Saturday, April 20, 2013

On the Life-Debasing Sensibilities of the True Believers


  • Fanatical Muslims kill thousands in their attack on the World Trade Center in New York because God wills them to strike fears into the heart of the infidel.
  • A pious Christian murders an abortion doctor in Kansas because he was convinced that God wanted him to revenge the lives of the unborn taken by the practice of abortion.
  • Devout Jews drive Muslims from their homelands on the West Bank and Gaza Strip because they believe that God has granted them the rights to their lands.
And now two brothers from Chechnya, Tamerlan and Dzhohar Tsarnev, caused mayhem and panic in Boston after exploding two bombs at the Boston Marathon.  The older brother, Tamerlan, age 26, had clearly been on the road to religious fanaticism for some time. The younger, Dzhohar, age 19, appears to have been influenced by his brother’s religious views, although by all accounts he was a fairly assimilated American.  Whatever their specific motivations might have been, it is clear that religion played a huge role in inspiring their rampage. 
There are those who would argue that the religious beliefs that propelled these two to kill innocent human beings represent a perverse form of Islam.  But in fact, the sacred book for all Muslims, The Koran, has over 100 verses calling for the faithful to go to war against infidels.  And this includes the following:
"And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]... but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful.   And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah." (Koran 2:191-193)
Of course, Christian and Jews have no grounds to be too smug.  The Old Testament is filled with passages calling for genocide against non-believers and acts of violence against those who violate God’s law.  And the New Testament contains passages that have been used by Christians to justify sexism, racism, and homophobia to this very day (not to mention inspiring several crusades, a fairly nasty inquisition, and centuries of slavery). 
The problem with religious belief in general is that at times it can be used as a kind of crutch to cover up the fears, anxieties, and insecurities that are part and parcel of the human condition.  Sickness, suffering, old age, and death are our lot in life.  And no one likes to think that the misery we experience is pointless.  So some people turn to religion to provide them with a soothing narrative to help put their suffering into some kind of meaningful content. 
With his faith to support him, the believer doesn’t have to worry about death any longer, because, as long as he remains faithful to God’s law, he will be rewarded with an eternity of pleasure with God in heaven (rather like your Disney vacation extended forever, but without all the humid weather, endless lines, and mobs of annoying children at every turn).  This leads to a kind of inner peace, but it’s an illusionary one: we can forget for a few moments at least just how wretched life is, but in the end we can never actually escape the reality of our own human contingency and finitude.  As Kierkegaard noted, despair is an inevitable part of our human experience and affects the believer just as much as it does the non-believer. 
The religious fanatic, however, takes his faith to another level entirely than the ordinary believer.  The fanatic has the kind of crystal clear certainty about God’s will and how he should live his life that admits absolutely no questioning or doubt.  In a Twitter feed, Dzhohar Tsarnev, the younger of the two Boston marathon bombers, wrote the following:
I kind of like religious debates.  Just knowing what other people believe is interesting and then completely crushing their beliefs with facts is fun.
Notice that Dzhohar didn’t say that he enjoys religious debates because it helps him to become more sympathetic to views than are different from his own.  He enjoys them because he gets a thrill from “crushing” his opponents.  And notice also that he describes his opponents’ positions as “beliefs” (something subjective, capricious, subject to error) and his own as “facts” (objective, certain, and infallible).
The religious fanatic’s certainty leads him to view the beliefs of all those with whom he disagrees as a kind of heresy—a rejection of God’s eternal law and a violation of the moral order that He has established on earth.  This makes it much easier, I suppose, to demean one’s opponents and to put them in the category of unredeemable heretic, apostate, or infidel.  It also makes it easier to kill them when you need to, because your opponents become, not just those who have a different perspective on the truth, but rather those who are activity working against God’s sublime plans for mankind (the establishment of the Kingdom or of sharia law on earth, for example).
But this denigration of the non-believer alone doesn’t fully account for the propensity of some fanatics to engage in acts of violence against those with whom they disagree.  I’ve met plenty of religious fanatics in my time, but none of them, at least to my knowledge, has ever caused serious physical harm to another human being.  They may foam up at the mouth during an argument about religion, but they probably aren’t going to kill you because you disagree with them.    There’s something more at work in the psychological make-up of the “true believer” that enables him to move from disagreeing strenuously with his opponents to wanting to see his opponents maimed or killed.   
And that something more is the kind of life-denying sensibility that is an inevitable part of all religious belief, but which is magnified almost infinitely in the minds of fanatics.
Certainly I think that all religious belief contains within itself some degree of life-denial.  The believer—whether Christian, Jew, or Muslim—sees his ultimate end separate from his life in this world.  Earthly existence, at its best, is an imperfect reflection of that eternal life to which the believer aspires.  At its worst, it becomes a “veil of tears” that we are forced to suffer through on our way to our true home with God in heaven.
By focusing on the next life, the believer inevitably is forced to downplay or ignore what’s going on in this world.  The believer, for example, doesn’t have to worry about the polar ice caps melting and what this might mean for future generations, because his focus is on the next world. He need not concern himself with creating a more just and social order here, because the very injustices that he experiences will provide the justification for his rewards later. 
But, though there’s a degree of life-denial in all religious belief, for the religious fanatic this life-denial takes on a pathological form.  It becomes not just life-denial, but life-denigration.  For the fanatic, any sense of pleasure, meaning, and satisfaction from this life that one derives diminishes the focus that ought to be placed on the next life.  So the fanatic is forced to view earthly existence as something ugly, sordid, and unsavory in order to magnify the qualities of the world to come.  For Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Kansas becomes something hideous to be fled from, because it makes that “somewhere over the rainbow” where she really longs to be all that much more desirable.  The only difference between Dorothy and the religious fanatic is that the fanatic never has the opportunity to realize that there really is “no place like home,” whereas Dorothy is wise enough by the end of her adventures to eventually come to understand that fact.
Like all human beings, the religious fanatic has a biological drive to try to derive as much physical pleasure from life as possible.  But the more he enjoys things like food, drink, sex, and even the higher pleasures of friendship and family life, the more tortured he becomes, because he views his natural desires as a kind of moral weakness.  This tension probably exists in all religious fanatics.  It’s interesting to note that the bombers of the World Trade Center couldn’t stop themselves from going to a strip club and drinking to excess before committing their atrocities.  One can only imagine that the contempt they felt for themselves for giving into such physical pleasures must have provided fuel for the murderous acts that they later engaged in.
Lest anyone think that I am attacking all forms of religious belief as bordering on life-denigration, let me assure you that this is most certainly not my position.  Just as I’ve met more than a few religious fanatics during my many years working for the Catholic Church, I’ve also met many devout men and women who are as life-affirming as you can possibly be.  These are people who sincerely believe that God’s kingdom is already at hand and that religious faith is meant to be lived out fully in this world.  Such individuals are deeply committed to making the world a better place and see absolutely no incompatibility between their love of life and their love for God.

But I also think that, to the extent that there is any kind of life-denying message in the teachings of organized religion, we will be providing a breeding ground for those warped individuals who think it necessary to demonstrate their devotion to God by wreaking havoc on the world.  In this sense, people like Tamerlan and Dzhohar Tsarnev should be viewed as victims of a perverse and unhealthy worldview that has been shaped by life-denigrating tendencies that exist in most of our major religions. It’s only when we begin to acknowledge that religious faith and life-affirmation, far from being incompatible, are actually two essential components of a healthy spiritual life that we will even begin to address the underlying causes of acts of terrorism like the one we just witnessed in Boston.

80 comments:

  1. Here's where I agree with you:

    Most religious people do seem to have life denying tendencies. The question is whether these tendencies are a result of their religious beliefs or whether people with life denying tendencies tend to be attracted to religion. It's the chicken and the egg problem.

    Here's where we disagree:

    you suggest that the life denigrating tendencies promoted by some religions leads to violent and destructive behavior towards others. I don't think that this is the case. Life denegrators in fact tend to hurt themselves rather than others. Their guilt at their sexual desires, for example, might lead them to repress these desires, but then act out in other ways that hurt themselves (drinking, drugs, etc). The main problem with organized religion is not that it turns people into violent psychopaths, but that it forces people to ignore their own healthy desire for physical pleasure and causes them to become self-loathing neurotics.

    I think you have to look for the causes of the terrorist acts in Boston in some other place than religious belief.

    - Sara

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  2. Personally, without knowing the facts or doing the interrogations, I think the older brother was a pissed off 20 something alone in the world and he drafted his brother to aid him in making a mark on the world. I don't think this is religious fanaticism, nor do i believe they were trained or otherwise influenced. As evidenced by the screaming uncle who everyone is lauding as some kind of hero in this for calling out his nephews for what they are (losers) and shaming his family, these two were rejected by the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally. It is a tough thing to live life without any love, either from family, friends, coworkers etc.

    May I suggest another topic for debate? From 2000-2010, 3,033 people have been killed by terrorist attacks in the USA. 3 more people were killed this week, and we (rightfully) hunted them down like the scum they are. Yet in the same time span, 335,609 were killed by guns. Oddly enough, we can't even pass a law requiring mildly expanded background checks for sale of guns. I wish those with common sense would come out and say "Let's abolish the 2nd amendment and start over with logical, needed gun laws."

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    1. You and I are definitely in agreement about the gun issue. But I think that the link between religion and what happened in Boston will be borne out.

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  3. you lack the courage of your convictions, doc. you were on the right track making the link between religion and violence, but then as always you had to backslide and imply that there can be a healthy form of religious belief. this is like saying that there's a healthy form of incest or necrophilia. religious belief is a type of pathology. you can't be psychologically healthy and be religious. our species will only advance once we've killed off organized religion completely. when that happens hopefully you'll see less violence in the world too.

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  4. Thank you for taking on a very difficult subject to understand and trying to make sense of it. The issues at hand are so beyond us and the 'correction' of extremist ideals combined with violence may never be possible. I find it so difficult to conceive that two young people, who derived the benefits of living in America, ...hate America? To disagree with fervor is everyone's right but how do you go from that to hurting innocent people? Perhaps I am too naive but I just can't put my head around it. Thanks, Mike.

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  5. It may well be that some people can only conceive of God’s kingdom as “a Disney vacation extended forever,” but, as you yourself point out, other believers (those worth taking seriously) have a radically different conception: God’s kingdom is already at hand, wherever the naked are being clothed, the hungry fed, the sick visited, bombing victims tended to … and sinners (even bombers) shown mercy.

    While it’s true that fanatics (whether nationalistic, racist, ethnic, political, ideological, economic, religious) “take their faith to another level entirely than the ordinary believer,” giving them “crystal clear certainty about how they should live their lives that admits absolutely no questioning or doubt,” so too do saints (Francis, Damien the Leper, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa) and other moral heroes, like those who risked their lives to assist complete strangers injured by the bombs. You can bet that the victims who were helped by these Good Samaritans were very happy that their saviors didn’t doubt their moral convictions. Of course, the saint, while acting with strong conviction, does see a place for critical reflection, even doubt—but the exact relation of criticism, doubt, and certainty is a difficult question.

    Again, it’s true that the certainty with which fanatics hold their convictions leads them to view the convictions of those with whom they disagree as a “violation of the moral order,” making it easier to demean their opponents and even to kill them; however, the certainty of saints concerning the moral order allows them to do just the opposite, even to the point of dying for those with whom they disagree.

    You say: “Certainly [note: you too, like all of us, are interested in certainty] I think that all religious belief contains within itself some degree of life-denial”; i.e., “the believer inevitably is forced to downplay or ignore what’s going on in this world.” At the same time you say that you are not attacking “all forms of religious belief as bordering on life-denigration,” indeed, that many believers are “as life-affirming as you can possibly be”; such believers “sincerely believe that God’s kingdom is already at hand and that religious faith is meant to be lived out fully in this world,” and so they’re “deeply committed to making the world a better place and see absolutely no incompatibility between their love of life and their love for God.” Further down you say that life-denigrating “tendencies” exist in “most of our major religions.” I’m not sure what you think, but I’m guessing that it’s that some (perhaps very few) religious beliefs are life-affirming, while others (perhaps most) are life-denying in varying degrees, and most have life-denying tendencies. But I do agree that “to the extent that there is any kind of life-denying message in the teachings of organized religion,” such a religion will be “a breeding ground for those warped individuals who think it necessary to demonstrate their devotion to God by wreaking havoc on the world.”

    John S.

