make progress by stamping out theistic thinking reminds me of so much conservative thinking about what people ought to do.
People ought to get married before they have children.
People ought to work if they’re able-bodied.
No one is allowed to be weak or succumb to the tragedies we all face in life.
Progressives should focus on achievable change and deal with the world as it is. We’re usually good at that, and much better than conservatives, definitely. But when it comes to other people’s theism, we want them to be supermen.
It’s never going to happen.
Let people survive and heal themselves in the only ways they know how to do those things, and work on making their paths easier, not on converting them to reason.
Yes, “ignostic” is the word. For those to whom it’s new, there’s a WIKI page. Mostly revolves around the idea that warm fuzzy in the sky is not falsifiable. If you want to talk about God, you have to define God. Or as booman said, “what?”. To me it just means the existence of God is not a question for adults. I haven’t given it any thought in decades.
What has really brought me to a point of view much like BooMan’s has been returning to Unitarian Universalism and joining a really wonderful congregation. My church is full of amazing people who do wonderful things in the community, who happen to identify as atheists / humanists (like me), theists of some vague sort, liberal Christians, pagans, or what have you. The very least interesting thing about any of them is what they “believe” or don’t. In Jefferson’s words, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
I am a militant Agnostic.
Which means, I’m actually neither militant, nor a believer.
Make of that what you will….
A fellow traveler.
I am firmly convinced that anyone who thinks they know with certainty the answer to this question is full of shit. It is, in fact, the need for certainty about something perfectly unknowable that I am suspicious of.
To quote Gabriel García Marquez: “I don’t believe in god, but I am scared of him.”
Zen, cund, or not, as it may, or may not, be.
There’s good post up downstream a day or so at War in Context on the difference twixt a-theism (Old Atheism, no-religion, there are no gods) and anti-theism (New Atheism, against-religion, all religions are a pox, Marx’s oppiate, Herbert’s tool of oppression). I fear I fall into both catagories, though purusing this (and other) thread I don’t find it uncommon. I would argue that the Old Atheism I entered into in the sixties When I passed through the doors of perception and embarked upon the path of knowledge, when I chose to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, is my “philosophical” philosophy, regardless that there is no philosophy beyond “there are no gods”. It’s a private thing, ain’t nobody’s business but my own, and I don’t try to ram it down my neighbors’ throat. Which leads us to “New” Atheism.
New Atheism could be argued as being my political philosophy. Religion is everything it is said here to be: it Is a pox on the population. It is evil. Marx’s oppiate, Herbert’s tool of oppression. No, it is not ok to have sex with children, the world is flat, not six thousand years old and no, it is not yours to destroy. The religionists, in particular the abrahamic cults of male domination are rapidly destroying the world my grandchildren are growing up in. That’s all the reason I need to call for their elimination. If We don’t bickering ore whose imaginary dog has the bigger dick, we, as a species, are not gonna’ make it.
Were you drunk when you wrote this?
And if he was, would that invalidate anything he wrote there?
We all know that categories like “American”, “White”, “Protestant”, “Conservative”, “Religious”, “Liberal”, “Beautiful”, “Brown-Haired”, … are just short-hand. There isn’t an exhaustive, iron-clad definition of what those words mean. But they’re convenient because our brains like to organize things into categories as a way of “understanding” them. If you try to define all the details, you can write volumes and never finish.
But saying one is “beyond atheism” doesn’t make much sense to me, either. Are you a fan of Wittgensetin?. He had mind-bending ways of thinking about logic, words and language…
Bertrand Russell went down a rabbit hole in trying to set up a foundational system for Mathematics without any fuzziness. Gödel showed that it was a doomed undertaking.
If people want to call themselves “committed atheists” or “Brights” or whatever, that doesn’t bother me. We all have to figure out what we believe, and those beliefs will invariably have contradictions and things we cannot prove or adequately explain to others.
As a kid, I went though a quite religious phase, but there was always a nagging doubt. I gave it up after a few years, but the topic of religion, and what people believe and why, still interests me.
