Carnival of the Godless #32 is available for reading. Once you've read through all that, there's also a somewhat interesting theistic point of view to consider. The author quotes Pascal:
Let the skeptics first learn what religion is before attacking it. If religion boasted that it offered a clear vision of God, and if it asserted that there was ample evidence of his existence, then the skeptic could simply argue that the evidence is not conclusive. But religion says the opposite. It recognizes that people are in darkness, remote from God, that God is hidden from their understanding. Yet it proclaims that God has given signs for those who truly seek him with their hearts. Thus the skeptics could only successfully attack Christianity if they themselves had sincerely sought God, and failed to find any signs.
He takes the claim that God is remote and difficult to know in a curious direction…as an indictment of the so-called 'spiritual' leaders who offer simplistic recipes derived from their religious absolutism.
For the fact is, most of those who set themselves up as religious or spiritual authorities in that country [the US], especially in the Christian religion, are just quacks. Fundamentalists are to real spiritual leaders as creationists are to real scientists—in fact, that's why fundamentalists and creationists overlap so profoundly. They're a big happy coterie of quackery.
I agree (no one is surprised, I'm sure). But I don't think the author goes far enough. If gods are murky and nearly unknowable, with no clear evidence for them, why believe in them at all? We shouldn't trust the charlatans who define Christian behavior so sharply, but why then should we trust any assertion about the nature of any gods, including the claim that there is no "clear vision" of them? Throw out the whole business of god-belief, I say.
As for that concluding bit that says that skeptics who claim to have sought gods and failed to find them had not sought them "sincerely", well, that's simply the old No True Scotsman fallacy. Why is it that everything I've read of Pascal's theology suggests that it was painfully simple-minded (I could bring up Pascal's Wager, the worst argument for gods ever, but I'll spare you)? The CotG is much more satisfying.
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"As for that concluding bit that says that skeptics who claim to have sought gods and failed to find them had not sought them 'sincerely', well, that's simply the old No True Scotsman fallacy."
It obviously bears some relation to the NTS fallacy, but I'm not sure it's quite the same thing. It's an effort to play mind reader and impute dishonesty to anyone who claims to have looked for God and found him to be absent. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a Christian fundamentalist who let slip his belief that no one could REALLY be an atheist. That, and previous discussions with him in which he distinguished the religious fervor of Christians from that of Muslims, suggested to me that he believed those who rejected Christianity to be engaging in an intentional act of self-deception--and so to be without excuse when God finally reckoned up the accounts.
I'm groping tentatively to this conclusion: it differs from an example of the NTS fallacy because the person arguing in this way is not shifting ground. He thinks that skeptics and believers in other faiths are liars, or self-deluded, from the get go.
Fuck Blaise Pacal. Right now I want to grab a fucking TUNING-FORK and jam it through his eyeballs.
Nothing pisses me off more then being told that my own inner life is incomplete and that I'd have the answers I sought if I just looked a little harder.
Okay, I want to fucking know why god screwed over the Native Americans so much. So I prayed about it. god told me he is a monster; That his goal is to streatch the arms of the cross around the universe, and then constrict and crush until there is nothing left but him and extensions of himself that were once snetient beings.
This may seem odd for a rationalist atheist type, but I am actually very strongly effected by religious ceremonies. Sometimes I go to church with my mom to keep her company when my brother can't go, and last time I was literally brought to tears by the idea of this horrible monster corrupting the earth.
So I get really fucking pissed when people tell me the only reason I could be an atheist is because I don't give credence to religious experience, and that I haven't really ever tried to talk to god.
Fuck, I even asked once on the Raving Atheist message board what I was doing wrong that the answers to my prayers. I said, "Hey, let's accept for a second the premise that anyone who has truly sought god will find him. Obviously, since I haven't found god, there must be a problem with my seeking methodology. How should I change it?"
The christians who post there basically figured I was yanking their chain, said as much, and refused to answer.
It really bothers me that when Christians have an emotional church experience,I'm supposed to take it as gospel (Pardon the pun), but when I have an emotional church experience it's because there's something wrong with me. In fact, my negative experience demonstrates that there's something so inherently wrong with me that I'm not worth talking to. Obviously, I must be lying, must be some non-believer trying to trap them with some stupid hypothetical, because had I been sincerely seeking, I would've found another answer, QED.
