I love this caption, too: God, seen here smacking his bitch up.
So I have a little bit of airport time to write a post today, and I can’t help but link this article that PZ linked to about how feminism and religion are at odds. Like PZ, I’m drawing a little short at the way the author defines “religion” pretty much as Christianity, and I would add that “you can’t be a feminist” is an unfair thing to say. “You can’t be a perfect feminist,” maybe, but that’s true of any compromise women make to get by in patriarchies, from lipstick-wearing to marriage.
But getting out of the better-feminist-than-thou contest, I have to agree with the underlying argument here about religion and irrationality in politics. One reason that religion has to be separate from church is that religion deliberately peddles in the irrational and that which is argued on faith. Therefore, it’s the hands-down perfect vehicle for making anti-female arguments. Some people try with “science”, but it’s science for choads, of course. Scratch a “womenz is inferior ‘cause science sez so” argument and you’ll usually find it’s hokum dressed up in science clothes and can’t withstand actual scientific scrutiny.
Not so with religious arguments supporting misogyny. The assertion that god thinks women are inferior is appealing because the only argument against it is, “Nuh-uh, my imaginary creator thinks that god is all for the ladies,” and then you’re at a standstill that can only be resolved by violence, which I do believe traditionally favors male domination. The patriarchy really needs religion to exist, which is why the term “people of faith” has become synonymous with “fans of an old-fashioned patriarchy” in the media. The motivator of the Bible-thumpers is not so much love of some 2,000-year-old Jewish carpenter living under Roman rule, but the need to have the bitches at home under the thumb, and religion, because of the inarguable irrationality aspect, is the perfect disguise. And it always will be. The high hopes of those who hopefully work towards a world where religion is more a force of good than a force of evil forget this much—good is generally arguable on its own terms, but evil needs some extra oomph, something to quiet the conscience and desire for peace. Religion will always be perfect for the job of arguing that evil is actually good, and as such, it’s going to be a tempting tool forevermore. oBeing a feminist led me to being an atheist in a fairly straightforward way, and this is basically why.
Anyway, the article doesn’t dwell on these aspects as much, but points out that the Bible and Koran can’t be treated like egalitarian documents without a heaping dose of lying to yourself. Worth reading for that, as well as the illustration.
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This is gonna be fun.
I’m not quite sure that I agree with your accusation that the author “defines ‘religion’ pretty much as Christianity”. Christianity seems to be the dominant focus of the piece, but I think that’s justifiable: Christianity is the dominant religion in the cultural context she’s speaking of. Nonetheless, she also points to the misogynistic tendencies of Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, which is important, seeing as though there is a tendency among more cosmopolitan folks in the West to whitewash them in an attempt to contrast them with the indigenous traditions. (It’s also worth mentioning that Hindus and Buddhists in the cultures to which they are indigenous also share the homophobic and secularophobic tendencies of our own religious nuts, and find plenty of scriptural justification for it.)
There is an argument to be had over whether religion is really salvageable in these respects. It’s certainly become more humanistic over the past few centuries. But I think the generally progressive nature of cultures that have had their indigenous religious traditions weakened (e.g., Western Europe and Scandinavia) attests to value of doing such a thing being done.
I generally favor synergistic approaches. Some can work toward weakening cultural religion while other work toward humanizing and liberalizing it’s vestiges. It’s much the same way with marriage: some abandon it altogether while others work to make it a more egalitarian institution.
There’s always the egalitarian Wicca, whose ancient traditions date back as far as 1970.
I think religion has become more egalitarian under threat from rationalism. It’s a basic economic tendency—when you’re competing with someone whose got an upper hand, you become more like them in order to survive. Think Coke/Pepsi, Republicans/Democrats, etc. Mainstream religion has to embrace some rationality lest it get rejected altogether.
Does this make me an okay feminist because I rejected religion a while back and do have feminist identifying moments. Or am I kicked out because I am a spiritualist and do believe in a creator?
I’m never sure on these points. Guess that means I just have to define it for myself. Crazy me.
While belief in a generic creator is still irrational (I do not mean this to be offensive; it just is), at least it does not include the creation story central to Christianity/Judaism. I think the belief that “god” created Adam and then, as an afterthought, Eve, has led to much of our cultural misogyny. That’s saying nothing of other world religions.
Or am I kicked out because I am a spiritualist and do believe in a creator?
Well, if you pick something like Judaism, people will cool the snotty remarks a bit because they don’t want to seem anti-Semitic, and if it’s an Eastern religion you might be able to squeeze in through the diversity thing, But otherwise, pretty much.
Well, I do honestly think that Christianity (hell, all the Abrahamic religions) are pretty much inherently patriarchal and misogynistic.
Does that preclude someone from being, say, Christian, AND a Feminist? Nope. I mean, sure, it’ll involve some bending and contortions, but I think it is possible.
However, does this mean I think ALL religions are inherently patriarchal and misogynistic? No, I don’t. I do know some religions that are quite egalitarian.
Course, this doesn’t preclude all religions from being silly and nonsensical. Because they are; religious beliefs inherently are irrational. Just because one is a rational enough person to be feminist, doesn’t preclude one from irrational enough to be religious.
But just because religion by its very nature is nonsensical doesn’t mean it will then automatically be misogynistic and patriarchal.
*shrugs* Works differently for everyone, I guess.
Being a Christian is what made me a liberal and probably contributed to me becoming a feminist. (I decided I was a feminist when I was 8 but I no longer remember how I decided that.)
I studied the bible in school (a progressive, feminist Catholic school where we called God “our father and our mother”) so I already knew what it says. I know the history behind most of the passages, the likely authors and the various ways to interpret them. The article didn’t impart anything new and struck me as a tad sophomoric in tone. Surprisingly enough, not everyone who considers themselves religious and a feminist is ignorant of the facts.
Nothing to do with the post, everything to do with the picture:
I think the intersection of class, race, and depictions of domestic violence is under-explored. The very nicknaming of the sleeveless white undershirt, associated with poor (usually, though not always, white) men as a “wife beater” testifies to how deeply these things are intertwined. They’re all there in that picture - the Bud cans, the “wife beater,” the tattoos - all these markers. I might argue that the “trailer trash” image has been more pervasively associated with domestic violence than even the SCARY MISOGYNIST HIP HOP ZOMG. My thoughts aren’t all that well formed on this topic, but I’d like to see it explored further. Does it serve to further marginalize poor whites? I have friends who grew up in a trailer park, who would make self-deprecating jokes about being “trailer trash” all the time - and not in a good way. It was insidious. Does it serve to obscure the non-poor families that experience domestic violence?
*shrugs* Works differently for everyone, I guess.
Being a Christian is what made me a liberal and probably contributed to me becoming a feminist. (I decided I was a feminist when I was 8 but I no longer remember how I decided that.)
I studied the bible in school (a progressive, feminist Catholic school where we called God “our father and our mother”) so I already knew what it says. I know the history behind most of the passages, the likely authors and the various ways they could be interpreted. The article didn’t impart anything new and struck me as a tad sophomoric. Surprisingly enough, not everyone who considers themselves religious and a feminist is ignorant of the facts.
*shrugs* Works differently for everyone, I guess.
Being a Christian is what made me a liberal and probably contributed to me becoming a feminist. (I decided I was a feminist when I was 8 so I no longer remember how I got there.)
I studied the bible in school (a progressive, feminist Catholic school where we called God “our father and our mother”) so I already knew what it says. I know the history behind most of the passages, the likely authors and the various ways they could be interpreted. The article didn’t impart anything new and struck me as a tad sophomoric. Surprisingly enough, not everyone who considers themselves religious and a feminist is ignorant of the facts.
… besides, everyone knows that god drinks High Life.
Just to add a personal comment, but misogyny in Christianity did drive me away. Admittedly, I grew up with fundamentalist Christianity, but I was never able to reconcile the text of the Bible with feminist values. So, after considering various textual constructions I eventually just moved away from it altogether. And beyond the text, I had tired of being treated as a second-tier human.
… besides, everyone knows that god drinks High Life.
Nuh-uh. Grain Belt.
The motivator of the Bible-thumpers is not so much love of some 2,000-year-old Jewish carpenter living under Roman rule, but the need to have the bitches at home under the thumb,
Not just the bitches, but other guys, too. There’s a bunch of stuff in the bible about being a good servant and being loyal to your master, where being subservient to a father or employer is portrayed as a parallel to the relationship between you and God. There’s even a business fad called Servant Leadership that builds on this idea.
If you’re already on top, there’s a lot of nice stuff in that book designed to keep everyone below you pacified.
It reminds me of that David Cross routine about what happens after we build a biosphere on the moon, and the earth is a smoking husk of a planet.
“No, no, you see, the meek inherit the Earth.”
SarahMC, There are many theologians, including myself, who would argue that the creation myth is not central to either Christianity or Judaism.
Recent scholarship would argue (can scholarship argue?) that the central story and pivotal event of the Hebrew Scriptures is the sixth century B.C.E Babylonian exile. Virtually all of the Old Testament is formed around that event, either in an attempt to explain why it happened or to help those who are exiled believe that what is happening to them today is not the final word for the future.
Similarly, the New Testament is written in and for a community that is either in exile or under the oppressive heel of foreign occupiers.
In it’s basic literature, Christianity is, or should be, about the oppressed and the powerless, giving them hope for the future and speaking against the powers that oppress them.
Unfortunately, for 1700 years, the most visible faces of Christianity have been caught up in what one author terms “Constantinianism;” Where Christianity and the current societal power structure are tied together and it is to the benefit of each to support the other.
As one of my professors put it in his most recent book:
Is it possible to be a Christian and a Feminist? Yes, in fact I would say that it is required to be a Feminist in order to be a Christian. The problem is that I don’t think it is possible to be a Feminist and a Constantinian Christian, and unfortunately very few of the loudest voices and most visible faces of Christianity are unwilling to give up their power and centrality to the culture in order to take up the mantel of being Exilic Christians, standing with and speaking a new word to the oppressed.
Meghan,
I just realized that I used the term “central” incorrectly. I realize that the creation story is not the central story/theme in the bible.
I meant the story “specific to” Christianity/Judaism.
Sorry!
1) Did the peeps here see that monster dk thread dairied by Shannika? It was so cool to read a shitstorm that happens when you get white people’s backs up about racism–I’m usually the one starting the bar fights…
2) One thing that I really think is very interesting about Islam is that it was so much more aggressively egalitarian than other religeons in its early days (for instance, I tend to think that a particularly irrascible german philosopher is correct about Christianity, as a religeon, being a slave religeon, and much of their egalitarianism is a response to the class struggles of the day). However, what was *more* interesting was how more intense patriarchism was reintroduced back into Islam, via some bad faith hadiths…
To me, this leads to the central facet of religeon’s role in society. Because an organization has assets, the meeting place, the religeous tools, the services, and the organized members themselves, a religeon can always be coerced into the preferences of the lowest common denominator in human groupings. The threat of violence is always the most utilized by those of the least enlightened, so that goes without saying.
So indeedy-diddely-do! God will smack his bitches up from time to time, and a bitch of his is anyone you call a cunt!
thank you Meghan, of course feminism and Religion is difficult to square, but, that does not mean that a religion that has at its root liberation from oppression (exile, f.e.) does not also speak up for woman - apart from the appalling quotes delivered in that piece, there are many characters in the Bible that are feminists in a very modern sense.
bashing people with quotes has never convinced anyone in any direction - trying to understand human life, interaction, joys and sadness — the bible provides an invaluable number of truly inspiring characters. There is no reason, why they would have to hide behind any of the moral statements, after all, they are equally in the same book suffering from the same bastards, modern woman suffer as well.
hmmm, reading the article, it *is* pretty ignorant of islam and uses language typical of anti-arab bigots when they feeling like appealing towards the “gentle sex” or whatever…
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/26/blogging-the-qur’an-sura-4-“women”-verses-17-34/
has some more context…In any event, at the time, the theological legalism was vastly more liberal, and more enforced in its liberal spirit (at least until Abu Bakr died) than anyplace else in Western Asia, and one can argue, in the world at the time…It was certainly liberal enough to cause several conservative counter-revolutions, which succeeded by corrupting the message, and then removing from the culture any kind of extrapolation…
No religion will be permitted to be revolutionary for too long…
If you’re going to cherry pick from the “sacred texts” then how do you know what is genuinely sacred and what’s bullshit?
Save yourself a lot hassle, it’s all bullshit.
There are many theologians, including myself, who would argue that the creation myth is not central to either Christianity or Judaism. - Meghan
While I agree with your point about the centrality of the exile in Judaism (one could argue that Judaism, per se, began with the exile … indeed, “Jew” essentially come into use even in the internal chronology of the Hebrew Bible around that time), you could very well argue that the creation story still plays an important role.
For Jews, the role is the establishment of the Shabbos(*). For more Orthodox Christians, it is the Original Sin. The problem for fundamentalists (of the sort who reject the notion of Original Sin) is for what purpose is the Creation story? Emphasizing scripture as they do, they cannot de-emphasize scripture’s opening passages. OTOH, it has no lesson for them. So it’s only role is history, which is why they are so keen to take it literally.
Of course, this is all OT. FWIW, in Jewish lore, there is the same tale as was presented in Plato’s Symposium: that the first human was neither a man nor a women, but rather both — and when “Eve” was removed from Adam, that not only produced the first woman but also the first man.
(*which is also linked, in our Friday night Kiddush, to the Exodus from Egypt, the emphasis of which no doubt picked up steam in pre-exilic times as the “Prophets” tried to disuade Judah from a self-destructive and futile alliance with Egypt against Assyria … btw, the depoliticization of the Prophets is one of my pet-peeves about certain religious strains which would reduce them to soothsayers predicting some odd events in the far future rather than keen geo-political analysists from whom we can learn much).
Save yourself a lot hassle, it’s all bullshit. - Pablo
My undergrad research advisor (z”l) once was waxing philosophical in his number theory class (which I was taking). All of the sudden, he followed up his naval gazing with “of course, you realize that all of what I just said is complete and udder bullshit”. He then paused and said “but … it is sublime bullshit” (to get the full effect, read this aloud with a well-modulated but somewhat gravelly voice and maybe more than a trace of a Yiddish accent … of the kind that makes you sound almost like a Shakespearean actor of a certain generation).
Nu? Maybe it is bullshit? Nu? But maybe it is sublime bullshit?
Am I missing something here? Sounds to me that when you say
“being a feminist led me to being an atheist in a fairly straightforward way”
it actually supports to some degree Pat Robertson’s infamous claim that feminism is a
“socialist, anitifamily political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians” (and apparently atheists).
Politics does make strange bedfellows, it seems… (ew; sorry for that image)
I didn’t know God smote women with his fists… he better make it his best shot; my right cross to the chin has put grown men in the dirt before!
Would “divine intervention” be a referee?
No, reading that whole article…no…That is one very ignorant post.
Lots of reasons to bash religions, and there are tons of stupid shit in all of the religious texts that refer to women’s subservience. Throwing together a few smattered and out of context phrases from books most people don’t read does not make it an enlightening read.
Like with Islam, if the author knew anything about it, she would have gone after the hadith (some of which is explicitly anti-women) rather than the Koran itself (even though the Koran certainly has objectionable content, when viewed in context…). Using phrases from a notoriously authortarian version of budhism also discredits her analysis.
She certainly couldn’t be bothered to go much outside of Leviticus to find interesting antiwomen statements. And woah, nothing from the New Testament…I wonder why…
That is *such* a libertarian “a little knowlege is a dangerous thing” rant…
Looked at the photo again… I don’t think that’s God; looks more like Bad Santa.
I’ll “ho-ho-ho” YOU, Bee-atch!
All pissed off because it’s the off-season and he can’t come for another year.
No one has done a feminist reinterpretation of the faith of the Disco Ball yet, perhaps it is not needed.
pablo: Most varieties of Wicca are heavily infested with gender essentialism, dressed up as goddess worship. As one of my high school history teachers put it: “Why do men like to put women up on a pedestal? So they can’t move!”
good is generally arguable on its own terms
Well, sort of. But when evil is deeply entrenched in the whole society–slavery, institutional racism, institutional misogyny, etc.–vanquishing it butts up against the perceived good of preserving peace and harmony in society. Very, very few people want to condemn their whole society as evil–that’s where they live, that’s where their family and friends live, and most people think “good” consists of going on, living their lives and providing for the people they’re close to the best they can. Attempting to upend societal institutions upends people’s lives, often in bad ways, and not only for the oppressors.
It takes hugely powerful convictions for most people to get past a tendency to keep what peace there is and make the best of things under the status quo, and big dose of irrationality–like, for example, being able to declare, “I am CERTAIN that, no matter what else happens, fighting for social justice is the right thing to do because God tells me it is”–can really help them have the courage of their convictions. Deeply religious people have been at the forefront of all kinds of social-justice movements, and their irrational religious faith wasn’t coincidental for them. Irrationality gets people moving.
Now, I personally am not religious, nor do I rabidly subscribe to some non-religious philosophy to take religion’s place. But I would also have a hard time being a radical activist.
Karalora, that drives me nuts too.
It really irritates me when Christians mock Scientologists for having “made up” beliefs that haven’t been around that long. As though Christianity wasn’t also new at one point. Not to mention “made up.”
Do beliefs become more legitimate the older they get?
Do beliefs become more legitimate the older they get?
Tradition!!!
shah8,
Forgive me for noticing, but you’ve made no attempt to deal with the “context” of the statements. I’d specifically like an explanation of which “context” the proscriptions point out by the article are okay.
Your posts look much like a garden variey case of the “Courtier’s Reply“.
In defense of religionists who identify as feminist, most of those religionists worship a deity, not the book about the deity. They would state that the books are products of their time and not a perfect reflection of deity.
Do beliefs become more legitimate the older they get?
I have no idea what happened….let’s try it again:
Tradition!!
(Amanda, can you delete the immediate previous post by me that contains the non-link, please…kthnx)
NancyP, why would anyone who acknowledges the imperfection or archaic nature of the book upon which the deity is based still believe in the deity?
Many Christians claim to take the bible figuratively. It’s not literal; it’s fables and metaphors.
Then why do you call yourself ‘Christian?’ The stories in the bible are “just stories” - except for the one about Jesus Christ being god made flesh?
“One reason that religion has to be separate from church
Ah, Amanda . . .
(Although one could argue that religion in a certain idealistic sense often has nothing to do with churches (etc), but I assume that we’re going for a more secular point here . . .)
“The motivator of the Bible-thumpers is not so much love of some 2,000-year-old Jewish carpenter living under Roman rule, but the need to have the bitches at home under the thumb, and religion, because of the inarguable irrationality aspect, is the perfect disguise. ”
There was an >a href =
‘http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/weekinreview/06johnson.html?_r=1″>end-of-ideology drooler in the New York Times today about how “From capital punishment to global warming to homosexuality to abortion, many of the social issues that divide us are shifting and evolving — perhaps even in some instances into a new consensus, or at least, and no less profoundly, toward a reframing of the old debates . . . Many of the great debates, in short, have become a bit passé“. While that’s not exactly wrong, it really misses what’s behind so many of these constantly reborn “old debates” - what, for example, exactly links gay marriage and HPV vaccinations.
“The problem for fundamentalists (of the sort who reject the notion of Original Sin)
DAS - I didn’t know there were such folks - who are they, denominationally speaking?
Karalora: I’d thought that comment was mostly because of that particularly obnoxious strain of Wiccan who likes to insist that Wicca is ancient, and that the swipe is at them, not at the newness of Wicca.
For myself, I find the insistence that nonsensical superstition that’s less than 1,000 years old is bad, but nonsensical superstition older than that is good to be preposterous in the extreme.
But then, as an atheist I find it all to be equally absurd. I was once talking with a Mormon who was expounding on the sillyness of Scientology, and he was quite put out when I suggested that from the outside Mormonism was just as silly.
As for religion and feminism, I’d argue that the basic thesis is mostly correct. Of the established and generally accepted religions, I can’t think of any that aren’t misogynist to the core. All the Abrhamic religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Confucianism [1], even Sikhism has its misogynist elements and its probably the best of the lot.
[1] Especially Confucianism. Of all the religions on the planet, I think Confucianism is the one I dislike the most.
I’m not sure patriarchy requires religion as it’s normally understood to survive. Any dogmatic faith will do, including bogus ev psych or social darwinism. To me it makes more sense the other way around: patriarchy generates a certain kind of religious doctrine or other dogmatic faith. (Not original with me; I’m pretty much parroting Dinerstein with a side order of Balbus, who coined the incredibly blindered phrase “mother-dominated child-rearing”. )
Religion is misogynistic because men are misogynistic and men make the rules.
Men make the rules because, in general, men are bigger and physically stronger than women.
Religious/philosophical/scientific arguments are just window dressing for the simple truth that men are still physically able to smack their bitches up at the end of the day.
Tyler, you miss the point.
I’m not saying that one has to be an expert in religion to decry it. The context that I was referring is pretty complex for me to spell out, namely how Mahommed was trying to reform what was a very harsh and exploitative society and recast it in terms that members of a very harsh and exploitative society would accept.
In any event, my objection was that the author was plainly cribbing her “research” from jingoistic (White Baby Jesus Is The Best Thing Evah!) sources. To accept that article as a basis for conversations about the validity of feminism in religion spreads the bullshit around.
The Courtesian’s Reply is a passive version of the Chewbacca Defense. I’m not attempting to avoid debate, I’m attempting impeach the basic source for debate. I don’t think arguing over bullshit is productive, or if we do, we should go from the premise that it was more a xenophobic tract rather than pro-feminist tract.
Throughout history, jingoistic sentiments have always focused on the sentiments that it’s legal and right for us native guys to rape women, but them furringers will do worse (with plenty of slander against said furringers). I’m all for slamming religions, and I have about as much fun as the next athiest, but the classist and bigoted elements really takes a bit of fun out of it…
“Religion is misogynistic because men are misogynistic and men make the rules.”
This statement seems a bit misandristic.
Mythago,
What I believe doesn’t follow any particular Judaic, eastern or western philosophy. I gave organized religions a pass a long time.
So I guess I just have to bear under snotty remarks. Heh.
SarahMC, I didn’t take it as offensive, but just as your viewpoint on the matter.
That’s interesting. I thought Wicca was predominantly female. Is that wrong or have they internalized this gender essentialism?
Bingo! But Karalora got the point too. Wicca’s newness doesn’t make it any more absurd than the absurdities of the 2000 year old religions.
shah,
Even if we agree with your interpretation of Mohammed as introducing reforms, that doesn’t seem to do much to revoke the polygamy and other exploitative practices rampant throughout the Koran, much of which was practiced by Mohammed himself.
“Throughout history, jingoistic sentiments have always focused on the sentiments that it’s legal and right for us native guys to rape women, but them furringers will do worse (with plenty of slander against said furringers). I’m all for slamming religions, and I have about as much fun as the next athiest, but the classist and bigoted elements really takes a bit of fun out of it…”
The problem is that I detect none of the latter in the piece. I’m sensitive to claims of anti-Arab racism, but that shouldn’t automatically be inferred as you seem to do. It becomes much like knee-jerk accusations of antisemitism whenever Israel is spoken of in a critica context.
I love this stuff because it gets hackles up, I must admit. It’s true that you either believe in the Bible (and therefore women are inferior, and the Bible very blatantly and repeatedly insists) or you are a feminist, but you can’t be both. You might be a “Christian” who doesn’t really believe the Bible if you’re a feminist, which is what I find fascinating. That area where people openly engage in irrational, illogical beliefs because it fills this long-standing need to belong.
Not all religious people or religions are against women.
Seriously, why does this need to be pointed out? Amanda, can you be bothered to do the most basic of scholarship?
Or are you going to hide behind the “If it doesn’t apply to you, just ignore the criticisms” shield again?
Not all religious people are against women. So… why are they religious? Because they pick and choose which parts of their religion they believe?
Again, why are liberal Christians who don’t interpret the bible literally Christians at all? If the stories about the burning bush and Jonah aren’t true, what makes you accept Jesus’ story?
Re: gender essentialism in Wicca
It varies between traditions and between covens. The older the tradition, the more likely the male-female duality is to be stressed, but what that means to the actual practice of the religion is highly unpredictable. Then you have traditions like Dianic Wicca where it is largely irrelevant, because the membership is all female. But whatever else you might say about it, Wicca is a religion wherein female clergy is the norm rather than an eyebrow-raising exception, and I think that counts for a lot.
Of course, I’m saying all this as a non-Wiccan, agnostic/pantheistic solitary Neopagan witch.
Petey, you must make a strong distinction between “religious people” and “religions”.
