When it comes to religion, I’m more interested in scientific and philosophical questions — Does God exist? Can science say anything about the supernatural? — than in sociological or political ones — Is religion good and or evil?, etc. So there was not much temptation to wade in on Pope Benedict’s recent troubles, or the wider issue of sex scandals in the Catholic Church.
Now, happily, that temptation has dipped to zero, since Phil Plait has done such a good job. Read the whole thing, as they say. Roughly, Phil notes that the Pope seems to be responsible for some very bad things; that he should be brought to justice for any wrong-doings; that there is some relevance to concerns of the skeptical community, insofar as the Church invokes supernatural explanations; but finally, that the strategy should not be simply one of proclaiming superiority and tarring religion as evil and demanding heads on plates. Catholics and other believers, whether we disagree with them or not, are human beings who will understandably be upset and troubled at the recent news. We don’t help to convert them to atheism or naturalism or skepticism by shoving the shortcomings of their leaders in their faces in the midst of a crisis; reason and rational discourse should be more our style. It’s a nuanced argument, which means it’s guaranteed to be misunderstood and caricatured, since even God can’t control the natural impulses of the internet.
Let’s be clear: I want religion to vanish. I think that religious beliefs are wrong, and that the world would be a better place if everyone accepted the real world for what it is. And I believe that many of the actions of the Church when it comes to pedophilia certainly deserve the label “evil,” whatever one might think of the people who perpetrated them.
So the question is, how to bring about the rationalist utopia in which people’s actions are based on reason and reflection rather than faith and hierarchy? I agree with Phil’s answers, as I’ve argued in other contexts. One of the primary tenets of a rationalist philosophy should be that we should be especially skeptical about claims that we want to be true. Our personal preferences don’t have any effect on the truth, so we need to guard against confirmation bias and lazy acceptance of ideas that make us happy. One great example is the idea that we’re going to make the world a better and more rational place by telling everyone how much smarter we are than everyone else, and how evil and stupid our enemies are. The Pope’s recent actions, it seems clear, are some combination of evil and stupid. But now is just not the time for patting ourselves on the back. A lot of people have been deeply hurt, directly or indirectly, and we should be able to show just a modicum of restraint. Not giving up or keeping quiet, but picking our spots. After all, we don’t have to win by being obnoxious — we can win by being right.
April 14th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
This is not the Church vs. the Atheists. I think we should draw stronger lines between being a deist and being a theist. Any scientist who buys into any degree of the anthropic principal is leaving room for a possible deity to exist and have invoked our parochial laws of physics.
That in no way suggests that the human-created precepts of obsolete religions (i.e. the Catholic Church) have any relevance or utility. But while hiding behind the church doesn’t exonerate the pope from prosecution for criminal activity, neither does it obviate the possibility of a god.
April 14th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Couldn’t we set a good example by cleaning up secular power structures that allow the same abuses as have happened in the Church. For example (since ther eare a lot of academics here), cleaning up university disciplinary committees so that they are unable to cover up campus sexual assaults under the guise of sparing victims the trauma of dealing with the police?
If there is not God, then the complex interaction of information control and power asymmetry should produce similar exploitable loopholes in both secular and religious institutions, so skeptical academics ought to be able to lead by example by cleaning their own houses.
April 14th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
As far as my beliefs go, I believe there are conscious beings with much greater size, energy, and ability than the human being (we are not the penultimate embodiment of thought, or love, or ego, soul, etc.), and if one might characterize the grand mystery that is the flower of our universe as God, then yeah, I believe in God. I do not believe Jesus Christ was God any more than I believe myself (a part of) God, nor do I believe any more modern messiah, from Muhammad to B’Hai u’ Allah to Joseph Smith to George Lucas and Obi Wan Kenobi are – because if anything, God is at heart a dualist (and hence, a trio, tetrad on to infinite splits).
That being said, there are some worthwhile moral perspectives in specific religious texts, from parts in the Bible to the I Ching, and others. I believe humanity has taken a good idea, turned it into a belief (like Kevin Smith relates in ‘Dogma’), and in doing so, perverted it into nonsense. Capitalism now suffers the same fate, and it is imperative we start calling a spade a spade! (so no rose by any other name would smell as sweet, you effing Bard!) To this point I agree with Sean that religion confuses the issue at hand.
People are emotionally fragile – we all live in a state of fear – and organizations from the media to the Republicans and Democrats, Catholics, Terrorists, etc., that promulgate fear – should be killed. We should recognize the things that are harming the system of life that exists on this planet, and remove them. For example, Capitalism. It empowers greed (which is evil and bad – no matter how much the wealthy cherish it – sorry folks, you have been infected with an evil virus), and greed kills. Capitalism takes a system of merit exchange, and being unregulated Capitalism here in the West, allows criminals and thieves, frauds and pimps and whores, to usurp the better things in life, which are shared. This is where our selfish (Darwinian?) nature is at odds with goodness. It’s the reason for our existence. We are the drama of the conflict between good and evil, and right now, evil is winning. We need Luke and the science of metaphysics (which I believe exists) to thwart all this bad energy stinking up the joint. The energies are subtle and in the noise floor (sorry to all you non-techies – knowledge is power is truth is good), and so we have yet to find it. When we do, we will be able to manipulate it, as we do other very small things like cells and DNA and microchips and lasers.
So our religion should be science, we seeks truth and knowledge, to better the living system. Sometimes we end up with such power that when controlled by greed-crazied, power-hungry madmen (Sarah Palin?), they become a tool for evil. But it is the person that pulls the trigger; blows up their diapers or shoes; hurts the innocent, and these people are just plain bad. This includes the Wall Street gang, the Banker gang, and the DC gang. So these folks are either with us (and Bill Maher), or ‘agin’ us’ (Glenn Beck, Rush and Sarah); they are either good folk (John Robbins, Jimmy Carter, John Stewart, Maher and Ratigan and the left, and pretty much most of those who don’t have a pot to piss in), or they are the lusting, greedy, fat, “I can’t get enough of it” sons of bitches who have stolen our money and should go to jail.
Barack, you better be listening. And you better watch which side of the line you are dancing on – we know what you are up against, and we’re with you when you fight for us. But right now, it looks awfully lot like you have been bought off and are just patronizing us. That would be a very bad thing to do. The stakes are too high. The pressures are coming to a head, and our history shows us which way the pattern tends to. Now it’s up to YOU. Which side are you on? Now live that, fight for it, and make the world a better place – not just for YOU, but for US. We’re a family – a system – a planet – a universe – a God.
