John urges all to read a “lovely, lyrical and wistful piece” on religion. So I did.
Sorry, John, it’s the same old noise.
The essay by Peter Bebergal has some good points: it’s premise is to deplore biblical literalism because it’s bad theology that is trying to ape science, and it cripples the imagination. That part I can agree with entirely. Biblical literalism is a slavishly stupid way to enshrine an absolutist authority — a false authority — as a source of information beyond question. So I am sympathetic to about half of its message.
However, the other half is the usual nonsense: ‘my version of religious belief is better, nobler, truer, more important, and essential to human health and welfare than their version’. Here’s his rationalization for the virtues of his metaphorical religion over their literal religion.
Religious experience begins with an encounter, which is then given form by the imagination. We then turn this form into texts, prayers, rituals, and of course, myths. Communities gather around these stories and continue to use the religious imagination to keep them relevant. The very notion of being in communion with God, whether through prayer or ritual, in believing that a man died and was resurrected, or in eating unleavened bread for a week, is the least rational of endeavors. But this is where its power lies. If the moments we commemorate through our rituals had simply occurred in history, there would be little possibility of giving them new meaning in the way, for example, the American slaves saw in the miraculous moments of the Jewish Exodus story a vision for their own liberation. When ritual is seen as the retelling of a mythological event, then its ability to function as a metaphor is enlivened each time. A purely historical event is static. While it might offer a moral lesson, there is nothing inherently symbolic about it. The mythologizing of events makes them part of our ritual and liturgy and allows us to reimagine them. But the religious imagination has been replaced by a need to rationalize religious faith. The motto of the Creation Museum is “Prepare to Believe,” but revelation is not the intent of the exhibits. The purpose of the museum is to prove that the Bible is truth, and to induce religious stupor it plays on an ignorance of science and what the doing of science really means.
That is disingenuous, not to mention bogus. Bebergal is waving his hands frantically, trying to justify irrationality as a power for human happiness rather than an impediment. There is no true power there. It is definitely the case that the human mind is not a piece of clockwork logic, and there are certainly irrational interpretations of the world that mesh well with our flawed preconceptions, and it can even make us feel good to give in to comforting myths. But this is not good for us. Put rats on a variable reinforcement schedule in a cage with a button that dispenses electric shocks to the pleasure centers of their brain, and they will push that button with passion and energy and even, as near as we can interpret it, joy … but that is a rat that has thrown away its rattiness and has dedicated its life to a shallow, empty abstraction. It is a rat that has found its god.
It is true that communities can accrete around myths; look at the Hajj, or Lourdes, all grand events built up around supposed supernatural events. People find consolation, satisfaction, and even happiness in the supposed virtues of these pilgrimages. I will agree 100% that this is all powerful stuff to the human psyche — even that weekly communal sit-in-a-pew-and-listen-to-boring-sermon stuff taps right into the social centers of the human brain and triggers potent rewards. Push that button, O Happy Rat. Do not question, do not think beyond, do not plan for something greater than call-and-response, the familiar hymn, the liturgy, the patterned dance of ritual. Go here to the small town in the Pyrenean foothills, and you will be healed because you wish to be healed, and because you are a good, wonderful person, never mind that reality often demands struggle and hard work of us, with no guarantees of success. But there is no victory there; there is no improvement. There are only happy lies.
One other word I must criticize in all these defenses of religion: imagination. I often hear that religion is all about using the imagination to see something beyond the literal and mundane, and imagination becomes a virtue in itself that is presented as something special to religion. It is not. It is also overrated. Imagination is essential, don’t get me wrong; we need this kind of cognitive randomizer that pushes our thoughts beyond what we already know. However, one thing science has taught us is that our imagination is pathetic. The universe is more vast, more complex, and more surprising than anything our minds can conjure up. Imagination is not enough.
Here we sit in our comfortable little spot, snug and reassured that our butts are firmly planted. Imagination is the tool we use to reach out and fumble about and make guesses about our local neighborhood, and religion is the part that enshrines guesses as absolute knowledge and reassures us that the rest of the universe is just like our little niche.
Science is imagination equipped with grappling hooks. We toss them out, we snag new and interesting bits of our environment, and we use them to haul our butts out of those well-worn hollows to something new … and we anchor the lines so others so inclined may follow. Thus does the limited reach of paltry human imagination become a greater endeavor that explores farther and farther still, leaving behind the delusions of those incapable or unwilling to use their imagination as a tool to explore the world, rather than as a masturbation aid.
Bebergal is stuck in a rut where he thinks his imagination, or his rabbi’s imagination, is sufficient and historically adequate, and he has no perception of what science actually does.
Scientists today are loath to admit that religious belief played an important part in their forebears’ impetus to examine and understand the natural world. Any sentiment that has even a scent of religious feeling is greeted with pinched noses, with great skepticism if not outright contempt. This is true even for those religious ideas that one might consider moderate or even liberal. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, himself a student of neuroscience and a staunch atheist, suggests that the religious moderate is just as dangerous as the fundamentalist because the moderate leaves the door open to religious ideas in all their forms, including the damaging literal ones.
Not true. I certainly do know that my ancestors relied on religion, and that virtually all early scientists and even many scientists now found happiness in pushing the big red button of religion. However, the only way any of them made greater progress in understanding the universe was by leaving the smug platitudes of faith behind, questioning what they were taught, and moving away to something new. Yes, I regard the scent of religion with disgust, but not because I lack an appreciation of its historical or sociological significance — it’s because I can detect the odor of corruption and decay, and I can smell failure. It’s not something I want in my house.
I also oppose moderate/liberal religion like Sam Harris, because it opens the door to more pernicious beliefs; reality provides only the coarsest constraint on religious belief, and allows nonsense to flow unchecked. But I also oppose moderate religion in itself, as the kind of smug reassurance of a fallacious perception of reality, as exhibited in the Bebergal essay. Why should we find virtue in the fact that “American slaves saw in the miraculous moments of the Jewish Exodus story a vision for their own liberation”? Couldn’t they find motivation in their misery? Were their imaginations so paltry that they could not desire their own freedom? Did reliving the book of Exodus in Sunday church-meetings bring them one step closer to that freedom, or did it falsely reassure them that miracles were on the way? There were no miracles in the American Civil War, or in the long hard path towards civil rights. The religious would love to take credit for the actual steps towards emancipation, or greater understanding, or the advancement of science, but all they can do at best is claim that they were cheerleaders, inspiring our progress. Unfortunately, when we look at the actual history, what we find is that they were cheerleaders for all sides of the struggles, and now opportunistically accept the accolades of the winners, whoever they might be. If we should fall into a new dark age, there will be the priests, happily telling us that they led us into this new appreciation of the mysteries of God. And if scientists should open our minds and cure diseases and reveal new wonders of the universe, there will be the priests, telling us that religion “played an important part”.
It’s time we saw through the con game of these lying leeches, and that goes for the local liberal church as well as the most outrageous televangelist. The moderate church may be bad because it can lead congregants to the vilest exploiters, but it is also definitely bad because it is misleading you right now.
WELL, AND A NICE GOOD MORNING TO YOU, TOO, SIR…
Put rats on a variable reinforcement schedule in a cage with a button that dispenses electric shocks to the pleasure centers of their brain, and they will push that button with passion and energy and even, as near as we can interpret it, joy … but that is a rat that has thrown away its rattiness and has dedicated its life to a shallow, empty abstraction. It is a rat that has found its god.
One of your best-written passages yet. Excellent imagery.
Excellent and well-written, PZ. I think this is a great way to start the day.
Of course that was for a future or the afterlife. In the here and now, religion was just another tool of oppression by the slaveholders.
Sadly, this perversion of religion still holds sway as the descendants of slaves still accept the religion of the descendants of the slaveholders. They even share the same teachings for the most part even though Baptists and Methodists had and to a great degree continue to have white and black denominations. The United Methodist Church still hasn’t gotten around to uniting with the AME.
I’ve heard similar arguments from religious think-tanks on my campus. The “myths are so important” or there “are no secular/atheistic myths to replace the religious ones.” They even went as far as to equate culture with religion. It’s ridiculous.
Awesome piece.
This is a fantastic piece, PZ. More of a kick in the ass than coffee, that’s for sure!
Great post, PZ, and gels well with this weeks’ Non-Prophets podcast which was especially good, too.
I wonder if Bebergal would acknowledge that the major religions have a naturalistic basis in the observation of the sun and stars and the correlation of these celestial bodies to the yearly cycles on planet earth? That the metaphor and mumbo-jumbo were early theories developed until better evidence became available to support more sophisticated theories? I rather doubt it.
Why persist with outdated myths of humanity’s long childhood when the real, observable universe is so much more fascinating?
Perfect!!
“Science is imagination equipped with grappling hooks.”
Nice new meme: bet it will latch on to many a post.
“It is true that communities can accrete around myths; look at the Hajj, or Lourdes, all grand events built up around supposed supernatural events. People find consolation, satisfaction, and even happiness in the supposed virtues of these pilgrimages.”
And communities can form around any shared cultural event. The dissemination of PZs thoughts via this blog produces a community of readers who can come to identify with one another and meet to talk science over beers. Secular art can be filled with metaphorical meaning and its enjoyment and criticism can define a community of fans and critics. Religion is different only in degree rather than in kind. People who talk about the power of the religious metaphor like to think it has a particularly significant relevance to life today.
If that were true, there wouldn’t be the concept of heresy. On the contrary, religion is all about suppressing imagination, at least in the vast majority of the faithful. Only a tiny few are permitted to “imagine” the tenets of a religious belief, while the rest are required to follow those imagined tenets faithfully, or else be branded heretic and tossed out of the religion.
Just ask the Cathars as to how tolerant religion is of imagination.
While the whole piece is excellent, this is just brilliant. As Eddington’s famous quote says, “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”
That was beautiful, PZ. Well written and spot-on.
Whew. Good stuff. One of the keepers.
Or, at least, it is a rat that has found an inexaustible supply of heroin.
If PZ’s metaphor is apt, then religion really is the opiate of the masses.
Wonderful piece. It makes me want to confess: I am not an atheist. At root, I am a hopeful agnostic. I am a big fan of Pharyngula and I believe that ALL religions were created by men. There’s just that nagging thought that there might be something bigger to it all (but maybe that’s my evolved pattern-recognition talking). If there is a god, I believe the atheist mode of thought is what he/she/it wants us to pursue: that is open-minded yet skeptical, looking for evidence to shape our beliefs, that whole “we are the Universe seeking to understand itself”. In short, I’m willing to admit I’m a rat, but I refuse to push the button.
Ian @ #5
People really say that? Wow. I can think of plenty of things to refute that:
Most of the content of Snopes.com — whether it is secular or religious depends on the content, but it does seem to be modern myths and legends trying to explain things or reassure us. For that matter, look at all the tales we tell about historical figures and celebrities. I’ve also seen people compare the activities of SF/Fantasy fans to how ancient people reacted to their own stories about heroes and monsters — it’s just novel/TV/movie heroes are usually under copyright, explicitly fictional, and you know who created them.
Nicely written. Bravo.
“A rat that has found it’s god”
This is excellent!
Why do the religious feel the need to be so long-winded and flowery. I think I’d be fine with their bronze age myths if they just admitted the only reason they do it at all is because of their unrelenting fear of dying.
The God who created me gave me the knowledge to see that every other religion’s creation stories are a bunch of bullsquat (with the notable exception of my own).
Enjoy.
I read the essay, and couldn’t help but think that what he was really advocating was good, engrossing fiction – not religion. He just doesn’t know it.
What does belief add to the equation? Get lost in Lord of the Rings or His Dark Materials, but come back to the real world when you’re done. You can even do the same with some Biblical mythology (as in Indiana Jones, parts 1 and 3).
You can find plenty of true notions in any fictional construct, but you get nothing of value out of the experience by believing the whole experience is true in some deeper way.
Yes Thanny (#21), I had similar thoughts when I was reading the piece. There is value in myth and metaphor – but it’s vitally important to know what is and is not real.
Another reason to oppose religious moderation is because that is what fuels the religion industry, and the industry (as opposed to the philosophy) is what creates so much conflict and misery in the world. It is the industry that perpetuates the indoctrination of young children, force-feeding religious nonsense into kids well before they are capable of evaluating it with an open and critical mind. It is the industry that insinuates itself into politics to wage war against women, homosexuals and other infidels. It is the industry that attacks science and education simply because it views them as a threat to its survival.
Wow you really oooze bile for that guy. Nice.
(But for my distaste of your use of the ‘dark ages’…stupid name)
Me, I’m a big fan of myths and stories. I love them and draw great personal strength from them.
