Last Friday, I posted an Aside with a link to a wonderfully articulate essay entitled, “The Sad State of Atheism Today.” At the end of the aside, I stated that I was an atheist. Later that afternoon, a friend of mine said, “So you’re an atheist. Good to know.” Thus began an interesting conversation about atheism and what it means for a person to proclaim oneself an atheist.
Earlier that day, I had read an essay by Anne Applebaum, entitled, “A Sorry Situation,” which was about the remarks the Pope made, the ones that caused such an uproar among radical Muslims, a controversy that hasn’t gone away, as you can see from a Google News search.
For those who may not know, the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor from the 1300s who said that Islam was “evil and inhuman.” As you might expect, this pissed a few people off. Ever since he made the remarks, the Pope has been in recovery mode, which has even inspired a long discussion about the Pope’s theological infallibility (you know, if the Pope is never wrong, how can apologize?).
Anyway, Applebaum’s article was about the sorry situation the West finds itself in, where it has to apologize because its words and (apparently) its comic-strips “caused” a bunch of people to become violent in the Muslim world. She says that it’s ridiculous, because:
Western politicians, writers, thinkers, and speakers should stop apologizing—and start uniting…We can all unite in our support for freedom of speech—surely the pope is allowed to quote medieval texts—and of the press. And we can also unite—loudly—in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies, and elderly nuns…The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don’t see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.
I read the thing, and I said to myself, “You know, I agree, but I don’t want to. How come?” I quickly figured out why. It’s because I’m reading Orientalism, by Edward Said, which is a book that shows how terrible it is to use “the East” or “the Orient” in any sort of logical argument. It’s not “terrible” in the sense of politically incorrect, but “terrible” in the sense that it reveals sloppy thinking. Along with the historical development of the term, “the Orient,” Said argues that”the East” is almost as general a term as one can possibly find. “The East,” after all, comprises most of the humans on this planet, so to generalize about such a huge number of people, to describe them all in the same way, and to think such a description actually has any relation to the truth, well, that’s just silly. Obviously, if “the East” reveals sloppy-thinking, so too does “the West,” and for all the same reasons.
So that was the post I started to write, something about how Applebaum’s desire for “the West” to rally is kind of silly. However, I only got a paragraph or so into it when I realized that I didn’t care. I apparently didn’t care that Applebaum’s argument had a lot of slippery slopes. I apparently didn’t care that there was something decidedly wrong about her desire to ignore the “subtle distinctions,” of the West. I apparently didn’t care that there is a very big difference between the thing that I call “the right to free speech” and the thing that right-wing conservative Christians call “the right to free speech.” And the reason I didn’t care is because the words I was writing didn’t inspire me to care. So I stopped writing.
That itch to write was with me all day though. Applebaum had brought the desire to express something, but she didn’t inspire me to actually say anything.
During my instant message conversation about atheism, both my friend and I agreed that if you call yourself an atheist, it is because you are willing to have the conversation about why you are an atheist. And if you know yourself to be one, but don’t actually describe yourself as one, it’s probably because you are not willing to talk to anyone about your religious sensibility (or because you think calling yourself an “atheist” would make your ancestors cry). We didn’t exactly talk about this next part, but I think we would both agree that we were not making any kind of value judgement with this description. The desire to talk about one’s atheism does not make one a “better” atheist. We all have a right to practice our religion (or non-religiousness) in whatever way we see fit.
It was a thought-provoking instant message, and like Applebaum’s article, it left me wanting to express myself further. But still, I found myself with nothing to say. So I did what any person experiencing a moment of writer’s block does: I went to take a shit. Clearing one channel sometimes helps to clear another; don’t ask me why — I’m not a plumber.
I found the latest issue of TIME magazine next to the toilet. I picked it up because it had an “exclusive interview” with Iran’s president, but I kept reading it even when I left the bathroom because it scoped out what a war with Iran might look like (the gist of it: Outside of trying to disturb our oil supply, we don’t know what they’ll do in retaliation). Once I finished that article, I turned the page and found “The Pontiff Has a Point,” TIME’s opinion of what’s going on with the Pope.
Where Applebaum was angry because “the West” was not uniting behind the concept of “free speech,” TIME was concerned that with all the furor over a few lines, people would forget what the Pope actually said in the rest of his 35-minute lecture on “faith and reason.” The author of the viewpoint, Jeff Israely, wrote:
[Pope] Benedict shifted the terms of a debate that has been dominated by either feel-good truisms, victimization complexes or hateful confrontation. He sought instead to delineate what he sees as the fundamental difference between Christianity’s view that God is intrinsically linked to reason (the Greek concept of Logos) and Islam’s view that ‘God is absolutely transcendent.’
