Truth Or Relevance?

[shantonu]

It has to do with one group's perverse view of theism, just as the Communist suppression of Christians was just one group's perverse view of atheism.

 

Now look, I'm not saying that Christianity doesn't have well deserved bad reputation. I'm just saying that there is nothing instrincially evil about Christianity. Some beliefs are more easily warped than others. Christianity seems to be very warpable, perhaps more so that Buddhism and probably much more so that animism. But Japanese Shinto priests and Zen priests did much to encourage war with America. Atheism hasn't been around long enough to develop the type of bad track record that theism has. But what's really to stop it? If atheism results in mere smugness, what profit is there in it?

And I'm not saying Christianity is intrinsically evil either but nor will I say Christianity is intrinsically good which is the mistake that you're making. You yourself said that there is nothing in Christianity that leads to immorality and that homophobia is a perverse view of theism. I guess I'm just imagining things when Paul condemned it in Romans 1 or in 1 Corinthians 6:9 or when God commanded the stoning of gay people in Leviticus? I think it's hypocritical for you to say Christianity is intrinsically good but when I try to point out that atheism is intrinsically neutral then suddenly I'm the head priest of atheism. I can say the same thing of you, who made you the high priest of theism? The truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as true Christianity as the gospels have been edited and changed throughout history and whatever Jesus may have originally taught has been lost to time.

 

Unless you can present proof that you know the truth about what Jesus really meant for real, you can't say who is a true Christian and who isn't, and the fundies are just as legitimate Christians as the Unitarians are because nobody knows what legitimate Christianity is. But it's a mistake to say that theism has nothing to do with the immoral actions we pointed out, and you did too say theism has nothing to do with it. You only have to look at the gay marriage debate to see that theism does play a role. It might not be your preferred version of theism, but it's still theism. And I'm not going to keep playing ring around the rosey with you just because you can't figure out what disbelieving means to continue this ridiculous debate about what atheism is. And I don't think you have the right to talk about smugness when you've been nothing but smug about "true" Christianity since you've started posting in this thread. Are you basically saying that the majority of the forum members here were not "true" xtians because we were members of what you claim is a perversion of it? How is that any different than the fundies we get trying to tell us we just left the church because we hurt by false Christians? And don't play the martyr card here and act like you're being persecuted by our smugness. We were getting along just fine until we pointed out the fact that you were building straw man arguments and are misunderstanding what disbelief is. And what about all the other dozens of atheists here who haven't even posted in this thread? How can you lump all atheists that don't agree with you in one sweeping generalization just because one or two people dare to disagree with you?

 

First of all, as I've made clear time and again: I am an atheist. I do not believe in God or any gods or the notion of the divine. I've said that even if 100% of the Bible were true, I would not worship God because I would hate rather than love such a being. My opinion is that if the Bible is true, then God should be brought up on war crimes charges.

 

But simply because I'm an atheist does not mean that I've privileged reason over experience or rationality over intuition. Reason can lead you down some very dark pathways. Reason is not a god. It's a human thing and has the same flaws as any other human invention. Read Paul Feyerabend's essays on this issue.

 

Now, to your point. Of course theism plays a role in anti-gay bigotry but so does a lot of things, including being from the South. Yet there are gay Southerners and proud ones too. There are gay bishops and priests. One of my co-workers is planning to be ordained in the Episcopal Church and she is a lesbian who goes to church every Sunday with her partner. So while theism plays a role, it can't be that it plays a determining role.

 

On the other hand, my college professor Michael Levin at the CCNY philosophy department--this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levin --is an atheist. But he wrote an infamous article called "Why Homosexuality is Abnormal." I know he's an atheist because I've hung out with him and we've talked about it.

 

So I think it's you that is misunderstanding what is going on. I'm not saying that your experience with Christianity was not genuine. There are virulent forms of Christianity, just as they are virulent form of Islam. And these virulent forms are legitimately Christian, but they are not the only forms, nor should these forms be touted as the paradigmatic forms. I'm not knowledgable (sp?) about Islam, but I'm sure that it would be ignorant to say that Wahabi forms of Islam represent the essence of Islam or are "Islam 101" when I also know there are Sufi poets and mystics that would have nothing to do with Wahabism.

 

You're giving the Christian tradition from John Donne to William Blake to T.S. Eliot to rather short schrift.