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  6. Dr. Russo:

    Your militant secularism is your Achilles' heel even as it (unbeknownst to you?) reveals the weakness of your argument. It is very un-philosophical (I dare to point out to you) to begin with a conclusion and argue backwards from there. If we have indeed established, through evidence, and beyond reasonable doubt, that "religion" universally plays a decisive role in terrorism, then in this particular case you might be able to argue that the brothers Tsarnaev shared this horrendous universal motivation. I'm inclined to disagree (along with John S. and Sara) that this is the case in the universal (although you present it as unquestionable), and, on the basis of what little information we have yet about these two hateful miscreants, is at all true in the particular.

    And yet: "...it is clear that religion played a huge role in inspiring their rampage."

    Let me ask you a question: how big a role does love play in inspiring rape? If a rapist believes that love is nothing more than sexual intercourse, can he convince himself that he is doing the right thing ("...you know she wants it..."), because, after all, love is a universal desire. But intercourse, all by itself, is not love (although love can be brought to fullness in intercourse), and we wouldn't demean love by suggesting so. And adherence to some particular doctrine, all by itself, is not "religion" (although religions can be made real in adherence to doctrines and values). And the religious experience is a universal aspiration, despite Alex's silly, adolescent, and self-righteous tantrum (more about this in a bit).

    What you're doing is nothing more than projecting your own unpleasant experiences with "religion" on to the entirety of the species, presenting a particular premise as a universal one, and pointing to the few particular examples of madness as proof of your syllogism (i.e., all "religious" fanatics have murder in their heart; the brothers Tsarnaev had murder in their hearts: therefore, the brothers Tsarnaev were religious fanatics).

    "There’s something more at work in the psychological make-up of the “true believer” that enables him to move from disagreeing strenuously with his opponents to wanting to see his opponents maimed or killed...that something more is the kind of life-denying sensibility that is an inevitable part of all religious belief, but which is magnified almost infinitely in the minds of fanatics."

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    1. Since you've already, interestingly enough, argued against this proposition, I won't bother to rehash your counter-argument (life-affirming vs. life-denying belief systems). I'll cut to the chase. We're not talking about religion at all, but ideology. I'm talking about ideology in the sense Jacques Ellul talks about it: a rigid, systematic set of rules and principles that exert absolute power on their adherents, and by which judgments of "purity" and "impurity" can be made according to the extent to which an adherent follows and obeys unquestioningly.

      Any belief system can become an ideology, whether social, political, economic, or religious. We look in awed horror today as the GOP is "body-snatched" by an inflexible, extremist right-wing tea party, who tests candidates for ideological purity and pays any price to defeat and destroy a candidacy of insufficient orthodoxy. We shake our heads at Capitalists who point fingers at government and cry "Socialism!" if one regulation is introduced that might protect consumers or their jobs. And we watch liberals part company when one fails the litmus test of purity by voicing a desire to protect both the born and the unborn.

      The fact is that human beings are creatures of diverse ideas and viewpoints and it is our job to try to navigate the differences among us with love, respect and compassion. But the fact is, too, that human beings are imperfect (a modifier I prefer to the harsher sounding "sinful"): we're insecure, self-righteous, fearful, resentful, and, sometimes, stupid. And so it is not infrequently that we lapse into the certainty of ideology. "The one true way," whether that way is, as I said, political, social, economic, or religious.

      Alex errs (I believe I am being charitable) in his false assertion of the pathological nature of religious belief. In fact, the aspiration to understand something beyond the material, sensory world is a universal in our species (please read my book "The Metaphysics of Media" if you haven't by now -- I gave you a copy a year ago). This aspiration plays itself out differently from culture to culture (think Chomsky's "surface structure" in speech) but is an absolute across the species (think Chomsky's "deep culture" in the human capacity for language and universal grammar).

      Final thought: "...you were on the right track making the link between religion and violence, but then as always you had to backslide and imply that there can be a healthy form of religious belief. this is like saying that there's a healthy form of incest or necrophilia. religious belief is a type of pathology. you can't be psychologically healthy and be religious. our species will only advance once we've killed off organized religion completely. when that happens hopefully you'll see less violence in the world too."

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    2. Many people of religious or spiritual inclination might be insulted by such an adolescent claim. But I've heard it many times before and I'll continue to hear it in the future. And I usually end up feeling sorry for the person who mewls this way, not out of some false sense of superiority, but precisely because the person who whines in this way is implicitly claiming a false superiority and is unable to see that they are as guilty of (if not more so) irrational, unjustified belief as the person of spirit. As John S. pointed out, we're all interested, to some extent, in certainty. But there are actually very few things in realty about which we can have absolute certainty. And yet we choose to believe them. Whether it's the righteousness of one's country, or the inviolability of one's point of view, or the truth of Capitalism (or, for that matter, Socialism), or the absolute liberty of the human person, or the equality of humans; or, contrarily, the corruption of one's political leaders, the absolute determinism of life, or the inferiority of other races; NONE of these things can be measured empirically and judged to be either true or false. You believe in justice? Why? Show me where it exists without humans believing in it. You believe in equality? Why? Show me equality in the "state of nature." No, human beings invent the idea of equality and make it real in their belief. It's all part of this universal aspiration to see and understand a piece of reality that exists beyond the sense.

      So, Alex, you don't believe in God. Fine. What DO you believe in? And why?

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    3. Peter -

      I don't even know where to begin in responding to you, but I'll give it a shot anyway:

      1) You claim that there is a universal aspiration for something beyond the material, but I don't see any evidence for this among people in advanced, developed countries. Once we create societies in which human beings' basic needs are met, it seems as though your fictitious universal desire for "something more" completely disappears. Organized religion is dead in much of Northern Europe. Religion does very in backwards, repressive places like Pakistan, Somalia, or Alabama, where fear of life acts as a motivator.

      2) Whether religious people might be offended by what I say is completely irrelevant to me. I agree that most of what we believe to be true has to be taken on faith. But we have far better reasons for arguing that certain kinds of political communities or economies are better than others than we do arguing for the existence of some old man in the clouds and life after death in heaven. Religious statements have absolutely no basis in reality. There's no "evidence' that you can give to support or reject these kinds of claims. At least we can show some evidence to support political or economic claims.

      3) As for what I believe, it is making the best of this life and trying not to cause too much harm to myself or others while I'm here. Maybe if so-called religious people tried to live according to this sort of philosophy, the world might actually be a much better place.

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    4. I think Peter is right, Alex, your critique of religion is too simplistic. What's the source of your hostility towards religion, anyway? Did you get hit too often by nuns in school?

      Of course, Peter and John may also be blinding themselves to the negative realities of organized religion. It's often used as a force for social control and has been manipulated by the right very successfully in the United States.

      Too many black and whites in these posts for my taste.

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    5. Alex,

      I consider it a healthy thing that you don't know where to begin in response to my comments. I consider it one of the problems of our culture that you feel compelled to "give it a shot anyway." We're not a culture that enjoys thinking, and especially mulling over the deep, existential mysteries of human life and consciousness. As John S. said above, we crave certainty. And that is one of our problems.

      I'm really not at all surprised that you are unable to see evidence of a "universal aspiration to see and understand a piece of reality that exists beyond the senses." Furthermore, I expect that you're pretty certain (!) that such an aspiration is evidence of superstition, or ignorance, or pathology. Like Dr. Russo, you begin your logic with a conclusion and make all subsequent evidence fit that conclusion. This is simply an unfortunate aspect of consciousness in a highly technologically developed culture where the senses subjugate the imagination. You claim that "Once we create societies in which human beings' basic needs are met, it seems as though your fictitious universal desire for 'something more' completely disappears." I would say that this claim is demonstrably false. You cite as evidence of this the (questionable) fact that "Organized religion is dead in much of Northern Europe. Religion does very [well?] in backwards, repressive places like Pakistan, Somalia, or Alabama, where fear of life acts as a motivator." Let me unpack this statement while explaining the falsehood of your first premise.

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    6. You seem to need to equate the "something more" I refer to with "organized religion." It is true that this universal aspiration I refer to has many times historically manifest itself in a structured and usually culture-bound set of doctrines, principles, "commandments," etc. However, this is a relatively recent human phenomenon. Humans have always had the aspiration I refer to, but it is only in the last five-thousand (or so) years, since the development of writing systems, that this aspiration has, from culture to culture, spawned orthodoxies; orthodoxies that come into contact and conflict and result in violence. Before the organizational techniques made possible by writing (and eventually print), there was no such thing as "organized religion" even though the religious or spiritual sensibility was just as powerful before as after. This sensibility was fluid and dynamic, and while there may have been a shared cultural understanding of a belief system, there was great room for individuals to express their own understanding of belief.

      So the "something more" I refer to is most certainly NOT necessarily "organized religion," even though, as I said, it has manifest itself this way from time to time (and, admittedly, perhaps too often). I'll suggest once again that when we use the term "organized religion" we're really talking about ideology, and ideology is a phenomenon that does NOT limit its damage to only the universal human aspiration for transcendent experience.

      When you say that "organized religion is dead in northern Europe," all you're saying is that people have begun (have allowed themselves) to see the hypocrisy involved in that particular ideology; in this case, Roman Catholicism. But you hold this up as evidence that the universal human aspiration to understand "something more" "completely disappears," and that argument is unsupportable by evidence. The 20th century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich described God as the human being's "ultimate concern." What he meant was that we all believe in something final, absolute, and self-sufficient, something (in an Aristotelian way) at which all our actions are aimed, some recognizable human end. Whatever that thing is, whatever we allow to be our ultimate concern, that is our "god." So if "organized religion" (a particular ideological manifestation of the universal human aspiration to experience the transcendent) dies, it does not follow logically that the "something more" must "completely disappear." We simply replace one phenomenon with another.

      Where have all the former adherents of "organized religion" gone? Well, some haven't gone anywhere at all (84% of the world self-identify as religious, according to Pew: The Global Religious Landscape, 2010), and others haven't gone too far. As in the US, most Europeans still self-identify as "religious" (i.e., Catholic, C of E, Reformed Church, etc.) even as weekly (and daily) attendance at services has fallen.

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    7. To be sure, there's been a rise in atheism, and an interesting rise in "religious agnosticism" (5% of the total 15% counted as "non-religious" in the US which counts atheists, secular agnostics and religious agnostics), and a rise in both traditional and non-traditional religions (Ba'hai, Jainism, Wicca, etc.).

      For better or for worse "organized religion" is not dead, religion is not dead, and the universal human aspiration to experience the transcendent is not dead.

      However, many have replaced one oppressive ideology ("organized religion") with another (e.g., Capitalism, materialism, egoism, sensualism, etc.). In each case, there is a completely irrational belief in what is, at the bottom line, an ideology. In Capitalism, for instance, we believe in an "invisible hand" that "rationally" guides exploitation or resources and labor, production of commodities, and distribution of goods to fulfill human needs. And there is NOTHING in the slightest that is true -- in any sense of the word -- about this belief system. Materialists deny the existence (without ever actually thinking ontologically) of any universal transcendental thereby jettisoning fully half of the totality of human experience (they call this being "more highly evolved," by the way). They close their minds to the spiritual experiences of others, and erect impermeable walls of technology to keep them completely attuned to their senses lest their imaginations lure them into a realm -- an entirely interior realm -- of souls and animating spirit (psyche/anima). And then congratulate themselves for not being Pakistani, or Somalian, or Alabaman, for not being, in other words, a stereotype, ignoring the great good that human beings can do -- religious and non-religious -- who are able to see a reality greater than themselves.

      Both religious folks and atheists, by the way, are human beings and can be guided by either conscience or ideology. None of what I'm saying should be construed to be an attack on atheists or agnostics, either secular or religious. And, again, I'm not offended by the attacks of secular people on believers. As I said, rather than counter-attacking, it is my inclination to feel sorry for those who, because of the power of a highly technological culture to bias our experience to the senses at the expense of the imagination, reject a part of human experience that actually defines our humanness -- and then feel superior about it!

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    8. Final thought for Alex: "As for what I believe, it is making the best of this life and trying not to cause too much harm to myself or others while I'm here." If you'll forgive me, there's not a whole lot of meaning in those words. "Making the best of this life..." This is mere platitude. Who can argue against it? It's like putting a bumper sticker on your car that says "support our troops." The question is how do you define GOOD in the first place? What is a/the "good life"? How do you make "the best of this life"? Do you have measurements (since you appear so attached to making judgments of a material and not a spiritual nature)? What are they? Are they values? Are they some sort of belief? The second half of your explanation, "...trying not to cause too much harm to myself or others" is less of a platitude, but still lacks evidence of conviction. Why try? Why not do everything you possibly can to assure you do no harm? And why "not too much harm"? Are you willing to cause a little harm to "make the best of this life"? How much harm are you willing to cause? To all? To some? You finish with the statement: "Maybe if so-called religious people tried to live according to this sort of philosophy, the world might actually be a much better place."

