Debate Amongst Atheists #1: Mike Ely's Letter 5 on Faith and the Black Church

[Rawthentic]

Debate Among Atheists #1: Mike Ely’s Letter 5 on Faith and the Black Church (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/debate-among-atheists-1-how-to-understand-faith-and-the-black-church/)

Posted by Mike E (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1129785784) on June 1, 2008
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/religiousright.jpg?w=200 (http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/religiousright.jpg)There has been an ongoing (and hopefully deepening) debate among communists over how to understand religious faith, how to understand its political role, how to discuss faith with religious believers, and how to promote a secular materialist understanding of the universe. This is (by its nature) a debate among people who assert that there are no gods and that religious belief is a human invention that does not (by its nature) correctly describe how the material universe works. But, starting from that common understanding, there emerges a divergence.
We will post here two different views on religion.
The first is taken from our the communist polemical work “9 Letters to Our Comrades” — and lays out a specific layered communist view of the origins, role and impact of religious faith.
The second contains two responses from followers of Bob Avakian (the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA).
One of the points of controversy discussed here is the slogan (raised by Avakian) that “The Bible Belt is the Lynching Belt.” On one level, this is simply true, of course — the plantation areas of the Deep South coincide (for iimportant historical reasons) with some of the most conservative areas of Christian Fundamentalism. The areas once dominated by Lynch Law remain today centers for some of the most rightwing and ignorant political forces in the U.S. But the controversy here is over how to interpret that: Was “the Bible” simply a weapons justifying that lynching, or did opposing forces wield religion in opposing ways? Was Christian religion in the Deep South simply an ideological prop for the most gruesome crimes — or were there ways in which some Christian churches (and even emergent forms of Christian belief) involved in the resistance and survival of Black people?
This question of evaluating the complex, historic and present role of the Black church has emerged again as a current question — in the recent controversies surrounding the “Black Liberation Theology” expressed by Jeremiah Wright.
This post includes an initial critical engagement with the religious approach of Bob Avakian.
* * * * * *
9 Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyond Avakian’s Synthesis (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/9-letters/)


by Mike Ely

an excerpt from Letter 5: Particularities of Christians and Fascists (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/9-letters/)

The RCP has given prominence to Avakian’s atheist polemics against religion. These are important topics. There needs to be a lively militant atheist-materialist pole raised among the people and in the fight against political reaction. This is after all a highly religious country, and this is a political moment when fascist forces of the Religious Right have been seizing positions of power.
However, Avakian’s analyses of religion have a distant, schematic, and reductionist quality. These works show little interest in the specific social and historic roots of people’s religious faith — and why particular religions have such power among particular communities. There is little appreciation of the complexity, sophistication and diversity of what people actually believe. And quite frankly there is little respect for the people and little real understanding of why many believe — or why some don’t. [67]
Little respect for the people. Little appreciation of what they believe and why they believe it.

The problem is methodology: As Avakian dissects Christian fundamentalism and the “Christian Fascist” political movements, you can’t shake the feeling that it is done without really knowing the people or their beliefs. I don’t mean just personally knowing — but the deeper scientific sense of knowing. There is a necessary substratum of research, investigation and the summation of political practice that is largely missing here.
For one thing, you can’t actually understand people and religious movements (not even “fundamentalists”) by relying so heavily ona close textual read of their holy scriptures. And a communist understanding of political fundamentalism can’t be developed by just reworking lots of secular-liberal exposés of theocratic political trends. You can’t speculate that a Christian theocratic political order is coming without studying the real historically-specific political obstacles to both centralized fascist power and the establishment of state religion.
I spent most of the 1970s among West Virginia coalminers who (as most people know) include many born-again Christians. [68] This is personal experience, admittedly from quite a few years ago. But it was experience and it has left me with a sense of the living contradictions surrounding religion and the cultural wars.
Here is Avakian on the causes of religion:

“…religious notions don’t appear out of, or arise out of, the mist or out of nowhere, but of course have their roots, historically, in the ignorance, the lack of knowledge, of human beings in early society; but they have been carried forward, codified and institutionalized by ruling classes throughout the ages as part of enforcing their rule.” [69]
This view attributes religion to a mix of ancient ignorance plus the later ruling class manipulations. It profoundly underestimates how deeply religious faith is rooted in the needs and desperations of people’s existence. Faith and religious community are rooted in the search for consolation and meaning.
Those religious impulses are then shaped by very specific historical experiences and simultaneously by the ideological operatives of various classes in society (including, but certainly not limited to, the ideologues of the ruling classes).
To take one example: The adoption of Christianity by enslaved African people in America was not just the result of enforced ignorance or the forced indoctrination by Christian slave-owners (though both were involved). The mass conversion of slaves to Christianity happened as part of larger religious movements that swept across the U.S., sometimes in the face of resistance from their immediate owners. In the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s, African slaves and freemen flocked to camp meetings held by traveling white Baptist and Methodist preachers, some of whom were convinced of the humanity of the slaves (a then-radical idea) and of the slaves’ subsequent need for salvation. As they embraced Christianity and as they established churches, Black people shaped and reshaped Christian worship — in both form and content — marking it with their dreams and accommodations and, in some moments, creating a gospel of escape or emancipation.
The defining elements of Christianity were certainly codified over centuries by ruling class ideologues. Many core messages Black people received via Christianity reinforced and justified oppression. The Christ of the Bible preaches “turn the other cheek” to the oppressed. Slaves were told that African people were “the descendants of Ham,” condemned to be “servant of servants.” [70]
But at the same time, the “spirit-filled” worship and music of plantation churches was carried over from West African cultures and they developed through the creative work of once-African people. The Christian fervor by many African American people over the last two hundred years is rooted not mainly in the imposition of “false consciousness” from without, but in a deep need for ecstatic relief and mutual consolation in a horrific world.
Avakian often points out (correctly) that science can satisfy the human need for “awe and wonder.” But religion is not just born from that outward-looking desire for context and amazement — but often in the painful inner despair of loss and powerlessness.
Marx understood this and his assessment is a sharp contrast to Avakian’s:

“The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being encamped outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” [71]
I think back on many intense discussions with fundamentalist believers — where I would dig into the absurdity of a loving God allowing innocents to suffer, or into the scientific absurdities of Genesis. While I was thinking I had “really pinned them down,” my friends often turned to me in exasperation to say, “Look, this is really not the issue. I feel Jesus as a living, healing, guiding presence in my heart.”
In fact the attraction of born-again Christianity includes an ecstatic “personal relationship” — not just the certitude of absolute biblical truth and attraction of reactionary morality in a world of “turbocapitalism.” [72] And getting at that personal attachment requires upholding Marx’s dialectical materialism over Avakian’s superficial rationalism.
You can undermine brittle dogmatic religions by using their inconsistencies. You can pry some individuals over toward communistic atheism that way. But you really can’t touch the potency of religion if you don’t appreciate the source of its influence.
You can’t challenge Christian morality by crudely equating it with venality — with Old Testament “horrors” or the ugliest “traditional values.” You also have to deal (in truly dialectical ways) with Jesus’ admonitions to “love your brother” and “turn the other cheek.” You have to deal with grace, redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, charity and hope for blessings — in other words, you have to all-sidedly deal (critically!) with what actually attracts people to Christian teachings.
Further: Religions are not just scientifically “wrong” world outlooks — but are also the rituals, traditions and cultures through which people identify themselves with historically constituted communities. Look at the stubborn Catholicism of many Irish people or the tenacious Judaism among dispersed Jewish people — who are often not particularly drawn to the supernatural.
There are no gods who hear our muffled cries. No one should expect divine blessings or miracles. The meek will not inherit the earth. But that doesn’t mean religion is simply self-deception or that communities of people don’t reap real benefits by organizing themselves into congregations.
No gods hear our muffled cries. But religion is not simply self-deception.

To return to my previous example: Can anyone hope to deal with the gap separating communism from the radical sections of Black people without appreciating the reasons why many African American people are so deeply attached to their churches and faiths?
Surely we have to understand the historic institutional role of Black churches, as economic support, as a political voice for a voiceless community, and even as the wellspring of world-changing music. Yes, those churches have been a force for accommodation and even reactionary purposes. But how can we evaluate all this if we don’t understand that religion (including the Black church) has had progressive and even revolutionary currents all through history. Let’s understand well the armed preacher Thomas Münzer 73] , the slaves’ prophet Nat Turner [74] , the last Puritan John Brown, and the still-beloved Sheik Bedreddin. [75]
The RCP has recently promoted the observation that “The Bible Belt is the lynching belt” — to suggest that violent racism is one of fundamentalist Christianity’s bedrock “traditional values.” But this approach lacks a sense of both history and dialectics: Christianity of the southern Bible Belt is not just the religion of the lynch mob — but also of the lynched. This is because the Bible Belt and the lynching belt is centered on the Black Belt — the former plantation areas of the deep South (what Black people called “the soil of our suffering”), a place where two distinct nations and national cultures cohabited in gruesome ways. Christianity there includes the African American churches.
Quite a few Black churches uphold some reactionary social values (including most recently in the controversies over abortion and same sex marriage). However, the gospel of the African American churches is obviously not marked by the “traditional value” of white supremacy. They have often interpreted the story of Jesus to explain, validate and inspire their own struggle for survival (including against the horrible threat and impact of lynching). [76]
Taking Claims of Fundamentalists Literally
Part of the problem with the RCP’s current approach is the fetish of the word — here taking the form of overestimating the value of textual readings. When fundamentalists say that they take the Bible literally, a dialectical materialist can’t take that statement literally. [77]
Sometimes secular people read the barbaric punishments advocated by the Old Testament and assume that fundamentalists “must” uphold this or else disavow the Bible. This is exactly what Avakian teaches. [78]
But in fact, many fundamentalists explain that (in their actual theology) there were different “covenants” with God — including a Mosaic Covenant (in the Old Testament) that was then replaced by a New Covenant brought by Jesus (in the New Testament). They often uphold some passages and insights of the Old Testament (like the Ten Commandments), but basically are not “bound” by its details or general moral tone.
In other words, conservative Christians have, long ago, cobbled together various theological ways of dealing with the contradictions and barbarism of the Old Testament. There is a long-standing conflict between that Christian fringe which literally believes in stoning people to death, and the broader ranks of fundamentalists who think those folks are nuts (even while they often condemn sex outside marriage in their own ways).
Their world is NOT rocked when the RCP naively points out that the Old Testament calls for stoning sinners. “After all,” people would explain to me, “Jesus stopped the stoning of the adulterous woman and said ‘let those without sin cast the first stone.’” [79]
With a few exceptions, the RCP ignores such distinctions — and at the street level, RCP activists (following Revolution newspaper [80] (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/letter-5/#note80) ) imply that executing gay people or disobedient women must be the program of the Religious Right today (and even of fundamentalists generally) because (after all) “that’s what the Bible says.” But it is wrong to functionally ignore the complex shades and divisions of faith. [81] You can’t act like fundamentalists (or even the politically active ones) are inherently or generally inclined toward literal theocracy [82] or (at the same time) imply that fundamentalists are essentially the only real Christians because of their literalism.
To actually understand the political programs (and shades of program) among the Religious Right forces (or anyone else), you have to do some real work of investigation. And you can’t just analyze the text of their programs — you have to analyze their actual living political movement, and what its driving contradictions are (which in real politics often lead in directions quite different from stated intentions.)



from : mikeely.wordpress.com (http://www.revleft.com/vb/mikeely.wordpress.com)

[Random Precision]

This is one of Ely's better articles. Hell, it's even obvious from the few RCPers on this site the overall bourgeois prejudice against religion that Avakian promotes. I especially appreciated his full quoting of Marx on the subject- too many people have just heard the last line or so, and don't even think about what the phrase "opium of the people" means, far less understand how he dealt with religion. As communists we must deal with religion in the same way- by understanding its roots in capitalist superstructure and pointing toward the class struggle as the real battleground on which religion will end, instead of constantly harping on about superstition and whatnot.

Oh, and it's good to have you back, LftP.

[al8]

There is nothing wrong pointing at the dishonesty of claiming to base ones views on the bible when one is actually basing the bible on ones own view (through interpretive summersaults).

And neither can I see how that excludes a marxist understanding of religion or makes one have a capitalist "prejudice".

[Random Precision]

You should read the article more closely, because he addresses the questions you raise quite well.


There is nothing wrong pointing at the dishonesty of claiming to base ones views on the bible when one is actually basing the bible on ones own view (through interpretive summersaults).

Maybe not, but going on about these inconsistencies overrates the importance the Bible has for fundamentalist Christians, misunderstands fundamentalism entirely, and serves to alienate people from the revolutionary viewpoint we are promoting. In short, it's missing the point.


And neither can I see how that excludes a marxist understanding of religion or makes one have a capitalist "prejudice".

By "bourgeois prejudice against religion", I mean an anti-theistic point of view that is based on idealist notions of religion rather than on materialist Marxism. You try to combat religion as an idea independent of any material roots, which for all practical purposes is the same bourgeois prejudice put forth by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. This is fundamentally opposed to Marxist notions of how to combat religion.

[pusher robot]

There is nothing wrong pointing at the dishonesty of claiming to base ones views on the bible when one is actually basing the bible on ones own view (through interpretive summersaults).

Consider this: Suppose I came in here and started railing against all of you for being anti-homosexual because, since Marx was anti-homosexual, and Marxism is based on the writings of Marx, all Marxists must also be anti-homosexual, otherwise you're not really Marxists at all.

What would you think of this argument?

[Rawthentic]

Pusher robot, no it wouldn't be an argument at all.

What's your point?

[pusher robot]

Pusher robot, no it wouldn't be an argument at all.

What's your point?

The article is arguing against applying this same sloppy argumentation to religion.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

I especially appreciated his full quoting of Marx on the subject- too many people have just heard the last line or so, and don't even think about what the phrase "opium of the people" means, far less understand how he dealt with religion. As communists we must deal with religion in the same way- by understanding its roots in capitalist superstructure and pointing toward the class struggle as the real battleground on which religion will end, instead of constantly harping on about superstition and whatnot.