But I love the myths and stories of Asimov, Pratchett, Wheedon, Sagan, even George bloody Lucas (pre 1997, or course).
I think contrary to what Mr Bebergal says, the problem with religion comes EXACTLY from the fact that people think the stories are true, or that they have to be true to have power. And this is the case with all religions (of my acquaintance) – even the moderate ones. All of the moderate Christians (and a few others) that I am familiar with will tell me that their holy books are simply stories… but when you press them you realise that even they do in fact believe in a nugget of literal Truth ™ at the core: the doctrine of the resurrection, the belief in the divine… whatever.
I’m still a fan of moderates – at least they aren’t trying to convert me or kill me. But they’re still deluded and, in addition, they also seem to miss one of the wonderful things about stories: they don’t need to be true.
Oh – and great post PZ. Scorching.
Thanny @#21: I read it pretty much the same. I’m not even sure he claims the HE believes it. Certainly he doesn’t seem to make any case for the Bible being better than King Lear or xkcd.
What I did like is that he calls the faculty he is talking about developing with the fiction “imagination”. It is, at least a meaningful term. Often, this sort of piece would talk about “spirituality” which seems to mean “imagination” (maybe with “emotion” mixed in) but is an easily moveable goal. You say someone’s statement about spirituality seems like bollocks and they will say you aren’t understanding what spirituality really is.
As Charlie Brooker had it “Spirituality is what cretins have in place of imagination”.
Excellent post PZ,with a few quotes to behold,as others have mentioned before me !
This reminds me of the story of the Neuroscientist with the stroke that caused her to feel all spiritual and mysterious and right-brainy,that was mentioned here in a recent thread.
//… but that is a rat that has thrown away its rattiness and has dedicated its life to a shallow, empty abstraction. It is a rat that has found its god.//
Loved Kseniyas comment re opium of the masses,very much spot-on !!
i’m reading a book about ancient greece right now, and i’m awed by their level of science! the book i’m reading states that the role gods played in ancient greece was essential to what happened. the greek gods were very human: they got drunk, were fighting all the time and lived on a mountain. that made greek gods pretty natural and therefore greeks could ask questions about the universe in an open way.
after the greeks, religion took hold again and it was only during the renaissance that we continued where the greeks had stopped. carl sagan says somewhere in ‘cosmos’ that the belief in a revengeful god has stopped our development for nearly 1500 years.
just imagine humanity 1500 years from now. that’s where we could have been right now.
you can be all pessimistic about that and say that it means the world would be gone by now, but look at it more positively: what if humanity had landed an observer on mars in the year 208? where would we be now?
If I may play devil’s advocate: The “pleasure button” can be a metaphor for all motivations, including those of science oriented folks. We do what we are rewarded for doing. You take it for granted that all religious experience is delusional? Science is limited to things that can be subject to experiment. Even if it is turns out that that is all there is we can know with any objectivity, it does not mean we should not explore in other directions. Religion is for the most part what you say it is. However, religious experiences might be an important part of reality, even if they do not lend themselves to scientific inquiry. To each his own … button.
@#14 Kseniya —
Indeed. The full Marx quote, because I think it rings even more true in context than as a single sentence:
Marx could really be quite poetic when he wanted to.
Good post, PZ!
I just googled that quote to know more, and Google corrected me:
“Did you mean: Spirituality is what christians have in place of imagination”
It is true that communities can accrete around myths
Thanksgiving Day as a prime example. It shows the need to make new myths, and the function of myths.
//The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. //
Marx’s thoughts on religion are undervalued,he had a lot of very true things to say about it,and often in a poetic way,as Etha’s quote above shows.
Btw Etha,have you spoken to Helen yet lol?Tragic case that one….
@#32: *LOLs out loud*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2145124,00.html
There you go.
Religion in the bronze age WAS about imagination. Someone ELSE’S imagination. Someone ELSE imagined why we’re here and what it’s all about. Religion now is about stomping on anyone’s imagination that dare question the original imagination as dutifully recorded on pieces of animal skin. According to biblical literalism, we humans have had all the imagination we need forever and can now free our imagination neurons and refocus them to reading and obeying.
Of course, he conveniently forgets the portions of the New Testament which instructed slaves to work like hell for their masters because their rewards would be in heaven. And this was preached to the slaves in the churches. Some inspiration, huh? Don’t worry about this life, everything will be copasetic in the next.
I always try to give these articles the benefit of the doubt, but they’re always just so goddamned smug and self-indulgent that I end up vomiting into my own mouth after just a few paragraphs.
Why do I care what this J. Random Columnist thinks? Why do I care about his rabbi? It’s nothing but a load of fluff. Like I should be so very interested in this guy’s boring-ass life story just because he has a newspaper column. Well, sorry, I’m not. It sounds exactly like every other boring-ass life story I’ve ever heard. (Probably not coincidentally. “Journalism” has a template for “personal narrative about Important Issue of the Day” the same as it has templates for everything else…)
“Yes, I regard the scent of religion with disgust, but not because I lack an appreciation of its historical or sociological significance — it’s because I can detect the odor of corruption and decay, and I can smell failure. It’s not something I want in my house.”
PZ Meyers
Just Marvelous PZ. Great write-up.
Great article. As a philosophy, you are entirely right, this is useless and may be dangerous. Like, presumably, you I would love to see a world where religions were a thing of the past. The question is – do moderate religions have a role in getting us there?
One apparent hope (Dawkins?) is to provoke an epiphany in the believer by sheer force of intellect. This is great to the extent it works. But I think moderate religions have a role to play in developing another pathway to atheism.
The Church of England is a magnificent institution which has gradually dropped (or so de-emphasised) its theology as to be little more than deist in many of its churches. At the same time it has more-or-less kept up its heirarchy and buildings. The result is that the UK population is largely post-religious. On the current track, the presence of the expensive infrastructure and the lack of believers will allow the CoE to collapse under its own weight. There are similar stories in most post-religious countries.
My (small) town has two churches, one Unitarian and one Episcopalian. Wouldn’t the rest of America be a happier place if the place for the most fundamentally minded was an Episcopalian church?
Sorry PZ….Myers.
You’re my hero Pz. Religion has gained too much respect. It deserves none. Sigh.
Yes, I’ve heard this many times, too, that unbelievers don’t have the imagination to recognize beauty, and complexity, and the intricate interconnectedness of all things in the world. What these defenders of the faith have a hard time understanding is that their belief system is built on imagination–the imagination of others–and that there are those who have the imagination to see this!
Religion is not only the rat pushing the big red button to get a jolt of pleasure; it is training the rat as to what feelings it is to concentrate on when it does push it, and holding up the promise of much greater pleasure if it keeps pushing it. I often feel that those who fall for this have just enough imagination to grasp simple concepts–and nothing left over.
TWO churches? How small is your town? Mine has a population of 5,000, and I think we have something like FOURTEEN churches here. On my short, 6 block morning walk to the coffeeshop, I have to walk past three of them. They’re like a blight upon the landscape, little festering boils popping up on any corner.
Religious experience begins with an encounter…
Yeah? An “encounter” with what?
Above par, PZ. I can’t express how much I agree with you.
Berbergal seems not to understand why people rally around the creation museum and other rank nonsense. It’s because if it is “just a myth,” it hardly counts at all to a lot of people.
Sure, many aestheticize religion into a perpetual myth, make it pretty, go through the rituals. It’s probably a bit infantile, but nothing to get too worked up over.
The truth is, the IDists and most other creationists want their beliefs to have the evidence and concrete power of science. The big problem is, it simply isn’t science, and destroying science standards won’t turn it into science.
Evolution is often accused of being elitist, something that isn’t inherently true at all, and probably doesn’t tell us much of its social status at the present time either. What is elitist in the main is actually Berbergal’s religion, the kind that will treat religion as a kind of art of narrative and imagination. I’m not saying that such a religion absolutely has to be elitist, but it tends to be.
Your lower classes, especially, want something that works, that produces results. They will not settle for religion as art, or at least they think that they won’t. That’s why ID promises them science. Sadly, it will never deliver, and yes, we have an obligation to at least offer science to them.
Berbergal is not wholly wrong, I would say. The religion that he favors is neither especially anti-science nor is it aesthetically displeasing to a number of folk. It’s just not the answer for most, and especially it’s not the answer for those who cling to religion because they have little else. “Liberal religion” exists for those who are happpy enough with their lot in life, not for those who are needy.
All that can be promised to those who need is learning and science. It’s a load of hard work, and expense, of which not all are willing or able. But there is no substitute, for science delivers, religion does not. Religion as myth will never be acceptable for those in need, because the latter need truth, and pretty lies that admit to being lies simply advertise to those in need that there’s no truth there.
“Liberal religion” is the promised shortcut which became the perpetual journey for those who were unwilling to give up religion. “Conservative religion” is the promised shortcut that is the endless grind that is “just about to deliver.” Science is the hard work, the grind that pays out in the end.
Liberal religion exists for the satisfied, for those who need no more than ritual in their lives. In one sense, both science and traditional religion are for those who demand results. The problem is that only one of them produces results. And for a lot of us, even if we enjoy myths aesthetically, only the route that produces results is worth more than, say, a good acid trip.
That’s what it comes down to, of course. Religion might be safer than acid. But if it’s just a matter of aesthetics and pleasure, it really doesn’t provide as much as LSD does.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
@ Ian (#5)
Am I the only one who sees the implicit irony in the phrase “Religious think-tanks)?
Excuse me, my irony meter needs a new overload buffer installed – the old one has been acting glitchy lately.
Can we give PZ the next Molly? :-)
PZ, in practice, is society stable if composed of human beings trying to behave rationally? Or conversely, is an irrational component necessary to keep society as a functioning, continuing entity?
Rationality is a recent evolutionary phenomenon. It isn’t needed for pre-human societies to function. What would be the likelihood that such a recent innovation would be sufficient for stability (given that it may have become necessary at this point in time)? As far as I can see, every current human society is predicated to some extent on irrational beliefs and impulses – and religion is one kind of organization of this irrationality.
Is there a better way to organize irrationality, rather than to simply dismiss it? It would seem that if one was interested in the social behavior of animals and their ability to continue this social behavior, questions of their native irrationality would trump any questions of intentional organization.
The key to all this of course, is the last part PZ wrote about: The unchallenged assertions of religion that they are responsible for all the good and never any of the bad. Success has a thousand mothers and fathers, but failure is an orphan. These assertions must be attacked mercilessly, because they are some of the worst lies ever devised.
I’ve heard people who don’t even practice or subscribe to religion give credence to the “Christians ended slavery” myth. I never bought into it because it was obviously a shuffling lie, or at the very least very thin thinking and acceptance of (in reality) the political agenda of a certain party…
Some general thoughts from an open-minded theist. My own position is in some ways similar to Bebergal’s, but not quite.
As I’ve noted on other threads, I deplore young-earth creationism and biblical literalism. It is both bad science and bad theology; bad science, because it necessitates ignoring vast swathes of geological and biological evidence about the age of the earth and the history of species, or twisting that evidence to fit a predetermined belief; and bad theology, because the natural and physical world is full of flaws and cruelties, many of which are in no way attributable to human activity, which does not square with the idea of intricate design by an omnipotent and loving God. I think we all agree here that the earth was not created in six 24-hour days in 4004 BC (indeed, I have difficulty understanding how any rational and intellectually honest person could promote such a belief in the present day).
My background is in law, not science, and I’m not scientifically literate enough to make any sort of meaningful judgment about the science involved. I do understand that evolutionary change, through a process of natural selection, is a near-universally accepted explanation, among scientists, for the diversity of life. I would not seek to challenge it on any level. However, I also understand – correct me if I’m wrong – that evolutionary theory does not purport to explain abiogenesis, and that how life itself emerged from non-living matter remains a near-total mystery. (I’d appreciate more information about this from any biologists in the forum, I’m interested in learning about it.)
But at the same time, while I certainly do not consider Genesis 1-11 to be a literal account of the creation of the world, I do not view the Bible either as valueless or as pure mythos, nor do I believe its utility to be limited to the role of a didactic storybook, as Bebergal seemed to be implicitly suggesting in his article. Rather, I think it is valuable as a historical text. While some would challenge this assertion, the majority of mainstream scholars hold that the Biblical historical accounts are, broadly, reconcilable with archaeological and extra-biblical evidence. While the traditional chronology of the Exodus does not square with archaeology – the Exodus is usually dated to around 1300 BC, while excavations show that Jericho and the other Canaanite cities were destroyed around 1550 BC – the “new chronology” suggested by the British Egyptologist David Rohl (which remains controversial in academic circles) would seem to reconcile the dates. (Rohl, incidentally, is an agnostic.) Furthermore, many aspects of the Biblical narrative have been shown to be more plausible than previously believed. The Hittites, for instance, were believed to be an invention of the Biblical text until the early twentieth century, when archaeological remnants identified as Hittite were unearthed in Anatolia. Also, Belshazzar, King of Babylon in the Book of Daniel, was believed to be fictional until 1854, when archaeological evidence from Babylon itself verified the existence of a prince called “Bel-sar-usur”. Moving on to the New Testament, although the historicity of Jesus has never been absolutely proven (hence the “Jesus myth hypothesis” proposed by Earl Doherty and others), the writings of Josephus verify large parts of the Gospel account, including much of the life of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas and John the Baptist.
