Last fall, we went on tour debating the topic "Is Religion Good For The World?" Our arguments were captured on film for a new documentary, Collison. Are our morals dictated to us by a supreme entity or do discoveries made by science and reason, make Atheism a natural conclusion? You decide.
Religion Is Absurd
by Christopher Hitchens
Religion will always retain a certain tattered prestige because it was our first attempt as a species to make sense of the cosmos and of our own nature, and because it continues to ask "why". Its incurable disability, however, lies in its insistence that the answer to that question can be determined with certainty on the basis of revelation and faith.
We do not know, though we may assume, that our pre-homo sapiens ancestors (the erectus, the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, with whom we have a traceable kinship as we do with other surviving primates) had deities that they sought to propitiate. Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has ever taken their existence into account, or indeed made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story. Instead, we are asked to believe that the essential problem was solved about two-to-three thousand years ago, by various serial appearances of divine intervention and guidance in remote and primitive parts of what is now (at least to Westerners) the Middle East.
This absurd belief would not even deserve to be called quixotic if it had not inspired masterpieces of art and music and architecture as well as the most appalling atrocities and depredations. The great cultural question before us is therefore this: can we manage to preserve what is numinous and transcendent and ecstatic without giving any more room to the superstitious and the supernatural. (For example, can one treasure and appreciate the Parthenon, say, while recognizing that the religious cult that gave rise to it is dead, and was in many ways sinister and cruel?) A related question is: can we be moral and ethical in our thoughts and actions without the servile idea that our morals are dictated to us by a supreme entity?
I believe that the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative. Tremendous and beautiful things have been achieved by science and reason, from the Hubble telescope to the sequencing of the DNA of obscure viruses. All of these attainments have tended to remind us, however, that we are an animal species inhabiting a rather remote and tiny suburb of an unimaginably large universe. However, this sobering finding -- and it is a finding -- is no reason to assume that we do not have duties to one another, to other species, and to the biosphere. It may even be easier to draw these moral conclusions once we are free of the egotistic notion that we are somehow the centre of the process, or objects of a creation or a "design". Dostoevsky said that without belief in god men would be capable of anything: surely we know by now that the belief in a divine order, and in divine orders, is an even greater license to act as if normal restraints were non-existent?
If Moses and Jesus and Mohammed had never existed -- let alone Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Kim Jong Il or any of the other man-made prophets or idols -- we would still be faced with precisely the same questions about how to explain ourselves and our lives, how to think about the just city, and how to comport ourselves with our fellow-creatures. The small progress we have made so far, from the basic realization that diseases are not punishments to the noble idea that as humans we may even have "rights", is due to the exercise of skepticism and doubt, and to the objective scrutiny of hard evidence, and not at all to faith or certainty. The real "transcendence", then, is the one that allows us to shake off the notion of a never-dying tyrannical father-figure, with its unconsoling illusion of redemption by human sacrifice, and assume our proper proportion as people condemned to be free, and able to outgrow the fearful tutelage of a supreme supervisor who does not forgive us the errors he has programmed us to make.
***
Atheists Suck at Being Atheists
by Pastor Douglas Wilson
From the perspective of a Christian, the refusal of an atheist to be a Christian is dismaying, but it is at least intelligible. But what is really disconcerting is the failure of atheists to be atheists. That is the thing that cries out for further exploration.
We can understand a cook who sets out to prepare a reduction sauce, having it simmer on the stove for three days. But what we shouldn't get is the announcement afterwards that he has prepared us a soufflé. The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday's foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress.
If the universe actually is what the materialistic atheist claims it is, then certain things follow from that presupposition. The argument is simple to follow, and is frequently accepted by the sophomore presidents of atheist/agnostic clubs at a university near you, but it is rare for a well-published atheistic leader to acknowledge the force of the argument. To acknowledge openly the corrosive relativism that atheism necessarily entails would do nothing but get the chimps jumping in the red states. To swallow the reduction would present serious public relations problems, and drive Fox News ratings up even further. Who needs that?