If you'd like the full (and even more enlightening) quote:



Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.



I think this is a clear statement of anti-theism, personally.

-Alex

[Post-Something]

Consider this: Suppose I came in here and started railing against all of you for being anti-homosexual because, since Marx was anti-homosexual, and Marxism is based on the writings of Marx, all Marxists must also be anti-homosexual, otherwise you're not really Marxists at all.

What would you think of this argument?

No, because Christians take the word of God as truth, whereas Marxists look at Marx and see if what he said was true; which it is. By definitions, Christians take Gods word as truth, while Marxists dispute aspects of Marx's theories all the time.

[pusher robot]

No, because Christians take the word of God as truth, whereas Marxists look at Marx and see if what he said was true; which it is.
So you agree, then, that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being?" You've looked to see if that was true, and indeed it is?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

No, because Christians take the word of God as truth
Only a very small fraction of Christians consider everything in the Bible to be true at face value, and even they do a lot of unavoidable interpretation of the clearly allegorical parts.

Yes, it is technically correct to say that Christians take the word of God as truth. However, Christians do not agree as to what the word of God actually is.

[Demogorgon]

If you'd like the full (and even more enlightening) quote:




I think this is a clear statement of anti-theism, personally.

-Alex

Only if you don't understand formal nineteenth century language.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions."

This line is written essentially backwards from the way it would be phrased in normal speech, as was the fashion back then. What it says in ordinary speech is that with real happiness the need for illusory happiness goes and that when those conditions that require illusions (capitalism) go so to will lead people to give up their illusions.

You need to understand the context Marx was writing from. He was criticising the approach that sees religion in isolation and calls on it to be abolished as if it were a force on his own. What he is saying is that the true goal of the atheist (in his opinion) is to seek to do away with the circumstances that lead to religion rather than trying to attack religion on its own.

This sentence here is the key part of the passage:

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering"

Here Marx is stating his position that religion is the means by which people's suffering manifests itself and the means by which they seek escape from it. His position is fundamentally that it is a natural expression of misery under capitalism.

To turn that into a statement that religion must be gotten rid of in order to get rid of capitalism is a pretty awful example of backwards thinking.

[Bud Struggle]

This sentence here is the key part of the passage:

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering"

Here Marx is stating his position that religion is the means by which people's suffering manifests itself and the means by which they seek escape from it. His position is fundamentally that it is a natural expression of misery under capitalism.

To turn that into a statement that religion must be gotten rid of in order to get rid of capitalism is a pretty awful example of backwards thinking.

That's an excellent point. You need to get rid of suffering to get rid of religion--not the other way round.

On the other hand--there is a lot more to religion that as an expression of suffering. Lots of people are religious that don't suffer much or at all. Lots of people are religious who really don't need illusions to make them happy--they are happy already.

Religion has a much more complex role in the human psyche than just as an expression of emotion--sad, happy, etc. or of a state of personal being, suffering, humiliation, etc.

Religion serves a real purpose in people's lives that can't be easily quantified.

[Demogorgon]

That's an excellent point. You need to get rid of suffering to get rid of religion--not the other way round.

On the other hand--there is a lot more to religion that as an expression of suffering. Lots of people are religious that don't suffer much or at all. Lots of people are religious who really don't need illusions to make them happy--they are happy already.

Religion has a much more complex role in the human psyche than just as an expression of emotion--sad, happy, etc. or of a state of personal being, suffering, humiliation, etc.

Religion serves a real purpose in people's lives that can't be easily quantified.
There are certainly other reasons for religion. I reckon that for a lot of people the main reason is the social aspect of the church. That is it creates community. Then again the fact you often have to go to church for community is a telling point about capitalism's trouble creating it. Which ties into a broader idea of suffering.

Also of course religion often caters for people's fear of death and provides considerable comfort when loved ones die, and while that is certainly a form of suffering, it is not one that socialism can eliminate, so I suspect religion will never entirely go away, though the less suffering there is in the world, the less religion there will be.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

This line is written essentially backwards from the way it would be phrased in normal speech, as was the fashion back then. What it says in ordinary speech is that with real happiness the need for illusory happiness goes and that when those conditions that require illusions (capitalism) go so to will lead people to give up their illusions.


I just don't see how you've got to this conclusion. The meaning of the sentence seems plain to me - if we call upon people to abandon their illusions (religions) then we call upon people to get rid of the system that needs illusions to make it bearable (capitalism). Simple, isn't it? To me, and perhaps this is just my lack of sophistication or whatever, it looks like you've just deliberately taken your opinion and super-imposed it onto Marx.


This sentence here is the key part of the passage:


Yeah, and then in the following passage he says we need to get rid of the imaginary flowers in order to throw off the chain. Or, we need to get rid of religion and other false comforts in order to get rid of capitalism.

Why do you get to say what is "key" and I don't?

-Alex

[KC]

Yeah, and then in the following passage he says we need to get rid of the imaginary flowers in order to throw off the chain. Or, we need to get rid of religion and other false comforts in order to get rid of capitalism.

That is an idealist way of looking at it; materialists realize that ideology (of which religion is and can be a part) is a result of the environment in which one lives, and not the other way around.

[Demogorgon]

I just don't see how you've got to this conclusion. The meaning of the sentence seems plain to me - if we call upon people to abandon their illusions (religions) then we call upon people to get rid of the system that needs illusions to make it bearable (capitalism). Simple, isn't it? To me, and perhaps this is just my lack of sophistication or whatever, it looks like you've just deliberately taken your opinion and super-imposed it onto Marx.

No, indeed it was probably closely reading that passage that caused me to give up anti-theism. It is a case of understanding nineteenth century writing, which uses different conventions from modern writing. This interpretation from you:

"if we call upon people to abandon their illusions (religions) then we call upon people to get rid of the system that needs illusions to make it bearable (capitalism)"

Is reading the statement as if Marx was using twenty-first century syntax (and also removing a lot of the subtlety). It is made more difficult by Marx's old fashioned language. But to put it in ordinary English would probably put it something like this:

The removal of religion is dependent upon the demand for real happiness. The real position is to call upon people to get rid of the conditions that require religion which will then lead to the removal of religion.

To put it more clearly, let's take Marx's analogy of opium. When somebody is dying of cancer and we cannot cure them we give them painkillers, usually opiate based. These painkillers do not cure them, but they do mask the pain. If a cure of cancer is found we will no longer have to give these painkillers to cancer victims, but that does not mean that the key to curing cancer is to take away the painkillers from dying sufferers.


Yeah, and then in the following passage he says we need to get rid of the imaginary flowers in order to throw off the chain. Or, we need to get rid of religion and other false comforts in order to get rid of capitalism.

This is an almost poetic passage and needs quite a bit of interpretation so lets look at it.

"Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower."

This essentially says that religion is the thing that is being used to make the "chain" of capitalism more bearable. He further says that the point of dispelling this fantasy must not be to simply to make people go on to to bear the chains of caitalism except without the comfort, but rather people must throw off the chains to achieve true joy. In essence this is a strong critique of anti-theism which simply seeks to get rid of the comfort.

"The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun

This is a statement of Marx's humanistic outlook. Man must focus upon mankind. Capitalism has made that considerably harder so man focuses on religion instead. You are making the mistake of presuming that it simply means that by getting rid of religion that man will be free to pursue a humanistic outlook. That is not the case. Non religious thinking outwith a context of human emancipation can be even worse than religious thinking after all.

Marx says that the removal of religion has to come in the context of human emancipation or at least in the context of class struggle in favour of that.

Anti-theism on the other hand attacks religion in a vacuum. Doing that leads to crap like Neitzsche's style of thought. Not anything positive.


Why do you get to say what is "key" and I don't?

At the risk of sounding flippant, because I understand nineteenth century writing better. Marx's comment about religious suffering is where he sets the context for the rest of his critique.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

I see what you're saying. I think it's more complicated than just the fact that religion is a result of environment, though. I think that religion has become so locked in as a social institution that it won't just melt with a re-organisation of the environment.

Anyway, I was more trying to point out Marx's actual meaning in that passage, because orthodox marxists always miss the second passage.

-Alex

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Also of course religion often caters for people's fear of death and provides considerable comfort when loved ones die, and while that is certainly a form of suffering, it is not one that socialism can eliminate, so I suspect religion will never entirely go away, though the less suffering there is in the world, the less religion there will be.
That's a very good point.

Question for anti-theists: If indeed religion is at least partially caused by people's fear of death, how exactly do you propose to eliminate this fear? No matter how much we improve society, our loved ones will still die, and that will still hurt.

[pusher robot]

There are certainly other reasons for religion. I reckon that for a lot of people the main reason is the social aspect of the church. That is it creates community. Then again the fact you often have to go to church for community is a telling point about capitalism's trouble creating it. Which ties into a broader idea of suffering.

That's a very keen observation, I think. I still occasionally go to church, despite truly believing in very little except the broadest tenets of morality, simply for the social aspect. The church is every bit as much of a social club as a place for worship - in fact, the after-service social potlucks and so forth are sometimes better attended than the services themselves! So be wary that when you attack peoples' churches, you are likely also attacking their social club (and, by proxy, its members.)

On the other hand, I don't really see this as a substantive critique of capitalism. Social groups must grow organically. Looking to an overarching ideology of political economy to "provide" this is, I think, misguided. Rather, it requires the sort of freedom to engage in cooperative activity that capitalism provides. Personally, I wouldn't want an ideological system that deems to "provide" me with social interaction, I'd want one that says, as capitalism does, "go forth and associate with whomever you will, and cooperate to provide for yourselves." To the extent that social organizations have suffered in the west, it has been almost entirely due to either (a) the meddling interference of governments, or (b) changes in material conditions, such as the demise of urban centers.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

The removal of religion is dependent upon the demand for real happiness. The real position is to call upon people to get rid of the conditions that require religion which will then lead to the removal of religion.

To put it more clearly, let's take Marx's analogy of opium. When somebody is dying of cancer and we cannot cure them we give them painkillers, usually opiate based. These painkillers do not cure them, but they do mask the pain. If a cure of cancer is found we will no longer have to give these painkillers to cancer victims, but that does not mean that the key to curing cancer is to take away the painkillers from dying sufferers.


I understand that, and I understand the logic behind it. However, I think things are a little more complex than this. For example, if we asked Edric O how he would feel about abandoning his religion in a socialist society, I'm certain that he would say he would hold on to it. Obviously that's not to say that he definitely would, but I think it illustrates the point that religion has to some extent outgrown it's material roots and has become a force in and of itself, psychologically. It is extremely difficult for anyone to abandon their fundamental beliefs about reality, and religion is about as fundamental as it gets. It's also extremely difficult not to act on those beliefs, and to pass them on to our children. So basically, I think religion would survive a revolution, unless direct action is taken to combat it, specifically.



This essentially says that religion is the thing that is being used to make the "chain" of capitalism more bearable. He further says that the point of dispelling this fantasy must not be to simply to make people go on to to bear the chains of caitalism except without the comfort, but rather people must throw off the chains to achieve true joy. In essence this is a strong critique of anti-theism which simply seeks to get rid of the comfort.


Totally disagree. You almost said it yourself - Marx is saying we need to get rid of religion to get rid of capitalism. It's there, clear as day. Get rid of the imaginary flower, in order that we throw off the chain. It can be taken as a criticism of pure anti-theism, of course, but certainly not leftist anti-theism; indeed, that is exactly what he is espousing here.



This is a statement of Marx's humanistic outlook. Man must focus upon mankind. Capitalism has made that considerably harder so man focuses on religion instead. You are making the mistake of presuming that it simply means that by getting rid of religion that man will be free to pursue a humanistic outlook.


Again, sorry, but I don't see how you've in any way refuted my "presumption". That is what the passage actually says. Yes, it is a reflection of Marx's humanistic outlook, but he explicitly states that this emancipation comes about through criticism of religion.



At the risk of sounding flippant, because I understand nineteenth century writing better.


This could well be true, and I've got no way of refuting you other than to just point out that the meaning seems clear enough to me. I suppose it's a matter of individual interpretation.

-Alex

[BurnTheOliveTree]

If indeed religion is at least partially caused by people's fear of death, how exactly do you propose to eliminate this fear? No matter how much we improve society, our loved ones will still die, and that will still hurt.


Well, firstly, we are interested in what is true, not what is comfortable - the universe does not owe you gratification.

Secondly, the fear of death in particular is not one dealt with by religion. Religious people are just as hurt as atheists when they're loved ones die. Death and loss are just facts of the human condition.

Thirdly, my personal opinion is that we can overcome our fear of death by looking at things rationally. For example - Death will be the end of experience and perception, so there is literally nothing to be afraid of. It's no different to a dreamless sleep from our perspective. Other ways of coping, such as focussing on what a person has achieved in life, help as well.

Basically, whatever religion can do, philosophy can do better.

Last, there's always transhumanism - for example, Sentinel is an advocate of Immortalism; using technology to avoid involuntary death. We could physically defeat the problem.

-Alex

[Demogorgon]

I understand that, and I understand the logic behind it. However, I think things are a little more complex than this. For example, if we asked Edric O how he would feel about abandoning his religion in a socialist society, I'm certain that he would say he would hold on to it. Obviously that's not to say that he definitely would, but I think it illustrates the point that religion has to some extent outgrown it's material roots and has become a force in and of itself, psychologically. It is extremely difficult for anyone to abandon their fundamental beliefs about reality, and religion is about as fundamental as it gets. It's also extremely difficult not to act on those beliefs, and to pass them on to our children. So basically, I think religion would survive a revolution, unless direct action is taken to combat it, specifically.

No, religion will not go away with religion, but the fact does not bother me. I do think it will become considerably less popular though. The first generation to experience revolution will probably be as religious before. But next generation? The one after that? Time will tell. But it seems difficult to imagine there will be no reduction. Religious belief is a manifestation of social realities. It seems clear that it will have to be reduced.