      In your defense, I certainly see no evidence of ideology in this statement. But I see no evidence of philosophy either.

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    9. Peter:

      Only you could think that a person who has the audacity to critique a tendency that is found in all monotheistic religions (i.e., a life-denying sensibility) can be accused of having some kind of militant secular agenda. By no means do I consider myself militantly secular, but, unlike you and John, I have been able to step back from my own religious upbringing to see both the positive and negative aspects of organized religion.

      The more information that we get from the news, the more does it definitely seem to be the case that the two bombers in Boston were indeed motivated to violence by their religious beliefs. So to imply that there's no connection between those beliefs and the acts of terrorism that they committed is completely erroneous.

      If you read my argument carefully, you must note that I specifically said that a healthy, life-affirming approach to religion was indeed possible. I think you probably have just this sort of approach yourself. However, I do think that any religion that argues -- as Christianity and Islam do -- that our final end is beyond this life, runs the risk of promoting exactly the kind of life-denigrating sensibility that I think lends itself to extremism and violence.

      If, on the other hand, we accept that the Kingdom already is at hand, then we can have a form of Christianity (or Islam or Judaism) that embraces the world and everything in it.

      Mike

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    10. You're wrong. See my (lengthy) response to Fred, below.

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  7. Sara,

    I'm not sure what you're reading that is showing you only black and white. I certainly don't see the world in black and white. On the contrary, I think that the conflation of religion (which is a natural part of the human experience) with "organized religion" (which is ideology) is a form of black/white thinking. I'm simply trying to show distinctions where our culture conceals them.

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  8. I meet many religious fanatics in my line of work. Many of them have an unquestioned faith in their beliefs, and would die defending them. Some people take their religious practices very seriously; sometimes engaging in fasting, offering sacrifices, engaging in self-injurious behaviors and injurious behaviors towards others. People who take their religion to such extremes as engaging in these types of behaviors do not see these behaviors as misguided; they are blinded by their faith. Many of my clients have engaged in such harmful behaviors as mentioned above in the name of their faith. All of these clients have also been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder and have at one time or another been involuntarily placed in a locked mental health facility due to their risk to harm themselves or others. Regardless of their religious beliefs, the fact remains that religious ideology is the basis of their delusional thought processes and hallucinations. It is remarkable how many similarities may be drawn between a person who has a diagnosable mental illness that is preoccupied with religion, and your everyday, average, religious fanatic. Actually, it goes beyond remarkable, it is almost indistinguishable. It is important to remember that a huge portion of the world’s population identifies with some kind of religious belief. It is also important to keep in mind that critically dialoguing the topic of religion with people whose religious beliefs are central to their identity within the world is usually a fruitless endeavor; as is attempting to dialogue rationally with an actively psychotic patient who believes that god is speaking to them and in fact commanding them into certain actions. Now, ask yourself, are individuals who blindly follow their religious faith in any circumstance any more likely to make a rational decision than somebody who has been diagnosed with a mental illness and deemed incompetent to make decisions for themselves? Then, I would like you to ponder the fact that many of these people who identify this strongly with their religious beliefs actually have a major impact on your life and are currently teaching your children, creating public policy, running corporations that are more powerful than the government, performing surgeries, leading troops into war, and enforcing the law.

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  9. Peter Fallon believes in a god who is so good that nothing that people do in his name can be traced back to that god. That god is beyond culpability even though he allegedly informs his believers as to how to behave. So we are treated with two notions of religion. One is true religion, capital "R" Religion, where the believer actually professes the inevitably right opinions of a true god and small "s" religion which is the historical collection of actions of religious people both charitable and genocidal. Fallon actually accuses other posters of starting with a conclusion and then arguing from there. However his theism is a massive assumption and his arguments unsurprisingly end up reasserting his assumption.
    As I take Fallon's view to be, if anyone acts in an evil manner they cannot be truly religious and if they interpret the commands of the true god in such a way as to produce bad consequences then they automatically have misinterpreted their god who is by definition All Good. If this isn't a priorism I don't know what is. Fallon's god is beyond reproach. So all who do evil in his name are either wicked or stupid.
    What is astonishing is that Fallon thinks that his claims are ordinary. His assumption is that his god exists. More than that, his god is a male! Further his god is omniscient, omnipotent and supremely good. This invisible, immaterial being has a mind which is not the production of brain activity and it didn't evolve! Fallon doesn't recognize that his claims are fantastic. And he bases his extraordinary belief on a complete lack of evidence. Note that the rest of us have the entire natural universe, evolution and the historic and present compendium of human experiences upon which to base our knowledge claims. Yet Fallon can make his fantastic claims on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. I think the burden of proof lies with him.
    The only way Fallon can carry off his distinction between true Religion and the ordinary run of the mill religions that we are aware of is to assert the existence of his reproachless god and assert such a god's true message which only his true disciples will know. However if we eliminate his presumption, the only real and true religions are the ones invented by humans and professed by humans. These are deeply flawed because they have not only produced great acts of charity but great acts of torture and slaughter as well. Whether the world would be better off with these religions rather than without them is an empirical question. Apparently there are some pretty advanced societies such as Denmark and Sweden that are getting along quite fine with the majority of their populations being completely indifferent to religion.

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    1. (~~sigh~~) When I read "discussions" regarding the existence/non-existence of God, or the role of what people mistakenly call "religion" in the human tendency toward violence, I confess I sometimes despair over the future of the species. People who view themselves as somehow being more "evolved" and "enlightened" than the ignorant and benighted "believers" are frequently just as ignorant, closed-minded, and bigoted as the very people against whom they rail in self-righteous -- and mindless -- indignation.

      I'll respond, point-by-point.

      First: "Peter Fallon" is an Irish poet and the owner/publisher of the Gallery Press in Ireland. He also happens to be my second cousin. I don't know what kind of "god" he believes in, although it is my suspicion he believes in no such thing at all. I once had the opportunity to meet him in Dublin -- he's really a very talented poet -- but at the last minute changed my mind and left him waiting, fruitlessly, in O'Neill's Pub in Anne Street. I understand he was very distressed by this, inconsolable in fact. And so I decided that I needed to make sure that people who know nothing other than what Google tells them would never mix the two of us up. Therefore, I am not "Peter Fallon," but Peter K Fallon. That is my given name, my legal name, my professional name, and the name under which I publish. This was your first sign of careless thinking, Fred.

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    2. Second: "Peter [K] Fallon believes in a god who is so good that nothing that people do in his name can be traced back to that god." You're absolutely correct, Fred. But it's pretty much downhill after that. What kind of person would believe in a "god" that would countenance acts of violence committed in its name? I'll give you an intimate look at my thinking in this regard, and a clue about my theology: people who believe that some "god" is telling them to hate, hurt, or kill others are either responding to an ideology or are psychopaths. It's really that simple. People who believe that the essence of the phenomenon of God is love, nurturing, and life are responding affirmatively to the imperatives of that phenomenon. Again, quite simple.

      Third: "That god is beyond culpability even though he allegedly informs his believers as to how to behave." Alleged by whom? I certainly don't believe in a "god" who speaks directly to human beings, especially one who tells them to hate or shun or kill non-believers. Divine revelation and the scripture that purports to record are very complex things. The person who believes them to be the literal word of God is a fundamentalist, whether that person is "religious" (in your tainted sense of the word) or "evolved" and atheistic. The fundamentalist non-believer is equally dangerous as the fundamentalist believer. Each is filled with self-righteous hate.

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  10. Fourth: "One is true religion, capital "R" Religion, where the believer actually professes the inevitably right opinions of a true god and small "s" religion which is the historical collection of actions of religious people both charitable and genocidal." I think it is important to note at this moment that I have made no such claims. I'm looking back over my comments just to be sure, and I'm pretty sure I never used the word "God" at all (I referred over and over again to the "universal aspiration to see and understand a piece of reality that exists beyond the senses," and I'll stand by that statement as being historically correct) and my use of the word "religion" was meant as a corrective to those who, in knee-jerk fashion, ascribe to "religion" that which rightly belongs to ideology. It is not, nor has it ever been, my argument that a group of people who our culture refers to as "Islamic terrorists" or another group who our media might (albeit less frequently) refer to as "Christian terrorists" don't exist, or that people don't do evil, hate, hurt, and kill in the name of something they're calling "god." My point is that if you look closely at either of these groups, you'll find some remarkable similarities (and I must admit it really aggravates me when I have to repeat myself because people don't read carefully, or see, when they're reading, only what they wish to see): We're not really talking about religion at all (that universal human aspiration to experience and understand the transcendent), but ideology. And, again, I'm talking about ideology in the sense Jacques Ellul talks about it: any rigid, systematic set of rules and principles that exerts absolute power on its adherents, and by which judgments of "purity" and "impurity" can be made according to the extent to which an adherent follows and obeys unquestioningly. And again I'll point out that any belief system can become an ideology, whether social, political, economic, or religious.

    The fact of the matter is that ideologies kill us far more frequently and in far greater numbers than a pursuit of transcendence does. How many people die each year in the developing world because the cancellation of a debt incurred during centuries of colonialism would break the sacrosanct principles of Capitalism? And yet, Fred, you would prefer to look at Oscar Romero and call him a fool or a bigot. And I wonder who the real fool and bigot is. The ideology of Capitalism, and the ideologues who benefit by strict adherence to its principles -- they love it when someone says "All [fill in the religious tradition here] are haters and murderers!" Again, there are 7 billion people on Earth right now, roughly 2 billion of whom self-identify as Christian, 1.5 billion as Muslim, 1 billion as Hindus, 2.5 billion as a variety of traditional ethnic and indigenous religions, and 1 billion as secular, non-observant (including atheists). Five million children each year -- the majority in the developing world -- die of hunger. Is that because the majority of the developed world self-identifies as "Christian" or because they self-identify as Capitalist? The life expectancy of an Angolan is 38 years, of an Afghan is 44, of a Nigerian is 47, of a Somalian is 50, while the life expectancy of an American is 78, of a Brit is 80, of a Spaniard, or Swiss, or French person is 81. Is that because of "religion"?

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    1. Millions die each year because Westerners -- without regard to their religion -- refuse to compromise the principles of the dominant ideology. On average, 10,000 die a year in acts of terrorism, "religious" or otherwise.

      And for the record, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Jong-Un, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-Dong, Than Shwe; together, responsible for the murders more than a hundred million people -- all highly-evolved, enlightened non-believers. Oh, and Jeffrey Dahmer too. My point is that there is no monopoly on hatred, stupidity, and desire to do evil. It is a human condition, not one restricted to "believers."

      Fifth: "As I take Fallon's view to be, if anyone acts in an evil manner they cannot be truly religious..."

      Poor reading comprehension, Fred. I'll repeat myself for the umpteenth time, again, trying my best to avoid the negatively-charged word "religion". The aspiration to experience and understand transcendence is universal. The aspiration is universal. Do you see? We are all human and have this aspiration, but we are also all human and pursue this aspiration in different ways. One of the ways we pursue this aspiration leads us directly away from it, and that is by lapsing into ideology. But even those who guard against such lapses can't possibly be constantly, consistently, and eternally successful, precisely because we're human. We screw up, we drop the ball, we do wrong, we err. Nobody, in pursuing this aspiration, gets it right. Some just get it disastrously wrong.

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    2. "...and if they interpret the commands of the true god in such a way as to produce bad consequences then they automatically have misinterpreted their god who is by definition All Good."

      I've already addressed this, above. Anyone who thinks they have a direct line to God is "nicht sehr klug," as my father would say. But, on the other hand, God must indeed be, by definition, good. I'm not sure I understand why this would be a point of controversy, and it is here, Fred, that I see you falling into Dr. Russo's trap of beginning your argument with your conclusion. What is the point of God, if not goodness? Am I (is anyone) supposed to believe in a "god" that is not good, that causes pain, that is the source of chaos, that impels not life, but death? You seem to want me, if I insist on believing in God, in submitting proof that God is not an evil forest gnome. I believe most of the world's believers in God moved beyond that sort of conception a couple of millennia ago. Yes. God -- if God exists at all -- is all good. Otherwise, what's the point?

      "...If this isn't a priorism I don't know what is. Fallon's god is beyond reproach. So all who do evil in his name are either wicked or stupid."

