Chris asks:
I'm quite curious, what do you think of a person like me, someone who is disturbed by religion as you described it in this past post, yet still has their own different sincere religious experience? Someone who also fully embraces science/evolution/etc., has no problem questioning anything (including their faith, which they realize is a faith), and is (or at least thinks she or he is) more than willing to reject parts or all of their faith if they ever find enough reason to (as for example, I've rejected certain ideas that I was taught early on as a Christian but now consider to be close minded and untenable)? (See comments from previous post for full text)
Good question. First of all, I will submit that I think people can have authentic, sincere spiritual experiences. Even I can--that is, as long as that experience doesn't come with rules and collection plates. It's probably inhuman to be unimpressed by the beauty and wonder of nature--so much that people, the little egomaniacs that we are, will want to project such wonders as yet another great invention, if not by us, then by our gods. it wasn't enough for adam in genesis to live within nature--he had to rule it.
i could easily take all the examples of your scrutiny and skepticism towards fundamentalism and faith, and apply it to myself at one such point. as you know, several years ago i did consider myself a christian. only, in this case, the skepticism lead me to completely rid of it, as opposed to keeping some self-made version of it, which i tend to really dislike in people, albeit quite common to find. there really comes a point where your point-of-view evolves to the place where you don't know where the religion ends and your own thoughts begin.
that's why i think that most who consider themselves christian, really fall into some hybrid version of it, that they have allowed to flex around their own world view. what's the point, then, if you're going to take some of the tenants of religion and not others? is it an insurance policy? are people really that duped by pascal's idiotic wager? it goes without saying that it really bothers me, then, that some will have the audacity to use the whole kitchen sink against others, when they themselves are only using a dish rag.
i suppose in terms of your question, i can't say i would be against skepticism, but i find it curious that through all of it, you could still hook your star to an implausible celestial being. it seems the very conclusion that would contradict such honest questioning and philosophical discretion. perhaps being religious really is a genetic trait that is impossible to shed--the most common case of OCD--that even the candidates who might seem as if they've mutated and evolved past religious belief, are still held captive to it?
9 out of 10 reasons people give for believing in god can pretty much be objectively debunked by science, history, or philosophy. that 1 remaining reason would simply be that god can not be disproved--which is true. but this concession that god can't be disproved doesn't even begin to explain it, let alone provide justification for the tenants of modern christianity.
but is it okay for you, with everything you know, to still play that supernatural lottery game and come out a winner? i think, considering all, you wouldn't be an immediate threat--no doubt your output into society might be as beneficial or detrimental as a non-believers might be. that's assuming you respected our constitution, didn't evangelize your faith to others, and let your children make their own choices regarding the matter.
but as i always harp on, i think your potential could be all the greater if only you pulled out that little thorn in your toe and accepted what is most likely the most probable perspective of the universe and our roles within it (or lack thereof). religion belongs to the dark ages of our history--many of its positives easily replaced and improved upon by non-theism, and all others simply debunked by modern science and moral philosophy.
i think it's probably a matter of time before this is concluded by all--and statistically, atheism is climbing. would the world be a better place without religion? in a word, yes.
4 comments:
First of all, thank you for the honor of having entire posts dedicated to my questions. ;-)
That being said, it looks as though we're back to that monolithic, static picture of religion that you seem to still be stuck on, coupled with a literalistic reading of the Scriptures that gives everything equal value no matter when it was written, both perspectives that religions in general clearly have not always held to historically. And I’m not denying that there have and continue to be fundamentalizing or ideologizing trends here and there that take precisely the above points of view. I’m just saying it most definitely isn’t always the case when you really look at history. So I have to continue asking, why don’t you think religion can develop and progress like everything else in human culture that you’re willing to accept? Why must religion, according to your “scientific” criterion, remain relegated to this absolutizing nature, when historically, it most certainly has not always been that?
And I don’t have a problem with not having a clear line always drawn between where “religion [revelation?] ends and your own thoughts begin,” because this is how things are in life, even in science. Everything is perspectival, mediated by symbols and language and experience drawn from human consciousness. Everything. Yet this doesn’t mean that there isn't development and further clarity over time concerning the various ways in which this is so, both in religion, science, and all other areas of human life (though more often than not it seems that this clarification comes primarily not from some logical process like the scientific method, but instead merely a conscious realization of changes in our own lived experiences in contrast to those of our predecessors). Anyway, I’m also not sure if any major theologians (at least in Christianity) have ever thought that the Christian scriptures, for example, were some sort of pure revelation, void of any human influence. Fundamentalists, on the other hand…
To answer your question then, no, religion is not necessarily merely an insurance policy. As far as I can tell, it seems perfectly reasonable why religion has and can continue to change and develop.
[And an aside, I really wish people (both religious and non-religious) would realize that Pascal’s wager never was intended to be some absolute, end all, bottom line proof or reason in and of itself for how people ought to live and believe in God. I can understand people like Voltaire not seeing this, since they lived at a time when the full intentions of Pascal’s never finished project were less clear. For such misunderstandings to continue nowadays though is disappointing. And I’m not saying Pascal is necessarily wholly convincing, but merely that the “bet” was only meant to be one small part of his larger Apologia.]
Now, a couple more of your statements…
i suppose in terms of your question, i can't say i would be against skepticism, but i find it curious that through all of it, you could still hook your star to an implausible celestial being.
Implausible to you. I suppose somewhere down the road we’ll have to further discuss just why you thinks a divine being is so implausible. I’ve raised questions several times now though concerning the criticisms you give suggesting implausibility and how they all seem to be critiques of fundamentalist versions of religion. Perhaps a good avenue for further discussion will be to continue examining whether this is the case.
