Myth and Cult - How atheists misunderstand religion
commentlog.org
commentlog.org
"When Dawkins and other proselytizing atheists point out the errors, inconsistencies, and crudities of the Bible, they hope to be the doughty Daniels of their own True Faith. But by showing that there is a great deal of myth in scripture, all they are doing is to fault the people of two or three millennia ago for not being aware of current scientific theory and for using the means available to them to describe natural phenomena. "
No, they're faulting modern religious people for basing their social morals and political choices on something written by the people of two or three millenia ago who weren't aware of current scientific theory. Truly most Christians don't believe the world is flat and rests on four pillars, but a large percentage do believe, for instance, that homosexuality is a sin because of stories from the same book. It's not so much that they don't believe the Bible is literal that irks atheists, it's that they don't believe that the parts that are clearly fiction discredit the parts that are murky. It's as if they're saying "well, this math book routinely says things like 2+2=6 and 5*3=87, and I know that's incorrect, but I'm going to trust the chapter on differential equations."
"The theory of evolution, to cite one example, does not per se disturb any Christian who is not a literalist."
In that case, 51% of American Christians are literalists, since that's the percentage who believe in intelligent design.
"What disturbs him is the neo-Epicureanism that frequently accompanies it (and for which there is no more empirical basis than there is for the idea of intelligent design)."
Clearly this fellow is not a biologist, or someone who even reads the science section on Google News. Evolution occurs daily, and we can and do watch it. Wild animals that humans hunt are rapidly growing smaller. Bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant. Genes for lactose tolerance becoming pervasive in humans.
Yes, there is no invisible man in the sky, and gays are normal people. Evolution is real. Look how smart you are.
Now, there is a fascinating history of religion in human society probably dating back 500,000 years. To most people, it continues today. Yet we are so insecure that we cannot examine that tradition as inquiring minds while noone is demanding that we accept it for ourselves.
Such intolerance and misbehavior from intellectuals! How do they interact in our society, hating and condemning most whom they meet, totally unwilling to take others at face value? I do not know. I hope that I can be more generous.
And it isn't about intolerance, it's about getting your facts straight. There are certainly many valuable services rendered by religion, but he didn't go into them.
Besides, intolerance in this debate doesn't come from the geeks. It's not computer scientists organizing against gay marriage, or insisting their beliefs must be in the Pledge of Allegiance. If I'm intolerant of the fiction that others use to justify their intolerance, is that wrong?
But from the reaction on this thread, he could have been linking to a Jack Chick tract. The anti-intellectualism on display is stunning. It looks to me that a Pavlovian anti-religious response is kicking in and a bunch of folks are spewing worn out canned responses orthogonal to the topic at hand. The reason this topic was dead-ed is surely more due to the juvenile discussion here than the thought-provoking article.
Should we refuse to listen to Christmas carols over the holidays because California passed proposition 8? Ought we boycott history lectures that mention popes because of Catholic stances on birth control?
If we temporarily drop our feelings about how people ought to act and examine how people actually do act, I promise you that we will learn interesting things. What happened to the geek ideal of learning about the world around us?
What happened to the inquiring mind? When I meet people that think different from me, I try to understand what motivates them, why they are different, what their history is like, what their culture is like, and how they see me. That shouldn't be hard for smart people like you and me, and I think it's a valuable thing to do.
The downside is that when you start to understand people, you start to lose enemies, and it is fun to have enemies.
Sadly, there are few places where one can have a good conversation these days. Most of the people who are capable of interesting discussion are old. It seems few young people are learning the art of entertaining ideas without changing their minds. Such a flat society it will be when every conversation must be an occasion for advocacy or agreement.
But maybe I am missing your point and you are just going to restate how gay people are okay and evolution is correct again. How thrilling.
The author attacks neo-epicureanism not evolution. The author believes in evolution.
In that case, 51% of American Christians are literalists, since that's the percentage who believe in intelligent design.
Well yes, but that's not an indictment of Christianity per se. Most people who believe in "science" have very superstitious views of science. Most of the "studies show ..." features on the five o'clock news are really cargo cult science. If we judged the value of science by what the average person believes, we would toss the whole field out.
Also, while I do not agree with the Christian teachings about homosexuality, in general, I think relying on accumulated wisdom for morality is a much better strategy than throwing the whole book out and rewriting morality from scratch. A lot of the social science fads of the 20th century, from Freudism to equality-of-results-feminism are far more crackpot than the moral teachings of the Gospels.
Very few Christians are biblical literalists in the rest of the world, and (except perhaps for a brief period post reformation) the educated have never been literalists.
It is worth noting things such as St Augustine's explicit rejection of a "six twenty four hour days" creation, ideas of gradual creation in the early church etc.
And Obama, who is probably the least religious President we've had in a very long time, at his inauguration still had about one God reference per dollar in the budget deficit.
In that case, 51% of American Christians are literalists, since that's the percentage who believe in intelligent design.
The two groups (evolution vs. intelligent design) are not mutually exclusive. I fully believe in the big bang and the process of evolution, but why couldn't a higher power have a hand in that? Call it 'divine evolution'.
Even if your theory is that without a God, we wouldn't have evolved into humans, you're still conflating evolution with something else that happens to have interacted with it to reach a certain end. People who believe that life would not have arisen on earth if the planet orbited the sun 5% more slowly don't claim that this is an entirely separate belief from evolution; people who believe that God (rather than orbital speed) was a deciding factor don't need a new theory, either.
People tend to think it's creationism, when in fact they are diametrically opposite methodologies. Creationism is entirely deductive, whereas intelligent design is inductive. A good hint here is that ID is hated by creationists as well as Darwinists.