      Apparently you don't know what a priorism is, Fred. This conception of God is not mine. It is not "Christian." And it is not a conception arrived at a priori. It is the result of many years of thought, both theological and philosophical, and is shared by the majority of the world's believers, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. And those very same people will tell you that "all who do evil in his name are either wicked or stupid." And to the extent that Christian, Jew, and Muslim is a true seeker of transcendence and not an ideology, they will not jump at the chance to make judgments about whether what you're doing is wicked or stupid, unless you're hating, hurting, or killing. There's nothing a priori about it. As C.S. Lewis points out, it is a natural part of the human personality to recognize love, sympathy, justice and fairness; first when they are given to that person, and later when they are given to others.

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    3. Sixth: "What is astonishing is that Fallon thinks that his claims are ordinary. His assumption is that his god exists. More than that, his god is a male! Further his god is omniscient, omnipotent and supremely good. This invisible, immaterial being has a mind which is not the production of brain activity and it didn't evolve! Fallon doesn't recognize that his claims are fantastic. And he bases his extraordinary belief on a complete lack of evidence. Note that the rest of us have the entire natural universe, evolution and the historic and present compendium of human experiences upon which to base our knowledge claims. Yet Fallon can make his fantastic claims on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. I think the burden of proof lies with him."

      Now, Fred, you're just totally full of shit. LOL. I mean, COMPLETELY. You're letting your self-perceived eloquence lead you astray. Where in the world did you get this stuff? Where did I even mention God as a "person," let alone as a gendered one? (I know, I referred to God in the feminine in THIS post just to piss you off...) And where is my claim of the omniscience and omnipotence of God? (I'm not saying that I either hold or reject these claims; merely that they are too complex to write about in a comment box, so I never would.) And where did I refer to ANY of my beliefs as a "knowledge claim"? I swear, folks who see themselves as "highly evolved, enlightened, and superior" can sometimes be the most ignorant and arrogant. I, too, live in, am a part of, and share the "natural universe, evolution and the historic and present compendium of human experiences." And it is upon these that I base my knowledge claims. But you never read a lot of medieval philosophy or theology, I'd suspect. Knowledge is knowledge and faith is faith. They are two entirely distinct universes of discourse and ought to remain distinct (that is your problem, by the way, along with Alex and Dr. Russo; you're confusing false knowledge claims -- ideology -- with faith). I know what I know based on evidence and always tentatively; I am prepared to abandon a piece of information when new evidence appears that sufficiently supports the judgment that old ways of understanding are no longer justified. That is the empirical mindset. But I believe what I believe out of conviction, because I believe what I believe is right, because I have thought deeply about what I believe over many years, because I believe what I believe is reflective of the universal aspiration to understand the ultimate transcendent truth, and IN SPITE OF the total lack of evidence (NOW, Fred, would be the appropriate time to mention a priori knowledge, not before, because a priori knowledge must always be arrived at through personal experience, not collectively or communally).

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    4. And, Fred, I feel no burden of proof whatsoever. I didn't come here to proselytize. You can believe or disbelieve whatever you want. My purpose in all of this (having been invited by Dr. Russo to throw in my two cents) was to correct the errors in (quite simplistic) thinking that says "Religion is divisive and the cause of all hatred and violence in the world." I firmly believe that it is in THIS statement that you have evidence of circular reasoning, self-justifying argument, and an enormous burden of proof.

      Seventh: "... the only real and true religions are the ones invented by humans and professed by humans. These are deeply flawed because they have not only produced great acts of charity but great acts of torture and slaughter as well."

      Fred, at the risk of shocking you, this is as close as you've come in your entire diatribe to being correct (although probably was more your intention to mock than to support my point). All religions are created by humans. This is not a controversial statement. Who else could invent a religion, a squirrel? A tree? A lake trout?

      We are a symbolic species. A dog comes across the carcass of a dead member of its species, sniffs it, perhaps feels a jumble of emotions (because we know that higher-order species, mammals especially, have a rich emotional life) like confusion or fear -- and then goes on its way with no real learning or understanding having taken place. A human comes across the carcass of a dead human and feels, perhaps, fear and confusion -- and then buries the carcass. Why? Because the human is able to say to him/herself, "Wow. That could be me." The human is aware of both his/her mortality and the idea of mortality in general. The human wonders -- as no other species is able to -- "Is THAT all there is? Is that all that awaits me?" And the human searches for answers to those questions. In the roughly two million years that the genus homo arose from the family mammalia, and the fifty-thousand years (or so) that the species homo sapiens evolved from the genus homo, we've come up with a number of ways to answer these questions. But it is the question, and not the answer, that is the universal. The human aspiration to experience transcendence has yielded answers both good and bad, useful and useless, personal and cultural, free-flowing and formal. It has yielded an yearning for spiritual self-knowledge and it has yielded ideology. And it is ideology that is the villain you ought to be railing against, not spirit.

      God is imaginary. That is not to say that God doesn't exist, but that humans cannot possibly "know" God except through the imagination. God, like other transcendent concepts -- justice, truth, equality, personal sovereignty, human liberty -- has no material existence. We make God manifest in the material world in the same way we make any transcendent concept manifest: by behaving as though it exists.

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    5. Finally, to Dr. Russo: you're wrong. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and pretty much every other religious tradition I am vaguely aware of, are not "life-denying" traditions. This is your false conclusion finding its way into your universal major premise. If it is true, I must agree with it and the rest of your syllogism has to be valid. I am, in that case, vanquished. The problem is, it's entirely false. Just because Augustine liked Plato better than Aristotle, and his writings exerted enormous pressure on the developing Church resulting in periods (not, I must point out, either monolithic or unbroken), Christianity is not, and does not have to be, a flesh-mortifying, sex-fearing, vale-of-tears ideology. Your secularism is, indeed, militant because you (choose to) ignore this fact which necessarily undermines your argument.

      At your invitation, I came here not to proselytize, but to correct. I am not here asserting any proposition in the affirmative, but to point out the faults in your assertions of a proposition in the negative. I don't know if "religion" incites violence. The term is too vague and laden with negative, culturally-derived associations. I am, in fact, pretty certain that at least sometimes "religion" (in some sense of the word) does cause certain people to do evil. But I know equally certainly (if not more so) that there are other sources of hatred and death and murder that have more to do with ideology, but our own cultural prejudices allow us (force us?) to label as "religion."

      There is a universal urge or aspiration to experience and understand some "reality" that is unapproachable via the human sensorium. Call that "religion" if you wish. There is no, however, universal human urge to kill. Despite the exertions of our media to make us feel as though that may be the case, human beings love more than hate. They nurture more than taunt. They care more than ignore. And they believe more than they disbelieve. They believe in good things, and they believe in bad things, and those good and bad things can be social, cultural, economic, political, and, yes, religious. Any belief system that becomes ideological -- whether it begins its existence as a good one or a bad one -- becomes an occasion of entrapment and slavery, both intellectual and spiritual.

      THIS is your villain. THIS is what you should be fighting against.

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    6. Sentence in the first paragraph above should read: "...exerted enormous pressure on the developing Church resulting in periods (not, I must point out, either monolithic or unbroken) of dominance, Christianity is not, and does not have to be..."

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  11. Oh you're THAT Peter K Fallon! Oh my. I had no idea. I just thought you were some snarky guy on this blog who accused Dr. Russo of being unphilosophical and insulted Alex by saying that his comments were "adolescent, silly and nonsensical." Now that I know you're Peter K Fallon I will sit up straight and adjust my collar and address your eminent self properly.

    First, let me say that your strict distinction between religion and ideology is questionable. Certainly if we take paradigm cases of ideologies such as Nazi Fascism and Stalinism, we can find religious elements. Hitler stated that he believed himself to be divinely inspired to lead the Arian revolution. He proposed a thousand year Reich and his propaganda portrayed him as a messiah. Stalin had his pockmarks removed from his photos, had his portrait placed in every office and home and his propaganda depicted him as the infallible messiah of the soviet communist revolution. Lenin's body was preserved and put on display like the saints whose bodies allegedly did not corrupt after death. Now religions have exhibited certain traits of ideologies. For example, people are willing to die for both, martyrdom is a feature of both religion and ideologies. Once the leaders who profess either religion or ideology gain political hegemony they exhibit a deep intolerance for competing religions and ideologies; and historically this has led to heresy trials, show trials, purges, pogroms, and holy wars. So I think that at least religion bears a family resemblance with ideology.

    Where I would mark a difference between ideology and religion is in a defining feature of religions, namely that for a religion to be a religion there must be an assertion of a transcendent being, a god who is central to the religion. There may be cases where this requirement is debatable, e.g. Buddhism. There, one might call it a religion but there is no god-worship or supernatural elements. Others would say that Buddhism is a practical philosophy and not a religion at all. I think that because the majority of Buddhists believe is Samsara, the recycling of souls through many lives, they have supernatural elements in their belief system. However Buddhism might qualify as a religion because it bears a family resemblance with the major religions. Anyway your definition of religion as a universal aspiration for transcendence beyond the sensible excludes what for most people is religion's most prominent feature: not merely the aspiration to but the acceptance and worship of a actually existing god. One might aspire to discover gold in Antarctica, but if it's not there it's a futile quest and not worth the effort. The prominent feature of religion is the gold is really there in Antarctica. If the existence of a god isn't true for Peter K Fallon than perhaps I have found a fellow traveler in him...if not a fellow atheist at least an agnostic.

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    1. Just reviewed the transcript and what you actually said of Alex was that he was engaging in a "silly, adolescent, self-righteous tantrum." I don't believe that enhances your reputation but I want to be accurate.

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    2. I'm glad, Fred, that you're clear on with whom you're engaging in discussion. "Peter Fallon" is an excellent poet and an influential publisher, but very full of himself. I don't want to be confused with him. As for my remark, please note carefully that I did not say that Alex was "silly, adolescent, self-righteous," but that his tantrum was. I feel comfortable standing by that statement. That's the general cultural mode in atheism today; rather ideological, actually. You (not I) might call it "religious."

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    3. Dear Peter K Fallon: I accept your explanation. Good advice: attack the position but never the person who posits it. In the same spirit, I propose that we leave the personal out of our exchange. I’ll admit that there are times when I am “full of shit.” When I respond in an intemperate manner, I usually regret it. What we are talking about is too important to resort to ad hominem attacks.
      I will admit that militant atheism has taken on a new life. Atheists tried to play CNN until radical fundamentalism built up a death toll. CNN tries to be fair to the Tea Party crazies and not even the Tea Partiers like them. Leaving the floor to the faithful was quite prudent since the non-religious are a minority (at least on record) and also have very low approval ratings among Americans. I thought that John Dean was a great candidate for president, but I know that his indifference to religion would catch up to him. Probably it is for the best because, as President, he’d be forced to attend some weekly religious service.
      I think that after homosexuals secure their rights, the obese will start campaigning and winning theirs. Next up will be the atheists. I welcome the fearless challenges of the militant atheists because they make me feel less alone and isolated. Also they stand up to the ideologues you yourself discredit.
      I admit that my first critique of your stand was hasty and inadequate. However, I think my response to your rebuttal was more thoughtful (although still filled with rhetorical flourishes). I would welcome your further reflections and criticisms on them.

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  12. (~~~sigh~~~). By the way, if you think that because I refer to evolution and the evolution of consciousness I am saying that I hold myself to be more evolved than a theist, you know nothing about evolution. Evolution isn't progress. It just happens and what we are doing here as co-equal primates is seeking strategies for living and for not dying and for passing on our genes to the next generation of humans. You do this with religious fantasies that I abjure. But believe me, neither of us is better equipped for the struggle.

    You say that, of course, gods are products of human imagination, but that doesn't mean that a god does NOT exist. It also doesn't mean a god exists! Since you consistently capitalize the word 'god' (would you dare not to?) I assume that you are a theist. If so, then the religion you defend as flawed but ultimately benign fits the description of a set of beliefs centering on the character and activities of a deity. If you were to fail to profess your faith and allegiance to this god you would and should be excommunicated by the authorities of your religion. If you were a Deist, your deity would stay largely out of the affairs of men and we'd be on our own to work things out. But I happen to know that you are a Christian and the Christian god intervenes constantly in human affairs, is enjoined to do so by the faithful, and is not adverse to curbing human desires to get his way. You may think that, properly understood, such a divine dictator, will always lead us into the path of universal love and righteousness; but your religion involves the surrendering of one's will to the will of its god...a resignation, an emptying of self and one's secular interests and a renunciation to the way and the will of the transcendent one to whom you aspire.

