I was born, raised and educated as a Catholic, today I'm an atheist. I don't know how I got to this point, but I'm here. When the occasion arises, I tell my believer friends that I think its a good thing for those that believe in God and the after life as it obviously gives them some form of positive reinforcement. I would never ridicule anyone for believing in God, nor would I try to convert them to atheism.

I believe the problem you are dealing with is form of denial.  In American thought, the door is closed on the idea that morality arises independently of religion.  Of course, the philosophers know better, but who pays attention to them?

In liberal discussion, there is much assertion of moral grounding of policies without any claim of religious rationale.  Consequently, for the person committed to rejecting a-religious morality, these claims are implicitly hostile.

This is why the passionate religions all go Republican.  They don't expect bankers to claim a moral ground for their greed.  Their compromise is all within their metaphysic.

To compromise with the left would mean they would have to accept morality arising without God, which would undermine their religion itself. 

Hi Michael, you are as dangerous as ever.

I think that it is a good time for an atheist offensive. More precisely, two related claims can be advanced:

a. atheists do not have to have moral principle, but most of them do, and they need no "spiritual roots" for the morality.

b. all too many self-styled people of faith have amazingly situational attitude to morality: is torture OK? Is unprovoked war OK? (Apparently, after personal guidance from the Lord, indeed it is!)

Another idea is that atheists and progressive Christian could combine forces for the jihad against mockery of religion espoused by theologians of American Enterprise Institute. It is one thing to believe that an immortal soul enters each embrio right after conception so once a sperm and ovum are joined, no human agency can impede their/its development. It is quite another to combine it into a unified "pro-family" agenda with "biblically inspired tax policies" like flat tax or getting rid of taxes on inheritances and capital gains, and biblically inspired denial of global warming, and biblically justifed imperialism etc. These people torture logic, torture Scripture and, of course, torture people.

Living in suburban Philadelphia, which is a pretty open-minded place compared to central Pennsylvania, I can say that this is still a pretty hard topic to discuss publicly. Many students are pretty good on this topic until their parents jump in and shut off discussion.

The Bay Area is a great place to discuss anything as are other pockets in America, but, I believe only 10% of the US population is agnostic/atheist. Until Americans can discuss everything rationally I'm afraid we are doomed to come in a distant second in the world intellectually. Every place that is more open-minded than the USA is tied for first.

I also think this also pertains to the poor critical thinking skills that enabled Cheney/Bush/WHIG to snooker so many Americans for quite a time after 9/11.

Tom

You should try teaching ethics in New York City without running cross ways of this little bugaboo...

I wouldn't vote for the GEICO caveman. The lizard, maybe.

It is equally offensive in reverse, don'cha'know.

As I have posted elsewhere, even the TERM "atheist" is offensive to me by setting theism at the center.

I prefer to think of myself as comparative LESS SUPERSTITIOUS.

How about someone who "believes" in God but feels all organized Christian religions pervert the "word of God" (whatever that is), are corrupt and only will have a negative impact on society (past, present and future)?  That would be me.  And I would be viewed with the same hostility as an athiest would endure...any maybe even more hostility.  The opposition is just as much, if not more so, is about being against the political agenda of organized Christianity as it is for actually being a "non-believer" 

I think that the reason Rorty's essay is more relevant now than ever is because the notion of "faith" has become so dangerous. I don't want to merely echo (or endorse) Sam Harris's book "The End Of Faith"--in many respects, I find it politically simplistic and borderline racist. But he does have one think right: A majority of religious people in this country prize action based on faith (or "wishful thinking") above action based on empirical evidence, and it's naive to think that this kind of thought pattern begins and ends with religious beliefs. Too many people (even high level politicians) let themselves be guided more by what they want to believe than by what the cold, hard evidence supports. From global warming, to the "benefits" of a free market economy, to our prospects in Iraq. And by giving people a "pass" on their religious beliefs, we're depriving ourselves of the ability to have any true rational discourse.

Of course, the good thing about the growing atheist movement--from Harris to Dennett and Dawkins, is that more rational people are starting to say, enough is enough.

On a personal note, I took several classes from Stephen Carter in law school, and I have to say, the man is as BRIGHT as a thousand watt light bulb. I've met some smart people in my life, but few as smart as he.

I think you are perfectly correct in pointing out the foolishness of liberals doing the whole "respect faith" dance. If it were sincere I think it wouldn't be so bad, but really it is as insincere as can be even from St. Obama. They think they need now to someone display their religious affiliations and beliefs to garner larger numbers of votes and shave off a few Christian Fundmentalists from the Republicans. It's ridiculous. It only gives more traction to those reactionary fundamentalists who in no way value the genius of what the founders established for us.