Obviously there are religious people who are not misogynists. All Allison Kilkenny and Amanda are pointing out is the fact that virtually all religions have strong streaks of misogynist “philosophy” in their DNA.
That is a fact, as the documented beliefs (bible, quran, etc.) clearly state.
If someone wishes to follow a certain religion, and step around the parts that are anti-women in order to be a feminist, great. But don’t pretend that they are fully following the teachings of that religion…
“…why are liberal Christians who don’t interpret the bible literally Christians at all?”
There are some more “fundamental” christians who wouldn’t consider them “true christians” at all - both for supporting women while ignoring certain parts of the bible, AND for being “liberal”…
Come on, Tyler.
Just focusing on the islam part, tho’ the sins are against pretty much every religion without thought…
Her comments about Mahommed’s mother was *really* absurd, especially given his early orphanhood, and his attitude about Halima, his milk-mother.
As far as Aisha goes, just google Mahommed and pedophilia, and you’ll get a huge torrent of right-wing slavering. Just a few facts…Aisha’s age was never truly verified, and we don’t know how old she was when she was promised to Mohammed, let alone when he consumated the marriage (the usual ages are 6 and 9, and other say after she began menstration in her teens). Second, there is absolutely every reason to believe that Mahommed had…sophisticated beliefs about polygamy. He had a long marriage with one older woman, with six children, with only Fatima (and Zainab maybe living long enough to maybe had another daughter) surviving to adulthood. He got all of his other wives because tribal political affiliations were sealed with family ties, and that involved marrying their women. He had one child from any of his later wives, and he died in infancy as well.
All of that is easily researchable, as well as the sloppiness regarding the other religions…
Not all religious people or religions are against women.
Interestingly, I have yet to hear this from anyone but those who belong to religions that are. I do believe you’re a Christian, right, Petey? So you and I both believe the teeny-tiny pro-woman pagan religions are wrong. Why are you defending them?
But you’re right. Some religious people abandon their religion to be pro-woman. So they are “of faith”, but not really believers any more.
Then let me re-phrase:
Why are people who consider themselves liberal Christians…?”
but here you’re imposing rationality on something that’s inherently irrational. No, it doesn’t make logical sense for them to bother being “Christians.” That’s a feature, not a bug, as far as religions are concerned.
And conservative Christians ignore most of what Christ is reputed to say in favor of Paul and parts of the Old Testament. Liberal Christians pick and choose no more than their conservative counterparts– and at least they have the explanation that “much of the Bible is metaphor” to explain *their* choosiness. The Fundies don’t have any excuse to ignore what they don’t like.
Hmm . . .
A lot of confusion here. “Irrational” beliefs can be defined by science and reason. “Arational” beliefs cannot be defined by science. (In philosophy this is the classic “what is unreasonable vs. what is beyond reason.”) Faith is based upon personal experience and is arational.
Amanda says that being a feminist caused her to be an atheist. That’s the equivalent to saying, “I don’t like X. Because I don’t like X it DOESN’T exist. That sounds kind of irrational.
Of course, it’s also easy simply to just blame Mohammed for being a man of his time and place, rather than a man of our times.
If you think I am being knee-jerk, when it comes to sensitivity, well, I kinda sorta care about truth, man, even if it goes against me. I’m not islamic, nor do I believe that Mahommed was divinely inspired.
However, I’ll smack the same stupid people around for saying Jews Are Bad Because They Killed Jesus. See, no israel anywhere around it (and I’m pretty anti-Israel, since I regard it as a Rhodesian project). It’s the same kind of rhetoric, a distortion of a key fact so one has an excuse to hate someone. Saying jews are jesus-killers is meant to exite antisemitism. Saying Mahommed was pedophillic is also meant to exite anti-semitism. Given that the rest of her column was no better in terms of accurate context, I’m inclined to disbelieve in her or her sources beneficence.
It’s all a matter of a talent for diatribes. Saying Fuck Fuck Fuckity Fucking a Bleeding Cunt! doesn’t mean it was funny because you were willing to say alot of dirty words. Writing some stupid sloppy essay full of red meat doesn’t mean it’s something meant to be consumed with a quality blusterfull aperitif! I don’t want rotten meat. I want KOBE STEAK, and damn the morality of feeding a cow all the beer she wants!
“…Why are people who consider themselves liberal Christians…?”
I think there are a lot of people who are “cultural” christians - who “believe” because they were raised to believe, who have christian doctrine transparently incorporated into their lives, often without realizing those things are doctrine. Being christian for them is like being American, or an Iowan, etc.
The shoe fits so well they can’t imagine living without it, when they think about it at all…
Okay, is there any actual argument there or do you just want to sputter, shah?
Again, context is everything. Muhammad was the one who laid down the law about four wives, max, and he was the one who said that you were only allowed a second wife if a) the first wife said yes and b) if you could emotionally and financially support a second wife. He also pushed for marriage of poor widows (which he practiced).
Back then, he was the first one to say that a woman had rights of her own, and that a marriage contract is about protecting her rights. In that time, it was common for rich men to have wagonloads of wives, or to sell off their daughters.
In fact, Muhammad’s first wife was his merchant boss. She was some ten years older than him, but she liked what she saw, and proposed to him. Throughout the marriage, while he was out being Prophet, she continued her rather successful merchant business.
I’m prepared to believe that religions are intrinsically anti-women, but I refuse to be convinced by that jingoistic nonsense that the article linked to contains. The author sounds like she stumbled into an operating room, screamed OMG blood! pain! suffering!, and ran out and wrote about how surgeons are anti-people and pro-suffering. If you display sloppy thinking in one part of your essay, it makes it harder for me to fight through that and concentrate on the over argument.
“Amanda says that being a feminist caused her to be an atheist. That’s the equivalent to saying, “I don’t like X. Because I don’t like X it DOESN’T exist. That sounds kind of irrational.”
Except that I don’t see where Amanda ever made that argument. Strawmen are cheap.
Mezzo, you seem to be confused about the substance of the argument. Whether Mohammed was progressive when compared to his ancient peers over a thousand years ago has nothing to do with the intrinsically misogynistic content of the Koran, especially by today’s standards. By all means, sing praises of a bygone claimant of relevation. But there is no denying that the content is profoundly anti-woman.
And would you mind pointing out to me where this “jingoistic” content is? I didn’t detect it.
“…Why are people who consider themselves liberal Christians…?”
It could also be because they do believe in God and Jesus, yet jettison the man made opinions that were written in the New and Old Testament.
Thus it would make their belief more of someone up there who had a son down here. IE, there is a God that genuinely exists as did his son. The people who claimed to have been writing about them didn’t know jack shit. I quite often ponder that one when I read the Old Testament. Particularly concerning Job.
It’s just my imagery that sees a bunch of old guys standing around.
“What’s been happening to Job? He’s such a good man, and all these bad things happening to him.”
“He must have angered God somehow.”
“But how, he is holy than the holiest of us. If he has angered God, what hope do we have?”
“Ah, it must be God is testing him. Yes, that is it. There can be no other explanation.”
That could be one way of looking at it all.
Tyler-
Did you read Amanda’s post? She says, “Being a feminist led me to being an atheist in a fairly straightforward way, and this is basically why.”
I find this interesting, because my atheism came way, way, way before my feminism.
“She says, ‘Being a feminist led me to being an atheist in a fairly straightforward way, and this is basically why.’”
Yeah, but that doesn’t equate to this:
“That’s the equivalent to saying, ‘I don’t like X. Because I don’t like X it DOESN’T exist.’”
“Led me” to atheism doesn’t necessarily mean that your lack of belief is predicated only on that fact alone, it can also mean that it simply had an influence on your initial suspicions/doubts. This is especialy true when it comes to motivations of those peddling the beliefs.
“…doesn’t necessarily mean that your lack of belief is predicated only on that fact alone.”
From the Department of Redundancy Department.
Sleeeeeepy….
And you seem to be confused by what I’m saying - I do not deny, nor support that it is anti-women. I don’t pretend to have any great understanding of religon whatsoever.
I am saying that it’s a little odd to explain that Muhammad perpetuated misogynistic practices, (which is what you said), when he was famous for trying to put a stop to misogynistic practices. Islam had a heavy number of female converts because the women of the time liked what they say.
By all means, go ahead and call your version of Islam misogynistic. But you’re on a discussion board, so expect dissenting views, rather than a backup chorus.
but you knew that already. Right?
You mean apart from doing the whole song-and-dance about “look at Muhammad the child molester” bit? Or the whole “**gasp** no mention of Muhammad’s birth - it’s cos he hates Teh Vagina!” The article is jingoistic because it perpetuates some of the worst stereotypes of theists around, and is prepared to lie to perpetuate a point of view. Karen Armstrong would be raising an eyebrow by now.
Um… why?
Christ didn’t write the Bible; the modern canon was determined by the early church, and they threw out a lot of stuff.
And I’m fairly uninformed about this part of history, but I don’t think the main criterion for putting a book in the bible was “It has to have a clear factual basis supported by copious evidence”.
Most of the decisions on what to include seem to me to have been philosophical, and pretty damn arguable.
Suppose you disagree with an argument for including a book in the bible, so you ignore it. How is what you’re doing any different then the way the bible was compiled in the first place, and what gave the early church the authority to define “Christianity” and why don’t you or I have that authority?
And this is true of, really, all religions, some of which have a much more… complicated situation when it comes to scripture.
It’s bullshit, it’s not based on facts, so one person’s view of what the religion is is as good as another’s.
If you really start excluding people who half-believe the bible from Christianity, you get a very weird sort of “no true Scottsman” thing going on, where you can say, “he’s not a Christian, he just believes Christ was the son of god and died for our sins”.
Things start to get really confusing when you go down that route.
I’m tired of hearing about how faith is not open to science. Look, the bible talks about actual things physically happening in the outside world.
It’s easy to imagine a universe in which the miracles of the bible (for example) ARE supported by fact, a universe where god’s existence is as clear and unambiguous as the existence of, I dunno, the moon.
I can’t see how such a universe would go against the central texts of any religion I’m familiar with, and, indeed, the texts I’ve read make no reference to the miracles they contain being somehow outside the realm of observation; they seem to think that miracles actually ARE verifiable by ordinary observational techniques.
Really, you get into very weird territory if you apply this belief to the Old Testament; God often does miraculous things in front of unbelievers. I can’t imagine how it could shake out that the walls of Jericho fell for the people who wanted them to, AND stayed up for the people that didn’t have faith.
Anyway, as far asI can tell this argument has only come up in light of the fact that observations do not match religion; if the observations DID match, I can’t fathom this idea being introduced at all.
The thing is, there was one group of theists that didn’t get slammed.
There are too many things in Paul’s letters that’s just as crazy to ignore ‘em…
Anyways, I just accept that Tyler is just being obtuse now…
I too, naturally rejected religion in much the same way as Amanda; I was a self-identified feminist from the age of, like, 7, and raised by secular humanists of WASP extraction. I lived in a semi-rural area, and sometimes got brought to church by boyfriends and friends (some in an overt chase to “save” me), but the more I sat there, and listened, and read, the more I thought, “Wow. This God doesn’t seem to like me and my kind much.” It seemed pretty straightforward.
I have moments where I give some credence to the Dan Brown Theory of Christianity (i.e. it wasn’t always ragingly misogynist, texts were edited/books not included that were more balanced, but then I read crap like this, and I have equally strong moments that all religion is horseshit.
Rainbow Girl recently did a post about this, which I find helpful to find a balanced perspective regarding religion and feminism:
Sometimes Christianity is useful to a patriarchal society as a tool to keep women down.
Sometimes Islam is useful to a patriarchal society as a tool to keep women down.
Sometimes science is useful to a patriarchal society as a tool to keep women down.
Sometimes medicine is useful to a patriarchal society as a tool to keep women down.
Sometimes psychology is useful to a patriarchal society as a tool to keep women down.
Sometimes law is useful to a patriarchal society as a tool to keep women down.
So what needs to change in order to render all these tools useless in keeping women down?
Mezzo, you seem to be high on bluster and short on argument (much like shah above). See if you can spot the fallacy here:
“I am saying that it’s a little odd to explain that Muhammad perpetuated misogynistic practices, (which is what you said), when he was famous for trying to put a stop to misogynistic practices. Islam had a heavy number of female converts because the women of the time liked what they say.”
That’s right, false equivalence. “Comparatively less misogynistic” is not the same thing as “not misogynistic.” And it’s not “my version of Islam” (I don’t have a version of Islam), it’s what the texts say. You can argue that Mohammed was a wonderfully progressive guy when compared to his ancient peers, that doesn’t exonerate him of the charge of misogyny.
“You mean apart from doing the whole song-and-dance about “look at Muhammad the child molester” bit? Or the whole “**gasp** no mention of Muhammad’s birth - it’s cos he hates Teh Vagina!” The article is jingoistic because it perpetuates some of the worst stereotypes of theists around, and is prepared to lie to perpetuate a point of view. Karen Armstrong would be raising an eyebrow by now.”
“Stereotypes of theists” isn’t “jingoism”, even if we grant your premise. And where is the “lie” in the piece?
“Anyways, I just accept that Tyler is just being obtuse now…”
Translation: I have no counterargument to Tyler pointing out my sloppy reading of Amanda’s post, a snide remark will suffice in its place.
Nah, he just wants to win this one. Just let him, seriously. Anyway, speaking as a forum moderator, internetz arguments are about stamina, not reason.
I could keep this up all night, since I’m on the other side of the globe, but he probably wants to go to bed sometime soon.
If you can’t think of a counterargument, you can always concede the point, Mezzo.
And incase anyone has lost track thus far, I’m still waiting for either Mezzo or shah (likely the former’s sock puppet) to point out which context in which blatant claims of male superiority, arranged marriages, incarceration and death for “lewdness”, etc., are not misogynistic.
And I’m fairly uninformed about this part of history, but I don’t think the main criterion for putting a book in the bible was “It has to have a clear factual basis supported by copious evidence”.
Christopher, one of the main components of acceptance was that it jived with the current thought of those who were deciding what books to put in in the first place. There was a dog fight, as it were, between differen believers, and lo and behold one of them won.
I believe it’s the reason gnostic books where tossed out with the baby. They went off on a different tangent than what the deciders had decided should be truth.
And it is for that reason that many feel the bible is no more than a history of the Jewish people and some of Christ’s time and early Christianity. It isn’t the end all and be all of God or Christ’s word.
This is just a general explanation on why some put a different light on the bible other than that of complete literal truth. So it isn’t surprising that some believe in God and Christ, and still would consider themselves to be feminist.
Tyler-
Amanda doesn’t mention any other factor as leading her to atheism other than feminism. In a logical statement “led me” indicates primary causality.
Chris-
A rational belief can be proven to be not true. (EXAMPLE: I believe that light is a wave. I believe that waves refract. If you demonstrate to me that light does not refract I will reject my belief that light is a wave.)
An arational belief cannot be proven to be not true.
(EXAMPLE: There is no way that you can prove to me that morbier cheese is delicious. I think it smells like dirty socks and tastes vile. My belief that morbier tastes bad is arational. It is based on personal experience.)
Belief in God is arational and based on personal experience. Believing requires faith and “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
There is no Christian canon until at least the late fourth or early fifth century of the common era.
IMO, it is possible to be a Christian and reject this canon. One could appeal to validity of apocryphal texts and/or dispute validity of now-canonical texts.
I’ve never bothered, but I’ll bet one could cobble together a Christian book that includes no misogyny.
I just read the Beast article Amanda linked to, and I gotta say, it’s a giant example of the “no true scottsman” fallacy.
Honestly, you could almost put it in a textbook:
Allison Kilkenny: No real religion is supportive of gender equality
Some religious person: That’s not true, my god says gender equality is great!
Allison Kilkenny: Ah, but you don’t have a real religion.
Here’s a quote:
Really?
I just had a vision of god. God is the creator of all things, and is sentient, though genderless. God’s only commandment to us, is that all genders must be fully equal and coexist in peace, or our society is abominable in God’s sight.
There, I’m pretty sure I did something impossible in about 30 seconds.
It might be a blind spot, but I’m not sure that you can argue that my vision there is somehow more rational then any existing religions, and I’m also pretty sure that my new religion doesn’t go against all genders peacefully existing, since that’s the only commandment in the whole thing.
The quest for human freedom, of which feminism is merely a special case necessitated by various historical contengencies, cannot be advanced further than it has been without the near absolute obliteration of the Middle Eastern monotheistic religions. They are simply the enemy that must be destroyed. Sorry to those of you who consider yourselves Christians, Jews, or even Muslims; You have no place in the future. I hope that you will reconsider your positions and come to understand where your interests lie.
Most Suffragists and early feminists understood that the magic man in the sky had go. Consider their example and recognize they lived much more under the oppresive influence of the faiths you defend. They lived under that oppresion and by supporting these faiths you may make things even rougher for your grandchildren.
The big G has got to go. Nietzsche said we had killed him. I think we just hurt him real bad. It’s kinda like those horror movies where the bad guy comes back after you think he’s dead. The 19th century dealt the magic man a grevious blow, but he bounced back. It’s up to us to finish the job. We need to stab, slash, shoot, and burn until there’s no trace left.
“Amanda doesn’t mention any other factor as leading her to atheism other than feminism.”
That would probably be because it was the reason that was most pertinent to the topic at hand, she’s written other posts on her non-belief. Just click on the “religion” tag above to see more.
“In a logical statement “led me” indicates primary causality.”
And that’s not necessarily illegitimate. The point is that Amanda never made an argument to the effect of “I don’t like god, therefore he doesn’t exist.” Saying that feminism “led you” to atheism isn’t the same thing.
Following up on my previous thought, atheists do ourselves a disservice when we [i]don’t[/i] shove the apocryphal texts in the modern Christian’s face. The existence of these widely disparate accounts, which magnify the contradictions exponentially, is further evidence for the ahistoricity of the whole story. For instance, the Gospel of Peter has Jesus being executed by Herod. How could this “mistake” have been recorded, if this was a recent historical event?
Or it’s called agreeing to disagree. The world isn’t a binary, you know.
I think we both have, but I don’t think we’re on the same page as you, Tyler. Actually, would you please stop the personal attacks as well? So far you’ve told me that I bluster, that I’m confused, and now you’re telling me that I don’t exist, since I’m a “sock puppet”.
I’m sure that you have an absolutely fantastic point that you feel needs to be made, but I’m afraid that I am unsure if I am supposed to believe it, since you’ve just said that I’m a non-existent being, and I’m not sure that non-existent beings can, well, believe in things.
So how about agreeing to disagree? You’ll get to bed on time, pride intact, and I get to avoid trying to prove that I’m not a sock puppet, and we all win.
I really don’t see the point in playing this internet battle of “the spoils go to the one with the most stamina”. I’ve said my piece, you’ve said yours, would you honestly feel better if you’ve managed to convince me how utterly wrong I am?
bacopa,
But what do we do with those who believe in something outside ourselves who created all of this?
You can, theoretically eliminate religions, which I would love to see myself. But it may not be so easy to get rid of those who believe something that others don’t.
I’m talking about people’s internal thinking, not the currently established doctrine, theory of those with physical churches and great monetary stake in having as many followers as possible.
It isn’t equivalent at all. They aren’t even the same class of statements. Let’s look at what she actually said:
We could paraphrase this in a way that obscures much depth, but is, I think, still a valid snapshot: “It is asserted that a benevolent deity exists, yet religion is used as a vector of violence, which a benevolent deity would not allow.”
This fits neatly into the class of arguments that derive from The Problem of Evil, probably the oldest and in my opinion still the best argument against the existence of a benevolent deity. I’m sure you’ve heard of it; it’s a bit more sophisticated than “I don’t like X.”
For the record though, I don’t like X either.
shah8 has a particular style of discourse (sometimes uniquely infuriating, though i mean no disrespect) which Mezzo9 does not seem to share. And neither person is a troll, so there’s no incentive to sockpuppet.
so let’s put that speculation to rest, please.
IMO, it is possible to be a Christian and reject this canon. One could appeal to validity of apocryphal texts and/or dispute validity of now-canonical texts.
Thanks Grammer RWA. It’s what I was trying to say in too many words. I have that bad habit.
I can’t be the only one who became a feminist because I was a Christian. When I realized that underneath anything else I had been taught about my religion was the simple “love one another”, I knew I had to be liberal and feminist and environmentalist. There are other religions (and nonreligious philosophies) that teach this, true–but I’m by no means the only one who sees the true version of my religion as being the one that’s all about freedom and justice. If it has only been recently that large numbers of my coreligionists have realized that this applies to women, too, I’d say that that’s them just finally coming to realize what it really means to be for freedom and justice.
There are a lot of misogynist Christians; there are also a lot of misogynist atheists. I don’t see how it’s fair to say that I have to choose between being Christian and being feminist. Believing in fairness for all will affect my view of both deity and other humans. If people writing in my religion’s scriptures wrote against women, they were wrong. I’m allowed to say that and still be a Christian because they were people, too, and were just as capable of getting things wrong as any other human. My faith says that everybody has to stand on their own two feet and believe as they see right–you don’t get to say to God on the day of accounting that, hey, you were mean to women because Paul or Leviticus said you could be.
(Or, what Samantha Vimes at 10:59 said.
)
I wouldn’t know where to begin, though. The Gospel of Thomas is out; it’s just revoltingly sexist.
By the way, Shayne, you should probably use html “i” or “blockquote” tags when you quote somebody else’s words. It wasn’t apparent to me earlier when you quoted Christopher that those weren’t your words, at least at first. It was a bit confusing.
Nenya, well, one could use the argument that because there are misogynist atheists therefore atheists can’t be feminist. And because there are misogynist Christians, Christians can’t be feminists.
It pars down the feminist field quite a bit, I’d say. It all works for me. Heh. Which is to say, I find it hard to take any arguments on this seriously. But it’s interesting to talk about.
Sorry, Grammar RWA, and for the typo on your name. And thanks for the tip. Will do from now on. Can I ask what the RWA stands for?
Nenya,
Since you’ve spoken up as a liberal Christian, I’d like to ask: can you tell me how you deal with Luke 12?
In that chapter, Jesus uses slavery (unambiguously; the word is “doulos”) as a metaphor for how humans should relate to the deity.
Implicitly, he condones slavery. He encourages people to be like slaves, and most importantly, he never, at any point in the Bible, says “oh by the way you should not keep slaves”. If Jesus was a real person, he was living in a society where slavery was rampant. Why did he never speak up against this aspect of the status quo? Why did he think it provided a useful and positive metaphor, with no moral conundrums to be resolved or even addressed?
Shayne,
It stands for Right-Wing Authoritarian; c.f. the work of Bob Altemeyer. It’s one of my lame jokes.
High Life? Pabst Blue Ribbon!!!!
Grammar, I just asked because as an author RWA is Romance Writers of America. An organization I have much trouble with.
So I was just curious as to the RWA. I like Right-Wing Authoritarian better.
Which Luke verse in 12?
The slavery trouble starts at verse 35 and continues through 48. There’s another sort of trouble from 49 to 53, not quite as bad as slavery but still revolting. This is a particularly nasty chapter. Paul’s writings are even more explicitly pro-slavery, but Nenya implied a low opinion of Paul, and no one should have to defend Paul against their better judgment. It’s redundant anyway; the pro-slavery stance is one issue where the Bible is never contradictory.
Hoo boy, I’m late to this post. Oh well. A lot of people seem to be in general agreement that one cannot simultaneously be a feminist and a Christian, and seem puzzled how so-called ‘liberal Christians’ manage the logical loops. I’m an atheist personally, but I grew up as the daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor and seminary history professor, so I know a thing or two (or three or eight billion) about Christianity. Here’s the formula as I understand it for being a Christian and a feminist at the same time:
Step 1: Discard the entire Old Testament. You’re a Christian, not a Jew, and Jesus both says and demonstrates that the old laws no longer apply. Jesus said it, QED.
Step 2: Do some reading about Christian history. Discover that the New Testament as a textual body was not finalized until 4th century AD, amidst a firestorm of intraChurch politics, and that a lot of these political arguments concerned the role of women (or lack thereof) in the Church. Investigate apocryphal and gnostic texts, and realize that canon interpretations of Paul are flawed: they leave out major parts of his ministry (including some that are very female-friendly; see also Thecla, a woman who traveled, preached, and baptized with Paul but is not mentioned in the conventional New Testament).
Step 3: Become disillusioned with the Church. Realize that all Church documents are necessarily political, the results of men doing what men do best. Resolve to depart from organized religion, and worship only Christ, not the mess that organized religion (including a group of men in the fourth and fifth century) made of his teachings.
