Brilliant Atheist Bertrand Russell On Science And Religion
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Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I vividly remember reading Russell write about an experience of being called an atheist. He corrected the person, calling himself an agnostic. If I am remembering things correctly, I’d change this blog title – I wouldn’t want to be called an atheist if I were agnostic, ang vice versa.
Jeremy
June 11, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Russell once believed in god, but over the years he shifted away from that belief, became agnostic, and later an atheist. This is from Bertrand Russell’s autobiography, page 36:
Also, I would like to point out that the terms are not mutually exclusive.
Gero
June 11, 2009 at 3:08 pm
The question that Russell points to as the turning-point in his change toward disbelief, is an invalid argument. The question “Who made God?” would actually be subjecting “God” to an impossibility, if God is truly God. Only contingent beings require a noncontingent being for their existence. This is why philosophers have called God the “uncaused Cause, the unmoved Mover” and so on. The only other option is an infinite regress of causality which would be an even bigger problem, since the causes and effects of time would never traverse infinity-past to reach the present effects.
digitalawe
June 13, 2009 at 4:53 am
@digitalawe
The statement that god is a noncontingent being includes two assumptions: that there is a god, and that the god being refered to is noncontigent. There is no evidence for the actual existence of these posited concepts. They exist only in the mind of the proposer. Any argument based on them is therefore illegitimate.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 1:14 pm
OH SNAP
Timbuktu
June 15, 2009 at 7:55 pm
lol oh snap. thats freaking hilarious
Angi
June 15, 2009 at 11:02 pm
One can be atheistic and agnostic at the same time, just as one can be agnostic and theistic at the same time. One refers to belief, the other to knowledge.
In addition, this quote was attributed to Mr. Russell; make of it what you will.
“There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric God. I cannot prove that either the Christian God or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration. Therefore, I suppose that that on these documents that they submit to me on these occasions I ought to say “Atheist”, although it has been a very difficult problem, and sometimes I have said one and sometimes the other without any clear principle by which to go”
Kris
June 11, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Well, I would just add, that Atheism is *ORGanized* approach to Faith, not necessarily just faith or spirituality. Gnosis literally means Knowledge whilst Truth and Wisdom are Different Characters by themselves.
Andy
June 11, 2009 at 3:44 pm
*I mean Theism is *ORGanized
Andy
June 11, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Not to open up the Pandora’s box of this whole debate, but after reading Russell’s quote, I just have to note the following two things:
-He portrays Christianity as if it takes one’s focus off of oneself and invests it totally on some irrelevant imaginary figure. It seems to me that the religion actually puts your focus more on the quality and the consequences of your daily actions, both for yourself and the world around you–because there is objective value or dis-value in what you do.
-Secondly, I agree with him that “the churches through all these centuries” have played a central role in forming the modern European (and more generally “Western”) consciousness and civilization. But in this quote it seems like he wants to attribute only the negative results to Christianity: the wars, bigotry, violence, and small-mindedness. I would say that these things are the vices of ANY man in power, through all time. All people who gain power must resist these temptations; they do not spring from the heart of religion. And Christianity is not merely a stain on the face of European history; it is Christianity that made Europe what it is, that imparted to it the spirit of industry, adventure, and enlightenment. Ironically, being hateful toward Christianity for being a ‘distraction’ from ‘real’ worldly affairs can serve as a distraction from the necessity of examining and bettering your own life–which is, all ought to agree, one of the (if not the primary) highest goals there are.
Loserman
June 11, 2009 at 3:28 pm
You say that religion is not the cause of war, and yet the vast majority of wars throughout recorded history have been between people’s of differing religions. Oh sure, one can argue that some of these wars had other causes, but religion has certainly played a large role. Take, for example, the English defeat of the Spanish Armada; not generally regarded as a religious war, however the Spanish were Catholic and had a great deal of interest in putting down the Protestant threat to their Spanish Netherlands, right across the Channel from those heretical English. William of Orange’s ‘conquest’ of England (William III of England, William II of Scotland, commonly known as the William in “William & Mary”) in the late 17th century was, again, the manifestation of a fight between people who wanted to return England to Catholicism and those who wanted to preserve it as a Protestant nation. The French Revolution is not often considered to be a war over religion, but the Royalty and Aristocrats in France were Catholic and the people revolting were Protestants. Do the math.
I could go on, and on, and on…
Lewis
June 14, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I COULD DEBATE ANYONE WITHOUT TIRING THAT THEY CANNOT BE ATHEIST. YOU WOULD LITERALLY HAVE TO BE MADE OUT OF PLANT MATTER WITH NO COGNITIVE SKILLS. YOU CANT BE AN ATHEIST WITHOUT BEING A THEIST. YOU CANT BE AGNOSTIC UNLESS YOU ARE UNINTERESTED IN KNOWLEDGE THEREFORE MOST OF THE SO CALLED “ATHEISTS” ARE GNOSTICS. AND PEOPLE THAT HAVE NO DESIRE FOR COMMUNICATION; HYPOTHESIS’… SELF KNOWLEDGE IS THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEPTHS OF ALL THINGS
Andy
June 11, 2009 at 3:57 pm
you are retarded
fred
June 11, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Man, I usually get offended when someone says this. But this made me lol so hard beer went up my nose.
Matthew Abel
June 11, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Not retarded necessarily. Incoherent, certainly.
Lewis
June 14, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Andy, you’re basic problem is that the word atheist is a misnomer and was devised by Christian scholars to describe non-believers. There are numerous ways of portraying and defining atheism, but the most effective one is to simply say that an atheist is a person who is certain that the existence of supernatural beings of all stripes cannot be proved. Since the burden of proof is on the religious person, the atheist does not waste any more energy on the question of god’s existence. i.e., you cannot prove the non-existence of something that does not exist. I can’t prove to you that there is an invisible, untouchable unicorn in my garage, but I can claim there is one. If I did, there is no way your senses could disprove it’s existence. BTW, A-thesist literally means “without- theism.” AND DON”T YELL!
matt
June 11, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Excellent use of capital letters.
kroo
June 11, 2009 at 4:30 pm
“YOU CANT BE AN ATHEIST WITHOUT BEING A THEIST”
I’d like to know what you mean by this, given that the two are mutually exclusive. It’s like saying you can’t be a female without being a male.
“YOU CANT BE AGNOSTIC UNLESS YOU ARE UNINTERESTED IN KNOWLEDGE”
Another interesting one, given that gnosticism pertains to the knowledge of spiritual things. So one can indeed be very interested in knowlegde and be an agnostic quite comfortably but have no knowledge of the supernatural.
Andrew
June 11, 2009 at 4:33 pm
i think what he is trying to say is that in order to reason for or against nonbelief, you have to make assumptions about the world around you that are only grounded in theism. Thus, “you can’t be an atheist without being a theist.” For example, if time, space, matter, and energy are all that there is… acting and reacting until the present time, then all you are and all you think are actually meaningless and worthless and absurd. The absurdity of random reactions of matter and energy do not breed nor give meaning to one’s life or thoughts. In a letter to a friend, Charles Darwin himself said that he was haunted by this… so much that he simply avoided thinking about the implications.
digitalawe
June 13, 2009 at 5:02 am
You are an idiot.
P.S. CAPS MAKE YOU LOOK EVEN DUMBER.
AndyisStupid
June 11, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Jeepers… That’s pretty rough. (Besides, how do you know that plant matter has no cognitive skills? Maybe they just choose not to use them where people can see?) ;-)
It’s very simple to be agnostic while being interested in knowledge. In fact, that’s kind of the whole point of considering oneself agnostic–acknowleding that we don’t know everything, and therefore, we must seek knowledge in different ways.
lobochik
June 12, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Andy
Attention Deficit Disorder-inattentive type. I don’t know what’s happening on Axis 2, but I speculate he’s the child of religious and abusive parents.
And of course a Shmuck
Rick
June 12, 2009 at 3:04 pm
That makes no sense. I am very sorry that you apparently think that it does.
RLWemm
June 12, 2009 at 11:29 pm
STOP YELLING AT US!!!!!
Ryan
June 16, 2009 at 12:59 am
“He portrays Christianity as if it takes one’s focus off of oneself and invests it totally on some irrelevant imaginary figure.”
That is exactly what christianity asks of a believer. It is about letting go, and allowing god to run your life. It is about submission to the higher power. It is about looking up, instead of looking around.
“It seems to me that the religion actually puts your focus more on the quality and the consequences of your daily actions, both for yourself and the world around you–because there is objective value or dis-value in what you do.”
First, religion only puts your focus on the things religion tells you to focus on. Some of those focuses are relevant to this earth and life, however most are not. Second, there is no objective value that religion can give you. It is subjective to a user’s level of faith, level of knowledge, and the particular dogma the individual grew up in.
Russell’s characterization of christianity, and in fact all religions, is spot on.
Joe
June 11, 2009 at 4:23 pm
“That is exactly what christianity asks of a believer. It is about letting go, and allowing god to run your life. It is about submission to the higher power. It is about looking up, instead of looking around.”
You have phrased what I have wanted to say more eloquently than I could have ever accomplished and for that sir, I thank you. Both Joe and Russell speak of what I consider to be the biggest flaw of religion (or atleast Christianity which is what I’m most familiar with being raised in a Christian family) and its major source of the vice and suffering it brings to everyone, including the non-believers around them.
If you don’t mind Joe, I would like to use that phrase “It is about looking up, instead of looking around.” That alone sums up a good portion of what is wrong with religion today in my view.
Eugene
June 11, 2009 at 5:24 pm
One prime example of looking up and not looking around comes from the recent scandals brought to light in the Irish Catholic schools. Catholic priests are required celibacy. They argue that it promotes or facilitates a stronger and more exclusive relationship with God. But everyone knows, including history, oh you can’t fool madam history, that the real reason was so that the Vatican could keep all its property within the Church. They didn’t want priests having heirs to which their property would rightfully be passed down to.
If that isn’t outright selfish already, fast forward a few hundred years and where are we? Irish Catholic priests raping little altar boys? The Vatican doesn’t admit to the property and land argument anymore and hides behind the foolish argument of piety and an exclusive relationship towards God. For God’s sake, take a look around and not up fools. Their zealotry is not only allowing it to happen, but PROMOTING it by RELOCATING and HIDING THE IDENTITIES of these priests and not punishing them like all other child molesters.
Should we not take care of our own little children and not let them get raped by these #!@$!@#$ before we worry about that big invisible bully getting jealous in the sky? Keep your dirty land Vatican, just leave the poor children alone.