My atheism is partly a result of a scientific worldview. But even if we accept Pascal's assertion that evidence is secondary to Christianity, I'd still be an atheist.
After all, in church, I see a horrible Lovecraftian monster. Others see a being whose love knows no boundries. Still others don't see YHWH at all, but see Vishnu or Tezcatlipoca. The question then is, how can we synthesize these viewpoints into a coherent whole? After all, there is no reason to accept my experience as less valid then a Christians.
And I've come to the conclusion that Christianity can't account for all those differing experiences. It simply declares some to be wrong and warns its followers not to think about them. This is true even of liberal Christians, who will refuse to condemn either the religious experiences of others or the First Commandment.
we should sacrifice virgins in the morning to make sure the sun will shine,
Which religion? Which version of God? There are so many. And many religions actually do assert that there is ample evidence of God's existence. The expanding variety of versions of god(s) is not an argument in favor of an underlying truth to the notion.
There is a school of spiritual seeking that recognizes the utter futility of... spiritual seeking! Either at some point you will achieve a snap realization of everything (maybe though unlikely achieving oneness with everything) or you will be left wallowing in Sansara...
People spend years with zen masters sitting in painful positions having their wrists smacked by zen masters and told to stop asking stupid questions like "when will I find enlightenment?"
It is certainly a fair point to say that religion itself can be studied scientifically (either from the inside or the outside), and indeed, it is not a fair point to smugly dismiss religion (just as it is not a fair point for religious hacks to fundamentally dismiss science, having not bothered to study it).
But ultimately, in the most profoundly spiritual religious contexts (zen, Hinduism, legitimate Kabbalistic Judaism, Sufism, Gnostic Christianity, etc.) it is recognized that few may ever "achieve God" in the way envisioned by Pascal...
Just as few achieve... much of anything.
Well, gee: this atheist was a Christian for...(counts on fingers, runs out; removes socks and shoes, runs out of toes....resorts to more modern arithmetical technology)....28 years plus a few months. Did the Fundamentalist thing, did the liberal thing, poked around in some odd corners. Guess somehow I never really, truly, sincerely sought God in all that time. *yawn*
My experience with atheists and religion here in boston (i am a college student) extends primarily to roman catholis. Now they aren't particular as adle brained as "Focus On the Family's" James Dobson, but the revivalist mentality found in my university's own Newman house gives me the willies. Basically its the catholic faither in its more conservative inclination fused with an odd 19th century evangelism.
How do I know this, being an atheist myself? I would go to the Newman house every tuesday for free spaghetti dinner. Even religion will not keep me from free food! Also am a survivor of 13 years of parochial education.
Basically, I agree PZ's posting, most especially the first sentance. I find far to many atheists around campus that hate christianity, but have no experience with it. Maybe what I see is more indicative of college students then atheists. BLARGH!
'I find far to many atheists around campus that hate christianity, but have no experience with it'
This is a statement I find odd.First It is possible to hate a religion based on how they percieve it's actions. Second, there is no one in the USA who has no experience with it in one form or the other.
To suggest that an atheist who sees no evidence for any religion must 'try' a religion to be critical of it's claims is simply false. In some ways being removed from a religion allows one to see it's claims more clearly. Such as when one religion looks at another. Christians don't try Islam before commenting on it. And vice-versa.
This is like those people who say you have to really study the whole Bible in depth in order to argue that it's not the complete and true Word of God.
I can never get over thinking the motive for such a suggestion is akin to that of a drug dealer who might say "Here, try some heroin for a while to see if you like it."
Can I get in on the action? How about:
But PaulCism says the opposite. It recognizes that people are clueless, remote from PaulC, that PaulC's monopoly on truth is hidden from their understanding. Yet it proclaims the PaulC will reveal the answer to all who send him a non-refundable payment of $1000. Remember, this payment is non-refundable, but don't worry, you will not need a refund because the truth will be revealed as a result of this simple payment. Please ignore all those people demanding refunds. They... ermm... are just lying. Trust me.