 

You are also seeking to insulate "atheism" from "atheists." But that's exactly what Christians do. You see offendedthat I could even suggest (!) that there might virulent forms of atheism. And you've reacted exactly as fundamentalists do when they are challenged by those who don't share their view. You've SHOUTED at me. You've called me stupid. You've questioned my honesty and education.

 

Why? Why did you react that way? Well, in my opinion, you've simply made a god out of atheism and perhaps reason. It can never err according to you, and if it does seem to err, then it's the fault of the reasoner, not Reason. Because Reason can never be wrong. It always leads to the Truth. It's timeless and perfect.

 

If that doesn't describe a religion, then what does? As a religion--as a dogma--I reject it. Reason is fallable, like all things of this world. I see no point in exchanging one false deitiy for another. But, being a tolerant man, I won't trouble you if you want worship as you see fit.

[Neon Genesis]

All I know is I'm done with this thread and there's no point in continuing in debating with a brick wall.

[florduh]

Reason is fallable, like all things of this world.

 

Reasoning with flawed information or perception can result in an incorrect conclusion. That doesn't make the process flawed, but results aren't absolute due to the possible variables of the input data.

 

Even so, reason and logic will lead to far more correct factual conclusions than will emotion, intuition, superstition or wishful thinking.

[Antlerman]

Reason is fallable, like all things of this world.

 

Reasoning with flawed information or perception can result in an incorrect conclusion. That doesn't make the process flawed, but results aren't absolute due to the possible variables of the input data.

 

Even so, reason and logic will lead to far more correct factual conclusions than will emotion, intuition, superstition or wishful thinking.

I'm sadly behind on this thread. Work has demanded my energies and will offer what I can here, not intending to ignore the good points that Vigile and others have brought up which I wish to give their due respects in response. I've just quickly gone over the most recent discussions here and will jump in at this point for the moment.

 

I have a great deal of respect for your thoughts florduh; as I do vigile's; as I do neon's; as I do shantou's. One thing I see is that there is a tendency to carry over the sort of thinking that occurred within the religious community experience over to the "non-religious" side where we now live. I'm still prone to it. I still find myself sucked into it, even now many years later. It's not so much a matter of theistic versus non-theistic points of view that are the lines that decide correct or incorrect thinking, truth or error, good or bad, helpful or detrimental, peaceable or war-making.

 

I think the underlying point of this topic for me is that it is people who create systems of mythological symbols, signs that represent attitudes that are very human. They are not the causes of the attitudes and their actions, but the creations of attidudes to support actions, to support the ideologies born out of something internal to us as people.

 

God can represent good; it can also represent the reprehensible. God can be an expression of human love, or hate. It can be a word for unity, or division. But it's not the symbol that creates the ideology, it's the society of poeple who do. Blaming God for our social ills is really not any different that claiming God supports the divisions we feel we want. It's the flip side of the same coin. It is religious thinking. I say this because its something I've seen manifest itself in me time and again. My work is to see above the argument to my own face, to our own. That responsibility is for both the theist and the non-theist, IMO.

 

Leaving behind Christianity for me was not a case of changing religions. I refuse for that to happen. I'm not interested in the prettier god. I'm interested in the meaning that was found in seeking religious faith in the first place, along with seeking the rational path in the first place also. It's not a case of one is true and one is false. It's a case of meaning and relevance. Factual conclusions are valuable. So are those things which inspire which don't depend on fact. Reason and hope.

[Vigile]

You're taking an enormously complex phenomenon--Christian belief--and reducing it to a caricature.

 

Religion isn't an academic subject, though some of made it that as well. What I wrote as the basic tenets would be agreed to by 99% of Christian constituents.

 

I really think you only have an academic understanding of this religion and zero real experience with it so you have no real understanding of what it does to people.

[florduh]

I think the underlying point of this topic for me is that it is people who create systems of mythological symbols, signs that represent attitudes that are very human. They are not the causes of the attitudes and their actions, but the creations of attidudes to support actions, to support the ideologies born out of something internal to us as people.

 

That is quite true. It says that people create gods, not the other way around. And people create gods that support the ideas they already have.

 

In practice, hundreds and thousands of years after the religious symbols are created, religious converts don't see the mythology or symbolic nature of the system. They are told, and accept it as fact, that the symbols are literally true and exist independently of human thought.