    There is a form of religion that appears to me to be entirely innocuous. The village vicar in small towns in England attends the town picnics and chats about football and the weather. He's a comfort and a friend but basically he adds nothing to the environment and doesn't demand much in the way of belief for the community. On the other hand, when England came under attack, it helped to have a god on their side. This handy enlisting of a god for reinforcing the aspirations of human beings is precisely the danger that Russo is ascribing as a feature of all religions. Thomas Aquinas reasonably exempted non-combatants from direct attack in his Just War doctrine. However he explicitly made an exception in the case of a holy war. There the slaughter of men, women and children is justified when the war is in accord with the will of a god. Peter K Fallon thinks that those who are religious are simply aspiring to some transcendence beyond the sensible world, but that's not really the main feature of most religions which involves finding that transcendent thing, ascribing to it a will and dedicating yourself to following that will even if it means sacrificing the inclinations of your own will. That is precisely the dangerous life-denying aspect of religion that Dr. Russo is bringing to our attention.

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  13. Peter K Fallon claims that one who refuses the siren call of religion is cutting himself off from an essential dimension of human life. He makes the unsubstantiated claim that there is a universal quest for an object of ultimate concern. With approximately 6000 gods recorded as having been worshipped around the world throughout history we are certainly talking about an extensive phenomenon. (Should we say it's one phenomenon or 6000 phenomena?) however there is ample proof that vast numbers in the human community have no inclination toward religion or belief in a transcendent entity. Moreover this is a growing trend. He also suggests that the nonreligious are lacking in imagination and creativity. I would have to say that the imagining of an omniscient, omnipotent, all Good, disembodied, brainless, non-evolved Being that is self-caused, has an interesting family, and who suffers from multiple-personality disorder is indeed a great act of the human imagination. However the notion that somehow not believing in such an entity or rejecting handing over one's will to such an entity somehow means the one is less inventive, imaginative or creative is ludicrous. Does Peter K Fallon believe that people like Robert Ingersoll, Samuel Clemens, Albert Einstein, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Hawkins or Richard Dawkins are uncreative, unimaginative human beings? What superior qualities does religion endow Peter K Fallon that these fellow primates are lacking?

    Lastly, Peter K Fallon, you have conflated the belief in a god with belief in so-called intangibles such as "justice," "truth," "equality", etc. Surely these latter concepts do not have to be Platonic Forms or embedded in the mind of an eternal god for them to have meaning in human language. Is there really something real about Justice Itself independent of just things. Isn't justice a quality of just laws, just wages, just distributions, just punishments? aren't these things fully within the phenomenal world? Does there have to be a universal essence of justice existing "out there" or is, as Wittgenstein says, merely a family resemblance between the various things we characterize as just? And "equality"? Isn't that the emptiest of abstractions until we specify the two or more things that have the relationship of equality? Equal distances, equal lengths, equal pay, equal value, equal membership in a species. Is there any mystery about the way human beings measure the specific relationships things appear to Ustinov have? People understand and share the meaning of the word "holes" and there's nothing material in a hole. that doesn't mean I have to have a theory of holes or posit some entity called Holeness itself existing in a Platonic world of Ideas or the Augustinian notion that eternal Holeness exists in the mind of a god. There are however gazillions of things that have holes in them and they're quite visible to the naked eye. You cannot put gods in the same bin as these other concepts because by definition there is no concrete object or objects to examine. As you say, the god-entity is beyond the sensible world. You can only speculate in the total absence of any experiential evidence about the nature of that being. You apparently enjoy engaging in that type of speculation (as evidence by conclusions based "on years of thought, both philosophical and theological") which I do not deny you. I just point out that it's the weakest epistemological basis for forming beliefs and it's dangerous to humanity when your imagination gets carried away and you start carrying out the plans of your imaginary friend.

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    1. Autocorrect replaced the word "us to" with the "Ustinov." Now there was an eminent Peter!

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    2. "He makes the unsubstantiated claim that there is a universal quest for an object of ultimate concern." Who's having this discussion? You and me? Or me and him? Pompous writing. But okay.

      Actually, his claim is not at all unsubstantiated. There is no human culture ever recorded that did not manifest this aspiration (that is why he calls it "universal"), nor is there any human culture TODAY where this aspiration is missing. Granted, individuals in increasing numbers (but still only about 5% of the Earth's population) are claiming abandonment of this aspiration. Don't give me the 12% number. That number, while it is growing, is a lumping-together of atheists and agnostics, including Theists who have simply rejected the ideological dimensions of their "religions" of birth.

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    3. This is a good one: "Does Peter K Fallon believe that people like Robert Ingersoll, Samuel Clemens, Albert Einstein, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Hawkins or Richard Dawkins are uncreative, unimaginative human beings?" Oh, no, He doesn't think that is true. He believes that is sort of a strawman argument, one he can even knock down, and will do so willingly. No, you, these are atheists he actually has a great deal of respect for. These are thoughtful atheists. He's actually referring to folks like you, Fred, and like Alex, who come to their topic from their conclusion and look for arguments to justify it. Why would you have the temerity to put yourself in the same class as Hawking, Dawkins, and the rest?

      "Lastly, Peter K Fallon, you have conflated the belief in a god with belief in so-called intangibles such as "justice," "truth," "equality", etc. Surely these latter concepts do not have to be Platonic Forms or embedded in the mind of an eternal god for them to have meaning in human language. Is there really something real about Justice Itself independent of just things. Isn't justice a quality of just laws, just wages, just distributions, just punishments? aren't these things fully within the phenomenal world?" (And blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum...)

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    4. You seem to feel the need to bring up things that "he" never mentioned. He didn't mention Platonic forms. He's talking about a phenomenon that precedes Platonic forms and, in fact, makes the eventual conception of something like forms inevitable. You use the word "language" in a purely materialist sense (i.e., behavioral) without understanding what it is you're talking about (it seems rather par for your particular course). Language is not simply something human beings "do," it's something we ARE. We are a symbolic species. You are not Stephen Hawking, so I'll tell you how you're seeing on a purely material (behavioral) level. This may tell you something about your atheism. We have a problem in the English language. Many, actually, but this one is germane at the moment. Our word "language" does multi-tasking. In French two phrases -- "la langue" and "la parole" -- do the work of two ideas that Americans conflate (here's the conflation, and it is yours, not mine). I like to use LANGUAGE and language. Language is the innate, evolved neural capacity to experience, store experiences, recall experiences, manipulate experiences, recall experiences and share those experiences with others through the usual of conventional meaningful symbols. Language (lower case) is the cultural manifestation of the capacity, a particular symbol set. Is there something real about justice independent of just things? No. There is no justice whatsoever, no "just things," and in fact, no "things" at all (as we understand them) in the absence of LANGUAGE (the symbolic conceptualization) and language (the ability to spread these concepts. "And 'equality'? Isn't that the emptiest of abstractions until we specify the two or more things that have the relationship of equality? Equal distances, equal lengths, equal pay, equal value, equal membership in a species." Empty? No, it is an abstraction pregnant with meaning, but one that has no existence whatsoever until it occurs in the human mind and shared in words. We CREATE justice. We CREATE equality. They don't otherwise exist except, perhaps, accidentally and even then, in the absence of LANGUAGE, have no power of their own to conceptualize themselves into existence.

      Consequently, there simply is no "justice," no "equality," no "liberty," etc., anywhere in the universe -- including some realm of "perfect forms" which was itself an attempt to reconcile human imperfection with a universal aspiration to transcendence -- until we conceptualize them, define them -- and then spend centuries arguing over the cultural meanings while losing sight of the fact throughout human history all human societies have found or invented some iteration of each of them. There's nothing "empty" about the concept of equality until you assume the un-granted warrant to fit the concept to your own narrow needs.

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    5. And finally (!), I will again repeat that I'm not here to proselytize, but to correct. You are free, as you know, to believe what you wish. You are even free to believe that what you believe is "real," and what others believe is not real. It's not my job to comment on such things.

      But I was invited here to comment on a particular proposition: that religion undergirds violence and murder. There's also an implicit sub-proposition: that the loss of this religious feeling, which is at its heart life-denying, would improve the human condition. And these propositions are not supportable. Since the emergence of homo sapiens, two tendencies (among many others) have appeared that were not characteristic of our evolutionary ancestors: religion and murder. They are both a necessary by-product of symbolic thought (LANGUAGE). To suggest that one causes the other is a simple logical fallacy, especially when there is ample evidence of one existing without the other, and equally ample evidence of other causal factors. You (and Alex and Dr. Russo) refuse to see the distinction between a universal human aspiration to experience and understand reality beyond the senses and another tendency (prominent, but I'm hesitant to label universal) to create and adhere to ideology: rigid, inflexible principles and rules that compel strict adherence and sanction -- quite negatively -- failure to adhere. Ideologies are cultural and external. Aspiration to transcendence is universal. But if you refuse even to entertain this distinction, and call what is clearly an ideology an ideology but call it rather "religion," then you've provided, circularly, evidence to support your pre-conceived conclusion. It's really as simple as that.

      I hope your atheism is more thoughtful than your rationalization of it.

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    6. Nope. That wasn't final. One more thing. I don't believe he will admit it on this blog, but I've known Dr. Michael Russo for coming up on two decades and I know this about him: He doesn't truly believe what he wrote in this post. I'd be willing to wager several pints of Bass Ale on this. He was playing with ideas and suspicions he holds, he has a culturally-inflicted aversion to "organized religion" (an aversion I happen to share but have chosen to deal with differently than he), and he was doing what he does best: throwing out controversial propositions to provoke people.

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  14. You're grasping at straws, Fred. "Certainly if we take paradigm cases of ideologies such as Nazi Fascism and Stalinism, we can find religious elements." These are ideologies. The fact that they appear to have what you consider to be "religious elements" is that you have decided what "religious elements" are and that they exist in these ideologies. ("...'Round and 'round and 'round in the circle game...") "...for a religion to be a religion there must be an assertion of a transcendent being..." So, again, goes your definition. The fact is -- this is empirically verifiable -- historically, different cultures at different times have developed their own interpretive accounts of transcendence. If you had removed the indefinite article "a" from your statement you would have been closer to the truth (as it were). The universal human aspiration to experience and understand some "reality" beyond the material and sensory certainly asserts transcendent being, but not necessarily "a" transcendent being. I've heard this atheist rant before (and it is, frankly, adolescent, silly, and self-righteous) about "religious" people who have an "invisible friend who lives in the sky." This universal aspiration is not for a "cosmic daddy (or mommy)" even if some individual religions, heading down the road to ideology, developed this delusion. It is for transcendent or absolute being. Understanding the existence of existence in all its dimensions; mortality/immortality, free will/determination, meaning/meaninglessness, etc. It constantly fights ideology (or falls prey to it) and its method is theology. That's the universal. Everything else is cultural add-on, and when the wondering stops, the questioning stops, and you have all the answers, the human aspiration is gone and you're dealing with ideology, and THIS particular ideology (what you insist on calling "religion") is no more or less dangerous than any other ideology: more people die of Capitalism every year than of "religionism." And, frankly, more people died in the 20th century of atheism than died in all the "religious wars" (which, of course, were entirely political, economic, and ideological) of the early modern era.




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  15. "If the existence of a god isn't true for Peter K Fallon than perhaps I have found a fellow traveler in him...if not a fellow atheist at least an agnostic." Again, your led to what appears to be an inevitable conclusion by a complete lack of understanding of your topic. You've decided the conclusion and seek to fit the premises to match them. I happen not to believe in "a" god (invisible friend) but in God (absolute Being). So atheism is out of the question. But agnostic? Of course I am! "Agnostic" simply means "I don't know." And I don't. When I tell you that I know all about "the god" and what "he" wants and all of "his" rules, someone has succeeded (with my complicity) in killing that universal aspiration in me. I'm nothing more than an ideologue, no better or worse than the Capitalist who believes he is only following the rational laws of free markets in "out-sourcing" manufacturing to an undeveloped country with no safety regulations or zoning standards or labor protections and hundreds of people die in fires or building collapses. You may call the person shooting the abortion doctor or the one in the marketplace with pounds of explosive strapped to his/her body "religious." Fine. Then call Capitalism a religion too. Call materialism a religion too. Call money a religion too. Don't twist language to suit your purposes.

    No, I don't know what God (absolute Being) wants, and particularly what it wants from me. But I believe it wants something and it is my job to try to understand what is important in life, central to pure Being. I don't know what the rules are, no "god" (invisible friend) has shared them with me. But I do believe there are rules (CS Lewis situates them -- universally -- as part of a "human nature that seeks justice -- first for self, later for others -- because it experiences injustice). Yes, I am agnostic. No person of faith (by the very definition of the word) can be anything but agnostic. If you know, it's not faith.