None of this, of course, demonstrates the existence of God or the truth of Judeo-Christian beliefs, nor is it intended to. All it shows is that the Bible is probably a reasonably accurate history (with the exception of those stories existing purely for didactic purposes, such as the book of Job) of the development of the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. Whether or not one believes in the supernatural elements, or whether these are mythological embellishments, is a matter of personal opinion. Being open-minded myself, I’m open to the view that it may be accurate, or to the view that it may not.
Sorry about this incoherent rambling post; I don’t have time to set down my thoughts in a properly organised way, but I wanted to share my thoughts before I forget about it.
PZ, we’re also about 5000, but this is Massachusetts. I know what you mean about boils – I lived for a little while below the bible belt and was amazed by the proliferation of brands “Abiding Faith” a few blocks down from “Abiding Saviour”.
There are times when I am glad I live in the UK. Here the churches I see in the locality are all rather attractive buildings, most dating back several hundred years. What goes on within may be a waste of time, but at least the buildings have architectural merit.
@#52 Walton —
But shouldn’t the elements in which the supernatural/god interacts with the natural (eg, the plagues of Egypt, parting of the Red/Reed Sea, the great flood) be subjected to the same standards of historical/natural evidence, since they have obvious natural effects? Though there may be evidence for the historicity of many parts of the completely natural stories in the bible, there is no evidence for any supernatural-natural interactions told therein. Why should the conclusions from this (lack of) evidence be a “matter of personal opinion,” while the conclusions regarding completely non-supernatural events are subjected to scholarly standards of historical/natural proof?
Ramen, brother!
So many bits of this great post already have been quoted in comments here, so here is my fave bit:
It’s time we saw through the con game of these lying leeches, and that goes for the local liberal church as well as the most outrageous televangelist. The moderate church may be bad because it can lead congregants to the vilest exploiters, but it is also definitely bad because it is misleading you right now.
Think your SQ (Sexy Quotient) just went up a notch, and this post should not be allowed to be seen by pubescent girls.
So umm….where can I get some electrodes installed into my pleasure center? =)
I’m just sayin’…..
Cheers
Outstanding piece of prose – reminds me why I check this blog every day (I don’t care much for cephalopods actually – Sorry PZ!)
After reading this, I have to ask: When are you going to write your own “God Delusion”? If it’s done in this style it might even outsell the original – especially if it’s coming from an American writing to fellow Americans. (I know you tend to mistrust us Brits over there. Why else do you always cast us as villians in your movies?)
But we have politics, organized sports, “school spirit,” and a host of other irrational social organizations and beliefs. Religion isn’t close to being the only one, it is just one of the most anachronistic ones.
Pre-human societies didn’t need religion, any more than they needed rationality. Religion at its earliest is a kind of quasi-science (from a certain late perspective) that attempts to rationalize what is not rational. Today it very often is an attempt to irrationalize what in fact is rationally understandable.
True, it probably will never go away, and I don’t oppose it in the way that PZ does. But I am not the least bit concerned that rationality will take over with or without religion. Nor do I think that humans need religion to be “spiritual” or to indulge in the irrational.
Thanks to writing, ancient beliefs parasitize the present (the dead hand of the past), particularly in the mode of religion. People try to rationalize not only the irrational aspects of their psyche, but also the irrational aspects of past psyches and societies. That’s why it turns into such a mess that people like Bebergal try to aestheticize it, where the believers agree with rationality as far as they can outside of religion.
When that works I am not going to fuss (much). But for many, the treatment of religion as meaningless myth is simply intolerable, and for those I think we need the PZ types to take religion seriously and to skewer it as the contrary collection of nonsense that it is.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
To Etha at #55: I think you’ve slightly misunderstood what I was trying to say (which is my fault entirely, I’d concede that it wasn’t very clear).
What I meant was that, when subjected to standards of historical scholarship, much of the historical narrative in the Bible does hold up – and, therefore, the Bible is not discredited as a source of historical information. It is true that there is no evidence for the veracity of any of the supernatural elements of the story – but there’s no evidence for the veracity of many of its natural elements either. For instance, there is no direct evidence for the existence of the Patriarchs, nor would we expect there to be; four generations of a single family wandering around the ancient Near East would not have left a massive physical impact identifiable by today’s archaeologists.
The point I was trying to make, simply put, is this. There are many elements of the Bible, both natural or supernatural, for which there is no independent historical evidence. But where there is historical evidence which covers the same ground as the Bible, there is no radical inconsistency. Thus, on its testable and falsifiable aspects, the Bible stands the test; this makes it possible, though by no means inevitable, to believe in its untestable and unfalsifiable aspects.
To draw a parallel with secular history: there is no archaeological evidence, for instance, that the Huns rode horses. Yet written records of the time make very, very clear that horse-riding was central to the Huns’ way of life and method of warfare. As Kenneth Kitchen says, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”.
Basically, the fact that the Bible is broadly consistent with extra-biblical historical evidence is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for belief. If archaeological evidence had consistently proven the Bible’s historical narratice to be entirely false, then Judeo-Christian beliefs would be intellectually unsustainable; however, that is not the case.
This is not in any way intended to be a solid argument for the existence of God; it’s nothing of the sort. I’m just pointing out that it is possible, at the least, to believe in the veracity of the Bible without rejecting secular history and scholarship.
Um, no. The fact that people writing much closer in time to the Hittite Empire than we are could throw an incidental mention of the Hittites into their story, treating them on a par with completely obscure tribes like the “Girgashites”, does not make their story a reliable historical document. We’re talking about people who couldn’t tell Rome apart from Cyprus, fer jebus’s sake.
That is a very insightful way of looking at the imagination, and it leads so well into what you say next:
So true. When you look at the religious explanations of creation and destruction, the contrast between imagination and reality could not be any starker. What we see in religion are facets of a culture’s everyday experience transplanted into a setting they find fitting for the theme (creation/destruction). But I am not sure I would have really ever had these thoughts laid out so clearly if not for this post. This is definitely a quote mine!
Imagination is an ability that seems to be very significant, does anyone know of any scientific studies of it? Are we the only animal that possess this ability or is our ability just more advanced, developed than other animals?
We all tell stories, all cultures have important stories that explain or illustrate their understanding of how the world works and what it is.
We spend a large part of our energy and time reading, listening and watching stories of all kinds. Look at the spread of TV and movies. Are not computer/digital games acting in stories?
If you want to get elected you have to have the better story. You need to “capture the imagination ” of the electorate! Does not seem mater if it is true or not look at recent history.
Advertising is a story not information.
Is not faith and religion all about stories?
The past, history, can be told and transformed by imagination into stories that do not match the “objective facts” of events thus giving it power to shape our present perception and action.
Scientific Interpretation or any other kind is what part imagination and what part fact?
There is not much of a chance that the ill effects of imagination nor our need for it are going to go anywhere. I would say that at the least it is a double edged sword that cuts for the good and the bad. I allows us to see more than what is right in front of us and allows us to see things that are just not so.
George Orwell said ” The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue and when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show us to be right.
Intellectually it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time. The only check on it that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield”.
To Glen D at #59.
Religion at its earliest is a kind of quasi-science (from a certain late perspective) that attempts to rationalize what is not rational. Today it very often is an attempt to irrationalize what in fact is rationally understandable.
Your latter sentence is, admittedly, true of a lot of manifestations of religious belief in modern society. Young earth creationism is probably the best example of this. Prior to the nineteenth century, when very little was known about natural history, some explanation was needed of how the complex natural and physical world had come to be, and so a reliance on the literal truth of the Biblical account was as good as anything. A “God of the gaps” role, in other words; there was no known natural explanation, so nothing wrong with relying on a supernatural explanation. Today, we have natural explanations (modern geology, natural selection, etc.), and evidence which effectively disproves the literal truth of the Biblical account; YEC seeks to rely on a supernatural explanation in preference to natural explanations, which is fundamentally irrational.
However, there is so much which has no natural explanation – or, at least, no non-speculative natural explanation. For instance, how the physical laws of the universe came to be, in such a way that the universe can generate and support intelligent life. (I’m no physicist, but I’m told that if some constants of physical laws were slightly different, the universe would either consist of nothing but hydrogen atoms or nothing but energy. I could have misunderstood this completely, so please correct me if I’m wrong.)
Not to mention human consciousness. As I understand it (again, correct me if I’m wrong) science provides no answer to the question of what consciousness is, and what quality gives us the self-awareness and self-introspection that human beings alone possess. Or, indeed, those qualities which are referred to in a religious and spiritual context as the “soul” (which is a universal concept found in all cultures, not an invention of any one religious tradition).
I am no scientist, as I’ve said repeatedly, and I could be talking absolute nonsense, so am entirely open to correction. But as I understand it, there is a point at which reason and demonstrable human knowledge ends – and there is a point beyond which said knowledge cannot go using the scientific method. Beyond that, there is space for belief in God. To limit and reduce God to something which can be scientifically demonstrated through material means – as creationists try to do – is, to my mind, meaningless.
So he’s a Bokononist, then?
This is an empirical question, and the answer implied does not square with the historical record. The story of even the most radical movements and slave rebellions in early American history shows that religious myths and beliefs were key motivating factors in struggles against oppression (see Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra). Religion was simply one of few cultural frameworks available to uneducated people. The relationship between religion and struggles against oppression is an extremely complicated one, and I don’t understand why people want to ignore that complex reality.
As you state correctly, religion was also shared, and used as a tool, by the oppressors, and the suggestion made by the religious that it has invariably been a weapon of resistance is self-serving and disingenuous. But the counter-argument, that religion has historically served solely as the opiate of the masses, is historically unsupportable (for a more contemporary example, see Deborah Levenson Estrada’s Trade Unionists Against Terror). It really doesn’t matter how poetically Marx put it (I’m still partial to Bakunin, but I’ll spare everyone another link to “God and the State”); the question is the role religious myths have played on the ground in real struggles.
Now, I disagree with Bebergal that the fact that this myth was important to the struggles of slaves and to the Civil Rights movement demonstrates something about the enduring social value of religious myths. First, because these myths are plastic and can be understood and used in ways that facilitate or impede human freedom. But, more importantly, because unlike some people in the past, we now have available other, non-religious cultural frameworks through which to understand struggle – civil rights, human rights, social justice, the class struggle,…. While these modern frameworks in some hands can take on mythological characteristics, the notion that irrational religious myths provide superior organizing principles to them is, in my view, wrong, and the fact that religious myths are just that – myths – should count them out immediately.
Anyway, that said, I liked this post.
[Wish I could’ve presented my comment in the form of a Venn diagram…]
Walton, I don’t know what would suggest that the Bible is a “reasonably accurate history.” It isn’t history, not as we understand it today.
The “causation theory” behind the Bible is largely incorrect. Sure, you get some of the historical causal factors mentioned, like the value of having soldiers and weapons is generally acknowledged. But God is the primary causal factor throughout.
Unsurprisingly, the Bible has some of the facts straight, as do most chronicles coming from ancient times. We rather prefer the Babylonian accounts regarding Babylonian events, however, not, say, the book of Daniel. I really don’t know where you’re going with the idea that the Bible is “reasonably accurate history,” since few would take it as anything but one of many resources from which an accurate history (insofar as it is possible) might be constructed.
It depends on what you mean by “abiogenesis” whether or not one thinks that evolutionary theory explains it at all. Evolution does not explain the initial aspects of abiogenesis, like the production of nucleotides, and probably not the earliest polymerizations of molecules. But the line between evolution and abiogenesis is hazy, so that what some people might consider still to be pre-life would indeed be subject to evolutionary pressures. Others would already call it life, once natural selection is significantly operating.
And I think it’s rather overstating the case to say that how life emerged from non-living matter is a near-total mystery.
We know that life is composed of “building blocks” that appear in meteorites and in many models of the early earth. That in itself ought to be considered to be a powerful clue to how life arose, which is from common “building blocks”, which would have had to have polymerized at some point.