Step 5: Discard all texts except Gospels, resolve to interpret words of Christ alone, and ignore the commentary inserted by Gospel writers or later scribes. Recognize that Christ is actually pretty progressive on the feminism matter: he consorts willingly with whores, includes women when he teaches and in his salon-like debates over Jewish laws, and speaks to them in inappropriate public places (like wells). Women were also pretty plainly among the group that followed Him from town to town, and He appeared first to women after being resurrected, by all accounts, possibly implying that they had more grace than male apostles.
Step 6: Latch on to key verses about the highest commandments: love the Lord with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. Realize that ‘neighbor’ is notably sexless: it could include widows, prostitutes, and other women who lived on their own at the time as well as male heads of houses. There aren’t any exceptions; clearly women were to be loved equally with men, and women were likewise to adhere to the commandment equally with men. Conclude that Jesus really didn’t care about sex, and cared more about religious affiliation. Read story of woman who touched Christ’s cloak, conclude that Christ didn’t care that women had vaginas (her problem was that she was bleeding ‘down there’, and He healed her even though social establishment considered her Untouchable).
Step 7: Rest content in Christ-centered Christianity that resembles none of the versions found in organized religions; declare oneself a ‘liberal Christian’ to reflect this non-identification.
This is pretty fool-proof; the only problem then lies in explaining how God let his holy texts be so mishandled in the ensuing two millennia since their original writing. I haven’t yet seen a satisfactory answer for that one…
Actually in reading over Luke 45, 46, and 47, I found something rather interesting.
It basically states a servant who mistreats others, will be cut into pieces and cast out.
One who knows the master’s will yet doesn’t follow it, will get many blows, one who doesn’t know the master’s will and misbehave will get fewer blows.
If this is indeed Christ talking about God and humans, it doesn’t at all follow with the fundamentalist version that all who misbehave or don’t believe will be cast out. It sounds like you might get your rear kicked a bit, but is by no means getting your ass cast into hell.
Looking up the Greek word I got the following possible meanings, slave, servant, devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interest.
http://www.searchgodsword.org/lex/grk/view.cgi?number=1401
Then again since Jewish at the time were regarded to be slaves of Rome, the term might have been used as something those around Jesus would have understand.
Please realize I’m throwing out thoughts here. I could be right or wrong. And I’m always the first to admit it. It is just my thoughts on what we are talking about.
I also can point out that the Jewish were the slaves/servants of Rome in Roman eyes. Jesus never said a word about it being right or wrong. At least not that I read. If anybody sees a verse that points out I’m wrong, feel free to run it by me.
I don’t know if it’s illuminating to say that the Palestinian Jews were slaves of the Romans. They were certainly conquered subjects, but they were afforded some amount of home rule in Palestine. Does that make them something other than slaves? Free Palestinian Jews were able to hold property; slaves under their system could not hold property. So I don’t think the analogy is precise.
You’re right to note that Jesus implies different punishments and different rewards besides a strict black and white, heaven or hell dichotomy. This happens many, many times throughout the books. (Though in this case, beating a slave with even a few blows for not knowing his master’s will is still downright cruel.) I’d agree that modern fundies would probably seem completely alien to early Christians, who held many different opinions about the afterlife, and at least in the beginning, did not kill each other even for major differences. There’s even bits like 1 Timothy 4:10 and 1 Corinthians 15:22, which have inspired new Universalist movements for nearly every century. The latest are … I shit you not … Fundie Universalists.
Other words besides “doulos” are used for “servant” and related ideas. Doulos is the least ambiguous; it means someone who is bound and owned, someone who cannot leave. When it’s used metaphorically in other contexts, it refers to the notion that believers’ souls have been bought and paid for by the Christ’s sacrifice: “Jesus paid for your sins so now he owns you as though you were his doulos.”
If you want a slightly more explicit case, there’s Matthew 10:24-25, where Jesus says that slaves can never rise above their masters, and they should strive to emulate their masters. I would argue that giving people advice on how best to be slaves is an implicit endorsement of slavery.
But that’s all a bit of a side-issue, to me. I don’t necessarily have a problem with slavery metaphors per se. The reason I’m calling Jesus out is because he fails to ever speak up and say, “yes, but all metaphors aside, you really have to stop keeping slaves.” At best, he’s silent, which is still inexcusable, given that if he really existed, he lived in a slave-owning culture.
I’d agree that modern fundies would probably seem completely alien to early Christians
Early Christians (Pre-Nicea) wouldn’t recognize a large amount of Christian Mythology, regardless of whether it is espoused by fundies.
If folks are still awake and interested, I’ve got a section of Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God posted over at my place.
I didn’t get that from Amanda as much as I got that from the article by Allison Kilkenny that she linked to.
I found the article to be sloppy and intellectually lazy myself. She takes a discreet number of religious views, discredits them, then declares that god does not exist. While there are progressive voices in these different religious traditions, she dismisses them as not “true” followers of the religion.
SarahMC:
Again, why are liberal Christians who don’t interpret the bible literally Christians at all? If the stories about the burning bush and Jonah aren’t true, what makes you accept Jesus’ story?
When I saw you asking this, I knew I had to answer. You’re always asking good questions ! I can’t answer for anyone but myself, of course.
I’m a liberal feminist and also a Christian. Specifically Lutheran (not the crazy synod, mine is the synod with female bishops), but I’ve attended a bunch of protestant affiliations through my life…. some offended me and I left, and others seemed too mild to truly accomplish anything. I do take the stories of Jonah and Moses as truth, but not as literal, “I expect this to happen tomorrow” truth. They’re poetically written metaphors for spiritual journeys. I believe in evolution, too. The Bible was written by human men centuries after all this happened, so I take it with the grain of necessary salt.
So why do I follow Jesus ? Because I see something of worth in his message. Despite all the damage done to it by fake “Christians” (right-wing reactionaries and the like) Jesus preached tolerance, equality (for women, too), care for the poor and needy and sick and persecuted, and peace. I do believe in the resurrection; but at the same time, even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t negate the wisdom of his words. I take those words literally- that I’m supposed to care for the sick and the poor I meet, that I’m supposed to stand up for peace and justice, that I’m supposed to treat people with tolerance and respect. And I’m supposed to do it right now, every day, everywhere, through my entire life. (Not just an abstract “I write a check for a church charity every year and the rest of the year I stomp on the little guy to make my stock rise.” Ugh, I could go on, but I won’t.)
Anyway, I’ll stop babbling. But yeah, I recognize the flaws in an ancient text, written by men in a patriarchal cult society (Christianity was once, essentially, a cult) and translated and re-translated through the centuries. But I found something of value in there, something that only enhances and deepens my feminism and my liberal values. I follow Jesus out of faith and also out of values; but I don’t think I’m better (or all that different) than somebody who wants to follow Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and just doesn’t call it religion.
Since the original post appeared on Jan 6, I take this opportunity to share my experiences preparing to teach a children’s “Religious Education” class in my UU congregation focused on El Dia de los Reyes aka “Three Kings Day” aka “Wiseman’s Day,” known in English or more officially as “Epiphany.” It’s a big deal Yuletide holiday in Latin America (according to my mother, in Italian culture as well–generically Latino apparently). For some reason or other the UU bigwigs decided an appropriate module for RE in the grade 3-5 age group would be “Holidays around the world” this past fall, and I had previously led teaching on Hogmanay (which is a Scottish Yuletide holiday invented specifically because the only people who ever actually held a War on Christmas, the Calvinists, did ban Christmas, and the Scotts quickly found they needed another excuse to party in mid-winter) and Eid ul-Fitr, the end of the fast of Ramadan in Islam. Well honestly I’d never heard of these celebrations before myself–but for Crum’s sake I was raised a conservative Catholic by a half-Sicilian mother, so it was weird that this:
http://www.drunkduck.com/PiLLI__ADVENTURE/index.php?p=133588
was my very first clue that this was a festive holiday (it’s a Catholic Holy Day of Obligation of course–when I mentioned that concept to the kids, and tried to explain it, they got kind of revolted, as well they should…)
Well, I figured I’d try to find out how the traditional elements of the story of the Three Wise Men came about, and turned to the Gospels, and found that Matthew (the only one who mentions the Magi) didn’t say a dang thing about them being kings, or coming from three separate kingdoms, or having the traditional names, or any of that stuff. He says, as the New American Bible (modern Catholic translation–it’s a Catholic holiday, so why not use the thing?) has it, that astrologers came from the East, and asked Herod directions, and it’s all wound up in the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents and all that. He has the bit about the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and following the star till it came to rest over Bethlehem (whatever that means!) It doesn’t specifically say that they had travelled together from the same place, but that’s a reasonable and straighforward reading of what it does say. “Magi” after all would refer to Zoroasterian priests, so they’d all be from the Persian-ruled regions of Iran and Iraq, presumably.
But the Catholic Bible had footnotes, and I followed them, to some Psalm and something in Ezekiel or Isaiah or something like that, about kings coming to do reverence to the King of Israel, specifically from Tarshish (which I think is Tarsus, but in OT times would have vaguely referred to the Aegean as a whole), Arabia, and Sheba.
Hence, you see, the tradition that these Magi were also kings and from three separate, distant kingdoms, none of which was or is anywhere to the East of Judea, but rather due north and south. Because there are 3 kings bearing those particular gifts in a couple places way back in prophecy, nevermind the direct contradictions!
This is what I have come to call Bible Logic, which is not like our Earth Logic but more like Insane Troll Logic.
I still have no clue where “tradition” gets their names from.
Well anyway thank you very much, mapaghimagsik, for introducing me to the wonderful and educational Pilli Adventures via your favorites at Drunk Duck (and still more for the incredibly good Taking Stock!)
I wanted to use the algeya’s Pilli cartoon in the class, but it’s pointless w/o the last panel, and obviously unusable with it, at least in grades 3-5…
Yeah, it’s always bugged a friend of mine as well. Sometimes I just wish that Muhammad had added the occasional caveat as well - such as an explicit, “I really really don’t care if my son’s gay, so long as he’s not practicing pedarasty - well, I do care actually, but I still love him, and that’s what’s important.”
Sometimes she and I wonder if inconvenient ideas got censored along the way - there’s an article somewhere that essentially describes most holy scriptures as “Holy Wikipedia Projects” - ie, bits get added in or edited or badly translated along the way.
Karen Armstrong, the historian of religion, made an important point once - namely that translations don’t work very well, because the original words had implications in those cultures that we don’t even begin to understand. She also pointed out that translations are very much dependant on what the translators want to believe.
Thats’ why she recommended not paying to much dependence on the “secondary” teachings, which often are more nuanced, and thus are often badly translated. Instead, she said that it would be better to go back to first principles - ie, the standard “love thy neighbour”, because those are simple phrases, harder to mistranslate.
Grammar RWA, that tentmakers site is .. strange. It’s like hippies, but without the drugs.
The US constitution has racism, misogyny and classism thoroughly embedded in its DNA. Just look at the text, and especially look at the words with the meanings they had when they were written. Obviously no sensible liberal of good conscience would follow it, and anyone who claims to be upholding its principles while cherrypicking and hyper-interpreting the text either isn’t a real liberal or doesn’t fully believe in the principles of the constitution at all…
If one of the teachings of the religion is that strict adherence to what’s written down or preached by priests is not the end-point of a religious life, then believers have (for better or worse) a license to step around whatever fallibly-written and fallibly-transmitted texts they believe it necessary to step around.
Well, having frivolously inserted a tangential comment on a side issue, I am coming to the end of my Net time today w/o addressing the basic thread issue.
I believe the human tendency to react in a way called “religious” or “spiritual” is not a mere product of patriarchial or any other form of misogyny; it’s just something humans do, I suspect as a kind of logical corrolary or if you like irrational by-product of our tendency to seek for reasons and systems and integrate our knowledge, which I think is evolved into our basic mind-based survival strategy–along with a certain gregariousness and sentimentality which is probably just generically mammalian.
What I have been taught about gatherer-hunter spirituality suggests to me that the basic human spiritualist impulse is “mostly harmless.” And perhaps even useful.
But patriarchial dominator societies hijack this human aspect as they do every other human tendency and capability, and from this comes the nasty misogynist stuff.
All I can say from personal experience is that despite being raised in a particularly patriarchial and intellectialized Catholic household, I always responded much more strongly to a view of spiritual matters that framed them in a more female-gendered way; I found this picture of God as a woman giving birth to the Universe in some baby book my parents had, for instance, and saw it as much more compelling and reasonable than God as separate, unique abstract Creator and Lawgiver.
Gotta go for now…
“The US constitution has racism, misogyny and classism thoroughly embedded in its DNA.”
It certainly does. However, The People who are governed by the Constitution can decide to fix it when it no longer reflects the needs and understanding of American citizens.
No religion allows this. In fact, the very nature of religious belief requires (blind?) obedience to a fixed dogma. Religious people typically decry the “flexibility” and “situation ethics” found in the real world in order to cling tighter to the “fixed and unchanging” code of their favorite religion.
Of course, religions DO change, but very slowly and those changes are not without detractors.
For example, Pope John XXIII champions the Vatican II “reforms” and 40-years later there are still Catholics who refuse to accept the resulting changes as legitimate. Likewise, I’m sure, unlike “Mitt” Romney, there are Mormons who think the 1978 “revelation” allowing full Black participation in the Mormon Church is not legit.
Being inflexible is a feature of religion, not a bug - at least to most religionists…
“If one of the teachings of the religion is that strict adherence to what’s written down or preached by priests is not the end-point of a religious life, then believers have (for better or worse) a license to step around whatever fallibly-written and fallibly-transmitted texts they believe it necessary to step around.”
Go ahead, tell the Pope/Immam/Pastor/etc. he’s wrong and the bible/quran/etc. is incorrect. See where it gets you…
Nuh-uh. At least not the religious tradition I was raised in, or a bunch of others I’ve been pretty close to. Questioning one’s faith, inner struggle, wrestling with issues of doctrine and ethics were all considered part of what made someone truly religious. Blind acceptance was how you could tell an idol-worshipper. (Which is one of the reasons I despise christianists so thoroughly even though I no longer believe — they’ve taken doctrines and institutions that had many good and interesting parts and turned them into a a pile of hateful crap.)
And I remember one of the scariest ultimatums uttered in English: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
Because I see something of worth in his message. Despite all the damage done to it by fake “Christians” (right-wing reactionaries and the like)
And the, “they’re not really christian” nonsense continues. Christianity is what exists in the world. There isn’t some pure aspect of it that makes one more or less christian. One is or isn’t.
Now, there are varying flavors, and yours is less authoritarian, but not rational (the idealization and worship of a complex human, the acceptance of the silliness of the resurrection, the need to somehow link phsyical truths to those acknowledged metaphors, the acceptance of a supernatural being that actively intervenes to suspend the laws of nature, etc.). There’s still a lot of unnecessary silliness in there.
I believe patriarchy causes religious misogyny, by and large, rather than the other way around. Egalitarian societies have spiritual belief systems that do not denigrate women or promote their suppression. And, interestingly, the egalitarian Moso in China are Tibetan Buddhists, while the self-proclaimed “matriarchal” Minangkabau in Sumatra are Muslim. Yes, we have matriarchal Muslims in the world. That’s why I believe that, while religion can reinforce patriarchy in many ways, a particular religion does not cause patriarchy.
AFAIC, you can be a feminist and be any damn religion or no religion you please. I get fed up with litmus tests. They only serve to “divide and conquer.”
And as Paul, above, pointed out, a misogynist does not NEED religion in order to justify his/her misogyny. Evolutionary psychology will do that quite nicely; I’ve known a surprising number of (almost always male) atheists who are nonetheless deeply misogynist and justify this via evo-psych.
In fact, I’ll go out on a limb here: Most, if not almost all, female and gay male atheists are feminist, even if they don’t call themselves feminist, they subscribe to feminist beliefs. However, there are considerable numbers of straight, male atheists who hold misogynistic and/or racist beliefs that they actually bolster through atheistic - sociobiological - means.
I do not believe that there is such a thing as either a religious font of all evil and wrong, nor a belief system that is all simon-pure, kittens and rainbows.
Seth, I hope you’re joking. If this is a serious attempt at using logic, you need to take the class again.
If something doesn’t make rational sense (an invisible Creator that “loves us all” but says it’s fine to treat some of us as sub-human) and can’t be shown to be real, it’s perfectly rational to believe it’s not real.
Honestly. People believe what they want to believe. Believing in that which cannot be shown to exist is irrational. Why can’t some people admit outright that they belive simply because they want to believe?
The concept of “God” that has been put forth by major religions is simply too small to deal with the modern world. For example, a “God” who does not see women as equal to men or gay people as worthy as straight people is a god who is too small for people to believe in. We would detest homophobia and sexism in other people, so why should we accept it in “God”?
While I do believe that their is a power greater than ourselves and there is far more to reality than can be explained by the scientist or by rational observation, the truth is that man created “God” far more than “God” created man. “God” is our way of explaining what cannot be explained. All images of “God” are at their core are man-made.
Some people try to cram the modern world into the ancient “God.” This is where the absurdities come from. For example, “God” loves everyone, but hates homosexuality, therefore homosexuality must be “curable.” The Bible says that God created the world in six days, yet science says that the world is billions of years old. Therefore, science must be wrong.
The fundamentalist is an extreme case of this. They hang on to their concept of God and reject reality. At the core these are very insecure people - if their concept of God fails, psychologically their world will crumble around them.
It is no coincidence that fundamentalists and neoconservatives have so much in common, despite the fact that so many neocons are atheists. Both have a faith that defies reality and is based on the idea of an omnipotent power being able to change the world at will. For fundamentalists, this is “God.” For neocons, it is the nations military might.
It is also no conincidence that conservative religion has created careers for second rate self-help gurus. This may surprise some people, but Christian bookstores are not just prayer books, bibles, and the latest political best sellers from the religious right. A large part of their inventory is inspiration and what would be considered “self-help” if it did not have the Bible references. Jesus will help you get out of debt, improve your marriage, make you healthier, make your children happy, relieve your anxiety, and give you a better sex life! This is not just the bookstore, you get the same advise from many pulpits. These people are attracted to religion for its psychological comfort, so is it any wonder that the armchair psychologists are in the religion business? After all, Dobson is not a preacher by trade, he is a psychologist.
Others fail to see any concept of “God” besides that which has been presented. They rightfully reject these concepts as being too small to include the reality of their being. However, they do not look any further, concluding that if A, B, and C are incorrect interpretations of God, then God must not exist, without looking for a D-Z.
Still others try to reconcile the old ideas and images with the new reality. This is the religious liberal. The problem is that the old ideas are simply not compatible with the new reality. The people sing hymns that they don’t really mean, the clergy dresses up and goes through the motions, and everyone wonders why liberal denominations are shrinking.
The truth is that the old ideas must go and given enough time, they will. I do not know what will follow it.
MAJeff:
And the, “they’re not really christian” nonsense continues. Christianity is what exists in the world. There isn’t some pure aspect of it that makes one more or less christian. One is or isn’t.
I think there’s a misunderstanding here, that I’m happy to clarify. I’m not saying that particular sects of Christianity aren’t Christian- no, there are certainly as many flavors of Christianity as there are ice cream.
Good for them. But of those who claim Christianity and follow the exact opposite of those teachings, I’m skeptical. The teachings of Christianity are: peace, tolerance, equality, and caring for the poor/oppressed/sick. In other words, Christians have to follow Christ.
So when right-wingers are pro-war, pro-death penalty, work towards the oppression of women and minorities, and violently oppose health care and social welfare programs; I do have to wonder exactly which Christ they’re following. Steve Christ ? Josh Christ ? Because I don’t recall Jesus Christ standing up for the rich white heads of the war machine.
That’s what I mean.
Wayward, what’s the point of a ‘concept of God’ if ‘God’ is too big and too complex to be understood? What’s the point of even giving it any thought? I think that’s where many atheists just go “Bleh. Enough of this.”
No ‘God’ big enough for the word (if such a ‘God’ existed) is going to give a shit whether I believe in it or not. In fact, if it’s a bad God, it might whack me for the fun of it because my suck-ass belief is annoying to it.
‘God’ is either not good, not omniscient, not omnipotent, not conscious–or there isn’t one. Take your pick; as long as your god leaves me alone it’s your own business.
Just don’t be too surprised if others Occam’s Razor ‘God’ away.
Have you ever read Acts of the Apostles? According to those tales, Christianity was practically communistic in nature in its early years. In order to join a Christian community, you had to hand over all your wealth to the community. Anyone who tried to hold back would be struck down by God.
When it’s used metaphorically in other contexts, it refers to the notion that believers’ souls have been bought and paid for by the Christ’s sacrifice: “Jesus paid for your sins so now he owns you as though you were his doulos.”
Okay, I never heard of that particular interpretation. So that threw me. You’ve hit the nail on the head as to why reading the bible can be a strange adventure at times. Different interpretations of the whole thing. I would outright reject the above. One it would blow free will out of the water, and two it just doesn’t fit the image of Christ. But no doubt, there are some who would accept it.
Which gives just one example of the interpretation problem. Heh.
Interpreting and bible aside, I do understand why people choose to believe and not believe in God. For me, the fundamentalists are the ones who have pushed me out of the Christianity label. The fact that they give rational people the willies doesn’t surprise me. And I’m seriously leaning toward a bit of a gnostic view of God in general. It does make me happy that people can believe however they choose. It’s only when others try to force the issue either way that I get bent out of shape. All I care about is that people always have the right to reject or accept for themselves.
I just don’t think believing or not believing makes one less of a feminist. But if the feminist movement came out in majority and stated believers have no place, then there’s no reason to argue, at least for me.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned theologian Rosemary Radford Reuther’s Sexism and God-Talk, which is her attempt to use the synoptic Gospels to overturn the dominant misogynist narrative of Christianity.
Her basic argument is that the Christ of the synoptic Gospels was radically egalitarian (ironically, she cites Paul in Galatians 3:28), and that salvation is to be understood both as liberation and as a change in relations between people. The subjects of liberation are women, whom as Reuther sees it, are the most oppressed. And the liberation is achieved through the elimination of distinctions between persons (Love they neighbor as thy self). In Christ, Women are to be respected and loved as full persons.
She fully admits that much of the Bible is patriarchal to the core, and to get around that as it were, she uses this standard: anything that doesn’t affirm the standard of egalitarianism set by Jesus is to be disregarded as relevant.
Her book is still pretty provocative, and it’s definitely worth reading if anyone has the chance.
To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth I: “Can any woman, in truth, serve two masters and be loyal to both?”
Religion is misogynistic. Those who are both feminists and religious are attempting to change that, I assume. But, if one of the “selling points” of religion is its unchanging nature in the face of social change (however dubious that claim is), then I say they are chasing a wild goose. Of course, I say that same thing about my fellow non-whites who follow the white MAN’S religion.
Of course one can be feminist and religious. however, one of those ‘masters’ is getting less loyalty than the other all of the time. And that varies according to situation.
Betty:
To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth I: “Can any woman, in truth, serve two masters and be loyal to both?”
And, in turn, Queen Elizabeth was paraphrasing Jesus. I do like your choice of quote; I think she’s a good illustration of a woman trying to reconcile feminist (or, pre-feminist, or proto-feminist, I suppose, since that wasn’t really how it would have been framed at the time) and religious identity.
And Jamelle, thanks for the rec, I’m going to have to read that. According to the Bible (and in apocrypha) Jesus was a radical figure, who encouraged women to lead in the early church and preached to them as equals. I’d love to see RRR’s take on that.
Gay male atheist feminist here. You’ll get no argument from me. Nobody said all religion is pure evil and all science is prismatic kittens, though, did they?
You’re overlooking another shade of what we’re saying.
A person can hold destructive, bigoted beliefs and root those beliefs in religion or science. But the religiously-rooted beliefs cannot be pulled out by rational discourse. “I know in my heart that God loves all people, all races, all genders, etc.” Response: “Nuh-huh. God told me He hates faggots, and women can’t be trusted.” Response? How do you carry on a conversation like this? Both people are just pulling their own preferences out of their asses and brushing them with a divine veneer. Religious beliefs were never grounded in objective evidence in the first place, so there’s no anchor holding this conversation to the earth, nor any common ground to anchor. And we desperately need to have these conversations in the modern era, real soon now.
Rational discourse based on empirical evidence can resolve these problems. When we exclude supernatural revelation from the discussion, if a person makes a racist, sexist, or homophobic claim, they have to back it up with evidence. It’s conceivable that they might have evidence, but at this point in time, such claims have repeatedly been debunked without exception. That doesn’t mean that every bigot gives up; most of them pretend that they haven’t seen the evidence. But if they are honestly open to evidence, they have to acknowledge the facts, and some do.