Totally disagree. You almost said it yourself - Marx is saying we need to get rid of religion to get rid of capitalism. It's there, clear as day. Get rid of the imaginary flower, in order that we throw off the chain. It can be taken as a criticism of pure anti-theism, of course, but certainly not leftist anti-theism; indeed, that is exactly what he is espousing here.

I think I am going to have to return your criticism of me of reading what you want into the passage. Marx was very strongly materialist, why would he think that removing an idea would cause the removal of the cause of the idea? That is the exact opposite of materialism. That is the context in which he is writing. As a materialist philosopher, so you have to take that into account.

Secondly if you take Marx's work as a whole, he often mocked the notion that religious belief could be removed without change in society. Again more context.

Reading with this context in mind and with an understanding of the conventions of formal writing in the nineteenth century, there is no other way to read the passage.


Again, sorry, but I don't see how you've in any way refuted my "presumption". That is what the passage actually says. Yes, it is a reflection of Marx's humanistic outlook, but he explicitly states that this emancipation comes about through criticism of religion.

No he doesn't. He says that the true purpose of criticism should be to criticise society rather than what it manifests. It is an old-fashioned way of using the word of course, but that is the meaning.

But come on, given what you know of Marx, do you really think he would say that emancipation comes from taking pot-shots at religion?

[Demogorgon]

Thirdly, my personal opinion is that we can overcome our fear of death by looking at things rationally. For example - Death will be the end of experience and perception, so there is literally nothing to be afraid of. It's no different to a dreamless sleep from our perspective. Other ways of coping, such as focussing on what a person has achieved in life, help as well.
There is nothing we can do to change the fact that when our loved ones die we will never see them again. Religious denial is a pretty expected psychological reaction.


Last, there's always transhumanism - for example, Sentinel is an advocate of Immortalism; using technology to avoid involuntary death. We could physically defeat the problem.

Yes, but that is not going to happen. That is just another example of wishful thinking. It effectively continues the afterlife belief but moves heaven to earth.

[Kronos]

Question for anti-theists: If indeed religion is at least partially caused by people's fear of death, how exactly do you propose to eliminate this fear? No matter how much we improve society, our loved ones will still die, and that will still hurt.

When you understand death and mortality rationally, you are no longer capable of fearing death. It is dying, rather, that one fears, not death. With death comes total annihilation, with this annihilation comes the impossibility of knowing one is dead; one does not reflect after dying- "hey, I'm dead, this sucks." Remember what Epicurus said: death means nothing to us.

Now, the anxiety of death is three fold. First, it accumulates in people because they are not taught to rationally understand death.

Second, it accumulates because people become more and more nervous as they approach death....because they have it in their head that there is a God waiting who will perform a judgment for or against them. This nervousness is synonymous to going to a job interview...."omg, will I get the job or not? I'm so nervous."

Third, it accumulates because of a kind of selfishness which evolves in individuals as a result of belief in God. It has never occurred to these people that the fact that life will continue after they are dead is enough to justify life and death. They think "but, but, what about me?" No. Fuck you. You are dead and gone. Now, what have you done while you were alive to secure the future of life which will continue after you? Anything at all? Of course not...because it never crossed your mind that God does not exist, but life does not need God to be meaningful.

Perhaps I am an exception to your case. When my "loved ones" die, I will be happy...because I hate them (and I'll get money from the insurance policy hopefully). I am a terribly lonely person who has never developed a "family" relationship with anyone...so such an experience of loss will not occur for me.

My family is the working classes. My enemy is the capitalist. My logic is this:

People are mortal.
People did not ask to be born.
Work has to be done so people can live.
Now, why the fuck would I allow another mortal to do any less work than myself, or survive off of my work, if all of us are going to die anyway?

No fuckin way. Either we all share the burden, or we die.

Here is the perspective of the working class:

I did not ask to be born. I am not obligated to do anything. But, I find myself in a situation where I spend my life working so that another mortal doesn't have to work. And for what? What is the reason why the situation is like this? There better be a very, very good fucking reason why some other dipshit mortal doesn't have to work while I do. If it is ever admitted that life is essentially meaningless, and that the "strongest survive", but remains shrouded behind some philosophical bullshit principle like "man is inherently greedy and capitalism is the only way to express that nature appropriately"....I'm gonna cut to the chase, skip the bullshit, and give that lie back to those who use it to justify their principles. I'm gonna show the capitalists the extreme implications of their principle. I'm gonna return that greed. They will taste their own medicine.

That aside, I am still wondering why people would choose to "worship" "God" even if he did exist?

The proofs for God's existence are ridiculous, and the moral adulation afforded by those who believe "God" exists is even more absurd than the proofs that are lacking in the first place.

What was the point? Was God bored? Drunk? Is he mad? Why did he create anything? Do not simply stop when you are convinced that God exists- inquire why he has done what he has done. You will find yourself in a labyrinth of nonsense so thick that God himself would not believe in his own existence if he were you.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

No, religion will not go away with religion, but the fact does not bother me. I do think it will become considerably less popular though. The first generation to experience revolution will probably be as religious before. But next generation? The one after that? Time will tell. But it seems difficult to imagine there will be no reduction. Religious belief is a manifestation of social realities. It seems clear that it will have to be reduced.


I think that the historical evidence is probably against this idea. How do you account for the prescence of strong religion in the "primitive communist" tribes, and other economic systems?



Marx was very strongly materialist, why would he think that removing an idea would cause the removal of the cause of the idea?


I think that despite being technically a part of the 'superstrcuture', religion has been so strong historically and now, that it's outgrown it's material roots, as I said previously. It's no longer a mere idea resting on the economic base - it is an independent social force. However, I appreciate that point that Marx taken in totality does not agree with this. That said, you must admit that this passage seems to contradict his main outlook.



There is nothing we can do to change the fact that when our loved ones die we will never see them again. Religious denial is a pretty expected psychological reaction.


There are far, far better ways to deal with it than religious denial. Religious denial takes all of our most childish instincts about death and glorifies them, simultaneously ignoring the delicate and often beautifully subtle emotions we could otherwise have. Anything religion can do, philosophy does better.



Yes, but that is not going to happen. That is just another example of wishful thinking. It effectively continues the afterlife belief but moves heaven to earth.


Why is it wishful thinking? Technological advancement is pretty much a constant, it seems inevitable that we will eventually be able to postpone death. No magic there, just a fairly safe bet.

-Alex

[pusher robot]

Third, it accumulates because of a kind of selfishness which evolves in individuals as a result of belief in God. It has never occurred to these people that the fact that life will continue after they are dead is enough to justify life and death. They think "but, but, what about me?" No. Fuck you. You are dead and gone.

I don't agree with this. I can assure you that the "selfishness" that causes me to want to live rather than die has nothing to do with a belief in God.

I don't think people "fear" death in the same way they fear, say spiders. The "fear" it in ths sense that they would much prefer to continue living rather than dying, not to avoid terror, but because they like living.

If you enjoy living, then you should fear death and seek to avoid it. That's the rational thing to do.

[Demogorgon]

I think that the historical evidence is probably against this idea. How do you account for the prescence of strong religion in the "primitive communist" tribes, and other economic systems?

Religion fulfills different roles in different societies. The role it fulfilled in primitive communism is utterly different to the one it fulfills now. Indeed I am not even sure if you could call what people believed back then "religion".

As for now, Capitalism has brought about a fall in religious belief as things have gotten better (between the war and the seventies there was a period where things did genuinely improve and religious belief greatly fell). Today things are getting worse again and we are seeing a bit of a rise in religious belief. It seems to follow that with socialism and further improvement there will be further falls in religious belief.


I think that despite being technically a part of the 'superstrcuture', religion has been so strong historically and now, that it's outgrown it's material roots, as I said previously. It's no longer a mere idea resting on the economic base - it is an independent social force. However, I appreciate that point that Marx taken in totality does not agree with this. That said, you must admit that this passage seems to contradict his main outlook.

Well for me to be convinced of that, I will have to be convinced that materialism is wrong, and I am pretty confident that materialism is correct


There are far, far better ways to deal with it than religious denial. Religious denial takes all of our most childish instincts about death and glorifies them, simultaneously ignoring the delicate and often beautifully subtle emotions we could otherwise have. Anything religion can do, philosophy does better.

What do you suppose philosophy can do here? It certainly can't provide comfort. Anyway I take it you are referring to secular philosophy rather than religious philosophy?


Why is it wishful thinking? Technological advancement is pretty much a constant, it seems inevitable that we will eventually be able to postpone death. No magic there, just a fairly safe bet.

-Alex
The human body naturally ages and by its nature will die. It is worth noting that while medical breakthroughs have nmost certainly increased our average lifespan, they have not increased our maximum lifespan.

Mind you, I don't doubt that maximum lifespan will be pushed out as means to slow again are discovered. In a few hundred years we may well see people living past two hundred or whatever. But the notion that we can put off death altogether is sheer fantasy.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Religion fulfills different roles in different societies. The role it fulfilled in primitive communism is utterly different to the one it fulfills now. Indeed I am not even sure if you could call what people believed back then "religion".


How so? What about the native indian tribes who all paid homage to "the great spirit", ritually sacrificed bison to it, et cetera. Sounds like religion to me. It had the same function, too - Death consolation by teaching a form of primitive reincarnation, primitive philsophy by teaching creation myths, and so on and so forth. Functionally, it is no different to Christianity. The differences are cosmetic as far as I can see.



Well for me to be convinced of that, I will have to be convinced that materialism is wrong, and I am pretty confident that materialism is correct


I don't see the contradiction. Religion is quite a bit more than a mere idea, it's the vast majority of the world's fundamental view of reality, it's the oldest social institution in the world by my reckoning.



What do you suppose philosophy can do here? It certainly can't provide comfort. Anyway I take it you are referring to secular philosophy rather than religious philosophy?


Provide serious, healthy, and real comfort. Here is an example from Richard Dawkins:



We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.


I defy you to tell me that religious comfort "They aren't really dead!" is superior to Dawkins' secular philosophy here.



But the notion that we can put off death altogether is sheer fantasy.


I expect the notion of say, flight was thought "sheer fantasy" back in the day. wouldn't bet against technology. Originally, an advocate of early computers excitedly suggested that one day, there would be, maybe, seven or eight computers built globally. But here we are, talking to eachother. :)

-Alex

[Demogorgon]

How so? What about the native indian tribes who all paid homage to "the great spirit", ritually sacrificed bison to it, et cetera. Sounds like religion to me. It had the same function, too - Death consolation by teaching a form of primitive reincarnation, primitive philsophy by teaching creation myths, and so on and so forth. Functionally, it is no different to Christianity. The differences are cosmetic as far as I can see.
Well native American society was further on than primitive Communism.

At any rate, in primitive societies, religion was a more ad hoc thing used to try and make sense of the world in the face of the unknown. It wasn't an institution, did not have set beliefs, organsied structure etc

I don't see the contradiction. Religion is quite a bit more than a mere idea, it's the vast majority of the world's fundamental view of reality, it's the oldest social institution in the world by my reckoning.

Only if you look at all religions as being one. The materialist position is that our circumstances determine our beliefs, not the other way. Religious people have a religious view of reality because of their circumstances. They don't see things in any given way because they are religious.


Provide serious, healthy, and real comfort. Here is an example from Richard Dawkins:

I defy you to tell me that religious comfort "They aren't really dead!" is superior to Dawkins' secular philosophy here.

Dawkins isn't a philosopher. Anyway I don't see how that provides any comfort. He is talking about the joy of life. It doesn't do anything to comfort one in the face of loved ones dying.

There are non-religious ways of coping of course. But you have to realise that different ways work for different people. For a lot of people religion works.

I expect the notion of say, flight was thought "sheer fantasy" back in the day. wouldn't bet against technology. Originally, an advocate of early computers excitedly suggested that one day, there would be, maybe, seven or eight computers built globally. But here we are, talking to eachother. :)

-Alex
The difference is that flight and the internet are based upon manufactured technology. The notion that we could somehow live forever flies in the face of every known biological fact. Absolutely nothing lasts forever, certainly nothing as ephemeral as the human body. The world itself will eventually be consumed by the son as it dies after all.

[pusher robot]

Absolutely nothing lasts forever, certainly nothing as ephemeral as the human body. The world itself will eventually be consumed by the son as it dies after all.

Granted, but I think when most people talk of "living forever" they simply mean that there is no maximum life span. Certainly, people would still eventually die from disase, disaster, accident, or the sun blowing up. But there doesn't seem to be any theoretical reason why we "must" grow old and die. After all, most of the cells in your body are not actually as old as you are! If cellular damage can be prevented or repaired and likewise generational defects (granted that's a big "if", but not theoretically impossible), then why oughtn't we live indefinitely?

[Demogorgon]

Granted, but I think when most people talk of "living forever" they simply mean that there is no maximum life span. Certainly, people would still eventually die from disase, disaster, accident, or the sun blowing up. But there doesn't seem to be any theoretical reason why we "must" grow old and die. After all, most of the cells in your body are not actually as old as you are! If cellular damage can be prevented or repaired and likewise generational defects (granted that's a big "if", but not theoretically impossible), then why oughtn't we live indefinitely?
I only know the basics of this, but there is a natural aging process in all biological things. Presumably that can be slowed by artificially replacing cells and countering the mental slide that often accompanies aging. However that is all about prolonging life. Not stopping the process entirely. We still haven't even started to prolong maximum lifespan (we have only extended average lifespan) so we do not know exactly what extending potential lifespans would involve, but it would presumably start with pushing it out bit by bit and as we get better and better at it we could expect to live longer and longer.

However there is a difference between pushing the boundaries and abolishing them altogether. It is like counting as high as you can. You can always count to higher and higher numbers but you never reach infinity.

Anyway you have to understand the context in which I made those comments. We were talking about the transhumanist view which a few people here have that we can be made to live forever. That means no death, not by disease, injury, accident or whatever.

Indeed it was even suggested here as an alternative to the need for religious comfort when loved ones die. You will have to forgive me for being the tiniest bit skeptical when people offer immortality as a possible solution to a social or political question.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Well native American society was further on than primitive Communism.

