Atheists need to lighten up

this is a great post from Mormon author Orson Scott Card:

link

He hits the nail on the head wrt this new brand of atheistic Jihadism. Here's a choice quote:

"Let zealous atheists behave as we do. Send out your missionaries to teach any who are willing to listen. But don't deliberately seek occasions to offend others when nothing is at stake; and willingly admit whatever good things others believe in and do."

Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris would be wise to heed this motto. They come off as unbearably strident, intolerant, and arrogant in their beliefs and attitudes. 'Smarter-than-thou' is no better than Holier-than-thou. As Card says, it's faith (in Science) without charity.

What atheists need to do is understand that while they may have a good grasp of modern science, they have no particular advantage when it comes to answering the need people have for meaning, and they offer excruciatingly cold comfort for those in need of solace in the face of suffering.

We (atheists and agnostics) will not convince the rest of the world that they no longer need the crutch of blind faith unless we address these deep issues somehow. I've argued before that the main reason some intellectual types who one might expect to "know better" than to believe patently mythical tracts, often have an unacknowledged agenda. Orson Scott Card alludes to it in this passage:

"Even if every word they said happened to be true, why do they assume that society or individuals would somehow be better, or better off, if their favorite doctrines were universally held? Why shouldn't atheists assume that people ignorant enough to believe in gods, devils, angels, heaven and hell are actually happier and should be left alone?"

Think about what he's saying here. The fundamental argument is that the truth of the matter is not what is most important. He's explicitly acknowledging that even if there was incontrovertible evidence that religion was wrong, we might still be better off believing it. That's a pretty interesting comment from someone who professes to believe in a religion that many people find quite incredible. I don't mean to question Card's faith: I'm simply pointing out that by his own admission, objective truth is not as important as the overall impact on society that religion brings.

If you dig deeper into the writings of religious intellectuals, you see many comments of this nature. Their main thrust usually comes down to this: lack of religion leads to moral degeneration. They point to the eugenic practices of the Nazis (Card erroneously calls them atheist; they were nominally Christian, though it's pretty clear that was a cynical sop to the populace. Their driving ideology was of course Nietzschian, "God is Dead", we are our own gods, etc)

The real fear I think these people have about atheism is a legitimate one. If we throw off the shackles of religion and tradition, where will we find our 'moral compass'? What will keep us from 'playing God', in the worst way -- ala Nazi racism and eugenics, or the indiscriminate disregard of life shown by non-religious leaders such as Stalin or Pol Pot?

I've written before about how I think these issues need to be addressed. Despite claims to the contrary, science *does*, I believe, have something to say about these issues. It's a complex argument, and not nearly as satisfying as simply saying "it has been written". Maybe it could be reduced to a 10-commandments-style set of soundbytes. Or, more likely, Youtube clips.

Merry, merry, quite contrary!

Lies, Damn Lies, and parenting

excellent essay about how we raise kids:

http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html

The irony is, Paul has no kids of his own. However, he just got married, so perhaps his agile mind is applying itself to the question of how to square this eternal circle. Good luck with that!

windows '98 forever?

I don't agree with everything Sam Harris says, but this is a funny quote, and I happen to think it's quite true:

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

— Sam Harris, The End of Faith

no atheists in foxholes; no believers in the ER?

this was an interesting, sad piece. Warning: tears may be jerked.

link

In case you don't want to read the whole thing, here's the punchline:

''If God is nothing more than an intangible concept that motivates our hearts—a synonym for "love" and "kindness"—He is more powerful than I ever imagined as a believer.''

Ben Stein's Ideology

from an article on Ben Stein, regarding his movie "Expelled":

Ultimately, it seems that Stein - who is preparing to make another documentary, one which he predicts will be even more controversial than Expelled and make Americans in particular go crazy - is more interested in morality than in the scientific process, focused more on questions of religion than the nitty-gritty of cell structure.

"It's incredibly important to treat people as human beings with a spark of the divine instead of as lumps of mud," he said, finishing his tea, "because if we're all just lumps of mud who happen to have been struck by lightening [sic] then there's no moral duty incumbent upon us to treat anyone with respect. But if there's a little bit of God within each of us, then there is that duty."