My bottom line is that people can believe what they like in their private lives, but science and reason, compassion and tolerance, personal freedom and responsibility, must all guide public policy. Getting the balance right is tricky and worth arguing about. Trying to force beliefs, or lack of beliefs, on people has a nasty history in this world.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
It’s not really necessary to get into usage in a Wittgensteinian way if you keep things simple, which is what I prefer to do when communicating in this format.
If you don’t ski, you don’t go around calling yourself an askier. And if you don’t bowl, you don’t go around calling yourself an abowler.
Calling yourself an atheist is basically defining yourself in opposition to something that really isn’t worth your mental energy.
Are you an anorse? An aolympian? An azoroastrian? An adruid?
If you’re still debating these things, you’re still trapped by them. And your thinking isn’t free of them.
Theistic theology has no more interest to me than the proper gender of Thor. Debate about theology is about as stimulating to me as debate about Tic-Tac-Toe strategy. If you haven’t learned the rules by now, well, we have nothing to talk about.
Basically, it’s like walking into a surgical conference and talking about humors.
My take is even more utilitarian. Who is doing more to advance freedom of thought and freedom from oppression- the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (who happens to be a United Church of Christ minister- you know, those supposedly nonexistent liberal Christians) or Sam Harris? I think the answer is painfully obvious.
The problem, IMHO, of saying that religion isn’t important or is irrelevant, is that it isn’t true when it comes to current events and politics in the USA (and elsewhere). Skiers and fans of Norse gods aren’t guiding US policy. People who are religious (at least in their own minds) are using their religious beliefs to guide and bludgeon others in deciding the rules, laws, and policies. Whether we like it or not.
Sure, there are ways of talking about ideas and policy proposals that don’t involve calling religious beliefs stupid or evil or whatever. But those religious beliefs on the other side, and their consequences, do need to be part of the conversation.
There are parallels, and lessons to be learned, from the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the like, and the politics our own time (the trumped-up fears of “the other”, the shouts of secret conspiracies and treason, the belief that bad things only happen in the world because the US is “weak”, etc.).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
And many other people who are religious in a very different way are opposing them. So let’s tell those people they’re idiots and we don’t want their support, because that’ll really help, amirite?
there are many ways to reply to this but I’ll start with this:
Can you think of a policy proposal that you oppose because of the theological justification for the policy rather than the likely result of the policy?
If you can, then go ahead an try to convince people that their theological understanding of the universe is wrong and leading them to propose bad policy.
Otherwise, focus on the policy being bad.
It has more to do with the framing and setting the ground rules of the debate. Politics happens in an environment and the environment affects the paths taken.
“My Senator is a Good Christian™, therefore I support his proposal to …”
If the voters look at things through those lenses, and they often do, rather than looking at policy specifics, then you reach them most directly by discussing the errors in the theology and the big picture. That’s what MLK did, that’s what Gandhi did. Most people don’t have the time nor inclination to get into the weeds of policy proposals. If the debate is restricted to the details of policy proposals, we’ll continue to lose.
Republican politics, in particular, is tribal. “My guys are Good, they believe in America (and the other guys obviously don’t), and I support them just like my parents did.” We need to break down that misplaced trust and support by showing the contradictions, and that their actions do not support their professed ideals. They’re flawed messengers. Big picture stuff.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
You propose attracting tribal voters by attacking their religion.
What could possibly go wrong?
Also, Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t particularly interested in disproving other people’s theological positions. He led mainly by example, and by pushing his theological and political understanding in a positive way. He said we needed to live according to our creed, but he wasn’t trying to tell everyone that their interpretation of the creed was wrong.
King attacked good people who kept silent more than bad people who committed violence. I think it’s completely wrong to think about non-violence as a theological argument. It wins converts but not by challenging their theology.
I’m not suggesting “attacking their religion”. I’m saying don’t cede the field to them. If they say “Jesus said this, therefore we should enact this policy”, then saying “Jesus also said this other thing, and your policy prescription won’t help the people who need it most” – that’s a more effective rebuttal, I think.
There’s a reason why they appeal to religion. Ignoring that isn’t an effective strategy.
King’s eulogy at the Birmingham bombing:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
More brilliant oratory one would be hard pressed to find.
Just take a look at some of the comments here. It is amazing how both those that claim, no religion and those that do both basically act the same. The reason is both are expounding their personally believes without any attempt to respect each others personal believes. Is religion or atheism the issue or intolerance of personal differences?
