So for those of you who are slightly confused, my previous post was a little April Fool’s Day prank. No, I haven’t suddenly seen the light – I’m still the same skeptical atheist you all know and love. I got a kick out of how many of you I actually made worried – I even had people emailing me out of concern, haha.
While I’m still a godless heathen, I wasn’t joking when I said that I really enjoyed Jon’s talk. And before I talk about it, I have an important side note to make. Every time we’ve had an atheist speaker on campus, something has gone wrong. It was raining for Hemant, snowing for Greta, and PZ‘s flight got delayed. Jon? Arrived early on the first beautiful, sunny, 70 degree weather day of the year. I think this is a sign…
I first met John at the Secular Student Alliance conference where he talked about how Christian groups can cooperate with atheists. We’ve kept in touch, and he has the honor of having the one Christian blog I follow. And like at his blog, he does a wonderful job of talking about Christianity in a way that’s a lot more understandable to atheists, especially ones (like myself) who were never Christian. One point that Jon made in his talk is why I like him so much – that he’s all about dialogue, not debates. He’s someone who will actually listen to what you have to say, and conversations don’t devolve into stubborn debates.
The bulk of his talk was about stereotypes people may have about Christians – that they’re anti-science, hypocritical, the morality police, etc. His main point wasn’t exactly revolutionary – that yes, some Christians do these bad things, but it’s not all Christians. But I’m mostly glad that he’s willing to admit this. Far too many people that I’ve talked to seem to think that Christians are infallible, but not Jon.
Though I will have to disagree with him on one point. When talking about certain Christian extremists, he remarked that he didn’t want to start “bashing Christians.” But I disagree. Okay, maybe not quite “bashing” – but we need more moderate Christians like Jon to speak out against Christian extremists. We all complain about the loud, obnoxious groups that get disproportionate media coverage, but moderate Christians need to start actually doing something about it. Do they see it as being traitorous towards their fellow Christians?
I don’t have too many specific remarks to make about the talk, but I definitely left feeling a bit uplifted. Not because I had seen the light, but because I remembered that there are Christians out there that I can talk to and be friends with. They’re not all right wing anti-evolution homophobic teabaggers. Jon and I definitely disagree on theological issues – I don’t agree with the concept of everyone being bad/sinners, or the whole… well, God thing. But we don’t feel the need to push our beliefs on each other, so we can still enjoy having a beer together and geeking out about Lord of the Rings.
Thanks, Jon, for coming and visiting us at Purdue! I know I enjoyed it, and so did others. Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you much at dinner – I’m sure our other members kept you entertained. Or more likely, somewhat frightened.
If you were there for Jon’s talk, please feel free to add to the discussion in the comments! Mike already has a good review up, as well.
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And as an aside,
Me: *leading the group to the restaurant, decided to take an alley for a short cut*
Member: Why are we going this way?
Me: It’s quicker.
Other member: *points ahead, we’re headed straight for the back of University Church* OH GOD, IT’S A TRAP! SHE’S TAKING US TO CHURCH!
Me: *evil cackling*
Member: He got to her, noooooo!
Me: You should have known this was just a plan to convert you all!
“I’m still the same skeptical atheist you all know and love.”:-)”OH GOD, IT’S A TRAP!”http://img249.imageshack.us/im…He new it too !
The weather is preparing you for Seattle.:-)BTW what Christian (or other religion) oriented blogs do us atheistic types like? I keep track of a few and think Nakedpastor’s cartoons to be worthwhile (Hemant sometimes posts them).
Many moderate Christians may not be “right wing anti-evolution homophobic teabaggers” but, as many people (e.g., Sam Harris) have pointed out, when moderates don’t speak out they give tacit approval to the wacky beliefs held by their brethren. Agree to disagree isn’t enough. Those more extreme groups need a good verbal “bashing”.
There are a few very religious folks where I work. Thing is, religion is pretty much banned from the office (strangely its only ever the Christians that need to be reminded of this) so people talk about anything but. Makes them easy to get along with when they don’t need to preach or make a point of how wonderful god apparently thinks they are.
Thanks, Jen! I should correct something, however. When I said I don’t like to “bash” other Christians, that doesn’t mean that I don’t speak out against those who are off their rockers. Bashing, to me, is calling their Christianity into question, something I don’t like to do. However, I do like to get rowdy with my fellow Christians all the time. I mean, that’s what the Attie awards on my blog are all about, after all. :) But, I love you Purdue pirates.