Hmm. What would be your definition of primitive communism, then?


At any rate, in primitive societies, religion was a more ad hoc thing used to try and make sense of the world in the face of the unknown

Making sense of the unknown is at the root of almost every major religion I can think of except perhaps Buddhism. They all have creation myths. They all make an attempt to summarise history thus far, even if the accounts are woefully off the mark. They all make an attempt to explain physical phenomena – for example, Genesis informs us of the existence of the “firmament” to separate high and low waters. Making sense of the unknown is a major feature of most religions; primitive ones are not unique in this regard by any stretch of the imagination.


It wasn't an institution, did not have set beliefs, organsied structure etc

Of course it did. To stay with the Native American tribes as a case in point, most of them believed that humans ought not to own land (partly why I thought of them as primitive communist) because all land in reality belonged to the Great Spirit. They believed in reincarnation in the form of “the circle of life” – their exact future forms to be determined by the Great Spirit, of course, depending on how they had behaved in life. Because they believed in the afterlife, they were extremely reluctant to farm the land, in case it disturbed the bones of their ancestors. They called on consistent and named spirits to aid them in specific situations – such as a battle spirit. Holy men were second only to the chiefs in power in many tribes such as the Sioux, and of course they practiced faith healing through the Great Spirit, and various other forms of quack medicine. As for it not being an institution, it was basically the only one they had! Almost all of the tribes used religious ceremonies, usually dances led by the local holy man, to grant them prosperity and a good hunt. If memory serves they did this on pre-arranged days. Of course, there were no churches. There was, however, usually a separate tipi in which the tribe would take drugs to transcend the worldly realm and access their deity more intimately. If this is not a social institution, I don’t know what is.



Only if you look at all religions as being one


Why not look at them all as one? The Abrahamic faiths all tell roughly the same story, because their actual content is practically the same. Christians and Muslims alone constitute the majority of the world’s population. In terms of functionality, I would argue that religions are identical, and therefore that it makes sense to view religion as a single entity. I think they all provide these basic functions:


Death consolation by pretending that people don’t die.
A terrible shot in the dark at the nature of the universe and its origin.
Provision of legitimacy for personal prejudice and morality.
The secular function of community.


They don't see things in any given way because they are religious.

This just seems manifestly untrue, though. Just yesterday I was having a debate with a Christian and asked her what her stance on animal rights was, to which she replied “I’d need to check my bible”. What is that if not seeing things in a given way due to religion?


Dawkins isn't a philosopher.

Oh right, I didn’t realise you had to be a “philosopher” to offer some philosophy. Guess I’ll stop posting in the philosophy forum then.


Anyway I don't see how that provides any comfort. He is talking about the joy of life. It doesn't do anything to comfort one in the face of loved ones dying.


If you focus not on the death of your loved ones, but on the life they lived, then Dawkins’ point about the improbability of our existence in the first place can only be a comfort and consolation – we can be happy and amazed that they lived at all. If there is any proper way to look at death, I submit that this is at least a good start. It is certainly infinitely better than the feeble, infantile and shallow response of religions, which is to pretend that the issue doesn’t ultimately exist: it does, and mature philosophy is always a better answer than simply looking the other way.


For a lot of people religion works.

For a lot of people, religion suffices. I would not go as far as to say that it works. I can think of several religious people I know for whom, in my opinion, religious consolation has not worked – privately, I think it is because they realise how hollow religious consolation is in reality. Anyhow, it seems to me that only the die-hard fundamentalists are genuinely able to get over loss purely be assuring themselves that the deceased aren’t dead. Most religious people that I have met have nominally reminded everyone that X is actually in heaven, but are still devastated by the death.




The notion that we could somehow live forever flies in the face of every known biological fact. Absolutely nothing lasts forever, certainly nothing as ephemeral as the human body. The world itself will eventually be consumed by the son as it dies after all.


If not literally forever, then surely you could foresee technological advancement to the stage where involuntary death is negligible, then?

-Alex

P.S - My laptop crashed three times while I was writing that. There was much swearing. :cursing:

[Demogorgon]

[Hmm. What would be your definition of primitive communism, then?Certainly not a society with hierarchical structure, a legal system and fixed political structure.


Making sense of the unknown is at the root of almost every major religion I can think of except perhaps Buddhism. They all have creation myths. They all make an attempt to summarise history thus far, even if the accounts are woefully off the mark. They all make an attempt to explain physical phenomena – for example, Genesis informs us of the existence of the “firmament” to separate high and low waters. Making sense of the unknown is a major feature of most religions; primitive ones are not unique in this regard by any stretch of the imagination.I put it to you that there is a rather drastic difference between ancient Judaism and modern Christianity. Christianity in the intellectual sense offers forms of explanation for unknown matters (like how the process of blood clotting evolved) but it does not provide stories to make sense of the unknown. There are extreme fundamentalists who think for whatever reason that the earth is six thousand years old or so forth, but in no way shape or form is that a general feature of modern religion


Of course it did. To stay with the Native American tribes as a case in point, most of them believed that humans ought not to own land (partly why I thought of them as primitive communist) because all land in reality belonged to the Great Spirit. They believed in reincarnation in the form of “the circle of life” – their exact future forms to be determined by the Great Spirit, of course, depending on how they had behaved in life. Because they believed in the afterlife, they were extremely reluctant to farm the land, in case it disturbed the bones of their ancestors. They called on consistent and named spirits to aid them in specific situations – such as a battle spirit. Holy men were second only to the chiefs in power in many tribes such as the Sioux, and of course they practiced faith healing through the Great Spirit, and various other forms of quack medicine. As for it not being an institution, it was basically the only one they had! Almost all of the tribes used religious ceremonies, usually dances led by the local holy man, to grant them prosperity and a good hunt. If memory serves they did this on pre-arranged days. Of course, there were no churches. There was, however, usually a separate tipi in which the tribe would take drugs to transcend the worldly realm and access their deity more intimately. If this is not a social institution, I don’t know what is.
But as I say, Native American society was not primitive so you cannot use their religion (which was an advanced one) as an example of primitive religion.


Why not look at them all as one? The Abrahamic faiths all tell roughly the same story, because their actual content is practically the same. Christians and Muslims alone constitute the majority of the world’s population. In terms of functionality, I would argue that religions are identical, and therefore that it makes sense to view religion as a single entity. I think they all provide these basic functionsReligions are not defined by its myths (which most religious people don't even know), but by the way it functions. Does Western Catholicism, Catholicism in Africa, Fundamentalist American Protestantism, Islam in Saudi Arabia, Christianity in China and Islam in New Zealand all fulfill the same function


This just seems manifestly untrue, though. Just yesterday I was having a debate with a Christian and asked her what her stance on animal rights was, to which she replied “I’d need to check my bible”. What is that if not seeing things in a given way due to religion?
That has nothing to do with religion. That is just not wanting to think for oneself. You see that with all sorts of people. Given that the vast majority of religious people do not think like that, we can coclude that religion does not make people do things like that.

Rather you should be asking what the material reasons were for this lady not to want to think for herself?

Really though you have to stop sitting on the fence here. If you want to tell me that religion determines people's outlook, start at the beginning. Give a reason why materialism is wrong. If you can prove that you have a good basis. Otherwise you will just go round in circles


Oh right, I didn’t realise you had to be a “philosopher” to offer some philosophy. Guess I’ll stop posting in the philosophy forum then.
A philosopher is somebody that comes up with philosophy. Dawkins is not a philosopher.

I say that for the same reason I say that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher.

Dawkins does attempt philosophy sometimes, but he is appalling when he does so. His arguments for atheism don't convince me and I am an atheist! He should stick to biology.


If you focus not on the death of your loved ones, but on the life they lived, then Dawkins’ point about the improbability of our existence in the first place can only be a comfort and consolation – we can be happy and amazed that they lived at all. If there is any proper way to look at death, I submit that this is at least a good start. It is certainly infinitely better than the feeble, infantile and shallow response of religions, which is to pretend that the issue doesn’t ultimately exist: it does, and mature philosophy is always a better answer than simply looking the other way.Believe me, when you are suffering from bereavement the thought that it was by extreme chance that that person was born at all is not much consolation

For a lot of people, religion suffices. I would not go as far as to say that it works. I can think of several religious people I know for whom, in my opinion, religious consolation has not worked – privately, I think it is because they realise how hollow religious consolation is in reality. Anyhow, it seems to me that only the die-hard fundamentalists are genuinely able to get over loss purely be assuring themselves that the deceased aren’t dead. Most religious people that I have met have nominally reminded everyone that X is actually in heaven, but are still devastated by the death.
Where are you getting this idea that religious people believe the dead are not dead? They believe that they will see them again when they die. This kind of inability to understand religion is one of the reasons I am so put off by anti-theism


If not literally forever, then surely you could foresee technological advancement to the stage where involuntary death is negligible, then?No, it is ridiculous. We will all die. Most of us won't want to, but we will all die. If your solution to bereavement is to make it that people live forever then I am afraid you won't convince many people.

Why don't we abolish world hunger by making it that we don't need food?

Why don't we stop natural disasters by taking over the weather, controlling volcanoes, telling earthquakes they can only happen when we say so?

[al8]

Question for anti-theists: If indeed religion is at least partially caused by people's fear of death, how exactly do you propose to eliminate this fear? No matter how much we improve society, our loved ones will still die, and that will still hurt.

First and formost to encorage people realize that this is a fake problem religionists push and encorage to make people flock to they're fake solutions for it.

People must learn in general to except facts and avoid illutions. That entails one should not shelter children from facts, be they hard, soft of purple.

I would propose that several things be done. That children be taught how organic matter decomposes. And also the growth and aging process of a human body, perhaps compared along side other animals. That is, teach what constitutes the process of life and dying. Armed with knowledge death is neither mysterious or all that frightening.
The general theme and message could take que from these following quotes;

Epicurus - "Where death is I am not; where I am death is not." (then what is there to fear?)
Julius Cesar - "It seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."
Woddy Alen - "I don't mind the idea of dying, I just don't want be there when it happens."

I'm sure this kind of educationl material could be easily put together with proper support. And if that doesn't do one can always look towards cryogenics and longevity research.

And I might ad that we have already experince the act of dying when we fall asleep at night. We loose conciousness, do not sense the time that passes. And that is what being dead is like - it's an endless dreamless sleep.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Certainly not a society with hierarchical structure, a legal system and fixed political structure.


Their hierarchy was social, not economic, and quite fluid - challenges could be issued for various positions, first share of food, and so on, and major decisions were taken democratically, although only amongst the men in most cases. I've not heard of a single tribe that had fixed political systems or "legal structure", and I've studied them a bit - could you provide an example?


I put it to you that there is a rather drastic difference between ancient Judaism and modern Christianity. Christianity in the intellectual sense offers forms of explanation for unknown matters (like how the process of blood clotting evolved) but it does not provide stories to make sense of the unknown.

I might've misunderstood you here, but it's pretty clear that Christianity provides countless stories to make sense of the unknown. What is Adam and Eve, if not a story to make sense of the unknown origins of the world and our place in it? What is the entirety of Genesis, for that matter? Even down to minute details - In the New Testament it's often hinted at that people with epilepsy are possessed by devils. In short, they did not understand epilepsy, so they blamed it on "devils". A story, to make sense of the unknown.

Also, I am not sure why there is a distinction between judaism and christianity here. What is the actual difference?



There are extreme fundamentalists who think for whatever reason that the earth is six thousand years old or so forth, but in no way shape or form is that a general feature of modern religion


I wouldn't say so. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, thinks that creationism shoudln't be taught in schools, but he refuses to comment on it's validity - he's probably a creationist. This is the archbishop - often seen as at the pinnacle of rationality within the church. In the U.S, a gallup poll showed that the most popular belief for 'creation' was:

"God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."



But as I say, Native American society was not primitive so you cannot use their religion (which was an advanced one) as an example of primitive religion.



It is difficult to find a society more primitive, short of out-and-out hunter gatherer nomads. The native americans even fit that description to some extent. Anyway, evidently we disagree about this so I'll wait for you to reply.



Religions are not defined by its myths (which most religious people don't even know),


Huh? :confused: I'm fairly certain that religious people know their own myths... Do you have any evidence to back this up?


Does Western Catholicism, Catholicism in Africa, Fundamentalist American Protestantism, Islam in Saudi Arabia, Christianity in China and Islam in New Zealand all fulfill the same function

At base, yes. I think each of those fulfills the functions I listed in my last post. And note that you've chosen religions that seem on the surface very different; yet they still fill the same essential role, in my view. See my last post and tell me what you think.



Given that the vast majority of religious people do not think like that, we can coclude that religion does not make people do things like that.


My personal experience suggests otherwise. Also, you must concede that it would be perfectly consistent and even logical for a religious person to behave in this silly manner because by virtue of their being religious, they must believe that their holy book is either the inerrant word of god, or at least inspired by god. In the first instance, it makes absolute sense to check the bible - why make you're own opinions when you've got a copy of the absolute truth, written down? If it is the second, it's reasonable at least to consult the bible, and be guided by it.



If you want to tell me that religion determines people's outlook, start at the beginning. Give a reason why materialism is wrong.


Grr, you're trying to force me into an untenable position here. :p I do not, fundamentally, think that materialism is wrong. I just cannot escape the feeling that religion a special case. It seems a glaring contradiction to pure materialism in that it certainly appears to have independent force.



A philosopher is somebody that comes up with philosophy. Dawkins is not a philosopher.

I say that for the same reason I say that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher.

Dawkins does attempt philosophy sometimes, but he is appalling when he does so.


Well, first you have contradicted yourself here. Dawkins has come up with philosophy, so he is by your definition a philosopher, yet you continue to deny that he is. Either way, it's basically a moot point, because it is the content of what he is saying that we should discuss, not him.


Believe me, when you are suffering from bereavement the thought that it was by extreme chance that that person was born at all is not much consolation

Clearly this is a personal thing. All I can say is that I found it an uplifting thought when a close friend of my family died a few months ago.



