Way Beyond Atheism: God Does Not (Not) Exist

[MishaK]

And that's only part of the story.  Please don't pretend that religion has not also been a source of good (and some very great good) in the world.

Of course not. How could I be a Brucknerian and pretend that? 

[Daverz]

And that's only part of the story.  Please don't pretend that religion has not also been a source of good (and some very great good) in the world.

I'll credit anyone their "good works", but I sure wish religious organizations would stop encouraging tribalism, irrationalism, and the subjugation of women, for starters.

[Iconito]

Religion involves believing supernatural/unsupported claims (like "there's god") and, more often than not, these beliefs govern acts ("god wants me to behave this way").
If these acts turn out to be "bad" or "good" is irrelevant to the fact that they are not based on compelling reasons.
If your god wants you to aid the poor, but this other guy's god wants him to stone his wife to death, on what basis do you condemn his behavior? Both of you are acting on your –unsupported- beliefs!
Also, if someday you lost your faith and became really frustrated and angry, would you still aid the poor? Maybe, maybe not.

Religion, homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic ( the list is very, very long ) cost billions upon billions of dollars and do much harm. And the good they do, we could have it without the funny beliefs, and it would be a better, faith-crises-proof good.

As for the OP's article, that is what happens when someone tries to make sense of nonsense: More nonsense. The literal, "real" god of the bible is indefensible nowadays (for some religious people, anyway. Others are still happy with Him) so we have to come up with some super sophisticated new god that is ultimately as useless (or does this new god also worry about my sexual life?) as impossible to disprove... Why don't they read some Carl Sagan, instead?

[MishaK]

Religion involves believing supernatural/unsupported claims (like "there's god") and, more often than not, these beliefs govern acts ("god wants me to behave this way").
If these acts turn out to be "bad" or "good" is irrelevant to the fact that they are not based on compelling reasons.
If your god wants you to aid the poor, but this other guy's god wants him to stone his wife to death, on what basis do you condemn his behavior? Both of you are acting on your –unsupported- beliefs!
Also, if someday you lost your faith and became really frustrated and angry, would you still aid the poor? Maybe, maybe not.

To be fair to believers, I would argue that your description describes a shallow kind of top-down doctrinaire theology. The New Testament at least is written in ways more open to interpretation than anything that would compel someone to claim "God wants me to do x." That is my point above: religious texts can be quite positively inspirational in assessing how to deal with moral issues. But anyone who issues black-and-white, do this, do that kind of commands on the basis of supposed divine will, has colossally misunderstood the text and should be distrusted. That is what I mean when I say, you have to know the limits of religion. I would argue that the persons in your example have vastly exceeded the scope on which religion can provide guidance. Those who confuse faith for blind obeyance to a shallow distillation of supposed divine will are hopeless idiots. If you are aiding the poor because God commands you to, you are not being the altrusitic person Christianity posits as the ideal. You're simply someone coerced into doing something for fear of divine repercussions. That's stupid. Religion should instead persuade you to become a better person because of the positive examples set in its foundational texts.

[Iconito]

Mensch, my description addresses what I consider to be the one problem with religion (and astrology, homeopathy, acupuncture, etc), namely the unsupported beliefs and the acts that derive from said beliefs. Yes I gave very simplistic examples for the sake of brevity, but I didn't mean to battle a straw man there. No matter how sophisticate or simple the belief (or the believers), if it involves the supernatural it's unacceptable.

(Also I'm afraid those you describe like "hopeless idiots" are not a negligible minority, but that's really beside my point)

[karlhenning]

To be fair to believers, I would argue that your description describes a shallow kind of top-down doctrinaire theology. The New Testament at least is written in ways more open to interpretation than anything that would compel someone to claim "God wants me to do x." That is my point above: religious texts can be quite positively inspirational in assessing how to deal with moral issues. But anyone who issues black-and-white, do this, do that kind of commands on the basis of supposed divine will, has colossally misunderstood the text and should be distrusted. That is what I mean when I say, you have to know the limits of religion. I would argue that the persons in your example have vastly exceeded the scope on which religion can provide guidance. Those who confuse faith for blind obeyance to a shallow distillation of supposed divine will are hopeless idiots. If you are aiding the poor because God commands you to, you are not being the altrusitic person Christianity posits as the ideal. You're simply someone coerced into doing something for fear of divine repercussions. That's stupid. Religion should instead persuade you to become a better person because of the positive examples set in its foundational texts.

Some things I should phrase differently, but overall, good post, thank you.

[MishaK]

Mensch, my description addresses what I consider to be the one problem with religion (and astrology, homeopathy, acupuncture, etc), namely the unsupported beliefs and the acts that derive from said beliefs. Yes I gave very simplistic examples for the sake of brevity, but I didn't mean to battle a straw man there. No matter how sophisticate or simple the belief (or the believers), if it involves the supernatural it's unacceptable.

You're not battling straw men. You're battling a shallow subset of believers. They are easy to deal with. But I don't think people with a more complex theological grounding think of themselves as automatons executing God's will. It's not that simple. You have to face the fact that even if you want to be purely evidence based, there will be situations where the evidence is inconclusive or altogether missing, yet you have to make a decision on what to do next. Your choice is some sort of combination of educated guess, faith, instinct, etc. Some of your choices may retroactively seem superbly rational, but in fact in the moment you're not necessarily being rational about it. That's part of being human. You can't escape it.