Let’s look at Kyle’s pre-response checklist and compare it to that paragraph, shall we? Discussion of an emotionally-charged topic, which usually makes for interesting conversation in the comments of any post? Check! Use of the phrase “fundamental difference” to inspire in Kyle a reflexive deconstruction of that difference? Check! Any reference to a major philosophical concept, such as “Logos,” for Kyle to use this opportunity to further his own understanding of something? Check! Any chance to virtually engage with a respected thinker, such as, perhaps, a person considered to be “the academic Pope?” And check!
Yet still I found myself with nothing to say. Instead, I found myself pulling out Dawn’s laptop so I could read the complete text of the Pope’s 35-minute lecture. And let me tell you, it’s an intriguing piece of work. The actual title of the lecture, which was given at the University of Regensburg in Germany, is “Faith, reason, and the university: memories and reflections.” And in it, the Pope asks, “Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?”
It’s a fantastic question. And how does this academic Pope answer it? Why, by referring to the Bible, of course, as any learned individual would do.
Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the Word”…thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis.
This concept of “God as the Word” is a Greek idea mixed with the biblical message. The Pope traces this mix all the way back to the burning bush, where God revealed his mysterious name, “I am,” which is, as the Pope said, “a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names.” This idea later got exposed to the Hellenistic culture as Christianity moved its way through the world.
A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, [the Byzantine emperor from the 1300s] was able to say: Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature.
All of which is very well and good, but he’s still resorting his reasoning to faith, and he hasn’t quite explained why, except to say that the Bible told him so.
The Pope then talked about the modern historical movement to de-Greekify Christianity, where the “central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message…to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it…from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divinity and the triune God.” The philosophical and theological elements emanating from the Greeks influence, rather than from Jewish milieu where Jesus lived.
But the Pope ain’t having none of that. He thinks that the desire to de-Greekify Christianity is nothing less than an attempt to satisfy a wanting definition of science, and hence, reason. This is the real crux of his lecture about faith and reason, not the comparison to Islam, as TIME would have us believe. The Pope says that our current definition of science “presupposes a mathematical structure of matter…and that only the possibility of verification or falisification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty.”
The Pope continues:
If science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by “science”, so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective “conscience” becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical.
And the Pope ain’t having none of that either. According to the Pope, ethics and religion are the foundations that sustain a community, and so they must be discussed within the community, not within the individual. The Pope doesn’t want any single person making ethical and religious decisions alone, because that quickly leads to the individual who thinks it is okay to be a pederast and a community that is fundamentally unable to explain why it is not. In other words, without the Word of God to lean on, we’ll all fall down. As the Pope asserts, “Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.”
Since the Pope said it, it must be true. This is where I would like to have heard the Pope discuss religions success in building an ethical world. I would like to have seen him discuss how the Spanish Inquisition was ethical, and how the Crusades were ethical, and how keeping its mouth shut during the Holocaust was ethical. I would also like to see him discuss why the Church made Cardinal Law the archpriest of one of the four most important basilicas in Rome after he resigned from the Boston archdiocese in disgrace because he had consistently ignored the allegations of sexual abuse among his priests. In short, I’d like him to show why the attempts to construct an ethical system from the precepts of relgion have been successful.
But I don’t want to let my atheistic cynicism undercut what the Pope is trying to achieve here, which is “to broaden our concept of reason and its application.” The Pope is asking us to expand our current understanding of “reason” so that it can live peacefully with “faith.” The study of this marriage between faith and reason should properly be theology, which the Pope defines as the “inquiry into the rationality of faith.”
But I have to ask, haven’t we already done this? I mean, haven’t we found that acting on faith alone has the tendency not to work (provided, of course, that there is actual work to be done — which is a topic for another post [which would be related to the thoughts in this one])? Haven’t the past several thousand years kind of revealed a few things about the promise of religions? Namely, that they’re just as (potentially) corrupt as every other organized interest group? I mentioned TIME magazine earlier. You know what the issue from the week before had as a cover story? “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” Several people take it on faith that He does. If the Pope expects “reasonable people” to align themselves with those who act solely on “faith,” then it seems he’ll have to get many of us to forget what acting on faith has actually accomplished.