So if the universe is what the atheist maintains it is, then this determines what sort of account we must give for the nature of everything -- and this includes the atheist's thought processes, ethical convictions, and aesthetic appreciations. If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo's David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still.
If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist's case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our "accounting" to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty.
It does no good to appeal to the discoveries made by science and reason, for one of the things that reason has apparently brought us is atheism. Right? And not content to let sleeping dogs lie, reason also brings us the inexorable consequences of atheism, which includes the unpalatable but necessary conclusion that random neuron firings do not amount to any "truth" that corresponds to anything outside our heads. This, ironically enough, includes atheism, and so we find ourselves falling out of the tree, saw in one hand and branch in the other.
Contrast this with the Christian gospel -- God the Father is the Maker of heaven and earth. He sent His Son to be born one of us; this Son died on gibbet for our sins, as the ultimate and final human sacrifice, and He rose from the dead on the third day following. Having ascended into Heaven and taken His place at the right hand of His Father, He sent His Holy Spirit into the world in order to transform it, a process that is still ongoing. Now obviously, this is a message that can be believed or disbelieved. But the reason for mentioning it here includes the important point that such a set of convictions makes it possible for us to believe that reason can be trusted, that goodness does not change with the evolutionary times, and that beauty is grounded in the very heart of God. Someone who believes these things doesn't believe that we are just fizzing.
You can deny that this God exists, of course, and you can throw the whole cosmos into that pan of reduction sauce. And you can keep the heat on by publishing one atheist missive after another. But what you should not be allowed to do is cook the whole thing bone dry and call the crust on the bottom an example of the numinous or transcendent. Calling it that provides us with no reason to believe it -- and numerous reasons not to.
***
Here's the trailer for the new documentary Collision:
***
"COLLISION" premieres Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 7pm & 9:30pm at Village Cinemas 189 2nd Avenue in New York City and Thursday, October 29, 2009, 7pm & 9:30pm at the Landmark Theatre 10850 West Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles.
The DVD is available exclusively at Amazon.
Charles Howard: Peter Gomes: A Sermonic Life
Over & over again I am disappointed by the arguments of apologetics. Their logic is so lazy & sloppy. They make these ridiculous analogies that mean nothing, & then if those don't work (which they don't), they regress into simply stating (without a shread of evidence or support), that "Atheism means life is meaningless", "Atheism means life has no purpose", "Atheism implodes on itself", "Atheism means there is no meaning to love & you can not appreciate art or the world in a meaningful way".
Really? Says who? I am a human, & I participate in the human experience, which means I love my wife and daughter, appreciate art and music, feel sorrow and grief, experience awe and wonder, etc. just as much as anyone, & guess what? Interjecting a super natural buddy / God to the equation doesn't add any value or make my experiences any more worthy. They are what they are.
It's pathetic that religious people have the audacity to suppose that they have a monoply on feelings & value within the human experience. Get a clue.
Also, just because something gives you comfort doesn't make it in the least bit true. In fact, things that give us comfort are frequently the things that we should be the most skeptical of, because we are most likely to be under the influence of wishful thinking. Wishing something were true doesn't make it any more real.
Atheists who claim it is “rational” to be atheists have lost track of themselves. As science has progressed, it has disproven many of the most sacred teachings of various religions. The sense of 'disprove' here means that the teachings have been shown to NOT be rational fact. This leads to such “rational conclusions” as “the theory of evolution is a rational fact, thus there is no God.”
Atheists are engaging in a belief, not a rational conclusion. They are choosing to believe that the reality that we experience and come to understand through the scientific method, or ‘empirical reality’ as Kant called it, is the ONLY truth or reality. For atheists, there is no knowledge, truth, or reality beyond what humans can know through reason.