It is the need for certainty – and the fact that others disagree undermines that need.
by “committed atheist” is that at this point it would take a lot to convince me that atheism is incorrect. Theoretically I am not beyond convincing. If the rapture happens tomorrow, for example, then I’m a Christian. But short of divine intervention, it is difficult to imagine anything that would convince me that any flavor of theism is correct. At this point I think I have already heard all the pro-theism arguments.
That’s really all I meant. I really have no problem with other people believing different stuff than me. By committed atheist, I did not mean I am a proselytizing atheist (I am not), or that I don’t respect religious people. (I totally disagree with SiDC’s viewpoint in this thread). “Committed” only refers to my own personal views, or at least my potential for being convinced otherwise. It really has nothing to do with other people. They can believe whatever they want.
On the other hand, I am flattered that my word choice prompted this post. Thanks for the link!
I’m certainly a committed atheist in that sense. To any proposition stating the existence of anything that could be described as “supernatural” I assign a probability arbitrarily close to zero. But I agree with what I take BooMan to be saying, which is that in and of itself this just isn’t a very interesting stance. To me it’s boringly obvious but not something I would bother insisting on with any otherwise simpatico person who disagrees, because being plenty rational enough for all practical purposes simply doesn’t require it.
“not something I would bother insisting on with any otherwise simpatico person who disagrees”
Who says I would ever do that?
The only reason I brought my personal atheism up was in response to Amanda Marcotte’s post about how atheists should take a hard look at themselves because of the three murders an apparent atheist committed in North Carolina. I pointed out that I am a “committed” atheist, and yet I don’t think I am on the same team as Craig Hicks (the murderer). My point was about tribalism, not really the question whether a god exists. (see the link in Booman’s post)
I’m sorry if I was unclear, I didn’t intend to suggest that you would. I think you, I, BooMan and Amanda are all more in agreement thwn not.
A near-death experience might change your perspective. I’ve never had one but I’ve spoken to those who have and they’ll typically be very confident in what they saw. These are not people who, in my experience, are trying to sell anything. More like, “If you don’t believe it, fine; you’ll see for yourself soon enough.” There are many examples of those who have an unexpected NDE who completely change perspective on life, sometimes renouncing careers and focus on money in favor of higher callings such as service to others.
I’m somewhere between SiDC and you. While I am not out there trying to actively “convert” people to atheism, I do see religion as being in the way of progress, especially as it’s a means that a lot of people — typically authoritarian people — express their political values.
Do I think the world would be “better” without religion? Hard to say. I think overall its impact has been negative, but I’m not stupidly naive like Dawkins and Harris (a terrible philosopher, btw…ever read his books? How did this clown get famous? He’s a terrible writer and thinker). I think Harris was once asked if he could get rid of rape or religion, what would he pick, and he chose religion. What a disgusting human being.
The other thing to think about is that “labels” have meaning. No, we cannot simply say because you’re a Muslim (or Christian, or atheist) that you believe “X”, per se, necessarily. But humans are tribal, and these are markers. It’s why I no longer want to associate with “atheism” as a movement. Not every atheist is anti-woman or “imperialist”, but all I can think about when it comes to this movement is its association with libertarians, hostility to women, and “whiteness”. These movement atheists want to exist as “atheists”, and have their conventions, but then they don’t want to be more than simply atheism? What the fuck is the point of that? It’s like:
~Jeet Heer
And whether they like it or not, your markers have value. What value is “atheism” to people affected by the above things Jeet is talking about? You cannot expand if you’re indifferent to these problems. I’d rather be friends with UU’s than these people. Movement Atheism offers me nothing.
However, as I said, these labels are markers, and people are tribal. I do think less of Evangelical Christians. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I grew up in a house where that was practiced. Perhaps it’s less because they’re Christian and more because it’s a movement associated with far-right conservatism, hostility to science, and patriarchy and hierarchy (to the point of being cult-like). When someone tells me they’re a Christian, I don’ automatically judge them, but there are “tells” when it’s someone involved with that type of Christianity. And you can damn well be sure that I think less of them.