April 14th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
When speaking w/ a religious person, you have to remember that you are speaking to a delusional person who firmly believes that they are perfectly correct and that YOU are the “lost soul”. In fact, they think it’s THEIR Obligation Under God to get YOU to “see the light” and accept Jesus Christ into your heart as Your Personal Savior.
Just how do you get a delusional person to wake up and shake off their delusion?
I knew a man in his 50s who had a near-death experience, brought on by disease. His heart stopped. Once recovered, he stopped going to church. Turns out that when he was “dead” he had no feelings of well-being, saw no fields of ambrosia and had no dead relatives welcoming him “into the light”. He learned that when you die, your dead.
Eliminate the “eternal reward” and the “life after death” and I submit you won’t have any Christians left.
April 14th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Personal Jesus
April 14th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
“One of the primary tenets of a rationalist philosophy should be that we should be especially skeptical about claims that we want to be true. Our personal preferences don’t have any effect on the truth, so we need to guard against confirmation bias and lazy acceptance of ideas that make us happy.”
Quite so. Both naturalists and anti-naturalists should agree that our modes of cognition should, as much as possible, insulate factual claims from the influence of bias, wishful thinking, and other motivational contaminants. If they do not, then we’re at risk of projecting our human hopes and categories onto the world instead of grasping its true nature. Call this the insulation requirement. Meeting this requirement is incumbent on any worldview that purports to represent reality objectively, and thus *applies equally* to naturalism and all varieties of anti-naturalism – theism, supernaturalism, paranormalism, New Age worldviews, etc. The inescapable demand of any claim to objectivity is that we do our level best to separate how we wish things would be from how they actually are.
http://www.naturalism.org/Toogoodtobetrue.htm
April 14th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Whoa, #3! Put the caps back on the Sharpies and open the windows!
April 14th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
“Let’s be clear: I want religion to vanish. I think that religious beliefs are wrong, and that the world would be a better place if everyone accepted the real world for what it is…So the question is, how to bring about the rationalist utopia in which people’s actions are based on reason and reflection rather than faith and hierarchy?”
Except, of course, no human being lives without illusion and irrational thought, as you have so deftly demonstrated…
No, I’m not criticizing the outsized description, but the idea that an ideal person could possibly run on pure rationality. Our emotions exist for the same reasons that myth exist: we cannot possibly know everything (much less what’s around the next corner), so our stereotypes and emotions are our best answer to an uncertain world.
Also…
I find it ironic to herald oneself as a rationalist while saying the most emotional, self-protecting thing I can imagine: making an errant connection between an individual (the pope) and a group of people (all religious people?) because, really, you just irrationally don’t like them. And why do you have to convert them to preserve the world? Isn’t that obviously just you’re own, equally evil religion? I mean, I hope you know people who are able to read between the lines.
April 14th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
As is all too common, Sean has done a better of promoting Phil Plaits’ views than the BA himself. Well done and I couldn’t agree with you more.
April 14th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
To quote Steven Weinberg: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. “
April 14th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
One more quote from Steven Weinberg to counter what I see as some degree of appeasement
being suggested by the last sentence of the blog–
“There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don’t condemn them, but I’m not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
* Closing statements of presentation at w:Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, 2006-11-05
Personally, I think we should be as obnoxious as hell.
April 14th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
[...] Carroll’s helping, too In Useful distinctions on April 15, 2010 at 4:52 am Hear here! “One of the primary tenets of a rationalist philosophy should be that we should be especially [...]
April 14th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
The very notion of cutting the church some slack is to grant it a legitimacy where, I think, none exists. Would you argue the same way if this church were a Satanic cult, believers in Greek gods, followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, worshipers of the easter bunny? This matter is not about being nice to either the pedarists themselves or the organization that, seemingly, went out of it way to hide them away. This matter is about young boys, particularly, who are being savaged and raped by those who claim to be their protectors. No one – no matter what part of society from which they come – would be protected from this behavior, so why should we go soft on those who hide behind the veil of a truly silly belief system?
Crimes have been done. For decades. To the most innocent of our kind. And no quarter should be given. None.
Brad
April 14th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I think that you all sound a bit defensive. If there is nothing to religion, then why are you fighting it so hard? I am not taking either side -I am simply wondering. I believe that a person who has truly found peace with their beliefs has no need to bash any one else’s beliefs. That is not the way to find truth either. Besides, I believe as Gandhi did that there is small bits of truth in every religion and within each person. He said, “I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.” (quoted from Gandhi His Relevance for our Time). I think any person seeking the truth about this world would agree with his statement. Evil things that happen like the situation with the pope are terrible -especially when they come from a “spiritual leader” or someone who at least pretends to be striving for morality.
Also, another thought to ponder… I propose that whatever you believe is a sort of religion. If you are christian then your reality is that God is the Creator and that you have a loving Father in heaven, if you are atheist then your reality is that when you die you return to dust and that this life is all that there is. If you believe in reincarnation then you believe that you are forever working to become better so that you will be blessed in the next life. All of these beliefs are based on what your personal experience has been and your personal interpretation of those experiences. But, the one common theme is that all of them are based on faith. Like Descartes we must strip past everything we have been taught and everything we “know” and ask fundamental questions about who we are and what this world is and maybe even if we exist or not (I’m joking). But, truly what do you know? Really nothing. We were not here when the big bang occurred or whenever/however this world was made. We don’t know how it happened. All we can do is interpret data and look for clues. The same is true of spirituality or of what you believe about the world. One must simply interpret the data. And, I think that no matter how obvious the data seems there is always room for error because quite simply we don’t know it all nor will we ever. Besides if there is a higher being than us why do we think that we could ever completely understand it or put him/she/it in a box or ever be able to define it?
April 14th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
On conflating “restraint” with “appeasement,” and the Ratchet of Hate…
There was once a completely irrational, totally evidence-less worldview that was nonetheless overtly infecting our society. It required no facts, no evidence, to hold – in fact, the facts and evidence contradicted it, yet this worldview was widel…
April 15th, 2010 at 12:46 am
“If there is nothing to religion, then why are you fighting it so hard?”