Theism, then, is the belief that there is knowledge beyond what humans can possibly know. We can call this knowledge, or reality, or truth, God. This God is by definition something that we cannot know. Yet, once one engages in the belief of this God’s existence, there are some things that can be shown to follow logically. And this is the stuff of religion. The important point is that there is nothing inherent in theism that is counter to science.
While agnostics may see no point in speculation, atheists, for reasons stated above, don't really claim to "believe", but for the sake of argument assume the existence of God is -pretty unlikely. Characteristically, they attempt to point out the disadvantages, for individuals and groups, of too easily embracing the perceived necessity to believe a ready-made legend; one that comes with an agenda- for the world and everyone in it.....
At this juncture, theists might point out the blessings of an ultimate faith, beyond intellect and pure reason, that works within one's personal belief system, to give one a sense of peace and understanding of life that an atheist, who just can't go there, will never experience. The existence of the aforementioned cannot be 'disproven' at all, nor would I wish to try. But when you imply that atheists cannot conceive of metaphysical ideas beyond what humans can know through reason, that is an implication, being a theist as you are (I only assume), that you could not substantiate, and so is rather just an assumption....
As the one positing faith in something that cannot be materially demonstrated, Pastor Wilson should state the basis of that faith. For a Christian it is that Jesus was god tunred man, whose message and purpose were laid out to humanity almost 2,000 years ago in the form of four biographies and a group of divinely inspired letters.
The validity of Wilson's viewpoint stands or falls not on the refutation of another world view, but on this straightforward laying out of the basis for his faith. If this is insufficient to convince someone to share that faith, then the validity of that faith must needs be called into question.
I once read an article by Sam Harris who practices a Buddhist meditation as I do, he finds it necessary to change all of the terminology to better fit his atheistic views even though Buddhism is a non-theistic religion. Nothing wrong with that but why do the New Atheists like Harris find it necessary to criticize someone who wants to explore the beliefs behind the practices? The beliefs of people practicing even Christianity and Islam are diverse and individual, many atheists speak as if they know the beliefs of all spiritual people, often in specific detail.
I find all fundamentalism to be intolerant and arrogant. Many outspoken people seem to believe that our tiny brains know the nature of reality. From a scientific view it's apparent that we've barely scratched the surface. If an Indian mystic is proven to be accurate in some perceptions through physics a century from now does that validate mysticism or discount it? As acupuncture and hatha yoga, once considered "voodoo", are receiving increasing validation through scientific research.
"Live and let live", this debate will not be won by either side.
Also you ask why "Harris finds it necessary to criticize...", read his book "The End Of Faith" it is a fascinating and disturbing look at the facts of religion. He is very explicit about this point you just made; especially about criticizing moderates and not just Zealots.
I believe we can and should criticize religious moderates for too much tolerance of the more fascist elements within their own religions but we cannot hope for a dialog if we do not respect their practices or "faith". We have to meet halfway if we expect to make progress, just like Christians need to respect the views of atheists and agnostics.
I am very interested in this debate and I go out of my way to read Sam Harris and Hitchens. I agree with most of their message but they frustrate me, they could accomplish much more with a different approach, they could help to get a healthy debate going in our society that is infested with fascist religious movements that are holding us back politically, but they might not sell as many books.
So Sam Harris wants to reap the benefits of meditation without the peripheral suspension of disbelief. How does that affect you? I guess it's somewhat akin to me listening to some vegan lecture me about how wrong it is for me to support, through my consumption habits, the horrors of Cow-schwitz. I listen, knowing that they are right, but I can't imagine life without meat. I'm weak that way. Some people can't imagine life without their imaginary friends. Understandable that they would cling fiercely to them. Unlike the craving for meat, one's hold on pure faith is very delicate and tenuous and can be gone ..just like that...
Are you saying religion gives us the possibility of beauty, or god? If god, which god? And what about all those that came before monotheistic religions, and those that areas that are still atheistic or pantheistic or polytheistic? Do they not have beauty, because they don't have some sky daddy to tell them what is beautiful?