Additionally, there are likely remnants of RNA life in present organisms, ribozymes and the like. This does suggest that life went through an RNA phase, which in some models would be the earliest life form (others think not). It is thus possible that we have vestiges of RNA life which simply arose from nucleotides existing in the environment.
True, that’s all pretty iffy, even the idea that RNA was the earliest form of life. Yet we already have constraints from presently-existing life, and from the possibilities on the early earth, that give us leads to researching abiogenesis.
Life arising from non-living matter is not a near-total mystery. The biggest problem we have with understanding the initial production of life is that organic chemistry is extremely complex, and there are a whole lot of possibilities between the existence of the “building blocks of life” and their early polymerizations, and extant life. We are not ignorant about organic chemistry, however, so we have ideas about what would have to happen–it’s just an embarrassment of riches at the present time.
But we have pretty good ideas about the initial steps of life’s first appearance on earth, including chirally-biased amino acids in meteorites. And the host of possibilities for abiogenesis and early evolution leave life’s origin less a “near-total mystery” than a basic understanding of the various processes that could have taken place, which leaves the exact routes quite open at this time.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
PZ, your mistake is to get sidetracked by this vaporous bullshit into believing that mainstream “abrahamic” religion is really about “imagination” or any such nonsense….it is manifestly NOT. This imagination BS (whatever its worth or lack of worth) is a sideshow. The real business of religion is power. The reason the rabbi was willing to do some dishonest dissembling about the nephilim was because he understood his priorities: its not about truth, its about holding the community together and motivating enough of them to fight and die for the cause. If that requires some finessing of nephilim or other BS, by all means….Which is also why its not going away soon. People need to be organized and led, and if this BS works to do that job, it will be kept around. Rational argument DOES undermine it, but the resilience comes from the fact that the formula still works well enough to be useful for many a “leader” looking to lead..
SC@66:
What – you mean like in Northern Ireland, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Iran, in Israel and Palestine, in …
IN other words – whenever religion is on one side of the argument, it’s also on the other – often in (to an outsider) a completely identical form.
Fine commentary there, Glen (#47)
What does the fact that significantly wrong data appear in the Bible mean? While it is true that Daniel was correct that Belshazzar existed, it still seems to have been wrong regarding any number of facts, including Nebuchadnezzar’s madness (another king may have, and the author of the Daniel story seems to have mixed up the two kings)–and Belshazzar’s status as king.
But moving on, even Herodotus includes supernatural events, and many think that he was beginning to actually write “historical accounts, which had not existed previous to that time, not as we understand the term today. Does the fact that Herodotus is fairly accurate (so far as we can determine) regarding Alexander the Great provide any kind of indication that the supernatural accounts he includes were true?
Almost no one, including religious people, think so. They simply disbelieve the miracles included in the histories, while provisionally accepted what seems both plausible and in agreement with other accounts.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
tony,
I’m unclear as to what you’re asking. I think you’re understanding me to be arguing something I’m not – otherwise, I don’t see how your comment is a response to mine.
One can calculate how the Universe would look if certain parameters were permuted, and our calculations show that such a Universe would not have lots of heavy elements in it; if other modifications are made, the result doesn’t look so different from the Universe we live in. All the normal matter we observe — stars, planets, nebulae, frogs, dandelions, people — is made of protons, neutrons and electrons, but Nature has provided us with extra particles, like additional “versions” of the electron, called the muon and the tau lepton, which are just the same except for having more mass. Likewise, both protons and neutrons are comprised of quarks, two kinds of quarks to be exact: the “up” and the “down”. But in addition to these, Nature offers us two more pairs, or “generations”, of quarks: strange and charm, top and bottom. These simply don’t occur in familiar matter. Why do they exist? Could a Universe lacking one or more of these extra “generations” — or one with more generations still — support organic chemistry?
The response I have heard from cosmologists on this question is, essentially, “I dunno. Maybe so.” (I have some links to relevant reading on this question here, midway down the page.) Then, too, we shouldn’t forget that the kind of matter which sustains stellar fusion, organic chemistry and therefore life — “ordinary” matter — is only the icing on the cosmic cake. Three quarters of everything is “dark energy”, of whose presence we are assured but of whose composition we are ignorant. Most of the remaining quarter is “dark matter”, which might be one kind of particle, or it might have three generations of its own.
We don’t know what the fundamental parameters are, nor do we know how the constants we observe today might be related. Perhaps the number of quark generations is tied to the number of spacetime dimensions, for example. Therefore, talking about other ways in which the Universe might operate is a bit of a crapshoot.
GlenD: Pre-human societies didn’t need religion, any more than they needed rationality. Religion at its earliest is a kind of quasi-science (from a certain late perspective) that attempts to rationalize what is not rational. Today it very often is an attempt to irrationalize what in fact is rationally understandable. And we need for people not to be dominated by the myth of self-interest (which is a danger in rationality as an ideology).
I mostly agree. But early human societies did need “ritual” — whether you call it religion or not. And human societies still need it, whether you call it “school spirit” or not. We need people to behave predictably and in collectives, whether we call it “markets” or “the mighty mountain god Mulgu”.
My question is if pretending that human society is rational isn’t dangerous (see Libertarianism for an example) — if we hope to get folks off the religion addiction, do we need something just as irrational, but better organized to replace it’s role? Many atheists speak as if they thought we should all behave rationally — when what we need is for irrationality to not pretend that it’s rational. We are experimental rats, who can think rationally, but must behave irrationally. I don’t know what the solution is, but I doubt that our current social organization is sufficient, notwithstanding “school spirit”, or a weekend at Mardi Gras.
tony,
I’m not arguing that religion is or ever was a desirable framework for struggle. I stated the opposite quite explicitly. My argument was that historically it has been a powerful basis for struggle (whether we like it or not) and not simply a tranquilizing force. The examples you offer provide much evidence of that, I believe.
Walton: But as I understand it, there is a point at which reason and demonstrable human knowledge ends – and there is a point beyond which said knowledge cannot go using the scientific method. Beyond that, there is space for belief in God.
I don’t think that follows. There is space to act without a rational basis for action – but that doesn’t imply that a belief has to go along with it. A belief of that kind is an attempt to rationalize the irrational. Why would someone want to do that? Just go ahead and act without lying to yourself.
“… continue to use the religious imagination to keep them relevant.”
In other words, we’re making it up as we go along.
Segueing from physics into more philosophical territory, one should note that using questions like “where did the laws of physics come from” to argue for a Supreme Being or a Paleyist deity who makes Universes and leaves them in the sand is not really a viable approach. For starters, we have only one Universe to examine (although some rather well-founded hypotheses in modern cosmology suggest that there may be regions of the Cosmos so far removed from our own that different versions of physical law, such as different particular realizations of the general principles of string theory, might operate in each one). Doing statistics with one data point is not so much fun: how can we tell the result of a non-random process apart from the effects of random chance?
Then, suppose we say that something had to get the Universe going and establish some physical laws for it to follow. How can we attribute any properties like intelligence, let alone emotion akin to human feeling, to that extra-cosmic something? (Following a Hume gambit, we might reason that a watch could be made by a single, master watchmaker, or by an inept apprentice on his thirtieth try, or by a committee of apprentices; a single watch is not enough evidence to discriminate among the available options.) And if we do attribute intelligence to that trans-Universal being, we’ve given ourselves a real problem. Either that being lives in an environment like our Universe, or it doesn’t; if that environment — call it Heaven — is like our Universe, then we must explain where it came from, and if it isn’t, then intelligence can exist in an environment unlike our own, and our argument collapses under its own weight.
SC: re my comments & yours.
Yes – my comment was merely an extension of yours. In reading that statement in your initial comment, there was an implication that perhaps religion* was ony on one side or the other – when in fact it is generally on both sides of most conflicts. Sectarian schism appears to be a major motivational force leading to violence.
Sorry for neglecting to mention that I generally agreed with your post!
* by religion I mean any & all irrational ‘leader/follower’ or ‘cultist’ groups, including many supposedly secular groups.
tony,
:) It occurred to me that that was what you were getting at just after I had posted my second response. I didn’t intend to imply that, although I can see how it could have been inferred from my first comment.
RE: rational/irrational
Frog@74,76: I agree completely — Humans have an intrinsic irrationality that we need to accept and recognize — but we need not be ruled by it!
Irrationality in the form of religion is accepting irrationality as the dominant factor in our morals & ethics.
Hard-core libertarianism (as you said) makes a false premise that we can live completely rational lives and exclude the irrational.
Real people live somewhere in the middle.
Most atheists fully recognize the need for the absurd and crazy and irrational – we just use books and movies and art (and recreational drugs) to indulge than need.
Maybe that’s why most hard-core fundies are such po-faced dullards? there’s no room left for normal irrationality!
This is not correct. Libertarianism believes in a particular kind of rationality, i.e. rational egoism. This is not the only kind of rationality and may well be fallacious as a description of putatively “rational” human behavior. See for example Amartya Sen’s article “Rational Fools: A critique of the behavioral foundations of rational choice theory” (i may have got the exact title wrong), among others. Rationality is quite consistent with selfless behavior. In fact one of the founders of Utilitarianism, Sedwick, held that Utilitarianism as a moral philosophy (“greatest good for the greatest number”)is quite inconsistent with egoism (in colloquial terms, selfishness).
-the question is the role religious myths have played on the ground in real struggles-
Gays and Lesbians have done quite well in struggling for their equal rights without any need for religion. In fact it would probably have been done in an afternoon with time for a quick half before closing if the religions hadn’t got oh such good reasons for screaming and gnashing teeth over it.
Bottom line then it seems to me… Religion in recent history has either had little to no effect (because both sides used it) or has directly opposed those struggling for freedom and equality.
One could argue in various ways regarding that.
Is it just as well to belive unevidenced myths, just because no adequate explanation exists? Many of us recoil at the thought, and indeed, traditionally the abrahamic religions have been quite intolerant of other myths, which had as much (none) evidence as their own myth did. Why? Because truth matters to the human psyche.
Then too, we’re still paying for the unquestioning acceptance of the Genesis myth, for many cannot give up what was so long believed.
But I suppose in one sense, humans feel the need to tie up the loose ends, and will do so even without proper justification. If looked at that way, one might suppose that the Genesis myth is as good as anything to hang your hat on in the seventeenth-century. One wonders, however, if healthy questioning is thereby prevented, even when no “natural explanation” appears possible.
I would word it differently, that the YEC seeks to rely on methods of discovery which have never proven to be reliable, as opposed to the methods of science which do work. I put it this way because I believe the issue is how one addresses remaining questions, not whether or not a sufficient explanation exists.
That’s essentially as I understand it to be.
This is why I pointedly brought out the matter of how we address remaining questions, above. The observation has been made that slightly different laws would not allow for life as we know it, and we know of no reason why the laws must be as they are.
Then the question is how do we (honestly, I would prefer) address the question this poses, of why the universe is as it is. Some cosmological models allow for an enormous number of universes to exist, in which case we’re probably just in one of the few (so far as we can figure) that could support life.
The latter is speculation? Not totally, for it relies upon known parameters of space, time, energy, and matter, and it utilizes the entirely reasonable fact that while we don’t know of anything that limits us to the present laws, we also know of nothing that limits the total possibilities to the observable universe. What I’m getting at is that cosmological questions tend to be rather open at this time, and if we don’t know any reason why this universe “must be able to support life”, we also don’t know of any reason why there aren’t 10500 universes, at least a few of which will support life simply through chance.
No answer? Surely we should consider the question within the laws of physics? I know that I have argued with theists fighting a rear-guard apologetics battle over the fact that consciousness must agree with the laws of thermodynamics, and many do not agree.
Which gets back to how we are to address remaining questions. After all, the real battles generally are not over settled science, and we would be worried about any theists who would deny using science to address consciousness. Would you? I think not, at least not deliberately so, but one concern about religion is that it really does not wish for some questions to be answered.
We surely know some things about consciousness, like that it appears to involve the information encoded in the nerve firings in certain areas of the brain, but not the information in other areas (unless those are completely separate conscious areas). I do not think that is an insignificant lead to follow.
And surely it is better to try to understand consciousness via the laws of physics and neurological function, than to simply write off the issue? I have my own ideas on the matter, to which I do not think anyone has provided any significant objections. Yet that’s not the point, the real issue is that we have little or no reason to use anything but the laws of physics and the knowledge embodied in neuroscience to deal with these issues, for no convincing evidence exists that anything else could address the question of consciousness.
I do not really know what this amorphous “soul” is. I don’t mean that I don’t recognize what people say that it is, I just don’t recognize consistency or anything that doesn’t appear to overlap with brain function.