Eugene
June 11, 2009 at 5:38 pm
The inability to prove something exists does not mean that it does not exist. It only means that at this time it cannot be proved by any known method and nothing else.
Any one who claims to know that God does not exist has as much ‘proof’ of this knowledge as one who claims to know God does exist.
What are the chances every single event that led to us being here at this time and engaging in this pointless and worthless exchange of words was the result of nothing that just happened for no reason? Is it really 100% in your mind? You sir/ma’am, are an idiot.
Morgan
June 11, 2009 at 5:23 pm
God cannot be disproved? I will say that perhaps a deist version of god cannot be disproved (or rather may be more difficult to disprove), but only because it does not make any specific claims about god or his/her/it’s effect on our world. If a god or gods exist but affect nothing, then what does it really matter, and what can I really debate?
That having been said, theists make very specific claims about the existence of god, who god is, and what god wants us to do. Christianity is making very specific claims about god and our world, and you are simply wrong if you think that we cannot examine these claims to determine their legitimacy. Scientifically, philosophically, historically – Christianity (and every other religion) fails the tests, time after time after time.
Gero
June 11, 2009 at 5:40 pm
As much as I sympathize with the challenges facing empirical, philosophical, or historical proofs, I cannot help but feel the side of the razor people fall on depends on the premises of their argument.
My premise: if empiricism has taught me one thing, it is that making a definitive claim is a fast track to eating crow. However, it is only in that debate that we can hopefully find definitive proof to our premises, rather than relying on an absence of perceived presence or an absence of ability to disprove existence as our arguments.
Jeremy
June 11, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Morgan, i think you are wrong on your first two lines. i agree with you to some point. before the science community could see atoms via an electron microscope there was no empirical evidence to “prove” that atoms did exist. with that being said anyone could say that flying dogs exists. could you prove they do not? even if i said they did? even though there is no evidence of flying dogs? what method would you use to prove that flying dogs do not exist? new methods do come about that allow humans to gain emperical evidence that were not available at previous times, like my seeing atoms example with an electron microscope. but we live in a material world, so anything that is not material to humans is pretty much worthless since all we have to understand the world is our senses. so with that being said what new methods would we come up with and be able to use to prove flying dogs do not exist? science is based on evidence, faith is based on no-evidence. although science has had the evidence wrong on some things, (what they thought was the reason, and it was wrong) it has great ability to be corrected. you are pretty much saying that science is based on faith. well it based on emperical evidence. and faith is based on belief without evidence.
Eric
June 11, 2009 at 6:10 pm
It has been a common mistake that you can’t prove a negative.. You can under pre-defined, specific conditions. I can prove their is no dog in my office right now, etc. But if someone tried to makeup something with the intention of it being unprovable that does not apply in the say way. To say their is no God, or designed is equally as arrogant as saying their is one. People need to stay with the TRUE scientific principal of, their is no evidence either way, so no ones knows, and anyone who claims to KNOW, is delusional. Via science, we can show that most religions and their stances are not allowed by the known laws of nature, etc. I will wager that in 500 years, scientists will be laughing at most of the things we think we KNOW are true.
Even when we think we see something, our very perception may be distorted. For example, the Earth, Sun, Moon etc, look like near perfect sphere’s right? (besides mountains, craters, oceans etc), but, overall the moon, sun and Earth are FLAT. The Earth is flat, just like most people thought 1000 years ago. Before everyone here thinks i’m crazy, realize this, its not the Earth that is a sphere, its the curative of space. So, what we are really seeing as a circular Earth is the curvature of space, BENDING the mater into a sphere. So, even what we think we knew 100 years ago, when people KNEW the Earth was round was even wrong on some degree. My point, is that we know nothing, and almost everything we know, is probably not true and time will show us wrong, so we cant claim to know hardly anything for sure.
George
June 12, 2009 at 1:48 am
I can’t believe I’m replying to this but what the heck.
You say “science is based on evidence, faith is based on no-evidence.”
It is extremely evident to a large population of the world that has does or will exist that there is some other supreme being somewhere. Including some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. But quickly you dismiss this because it’s not consistently testable.
But I’m sure you with your electron microscope are smarter and know more than every single one of them.
Again, you cannot say an unobserved event did not happen and you cannot say it did happen. And it not being observed does not mean it did not happen. Including any event acted upon by a supreme being.
Science constantly changes. Truth does not.
Morgan
June 12, 2009 at 6:41 am
They do exist.. look here :P
Alejandro
June 12, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I say the flying spaghetti monster exists.
Prove me wrong.
U CANT.
Christians claim their god exists, and they have no proof to back up these claims.Just a book.If they are going to make the claims, the burden of proof is on them.
Use some COMMON SENSE, and not your ego.JUst because ur ego tells you that there MUST be a reason to our existence,doesnt mean its true. Just because YOU cant explain how something works, doesnt mean “GOD” did it.
Since man could first speak, man has been making up religions to explain what he could not. THOUSANDS of religions have been created,and then abandoned through out history. Why? Because each religion was MANMADE to explain something that man couldnt. When the REAL answer was found, the old religion was forgotten, and a new religion with new questions arose. Men used to thing that an angry god named zeus was responsible for lightning.That HE threw lightning bolts down to earth. Eventually man learned this was false,and that that religion was flawed.Then they made a new one, that ignored the old beliefs and made up new ones. Use some COMMON sense.Those who dont know history are doomed 2 repeat it. Christianity is just another lame attempt. Science has PROVEN evolution is a fact. And science has proven that life can start without a god to do it.When the right elements come together, organic material can be created from inorganic material.The only real question is how the universe got started. Just because we dont have the technology to go out in space and find the REAL answer, doesnt automatically mean god did it.Ignorance isnt proof of a higher being.
It is a big chance. Winning the lotto is a big chance.Chances are YOU arent going to win. BUT somebody eventually will. Well there are BILLIONS of planets out there, BILLIONS of stars etc etc.Chances are most planets wont meet the requirements to support life. BUT eventually there will be a planet that does. WE are the planet that one the lotto. Yes, the chances are slim, but it will eventually happen.
Thats the most ignorant argument ive ever heard, yet i hear it all the time. “what are the chances?”
Yea idiot.Its understood that the chances are slim. SLIM, but still possible.
MistaRIPsa210
June 12, 2009 at 4:53 am
sorry link is here
http://www.holytaco.com/flying-dogs
Alejandro
June 12, 2009 at 12:55 pm
The Christian god is self-contradictory which means that it cannot, by definition, exist. The characteristics attributed to it by its followers are inconsistent with the behaviour which its followers attribute to it.
If a god were to exist then it would be some other one. (Somehow I don’t think you would be happy it that were the case.)
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 12:50 pm
You have your login backwards. It is impossible to prove that something DOESN’T exist. Pink unicorns? can’t PROVE they don’t exist. The Easter Bunny? Leprechauns? Dragons? Alien abductors? God? Geese that lay solid gold eggs? It make no difference that you can’t prove they DON’T exists, because that’s a logical fallacy. Without any evidence at all that they DO exist, it is pure nonsense to claim they do.
The inability to provide any evidence of something’s existence does mean, logically, that it does not exist. Claiming something is real without any evidence is a logically indefensible position. It is also a position rooted in ignorance, and cannot be argued with. If you believe something without evidence that is up to you. if you believe something in contradiction to evidence, that just proves you are willfully stupid. Someone who believes there is a “God” that created everything 12+ billion years ago? OK, fine, that’s what they believe. It’s irrational and illogical, and there’s no point in arguing with them. But someone who believes the world is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs and people where pals in some place called the Garden of Eden? That’s an astonishing degree of willful stupidity, and that is something you CAN argue with.
You don’t get to ‘believe’ something that is contrary to FACT without being labelled ignorant, stupid, or brainwashed. I don’t care how strongly you believe it. And if you don’t ‘believe’ in evolution, then I don’t think you have the right to graduate with a biology degree, or be a doctor, or any sort of scientist. There has to be a basic IQ test for those sorts of jobs that excludes anyone who doesn’t ‘believe’ in facts. If a doctor is so stupid as to not believe in evolution, I want to know that so I can avoid him/her at all costs.
Lewis
June 14, 2009 at 4:27 pm
login=logic
Lewis
June 14, 2009 at 4:28 pm
@Lewis
You can prove something does not exist if it is logically inconsistent by virtue of its definition. Round circles, for example. Or all loving and all powerful gods who torture people forever (unless you use semantic trickery to redefine the torture as “loving”).
RLWemm
June 14, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding regarding his final position. I have not read him in some time and I can almost guarantee most of my reading focused on earlier works.
While I recognize they are not mutually exclusive, I was encouraging caution because, as you said, Russell was a theistic agnostic early on. In such a position, he would not agree with being labeled agnostic and atheist, nor would he agree with the terms being synonymous. As you say though, neither are they mutually exclusive.
Jeremy
June 11, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Perhaps, Problems come when people play to be Gods. When atheism is declared, the only god to believe in is oneself, so Mr.Abeledo’s religion is himself. However he is god, and nobody can change the fact that Abeledo’s religion comes with the fact that Every scientist in Spain, must be just as Abeledo believings. But often, people are more intelligent than Abeledo. That’s the question.
Did Abeledo Create the world, and so Did he evolutionated from a Chimpancee ?….Who knows..Perhaps he did. _He feel very proud to be a Skeptic God who holds the global knowledgement.
Nobody is scientist except he, himself. Rest of us are some kind of ignorants.
starviwer
June 11, 2009 at 9:46 pm
UH!…What? I want some of what yer smokin’
Zedge
June 12, 2009 at 10:30 am
I like how “That’s the question.” follows a string of statements. Often, people are more intelligent than starviewer, and there’s no question there.
J Luke
June 12, 2009 at 2:05 pm
“Christianity (and every other religion) fails the tests, time after time after time.” could you expand on this for me. I would like to hear about the tests you apply to the belief systems. thanks.
humanitasremedium
June 12, 2009 at 1:45 am
Take this link to start with. this one is just the bible, but you can look up the rest yourself it’s easy if you try. Do your own research and don’t let anyone tell you what to believe. You should however research all sides before you make up your mind about something as important as your personal belief system.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/flaws.html
Zedge
June 12, 2009 at 10:39 am
What has irritated me is that people consider me to be an atheist if I tell them I don’t want to believe in a God they believe in, that I don’t want to believe in a God who permits racial discrimination and intolerable injustice. They say I’m an atheist if I believe in a God of my own.
Mukundh Vasudevan
June 12, 2009 at 1:54 am
Thanks for the Russell quote.
Ironically his reference to heart is exactly what true religion is.