Because we’re surrounded by religious people and imagery, because we are marginalized by both political parties who explicitly pander to the religious, because many people equate atheism with immorality, because many of the religious try to destroy science education (e.g., Texas school board), because we’ve had relationships end because the other person couldn’t stand that we were atheists, etc.? (I’m speaking of the US.) Oh, and many of us are educators (professionally and otherwise), and one of our primary goals is to explain reality to people.
“I propose that whatever you believe is a sort of religion.”
Yes, we’ve all heard that before. And you are wrong. The scientific epistemology is fundamentally different from any religion. Yes, we can’t disprove Last Thursdayism (or occasionalism), but that doesn’t make science a religion.
“Besides if there is a higher being than us why do we think that we could ever completely understand it or put him/she/it in a box or ever be able to define it?”
This seems like an odd question to ask atheists, who have never claimed to be able to do such a thing. (We have asked people to explain what difference the presence or absence of a god would make. I’ve seen no real answer.) Please go ask religious people this question.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:02 am
As a non-Catholic, I ordinarily would not pay any attention to the Catholich Church. Unfortunately, I can’t not pay attention. It opposes legal abortion. It opposes birth control. It threatens to excommunicate or deny communion to politicians who do not do what it wants. It attacks divorce laws (I live in a officially secular Catholic country in Europe). It expects national goverments to pay it money to keep it running. It controls national monuments constructed centuries ago and charges obsecene prices to visit them. It cooperates with dictators (Franco and Salazar, in Spain and Portugal, come to mind as two easy, not so distant, examples). The list goes on.
And then one must add that it protects and facilitates pederasty (rape! let’s call it what it is) and denies the authority of civil law. It is the last thing that is fundamentally the problem with the Catholic Church. It does not respect civil authority.
Such an institution, in this case the oldest and largest continually extant human institution, cannot be ignored.
The law ought to be such that church administrators who knowingly protect known (even convicted) child molesters, are themselves committing a crime. I don’t enter into that these men (they are all men) pretend to be arbiters of morality, constantly haranguing politicians for proposing laws that don’t coincide with their notions of morality, all the while rationalizing and preserving the degenerates their own infrastructure supports. The only rational explanation for what happened in Boston, L.A., Ireland, Poland, etc. has always been that men high up in the Catholic Church’s administrative hierarchy are directly implicated in shielding the perpetrators from civil authority (at the least). Recent documentary evidence has confirmed this explanation.
This has nothing to do with what one things about religion, or even the poorly named Catholic religion. Any large institution actively confronting civil authority is a menace to the public order, much more so when the particular confrontation turns on protection of child rapists. The Catholic church imposes itself on me, so I have no choice but to fight back. It should be denied public funding. It should be denied exemption from taxation. It should be treated as the sectarian, political, anti-democratic, anti-civil institution that it is.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:37 am
Proof by analogy: religious people have done bad things, so religion is evil. People in the comments here should stop making that mistake.
Also, this from Phil Plaits’ post:
“[...]then again the perpetrators need to be hauled in front of a tribunal, and, if found guilty, they get to find out first hand how child molesters are treated in prison.”
What happens to prisoners in american prisons is a disgrace. Child molesters have rights too, whether you like it or not. Suggesting they are to be beaten and raped is plain evil. So many people state this off hand as if it is normal, it really annoys me.
(I’m pretty sure I agree with the rest of his post, but this bit just got to me)
April 15th, 2010 at 2:19 am
Some constants =>human doesn’t say much about religion. Some kind of number voodoo?
Human exists, so are the constants? That is just a problem.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:16 am
Well said 14. The problem here is an organisation has made a concerted effort to shield people from the authorities and cover up their crimes. It is ones duty to cause an outcry against these people and ask for them to be brought to task for their crimes and for aiding and abetting these crimes. It doesn’t matter what religion or lack of religion is held by the persons calling for justice and should not need to be known or discussed. The crimes are made worse by being perpetrated by persons who are the ones who tell us what our morals should be but this is not the reason why they should be brought to justice and it is only trying to obscure the details and point the blame in other directions by bringing the beliefs of the accusers or accused into the argument. Surely there can be no moral person who does not think that the victims here are the children and all the red herrings in the world cannot change that.
If the person calling for justice is an atheist it is irrelevant to the main issue that crimes need to be investigated and whoever has commited them or connived to sweep them under the carpet must answer no matter who they are.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:51 am
» Sean Carroll:
… that the strategy should not be simply one of proclaiming superiority and tarring religion as evil and demanding heads on plates.
But Sean, how can one conceivably characterise as “demanding heads on plates” etc. the insistence that an institution which we have proof in writing obstructed justice and aided and abetted criminals face legal consequences just like anybody else in a comparable situation? How on earth?
A lot of people have been deeply hurt, directly or indirectly, and we should be able to show just a modicum of restraint.
Yes, a lot of people have been hurt, especially the fucking victims! (Pun very much intended. And I’m disappointed you don’t mention them directly even once.) Why on earth should we show restraint towards the perpetrators of crimes?
Not giving up or keeping quiet, but picking our spots.
Then what exactly are you advocating? This sounds for all the world like, ‘Whatever we do, let’s try not to appear to endorse the shrill Dawkins and PZ.’
What on earth can possibly be wrong with calling for the prosecution of any institution that for decades had an official policy of effectively covering up crimes of their employees?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:41 am
This blog post is about forwarding the rationalist cause, specifically in opposition to Catholicism. This is not a scientific issue, since rationalists, Catholics, atheists, deists, Protestants, Orthodox, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, etc., can all be scientists. So why is this here?
I look at this and the other Discover blogs and wonder if Discover Magazine has a policy of opposing religious positions. Would the editors ever entertain the idea of a science blog, say, if the author happened to be a Jesuit astronomer?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:30 am
One more quote from Steven Weinberg to counter what I see as some degree of appeasement
being suggested by the last sentence of the blog
No, no, and no. You’re conflating criticism or restraint with appeasement, which is hopeless.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:03 am
Back to the question: what should we do about the Pope?
I say let the Pope and the Church face the same legal scrutiny as any other person or institution would face, be that law suits or criminal prosecution. No immunity and no special treatment. What on earth is wrong with that?