Moreover, these conversations take place on a worldwide scale, scientific consensus emerges, and most people, who could have been swayed either way, follow the scientific consensus. Very quickly, most people in technologically advanced nations with good science education have come to believe that sexuality has a genetic component and is to some degree innate. This, in a couple of decades, just from looking at the evidence. Religion can never accomplish the same kind of consensus shift, except by threat of force. It has no evidence to investigate, no moving force that compels anyone to change their minds. Any belief rooted in religion can be maintained forever, even in the face of contradictory evidence; you just believe what you believe, on faith, end of story.
Society needs to have these conversations. The only way to have them is to set down the rule that supernatural revelation is not allowed at the grown-ups’ table.
God of the gaps. Why do you believe this? What do you have a handle on that is immune to scientific investigation? Do elaborate.
Yawn. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that I’ve tried D through Y already. Why don’t you go ahead and lay Z on me? Less bluster, more discourse, please. Demonstrate that there is a Z worth considering before you play the “atheists are rigid/unimaginative/incurious” card. Otherwise, you’re just playing hurtful, slanderous games for no other reason than it makes you feel warm and clever.
“And, in turn, Queen Elizabeth was paraphrasing Jesus.”
I like to split hairs - she was paraphrasing the bible, yes. Since there’s a serious lack of any proof that Jesus existed at all, it’s hard to attribute anything to him. Imo, anyway. Because I am a feminist and an atheist.
Grammar RWA - good posts!
and this: “Both people are just pulling their own preferences out of their asses and brushing them with a divine veneer. ”
made me laugh out loud.
I like to split hairs, too. If I attributed the quote “Do you feel lucky, punk ?” to Dirty Harry, would you argue that I was incorrect because Dirty Harry isn’t real ?
Maybe I should quote the screenwriter. Fair point, I suppose.
And in defense of atheists who keep getting told “but did you try XYZ;” I’d like all the religious folks to imagine how they’d feel if every time they told someone what their faith was, they got a well-meaning glance of pity and a suggestion that they “try” Buddhism/Wicca/Islam/Christianity/etc ? “Have you tried…. not believing ?”
It is, yes, insulting. I’m religious, so I don’t see the point in telling other people their beliefs are stupid, or suggesting that they haven’t actually thought about it.
Isn’t that what religion in general is all about, though?
So when right-wingers are pro-war,
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” — Matthew 10:34
pro-death penalty,
If a man has a stubborn and unruly son who will not listen to his father or mother, and will not obey them even though they chastise him, his father and mother shall have him apprehended and brought out to the elders at the gate of his home city, where they shall say to those city elders, ‘This son of ours is a stubborn and unruly fellow who will not listen to us; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all his fellow citizens shall stone him to death. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel, on hearing of it, shall fear. — Deuteronomy 21:18-21
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” — Matthew 5:17-18
He said to them in reply, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and ‘Whoever curses father or mother shall die.’ But you say, ‘Whoever says to father or mother, “Any support you might have had from me is dedicated to God,” need not honor his father.’ You have nullified the word of God for the sake of your tradition. — Matthew 15:3-6
work towards the oppression of women
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. — Ephesians 5:22-24
and minorities,
Do not be yoked with those who are different, with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? — 2 Corinthians 6:14
and violently oppose health care and social welfare programs;
Now when Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster jar of costly perfumed oil, and poured it on his head while he was reclining at table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant and said, “Why this waste? It could have been sold for much, and the money given to the poor.” Since Jesus knew this, he said to them, “Why do you make trouble for the woman? She has done a good thing for me. The poor you will always have with you; but you will not always have me.” — Matthew 26:6-11
I do have to wonder exactly which Christ they’re following. Steve Christ ? Josh Christ ? Because I don’t recall Jesus Christ standing up for the rich white heads of the war machine.
So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” — Mark 12:17
“one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one.” — Luke 22:36
anyway, I’m not saying you’re wrong. But if you’re right, they’re right too. The scriptures clearly support both peace and war, compassion and apathy, left-wing and right-wing interpretations. It’s fine if you want to go tell the right-wingers why your interpretation is better. Good luck with that. But don’t just assert to us that you know what Jesus really meant and the right-wingers are getting hung up by overemphasizing all the evil shit that the Bible does, in fact, attribute to him.
Josh and Jesus are the same name, by the way. Hebrew and Greek versions.
Mezzo, how does Karen suggest we figure out which messages are “primary” and which are “secondary”? Pray for guidance? This sounds like nothing but a convenient license for progressives to discard the passages they don’t like and keep the ones they do.
And I don’t have a problem with that. But we shouldn’t pretend that there’s something rigorous going on here. Just call it cherrypicking and stop apologizing for it. Better yet, get rid of the damn book entirely and unapologetically use your own brain… you can figure out “love thy neighbor” for yourself. You don’t need scripture for simple ethics.
Thanks Betty!
You think people choose? I’m pretty sure belief is a function of one’s standards of evidence and one’s reservoir of wishful thinking.
So, if [wishful thinking] + [evidence experienced] > [standard of evidence], then you believe. Otherwise, you don’t.
If you think you can choose your beliefs, then try this experiment: stop believing in God for a week. Then you can start again, if you like. And next time you see me in a thread here on Pandagon, let me know how it went.
I’m afraid you’re missing some of the point, and I don’t blame you because it hasn’t been particularly clearly articulated.
My post above at 3:59 pm is intended to address this. In short, if you permit supernatural revelation in your discourse, you will get the short end of the stick, unless you are a member of all the privileged groups. Bigots can always say “God said women can’t be trusted”, and there is no convincing reply. The bigot has faith he is right. You have faith he is wrong. End of discussion. But your faith is not going to prevent him from using his faith as a weapon against you. You’re going to get hurt.
The only reliable answer is to cultivate an attitude throughout society, a zeitgeist, that tells everyone their beliefs have to be grounded in evidence or they will be ignored by everyone else. Science has accomplished this with regard to the shape of the planet, the germ theory of disease, plenty of shit. We can get the sort of same consensus results in the culture wars, and put so many of these tired old battles to rest, but to do that we have to open up all fields to science and disallow religion from having a place at the grown-ups’ table.
To cultivate that zeitgeist, though, you’ll have to stop requesting that anyone ever respect your beliefs unless you have solid evidence for them. That may sound uncomfortable, but it’s better than getting steamrolled by a bunch of religious bigots. As long as you ask that anyone respect your faith, you’re acting as an enabler for worse faiths.
To cultivate that zeitgeist, though, you’ll have to stop requesting that anyone ever respect your beliefs unless you have solid evidence for them. That may sound uncomfortable, but it’s better than getting steamrolled by a bunch of religious bigots. As long as you ask that anyone respect your faith, you’re acting as an enabler for worse faiths.
What many religious folks don’t see to realize is that to those of us who are atheists, your difference with people like Phelps is one of degree, not kind.
Grammar RWA,
Indeed using the word choose was a poor choice. The thought process and experiences that lead others is more apt.
A zeitgeist approach is something I wouldn’t have an argument with. Since being ignored by everyone else is fair preferable to having something forced on me. Nor would I have probably advocating it. I’m grateful you mentioned all of this to me and gave me another way to look at the situation.
I would say that I asked nobody to respect my faith. I didn’t equate the right to allow anybody to choice as anything to do with respect at all. My high horse happens to be the right to decide for oneself whatever the issue.
Fix nor would I have a problem advocating it.
And instead of choice in the last paragraph, I change that to figure out for themselves
Why do you believe what you believe? What causes you to believe these things?
Why do you think that war, the death penalty, oppression of minorities and women, and opposition to health and social welfare programs are wrong?
What makes you think you are more than a certain mass of certain biochemicals? If you thought that’s all we are, you wouldn’t care whether or not you made a difference.
Can science measure a soul? Can science measure a purpose? Can science explain passion? If so, would its explanation truly be adequate?
What many religious folks don’t see to realize is that to those of us who are atheists, your difference with people like Phelps is one of degree, not kind.
MA Jeff, while I refuse the term religious for myself, it’s the ones like Phelps that help me see exactly why some atheists and other sane people would indeed reject the whole thing from mild to hardcore. I’d also include Robertson, Swaggart, Baker, and a load of others with Phelps.
I think I’d be even more frightened by humanity if people didn’t reject them.
*smile* True, you didn’t. I made an assumption that you may sometimes do this and my words might ring true anyway, since “but you have to respect people’s beliefs” is such a common refrain in our culture (from atheists too).
Whatever I’ve said that doesn’t apply to you, kindly ignore it.
It’s Sam Harris who’s best known for the “religious moderates are enabling fundamentalists” argument, if you wanted to track it down.
It was a difference in thoughts, Grammar. *L*
You and I have found common ground on the zeitgeist approach, since I do find it infinitely preferable to enabling or giving any validity to any religious belief whatsoever.
I will be further researching this. So thanks for taking the time to discuss it all with me.
You suggested there are things that are real but which are inaccessible to naturalism, and entirely in the domain of supernaturalism. I asked you to elaborate. Does asking these questions of me help you answer, or is it a deflection?
I would be happy to answer any one of these questions (to answer all of them would take more time than I have). But before I can do so, you and I need some common ground and I’m afraid there is a major hurdle in your path before you can get there, as evidenced by your next question:
I do think I am a certain mass of certain biochemicals. I have no problem with that. Your next statement does not follow. What I believe my physical or metaphysical nature is has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not I want to change the world.
Really! What an odd thing for you to say! Why do you think nihilism necessarily follows from naturalism? This, I think, is a barrier to any other discussion. So please elaborate on your reasoning here, and I’ll do my best to answer.
Why should we imagine there is a soul to measure?
Philosophy grounded in metaphysical naturalism can. And the products of such philosophy can be measured by science as hypothetical predictions of correlation with joy and fulfillment. So, in a roundabout way, yes.
Sure, why not? I don’t claim that at this time there is enough data for me to explain in frame by frame detail what’s going on in my brain when I experience passion. But I have no reason to think that the phenomenon is not physical and amenable to scientific inquiry. Having consumed methylenedioxymethamphetamine a few times and studied its chemical pathways, I have a general idea of where this inquiry is heading.
Thank you as well, Shayne. I’ve enjoyed talking with you.
Grammar RWA, There just has to be more!
My personal opinion is that that sentiment is a pretty natural reaction to working to survive under capitalism and consumerist culture. Life doesn’t have to be tragic and empty, but it often is around these parts.
Joe Hill beat me to this a hundred years ago when he sang “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die!”
Very well.
Science tells us that chemicals react in a certain manner. All reactions are predictable since they are governed by the laws of nature. Now, if all you are is just chemicals, then your chemicals are just reacting in a predictable manner, as are mine. Everything you do can theoretically predicted. You have no free will - only an illusion of free will. There can be no good, no evil, just chemical reactions.
If that isn’t nihilistic, I don’t know what is.
So yes, taken to its logical conclusion, nihilism must follow from naturalism. I am not saying that you are nihilistic, or that anyone else is, but what I am saying is that you might not be as naturalistic as you’d like to believe.
Reading things like this makes my head hurt. Then again, that’s just a natural process of chemical reaction, so I can’t blame the author.
Organized religion, or at least 99% of them, are a reaction to the envy and mysification that men suffer in light of the fact that they cannot create life. So instead of respecting this unique ability, they created an alternate “narrative” whereby people are born (from the womb) and then re-born (through the church) and are cleansed of their dirty vaginal origin.
It is all chalked up to jealousy and confusion. ironically, there are quite a few women (including myself) that do not see this “gift of life” as a net positive. Of course that angers those who envy this “gift” more than anything else. it is akin to watching someone so bright and talented throw their life away with drug addiction, self-sabotage or similar, when your IQ hovers around the average temperature of Florida.
The only organized religion that I have encountered that exhibits any evidence of equaity is Quakerism (my husband was raised a Quaker after his Irish-Cathoic mother decided that was her religion of choice). I have a distinct feeling that if has something to do with the ingrained policy of absolute pacifism. it is the equivalent of admitting fear or anxiety, but retaining the sense of self to overcome these destructive impulses. it has a shred of empowerment through free-will, which of course is heretical to most organized religions.
at any rate, i digress. i read in the Gulf News last week while traveling that Confucius is quoted today as sayign something to the effect of a woman who has merit is one that has not talent. Ha.
Grammar,
I just watched the Sam Harris youtube. Wow. I understand now how the acceptance of religion in any form is seen. An the logic behind it. It puts me more firmly in the ignore it unless there is evidence camp. Even though I have a belief myself, I still subscribe to the evidence side of things for a world view.
Absolutely fascinating. I have to say I agree completely. I have never honestly thought about it in that way, and held to a philosophy of live and let live.
It certainly modifies my thoughts on my previous expressions in this thread.
I need to read and find out more. Heh.
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord… — Ephesians 5:22-24
Do not be yoked with those who are different… — 2 Corinthians 6:14
Ephesians and Corinthians were written by Paul, after Jesus’ death. Paul fought with Mary Magdalene and kept her text out of the Bible- he’s not the final voice on Christ’s teachings. These chapters were letters between himself and early churches, not commandments. There are plenty of Christians who disagree with many things that he’s said.
If a man has a stubborn and unruly son … — Deuteronomy
21:18-21
Old Testament. Which this quote addresses:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill…”— Matthew 5:17-18
When he says fulfill, he means it. In his death and resurrection, he fulfilled the prophets, and so the law passed away. There’s not supposed to be any more stoning of unruly sons; no more laws against shellfish, no more death for working on the sabbath. The law is fulfilled- it’s over. What was established was the new law, Christ’s teachings of compassion.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” — Matthew 10:34
In Luke, too, he says “I have come to cast fire upon the earth.” (49) He’s not literally torching the place. They’re metaphors for truth. Truth is repeatedly referred to a “sword” that divides. Truth is a radical divider, and Jesus was nothing if not radical.
Etcetera.
But don’t just assert to us that you know what Jesus really meant and the right-wingers are getting hung up by overemphasizing all the evil shit that the Bible does, in fact, attribute to him.
The Bible does not, in fact, attribute that all to him. As I’ve pointed out, several of your examples don’t belong to Jesus at all, but other writers centuries before him and decades after.
And after all that, in many ways, I agree with you. The Bible is fraught with problematic language and poetic sections that are, unfortunately, taken literally. And it’s abused by people with both good and bad intentions. It, like anything else, can be twisted to suit someone else’s meanings- but then, so can the writings of Margaret Sanger. I’m still a feminist, and I still respect her contributions to the cause, despite what insane eugenics-nuts have said. I don’t think misinterpretation is cause to throw up my hands in defeat.
Better yet, get rid of the damn book entirely and unapologetically use your own brain… you can figure out “love thy neighbor” for yourself.
Yeah, I did. I joined the Lutheran church as a grownup, having experienced a good chuck of life already. Faith fit the things I’d figured out about the world. You don’t have to respect me or my faith. That’s okay with me. But I don’t challenge atheists to give up their beliefs about the world; or, if you prefer, their observations. I would never paint an atheist as ignorant or small-minded. People who don’t believe aren’t, in return, a challenge to me. All I ask is not to be misrepresented.
Better yet, get rid of the damn book entirely and unapologetically use your own brain… you can figure out “love thy neighbor” for yourself. You don’t need scripture for simple ethics.
Thank you!
Shayne:
Fred Phelps did not lead me to reject religion or the concept of “god.” I reject supernatural claims on my own. Phelps is just an insufferable, bigotted pig.
. In his death and resurrection, he fulfilled the prophets, and so the law passed away.
Human sacrifice. Nice thing of your deity to demand.
Agreed.
Not necessarily. If the universe is deterministic, one would still need a snapshot of the whole observable universe in order to predict the future in perpetuity. And this is not even theoretically obtainable from our vantage inside the universe. If Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle points to a fundamental indeterminism in the universe, then the future also cannot be predicted. However, these are technical quibbles. Neither necessarily opens up the possibility of free will.
I don’t always have even the illusion. But yeah. Agreed. There’s no free will in a universe with an omniscient god, either (and not even the omniscient god has free will). I guess your vision of God is one that has no knowledge of the future?
This is where you lost me. Why would it not be good if I offer some spare nutrients to another chemical reaction who I meet on the street? Why would it not be evil if I punched that reaction in the face and stole his shoes instead? It sounds like you’re not factoring in the important point that these reactions are conscious, and have feelings and desires and hopes. Ethical considerations enter automatically when conscious entities are involved. Good derives from value judgments, and I personally, as a conscious chemical process, value kindness and joy. To the extent that my actions increase the amounts of kindness and joy in the world, I am doing good.
I don’t need to tell myself that “I am a free radical, an unmoved mover! I am a unique snowflake soul who is not motivated by prior events! All the things I do usher forth from the well of my pure personal essence, which is the ideal distillation of my Self that has persisted beyond time and space to touch this mundane material moment and bend it to my timeless Will!”
I am content to be a part of the universe. I am pleased, even a little flattered, to be a part of the unfolding events of this bizarre bubble of spacetime. The fact that I could not have done other than I do, could not have been other than I am, does not bother me in the least. What else would I have been? Such worries are born of discontent.
What’s even more exciting to me is that here, in this tiny locality on this blue planet, a self-aware species has not only evolved, but appears to be stumbling toward greater and greater altruism, community, liberty and love. And I get to be a part of that history, for a very short while, at one of the most exciting times yet recorded. Fucking glorious! That the universe should happen to literally turn into love, even if only rarely in a relatively few craniums on a tiny speck of rock, is tremendously weird and spectacular. I don’t need free will to appreciate that. I don’t need free will to be glad to be a part of this thing called life.
“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 Sahara. 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 outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
…we didn’t arrive by spaceship, we arrived by being born, and we didn’t burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we gradually apprehend our world, rather than sudddenly discovering it, should not subtract from its wonder.” — widely attributed to a kind and lovable person
Do I sound like a nihilist? I should think not. But find in my words where I allude to anything beyond the natural. You won’t. I suppose that a naturalist could be a nihilist. But it ain’t necessarily so. Just add love.
Sarah, that’s why I said some. I didn’t want to give the impression that I thought it was the only reason that atheists decided there was no god.
I have a fat comment to wayward, waiting in moderation. In the meantime I’ll just add the caveat I should have added earlier: watch out for Sam Harris, he is a torture apologist.
I find Harris to be somewhat overbroad in parts of his “everyone’s responsible for the whackos” rhetoric (although my degree/kind distinction above still holds), and don’t find his defense of torture all that credible. He does make other decent arguments though (and he’s very yummy to look at, too).
Thank you for the clarification, Shayne.
Human sacrifice. Nice thing of your deity to demand.
Since you don’t believe he existed, isn’t it a rhetorical question ?
Are you serious? You can’t see in your own narrative that the central aspect of your religious belief is the necessity of a human sacrifice to assuage God, a sacrifice he demanded in order to change his own laws? You can’t see that?
Re: Harris as a “torture apologist”, thats only true when you take something he said radically out of context. Harris can hardly be an “apologist for torture” when the fact that religion supplies a ready justification for torture is one of the bases from which he levels his criticism.
Other orange, it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize fictional characters.
If the Judeo-Christian god were real, he wouldn’t deserve worship.
Grammar RWA - well done and entertaining too!
I don’t think that religion is inherently misogynistic. But it is inherently anti-rational. And since feminists generally try to make a case for feminism through rational arguments, there is an obvious clash there.
You Christians who say your religion says all these great things about being nice to people - you do realize that Jesus isn’t the only one who said those things - and usually not the first, either, right?
So why don’t you keep the “be nice to people” aspect in your life and discard the god-rising-from-the-”dead”-and-telling-you-to-eat-his-body stuff?
You can be an atheist and still be nice to people. I’m not claiming I’m an example, but there are plenty of atheists who are much nice than me. You don’t need a deity to tell you to be nice. Unless you’re afraid there will be hell to pay if you don’t give a deity all the credit for your good behavior.
So what? Pauline Christianity has been a “legitimate” form of Christianity for at least 1960 years now. Yet you called it “fake” Christianity. I’m just saying that’s not for you to decide. You don’t have to be Pauline. But it’s ridiculous to defend Christianity to a bunch of atheists by saying that the Pauline fundies are wrong while you are right. At best, you’re both right. Paul’s writings are the oldest books of the NT! They predate the extant canonical gospels. The dude may have known what he was talking about, better than any of the gospel writers.
I don’t believe that Jesus existed and I’ve seen no evidence for the Magdalene. It’s uncontroversial to say that Paul injected some of his own opinions into his epistles; all writers do these things. But from curiosity, whence the notion that he was sparring with the Magdalene?
Really. Then what does “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place” mean? Sounds to me pretty clear that he isn’t undoing any of the Mosaic law until the second coming, which would be when “heaven and earth pass away”.
And why does he chastise the Pharisees for failing to stone their children? Why doesn’t he just say that’s vile nonsense? He says they’re hypocrites, so wicked they’re prophesied as such by Isaiah, just for failing to murder children.
It’s your business. You don’t even have to answer me. It isn’t going to make me more hospitable to Christianity. I’m just curious to gaze into the mind of someone who’s running apologetics for themself so they don’t have to face the worst of the worst. And we’re almost there:
Where is truth and the sword demonstrated to be a metaphor? Or truth and fire?
How about the next verses of Matthew 10? “For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.” Luke 14 is even better: “If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” What is the metaphorical value in telling us to hate our own families? Please, do me a favor and just reject these verses out of hand. Tell me they are wicked Papist insertions, or the like.
That’s evil enough shit right there. I didn’t claim Jesus had all the evil shit attributed to him, just some. There it is. I wonder too how Luke 19:27 is supposed to be some kind of enlightening metaphor to us. The king is supposed to represent God, so apparently God just kills people sometimes for failing to acknowledge his superiority. Big man. If Jesus is God then it’s even worse; he’s making an explicit threat to the listener/reader. And then while he’s apparently drunk, in Matthew 11, he damns three whole cities to Hell: Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. If the dude really lived, what do you think the people who lived there were thinking when they heard that? Despair! Probably much gnashing of teeth. Come on, this is morally on par with Pat Robertson saying New Orleans sank because of Ellen DeGeneres. Everybody got all up in Pat’s ass for that, didn’t they? But he’s no worse than the zombie overlord he claims to speak for. They deserve each other.
Isn’t it more accurate to say that a very peculiar twentieth century formulation of faith, that countless well-meaning theologians agonized over to transform into a halfways decent moral code, fit the things you’d already figured out? Possibly because they figured out the same things and then did the hard work of redefining Christianity to fit with an evolved morality? Probably you owe much more credit to those backflipping literary acrobats than you ever owed to the ambiguous, mealy-mouthed scribes who jotted down the vile bits 1800 years ago.
I respect you, if not your faith. You must have a big heart to desire a decent, modern, liberating theology. The love underlying your beliefs doesn’t make them respectable, but it makes you respectable.
I just wonder why you bother. What’s so attractive about this particular zombie cult that you want to redeem it for your life? You’d be doing something emotionally similar and yet contextually different if you’d grown up in a Muslim or Hindu society. Your human ethics are driving your desire to bring love and community into all you touch. Why not shake off the dogma baggage and embrace just those human ethics full force?
I haven’t misrepresented you, have I? Let me know if I did. I think you should challenge atheists at any time you think we’re wrong. Wrong doesn’t have to mean stupid or small-minded. Let’s have these discussions, instead of walking on eggshells around each other.
Chet, a person who writes a sincere essay called “In Defense of Torture” is by definition a torture apologist.
as a student of religion with a strong interest in feminist theology, i think that there are a number of problems with this sort of discussion.
first off, the post is inherently writing-off all women who identify as religious feminists, that is to say, that their feminism informs and enriches their religion, and vice versa.
secondly, it essentializes religion and dehistoricizes it - very bad in methodical thinking. yes, ancient religious texts are patriarchal, as they arose in a time that was heavily patriarchal. there is no escaping that. to collapse all religion into the category of misogyny is a strong leap. layers must be taken into account. for instance, i encourage everyone to read tikva frymer kensky (of blesses memory) in the fabulous book WOMEN AND THE BIBLE. that having been said, the bible is not religion en toto, and religion is not the bible. this is a point also missed by the post.
as a self-identifying feminist (egalitarian) Jew, whose best friends are also feminist women and men of faith, i find these posts really angering. our voices are written out of the arena by the fundies, and it’s actually re-enforced by feminists as well! it’s heartbreaking.
as a self-identifying feminist (egalitarian) Jew, whose best friends are also feminist women and men of faith, i find these posts really angering. our voices are written out of the arena by the fundies, and it’s actually re-enforced by feminists as well! it’s heartbreaking.
And yet, here you are writing. Instead of complaining about no voice, write.