“We all complain about the loud, obnoxious groups that get disproportionate media coverage, but moderate Christians need to start actually doing something about it. Do they see it as being traitorous towards their fellow Christians?”On my blog I talk smack about Christians I disagree with much more than I do other religions I don’t believe in. I don’t consider it traitorous, but I myself don’t belong to any denomination or organized system, so I don’t view other Christians as being “brothers and sisters in Christ” and we’re all ‘against’ atheists or Muslims or Buddhists or anyone who’s not Christian.I’m aligned with those that are against injustice and suffering and intolerance, and against those who support or preach such things. If that means I’m aligned with a group of atheists against someone like Fred Phelps, so be it. It’s more important that I can be considered moral than I can be considered a ‘proper’ Christian in someone else’s eyes.On the subject of us moderate Christians needing to speak up against extremists, I don’t disagree. But I don’t think it’s that easy to get the media to notice us, as you mentioned.Example: Glenn Beck recently spewed some crap about “social justice” being a code-phrase for commu-facism and he got a lot of attention for that. But when Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners (a progressive Christian group that lists ‘social justice’ as it’s raison d’etre), challenged him on this he didn’t seem to get as much attention. Not from what I saw at least.This all ties in to the old maxim “If it bleeds it leads.” People like Phelps or Beck can be counted on to say the most outlandish things (often hateful, ignorant, ass-backwards), and they’ll get the most attention. Whereas people like Jim Wallis are virtual unknowns and don’t get clips of them speaking repeated on all the news stations or get quoted online.(How this fits in to the media’s ‘Let’s look at both sides’ fetish I don’t know)Ideally us ‘moderate’ Christians (I prefer ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal,’ for a reason I’ll explain in a bit) will get organized and develop a religious-left coalition that can, if not wield political power the way the religious right has, at least get recognition from the mainstream media and lead to people understanding that the ultra-right extremists are not the only voice of Christianity.One problem is related to my problem with the term ‘moderate Christian.’ As much as I don’t consider Phelps or Tony Perkins representative of what Jesus taught, it’s not as if they’ve pulled the homophobia or misogyny they preach out of their ass. There is a lot of brutal, cruel stuff in the Bible, and no matter how much I don’t care for it I can’t just hand-wave it and say it’s not really there. Arguments like ‘context’ or ‘Jesus taught something else and that supercedes the old stuff’ satisfy my concerns, but I know not everyone agrees. Extremists will cherry-pick if they want, and I know some atheists prefer to throw out the Bible as a whole out because of the bad stuff.So yes, the extremists are motivated by what they see as the teachings of the Bible, and they have their preferred quotes to back it up. In their minds they’re proper Christians, and even for people like myself or Rev. Weyer (judging by his above comment) we don’t see them as non-Christians.Which is why I don’t like the ‘moderate’ term, because it implies that I or Rev. Weyer are in some way restrained, and that we’re not ‘fully’ Christian compared to a Phelps or Perkins. To me that’s bullshit.
Previous post mentioned Jim Wallis of Sojourners. His blog site is God’s Politics. Beck’s denouncing of ‘social justice’ irked a lot of Christians. John Shuck of Shuck and Jive seems to enjoy tussling with the more conservative members of his denomination (they consider him a heretic). Though I haven’t yet decided whether he is best described as a Presbyterian atheist. “Belief in god is dispensable. I have dispensed with it. “God” is our own creation as are our morals. You can be ultimately concerned with doing good without the need of a supernatural figure that we created in the first place to tell us what good is. We figure it out. There is nothing that “God” can give us that we cannot get without that hypothesis.” –John Shuck
If you’ve never encountered Fred Clark’s blog at slacktivist.typepad.com, he presents a really great example of a liberal evangelical Christian, primarily through thoroughly analyzing and deconstructing the Left Behind series with an emphasis on both literary and theological criticism of their worldview. I highly recommend it. And stick around for the comments–for the most part, they are just as worth reading as Fred’s posts, with theists of all varieties as well as agnostics and atheists coming together and holding reasoned discourse.
Re: PhillipI think your point: “If it bleeds it leads” was excellent. You have to blame media shows, for whom they invite. It is not moderate Christians fault if they don’t get airtime. It is their fault if they do, and fail to speak out on on moderate issues – including condeming the extremist within their Faith.I think the solution is to just stop watching, support media that does a good job. Public radio etc. oh and blacklist any show that invites Deepok.PS regarding trolls: Think of the kittens
Jen, I’m not sure if the change-over in comments system was successful. It still looks like the old one, and apparently our favourite psychotic Canadian troll is still capable of getting in.On a completely different note… I would like to play “devil’s advocate” here. A lot of my points actually draw a lot from Sam Harris, ironically enough given Jonathan’s position regarding him, although he’s not the only source of these ideas.While the unicorns-and-rainbows, “isn’t it great, we can all get along even though we disagree about ‘theological issues'” view may sound attractive, I think it’s flawed. I’ll try to explain why, without coming across as an intolerant bigoted asshole (which I’ll probably do anyway, so please bear with me).Religious beliefs are truth claims about the world. When asked for the basis of their belief, there are two kinds of response: the honest theists say “it’s faith, I have no reason to believe it” and the dishonest or stupid ones try to muster some kind of evidence and fail horribly. Even moderate believers invoke faith; they merely believe different things and don’t draw their beliefs explicitly from “literal” readings of a text, but the justification is the same.It is not, primarily, the individual beliefs with which I’m concerned (although I do have many objections there). I’m not even primarily concerned with religion, although it does tend to get the majority of my attention where criticism is concerned, perhaps because it’s the most prominent. What I’m concerned with is the methodology and thought process which go into those beliefs – and here is where the concept of “faith” comes in, and that is endorsed by the “moderate” believers as much as by the extremists.Harris likes to say that “moderates” enable the radicals by making the idea of faith publicly acceptable. I prefer to say that I draw no distinction between moderates and radicals because they both endorse the faith meme.Of course, that’s not to say that, all other things being equal, I don’t prefer the company of moderates to extremists – I do. That does not, however, mean that I am comfortable “agreeing to disagree” with them on this core point; they may be easier to get along with, but that doesn’t mean I find their beliefs worthy of respect, nor does it mean I’ll refrain from arguing robustly with them about it if they choose to bring the subject up around me.
Ugh, the “moderate enablers” drivel has got to be the one argument I hear from atheists that pisses me off more than any other.