Spirituality, on the other hand, does not seem so difficult, for it seems to consist primarily in recognizing patterns outside of rational reasons to do so, the taking in of the mysterious in a kind of understanding that does not mesh (at least not well) with “concrete understanding”, and a kind of “sense” that goes beyond rationality. We do not come into the world believing in god, but we may be argued as coming into the world as spiritual beings, primarily because so little is understood at first.
Science begins in the spiritual, if one accepts the more continental version of philosophy, as I do. The lost chord, the harmonics of Pythagoras (which, btw, already breaches the “wall” supposed to be between “mind” and the “outside world”), the spiritual leads us to do science. Unfortunately for those of us who enjoy the spiritual, the pleasures of the spiritual tend to disappear with explanation, yet further mysteries beckon.
See, this is why we’re somewhat leery of theism, even the kind that is compatible with established science. Too often theism notes that not all is explained, and wishes to conclude thereby that science cannot explain it.
I do not recognize the boundaries that you think exist. There may be such boundaries, however we do not know of these, and we do not agree with you that science cannot go beyond the ends of current science.
I’m not at all saying that all theists think that science must end at any certain point. I am noting that too many theists take the unexplained as being the unexplainable, and I cannot claim to think at all well of such a belief.
While it is unlikely that science will ever explain everything, the remaining empty space for God seems not to be a very solid foundation for religion. Which is fine, if you don’t wish for that. However, science insists upon intruding on the remaining questions, and it may very well be capable of explaining any question that it can ask while being rationally consistent–we don’t know yet, which is why we insist on intruding.
If science continues to provide answers to questions, there may be no space for a “god of the gaps,” other than in the remotest questions, which would be uninteresting to the vast majority of theists.
The question of what is “beyond human understanding” is what keeps non-theists and many theists from coming to terms, because even many “moderate theists” seem to think that there are barriers to our knowledge, and that their theistic beliefs rest upon those barriers. The point of science is to dispel any ignorance that it can, and it will not accept any such barriers to “physical knowledge”. It’s the scientific attitude that we promote, this lack of reverence for any ignorance, and thus it continues to intrude on the religious beliefs of even many of the “moderates”–but not all of them.
Oh, and thanks for the compliment, Kseniya.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
sorry about the bold tags, my mistake. Also I misspelled “Sedgwick”. Apologies for all the typos
I’ll definitely say yes, frog.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Richard Eis,
That’s an empirical question as well, and not resolved by pointing to a single case. Aside from that, I don’t see how anything you’ve said contradicts my original post. Or were you not trying to do that? I’m becoming a bit frustrated, as it seems people are pulling that one line from my comment without recognizing its meaning in context.
Re Walton and his correspondents:
I don’t agree with Walton’s views, but have a certain degree of sympathy, as not all that long ago I believed things not all that different. But that to one side, what I really wanted to say is this:
Can PZ put a permanent link to this thread in the sidebar?
The reason for this suggestion is that, the next time an unwitting fundamentalist troll surfs in, types “Genesis pWn3 evilution! Darwin caused Hitler! You will all roast in hell!!!!111!!” and then complains after the inevitable reaction, as the rest of the commenters wipe their axe blades clean, that “you’re all bigoted and mean and don’t respect my beliefs!”, we can point him to that link.
It’s certainly a refreshing change when a religious person comes in and, rather than spraypainting Jack Chick graffiti, explains politely and clearly where he disagrees with atheism. And, when that happens, the atheists respond with equal politeness and clarity to explain why they disagree with him.
Pointing this out to the trolls would be a good way of telling them, “See? We reject your beliefs and all, of course, but that’s not why we mock you. We mock you because you’re an asshole.”
Re irrationality,
I’m curious as to whether anyone else here has read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Dancing in the Streets. It has some weak points, but it’s an interesting read. She makes an evolutionary argument about group dancing, and I would love to hear biologists’ thoughts on its validity.
sGlen (#47): … What is elitist in the main is actually Berbergal’s religion, …
Yes. Religion-as-art makes sense for only a small, self-satisfied, “elite” segment of the population. The skills necessary to do cutting-edge science are limited to a relatively small number of (elite) people, but science is about the real world where everybody lives, thus making it definitely non-elite.
I just want to add:
This assertion is flatly not true. Look at the way the modern gay community has created ritual and meaning around the 1969 Stonewall riots. Stonewall was a definitive moment in our history. It inspired the queer movement as we know it. It has acquired an almost mythic status in our culture (“mythic” in the sense of “legendary” or “heroic”). And there was nothing supernatural about it.
And that’s just one example. I could go on and on. Plenty of events that “simply occurred in history” have acquired great meaning and ritual around them… meaning that adapts and grows with a changing culture.
Oh, I also want to point this out:
And here, people, is where Mr. Bebergal assumes the thing that he’s trying to prove — that religious experience is an “encounter” with something real that different people interpret differently. And it’s that very assertion that atheists are questioning.
It is easy to see why PZ is creationist’s worst nightmare – his attack willingness single-handedly destroys the ludicrous idea that dinosaurs would be safe from men.
Then again, while dinosaurs were neither slow moving nor dim witted, apologists seems easy prey. Bebergal claims that religious texts to him become “metaphors for our relationship with the world, metaphors that point to its holiness.” Besides the problem that any fictional work would do, he just conjures this up.
Nice, PZ
It brings to mind an essay written recently by Robert Sapolsky on a Templeton Foundation big question – “Does Science make belief in God obsolete?”
Sapolsky writes-
So why is belief still relevant? It is for the ecstacy. I mean those instances where you’re suffused with gratitude for life and experience and the chance to do good, where every neuron is flooded with the momentness of feeling the breeze on its cellular cheek. A scientist or a consumer of science may feel ecstatic about a finding–that it will cure a disease, save a species, or is just stunningly beautiful– but science, as an explanatory system, is not very good at producing ecstasy.
Science is the best explanatory system that we have, and religiosity as an alternative has a spectacular potential for harm that permeates and distorts every domain of decision-making and attribution in our world. But just because science can explain so many unknowns doesn’t mean that it can explain everything, or that it can vanquish the unknowable. That is why religious belief is not obsolete. The world would not be a better place without ecstasy, but it would be one if there wasn’t religion. But don’t expect science to fill the hole that would be left behind, or to convince you that there is none.
.
.
Me, I’m just a rat.
Anyone know where I can get me one of them buttons wired up to my pleasure centers? Sounds even better than Church! :-O
“Yes. Religion-as-art makes sense for only a small, self-satisfied, “elite” segment of the population. The skills necessary to do cutting-edge science are limited to a relatively small number of (elite) people, but science is about the real world where everybody lives, thus making it definitely non-elite.”
What is more, those that do such science tend to to their utmost to ensure that those who are not part that small group who have the skills and knowledge to do cutting-edge science are aware of what they studying, and what they are finding out. Yes, to try to understand what science is about, and where it is at today may require some effort, but then so does anything meaningful. If you want to understand history it means a lot of reading and critical analysis of what historians say.
Agreed. A problem here is that the religious mind reasons as if there is an ensemble to make probabilities on. But in such case the religious anthropic argument that it would be improbable to find ourselves in a universe with the required parameters for life is wrong. It is confusing a priori probability with a posteriori likelihood.
To see this, one has to allow for an ensemble, say by observing that our universe is now suspected to be much larger than the local observable volume (possibly infinite) and that this allows for a parameter range. This raises the possibility for a natural weak anthropic principle, that we likely find ourselves in a volume with the most suitable parameters. And this is quite the reverse to the religious argument.
Segueing from philosophy into more argumentative territory, one could also ask: if the universe is supposed to be designed for life, why the #&?! do we get such a small volume to live in?
@#60 Walton —
Yes, but even leaving aside the things the bible got wrong, in all the cases where there is independent historical evidence, it’s for a natural claim. There are no cases of independent historical/scientific evidence for one of its miraculous/supernatural-interacting-with-natural claims.
That would depend on what you mean by radical inconsistency; others better versed in ancient semitic history have addressed this better than I could. However, I would question what you mean by “untestable and unfalsifiable.” The miraculous events described in the bible involve some interaction of the supernatural (god) with the natural, to produce visible effects — eg, in Exodus, the plagues, the parting of the Red/Reed Sea, etc. Why is there no independent historical evidence for these events? Surely the Egyptians would have noticed these things (the death of all their first born children would have been especially note-worthy), and news of it might have spread to their neighbors as well. Yet AFAIK it never showed up in any non-biblical sources. Why?
This is a faulty analogy. The existence of horses is not an extraordinary claim. The existence of a God who can bring plagues, raise people from the dead, etc is. If the written record argued that the Huns used horses who could sometimes miraculously sprout wings and fly, would we put much credence in that claim?
non-vegan tony: Most atheists fully recognize the need for the absurd and crazy and irrational – we just use books and movies and art (and recreational drugs) to indulge than need.
That’s not exactly my point. I’m not talking about individual irrationality, but group irrationality. Much “organizing” behavior isn’t rational – you don’t get married and have children out of some rational plan, with an expected reward. You do it because it feels good, or you feel impelled, and then you rationalize it afterward.
The same goes for work: most of what you see at most work sites isn’t a rational accumulation of wealth, but people helping each other or torturing each other, and then rationalizing it afterward in terms of wealth accumulation. People just have irrational social needs that can at most be rationally explained, but isn’t driven by reason or intent. People like to do the same thing everyday; people like to pick fleas from other people (metaphorically speaking); people like to sing and dance.
When they don’t have satisfaction in those needs, they’ll reach out to any that are offering to satisfy those needs — aka, your local pentacostal snake handling church. And they’ll then regurgitate any nonsense they hear to be part of that group. Movies and drugs lack the full social dimension needed.
Walton, let me summarize comment 84 in one sentence:
All your “science cannot explain” statements are true, but they lack the Homeric Qualifier: “So far!”
Also, if you haven’t done it yet, please follow the link in comment 61 and read all four pages.
Hard to believe. Please elaborate.
—————
“You”, of course, meaning “southeastern estadounidense”.
We ain’t got no snake-handlers this side of the Pond. The closest thing to a reasonably large cult over here is Scientology, and it’s much less prominent than it appears to be in the USA. For religious mass experiences, watch football. (Soccer.)
frog: Movies and drugs lack the full social dimension needed unless you’re talking about the Rocky Horror Picture Show
Otherwise I agree that social irrationality is (mostly)unmet by those.
AFAIK, bones which can be unambiguously attributed to Hunnish horses are hard to come by (and with Attila trying to transition his kingdom to a less nomadic lifestyle in the 440s, a downgrade in the number of horses might be understandable). However, contemporary sources describe the Huns as fierce horseback warriors. And if you believe that the Huns were the same tribe as the Hsiung-Nu, then the Great Wall of China was built to keep their horses out.
DM: For religious mass experiences, watch football.
I guess we’ll see if football is enough (and carnival, etc.). It’s only been half a century since your last major outbreak of semi-organized lunacy. I wonder how long this interlude will last without some irrational defense mechanisms against another outbreak — how long social cohesion will last before you catch the American disease (“I’m out for #1 and screw the rest of you guys”), which then creates an opening for someone offering some insane but vivid version of “meaning” and group identity. Remember that Germany was very secular in the twenties, but maybe y’all have found some cure to being human!
from, DM: I just had a thought (epiphany, even!)
Maybe the US is now the ‘safe harbo(u)r’ for irrationality in the human race — our presence lets Europe become lots more rational, without losing ‘society’
We’re now the irrationality theme park for the world! (maybe that’s why I’m happy here – it fits with my uber-need for idiocy in my life!)
Yes, I regard the scent of religion with disgust, but not because I lack an appreciation of its historical or sociological significance — it’s because I can detect the odor of corruption and decay, and I can smell failure. It’s not something I want in my house
I would be curious to hear what would happen if one of your children embraced a religious faith.
Feh. Religion is not a prerequisite for ecstacy. I wouldn’t expect science to “fill the hole” left by religion and I wouldn’t deny that there’d be a hole, but a willingness to immerse oneself in reality would be a giant step in the right direction.
PZ’s comment (#44) on how many churches he walked by prompted me to do some surfing. Specifically, I was looking for a map that showed the number of churches per person, or churches per sq mile, or something like that for counties or major cities. I found a lot of maps that showed percentage of various religions broken down by counties and states, but no maps depicting just number of churches.
I finally came across a list of number of churches per 10000 people broken down by county/state at this site. I’ll have to turn it into a map someday when I get some time.
PZ’s home county of Stevens comes in at 25 churches per 10000 people, ranking 1,078th. My county of Maricopa, AZ, I am pleased to say, comes in at 5 churches per 10000 people, ranking it way down at 3,069th. Worst place? Harding County, New Mexico with 99 churches per 10000 people. I’m sure the data is skewed by size of county and population densities within, but interesting data nonetheless.