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  16. You two may not be life-debasers, but you both manifest the kind of fanatical tendencies that causes much misery and suffering in the world.

    Let's be clear about this...My position was very modest. I didn't make any of the kind of bold, absolutist pronouncents about religion that you two seem compelled to make.

    Now let's wrap this debate up!

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    1. Sorry, Mike. Your position, if immodest, does not become modest at your insistence. For my part, I'm unaware of any absolutist statements I've made. On the contrary, my intention was to dispute an absolutist statement: "religion" is life-denying and facilitates (if not flat-out causes) hatred and murder. That is not a modest position.

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  17. You do realize, Peter K Fallon that it is you who I think is twisting the language to suit your purpose. It is you who is eliminating “God” from the definition of religion. Granted (laissez-faire) capitalism can be ideological, still there is no god central to capitalism. I don’t know what it would mean to say that materialism is a religion or even an ideology since it’s simply the default position after beliefs in spirits, ghosts and immaterial souls are exploded as myths.
    I think you are basically confused about being an agnostic and a theist. By now you must realize that I think your concepts of religion and “god” are idiosyncratic and unorthodox. You remind me of a criticism made by Alasdair McIntyre about Paul Tillich: that he gives atheists less and less to not believe in.

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    1. I am no control of what you wish to hear, Fred. It is not I who eliminated "God" from the definition of religion. The most ancient religions had no "gods." Transcendence indwelled in the material. So, unless you're going to say that animism -- transcendence in every rock, river, and ravine -- is the same thing as pantheism (and they're not terribly distant, just not the same) you reveal yourself as one who grabs the label that is most convenient. You've done it earlier (and again this is evidence of your need to begin with the conclusion to support your premises) by rejecting Buddhism as a religion because of the absence of some old man in the sky who tells you what to do. Hey, Fred, if you get to invent the rules by which human beings reason, then I surrender! I'll never be right about this, and the evil of religion, rather than the evil of ideology, will be proven.

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    2. Re: capitalism. You need to read to read Paul Tillich. Capitalism most certainly has a "god," for those who look at it not as a mere economic system (which needs to be regulated by human reason) but as an ideology.

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    3. My views of "god" are idiosyncratic and unorthodox? Good. That's the point. And I have news for you: this is the unreported story behind the "decline of religion." It is not the aspiration for transcendence that has declined, it is the unquestioning adherence to ideology. I am far from the only human being on Earth to have discovered his/her own idiosyncratic and unorthodox understandings of transcendence.

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  18. So let’s examine your concept of “God.” Do I, Fred N, believe in a reality that goes beyond our present and past human experiences? You bet I do. Am I so enamored over our puny powers of perception, even when enhanced by powerful scientific instruments, that I believe that there can be nothing that exists that is not experience-able (is that a word?)? No, I think that’s possible. So is there a numinous Being Itself lurking behind the totality of beings that I can see and handle? Maybe. But I don’t aspire to that mysterious transcendence! Why should I? I know nothing about it. Neither, do you, as you say. You cannot even call it, an “it.” So why do you call it “God”? You know when you do that people are going to think you’re talking about YAHWEH or Christ or Allah. It’s only natural. If you say those gods are really in fact what you are calling “God,” they’d beg to differ because their god is not nebulous or meaningless in practical terms.
    They are right and you are wrong because their gods can offer them all the things one can aspire to and your god can’t. Their gods are persons, they think they promise, they console. Your god does none of those things.

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    1. I believe you promised you would examine my concept of God. What I read here sounds to my ears like either your concept of "god," or your concept of my concept of God. Upon what warrant do you claim the authority to control every dimension of a debate, including your opponent's views?

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  19. You say that you don’t know what absolute Being wants or what it wants from you. Yet you believe it wants something (something central to pure Being). So you believe that pure Being has desires, that it knows enough about you specifically to want something of you. This would imply that pure Being is intelligent and has awareness and desires, something akin to the traditional gods. I ask you what makes you have such fantastic beliefs about something you admit you know nothing about?
    You say that faith is believing in unknown things. I think you think this is a good thing to have. Why? Try this out. My faith: I believe there are no gods (not even pure Being). I believe this with all of my mind and heart. I believe that if you Peter K Fallon would embrace that belief, abandon yourself to it, dwell in it, reflect and meditate upon it, you too will discover its inner truth.
    Clearly you would say that process wouldn’t add one bit of credibility to my claim. Don’t tell me I have to have faith in something. I have faith and trust in the people I love. I have a crazy faith in democracy. There are good, time tested, experiential reasons for that faith. But I don’t have faith in Being Itself. Assuredly not!

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    1. Good for you, Fred. I am proud of you and happy for you. It is not I, however, who am trying to argue the silliness of atheism to you. I'll say it for (I believe) the third time: I am here ATTEMPTING to do one thing and one thing only, to dispute an unsupportable (and, frankly, bigoted) proposition -- and one that is tested based only on another, prejudged proposition; that it is "religion," and not something else, that causes people to hate and kill. And the proof presented here is that, well, everyone knows that religion is life-denying ALWAYS and has no life-affirming element. If you accept the latter, you're pretty much forced into accepting the former. And it is, ultimately, nothing more than bigotry, the same sort of hatred (poorly disguised as reason) that is being condemned in the first place.

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  20. Fred,

    You and Peter can't even begin to match the debate that is occurring as we speak on The Occupy Wall Street Forum, where I posted this piece to see what real rabble-rousers think:

    http://occupywallst.org/forum/religion-the-cause-of-what-happened-in-boston/

    You two are like lambs compared to some of the people on this site!

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  21. Animists don’t believe in gods? Now who’s grasping at straws Peter K Fallon? So the animists see “spirits “ in everything and not gods like the ancient polytheists. What is your point here? While you’ve been trying vainly to refute me, you’ve inadvertently proven my point and validated Michael Russo’s position that religion is dangerous to humans’ health. You have conceded all that is required. You make a distinction between religion and organized religion. You disparage the latter as ideological, unthinking, wedded to “culture-bound sets of doctrines, principles, commandments. These orthodoxies conflict and result in violence. Would you be comfortable if we called these religions “pop-religions”?
    You distinguish these corruptions from an original, primordial universal religion, which you describe as a universal yearning for transcendence beyond the sensible. You minimize and denigrate the few pathetic, uncreative, unimaginative, unquesting people who lack this deep hunger of the human heart. You scoff at the simpleton atheists who think that god is an old man with a white beard up in the sky and by doubting that they foolishly believe they have refuted theists. No, you thunder, true religion does not direct itself in adoration to a being, another thing residing above space, but to transcendence itself, to Being itself. No need to utter the word “God.” The ecstatic experience is one of awe and wonder over the immense otherness of Being Itself. The human experiences of hope and love somehow produce in us a conviction that something at the center of Being is in accord with what we want when we want it most fully and deeply (G.Marcel).

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    1. You make the difference between Religion and pop-religions so marked that the latter are not even sub-sets of Religion per se. They’re nasty little businesses that you want nothing to do with. However, I point out to you that your godless Religion has only yourself as a proponent. Perhaps other sophisticated theologians belong to the Peter K Fallon Religion, but they are not trucking with the people in the pews either. You claim that I have not examined your “god” because I don’t understand it. You haven’t made it easy to understand; and you admit you don’t really understand it either. You continually evade my argument, which I think is quite clear. Here it is again: Religions center on a supernatural god (you claim true religion need not do this). The god’s will supersedes human will (you said Being Itself wants something from you, but you refuse to address the implications that your Transcendence is characterized by wants and desires.) Once that happens then one abnegates one’s own reason and will (denies an aspect of one’s life) and does so on the least epistemologically sound grounds (speculation). Thus religion causes humans to do evil both to themselves and others.
      You will say, blah, blah, blah, that I am confusing true Religion with pop-religions, but no one believes in your Religion except you and it’s so nebulous that you might as well be an a-theist. (Of course this is my concept of your concept of religion but what choice do I have?)

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    2. By the bye, Paul Tillich is subject to the same critique. Maybe he was a closet atheist as MacIntyre suspected. He explains away faith as ultimate concern (reducing it to a human emotion, perhaps to an aspiration.) Then he claims that we are involved in a life-long search for “the Object of our ultimate concern.” This object is our god. If we mistake something that is not truly worthy of our ultimate concern, we settle on some finite object (money, fame, the State) and that becomes our god. Only the god above gods is worthy of our ultimate concern. Nice bit of psychology there. Of course, he doesn’t demonstrate that there exists a god above gods, something that can give our lives ultimate meaning and value in the cosmos. It must be difficult for you not to have any ultimate meaning or value… just a blip on a screen and then “poof.” My condolences. Tillich himself thought that an afterlife was wishful thinking. Of course the better alternative is not to make a god of anything.
      Anyway, your championing of the innocence of true religion fails because it’s not religion except in your own head.

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    3. 1] No, animists didn't believe in gods. "Where I would mark a difference between ideology and religion is in a defining feature of religions, namely that for a religion to be a religion there must be an assertion of a transcendent being, a god who is central to the religion." That's YOUR distinction, Fred. Where did you get it? Who/what's your authority. The anthropomorphization of God into "a" being (and more so, "a person") is actually very new phenomenon (relatively speaking) arising roughly simulataneously with the development of writing, and animism didn't die (completely, at any rate) with the rise of "personal gods." Fred, you do not unilaterally create the rules of engagement -- although you sure do feel the need to try -- by putting forth unnecessary and disputed definitions. Animism survives today in the Gaia religious movement (they call it pantheism, but they err ever so slightly; they affirm absolute "being" but reject supernatural "beings"). They would certainly disagree strongly with your insistence that YOU, and only YOU set the parameters of what is and is not religion.

      As I said earlier, if this is your only debating technique -- presenting your opponent with arbitrary and invented definitions which (whaddaya know?)just happen to support your pre-conceived conclusion -- then this is not really going to go anywhere. You are doing nothing but providing evidence that atheism is a belief system like all other belief systems, and in your case can be just as ideological and fundamentalist as any of the others.

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    4. With that in mind, 2] "You continually evade my argument, which I think is quite clear."

      No, I haven't evaded your argument at all. You simply refuse to accept my answers unless they conform to your rigid ideology (I believe, based on several days of this "debate," that I am now thoroughly justified in considering you an ideologue).

      "Here it is again: Religions center on a supernatural god (you claim true religion need not do this)."

      I've addressed this. This is YOUR definition. Tell me I'm wrong, that's fine. But provide me with authoritative sources to support your objection.

      "The god’s will supersedes human will (you said Being Itself wants something from you, but you refuse to address the implications that your Transcendence is characterized by wants and desires.)"

      This is very poor argumentation. You chastised me early on for characterizing Alex's comments as adolescent. What am I to do? Again, it is YOUR contention, completely unwarranted, that God's will "supersedes" human will. I have no other way of responding to this than to say it is childish. The fact is (and it is a fact) that I affirmed it as an article of MY faith that my belief in absolute, transcendent Being imposes certain responsibilities on me (my words, cut-and-pasted: "I don't know what God (absolute Being) wants, and particularly what it wants from me. But I believe it wants something and it is my job to try to understand what is important in life, central to pure Being. I don't know what the rules are, no "god" (invisible friend) has shared them with me. But I do believe there are rules (CS Lewis situates them -- universally -- as part of a "human nature that seeks justice -- first for self, later for others -- because it experiences injustice). Yes, I am agnostic. No person of faith (by the very definition of the word) can be anything but agnostic. If you know, it's not faith.") Where in here do you see me surrendering my will? Please, show me.

      "Once that happens then one abnegates one’s own reason and will (denies an aspect of one’s life) and does so on the least epistemologically sound grounds (speculation). Thus religion causes humans to do evil both to themselves and others."

      IF I reject reason and IF I surrender my free will (which, ironically, is another transcendent concept that many on your list of eminent atheists reject) and IF I do these on the basis of mere speculation (which, AGAIN, is your attempt to control the terms of debate and just more evidence that all you're doing here is engaging in some sort of activity that allows you to feel superior), then, YES! I am hurting myself and others. But Fred, your "proof" for all of this is that because I am "religious" (which you CHOOSE, by your free will, to conflate with ideology) I am irrational, delusional, and dangerous. It's nothing more than vulgar bigotry. Really! I'm shaking my head right now unable to understand how you can even try to deny that! But, of course, you have the ONE, TRUE WAY, and all who reject your way are -- well -- infidels.