[Iconito]

It seems we do not understand each other... The "shallow subset" of believers I'm battling (*) are those who believe in god, the afterlife, the power of pray, and a long, long, very long list of other supernatural/unsupported claims. Do your true-Scotsmen-believers believe any of those things? If they don't, well, THAT is a really shallow subset of believers... And it makes no difference how complex their theological grounding is, or how (otherwise) smart and sophisticated they are, or how much moral insight they get from religious texts (you can get moral insights from Dylan songs... Did Dylan create the Universe?), or how much "good" or "bad" they do. That is totally beside my point.

And I'm well aware that we can't be 100% certain of almost anything. What does that have to do with people believing in god? What's your point?


(*) Actually I don't mean to "battle" believers, but their beliefs. It's a subtle but important distinction, I think.





edit: "true Scotland" wasn't quite what I meant "True Scotsmen" it is.

[Florestan]

Mensch & Karl, thank you for a civil and reasonable debate.

Iconito, you're hopeless, compadre!     

I look forward to reading Ernie's essays on the issue at hand... Or maybe not. 

[karlhenning]

I'll credit anyone their "good works", but I sure wish religious organizations would stop encouraging tribalism, irrationalism, and the subjugation of women, for starters.

Speaking purely as a composer, mind you . . . I should say that we sometimes underestimate the value of the irrational.

[jowcol]

18. Tozan's Three Pounds

A monk asked Tozan when he was weighing some flax: "What is Buddha?"

Tozan said: "This flax weighs three pounds."



Mumon's comment: Old Tozan's Zen is like a clam. The minute the shell opens you see the whole inside. However, I want to ask you: Do you see the real Tozan?

Three pounds of flax in front of your nose,
Close enough, and mind is still closer.
Whoever talks about affirmation and negation
Lives in the right and wrong region.

[MishaK]

It seems we do not understand each other... The "shallow subset" of believers I'm battling (*) are those who believe in god, the afterlife, the power of pray, and a long, long, very long list of other supernatural/unsupported claims. Do your true-Scotland-believers believe any of those things? If they don't, well, THAT is a really shallow subset of believers... And it makes no difference how complex their theological grounding is, or how (otherwise) smart and sophisticated they are, or how much moral insight they get from religious texts (you can get moral insights from Dylan songs... Did Dylan create the Universe?), or how much "good" or "bad" they do. That is totally beside my point.

And I'm well aware that we can't be 100% certain of almost anything. What does that have to do with people believing in god? What's your point?


(*) Actually I don't mean to "battle" believers, but their beliefs. It's a subtle but important distinction, I think.

You're essentially saying it's the stupids who determine what should be considered official church doctrine, not the theologians. That certainly makes it easier for you to shoot down your caricatures of their beliefs. It isn't really helpful in furthering any meaningful debate.

[Iconito]

Iconito, you're hopeless, compadre!     

Yes. I need you to pray for my soul. 

You're essentially saying it's the stupids who determine what should be considered official church doctrine, not the theologians. That certainly makes it easier for you to shoot down your caricatures of their beliefs. It isn't really helpful in furthering any meaningful debate.

No. What I'm saying is I'm against believing supernatural/unsupported claims.

The rest is just you bitching about things I didn't say (and calling a bunch of people "stupid" in the process). Please stop doing that. If you want some clarification about anything I said, just ask and I'll be happy to help.

[Philoctetes]

You're essentially saying it's the stupids who determine what should be considered official church doctrine, not the theologians. That certainly makes it easier for you to shoot down your caricatures of their beliefs. It isn't really helpful in furthering any meaningful debate.

As much as it irks me to support something that props up 'religion'. This is a really good post. It's quite easy to set up straw men of the fools, forgetting the masters of the dogmatic base. It's much more difficut to topple those ivory towers, as their logic can be quite astonishing (Duns Scotus), in its breadth and depth.

[karlhenning]

There's no need to put religion in scare-quotes in that statement. But, telling that you do.

[Philoctetes]

There's no need to put religion in scare-quotes in that statement. But, telling that you do.

It doesn't tell much if you've read any of my other posts in these types of topic. I have naer no respect for 'religion' (of the Western variant <a qualifier I should have added>).

[Florestan]

I have naer no respect for 'religion' (of the Western variant <a qualifier I should have added>).

Could you be more specific? What do you mean by "religion of the Western variant"?

[Philoctetes]

Could you be more specific? What do you mean by "religion of the Western variant"?

I suppose I'm being quite restrive in my view, but when I say 'western variant' (I'm mainly talking about the branches of Judaism: Islam and Christianity, but beign that I live in the U.S., it's mainly just Christianity). Although, I do value their scholars, like Duns Scotus, Barth, etc.

[Florestan]

I suppose I'm being quite restrive in my view, but when I say 'western variant' (I'm mainly talking about the branches of Judaism: Islam and Christianity, but beign that I live in the U.S., it's mainly just Christianity). Although, I do value their scholars, like Duns Scotus, Barth, etc.

Ok, but neither Judaism nor Islam nor Christianity are "Western".

[Brian]

Ok, but neither Judaism nor Islam nor Christianity are "Western".

They (or at least two of them) are for the most part practiced in countries known as "the western world" in common parlance, and even though they may be "middle eastern" in origin, they originated in a location which is without doubt to the west of the so-called "eastern religions," and Christianity's doctrines were mainly formulated in central and western Europe. You're really splitting hairs, and that would be perfectly fine by me if it were useful, since I'm a humanities grad student and most of our study is splitting hairs, but alas, it's not very useful at all.

Is Mormonism the only "Western" religion in your book?