@mcbender: Religious beliefs are truth claims about the worldI don’t really see religion in terms of epistemology at all, but in terms of technology — for obtaining various things. Some of which are the same sort of thing we all want, such as health, wealth and happiness; but some of which are less attractive, such as unjustified self-esteem and unjustified others-disesteem. Faith is less a truth claim than a sorcerous technique for getting something, either immediately (as in that silly book about thinking yourself a Ferrari, which isn’t so very different), or after death. Rather than talk evidence and truth and so forth, I prefer to look at what it is the believer is trying to obtain (which doesn’t have to be what he tells us he is). Most of the time this utterly subverts his impudent equation of religion and ethics.
Jake: I assume the “moderate enablers” argument pisses you off because it’s true?
Lol, yes Andrew. That is why. It has nothing to do with it being used as an excuse to validate people’s bigotry./sarcasm
Hugo, it’s interesting that you say that. I think I agree with you… but those all seem like secondary or additional characteristics to me, dependent on the fact that the epistemic claims are also being made.I don’t think someone could get away with explicitly saying “God doesn’t exist; God makes me feel better about myself and my life” – the epistemic claim is fundamental to the practical claim.I think I agree with you in principle: faith does serve those purposes, and I think that’s another point against it… however it’s an objection that is more difficult to justify philosophically, while I think the epistemic point is simpler to make and I think more convincing.As for Jake, let me just say this:I understand “bigotry” to be prejudice based on irrelevant/arbitrary characteristics. Religion is neither: it is not arbitrary (like skin colour, gender, etc) because it is dependent ONLY on the opinions a person holds, and it is not irrelevant because it greatly shapes the way a person views the world and the way a person acts.Perhaps all my saying that will do is convince you that I am a “bigot” in your estimation. So be it.
@Mcbender: No, really, I think I have it the right way round: it’s a set of technologies, which require a certain inner epistemic performance to work. (And some of them do work, at any rate the permissions to think oneself superior and so forth.) Remember that for many believers, “faith” isn’t an epistemic claim, it’s about making things happen by generation of emotional states. So it’s secondary to the telos the way a Philips screwdriver is secondary to the aim of repairing your computer.You could put together the whole suite of technologies without a god, and indeed they all exist in other, excuse the expression, incarnations. Any form of investment scam, for example, any form of New Age health woo, and any form of Inner Ring exercise, like the high school clique. Religions work because they assemble a great number of the neural hacks in one convenient package.
Jake, you can’t be bigoted against ideas. Furthermore, if you actually have any genuine criticisms against the argument voice them rather than complain about how much you don’t like it. No offense, but your earlier comment really just sounded like whining.
mcbender,I don’t quite agree that religion is free from prejudice or bigotry on the grounds that it’s distinct from gender or skin tone. For most people religion is something inherited from their parents just as ethnicity is. They don’t perceive their beliefs as something they chose (or as something they even could choose to discard or change) but rather that it’s a part of their being.Where it gets different from racism or sexism (because religious bigotry is not exactly the same as those two prejudices, I won’t argue that) is that most people of faith believe their faith is the right one, and that everyone who doesn’t share it is deluded in some way. So they’ll wonder why the Christians or Muslims or whomever don’t convert to the proper religion (their’s). Also, the idea that they themselves could become Muslim or Christian is ridiculous to them.Not as bad as people who think that Africans or Asians or whomever are inherently inferior and that they can’t do anything about it, but there’s still arrogance and presumptiousness based on the percieved superiority of a (most often) unconscious attribute.
Joel,Bigot: a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.As for specific criticism against the argument they should be pretty obvious and I am thinking about writing a post about it for my blog. The comment section of someone else’s blog is not really the place for a full discussion. Sorry if you took it as whining, disgust would be a better description.
I define “bigotry” as prejudice based on an arbitrary characteristic, usually an unalterable one (i.e., gender, skin colour, sexual orientation, etc). Religion does not qualify; it is a set of propositions and one’s beliefs about them are under conscious control and can be altered (although admittedly, childhood indoctrination sometimes makes this rather difficult). I think Joel said what I was trying to more clearly than I did.So I’m arrogant and presumptuous; yes, as a matter of fact, I am on occasion. Sue me. Jake, your “disgust” is meaningless to me (disgust, whining, tomayto, tomahto): the truth value of a proposition is independent of how any one person may feel about it. Go ahead, feel disgusted, walk away feeling smugly superior about how arrogant and bigoted that Bender guy is. You’re still dodging the issue. (As an aside, incidentally, I see no reason not to have this discussion in the comment section of a blog; spontaneous discussion of interesting issues is exactly what these kinds of things are for).All of that said, on a completely different note, I wanted to address Hugo’s point.Hugo, I think I agree with you. It’s quite probable that the mental “technologies” as you call them precede the epistemic claims – there’s a sort of ex post facto justification that seems to be going on in most of these cases (especially in the case of New Age woo… I’ve had several encounters with homoeopaths and actually I find them even more difficult to engage in conversation than religionists).Without the epistemic claims, however, I don’t think the “neural hacks” would be able to sustain themselves for very long. Wishful thinking can only take one so far if one doesn’t have a convenient justification at hand to deter oneself from questioning and suppress one’s curiosity… however, that does not prevent the goalpost-shifting and such we frequently see, whereby excuses are found and new claims made to replace the old as they fall to criticism.The more I think about it, the more I come to agree with you entirely – I had been inclined to say “destroy the epistemic claims, and the entire edifice should fall”, but I recall doing so time and time again and if anything it is bolstered instead. Perhaps I was merely falling prey to wishful thinking myself – I would like to believe that the war on bad ideas can in principle be won.I still want to say that the epistemic objection is easier to make rigourous, however, and for that reason I favour it. On the other hand… the emotional states may well be the more harmful, I can’t dispute that.