      Early in my professional life, I worked in mental health facilities producing educational and training media. I had more logical conversations with chronically hospitalized patients than I'm having right now.

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    5. Finally, 3] "Anyway, your championing of the innocence of true religion fails because it’s not religion except in your own head."

      Well, no. And no surprise. On one level, what you're saying here, in far too many words, is that WHATEVER my argument is, you disagree. (Cue Groucho from "Horsefeathers": Your proposition may be good, but let's have one thing understood, whatever it is, I'm against it!")

      On another level, a level of fact (which is not the same thing as Truth, by the way), your statement is wildly inaccurate. It is not just "in my own head." Those same surveys that many of my atheist friends wave in my face purporting to document the "decline of religion" (especially in those magical Scandinavian countries) are cold comfort to atheists who actually read the footnotes. Atheists like to say that there number is growing, but surveys done in the last ten years don't really support that. Look at Pew's 2009 survey. What is growing is doubt and skepticism. What is growing is a rejection of ideology. And this is good. This is, in fact, why "what's in my head" is not terribly different from what's in most human beings' heads.

      I'm not taking credit for this. This is universal human phenomenon. And I'm not judging or trying to convert anyone who has "evolved" beyond the point of feeling the need to respond to this phenomenon.

      You're once again trying to impose your ideology and its accompanying worldview on this debate.

      I'll say it one more time: religion is not the enemy. Ideology is. I have a devout Muslim friend. We've been friends since the 1980s. I sincerely believe that your ideology, founded in bigotry, is more dangerous than his religion.

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  23. So let's sum up. Forget that anyone who disagrees with you gets characterized as an ideologue, a bigot, adolescent, silly and mentally ill, let's find the places where we agree. You agree that pop-religions that center on a personal god and are rigid systems of beliefs, principles, doctrines and commandments are life-denying, are dangerous to the health of humanity, and are conducive to violence. You are a proponent of a religion that is absent a personal god, beliefs, principles, doctrines and commandments. Your faith is characterized by skepticism and agnosticism. If the religious one maintains a humble, questing, skeptical and agnostic attitude, they cannot help but be tolerant, peacemaking, nonviolent and loving. What you've described seems to me to be indistinguishable from humanism, but let's not dwell on that. If that's what you are calling religion (and it will be for others to judge whether that bears any likeness to any kind of widespread phenomenon), then why am I arguing with you? Who could object to a religion with no beliefs and no gods?

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  24. Fred, you are nothing if not relentless in your need to define others to suit your goals. No, just about nothing you said I agree with. First of all, I do not label people with whom I disagree anything. I label people who see all people of faith (without regard for whether they're confusing faith with ideology) as dangerous, "bigots." I label statements like "religious belief is a type of pathology," "adolescent." I label a person who REFUSES to even entertain the notion that they're incorrect in their conviction that ALL religion is evil (see your comment from a few days ago) and atheism is the only rational choice, "ideologue." I have made it clear many, many times that I'm not being personal (if I were, frankly, I don't think I'd even bother wasting my time responding). You seem to need to paint my position as a personal attack -- which, by the way, is a very clear sign of adherence to an ideology. An diversion from the precepts is an "attack." I don't agree that "pop-religions" (I don't even know what that's supposed to mean -- you just tossed that one in there the other day) are rigid systems (etc.), I believe ideologies are. I am NOT a proponent of a religion that is absent a personal God. I am an opponent of ideology. I am not even against any and all precepts, principles, doctrines, or commandments. I am against the creation of rigid, inflexible systems of thought and social institutions -- ideologies. You are -- I hesitate to say -- correct in saying my faith is characterized by skepticism and agnosticism. But you didn't say my faith is also characterized by faith. To say that what I'm describing is "a religion with no beliefs and no gods" suggests either an inability or an unwillingness to attend to your opponent's words.

    Ideologies, of course, do tend to bias even our senses. That's one of the reasons we need to be skeptical not only of those experiences we seek that may be called "transcendent," but also those of the sensory world.

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  25. But I don't think you're stupid, Fred, and your record in this several days of debate has been so consistent in the arbitrary framing of the boundaries and reinterpretation of opposing propositions that I'm fairly comfortable with my impression that you're simply an ideologue, no different from the so-called "christian" who stands in front of an abortion clinic screaming "murderer" at a pregnant woman, except you're an atheist. The difference, in your mind, MUST be religion, and so what YOU'RE doing is inherently good, your belief -- every bit as irrational as any fundamentalist on earth -- is "true" and therefore "holy" (except you try your best to find another adjective, but in your heart it is your righteous superiority that seems to motivate your atheism).

    I'll say it one last time. I came here to comment on, and oppose, Dr. Russo's "modest" position that the supposed "life-denying" tendencies of religion create hatred and terror. I find that position, frankly, offensive. And somewhat simple-minded. And it ignores the vast majority of quiet violence that goes on in the world that is rationalized (but never justified) in the name of some ideology or another.

    That was my purpose. You, Fred, felt the need to turn this into a duel of belief systems. It was never my point to attack your belief system. As I said the other day, I know many Muslims and can claim at least one as a close friend. I also have atheist friends and, yes, close friends. We even sometimes discuss the differences in our belief systems. I am not threatened by these discussions because I know my belief system is a natural product of an aspiration I share with all human beings, and I came to it -- by myself, for myself -- as a matter of conviction, a matter of faith, after a lifetime of questioning, wondering, and investigating. Questioning it does not threaten it, because it is not an ideology. It is not dependent on a false sense of certainty. And my atheist friends, I believe, feel the same way. They came to their atheism as a result of a process of living their own experiences (many of which, interestingly enough, are very similar to mine). They don't feel threatened by my questions, because they know their atheism is THEIRS.

    I think I'm pretty much finished with this now. I can't imagine anything productive will come out of pursuing this further (and by productive I mean modifying your concrete views of the evil of "religion"). I'm actually rather sorry about that

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  26. The title of Christopher Hitchen's most famous book is God is not Great: How Religion poisons Everything. In order for you to counter the claim that religion is bad for humanity you would have had to present a version of religion that doesn't require a person to subordinate her own will to the Will of a Supernatural Being...a religion that doesn't poison everything. You have portrayed yourself as someone who would never subordinate his own will and judgment to a higher power and yet you have faith in a personal god. Your god demands nothing of you, makes no demands on the State, the law, international relations or upon our moral judgements. You respect your god but you're not taking any advice from her. Neither should anyone else and that's why your religion escapes the accusation that it contains a life-denying characteristic. Reduced to a primitive impulse, a yearning, an aspiration, religion makes no further demands upon us. Any that do are ideologies and not true religion. And you are personally offended by anyone who would claim that ALL religions are life-denying. Got it. Don't blame the rest of us for failing to recognize as a religion your esoteric idiosyncratic version of it.

    As for being an ideologue, I find that amusing as a description of a person whose position amounts to not believing things. What motivated me to challenge you was your intemperate attack on Dr. Russo as proposing a radical secularism and your characterization of Alex's post as a silly, adolescent self-righteous tantrum, "mewling" and "whining." Who knew that the schoolyard bully had a glass jaw?

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  27. Testy, Fred. Did I hit a nerve?

    You continue, as your ideology apparently demands, to respond to what in your view I MUST be saying, and not one whit to what I actually say. As masochistic as it is to try even to have a dialog with you, I just don't like to have my words manipulated.

    I liked Christopher Hitchens. So what? Your imperious statement constitutes an illogical stand (one based on ideology). It's you (and Dr. Russo and Alex) who have made the charge (religion is bad for humanity) in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and it is you who has the burden of proof. With seven billion people on earth, how many die in a single year as a result of what you call "religion" (and I see clearly as ideology) and how many as a result of other ideologies (capitalism, for example) that are (in your view) "non-religious."

    Scores of millions died in the twentieth century alone at the hands of atheists, but I'm not making the claim that "atheism is bad for humanity." Do you know why? Because that would be "silly and adolescent" and something of a tantrum. Because it wouldn't be atheism that was the agent of this murder, but an ideology.

    This is so clear, you simply MUST fire salvos of irrelevant nonsense to hide yourself from it.

    Once more, you ignore my claim that there's nothing esoteric or idiosyncratic about this orientation. Indeed, it is becoming rather common, as people of faith turn their backs in droves -- or at least keep a healthy distance -- from faith-traditions that have long been, or have become, in the last thirty to forty years, ideological. As a matter of fact, rather than atheism, parts of this group accounts for the growing number of self-identified "no religion" in recent surveys (like Pew's 2009).

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  28. There's nothing contradictory about a pose of "not believing in anything" and ideology. "Not believing in anything" is your belief system. And it must not be threatened. This is the ideological position. You need to attack (as, surprisingly, Dr. Russo did) anyone who believes something. You need to marginalize and ridicule anyone who believes something different from your own "pure" belief. No, there's no paradox here. It happens all the time.

    An atheist simple believes that there is no "god." If someone wants to believe in a "god," that is their right. Furthermore, an enlightened atheist (as my earlier mentioned friend is) questions his/her own lack of belief in "god" and even examines the faith of others without fearing that they'll lapse into some sort of "superstitious" catatonia.

    An ideological atheist simply won't accept others' beliefs -- which is to say they'll publicly announce the unacceptability of belief. They'll call faith "life-denying" and the faithful "superstitious," or "bigoted" or "hate-filled." They'll refer to "invisible friends" who demand that the faithful subjugate reason and free will to the invisible friend's will. (Again, this is a very childish public pose; there's simply nothing else to call it.)

    Can people you refer to as "religious" be ideological and therefore dangerous? Yes, absolutely. I've ceded this point already. Fundamentalists of any persuasion are, almost by definition and certainly in function, ideological. And ideology is dangerous. It motivates killing, both "in the name of God" and "in the name of profit." But it is YOUR insistence -- and this is why the burden of proof is on YOU, not me -- that all people you refer to as "religious" (even the non-ideological -- are dangerous, hateful, etc.

    You will not address this issue in your next comment, because you will refuse to acknowledge the ideological nature of your argument. You are compelled to see your point-of-view as solid, unimpeachable, unshakeable, and true. You will pick on one word I said, or you will find one "important" point completely external to what I have just said (you already chose to ignore the contradiction when you gave me a list of brilliant thinkers who were atheists and then ridiculed my point of view precisely because it demanded the surrender of my free will -- a concept which most of the atheists on your list explicitly reject).

    No, you'll ignore all of this and find some tangent to go off on. Because your atheism is quite ideological and militant. You are something of a fundamentalist atheist. Another extremist in a culture of extreme views.

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  29. Michael, you threw a grenade and then ran away. What's up with that, bro? Your only real response to the comments (especially mine) has been to say that your post represented a "modest position." Here is my modest statement, which I see as a mirror image of yours and I'd like you to respond to it (I expect you'll find mine to be quite immodest, as I found yours):

    Pol Pot -- committed atheist -- kills 4 million Cambodians between the 1970s and late 1980s.

    Josef Stalin -- committed atheist -- kills more than 25,000,000 Russians, most of them people of faith, because of the threat they represented to both his ideology, and to him, the ultimate and absolute arbiter of his ideology.

    Mao Tse Dong -- committed atheist -- executes tens of millions of Chinese in the name of a "cultural revolution" meant to "purify" Chinese culture of the pollution of faith.

    The problem with atheism in general is that at times it can be used as a kind of crutch to cover up the fears, anxieties, and insecurities that are part and parcel of the human condition. The human condition, the attempt to find "meaning" in life, after all, is shrouded in mystery: sickness, suffering, old age, and death are our lot in life. And no one likes to think that the misery we experience is pointless. So some people turn to atheism to provide them with a soothing narrative of material certainty to guide their decisions and actions and help put their suffering into some kind of meaningful context.

    With his rejection of faith to support him, the atheist doesn’t have to worry about death any longer, because it is a certainty. As long as he remains focused on the material certainty of the here and now, he will feel justified in gratifying his sensual, physical needs and desires without the annoying burden of worrying about the "transcendent" meaning or consequences of his actions. This leads to a kind of inner peace, but it’s an illusionary one: we can forget for a few moments at least just how wretched life is for others, but in the end we can never actually escape the reality of our own human contingency and finitude. And so atheism leads, inevitably, to an ideological rigidity that demands that all who are not atheist be, at the very least, ridiculed and marginalized, and at worst, eliminated.