Then again, perhaps this is the Pope’s way of saying to all those crazy Christians out there, “Hey, numb-nuts. If you want to act as God would have you, for His sake, act reasonably.” But the fact that the Pope seems to be addressing those who put their faith in science here, and not those who would should perhaps make a science of faith, I think we may be putting too many words in his mouth.
Anyway, back to what the Pope actually said. While much of his lecture is about the dialog between faith and reason, the controversy is about what he said about Islam. His argument asserts that the Islamic concept of God transcends the concept of reason, which is kind of a backdoor way of saying that Muslims tend to act more crazy than Christians simply because their idea of God doesn’t require them to be reasonable. This assertion is actually put in the mouth of the editor of the Byzantine emperor’s dialog, a Theodore Khoury, who is quoting “a noted French Islamist R Arlnadez.” Do I have to mention that Said’s Orientalism could also be called Islamism, and that he pretty much destroys all the credibility of any man (and especially a Frenchman) who would call himself an Islamist?
So, the Pope is saying that Muslims don’t respect the concept of reason because it is not represented in their God. I thought about that for a little while. Something just wasn’t sitting right. Then I remembered: Muslims arrived at science way before the Christians did. I started to write a post on this. But when I read over the first paragraph, I still didn’t hear a voice. So I went looking for more words that might inspire me.
I live in a very small apartment. It’s cute, and comfortable, but small. In every single room (including the bathroom), there are at least two places where one can find ample reading material. What’s great is that if you can’t find something to read in one room, there’s always a chance that there will be something in another, something that you didn’t catch the last six dozen times you looked at those exact same books. After at least three laps around my entire apartment and its multiple bookshelves, I finally found the book I was looking for: The World’s Religions, by Huston Smith.
I own three books by Mr. Smith. The World’s Religions is the third one. I have the first two, Beyond the Postmodern Mind: The Place of Meaning in a Global Civilization and Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, because I put them on my Amazon wish-list and dutifully received them for Christmas. I had never heard of Smith before adding him to my wish-list, but the title of his books sounded like something that would interest me. Unfortunately, when I sat down to read them, I didn’t like them at all. Nope, not one bit. Smith’s thinking seemed sloppy, his understanding of postmodernity seemed sophomoric, and his religious agenda seemed pronounced. Several times, while turning the pages, I physically shook my head and opened my eyes in wonder at how wrong he was. Nope, I didn’t like the first two books at all. Didn’t even finish them. Nope.
This third book, the one I picked up on Friday, The World’s Religions, this one I only bought because I was commanded to. It was the textbook used in one of my first college classes, which was on (you guessed it) the world’s religions. I dropped the class in the fourth or fifth week because the classroom suffered from very little debate. Everyone seemed so accepting of everything, including the professor, who is, I think, an ordained Methodist minister and who help set up the non-denominational chapel on campus. I understand the reason why the class was so accepting. It’s just not what I hope to find in that particular classroom. Despite the fact that I dropped the class, when I went to sell back my books at the end of the year, I decided to keep The World’s Relgions. It just seemed like the kind of book I might want to pick up some night.
The World’s Religions was the only thing the class had going for it. Smith seems like he has a genuine desire to help the world’s religions learn how to respect one another. To an outsider, he really gives what feels like an insider’s view on each of the major religions, from Hiduism to Buddhism to Taoism; from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. He even has a section on a few of the primal religions (his lack of total inclusiveness despite the political correctness of his tone is defended by the fact that The World’s Religions is not an encyclopedia). Despite the poor performance in his first two books, the humanity he revealed in this third one has always prevented me from discarding him from my collection.
The World’s Religions appeared to me on Friday when I was looking for something specific but unnamed to read. I picked it up and thumbed to the section on Islam. I came to this section about Muhammad:
The prophet must receive…his commission. …It was the same command that had fallen earlier on Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Isaiad, and Jesus. Wherever, whenever, this call comes, its form may differ but its essence is the same. A voice falls from heaven, saying “You are the appointed one.” …On that first Night of Power, as Muhammad lay on the floor of the cave, his mind locked in deepest concentration, there came to him an angel in the form of a man. The angel said to him, “Proclaim!”
And then suddenly, I knew what I wanted to write.
15 Comments
Kyle, I’m a friend of Adam’s and I am usually very hesitant to post comments on sites like these. However, I understand that you are looking for more discussion and more viewpoints, so I thought this might be a good entry point for me to contribute something.
I am a Christian, but I’m not always happy with those who claim to share the same beliefs I do. I try to maintain my focus on what it means to me to be a Christian. Unfortunately, this is a long way from what most people think of Christians and I’d have to say for the most part that bad reputation is very much earned.