@Mcbender: Ah, a convert, pass the collection plate! :-)Personally, I don’t particularly care about the rigour of the epistemic objection. As you yourself say, nobody changes their mind anyway. You may remember my 419 analogy, I’m going to offer it to Jen in the newest thread. Of course you won’t convince a homeopath, unless you have an alternative and equally well-paying job to offer him. That would be like Bernie Madoff saying, “Gosh, you’re right, Ponzi schemes do not conduce to the greater good, I’ll go work checkout at Walmart instead”. It is my impression that, empirically, people only leave religions when they find themselves conned (as in, I paid so much money and for what, God took my little girl, etc.) and/or when the behaviour of the other religionists disgusts them. So the motor is not epistemic belief, but the balance between greed and ethics.
Jake: I assume you’re “bigoted” against Nazis, then?
mcbender,Perhaps you see religious faith as alterable, but for the majority of believers it isn’t because they don’t choose what faith appeals to them or which one offers their preferred version of the afterlife. What they believe is what they actually, sincerly *believe*. What they take to be true. How can you just say that one’s perception of reality can be consciously altered? It’s not unheard of, obviously, but it would take tremendous evidence and arguing to do so.I am, right now, in the middle of the child abuse chapter of The God Delusion and shortly before revisiting this thread I read about Edgardo Mortara, who was taken from his Jewish parents by the church because he was, according to their beliefs, now a Catholic after being baptized. The question is raised why his parents didn’t consent to be baptized so they could take back custody. It’s because for them Judaism was Truth, and they were so committed to it that they wouldn’t go along with even a sham conversion.Whether you think they were being unduly obstinate is beside the point. I’m just trying to illustrate that for most people of faith their religion is just as unalterable as their ethnicity.
@Philip: Although an atheist, I have in one particular way more in common with you Christians than with some kinds of New Agey folks: the conviction that reality exists. I cannot abide the “if you believe it, then it’s true for you” line. To me that is like someone saying, “if you think Shanghai is the capital of China, then that’s true for you”. What on earth could that possibly mean other than that I believe that Shanghai is the capital of China, which we already knew? That would be a pointless tautology. If it meant that Shanghai objectively speaking takes on some quality of capital-ness in order to accommodate my belief, then the person saying that is as mad as the man who thinks himself to be Cleopatra. I expect you agree with me that God either exists or doesn’t exist, there can be no half-way houses wherein he exists for you but not for me. If you are right, then I am wrong, and contrariwise. I get the behaviour of those Jews you describe. If someone proposed to execute me unless I affirmed the existence of god, I think I would consent to be executed, unless perhaps it was an abominable death like burning alive. OTOH, what mcbender and I were talking about is something a little different, belief as a rationalisation. And so I think you’re wrong about believers not choosing whatever takes their fancy and “believing in it” — I think some do precisely that. Lewis wrote about no one choosing to believe in hellfire, but I think he’s wrong as well, people may choose to believe in it as the destination of other people, as it offers an emotionally satisfying answer to “Why do the wicked prosper?”
@Hugo Yes, I do agree with you about how existence is not really debatable (except maybe for philosophers and stoned college students who wonder if our universe is, like, just an atom in a BIGGER universe, man) and, taking this to the issue of ‘faith is a choice,’ I am a bit puzzled by how many people profess belief or follow practices of a faith that they know they chose because it appealed to them, rather than because they earnestly believe it is logical or explains the larger questions.Then again, some people don’t actually realize they started reading horoscopes or going to tarot readings because they were being told nothing but good news or because the idea of destiny is reassuring to them. Not to sound condescending, but even as a man of faith I’m surprised at how little many people objectively critique their own beliefs.I was a bit simplistic in my last comment because a) I didn’t want to cover every single degree of faith, from the dead certain to the “I guess I believe” and b) because I consider (though I don’t have any studies or whatnot to back this up) that most people, probably a clear majority like 60-70% of them, do believe what they believe because it is part of their conception of reality. That even if there are parts of their dogma that they accept because they want it to be true, the general scope of it is not “I want this to be true and so I’ll live my life as if it is” but “I take this to be the truth.”For example, a Jew/Christian/Muslim may simply like the idea of an afterlife (preferably of the paradise variety), but that’s ancillary to their full and complete acceptance of the existence of God, that God is personable and involved in the universe, etc. One is a pleasant thought, something hoped for, and the other is something that *is*.You mention hell and how some people may wish it upon others. There’s a sort of chicken and egg thing there, where I wonder to what extent people are drawn to religions that teach punishment for non-believers because they are fiercely in-group oriented and wish harm upon out-group people, or if they come to accept faiths that preach conformity of belief at the risk of punishment because of some other factor beyond the in-group/out-group framework created by religious identification, and they accept it as part and parcel of the faith entire.In other words, are people like the Westboro Baptist Church inherently vile at heart and they would, in another life, still latch onto a religion or belief that favors the few over the many, or do they get warped by falling in with Fred Phelps and his clan because there’s something else they take from the church/community?And I’m trying to not be off-topic here, so to get back to your comment, I think that with many people the faith they were raised in is comforting to them, and so while on some level they choose to stay in it because of what it provides them, there’s also what I said before about one’s perception of reality being hard to change.
