Near the final scene of the 1993 Joel Schumacher film, Falling Down, Robert Duvall has cornered Michael Douglas, who plays a laid-off defense-contracting engineer who has gone on a murderous rampage. Douglas looks at Duvall and asks incredulously, “I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?” And he really doesn’t know.
I’ve been corresponding with a Christian minister who asks a similar question. He’s genuinely puzzled as to why humanists in general or gays in particular would associate Christianity with bigotry and prejudice. A few excerpts:
Who should I hate? In the end, it seems that I must either hate them all or none of them. The word of God and the inward testimony of God both tell me that I must hate none of them – even when it is necessary for me to oppose them…
And I think you have correctly perceived that I do not hate you. And, I find that the ability – the necessity – to love my opponents and to wish always for their best good, is tied directly to having placed my ultimate hopes beyond the present reality. If I thought this was all there was or ever would be, I think I would be decidedly more capable of hate. If I thought it was all about evolution – which,it seems to me, hinges on the quest for momentary advantage – I believe I could hate – that being after all, only a chemical phenomenon that is either useful or not at the moment and virtually immune to concepts like virtue or morality…
In the meantime, I hear from folks on your side of some issues that I do hate. I am prolife and therefore, ipsofacto, I hate women. If what they mean is that if I had my complete way, I would restrict certain freedoms even though it places certain barriers and limitations before individuals and classes of people who would like to operate without that restriction, then we don’t have the same definition of hate. I could introduce you to several women who have had abortions, who either previously were or currently are pro-choice, who yet would sign any affidavit you cared to craft swearing that I love them. (Emphasis mine)
And,
Please believe, it is not a matter of hurt feelings. I don’t have any particular desire to be obnoxious to you or your compatriots. I am not afraid of spirited debate. But part of my agenda is both to understand and confront the (to me totally upsidedown seeming) notion that Christianity breeds hate, contempt, and ignorance. If I am not yet skilled enough to communicate across this great divide without fostering the impression of ignorance and hatred despite my own clear conviction that I hate none of you (whether or not I’m ignorant may be more in question), then it is probably best to keep my mouth shut a while longer. (Emphasis mine)
And,
I feel that homosexuality is a moral problem. I do not, for what it’s worth, feel the need to take that issue to law and regulation. I don’t think the moral problem of homosexuality is worse than my own moral problems. I am not – at heart – a legalist. And I’m not trying to start a new issue between us on either abortion or homosexuality. And I know that presenting a similar list of homosexual people who would sign the ‘He does not hate me’ affidavit wouldn’t make any real difference. The assertion seems to be that I hate a class of people regardless of my relationship to any particular individuals.
I suggested throwing his agenda open to the community at SEB for response and he replied:
I don’t mind if you post the paragraph. I would be interested to see what would happen. I don’t really think you misundestood this – only a product of a quick communication – but to clarify, I’m only partly worried about offending anyone. I’m more worried about the cultural divide. I have seen missionaries do harm because they were eager to impart the gospel before they understood the target culture. This is not what you would call a missionary venture, but the same principle applies.
Really, Christians are the bad guys? How did that happen? Aren’t Christians, by definition, the good guys? Can anyone explain?
He’s all yours, folks. He wants to know. Can you help him understand?
Terry,
Surely you cannot fail to see the irony in these two articles. Ethics and justice are systems developed by a particular culture to help that culture survive by describing what is and is not acceptable behavior in society. Religion is a political system that rulers devise to manipulate and control the people under them. All organized religions claim special privilege because they “speak for God” and each one interprets what that particular God wants people to know. Those who have “faith” in that privilege will follow that ruler. Nothing to do with ethics, everything to do with politics.
Peace.
Tyler, seriously… What The Fuck?
Terry:
Seems to me you got hung up on that sentence but completely missed the two sentences before it. Here, I’ll copy them for you:
Christianity has, at various times, defended slavery, opposed slavery, defended and opposed the oppression of Jews, and in the last 200 years been absolutely obsessed with other people’s sexuality as if the God Of The Universe sat around worrying about what people do with their naughty bits (of course while privately doing things they publicly condemn with their own naughty bits). And that’s before you even get into the awful stuff in the Bible, where God commanded the Israelites to go kill everyone and keep their daughters for concubines and so forth.
Maybe you only missed the word; “useful”? Because for all its claimed purity religion’s signal-to-noise ratio is little better than chance.
Ah! There’s the problem. Yes, we are agreed that religion, comfortably protected by its untestable claim of divine guidance, has a practical effect on ethics. After all, you can’t really argue with God… it’s a matter of faith! Which leads to this little gem from Karen Armstrong:
Given that Christianity posits faith as a virtue and uses it to compel millions of people to believe and act on teachings for which there is no evidence, then yes: you’re damn right it’s immoral. The village priest stood there and with perfect confidence, told everyone that the plague was a judgment from God. What form did his conversations with God take, exactly?
Ahh, but if there’s no universal standard, what shall we do? Unless ethics comes from something beyond humanity? Won’t that make ethics a much more difficult topic? That trump card turns out to be severely marked. Refer back to the near-infinite malleability of Christian ethics over the centuries. Some horrible things were done but we can’t have a real conversation about it because God says XYZ. And no, we can’t tell you how we know that.
So isn’t secular ethics pretty much muddling through and figuring out what works? Some kind of rough application of the Silver Rule?
Well, yeah… it is. You can wish it were simpler but until you get God on the line, it won’t be. You know what they say about wishes.
Maybe we’re going at this the wrong way, so I leave you with The Digital Cuttlefish:
On the topic of religion and ethics I think Dawkins explains it best in his book The God Delusion, (below is by no means an exact word for word quote just the general idea, I put it in blockquote to more easily show the statement)
You can have your opinions on Dawkins fine, but he makes a valid point. Pick damn near any town, when the cops take a break crime sky rockets during that period. If you claim religion gives us ethics than you have to explain these occurrences. I would suspect that most skeptics would view such an event as an example of how adults and societies draw their ethics and morality from within and not some mystical untestable/provable source. As Dawkins states, God didn’t take a break too.
Webs, I think Dawkins has a blind spot with that example, and that it can be seen very differently. There’s no question that religion is an ethical focal point for many people, and a lot of valuable moral philosophy has come out of the religious context. It isn’t all minutia about the religiously proper way to piss in the desert – read the Book of Proverbs for example.
My point is that even the valuable ethical teachings of religion are actually undermined by the claim of divine guidance. It makes real discussion impossible and has been – still is – an instrument of oppression.
I think Dawkins’ point is clear. We know in addition that atheists tend to have lower crime and divorce rates. Why that is the case is open to debate, but it does not suggest that the religious have a special insight on these subjects. Religion-based morality is often quite empty and devoid of integrity; doing a good deed without hope for reward or fear of punishment is more meaningful, which is why atheists can be said to generally have more noble ethical systems. If someone is only behaving a certain way to get into heaven then they can just as easily behave malevolently if they are convinced that this will save them instead. The religious always have their loopholes. Furthermore, they are infamous for taking benign behaviors and transforming and demonizing them into “sins”, i.e. homosexuality, birth control or eating pork. They abuse the concept of ethics and use it as a weapon to beat their opponents with, when their own notion of ethics is often quite lacking.
Lastly, I think it was Hitchens who said that religion borrows its ethics from man and not the other way. I think that is the last word on the issue. Religion-based ethics are overrated, in every way.
Precisely! Until you have extraordinary proof that YOUR God exists, ALL religion-based ethics are, in fact, human-based ethics that some human CLAIMS to be from a god. Of course, we have never seen a ruler or a priest lie to people for their own benefit, now have we?
Peace.
“I told you so” never sat well with me even as a child. Now that I fancy myself a reasoning adult, I require to hear the reasoning, and it must make sense. You may continue to believe despite what you know (apparently this is called “faith”), but I choose to find out.