(source: http://www.nationalpost.com/rss/story.html?id=608574)


This is a very revealing comment. It lends weight to a theory I have developed, which is that there exists a class of intellectual, conservative-leaning intellectuals who style themselves as religious and God-fearing, but who are really not all that different from the intellectual snobs on the left who attempt to control public discourse through concepts such as political correctness and cultural relativism. The thinking in both cases is the same: I know what's really going on, but the unwashed masses are not smart enough, educated enough, or motivated to think about things deeply enough to be trusted to form their own opinion. Therefore, we need to feed them a simplified world view that is easy to digest, and causes them to think and behave in a fashion that we find acceptible.

Of course there is an element of truth to this conceit. People in general are herd animals; they exhibit a strong tendency towards group-think. Putting aside the issue of 'native intelligence', most people are in fact too preoccupied with the challenges of daily life to work out the implications of Kant's categorical imperative on their own. Easier to tell them that Heaven awaits them if they're good, and Satan will punish them for eternity if they're bad. It's an intellectual form of noblesse oblige -- the condescension of self-appointed superiority. You see it also on the left, in the guise of political correctness, cultural relativism, and 'expertology'. In both cases, the urge is to cut off discussion, and replace thinking for oneself with acceptance of dogma that serves the purposes of those who would like to impose their ideology on the world.

Will this always be true?

Don't scare the children

I was at a friend's house the other day, and I saw a book on the table, titled "My First Book about God". One of his children is 4, so I assumed (rightly) this book was for her. We had never talked about religion before, so this was one of those awkward moments -- the kind I never leave alone. I know him well enough that I was pretty sure he wasn't a fundamentalist or hard-core evangelist type. After a few gentle questions, the following facts came out:

* He's somewhere between atheist and agnostic

* He and his wife used to do some low-key Episcopal type church-going, but it dropped off

* His mom sent the book for her granddaughter

* He's going to give the book to his daughter, because it's the right thing to do

So my question was, why would you impose a belief system on your child that you don't even believe yourself? The answer was instructive. Aside from grandparent pressure and social norms (we live in a community that is probably among the most 'secular' in the US, there would be no social pressure at all) the real reason he won't tell his daughter what he actually believes is that it is simply too depressing.

He asked me to imagine the following conversation. Say one of his or his wife's parents died (God forbid). Can you say to a 4-year-old, "Grandma died, and that's all there is to it. She's gone forever. Her body will decompose, and everything that made Grandma Grandma will fade away with her. Get used to it!" He thinks not. Instead, we say "Grandma has moved to a special place, where she will be happy forever! She really misses you, but one day you will see her again, and everyone will live happily ever after!"

Put that way, the impetus behind humanity's attachment to religion becomes pretty obvious. I've spoken about this before. Here's a paragraph from this blog, from a while ago:

"...Who can explain the death of a mother to a five-year-old, without the urge to give at least a little comfort? Imagine if you will, this scenario in a landscape of unremitting difficulty, disease, death, violence, and random acts of natural destruction. Now subtract all that we have learned in the last few thousand years; go back to a time when everything around us was a complete mystery. Who among us would not see the forces of nature as powerful gods? Who could possibly come up with the idea that the mother's death was meaningless; that the force of her being has simply vanished; that she lived a life (paraphrasing Mark Twain) where she was of no consequence, achieved nothing, where she was a mistake and a failure and a foolishness? Could you say that to your child, even if you believed it with every fiber of your being?"

This is a problem for atheists. It's just a terrible belief system to impose on a child, from a selfish, feel-good perspective. It's philosophical Ferber Method (wiki it). Let the kid cry herself to sleep, knowing that life is meaningless. It's character building!

-ap

Agnostic vs Atheist

aah, it's so bittersweet when someone takes the words right out of your mouth: link

"Here is my position - very briefly. It is important to distinguish between propositions that are false and those that are outside the arena of science. Those ideas that cannot be tested, even in theory, are simply not science, and they are unknowable (I am talking about factual claims, not value judgments).

Unknowable propositions are worse than wrong - they are unnecessary. As I said - deism is unnecessary. That doesn’t mean there is no god - it means that the notion of a god (depending upon how it is conceived, but the basic idea of a being outside the confines of our physical universe and its laws) is simply unknowable. It is simply wrong to say that we can know god does not exist. The only logically consistent position is agnosticism. But you can combine that with the notion that such unfalsifiable claims are unnecessary. If someone chooses to have faith in such a thing, like the FSM, I really don’t care - as long as they keep it pure faith and do not make any logical or empirical claims - that’s cheating.