 

Religion relies on faith to exist. Faith is the antithesis of reason, by definition. Faith has spawned thousands of competing conclusions, but reason leads to universal conclusions. Logic and reason must be discarded in order to embrace faith. It was logic and reason that discovered the mechanics of our solar system, not faith. It was a logical and reasonable approach that discovered that "possessed" individuals were suffering from mental disorders, usually treatable.

 

Sorry, I'll take reason every time as the best tool for understanding. Feelings and intuition have their place, especially when key facts are missing, but a non-rational approach to problem solving or discovery of reality has proven to be a very inferior method.

[Neon Genesis]

You should ease up on the personal attacks and cheap shots at my intelligence. It's bad form. If you want to have a decent discussion, let's do that. I think I can match the sophistication of anyone here.

I apologize for any insults I may have made to you and I hope you'll forgive me for it. But I still stand by my stance on atheism and I don't think we're going to be doing anything other than arguing the same points back and forth, so it's probably for the best that I still bow out of this thread. I hope you'll forgive me for any insults I may have given you that might have been out of line.

[Legion]

Faith is the antithesis of reason, by definition.

Personally I think most of us have faith of some sort. And I don’t see anything wrong with this in principle.

 

For instance, one of my favorite scientists has pointed out that we generally assume that there entailments between phenomena. That is, we have faith that one phenomenon, or set of phenomena, can entail others. But there is no way to be absolutely sure of this because in the end all that we perceive directly is ourselves along with sensations that we attribute as coming from outside of us.

 

If one wishes have a fanatical adherence to things that are certain then they can still do mathematics for instance, because mathematics is the study of systems of inference. Inference in turn exists entirely within our own minds. But if one wants to do science then they must take some things on faith, namely that there are entailments between phenomena.

[florduh]

Personally I think most of us have faith of some sort. And I don’t see anything wrong with this in principle.

 

Yes, we all employ some sort of faith at times by necessity. It would probably be impossible to operate without it. There are different degrees and kinds of faith, but basically faith is believing something without corroborating evidence, or sometimes even in the face of conflicting evidence. If we have the choice to use logic and reason in place of guessing or hoping, we should.

 

It is, for example, foolish to allow your faith in the Bible to cause you to believe the Earth is 6,000 years old when there is mountainous evidence proving it is much, much older. The rational and logical application of the sciences always leads closer and closer to verifiable facts, while trying to make a determination without - or in spite of - evidence tends to lead toward error.

 

We may have faith that mankind is basically good, or faith that we will awaken tomorrow. I don't think that's what is relevant to the topic. After all, this is deep philosophical shit here!

[Legion]

After all, this is deep philosophical shit here!

Well the OP mentions the word "truth". And I believe that anytime someone speaks of truth they are rubbing elbows with philosophy.

[florduh]

Why does my elbow hurt?

[The-Captain]

Shantonu, you mentioned that you think that atheism does in fact entail beliefs other than the inherent statement of the word, would you be willing to elaborate on that? While I can see that many beliefs have developed out of atheism, I do not see how the concept itself can carry a belief system with it any more than theism does.

 

You've repeatedly equated atheism with Christianity, but I do not think the two can really be compared. As has been said atheism is simply an answer to one question, an on/off switch as it were. Christianity is an entire belief system, predicated on certain precepts that grew out of theistic belief. A much more accurate parallel can be drawn between atheism and theism as in and of themselves they only address one thing.

[Legion]

Why does my elbow hurt?

Dear Zeus, will it never end?

[Vigile]

It is, for example, foolish to allow your faith in the Bible to cause you to believe the Earth is 6,000 years old when there is mountainous evidence proving it is much, much older.

 

 

Why is it foolish? Because it is faith.

 

This comes up every so often and I always get a bit frustrated by the willingness to adopt the word faith. If faith has so many different definitions wouldn't it be better to not use this word at all?

 

Faith to me is belief without facts. Anything else is something else. I don't have faith the sun will rise tomorrow. I have a reasonable expectation based on knowledge of physics and personal experience.

 

I really think that we are giving xian apologists a foot in the door when we allow them this broad definition of faith. It's no different than the smirks they give when referring to evolution as "just a theory."

[The-Captain]

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1.

[Legion]

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1.

Sounds good to me.

 

It’s only natural I think that words will mean different things to different people. I don’t see that by adopting the word “faith” that I have given the apologist a foot in the door. Rather I see that we can then discuss what it is that we put our faith in.