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  30. The atheist takes his faith in the impossibility of a transcendent reality to extremes. The fanatic has the kind of crystal clear certainty about the primacy of his own will and how he should live his life that admits absolutely no questioning or doubt. In a Twitter feed, the atheist Dzhohar Tsarnev, the younger of the two Boston marathon bombers, wrote the following:

    "I kind of like religious debates. Just knowing what other people believe is interesting and then completely crushing their beliefs with facts is fun."

    Notice that Dzhohar didn’t say that he enjoys religious debates because it helps him to become more sympathetic to views than are different from his own. He enjoys them because he gets a thrill from “crushing” his opponents. And notice also that he describes his opponents’ positions as “beliefs” (something subjective, capricious, subject to error) and his own as “facts” (objective, certain, and infallible). This is the way of all atheists.

    The atheist's certainty leads him to view the beliefs of all those with whom he disagrees as a kind of heresy — a rejection of reason and a violation of the atheist's right to do as he will without the judgment of others. This makes it much easier, I suppose, to demean one’s opponents and to put them in the category of irrational, superstitious, and primitive; in truth, not fully human. It also makes it easier to kill them when you need to, because your opponents become, not just those who have a different perspective on the truth, but rather those who are actively working against the culmination of millions of years of evolution: reason.

    There is a soul-denying sensibility that is an inevitable -- and logical -- part of all atheist belief, but which is magnified almost infinitely in the minds of ideological atheists. There is no transcendent connection between one soul and all others. There is only the person. there are only the senses. There is only now.

    Lest anyone think that I am attacking all forms of non-belief as bordering on life-denigration, let me assure you that this is most certainly not my position. Just as I’ve met more than a few good agnostics during my many years on Earth, I’ve also met many supposedly devout men and women of faith who are as self-centered and epicurean as the most committed of atheists.

    But I also think that, to the extent that there is any kind of soul-denying message in the curious phenomenon of atheism, we will be providing a breeding ground for those warped individuals who think it necessary to demonstrate their devotion to reason by committing genocide, encouraging warfare, and wreaking general havoc on the world. In this sense, atheists like Dzhohar Tsarnev should be viewed as victims of a perverse and unhealthy worldview that has been shaped by soul-denigrating tendencies that exist uniformly in atheism. It’s only when we begin to acknowledge that religious faith and soul-affirmation, far from being incompatible with reason, are actually two essential components of a healthy intellectual life that we will even begin to address the underlying causes of acts of terrorism like the ones we witness everyday.

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  31. Peter K Fallon, did I say all advocates of religion are murderers? Did I say I have NO beliefs? What absurdities. It is you who should learn how to read.
    You again bring up secular atrocities as though a body count could win the argument between atheists and theists. Mass murderers belong in both camps, Hitler believed himself to be divinely appointed to lead the Arian revolution. I do not think that people in the 20th century were any more ruthless than the people of the ancient past. They simply had better technology to launch their attacks against their fellow humans. What would the Crusades have been like if the Saracens and the Crusaders had WMDs? Does morality depend upon religion? Are those who are without religion immoral beasts? Did the Jews really have to wait for Moses to bring down tablets from Mount Sinai in order for them to know that murder is wrong and lying is wrong?
    You wish to paint my position in the worst possible light. I am not saying that the trouble with religion for mankind is that it leads inevitably to the Boston Massacre (By the way, the Tsarnaev brothers were Muslims not atheists. Were they not?
    Our entire debate hinges on the definition of religion. “Religion” lends itself to all sorts of uses, including tangential and metaphorical instances such as “his religion is football.” I said that Buddhism might be considered a religion because (like football) it shares family resemblances that run through a vast array of permutations. There need not be a universal essence, a single feature that is common to all instances. That said, however, there is a paradigm case of religion and there is generally accepted sense of what a religion is. There is no private language. You can’t just make up your own meaning and expect to be understood. I’m not fond of using dictionary definition in an argument, but in this case I find it telling that the Merrian-Webster Dictionary’s first definition for religion is “the service and worship of God or the supernatural.” Consulting the Catholic Encyclopedia under “religion,” one reads that the most likely etymology of the term is from Lactantius in his Divine Institutes IV xxvii. He derives religion from religare (to bind): He states: “We are tied to God and bound to Him (religati) by the bonds of piety…”

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  32. The encyclopedia goes on to state: “Religion, broadly speaking, means the voluntary subjection of oneself to God.”
    We have long since worn out our audience, but I keep expecting someone of faith to jump in here and shout: “NO, Peter K Fallon, religion is NOT merely an aspiration for some nebulous transcendence! Let me assert “God, our Father, thy Will be done! Into His hands I commend my soul. I know that my Redeemer Liveth. Would you label these advocates of religion as ideologues?
    You, of course will not assert that the most general sense of religion involves the subjection to a Supreme Being who is more worthy to be followed than one’s own sinful ego, because then you would have to concede that which the atheist most faults the faithful for doing. Many faithful people would say that they are quite proud and grateful to renounce their own selfish egos to bind themselves to the way and the light of their savior. They feel sorry for the atheist whose lack of faith forces them icily on their own path without hope or divine grace. They see it as a great strength to follow their god, not a weakness.
    You can try to finesse this by saying that one who truly follows god’s will is following one’s own will and thus there never is any conflict and certainly no evil consequences of submission. This was Rousseau’s trick when he suggested that when one went along with the General Will (le moi common) one was in fact following one’s own true autonomous will. Political pragmatists found that rather suspicious. How could one know what the General Will wants? Too soon the General Will turned into the General’s Will (Napoleon’s) So too the atheists doubt that the theist can really know what “God’s Will” is. However the atheist doesn’t doubt for a minute that the myriad proponents of religions think that what they are doing is in accord with the Will of their god.

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  33. I find your latest ranting amusing as you try to describe the characteristics that unite an immense variety of people who are without belief. The attempt to make atheism into a religion is like saying that not collecting stamps is a hobby. I am laughing over your depictions of the “certainties” and comforts of atheists as we wallow in hedonic materialism. You sound especially paranoid when you claim that it’s atheists that accuse believers of “heresy.” You are hysterical when you claim that atheists are willing to kill people for the sake of Reason! Spare me please! Moreover you claim we are trying to marginalize theists! What absurdity. You clearly have no sense of history and the consequences that freethinkers have suffered at the hands of religious people. Let’s have enough of that.
    I am going to spell it out for you one more time. The atheist is not exulting over the absence of any metaphysical or religious comforts. You theists like to think of us like Milton’s Satan, arrogantly defying and mocking the faithful. Nothing could be further from the truth. The life of the Matrix is quite tempting. The tragic view of life is painful to accept. William James would say to us you have a right and a choice to make yourselves feel better by just adopting belief. However, after “years of thought, both philosophically and theologically,” the worldview that comes from religion ceases to be an option. It becomes as Freud put it “a delusion.” In this same spirit, can you not see Peter K Fallon that when one only has this wonderful natural world and one’s own will to go on (together with the collaboration of all our fellow humans) that it would not be wise to put your faith and trust in something that doesn’t exist, and downright dangerous to do so given the claimed superiority and authority of its alleged will? Can you not see that? You will say that I don’t really understand religion, but I think I understand it better than you do given your murky and contradictory assertions about your own. I have lost interest in your religion and am talking about religion, as religionists themselves understand it. For most believers (save you apparently) the strength of their faith is in their allegiance to a personal god, the very thing that is a flaw to the non-believer.
    By the bye, I didn’t miss your crack that I refer to free will when atheist scholars have challenged the notion. Is this really the place to engage in the free will/determinism debate? Wouldn’t that lead us far afield? “Self-determination” is a good compatibilist substitute for “free will.”
    It certainly is a clever (although not terribly original) ploy to try to turn the tables and demonize atheists for all the evil in the world. So intent on this tactic that you even claim that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an atheist, though he told a friend two weeks before the marathons: “God is all that matters. It doesn’t matter about school and engineering.” (New York Times, May 5). I implored you not to engage in character assassination, but you seem to have a penchant for it.

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  34. I love the way you say you not disparaging all non-belief, just the most committed atheism. What a lovely compliment for you to say that you've met some devout people who are as self-centered and epicurean as the most committed of atheists. Why, thank you very much. Being such a reasonable and charitable guy, you claim that the terrorist's perverse and unhealthy worldview ... has been shaped by soul-denigrating tendencies that exist uniformly in atheism. Man, where do you get this stuff? There are quite a few atheists who, admittedly, are not fond of dualism and the theory of "the ghost in the machine. " Many believe that the mind/brain is a natural phenomenon. If that's what you mean by "soul-denigrating" then the non-dualists would admit: guilty as charged. However if you mean by soul a metaphorical way of talking about moral character or personality, there is no way you're going to get away with charging atheists of "soul-denigration". Miles Davis has soul. Michelle Obama has soul. Lady Gaga has soul! In that sense, why wouldn't atheists be just as soul-affirming as religionists?

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  35. Sorry, Fred. Webster's doesn't cut it. And why should anyone be surprised that the Catholic Encyclopedia defines religion directly in terms of God? Did you bother to look at any anthropological or sociological resources? You can pretend I'm making things up or bending language, even as you aggressively (and in increasingly hostile tones) try to control the boundaries of debate.

    J.M. Yinger (The Scientific Study of Religion. NY: MacMillan, 1970) defines religion as "... a system of beliefs and practice by means of which a group of people struggle with the ultimate problems of human life."

    Emile Durkheim (don't have my copy of "elementary forms of religion" in front of me so I'm paraphrasing but I guarantee you not distorting his definition -- go look him up) defined religion as being those aspects of social organization concerned with the "sacred" rather than the "profane."

    Bronislaw Malinowski (Magic, Science and Religion, Chapel Hill: UNC -- date? my copy is shelved downstairs) had trouble defining religion! Especially primitive religions. Hence the title of his book. Animism comes into play, vague notions of "supernature," and --yes -- even "gods" or a "god." But a "supreme being" has NEVER been either necessary or even central to religion.

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  36. But, of course, you insist on discussing religion-as-you-demand-it-exists. And so we have systematized beliefs, formalized worship, ritualized behavior (and potentially thought). This does, indeed, come perilously close to Ellul's definition of ideology (although I don't believe it necessarily crosses the line). Indeed, Ellul chastised Christians to neither believe in nor live by any sort of "Christian principles." Christianity, for Ellul (and he was both a pastor in the Reformed Church and a theologian) was not a rule-based system; in fact, it could not be reduced to a system at all.

    But I'm straying from your desired point, that religion-as-you-demand-it-exists is God-centered, will-subjugating, and life-denying. (Again, this is so arbitrary that YOU are forced to look at Buddhism or Taoism and remark that they are "not really religions" simply because that is the natural conclusion of YOUR definition of religion.)

    So, let's look at the number of Muslims who kill people as opposed to the number who live in peace with God, with their neighbor, with nature, etc. And let's then look at the same relationship between Christianity and peace or violence. And the same for Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism.

    And then let's do the same for ideologies, like Capitalism.

    But, no, you say this breaks the rules of YOUR debate because it contravenes YOUR conceptualization -- quite an arbitrary one -- of what is and is not "religion." We must dismiss the twentieth century and ignores its significance. It was not atheism but technology that made the twentieth century the deadliest in human history. By the way, I brought those up in my response to Dr. Russo as an argumentum ad absurdum; I no more believe that atheists are more violent than religious people than I do that religious people are more violent than atheists (and THAT is my entire point in ALL of my responses to ALL of the comments on this post: it was, from the very start, an absurdity, and one based on ignorance).

    Again, Fred, knock yourself out defend yourself until the cows come home. I do not know you, and I do not judge you. If you know Mike Russo there must be something good about you. I do not dislike you and, again, I'd like to think that if you are not just an acquaintance of Mike Russo's, but a friend, that we might engage in this debate in person in a friendly manner. I certainly do not dislike you because you are an atheist. I have too many atheist friends with whom I have great relationships for that to be the case.

    But your behavior during these couple of weeks of "debate" is exactly that of an ideologue. And so this is all pretty fruitless. If you get to arbitrarily control reality by defining it into existence, then I can hardly counter-argue on the basis of something that, ipso facto, does not exist.

    But that only makes the debate fruitless. It doesn't change the nature of reality.

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  37. "It doesn't change the nature of reality." Amen Brother!

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  38. Fred, Mike, et al., you might want to consider this:
    http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8885481/after-the-new-atheism/

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  39. So good of you Peter K Fallon to suggest the future direction for atheism. However, it is no surprise that British Theologian Theo Hobson, writing for a conservative journal The Spectator, would find Richard Dawkins to be a joke. He should know. He's quite funny himself.

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