Regarding the term agnostic - I would rather have the opportunity to explain to people why I am agnostic than to create the other misconception (which is absolutely used as often as possible by believers) that atheists have faith in the non-existence of god. You’re burned either way, and you will have to explain yourself, so don’t shy away from philosophical purism."

Interestingly, this is the same guy who made the comment about the ghost in the machine being dead. Dualism and deism are two different things. However, yet another comment from the original thread interprets Brooks' take on duality in a way that resonates with me:

"...it seems to me that Brooks is advocating higher states of consciousness emerging as epiphenomena, rather than a dual quality of the mind, as implied by your “ghost in the machine” remark."

To me, this is the real mystery. I wholly accept the material nature of existence, and yet I still find it magical. You can have both -- complete materialism (even determinism! more on that one day) -- and yet there is still a fantastic, infinitely rich mystery to the whole thing. It's like the Mandelbrot set -- infinitely complex, yet described by a simple formula. It seems to be an intuition that comes most easily to those who have spent some time thinking about information and computation (ie, computer science and information theory). Perhaps it's just another way of saying things that have been said before, but in a somewhat more scientifically palatable vocabulary.

Something like that.

responses to Brook's Neural Buddhism

this is an interesting blog thread: link

his summary:

"...I see no merger of neuroscience and mysticism. Quite the opposite. The ghost in the machine is long dead and only the machine remains."

The comments are particularly revealing. They repeatedly knock Brooks for supposedly giving succor to dualism. I didn't read his article that way, though in retrospect he was careful to stay on the fence. The 'new atheists' are quite virulent in their disdain for this stance, however. Here's a typical example:

"...So the rogues tell us that you have to be an agnostic if you want to be intellectually honest. Well that’s crap and you know it, rogues. You do live your life as if there were no gods, and for all intents and purposes, IMO, you are atheists. The problem with telling other people you are an agnostic, is that it would in their minds create the illusion that you are undecided - like it’s a 50/50 decision."

So I guess he's saying if I self-identify as Agnostic, I'm betraying the true cause of Atheism. Now that's rich. I'm reminded of the brilliant (as always) South Park episode, where Richard Dawkins wins the war against religion, and 500 years from now the United Atheist Alliance is locked in a battle to the death with the Allied Atheist Allegiance.

Point being, people will always be people. Why can't we all just get along?

What I Believe

(excerpt of comment thread from an earlier post)

Vered said:

"So the thought is that there IS a "higher existence", but religions are just sets of cultural rules and customs that have nothing to do with that higher power?

If so, do you believe that?"

and I answered:

I believe that there are aspects of our existence that transcend what we would naively expect from a perfectly materialistic world. Logically, I don't know how that can be, so the question interests me.

I also believe that all major religions were obviously created by mankind, and are flawed, and to at least some degree cause division and hatred, and someday we will need to move beyond them (in their present forms).

I believe that the 'secular atheist agenda', such as it is, often tries to fight or ignore the fact that people long for meaning in their lives, and treats that longing as a failing. I worry that because of that, people feel forced to choose from a false dichotomy: 'science', with its apparent disregard for the transcendent aspects of existence, or 'religion', which acknowledges those feelings but ties them up with various myths, traditions, and dogma.

I think there's room for something else.

- Artiphys

article on science and religion

I found this to be fascinating:

The Neural Buddhists.

excerpt:

"In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism."

religion as lifestyle

Maybe the reason I'm so bummed about getting older is because our culture is so disposable. You get the feeling sometimes that everything that matters to you has now been declared irrelevant, because the march of trendy fashions has moved on and you left the parade.

I think one of the strongest things that attracts people to religion is the idea of ancient traditions that buck the trend of constant change. The idea that you are thinking thoughts similar (if not identical) to those of your great-great-great-grandfather, sitting in the same pew, hearing the same songs and sentiments -- it's very comforting. Sharing that feeling with a whole community, bigger than your immediate family (who you are of course perpetually annoyed and disappointed with) -- this satisfies a strong craving that seems deeply wired into our subconscious.