The scientific community is gradually figuring out the whys and wherefores of how the universe works.
Hundreds of years ago, people thought that spirits or possession caused hallucinations. Thanks to science we now know that they can be caused by disease, injury, drugging, stress, optical illusions, or more, and we now have methods of fighting the vast majority of these.
Praying to God won’t do a thing about my diabetes, except make me a bit more sure of myself when I die a horrible, blind death of renal failure. Listening to the docs who have developed methods for dealing with this via the scientific method, OTOH, will improve my quality of life, and keep the diabetes in remission until hopefully they can cure this.
Now I don’t *know* science will figure this one out, but I do have faith in their methods because I know their methods work, based on their history, and I know that simply listening to every yahoo who says “Well, the Bible says XYZ” leads me at best in circles, or down the tubes, or worse.
All,
Sorry for another absence. It’s my life.
Positive,
In response to your several posts.
1. I thought the term ‘synthetic life’ might be a little misleading for what was actually done but let it be. I certainly don’t have any religious tenet insisting that man cannot create life. But the whole ‘god of the gaps’ scenario is set up by people who do not (and mostly do not wish to) believe in God. It’s a disproving machine for people looking for disproof. For instance, you assert that if scientists can create life it demonstrates that no God is needed to have created it originally. It’s kind of like saying that if man can build a lake then there is no need for any other explanation of prior lakes. Or, more to the point, it might as easily and logically be asserted that man creating life demonstrates that an intelligent being dedicating energy and resources to the purposely willed object of ‘life’, can create ‘life’. That is certainly proved when and if man actually creates life. So, I guess there’s no need for talk about natural selection or biochemical predestination or other prior ideas once we have proved that life can be the product of a purposeful intelligent being. In any case, I’d say this latest development lends more credence to Stephen Meyers than Richard Dawkins.
2. OK, then Christianity is simply what it means, a determination to follow Christ. And yet it is a clearly recognized religion/ideology because certain kinds of things adhere to the determination. The fact of internal differences does not reduce its status as ideology. But you apply a different ruler to atheism. You did add that atheism is a negative – a lack of belief – bring on the whole ‘not collecting stamps as a hobby’ thing. But certain kinds of things adhere to a negative idea as well as to a positive. To that extent, atheism is, in part, reactionary rather than negative anyway.
Consider,
“Atheism is an integral part of a system organized around a central reference to a religion which exhausts the concept of belief. Ultimately, any sociology of atheism is a sociology of religion.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology.
Or,
“Freethinkers, including both atheists and secular humanists…expected that a progressive secular ‘kingdom’ would emerge as soon as societies threw off a primitive theistic mindset and matured into educated adulthood. As historian Sidney Warren writes… ‘Freethinkers never doubted the correctness of their position, for they viewed history as a continuous struggle between the forces of light and darkness. They were, they felt, carrying the torch of reason in an otherwise religious world of bigotry and superstition.’… The expectation of a comprehensive secular revolution was widely shared by organized humanist and atheist leaders and thinkers as well as by scientists and educational leaders. Secularism, understood as the dominance of naturalistic and scientific thought over supernatural explanations of reality, was seen as the future for America. We call this view ‘Progressive Secularism’….Most participants in the movement acknowledge the difficulty of being an atheist or secular humanist in American society, but nonetheless maintain a hope that secularism will eventually triumph. In this article, we argue the question of how secularism can survive and even thrive in a religious society has become pressing for atheists and secular humanists, resulting in significant changes in their strategy and self understanding.” Christopher Smith and Richard Cimino, Sociology of Religion: Secular Humanism and Atheism beyond Progressive Secularism.
Or,
“The Marxist theory of ideology as mere ‘superstructure’ has been criticized by religious and nonreligious alike for being highly speculative and for employing a crude ‘nothing but’ reductionism which does not do justice to the facts. It has also been criticized for its various intellectual inadequacies, entwining itself in problems of self reference; if religion is nothing but an ideological reflex of material conditions, this must also be true of atheism.” Investigating Atheism, University of Cambridge.
3. Is the universe transcendent or not?
4. I will give up on pointing out the futility of your assertion that atheists ‘have lower crime and divorce rates.’ Take that up with Your Mighty Overload. If the rates are different in a decade or so, what then?
Tyler,
Just as imminently fair minded and rational as usual.
Your Mighty Overload,
I’ll go at least halfway down that road. Fundamentalism is generally mostly a poor man’s game. It seems to me that the explanation is found in the understanding of fundamentalism as reactionary. The poor generally feel the threat to be defended against a bit earlier and a bit more often. When the rich finally come to feel really insecure, they will be as fundamentalist as anyone. Note: this explanation does not treat whether the perceived threat or the central fundamentals in question are ‘true’.
Leguru,
If one takes the simplistic and one dimensional identification of religion and politics, I suppose so. Is Buddhism an exception?
DOF,
First, let me express my appreciation for your moderation in the last several posts – not just the ones addressed to me. As to consensus ethics and morality, it seems to me you’re only flattening against the rock. If ethics means hammering out a consensus then by what measure is the prevailing consensus unethical or immoral?
Webs,
DOF is right, the example you take from Dawkins can be seen very differently, especially if one really reads the Bible on the purpose for human government and law enforcement as a presence in the fallen world.
Terry
I didn’t suggest that science should or will stop discovering answers to the origins of life. And science is finding more and more answers to that question; none of them involve God spitting in clay, or whatever it was that Genesis claimed. For one thing scientists have shown that the atoms and chemicals and gases that make up living beings on earth probably originated in stars. A very interesting idea, which requires no superstitious creation stories. Religionists often said that man’s failure to create life suggested that life was a miracle, and this was disproved. The God of the gaps is an ever shrinking deity. Did you know that thunder isn’t really God bowling, either?
You will have to forgive me Terry, but I could not be any less interested in these categorizations of atheism. Splitting hairs and over-analyzing “what atheism is” is not going to solve anything nor does it address the issue of whether or not God’s existence is plausible or not. I’m sure that it was easy for you to find people who categorize atheism as “reactionary” or as in the same boat as religion, but that doesn’t really get us anywhere. You and I likely share the idea that reincarnation is not real. We are areincarnationists. Maybe some people who do believe in reincarnation would be bothered by this, and they might even try to find negative ways of labeling people with our shared position. They would call us reactionary westerners who are close minded to the evidence about reincarnation, or something along those lines. But the fact remains that you and I are very different in our ideas, and our shared resistance to the concept of reincarnation says little about us in other areas.
“I will give up on pointing out the futility of your assertion that atheists ‘have lower crime and divorce rates.’”
Sure. Don’t let observable facts get in the way of your pre-determined conclusions. The only thing that I can see that is futile is the attempts to say that religion improves the behavior of its followers or that morality originated in religion; which most religions claim. These are absurd claims.
“especially if one really reads the Bible on the purpose for human government and law enforcement as a presence in the fallen world.” Right, but this does not stop religious apologists from claiming that it is religion that stops us from reverting to anarchy, which is patently false. Tell it to your co-religionists.
Terry: Thanks. But there’s nothing “moderate” about my atheism: it’s on a par with my a-unicornism and my a-orbiting-teapot-ism.
(You suppose anyone will ever launch a teapot into solar orbit just on a lark?)
If ethics means following an “absolute” standard given by some invented god, then by what measure is the
prevailing consensusgod ethical or moral? What if the god told you to commit genocide, would that be moral? Or does morality have some kind of rough existence of its own, in relation to the well-being of society? You know, simple well-being, like your kids are healthy and people are living a long time.Put it another way: the bible says you should kill homosexuals, and apparently also “witches”. Yet you do not advocate for those things. What’s your yardstick?
Here’s a sign that’s been making the rounds. It doesn’t cover the whole subject for me, but it’s a good start:
Oops, the image file doesn’t show. OK, here’s the text of the image:
More later- peace.