Perhaps Russell understood as Einstein, that great mystic, understood that our heart or ‘right-brain’ part of being human was an essential way of knowing – de-legitimized through the scramble to intolerantly worship the Enlightenment god of reason.
We have three ways of truth telling; 1) our reasoning ‘left-brain’ (internalized objective truths from the Sciences), 2) our moral sense (internalized truths from the Humanities, and 3) our subjective reading of reality (internalized truths from the Arts). Insanity is judging any one of these in terms of the other. In these three we are human along with living in groups and communities.
“All religions, including atheism and humanism, are worse than useless unless you can show that through them or it you are are happily creating beauty, doing good, and discovering truth, whilst celebrating unity in diversity.
If you, or I, hold to a religion and it doesn’t lead to those quintessential human activities not only is it worse than useless,we thereby are shown to be hypocrites.
It doesn’t much matter what you or I believe as long as the result is acts of truth, beauty and goodness whilst celebrating unity in diversity.”
‘God’ has no religion.’ We on the other hand each have a unique belief system and viewpoint, full of wonderful things – including errors. Most religions have been debased via the manipulations of men. But they all started in one of the two senses of wonder – the state of wonderment at the beauty of being. The trouble starts when we try to give accounts of our experiences – and then try to impose them on others.
I have a model of these ideas here if you are interested – http://sunwalked.wordpress.com/courses/the-heart-of-all-of-the-courses-deepening-what-it-is-to-be-human/
Roger
June 12, 2009 at 2:45 am
atheism and humanism are not religions. Science is not a religion. These labels are perpetrated by the religious zealots who have the basic assumption, wrong as it is, that everyone is religious and that everyone has to ‘believe’ in something.They claim I ‘believe’ in gravity.
I don’t ‘believe’ in gravity. It is simply the best explanation for observable facts. If a new and better theory comes along (like, say, Einstein’s redefining of gravity as a product of curved space instead of some ‘force’, or maybe the quantum scientist with their string theory) then I’m perfectly content to adopt that.
Science is a way of explaining the world/universe without relying on making shit up and believing in a doctrine based on fear, myth, liars, and mistakes. Science is constantly evaluating, re-evaluating, discarding, refining, and reinventing. Find a better explanation for how things work and voila! you’ve improved our understanding of the universe.
Religion takes an idea and holds onto it forever. Questioning the idea is ‘wrong’ or ’sinful’ or ‘heretical’. Anything that challenges that idea must be attack and destroyed because anything that threatens belief might accidentally lead to knowledge, and religion (ALL religion) is strongly opposed to knowledge.
Lewis
June 14, 2009 at 4:37 pm
This is a pre emptive ‘Please excuse the rambling’ below – but I have a question to get to at the bottom… I write colloquially because really, I like reading responses written with direct language – but I’m not a drongo, i assure you :D
I am an atheist/agnostic – I know there is debate about exactly what the definition of that is, but basically I don’t believe in any supernatural aspects of religion – life after death, jesus being the son of god etc. etc.
I was a devout catholic until I was about 18, when a rotten b***ard of a priest turned me off religion completely by embodying all that is wrong with organised religion – lies, greed (he didn’t molest any children as far as I know, but he really was a piece of work) manipulation, prejudice, homophobia, all that stuff.
So, I began to define myself as quite a hard line atheist and was completely opposed to the idea of religion, the bible was horse shit, fundamentalist christians were complete nazis in my view and I absolutely lapped up anything Richard Dawkins had to say.
But recently, I’ve begun to feel differently – Dawkins recently gave a talk discussing why the ‘intelligentsia’ didn’t run things like the ‘intelligentsia’ were some kind of elitist tribe that would solve the worlds problems, and that science was the answer to everything.
Since when did science become a belief system? Why is the tone of organised atheism sounding more and more like hard line fundamentalist christianity?
doodlebread
June 12, 2009 at 9:53 am
@doodlebread
I think you know the answer to your question already. When someone is fighting against something they usually take a hard line. As the influence of religion declines then the line against it softens. Look at countries like Sweden, Denmark, Japan.
RLWemm
June 14, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Religion was only invented to make a superstitious being, man, feel more secure. The priests also used this fear to make a living. Look how the universal church extorted billions in gold from the Europeans to get into heaven , for instance. This wealth is still retained by the Vatican today.
We have no idea why this universe began and how it continues to exist. But the term God is only a crutch.
MGL
June 12, 2009 at 10:18 am
Morgan writes:
“I can’t believe I’m replying to this but what the heck.”
Right back you, buddy.
Morgan writes:
“It is extremely evident to a large population of the world that has does or will exist that there is some other supreme being somewhere. Including some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. But quickly you dismiss this because it’s not consistently testable.”
Really? What kind of “argument” is that? For as many great minds who claimed there was a god (or whatever) there are just as many who will issue the claim there is not. Also, just because “it is extremely evident to a large population of the world that has does or will exist that there is some other supreme being somewhere” is nowhere near a good enough reason to simply accept that this is so. That doesn’t tell you anything and in now way helps with the point you are attempting to illustrate.
“Science constantly changes. Truth does not.”
I’m betting this sounded like a smart and/or coinable phrase in your head. What does it mean if science changes? I’m assuming you think that this makes it “less true”, whatever that means. I would like to see an example of one of these unchanging universal truths you seem to be privy to by making a statement like this.
UnknownKadath
June 12, 2009 at 10:32 am
“For as many great minds who claimed there was a god (or whatever) there are just as many who will issue the claim there is not.”
So in what regard does the burden of proving a truth-affirmative claim lie on Atheists any less than “theists”? Because absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Likewise, I don’t see how asserting “testability” helps the Atheist argument at all. Scientific reduction is NOT some totality; it deals with the local, the contingent, and the variable; it deals with parts of Being and in no way can be applied to Being-itself without committing yourself to circular faith in the ideal of the process itself.
Sir Gnome
June 12, 2009 at 11:15 am
This is the same old pathetic christian babble dressed up with some teen passion, faux academic language and self righteous bluster (the same applies to everything else you write).
Read this slowly so you get it and actually think about it so we don’t have to read any more of your petulant tirades.
ATHEISTS DON’T BELIEVE IN THE CHRISTIAN GOD, THE MUSLIM GOD, GHOSTS, SANTA CLAUS, TALL FISHING STORIES, OTHER ASSORTED, NEW-AGE GOOBA GOOBA OR FLYING PIGS. NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE OR PROOF.
Let me put it another way; if you told me you could leap tall buildings in a single bound i would think the burden of proving that would rest with you not me. I’m just happy minding my own business. You’re the one carrying on that you can leap to the top of buildings and what’s more you want the power to have people burned alive because of it.
paul
June 13, 2009 at 8:44 am
This is meaningless philo-babble. It demonstrates ignorance of the philosophy of science vis a vis religion (Karl Popper et al) as well as ignorance of statistical applications and the scientific method.
According to Popper the difference between a science and a religion is that science is capable of being tested and falsified but religion cannot be tested in any manner which would allow this possibility.
Science fits conclusions to facts but religion looks for facts to fit its conclusion. A religion will even invent “facts” to support its conclusions. Philosophical concepts for example.
Defining an entity or a concept in a way which fits your conclusion is circular reasoning and a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies are usually taught at Philosophy 101 level but perhaps you missed the classes.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 12:39 pm
A simple thought on which to digest. If you allow something to control you, to that you are a slave. It is your master whether it be a person, thing or even an idea. Look within yourself and examine that which drives you to live and exist. Research your bank statement or check book or investment portfolio. Those things in which you invest your money the most is your god, again whether a person (including self), an object like money, car or home, and even ideas like dying for a cause. The one, true living God, Yahweh, designed you to worship Him and him alone. However, because human nature is such that rebellion is king, we turn away from our original design and seek out our own pleasures and desires. If you don’t serve God, you will serve some one, thing or idea. Prove yourself. You will the truth that God is God.
Jason
June 12, 2009 at 10:43 am
According to your argument, you are a slave to the god that you and your fellow believers have created. Just because you redefine this as your pleasurable desire does not make it so.
If there were a god it would be nice if it were considerably less monstrous than the Jewish god written about in the Christian Old Testament. Only someone who is deeply deluded would welcome the idea of living for eternity with something like that. I prefer to treat my fellow human beings with considerably more compassion and kindness.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 12:18 pm
@ RLW, it is not a matter of us creating a god. God created us. He is not a violent monster. He actually had enough compassion for you to give His one and only Son for you. How many people do you know who would willingly lay down there life for you out of love? There isn’t ONE single human being willing to die for someone else to save them from eternal death. Look at the majesty of the stars and heavens, the beauty of nature, the complexity of science itself. No human being could have ever designed or created such things of magnificence. The very fact that you live and breath is a miracle in and of itself. Nature testifies to the very existence of God. In your pursuit of hedonism and exalting of mankind, you will find that you worship something. You may never admit openly in public to worshiping anything or anyone, but I promise you that you worship something even if it is nothing more than your pursuit to deny God and live life your way. May your deaf ears and blind eyes be opened to the truth of God’s forgiving and life-sustaining love through Jesus. I wish that you and every atheistic person on this blog would begin to feel the conviction of God’s Holy Spirit and come to know the truth of eternal life in Him. May this dig down deep into your soul that all of you would have to research the truth of the Bible in order that you may come to know its truth and be changed forever. Satan has lied to you that there is no God. He wants nothing more than for you to sit around debating the existence of a God in heaven and promote yourselves to the status of a god. In essence, anyone who denies Jesus and God has placed him/herself into the place of being Almighty. When the light of truth comes to you, may experience the love and peace of God.
Jason
July 13, 2009 at 8:51 am
@Jason.
You are clearly sprouting material which you have been taught by others but which you have not examined properly. It is very obvious that you have never bothered to educate yourself on what atheism is or you would not be making so many ignorant and unfounded assumptions. You sound like a poorly performing student who insists on “correcting” a teacher in areas which the student is a very long way from mastering. Any atheist reading this will react much the teacher in that situation: they will laugh, groan or get irritated because they have good reason to dismiss the speaker as an ignorant and arrogant individual who has a great deal to learn and lacks even the knowledge required to comprehend this.
If you do not wish to be perceived as an arrogant ignoramus then you need to study a topic well before commenting upon it. Otherwise no-one with any real knowledge in the area will take you seriously.
First, some basic education is clearly in order.
Atheism is simply a non-belief in all gods, including any which were previously believed to be real. That is all. Atheists are otherwise normal people who have a wide variety of beliefs, personalities and talents, including caring for other humans and the environment in which we all live.