Payment should be in small bills, preferably 20s. Sorry, no personal checks.
Yeah, I wonder about that too. Who in this country has no experience with Christianity?
On the opposite hand, there are plenty of Christians who have no experience with atheism, because they have driven the atheists in their region into the closet. The absolute nonsense they attribute to atheism (e.g. a person can't be moral without Big Bubba looking down on him from the sky) is indication of this.
There's a deep division between the 'God of the Philosophers' and the 'God of the People'. If Pascal and other apologists would acknowledge that all those Christians out there are not really worshipping the same God, it would not help his case.
There are 5.something billion people on earth who believe in a god or gods. I posit that consequently there exist at least 5.something billion gods. I use the term "exist" to mean that at least conceptually these gods are real to the minds manifesting them.
All this to say that no two humans, try as they might, believe in exactly the same god. Even a pair of twin daughters of a Baptist preacher will have two variations of the god-meme in their brain.
An atheist can say he does not believe in any gods. This may be true. Or, he may simply be angry at the one concept of god he is envisioning.
In any case an agnostic can honestly say that at least he does not believe in your god. None of your gods, each and all, in that if a god or gods exist, absolutely no one can have a "true" conception of such a thing.
Whole groups of people delude themselves into thinking they all agree on their god-concept, and as far back as history has recorded, they will kill over it. Imagine that.
'This may be true. Or, he may simply be angry at the one concept of god he is envisioning.'
Can't be mad at what one thinks doesn't exist. That doesn't make any sense.
The old scholastic philosophy had a meaningful place for a God concept. For a while it looked like the mechanical world view that came after it was even more favorable since thinking of the world as a tool or device naturally implies a fabricator, but serious thinkers like Pascal recognized that the emptiness of this vision. In fact I think it can be argued that the spiritual exertions of such men resulted in the discovery of the absence of God, which, quite understandably, they interpreted religiously. Christianity for such men is like a solenoid. It has no core but it still exerts a powerful attraction.
I think DJ may be refering to the kind of "atheist" who is just claiming the mantle of atheist before returning to their religion of origin, not someone who actually lacks belief in any sort of god.
Turn it around - make the believres do the work - they claim (their version of) god exists - well then ...
1.No god can be detected - OR - God is not detectable
2. All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition.
3.All religions have been made by men.
4.Prayer has no effect on third parties.
5.All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.
Right - prove all 5 of those false, or go forth and multiply - otherwise known as sex and travel - or even F*ck off!
I haven't read most of the canivals so I'm not sure if this ever made it, but it's the single best resource on the topic I've seen: Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide to Christianity. Deep and thorough. Its index.
So lets see:
1. Religion says evidence of God will be hard to find.
2. Athiests haven't found any evidence of God yet.
3. Therefore, God exists.
Wow. With logic like that, I guess I'll have to convert.
No matter what one thinks of the validity of Pascal's Wager, it certainly isn't an argument for the existence of gods (as you say) but rather an argument for the value of belief to the believer. Those are quite different things.
I know it's kind of odd to suggest this, but maybe the christian nutballs have an easier time dealing with 'the masses' because the intellectual price of entry, the "buy-in," is so cheap. "God loves us and forgives us etc etc etc.," while bad logic, is pretty simple to explain to grown ups and children alike. It fits in a sentence. Where's our sentence (other than "to spend our lives toiling despite rampant ignorance")? Ignore the religious/science debate for a second, and pretend we're presenting our ideas in a vacuum. How do we teach 30 year olds, or 15 year olds, or even 7 year olds to think practically?
So far, the best I've got is to start with theories ("hypothesis" is too many syllables): "Science is made up of theories that can be tested and proven right or wrong, and the longer the testable theory lasts under scrutiny, the more it can be relied on."
Then what? Maybe elucidate each bit by adding a few more ideas, but keeping the terms relatively simple. "Every step in science has to be written down. We make a new theory using reason to describe something. We describe a test of that theory with a list of reasoned methods. We describe what we observe as the results of the test, or evidence. Theories are compared to each other using the strength of their reason, the strength of the test methods, and the strength of the evidence."