Terry
Disagree with you here. I think what it demonstrates is that supernatural intervention is not required to create life. There is no “life force” which must be breathed into the organisms – they are just chemistry writ large, as the saying goes.
Sure, in this case a human did it. However, we know complexity and functionality can be carved out of the marble blocks of random genetic variation. We also know that the natural experiment which, 3.9 billion years ago led to this complex chemical dance that we call life, lasted hundreds of thousands of years, in a planet sized test tube. Sure, the bacteria made by Venter’s team (and I think we truly can call it synthetic life, since after a few generation, every protein and lipid produced by the cells was a direct result of a DNA code which was synthesized in the lab) used the code of a bacteria which is already extant. However, I don’t take this away from them. We are still learning, still trying to work out what a minimalist cell is like. This is a step down that pathway.
I can understand how one might think this lends credibility to Meyer’s position (he should be happy about that – it’s the first time his position has even had a whiff of credibility), but I would argue the opposite. Venter’s team shows that life is self-replicating chemistry and nothing else. We don’t need supernatural explanations for life any more – there is nothing magical about being a living thing.
Your analogy with lakes has some merit, but I think it misses the point. The fact that humans can build a lake does not mean all lakes are built by humans. However, the fact that humans can build lakes completely destroys the argument that a god id necessary to build lakes. The fact that we can create life in the lab nowadays does not mean that all life was created by humans (which would lead to interesting logical difficulties – the same ones faced by a creatorless creator), but it does mean that no gods are required to fill that gap any more.
Terry
I think we have to consider what the word “atheist” actually means, etymologically. The “a” part denotes “without”, while the “theist” part denotes “belief in god(s)”. So, atheist literally means “without belief in gods”. I would argue that for atheism to be an ideology, you would have to name it something ‘atheism-ism’, which should transform it into a belief in atheism. Kind of silly though.
Atheism per se has no tenets. The central point of atheism is that one does not accept a claim. Dawkins has pointed out that we are technically all a-teapotists, and a-leprechaunists, and a-flying spaghetti monsterists. It is a fair point. Stalin and Hitler and all the Popes and all the people in the Crusades were a-flying spaghetti monsterists. Obviously, based upon common theist logic, it was because they didn’t have knowledge of his noodly appendages that they committed their crimes!
Or we could be realistic. You cannot get from “I don’t believe in any gods” to “all religious people and institutions must be destroyed” without adding something to the mix. For Stalin it was his megalomania and paranoia.
Now, anti-theism is the positive belief that no gods exist. That is something one can build on, although again you have to bring other ideology.
What does the exception have to do with all organized religions being political organizations? Whether or not Buddhism is an exception is not the point. The point is, as you say simplistically, ALL organized religions are political. The reason for the organization is to perpetuate whatever political goals the organization has set. If “God” had organized ONE religion, which one is it? How can we recognize it, if God has not certified it? So many questions, so few responses that make some sense!!!
Peace.
An even larger difference to me is that between a mortal being creating life and the “more awesome than superman, batman, Spiderman, hulk, wolverine, and flash combined” being creating life. There is a very large difference there and it shows there is no need for a super natural being to create life.
Also, reread my comment. it’s still clear to me and others here so I stand by it. The disagreement would be over whether or not we are fallen, the evidence of which is as weak as anything else religious.
Don’t flame, posted from cell…
Positive,
1. I know you didn’t suggest that science stop looking for answers. Neither did I. I suggested that such an assertion would be as plausible a reaction to the ‘synthetic life’ business as the assertion that we should stop thinking about God.
2. The whole business of atheism and ideology is relevant to the actual topic of the thread. To me and many others it seems like myth you and most of your fellows (I find a growing number of atheists on various online venues taking my side of this argument) cling to in order to maintain a distinction that allows you to see Christians as –‘The Bad Guys’. It seems a little out of character for you to so quickly dismiss the work of serious sociologists and historians. But, if you truly could not have less interest in the scholastic approach, perhaps you would be interested in this one. – Positive says, ‘Saying that someone is an atheist tells you almost as little about them as saying that they do not believe in sea monsters.’ And Positive says, ‘Luther and Calvin show us what happens when you put Christian fanatics in charge of your state and, as for atheists, who tend to be better educated and tend to have lower crime and divorce rates, hopefully their depravity will one day become the majority.’ There seems to be a disconnect. No ideology guarantees cookie cutter duplicates but you certainly seem to believe in some predictable affects of or on atheism.
3. The god of the gaps may do as he/you please(s). Christians do not worship the god of the gaps (your construction) but the God of creation.
DOF,
I didn’t mean to imply that your atheism is moderate – only that you are generally as quick to call a blind spot or misconstruction on one side of the argument as the other. If ethics and morality rest on the concept of simple well being in society (which is zero existence apart from human consensus) then when well being calls for thinning the herd, genocide (however scientifically or humanely accomplished) is ethical. Which brings me back to the original question – how can the prevailing consensus be unethical?
Your Mighty Overload,
The introduction of the term ‘supernatural’ begs the question. The synthetic life scenario still shows that willful intelligent intervention is so far, the only laboratory demonstrable means of producing such life right out in the open where we can all see it. Even without the question of the introduction of human effort, how can Venter’s efforts show that life is self-replicating chemistry and nothing else short of starting at least with only hydrogen? A DNA transplant into something that is already alive fails to make such a point. Further, assuming God, the ability to unravel some of His mechanics does not do away with Him anymore than reverse engineering a watch does away with the original watchmaker.
Granted, the terminology for the whole atheist/ideology thing can be difficult. We could introduce some term that stands past atheist as ‘Christianity’ stands past ‘Christian’. But it seems to me that ‘Atheism’ already fills that gap. Without a certain level of commonality beyond the begetting idea, there can be no such thing as AtheISM; only non-believers. And, OK, we are both aleprechaunists. But you miss the point in trying to shoot for the silly. Animism (count in leprechauns, fairies, trolls, et al), where and when it truly exists, plays a huge dynamic role in shaping the thinking and practice of the people. To reduce that effect to the parameters of your comic understanding of a mascot for an oat and marshmallow cereal is a mistake. Introducing theism into an animistic society isn’t a move likely to go without effect. Without at all trying to say that all atheists are nihilists, much less Stalinists, Atheism has tenets because certain kinds of things tend to adhere. You can drag a magnet and a strip of Velcro through a pile composed of ball bearings and saw dust. Same pile – different results. At any rate, agreed – antitheism is different from atheism.
Leguru,
So, what is the political agenda of Buddhism?
Webs,
Again, reverse engineering does not do away with the original engineer. If you regard the original engineer as chance and natural selection, the experiment doesn’t obviate that for you. Why the difference if the original engineer is perceived as God? And when either of us says there is no need to analyze our thought as long as one other person on the thread agrees with us, it’s hardly in the spirit of rationalism.
Terry
Again, like so many of your posts, you miss the point. I could explain how the different schools of Buddhism have goals that reflect the organization of that branch. The point is that ALL organized religions are political. YOUR opportunity here is to show us how your religion was organized by a supernatural being which would make your religion not bad by definition. Since all political organizations use power to control their followers or subjects, we all want to see how your organization is purely beneficent, like your all-compassionate god. Otherwise, your organization, and by extension, your god, is no better and no worse than any of the other gods, or humans, who have developed organizations to manipulate the masses. That makes you the bad guy when you are unable to prove that your organization is better because your god is right and all other gods and organizations are wrong.
Peace.
Yep, that’s a real head-scratcher all right. Shall we consult the bible on whether genocide is OK?
I don’t have an absolute yardstick, and you don’t either. Ethics and morality are iterative. You may not like it but that’s the way it is, religious or not. If scripture is a direct line from God, then God can’t make up His mind about some pretty important stuff. From age to age, He pretty much validates the morality of whoever claims to hear his voice, I guess.
I did not say that people will stop talking about deities. I stated that this is another blow to the theistic position.