This is one of the things that’s so frustrating is that when we atheists actually say that we don’t find arguments for supernatural stuff convincing, when we say we find them to be unnecessary at best and downright murderous at worst, when we say that we find a lot of them very silly, well then we’re silencing people. When we offer reasons why, we’re challenging people’s faith. Admittedly sometimes we are; sometimes we’re just stating what we think, but that’s off limits. Keeps coming back to this.
I don’t think religion is inherently misogynistic.
But I sure won’t stand by and have people “of faith” tell me to STFU because I won’t tiptoe around their delicate faithly sensibilities.
Most Americans won’t vote for an atheist. It’s a tough world out there all around.
Chet, a person who writes a sincere essay called “In Defense of Torture” is by definition a torture apologist.
Wow, did you even read the essay? Because you clearly didn’t understand it. The whole point of the essay is the argument he makes at the end:
It’s not an apologia for torture, it’s an attack on the indiscriminate warfare. And he’s right; causing non-fatal pain to one single Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a lesser crime than starting a war that results in civilian deaths. (I challenge anyone to produce a moral calculus that indicates the opposite.) To describe it and Harris as you have is a misrepresentation, for which you should be ashamed. Sorry, no, Harris is no more an “apologizer for torture” than Swift was an apologizer for baby-eating.
But he’s wrong for two reasons.
There are sometimes justifiable reasons for going to war. Or do you think the US should not have fought back when attacked by the Confederacy?
Dropping bombs is a more effective way to achieve a goal in war than torturing achieves a goal. People who are tortured will say anything to stop the torture. Their statements are unreliable.
Harris’s view is effectively pro-torture. He is saying that as long as combatants engage in war, you might as well through out all rules of war, and anything goes.
So until there is peace on earth, screw the Geneva conventions.
I have to say, he is pretty attractive for a public intellectual though…
I have to say, he is pretty attractive for a public intellectual though…
Let the people say, “Hallelujah!”
Chet, I read it, and I think I understood it. If not, I’ll acknowledge my mistake at such time as I understand it. But I won’t be ashamed.
He’s saying torture is not as bad as bombing Iraq or Afghanistan. But he isn’t necessarily opposed to bombing Iraq, though he says it’s a distraction from bombing Afghanistan, which is apparently even more important to bomb.
His own words, as succinctly as he ever puts it:
Okay, so he’s an apologist for torture. Again, by definition. Would you have preferred that I add the nuance: “he’s an apologist for torture in limited situations”? Fine.
I don’t want to side-track this about torture, but he’s not wrong.
There are sometimes justifiable reasons for going to war.
So then how can there not be justifiable reasons for torture, since torture is so much less worse than war?
People who are tortured will say anything to stop the torture. Their statements are unreliable.
Harris addresses that in his essay. But this part is me: bombs, too, are unreliable. And nations might very well agree to any terms whatsoever - say anything - simply to get the invasion to stop. Treaties established when one party is on the ropes are also unreliable.
If that’s not a reason not to go to war, then why is it a reason not to torture? In what possible moral calculus is war not worse than torture? How can it possibly be better to shoot a soldier (or worse yet, a child) dead than to torture him?
Harris levels a devastating argument against your position. Did you even bother to read the essay? Sure, I can imagine a situation in which a war might be justified. I can imagine, too, a situation in which torture might be justified. And because torture is so much less worse than war, it’s a hell of a lot easier to justify some torture than to justify some war.
Harris is no more apologizing for torture than Nancy is apologizing for war. I don’t think Nancy is a war apologist, or would like to be described as one, for promoting a position that is highly reasonable - war is sometimes justified. The position that torture can be justified as well is just as reasonable, and it’s ridiculous to call someone a “torture apologist” when they’re just pointing out the obvious.
So until there is peace on earth, screw the Geneva conventions.
I don’t see where he makes that argument at all. Maybe you can quote it?
Well, I’m starting to worry that my reply to wayward was lost and is not sitting in moderation. So I’m going to break it into smaller bits, strip out the cussin, and try again. Apologies if it is in queue and I double post.
Agreed.
Not necessarily. If the universe is deterministic, one would still need a snapshot of the whole observable universe in order to predict the future in perpetuity. And this is not even theoretically obtainable from our vantage inside the universe. If Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle points to a fundamental indeterminism in the universe, then the future also cannot be predicted. However, these are technical quibbles. Neither necessarily opens up the possibility of free will.
I don’t always have even the illusion. But yeah. Agreed. There’s no free will in a universe with an omniscient god, either (and not even the omniscient god has free will). I guess your vision of God is one that has no knowledge of the future?
This is where you lost me. Why would it not be good if I offer some spare nutrients to another chemical reaction who I meet on the street? Why would it not be evil if I punched that reaction in the face and stole his shoes instead? It sounds like you’re not factoring in the important point that these reactions are conscious, and have feelings and desires and hopes. Ethical considerations enter automatically when conscious entities are involved. Good derives from value judgments, and I personally, as a conscious chemical process, value kindness and joy. To the extent that my actions increase the amounts of kindness and joy in the world, I am doing good.
I don’t need to tell myself that “I am a free radical, an unmoved mover! I am a unique snowflake soul who is not motivated by prior events! All the things I do usher forth from the well of my pure personal essence, which is the ideal distillation of my Self that has persisted beyond time and space to touch this mundane material moment and bend it to my timeless Will!”
I am content to be a part of the universe. I am pleased, even a little flattered, to be a part of the unfolding events of this bizarre bubble of spacetime. The fact that I could not have done other than I do, could not have been other than I am, does not bother me in the least. What else would I have been? Such worries are born of discontent.
What’s even more exciting to me is that here, in this tiny locality on this blue planet, a self-aware species has not only evolved, but appears to be stumbling toward greater and greater altruism, community, liberty and love. And I get to be a part of that history, for a very short while, at one of the most exciting times yet recorded. Glorious! That the universe should happen to literally turn into love, even if only rarely in a relatively few craniums on a tiny speck of rock, is tremendously weird and spectacular. I don’t need free will to appreciate that. I don’t need free will to be glad to be a part of this thing called life.
“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 Sahara. 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 outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
…we didn’t arrive by spaceship, we arrived by being born, and we didn’t burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we gradually apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discovering it, should not subtract from its wonder.” — widely attributed to a kind and lovable person
Do I sound like a nihilist? I should think not. But find in my words where I allude to anything beyond the natural. You won’t. I suppose that a naturalist could be a nihilist. But it ain’t necessarily so. Just add love.
gah. parts 1 and 3 came through…
What’s even more exciting to me is that here, in this tiny locality on this blue planet, a self-aware species has not only evolved, but appears to be stumbling toward greater and greater altruism, community, liberty and love.
I just finished reading Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale. Here’s a paragraph I quoted:
The fact that we’re here, writing and communicating through this medium that only exists because of our enlarged brains is pretty fucking amazing.
When he says fulfill, he means it. In his death and resurrection, he fulfilled the prophets, and so the law passed away. There’s not supposed to be any more stoning of unruly sons; no more laws against shellfish, no more death for working on the sabbath. The law is fulfilled- it’s over. What was established was the new law, Christ’s teachings of compassion.
So, you assert that Jesus abolished the old law, in contradiction of his statement. If there were “no more laws”, I think the phrase”the laws were abolished” would be true, don’t you? Jesus disagrees.
Okay, so he’s an apologist for torture. Again, by definition.
Again, only by an idiot’s definition. If there’s some moral calculus where the horror of war can be justified, but the much lesser act of torturing one person can never be, it has yet to be presented.
And Harris is no apologizer for pointing that out.
Would you have preferred that I add the nuance: “he’s an apologist for torture in limited situations”? Fine.
Of course, the nuance makes it a lot harder to smear him with the brush of “torture apologizer” in order to ignore his conclusions, so no surprise you were in no hurry to add it. But with or without your qualifications, it’s incorrect. Harris supports a unilateral legal ban on all torture by American authorities and everybody else, consistent with the Geneva Conventions (which Nancy falsely asserted he wanted to throw out the window.
I have a very hard time seeing how somebody who insists that torture should be illegal in every situation constitutes a torture apologist, except by an idiot’s definition.
I don’t think misinterpretation is cause to throw up my hands in defeat.
Oh, so it isn’t a problem with the writings, it’s misinterpretation of them. Then, why the need to forget the Old Testament? After, all, there’s nothing wrong with them, they’ve just been misinterpreted. right? Same with the Pauline epistles, right? Romans Chp. 1 has been completely misinterpreted, right? We’ve all misread it when it demonizes gay and lesbian people. And it had no efect on Christians whatsoever. They were all fake Christians anyway.
Fuck, Chet, I just quoted him. Look. Again.
“But our interrogators should know that there are certain circumstances in which it will be ethical to break the law. Indeed, there are circumstances in which you would have to be a monster not to break the law [against torture].”
Translated into small words for you: “some times it is right to torture.”
Now, are we speaking different regional variants of English, perhaps? Because my dictionary says this:
“a·pol·o·gist (ə-pŏl’ə-jĭst) n. A person who argues in defense or justification of something, such as a doctrine, policy, or institution.”
Such as someone who makes a defense of torture. Such as someone who basically says “sometimes it is right to torture”. Such as someone who explicitly says “there are circumstances in which you would have to be a monster not to”. Such as someone who writes a sincere essay called “In Defense of Torture”.
Man! I’ll grant that the original phrase of “torture apologist” did not capture the nuance of Sam’s argument. But while it may imply more than it should, the phrase is not wrong.
Last attempt at part 2 to wayward, and then I’ll stuff.
This is where you lost me. Why would it not be good if I offer some spare nutrients to another chemical reaction who I meet on the street? Why would it not be evil if I punched that reaction in the face and stole his shoes instead? It sounds like you’re not factoring in the important point that these reactions are conscious, and have feelings and desires and hopes. Ethical considerations enter automatically when conscious entities are involved. Good derives from value judgments, and I personally, as a conscious chemical process, value kindness and joy. To the extent that my actions increase the amounts of kindness and joy in the world, I am doing good.
I don’t need to tell myself that “I am a free radical, an unmoved mover! I am a unique snowflake soul who is not motivated by prior events! All the things I do usher forth from the well of my pure personal essence, which is the ideal distillation of my Self that has persisted beyond time and space to touch this mundane material moment and bend it to my timeless Will!”
I am content to be a part of the universe. I am pleased, even a little flattered, to be a part of the unfolding events of this bizarre bubble of spacetime. The fact that I could not have done other than I do, could not have been other than I am, does not bother me in the least. What else would I have been? Such worries are born of discontent.
“What makes you think you are more than a certain mass of certain biochemicals? If you thought that’s all we are, you wouldn’t care whether or not you made a difference.”
Without certain biochemicals, none of us would care about anything.
Sam Harris wrote:
“My argument for the limited use of coercive interrogation (”torture” by another name) is essentially this: if you think it is ever justifiable to drop bombs in an attempt to kill a man like Osama bin Laden (and thereby risk killing and maiming innocent men, women, and children)…”
No, I don’t think it’s justifiable to try to assassinate one man by dropping bombs. It’s disturbing if Harris assumes that most of his readers would be OK with this. And if it’s mostly about the risk of “killing or maiming” someone, wouldn’t it follow that people who drive cars must be OK with torture?
If there’s some moral calculus where the horror of war can be justified, but the much lesser act of torturing one person can never be, it has yet to be presented.
What makes you think that the comparison of one single act of torture to a whole war is the correct one? Only if you can be sure that you have the real bad guy, one act of torture is all you’ll need, and that it will prevent a war.
Harris supports a unilateral legal ban on all torture by American authorities and everybody else, consistent with the Geneva Conventions (which Nancy falsely asserted he wanted to throw out the window.
His suggestion of making a nudge-nudge-wink-wink concession to illegal torture in some situations is worse than making it legal, but strictly regulated.
MAJeff, regarding Dawkins casually approaching agency in natural selection: I don’t know if he’s doing it only in these cases, but there are evolutionarily stable strategies and mathematical attractors that can appear to “pull” natural selection in certain directions. Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” touches on these phenomena, though I can’t recall how far it was discussed and I don’t have the book on hand to check.
MAJeff, regarding Dawkins casually approaching agency in natural selection: I don’t know if he’s doing it only in these cases, but there are evolutionarily stable strategies and mathematical attractors that can appear to “pull” natural selection in certain directions
Oh, yes. That’s one of the things that was so nonsensical about wayward’s “only chemicals” comment. There are times when new forms of organization arise, dependent upon the previous one, but obeying their own patterns (he has a nice discussion of convergent evolution and eyes). That’s what natural selection (the process) is. It’s not agentic, but there are tendencies. Dawkins comes close to crossing that line occasionally, particularly in his energetic moments. Minor issue.
I never said “God” was omniscient or had knowledge of the future. My ideas of the power greater than ourselves are admittedly and intentionally vague because there is so much I don’t know. Call it God, call it a spirit, call it “the force,” if you want. All I am saying is that the universe is more than just atoms and physical forces.
Read my posts carefully. I never said you were a nihilist.
But where does the love come from? All I am saying is that love transcends nature. And a universe without love is nihilistic.
Anyway, it has been interesting talking to you.
And yet, here you are writing. Instead of complaining about no voice, write.
This is one of the things that’s so frustrating is that when we atheists actually say that we don’t find arguments for supernatural stuff convincing, when we say we find them to be unnecessary at best and downright murderous at worst, when we say that we find a lot of them very silly, well then we’re silencing people. When we offer reasons why, we’re challenging people’s faith. Admittedly sometimes we are; sometimes we’re just stating what we think, but that’s off limits. Keeps coming back to this.
MaJeff, the thing of it is, is when Christian Feminists do write or engage in discourse, it’s met with the sentiment that you can be a humanist without all that silly God stuff, so why bother with your beliefs? Which goes right back to where we’re shunned by Fundie Christians (whose company I don’t want anyway) and feminists like Amanda. So my belief in Jesus as deity is irrational. So what? I happen to think he was a great feminist and political revolutionary, and is worthy of my worship. You don’t agree? That’s your business. I’m not going to demand you entertain the idea of Christianity, and I don’t appreciate being treated as though I’ve never contemplated atheism or gone through times where I didn’t believe or just was indifferent to the presence or lack thereof of God. I settled on believing for my personal irrational reasons. My being Christian made me a feminist. And quite frankly, if Christian feminists are down with the crux of feminism, I don’t see why having them within the feminist ranks is such a bad thing or why Amanda (though I love Pandagon and really enjoy her posts) goes out of her way to alienate them.
If you have a problem with people who claim to be Christians and live their religion by attacking atheists and oppressing people, then go ahead and challenge them. But why the need to shake up allies? Is it just b/c Christian feminists are more likely to engage in discourse?
Call it God, call it a spirit, call it “the force,” if you want. All I am saying is that the universe is more than just atoms and physical forces.
Sure: there’s space, plasma, dark matter…
But where does the love come from? All I am saying is that love transcends nature.
Love is a product of animal brains and as such is a part of nature. Of course you can always speculate about “something more”. But why should love transcend nature any more than hate, or nausea, or hunger? Just because the idea of transcendent love sounds nicer?
“Sure: there’s space, plasma, dark matter…”
Don’t forget that chaos lives out there somewhere too…
:)
Right here.
So in other words if we ARE willing to wage modern warfare then we should be willing to torture as well.
And since “we” are in fact willing to wage modern warfare, then we should be willing to torture.
That seems pretty clear cut to me. How do you interpret that sentence?
“All I am saying is that the universe is more than just atoms and physical forces.”
Proof?
If you insist on arguing in favor of the irrational, why should anybody care about your arguments? Not much point in having an argument devoid of rationality.
And it certainly seems odd to posit a god as a political revolutionary, since in my understanding of gods, they can pretty much change time and space at will. Seems really silly to bother with politics when you are, you know, omnipotent.
I think there is some evidence to support the claim that the historical personage called Joshua bar Joseph was a political revolutionary, determined to defeat the Romans and create a sovreign Jewish state. The feminist part - not so much.
But if irrationality is deemed a satisfactory basis for a belief system, then evidence isn’t really required.
No, wayward, love doesn’t transcend nature. It’s perfectly natural–altruism and empathy are natural, with socialization helping them along. Human socialization is a natural process. It happens whether people believe in a force or not.
I’m not trying to pick on you. I’m just saying you don’t need a conscious “force” creating us for love to exist. It doesn’t make the love any less meaningful to us. It just means that it’s not holy. And that’s why people believe–they just want to. They want to feel like there’s something more, that they have a purpose, and human psychology is such that it’s easier to imagine there’s a Big Daddy or a guiding light instead of recognizing that we’re in charge.
And there is free will, or else people wouldn’t go therapists to change their thoughts and feelings to improve their lives (for instance). Just because we can think and make choices doesn’t make us that all-fired special. We can be special to each other without a force dictating it.
You can say that atheists have no imagination or curiosity if you want to–but you’re the one who’s not really looking too closely at the force you believe it.
In. Force you believe in, not it, Goddammit.
If you have a problem with people who claim to be Christians and live their religion by attacking atheists and oppressing people, then go ahead and challenge them. But why the need to shake up allies? Is it just b/c Christian feminists are more likely to engage in discourse?
Translation: why don’t you atheists shut the hell up already.
Grammar RWA, I appreciate your willingness to talk.
And maybe I can make myself more clear by stepping away from the religious context for a second. Radical feminism has given us unbelievably good things- but there are radical feminists who take texts and ideas and twist them around until they become anti-transpeople. I’m sure you’ve witnessed firsthand, here and on other blogs, the debate that still rages.
So what are trans-positive radical feminists to do ? Give up radical feminism ? Stop writing or speaking or teaching about it ? Stop trying to illuminate the good aspects of that discourse, because it’s been soured for a lot of people ?
That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m saying that what I’m trying to do with liberal faith is, yes, maybe transformative. Maybe someday I’ll sit down with real Biblical scholars, or I’ll jump in a time machine, and get the rug pulled out from under me- maybe I’m the one misinterpreting everything. Maybe I’m trying to reclaim something that never existed- I don’t think so, but I’m willing to hear the alternative presented as an argument. But I still see the good and the strength in it.
And one last thing: I think you should challenge atheists at any time you think we’re wrong.
I don’t think you’re wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong, either. I am perfectly happy to agree to disagree. I’m not interested in convincing any atheists that there’s “something more” out there, or that they should just “try to believe” or that they’re not good enough people for not believing what I do. Obviously, atheists searched and reached their own conclusions; though we might have come by it different ways, we each have a strong moral center. Good. We can work together.
But I can’t throw away what I find to be a great idea, because the delivery system was flawed. If anything, looking at other flawed people who did great things, it gives me hope.
Thanks again for talking to me.
All I am saying is that love transcends nature.
nonsense.
MAJeff, I think what kissmypineapple is objecting to is that discussions between feminist Christians and atheists sometimes dissolve into LOL U BELIEVE IN FAIRIES, STFU. Or atheists quoting Bible passages like they’re going to trick us into saying “Whoops ! I guess my deeply-rooted faith is totally bonkers !”
If someone is trying to “trick” you out of atheism or into admitting something, by quoting stuff about love and the soul and “the world beyond the senses,” doesn’t that offend you ? I imagine it would. Well, it goes both ways.
I can’t speak for everyone who is a Christian feminist but yeah, some of the shit in Christianity is totally bonkers. Yes. Oh, God yes. But the ideas that I’ve found within, about compassion and peace and justice, aren’t bonkers at all. As long as we share so many of these commitments to social justice, why do you care where I got them ? I don’t care where you got yours. I’m glad you did.
Right up until the minute I use my faith against someone else, it’s mine and mine alone. If I cross that line, I pretty much assume I’m a fair target. Sure. But not until then.
Maybe I’m trying to reclaim something that never existed
Bingo!
MAJeff, continued- please understand that I do get, I do see all the shit that gets put onto atheists by well-meaning and ill-meaning people alike. I’d never suggest that atheists are “oppressing” us poor Christians, when so much of the mainstream treats it like the default, and everything else is “the other.” I do get that.
I just want to be able to work together.
And not to be argumentative, but if a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Shinto-following feminist came onto this thread, would she get the same treatment ? Would she get her own sacred texts quoted back at her, or do we not have those memorized ?
Okay, that was a little argumentative. Apologies. But I’m curious to know, honestly, if this religion=/=feminism thing is considered to be all across the board. Let me know how you feel.
“But I’m curious to know, honestly, if this religion=/=feminism thing is considered to be all across the board. Let me know how you feel.”
Is it “across the board”? Yes. Know major religion (which skips over a religion featuring 12-people meeting in somebody’s garage) treats women as equal to men.
Not Hinduism, not Buddhism, not Shinto (to anwer the three you mentioned), let alone Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.
So, to the extent major religions treat women as second class, they are misogynist. And if they are misogynist, how can a feminist support them in good faith?…
And if they are misogynist, how can a feminist support them in good faith?…
I agree that that is an almost impossible argument. Misogyny is present in the practices of many faiths- and in many cultures. It’s hard to reconcile.
But I’d suggest that if a feminist wants to keep her faith and work towards bettering her faith community (like the fight for female pastors and priests) couldn’t that have an effect on the world at large ? Since faith is so influential and important to so many people, I’d hope that giving women a voice within it could transform the landscape for a lot of people. Maybe even turn people of faith into feminists along the way.
I feel like feminists work together with women of other cultures to gain better agency and independence- but without pressuring them to drop all aspects of a culture they were raised in, or adopted, or love in many ways. I think this can be applied to faith, too.
We do all work together. Do you folks realize how many meetings I’ve been in with religious folks, working alongside them, to accomplish a common goal, and never said, “You’re batshit, you know.”
This is what always happens, though. Someone writes about atheism and how they came to it. Religious folks get fussy because they don’t share that part of the religious experience being critiqued. When critiqued on that part, they get fussy because atheists don’t share their “belief in belief” and give it special cred. Then comes out the “can’t we all get along” card.
We do all get along. But you want a free pass. There are many axes along which people can align themselves. Most of us here tend toward a feminist approach on a lot of these differing axes. However, as I said above, for many of us atheists, you liberal “people of faith” are on the same axis as Fred Phelps and Islamist terrorists. You are also on different ones (of course), but when it comes to discussions of religion, y’all’s differences are in degree not kind, in that you are all starting from some kind of similar place in revering a supernatural “thing” and people who has “special access” to that thing, and texts supposed to have laid out that things wishes. Sorry, not buying.
Again, we’re supposed to shut up. When we don’t find something convincing. Shut up. When we don’t share the belief in belief. Shut up. We’re not supposed to say, “We don’t find that convincing and here’s why.” Nope, in order to get along, we need to shut up.
“Again, we’re supposed to shut up. When we don’t find something convincing. Shut up. When we don’t share the belief in belief. Shut up. We’re not supposed to say, “We don’t find that convincing and here’s why.” Nope, in order to get along, we need to shut up.”
Dare I say, atheists are told we need to stay in the closet? (Please don’t hit me Jeff…)
Dare I say, atheists are told we need to stay in the closet? (Please don’t hit me Jeff…)
I don’t find that metaphor to be a problem at all.
We’re not supposed to say, “We don’t find that convincing and here’s why.”
No, no, you are absolutely supposed to say that. You are welcome and free to say that. I’d rather you didn’t say “We don’t find that convincing, and you’re an idiot.” Or, alternately, “We don’t find that convincing, and here’s why- and if you still continue to believe, you’re an idiot.”
But actually, you’re free to say that too.
People of science often ally themselves with racists and sexists and are always popping out surveys about brain size and how women get faint around math. But I don’t put atheists, with their reason-based approach, alongside those people. I think to do so would be unreasonable, and would be a huge misunderstanding of what it is atheists actually stand for.
and would be a huge misunderstanding of what it is atheists actually stand for.
atheists don’t “stand for” anything other than nonbelief in supernatural deities.
“and would be a huge misunderstanding of what it is atheists actually stand for.
atheists don’t “stand for” anything other than nonbelief in supernatural deities.”
I think I can understand what orange is saying here. Atheists “believe” in the primacy of logic, reason, facts, proof, etc., so they could be considered to “stand for” those things. And by definition, the “supernatural” cannot be fit into that worldview.
And when I say worldview, I mean our perceptions are really just a model of reality, according to what we know and have experienced. Atheists simply do make room in their model of reality for the supernatural…
Was it Julia Sweeney who talked about having to pretend to believe just to “be polite”? I don’t remember who actually said it, but I think it was in relation to Sweeney’s experiences.
I don’t think believers are stupid, other orange–I just think they want to believe. What bothers me is most won’t admit that simple thing. I always did, when I believed in God. All the rational arguments against couldn’t sway me, I believed and that was that–but even then I knew full well it was a choice of sorts.