 

At my better moments I sense that humanity is one big family. And inclusion comes naturally to me in those moments. I don’t particularly like my stepdad. But he is family. I don’t particularly like most apologists but they are still human.

[Vigile]

Rather I see that we can then discuss what it is that we put our faith in.

 

Again, this is not the question. I in no way, shape or form am not sure in what I hope for nor am I certain in what I do not see (well, may gases and air. But then again, I do see them; just not with my eyes).

 

Let me put it this way.

 

When xians are talking about believing something I hope for are being certain about what I can't detect and we are talking about reasonable assurance based on probabilities and past observation we are talking about two very different things.

 

So the question is not "what" we put faith in. The question is, what do you mean when you use the word faith?

[florduh]

Faith to me is belief without facts.

 

You are correct, of course. Sometimes it's too easy to join in the lazy application of the language.

 

There should be a distinction between reasonable expectation and faith.

[Legion]

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1.

Vigile I use the word faith in exactly this manner here stated Hebrews 11.

 

I hope that there are entailments between phenomena, and I am sure that this hope is well placed. I cannot see these entailments, but I know for certain they are there.

[shantonu]

I get the feeling that you believe, or would like to believe that a more perfect world can be created Shantou. Am I off base to suggest that you believe that a good myth can make the world a better place and that this is why you are defending some forms of the xian myth?

 

You're right.

 

We believe that "All men are created equal." Even if evidence and reason were to the contrary, we must believe this. This is an example of a good and useful myth/dogma perhaps. We have to be careful. I don't like dogma anymore than the next atheist, but to say that all dogma leads to unacceptabable irrationality is iteself a dogma.

[shantonu]

Reason is fallable, like all things of this world.

 

Reasoning with flawed information or perception can result in an incorrect conclusion. That doesn't make the process flawed, but results aren't absolute due to the possible variables of the input data.

 

Even so, reason and logic will lead to far more correct factual conclusions than will emotion, intuition, superstition or wishful thinking.

 

Mostly. But we should not completely disregard our intuition. Some of our "wishful thinking" and superstition--and certainly our emotions--help us understand who we are as a species and while many of our instincts are base, many more are noble.

[florduh]

but to say that all dogma leads to unacceptabable irrationality is iteself a dogma.

 

If dogma, founded on an unsupported faith, leads to a rational and correct conclusion, it is a coincidence.

[Legion]

We believe that "All men are created equal." Even if evidence and reason were to the contrary, we must believe this. This is an example of a good and useful myth/dogma perhaps. We have to be careful. I don't like dogma anymore than the next atheist, but to say that all dogma leads to unacceptabable irrationality is iteself a dogma.

Man Shantonu, I like that.

[Vigile]

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1.

Vigile I use the word faith in exactly this manner here stated Hebrews 11.

 

I hope that there are entailments between phenomena, and I am sure that this hope is well placed. I cannot see these entailments, but I know for certain they are there.

 

You left out, based on past observation. Having hope is not what it says. It says believing that which you hope for. IOW, when I buy a lotto ticket I hope that I will win but I don't believe that what I hope for will come true. When you "know" those things are there, you are basing that knowledge on evidence even if that evidence is not your 5 senses. A person who "knows" heaven exists has no evidence at all so what he is doing does not equate to what you are doing.

[shantonu]

I think the underlying point of this topic for me is that it is people who create systems of mythological symbols, signs that represent attitudes that are very human. They are not the causes of the attitudes and their actions, but the creations of attidudes to support actions, to support the ideologies born out of something internal to us as people.

 

God can represent good; it can also represent the reprehensible. God can be an expression of human love, or hate. It can be a word for unity, or division. But it's not the symbol that creates the ideology, it's the society of poeple who do. Blaming God for our social ills is really not any different that claiming God supports the divisions we feel we want. It's the flip side of the same coin. It is religious thinking. I say this because its something I've seen manifest itself in me time and again. My work is to see above the argument to my own face, to our own. That responsibility is for both the theist and the non-theist, IMO.

 

Perfectly said. We are responsible for what we make of things. The fundamentalists who make a monster of God, are responsible for the monster they have created. I'm an atheist, but as an ex-Christian I am in sympathy to the progressive minded Quakers and Episcopalians and even some Baptists that are fighting to take their God back from the fundamentalists.