Where are you getting this idea that religious people believe the dead are not dead? They believe that they will see them again when they die. This kind of inability to understand religion is one of the reasons I am so put off by anti-theism


Sorry, didn't mean to put you off, I was propbably just being flippant to emphasise the point... I get quite heated about this sort of thing. What I mean is that the religious response seeks to deny the reality of death as a means of consolation. It's comfort is false, and childish. It is putting your head in the sand. It's sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Not listening, not listening!" And it is a terrible response compared to mature, reasonable, and real comfort.



No, it is ridiculous. We will all die. Most of us won't want to, but we will all die. If your solution to bereavement is to make it that people live forever then I am afraid you won't convince many people.


This is not an argument.


Why don't we abolish world hunger by making it that we don't need food?

We can already do without food, in a sense. All we need is the nutritional intake, and it is possible to do this with injections or pills, at least in theory. Certainly in the future it's not difficult to see them as plausible alternatives. I think the army uses this principle, if I'm not mistaken.


Why don't we stop natural disasters by taking over the weather, controlling volcanoes, telling earthquakes they can only happen when we say so?

You're being facetious now. You know as well as I that damage from natural disasters has been massively decreased by the intervention of technology, particularly with regard to earthquakes, and flooding.

-Alex

[Kronos]

I don't agree with this. I can assure you that the "selfishness" that causes me to want to live rather than die has nothing to do with a belief in God.Allow me to reword this. Suppose that people who believe in a benevolent God also believe that inevitably, the universe could never "go wrong", or in other words, that whatever happens...it can and will be resolved by God, and therefore be considered justified.

Of course this doesn't stop people from feeling grief and despair when they experience an accident, for example, where people are hurt. It isn't as if the person thinks "God exists so this event isn't terrible." All the normal behavior is still there. But when deeper philosophical issues are examined and the question of the meaning of life, love, beauty, is at hand, this kind of person cannot strike a pessimistic chord, a nihilistic chord, if only to temporarily switch perspectives and consider, from a nihilists view, what the universe would be like without God.

Therefore all the important moral issues are reconciled from the start.

Because of this a small degree of the feeling and idea of responsibility is garnished. Ultimately, whatever this person does in life, they cannot conclude that they have made a fatal mistake, or a mistake which would yield repercussions for anything other than what made the mistake. In shorter words, he believes "it is all in God's hands."

So my conclusion is that since individuals feel that all of existence is redeemed by God's existence, they do not think sentimentally about the future of life in general- rather, again, only about the individual....and as the belief has it....every and any individual is unique and redeemed if only because God exists.

If there were ever a case where...[let's use a capitalist]...where a capitalist who happens to be religious participates in an unethical political system which, itself, is a philosophical stew of a number of principles derived from metaphysically founded moral laws, and learns later that not only does God not exist, but any consideration of a God's existence has never caused anything but trouble (granting that any morality can function without a God...and do) because of it's garbled mystical nonsense, then suddenly realizes that it is the belief that is causing the problems that religion has sought to solve with religious solutions so that the problems caused by metaphysical beliefs, which are the very conflicts in capitalism/consumerism that inspires them to "search" for religious consolation, it would be absurd!

That was one helluva run-on sentence. I apologize.

That aside, there is nothing too shocking for a theist. I find this very shocking.

If anybody want to claim God exists, you would have to propose something like this: "existence is so absurd....only a God could design it, that is to say that without a God's intervention, a meaningless, purposeless universe would have had already worked itself out. I don't even know if this is a legitimate claim but damn it sounds good. Remember Wittgenstein said something like "...for whatever reason we exist, I don't think it is to have a good time."

The only thing left salvageable in "Christianity" was taken by Kierkegaard and rebuilt. If I have ever almost been seduced by a belief in a God, as more or less portrayed by the Christian religion, it was because I read too much Kierkegaard. He is the best writer I have ever read.

Anyway, I'm saying that a very real subtle sense of less responsibility, because of the optimism in religious thinking, affects people's psychological, moral culture and tradition. An atheist is an entirely different mind....and yet he is facing more ironic problems; he is dealing with mistakes and problems created, primarily, by his opposer's beliefs. Think about that. It isn't only that one is fighting the other, but also that the one who is being fought causes the fight, vis-a-vis, the problems generated in a system influenced by metaphysical beliefs....the "paradigm" of agnosticism; that even the question "what is God" is absurd. It shouldn't even be a question. It cannot be a question. Seriously. Make a religious proposition, then define those premises with more propositions. So on and so forth. Do you think that anything you say could ever demonstrate God? Surely not. What is happening instead is an existential despair which is making a malady of itself in a desperate expression in language; one might say a million and one things about God, but all the while what they were inadvertently ensuing is "dude, what happens when we die?"

Rather than saying immediately the easiest and most likely thing- "nothing"- one sets out across centuries to simultaneously ignore that anxiety...and treat it, at once, with all manner of made up nonsense. All the while because they didn't want to die, or better, they were selfish, pitiful, scared little creatures.

Fascinating, really.

Proper metaphysics cannot operate as if there is a transcendence in nature, or even teleology. It cannot suppose a finite "matter" to anything, or a thing to which things "mattered". Monotheistic religion is paranoid, anthropomorphic, psychological neurosis; it is based on the assumption that there is a watcher, a judger, a list of rules, the possibility that one can do wrong, but the eventual consolation of everything for a good reason.

These elements are left-overs from primitive hierarchical systems of people, initially the parent-child relationship, later on, economical and political relationships. Once the image of a benefactor has evolved in the psyche, the child projects the same sentiment onto the universe. It imagines that everything has a relationship to a benefactor. This idea bears a similarity to Freud's "Father Figure" association made to God, by human beings.

[Demogorgon]

Their hierarchy was social, not economic, and quite fluid - challenges could be issued for various positions, first share of food, and so on, and major decisions were taken democratically, although only amongst the men in most cases. I've not heard of a single tribe that had fixed political systems or "legal structure", and I've studied them a bit - could you provide an example?

That is an overly romantic take on native AMerican society to say the least. Of course the hierarchy was economic. All hierarchy is. Are we really going to start right at the beginning of Marxist analysis? Native American society was highly complex and in many ways pretty sophisticated. The political structure and legal system were carried by oral tradition rather than statute, but that doesn't make them non-existent.


I might've misunderstood you here, but it's pretty clear that Christianity provides countless stories to make sense of the unknown. What is Adam and Eve, if not a story to make sense of the unknown origins of the world and our place in it? What is the entirety of Genesis, for that matter? Even down to minute details - In the New Testament it's often hinted at that people with epilepsy are possessed by devils. In short, they did not understand epilepsy, so they blamed it on "devils". A story, to make sense of the unknown.

Also, I am not sure why there is a distinction between judaism and christianity here. What is the actual difference?

Those are stories of ancient Judaism, not modern Christianity. I hope you are not about to make the mistake here of trying to tell me what you think Christians should believe rather than what they actually believe.


I wouldn't say so. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, thinks that creationism shoudln't be taught in schools, but he refuses to comment on it's validity - he's probably a creationist. This is the archbishop - often seen as at the pinnacle of rationality within the church. In the U.S, a gallup poll showed that the most popular belief for 'creation' was:

"God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

You think Dr. Williams is a creationist? :laugh:

He doesn't comment on creationism because the Anglican church does not take doctrinal positions when it can avoid it and he has already annoyed the African churches enough already over gay rights.

If you are familiar with what he actually believes, rather than what you think he should believe, you will find that he is nowhere near that position.

Oh and for the record, the Catholic church, by far the biggest Christian church in the world explicitly rejects creationism


Huh? :confused: I'm fairly certain that religious people know their own myths... Do you have any evidence to back this up?

I would be astonished if more than one in a hundred Christians have read a single word in the bible. People tend to know the big bible stories that have made it into popular culture, but none of the rest.


At base, yes. I think each of those fulfills the functions I listed in my last post. And note that you've chosen religions that seem on the surface very different; yet they still fill the same essential role, in my view. See my last post and tell me what you think.

Their political and economic roles are entirely different. You are conflating personal belief and religious institutions


My personal experience suggests otherwise. Also, you must concede that it would be perfectly consistent and even logical for a religious person to behave in this silly manner because by virtue of their being religious, they must believe that their holy book is either the inerrant word of god, or at least inspired by god. In the first instance, it makes absolute sense to check the bible - why make you're own opinions when you've got a copy of the absolute truth, written down? If it is the second, it's reasonable at least to consult the bible, and be guided by it.

The majority of the population are religious. Are they all like that? You are taking the example of the most extreme fundamentalists you can think of and trying to say that they are representative.

The fact is. your position is based on entirely misunderstanding Christianity, something all anti-theists do. The only thing you can focus on is the ultra-right wing of Christianity because none of your arguments apply to mainstream Christianity, but still you want to tell us that you are attacking the religion as people believe in it.

You have to ignore the extreme fundamentalists when examining regular Christianity, because they are irrelevant. If you want to get into a theological debate on the matter, extreme fundamentalism is not even Christian because it is based on the idea that the word hangs between two deities, one good and one evil rather than on monotheism.

Anyway to mainstream Christianity it would be blasphemy to regard the Bible as the source of ultimate truth because it would be worshipping a book written by man rather than God. Christianity falls into two very broad categories. Catholicism that holds that the central position is the salvation Jesus brought by dying on the cross and Protestantism which holds that the key point is the personal relationship with God. Neither starts with the Bible or regards it as truth. They nearly all accept it as plain mythology, albeit mythology with wisdom behind it.


Grr, you're trying to force me into an untenable position here. :p I do not, fundamentally, think that materialism is wrong. I just cannot escape the feeling that religion a special case. It seems a glaring contradiction to pure materialism in that it certainly appears to have independent force.

Well, you are going to have to choose. If you think religion is an independent force, you cannot claim to be a materialist. This is why I have consistently argued that anti-theism is completely antithetical to Marxism.

Besides, fortunately you don't have to view it as an independent force. With all due respect, every anti-theist on this board, without exception, attacks religion because they want to do rebellion "properly". Attacking religion, and particularly Christianity, is almost a rite of passage in Western society to cement oneself as "radical". I went through it myself.

When you get past the need to do that though and look at religion without prejudice or bigotry, you will actually see there is nothing at all to indicate that it is a remotely independent force.


Well, first you have contradicted yourself here. Dawkins has come up with philosophy, so he is by your definition a philosopher, yet you continue to deny that he is. Either way, it's basically a moot point, because it is the content of what he is saying that we should discuss, not him.

No contradiction. I said he attempted philosophy, not that he managed. Dawkins is a biologist who decided that pseudo-philosophy would sell more books so pumps it out. There is nothing of remote philosophical interest there though. He is a good biologist. But his "philosophy" is just half-arsed recycling of the real thing.


Clearly this is a personal thing. All I can say is that I found it an uplifting thought when a close friend of my family died a few months ago.

Good for you. I would suggest that it is not a good idea to tell people how they should grieve however.


Sorry, didn't mean to put you off, I was propbably just being flippant to emphasise the point... I get quite heated about this sort of thing. What I mean is that the religious response seeks to deny the reality of death as a means of consolation. It's comfort is false, and childish. It is putting your head in the sand. It's sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Not listening, not listening!" And it is a terrible response compared to mature, reasonable, and real comfort.

Only if you take it in its simplest form. This is the problem with making a straw-man of religion. Sure you have argued against what you think Christianity is, but you have not given any argument against real Christianity.

I think I know why anti-theists do this, but it still renders their position worse than useless. I put it to you that if I were to play Devil's advocate I could give you arguments in favour of Christianity that I doubt you could answer. The reason you could not answer them would be that because you have spent so much time knocking down strawmen that you have never looked at real christianity.


This is not an argument.

Yes it is. If you want to provide an alternative to religion you would do well not to offer something even more ridiculous. That is all I am saying


We can already do without food, in a sense. All we need is the nutritional intake, and it is possible to do this with injections or pills, at least in theory. Certainly in the future it's not difficult to see them as plausible alternatives. I think the army uses this principle, if I'm not mistaken.

You will find that the army actually does feed its soldiers. Nutritional substitutes provide necessary vitamins, but they do not and cannot provide the substance to food-the calories really-that the body burns in order to produce energy. People on hunger-strike often take nutritional substitutes to prolong their life, but without food they still starve.


You're being facetious now. You know as well as I that damage from natural disasters has been massively decreased by the intervention of technology, particularly with regard to earthquakes, and flooding.

Natural disasters haven't decreased though. We just know how to predict them and how to build to minimise the risk.

I think this worship of technology in the belief that it can do anything is ridiculous. Religious in fact.

[eyedrop]

A question Demogorgon, do you think that how educated the masses are of communist ideas at the eventual revolution doesn't matter? Since it would be idealistic to believe that the ideas they hold would matter.

Let's look at the spanish revolution for example, I would think that the reason why it went in such a communistic way in some parts were because of the long tradition of anarchist tendencies in the working class there. Which had been achieved in a long class struggle, focusing on anarcho syndicalist ideas from about 1850 if i remember right. Would it had gone the same way if such a substantial amount the working class there had been without the anarcho syndicalist ideas?


Sure it is materealistic conditions that decides which ideas are heard, spread and even thought of, but the ideas still need to be spread by someone. If the entire first world decides to skip all our technology to Afganistan they would still need years before they change their ideas to fit their new materealistic conditions. The same reason the russian revolution failed, to many people not living in the materealistic conditions to fathom communist ideas. Our assumption is that late capitalism produces the neccesary conditions for communist ideas to be widespread. If that shows to be false we have to hope that a leninist state would be able to produce the material conditions for such ideas to be widespread, which is questionable too at least from what w have seen untill now. Assuming that a leninist state would be able to appear in late capitalism.


I don't understand your view that ideas don't matter at all. In my view which ideas can be held, and be widespread, is a product of which material conditions the masses live in. One could have been a communist, or anti-theist, in medieval europe but no one would listen to you. The material conditions neccesary wasn't there for them to understand you. Us invidually are unimportant for spreading the ideas since capitalism now produces the material conditions for the ideas, so someone would anyway enter the scene to spread them. Without anyone to spread them the ideas would be non-excistant but society as it is today will no matter what produce people to spread them.