April 15th, 2010 at 8:11 am
@wds #18
Phil Plait (the BA) is not known for his emotional maturity. which is one reason I stopped following his blog. While I share his skepticism, emotionally he is a 15 year-old boy in a man’s body.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:37 am
I think we can all agree that the Catholic Church has promulgated tremendous evil. The latest revelations, tragic as they are, merely represent the tip of the iceberg. Yet humans cannot live by rationallity alone. This doesn’t mean we should be irrational, nor does it give us license to believe the world is constructed however we want. However to require that every feeling and aspect of existence be firmly rooted in a purely logical structure is tantamount to imprisoning the human spirit. So as much as I admire the good sense in Sean’s article, I fear the tyranny of a rational utopia. May we hope to see an end of all forms of dogmatism.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:46 am
“I think that you all sound a bit defensive. If there is nothing to religion, then why are you fighting it so hard?”
Mostly because it’s too integrated with society and there are a lot of de facto theocratic elements of the societies many of us live in, which in turn causes the society to be extremely marginalizing towards anyone who is not religious.
Those who think like you honestly act as if you don’t think religion has any impact on society. It does, and its impact is harmful.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:47 am
“Yet humans cannot live by rationallity alone. This doesn’t mean we should be irrational, nor does it give us license to believe the world is constructed however we want. However to require that every feeling and aspect of existence be firmly rooted in a purely logical structure is tantamount to imprisoning the human spirit.”
You appear to know nothing about neuroscience, do you?
April 15th, 2010 at 8:51 am
“As far as my beliefs go, I believe there are conscious beings with much greater size, energy, and ability than the human being”
Proof, please.
Also, what definition of ‘energy’ are you using? An elephant has more energy than a human, if only because it has more mass. If this is the woo-woo cosmic load-of-crud type of ‘energy’ you’re talking about, then I call bullpoop.
“We need Luke and the science of metaphysics (which I believe exists) to thwart all this bad energy stinking up the joint. The energies are subtle and in the noise floor (sorry to all you non-techies – knowledge is power is truth is good), and so we have yet to find it.”
Virtually every ‘metaphysicist’ (which sounds like they’re trying to get science cred; it’s not science, it’s philosophy) I have ever met has been a total crackpot.
“We’re a family – a system – a planet – a universe – a God.”
Nah, we’re just a universe. There are no deities to speak of.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:54 am
For Christianity’s contributions to the Western world, check out these two books:
“God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science”
“How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization”
Both are very good reads.
As far as religion as a whole, I highly doubt it will ever go away. I think one aspect of religion which makes religion appealing is “the after-life”. I don’t know about you, but I find it disturbing that after death, the universe effectively ceases to exist for us. No consciousness, no sentience, etc. Utterly nothing. Many people cannot understand how this is even possible for themselves. So they believe that there must be something in us which “survives” death. Hence, the supernatural, and it goes on from there.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:56 am
“I propose that whatever you believe is a sort of religion.”
Can we use a consistent definition of religion, perhaps?
“But, the one common theme is that all of them are based on faith.”
‘Faith’ is belief without evidence – almost to an extreme, hopeless-sounding, pathetic extent. I do not think all of the beliefs you mention are based on ‘faith’.
“Like Descartes we must strip past everything we have been taught and everything we “know” and ask fundamental questions about who we are and what this world is and maybe even if we exist or not (I’m joking). But, truly what do you know? Really nothing. We were not here when the big bang occurred or whenever/however this world was made. We don’t know how it happened. All we can do is interpret data and look for clues. The same is true of spirituality or of what you believe about the world. One must simply interpret the data. And, I think that no matter how obvious the data seems there is always room for error because quite simply we don’t know it all nor will we ever.”
This does not mean that just because one is only 95% certain and not 100% certain that something is untrue. Are you familiar with confidence intervals and other basic statistics?
“Besides if there is a higher being than us why do we think that we could ever completely understand it or put him/she/it in a box or ever be able to define it?”
You’re going to have to describe this hypothetical ‘higher being’.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:57 am
Also, an interesting NY Times article which better elucidates the role Benedict plays in all this, better than in this post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/opinion/12douthat.html
April 15th, 2010 at 8:58 am
“This blog post is about forwarding the rationalist cause, specifically in opposition to Catholicism. This is not a scientific issue, since rationalists, Catholics, atheists, deists, Protestants, Orthodox, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, etc., can all be scientists. So why is this here?”
This is, in fact, a scientific issue, which has nothing to do with whether a given scientist is religious or not. The only thing at hand is how close an individual scientist’s beliefs hew to demanding evidence for semantic statements made about the world.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:01 am
“Except, of course, no human being lives without illusion and irrational thought, as you have so deftly demonstrated…”
The difference between those who become or remain religious and those who become or remain nonreligious/atheist/etc. appears to be the effort they put and the success they have in overriding the cognitive biases they may possess.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:08 am
No I haven’t studied any formal neurology and I don’t understand the subtleties of the brain. Of course, no one else I know does either. I do know that our thougt patterns are largely unconscious. This doesn’t imply they are mystical, but I don’t see them as always directed towards a purely logical objective. I view the brain as a sub unit of the universe; particularly skilled at processing a narrow band width of information and subject to the contingencies of our history.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Also, you can’t nail the church for being against legal abortion. The church holds, understandably, that a new human life begins at conception (which has lots of scientific evidence because the zygote has its own complete human genome, and it literally grows into a developed baby which everyone would agree is human — therefore, it must have been human to begin with) and, therefore, it is wrong to have an abortion unless the pregnancy puts the mother’s life at danger. I find nothing wrong with that position.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:28 am
I’m afraid your goal of “rationalist utopia in which people’s actions are based on reason and reflection ” presupposes the general public is capable of rational behavior. Most people haven’t a clue about how to think rationally. They simply refuse to recognize any facts which don’t agree with their prejudices. As Dan Ariely put it, they are Predictably Irrational.
My brother once remarked that “5% think, 5% think they think and the other 90% would rather die than think”. He was an optimist.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
It’s hard to call myself an ex-Catholic because I can’t remember believing any of it, and my membership in the Church had nothing to do with my personal preferences. When my parents gave up on compulsory attendance, I never looked back. But I suppose an ex-Catholic is what I am. I have even found myself correcting the odd protestant when they spouted some utter nonsense about transubstantiation or the sexual orientation of nuns.