I do not see a contradiction in my two comments. I said that atheists are not of one mind on all issues and that atheism is not an ideology and I said that Christian fanatics are often bad for a state. I made a point of not generalizing about all Christians; not all Christians are as fanatical as Luther or Calvin. Now, it is true that atheists have lower crime and divorce rates (notice that conservative Christians while harping on gay marriage and the sanctity of marriage do not try to ban divorce and re-marriage; probably because half the Christians in this country are divorced and re-married.) But I did not say that atheism makes a person better or smarter per se; my point would be that religion itself has not demonstrated on average that it has an ability to improve the behavior or ethics of its adherents, which is supposed to be one of its strengths. This is to its discredit.
The God of “creation” is a subset of the God of the gaps; the gap being “creation” itself. Religion has to either ignore science all together, as fundamentalists do, or hope that science discovers as little as possible so that they can attribute more and more to these mythical gods. And the god of Christianity is more than a mere creator deity, by the way. There are no virgin births in Deism, as you know.
As for ethics: religious ethics are as fickle as anything that secularism has produced, if not more so. You may not like the fact that there is ethical uncertainty in our species, but that is the reality. It is a fallacious appeal to consequences to say that we need to pretend to have absolute certainty because the alternative will be too terrible. And, to the contrary, those with absolute certainty often commit the worst crimes. It wasn’t for lack of certainty that Hitler committed his crimes. Baseless faith does not solve our ethical dilemmas, the best we can do is to base our ethics on reason.
Indeed. And the flip side is the value in recognizing that certainty is not possible. To the study of ethics science has this to offer: that we can only speak of probabilities.
Terry
Well, I am not entirely sure that it does. Most theists who debate in any way come back to the design principle (which is, of course, a flawed argument) and the first cause argument when asked to justify their beliefs. What Venter’s team shows is that life does not require supernatural intervention. You could say I am begging the question, but wouldn’t that suggest that you therefore accept that the origins of life could be entirely natural? If that is the case, then I have no issue with you on that point. I would not accept that an intelligent agent is necessary, we need posit no more necessity for a designer for a DNA molecule (and remember, that is ultimately all it is) than we do for an eye. We know the eye could evolve – that is well demonstrated by now, and I see no reason why nucleotides, under the conditions which we know early earth was under (strongly reducing chemical environment) why DNA / RNA chains could not form – they do so spontaneously if you put those chemicals under those conditions in a lab nowadays! Venter has been very successful at showing that life is chemistry. Now we just need to show how simple chemistry can become more complex chemistry, and we will be pretty much all the way there.
I have no problem if you want to use the term non-believer rather than atheist – to me they are absolutely interchangable. To try to turn atheism into an -ISM ignores the etymology of the word, however. The base word here is “theism” – the belief in the existence of a god or gods. A-theism is simply the rejection of the claims of theism. The important distinction is that theism is a positive claim – the claim that some god(s) exist. Atheism, however, is NOT a positive claim. It is simply the rejection of a positive claim on the basis of insufficient evidence. This is why I do not believe that you can say that atheism does not fall into the -ISM category – the simple fact that it is not a positive claim.
However, with both theism and atheism, you have to bring something, as I mentioned earlier. Being a theist per se doesn’t tell you to do anything. However, theism is almost universally wedded to a specific set of religious claims. Believing in a god is quite one thing, but when you then surround that god with rules and laws and rituals, and people and actions to hate, then you can get to bad places. Of course you an also get to those bad places if you surround your atheism with bad ideologies – Stalinism would be a good example of a bad ideology. However, I fully believe that it is typically harder to justify these bad actions when you are an atheist. Theists can always rely on the argument to authority – “god is always right, and his actions are always moral – it says I should do this thing which I would otherwise consider bad in god’s holy book, therefore I should do it”. Atheists can’t really do that. They could, for example say “I think the world would be better if I killed all the people in group A”, but that, at least is a position which is debatable, and evidence driven. Until someone positively demonstrates the existence of a god, then the argument that “god says so” has absolutely no validity.
Terry
I heard one the other day I thought you might like to discuss; “supernatural and unnatural are synonyms” (Rev. Michael Dowd)
All,
Another busy couple of weeks now behind me and pulling out tomorrow for a week where there will be no internet. Just a few quick words before I go.
Leguru,
I don’t believe I missed the point. All operations involving groups of people (families included) will have a political element. The identification of religion and politics is unwarranted.
DOF,
So, if God validates the morality of whoever claims to hear his voice, how was a choice made between Jeremiah and Hananiah? Post millennialism believes in iterative morality too. G’luck. By the way, you still haven’t demonstrated a platform from which to question the present iteration.
Your Mighty Overload,
If the ‘ism’ in atheism is borrowed then the sociologists are justified in thinking of atheism as reactionary. And yes, theism seems almost universally wed to certain kinds of ethical and moral ideas. It’s kind of my point. The problem lies in thinking atheism is not so wed. I’ll have to look up the Dowd thing before commenting. I don’t know for sure what he meant.
Positive,
In your statements you expressed the hope that atheist ‘depravity’ would someday become a majority position because that would be preferable for society. How can that be if said ‘depravity’ has no defining parameters more important than not collecting coins and even less predictive value? If atheism says nothing about individuals or the (non) group, then how can you define the (non) group as ‘better educated’, ‘less prone to crime’, or anything else? As to defining subsets – I wouldn’t enter any Venn diagram contests if I were you.
Terry, you really can’t fairly assign common attributes to atheists other than the lack of a belief in a deity, because that is the one single quality that defines being an atheist.
Think about this for a moment: what common traits could you assign to all non-octopi? Or non-mathemematicians? When you consider that, I think you’ll get YMO’s point.
And in response to your response to Leguru’s point… seeing as how a single individual can easily be an atheist, but you can’t have a single member of a religion, your assertion that politics is merely a property of a group of people ipso facto means that yes, religion is inherently tied to politics, just by virtue of the simple fact that groups are involved.
Positive put ‘depravity’ in quotes, because Xtians tend to label anything they don’t like or disagree with as ‘depraved’, whereas atheists tend to identify and correct things that are actually destructive or disharmonious to society.
To wit, as an example: sure, the Bible condemns murder. And so do most societies, because a society that tolerates members killing one another will not last long. It’s a bad thing because it’s destructive, not because the Bible says so. When you stop to consider something else, say… homosexuality… unless that person is trying to force you to be homosexual, then they’re not harming you at all, at least as far as that goes. And the model I just illustrated says that unless you can demonstrate how this behavior harms society, says it should be tolerated.
The Bible and destructiveness/disharmonious to society models share some common values, to be sure, and those values should be preserved. But that they’re part of the Bible isn’t the reason why.
ONLY if religion is a political organization that is perfect. ONLY if religion is ruled by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being, i.e., a god. Now, your position is to prove that any religion, and your religion in particular, is ruled by a god. WE’RE WAITING for your proof.
Peace.
It just so happens that atheists tend to be better educated. They are also less likely to commit crimes, which I would guess is because of their education itself and not their atheism. Atheists are also less likely to divorce, which I wouldn’t really know what to attribute to. Despite your best efforts to claim otherwise, atheism does not contain a unifying ethical system or agenda (attempts to define atheism as having these things merely shows a lack of comprehension) but it does, perhaps ironically, happen to gain the adherence of some of the more civil members of society. As NewDave said, I believe my earlier point was merely that this “depraved” atheist movement does not lead to the moral degradation that its opponents often stereotype it as causing, and that religion does not cause people behave better on average.
If you are really intent on finding the definition of atheism, we can do it in a rather simple way. Merriam-Webster on Atheism; “a: a disbelief in the existence of deity b: the doctrine that there is no deity”
Try to wrap your head around that. It is not that atheists as individuals do not have important beliefs or opinions about other subjects like ethics, but those other opinions are not part of their atheist identity. If you want to know what I personally think of morality or philosophy you can see my comments above or ask me more about it, but my ideas about those subjects are simply my own. The only inherent idea that I share with other atheists is a lack of belief in a deity; not sure why this is hard or so troubling to envisage.