In your pursuit of hedonism and exalting of mankind
Atheism is not self-indulgent hedonism: the unfettered pursuit of happiness. Nevertheless, a few atheists may happen to be hedonists. So are some god believers; they just define it so that is sounds “moral”. Self-indulgent displays of intellectual arrogance are redefined as “witnessing for Christ” and “winning souls for Jesus”. Loud histrionic praying behavior which disturbs the peace of hospital patients in the vicinity is redefined as the expression of “fruits of the spirit”.
Atheism is not nihilism: the rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief. Nevertheless, a few atheists may happen to be nihilists.
Satan has lied to you that there is no God.
Atheism is not devil worship: the Christian Devil (and all of its named manifestations) is merely another, but lesser, god from the Christian worldview. At least two biblical authors cannot tell the difference between the Jewish Yahweh god and the Jewish Devil god. (Look up the conflicting stories of why King David was punished by the Yahweh god for taking a census of the people: the first writer insists that David took the census because Yahweh commanded it; the second insists that Satan commanded it.) Because the devil concept is also a “god”, no atheists are devil worshippers.
I promise you that you worship something even if it is nothing more than your pursuit to deny God Atheism is not a denial or rejection of a god. You cannot deny or reject something which you do not believe in. Every person on this earth fails to believe in thousands of gods but this does not mean that they reject them. You have not rejected Thor or Aphrodite because you do not believe in them. You probably never believed they existed and see no reason to change that idea. No atheist has rejected god. Someone who has rejected a god is a believer in that god.
Nor is atheism a rejection of a god you once believed in. At one time you will almost certainly have believed in one or all of Santa Klaus (who may have been based on a real person), the Easter Rabbit, the Tooth Fairy, Goblins, Trolls and Leprechauns. You have not “rejected” any of these _personages_ because you no longer believe in them. What you have rejected is the _notion_ that they are real. No atheist has rejected a god that they once believed in. They have rejected the notion that such a god exists.
I wish that you and every atheistic person on this blog would begin to feel the conviction of God’s Holy Spirit and come to know the truth of eternal life in Him.- – - When the light of truth comes to you, may experience the love and peace of God
Very many atheists, especially the so-called “new” atheists (the ones who have been silent until called to action by recent events), were once very heavily involved in the pursuit and practice of a religion. Many were pastors/priests/theological students or teachers/missionaries and evangelists. Some of us were deconverted by our intense study of the very religion we sought to disseminate. I am an ex-theological student and evangelical crusader, for example.
Although I am “out” to my family and most of my friends, some of these once heavily committed believers now live a double life because they are financially or socially unable to leave their religious profession or dissociate themselves from it. Some live this agonizingly uncomfortable double life for fear that owning up to their current non-belief would have devastating consequences for them and/or their family members. They fear, with very good reason, that it would lead to poverty, social isolation, misery and even mental illness. Most of these people have first hand knowledge that on-going believers can be incredibly cruel to atheists. Fred Phelps and his family is only the known tip of the iceberg.
Atheists are not immoral. In fact, practically every reputable study comparing the morality of regions, states, countries and individuals with varying degrees of god-belief and religious behavior have concluded that non-believers and countries of non-believers are far happier and less likely to commit crimes, or show evidence of social disease (divorce, for example) than those who are strong believers in a god. This is true across the board: it makes no difference which god is worshipped (or not worshipped). In other words, the evidence supports the notion that religious people are more immoral than atheists. Religious people may interpret these facts differently because they have a unique view of “moral” behavior due to the teachings of their church or religious leaders. Nevertheless, there are a few atheists who would be generally labeled as “immoral” by everyone.. Like religious believers, every atheist has performed many acts which would be considered as “naughty”, “bad” or “wrong” by all. This is an inevitable part of the learning style implicit in all animals, including humans. Anyone who learns will make mistakes. Only the non-learning and non-sentient are error-free.
I repeat: Atheism is simply a non-belief in all gods, including any which were previously believed to be real. That is all.
Now let us look at the assertions you have made and apparently assume to be self-evident truths.
God created us. This is an assertion for which there is no valid objective proof. It assumes that there is a god in the first place.
He is not a violent monster. This may be the type of god you would like to exist and which you think is consistent with the Jesus character described in the biblical gospels. The god depicted in the Christian Old Testament, however, is quite clearly a monster who was responsible for crimes which are far worse than those attributed to Hitler and his regime. If you are not aware of this then your knowledge of these books is rudimentary and/or capriciously selective. If this is the same god as the Jesus god then the two (or three) parts form a very disturbed type of multiple personality which would be held in a maximum security prison psychiatric ward in this age.
He actually had enough compassion for you to give His one and only Son for you. That might have been an acceptable “gift” in the bronze age which spawned the biblical books but it would be a heinous crime if it were performed in this much more enlightened era. I’ll bet that you never thought of translating this “act of god” into modern terms. I am sure that you have simply continued to unthinkingly interpret it as “supremely good” in line with the way it was presented to you before you had the cognitive ability to question this line of reasoning. So let’s translate it into the morals of this present era.
If you were in danger of dying without a heart or liver transplant what would you think of a friend who arranged for their child to be tortured and killed so that you could have their organs as a donation and thus save your life? I hope that you would be horrified, notify the relevant authorities, including the child protection agency, and cease to call this person a friend. This society would consider you to be psychiatrically disturbed if you considered your friend’s “sacrifice” to be proof of their intense love for you and you celebrated the gruesome event by wearing a machete or surgeon’s scalpel about your neck in honor of the horrors their child endured in order to save your life. Considering the dramatic and horrific nature of the event it would be quite within the bounds of normal experience if you have dreams of even visions of the child for a few days after his death. This is reasonably common among parents and spouses of the recently departed. However if you then believed the child had been raised from the dead for real and, when he failed to appear to you again you began to worship him as a savior god your insanity would be confirmed.
The god you claim to worship is reputed to have been responsible for all kinds of things which would be labeled as atrocities in this modern era of moral thinking.
How many humans do you know who would torture their adult children by insisting that they demonstrate their family loyalty by preparing one of their adult child’s children (the grandchild of the person giving the command) as a human sacrifice for the grandparent? Who would you hold responsible for the ensuing life-long post-traumatic stress disorder in the grandchild: the parent who carried out his parent’s commands, the grandparent who issued the commands or both of these adults? Who was more guilty of mental cruelty: the parent of the nearly sacrificed child or the grandparent?
What would you think of an adult who performed an act which benefited someone and then accepted the slaughter of one of their children as a suitable “thank you” gift?
Are you ignorant of these biblical stories told about the Jewish-Christian god or have you reinterpreted them as “good” because the personality that you have given to the responsible god is incompatible with them being interpreted as “evil”? If you would consider these acts to be monstrous if performed by humans or other gods, then logical consistency demands that you label them identically horrid if performed by your favorite god. What do you think prevents you from doing so? Is it because the god you have created to live up to your own ideals could not do such things and still be as moral as you like to think you are?
How many people do you know who would willingly lay down there life for you out of love?
There is nothing divine about this. It seems to be an innate function of being a parent. Just about every parent would give their life for their child.
There isn’t ONE single human being willing to die for someone else to save them from eternal death.
You would be hard pressed to find a human being who would consider it moral to subject someone to eternal torture for finite “sins”, especially if some of them were committed by one’s reputed ancestors. Yet you can see no problem with worshipping a being who you think will happily do just that, and let you hear their screams for eternity while you try to enjoy yourself in his/its presence. If you believe this entity to be all-powerful then he/it obviously has the power to do things differently. Or do you think it has been causing people to tell lies about the nature of hell all this time? What kind of monster is that? Do you really want to spend an eternity in close proximity to this kind of personality? Wouldn’t that be hell? Does that make the recounted uprising in heaven by Lucifer (Light) and a large contingent of angels to be a good, rather than a bad, thing? Or would you be happy there because you are basically the same kind of subtly sadistic monster as the Yahweh god is reported to be?
Nature testifies to the very existence of God.
This is a nonsense argument which only makes sense if you are scientifically ignorant or insist on believing what you have been told by those who don’t know any better.
I promise you that you worship something.
This is an arrogant statement of something you would like to be true or have told must be so. It has little basis in reality, but when it does, it is an embarrassment to the rest of your case.
There are some atheists who worship the pursuit of justice and fairness for all. One atheist who is a devoted advocate of human rights for all, regardless or color, race, gender, sexual preference or creed, insists that her agenda makes her too moral to revere the ethics attributed to the Judeo-Christian god. I agree.
In summary, you clearly speak from the naïveté of a person who is only familiar with the argument for the defense. Any argument you make on the basis of this selective ignorance is unbalanced and therefore invalid. Any decision made on the basis of such incomplete data would cause a mistrial in any court of law which sought to fairly determine the truth of a matter. Such a one-sided case would likewise be ridiculed in any scientific circle and denied publication in any reputable scientific journal.
Your expressed beliefs about atheists are based on culpable ignorance and the religious faith you propose has clearly never been seriously examined. If you do not wish to make a public ass of yourself in public again go away and spend at least a couple of years studying both subjects (theism and atheism) properly (from all angles). This means reading information written by people who support each viewpoint, not commentaries written about these writings by someone with your current viewpoint. You are talking to people on this forum who have done this for up to forty years. Perhaps now you can understand why you just sound pretentiously silly to us.
What you have done here is as ridiculous as if you had tried to teach “creationism” to a biologist, convince a cartographer that the earth is flat or tell an astronomer that the sun revolves around the earth. The Bible, of course, insists that all three of these absurd notions are true.
May your deaf ears and blind eyes be opened.
May your ignorance be addressed.
RLWemm
July 14, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Russell’s “Atheism” is a product of his position as a natural language philosopher, i.e. logical positivism. The man was a great philosopher within the context of his times, but when contemporary “Atheists” abduct a few quotes here and there, they’re only embarrassing his philosophical ideas because they take no account of his context.
Positivism and Puritanical Analytic accounts of philosophy died out decades ago–so where have the Atheists been since? Their arc is always toward some physicalist/materialist/scientific positivism without any regard for the shortfalls of their views, in which case their views ARE based on BLIND FAITH, and in most cases Atheism formally qualifies as a religion.
Sir Gnome
June 12, 2009 at 11:11 am
Some people are so lost
tom918
June 12, 2009 at 11:14 am
Science is a process of finding out how things work not a belief system. (If you hold a flame against something it burns, if you keep sailing across the ocean you don’t fall off the edge).