@Philip: I am a bit puzzled by how many people profess belief or follow practices of a faith that they know they chose because it appealed to them, rather than because they earnestly believe it is logical or explains the larger questions.Good for you, I thought we’d be on the same page with that one. Where we may disagree is what percentage of religion is explained by that. You think 60-70%, I (a former insider) would put it more like 5%. We’re both speculating, however. In other words, are people like the Westboro Baptist Church inherently vile at heart and they would, in another life, still latch onto a religion or belief that favors the few over the many….I have no experience of Westboro, though plenty of other born-again outfits; it is my considered position, as a card-carrying wrinkly who has pondered this for decades, that Velle non discitur. There are good and bad people, who upon conversion then proceed to clothe their goodness and badness in the language of the church. Good people will tell you that they are doing their good deeds because they have been saved, although they would probably do them anyway; bad people use religion as their vehicle for what they are into, namely self-aggrandisement and cruelty. They would probably be vile-at-heart astrologers too. If you deduce from this that I deny the concept of redemption, you would be perfectly correct. I’ve never seen it; what I have seen is twisted people, including myself, who remained twisted in their new home and found new ways of expressing this. A person whose inner being is structured around in-group/out-group might join Westboro, or the Klan, or Dworkin-type feminism, or the Marines. It’s not only that the organisations would then cultivate and aggravate that inner being, it’s that they “give permission” (as in Eric Berne’s psychological system) to be that way. People embrace such permissions with great joy.
“You think 60-70%, I (a former insider) would put it more like 5%. We’re both speculating, however.”In the past I’ve used the term “apatheist” (possibly of my own invention or I got from somewhere else and don’t remember). It refers to someone who has never really given any thought to questions about faith and go along with whatever they were raised in. If pressed to identify a religion they would list what their parents were, but they don’t actually pray, go to church (expect perhaps at Christmas and Easter), have never considered the more miraculous aspects of their dogma, and at most simply hope that they’ll get into heaven (or similar) because they’re a good person or they go through the right motions.I think a surprising number of people, if they devoted any brainpower to the question, would realize they don’t really know what they believe. And if that happened, the number of self-identifying atheists and agnostics would jump up.But in the meantime, I think most people go along with what they learned as children, not because they want to but because they accepted what their parents told them.*About the idea of religion providing permission for one’s innate character, I don’t think that covers everyone. Some people do experience a change in their personalities. Jen has mentioned (on Twitter, though I’d be interested in hearing the entire story) a friend of hers becoming a creationist after discovering religion. A pretty extreme change for someone who apparently was well educated in science.Also: what would a vile-at-heart astrologer look like?
@Philip: Actually, I was mentally excluding your “apatheists” even from the baseline. The 5% who believed because they honestly thought it true referred to the others. Your apatheists aren’t worth counting on either side; let us spew them out of our mouths. I maintain that sudden changes in personality have to be based on some innate characteristic, a flaw or capacity. Of course we would need to know more about Jen’s friend before we could deconstruct her. If I may be permitted a guess, however, I should say that she wanted something, and found that espousing creationism was the price. The force of desire for the emotional satisfactions can easily cause immediate “belief” in all sorts of strange things, although it would be a more brittle belief than that of someone who has genuinely gone through the arguments, such as they are, and espoused creationism first and God afterwards. My prediction is that Jen’s friend will some day flip back, and become an evolutionist again overnight. what would a vile-at-heart astrologer look like?The same as a vile-at-heart anything else. Perhaps he’d twist his readings to get the client into bed. If you were looking for Uranus jokes, I’m not playing. :-)
@HugoRe: apatheists and whatnot, I wish someone would do (or if they have done, I wish I knew where to look it up) a comprehensive survey that not only asks a person what their religious identification is, but how seriously they take their beliefs, how much their beliefs influence their day-to-day life, and how critically they’ve thought about their beliefs. A lot of what I’ve said so far is mostly guessing and conjecture based on my own experiences and what I’ve read of other people. I know converts to a new religion are usually more serious and devoted than those raised in it, but I don’t know what the numbers for, say, Catholicism are in terms of who converted and who was raised in it.*”let us spew them out of our mouths.””If you were looking for Uranus jokes, I’m not playing. :-)”So dick jokes are OK, but not anal? :p
@Philip:So dick jokes are OK, but not anal? You finding dick jokes in the Revelation of St. John, then? Blasphemer! Into the lake of fire with you, my lad. 8-)I like your idea of a detailed survey, but we’d have to design it ourselves. Questionnaires are generally such crap; I always want to say “None of the above”, “Yes but” and “it depends what you mean”. I think it might have to be open-answer interviews rather than tick-the-box. In my country, the Catholics are either immigrants (Poles, Tamils, Chileans) or else intellectually cosmopolitan natives who converted — medieval historians, art historians, painters, aesthetes. It was inter alia their way of protesting against the narrow-minded, anti-clerical and philistine pietism that used to dominate at any rate parts of the country. They’re good company.