The reason I chose to write here is because I couldn’t help notice something that I seem to run across more and more these days. You introduce yourself as an atheist, which I can respect (hopefully this is the first demonstration that I don’t fit the stereotype). You then proceed to discuss the Pope’s speech and your feelings on it. I’m not Catholic, and therefore don’t have much to say about the Pope or his beliefs/comments. What I did notice was that your counterpoints in almost every case were in reference to religion. I think most people who do not practice a faith of some sort equate God and religion. There is good reason for this as the two started out very much in concert with each other. At this point though, in most cases, they are two different worlds that occasionally collide.
My feelings on religion probably mirror most of yours, but that has nothing to do with my faith or beliefs. Like so many things started and meant for good, religion has become a crutch for radicals from every angle to use as justification for their ridiculous actions. I’m not just referring to Muslims and terrorism here; Christians have their share of lapses in this area as well, and I’m sure other groups have their share of extremists too. I’m not looking to wax theological here, but suffice to say, the Bible doesn’t advocate or call for any of these actions, yet God and His word are generally the ones questioned or blamed when religious radicals lose it and start to hurt people.
All of this is not to try and force my beliefs on anyone, it’s also not an exercise in semantics to try and call you out on anything. It’s merely my attempt to make sure the distinction is made and understood that religion does not equal God or faith, it’s merely a vehicle to practice–and just like cars, there are Mercedes and Yugos out there, so buyer beware.
Dave, you are right on.
First, Dave, welcome to the site. Adam had mentioned that you were reading the site, and I tried to draw you out a couple of weeks ago, but to no avail, so let me just say, welcome and thanks for participating.
Now, on to your comment :-)
You wrote, “I think most people who do not practice a faith of some sort equate God and religion.” I am not one of those people. I was raised a Catholic, but by the time I was a old enough to be confirmed, I had realized that organized religion was not for me (especially hyper-organized Catholicism). For the next bunch of years, I explored other forms of spirituality. I never got into crystals and shit like that, but I read a lot of those books you find in the religion & spirituality section of the bookstore. You know, books like The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, The Teachings of Don Juan, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, and (of course) The Celestine Prophecy. Most importantly, I also read the novels of Tom Robbins, and while I don’t take them as gospel, his books have probably had the most effect on the way I view religion and spirituality.
In my post “Got God: Religion and Spirituality in the Postmodern Mind,” I quoted Robbins at length. Let me do so again here:
Now, neither Robbins nor I are equating “God” with the Divine. For me, the former has patriarchal overtones, while the latter is, as Robbins wrote, expansive. I have faith in the Divine, but that faith is not towards some supreme being, nor towards God the Creator, nor towards an interventionist Divine ((the Divine will not save me, no matter how hard I pray). Rather, it is towards the eternal beauty of the something (as opposed to the nothing).
With that being said, I love your Mercedes and Yugos line.
But if we’re gonna save the world from imminent destruction, we gotta get out of cars and get on our bikes.
Kyle, I never doubted that you confused the two, just wanted to make sure the distinction was clear and I’ve been looking for an entry point anyway, so why not comment on a topic I actually know something about.
I’ve had a lot of experience with the “Yugos” out there and I’m afraid that may be a huge part of the problem. While I lived in New England I met so many people who were down on God, down on religion and just plain bitter towards the whole topic and most of them seemed to share a similar trait with you–they were raised in the Catholic Church. The one “Mercedes” I’ve found out there is a place in Franklin, MA called New England Chapel and I would say it’s about 75% ex-Catholics including the pastor. Their slogan is “for those who have given up on church, but haven’t given up on God” and it primarily serves to help people deal with all the conflicting messages and hypocrisy of the churches they grew up in. It’s just sad to me that a few corrupt people can do so much damage to something that was started with such good intentions, but I’ll jump off my soapbox before I even get started.
Adam told me that you had called me out and I went to find it and couldn’t locate it on the site. I used the search tool and searched for my name, but nothing came up–not sure if it’s supposed to search the comments or not. I had long checked out of the whole Bush-bashing/Iraq conversation by the time that thread got going. I am in the camp of Adam and Dawn when I say I just don’t follow that stuff. I tried in the beginning, but I just couldn’t force myself to be interested. I know you believe that it’s our obligation, and I guess I do too in some sense because I feel bad that I don’t follow it, but it’s not enough to force me to dig in.