[pusher robot]

Allow me to reword this. Suppose that people who believe in a benevolent God also believe that inevitably, the universe could never "go wrong", or in other words, that whatever happens...it can and will be resolved by God, and therefore be considered justified.

Is there any substantive difference between this belief and the belief that "right" and "wrong" do not objectively exist and therefore whether something is "justified" is objectively nonsensical?


Of course this doesn't stop people from feeling grief and despair when they experience an accident, for example, where people are hurt. It isn't as if the person thinks "God exists so this event isn't terrible."

No, but it does allow them to salvage some comfort out of their tragedy. Perhaps more importantly, it helps them rationalize the obvious and atrocious injustice of nature. Humans - for whatever reason - tend to hate injustice, especially when directed at them. But when it is the universe itself that is so unjust, you end up hating the universe and everything in it. One way out of this is to invent a different context where the injustice is, in fact, just.


All the normal behavior is still there. But when deeper philosophical issues are examined and the question of the meaning of life, love, beauty, is at hand, this kind of person cannot strike a pessimistic chord, a nihilistic chord, if only to temporarily switch perspectives and consider, from a nihilists view, what the universe would be like without God.

That's a pretty baseless assumption. What makes you believe religous people are incapable of seeing different perspectives? How do you know that the other perspectives they've seen haven't made them religious?


Therefore all the important moral issues are reconciled from the start.

Only if you assume that all religious people are brain-dead simpletons with absolute, unquestioning faith.


Because of this a small degree of the feeling and idea of responsibility is garnished. Ultimately, whatever this person does in life, they cannot conclude that they have made a fatal mistake, or a mistake which would yield repercussions for anything other than what made the mistake. In shorter words, he believes "it is all in God's hands."

Here you are falling in to the trap that is the topic of this thread of arguing against what you think religious people should believe, rather than what most of them actually do believe (most are not fatalists.) Indeed, do not religious people often go in the opposite direction - of ascribing responsibility where none is warranted, of assinging purpose to the random?



where a capitalist who happens to be religious participates in an unethical political system which, itself, is a philosophical stew of a number of principles derived from metaphysically founded moral laws, and learns later that not only does God not exist...it would be absurd!


It would be absurd because one cannot "learn" something that it is logically nonsensical.



Rather than saying immediately the easiest and most likely thing- "nothing"- one sets out across centuries to simultaneously ignore that anxiety...and treat it, at once, with all manner of made up nonsense. All the while because they didn't want to die, or better, they were selfish, pitiful, scared little creatures.

Fascinating, really.

What I find fascinating is your apparent inability to accept the fact that people like living and wish to avoid death if at all possible. Why this should be, in your mind, something to be ashamed of or somehow irrational, I do not understand.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

That is an overly romantic take on native AMerican society to say the least. Of course the hierarchy was economic. All hierarchy is. Are we really going to start right at the beginning of Marxist analysis? Native American society was highly complex and in many ways pretty sophisticated. The political structure and legal system were carried by oral tradition rather than statute, but that doesn't make them non-existent.


You need to provide an example of political and legal structure in the tribes, because I don't believe that they had them. Which tribes are you referring to? I am thinking of the major ones like the Sioux and Pawnee, et cetera. And the fact is that their hierarchy was not economic - resources were shared. The men got first pick, of course, the tribes were almost always patriarchal, but nonetheless. Hierarchy in the tribes was primarily social; for example, holy men would often be given the first oppurtunity to speak at a meeting.



Those are stories of ancient Judaism, not modern Christianity. I hope you are not about to make the mistake here of trying to tell me what you think Christians should believe rather than what they actually believe.


I hope you are not about to tell me that modern christianity does not believe in Genesis, Adam and Eve and the new testament.:laugh:


If you are familiar with what he actually believes, rather than what you think he should believe, you will find that he is nowhere near that position.

He had the clear oppurtunity to say that creationism should be rejected, and he did not. He said that it makes the mistake of categorising the bible "as a theory like other theories" and so it shoudln't be taught alongside evolution, which is a theory like other theories. His language was very ambiguous. If he is not a creationist, that was the perfect time to come out and reject it properly, as the vatican have done.


I would be astonished if more than one in a hundred Christians have read a single word in the bible. People tend to know the big bible stories that have made it into popular culture, but none of the rest.


Oh come on. Christians read their own book, for crying out loud, this is nonsense. I have no idea where you've got this from.


Their political and economic roles are entirely different. You are conflating personal belief and religious institutions

I don't understand what you mean, sorry. :(


The majority of the population are religious. Are they all like that? You are taking the example of the most extreme fundamentalists you can think of and trying to say that they are representative.


There aren't statistics for this sort of thing, so I can only really give you anecdotal evidence. The view that the bible is inspired or basically directly authored by god is not at all uncommon in christianity. In fact, I'd be surprised if you could find me christians that don't think the bible is inspred by god. And if this is what they believe, then it makes perfect sense for them to just parrot the bible - you can't go far wrong repeating the inerrant word of god, after all. No surprise then, that a lot of them are consistent and actually do this! I had a christian girlfriend a while back, and sporadically attended her church. In this church, a typical sermon from the moderate pastor would be something like, "Abortion! We all have our personal views on this issue. But what does the bible say?". I really think you need to take christians seriously and at their word when they say things like this. Not to do so is to be dishonest, really.



The fact is. your position is based on entirely misunderstanding Christianity, something all anti-theists do. The only thing you can focus on is the ultra-right wing of Christianity because none of your arguments apply to mainstream Christianity, but still you want to tell us that you are attacking the religion as people believe in it.



This is just an assertion and not an argument.



You have to ignore the extreme fundamentalists when examining regular Christianity, because they are irrelevant. If you want to get into a theological debate on the matter, extreme fundamentalism is not even Christian because it is based on the idea that the word hangs between two deities, one good and one evil rather than on monotheism.


Fundamentalism is just consistent christianity. The only reason moderates are even around is because society has mostly moved on from the old shit of fundamentalism, and without toning down the historical messages of the church, the church would not have survived. Also, if you want to be theological about it, christians believe that satan is a fallen angel, not a deity. It is you, not me, that misunderstands christianity.



Anyway to mainstream Christianity it would be blasphemy to regard the Bible as the source of ultimate truth because it would be worshipping a book written by man rather than God.


Right... That explains the regular accusations of blasphemy from the church to those who regard the bible as the the truth, then.:confused:

Some christians believe that the bible is the inerrant word of god, most believe that it is inspired by god. Almost no christians believe that the bible is a book written by a human in the same sense that Harry Potter was, which seems to be what you're suggesting.


Well, you are going to have to choose. If you think religion is an independent force, you cannot claim to be a materialist. This is why I have consistently argued that anti-theism is completely antithetical to Marxism.

Well, I suppose I'll have to concede the tension. I don't want to abandon either view, both make too much apparrent sense to me.



With all due respect, every anti-theist on this board, without exception, attacks religion because they want to do rebellion "properly".


Thanks for the amateur psychology, doc. I assure you that this is not my motivation for attacking religion at all. I very much doubt it is any of the anti-theists' motivation, either. I find your assessment condescending and pretty offensive, really.



No contradiction. I said he attempted philosophy, not that he managed. Dawkins is a biologist who decided that pseudo-philosophy would sell more books so pumps it out. There is nothing of remote philosophical interest there though. He is a good biologist. But his "philosophy" is just half-arsed recycling of the real thing.


Oh, I see. So you get to decide who is and who isn't a philosopher, based on your personal taste! Fantastic.



Good for you. I would suggest that it is not a good idea to tell people how they should grieve however.


I would never try to "tell someone how to grieve", but I think it's completely possible to establish healthy ways to grieve and unhealthy ways to grieve. Denying the reality of death is not a healthy way to grieve, coming to terms with it and appreciating the life that someone has lived is.



Only if you take it in its simplest form. This is the problem with making a straw-man of religion. Sure you have argued against what you think Christianity is, but you have not given any argument against real Christianity.



I don't see what gives you the authority to decide what "real christianity" is. I have given several arguments to support my interpretation of it, but you just keep insisting that I am attacking a straw man. Almost all christians believe in an afterlife - that is, they deny the reality of death. They put their head in the sand. That is real christianity, not a straw man, real christianity.



I put it to you that if I were to play Devil's advocate I could give you arguments in favour of Christianity that I doubt you could answer.


Bring it on.


The reason you could not answer them would be that because you have spent so much time knocking down strawmen that you have never looked at real christianity.

I spend a lot of time debating actual christians, though. Currently I'm debating abortion and gay rights with an australian pastor via the internet. I can hardly be attacking a straw man if I'm by definition dealing with the real thing.


Yes it is. If you want to provide an alternative to religion you would do well not to offer something even more ridiculous. That is all I am saying

Just calling my argument ridiculous is not a counter-argument.


You will find that the army actually does feed its soldiers. Nutritional substitutes provide necessary vitamins, but they do not and cannot provide the substance to food-the calories really-that the body burns in order to produce energy. People on hunger-strike often take nutritional substitutes to prolong their life, but without food they still starve.

I know that the army feeds it soldiers, and I also know that they use a lot of nutritional substitutes. My point is that the need for food is being pushed back and back and back by technological advances - what logical problem is there with the prediction that we will eventually solve the problem once and for all?


Natural disasters haven't decreased though. We just know how to predict them and how to build to minimise the risk.

Granted, but inevitably we will get progressively better at prediction and minimising risk to the point where threat from natural disasters will be negligible. I don't think it's out of the question to suggest that we might one day have the capability to manipulate our environment to the extent that we can actively prevent them from happening.


I think this worship of technology in the belief that it can do anything is ridiculous. Religious in fact.

Great, but this is just another assertion.

-Alex

[Demogorgon]

A question Demogorgon, do you think that how educated the masses are of communist ideas at the eventual revolution doesn't matter? Since it would be idealistic to believe that the ideas they hold would matter.

Let's look at the spanish revolution for example, I would think that the reason why it went in such a communistic way in some parts were because of the long tradition of anarchist tendencies in the working class there. Which had been achieved in a long class struggle, focusing on anarcho syndicalist ideas from about 1850 if i remember right. Would it had gone the same way if such a substantial amount the working class there had been without the anarcho syndicalist ideas?


Sure it is materealistic conditions that decides which ideas are heard, spread and even thought of, but the ideas still need to be spread by someone. If the entire first world decides to skip all our technology to Afganistan they would still need years before they change their ideas to fit their new materealistic conditions. The same reason the russian revolution failed, to many people not living in the materealistic conditions to fathom communist ideas. Our assumption is that late capitalism produces the neccesary conditions for communist ideas to be widespread. If that shows to be false we have to hope that a leninist state would be able to produce the material conditions for such ideas to be widespread, which is questionable too at least from what w have seen untill now. Assuming that a leninist state would be able to appear in late capitalism.


I don't understand your view that ideas don't matter at all. In my view which ideas can be held, and be widespread, is a product of which material conditions the masses live in. One could have been a communist, or anti-theist, in medieval europe but no one would listen to you. The material conditions neccesary wasn't there for them to understand you. Us invidually are unimportant for spreading the ideas since capitalism now produces the material conditions for the ideas, so someone would anyway enter the scene to spread them. Without anyone to spread them the ideas would be non-excistant but society as it is today will no matter what produce people to spread them.
People's understanding of Communist theory is not unimportant, but nor is it central either. I think Communist theory is useful for understanding the "how" of the matter if you know what I mean.

You must bear in mind that there is a difference between knowledge and ideas. It is always worth expanding one knowledge, so understanding Communist theory is very useful I think because it outs that set of possibilities on the table. On the other hand ideas are simply the product of one's conditions.

Nobody has yet explained why-prejudice notwithstanding-religion should be opposed in the first place. They point to examples of religious idiots, but the number of religious idiots is no higher than the number of idiots in any other demographic, so I do not see the point. I suspect it is just about wanting to rebel. That is certainly what it was for me when I was younger. I didn;t see it that way at the time of course. But there you go.

[Demogorgon]

I grow tired of debating when you would rather just rely on your bigotry, rather than facts so I will keep this brief.

I hope you are not about to tell me that modern christianity does not believe in Genesis, Adam and Eve and the new testament.:laugh:
They believe in most of the new Testament. Then again I believe in most of the New Testament. It is mostly a collection of letters that were definitely written by the people attributed to them.

As for Adam and Eve and that crap, very few Christians believe in that. The only part of Genesis that modern Christians believe in is the story of Abraham.


He had the clear oppurtunity to say that creationism should be rejected, and he did not. He said that it makes the mistake of categorising the bible "as a theory like other theories" and so it shoudln't be taught alongside evolution, which is a theory like other theories. His language was very ambiguous. If he is not a creationist, that was the perfect time to come out and reject it properly, as the vatican have done.

He is effectively a politician. It is job to not answer questions. Believe me when I say he does not believe in creationism. The very idea of it is utterly against everything he wrote


Oh come on. Christians read their own book, for crying out loud, this is nonsense. I have no idea where you've got this from.
Living in a Christian country all my life and educated in Christian schools all my childhood and raised by a Christian family I have only ever met one non-ordained Christian who has read any of the Bible and nobody who has read all of it.

Come on, use your common sense. Have you tried reading the thing? Why would anyone bother?


Fundamentalism is just consistent christianity. The only reason moderates are even around is because society has mostly moved on from the old shit of fundamentalism, and without toning down the historical messages of the church, the church would not have survived. Also, if you want to be theological about it, christians believe that satan is a fallen angel, not a deity. It is you, not me, that misunderstands christianity.
Fundamentalism is a nineteenth century phenomena. And it may be many things but it certainly isn't consistent.

BTW, not to be smart, but debating me on theology is not a good idea.

As for Christian beliefs on the Devil, well the concept of him being a fallen angel comes from medieval poetry, not Christian texts. In ancient Jewish myth he was a loyal servant of God and that is how he generally appears in the Bible.