All the feelings of there being something more, all the thoughts, all the experiences, meant something to me. I didn’t tell other people God was going to get them for not believing, but they couldn’t sway my own belief, vague as it was.
I just got to a point where it made so little sense that it was easier and more peaceful to just let go of the whole idea. The peace that passeth all understanding came from not trying to believe in something that MADE NO SENSE anymore.
Anyway–you’re making a choice. It’s up to you. But no other superstition is afforded the kind of respect that belief in a conscious, caring Supreme Being does. Maybe we’re tired of pretending just to be polite.
Just to lighten things up.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Cara!
When my religious faith began to unravel, I desperately tried to hold on to it. It is pretty frightening to have your faith pulled out from under you. But it is much more authentic and honest to face the facts and admit to yourself that, ZOMG! you’re an atheist. It takes a little while to adjust to, though.
MikeEss-
Atheists “believe” in the primacy of logic, reason, facts, proof, etc., so they could be considered to “stand for” those things.
Yes, thank you. That is what I meant, and you explained it better than I did !
I just wanted to point out that science and reason have been misused as well; but that it doesn’t make atheist convictions any less strong and valid.
MAJeff, that is CLASSIC. I think I ruined a keyboard.
Speaking of Julia Sweeney–here’s the first 20 minutes of “Letting Go of God
MAJeff, that is CLASSIC. I think I ruined a keyboard.
It sets me a-giggling every time I watch it.
I just think they want to believe.
Cara- yes, you’re quite right. I do just want to believe. I appreciate your understanding.
And I can say that I respect you, because I do; but I do also know how the world in general treats atheists. It’s wrong. I don’t expect (or want) you to have to pretend in order to be polite.
I can’t change the world but I can convey my respect to one atheist at a time, I suppose. I hope that people like you and I can end the false politeness and get to real courtesy, which includes respect for both of our beliefs/viewpoints/realities.
All I am saying is that the universe is more than just atoms and physical forces.
Try saying it in a way that suggests you have any reason whatsoever to think that. That is, include evidence with your assertions. Otherwise, no one else can understand why you would even say these things, and you start to remind us of a scraggly fanatic wearing a sandwich board. A kindly, well-meaning fanatic, perhaps, to whom I’d give a fiver and half my lunch.
I mean, you were the one who suggested atheists weren’t looking for options D through Z. Because apparently if we did, we’d notice that some of these options are better. You got me interested, and now you aren’t willing to elaborate? Do you have some secrets I’m not privy to? When you hint at these claims but then won’t back them up, it just sounds like a scam, or other less charitable terms I’d rather not toss around.
Another option would be to stop playing the “atheists are rigid/unimaginative/incurious” card, since it’s downright mean if you’re just bluffing and you don’t even have a winning hand. You keep suggesting that there’s something more that we’re just too blind or stupid or dogmatic to notice. If you won’t explain what that is (or explain why love can’t be natural, or whatever), then you’re just chucking slander for no apparent reason than to separate yourself from the Other.
Read my posts carefully. I never said you were a nihilist.
You did say that I must be either a nihilist or a supernaturalist. Well, I’m not a supernaturalist. Here’s an idea. Why don’t you stop telling me what I am, and start taking my word for it? I am a naturalist and not a nihilist. If you genuinely cannot understand how this is possible, I’m sorry to hear that, but are you willing to give me the benefit of the doubt?
I explained why I don’t need free will to experience passion and purpose and the drive to change the world. I was kind of hoping you’d engage with that. Maybe you mean to do so by explaining why love cannot arise naturally from evolution? Please do! But can we have details instead of mere assertions? Or if you don’t feel confident that you can give details, perhaps you’ll own up to that and say “perhaps I am wrong, and love can be entirely naturalistic.”
As it stands right now, your assertions amount to granting me three options: either I am a nihilist, or I am a closet supernaturalist, or I don’t understand what love is. I know that I have other options, so is it possible you are projecting your fears onto me? Are you worried that love is somehow less than love if it isn’t supernatural?
If you have a problem with people who claim to be Christians and live their religion by attacking atheists and oppressing people, then go ahead and challenge them. But why the need to shake up allies? Is it just b/c Christian feminists are more likely to engage in discourse?
kissmypineapple, let me start by saying that I don’t think anyone should be telling you that you can’t be both a feminist and a theist. I think you can, and my feminism predated my atheism. I think Amanda addressed this in the second sentence: “… and I would add that ‘you can’t be a feminist’ is an unfair thing to say.”
So let’s be clear on what’s being said. I am saying that if you are a feminist and a theist, you are digging your own grave. My posts yesterday at 3:59 pm and 5:46 pm elaborate upon this. I don’t think there’s more to add, so go read those if you want to know why I think feminist theists need to be challenged.
Or even shorter: the world is headed to hell in a handbasket real fast, and many of the problems happen because society permits supernatural discourse in policy discussions. We need to stop this quickly, and the only way is to show supernaturalism for what it is: careless prejudice and wishful thinking. I don’t want to only crush the faith of right-wingers, because I don’t like hanging out with a bunch of right-wing atheists. So if I can, I want to bring you and other progressives along for the ride.
I think Amanda did her best to make clear that she does not think you can not be both a theist and a feminist. If you find particular atheists crossing that line, well, I’ve got your back.
If this is really what you want then how do you provide for the existence and enforcement of moral codes? After all it is not possible to objectively prove the existence of morality.
By your logic then we should discard any notions of morality or fair play since there is no solid evidence of them even existing.
Additionally this logic seems to render us incapable of enforcing moral beliefs since we would be requiring, as individuals or society, others to adhere to our notions of how to behave absent such evidence that our beliefs our better.
Additionally this logic seems to render us incapable of enforcing moral beliefs since we would be requiring, as individuals or society, others to adhere to our notions of how to behave absent su that our beliefs our better.
I think if the message of Christianity or any religion had been one of love, peace, and understanding throughout history, this conversation probably wouldn’t have been necessary.
But the point is that that hasn’t been the message at all. Religion has used their gods to perpetrate the worst, and they still do.
In that, I can very well see the need to defang the whole premise. Yes, there are mild believers, but they aren’t setting world policy. In fact from what I see it’s the complete opposite.
While I do have a belief in a creator, I can very well see the need for the rest of the world to stop the nonsense that perpetrates the evils under the banner of belief in a god.
If it means relegating me to the irrational, I’m fine with that. Though I don’t like being seen as therefore irrational for any other decision I might make. Still, I can see the necessity of a move to take the power from those who use a god to control the populace and set world policy.
That’s just how I am coming to see it all.
other orange, when I was asking you to respond to Bible quotes, I wasn’t trying to say you’re wrong in your reading. I just wanted to understand how you perform these contortions (actually, Carole may have done this yesterday at 2:53 am). When I was a Christian, I basically ignored the Bible because I found it too horrid. I eventually rejected the whole Christian story for the same reason (human sacrifice especially). So I remain curious as to why anyone would prefer to salvage it rather than drop it.
For instance, pretty much every good thing attributed to Jesus was actually copied from another earlier source, most religious, some secular. This is part of why I remain curious. When Christianity is unique, it is only uniquely evil. It is never uniquely good.
Where “trans-positive” stands in for “religious” there, no, I don’t think you should give up any of those things. I’d be delighted if you’d just entirely stop being religious, but I don’t think that people can choose their own beliefs, so it’d be silly for me to ask you to “just stop!” The best I can hope for is to shake it out of you with argumentation *grin*, but I don’t know if you would even want to have that sort of conversation.
Ideally yes, logistically no. I wish I had the knowledge and the resources to challenge those beliefs, but I don’t. As I said a few times now, I think all supernatural thinking is dangerous to the individual and society at large. But I grew up Christian and the Abrahamic faiths are the easiest for me to address. I think the most damning evidence against God is non-denominational, though.
Yes, and I don’t think you should worry that anyone thinks otherwise. To say that it would be better if you were an atheist is not to say that you are doing zero good as a theist.
Well, I have longer answers, but a short answer is that if you are only compassionate and progressive because you believe God asks these things of you, then you could suddenly change if you find reason to believe God asks for hatred and violence. And since God is like a groundless aether in your brain, I have no assurance that He won’t suddenly shift into something wicked during a crisis of faith or a head injury.
Now, I tend doubt this, because as I hinted earlier, I think you’re a compassionate and progressive person on your own and you’re casting God in your own image. But I do worry if you think that God is making you good, rather than the other way around.
As I said, I can and do respect you, but I cannot respect your faith-based beliefs. I think that even the weakest lip service to supernaturalism is dangerous, and it is possible that such lip service is going to provoke nuclear war. If you want me to respect your beliefs, I’m going to need more than “they are important and meaningful to me.” Racism is important and meaningful to racists, but that’s not sufficient reason to respect such beliefs. See above reply to kissmypineapple, and Sam Harris video at 7:20 pm yesterday.
Anybody who’s interested in having a longer discussion about what the appropriate boundaries of this discourse should be, or how leftist theists and atheists can best work together, drop me a line.
I do not accept your premise, Adam; you say this as though you’ve never heard of moral realism, or you’ve categorically debunked all forms of it. As it happens, I have laid out the first step of my own theory of rights here. It’s slim, but I think there’s a solid foundation there.
Though I am a moral realist, I am aware that there are well-formulated theories of relativism that provide for fair and just law enforcement. If I were such a relativist, I would point out that there can indeed be evidence that certain moral precepts, when acted upon, result in increased joy, liberty and fulfillment. That’s simply a matter of trial and error, and we already have plenty of data from history.
To be perfectly frank, it is impossible to objectively prove the existence of anything but my own consciousness, and I can only prove that to myself. Everything else can be the result of a Cartesian demon.
However, this does not preclude gathering evidence, and testing whether certain actions reliably lead to certain desired results. Evidence is all that anyone can ask for. “Objective reality” is beyond proof. But I only asked for evidence.
Shhh, Shayne! You and your irrational numbers must meet in secret groves, under the cloak of night. You can whisper your chants of transcendent woo to one another at every new moon, and then walk unnoticed among the living during the day, while the old gods roam among us as vagrants in their fleshly disguises.
Or, as long as you can back up your other decisions with rational discourse, no one should make a fuss about those opinions. If I were you, though, I’d reexamine all my beliefs just to make sure that my policy opinions aren’t resting unnoticed upon something indemonstrable.
By your logic then we should discard any notions of morality or fair play since there is no solid evidence of them even existing.
Yeah, secular humanist writings don’t exist, and neither does philosophy. “Morality” comes from “mores”, which is just Cicero’s translation of Greek ethics. There is no reason to assume Divine Command Theory in order to have a valid and rational ethical system.
I should here note that Adam North is not worth yet another 400 comment thread.
Grammar, the truth be told there are a few of my opinions that would be very provable as not being based on believer dogma, but do rest on nothing more than my saying I believe it to be wrong.
Case in point is my support of gay rights. Clearly, I’m going against what is in the bible, so the decision is obviously made without that particular book. Yet, I have made the decision because I personally believe it is wrong to treat anybody as a 2nd class citizen based on who they want in their bedroom (or for any reason race, creed, gender). Wrong, wrong, all kinds of wrong to my mind.
Well, that grove thing. I don’t think I’d mind it so much. Whatever ideas your life has led you to on that level should be celebrated by oneself in the silence of one’s own mind. That’s just me though the appeal of secret groves, moonlight, and whispering has its merits.
I also think it’s hilarious that, even with Euthyphro’s Dilemma well stated for 2500 years, people still complain that there is no morality without their version of God.
JackGoff, that’s why I didn’t bother addressing the original comment. People’s morality will exist with or without the presence of a god. And at points laws are usually enacted to insure it.
That’s just commonsense and logic based on any observation of people in history in general. Therefore, not really worth arguing the point at all.
Look. Again.
You look again. How can someone who says we should honor every agreement we’re a part of against torture, who says torture is illegal, should be illegal, and always should remain illegal, an “apologist for torture?” It doesn’t make any sense, Grammar. It’s a smear the way you’re using it, plain and simple.
I’ll grant that the original phrase of “torture apologist” did not capture the nuance of Sam’s argument.
Good to see you backpedal, but you still haven’t explained how Harris’s entirely correct argument* has any relevance to this topic. You can’t explain, because it was a smear. Plain and simple.
*If war can be justified, so can torture.
No, I don’t think it’s justifiable to try to assassinate one man by dropping bombs.
Then how can bombing any persons be justified? If killing the murderer of thousands doesn’t justify death by bombing, how can death by bombing be justified in the case of a soldier who’s killed hardly anyone at all (if any)?
Doesn’t it? I loved writing that paragraph.
Just your opinion? This is an easy one to make concrete.
1) Ain’t no excuse to do harm unless it’s to prevent greater harm
2) We gay folk ain’t harming anybody else by being gay
3) From 1 and 2, ain’t no excuse to do gay folk harm
QED
Windy:
His suggestion of making a nudge-nudge-wink-wink concession to illegal torture in some situations is worse than making it legal, but strictly regulated.
That’s idiotic. What Harris wants to do is put a finger on the scale that tips it even further against torture. There’s an even greater standard of justification - not only does it have to be the right guy, and there has to be a city in peril from a ticking time-bomb, but the erstwhile torture has to believe it’s the right thing to do to the extent that he’s willing to take the chance of going to jail afterwards.
How do you interpret that sentence?
Nancy, I still don’t see where he says “screw the Geneva Conventions”, in your quote or in any other part of the essay. Indeed he comes quite firmly down on the side of maintaining and even strengthening the legal prohibitions against torture, including the Geneva Conventions. How you get “screw the GC” out of his stated support for upholding the GC remains a mystery to me.
Ugh, bad HTML formatting above. Sorry.
To misquote Samuel Johnson, We refute it thus.
After all it is not possible to objectively prove the existence of morality.
Adam, I’m not sure what you think that’s supposed to mean. In what sense could morality exist?
Humans develop morality, spontaneously, because its of practical benefit to society and the people who are in it. I don’t see why the rejection of supernaturalism for being senseless twaddle imperils that.
By your logic then we should discard any notions of morality or fair play since there is no solid evidence of them even existing.
Again, I’m not sure what you mean by “exist.” Obviously there’s morality, because humans have developed it. And obviously there’s fair-play, because many animals, including humans, have a sense of what it is. Game theory provides a model by which we can evaluate which moral postulates are of use to society and which aren’t.
There’s really no need for recourse to supernaturalism to establish morality. The proof of this is that atheists are predominantly moral people. They’re not that way because we’re all, as a species, picking up morality signals on spiritual radios; they’re that way because they’ve developed morality on their own, like all human beings do, even you.
Because he also says that sometimes our interrogators should break the law anyway, and torture. I quoted this above, at 11:59 pm. Defending a particular (presumably small) set of “certain circumstances in which it will be ethical to break the law [against torture]” is still defending (some) torture. Defending any torture makes you a torture apologist. Again, this is the definition of the word “apologist”. I don’t see why this is so hard for you.
I’m not backpedaling. Sam Harris is a torture apologist.
I merely brought it up because I directed someone to a Sam Harris video and I wanted to put the caveat on the table. His torture apologetics are not otherwise relevant to Amanda’s thread.
I disagree that it was a smear. See, the only reason to smear someone is to cast their other opinions in a negative light. But as far as I recall, I am accepting or tolerant of all of Sam’s other opinions. His torture apologetics are the only bits that bother me. So I have no reason to smear him. My only intent was to say “Sam Harris has some bright ideas, but watch out for his torture apologetics”.
Okay, thanks, Grammar. I have images of myself dancing among those secret trees, singing and chanting in celebration.
Now that mental imagery should scare any sane male with a playboy fetish on the planet. Heh.
I follow your argument. Harm to do a great good I’m a little waffley on. It might be that idealistic in me that wants harm to none. Yet I can argue myself out of it because if nobody did harm, it would be a perfectly acceptable thing to believe in. However, this ain’t that world. So disregard the 2nd part of my comment on your blog. I’m seeing the argument. *L*
As a side note, Chet, I just remembered that you are a vile human being and you do not deserve my time. Please do not speak to me again; I will not answer.
We have strayed from the original premise of Amanda’s post for which I apologize.
That really wasn’t my intention. Another poster suggested another way for me to look at what Amanda had said, and I’ve been asking questions since. That would be my fault.
By objective proof I meant empirical evidence. It seemed in the post I was responding to that the author was indicating that ideas not based on “solid evidence” should be discarded. I interpreted solid evidence to mean empirical data. If I was wrong or unclear I apologize.
Since no moral force or particle has yet been detected in the universe I would argue that there is no empirical evidence of morality existing.
If ideas not based on solid evidence should be ignored than morality not being based on solid evidence by extension should be dismissed.
As was just asking the author if he or she wanted to live in a society where we discard all notions of morality based on the dearth of evidentiary support for them.
I don’t think they do. While it’s true in modern Western society that there seems to be a growing sense in people that we should make the world better for everyone this is hardly a historical constant. Most societies, like the ancient Roman, Chinese and Egyptian civilizations, have been controlled by small groups of elites who monopolized political and economic power. The morality of those societies, as reflected in their laws and ethical systems, does not seem to be about making society better for those in it. Their systems are about making the life for the Pharaoh or Emperor better. Could you call these systems moral?
I mean to have some type of transcendent nonmaterial quality or be some type of physical force or material.
The way you seem to be defining morality makes it out to be mere social conventions - a typical moral relativist view which I reject.
The problem naturally with the whole morality-comes-from-society-and-is-what-humans-make-it argument is that it leaves one unable to grapple with societies that come to different conclusions on moral issues than you do. So if some society decides its ok for its men folk to rape unmarried women or something you are left without much of a basis to reject that society’s view.
I’m not really sure of what animals you are speaking of but as to Game theory that seems to me to just be another attempt to equate morality with self interest or communal aggregate self interest.
I don’t doubt that atheists are predominantly moral people. However I see morality as being a component of a transcendental body of knowledge, like math or logical reasoning that has no physical existence but nonetheless seems to be rooted in something other than human fantasy. As humans we are all capable of uncovering this knowledge using reason and or intuition – regardless of whether or not we believe in a deity.
Also I would like to point out that behaving morally does not necessarily mean you are moral anymore than behaving like you are religiously pious makes you pious.
Um, no, it’s not, Adam. “What is moral” has been changing since humans have been in existence. What we take for granted now is “right” was not even considered rational centuries ago–rights for women, ending slavery, etc.
And your remarks about there not being a “morality particle” so we can’t prove it exists are completely disingenuous.
Well, too bad, kiddo–that’s life. People and societies change, and we hope they’re improving. I tend to think so, since altruism and empathy are coming to the fore. Then again, conservatives really have a lock on that “everyone’s really just out for themselves” philosophy, so maybe in 100 years we progressives will be seen as the stupid pollyannas they think we are.
Because he also says that sometimes our interrogators should break the law anyway, and torture.
And then be tried for it according to the law. How does that constitute an “apology for torture”? You’re just not making any sense.
My only intent was to say “Sam Harris has some bright ideas, but watch out for his torture apologetics”.
“Watch out for them” what, though?
As a side note, Chet, I just remembered that you are a vile human being
Because I don’t like dogs? You’re a fucking dipshit. Anything to discredit the messenger, huh, Grammar. No, I’m not a vile human being, Grammar. Liking dogs is not a cypher for humanity, as much as you idiot dog Nazis like to pretend otherwise.
Crap. My post just got eaten, and it’s late; but, Grammar RWA: thank you. I appreciate talking to you- it reminds me of many conversations I’ve had in the last few years with my best friend, who reached the realization that she was an atheist a while back. It’s good to be challenged, and it’s good to have someone to explore all that stuff with- morality, theology, human nature, whatever. She’s definitely taught me to think more constructively about faith- what I need it for, what I want from it, and what it really is.
Maybe we’ll go back and forth more, and maybe not, but thanks for your time regardless.
By objective proof I meant empirical evidence.
Of what? People being moral? We have that. People determining their own morals? We have that. Which moral systems lead to success and which are failures? We have abundant evidence of that.
What don’t you think we have evidence for? Is it perhaps the case that when you say “morality”, you don’t actually know what you mean?
As was just asking the author if he or she wanted to live in a society where we discard all notions of morality based on the dearth of evidentiary support for them.
But the dearth you speak of doesn’t exist. We have abundant evidence of humans operating according to moral systems. It’s sufficient to just look around you.
Most societies, like the ancient Roman, Chinese and Egyptian civilizations, have been controlled by small groups of elites who monopolized political and economic power. The morality of those societies, as reflected in their laws and ethical systems, does not seem to be about making society better for those in it.
And as a result, those societies were destroyed. Their moral systems were a failure. Do you see my point?
Could you call these systems moral?
They’re certainly systems of morality, if that’s what you mean.
I mean to have some type of transcendent nonmaterial quality or be some type of physical force or material.
What, like an idea? I guess I don’t understand. What would morals be made out of? How can something transcendent and nonmaterial exist?
The way you seem to be defining morality makes it out to be mere social conventions - a typical moral relativist view which I reject.
You can reject it if you like, but there’s abundant evidence to support it. From what basis do you dispute it? You just don’t want morals to be like that? You don’t trust yourself as an adult to act morally if morals are just rules you impose on yourself, rather than something imposed on you by God or the universe or something?
As humans we are all capable of uncovering this knowledge using reason and or intuition – regardless of whether or not we believe in a deity.
But clearly that’s nonsense. Where do we uncover it from? And why would we need to uncover or discover it when our brains have the capacity to create it? How does the brain know the difference between the false things it invents - because people surely have wrong ideas as well as right ones - and the true things that it, somehow, recieves from the transcendental ether?
Or are wrong ideas also part of a transcendental body of knowledge, and human brains have no power to develop ideas on their own? Surely, in that case, you’re faced with the Library of Babel problem, where discerning the correct transcendental ideas from the incorrect wrong is exactly the same task as actually coming up with the right ideas (in the same way that, in the Library of Babel, finding a specific book and writing it are precisely the same thing.)
The truth is that it’s your own preference that leads you to conclude the existence of any transcendental ideas; there’s absolutely no rational reason to propose such a thing. Ideas like math and morality survive just fine when we recognize them as entirely human creations instead of enshrining them as inalterable truths.
Also I would like to point out that behaving morally does not necessarily mean you are moral anymore than behaving like you are religiously pious makes you pious.
Nonsense. How is it possible to be a moral person acting immorally?
Well if Chet defends those who defend torturing humans, what chance have dogs got?
And address my previous response Chet, you douche, instead of just ignoring it and then whining how you don’t see how I can make the statement about the Geneva convention when I took the time to explain it to you.
“Dog Nazis”? What a douche.
Yes. We do have evidence that humans have moral systems. What I was getting at was do we have proof of morality itself – not the imperfect human practice of morality.
For example take a man rescuing a drowning child at great risk to himself.
We don’t have any empirical proof that this man was moral in doing so. It’s not like we can see morality around him or measure a moral force with a moralator. Its not like we can take the action and dissect it – these things are too abstract. That’s what I meant when I said we have no solid evidence that morality itself exists.
No.
While these societies eventually collapsed it was hardly because of moral decay – they were simply invaded by other powers that had their own morally questionable ways. Moreover these societies each persisted for at least a thousand years – in the case of the ancient Egyptian and Chinese societies for several thousand. American society must survive millennia more before it will be able to claim a more enduring moral system.
This also begets a more interesting question. You seem to be operating under the assumption moral systems are to be evaluated by how successful they are in keeping societies intact.
I must then pose a hypothetical. Say there are two societies. Society A is warlike, conquers other peoples for slave labor and to support their war machine. They are patriarchal; they treat women as nothing more than solider production units and possessions. (and don’t tell me that such a society is impossible – I am describing Sparta which existed for centuries longer than we have) Say society B is basically a peaceful, egalitarian democracy that has never committed a genocide or fought a war of conquest. Then say Society A conquers society B and annihilates them.
If moral systems are evaluated in the way you seem to suggest then isn’t society A more moral that society B? Society A is intact while society B fell apart.
No. I mean are they moral. Period.
Well by definition transcendental has to do with the basis of knowledge – so yeah it is basically nonmaterial. How can something nonmaterial exist you ask? I have no idea but I am pretty certain it does. Take the information contained in this reply. Obviously the information itself has not material attributes: it can’t be weighed or scanned or empirically described in anyway. Yet I hope the information exists because that would make replying to you kind of silly.
You haven’t provided any evidence.
I dispute it because the moral relativist can not give me a reason why it’s actually immoral to kill someone or commit genocide. For it to be okay I just have to think it is and or live in a society that holds those things okay. Also moral relativists can not acknowledge moral progression nor can they provide an account of how moral behaviors can change within a society. In other words if morality is just a product given to us from our society why is that moral movements can start which challenge that moral belief?