@HugoYeah, I understand the problem any kind of survey would be. An open-form questionaire would be the best, but like I said in a prior post, I don’t think most people have actually thought about whether they really believe anything.Which makes me wonder why there aren’t more atheists out there. Maybe you’re right in that a lot of people hold onto some kind of faith because they expect a reward, or they think that if they profess to have faith they’ll get into Heaven. I don’t know.
@Philip: Which makes me wonder why there aren’t more atheists out there. Out where? Plenty over here, where we aren’t persecuted in any way. If I had to pick another reason, it would be the field that Jen has just covered, that the theists have conditioned people to think we eat babies, and so people feel obliged to invoke an often vague belief in order to persuade their neighbours that they are reasonably moral fellow-citizens and not enemies.
@HugoI was refering to why more people don’t seem to think their beliefs through, which I think would lead to more people realizing they might be agnostic or atheist.Once they realize that, then there’s your point about the problem of admitting it others.
@Philip: I grew up among Anglicans who described themselves primarily as “churchgoers” and if possible avoided mention of God. Of greater conversational moment was who was wearing which hat to Sunday service. To me, it was obviously about social validation. Would you be amenable to classifying suchlike as “agnostics without knowing it”?
@HugoBased on your description, and based on my preconception/assumption that people with serious religious belief (as in, they take the belief seriously and their faith means something to them) act accordingly, I would say yes.Your description implies that they see church as nothing more than a social event, and provides services that could be fulfilled by a book club or block party.It’s hard to imagine them having any actual beliefs if they put socialization ahead of even just listening to a gospel reading (something I think is common throughout all the denominations, moreso than the rituals like communion or offering).So, based on what you’ve told me, they could actually be atheists and have not realized it. It may seem weird for a Christian to say this, but I wish a lot more people would be forced to defend their faith in some way, instead of just passively going along with something as basic as church attendance out of habit and thinking they actually are Christian (Jewish, Buddhist, etc.).We’d have much more accurate statistics if people were more introspective about stuff like that.
Your description implies that they see church as nothing more than a social event, and provides services that could be fulfilled by a book club or block partQuite. And Bree v. Catherine in “Desperate Housewives” have nothing on Englishwomen fighting over the right to do the altar flowers. You might find this interesting:http://hugogrinebiter.com/?cat…Also worth noting is that in such churches the collection goes to finance said altar flowers and other running expenses, there is no question of alms. It’s the same in many megachurches, of course, no money leaves the church to benefit the Matthew-25 causes (evangelism doesn’t count, that’s business expansion).
@HugoI agree with your general point that religion is used to seperate and elevate a select few from/above everyone else. Just another thing about organized religions I don’t care for.This entire conversation has gotten me thinking about how, in some ways, I wish a lot of people would lose their faith. The faith they have now, at any rate. I wish more people would be forced to defend to themselves their beliefs and their religious identifications. No doubt a lot of people would lose their religion entirely, but I think a sizeable portion would come out with their faith stronger, if not changed.It would all be more authentic, would be my main hope.
No doubt a lot of people would lose their religion entirely, but I think a sizeable portion would come out with their faith stronger, if not changed.They might also come out changed for the worse. Think Donatism: “We who held firm under persecution are from here on out, the only true church, you waverers are all damned.”
First off, sorry for not responding sooner but I was in the field for a training exercise this week (and I have to go back Sunday morning; fun).Second, you’re right that people whose faith is tested might come out the other side gnarled and twisted. That’s a potential problem for Christianity (and certain other religions like Islam or segments of Judaism) that the idea of forgiveness and salvation translates to some kind of moral superiority. Personally I think it’s the wrong thing to take from Christianity, because humility is a vital part of asking forgiveness, so there’s no excuse for people to forget that and then turn around and act arrogant towards their fellow humans.
Training exercise? In counter-insurgency against the Dominionists, I hope? idea of forgiveness and salvation translates to some kind of moral superiority. Understandably, you treat this as a regrettable accident; but I tend to regard it as the object of the whole exercise. It’s the goods in the window that they wish to purchase, e.g. through rigorism on adiafora. I believe that most Christians don’t really ‘get’ Original Sin or any other sins — except, of course, those of other people. They have merely been told that God will fry them for what, deep down, they probably consider rather minor matters and are probably right. The sin of Adam, however, can be understood philosophically as a much deeper affair, the way Schopenhauer identifies Will, by which he means all blind striving in nature, from gravity up to trying to get laid, as the ding-am-sich, as the true inner being of nature, and considers it a Bad Thing. I took much the same line before I read him, except that I called it “the animal agenda” and “predation”, see my chapter-in-progress “Against Nature”, which is an atheist version of Gnosticism. In my opinion Christianity has gone wrong, therefore, in forsaking its radical-ascetic roots and accepting a moderate embrace of the animal agenda, that is, permitting things like jobs, politics and marriage. This means that the gnostic critique of our own genetic nature as horny and manipulative predators must necessarily be frustrated and turned outwards onto Other People. IOW, the moment you allow Christians to marry and have sex and stuff, they must necessarily reinterpret original sin in terms of the way Other People are getting their jollies, and reinterpret ascesis in terms of their own jollies. As Butler put it, they “compound for sins they are inclined to, by damning those they have no mind to”.