BMcP@104: what would happen if one of your children embraced a religious faith.
Personally, I’d be sad but I’d continue to love him or her, and would try very hard to help them use their own mind and think.
In all truth and being totally candid — my son is surviving middle school amongst a *lot* of uber-xians here in sunny GA. Their idiotic and infantile drivel (they even tried Pascal’s Wager – meh!) has done nothing but support HIS mindset — which is very different from mine, BTW – he leans towards a deist viewpoint.
Regardless – if he were to ’embace jeebus’ I’d be worried what that abrupt mental change implied (drugs, illness, ???)
Let me ask you a similar question: What would YOU do if a child of yours completely rejected religion?
Tony
SiMPel MYnd @ 106.
I wonder how many of those Churches are ‘Mega’?
In my own little corner of GA there are three mega churches within a four mile radius of my home: which happens to be at the intersect of Forsyth, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties.
Given the congregations possible at those mega churches run into the many thousands, the map would need to include the size (or area of influence) of the church.
Even with those there are still many more churches in the populated areas than the raw numbers would imply.
An interesting link you provided there (about archeaology & the Old Testament), but neither a quick scan nor a search for “cyp” finds any reference to that sunny isle – so, pray tell, what’s the basis for the above jab?
Walton: Here are a couple of well-informed (but quite readable) looks at the-O.T.-as-history from, respectively, archeaologists’ & historians’ viewpoints:
* Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
* Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?
tony (not a vegan) @108:
From this NY Time article, it looks like the megachurches have concentrations centered in Souther California, Texas, Georgia, Washington, Maryland, and New Jersey, with other smatterings covering most of the southeast and midwest.
I thought everybody knew about Daniel 11:30.
Chittim [Kittim, Kition] is Cyprus, but the (thinly veiled) historical references in Daniel 11 are talking about Roman naval power. The Douay-Rheims version actually translates the verse as beginning, “And the galleys and the Romans shall come upon him”. . . it’s in Asimov’s Guide.
Worst place? Harding County, New Mexico with 99 churches per 10000 people.
Harding County, NM has 8 churches spread across its 2,136 sq mi. 8 churches for fewer than 1000 people may give it the most chuches per person of any county in the US, but considering the size of the county, I don’t see how you could walk past 3 of them.
Any number of churches is too many as far as I am concerned, but Harding county doesn’t sound as crazy as those places with megachurches.
Hmmm, interesting. My home county has a high proportion of “adherents” (nearly 75%) but hosts a mere 5 churches per 10,000 inhabitants.
The missing stat is “adherents per church.” In my county, that number comes out to nearly 1,500 – and there are no megachurches here, nor anything even remotely resembling one. (This is New England, after all.) I can only conclude that many of these adherents do not actually go to services with any regularity.
For the sake of comparison, in Stevens County, MN, there are only 309 adherents per church. Maricopa County, AZ, which has the same number of churches per 10,000 residents as my home county, boasts little more than half as many adherents per church at 786. And in Harding County, NM, there are only 82. Harding doesn’t offer much of a sample size, though – the population of the entire county is only 810 people.
It looks as though a lot of people around my area identify as religious, but aren’t really active in a church – which is how it has always seemed to me, anyways.
Damned liberals. :-)
Blake Stacey: … he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.
Uh-oh – is “have intelligence with” equivalent to “know” in Biblese?
… it’s in Asimov’s Guide.
Ah well then – who I am to question Holy Writ?
Oops – who am I to question HW?
You’re half right.
“Science is imagination equipped with grappling hooks.”
Beautiful.
Pierce-
Are you trying to say “Am I who I am”?
or
“I am who I am”?
Who are you, anyway?
@Elwood (waaaay back at #58) (sorry, I was sleeping – Antipodean time)
Because “You may fire when ready.” just sounds better in an English accent. It just does.
OT – Great post PZ. This is why I lurk here. (It ain’t for the inedible calamari. That was a disappointment)
Tony@107 wrote: Let me ask you a similar question: What would YOU do if a child of yours completely rejected religion?
A fair question.
The answer in short is nothing really, as in it wouldn’t change our relationship, they are still my children and would love them just the same. I have disagreements with my own sister, who is a fundamentalist Christian and a devoted YEC who raised her children the same way, and even though I disagree with her belief, I still love her as much, she is family and I adore my nephews and nieces, as they are family, no more explanation is needed.
@Walter
Three points:
-Written records are archaeological evidence – and there are many, which are consistent and corroborative.
-Other evidence exists of the horse-culture of the Xiongnu, bridles, pottery, belt buckles etc.
-Walter is out of his depth here.
(sorry to nit-pick, but the Xiongnu and other cultures lumped under ‘Huns’ are an interest of mine)
…waiting for “imagination equipped with grappling hooks” to find its way into an xkcd strip, if it hasn’t already…
“Walton”, not “Walter”. Apple-ogies.
Excellent piece that will find much referential use in the future.
We’re all just rats in a maze, trying to make our way past tempting buttons aren’t we? Nothing wrong with pushing some buttons, though, as long as we admit that they’re just buttons. But some rats (like that zinger) are telling us of bigger buttons that await those who push the ones in the here and now. Whatever happened to plain old cheese?
aaannd… speaking of hardwires to pleasure-centres : That photo yesterday from the HiRISE of Phoenix hanging over Mars on its parachute gave me a thrill like I haven’t had for a long time!
Science – it works, beyatch!
postscript:
Oh! Oh! Ohhhhhhh! There’s more! The HiRISE has shots of Phoenix on the ground! I need a nap….
A bit off topic, but honestly, where do Christian apologists get their energy? It’s got to be an exhausting endeavor. I suppose they do it for love of Jesus, but I don’t get how one can look at and live in the natural world and still be that rabidly out of it. This guy, in particular, was pretty prolific up until recently: http://lifeanddoctrineatheism.blogspot.com/ I guess “Expelled” has him tied up at the moment, but for a while he was like C.S. Lewis on speed. Oh, what blogs hath wrought!
Fortunately, most apologetics blogs are just typical annoying quote-mining, No True Scotsmans (“no REAL Christian would believe/do something like that!”), and general absurdity. Some apologists, however, are more persistent. Sometimes I have fun trying to play “Find the Logical Fallacy” with them, but after a while I can just feel my head start to hurt and my blood pressure rising. I’m all for hearing all sides of an argument, but sometimes I just don’t have the energy to try to stretch my mind that much.
Kudos to you, PZ, for having the energy to address them, and making it humorous and reasonable.
PZ Myers: “there are certainly irrational interpretations of the world that mesh well with our flawed preconceptions, and it can even make us feel good to give in to comforting myths.”
Right; but none of this comforting irrationalism need be in the form of religion or supernaturalism. It might be political, or philosophical, or any number of things.
You can lead people away from the organized body of myth, but you can’t take the myth-making machinery out of the human mind.
(No, I’m not necessarily referring to a module nor an adaptationist hypothesis of irrationalism; what I’m calling “myth-making machinery” might be a very robust, and perhaps phylogenetically and developmentally constrained, bias of vertebrate ways of making brain-minds.)
@walton
I believe this has already been addressed in great detail by Glen D, but the simple answer to any of these kind of claims is yet…
I’m interested to hear Walton’s response to this.
Also, as a common lurker here I’d like to thank everyone for a wonderfully calm and reasoned discussion.
“But some rats (like that zinger) are telling us of bigger buttons that await those who push the ones in the here and now. Whatever happened to plain old cheese?”
‘Who Moved My God?’
“…waiting for “imagination equipped with grappling hooks” to find its way into an xkcd strip, if it hasn’t already…”
Perhaps the recent one involving mistranslations . . .
——–
[“Song of a Rat
I. The Rat’s Dance
The rat is in the trap, it is in the trap,
and attacking heaven and earth with a mouthful of screeches like torn tin,
An effective gag.
When it stops screeching, it pants
And cannot think
“This has no face, it must be God” or
“No answer is also an answer.”
Iron jaws, strong as the whole earth
Are stealing its backbone
For a crumpling of the Universe with screechings,
For supplanting every human brain inside its skull with a rat-body that
knots and unknots,
A rat that goes on screeching,
Trying to uproot itself into each escaping screech,
But its long fangs bar that exit –
The incisors bared to the night spaces, threatening the constellations,
The glitterers in the black, to keep off,
Keep their distance
While it works this out.
The rat understands suddenly. It bows and is still,
With a little beseeching of blood on its nose-end.”
-Ted Hughes]
I’ve always felt that religion has always been tied to authority. Way back when someone wanted to lead a tribe, he (I’m going to make that assumption at this point; apologies if that bothers anyone) needed the people to believe he had all the answers.
How often do politicians today admit to not having an answer? They’ll spend ten minutes talking around the question without making anything close to an admission of ignorance on a topic. And that’s only if they’re one of the intelligent ones.
So, in our hypothetical ancient tribe, when someone asked the chief why the big, hot orange flamey thing moved across the sky he wasn’t going to say he didn’t know – even though we know he couldn’t have known. Why would people follow a chief who didn’t have answers? He had to come up with something, and the best option was that is was a god – or, at least, something controlled by a god – which is not that unreasonable when you’ve got nothing else to go on.
As long as there are ‘gaps’, things we don’t have answers for, there’ll be people who’ll choose to believe in god(s). These days, however, it isn’t things for which we don’t have answers for that’s the problem; it’s that those answers displease people for whom it means having to admit things they don’t like – or can’t understand.
And as long as people believe in something they’ll feel they’re right to do so, and find ways to justify it.
I don’t mean to pick on Walton specifically, for he seems to be an eminently reasonable fellow, but the anthropocentric arrogance exemplified by this widely-held assumption has long troubled me. There’s a continuum of awareness and consciousness in the animal kingdom. The notion that only members of genus Homo are able to reason, feel emotions, make decisions which govern their own actions, or even entertain abstractions formed from the contemplation of their own existence is unsupportable. There’s a clear correlation between intelligence and the kind of consciousness to which Walton refers, yes, but it’s a matter of degree rather than of kind. We’re special, but not as special as we like to think – and, more importantly, not uniquely different in the way that is necessary to support the belief that we alone are touched by the divine.
Hey, even dogs feel shame…
PZ…
Just a great post on a great subject. Thank you.
And kudos to all who commented, a very pleasant read!
Well said PZ and I think that
“Science is imagination equipped with grappling hooks.”
is the perfect meme.
PZ commenting about churches in his small community. #44
“They’re like a blight upon the landscape, little festering boils popping up on any corner.”
I share that exact same sentiment but substitute banks and/or credit unions. Why do we need so many of them and on every single corner!
Kseniya: Hey, even dogs feel shame…
Dogs feel a lot of things. I was working on a project one time and told the dog (black, lab breed) to go away. She took a few steps and looked back at me with the most mournful expression I have ever seen on a dog. I didn’t even know dogs could look that way! I laughed at her and she cheered up a few minutes later.
It’s interesting, if you treat a dog like a dog (with all that phony high pitched enthusiasm in your voice when it does something right, or give it orders like it’s a lower life form, or, you know, etc.) then it will act like a dog. But if you treat it like any other person, with respect and consideration for its feelings, then you begin to see that it has an incredibly rich spectrum of emotions and attitudes. The only thing missing, really, is an ability to figure out the more complex mechanical things, and a grasp of abstract concepts. The fact that it lives in a world of odors, and has different instinctive drives doesn’t change the fact that there is a conscious “personality” in there that feels, contemplates, holds grudges, has an ego, gets amused, etc.
Among all the other creepy things that religion preoccupies a person with, this idea that we are “ensouled” and “made in the image of God” in a way that all other animals aren’t, is, as you say, unsupportable. We simply have bigger brains in different bodies. (Brains that, ironically, also give us the ability to imagine special attributes that we don’t really have.)
RambDude:
LoL, and yes, and yes. And dogs aren’t the sharpest tools in the drawer, either. Gorillas and chimpanzees exhibit even more complex behaviors and emotions – not to mention an ability to learn human language and the capacity to fear death, and not only in the strictly immediate sense that any creature with a survival instinct will flee mortal peril, either…
Who has yet plumbed the mind and society of the bottle-nosed dolphin? Their world is far more alien to us than the world of the bloodhound, and yet dolphins have seen fit to save human children from drowning. Surely such a big-brained creature is not acting solely from mindless instinct. I admit that I’m indulging in conjecture, but IMO it’s not unreasonable to suspect that dolphins, along with any number of other relatively intelligent social mammals, have an awareness not just of self but of other, with the latter sense being more than a simple component of survivalistic xenophobia…
You can find plenty of true notions in any fictional construct, but you get nothing of value out of the experience by believing the whole experience is true in some deeper way.