Oh. Yeah this is a major problem with morality. It’s what makes it hard. Unlike say math or science with morality we just sort of have to go on the basis of intuition and feeling for some of it – first principles and such – then reasoning for other parts of it. It’s tough and it takes awhile but eventually people seem to be able to be persuaded that slavery, patriarchal dominance, etc are wrong.
No. Wrong ideas probably just come from people who want a reason to take advantage of others. Thus if you want to have slaves but you don’t want to be a slave yourself and you want to be able to sleep at night you come up with justifications: i.e. make slaves people who look distinctly different from you, convince yourself and others the slaves are not human, and need to be controlled etc. We have to be on the constant watch against stuff like this.
If they are just human creations then why did we send an signal using math and scientific constants to a globular cluster in the 70’s in the hope of communicating with Aliens?
If this stuff wasn’t independently true it would be nonsense to any alien species after all. Oh and I’ll answer my own question – math and morality are true independent of our species’ existence. 1+1=2 to ET too. That’s why we might be able to talk to star buddies. Sending over Shakespeare on the other hand probably wouldn’t do much for them absent a means of translation.
Oh you reversed it. I indicated that an immoral person can act morally. What I am getting at is that if the guy who saves the kid from drowning does so only to gain fame and doesn’t give a shit about the kid I would question if his action was truly moral.
Grammar RWA -
Amanda pretty much concludes there is no God because she doesn’t see the concept of God fitting in with feminism. Basically, she doesn’t like the idea of a God and therefore, in her mind, God doesn’t exist.
The “Problem of Evil” is a terrible argument in support of atheism. It’s particularly weak support for so called “positive” atheism. Who determines what benevolence means and why does God have to meet the observer’s standard of benevolence?
I am curious about your journey to atheism. Was there a turning event or revelation?
Cara-
Belief in God is arational. It is not irrational. Again, it is the difference between what is beyond reason as compared to what is unreasonable. The fact that some people are treated as subhuman isn’t proof that there is no God. Just because a deity doesn’t meet your definition of benevolence doesn’t mean that the deity doesn’t exist.
The “Problem of Evil” is a terrible argument in support of atheism.
It’s a great argument in support of complex, rather than simplistic, conceptions of a supernatural intelligence.
I don’t think believers are stupid, other orange–I just think they want to believe. What bothers me is most won’t admit that simple thing.
People won’t admit what you’ve decided they’re really thinking, because you know better than they are? I can see why that would bother you.
Amanda pretty much concludes there is no God because she doesn’t see the concept of God fitting in with feminism. Basically, she doesn’t like the idea of a God and therefore, in her mind, God doesn’t exist.
You’re boring me, Seth. it’s been explained to you multiple times now by several people that you’re misinterpreting these statements. I don’t know if you’re doing it deliberately or accidentally, but it’s getting real tiresome real fast. Keep it up and you will end up talking to yourself in the dark.
The “Problem of Evil” is a terrible argument in support of atheism.
Apparently it’s not a good argument for you. I’ve noticed it’s pretty reliable, though. More so than any other tool in my kit.
Who determines what benevolence means
I do. Words have meaning. I know benevolence when I see it.
and why does God have to meet the observer’s standard of benevolence?
It was not I, but the religious, who asserted that there is a deity and it is benevolent.
I am curious about your journey to atheism. Was there a turning event or revelation?
It’s a very bland story. Many days go by, and you notice your toenails need clipping; it was like that.
A few years ago, I was reminded (by what source I do not recall) of the argument that there is nothing that exists which necessitates a supernatural agent. Some months later, I noticed I no longer believed in a god. At that time, I could not even recall how long I had not believed, and I had not noticed the change.
Belief in God is arational. It is not irrational.
“Arational” is a superfluous synonym for “irrational”.
rational = rational
irrational = not rational
cf. the law of the excluded middle.
Thank you, other orange. I enjoyed talking with you as well. Make your friend a sliced-banana-and-peanut-butter sandwich for me. She’ll love it. It’s called “The Atheist’s Nightmare”.
I dispute it because the moral relativist can not give me a reason why it’s actually immoral to kill someone or commit genocide.
Look up Euthyphro’s Dilemma. This is a problem with Divine Command Theory as well. It isn’t moral to kill people because you yourself, if you value your own life, place some value on existence. Therefore, you must also place the same value on other’s existence, else they have no reason to do the same for you.
If God said it was moral to kill or commit genocide (and he has, numerous times), it would be moral to kill or commit genocide.
Again, you use these words like they don’t come from somewhere, but philosophy has had a long tradition, well established. You say systems are “moral”, but that just means they conform to a given society’s mores.
Seth,
Amanda pretty much concludes there is no God because she doesn’t see the concept of God fitting in with feminism. Basically, she doesn’t like the idea of a God and therefore, in her mind, God doesn’t exist.
I’ll say it another way. If as you insist this is what Amanda said, what is the problem? It is an opinion. Apparently not your opinion, but still it is her opinion nonetheless. You may disagree, of course, but reiterating the statement becomes disagreeable.
It is indeed an opinion, and Amanda has them much as everybody else does. It seems irrelevant that others have read her post and taken a different message from it. I, myself, am one of those who took a different message.
As for the Problem of Evil being a terrible argument. Oh, I don’t know, it was used on me, and I began to see the whole thing in the way another might see it. Whether or not, you see it as a good argument, you might try seeing it how another might.
Then again, you can completely ignore me. This is all just another person’s opinion. Much like Amanda’s and yours and everybody else in this thread.
Re: morality from god vs. an atheist’s morality, Steven Pinker asked,
“How can we tell which theory is preferable? A thought experiment can pit them against eachother. What would be the right thing to do if God had commanded people to be selfish and cruel rather than generous and kind?
Those who root their values in religion would have to say that we ought to be selfish and cruel. Those who appeal to a moral sense would say that we ought to reject God’s command.”
The fact that there’s no God is my reason for believing there’s no God. YOU believe whatever you want–there’s no rational reason to believe it, whereas my beliefs are backed by rationality. Period.
And address my previous response Chet, you douche, instead of just ignoring it and then whining how you don’t see how I can make the statement about the Geneva convention when I took the time to explain it to you.
I did address it, Nancy. You failed to present any statement where Harris says we should ignore the Geneva Conventions. And the reason you failed is because Harris doesn’t think they should be ignored; he thinks people who torture other people should be prosecuted under those Conventions, every single time. Even when torturing someone was the right thing to do, which, in one essentially impossible circumstance, it is.
How about you address any of my arguments, instead of all these personal attacks? You’re unbelievable.
We do have evidence that humans have moral systems. What I was getting at was do we have proof of morality itself – not the imperfect human practice of morality
Er, I guess I still don’t understand. Morality is the imperfect human practice of morality, so obviously we have evidence for both, because they’re the same thing.
You seem to be operating under the assumption moral systems are to be evaluated by how successful they are in keeping societies intact.
Now we’re “evaluating” moral systems? Adam, you throw out a lot of terms without explaining what they’re supposed to mean. Why would we “evaluate” any moral system but our own?
I’m operating under the assumption that moral systems that lead to better conditions for the people under them are better than ones that don’t, and that history demonstrates an obvious trend towards systems that are better for people, as opposed to worse for people. The ancient moral outrages you refer to are outrages that occurred only because they were ancient, rather than modern.
There’s an evolution of morals that occurs, just as everything else human evolves. And it evolves because we want it to evolve, because we as humans want fairness, we want moral systems for society that jive with our own sense of what is right and wrong, which comes from experience.
No. I mean are they moral. Period.
You’ve put the period long before any explanation of what the hell you actually mean, Adam.
Yet I hope the information exists because that would make replying to you kind of silly.
But it doesn’t exist, Adam. (For one thing your replies seem to contain a lot less information than you seem to think they do.) There’s no sense in which the information you refer to is actually contained within the symbols on the page.
The information is “in” your head and mine; it’s a consequence of how the symbols you’ve written change my physical brain-state. And we both experience subtlely different information from those symbols, as a consequence of us not being the same person. The information doesn’t exist. Our brains exist.
I dispute it because the moral relativist can not give me a reason why it’s actually immoral to kill someone or commit genocide.
They can, if you pay attention. It’s obvious that you never have (and I doubt you’d start now.) The problem for you is that you transcendental moral absolutists can’t explain why Moral Person A thinks being gay is bad, but Moral Person B thinks its perfectly fine, if they’re both receiving the same set of morals from the ether. If morals are universal and transcendental, there’s no reason for the fact that they appear to be different for every single individual human.
Wrong ideas probably just come from people who want a reason to take advantage of others.
I doubt that very much. Nobody’s mistaken in your world? But where do they come from? Invention? Some transcendental source of moral ideas that can be used by oppressors to take advantage of others?
What is the source of these ideas, Adam? Imagination? Then why can’t imagination also be the source of the moral ideas you think are moral? What’s the justification for asserting that bad moral ideas are human inventions, but good moral ideas are transmissions from a transcendental source?
If they are just human creations then why did we send an signal using math and scientific constants to a globular cluster in the 70’s in the hope of communicating with Aliens?
Because some people are mistaken and think they’re not human creations. You’ll note, Adam, that we never got any reply to that transmission.
Oh and I’ll answer my own question – math and morality are true independent of our species’ existence.
It’s impossible to believe that when even on Earth there are human cultures that reject, wholesale, the concept of numbers greater than “plural.” The conclusions of math are only true insofar as you accept the initial premises. If you don’t, the conclusions are worthless. Math isn’t “true”, it’s tautological.
Oh you reversed it.
It shouldn’t matter, the way you phrased it. If morality is somehow disconnected from moral action, then it’s just as possible to be a moral person who acts immorally as the reverse. But clearly, that’s incoherent with what we understand to be “moral.” Thus, the connection between morality and moral action must exist, regardless of your example. Whether people act morally out of self-interest or out of a desire to be moral is irrelevant. Don’t you watch House?
Again, it is the difference between what is beyond reason as compared to what is unreasonable.
Typically, outside one’s own head, the difference between these two is staggeringly small.
Math isn’t “true”, it’s tautological.
I think you more mean that math isn’t “truth”. 1 + 1 = 2 is true, but only since we’ve defined “1″, “2″, “+”, and “=” to mean what they do.
Why would you worship a god whose standard of benevolence and morality were inferior to your own?
“Why would you worship a god whose standard of benevolence and morality were inferior to your own?”
Low self-esteem and a persecution complex?…
It just strikes me that, when arguing about the Christian god, it’s all, “Oh, God is love and Jesus loves you”, until you push them on it and point out how objectively terrible most of biblical morality is, and then it’s , “Oh yeah?! Well who says God’s benevolence doesn’t involve shoving red hot lugnuts up your ass for eternity for the crime of not believing in him?”. It doesn’t take much to get them to fall back on the smiting.
I think you more mean that math isn’t “truth”.
I guess if you pressed me, I’d say that I meant that “math isn’t based on empirical inquiry into the state of the natural world, it’s based on drawing conclusions according to formal rules from propositions simply assumed to be true.”
But, yeah.
Most societies, like the ancient Roman, Chinese and Egyptian civilizations, have been controlled by small groups of elites who monopolized political and economic power. The morality of those societies, as reflected in their laws and ethical systems, does not seem to be about making society better for those in it. Their systems are about making the life for the Pharaoh or Emperor better.
Nonsense. If there had been no concept for fairness or morality between common people in ancient Egypt, they wouldn’t have bothered going to court to complain about unfair treatment.
This article on women’s legal rights in ancient Egypt shows that they were relatively advanced in some respects.
oh Chet, your douchliness knows no bounds. But I’ll play along a little longer because it’s no bother to harrass a dog-hater.
here it is again, since you can’t be bothered to scroll up:
You: I don’t see where he makes that argument at all. Maybe you can quote it?
Me: Right here.
Harris: if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.
Me:So in other words if we ARE willing to wage modern warfare then we should be willing to torture as well.
And since “we” are in fact willing to wage modern warfare, then we should be willing to torture.
That seems pretty clear cut to me. How do you interpret that sentence?
===============
New Me: you do understand that the anti-Geneva convention statement is an *inference* based on his statement that if we are willing to wage war, we should be willing to torture. Right?
The Geneva Conventions reflect the reality that we ARE willing to wage war, but nevertheless feel the need to set SOME limits on ways that war is waged. If Harris had his way, the Geneva Conventions would be utterly pointless. Do I have to spell out why?
I can’t believe I had to explain this all to you. You clearly believe yourself possessed of a superior intellect. What happen Chet? Synaptic misfire?
But yes, let’s dissect Harris’s argument further if you want. You deserve so much more harrassment. On behalf of the ASPCA AND the Geneva Conventions.
I wouldn’t quote Steven Pinker to back up any arguments, especially on any topic related to feminism. He is convinced of female intellectual inferiority based on the specious arguments of evolutionary psychology. He was Lawrence Summers personal girls-are-the-victims-of-their-own-stupidity argument coach.
He is a complete asshole.
Come on folks, I know you can track this.
Grammar-
I’ve read Amanda’s thoughts on God. Even her sticky, white thoughts.
Benevolence on the macro scale might look different than on the micro scale. You know exactly what “benevolence” is? I sure don’t. ( I want to give the homeless dude some money and food. Will it cause him to think that he can make a living on the street and because of that suffer frostbite one cold Chicago night?)
“The Problem of Evil” is primarily an emotional argument. Emotional arguments work . . . look at most advertising. The funny thing is that “The Problem of Evil” can be used the other way. Here’s a pretty common example: Why would evil RANDOMLY evolve? If we observe what we call “evil” is it not in fact proof that Satan exists?
Have you never heard of “arational” vs. “irrational?” Pretty standard stuff in philosophy. I think I heard it my first week of college. Belief in a deity is not subject to “rejectability.” That’s why a belief in a deity is arational.
Basically, logic is a tool. Determinations that cannot be made with logic are arational. You can open a can of paint with a screwdriver. You can beat back a mugger with a screwdriver. You can driver screws with a screwdriver. BUT . . . it’s the wrong tool when you want to clamp a guitar that you’ve just glued. Capiche?
Shayne-
I do see that “The Problem of Evil” can be very appealing. It doesn’t mean that it’s a SOUND argument for atheism.
Cara-
See the tool illustration above. If you could prove so called “positive” atheism rationally, you would be the greatest hero academia has ever seen. You’d get the corner office at Oxford.
Can you outline your infallible rational argument that backs your beliefs?
“The Problem of Evil” is primarily an emotional argument.
Actually, on the macro scale, it isn’t. It’s a flawed design, with no purpose. Benevolence is pish-posh, the true factor is omnipotence. Why is evil necessary for some form of free-will to exist? If you claim there are moral absolutes, why not make it impossible for human beings to commit evil, given God’s omnipotent status.
The answer is always “He (always He) is testing us!” Why? And now, here is where benevolence comes in:
God (as you and other men have defined him) is logically not benevolent. He’s a gamer. He’s a voyeur. And he’s a sadist. He has the power to make sure no Hell needs to exist, but that isn’t fun for him.
It doesn’t mean that it’s a SOUND argument for atheism.
Based on rational principles, it is. And you can bluff your way through with “arational” if you want, but judging from actual characteristics and reasonings for believing in God, I’m not one to believe in things because I have to fear retribution if I do not. “God” does not offer evidence in which to believe, merely circumstance that is easily explainable through less preposterous means, and knowing this, a punishment is created for merely not believing in “him”, despite all evidence to contrary that the belief was necessary in the first place. There are numerous examples of people without belief in “God” or a higher power who were not what our own Western morality would call “evil”.
despite all evidence to contrary that the belief was necessary in the first place
Whoops, should read despite all evidence to contrary that the belief was not necessary in the first place
That doesn’t mean his question isn’t a valid one, Nancy.
While I hate sexists, yours is an ad hominem attack that does not take away from his (and my) point.
Jack-
#268
I think you might be confusing “positive” atheism and agnosticism. Two very different beasts.
So a raging sexist says something atheistic, and you feel it’s a good idea to quote him to make a point on a thread about the problem of religion and sexism.
Fine. But I’m sure you could find a better source than a raging sexist.
My basis for attacking Pinker is based on his sexist arguments. That’s not ad hominem. The asshole part was just tangential.
If he was *just* an asshole I wouldn’t have made an issue of him.
Wow Seth, you sure know how to hang onto your spare change and food, don’t you? Yes, Seth, there is NO SUCH THING AS BENEVOLENCE because any act of kindness might lead to something bad.
To paraphrase the philosopher Willow Rosenberg: “oh Seth, you really need to have every square inch of your ass kicked”
Nancy-
That was an EXAMPLE of how “benevolence” is not always easy to determine. The course of action, as best I have determined, is to offer a ride to the shelter and donate money to shelters and treatment facilities. I have a friend who buys sandwiches and beer. Two guys who want to help, but we see “benevolence” differently.
I think you might be confusing “positive” atheism and agnosticism. Two very different beasts.
Oh, I believe a belief in God is very possible. It just is not necessary or particularly useful. I will freely admit apatheism.
And, of course, by God, I am NOT talking about the white haired dude who gave Joshua a thumbs up when he slaughtered the Canaanites (at least according to Teh Gud Book ZOMG!)
LOL! But Seth - what if you get into an accident on the way to the shelter and the guy is killed? Where is your benevolence? What if the money donated is embezzled? What if the sandwiches contain rat poison? What if he gets drunk on beer and walks out into the street in a drunken stupor and gets hit by a car - being driven by a guy taking a homeless guy to a shelter?
I was so wrong to tacitly compare you to Buffy. Arguing with you is the equivalent of fighting Harmony. Without her minions.
you do understand that the anti-Geneva convention statement is an *inference* based on his statement that if we are willing to wage war, we should be willing to torture. Right?
Do you understand that you’re claiming to infer something that’s the exact opposite of what he states, and since I take his word for his own position over yours, your inference must be wrong?
If Harris had his way, the Geneva Conventions would be utterly pointless. Do I have to spell out why?
Yes, you do. If you want to advance an inference that is obviously false and not have it laughed off immediately, yes, you have to spell it out. It’s called “supporting your assertions.” You’re not exempt. And I see you’ve expanded your idiot assertions - now it’s your contention that the sole point of the Geneva Conventions is to prevent torture. As if.
The point is that you’re wrong. The Geneva Conventions don’t legitimize the morality of warfare, at least not according to the same morality that says all torture is bad. The best that can be claimed for the GC is that they reduce, slightly, the moral outrage that war constitutes. Of course, a reasonable question is - why can’t we have a Geneva Convention for torture? One that recognizes the situations where torture is the least objectionable alternative?
You can’t argue for the outrage of war and against the outrage of torture at the same time, at least not in any coherent way. (That’s why you and Grammar have been so incredibly incoherent on this issue, and why the ad hom attacks - based on the hilarious idea that a decent human being has to love nuisance dogs - feature so prominently in both your posts.)
Your moral calculus simply doesn’t add up. I’m not at all sure why I’m a “douche” simply for pointing it out. I mean, jeez, touchy much?
You clearly believe yourself possessed of a superior intellect.
I only wish I were smart enough not to talk to assholes like you, I guess.
Are you serious? Is that really a common argument in the god-botherer circles you run in? Can you give me some examples of it occurring in the wild?
It’s a pretty simple one to answer. First off, no it’s not proof of Satan, because there’s no reason that evil must necessarily derive from a supernatural entity. I’m not wholly comfortable tossing around the word “evil” undefined, but I’m assuming it encompasses acts like punching your grandmother: non-supernatural, immoral actions.
Second, to answer why evil acts occur: ruthless competition is an inevitable result when life exists with finite resources.This is precisely what evolutionary theory predicts, and lo, there it is.
Personally, I believe that we can eventually change culture enough that most evil acts become downright inconceivable as a course of action to most people (the way that genocide is, for most progressives, now). It’s slow going, though, partly because many right-wingers enjoy their hate boners.
Boy, I must be pretty fucking stupid, eh? Yeah, I know of the term, but it’s a controversial thing that springs up in certain battles between semantic cognitivism and non-cognitivism, and I don’t feel like allowing it unless you make a case that it’s necessary. As far as I’m concerned, “irrational” means “not rational”, my dictionary and common parlance agree, and your lexical preferences are a shroud of propaganda that allows you to avoid the common term’s negative connotation.
No, it isn’t. It has strong emotional connotations, but then, most discussions of morality elicit emotion. This is no surprise, and this fact should not distract from the logic:
There are hypothetical contingent events, such as infants dying of AIDS, that could not occur under the watch of an omnipotent, benevolent deity. Do infants die of AIDS? Yes. So there must not be an omnipotent, benevolent deity.
Infants dying of AIDS cause an emotional reaction, but nowhere in the chain of logic is there a step labeled “Waaaaa, I don’t like it!” It isn’t foremost an emotional argument. However, I will grant that it is effective because it elicits emotion, because emotion sticks in the listener’s mind and tends to cause the person to run the problem over and over again, instead of forgetting it.
a decent human being has to love nuisance dogs
A decent human being would have to have a problem with the abject slaughter of dogs, at least I think so. I did not read any of that thread, however. You do have a problem with dog fights, correct, Chet?
Clearly you don’t get why I called you a douche.
Again: here’s what he said:
“if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.”
All I did was turn it around:
So if we are wiling to wage modern war we should be willing to torture.
What is the problem with that?
Would you prefer “if we are willing to torture, we should be willing to wage modern war”?
You do see he’s making a connection between war and torture right? In the sense that either both are right or both are wrong. You can only refuse to torture if you refuse to go to war.
Really - what do you think I’m missing here? Or is this sentence saying the opposite of everything else in his commentary? Some kind of typo?
You guys make a great team.
You do have a problem with dog fights, correct, Chet?
Yeah, I’ve got a big problem with them. I think they’re cruel and gross.
Clearly you don’t get why I called you a douche.
Since I’m not one, Nancy, yes, it’s a little bit of a mystery. Further I don’t understand why you think “you’re a douche” constitutes a feature of intelligent argumentation.
What is the problem with that?
The problem is where you think that has anything to do with the Geneva Conventions, and why you won’t address why, if Harris supposedly wants to overturn the GC, he comes out explicitly in support of the GC.
Why can’t you understand that point, Nancy?
Really - what do you think I’m missing here?
Gosh, I don’t know - maybe the part where he explicitly asserts his support for every legal prohibition against torture, including the GC?
I mean, seriously. When are you going to address that?
Chet, I will say that there are circumstances where the only solution is militaristic conflict, however, there is never a point at which torture can be proven to give reliable information, so I will say, pacifist that I am, that I will not hesitate to approve war before torture. This is not to say that war has little to prove to me for it to be valid, but that torture has a gigantic amount to prove, nearly insurmountable, before it is valid.
Militaristic combat should never be used, and, should it need to be used, torture should have nothing to do with it. Ever. I believe you and whomever you defend are getting a large amount of things backwards. Torture focuses the war upon one person, whereas warfare, that is just, mind (as not all wars are, especially modern wars), is supposed to be somewhat random. Either way, I would approve of a just war before I would ever approve of the most just torture, even of someone who had a hand in killing someone I loved. I would never trust the information they gave, for starters.
Just a soon as you address the sentence I keep showing you, but you keep refusing to discuss.
Then we can get into the rest of his statement, which I am fully prepared to take apart with tweezers, don’t you worry about that for one minute.
And the “douche” remark wasn’t meant as an argument. It was a gratuitous observation I felt compelled to make, after reviewing your online oeuvre.
But then, you called me “asshole”, so you are capable of the gratuitous comment yourself.
But I’m fine with sticking to Sam Harris’s weak argument from now on.
Mothworm-
How would a finite and fallible person have a greater grip on morality and benevolence than an infinite and omnipotent God?
Nancy-
Why the personal attack? Nevertheless, you have truly shown how hard it is to know what “benevolence” is. What appears “benevolent” at first may have dire consequences later. I did enjoy the irony you laid out. Who smells a TV pilot?
Grammar RWA
“The Problem of Evil” can be applied to any hypothesis regarding human origin (such as evolutionary theory). I’ve heard this discussed among philosophy/theology students. You know, the whole “teams that press hate to be pressed.” The basic idea is that savage, evil acts can be so horrific that they do not make sense because they are not adaptive. Evolution requires acts to adaptive.
Would you say that ruthless competition for finite resources causes people to rape children, attack gays, etc? These are heinous, evil things, that evolutionary theory does a terrible job explaining. Lo, there it isn’t.
Of course, you can’t use “The Problem of Evil” to prove the existence of Satan! Belief in Satan is arational.
I didn’t say you were stupid. You do sound Canadian, though.