That said, the Vatican leadership truly repulses me now. The execrable manner in which they dealt with the problem of clergy sex abuse is deserving of the uttermost contempt. What to do about His Holiness? Incarcerate him, and the rest of his criminally negligent lackeys. I don’t see this in atheist/theist terms. Spiritual authority greatly exacerbates the damage it can do, but the Holy See has revealed itself to be nothing more than a peculiar and powerful bureaucracy which has become so self-serving and corrupt that it should be dissolved.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Katherine,
One example of a ‘higher being’ is the planet itself, which is clearly a living system, alive, and I believe conscious. Also, the Sun, which a lot of people throughout time believe is a God, creates the Earth, which creates life, so the solar system is in my view, alive. This gets to the definition of life, and most of us are too egocentric and anthropomorphically self-centered to want to see this view. Even societies may have a consciousness greater than the ego of humanity, such as Ken Keyes ‘The Hundredth Monkey”, which you should read (it’s short).
However, using induction on living systems, it can be proven mathematically that if life is the exchange of energy to do the work of reproduction, becoming a more organized structure (which atoms that become molecules that become organic compounds that become cells that become creatures that form societies which are hosted on other life forms called planets, which organize into galaxies ad infinitum), which is the polar opposite of entropy perhaps, which might be called death, then in fact consciousness may be the juxtaposition of opposites, spiraling toroidally, eternally. That is one way I visualize consciousness.
In terms of pseudoscience, I believe metaphysics is a kind of boundary science in its infancy: one part mathematics, one part physics, one part philosophy, perhaps inclusive of other areas of knowledge. I hypothesize that there are organized energies (which obviously exist in the EM spectrum, and beyond), which we can contemplate and model with mathematics, yet is out of reach of our instrumentalities, because we live in a space which is limited by what we can perceive. We are thus locked in the room of speculation and theorization, until we develop the technology to capture these faint signals (and boy, do I look forward to what the LHC and the Webb Space Telescope might capture!!) – yes, there are many nuts in this ‘space’, because people who can sense these energies seem to have a more sensitive DNA frequency, or whatever it is which gives them this higher sensitivity, and the cold, harsh, material world which exists outside of love causes some kind of paranoid schizophrenia in them (and which we should study).
What if Gaia is true? What if the ancients were right about Ra and Mother Earth and Karma and the Wakah Chan? What if it’s ALL TRUE? From the Trinity to the Matrix – whatever you believe – what if the universe is actually like the Krell’s Forbidden Planet, or the Dark City, creating our reality by our thoughts? We might be more careful about how we think. Would we be more focused on our actions as well? If we all just stopped for a moment, and took that infinite yogic breath of Brahma – and in this moment, had the clarity of purpose to believe that Love will save the day? Instead of the Ouroboros rat race, we enter that dragon; We work together, resonating our thought harmonics in perfect geometrical alignment, and ‘shut it down.’ And then, in that moment, as Lennon sang it best, we imagine.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Katharine (post #28) responds to Another Sean (post #26) as follows:
“Yet humans cannot live by rationallity alone. This doesn’t mean we should be irrational, nor does it give us license to believe the world is constructed however we want. However to require that every feeling and aspect of existence be firmly rooted in a purely logical structure is tantamount to imprisoning the human spirit.”
You appear to know nothing about neuroscience, do you?
Katharine, are you happy?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Imagine that anthills evolve into really smart anthills, so smart that they can hold down jobs in the human world. The ants themselves may have evolved too but they are by no means as smart as the anthills they live in. In fact, we perceive the anthills as smart, not the ants, even though they communicate by the ants moving over a chemical messenger interface. But that intelligence cannot be of the hill’s dirt or of the ants themselves: it emerges entirely by relatively mindless ants interacting with each other and their environment.
Now imagine that the anthill not only acts like it is conscious and intelligent, it tells you that it is and it has a problem.
It says, “I’m right here, I know I’m right here, but I’m upset because there’s no way for me to reconcile my feeling of being me with the fact that I’m composed of ants and dirt. In fact, the more I think about it the more I can’t figure out why I can experience the world at all and why I feel neither inside the hill nor inside the ants.”
I think our current scientific approach runs into trouble when faced with mind-body problems, randomness, and the axiom of choice. Or rather it starts from these points as axioms. We all have a sense of what randomness seems like but every procedure for generating it falls short. We can test what we think is random but it would be hard to prove that it is in fact random. Similarly with the axiom of choice. It seems right but there is no process to choose an arbitrary real number. We can only assert that it is possible in our mind and that it yields some valid correspondence between numbers.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Shoot him. The good, practised, traditional way rationalist utopias have for dealing with those they dislike.
The knock in the middle of the night, the screams from the basement of the Lubyanka, the bullet in the back of the head.
Oh wait, that was tried already wasn’t it?
April 16th, 2010 at 1:58 am
We should recognize the things that are harming the system of life that exists on this planet, and remove them. For example, Capitalism. It empowers greed (which is evil and bad – no matter how much the wealthy cherish it – sorry folks, you have been infected with an evil virus), and greed kills. Capitalism takes a system of merit exchange, and being unregulated Capitalism here in the West, allows criminals and thieves, frauds and pimps and whores, to usurp the better things in life, which are shared. This is where our selfish (Darwinian?) nature is at odds with goodness. It’s the reason for our existence. We are the drama of the conflict between good and evil, and right now, evil is winning.
Argh !
Who let THAT in ?
My God , the evil is winning …
Let’s shoot them all “virus infected” like Piscator aptly says in 42 .
Amusing to see that kind of ranting in a thread supposedly dedicated to anti religion considered as … a holy duty of the true non believers
April 16th, 2010 at 3:32 am
I hereby proclaim my superiority and demand the head of the evil pope on the plate.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:52 am
Science is not a religion, but the belief that science can explain everything is a religion. Actually, the Goedel theorems from logic imply that this is impossible.
The only way around this for the hard-core “rationalists” would be to deny the objective existence of natural laws and mathematics and declare that our universe is acausal and completely random, so that everything can be explained as a random fluctuation. For me, this is not a rational belief. As far as the subject of religion is concerned, I would recommend to rationalists/atheists to read a short book by Leo Tolstoy, called “A Confession”.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:58 am
Philip -don’t take everything so literally – and note some of the sarcasm. But if you don’t see the evil winning (and defining evil is another problem, but lets look at human behaviors that hurt others asa start), then don’t you see all the financial hurt out there? And ranting is independent of anti-religion (or religion) – that we aren’t in the street physically yanking our lousy Congress out of their offices and caning them, given the fraud they have committed (treasonous!), then what does that say about us? We let these snake oil salesmen run amok.