Actually, whether you get something of value out of a subjective experience could be true, and the claim that one gets no value out of a subjective experience, while it may be true, is also subjective.
yet dolphins have seen fit to save human children from drowning.
and rape.
and murder, too (bottlenoses are especially noted for this).
all of which have plausible explanations from a viewpoint based purely on selective forces acting on behavior.
Who has yet plumbed the mind and society of the bottle-nosed dolphin?
several people I can think of, actually.
I knew a grad student from UCSC that did his thesis work on spinner dolphin behavior, for example (Michael Poole).
I’m sure a quick google will pull up quite a few references relating to the study of dolphin social dynamics; we’ve come quite far in our understanding over the last 20 years or so (not that there still isn’t a long way to go).
Surely such a big-brained creature is not acting solely from mindless instinct.
There are very few instances of what one might describe as “mindless instinct”, most behavior has both innate and learned (or environmental) components, and we’ve known that since Lorenz and Tinbergen’s time (over 60 years). Just to be clear, though, even with supposedly “complex” behaviors, there is no reason to assume selection does not act on a specific behavior like any other trait.
Moreover, when thinking in terms of “complex behavior”, one can find quite complex behaviors in even the “simplest” of organisms, like ants, for example.
I’m just saying that associating brain size, or even cortex size, with behavioral complexity isn’t necessarily accurate, or even relevant to whether a particular behavior is more “innate” than “learned”.
*shrug*, I’m not even sure I’m addressing your point, but I thought it relevant to point out that dolphins aren’t necessarily the lovable scamps a lot of the popular media make them out to be.
Thanks to GlenD and several others for responding to my points in a reasonable way. I’m glad to see that I don’t seem to merit the “Kenny treatment”.
I would be the first to concede that I’m a little out of my depth discussing physics, cosmology, biology, Biblical archaeology and theology, none of which are within my area of expertise. Accordingly I have only a layman’s understanding of these areas. As regards the claim about the Huns, I’ve heard it repeated numerous times (mostly by apologists for the LDS Church, who use it to draw a parallel with the total lack of archaeological evidence for any of the events of the Book of Mormon), but I stand corrected (#121 above).
My suggestion that the inexplicable nature of human consciousness and self-awareness may be a sign of the divine seems to have been somewhat of a red herring; if I understand everyone else’s arguments correctly, just because this particular aspect of human nature is beyond our present scientific understanding doesn’t mean we will never understand it through science. However, what I was trying to say is that it is, at least, rationally sustainable to believe that there is something which sets humanity apart other than our more complex brains and powers of reasoning; the “soul”, as it were. I realise (as Kseniya pointed out at #131 above) that there is a continuum of intelligence within the animal kingdom, and that some primates, for instance, have very high intelligence and a degree of apparent self-awareness, as well as an apparent ability to experience emotion. But I would point out that animals are not driven to create poetry, art or music; nor is there any obvious rational explanation for why we are driven to do these things, when they are of no obvious benefit from the standpoint of individual or racial survival. (Yes, before anyone says, I am sure that it is possible to rationalise that particular phenomenon in some way. But I’m not trying to show that we need a concept of God to explain things like that; I’m merely trying to show that it is possible to believe in a God without rejecting science, and that God need not be just a “fill-in-the-gaps” solution for phenomena which we don’t understand.)
I still think there’s something in my argument about the laws of the universe. As I said, I don’t really understand the physics or cosmology of it that well, and I’m grateful to those who’ve added scientific information to this discussion. But no one here seems to have outright rejected the assertion that it is highly probable that, if certain physical constants were different, the universe would consist either solely of hydrogen atoms or solely of energy, or would in other respects be unable to sustain life (even life of a radically different type from that with which we are familiar). Obviously, this would make sense in the context of multiple universe theory; if there are billions of other universes, it would not be improbable that this one can sustain the particular type of life which it does sustain, since there would doubtless be many others which did indeed consist of hydrogen or of energy. (As I said, this is purely a layman’s understanding, so apologies if I’m making any physicists cringe in horror at my simplistic perspective.) But surely it is inherently beyond human understanding to know for sure whether there are multiple universes? And if so, doesn’t that make it rationally plausible – though by no means inevitable – that there is only one universe and that its physical laws were established by a benevolent deity of some sort?
(I’d also point out that until the 1930s, most scientists believed in an eternal, steady-state universe. When Georges Lemaitre first proposed the Big Bang theory, with a finite age of the universe and a specific point of beginning, some accused him of twisting the facts in favour of Judeo-Christian creation mythology, which of course necessitates a universe with a specific beginning and finite age. Today, on the other hand, steady-state theory has almost no adherents. Again, correct me if I’m wrong about this.)
As I said, I’m not trying to “prove” that God exists; it’s my standpoint that God, if He exists, is inherently beyond material and scientific proof. That’s why I disagree with YEC and all that nonsense, because I don’t believe in a God whose existence can be materially demonstrated through examination of natural and geological history. In a sense, that’s limiting God to the role of a mere scientific agent. Rather, all I’m trying to do is to establish that it is rationally possible to believe in God, and that there is a place for God within human understanding of the universe – not scientific understanding, but in the place where the scope of potential empirical knowledge ends.
Walton #139
Meh? Of course – you didn’t display the “Kenny behaviour”.
Commenters here are no zealbots. Well, maybe one or two.
God doesn’t get any more “gappy” than that, wouldn’t you say?
The opening quote from Bebergal starts with insight –
“Religious experience begins with an encounter, which is then given form by the imagination. We then turn this form into texts, prayers, rituals, and of course, myths. Communities gather around these stories and continue to use the religious imagination to keep them relevant.”
Instead of going on to the apologia, that seems accurate in itself. Religion is codified imagination, perhaps starting with the most imaginative member of the family or tribe becoming the storyteller, the shaman, at first inspiring everyone to use their own imagination.
As stories are passed down, standard forms begin to constrain imagination and become a tribal identifier. Larger social structures such as kingdoms impose their own codified forms of earlier imaginings through religion as a control mechanism. With literacy these imaginings take written form, spreading quickly while frozen at the time of writing, and in the most successful cases lasting through the centuries while continually being reinterpreted for meanings that suit contemporary purposes. Sometimes inspiring new imagination of their interpretation in various formats, sometimes crowding out new imaginings as adherents without imagination demand conformity to their frozen doctrines….
But what do I know. I’m just imagining this.
But [irrationality] is where its power lies.
If this is true, there are plenty of drugs available that can magically bestow this type of super powers.
To GuLi at #140.
God doesn’t get any more “gappy” than that, wouldn’t you say? – No, I don’t think this is a “God of the gaps” argument. It isn’t just a way of filling in a gap in our knowledge which we haven’t yet filled through scientific means. Rather, it’s an aspect of reality which, as far as I’m aware, is by its nature beyond human understanding and empirical observation, and can only ever be speculative; thus, perhaps, outside the realm of science. We know what the physical laws of the universe are; that is science. But we don’t know why they are how they are, and that is a question beyond science (assuming I’m understanding the physics of it correctly).
Too bad I missed all the discussion about historical accuracy of the bible (a filling fell out and I’ve been in total-baby crying pain over it OWIE!)
The bible is a pretty shoddy piece of historical accuracy. Never mind Tom Paine’s brilliant takedown of the Dan saga. Here’s one example that would give me pause if I were a Christian: Thus far, there is zero archaeological evidence of David or Solomon’s existence, to wit: no evidence of any great Judaic king of the years the Bible says they lived, in the splendor that they supposedly did, with the control of land they supposedly had.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that there were a few powerful Israeli chieftains in that age, and their exploits/possession were, shall we say, pumped up thanks to endless retellings over the generations. So a chieftain who controlled a few acres of land, had a pretty nice tent, a few pieces of gold and a couple of wives soon had 100 acres, ten tents, a bag of gold and 10 wives, then 100 acres, an entire camp of tents to himself, pots of golds and 100 wives, then tens of thousands of acres, vaults of gold kept in a palace with 200 wives then this big honking fortress palace megalopolis made outta gold with 700 wives plus concubines and dominion from the Mediterannean to Iraq! And that’s when the story got written.
A lot of what passes for history or miracles in the bible consistently seems like the tail end of a long game of telephone played by the incredulous and insecure until it fell off the deep end of ridiculous. Our God has to be better yeah–so he did X–No X to the power of 10–X to the power of infinity–X to the power of infinity plus 1!
Walton,
NeuroLogica has some good discussions of the science-of-consciousness question. I linked recently to this post
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=293
which is a good place to start.
Uh… Walton… When you say that there is something that humans can’t know, whatever it is, you’re using God of the Gaps thinking. I’m sorry, but you’re saying there are things we will never know. That isn’t necessarily true, but it will be if we just throw up our hands and say it’s impossible, so why bother. Where would we be if Gallileo had been content with that answer? Or any of our scholars through the ages?
Goddidit is an admission of intellectual failure. I’d think we’d be well beyond accepting that anything is unknowable after how many things have failed to prove that only God could understand them, or make them possible. Maybe this will help you understand how fallacious it is to think things are beyond our comprehension forever:
Then follow it with this one:
To Aquaria #144.
Here’s one example that would give me pause if I were a Christian: Thus far, there is zero archaeological evidence of David or Solomon’s existence, to wit: no evidence of any great Judaic king of the years the Bible says they lived, in the splendor that they supposedly did, with the control of land they supposedly had. – It is true that until very recently, historical scholarship seemed to cast a lot of doubt on the David and Solomon story; there was no archaeological evidence supporting a powerful and united Israelite state in that time period, and the chronology didn’t add up (since the time to which David is usually dated was, according to archaeology, a time of relative poverty). However, two changes have altered the view of this in recent years. Firstly, David Rohl’s revised Biblical chronology, as well as making the Exodus more plausible, also puts David and Solomon in an earlier time period, which fits better with archaeology.
Secondly, the Large Stone Structure, discovered in Jerusalem by Eilat Mazar in 2005 and currently being excavated, may be David’s palace. It is located in Ophel, the area of Jerusalem known as the “City of David”, which accords with the Biblical account. Although Mazar’s dating of the structure (to the 10th-11th century BC) is disputed by some, it is agreed that the structure is Phoenician in architectural influence – which accords with the Biblical account that it was built with the assistance of Hiram of Tyre, a Phoenician.
Another find at the site is a seal of a government official named Jehucal, who is actually referred to three times in the Book of Jeremiah.
The Biblical account of history has often been challenged, but it’s actually been shown on many occasions to be more plausible than previously believed.
(Follow-up to my above post) I’m not asserting absolute Biblical inerrancy; indeed there are errors in parts of the Bible which are hard to explain away (for instance, the contradiction between Matthew and Luke over the time of Jesus’ birth; Luke said that it occurred “when Quirinius was governor of Syria”, which we know to have been 6 AD or later, yet Matthew said that it occurred during the reign of Herod the Great, who we know from Josephus to have died in 4 BC). But the impression I get, examining the scholarship, is that the biblical historical narrative is primarily truthful, but became corrupted through being handed down through generations and by word of mouth. This is especially true, of course, with the older documents (particularly the five books of the Torah, which are thought to stem from four separate documentary sources – “Jahwist”, “Elohist”, “Deuteronomist” and “Priestly” – which were only synthesised much later in historical times).
To Aquaria #146.
I don’t disagree that “God did it” would be an intellectually lazy explanation for many things. We don’t know what causes some diseases, for instance; but that doesn’t put them beyond the bounds of scientific knowledge, and it’s possible – indeed likely – that an explanation for such diseases will be discovered in the future through the scientific method. So I’m not suggesting that we should give up looking for natural explanations and accept the supernatural as a patch.
Rather, I’m perhaps talking about a different type of “truth”. There’s a well-known saying: science deals with how things happen, religion deals with why. Obviously that’s an oversimplification, if taken literally. But my contention is that while science can tell us a great deal about how the universe came to exist in its present form, and those gaps in our knowledge which still exist are capable of being filled in the future, it can never answer the question of why things came to be. Nor can it answer the question of why the laws of physics in our universe are “designed” (I use the term in its broadest possible sense) so as to be capable of supporting life, when physicists concede that a slight alteration in those physical constants would produce a universe consisting solely of hydrogen or of energy. Of course, if the existence of billions of multiple universes can ever be empirically demonstrated, it would be an indication, perhaps, that the existence of life in this universe is sheer random chance. But until that point (and I’m not a physicist, so I don’t know if such an empirical demonstration is even theoretically possible) there seems to be a reasonable cosmological argument for belief in some sort of God, though by no means a conclusive one.
Again, this is entirely a layman’s view and I apologise to any physicists who are cringing in horror at my simplistic understanding of science. I am a little out of my depth here (I prefer arguing about politics).