“Irrational means ‘not rational.’” Yes, and ARATIONAL means “not subject to logic.” (please see the tool example) You can’t apply logic to everything (please see the taste example regarding morbier cheese).
As for “The Problem With Evil, ” the way I see it practiced has a strong emotional component. “I’m in pain. Why would God let me suffer if God exists? I’m suffering, so there must be no God.” Or it could be the suffering of children dying of AIDS. Why should a finite, fallible person be able to define “benevolence?” What if pain causes someone to create a great work of art? Would a “benevolent” God deprive humanity of that great work of art? What if a child dying of AIDS causes a caregiver to develop a deep sense of compassion? Also, an extreme view of “benevolence” confuses it with “nice.” A parent my try to prevent a toddler from falling at all costs . . . and prevent the child from learning to walk Is that “benevolence?” Then there’s also the idea of eternal heaven.
How would a finite and fallible person have a greater grip on morality and benevolence than an infinite and omnipotent God?
Again, you read about Euthyphro’s dilemma? Now, if you want to say “morality” or “benevolence” are not actually traits of “God” as you see him, then possibly. Trust me, the evidence here is not with you. Unless you personal;ly want to redefine both “morality” and “benevolence”.
What appears “benevolent” at first may have dire consequences later.
Again, you want to make that assertion about all evil? Why is it benevolent for evil to exist? (Trust me, there is no reason to assert the benevolence of God. You have to completely redefine the word so much that it is worthless.) You might as well say that God doesn’t give a shit (or doesn’t exist, but you got a complex that makes you keep a-holdin’ on).
Seth, you can sit on your happy ass with your “Can’t prove a negative, neener-neener-neener” 8th grade debate club bullshit if you want to. It doesn’t make you right (and, you’re NOT, but that’s okay, you’re allowed to be wrong).
Like I said–you want to believe in something that not only has never been proven to exist, but the whole POINT of believing it is that you can’t prove it. Be my guest. Still, your debate is no more a debate than my 12-year-old’s assertions that he doesn’t need a bath and I can’t prove he does.
Just a soon as you address the sentence I keep showing you, but you keep refusing to discuss.
But that’s the problem, Nancy - I have, and you insist on using the false assertion that I haven’t to dodge the conversation.
I address his sentence in way I’ve already told you - in the context of his entire essay, where he makes it clear that he supports all legal prohibitions on torture. Thus, neither that sentence nor any other can support an interpretation of “let’s gut the GC” because it’s that specific reasoning he repudiates.
When you can address that point, Nancy, the conversation can continue. Despite your nonsense assertions, it’s abundantly obvious that you’re not in the least prepared to grapple with the meat of Harris’s essay.
It was a gratuitous observation I felt compelled to make, after reviewing your online oeuvre.
My “online oevure”? The whole thing?
Or just one thread where I’m attacked because I think dogs are dumb?
Chet, I will say that there are circumstances where the only solution is militaristic conflict, however, there is never a point at which torture can be proven to give reliable information, so I will say, pacifist that I am, that I will not hesitate to approve war before torture.
Thanks Jack; I appreciate your argument but it appears to me to fail on a number of points.
For starters we could certainly prove that a certain piece of informations extracted by torture was reliable; we could go investigate it. If the bomb is precisely where the guy said it would be, that’s proof that his information was reliable.
Stipulated that we have the right guy in custody, there’s no reason to think that information extracted via torture is never reliable. Under duress, it’s far more likely that a person will offer up the truth than take the effort to lie. Indeed that’s the entire foundation of polygraphy and other lie-detection systems - that it’s far more of a cognitive burden to lie than to tell the truth.
Certainly torture of the right people has produced accurate information in the past. It’s also true, of course, that you’re far more likely to be torturing the wrong guy, and he’ll just make up nonsense to get the torture to stop. So, yes, practically, it’s never right to torture. It should always be illegal because it’s far, far more likely to be misused than used legitimately.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, under a specific set of circumstances that represent essentially an impossibility, torture is a lot easier to justify than war. For instance, what if torture could prevent a war? Even a just war?
Surely it would be right to torture then? Even if I was the one who had to be tortured, I’d be forced to agree.
The basic idea is that savage, evil acts can be so horrific that they do not make sense because they are not adaptive. Evolution requires acts to adaptive.
I think maybe you don’t understand evolution. Evolution doesn’t require that all acts and qualities are adaptive. After all we get diseases and parasites, and while that’s good for the diseases and parasites, it’s not adaptive for humans.
But, in general, the beings perpetrating those horrific acts do generally profit by them, at least in the short term. So it’s not clear in what sense you can say that evil is not adaptive. Indeed, evil is so seductive because of its great rewards.
As for “The Problem With Evil, ” the way I see it practiced has a strong emotional component. “I’m in pain.
But pain is not an emotion. And objecting to senseless pain is not an emotion, either. It’s a completely reasonable, human response.
Yes, and ARATIONAL means “not subject to logic.”
If we can think about it, it surely can’t be “arational.” That’s simply a false attempt to set certain entities beyond discourse when there’s no reason they should be. The existence of God in the universe is testable. That it has failed every test is significant.
Nancy, you’ve already demonstrated that Harris is willing to excuse torture. Anyone reading the thread can see that. Don’t chase this around in circles.
To vindicate specifically your original portrayal of his argument, “so until there is peace on earth, screw the Geneva conventions”, you may be best served by focusing on this sentence: “If an interrogator finds himself in such a circumstance, and he breaks the law [against torture, such as the Geneva conventions], there will not be much of a will to prosecute him (and interrogators will know this).”
This is where Harris gives the wink wink, nudge nudge approval of torture without prosecution, which if adopted by a government as explicit or understood policy, renders the Geneva conventions irrelevant. Thus your original portrayal was accurate.
You can’t argue for the outrage of war and against the outrage of torture at the same time, at least not in any coherent way.
Just War doctrine.
This isn’t a response. You just state what you didn’t attempt to prove – morality is the imperfect practice of morality -without any rationale or evidence. By the way you just admitted that there is a form of perfect morality – else how could there be an imperfect practice of it? This could be just a casual mistake but if it isn’t it is not consistent with the moral relativism that you purport to believe.
Once again you don’t actually provide any reasoning – in lieu of it you just ask a few questions and make a few unsuported statements.
Additionally I was just responding to your argument that the moral systems of ancient societies were a failure. When you say something like that it sounds like you are evaluating them. So basically in the course of two posts you have taken two separate positions: (1) the moral systems of old were failures (which is an evaluation) and (2) we are not to (or can not) evaluate them.
Now you seem to be back to your earlier position – that moral systems are to be evaluated – as you indicate that moral systems which lead to better conditions for the people under them are best.
Where do these notions of fairness come from? Why do we want these things? How can you make your unwarranted assumption that systems which benefit the most are moral? If morality is indeed just human fantasy and imagination then how can you justify pointing to any system being better than any other? Notice that my responses here are basically just questions because you are neglecting to provide any consistent reasoning or explanations.
You took this out of context. I was responding to a question you asked: “They’re certainly systems of morality, if that’s what you mean?”. So I made it clear that was not what I meant. Having explained this earlier I did not reiterate my rationale. By the way you never responded to my explanation for why we have no empirical evidence of morality existing – although we have evidence of moral systems being practiced. For your conviencence this is what I said:
“Yes. We do have evidence that humans have moral systems. What I was getting at was do we have proof of morality itself – not the imperfect human practice of morality.
For example take a man rescuing a drowning child at great risk to himself.
We don’t have any empirical proof that this man was moral in doing so. It’s not like we can see morality around him or measure a moral force with a moralator. Its not like we can take the action and dissect it – these things are too abstract. That’s what I meant when I said we have no solid evidence that morality itself exists.”
By the way I originally said this in response to someone who argued that if you don’t have solid evidence of something you shouldn’t be listened too. Thus by this logic if you have no solid evidence that one moral system is better than another or that morality even exists in any meaningful way you should be a moral nihilist.
I find this odd. Basically you seem to be saying that minds and brains are the same thing – which must be true if information does not really exist. This is like claiming that a novel is the same as the book in which it is written. No, the book is the physical representation of symbols which stand for letters and words which together make up the concepts and story as a whole. If the book and the novel are the same thing then why can the same exact novel be conveyed in totally different mediums – like an MP3 file of an audio book inscribed on a CD? It’s the concepts and narration of the novel that I am claiming exists immaterially – and which seem not to be dependent upon in particular median. The concepts – the novel itself - have no physical characteristics. They can not be weighed or sliced in half to be analyzed – or in any way empirically described. Similarly a brain is just the representation of the mind – the thoughts and information contained in the brain – which are immaterial. The mind is the result of the material – neurons and synapses and brain states – working together which as a whole are greater than the sum of its parts. Saying information doesn’t exist because brain states within craniums do is like saying stories don’t exist – only collections of letters and words do within books. Furthermore, logically it should be possible to create, as many futurists contend, a machine which could mimic the processes of the brain and to which one could transfer one’s mind to that machine brain – demonstrating that a brain is not the mind any more than an MP3 file is Shakespeare.
That probably has something to do with the fact that the cluster is 10,000 light years way.
Here it seems as though you are arguing that science, math, logic and morality are all just human creations. It appears not only are you a moral relativist but a science, logic and math relativist as well. Is this a fair observation: do you think there is no objectively true logic, math or science independent of humanity?
Just War doctrine.
So call it “Just Torture doctrine.” It doesn’t really help you out of the bind.
Thus your original portrayal was accurate.
Except that it’s not, Grammar. If you want to come back into the conversation, you’re free to. All you have to do is recognize that “my opponent doesn’t like dogs” doesn’t constitute much of an argument.
You just state what you didn’t attempt to prove – morality is the imperfect practice of morality -without any rationale or evidence.
The onus is on you to prove what is essentially counter-obvious - that there’s any distinction to be made between morality as practiced and some kind of perfect, Platonic morality that exists in supernatural realms.
You’re the one who has to prove it, Adam. Not me. I’m not proposing invisible, transcendental morality. Yours is the positive claim. Yours is the burden of evidence.
By the way you just admitted that there is a form of perfect morality – else how could there be an imperfect practice of it?
Huh? That doesn’t follow. Something perfect doesn’t have to exist for an imperfect copy of it to exist. Just because you have a copy of something, or a derivative of something, doesn’t mean that there had to be an existing original.
When you say something like that it sounds like you are evaluating them.
I’m evaluating societies. The fact that a society doesn’t exist anymore strikes me as a good way to determine that it was a failure.
Like I said you’re suddenly talking about “evaluating morals” without explaining what that means. They’re not evasions, Adam, they’re questions to find out what the hell you mean so I can reply to it. What you’re doing is evading questions. As a result it’s quite difficult to try to talk to you. Is this de rigeur for philosophers, or something?
Where do these notions of fairness come from?
Our imagination, our will, like everything else that’s a human creation. Why would they come from anywhere else?
If morality is indeed just human fantasy and imagination then how can you justify pointing to any system being better than any other?
The results justify it. It’s actually quite simple.
So I made it clear that was not what I meant.
So what on Earth do you mean, Adam? Wasn’t my question clear in indicating that I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about?
Why are you so resistant to explaining what you’re on about? How on Earth do you expect communication to occur when you insist on portraying your position like it’s an enigma?
By the way you never responded to my explanation for why we have no empirical evidence of morality existing – although we have evidence of moral systems being practiced.
But I did respond. You responded to the response. Now you’re lying about it? Need I remind you? We do have evidence for morality existing, because we have evidence for the human practice of morality. And because the human practice of morality is all the morality that exists, it’s all the same evidence. They’re the same thing. There’s no coherent sense in which morality can be separated from the practice of it.
Basically you seem to be saying that minds and brains are the same thing – which must be true if information does not really exist.
They are the same thing. Minds are what brains do. Surely in the 21st century it’s impossible to dispute that the experience of “mind” is simply a result of having a brain that’s doing that.
If the book and the novel are the same thing then why can the same exact novel be conveyed in totally different mediums – like an MP3 file of an audio book inscribed on a CD?
Because it’s not the exact same novel. It’s not the exact same story. The experience isn’t the same at all. The medium is the message. Remember?
That’s why it’s so hard to adapt a book for the movies. You can’t just take the same story from a novel and film it. It doesn’t work like that because there’s no such thing as “information” that exists outside of our experience of it. A Chinese dictionary contains no information at all when people stop being able to read Chinese.
It’s the concepts and narration of the novel that I am claiming exists immaterially – and which seem not to be dependent upon in particular median.
Exists where? In what form? And how does it get into the book?
Concepts and narrations are just ideas, Adam, and ideas don’t “exist” in any sense. They’re not out there, waiting to be picked up on transcendental radio. They’re human inventions that result from imagination and will. Novels are like that. Math is like that. Morals are like that. They’re human inventions, and they’re nonexistent except in minds.
That probably has something to do with the fact that the cluster is 10,000 light years way.
And you think there’s nobody closer? Why?
Here it seems as though you are arguing that science, math, logic and morality are all just human creations.
Yes, exactly.
Is this a fair observation: do you think there is no objectively true logic, math or science independent of humanity?
No, of course not. The map is not the territory. Science is not reality; it’s our attempt to model a reality we can perceive through our senses. The reality is real. The science that explains it is the fruit of our labor and imagination.
I mean, duh.
Pretty easily. Any human being that behaved as the god of the bible is described as doing would be labeled a psychopath. To say that it’s Ok for god to do so is to say nothing more than might makes right.
If, as you seem to believe, we have no way of truly knowing what benevolence and morality are, then how do you recognize it in your god?
How “benevolent” of god to torture one person to bring about some “divine” effect in another. I’m sure the child who has spent her life in agony really appreciates how it’s helped her caregiver develp a deeper sense of compassion.
You’re ignoring the omnipotent part of the equation. Any all-powerful being could easily accomplish whatever you think it is that is gained through suffering without the suffering. Suffering, in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent god, is pointless unless your god is also a sadist. Now, maybe that is the god you worship, but it’s not the one I hear the theists trying to defend all the time.
A god can not be omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent all at the same time (in the universe as we know it). If god can prevent suffering but doesn’t, then he is not omnibenevolent. If he cannot prevent suffering, then he is not omnipotent or omniscient. Either way, he’s not the god you say he is.
Actually, it doesn’t. There are plenty of traits that just arise as a side consequence of other traits (google Stephen J. Gould and spandrels). There are also traits that exist because they have no selective pressure acting upon them.
Besides which, we can only begin to classify something as “evil” when the parties involved are aware of the meaning of their actions. We don’t consider non-human animals “evil” when they kill their prey for food, even though they may do so in some pretty horrific ways.
People and creatures don’t always do things that are to their long term advantage. Animals, for the most part, don’t have to worry about group dynamics and societies. If you live and hunt on your own, killing an outsider probably aids your immediate and long term survival.
In human societies, these impulses must be balanced against the cohesiveness of the unit (you’ll survive better in a pack than on your own). And, in animals that live in groups, you’ll see varying types and levels of social systems arise to maintain order. Even then, part of surviving in a group is competing against other groups, so, yes, you’ll still see plenty of non-benevolence. Not to mention the pressures (especially when you add self-consciousness, abstract thinking, and rudimentary attempts to comprehend/control nature) to maintain cohesiveness within the group which nearly universally leads to violence against anyone or anything that goes against the system.
Is it irrational or arational to believe in the existence of something for which there has never been any evidence?
This isn’t a response. You just state what you didn’t attempt to prove – morality is the imperfect practice of morality -without any rationale or evidence. By the way you just admitted that there is a form of perfect morality – else how could there be an imperfect practice of it? This could be just a casual mistake but if it isn’t it is not consistent with the moral relativism that you purport to believe.
I meant to add earlier, that I wish we could get away from talking about morality. I’m not sure I can formulate a definition of morality that doesn’t sound like a definition of sin, and since I don’t believe there is any such thing as sin…
I think we should be talking about ethics here.
Meh. That middle paragraph should be blockquoted, too.
By the way you just admitted that there is a form of perfect morality – else how could there be an imperfect practice of it?
Wow, new levels of disingenuousness. No, if I say that humans are imperfect, that, in no way, implies the existence of an actual perfect human being. It implies the idea of a perfect human being, and an idea can be created, but whether it actually exists is not predicated on it’s ability to be thought of in the minds of rational beings.
This is actually very simple and basic.
This isn’t a response. You just state what you didn’t attempt to prove – morality is the imperfect practice of morality -without any rationale or evidence.
Ok, last time, and then I give up. “Morality” has nothing to do with some cosmic supernatural mystic crystal Dude-in-the-stars. It’s the observation and judgment of actions with respect to the mores of the society in which the judgment takes place. To say otherwise is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Seth, “benevolence” is a word in human languages. It is the god-botherers who assert that there is a god and it is benevolent. That sentence is spoken by humans and has a meaning in human minds. You can’t cry “humans don’t know what benevolence is!” We do. We made up the word, to refer to concepts we define. You are now trying to strip words of their meaning so that they don’t work against your Imaginary Friend. There are somewhat respectable and interesting methods of arguing for the existence of a deity, but childish games aren’t among such methods.
No it can’t. Evil is a philosophical “problem” only when it is asserted that a benevolent consciousness is managing the situation. In the absence of such a being, there is no reason to expect that evil acts would not occur. So it is not a surprise to be explained, no more than water streaming down a hill.
I’m not surprised that theology students would misunderstand basic logic. But I’m not too excited by anecdote. As I asked before, are there concrete examples of this argument in the wild that you can point me toward? That might be profoundly amusing, and it would be nice if you could offer something to keep my interest.
No, it doesn’t. Cancer is not “adaptive”; it does not increase reproductive fitness. And yet it persists. Natural selection allows all sorts of maladaptive phenomena to persist. The only exclusionary criteria is that the phenomena must not make it impossible for the organism to pass on its genes. Everything else is permitted.
If raping children and attacking gays doesn’t stop a person from passing on their genes, it can occur. You also need to consider the effects of culture, which radically increase the range of plausible behaviors. Memetic influences are very open-ended, and can drive all sorts of (extremely altruistic, extremely wicked, and just outlandishly bizarre) behavior in humans that we would not see in other animals. Dawkins: “Civilized human behavior has about as much connection with natural selection as does the behavior of a circus bear on a unicycle.” Human behavior under the influence of culture is even less constrained than nonhuman behavior under natural selection. It’s in the domain of sociologists to address, not biologists.
That said, tremendous wickedness occurs in nonhumans. Try Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s 1977 paper, “Infanticide as a Primate Reproductive Strategy” if you like horror stories.
Thank you. Since you’ve just ceded this territory, that particular discussion is over. If rational means rational, and irrational means not rational, then by the law of the excluded middle, everything is either rational or irrational, one or the other, and those are the only options. If you don’t understand the law of the excluded middle, I’m sorry, but your honest misunderstanding doesn’t make you any less wrong.
You are trying to define “arational” to mean both “not rational or irrational”. By the distributive law, this is equivalent to saying “not rational, and not not rational”. Eliminating the double negative, you are saying it is “not rational, and rational”. This is a contradiction, and thus false.
That which is arational (assuming it is not an empty set) is actually a subset of that which is irrational. I’m glad we could put this to rest. Feel free to make your impassioned pleas for special deference to that subset of irrationality that you hold so dear, but I don’t think you have much of an audience anyway.
Heaven doesn’t undo the past. An infant that dies in agony is still an infant that dies in agony. If you think that slowly murdering a child to bring that child to heaven is better than just creating the child already in heaven, then we have no common ground and it may be best for us to go our separate ways rather than dragging this out to the point of mutual exhaustion.
By the way, Seth, originally I had guessed you for a theistic evolutionist. Some of your comments are making me wonder. Do you acknowledge the fact of evolution?
Fuck yes, mothworm, thank you for pointing that out.
So call it “Just Torture doctrine.” It doesn’t really help you out of the bind.
I am perfectly happy in allowing torture that follows principles which are homologues to those of Just War.
Since this excludes any form of torture, it’s not that huge a concession…
So in other words, this sentence was a big mistake in the middle of an essay that argues exactly the opposite.
Thanks. And you are so coherent. Unlike some I could name.
wink wink
:)
Do I have to tell YOU why Seth? You know all about the problem of benevolence.
But your whole thing on benevolence - you can’t do something nice to someone because somewhere, somehow something bad might occur as a result - is so absurd I have a hard time taking you seriously. I mean, how could you NOT get how ridiculous your benevolence-to-a-homeless guy argument was?
Are we clear now that you will NEVER give any money to charity because of the evil that may occur as a result of your misguided attempt at “benevolence?”
But Seth - what if your keeping all your money for yourself somehow results in something bad happening? Then what?
Clearly every single thing you do is a vector for evil Seth. What does that feel like?
Let’s look at some other statements by Sam Harris that seem to say the exact opposite of what Chet believes:
Now incoherent dog-loving fool that I am, I interpret this as Sam Harris admitting that he thinks that torture is an “ethical necessity.”
I await Chet to explain my logical error.
Let’s look at some other statements by Sam Harris that seem to say the exact opposite of what Chet believes:
What? No, you’re misunderstood, apparently. Like Harris, I too believe that, if war can be considered an ethical necessity under certain circumstances, there are also circumstances where torture as well can be an ethical certainty.
I don’t see how that can be denied. Obviously, it would be better to torture one person than to allow a city to be annihilated, if you could be certain that the one can prevent the other.
I realize, and Harris does as well, that that’s a big “if.” It’s not an impossibility, however, for the reasons that he stipulates in his essay.
And none of that, Nancy, implies that we should reject the Geneva Conventions nor any other stricture against torture.
I await Chet to explain my logical error.
The logical error is the unjustified inference that Harris thinks we should obviate the Geneva Conventions. I can imagine a circumstance in which it’s an ethical necessity to break a law, at the same time that I recognize that the law is just, and should be maintained, and transgressors of that law be punished. (Even the ones who broke the law for just reasons.)
Why can’t you?
I guess it just comes down to alignment. Lawful Good types can’t imagine a circumstance in which it would be good to break a just law. Chaotic Good types can’t imagine not being able to imagine it. Oddly enough, I think Lawful Good and Chaotic Good are, in practice, synonyms for “dog lover” and “cat person.”
Grammar RWA-
It seems to me that you have a lot of baggage with the “god-botherers” and are approaching discussion based upon that baggage.
OK. Some more about arationality . . . back to the first week of college. Presuppositions are sometimes arational . . . You probably assume that the physical world and that your own body exist, but you can’t PROVE it. It could ALL be a FIGMENT of your imagination. Your senses could be lying to you. There is no way to prove it, but somehow you just “know” it. The way you know that the physical world exists cannot be either proven or disproven. That “knowing” is ARATIONAL. If you deny the existence of the arational, you say that your knowledge of your own physical body and the world around you is irrational. BTW, The excluded middle is a neat trick, but you are applying rationality to arationality.
(see tool example above)
As for “benevolence.” I could get into theology, but basically, your description of benevolence” as a HUMAN term is correct. To be a little more precise, “benevolence” is a word in the ENGLISH language. Other languages have different words that are close in meaning, but not exactly the same. “Benevolence” is highly subjective and complex. It is not an easily defined thing like the concept of a “triangle.”
At any rate, finite human beings, with a track record of making mistakes, are not in a position to determine if an omnipotent deity is “benevolent” or not. What appears to be benevolent at first might turn out to be harmful. True benevolence doesn’t necessarily preclude pain or suffering if such pain and suffering produce positive things later.
Chet- The “emotional” part of the pain leading so called “positive” atheism is not the pain. The emotional part is the REACTION to the pain.
Then you’re making the word benevolence (and any other word) meaningless. If you can’t say what benevolence means when applied to god, then you can’t say what any other word means, either. You can’t say anything meaningful or definitional about god at all. Which makes him a completely meaningless concept. Which is something I would agree with, but I doubt that you would.
You’re still ignoring the salient point that an omnipotent, omniscient being could produce any “positive thing” without the added suffering. Which makes your god objectively cruel.
You probably assume that the physical world and that your own body exist, but you can’t PROVE it.
Um, wait, this is not arational. Decartes discussed this many years ago.
There is no reason to believe that which you have no evidence for or against. You would say that, according to your ideology, I have no reason to negate the idea that I am a brain in a vat, being told everything about my existence through wires operated by an evil genius and his supercomputers.
In short, Seth’s entire premise is based on an idea that can be refuted by Occam’s Razor and Rationality.
At any rate, finite human beings, with a track record of making mistakes, are not in a position to determine if an omnipotent deity is “benevolent” or not.
Stupidity at its finest. The word “benevolent” has a definition. It was created by humans, and humans will understand what the hell you are talking about when you say “benevolence”. It is not applicable to the God you presuppose exists.