Now, while you may enjoy uncovering these derogatory categorizations of atheism I have to insist that it does not really prove anything. I would point out that we could just as easily find negative ways of categorizing any given religion. Christianity for example, particularly early Christianity, is often put into the category of cult, taking its place alongside the Manson Family and Peoples Temple. Is putting Christianity in this category faulty? No, there are certainly many different ways in which one could easily define Christianity as a cult, particularly in its early centuries. Does this give us some insights into Christianity? It does. But I doubt that this is going to cause many Christians to think twice about their faith. They would likely argue that a derogatory category for Christianity does not by itself prove that Christianity is right or wrong in its beliefs, and that would probably be a fair argument.
Not sure what you mean by “the present iteration” but if you mean popularly understood morality, it should always be in the dock. The evidence that this is so is that “morality beyond question” held by previous generations might today only be held by, say, Pat Buchanan or Pat Robertson.
That you wish for a solid platform on which to stand, is not evidence that one exists. I’d rather be realistic and say; “We have no way to be sure, so we will act to the best of our understanding now.” Skipping across wobbly ground with the confidence of unshakable belief is an invitation to disaster.
Of course you do believe there’s a platform, some solid ground, in revelatory morality. Great; knock yourself out. You have a code for you and your fellow believers. Just remember your believing ancestors approved of things you wouldn’t think of doing, and your believing descendants will by shocked by things you think are carved in stone.
From your own reference of June 10 post. Once again proof that religion is nothing more than a particular political view. In order for religion to be different than any other political view, you must prove that religion, or in particular your religion, is ruled by a perfect being. WE ARE STILL WAITING.
Why do you think the founding fathers demanded the first amendment be ratified? Competing political views.
Peace.
New Dave,
It seems to me you mis-frame the argument on two points.
1. Octopi/non-octopi are not what they are as the result of choice, belief/non-belief, etc.
2. If I needed to generalize about non-octopi, I wouldn’t have to discover traits common to ALL non-octopi – only most non-octopi. I might start with something like ‘Most non-octopi survive reproduction.’ If I then combine two or three obviously true characteristics about non-octopi (Most non-octopi survive reproduction and have other than eight legs – that arrangement being pretty much confined to cephalopods and arthropods.) I could hammer something out.
In any case, let’s start with a single point. Would you agree that most atheists are on board with DOF’s view on consensus driven ethics and morality rather than my revelatory view?
My response to your response to my response to Leguru’s response: I’m not objecting to the idea that there will be a political element to religion but to the identification of religion with politics. And I used the word ‘depravity’ because Positive did. I did not mean to imply that atheists are especially morally depraved as a group but that Positive implied some coherent body of thought that could become a ‘norm’. He does the same thing by inserting the word ‘movement’ in his more recent post. Positive and others continue to speak as though atheism is what they insist it is not.
Leguru,
Prove to me that the universe operates according to rational principles accessible to science, i.e. that the modern scientific understanding of the universe is not simply superimposed. When you get done with that (g’luck) prove to me that the authors of ‘Row row row your boat’ aren’t correct and that you aren’t just a miasmic phantom in my dream.
Positive,
As noted before, the education gap between atheists and theists is closing (probably all but closed). Part of that seems to be due to an increasing global education level and part of it due to the fact secularism is losing its luster. New Scientist also posits that atheism has mainstreamed a bit – kind of welcomed the cretins aboard! Other factors no doubt exist. What then?
As noted to New Dave, there can be no atheist movement without an identifiable common ground. Do you agree as a start, that most atheists subscribe to consensus driven rather than revelatory ethics?
Yup, sociologists may speak truthfully about the nature of world religion and we’re all good with that but when they begin to probe into the sociology of atheism – that’s derogatory! By the way, yes it would be perfectly accurate in a sociological sense to say that Christianity started, by definition, as a cult – a small group organized around a single powerful personality. That it has become more is obvious. (That it may have been more to begin with is a point of faith rather than sociology.) The point is that from a sociological perspective we see the progress from cult to world spanning religion/ideology. Of course, the similar progress of another idea or the rejection of an idea, say atheism, within a particular cultural setting to an ideology, now that’s impossible!
DOF,
OK, in reference to the contradiction (If ethics and morality are consensus driven then the consensus can’t be unethical or immoral) your answer seems to be that consensus naturally changes over time and circumstance and clinging to an outdated consensus is unethical and immoral. I think you would add that the process of change is ‘messy’. Yes/no?
By the by, ‘There is no such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.’ Daniel Dennett
Terry
OK. Now we’re getting somewhere. The universe (and the authors of ‘Row row row your boat’) to you is subjective. Therefore, your world view is the correct explanation of the universe. That’s precisely what we have all been trying to tell you at this site. This does not mean that my world view is wrong, or that DOF’s world view is wrong, just that it is correct only for each of us. This means that the objective universe may be something entirely different. It could be what “modern scientific understanding” describes, or it could be what you describe. Now, what proof do you have that your subjective view is more accurate than the modern scientific view? Of course, this will not affect your subjective understanding of those items outside of scientific observations, i.e., God, love, compassion, etc.
We are still waiting for that proof.
Peace.
We can presume that atheism will gradually increase where education increases; we will see. Cretins?
Atheists do have a common ground; it’s called atheism. That they may not agree on ethics or politics or baseball is something else. Do atheists subscribe to a “consensus driven ethical system”? Whether atheists tend to think alike or not (and I would think not) the fact remains that ethics has nothing to do with atheism. That does not mean that atheists as individuals do not have ethical systems, but there is not an Atheist Church that sets down a list of regulations, as you know. Nor is atheism a democracy where people vote on what a given atheist position is going to be. Atheism is only about one position, or non-position.
“Revelatory ethics” is an interesting phrase. I would phrase it “arbitrary and often questionable ethical claims which originate from an invisible authority whose existence there is no evidence for.” Not as catchy. Moses, as he is presented in the Bible, was a slayer of civilians and an advocate for slavery and rape. Not very impressive. Ditto Muhammad, who also claimed revelation but who you apparently do not believe in… for some reason… even though his claims are no more radical or unbelievable than anything that you might find in your Bible. Again, such an arbitrary worldview.
Yes, depictions of atheism as a religion or as reactionary are derogatory as well as inaccurate. When religionists argue against atheism and attack it as a form of groupthink, as dogmatic, as a religion, etc. they are in an odd way arguing against themselves. It reminds me of Bill Donahue, who belongs to a religion with a “Dogmatic Constitution”, who labeled Christopher Hitchens as a “Dogmatic Atheist”. Religionists who attack atheism as being itself a religion or faith-based share the same ironic projection; they do not seem to realize that they are attacking the very faith-based foundations of their own faith-based positions.
“that the modern scientific understanding of the universe is not simply superimposed.” Umm, how about you prove to us that you are not doing the same with your Hebrew mythology. Has your religion gotten anyone to the moon lately? Was your computer shipped down to you from heaven? Whether science will be able to answer to the ultimate questions, it has more to show for it than the superstitions.