I find your assessment condescending and pretty offensive, really.

Good, that generally means I have touched a nerve.

Look I grew out of anti-theism around the same time I grew out of rebelling against my parents, taking drugs and staying out to all hours in the morning. The same is true for quite a few other people I know.


Oh, I see. So you get to decide who is and who isn't a philosopher, based on your personal taste! Fantastic.

No I simply take the view that real philosophy needs to follow the basic rules of formal logic and not just be cheap crap written to sell books


I don't see what gives you the authority to decide what "real christianity" is. I base it on my knowledge of theology and my knowledge of what Christians actually believe

Bring it on.
Well I would first of all make the claim for God in general, not related to any religion using something like this: http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html

I would then say that if God existed it would be possible for people to have connection to them if it were to choose. I would argue that given people tend to believe in God as a rule that such a connection seems probable. From there I would argue that such an infinite God could take the form of any experience at all and that human experience of God would come in the form of being aware of certain extraordinary realities. I would then argue that Christianity was by definition one such interpretation of an extraordinary reality and that by definition it is therefore a true interpretation of God in one of its aspects.


I know that the army feeds it soldiers, and I also know that they use a lot of nutritional substitutes. My point is that the need for food is being pushed back and back and back by technological advances - what logical problem is there with the prediction that we will eventually solve the problem once and for all?

You would need to give people a calorie intake that they could burn for energy. We tend to know that as food.
[/QUOTE]

[eyedrop]

People's understanding of Communist theory is not unimportant, but nor is it central either. I think Communist theory is useful for understanding the "how" of the matter if you know what I mean.

You must bear in mind that there is a difference between knowledge and ideas. It is always worth expanding one knowledge, so understanding Communist theory is very useful I think because it outs that set of possibilities on the table. On the other hand ideas are simply the product of one's conditions.

Nobody has yet explained why-prejudice notwithstanding-religion should be opposed in the first place. They point to examples of religious idiots, but the number of religious idiots is no higher than the number of idiots in any other demographic, so I do not see the point. I suspect it is just about wanting to rebel. That is certainly what it was for me when I was younger. I didn;t see it that way at the time of course. But there you go.

Well not everyone needs to be a marxist scholar. Then we would be fucked anyway, not in the positive way of being fucked. A basic class counsciousness in a substantial part is fundemental in my opinion though, but that will be produced by the conditions of late capitalism. (Assuming we're right)



As for your other and more important part (skipping your unneccesary ageist comments); why religion should be opposed. First I feel that a materealistic understanding of reality in a large part of the working class is neccesary to a revolution done right. That is already mostly achieved though as most people in the west, even the "religious" kind think materealistic (is the word spelled right? Something looks wrong) about the world. People already only accept material explanations for events, except certain whacko's. What I am more concerned with is to convey that superstitious explanations are not acceptable, only materealistic explanations are. And the rest of the working class needs to think that too, and religion at it's core is an superstitious explanation.

Can a largely superstitious working class make revolution? We are kinda over that nowadays though as most of what is left is cultural christians (being a bit eurocentric here).

[Kronos]

Is there any substantive difference between this belief and the belief that "right" and "wrong" do not objectively exist and therefore whether something is "justified" is objectively nonsensical?

Absolutely. The pleasure principle is neither right or wrong. It is a scientific fact that pleasure is desirable over pain. It should follow that people want to live in a world where the most amount of pleasure is experienced by the most amount of people. So when I say "religious people don't believe the universe can go wrong", I mean that they are ignoring the primacy of the pleasure principle and replacing it with something they believe is more significant- a purpose for life and the universe, as if there is something more than the pleasure principle. When three billion people ignore this fact....the world tends to head in the wrong direction. One such wrong direction is capitalism- a system that compromises many people's privilege for sensual pleasure. It does so in the form of exploited labor. The more a man labors, the less time he has to enjoy himself. Now, as I said earlier, there better be a damn good reason why this is so. If that reason is simply "so some other Joe doesn't have to labor", I say it ain't good enough.

Religion is nothing but a catalyst for denying revolutionary responsibility to abolish the conditions which cause some men to labor more than others. The moment a man thinks "it is all in God's hands", the principle of pleasure (which is the only motivation to live, period) is compromised because three billion people are applying a little less effort in stopping exploitation.


No, but it does allow them to salvage some comfort out of their tragedy. Perhaps more importantly, it helps them rationalize the obvious and atrocious injustice of nature. Humans - for whatever reason - tend to hate injustice, especially when directed at them. But when it is the universe itself that is so unjust, you end up hating the universe and everything in it. One way out of this is to invent a different context where the injustice is, in fact, just.

So you are saying that believing in God, even though he may not exist, is reasonable because it helps people cope with tragedy? Ah. Now we have two tragedies: first, something terrible has happened, second, to reconcile this, we lie to ourselves.


That's a pretty baseless assumption. What makes you believe religous people are incapable of seeing different perspectives? How do you know that the other perspectives they've seen haven't made them religious?


Precisely! The unbearable absurdity of existence is too much to feel responsible for, so they conveniently ignore it and pretend God exists. You cannot seriously believe that life is absurd and then lie to yourself and believe God exists, in some attempt to make this fact more comfortable. Part of the conditions of taking the perspective of a pessimist is staying there and not lying yourself out of it. You stay there, and do your best to deal with what we have to work with. Hoping God exists only makes things worse.


Only if you assume that all religious people are brain-dead simpletons with absolute, unquestioning faith.

I think you misunderstood what I meant. I mean that any given single ethical problem is is believed to be redeemed because God exists. So, a religious capitalist, or even a religious proletariat, will believe that it is okay to pick tomatoes for twelve hours at thirteen cents per hour because it is part of some grand plan.

Gotta go for now. The coffee shop is closing.

[pusher robot]

[quote=Kronos;1166169]
So you are saying that believing in God, even though he may not exist, is reasonable because it helps people cope with tragedy? Ah. Now we have two tragedies: first, something terrible has happened, second, to reconcile this, we lie to ourselves.

I don't see this as the manifest tragedy that you do. Just as a certain amount of "lying" to friends is necessary to avoid hurt feelings and social friction, so a certain amount of lying to ourselves may be necessary to keep us emotionally functional. If my lies to myself about the existence of something that cannot be observed or tested keep me from killing myself out of despair, then they are clearly the lesser evil.


You cannot seriously believe that life is absurd and then lie to yourself and believe God exists, in some attempt to make this fact more comfortable. Why not? It's my mind, I can tell myself any thing I want, can't I? What if I said, "you cannot seriously believe that cancer is painful and then take morphine, in some attempt to make cancer more comfortable." Isn't something missing from this argument?


I think you misunderstood what I meant. I mean that any given single ethical problem is is believed to be redeemed because God exists. So, a religious capitalist, or even a religious proletariat, will believe that it is okay to pick tomatoes for twelve hours at thirteen cents per hour because it is part of some grand plan.
What? This certainly doesn't match my observations. Are you sure this is not all theoretical?

[BurnTheOliveTree]

I grow tired of debating when you would rather just rely on your bigotry, rather than facts so I will keep this brief.

Thanks for that ad hominem. Kind of uncalled for though, wasn't it?


Then again I believe in most of the New Testament.

You believe that Jesus was the son of god? You believe that Jesus could perform miracles? That he was born of a virgin? That he was rose from the dead? These are all pretty central tenets of the new testament. If you don't believe them, I don't think you can legitimately claim to believe most of the new testament. If you do, then there's basically little that we can say to eachother.


As for Adam and Eve and that crap, very few Christians believe in that. The only part of Genesis that modern Christians believe in is the story of Abraham.

Again, you can't just assert this. I have not yet met a christian that does not believe in Genesis. I know that they exist, but there is simply no justification for you to say that "hardly any" christians believe in Genesis.



He is effectively a politician. It is job to not answer questions. Believe me when I say he does not believe in creationism. The very idea of it is utterly against everything he wrote



Why didn't he properly condemn it, as the catholic church have done?



Living in a Christian country all my life and educated in Christian schools all my childhood and raised by a Christian family I have only ever met one non-ordained Christian who has read any of the Bible and nobody who has read all of it.


Well, you're an anomaly then. All the christians I know are familiar with most of the bible, and several have read it cover-to-cover. And it makes sense - it's suppsoed to be at least inspired by god. Why wouldn't they?



Why would anyone bother?


Because it is the holy book of their religion, of course.



Fundamentalism is a nineteenth century phenomena.


Lol.



BTW, not to be smart, but debating me on theology is not a good idea.


Oh sure, I'll just bow to your mastery of the issue then.


As for Christian beliefs on the Devil, well the concept of him being a fallen angel comes from medieval poetry, not Christian texts. In ancient Jewish myth he was a loyal servant of God and that is how he generally appears in the Bible.

Show me where he is portrayed as a deity, as you have said, or find me a sizeable church that believe satan is a god.



Good, that generally means I have touched a nerve.

Look I grew out of anti-theism around the same time I grew out of rebelling against my parents, taking drugs and staying out to all hours in the morning. The same is true for quite a few other people I know.


You've touched a nerve by being a dick, yes. I might take drugs and stay out late, but I do not rebel against my parents at all, I have a good relationship with them. I do those things because they're fun. Stop pushing your weirdo psychology at me, we aren't all like you.



No I simply take the view that real philosophy needs to follow the basic rules of formal logic and not just be cheap crap written to sell books


Yeah, so it's all about your personal opinion, which as we all know, is what defines philosophy. Good to clear that one up.


Well I would first of all make the claim for God in general, not related to any religion using something like this: http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html (http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html)

You seriously thought I would be unable to answer the cosmological argument? :confused:

Fair enough. First, Craig assumes a law of universal causality which we know scientifically is not the case - acausal phenomena such as the movement of gas particles in a vacuum have been observed. The argument falls flat, then, from it's first premise. Second, it is self-contradictory. Craig makes a valid point about the impossibility of an actual infinite, and then just goes ahead and proposes god as an actual infinite. Third, the argument is destroyed by Occam's Razor - if Craig can say that God has existed forever, I can say that the universe has existed forever, and my hypothesis contains less entities, so it makes most sense to trust mine. God is not necessary here, and any logic applied to bring him in is equally applicable to the universe. It goes back to Laplace - we no longer have need of the god hypothesis; the naturalist model of the universe works just as well or better in all cases.


I would then say that if God existed it would be possible for people to have connection to them if it were to choose.

Why is this? Even if we accept Kalam's nonsense, the prime mover need not have magic powers or anything. Indeed, we know nothing of the nature of the prime mover from the cosmological argument, only that there is one.


I would argue that given people tend to believe in God as a rule that such a connection seems probable.

How would belief in a god equal a "connection" (what is this, anyway?) with the as yet unknown entity that began the universe? This does not logically follow.


From there I would argue that such an infinite God could take the form of any experience at all and that human experience of God would come in the form of being aware of certain extraordinary realities

You still have not accounted for the existence of god's magic powers. Being creator of the universe does not mean that you can suddenly "take the form of any experience at all"?


I would then argue that Christianity was by definition one such interpretation of an extraordinary reality and that by definition it is therefore a true interpretation of God in one of its aspects.

Terrible. Christianity in this case could be hopelessly wrong. What if our creator was malicious, and manifested to trick the christian's into thinking their various beliefs? What if it were some other powerful entity tricking the christians?

There are innumerable holes here. That argument literally fails every step of the way.



You would need to give people a calorie intake that they could burn for energy. We tend to know that as food.

You didn't even try to answer my point. :(

-Alex

[Demogorgon]

Well not everyone needs to be a marxist scholar. Then we would be fucked anyway, not in the positive way of being fucked. A basic class counsciousness in a substantial part is fundemental in my opinion though, but that will be produced by the conditions of late capitalism. (Assuming we're right)



As for your other and more important part (skipping your unneccesary ageist comments); why religion should be opposed. First I feel that a materealistic understanding of reality in a large part of the working class is neccesary to a revolution done right. That is already mostly achieved though as most people in the west, even the "religious" kind think materealistic (is the word spelled right? Something looks wrong) about the world. People already only accept material explanations for events, except certain whacko's. What I am more concerned with is to convey that superstitious explanations are not acceptable, only materealistic explanations are. And the rest of the working class needs to think that too, and religion at it's core is an superstitious explanation.

Can a largely superstitious working class make revolution? We are kinda over that nowadays though as most of what is left is cultural christians (being a bit eurocentric here).
This still isn't answering the question. It is only the right wing of religion that entirely rejects materialism in the social context. Religious belief (as in proper belief, not just belonging to a church out of habit) is essentially a belief regarding metaphysics, not social issues. I think people who are inclined towards materialism are obviously far less likely to be religious, but religious thought has no bearing in the other direction. If you convince an idealist that religion is wrong they will not move to materialism

[Demogorgon]

[You believe that Jesus was the son of god? You believe that Jesus could perform miracles? That he was born of a virgin? That he was rose from the dead? These are all pretty central tenets of the new testament. If you don't believe them, I don't think you can legitimately claim to believe most of the new testament. If you do, then there's basically little that we can say to eachother.
I don't believe those things. But I do believe that the letters were written by the attributed authors and they were an accurate reflection of their views. I believe that much of the Acts Of The Apostles is valid and that there was a preacher or preachers preaching the message Jesus is said to have preached and that he was executed for political reasons


]Again, you can't just assert this. I have not yet met a christian that does not believe in Genesis. I can only conclude that you have not met many Christians. If you honestly think that literal interpretation of Genesis is part of mainstream belief then you are so far out from an accurate knowledge of Christianity that your opinion is useless


Why didn't he properly condemn it, as the catholic church have done?

Because he is a politician.


Because it is the holy book of their religion, of course.

It is also very boring.


Show me where he is portrayed as a deity, as you have said, or find me a sizeable church that believe satan is a god.

In Fundamentalist Christianity. They portray the world as caught in a struggle between good and evil. That is by definition a dualistic view of the world.

Yeah, so it's all about your personal opinion, which as we all know, is what defines philosophy. Good to clear that one up.