April 16th, 2010 at 4:55 am
“I think that religious beliefs are wrong, and that the world would be a better place if everyone accepted the real world for what it is”
As a physicist, surely you understand the limitations of science. In addition, you recognize that every experiment, every calculation that we do has at least one underlying assumption. What is an assumption if not a statement of faith? You are blinded by your desire to sculpt everything as a rational search for truth. All of our lenses are flawed, Sean. All of us view the world from our own corrupted perspective.
Great theologians are equivalent to great scientists. Both recognize the limits of their understanding. Both question their beliefs on a daily basis. Both strive for a greater understanding of the universe. We can learn much from both.
You have the same problem as the “religious” people you belittle. Both of you are absolutely certain of the answer to the question of the existence of God and the necessity for religious belief. Both of you have much to learn.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:06 am
Religion is a construction of man. As such it is inherently flawed. 2000 years ago we were told to love our neighbors as ourselves and remember someone whenever we broke bread and drank wine. From this, we created a massive hierarchy and system of belief. We need to remember this whenever the “Church” is implicated in bad behavior.
The “Church” is a collection of men and women. It is not religious belief.
Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
April 16th, 2010 at 7:11 am
Milton: Ok, lets call it accomodationist, not appeasement. It sort of reminds me of how Obama
deals with things.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
When do you complain about Pol Pot and Stalin and Mao and Che and Fidel ?
April 16th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Jr,
“When do you complain about Pol Pot and Stalin and Mao and Che and Fidel ?” makes little sense – how can you compare Che Guivarre (sic) to Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao? Why not add Chavez and Mussolini? You’re confusing the Left with sociopaths. Most leaders tend toward the later, so I guess it’s time to add Obama and Hitler. How little we learn.
April 16th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Aleksandar Mikovic, Good comment. If science is viewed as a formal language based on empirical evidence then Godel’s proof asserts that science can make no consistent statements about anything not within this system. So science has nothing whatever to say about things outside the physical universe.
Regarding Tolstoy, apparently he was a significant influence on Ghandi, an influence that inspired the non-violent resistance of Indian independence and perhaps avoided a major holocaust. Tolstoy, of course, got it from those who based their morality on this issue on Matthew 5:39 as described in Tolstoy’s book “The Kingdom of God is Within You”.
April 17th, 2010 at 5:01 am
Indian independence was hardly non-violent: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
April 17th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
For those who may be interested in an alternative view, P.Z. Myers is not at all a fan of Plait’s post:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/as_long_as_im_criticizing_my_a.php
April 18th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Whatever one believes, it is a very nice thing to sit quietly in a beautiful large hall with ones neighbors once a week … listen to music, have stories told to you and participate in a known ritual – whatever that may be –
In my church the music is – well – there are no words for it … Anyway what is the harm in a few irrational thoughts.
April 18th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
The hubris of the humanists never ceases to entertain. No sooner do they denounce as anthropomorphic the faiths they eschew than they appeal to a faith of their own making: the church of orthodox science.
Humility all around would suit us all well.
If the ‘rationalists’ would be accepted as such, perhaps it would serve their cause to apply said ration to comprehending the religions of old rather than merely dismissing them in sophomoric haste. You never know what you might learn.
For example, even a superficial perusal of ‘religion’ reveals an enlightening, universal obsession with science: the creation of life, planets, stars, light, matter, even time itself. (Would that ‘science’ were so obsessed with understanding religion!) It’s just not worded in terms familiar to anyone at the NAS. But this knowledge does give one a tool for exposing the real frauds such as ‘Scientology’: No science. No ‘Xenu created matter’. Ergo: It’s a false religion, truly the product of human imagination. Like philosophy.
This is not to say that religion is free of human influences, especially by governments and rulers, seeking to usurp the authority inherit therein. But is this not also the classic complaint of the scientist? “Oh that mankind’s morality kept pace with his technology!”, wrote the author, bemoaning the fact, of course, that government, by sponsoring ‘science’, always seems to do so for their own imperialistic ends.
Face it. There is nothing about science any less superstitious or more noble than any other religion. You have your temples, your priesthood, your doctrines (many of which must be accepted on faith because there simply is no proof), your scandals, your saints, tribute, excommunication, and, soon, to hear you all expound ad nauseum, an inquisition.
When that day comes, as it sounds like you’re advocating, you’d better hope there’s no God.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Marcus,
No one who is skeptical can “comprehend” religion because when they think they have something to criticize (which will be pretty soon), the religious move the goalposts (“ooh but “god” is ineffable!”; “It was a metaphor!”; etc., etc., etc.). As soon as the critics get tired of dealing with such disingenuous excuses, the religious will go back to science-defying miracles and resurrections.
And:
Time to put down the tinfoil hat and pick up a book about science and its history. (A Brief History of Time is a pretty good one, it probably won’t even offend your religious sensibilities.) But start here.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:13 am
Sean – stick to the science, and respect the heritage science owes to the Catholic Church (as any historian of science will tell you).
It is very clear from both Phil’s entry and your comments that you know very little about the situation, not least the causes of the abuse. Yes, the abuse of awful in the extreme, any suggestion of cover up is worse (if proven), but I suggest you read a bit more from the Catholic perspective and get a balanced view.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:20 am
There are some superb posts on this timely subject, and I will not inject any more pseudo-intellectual philosophizing about this subject.
Dawkins has called for arresting the pope if his plane lands in the UK. I agree wholeheartedly.
Jesse Ventura has pointed out that the catholic church can be prosecuted under the
federal `RICO Laws’ in which its role in child abuse can be considered a form of racketeering.
Sure, Bill Maher’s `Religulous’ pokes fun at & demos the inherent absurdity in religon, but
its way past time for atheists to take the gloves off, & become leaders & standard bearers.
From Galilei’s time up to today, the crimes of the Vatican are part of history, and will continue to become so unless we say “Stop, Enough”.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Ian, why don’t you say what could possibly in the “catholic perspective” could ameliorate what the pope has done (or failed to do)? Is all the evidence, the despicable blaming of others and lameness of excuses by priests and cardinals and bishops, the documents, all a lie? What could possibly make it better, if not that the pope is completely innocent from the allegations and everyone else is lying?
And why don’t you say exactly what “heritage” science owes to the catholics? If you’re gonna play that game (which is idiotic anyway), then science owes much more to Greeks and Arabs. Oh, I get it. You mean that the scientists and freethinkers that got discovered and burned at the stake were the weak ones, thus the church let the strong prevail? Darwinian survival of the fittest!