Terry
I think if we take only one’s atheism in isolation, then your understanding [mistaken, I believe] is one we can come to all too easily. Our atheism per se is not, I would contend the reason why we can form a consensus position on moral issues. The reason that we can form a consensus position is that we all have a relatively similar internal set of moral code,which are a biproduct of us evolving in social groups. We don’t like people murdering, because we don’t want to be murdered ourselves. You can get into thornier issues when you are dealing with thornier problems. For example, if one could build a time machine, and go back and kill Hitler before he murdered 6 million Jews, should we do it? A truly religious person would have to say “no” for two reasons, only one of which may be valid; 1) it says “thou shalt not kill” in their magic book, and so therefore they aren’t allowed to (unless they here the voice of god in their head [which raises the question, how do you know it is actually god, or just claims to be god]), 2) at the time of the assassination, Hitler won’t have actually done anything wrong (yet). If you are to believe in truly free will, wouldn’t a Christian be forced to admit that Hitler might behave in a different way? An atheist, without the decalog based starting point may actually decide to assassinate Hitler, in order to minimise the amount of needless suffering in the world. Would any of us condemn the atheist who assassinates Hitler? Would any of us truly, in our deepest hearts, truly think he did the wrong thing? The difference between Christians and atheists seems to be where they start the discussion from, and that affects where it ends up. It shouldn’t be such a big mystery as to why atheists tend to end up in the same moral endpoint given the same starting point and the same information – rather like two people attempting to solve a mathematical problem should end up with the same answer given the same information.
We don’t think there is a magic sky-man telling us what is good and what is bad (Euthyphro’s dilemma, anyone), and we have to figure it out by ourselves. We also tend not to think that there is any magic man telling theists what to do either. Rather, religions coopted most of the good stuff in them from our common morality (which explains why christians and atheists generally favour the prohibition of murder / execution [although it is telling that those Chrisitans which do favour the death penalty tend to do so on biblical authority]), while there is a lot of barbaric stuff in the bible which most people choose not to follow (like stoning people to death for working on Sundays). Theists must have some kind of innate morality just there, to know to ignore their holy book, when it is clearly proscribing immoral acts.
Anyhow, the question is more complicated than just “you guys don’t believe in God, so therefore you don’t believe in anything”. We atheists don’t believe in God; however, on top of that, many of us do believe in secular morality (or secular humanism, for example). So, the atheism part doesn’t address the morality question – our individual beliefs about what is moral address that.
“So, the atheism part doesn’t address the morality question – our individual beliefs about what is moral address that.” Right. Not sure why that is so hard for some to understand.
As for my use of the term “movement”; I don’t see what that implies. A movement can be about only one issue. One might say that Anti-Communism was a movement. Anti-Communists were anything from Democrats to Republicans to Nazis to Anarchists to Islamic extremists to McCarthyists. That they opposed Communism did not imply that they had anything else in common. And what if Atheism were a movement with an ethical system and a political ideology, as Terry seems to be implying, rather than what I and DOF and others have already explained it to be? What would that prove? Does that make God’s existence more or less likely? Does that make religion more or less respectable? I dare say that it is a stupid argument and a red herring.
Terry, it sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to make a point, but there isn’t one to be made. Show me any process involving human society that isn’t messy, including religion. The claim that religion has some kind of divine hot line which it, on examination, does not appear to have, is a lie. You can believe it if you want to, but it doesn’t give you any better seating at the Human Ethics convention.
By the bye, according to St. Dennett, science has a philosophy. (And according to Micky’s little left hand and his big right hand, it’s ten ’til five) So what? The basic philosophy of science is the same as its fundamental epistemology: “Question everything and don’t fool yourself.”
DOF,
My point was to try to pin down a missing variable.
1. Ethics and morality are consensus driven.
2. The prevailing consensus (American Christianity) is immoral and unethical.
3. ?
You made a passing effort to assert an independent existence for morality. This however only resolves the contradiction by negating the first premise. You may at times have answered that Christianity is too hypocritical or inconsistent – i.e. doesn’t live up to its own moral and ethical consensus. This merely restates the contradiction. If consensus determines right and wrong, then consensus may be as uneven or discriminatory as it pleases without being wrong since there is no external standard. The mere process of being perpetually ‘in the dock’ doesn’t do it either. Continued consensus amounts to a verdict in favor. Your repeated assertion that religion doesn’t have an authority you find acceptable is a dodge. I’m examining your proposed system. So, I asked if I correctly understood you to say that chronology was the missing variable.
Science and philosophy: I understand methodological agnosticism (although I think Newton, Joule, Ampere, Faraday, Boyle, Lyell, Herschel, Kelvin, Pasteur, Maxwell, …..all did reasonably good work.) Science, by nature, seeks material explanations and to say ‘It’s the work of God’ is no more scientific an answer than to say ‘Terry did it.’ The question is not ‘Who did it?’ but ‘How it was done?’ Perhaps no one did it. I know that is your assertion. But is that a scientific assertion? I rather think materialism is a philosophical tenet and brings with it exactly the sort of unexamined philosophical baggage to which Dennett referred. “Question everything – except materialism because, well, because!”
The two topics are actually closely related. If philosophic materialism is true then free will is a complete illusion and all questions of ethics and morality are academic anyway. In materialism there is no ‘self’ – only genetic programming and electrical/chemical interactions and the differences between you and I are just – what they are – sans good guys and bad guys. Long live reductionism! Except, of course, as it might be applied to atheism, secularism, humanism,…
I think you should read more from Freeman Dyson.
Positive,
If identifying atheism as an ideology wouldn’t make any difference, how can it be derogatory? Of course it does make a difference. Let us imagine individuals calling themselves ‘ascientists’. They just don’t believe in science. There isn’t anything binding them together except their lack of belief in science. It isn’t reactionary – they just don’t believe in science. Even if they attain a social majority, it can’t really have any predictable or causative effects because it’s just like not collecting coins – no one can ever be motivated to do anything or to shape society in any particular way from a LACK of belief in science. Agreed?
Your Mighty Overload,
Christians believe in natural law too. We see it as an element of the way we were made. But my question is not how a consensus is arrived at. My question concerns the contradiction of consensus simultaneously defining ethics and morality and being itself, immoral/unethical.
On the side: If execution is immoral (I think I heard echoes of that in your post) then how can the time machine assisted assassination of Hitler be above actual reproach? It seems to me that you are making (or perhaps just warming up the canned version) hash of murder, execution, war, etc. when discussing the 6th commandment. It seems to allow you to manufacture a sense of inconsistency. If you really believe that an individual’s atheism does not address that individual’s moral conclusions – explain to me how that differs from the compartmentalization Christians are apparently so good at.
Leguru,
Then why should secularism attain social authority? Why should anything?
Terry
(can’t log in for some reason)
Terry, like you, I am capable of wishful thinking. I really want to think you’re just being deliberately dense, or sophistic, to amuse yourself. I don’t want to think you really are that dense.
You’ve started with the premise that there IS a god, and that he HAS provided some kind of external ruler of right and wrong, and that any system that lacks such a ruler is wrong before it starts. Kinda jumped over any evidence for any of those premises, though, and waved aside all evidence that your divine ruler is printed on soft, stretchy silicone rubber by saying something about human fallibility, while asserting that you somehow know what the ruler is, or why your ruler is the one of many “divine” rulers we should use.
Then you want to make like it’s some kind of big flaw in secular ethics, that it doesn’t have an absolute yardstick like your divinely given ethics. And you say I’m the one dodging? Yeesh.
I have admitted what you deny; that ethics is slippery and difficult no matter what ruler you use, including religious rulers. The Star-Bellied Sneeches never explained what was so great about having a Star on their bellies, it was just supposed to be obvious.
How can anything be wrong? Well you got me there. (I believe the phrase I used before was; “head-scratcher” but you seem to have ignored it.) If there were a god and if that god cared what we do with our penises or what kind of milk we boil meat in, or wanted to crucify his son to, um, something-something-something, then yes, you could say that secular ethics was way too flexible. Providing anyone could agree on the markings on the god’s ruler, and that there was the slightest evidence that believers in the god and the ruler were more apt to measure by it consistently over time.
Most cultures have some kind of version of the Silver Rule; that will have to be good enough. It works like this: if you want to live in a society where you don’t have to watch your back all the time, where your kids will grow up and be OK, (and most people appear to want that) then everyone has to abide by that rule. Society, recognizing its practical value, will enforce it. Over time, because cultures change and interact with other cultures, the understanding of that rule, will evolve. There are bound to be slip-ups and missteps along the way. And we’re not headed for some promised land. Best we can hope for is to equip our kids for better application of the rule than we have achieved so they can find whatever happiness is available in this life.