Have you ever researched the difference between Atheism and Agnosticism? It’s the other side of the world for me, but I find it very interesting. I had a friend at NU that “discovered” that he thought he was Atheist, but in reality was Agnostic. He had read a very interesting article on Atheism and how in reality it is a circular reference in and of itself, so the belief that there is no God was more of disconnected, Agnostic pattern because active disbelief became a belief in and of itself and he was more comfortable in just having that area not exist in his life. Anyway, I tried to find the article on the internet to no avail, so I was wondering if you had ever done any reading/research on the topic. I was struck by your comment “I believe in the Divine” and it didn’t seem to add up into Atheism as I know it. Of course, that could just be my lack of knowledge on the subject–which you will definitely see from time to time!
I am, unfortunately, one of those bitter New Englanders that can not differentiate religion from the word ‘god’. I have read, through the teachings of Joseph Campbell, that religion was made up to answer the bigger questions in life. Questions like, “Why are we here?” or “What happens when we die?”. These questions were answered through a faith in a higher power. People would no longer have to confuse themselves with all types of crazy theoretical ideas. Religion would become a cushy blanket to wrap themselves in. Inside this blanket all of life’s questions would be answered.
Am I wrong when I assume that the advent of, let say, the Catholic religion coincided with the creation of what most people now picture as God? Weren’t their other practices prior to that that focused more on the Earth and it’s relation to the self.
I would love to find out more about the beginning of Catholicism. But the only thing we have to catalogue the bible, is the bible itself. There was no Jon Krakauer around to write a separate history on the start of that religion (Did anyone read “Under the Banner of Heaven”?)
I guess my view is that religion is equated to god because both are creations of man. Therefore it is my belief that any religious problems in the world can not separated from the idea of god. They are both fabrications that people believe so strongly in they would be willing to fight and die for.
Well…I am not bitter, or athiest, just chillin’.
I was raised Methodist, not just an Easter-Christmas-Methodist, but an Every-Sunday-Methodist. Taught Sunday School when I was in Highschool, lit the candles, weekend church retreats, you name it. I am not bitter because it was overall a positive experience.
It was not a few corrupt people that helped me to realize that religion was not for me. It was not the sex abuse in Catholic churches or a bunch of fanatics bombing abortion clinics.
My reasons are pretty simple: women are not valued, there is judgement towards gay people and free thinking people, and lastly - the music is usually pretty lame. Only the inner city baptist churches have the good music-in New England anyway.
The word “God” does have a patriarchal overtone. The word “God” is even presumptuous because it assumes one God. If you are not intending to profess one particular religion, to use the word “God” still assumes you are of some religion, since there are religions believing in more than one God- “Gods”-plural. Make sense? Kyle add “When God was a Woman” to your reading list. It explains, through archeology and art, religions that existed prior to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
All of this said, I don’t care what people do with their spirituality, as long as they are happy and not judgemental. I love that my mother goes to church every Sunday. I love that I don’t.
i like noah… - he’s a real go getter… - he got all of them critters onto one of those floaty things… - and never complained once about all of the poop…
sharp guy…
I think religion provides a very important service in this world. Like therapy, and/or a solid family structure, it provides security, support and a feeling of belonging that I think is important to people. Not everyone is blessed with a strong family system and or a solid support group and in those circumstances where someone needs that in their life. Religion has a very positive impact. I also get frustrated when you see all the evil that is being done “in the name of religion” because, like Dave said, how can something that is inherently based on such positive ideas, become so negative. However, its not just religion that causes war, murder, etc….just as much evil has been done in the name of race, economics, etc….essentially, anything that divides us and puts us into groups, will eventually lead to violence. I guess thats just human nature. I think it has been a long time coming for religion to be exposed for the corruption that resides within it…frankly, there is just too much money at stake for their not to be corruption. The catholic church, as kyle once said to me, is a corporation and the pope is a CEO…and if you were running a corporation that large….many people would do whatever it takes to keep things status quo (including hiding scandals, etc). The USA is also a corporation and our fearful leader (also our CEO) is also responsible for some underhanded things (like many of his predecessors) in an effort to keep this big corporation full steam ahead….