When we're younger, there's a similar feeling but it's focused on newness, on defining our generation. New music, new styles, new modes of thought -- we share them with each other, but our parents are shut out. I think that's fine, but it shouldn't mean the other pull -- for continuity, tradition, sense of connection with other generations past and present -- should go by the wayside.

Maybe this is something the "atheist jihad" types don't really understand. Most people feel compelled to practice their faith even when elements of it are obviously intellecutally difficult to defend. Science itself has a long and venerable tradition, and thinking about it, most of my friends who would be categorized as hard-core secularists do in fact have a connection to a tradition -- the tradition of intellecutal pursuit, usually in an academic setting. They are comforted to walk the paths of Harvard, Oxford or Princeton, thinking of the great tradition of intellectual achievement that has gone on there before their time. And of course the celebration of rational discourse and scientific method goes back farther than modern history, to the ancient Greeks, and the 'classical tradition' that was discovered and reanimated in the renaissance. (or something like that, I'm no historian...)

I think this is why the strong-arm approach of the likes of Dennet, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Sam Harris sounds so tone-deaf to me. They argue that even moderate religion is an 'enabler' of fundamentalist thought, because the culture of tolerance keeps moderates from criticizing their less moderate peers. There is some truth in this, but it's not something "wrong with religion", it's a simple moral failing of those particular people.

What *is* 'wrong with religion' (at least some religion) in my mind is that the desire for community and tradition is bound up with ideology and ancient, rationally unsupportable ideas that no longer serve their original purpose. Examples are easy to come by -- sexist and racist attitudes; irrational, unscientific dogma; and an unwholesome attitude of "our people are special, and everyone else is not blessed by our God".

Is it possible to save some of these traditions while jettisoning the parts that don't make sense, and actually cause strife in the world? I'm not sure. Seems like it would be a good thing.

Another approach might be to develop new traditions, that have some familiarity with the old, but are based on ideas that are in sync with what we now know about the world, and with the idea of a global civilization that needs to be at peace, even if it's not a single, uniform one-size-fits-all culture. For that to happen, there will need to be some common agreement on certain moral codes -- it can't be complete moral relativism. That's the failing of extreme liberal secular humanism -- the political correctness of never criticizing anyone's beliefs or values. Some traditions and values can stay, but some just have to go, as painful as that may be to those who wish to hold on to them.

It might seem naive to think this could happen, and I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. However I've noticed that people can often change their allegiance to a new set of traditions and values, *if* they have a compelling reason to do so (such as being in love with someone where adoption of a new tradition is necessary to live in harmony with the extended family).

I once met a lady on a plane who was "shopping for a new religion" (her words, not mine). I think she was Lutheran and her husband was Catholic (or something like that), and they were trying out various churches in their new neighborhood -- Methodist, Presbyterian etc. (by new religion she really meant 'new sect of Christianity'). What struck me was how easily she contemplated the change -- as if it were like choosing a school for her kids, or a new place to shop. I was amused to think of all the saints and martyrs turning in their graves over her easy ability to be blissfully unconcerned about the various doctrinal differences that must have been so deeply divisive way back when, causing schisms, inquisitions, murder and mayhem. But then I thought well, she's not a theologian -- it just doesn't matter to her precisely what her Church believes, because she's not interested in doctrine. For her, it was a social choice -- who her friends would be, who she would be associating with. It occured to me that most people probably treat religion that way -- not as a strict dogma, but as a lifestyle choice.

I actually think that's a good thing.

The Church of Plausible Deniability

now that's a place I would worship.

Here's an interesting link -- a thread by a number of de-converted Christians. Some of their stories are quite moving really:

http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/11/open-thread-4.html

The last line of the last post says it best:

"I stand by my conclusions on the basis of four simple principles: a) There is no evidence for the existence of the supernatural b) the Bible does not appear to be an inspired document c) the nature of the Christian God is contradictory and nonsensical and d) Christianity simply makes more sense as an evolved belief system than it does as a divine revelation[.]"

- Bill1324, ex-believer

the unspeakable

“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now!”

-- Kathy Griffin, award acceptance speech at the Emmys.

E! entertainment cut the clip, refusing to air it. Jesus, doesn't anyone have a sense of humor anymore? It's just a fucking religion. Get over it.