So a basic idea, an expansion of those ideas, and then...more expansion? Conclusion? We have to use the same vocabulary. "A tested theory that seems strong enough can have other theories based on it, and theories based on those, and so on. Because each theory has to describe something in our world, the more reliable theories we describe, the more we can say we know about the world. Even if we can never know everything, we can keep learning."
Why don't we have something simple enough to describe to other people? As scientists, shouldn't we be testing methods of teaching to find a basic description of science that is both true and simple to transmit?
Jason Powers, I think I see where you are coming from (I think), and you do hit on the problem of communication. Most laypeople don't understand the scientific method (in spite of the fact most school children are taught, or should be taught, about it). In terms of science vs. the general public's understanding of science, one major stumbling block is the use of the term "theory" in science vs. the use of the term "theory" by the general public. Maybe we need a term that hasn't been co-opted by the general public to mean "an idea I haven't yet tested" when to scientists the term theory means "an idea that has been tested rigorously over and over again from every possible angle and it still explains the phenomena we observe". Because the public defines "theory" as the scientist defines hypothesis, it is easy for the general public to dismiss the theory of evolution (or any scientific theory, for that matter) as "just a theory".
From the article linked to by PZ:
An excellent point, and one I wholeheartedly agree with. We should be open-minded and consider a view fairly before rejecting it. Therefore, it's only right to ask the author of that article how many pro-atheism books he's read before deciding he was not an atheist.
Not just how many pro-atheism books, but how sincerely he tried to embrace the atheist position.
Any Christian who claims to have been an atheist was No True Atheist.
Yet it proclaims that God has given signs for those who truly seek him with their hearts. Thus the skeptics could only successfully attack Christianity if they themselves had sincerely sought God, and failed to find any signs.
...suggested to me that he believed those who rejected Christianity to be engaging in an intentional act of self-deception--and so to be without excuse when God finally reckoned up the accounts.
I have said it before, and it bears repeating: this notion ("the truth is self-evident, and if you don't believe as I do, then you are surely deceiving yourself") is one of the ugliest memes ever crafted by human intelligence. It creates a breeding ground for the twin vices of paranoia and hubris, it engenders dogmatism and ignorance (because it denies the possibility of learning from others), and it is the first thing which should be annihilated in any attempted cultural Enlightenment.
Pointing out that friends can honestly disagree on the issue in question is, as far as I know, the surest way of effecting this annihilation.
"Any Christian who claims to have been an atheist was No True Atheist."
PZ says it the way I meant it when I said an atheist either doesn't believe in any gods, "Or, he may simply be angry at the one concept of god he is envisioning."
There are true atheists, and there are those who claim to have been atheists and changed their minds. In which case, really they were just pissed at the version of God dwelling in their minds in the first place and finally settled down and saw it from another perspective. Replaced that God with a more palatable version.
They were No True Atheists. I've met a great number of them. In fact, it appears to be a great storytelling device, this anecdotal miracle of converting from atheism to Christianity. The True Believers just eat it up.
Squeaky, you're correct that theory is already an overloaded term. Hypothesis is the most accurate one I can think of, but it isn't plain enough: most people say 'I have an idea' rather than 'I have a hypothesis'. While the word 'hypothetica' is used in my workplace every day, I'm (luckily) surrounded by medical researchers and biostatisticians who can barely be bothered to explain themselves to each other, never mind the religious types we like to pretend don't exist here in Boston (even if some of the crazier Christian sects were founded here in the distant past).
As a child I lived in some right-wing parts of the country (including Klan territory!), I've attended (and was asked to stop attending) religious schools, and as a complete atheist I always felt bad for the kind of pathetic education these people offered their children. Now I'm 30 and their children live off in Cracker Barrel, Florida, vote for the same disingenuous tools and donate money to the same evangelists as their parents. Not once during my life have I ever found any viable method of teaching one of them how science works, and the science education I recieved in both public and private schools seemed a poor way to go about it.
Basically if you are equally unmotivated to understand science and religion, the barrier to entry is much lower for religion than science. I think we should at least take the time to be competitive. Even if it's baby talk to us, figuring out how to relay the principles of practical reason to an elementary school child would go a long way towards cutting down the religious noise in this culture twenty years down the road.