I mean, you can’t look at religion in any other way then to say that this thing was created (at the very least) with good intentions…I mean, over time, it has proven to be full of faults…there are factions that don’t treat women well, factions that don’t treat gays well, factions that don’t treat other factions well, etc…the list goes on and on….but there are a lot of things that the united states does that make my stomach turn, but, in the end, I still feel lucky and proud to be an american, just like with all the awful things that religion has spawned, I still feel that, in the right hands, its nice, like Deb said, that people go to church every sunday, and try to teach their children the GOOD things about religion…I mean, if anything, its a great way for families to connect…to share a common bond…those things are important…
I was raised jewish…I don’t practice, don’t much care to, but like a lot of jews, I tend to see judaism more of a cultural thing, than a religious thing….I associate with being jewish…and I’m proud of what the jewish people have gone through, and I feel that in some weird way, I’m honoring my family by keeping this association…much like many of you may feel like you honor your families by being proud to be Irish, or italian, etc…ultimately, everyone likes to associate themselves with “something”…whether it be race, religion, sex, intellect,…..everyone sees themselves as in one group and not in another…and they like to be around others that share those traits….thems are just the facts…
so how do you take a species (such as humans) that are inherently interested in dividing themselves up into like groups…and keep them from killing each other…or is that too lofty a goal…I mean, in some ways, we have tried to put together groups based on kindness, generosity, and faith (religion) and that didn’t work out so well….we have tried to make groups based on geographich boundaries (nationalism) that didn’t work out so well…we have also tried by color, private parts, language, and bank accounts…..all of it seems to end in violence…well, except for private parts…we still haven’t had the official men vs. woman “war” yet…but anythings possible…
some people go to church, some people play sports, some people write blogs, some people spend lots of time with family, some people do all of the above, some people read, some people write, some people paint, some people break laws, some people teach, some people learn, some people complain,
In the end, if it wasn’t religion that was causing all of these wars, violence, and sexual misdeeds….it would be something else…some other division among us…the painters vs the drawers…..the fat vs the skinny….
ultimately, all of these groups provide some value for its members…some service…and they all have some positive messages associated with them….the key is figuring out what causes humans to want to hurt other humans…find that genome, and manipulate it…eliminate it while your still in the womb….
get rid of the violent nature that resides in humans, and you will solve the problem of religion…religion isn’t the problem…right, violence is the problem…and violence is ultimately what we need to ger rid of…
I mean, there are plenty of organziations out there with whacked our ideas…but since they haven’t caused any wars lately…and since their membership isn’t as large as, say, the catholics…they get overlooked.
Wow. Fantastic comments. Since everyone seems willing to contribute at length, there are so many different things to comment on. Let’s get started.
Dave —
On the calling out thing: if you click on the link in my first comment (the one that says “a couple of weeks ago,” it should link directly to the call out :-)
On why I stopped being a Catholic: It wasn’t because of the scandals or because of the hypocrisy. It was because I didn’t believe in a personified God. I didn’t believe that there was a God who spoke to Abraham or to Moses or to Jesus. I didn’t believe in the kind of God that writes commandments. Basically, when I left the Church, I didn’t only leave behind the organization, I left behind the entire concept of a Supreme Being.
On the difference between agnosticism and atheism: I haven’t done any formal research on it, but I know what those two terms mean. An agnostic is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God, and who claims no faith or disbelief in God. An atheist, on the other hand, actively disbelieves in God and/or gods, especially God(s) as the creator of the universe, one who intervenes in it and sustains a personal relationship with its creatures. I am an atheist.
I tried finding that circular argument you were talking about; unfortunately, I didn’t. I did, however, find a basic introduction to atheism (with comparisons to agnosticism) on Infidels.org. I haven’t read the whole thing carefully, but scanning through it, it seems like a well-intentioned piece. You might want to check it out if you’re interested in this topic.
In lieu of finding the circular argument though, we can look at how you characterized it: “active disbelief became a belief in and of itself.” Atheism is not the belief that one should have no beliefs. It is a belief that God and/or gods do not exist.
On “The Divine”: This, obviously, is a complex term. Looking for its definition is, in some sense, analogous to looking for a definition of God. So let me start by saying that the Divine does not have a will. It does not have purpose. It does not want. Nor does the Divine love. This is not a “God cannot be understood” kind of thing. Rather, it is an understanding of the Divine. Perhaps the simplest way to explain my understanding of the Divine is to say that it is a sense of communion with the universe. Put even more simply, it is a felt connection with all the other stuff, where “stuff” is a technical term meaning all the elements of the universe (including its laws and forces). To feel “divine inspiration” is to be inspired by the universe.