Religion hates science because according to religion the way the world was created and the history of the human race happened in one way that cannot be contradicted. That is why Marx called religion the ‘opiate of the people’. Scientific process is about proving things wrong including your own theory so you come closer to what is right.
Religious types don’t like this kind of scrutiny. It wakes them from their lovely dream they have been having. Religion encourages and demands obedience and ignorance. Rulers have always used religion to control the masses.
To be an atheist is to live in the world how it is and to be open to any possibility. To be religious is to commit to a fixed view of the world based on close minded faith.
In the words of my 4 year old daughter who had been told by a horrible christian “Don’t you know god made you?” – God didn’t make me, my mummy and daddy did!
Paul
June 12, 2009 at 11:35 am
Really? I would love to see your argument for how a purely inductive process can affirm itself without making assertions beyond the scope of induction. Hume, the father of inductive empiricism, was the first to deny that this was even possible. So, how exactly can science affirm itself without begging the question as to the validity of its own principles? It’s foundations as some monolithic totality are not as solid as the banal ranks of Atheism of assume; and likewise, religion is not nearly as two-dimensionally ghoulish as you claim.
Please stop talking, this is 101 level philosophy. Your ideological condescension is stifling.
Sir Gnome
June 12, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Seriously. Big words do not make an argument. I will agree that religion is not two-dimensionally ghoulish. However, Paul is absolutely correct in that “Religion encourages and demands obedience and ignorance. Rulers have always used religion to control the masses.”
I understand that Sir Gnome here is the type that tries to fluff up his arguments with $2 words in the hopes that he will confuse others in the process.
Doesn’t make his comments any less asinine.
jmloquist
June 12, 2009 at 1:38 pm
This is an excellent proof that you can’t discuss a concept (or label, or word) until you define it.
But I see everyone had a lot of fun trying :)
mllamoreux
June 12, 2009 at 1:15 pm
It was once believed that everything was made out of earth, air, fire, and water. That the sun was a chariot in the sky which traveled over a disk shaped earth. That sickness was caused by demons and imbalanced humors. That specialized rituals could call rain, heal the sick, and summon otherworldly entities. That women were naturally inferior to men. That those of different races were not actually humans. That a powerful intelligence created everything out of nothing and controls the whole world.
Why is it that we are able to critically examine, and discard, everyone of these ancient beliefs except the last one. Religion tells us that we must accept all of its claims without proof. Religion tells us that to think rationally about something is a sin, that doubt is Satan creeping into our minds. Any rational, thinking person can see this is but a self defense mechanism. God doesn’t want you to think critically about him because if you do he will vanish like a shadow when the light is shown on it. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. This holds just as true today as then. If your faith cannot stand up to reason then maybe the flaw is with your faith, not with the reason.
The religion of Christianity fails to hold up to reason constantly and consistently. Arguments from “why doesn’t god heal amputees” to “why does a perfect, omnipotent, all-loving, all-knowing god allow evil to exist” cannot be answered rationally.
As for bald theism, there is no evidence to back it up. Rationality does not in an way support even theism. There are some (myself included) who believe that there is some form of divine presence through the use of intuitive knowledge. However, as this knowledge cannot be replicated, examined, or shared there is no logical basis for saying that it is “truth”. As science would tell us, we can never know truth. To know truth is to know all things, because if there are any unknowns then it is still possible that your “truth” might have an unknown flaw. Atheist are simply those that look at the universe and see that there is no proof for a supreme intelligence and see no need for one. This terrifies the theists and the religionist because it calls into question their basic belief, that every man can feel the existence of the divine. They secretly doubt the reality of their god, but instead of exploring this doubt they project it onto those who openly deny god and try to destroy them. By destroying the atheist a theist hopes to destroy the doubt. Of course this does not work and so the cycle continues. The atheist of course is threatened with destruction and so fights back. He learns that all theists are out to destroy him and so begins to hate all of them, even those that have never threatened him. He attacks the theists and builds in them the doubt that they must deal with by attacking back. The cycle continues indefinitely. If a theist actually believed in his god then he would not see the need to destroy those who don’t believe. To restate a point, belief in god is irrational and every person can see this. The reactions are either acceptance of this fact, or violent opposition to those that do.
Responding to doodlebread
The reason why some (not all) atheists have begun to view atheism in a dogmatic and almost religious way. The reason for that is because they are still human and so are susceptible to human foibles. In the absence of a religion they begin to create a new one based on a lack of belief. Atheist too must be on guard that they don’t begin to fall into the trap of blind belief.
Responding to Loserman
1-The basic thesis of Christianity is that humans are innately evil and can do no good thing. Therefore we must submit all of our free will to YHVH (the christian god).
2-Christianity has been a force for incredible evil in the world. For every one good thing that Christianity has done for humanity there are at least a hundred evil things it has done. Slavery, rape, genocide, and child killing are all advocated in the bible. Democracy, science, religious freedom, racial right, women’s rights, and child abuse laws were all opposed by Christianity. Christianity has historically been a force for great evil in the world and to this day it still is (homophobia, dominionists, and abortion bombings).
Sorry bout the long rant. We must fight ignorance and oppression wherever it rears it’s head.
Don
June 12, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Awesome. Thank you dude.
Timbuktu
June 15, 2009 at 10:22 pm
So does this means Jesus doesn’t love him?
I hope the guy outside the train station with the sign will get that update.
Frankelstache
June 12, 2009 at 2:59 pm
As for myself, I stick with the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
spartacustractus
June 12, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Just a couple of comments, having quickly read through these comments.
Firstly, organised religion is basically organised superstition – with all the rituals and regalia to support it. Organised, evidence-free pontificating historically used to subjugate people.
Secondly, some posters need to be reminded that Christianity isn’t the only religion in the world, and that even within Christianity there are plenty of other mutually exclusive superstitious interpretations.
Thirdly, atheism isn’t a philosophy – merely the absence of belief in a supernatural deity. For example, it’s perfectly possible to be an atheist and subscribe to a something resembling a Christian philosophy.
pv
June 12, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Don-
Yes, incredible evil has been done in the name of Jesus Christ. However, it is important to separate the actions of those who claim to be Christian from Christianity itself. Jesus said in the Gospels that many would preach in His name, would claim to be followers of Him, but would not know Him. Many of the worlds evils, including slavery, have been both perpetrated and finally abolished by the actions of Christians, alongside non-believers as well. But I agree with you entirely: we do need to fight ignorance and oppression.
newmaldon
June 12, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Thanks for the image, Gero. I posted it on my office door. We discuss such notions in the Brit Lit I class when we discuss Faustus. I put Russell’s quote next to Nietzsche’s “God id Dead.”
If God really answered prayers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would win more races.
Woody Lassitor
June 12, 2009 at 4:26 pm
JMLoquist-
In fact big words often do form arguments, and yes, often to the exclusion of banal cultural demagoguery, whether directed at or from the religious. The fact that you do not understand them does not preclude them from being arguments.
Presented with actual philosophy, you guys regress back to summary dismissals of religion as that which only, “encourages and demands obedience and ignorance. Rulers have always used religion to control the masses.” Blah, blah, blah. The bigotry in these sorts of statements—as vehicles of reductive rationalism—is now so transparent it’s just disgusting.
Want to have a grown up conversation? Let’s. Want to go through the same rote Atheist exercise of right-by-agreement? Have fun. I’m sure it will sell lots of bumper stickers and crappy Atheist literature.
Sir Gnome
June 12, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Sir Gnome you don’t make an argument but merely regurgitate philosophical jargon to prop up the immaturity of your nonsense. A great writer uses simple language to convey deeper concepts. Your vocabulary only goes to display what an academically bound creep you are.
Paul
June 13, 2009 at 12:18 am
Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In the realm of Atheism, ad hominems translate as an admission of intellectual insecurity; likewise, calling someone a creep on the internet (in spite of having any thoughtful argumentative response) is pretty contradictory.
Why are Atheists so anti-intellectual? Why so strangely anti-existential? If Atheism was such a defensible position, then why not proudly and substantively respond to challenges? Why aren’t such challenges an opportunity for “enlightening” your opponents as opposed to just a new opportunity for oblique attacks? Or has Atheism been abducted, as I suspect, as a stealth surrogate for every kind of bigoted ideology in the West?
Sir Gnome
June 13, 2009 at 11:58 am
@Sir Gnome
Calling atheists “anti-intellectual” is an ad hominum attack. According to you, this equates with intellectual insecurity.
Have you heard of the psychiatric concept of projection?
If the shoe fits …..
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 1:03 pm
@ Sir Gnome
‘Sound and fury signifying nothing’ at the beginning of your post should be followed by a colon.
Timbuktu
June 15, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Friedrich Nietzsche blazed a new path for modern man to freedom from the conventions and deceptions of society. Bertrand Russell in his quest for absolute knowledge in Principia Mathematica never achieved his quest. However, Sir Alfred North Whitehead and his devout beliefs in God kept him on track during their collaboration. The personal life and philosphy of Bertrand Russell left nowhere near the importance of Nietszche.
hoboduke
June 12, 2009 at 5:34 pm
The thing that is so funny to me is all of you atheists have the time, money and freedom to talk about thses things openly without fear of retribution or penalty. The time money and freedom which were born out of the prosperity brought about by the fruits of a Christian nation. Show me an atheistic country that even comes close to our Christian nation.
Greg
gregwirths
June 12, 2009 at 10:26 pm
@gregwirths:
Learn your history. The US is not a “Christian nation,” as it was founded on Enlightenment principles. Most of the Founders had very little good to say about Christianity. The time, money, and freedom we enjoy was indeed born of prosperity (not to mention a dedication in our Founders to creating a new kind of society, based on Enlightenment principles)–and that in turn was accomplished not through “the fruits” of Christianity (far from it), but through reason, science, and the rule of law. I hope you don’t consider yourself a patriot, because you aren’t. Patriotism requires that you align yourself with the fundamental principles of your nation, and that you show enough respect to know the history of its founding. In these things you are way off the mark. “Why do you hate America?”
casey
October 15, 2009 at 7:24 pm
@gregwirths
Sweden, Denmark, Japan – for starters.
There is a strong correlation between religiousity and crime and social diseases and disorders.
RLWemm
June 12, 2009 at 11:24 pm
“According to Popper the difference between a science and a religion is that science is capable of being tested and falsified but religion cannot be tested in any manner which would allow this possibility.”