@Hugo”Training exercise? In counter-insurgency against the Dominionists, I hope?”Nothing so spectacular. I’m just in a regular army and my battalion is having some field exercises this past and coming week. For me this amounts to, now that my part of setting everything up is done, working 7PM to 7AM sitting in a tent, trying not to fall asleep. I have gotten a bit of reading done, but the odd hours and this half-weekend thing are chafing me.Anywho, I don’t disagree that the perception of salvation often leads to condemnation of others, and this is one of those things that I as a moderate/liberal Christian just don’t know how to handle. I don’t care for it or condone it, but other than throwing out a lot of the Bible and tradition I’m not sure how to fix it. For everything Jesus taught about compassion or helping others, there’s a lot more that trumpets tribal pride and isolationism, which is about as far from what I expect God wants of us as I can imagine.Of course, my primary concern should be myself and how I behave, and it’s things like this that make me think it’d be easier to discard the whole ‘Christian’ identification and call myself a deist or whatnot, just trying to do right by God without getting caught up in what amount to theological distractions.And now I’m offline for the next week. Ta.
Enjoy! Have enjoyed. I’ll reply in the hope that you can find your way back here. other than throwing out a lot of the Bible and tradition I’m not sure how to fix it. For everything Jesus taught about compassion or helping others, there’s a lot more that trumpets tribal pride and isolationism.Well, that’s the nub of the matter, isn’t it? The whole thing starts with what the social services call “a problem family” doing a moonlight flit from its creditors in Ur. This develops into your typical sociopathic robber clan. (The social services can tell you all about their equivalents today.) At some point, either then or in retrospect a millennium later, it gets the jolly wheeze of inventing a god who not only permits them to take their neighbours’ stuff, but positively commands them to do so. For they are the master race, and everyone else is subhumans. A lot of the OT is about separating themselves from these ungodly, is it not? Other people are pollutants. Now, you try to graft a universal philanthropic ethic on top of this basic cognitive structure and you’ve got big problems, because the well is poisoned. The NT is not, after all, a Greek philosophical school, it is a reboot of the House of Israel franchise. It is then inevitable that your new sort of Chosen People, defined by belief rather than descent, will read all the stuff about not breaking bread with the contaminating ungodly, or even exterminating them, and apply it. This we now call the culture wars. If your God doesn’t want tribal pride and isolationism, how on earth can he be the God of the Bible? You do indeed seem to me to be an 18th or 19th-century Deist, but who has ripped the emotional heart of the Bible out and is just wearing its desiccated skin. Alas, that emotional heart is in-group narcissism. So you’re screwed either way, sorry.
Well I’m out of it all right, and hopefully I won’t be going back to the field for…oh, ever.That confusing opening bit aside, I don’t deny that it would be easier and more appropriate for me to just identify as a deist or agnostic. I’ve written about it before, earlier this year (http://j.mp/5z1oLY), that I’m not really attached to the identity of ‘Christian.’ I probably would be more comfortable with deist.But there’s also the question of what specifically do I believe. You mention the question of God-sanctioned (ordered) isolationism and expansionism, and there are other things I’ve had milling around in my noggin. Mostly spurred by this conversation, but also by reading a bit of Dawkins and other stuff recently.I already had a blog post planned where I would layout my thoughts in depth, both about the idea of how much people challenge their own beliefs and where I lie theologically right now. So forgive me, but instead of responding at length here I’m going to write that post sometime tomorrow or Saturday.
@Philip: OK, I’ll see you there, then. By the way, your account of Westboro theology on your link sounds like orthodox Calvinism to me; perhaps Westboro are merely the last ones left with the brass face to go round actually serving it neat and uncut?
Well my question is, if God already chose who will be saved and who won’t be, what does ANY of it matter? You’re doomed or saved no matter what you do, say or believe, so what use is religion?
You’re doomed or saved no matter what you do, say or believe, so what use is religion?Easy-peasy. You get to look down on others who are not Elect and thus not saved, which counts as “use” — for such a hierarchical species as ours. Now, one might think that a Calvinist might wonder sometimes whether he, too, might be predestined for damnation, and so humbler, but it doesn’t work that way. BTW, I won’t be able to comment on your site, you are using that there Blogger software that doesn’t permit posting as a Guest without a prior social-network-site identity. You want to discuss more, it’s either here or my place :-)
I’ll post a link here when I write the post (just started it this afternoon after writing other, simpler stuff first) and we can discuss here then.
Here you go. Caution, it’s long and rambling:http://lawfulgoodwonk.blogspot…
Rambling indeed, Philip, you should join the Sierra Club ;-)One point I’d like to pick on for a comment. You mention that god doesn’t do splashy tricks any more, and imply that it never did. Thought experiment: suppose the Turner Diaries or Fox News or something survives two or three thousand years and becomes somebody’s sacred scriptures? Or suppose future fundis believe that “Atlas Shrugged” is history, and shrug off archaeologists’ inability to find traces of the great collapse, the Taggart Tunnel and so forth? I see that you espouse my own slogan of Follow the Money, but in the case of the OT it’s also about following the politics. A lot of the bible is political pamphleteering; the whole Egyptian interlude of the Jews, with the genocide-mandating covenant, is a fiction designed to achieve certain political results in the time the books were written, such as the Babylonian Exile. Did the miracles happen? Well, I’ve never read the Turner Diaries, but I assume they cite certain past events, did they really happen? The prophets are political bloggers like us; look at Ezekiel’s critique of Israel’s alliance policy, he’s a radical dissident like Chomsky or Pilger. In the same way, the gospels are blogs, polemicising with one another and with the lost materials and the unknown personnel of the early church.