Terry
The words are English, there are no spelling mistakes, and the sentences seem full and complete. However, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what your point is.
Right, I thought about this after I posted last time. Assassinating Hitler would, of course, still be “a bad thing”. Murder is, in my opinion, morally wrong. However, morality is not an easy thing to arrive at. Personally, I would only assassinate Hitler if there were no way to otherwise render him unable to cause the death of millions of people. Murdering him would not be morally right, but it would be more morally right than having the power to prevent him from killing millions of people and not using it.
I was alluding to the Decalogue of course. A Christian, following the word of their god as set down in the decalogue would be forced to allow Hitler to live, with the resulting atrocities. In fact, a good Christian would surely have to turn the other cheek and bear it. The only exception I could see to that would be if your god was to give you a direct commandment to assassinate someone. Many would say their god would never command that, despite the fact that contradicts what their holy book says. Anyhoo, if you had the chance to squeeze the trigger on Hitler in 1936, and save 6 million lives, would you not agree that is more moral than allowing him to live and murder so many innocent people?
Sorry DOF, that was my fault. I re-installed SABRE and forgot to add all the current users back into the “approved” list. Should be able to login now.
Works! Thanks.
Please re-read DOF’s recent posts. You mean to say that if there is no “God”, there is no value to human life?
Really?
All the other societies in the world in the last 50,000 years have nothing in common? None of the other codes of ethics or conduct have any value? Are you saying this with a straight face???
How can you deny the identification of religion with politics, unless you can prove your “religion” is, in fact, ruled by a supernatural being, i.e., “God”?
Peace.
I am having difficulty tracking the original post as there have been so many but I seem to recall you quoting someone as saying that atheism is a religion or should be categorized as a religion and another saying that atheism is reactionary. I think it is obvious that most atheists would find that derogatory.
I do not need to imagine “ascientists” as we have plenty of “ascientists” in our society, mostly coming out of the religion camp. Anyway, some atheists will probably try to change society, many won’t bother, and some will even work for religious interests. There are the “I’m an atheist, but…” folks that Dawkins talks about. See SE Cupp as an example… assuming she even is an atheist. There is no universal atheist agenda that all atheists are “in” on. That is simplistic.
[...] thought it was interesting in terms of another thread we have going here on SEB titled: A Christian asks; “I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?” Clearly she feels that associating with Christianity makes her look bad and so she’s decided [...]
Positive,
You keep defending against something I haven’t said. I did not posit an agenda in which atheists are involved. I posit that the rejection of belief in God has ramifications that will move people in predictable directions and that if it becomes the dominant position in a society, it will move the society in predictable directions. Of course you don’t have to imagine the ‘ascientists’. That was my point. Do you deny that if the ‘ascientists’ constitute the majority there will be predictable concrete results? That’s the point.
Terry
Apology, I thought this posted a week ago. I guess not. Better late than never – maybe. I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks now but hope to continue the conversation when I return.
DOF,
It is of course possible that I am just being dense. It would not be the first time that particular light has come on. But I don’t think I’m trying to say that your proposed ethical system is wrong from the start because it has no external source. I think I’m trying to examine your ideas on their own merit as you claim to examine religious ideas. The simple contradiction of the consensus determining ethics and morality and the consensus itself being unethical/immoral seems to me to need reconciliation. Your best answers seem to be ‘You got me there.’ ‘I don’t know.’ It’s a head scratcher.’ (I didn’t ignore that one.) and ‘A rough approximation of the silver rule will have to be enough.’ If I’m not mistaken, if, at any time, I offer such answers on a matter of any import to this conversation, it would be immediately cited as evidence that I am the bad guy. I suppose they’re acceptable for you because the issue at hand is not one of great importance – only THE ENTIRE MORAL/ETHICAL FRAMEWORK OF ALL MANKIND. You do not know how anything can actually be wrong in a universe without meaning? Fine. Then admit that the only possible objection you can raise to the existing consensus in America (to any consensus at any time) is personal preference and stop referring to consenses and their constructs as immoral. For that matter, if it’s all about not having to watch your back all the time and having your kids grow up to be OK, the Christian consensus in America hasn’t done all that bad a job.
Maybe there is an answer excluding an external source that reconciles the contradiction I see. But that answer is not – ‘Well, that’s a head scratcher.’ Wouldn’t that be similar to approaching shaky ground with firm conclusions based on – dandruff? Or, maybe there is the possibility of an external source short of God. You might, like Dawkins, cite natural selection/survival value as a source older and other than humanity from which ethics and morality spring. I think Your Mighty Overload was headed that direction. I foresee difficulties justifying your stance in that direction but it would be a place to start and perhaps the difficulties could be explained. But in a picture lacking an external authority you cannot seriously expect me to accept a settlement on a question as serious as the basis for morals and ethics that amounts to watching you scratch your head.
Your Mighty Overload,
As to the point that eluded you, try it this way. If A = B and B does not = C, then A cannot = C.
Following your thought on the assassination of Hitler; you are citing the ‘lesser of two evils’ model. Where the commandments figure in, I would still say that ‘murder’ is the intent of the sixth. The original Biblical discussion and context makes it plain that what concerns the commandment is separate from war, capital punishment, or even negligent manslaughter. And without launching into another long etymological explanation, you might research the history of translation of the Hebrew ‘Ratsach’ and the Greek equivalent ‘Phoneuo’ as opposed to other words available and known to the Biblical authors like ‘harag’, ‘zabach’/’Thuo’, ‘Aneiro’, etc. I think that versions like the NASB most correctly translate the sixth commandment as ‘You shall not murder.’
Would I, following your lesser of two evils methodology, not agree that it is more moral to assassinate Hitler in 1936 than to allow the holocaust to proceed? Even at that you qualify that you would first have to know there was no other way to render Hitler unwilling/unable to wreak genocide. I’m not sure how you would come by such knowledge. Best guess I guess. Harking back to the former paragraph, the state has the power of the sword. Have I the commission of the state? Probably not in 1936. Because here’s the deal; many people – and not only Christians or even religionists (see Peter Singer) – believe that not yet born babies are human beings. If their best guess is that other means have failed and the slaughter continues, then are they justified, sans state sanction – in opposition to the state – to squeeze the trigger on a small number of abortion doctors to prevent the deaths of millions of innocent babies? Given the assumptions – which are really no greater than the lists of assumptions involved in pronouncing Nazi Germany evil or deciding to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, I fail to see the difference in the logic of the two scenarios. And I have at least already answered this one for myself. I would not be justified in taking the lives of abortion providers.
Leguru,
If there is no God then there is only the value assigned by humans to human life. Really! At what point did I say that historical or modern societies have nothing in common, morally/ethically or otherwise? Show me where I said that and I will scratch the whole argument back to that point and start over. Politics seeks solutions of policy and polity. Note the phonetic similarities. There will be that aspect to a religious GROUP. But at heart, religion seeks meaning. It is perilously easy for religion to become too political. That doesn’t make religion and politics the same thing. It’s why there’s a separation between church and state (as abused as I think that doctrine is).
Terry
Tell that to Matthew Sheppard. Tell that to the “witches” of Salem. Tell that to the native Americans. Tell that to . . .
You see where your are going with that one? It does answer the question of this post, “I’m the bad buy . . .”
Peace.
You’ve done a poor job of convincing me it isn’t what you’re saying. Especially when you just come out and say it a few paragraphs later.
The contradiction that you see lies in the refraction of your moral optics: you seem to accept no morality that does not lie in divinely given absolutes. Then you twist yourself into a multi-dimensional pretzel to explain away the contradictions among the various presentations of god in the bible, let alone in Christian societies.
Christians become the bad guy when they act like Pharisees of the Legal-Political Sphere while congratulating themselves on their moral superiority. I don’t know how many different ways to say it.