Good reference, but in what manner is something as organically complex as religion so hastily reducible? It’s funny, because the premise of “religion” in these sorts of specious arguments hold “religion” as some monolithic, automatically prescriptive totality. The religious are drones and automata, automatically and in suspense of all cognition, swallowing the prescriptive ideas of their institutions. What’s unusual about such a hyper-reductive attitude is that it’s not even scientific in the sense that it reduces complex phenomena to pre-existent and over-simplified conclusions. The argument is valid if and only if you accept religion as such; and accepting religion as such, the argument becomes valid.
Likewise, I’m curious as to what constitutes scientific “facts” except in infinite recursive regress? In what manner are “facts” facts, independent of any ontological groundwork, without referring to themselves in a circular fashion? How does an exclusively inductive process assert its own self-contained validity without referring to abductive reasoning? How do evidential canons assert their own foundation without reference to assumptions beyond the logical jurisdiction of empirical induction?
Who’s being circular? Ideological? Oh, right—those darn “theists,” those “others,” those fill-in-the-blanks.
Sir Gnome
June 13, 2009 at 1:10 pm
@Sir Gnome
Re: Good reference, but in what manner… those fill-in-the-blanks.
Since list readers have been complaining about your obfuscating written style I ran your reply to me through several tests of readability. These are the results.
The Gunning Fog index is 17.80 (This is an extreme level of FOG. It implies that the reader needs 18 years of education to be able to easily determine that it is nonsense.)
Flesh reading ease score: 27.8 (Extremely unreadable)
SMOG Index: 14.2 (A high level of obfuscation)
Wikipedia has this to say:
“Obfuscation means making something harder to understand, usually by complicating sentences needlessly. Weasel words are a form of obfuscation. Obfuscation is usually used when people either do not know what they are talking about or wish to hide their meaning.”.
Does this describe you?
You would to well to actually read what Popper has to say about religion versus scientific methodology before you dismiss his writings as specious. Try this one for simplicity: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html.
The Gunning Fog index is 15.10 (That is you should be able to understand it after nearly completing an American level undergraduate education.)
Popper includes religion along with ideologies and pseudo sciences in the category of “impressive and all-explanatory theories which act upon weak minds like revelations”. Popper noted: “The most characteristic element … seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which “verified” the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their adherents. ….. These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it.”
The premise of religions and ideologies in this schema is not that they are prescriptive totalities which are accepted without question by their adherents but that they are capable of explaining anything and everything, even if their predictions are proved false. That makes their validity essentially untestable.
In contradistinction to such theories, scientific theories are “incompatible with certain possible results of observation”. In other words, they were theories which risk falsification.
Popper summed up his thoughts as follows:
“
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of “corroborating evidence.”)
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a “conventionalist twist” or a “conventionalist stratagem.”)
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”
Your last paragraph is pure philoso-babble and essentially meaningless in the real world. Facts in science are defined as that which is objectively observable, measurable, confirmable and repeatable. The legal world shares much of these critieria but includes highly restricted personal testimony among the list of acceptable evidence. These are deductive, not inductive, processes.
The reason why these standards of evidence rate far above the standards used by philosophers is that the methodology of science and the legal rules of evidence have been spectacularly more successful in determining truth in the objective world. Subjective experience is extremely unreliable as a determinant of any truth external to the self. The flights of philosophy which you engage in are word plays which obfusticate the truth, not clarify it.
You cannot use philosophy to discover the blind spot that you have in each eye. Nor will philosophy help you determine what it is that you “see” in those areas. While you could argue that whatever you think you “see” in those spots is “real”, that conclusion has no practical application in objective reality and no predictive power.
I could say that it seems to me that you are spending most of your time arguing in your blind spots. That would be a non-scientific statement as it cannot be falsified. That does not mean that people reading this list believe it to be false.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 6:12 pm
RLWemm says:
‘Calling atheists “anti-intellectual” is an ad hominum attack. According to you, this equates with intellectual insecurity.
Have you heard of the psychiatric concept of projection?
If the shoe fits …..’
Calling atheists anti-intellectual would be an ad hominem if it were not for an abundance of public examples, not the least of which can be found in the comment responses above. Likewise, RLWemm’s method of recusing Atheists of the charge of ad hominem rhetoric is reliant on a specific kind of ad hominem in the form of a reductio ad folk-psychology. So to deflect the charge, the response is to satisfy and exceed it?
Sounds exactly like the PZ Meyers’ response to Charlotte Allen’s LA Times charge that Atheists are shallow and bigoted: shallow and bigoted. And to be clear, I think the term “Atheist” only refers to its “new” ideologues, not whatever thoughtful remnants might be left which have yet to be co-opted by the “new” demagogues.
Sir Gnome
June 13, 2009 at 4:13 pm
LOL. Little do you know how absurd that is!
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 6:22 pm
@Sir Gnome:
Calling atheists anti-intellectual would be … the “new” demagogues.
The Gunning Fog index is 13.53
An improvement of sorts.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 6:27 pm
The point I’ve been making, and which your comments continually reaffirm, is that these kinds of childish retorts have a meaning that is completely independent of the “literality” which they presume to possess. I mean all that hot air, snark, and wikipedia browsing, but NO IQ references? I’m thoroughly disappointed.
Sir Gnome
June 13, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Reason is the enemy of religion.
Gnome you are not an enemy of religion.
You have passion but you are not persuasive. You can’t bully people into believing in god by deconstructing and belittling everything they say until they have no option.
Your words are academic in style but your manner is juvenile and betrays your agenda which you so obviously remain cagey about.
If you are a christian just come out and say it. Don’t come here with a petulant, snarly and supercilious attitude thinking that is the way to convince people that there is a big bearded man in the sky who made everything in 6 days.
And for god’s sake have some humility about you. Your
references to IQ and ‘philosophy 101′ and constant promotion of your credentials should be unnecessary to a confident adult. No one else feels the need to.
Why don’t you just state your position and let us discuss it hey tiger?
Paul
June 14, 2009 at 5:15 am
Atheists are anti-intellectual? Why? Because they don’t accept the slippery, foggy, post-modernist notions of a blowhard? There are plenty of serious intellectuals who reject the nonsense you are carrying on about, so it is fallacious to present your conclusions as inevitable among pro-intellectuals, and opposition to them as anti-intellectual. Obscurantism and sophistry…you’re not looking too good here.
casey
June 16, 2009 at 12:07 am
@Sir Gnome
“IQ references” are meaningless if their utilization is hampered by other factors.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 7:43 pm
@Sir Gnome:
“The point … thoroughly disappointed.
The Gunning Fog index is 13.07
Coming down. Keep working on it.
RLWemm
June 13, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Babble, God is the Jabberwocky! As the Mad Hatter said, “They’re only words, they can mean anything I wish.”
Gue
June 14, 2009 at 1:06 am
I think you will find that was Humpty Dumpty, not the Mad Hatter, in his speech on the meaning of Capital. Ironically, Capital, at l;east for a while in Britain, meant exactly what Humpty Dumpty wanted it to mean.
Lewis
June 14, 2009 at 4:43 pm
nice……….
Wrinkle Reviews
June 14, 2009 at 6:12 am
nice!!! he’s got a point!!
fireinyoureyes
June 15, 2009 at 3:05 am
if you are going to leave a page why don’t you create your own web page. being an athesist is pretty awesome even though my parents still belive i am a christian
Kassi
June 15, 2009 at 1:57 pm
The thing I’ve come to realise in the whole atheist/theist debate is that, although I absolutely don’t believe in any God, I actually don’t care whether one exists or not. Either way it will not affect how I live my life, thus I leave those who wish to believe to get on with it, and those who don’t to do likewise. We could debate and logicise until the end of time and nobody would either convince someone with the opposing viewpoint to change, or reach a satisfactory conclusion. Even if one proves something is true, you then have to define truth and reality. It’s easier just to chill out, seriously.
Let's call the whole thing off...
June 15, 2009 at 9:59 pm
That would be nice. The problem is that this isn’t just an academic exercise: some powerful theists aim to rule the world according to the dictates of their religions. That is a real threat, and therefore apathy is inappropriate. If you like your personal and institutional freedoms, the benefits of science, progress, and all that, you would do well to remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
casey
June 15, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Furthermore, your premise that debate will never do anything to convince anyone is false. I am a living example of someone who was de-converted through debate; I have friends who were de-converted through debate; I know of authors who have written entire books on the subject of being de-converted through debate. There are certainly people for whom superior arguments are not sufficient to dislodge from them their cherished fantasies. But there are a lot of reasonable people among the religious, too, who would be well served by being exposed to this debate…and they can be convinced.
casey
June 16, 2009 at 12:16 am
Couldn’t agree more.
RLWemm
June 16, 2009 at 12:30 am
@Let’s call the whole thing off…
I lived your preferred life for many years. Things changed when I moved to the USA and I discovered that there was no longer the freedom to do so. When the theists stop bashing non-believers and interfering with education and science then we will be able to return to a life where it truly doesn’t matter what we think. Then, and only then, will it be safe to relax and live a normal life full of non-contingent friendships, hold jobs which are not contingent on expression of religious beliefs, study and research areas which threaten the religion or ideology of those in power in the community and express the most mature form of morality towards people without the behaviour being perversely labeled as “immorality”.
RLWemm
June 16, 2009 at 12:28 am
The thing about religion that bothers me is that it takes the choice out of people. It makes them stop rationally weighing the benefits or drawbacks of many options. What you find when you look inside of a church is many people listening to one person who massages texts selected by other people thousands of years ago in order to push his (or her) view. It doesn’t matter what type of religion it is; the end result of disagreeing with your church leader is a nagging feeling that you’re headed for worse straights than this life. You must obey, even if it means shutting your eyes and rushing through life. It takes away the personal responsibility of each and every one of us to empathize and appreciate each other and feel good about ourselves.The things that religion are more fully explained by science. There is no reason to believe in invisible beings. It’s so sad that people still allow themselves to be led around in such a way. There are moderate christians, but I feel that any system that allows personal freedom to be robbed regularly should be generally discouraged.
nikki
June 16, 2009 at 12:46 am
I love this debate, it is probably the most engaging one, but I never saw one change his mind, does not meter how good of argument the another side presented.
Often, people mix religion and God. It seems that religion supposes to bring God to people, but instead it encapsulates him, creating frame in which he supposes to fit. I love God, as absurd as that seems, but I hate religion. Religion opens some doors but closes more of them.
I found that my faith helps me stay on the top of things, in control of my life and feelings in time when situation would calls for desperation.
It seems to me that Theists and Atheist are siting on two different mountains looking on same valley from two different points of view. I found that there are idiots and smart people on both sides, and not one knows it all. I found many benefits of faith but what are the benefits of not believing. Surly not accepting authority of religious groups gives you more space and freedom to analyze life but God should not be on anybody way of thinking. He is one that gave us brains and need to search and ask questions.