9 out of 10 reasons people give for believing in god can pretty much be objectively debunked by science, history, or philosophy. that 1 remaining reason would simply be that god can not be disproved--which is true. but this concession that god can't be disproved doesn't even begin to explain it, let alone provide justification for the tenants of modern christianity.
Again, more flighty statements about your opinions on issues, which is fine, but those alone won’t convince anyone in a discussion.
but is it okay for you, with everything you know, to still play that supernatural lottery game and come out a winner? i think, considering all, you wouldn't be an immediate threat--no doubt your output into society might be as beneficial or detrimental as a non-believers might be. that's assuming you respected our constitution, didn't evangelize your faith to others, and let your children make their own choices regarding the matter.
First of all, I repeat, it’s a lottery game from your perspective. From my vantage point, you appear to be grossly oversimplifying the real situation we’re in.
Secondly, I’ll respect the constitution, but I’d really like to hear more of your thoughts on the other two issues. For example, supposing I were to evangelize to grown, rational adults, what’s really so bad about that? Can’t we have a reasonable discussion, like way doing right now in response to your own evangelizing? As for children, assuming they’re your own, what’s wrong with raising them up in your faith, especially if you were really teaching them to be critical, presenting them with all of the issues being brought up here and more?
As for the rest of your points that followed, they’re simply more of your opinions on matters that as far as I can tell, deserve much more discussion before being so nonchalantly shrugged aside.
And I hope we're not being too redundant, though I fear we (or at least I) might be. Does anyone want to review and crosscheck the discussion on Justin's blog for me? ;-)
Here's some interesting food for thought on modern fundamentalism (by the way, my blog will never get going again at this rate -- this was supposed to be one of my new posts on there):
Has anyone else ever found it peculiar that the only people that give really narrow literalistic readings of religious ideas tend to be the fundies and the anti-religious nontheists? Why is this so? Well, what if fundamentalism as we know it today was largely a product of modern times too? This isn't to say there hasn't been close minded and uncritical thinking in the past, but merely that the particularly nasty forms of it which we have today (despite vasts amounts of evidence to the contrary of their beliefs) are actually the results of modernity's one-sided approach to reality.
Here's the theory from Karen Armstrong, though I've read and heard similar ideas in the past from other people as well (for example, the political philosopher Eric Voegelin comes to mind). The following comes from the Wikipedia article for her:
Central to her reading of history is the notion that premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos was concerned with meaning; it "provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal." Logos, on the other hand, dealt with practical matters. It forged ahead, elaborating on old insights, mastering the environment, and creating fresh and new things. Armstrong argues that modern Western society has lost the sense of mythos and enshrined logos as its foundation. Mythical narratives and the rituals and meanings attached to them have ceded authority to that which is rational, pragmatic and scientific - but which does not assuage human pain or sorrow, and cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. However, far from embarking on a wholesale rejection of the modern emphasis in favour of the old balance, the author contends, religious fundamentalists unwittingly turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalism is a child of modernity, and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern.
What does everyone (i.e. Steve) think?
...what’s wrong with raising [children] up in your faith, especially if you were really teaching them to be critical, presenting them with all of the issues being brought up here and more?
i like everything here except for the "faith" part. teaching children to be critical and open-minded is a good thing. but i have a feeling that the faithful, even in their best efforts to teach critical thinking, will always massage the children back towards their own dogmas...a strategy fox news tends to deploy to appear "balanced" by asking loaded questions.
Has anyone else ever found it peculiar that the only people that give really narrow literalistic readings of religious ideas tend to be the fundies and the anti-religious nontheists?
my explanation is this. non-theists do not hold a spiritual perspective towards holy books. many secular perspectives of holy doctrine are historical, some literary, and others philosophical, but by no means exclusively cynical or distempered.
secularists can understand why spiritualists would rather argue that "this bad thing here is actually metaphorical," particularly if you want to make god appear to be a consistent ethical figure. if there is one thing i can say about the character of god, it is that he seems very literary and man-made. if that helps the claim that some of the bad bits are actually false, then so be it, but it most certainly doesn't help if you want to say the thing is true.
fundamentalism, on the other hand, while you might often concede it being dangerous and embarrassing for religion, takes a literal approach that i can understand much better than the alternative you might rather endorse.
that alternative seems to be one that cherry-picks over the doctrine, and molds what they like and what they don't like into a world-view that is best compatible with their secular perspective, all the while enjoying some fleeting comfort that there is no such thing as death. rather than explore science and technology, they can easily answer with authority that all is "god-made" and needs no explanation (and often, the physical explanation is actually evil.) callous it may sound, yet often appears to be the consensus i witness when interacting with the faithful.
i wish to also note that it makes no difference whether a particular event in the bible is supposed to be taken literally, or metaphorically. the message is still intact, so how else should we take it?
take the story of sodom and gomorrah. lot's wife, when leaving the city, disobeys god's instruction to look upon the carnage of the city's demise, but she does, and as result, is turned into a pillar of salt.
does taking an event such as this, say, metaphorically, make it even the slightest more acceptable? i doubt it. again, the message is intact, regardless.
now clearly, i do not believe it happened, nor does anyone else, (except for maybe your occasional fundamentalist as you claim), so it is impossible to take a narrow literalistic approach from a historic or scientific approach.
nonetheless, metaphorically, or whatever shoestring attitude i might have towards the old testament, you can still receive a message, or else why bother at all?
and in my humble opinion, the message is not one i would ever subject my children to.
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