“Thought experiment: suppose the Turner Diaries or Fox News or something survives two or three thousand years and becomes somebody’s sacred scriptures? Or suppose future fundis believe that “Atlas Shrugged” is history, and shrug off archaeologists’ inability to find traces of the great collapse, the Taggart Tunnel and so forth?”Well, no cryogenic freezing for me then.The use of religion for political power is certainly true, and I briefly touched upon the idea of waging war in religion’s name. But I didn’t go into that too much because a) I had already written a lot and b) I mentioned that people have trouble conceptualizing of the far past in any real detail, and even I have trouble keeping in mind just how much of the OT is just advocacy for military action. I usually just go with the more general issue of tribalism.
Just for lulz, I want to float a possible classification out there: Skeptical Christian. Can it work, or is it contradictory?
Wouldn’t that depend on what precisely you were being sceptical about? Surely “Christian” ought to refer to a person who, being able to recite the Creeds sincerely, was a member in good standing of a fellowship devoted thereto. If you were sceptical about the Creeds or the fellowship, I would tend to answer your question in the negative. But clearly there are details around the edges where such a Christian could be sceptical.
In a sense, yes. Then again, I think you think about this stuff more than the majority of people.
I should jolly well hope so!
OK, a bit more detailed a reply here (that last one was written right after I read your response).While I won’t say that belonging to a congregation of any kind/size is completely insignificant, I don’t think membership of any sort, as you seem to imply, is necessary for one to identify as a Christian.On the subject of creeds, and I assume you’re referring to the Nicene Creed more than anything else here (I’m not sure what other creeds you might be referring to), yeah, that’s a pretty good run-down of what you can’t really cut out and still say it’s Christianity.But when I say ‘skeptic’ I mean that one is upfront with whatever doubts they may have about anything in there. For instance, I’ve mentioned that anything miraculous attributed to Jesus gives me pause, but I don’t see myself dismissing it completely. I suppose part of it may be that Jesus’ teachings and examples both appeal to me and make sense, and I feel that if I’m going to try to live by what he taught I’ll have to deal with the entire “God as man” issue.Plus there’s everything outside the Nicene Creed, by which I mean not only anything related to other religions, but even so-called miracles within Christianity like demonic possession or sightings of the Virgin Mary. All that stuff? I’m pretty quick to call bullshit on.
I don’t think membership of any sort, as you seem to imply, is necessary for one to identify as a Christian.Well, C.S. Lewis would disagree very strongly with you. He has hard words for church-hoppers, apparently influenced by St. Benedict’s vow of stability and the “school of love”. Creeds there are three of: Apostles’, Nicene, and I am old enough to remember reciting the Athanasian on special days. Calling bullshit on demoniac possession and sightings of the BVM is, as I understand it, also a very respectable occupation for an orthodox Christian. Even the Pope does it, probably not in the same words. If by sceptic you mean “doubter”, there is a reasonable recent tradition of Christians wrestling with doubt. Anglicans are of course the experts here, no good talking to Penties etc. about this. I am vaguely aware of someone called John Robinson. Looks like you might like “Honest To God”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J…
The Apostle’s Creed is pretty much the Nicene Creed according to Wikipedia, although it’s the former I remember reciting in church all the time.And Robinson sounds like someone simpatico to my beliefs and what I take to be an understanding of God. I can imagine others getting all worked up over “moral relativism” and whatnot, but I’m willing to say “I believe this or that. I don’t *know* it, but I believe it, and I am aware of the possibility that I’m wrong about it.”And one thing I would want to make clear is to point out that my lack of firm knowledge covers multiple things. It’s not just that I’m aware that I could be wrong about the existence of God, but also about the nature of God. People who firmly believe in God also usually are just as firm in their belief of what God is or is not, how They view humanity and sin and whatnot. And for me, my conception of God is a being of infinity, which makes them inscruptible in many ways. And that just adds to my doubt and lack of firm belief.And this is often a problem I sometimes grapple with: I’m not skeptical enough for the atheists and I’m not as convicted as most other believers think is necessary. I’m a bat (http://j.mp/aJAf8p). But now I’m just venting about my own problems.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,How I wonder what you’re atUp above the world you fly,Like a sceptic in the sky”People did indeed get all worked up over Robinson on the grounds you say. Would you care to define “a being of infinity” so I can get a grip on it? A lot of bodies are buried with that dangerous word.
Back again from the field.By infinity I mean just that: no end or beginning. The question of “Who created God?” is simply answered by “God always was.”By being I mean Their power, Their knowledge, Their presence. They have no physical form, unless you want to claim that this universe, everything and everyone in it, is somehow part of God. I don’t buy that idea, though.So we can understand the concept of infinty, but not infinity itself.
Dwasifar tells me that the set of odd numbers is infinite without, clearly, being “everything that is”. The difference is crucial, for those who conceive the infinity of God in terms of “without boundaries” rather than as “without end or beginning (in time)” are vulnerable to the Spinozan objection that such an infinite God cannot be the Creator as usually understood, because such a Creation is something that is not God, ergo God is not infinite in that sense. Did you know the trouble you almost got into there, or are you just lucky? :-)
I’m just lucky God doesn’t take a page from Zeus and make liberal use of lightning bolts on unbelievers.
And I wonder if God gets much amusement from us trying to figure out Their nature (at least those of us that don’t take up arms when people disagree with us).
i realize that And I got to take my photo with all the Purdue icons! Huzzah! …. For realz: Reverend Jon Weyer’s talk at Purdue!