But dismissing posibility of somebody like God could be a loss as if he is, he is the most amazing person ever and probably somebody anybody would like too meet.
lolimin
June 16, 2009 at 2:07 am
@lolimin
Attitude and belief change normally takes time if it is caused by education and thoughtful consideration of the evidence. Instant conversions, on the other hand, are the result of emotional and cognitive manipulation. See the videos of Derren Brown’s “instant conversions” of non-believers to Christian beliefs with which they are already familiar. [He de-converted them back again at the end of the show.]
You are welcome to hold your “non-religious” religious beliefs. While the feelings you have may seem real and precious to you, you are making assertions that I cannot accept. (For example, that god exists, is an amazing person who is able to be “met”, and gave humans brains.)
Having been on your side of the fence (I am a de-convert) I can assure you that we are not looking at the same valley from different viewpoints.
I have a strong need to believe things which make logical sense and for which there is good and valid evidence, regardless of whether they make me feel good of bad. That may mean that we have different personalities or it may simply mean that we have different levels of education.
You are absolutely correct in stating that their are idiots and intelligensia on both sides of the divide, and a similar mixture in the middle of it. According to my (professional) research, religious belief change and loss is related to educational experience, personality and social environment.
RLWemm
June 16, 2009 at 4:26 am
“Having been on your side of the fence (I am a de-convert) I can assure you that we are not looking at the same valley from different viewpoints.
I have a strong need to believe things which make logical sense and for which there is good and valid evidence, regardless of whether they make me feel good of bad. That may mean that we have different personalities or it may simply mean that we have different levels of education.”
Some last words on behalf of an utterly discomfited philosophy student:
This is precisely where contemporary Atheism and tolerance diverge, which is worrisome because it is so much unlike past formulations of Atheistic perspectives. How can you make such overtly arrogant and presumptuous statements toward another person’s suggestion of agnostic humility? Precisely what prominent “logical” grounds can you cite in order to justify such a condescending statement? Likewise— because it is ABSOLUTELY statistically significant—WHY is it that so many self-identified “Atheists” once belonged to the rabid, fundamentalist religious sects which they now so freely scorn as their personal object of ressentiment? Is this “new” Atheism quasi-religion thing just a surrogate for ideological bigotry?
You STILL have not answered my questions several posts back about how an inductive process (science) can justify itself without referring to abductive assumptions; or the one about the limited nature of scientific reduction and its liminal sphere of application; or about the prior assumptions of canons of empirical evidence; or the one about how thoroughly unexamined your notions of positivism are. I guess I won’t even mention how shallowly you have reified religion as some prescriptive totality, and thereby reduced it to the flat and fetishizing image reflective only of the perceptions of a complete ideologue. Instead of answering these questions, you suppressed or ignored them by summarily dismissing them as “philo-babble.” But surely someone as “educated” as yourself understands these issues and their attendant vocabularies? Can you address these challenges? And remember, I’m not religious, so the ad hominems, tu quoque’s, and grammar lessons won’t put any traction under your claims.
Sir Gnome
June 16, 2009 at 10:37 pm
If you were as intelligent as you seem intent on implying then you would be perfectly capable of translating you turgid text into everyday language. Of course, it would not look so impressive to the average reader if you did.
Leaving aside the multiple gratutious and loosely disguised insults, you are asking over and over again, in a creative variety of philoso-babble,
why science defines itself and its findings in words which have been defined in terms of themselves (so what?),
why science should consider itself sufficient to explain away religion (it doesn’t),
whether science is well served by a methology which is itself based on assumptions which may not have been examined (it works)
and whether my notion of positivism is sufficient for examining any of the above (irrelevant).
As I have already stated, these interminably expressed questions have no practical relevance or application to the issue at hand. If you have the intelligence to understand this then you have deliberately chosen to pretend that you do not. Either way you have nothing of worth to add here.
RLWemm
June 17, 2009 at 1:33 am
@ sir gnome:
I agree with what RLWemm has said. But I’d like to add some things.
1) Do you get out of your philosophy classes much? You come across a bit myopic. You seem to be suggesting that a good dose of serious philosophy is all that is needed to lead one to reject “new” Atheism as nothing more than a “quasi-religion” (as you call it). You would do well to admit that there are serious philosophers who disagree with this view–and they are not students, like you are. I have seen philosophy and formal logic used to “disprove” a lot of otherwise good ideas, which work quite well despite their being “wrong” to clever philosophy students. What you are doing reduces to sophistry–essentially the opposite of philosophy.
2) You seem to be speaking the language of postmodernism, a perfectly ridiculous world-view (if it can be called one) that I have no patience for. I subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth, and that should answer a lot of your misleading questions.
3) It is obvious that you dislike atheism, but your arguments hardly address it. You are instead addressing empiricism, or science, or both, and pretending as though this is an attack on atheism. You seem to forget that atheism makes *no claims*. The burden of proof (if that is even an issue for someone who doesn’t believe in the concept of evidence) is not a problem for atheists, but for theists. Atheism is not synonymous with empiricism, any more than it is mutually exclusive of agnosticism.
4) Your question about the “statistically significant” fundamentalist background of “so many” atheists has an obvious answer. Of course, the obvious answer is not convenient to an obscurantist and sophist, but here it is, for the sake of those who have some sense. Fundamentalist institutions without exception cling to the easily *falsifiable claims* that their more liberal spawn have rejected. And why have they rejected those claims? Because those claims have been profoundly discredited by the outside world. Atheists are those who have discovered or always knew that they have no internal propensity for belief in comforting (and/or frightening) fairy tales, so it is typical for these types of people to move from fundamentalism to atheism, rather than from fundamentalism to apologetics. Further, another set of statistics show that a large percentage of de-converts describe themselves as having taken their former religions very seriously–seriously enough to critically examine the claims, claims which, as I’ve said, are more often *falsifiable* in fundamentalist institutions than in liberal ones (which are easily recognized as having sacrificed Truth upon the altar of social survival). Is it any wonder then that former fundamentalist atheists are “statistically significant?” Not really. It certainly doesn’t make atheism an ideology, much less a bigoted one.
casey
June 17, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I’m so bummed I read these comments.
Conner
June 16, 2009 at 2:57 am
@ RLWemm:
So what your arguments boil down to is that which you cannot understand is therefore invalid. I guess we can close down all those pesky schools and fire those pedantic teachers, because anything of complexity is necessarily false. And asking you to justify why this is so yields the tacit admission that you don’t know the first thing about these contemporary issues, yet nonetheless feel you are informally privileged to judge others with regard to their beliefs, while simultaneously denying your own.
I couldn’t have received a more direct admission of rational bigotry if I had tried; and if any subsequent post does ANYTHING but address my prior questions, I think we know the quality of your bona fides.
Sir Gnome
June 17, 2009 at 8:08 am
Get back to me when philosophy is used to determine truth in courts of law and forms the basis of complex scientific research. Get back to me when you can put a statistical probability value on any “truth” determined by philosophical conjecture. Get back to me when you explain your “complexities” in simple everyday language. Until then I claim that they are irrelevant to the search for objective truths.
RLWemm
June 17, 2009 at 1:55 pm
“Get back to me when philosophy is used to determine truth in courts of law and forms the basis of complex scientific research.”
Are you actually claiming that philosophy does not fully encompass both of these fields? Is that why law school entrance exams involve logic games and language analysis? Is that why philosophy is the leading undergraduate major among attorneys, judges, and legal professionals? Or perhaps why mathematical constructivism and logical languages are the very basis of scientific research in “ultimate” fields such as physics, cosmology, and astronomy?
“Get back to me when you can put a statistical probability value on any “truth” determined by philosophical conjecture. Get back to me when you explain your “complexities” in simple everyday language. Until then I claim that they are irrelevant to the search for objective truths.”
So, your basis for these mythical “objective truths” (the phrase is “ding-an-sich”) is purely through inductive statistical probability? And yet they are no less absolute because of the variability and incompleteness this implies, correct?
Another non-answer that simply loops back to my original questions, implying a further admission of lack of familiarity on your behalf. But obviously this is not a problem for you as long as you have some religious “other” to smolder over.
Sir Gnome
June 17, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Bona fides? Get a grip, gnome. Philosophy isn’t everything, and *your* particular philosophy doesn’t comprise even the pinkie finger of Philosophy Proper, who sits on his fat pampered ass all day in the corner of the town’s tiniest cafe and argues with himself–most often about things that will never matter to anyone but him. But at least Philosophy Proper has the decency to recognize that he did not raise up the cafe. And I know him well enough to say that, since we’ve been drinking buddies for quite a few years.
casey
June 18, 2009 at 12:07 am
These kinds of responses from “new” Atheists are great, because how exactly do you formulate an anti-philosophical position without recognizing that it is itself a philosophical position?
Sir Gnome
June 18, 2009 at 10:47 am
“These kinds of responses from “new” Atheists are great, because how exactly do you formulate an anti-philosophical position without recognizing that it is itself a philosophical position?”
I never formulated an anti-philosophical position. You know, a little reading comprehension might help you do better in those philosophy courses you are taking.
casey
October 15, 2009 at 7:36 pm
@SirGnome
It seems that you are still so immersed in your philosophy major that you cannot see the world outside it.
Religion grew out of philosophy because that subject allows its followers to speculate and form mind-driven hypotheses. Then it allows them to argue from these without the need for proving the speculations on which they are based. A hollow exercise which led to nothing very substantial except for a lot of interesting literature and some very beautiful prose.
Science usurped philosophy as the means to discover real things with real purpose and application. Science is about mathematics and statistics and some the logical aspects of philosophy. It is a method which uses the best possible methods to determine facts and truths about material things and anything which is capable of acting on the material world. That includes any claims about things or beings of any kind which or who are assumed to be able to act on the material world. This includes most people’s concept of “god/s”.
Atheism, especially the “new” variety, is much more beholden to the application of the scientific method rather than the philosophical method which it usurped. Like good science, it accepts and uses the portions of philosophy (logic) which have shown themselves to be useful in determining and checking the validity of knowledge with practical value. It has little use for the rest of it.
The problem with religions are that they are stuck with an old style method of determining truth which embraces, rather than sifts out, highly unreliable subjective elements. This results in interminable justificatory exercises which create the illusion of wisdom and, to many, certainty.
Science does not deal with certainties. It deals with providing the best level of approximation to the truth as possible. It always leaves itself open to improve that level of certainty or to abandon its conclusions should further evidence overturn them. The scientific method will also abandon trying to answer a question should the question fail to produce anything of practical significance.