To Walton@149 and earlier. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that there is a only one universe, that it has a set of fundamental, fixed physical constants, that there is no logical reason why they should have the values they do, and that if any one or more of them were even slightly different, the universe would have been unable to support life. Now, can you spell out for me why you consider this an argument for the existence of (a) a creator; (b) a benevolent creator?
To Nick Gotts #150.
a) I should have thought this was self-evident. If those assumptions are accepted, then there are only two possibilities. Either it is pure chance that the universe functions on the laws and constants that it does, and therefore that it is able to support life (rather than consisting solely of hydrogen atoms or energy), or there is some other reason beyond our understanding. Since we exist within the physical laws of the universe, by definition we cannot ever test, determine, or understand what that reason might be – so God is as good an explanation as any.
It isn’t, of course, a conclusive argument for the existence of a creator. There are plenty of other speculative possibilities – including, as we discussed, the possibility of multiple universes and mere random chance. But it makes it possible plausibly to believe in a God who, for reasons of his own, created a universe which would be able to support organic life.
b) It isn’t, of course, an argument for a “benevolent creator”, and I never said it was. It tells us nothing whatsoever about the attributes of the creator. That element of religious belief falls to be taken fundamentally on faith. But for most Christians, the decisive factor in that regard is Jesus Christ and his teachings; while it takes a leap of faith to believe that a poor Jewish carpenter was the Son of God, it is neither impossible nor inherently implausible that he was, and that he performed the miracles which the Gospels attribute to him. A God of the type described in answer (a) above, capable of establishing the physical laws of the universe, would surely also be capable of manifesting himself in human form.
Walton:
Your italicized quotes contradict your bold quotes.
You make a mistake in thinking there is more than one kind of ‘understanding’. The only kind of understanding there is is that which integrates everything you know or can know into relationships you can see and concepts which are clear and unequivocal. If there’s this ‘god’ thing that can’t be ‘proven’ and has absolutely no evidence, and has left no mark on the world with any of these supposed things he has done, then what reason is there to think s/he exists? If your mind and memories were reduced to a blank slate tomorrow morning, and then you looked at the world and started learning everything over again, at what point would you see something that gives you an idea ‘hey, there’s a god…’?
In what sense is God an explanation at all? An omnipotent God could presumably create a Universe with any conceivable physical laws it chooses. To get this Universe, it’s not enough to posit a God. We must posit a God with some set of selection criteria which happen to match the observed Universe. Our ‘explanation’ then boils down to ‘the Universe-as-is was created by a Universe-as-is-creating-thing.’ Well, fucking wonderful.
This problem is compounded by the fact that God’s selection criteria must mimic the anthropic principle which, of course, we get for free.
I like that we get it for free.
Ichthyic: Corrections and enhancements noted. As for addressing my point (or not), all I was trying to express was that the notion that only mankind possesses the capacity for self-awareness and introspection is difficult to support. I make no claims about the “goodness” of dolphins. ;-)
I’m not impressed by “If things were different, they’d be different – so isn’t this special?” arguments. I realize that’s an unsophisticated remark, but hey – sue me.
Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I think Walton’s a lawyer or sumptin’. ;-)
Others have expressed the sophisticated arguments better than I could, anyways. “A Creation implies a Creator” arguments regress infinitely, and besides, the statement rests on an unproven assumption to begin with. As Blake so clearly pointed out upthread, we don’t have enough data points upon which to base any definitive, rational conclusions about what does or doesn’t, or what can or cannot, go into creating a universe – and parsimony demands that we abandon extraneous variables like Intelligent Creators until we have some compelling reason to include them in our hypotheses. That would appear to be the rational stance; an accompanying God-belief is neither incompatible nor necessary.
I should have thought this was self-evident. You’re wrong.
If those assumptions are accepted, then there are only two possibilities. Either it is pure chance that the universe functions on the laws and constants that it does, and therefore that it is able to support life (rather than consisting solely of hydrogen atoms or energy), or there is some other reason beyond our understanding. Since we exist within the physical laws of the universe, by definition we cannot ever test, determine, or understand what that reason might be – so God is as good an explanation as any.
What’s wrong with the “pure chance” explanation?
@# Kseniya —
Are you familiar with the mirror test for self-awareness? From the wiki article:
It’s obviously not a perfect metric for self-awareness, but it’s fairly interesting nonetheless. Among those that pass it are all of the great apes, bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, Asian elephants, and magpies. They also use it to look at the development of self-awareness in humans…I think babies are first able to pass it somewhere between ages 1 and 2, though I’d have to look up the ref again to be sure.
That doesn’t look quite right. In fact, I think that it’s a classic false dichotomy.
I have a more exhaustive argument, but I don’t have time just now to articulate it.
The amazing thing is, Harpo Marx and Lucille Ball passed the test – but for the wrong reasons.
Yup Etha, that test is interesting, and I think you’re right about babies passing it at around 18-24 months – IIRC, the ability to pass the mirror test follows gaining a sense of object permanence, which should happen between 12 and 18 months. Kinda makes sense that way, too.
Magpies. Gotta love it. Mockingbirds, in contrast, seem to see themselves as every other bird. ;-)
@ Walton #52
My apologies if this has already been covered. I’m still working my way through the comments.
My questions would be, “Which ‘mainstream’ scholars?” and “How ‘broadly’?” This is a not uncommon gambit that Christians grab when all else fails, “But the Bible mentions X, Y and Z, so see? It’s true!” I’m currently reading a mystery set in Philadelphia; the fact that Philadelphia exists (to the best of my knowledge never having been there) is not indicative of the rest of the story being true. That itinerant shepherds heard of or even visited some locations and absorbed them into their myth isn’t odd–after all, the Greek and Roman myths also incorporate actual locations and historical people. Do you accept the Greek and Roman myths as true? That being said, the Bible is very, very wrong on a lot of key historical points. To name just four:
There is no Egyptian record of all the firstborn children dying in one night.
There is no Egyptian record of the Exodus or even, indeed the slavery of “Israel”.
There is no Egyptian record of a Pharoh and his army being swallowed up by the parting of the Red Sea.
There is no archaelogical evidence of the “40 years in the wilderness.”
Considering what a record-keeping people the Egyptians were, it’s a little odd that such momentous things were never, ever mentioned. If the argument is made that, well, of course such things are just a bit of hyperbole to make the story more interesting, the question becomes, then, how do you know which bits are “true” and which are allegory, hyperbole, or distortion? And if the choice between the them is arbitrary, how truly “true” of a book is it?
To Walton@149
And that saying is wrong.
Religion DOESN’T deal with “why”, although many theists try to claim it does. All they do is push their particular theological fantasy and claim that the “why” is because their particular supernatural father figure is behind it (and to claim that constitutes “a different type of truth” is another absurdity.)
In other words, it’s the old “Goddidit” argument, nothing more. It most certainly is not a cosmological argument for the existence of God, it is merely an all too human attempt to anthropomorphize causality of the universe. That’s a fool’s errand.
Quite apart from their truth or falsity, I find most of the myths associated with the Abrahamic religions to be quite ugly and uninspiring…. particularly all those ones about enemies getting smitten.
I do believe that myths and stories are powerful ways for human beings to understand their psychological reality, but the right sort of story requires no protection or special pleading. Like great works of fiction, they have their place because they mean something to those who come across them, and so they get shared or reprinted.
A myth that has some meaning, some value, will survive in the memetic universe without any apologists to defend it. I see many of the religious myths as destined for exctintion on that basis.
#151:
There are two main problems with this argument.
First, there are many possibilities for the origins of the universe, and a ‘creative force’ of some sort is one of them; but there is currently no rational basis for choosing that over any other.
Why choose at all? Isn’t “there are many possibilities, and we have no way of knowing yet” a valid answer?
Second, positing a creator doesn’t answer the question of origins at all. It merely pushes the problem further back — what are the origins of the creator? The entity is then ascribed special privileges (the Prime Mover argument) and the question is ignored altogether!
If it is argued that all things need a ‘creator’, except one, I can see no logical difference between:
Universe <- created by God <- no creator needed
Universe <- no creator needed
he Biblical account of history has often been challenged, but it’s actually been shown on many occasions to be more plausible than previously believed.
suggest you raise that point with real theological anthropologists and historians, like Hector Avalos:
http://mnatheists.org/component/option,com_seyret/task,videodirectlink/Itemid,65/id,17/
frankly, there aren’t many theologians who have actually examine the relevant archaeological data that would agree with you at this point.
If you are relying on false interpretations of archaeological data to support your claim of the bible’s accuracy, you will end up being sorely disappointed.
but then, that’s not what “faith” is supposed to be about, right?
And that saying is wrong.
Religion DOESN’T deal with “why”, although many theists try to claim it does.
exactly so.
religion does not answer why questions, it merely defers them into “unanswerable” status.
IOW, it’s worthless as an explanatory methodology, and it’s exactly why science has replaced it as a much more efficient and accurate methodology over the last 400 years.
sorry, Walton, but you’re living in a fantasy land if you think religion of any kind actually works to answer real “why” questions in anything other than a superficial or deflective way.
In fact, if you really think your religion does so, I’d suggest re-examining your belief structures to see where “faith” ends, and fantasy begins.
Walton is indeed the very example of the “pleasant, smiling, apologist”, that if not lying to us, at least is lying to himself.
oh well.
nothing new there.
For all possible explanations for the currently unexplained, it is never reasonable to offer “God” as an explanation. I have a truly remarkable proof of this proposition which this universe is too small to contain.
OK, I’m sure that there’s a better argument than that, but I’ve been busy at work. And I thought the above was funny.
I have a truly remarkable proof of this proposition which this universe is too small to contain.
I’d be happy to volunteer to construct a universe large enough.
;)
any particular shape?
The piece linked to is indeed “lovely, lyrical and wistful”. But so are the poems of William Blake. Beauty does not make something true. (See: Unicorns.)
PZ, I have but one thought after reading this:
“Good heavens Miss Sakamoto – you’re beautiful!”
I might adopt the attitude of the Beautiful Flower &Penis crowd now, so watch out!;-)
Great piece and some truly gorgeous writing.
To Icthyic at #167.
I have not knowingly lied to anyone at any point. Since my views on religion are open-minded rather than definite, I have played devil’s advocate to some extent by taking a particular position and sticking to it, in order to engage in constructive debate; however, I have said nothing which I know or believe to be false.
I do concede, and have said many, many times, that my knowledge of both science and theology is limited, and I’m no expert in either of these fields. I wouldn’t claim that any of my reasoning is absolutely watertight either. So if I have said anything which is demonstrably incorrect, I apologise. But please don’t accuse me of lying.
I’m not trying to gain converts or anything of the sort. I have no interest in doing so (and if I were interested in such, there would be many, many easier places to win converts than a website full of die-hard, highly educated atheists). So I have absolutely no motivation to lie to anyone. I will entirely concede the possibility that I may be wrong in any or all of the things I’ve said; but I have not been dishonest.
Walton, I belive that I know where you are. My advice to you is simply this: Let it go.
There is a tipping point, you see. One cannot consciously choose to believe or disbelieve. There is no rational argument for God, there are only rationalizations for accepting the hypothesis, beyond which lies the grey area of agnosticism and the provisional disbelief of atheism.
If you are content to have faith in the absence of rational justification for that faith, that’s another matter. Isn’t that was faith is? But if you’re desperately seeking a rational justification to maintain that faith – well, it’s already too late. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Welcome to childhood’s end.
Kseniya @#173 said:
Indeed. Nicely put. I’m sure he knew what you were referring to, but for anyone who wasn’t sure:
Corinthians. Ironic, isn’t it?
I mean it in a more literal sense, too, and with a nod to the late Sir Arthur.
Gah… I could go on at length about this; about the infantilizing effect of fundamentalism and of authoritarian religious paradigms in general; about the parallel between “sophisticated” theology and rationalism, about the god who wasn’t there; about deism, agnosticism and atheism; about the vital but limited role of a parent in the life of a child, and how that role applies to the paternal (or maternal) god concept…
Fortunately for the rest of you, I’m not in the mood. :-)
Nice imagery there in the bits about rats and grappling hooks. You could almost have used some kind of tentacle-based analogy there instead, but I know noone wants to be too predictable :)
And the irony there is the physical form of the parties involved…
Walton,
Angelus Silesius (1624-1677), extrapolating from the mystic Meister Eckhart, wrote:
“The rose is without why, it blooms because it blooms.”
Maybe we ask “why” because we are why-asking creatures, but isn’t asking “why” of phenomena or conditions before we were around to commit some kind of category error? Who or what was concerned with “why” a billion years ago?