So, in short, why don’t you speak clearly what exactly you mean, instead of throwing around disingenuous accusations of ignorance, and hope that no one will bother to look up those “historians” of science who will make your point for you?
April 19th, 2010 at 4:37 am
@60 – first words preceeding ‘catholic perspective’ should answer your concern ‘Is all the evidence, the despicable blaming of others and lameness of excuses by priests and cardinals and bishops, the documents, all a lie?’
Second I find it interssting that no-one has commented on the causes of abuse – something the John Jay report did, hence my reference to the ‘catholic perspective’. Further to this you may also want to consult some Catholic-based commentary on this – http://www.ncregister.com/register_exclusives/setting_the_record_straight/
Thirdly – Wis 11:21 (only found in Catholic scripture) did so much for science, far more than the Greeks or Arabs whose theology failed their scientific endevours. And given that I assume everyone reading this blog is capable of research I certainly do not ‘hope that no one will bother to look up those “historians” of science’, but just in case you are lacking … James Hannam and Fr Stanley Jaki for starters.
Fourthly, just in case you are still struggling for what the Church did for science … 35 Jesuits have their name on the moon (how did they get there?), Fathers of minerology, geology, military surgery, astrophysics, genetics, geodesy, cystallography, modern chemistry (and more) were all Catholics, and in the cases where these were priests … just think how the Church sponsored these investigations, surely fully paid up members of the Church (priests) could not do science if the Church opposed it. The units Volt, Coulomb and Amp all take their names from Catholics. Want someone more famous? – Fleming and Pasteur were Catholic. Cathedrals were built to study the night sky, I could go on, but heh you can research this stuff for yourself. Can’t you?
My point is to recognise the heritage from the Church (other heritages are available), and think about it beore people wish religion would vanish.
Finally, if Sean really wishes ‘religion to vanish’ then I suggest he starts by changing his name. Sean, taken from the Irish for John, means God’s beloved, which he is, but he doesn’t know it.
April 19th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Again, more blanket statements and wild assumptions.
Your first point doesn’t say anything. You say “if proven”. Is that what you’re referring to? Please, clearly, do you think it is all a lie?
The second point makes no sense. The priest there is doing the honorable thing and apologizing. That’s what the pope and all others in position of power should have done, but now they also have to answer to the cover ups. An apology can’t let them off the hook anymore.
Care to explain how that passage, nay, that whole chapter, did anything for science? Or again, you thought no one would look it up?
Your fourth point, an exercise in pointless counting. Some scientists happened to be catholics, therefore science was made possible by catholicism? Are you for real?
Like Galileo, right? The catholics only allowed “science” that could be made compatible with their beliefs. And care to mention all those “fathers”?
By the way, do you wanna count how many of those scientists wouldn’t have done what they did if the Greeks didn’t start it all and the Arabs didn’t preserve and advance that information?
And what about counting Jews? Hmm a famous Jewish scientist… hmm…
Even if half your wild claims are actually true in any realistic sense, you’re cherry picking. Do you think the catholic church has never done anything to hamper scientific progress? If you think that, then this conversation is pretty much over, there’s no reasoning with you. If you think they did do some bad things, please list a couple of the ones you think are worst.
And one last question. What exactly could NOT be discovered if not for explicit religious (catholic in particular) dogma?
April 19th, 2010 at 10:10 am
andyo,
I recommend these two interesting books:
“God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science”
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Philosophers-Medieval-Foundations-Science/dp/1848310706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271696253&sr=1-1
“How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization”
http://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Church-Built-Western-Civilization/dp/B001PTG3KG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271696283&sr=1-1
Also, don’t forget about all the charity work the Catholic Church does. To quote a recent NY Times article:
“Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.”
Just out of curiosity, have you done anything charitable in the past week?
“This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives. ”
The Catholic Church (as well as other Christian Churches) reaches out to those who have been completely forgotten by society. In the 1800s, there was a priest by the name of Father Damien, who moved to a leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai to care for them, and to give them something society never did: love. In the process, he contracted leprosy himself. Now, if that’s not dedication and love, I don’t know what is.
And from another NY Times article concerning Benedict:
“In the 1990s, it was Ratzinger who pushed for a full investigation of Hans Hermann Groer, the Vienna cardinal accused of pedophilia, only to have his efforts blocked in the Vatican. It was Ratzinger who persuaded John Paul, in 2001, to centralize the church’s haphazard system for handling sex abuse allegations in his office. It was Ratzinger who re-opened the long-dormant investigation into Maciel’s conduct in 2004, just days after John Paul II had honored the Legionaries in a Vatican ceremony. It was Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict, who banished Maciel to a monastery and ordered a comprehensive inquiry into his order. So the high-flying John Paul let scandals spread beneath his feet, and the uncharismatic Ratzinger was left to clean them up.
Has Benedict done enough to clean house and show contrition? Alas, no. Has his Vatican responded to the latest swirl of scandal with retrenchment, resentment, and an un-Christian dose of self-pity? Absolutely. Can this pontiff regain the kind of trust and admiration, for himself and for his office, that John Paul II enjoyed? Not a chance.
But as unlikely as it seems today, Benedict may yet deserve to be remembered as the better pope. “
April 19th, 2010 at 10:13 am
By the way, the charitable works I mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg. I recommend that you look it up. Now, I’m not saying that you or an organization needs to be a religious one in order to do charitable works. But religious people and religious institutions tend to be the ones who feel that it is their duty to care for those less fortunate.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Let me add something else.
No matter what you think of religion, right or wrong, good or evil, religion gives people hope that they are something more than just a collection of atoms. Because if they are just a collection of particles and forces then, upon death, they cease to exist forever. Everything effectively ceases to exist for them. They are forever gone and never coming back. They forever feel/sense nothing, and they are nothing. Many people cannot possibly understand how that’s possible. It’s not that they are afraid of it, because you can’t be afraid of nothing, they just can’t wrap their minds around how it’s even possible. So religion can be used as a means of saying, “No. I am more than this. Something about me survives past death.” No matter how well you convince people to abandon religion, you cannot replace this feeling without an appeal to the supernatural.