Philosophy, on the other hand, does not know when to quit. As you have shown on many occasions here, and elsewhere, it can all too easily devolve into mind masturbation which answers nothing and provides no information which improves technological advancement or the lot of human beings.
There is as much room for such mind masturbations as there is for art and music. It is just wrong to assume that they are of practical significance or value. It is also wrong to assume that everything outside of these fields must be answerable to them, translated into them, or sifted through them.
In short, atheism is no more a form of philosophy than it is a form of music or art.
IgnobleSir, you really need to get a life outside your studies.
RLWemm
October 16, 2009 at 1:58 am
@Sir Gnome.
Aspects of philosophy are useful in the search for objective truths. This is why such aspects are included in the training of those who will engage in the searches. Knowledge of the rules of logic is a usual tool when assessing a person’s interpretation of events or data. The general discipline of philosophy is useful in sharpening the ability to think around and through a wide range of complex issues. However, while this is good brain exercise it does not substitute for core knowledge in other areas.
The field of philosophy does not encompass the discipline of law and the range of scientific fields, as you claim. The field of philosophy is a useful but far from sufficient knowledge base when dealing with practical issues of objective reality. In the end it is lawyers with some philosophical training, and not philosophers with some training in law, who are called to argue a case aimed at determining objective truth. In the end it is scientists with some philosophical training, and not philosophers with little or no scientific training, who are called to give expert witness in such cases.
It does you no good to assert that I or anyone else on this forum knows less about certain philosophical questions than you. Although you have yet to provide readers with valid and comprehensible proof of this assertion, it may well be true. In fact I would go so far as to say that there is an extremely high probability that you have expertise in areas of philosophy, and probably in a whole lot of other areas as well, which is superior to that of every other reader on this list. While it may provide you with a smug feeling of superiority, that feeling it is misplaced.
In the final analysis, the presence or absence of such knowledge is irrelevant to the search for practical scientific facts. You have claimed (with considerable lack of clarity and great deal of unnecessary pomposity, suggesting that you do not really understand the concepts you are quoting) that a number of issues are pertinent to the understanding of the truth value of science vis a vis religion. So that other readers can see what it is that you are actually attempting to argue I have translated your muddy text into ordinary language. What is loses in precision is more than made up for in clarity.
Avoiding the attacks on me and others (mostly), your assertions were:
Assertion 1: That science is an inductive process which cannot justify itself without reference to abductive assumptions [cribbed from the Catholic Encyclopedia!].
Translation: The scientific method generalizes from experience, arguing from a set of observations to a particular rule based on them. It falls into the logical trap of assuming that when one event precedes another it is the cause of whatever happens next. [This describes bad science as well as bad logic. Good science does not assume that a connection between events, even a very strong one, is either causal or directional. Good methodology and relevant statistical analysis aims to avoid these problems.]
Assertion 2: That science is a liminally reductive enterprise with a limit to its sphere of application.
Translation: Science tries to break things down into the lowest common denominator and/or to explain things in terms of one over-arching theory whenever possible. This process breaks down at the thresholds.
[In medical and behavioral sciences that approach causes problems. Sick people, for example, may have concurrent illnesses or abnormal conditions so trying to account for all the symptoms with one illness may kill the patient. Mathematical procedures such as Fourier Analysis and Partial Regression attempt to partial out multiple signals. ]
Assertion 3: That canons of empirical evidence are based on a priori assumptions [unspecified].
Translation: The rules for collecting/observing evidence are based on things which are assumed to be true, but have yet to be proved. [The assumptions are not specified. Presumably they refer to the fact that human observation is necessarily fallible. This is why good science requires multiple observations by different observers under different circumstances at different times using different instruments, etc.]
Assertion 4: That a good grasp of the finer points of [logical] positivism is a necessary tool in the determination of [objective/subjective?] truth.
Translation: Science is based on the notion that the only acceptable evidence is that which occurs in the real world and is based on actual sensory experience. [With some modification, this has stood the test of time as the best method for determining objective truth. Subjective emotions, notions and metaphysical reasoning are not very useful, and frequently quite unreliable, in these circumstances. Determining subjective “truth” is another story.]
Assertion 5: That [I alone/ all scientists/all non-believers?] reify religion as a prescriptive totality.
Translation: {Any one I don’t like ?} treats religion as if it were a real concrete tangible thing instead of something intangible and elusive, like a set of ideas or feelings. They insist that it is always the same for everyone. [This is a projection of the writer’s habit of reifying non-belief/Atheism as a prescriptive totality. Neither of these extreme positions can be validly supported.]
I think that clarifies a few things. One outcome is that your notions appear to be lifted from text books rather than actual real life experience. I doubt if any of these assertions are based on your own original thoughts.
Most importantly, none of these issues (either implicitly or explicitly) are a significant part of the normal proceedings of a court trial or a scientific research project. Few of them have even minor relevance in such circumstances.
In other words, the issues you insist we must deal with are not essential components of the tried and established methods for determining practical and objective truths. The bulk of such work requires knowledge of other disciplines. That, Sir, was my point.
My advice to you is to widen your educational and experiental background, improve the clarity of your written expression and (ahem) do something about the personality quirks which make you come across as a very insecure and defensively supercilious human being.
We are done here.
RLWemm
June 17, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Well said, Rosemary. ;) (It’s a small web after all.)
casey
June 17, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Amen (no pun intended)… nicely put!
Tom
June 17, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Okay. I don’t really care what your religion is, but if you have the nerve to try and “convert” me, you had better have some fricking proof. The way I see it, if your All Mighty God was so loving and forgiving and real, we would not be having this debate right now. So all you Christian/Pagan/what ever, don’t push your religion on us, and we will all be happy.
Get it?
Got it.
Good.
Indiffrent
June 17, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Huh? Who are you referencing?
Troll?
RLWemm
June 18, 2009 at 12:04 am
“However, while this [philosophy] is good brain exercise it does not substitute for core knowledge in other areas.”
Really? The field whose largest concern is epistemology does not substitute for “core” knowledge in other areas? What is this “core” (code for “absolute”) knowledge? Where does it derive its sovereign validity if not from epistemology?
“The field of philosophy does not encompass the discipline of law and the range of scientific fields, as you claim.”
I’m baffled: the field which hones and constructs the rules of evidence for the totalities of “science” and “law” is not their primary field of reference? But of course, philosophy—and certainly not science—is purely a subset and an instrument of capital, practicality, and localized value:
“The field of philosophy is a useful but far from sufficient knowledge base when dealing with practical issues of objective reality.”
This is where the rest of your post becomes irrelevant; and as much as we have disagreed, it was thoughtful of you to try and face up to some much bigger philosophical and scientific problems than I implied.
However, what is this “objective reality” apart from its implied assumption? What is prior to it, when the only means of empirical analysis is posterior? Did you just save Schrodinger’s cat? So, it is the task of science to presume this static level of reality (a reality in which absolutely nothing seems so foundationally static) is directly accessible to the impartial experiences of human beings (we models of impartiality)? Do you not see the circularity in presuming the static intelligibility of objective facts, then using this assumption as a basis for affirming the process of science itself? And what about when you weaponize these “facts,” co-opting a neutral process, and direct them against a specific social class?
Others have accused me of—buzzword alert!—being “postmodern.” The thing is, the only angles of critique that I have presented (except a few bits of phenomenology) are from early-Modern philosophy. You still haven’t answered my questions, all you have done is laid a groundwork for saying philosophy should be co-opted or rejected based on its ability to passively facilitate an incredibly capitalist notion of “science” and its teleological progress. And likewise, those little tidbits of personal details about myself, how are those not ad hominems again? How are those not a—beggin yur pardon—sign of extreme insecurity that instead of actual argument, you continually have to delve into someone personally, “just in case”?
“We are done here.”
I am, but I’m sure you’re not, or the buddies from RD-net as they pile on. But look out your window some time—what is this oscillating “done-here”? What informs and precedes it? I doubt “we” are ever “done,” and I doubt being “done” has anything to do with our own determination.
Sir Gnome
June 18, 2009 at 11:27 am
@Casey.
Thanks. Appreciated.
@All
Sir Gnome appears to be a student at Washington State U, probably in Literature/Philosophy, etc. His other writings are strongly critical of “new” atheists, although he describes himself as a non-theist with a penchant for Nietsche, etc. I suspect the turgid prose will modify over time as he ascends the academic ladder and gains in self confidence.
RLWemm
June 17, 2009 at 11:42 pm
He can keep the writing style, as far as I’m concerned–I’m rooting for him to jettison the interminably stupid postmodernist approach to science.
casey
June 18, 2009 at 12:29 am
idk. i came in about half way through… I’m actually just really bored.
Indiffrent
June 18, 2009 at 12:19 am
I hate how if anything ever contains the word atheist in it a bunch of people comment on it just to start same old wonted religious debate. Is that really obligatory?
Katie
June 20, 2009 at 2:09 am
Russell is an atheist because he just use only his faculty of mind. Our mind is limited but Gos is infinite.God cannot be found by mere thinking because God is beyond mind.But through centuries,mystics have found God through their heart.Go deep in your meditation, then you will found Him! And then there’s no argument any more.Full stop.
Rich
June 21, 2009 at 3:07 pm
@ Rich
The heart is an organ that pumps blood. The fact that “mystics” cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality does not indicate that they have special insight, it means they are insane. Like you. Full stop.
casey
June 21, 2009 at 6:22 pm
@ sir gnome
In response to your unintelligible questions, I will ask you a straightforward one.
How do you explain independent verification if there are no objective facts? And while we’re at it, why don’t you just come out and tell us what qualifies as truth in your world.
casey
June 21, 2009 at 6:32 pm
@ sir gnome
I sense that you go in for the popular practice of imagining fantastic implications for quantum theory that the theorists themselves would reject as foolish.
casey
June 21, 2009 at 6:55 pm
OMNEG! (Oh My Non-Existent God) Pronounced Oh my neg! is the web’s fastest spreading meme. It can be used to invoke a particular non-existent entity when expressing surprise, vexation, or just plain irritation at those who use OMG! in various contexts and mean it. It seems particularly apt for use in the discussions above, where one OMNEG! was all that was needed to deal with the tiresome and specious theistic arguments.
nnimisubo
July 13, 2009 at 8:18 pm
LOL. Good one. I will try to remember it and to use it were ever necessary.
RLWemm
July 14, 2009 at 5:48 pm
PLEASE DELETE ALL MY COMMENTS. Thanks.
JD
October 15, 2009 at 2:30 pm