It is simple fact that philosophy is not philosophy

That is why Dawkins has no page on the Stanford Encyclopedia and where he is referenced, it is for his biology.


You seriously thought I would be unable to answer the cosmological argument? :confused:

No idea if you could or not. Given that that wasn't a cosmological argument, I am about as confident of your abilities there as I am of your understanding of that article


Why is this? Even if we accept Kalam's nonsense, the prime mover need not have magic powers or anything. Indeed, we know nothing of the nature of the prime mover from the cosmological argument, only that there is one.

Because an infinite being is by definition capable of anything at all


How would belief in a god equal a "connection" (what is this, anyway?) with the as yet unknown entity that began the universe? This does not logically follow.

You could call it religious experience


Terrible. Christianity in this case could be hopelessly wrong. What if our creator was malicious, and manifested to trick the christian's into thinking their various beliefs? What if it were some other powerful entity tricking the christians?I take it that you do not understand the concept of experiencing extraordinary realities. It means that there are multiple ways of experiencing the same deity and that all religions are by definition correct.


There are innumerable holes here. That argument literally fails every step of the way.

There are certain flaws in the argument. I do not agree with it for that reason. But you didn't come up with any of them. You simply misunderstood the argument which is not the same as being able to answer it.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

I don't believe those things. But I do believe that the letters were written by the attributed authors and they were an accurate reflection of their views. I believe that much of the Acts Of The Apostles is valid and that there was a preacher or preachers preaching the message Jesus is said to have preached and that he was executed for political reasons


Okay. I could probably agree with this. Certainly though, neither of us then "believes most of the new testament", because the fundamental message of the new testament is a supernatural one.



I can only conclude that you have not met many Christians. If you honestly think that literal interpretation of Genesis is part of mainstream belief then you are so far out from an accurate knowledge of Christianity that your opinion is useless


Insulting me isn't an argument. I have met lots of christians, evidently we've just had different experiences.



Because he is a politician.


If he is, then so are the cardinals, and other officials of the vatican. What makes him unable to speak the breathtakingly obvious truth and not them?



It is also very boring.


Agreed. :) But they put themselves through it, because it is their holy book.



In Fundamentalist Christianity. They portray the world as caught in a struggle between good and evil. That is by definition a dualistic view of the world.


I thought fundamentalism was a "19th century phenomena"? :P Yes, it is dualism, but they just do not classify satan as a deity. Find me a statement by these fundamentalist groups, and i'll concede the point.


It is simple fact that philosophy is not philosophy


Not sure what you mean here.



That is why Dawkins has no page on the Stanford Encyclopedia and where he is referenced, it is for his biology.



So it's the Stanford Encyclopedia that decides?


No idea if you could or not. Given that that wasn't a cosmological argument, I am about as confident of your abilities there as I am of your understanding of that article

I've actually read the article before, it's a defence of the Kalam cosmological argument. Why are you lying about it? :confused:



Because an infinite being is by definition capable of anything at all



The only sense in which the mover is proposed to be infinite is in time, not in capability.



You could call it religious experience


That doesn't really make things clearer. What actually is this "connection"?



I take it that you do not understand the concept of experiencing extraordinary realities. It means that there are multiple ways of experiencing the same deity and that all religions are by definition correct.


This is absurd, you can't just define all religions as correct! Scientology is correct, then? Totally ridiculous.



There are certain flaws in the argument. I do not agree with it for that reason. But you didn't come up with any of them. You simply misunderstood the argument which is not the same as being able to answer it.


What are your criticisms? I understand the argument just fine.

-Alex

[Demogorgon]

If he is, then so are the cardinals, and other officials of the vatican. What makes him unable to speak the breathtakingly obvious truth and not them?
Because the Cardinals are not presiding over a splintering Church.

Also the structure of the Catholic Church and what its leaders can and cannot say is utterly different from the Church Of England. The Episcopalian Church has no set dogma and so the Archbishop of Cantenbury cannot and must not be drawn into such disputes. Dr. Williams has had a long and distinguished career as a theologian and has always rejected creationism, but to talk about it in his position as Archbishop would be mad.


Agreed. :) But they put themselves through it, because it is their holy book.

Why would they do that. There is absolutely no requirement in Christianity to read it. Indeed it was only until comparatively recently that many Churches stopped specifically encouraging people not to read the Bible. Only fundamentalist Christians think it should be read for any reason beyond interest.


I thought fundamentalism was a "19th century phenomena"? :P Yes, it is dualism, but they just do not classify satan as a deity. Find me a statement by these fundamentalist groups, and i'll concede the point.

It is a nineteenth century phenomena. Anyway what they call their view is irrelevant. Their position is one of two Deities. The fact that they all one God and the other Satan is immaterial.


Not sure what you mean here.

Typo

So it's the Stanford Encyclopedia that decides?

It is generally considered a definitive source on philosophy


I've actually read the article before, it's a defence of the Kalam cosmological argument. Why are you lying about it? :confused:
I should have said it is not the Cosmologicala rgument. Aquinas and all that. It is a different kind of argument.


The only sense in which the mover is proposed to be infinite is in time, not in capability.

Not as it is commonly understood. If you are going to concede an infinite being it isn't worth the time to try and argue limitations on it. That is a dead end ally


That doesn't really make things clearer. What actually is this "connection"?

How on earth should I know? I've never experienced one


This is absurd, you can't just define all religions as correct! Scientology is correct, then? Totally ridiculous.

I should have said all religions based on divine experience. Scientology isn't so it wouldn't apply. But rather all religions that experience God would be correct in terms of their experience according to this theory


What are your criticisms? I understand the argument just fine.

-Alex
I would dispute the argument for God by discussing infinites and using Possible Worlds theory to show the non-existence of god (I should clarify here that I am a strong atheist, something that most people here are not, so my position would be a bit different there).

Apart from that, should I concede the possibility of God, I would argue that there is no way of knowing what is religious experience and what isn't.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Because the Cardinals are not presiding over a splintering Church.

Also the structure of the Catholic Church and what its leaders can and cannot say is utterly different from the Church Of England. The Episcopalian Church has no set dogma and so the Archbishop of Cantenbury cannot and must not be drawn into such disputes. Dr. Williams has had a long and distinguished career as a theologian and has always rejected creationism, but to talk about it in his position as Archbishop would be mad.


Fair enough, you've persuaded me.



Why would they do that.


Because they believe that the bible is either the word of god or inspired by god, and contains details on their salvation, et cetera. It just makes sense, if they actually believe what they say they believe.



Indeed it was only until comparatively recently that many Churches stopped specifically encouraging people not to read the Bible.


Really? I wasn't aware of this. Unless you mean right back when most people weren't actaully able to read the bible, only the priests?



Only fundamentalist Christians think it should be read for any reason beyond interest.


Of the three churches I have been present in during a service, all of the sermons have been bible-based, all of the prayers, and basically the whole service revolved around readings from the bible. None of them were fundamentalist.



Anyway what they call their view is irrelevant. Their position is one of two Deities. The fact that they all one God and the other Satan is immaterial.


Dude, just admit it, they don't view satan as a deity. That is your interpretation.


It is generally considered a definitive source on philosophy

Okay. I just tend toward the view that we can't define philosophies we don't like as non-philosophies. Objectivism is still a philosophy, for example. The fact that I hate it doesn't make it any less a philosophy.


I should have said it is not the Cosmologicala rgument. Aquinas and all that. It is a different kind of argument.

Mmm, but it is largely the same logic, at base. It's the "Why is there something rather than nothing?" root of argument. Same with Leibniz.



Not as it is commonly understood. If you are going to concede an infinite being it isn't worth the time to try and argue limitations on it. That is a dead end ally


But the cosmological argument just doesn't do anything to establish what capabiltities this being might actually have, only that it created the universe.



How on earth should I know? I've never experienced one


Doesn't do to use a concept you can't actually define, then.



I should have said all religions based on divine experience. Scientology isn't so it wouldn't apply. But rather all religions that experience God would be correct in terms of their experience according to this theory


Since you are unable to classify what constitutes a divine experience, this is a dead end. Also, how are we to verify that someone has had a divine experience, beyond their insistence?

What is Possible Worlds theory? I basically agree with your criticisms... what do you think about arguments based on internal contradiction of the "omni-god"?

-Alex

[eyedrop]

This still isn't answering the question. It is only the right wing of religion that entirely rejects materialism in the social context. Religious belief (as in proper belief, not just belonging to a church out of habit) is essentially a belief regarding metaphysics, not social issues. I think people who are inclined towards materialism are obviously far less likely to be religious, but religious thought has no bearing in the other direction. If you convince an idealist that religion is wrong they will not move to materialism

So your saying that your beliefs regarding metaphysics has no influence on your beliefs regarding social issues? I find that very hard to swallow. How would that explain why religious people are generally more social conservative for example?

[Demogorgon]

Because they believe that the bible is either the word of god or inspired by god, and contains details on their salvation, et cetera. It just makes sense, if they actually believe what they say they believe.

Except that isn't what they believe. They believe that salvation comes (according to denomination) either through repenting for ones sins or by believing Jesus as the sorce of salvation


Really? I wasn't aware of this. Unless you mean right back when most people weren't actaully able to read the bible, only the priests?

It varies from church to church. In the catholic church for instance it was around the nineteen sixties that they dropped that. More Conservative churches still don't want people reading the bible.


Of the three churches I have been present in during a service, all of the sermons have been bible-based, all of the prayers, and basically the whole service revolved around readings from the bible. None of them were fundamentalist.

Three churches. Not exactly a huge sample. Anyway I would be very surprised if the prayers were Bible based. Most prayers said in church come from other sources. In Catholic Churches it is usually from the Catholic Missle or prayers the Priest has written himself. Other churches have their own prayer books


Dude, just admit it, they don't view satan as a deity. That is your interpretation.

No, that is the interpretation of anybody familiar with both theology and fundamentalist christianity. Dualistic theism by definition believes in two deities. The fact that they only worship one makes little difference

Objectivism is still a philosophy, for example
Ha! If Objectivism is a philosophy then quite literally anything, up to and including my dog barking, is a philosophy.

What is Possible Worlds theory? I basically agree with your criticisms... what do you think about arguments based on internal contradiction of the "omni-god"?

-Alex
Possible worlds theory is a way of investigating modal claims essentially. Basically it is a thought experiment where you think about all possible worlds to see if something is true in any of them.

Because the existence of God is possible but not absolutely necessary (if it can be proven that God is necessary my position falls) then it is only a contingent claim. According to materialist principles there is no possible world where you can have identical material things but non-identical non-material things. Therefore God, being a non-material thing does not exist.

Of course, as you have rejected strict materialism in favour of anti-theism you cannot accept that argument and have to say God might definitely exist, but for people who are not anti-theists, it is an excellent argument.

[Demogorgon]

So your saying that your beliefs regarding metaphysics has no influence on your beliefs regarding social issues? I find that very hard to swallow. How would that explain why religious people are generally more social conservative for example?

Metaphysics is mostly bunk and has little bearing on anything.

Anyway your proposition has two flaws. Firstly it assumes that religious people are more socially conservative. As far as I know, there is no worldwide data proving that.

Secondly it mistakes correlation for cause.

Personally I am pretty sure that conservative people are more likely to be religious than progressive people, not the other way round.

[eyedrop]

Metaphysics is mostly bunk and has little bearing on anything. Can't it be said that metaphysics can provide the framework which socially conservative values can be justified. As socially conservative values can't be justified on honest material reasons.


First you say

Anyway your proposition has two flaws. Firstly it assumes that religious people are more socially conservative. As far as I know, there is no worldwide data proving that.
and then


Personally I am pretty sure that conservative people are more likely to be religious than progressive people, not the other way round. So you basically agree with the assumption that religious people are more likely to be conservative, or that conservative people are more likely to be religious. Which basically is the same thing. So it seems you agree but just want to score a cheap point.

Secondly it mistakes correlation for cause. Fair enough, but I still don't see why we shouldn't discourage the metaphysical framework which justifies socially conservative values. Religion has historically been opposed to a materialistic understanding of reality.

[Demogorgon]

Can't it be said that metaphysics can provide the framework which socially conservative values can be justified. As socially conservative values can't be justified on honest material reasons.
No because when somebody tries to justify their social outlook based on metaphysics, you can be sure they are working backwards trying to search for something-anything-that corresponds to what they have already decided.


First you say
and then
So you basically agree with the assumption that religious people are more likely to be conservative, or that conservative people are more likely to be religious. Which basically is the same thing. So it seems you agree but just want to score a cheap point.

It isn't the same thing at all. Ice Cream is likely to be cold, but by no means are cold things likely to be ice cream rather than anything else.

[eyedrop]

No because when somebody tries to justify their social outlook based on metaphysics, you can be sure they are working backwards trying to search for something-anything-that corresponds to what they have already decided. When racists defend their racists views in the framework of "racial science" we shouldn't debunk racial science?


It isn't the same thing at all. Ice Cream is likely to be cold, but by no means are cold things likely to be ice cream rather than anything else. Cold things are still more likely to be ice cream than a random thing is likely to be ice cream.

What would be the effect if conservative people are more likely to be religious than progressive people? The religious demographics would on average be more conservative than the average demographics as more conservative people flock to religiousness.

[Demogorgon]

When racists defend their racists views in the framework of "racial science" we shouldn't debunk racial science?
Well it already is debunked. Anyway, while I see your point, racist pseudo science isn't used by anyone except racists. Religion on the other hand is used by people of all sorts of stripes. It can as easily be used for the justification for progressive thought. The fact that reactionary thought is more likely to have to fall back on it, does not say anything about religion.


Cold things are still more likely to be ice cream than a random thing is likely to be ice cream.

What would be the effect if conservative people are more likely to be religious than progressive people? The religious demographics would on average be more conservative than the average demographics as more conservative people flock to religiousness.It might be more conservative. It is really going to depend on a lot of factors however. Which country and which church you are talking about for one. Further it wouldn't tell you much of any use anyway as you would still have plenty of progressive religious people and moreover Religion definitely would not be having any bearing on people's social outlook.