This is your brilliant conclusion, that I don’t think ethics is important? Terry, what the hell have we been talking about all this time, if not ethics? All that stuff about slavery and abortion and homosexuality and war and genocide… remember that stuff?
Where the hell have you been all this time?
Implicit in “it’s a head scratcher” is “it’s a hard problem that we will pretty much have to work on forever”. That’s what “iterative” means. We don’t have a god giving us moral crib-notes to cheat on the test. And if we did, I hope it wouldn’t be the god who destroyed an entire world in a fit of moral pique, and later commanded genocide, and whose book celebrates subjecting a boy to a mock-sacrifice, or another hero who handed his daughter over to a mob to be raped. Or who punished a woman who turned around to see her childhood home in flames, by turning her into a pillar of salt. Or whose church commanded that a woman ought to shut up and let her husband do all the important thinkin’.
Recognizing that the problem is hard does not imply that it is not important.
I did not say that nothing can be wrong; I said that the church has hardly been a moral anchor in history as societies have changed what is held to be right or wrong. I have asserted that your divine yardstick is made of divinely stretchy silicone rubber and provided examples of how that is so.
Over the centuries (and increasing frequency as the influence of the church has declined) society has moved toward this consensus: that the commons deserves protection, and that the rule of law should protect those without their own means of protection. There are hints of this in scripture but it neither originates or ends there.
Furthermore I have specifically disclaimed having the absolute ruler of moral measurement that you claim to have. Your trivialization of that disclaimer (that I think “nothing can be wrong”) suggests to me that you recognize no morality which is not laser-inscribed on a planet-sized block of perfect diamond at the center of the Universe by some deity. But your deity has not exactly lived up to that standard, now, has it?
You’re right: the Christian consensus in America has done a fine job for financially secure white male heterosexual neurotypical Christians. Leguru beat me to the punch on this one, so building on his question I’ll ask; “ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?”
Think for a moment about the “kinds of people” it is dangerous to be in this country. One in ten blacks aged 20 to 29 is incarcerated, and one in three can expect to be locked up sometime during their twenties. Until just recently gays had to carefully hide their sexual orientation, and they still can’t serve openly in the military or have a real life partner with all the advantages of marriage. One of our states has decreed that anybody with brown skin and an accent can be forced to prove their citizenship at any time. Muslims in New York are facing death threats for building a civic center – pretty much their version of a YMCA – because hey, “they” attacked “us” (never mind the Muslims who died on 9/11 or the fact that the head Imam of the center is Sufi Muslim, which would be like saying Mennonites were responsible for the bombing of Baghdad.) Whole neighborhoods fight legal battles over polluted ground water against corporations that simply hire more lawyers and lobbyists. Poor people are forced to make agonizing financial decisions about taking their kids to the doctor when they’re sick. But if they do push their finances to the breaking point and get “health insurance”, they risk their policies being rescinded if they get sick. And as a nation we export violence on a grand, industrial scale.
Of course there are other places that are worse, and a few that are better (and not coincidentally, more secular). But it’s hardly an advertisement for the moral rectitude of Christianity if this god-soaked country can’t see what’s wrong with the status quo.
What’s bothering me is that you are not scratching your head. You have this packaged answer from a divine source, and the habit of falling back on that solution has made it impossible for you to walk in the shoes of those who take responsibility for ethics in a godless universe.
Finally supposing that an “external source” would fulfill all wishful thinking and provide the firm foundation for moral decisions that 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed seem to want… that has precisely diddly to do with whether the source actually exists. We’re stuck with our moral quandaries, and with the consequences of whatever solution we come up with.
What DOF said. Thanks.
Peace.
DOF & Leguru,
Despite your plea in paragraph 3 of your last post, you know several ways to ‘say it’. You’re just adroit at skipping out on the one currently under consideration. For instance, in the present context, Christians become the bad guy not only for assuming Pharisaic prerogatives but for (as you expressed in a later paragraph) having certainties based on uncertainties. But it is of course, more useful to you to object on the first grounds when being pinned down on the second.
In your post of July 16, 2010 you said, “How can anything be wrong? Well, you got me there.” And yet you continue to pronounce all manner of things to be concretely and categorically wrong. Your only basis is consensus. But you pick and choose pretty freely from consensus. You evidently find certain aspects of the existing consensus rather objectionable.
Then you get all huffy because (you say) I accused you of not caring about ethics. I, of course, did no such thing. I said you were guilty of engaging in the very kind of ethical thinking you decry.
And where have I been? Well, I’ve been here the whole time. It’s just that your Zinnian narrative is no more persuasive now than then. Of course Christian societies have been guilty of terrible things. But you cannot make the case that Christians didn’t ultimately renounce slavery – at great cost. You may assert that Christians were dragged to that renunciation ‘kicking and screaming’ But they were dragged by other Christians. The process can in no way be characterized as a victory of secularism over religion.
But there’s probably no need having that discussion again. Your vision exceeds description as ‘tunnel’. Ethics are about not having to watch your back and feeling that your kids are safe? But of course, the people of Arizona aren’t into that. They just hate people with brown skin and accents! Likewise the rest of your catalogue.
Tell it to Matthew Shepard? Of course we must ignore the fact that Shepard’s life and identity were shaped in part by an act of homosexual rape in Morocco or that he and his killers were at least acquainted and all were part of the dug culture in their hometown. Yes sirree, Shepard’s death is the direct result of the fact that Christians hate gays. It is not my intent to belittle Shepard or minimize what was done to him. It is my intent to say that you are not honest brokers. For that matter, I once read DOF minimizing the statistical importance of the Littleton Colorado shootings. After all, there are over 80,000 public schools and there have been shootings at – how many? So, how many gay men are there in the U.S. and how many murders are committed based on that sexual orientation?
Read Darwin’s second book sometime. He, at least, understood the ethical implications of his theory.
And I’ll save you the effort of dreaming up further imaginative descriptions about where the ten commandments might be carved. If the Decalogue was prominently featured on the surface of the moon – would that cause you to believe in God? I submit it would not. The Great Wall can be seen from space and God didn’t do that. Mt Rushmore, etc. etc. Stop citing bars for evidence you would not find acceptable should the evidence rise to them anyway.
And do me a favor. If you really must drink all that Koolaid, try to drool less. The purple stains obscure your points.
Terry
Then you have a way to prove the existence of your “God” for a certainty? Come on, Terry.
Then, why did you do just that? And you still can’t see why some of us see “Christians” as the bad guys?
Peace.
Thousands of homosexuals were killed by the Inquisition. Who knows how many more were killed in less well-organized attacks by Christians. Christianity shares most of the responsibility for the persecution of gays in the West. They are apparently trying to ban sodomy now in Texas, by the way. They aren’t bad guys?
It was a secular government and army that defeated the forces of slavery in this country. That the people who made up that secular government and secular army were mostly Christians is true, but a secular society it remained. Secularism is open to all people, not only atheists. It does speak to the incoherency of Christianity and to its inability to effectively run a real world society that it gave rise to so much secularism; but we’ll leave that for another day.
Be it Christianity or Islam or another group there are two aspects of a religion to consider; scriptures and adherents, who can be moderates or fundamentalists. On the issue of slavery the moderates won over the fundamentalists, and did so by convincing them (through force or otherwise) to ignore the parts of the Bible (Old and New Testament) that allow for slavery. This does not redeem the Bible, which still contains those pro-slavery scriptures, but it is good that this change finally occurred in Christian culture. It was an act by people who watered down Christianity and dismissed some of its scriptures in order to suit the needs of a modernizing nation. Cafeteria Christianity is the only form of Christianity that is suitable in the civilized world. We are now hoping that Cafeteria Islam will win out over the fundamentalists of that faith. A society which is not beholden to any of these vile scriptures would be the ideal for society; but utopia is always elusive.