I should try to make clear here, for those who missed it because I didn’t do a good enough job of communicating it, that it wad this last thing (divine inspiration) that was the major thrust of my post, and it was the reason I ended on Muhammed feeling divinely inspired. What I was trying to get across is that when one actively disbelieves in God and/or gods, one must find a better explanation as to why something is occuring. The reason this post is entitled “Finding Something to Write” is because I wanted to illustrate the worldly-events that motivated me to sit down and proclaim. It was to show that a self-reflective person is able to understand the forces that are work within him or her, and to contrast that with Muhammed (and Abraham and Moses and Jesus), who assigned those forces the name of God
Leigh –
On the beginnings of Catholicism: There are more sources about the time of the Bible than the Bible itself (we’re talking New Testament here). One such example are the writings of Josephus. I read a portion of them a long, long time ago (so long ago that I got the collection from the Swampscott Library!), so I don’t remember the whole story. The short version is that he was a Jewish historian who wrote around 70 A.D., but he was also trying to save his own ass after fighting against the Romans and then not killing himself with the rest of his compatriots at Galilee, so some people question how accurate his “history” is. Some say he wrote about Jesus, but others dispute this, since the translation we have is from the 9th century, and the passage could have been added in the intervening years. Anyway, he gives a relatively-reliable perspective on the events happening around the beginning of Catholicism.
Another example (and the one that directed me to Josephus) is James, the brother of Jesus, by Robert Eisenman. Using the Dead Sea Scrolls against the highly-politicised editorials of the New Testament, Eisenman argues that Jesus’ brother James was the heir of Christianity, and not Peter (who is considered to be the first Pope). It’s an interesting look at the type of charged environment that must have followed the death of Jesus, showing that some followers wanted to go in one direction, and others in another. In some sense, Eisenman’s book is an attempt to show that the victors don’t always get to write the history books.
As for religions prior to the major ones (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christinaity, and Islam), there are a ton, probably going all the way back to the first time humans ever buried their dead. We’re talking all of the different belief structures that now come under the name Paganism. Good luck with your research :-)
Deb –
As always, it takes a woman to make the world beautiful. Your line, “I love that my mother goes to church every Sunday. I love that I don’t.” is perhaps the best example of religious tolerance one could hope for. Thanks for entering back into the conversation after such a long time away :-)
David –
Plus, Noah was a drinker. And as the sign says in my grandfather’s camp in Maine, “Never trust a man who doesn’t drink.”
Adam–
I agree with almost everything you said, except for one major thing. I am not against religion because it causes violence. I don’t think it does. As you said, the laws of nature seem to cause violence (Tennyson’s “nature red in tooth and claw”), and humans are not above nature (though if we follow your genetic manipulation idea, we might be outside of it). I am against religion because it hides our eyes from looking at our nature. In some ways (not all), I conceive the origin of religion as the termination of education. I’ve said somewhere else that philosophy (nee, education) is the protection of the question. Using that formulation, religion would be the prevention of the question. For more on this idea, read this week’s “weekly feature“.
I totally agree and I wasn’t saying that violence was the reason you were anti-religion (though it did sound that way in my post)….but I guess my point was that when one gets into an anti religion discussion, violence is almost always brought up as prime example of why religion is bad…though its pretty clear, your reasons are more about your actual beliefs, etc….(which I share by the way)
The Problem of Beauty
One reason why many of us can’t believe in God—at least as conceived within Judaism, Christianity and Islam–is the problem of evil. If God really loves us, then why is life often so painful and unfair? No one has answered this question adequately. But the flip side of the problem of evil is the problem of beauty. If there really is no God, if the world was not in some sense designed for us, why is it so heart-breakingly lovely?
Dawkins addresses this issue in Climbing Mount Improbable. He recalls driving with his six-year-old daughter when she pointed out all the “pretty†wildflowers in a field. When Dawkins asked what she thought wildflowers are for, she replied, “To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us.†Dawkins—bless his rational heart!–writes: “I was touched by this, and sorry I had to tell her it wasn’t so.†I actually laughed reading this passage. No Santa Claus in the Dawkins household!
Dawkins points out that his daughter’s logic resembles that of Christian fundamentalists who claim that God created the AIDS virus to punish sinners. True enough.
But Dawkins still never explains in Climbing or elsewhere the aesthetic response evoked in us by nature. His colleague Edward Wilson has suggested that natural selection may have instilled in us a “biophilia,†or reverence for nature, that benefits both us and those creatures with whom we enjoy mutually beneficial relationships. But why do we respond to rainbows, sunsets, stars, phenomena from which we extract no tangible, utilitarian benefit? As the atheist and Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg writes in Dreams of a Final Theory, “I have to admit that sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.â€
The problem of beauty is one reason why I call myself an agnostic and not an atheist.