And Buddha, and his followers who were atheists, did they have no model for ethical stand? And who said religion gives us fixed ethical standards? Are the ethics of Christians of today, the ethics of Christians two thousand years ago?
Nor does atheism FALSELY CLAIM to have any fixed ethical standard, or FALSELY CLAIM it is what allows us the possibility of beauty."
Someone needs to open his can of soda; the pressure of the fizzing is compressing his sense of reason.
At the very least, think about it.
I don't have the time nor the will to attempt to find where morals do come from (I'm sympathetic to a naturalized approach, but my colleagues think this is not the right way to go about it), but ever since Plato wrote the Euthyphro, serious moral philosophers (and the best we've had), even the religious ones, have tried to develop moral systems that do not depend on god, since they've seen how weak a moral system that would lead to. Indeed, some of the greats 'bit the bullet' and tied god's hands - Spinoza admitted that god's will is fixed and immutable, and tied it into the conception of nature (it's not surprising that people called him an atheist).
Plato argued (conclusively: Please all, read the Euthyphro, it's short and easy) that moral actions cannot be good because god commands them. Why? Let us ask a question: Does god love a moral act (let's say, giving to charity) because it is good? Or, is it a good moral act because god loves it? Divine command theorists would of course agree with the latter - god deems an act good, and, presto, it is good! But isn't it clear how deeply problematic this is? What if god changed his mind, and suddenly thought rape was a good moral act. Surely no one would agree! The apologist has a rejoinder to this though - 'Aha!' he says 'But god can't deem rape to be moral, because god is restricted by his goodness [or some permutation of this argument - it usually boils down to restricting god's power to deem bad things good].' But this shoots the Divine command theory directly in the foot - to command that 'this is right and this is wrong' is to allow complete freedom to determine the contents of that command. Else, there is something restricting the domain of that command, and it's not really command at all (not to mention you'd have to give up ideas about the omnipotence
Are you seriously defending that?
God the creator?
God the collective mind??
God the guiding principle in the universe?
God the ideal embodiment of a good society.
or:
God is Allah,
God is Jesus,
God is Abraham?
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2009/05/challenge-to-science-and-religion.html
and the "Challenge to Human Vision" at
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2009/06/challenge-to-human-vision-benefits-of.html
The world deserves better than glib dogmas paraded as "reason" and "faith".
This is your second post on HP, and it's apparent that you are here to sell your fictional books.
You have as much evidence for your idea of "deliberate design" by extraterrestrials as creationists have for "intelligent design".
This is not science ... this is belief!
I saw your response (don't know why it didn't pass the sin-sores), lol!
You've made me feel really bad ... so I'm off now for a little self-flagellation.
Any argument based only on "reason" or "science" is always circular and therefore false.
There has never been a philosopher able to use logic outside a religious framework to form moral standards. In the 1800's, it was a very popular idea, that this was possible, but no one was able to do it. It is impossible to separate cultural expectations from broader morality. For example, in this piece, notice that the author's morality is informed by Christianity, since he is a Westerner. If he was an Aztec or a Viking, do you think he would have the same concerns about organized religion? No.
And since we're not living in the 1800's anymore! maybe it's time to move on. Truly rational decision making is made not only through the use of reason and science, but also with emotion, intuition and spirituality, of which organized religion can play a part.
Hitchens arguments are therefore illogical.
“The Rift of Popular Culture” page 85…
“….Albert the Great; father of Geology, Roger Bacon; father of Chemistry, Gregor Mendel; father of Genetics, Christopher Clavius; the second “Euclid” of the Renaissance, Angelo Secchi, father of Astrophysics, Georges Lemaitre, inventor of the “Big Bang Theory”….all were priests or monks. Indeed, up until the rise of the modern University, in the nineteenth century, most scientists were in fact clergymen-they alone had the education, and the free time, to indulge in scientific pursuits”
Oh and there's more....