Creationism starts with the theory that a particular interpretation of the Bible is correct, and attempts to find evidence for the theory.
Intelligent design, on the other hand, is the conjecture that intelligent/intentional causation is empirically distinguishable from physical causation. Therefore, it attempts to develop falsifiable hypotheses, such as Dembski's explanatory filter.
Additionally, it is common descent ambivalent. Common descent, old earth, etc. may or may not be true for all it cares. However, ID contradicts Darwinism, since Darwinism implies intelligence and intent are produced only by physical laws, thus indistinguishable from physical causation.
I do not want to be a troll. I only want to help correct a very common and very annoying misunderstanding. If someone wants to discuss it more offline, I'd be more than happy to do so.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main...
The trend between the two polls shown is encouraging though. In one year 4% of the population shifted in the right direction.
Speaking of interesting material that doesn't belong here, can we please just stop posting wikipedia links? If I want to read random historical trivia I can go there myself.
"Let me make my own point of view clear - it is that the only position tenable from a viewpoint of strict empiricism is that the existence or non-existence of God are equally un-disprovable."
So then why, if God exists and created humans and made humans rational, should anyone believe that God exists? Was rationality something God intended only that humans overcome? Or did he intend for us to use it some of the time? Most of the time? Not at all? The existence of rationality poses the biggest explanatory challenge to someone who views the poster's two options as being equally probable yet chooses to believe in God anyway.
That's impressive for a blog comment. UR's comments will never decline in quality, because the masses will never have the patience for Moldbug's meanderings.
After reading the article, I'm thinking I have that backwards.
"Arguably, the highest achievements of the human species have been motivated by that instinctive spirituality just mentioned. The great cathedrals, the precious heritage of religious art and music, are not only monuments to religious belief, but more persuasive testimonies to and arguments for faith than the disputations of theology. Have you ever read the story of the conversion of St. Vladimir, the founder of the Russian Orthodox Church? He was, as the account goes, a pagan prince of the line of Rurik; and an enthusiastic pagan, having built several temples. Yet he was not quite satisfied with his religion, and agreed to hear deputations of Muslims, Jews, and Christians each deliver their respective sales pitches. The presentations of the first two were rather arid, but the Christians (who had come from Byzantium) put on by far the best show, high mass with all the smells and bells, rich vestments, singing, the whole nine yards. Vladimir was convinced - any religion that was so beautiful had to be the right one (it also didn't hurt that it had the least restrictive dietary rules, and no ban on booze). Accordingly, Russia became Christian, and Vladimir a saint - all on the basis of his aesthetic judgment.
I suppose these anthropological and aesthetic reasons explain why many people remain culturally Christian despite an abundance of doubts and discontents. They aren't willing to dismiss the spiritual out of hand; they see more benefit than detriment accruing to society from religion in spite of their doubts (as did Jefferson and Franklin); and they find Christianity aesthetically appealing (as did St. Vladimir). They are therefore unwilling to discard it in favor of the barren and austere horizon offered by the crusading atheism of a Dawkins. For my part, I'll wait to see whether Dawkinsianity produces anything equivalent to Chartres, Handel's Messiah or Mozart's Requiem, the Pietà or the Sistine ceiling. When it does we may re-evaluate it to see if it offers anything worthwhile."
My biggest pet peeve has got to be the misattribution of human excellence to the divine. So many times "thank god" should really be "thanks to millions of man-years of trial and error, science and engineering, hard work, and lives lost figuring this stuff out" (I'm thinking miracle on the hudson, car crashes, lifesaving surgeries, etc.).
I grew up with a literalist/fundamentalist version of Christianity, and when I discovered the atheistic/materialistic/scientific worldview it came as a shock - I implanted on it immediately, the world made much more sense almost overnight and I lost all interest in anything remotely spiritual. Later on I discovered the rest of religion, and the intellectual shock was similar, but not much else changed. I still find the purely materialistic worldview perfectly satisfactory and I fully expect that it will continue to conquer everything in its path, up to and beyond the mind-body problem, but until then, and maybe even after then, I have no problem characterizing my lack of personal commitment to faith, God, or the spiritual as purely aesthetic. I can appreciate, to some extent, why other people prefer to believe it, and I can appreciate, to some extent, why many people on each side either can't or won't believe that sensible people could hold such obviously stupid and wrong beliefs. Every time I start to think that the religious have a monopoly on lack of curiosity, some atheist pops up and makes a spectacle of their own righteous single-mindedness. I prefer to cultivate a certain amount of genuine curiosity about, and appreciation for, the aesthetic preferences of the other 80% of the human race.
The quoted text has the opposite meaning, more like the Sistine Chapel exists because its creator(s) were inspired by God.
It's right there in fact: "the highest achievements of the human species have been motivated"
Plus, it is "arguments for faith than the disputations of theology", presented as a comparison, not justifying why people have faith.
Really, is my english that bad? I can't believe how someone could interpret this text the way Avshalom did.
That Russia is christian because of aesthetics, and aesthetics are an argument for the merit of faith implies that the christian faith is more meritorious than, paganism, judaism and islam because it's the prettiest.
"Let me make my own point of view clear - it is that the only position tenable from a viewpoint of strict empiricism is that the existence or non-existence of God are equally un-disprovable. Pointing to one or another scriptural absurdity iluustrates only that the man who wrote it long ago failed to understand matters properly; pointing out that many people still believe that absurdity, in the face of evidence to the contrary, proves only that there are still many simple and unsophisticated people. On the other hand, all the arguments customarily advanced by religious believers, such as the argument by design, are such as to be convincing only to people who already believe."