Just thought it was interesting. Kyle there should have a book club on here where we can all read the same book then discuss. As long as there is enough time given I think it would work.
Sorry thought was taken from http://discovermagazine.typepad.com/horganism/2006/10/the_problem_of_.html
Wow. Good find.
The problem of beauty is the problem of perception, or in the sense of beautiful music, audition. In both perception and audition, we filter certain things in favor of others. We don’t hear like dogs do because we didn’t evolve that way. While some animals do respond to music, they don’t consider it beautiful, though for other animals (or really, some individuals of some species), you would swear that they enjoy classical over metal. In other words (and even for dogs), beauty is subjective.
With that being said, it appears that rainbows, stars, and wildflowers are of such quality that all humanity can be said to appreciate them. This is not the beauty you may find in a woman’s figure, or the beauty you may find hanging on a wall. No, this is awe-inspiring beauty. Mountainscapes and lakes and sunrises. We all turn into the light, after all.
Except for those who don’t. Most of us know at least one of these people (though if you went by TV, they seem to be everywhere nowadays). The ones who prefer dark rooms with the shades drawn. The kind that give the finger to the horizon. The ones who slink through alleyways and don’t come out unless they’re in shadow. The ones who prefer the monochrome red of blood over the diverse hues in the rainbow.
We have to ignore them if this is to make any sense of course. We can’t speak in specific but must deal, as the writer before me did, in generalities. And we must call those generalities truth. Not estimations or statistics. But truth.
So, for those of us who think nature is beautiful, or I guess all of us, or rather (and just) “us”…for us, there needs to be an explanation as to what inspires the “aesthetic response in ‘us’ by nature.”
Here would be my question to the previous writer: can nature be ugly? It can be scary, yes, but can it be ugly? Is there not, even in the darkest and dankest swamps of the everglades, a kind of beauty? The kind of beauty that makes us tremble in fear, tremble if only at its beauty of fecundity?
Nature is, by definition then, beautiful. Why? Why do we insist on calling a pile of rocks raising up from a body of water and shaded all in diverse colors, why do we insist on calling it beautiful?
Albert Borgman, a passionate Christian writer, wrote, “The ancestral environment is the ground state…of reality. Human beings evolved in it, and so did their ability to read its signs. It is reasonable to assume that the attunement of humans to their original environment felt good…[though one] must be careful not to idealize the original and natural setting…[y]et it had for the most part a coherence, order, and vividness that we rarely experience in the contemporary setting…” [Holding on to Reality, pp. 24-25).
Though Mr. Borgman’s book is on another topic (what we lose because of digital technology), his paragraph helps explain why nature has all but imprinted itself as our definition of beautiful. “The ancestral environment is the ground state…of reality.” We think nature is beautiful because we are taught that nature is beautiful (unless we’re not, but then we don’t).
Further, “the original and natural setting…had…a coherence, order, and vividness…”. At the dawn of perceived time, Borgman is saying, we noticed our world as order, as vivid, striking order. The stars moving through the sky. The rainbow appearing the same way every time. The cycle of the four seasons. And vivid: the winters cold without the fire, the summers hot without the wells, the winds strong outside the caves, the sound of the insects harsh in the trees. We tremble at the fecundity of order.
The question the writer needs to be asking himself is not, why is something beautiful, but rather, why is there order rather than not? That answer is evolution. Not biological evolution, but material. Its atoms and molecules, given momentum and an infinite amount of time.
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On the topic of the book club: Nearing Mactan, my brother.
Re: Orientalism. The chief effect of Edward Said’s book has been to stifle honest, objective scholarship about those cultures. See here: “Where Edward Said was wrong”
Re: the Hitler’s Pope smear. You can a number of rebuttals in the archives at the conservative Catholic journal First Things. If this link doesn’t get you into a list of articles, search keywords “Pacelli” and “Hitler”.
Re: Orientalism: Reading through Said, it’s difficult to give the details of his arguments much creedence (he is similar to Foucault in this way). The article you pointed to makes this abundantly clear. With that being said, I think that what I’ve taken from his book — the idea that any generalization made about “the East” is necessarily false (or meaningless) due to the fact that nothing of any value can be said about billions of people without gross misunderstandings…i.e, for the same reason that racism, sexism, nationalism, etc. is bad, Orientalism is bad — I think think this message is valid and valuable.
Re: The Pope and the Holocaust: I stand corrected. Thanks for the heads up.