Also, it would be unwise to get rid of religious institutions, leaving no replacement for all the charitable works done by religious institutions. I believe, and perhaps I am wrong, but religious institutions inspire people to go above and beyond to care and love for those who have been forgotten by society. If everyone of us were just a conglomeration of particles, and you cease to exist when you die, why would I go above and beyond to help people? I should just give money, get a good education, enjoy my own life, and care for my own family and friends, and screw everyone else. Giving money is enough. But if we knew of absolutely no cure for leprosy, who would live at a leper colony to care for and show compassion for those suffering from leprosy? You’d be hard-pressed to find something willing to do that who wasn’t religious. So if you get rid of religious institutions and somehow manage to convince people to stop believing, then you had better have a replacement for the kind of inspiration to go above and beyond to do works of extreme charity.
April 19th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Victor: That is absolutely ridiculous. Do you think that Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) consists of religious do-gooders? Do you really think that atheists won’t contribute to charities? Altruism isnt confined to the religious, and, I find, the religious often
do things for rather ignoble reasons of delusional personal gain in the hereafter.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Marcus: Science can be falsified. Religion cant. Ergo Science is NOT as superstitious as religion.
Saying black is white doesn’t make it so. This blog seems to be getting infested with religious
lice.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
“Do you really think that atheists won’t contribute to charities?”
I’m not saying atheists won’t contribute to charities. Nor am I saying that there are no non-religious charitable organizations. All I’m saying is that a huge chunk of those organizations are religious ones. Many people get religiously inspired to do great acts of charity, like caring for people in leper colonies back when there was no cure in site and treating them as real people even if it meant contracting the disease themselves. What I’m saying is that religion has contributed a lot of good and still does. That’s all.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Also, Gordon, what do you mean by “religious do-gooders”. I sense a bit of hostility in your tone there. Why are you so hostile?
“I find, the religious often do things for rather ignoble reasons of delusional personal gain in the hereafter.” Sure that could be one reason, but I highly doubt it’s the ONLY reason. Perhaps there’s a second reason: a genuine care for a human being because he/she is something more than a collection of particles. True, I can care for someone just because if I were in their shoes, I would want to be cared for also. But, for religious people, there’s also the reason that the person they are helping is more than just a living body, but a spirit. Of course, these are just words, but I’m just trying to show you that there are simultaneously more (genuine) reasons than just “If I do good, I will get rewarded after I die.” At least the vast majority of Catholics and other Christians (the types of people I know best) are like that.
April 19th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
But Victor, human beings ARE just collection of “particles” ,just as consciousness is an emergent property of the structure and chemical/physical processes and software programming going on in the brain. “Spirit” is something that has never had any evidence for it and is part of the
supernatural myth-making of religions. “Spirit” is likely a brain-state produced by dopaminergic neurons and temporal lobe structures. Too many people use the word to mean
virtually anything—a la Humpty Dumpty-”Words mean what I want them to mean–you just have to pay them more.”
By “religious do-gooders”, I am talking about those folks who foist their religious views on those they are helping, and those who are banking credits in a non-existent Heaven, or avoiding a non-existent Hell by doing good deeds to curry favor with the God Who Isn’t.
I am somewhat hostile in detecting in you an irrational tenor that somehow atheists cant
be moral, or that because someone is religious, they are altruistic. In my experience, those who are rational can help others better than those who are deluded. Yes, some religious people are good and generous people, but their core beliefs are crazy.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Gordon,
I definitely don’t think that atheists cannot be moral or can’t give of themselves through charity. It would be silly for me to think that. I just know a lot of people who get propelled to doing good works for the less fortunate by their religion. If their faith inspires them to do such deeds, that’s great. Who knows, maybe if they weren’t raised in that faith, they wouldn’t be compelled to do great things. I’m not saying that non-religious people won’t. Just that the more reasons people have for doing great things for others, the better.
You’re right, “religious do-gooders” as you defined them shouldn’t be doing that. In my opinion, they should care for those and use those acts of charity as an example of what their faith means to them. They shouldn’t pressure the people they are helping to believe the same thing they do.
Yes, I do think many beliefs are crazy. But I wouldn’t use such a word as “deluded”. If there was hard evidence AGAINST their beliefs, yet they continue to believe, then I would say they are deluded.
Regarding the whole “spirit” think, I’m almost 100% sure that someday we will understand the brain so well that we can identify the processes that lead to everything we see in human behavior and thought. But I bet you that that won’t force people to give up some sort of belief/hope for an afterlife, because many people just don’t want to think that it is even possible to be forever gone after death. I think about that sometimes, and it’s not that I’m afraid of it, I just think it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever that I can be alive, conscious, aware, and interact with the universe for however many years, and then POOF, it’s all gone…pure nothing for the rest of eternity. That seems so wild to me, I think how can that even be possible. Maybe people use that, and will continue to use that as a springboard the existence of the supernatural and, ultimately to a particular religion. Who knows.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
What about a *before* life ?
April 20th, 2010 at 1:36 am
Actually, Andyo, I cut my teeth in, among others, the very halls of NASA, specifically Goddard, as well as the engineering headquarters of Daimler-Benz AG, after having studied at one of the professor’s own haunts: die technische Fachhochschule Esslingen.
But you’ve proved my point quite nicely, I think, by demonstrating that those who would here feign claim superior intellect exhibit the opposite, having done little or no reading themselves on a subject which certainly may be comprehended by any willing to invest the effort, while wont to unleash invective at those who have.
April 20th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Hmm Marcus.
You have probably made the wildest claims here, and when challenged, you resort to an argument to (own!) authority to call me stupid (hey, that’s an ad hominem!). I think you’re breaking the logical fallacy density limit. Nobody cares about your “qualifications” if you’re not going to say anything worthwhile.
April 20th, 2010 at 6:32 am
Victor, in the same way that you didn’t say atheists can’t do good, I didn’t say religious people can’t either. I of course agree, you don’t have to be religious to do good, nor you have to be atheist. Dogma in general (and religion in particular) though does make one powerful excuse to do awful things, and among all the other excuses, it is rather unique in that it makes the person doing it feel righteous.
About the “hope” that religion brings to people. I’m not sure if it can be separated from its truth claims which are for the most part clearly false. If so, then good, but if not, well one would have to choose between being intellectually honest or the comfort of delusion.
There’s also another problem with that. It’s a bit condescending to think that most people need this “crutch”, don’t you think? Maybe some do, but I’d bet most don’t.
April 20th, 2010 at 10:01 am
“5 myths about the Catholic abuse scandal”
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/gibson-5-myths-about-the-catholic-abuse-scandal-586313.html