Those who understand and are comfortable with their religious beliefs understand also that while their religious beliefs inform their world view and outlook, it is simply foolish to allow religious dogma to enter into the thinking of policy makers and equally foolish to allow religious dogma to become a mainstream tenet of public debate. Why? Well for many reasons really but the most important of them in my opinion are that debate over questions of religious dogma or debating how to apply dogma to public policy is a private and not a public matter. Our elected officials are most decidedly NOT our religious leaders and neither the founders nor the majority of people today wish them to be. Dogmatic concerns should be strictly limited to privately conducted debates within a religious community. Jefferson and many others including me are happy to let you love and adhere to your dogma, but that's your personal business, it isn't public business, we don't want to hear about it because it leads to no good in public affairs. The other main reason is because we know, as the founders did, that once religious debates become political debates then dogma is used as a cudgel to beat people into submission particularly by larger goups of dogmatic adherents who inevitably begin to demand conformity from those who belong to smaller religious dogmatic groups or those who belong to no organized dogmatic religous group. Religion in and of itself is not a problem in a free and democratic society such as ours. However, like power, which will (not may, but will) be abused by those who wield it, religion will always be abused when it becomes part of the political debate. Religious dogmatists who enter upon the field of public debate, elections, and government demanding that their dogma be observed and venerated inevitably abuse the position and power they gain and bend it toward their own dogmatic ends. The religious stripe of the dogmatists matters not one whit. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And religious power mixed with politics corrupts and then kills religious freedom and freedom of conscience.

By removing religion from our political system the founders brilliantly bypassed the pointless and completely unproductive, idiotic, bloody foolishness of religious dogmatism. It is the genius of our system and should be defended by all genuine patriots, not to the detriment of religion or civil society but to the great benefit of both as we have seen in our national experience. Back in the Old World where this separation never was and the uncontrollable urge to abuse power in the name of religious dogma reigned for hundreds and hundreds of years there are far fewer believers in any God of any kind. So oddly, those who are the most fervent believers are those who ought to be most adamant about maintaining the distinct separation of religion from our politics.

Would you mind explaining yourself?  Theism is precisely the same sort of erroneous thinking as telling fortunes with the Tarot or belief in Astrology.  It reflects exactly the same sort of need for and belief in magic.  Consequently, it is superstition.

I do not consider myself FREE of superstition, but this is a superstition I have gotten past, like the fear of the dark I had as a child.  So I am LESS SUPERSTITIOUS.  I am quite serious about this.

To use the term "atheist" places YOUR world view before mine.  THAT is OFFENSIVE.  I place my world view first, and consider theism to be a superstition. 

You can do whatever you want when talking in private, but when communicating with me, you must RESPECT ME.  I am very tired of the tables being reversed.

And when they come from the left side of the spectrum, they can’t possibly be about trying to win over voters on the religious right.

Why not? This certainly seems to be the motivation of the DLC/TAP attacks on outspoke lefty atheism.

Somewhat off-topic, these findings may bode well for Democrats, especially considering that a good number of the "would vote fors" probably came from Dems and a good number of "would not vote fors" probably came from Republicans:

Mormon 72 24
Married for the third time 67 30
72 years of age 57 42

It's going to be hard to win starting off down 24 to 42 points. Electing an African-American or a woman looks downright easy in comparison.

It is all about abortion. A political scientist from my state, Utah, said the state which was blue as recently as the 70s went red over abortion. Nothing else matters. The most liberal person I know has said: "Give them abortion so we can get on with other, important things." I'm afraid it will be give 'em an inch problem but I do admit (especially since I am past child bearing years) that I would love to find a way to a truce and there appears no way to do it without talking abortion.

Not to put to fine a point on it you can get conscientious objector status without believing in God as per Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333 (US Supreme Court 1970) which some have argued (including me) overturned Seeger. Seeger is this great 1964 case where the petitioners were basically arguing they were were secular humanists and the court said OK, you can be a CO BUT if you were an atheist...not so much. In Welsh the court held if your beliefs "play the role of religion" in your life, that's good enough for us as long as they are sincerely held. The case is a great read (remember when we had liberals on the court?) if you've got the time and while I still balk at the idea that my moral code must "play the role of religion" I can life with that.

On statistics: the largest survey done recently was done in 2001. The question was asked: "Do you live with anyone who is not religious?" 19% said yes. "Are you religious?" 14% said no. 5% of us are lying and there are more of us than you think.

I'm currently toying with calling myself a "non-religious Christian" because atheist is such a conversations stopper (and career stopper I might add.)

On April 5, 2007 - 5:45pm tlees2 said:

... but what worries me is that this "positive reinforcement" frequently comes at the expense of rational critical thinking (which results in Cheney/Bush/Whig types getting away with conning so many for so long).

I agree to the extent that the "believers" you refer to and the believers I refer to are different. I don't know any right wing christians (believers), the religious people I know aren't the Falwell, Robertson, Southern Baptist types.

Similarity tends to increase efficiency, harmony, and communication but may also lead to predictability and stagnation.

Variety tends to increase innovation and accelerate evolution but but may also lead to disharmony and misunderstanding.

Evangelizing personal beliefs can encourage vigorous and productive debate, or produce hostility and further segregation.

Reinforcing group beliefs can produce group momentum or produce an echo chamber.

Weighing situations on that 2 axis framework, it's usually easily apparent what approach makes the most sense.

Thanks, piotr! But I believe the proper term is "dangeral."

One caveat about that atheist offensive, though: Sam Harris's sometimes-but-only-when-we-really-need-it defense of torture doesn't provide us with any moral clarity on that front. Rorty's straightforward opposition to cruelty leaves us much better off -- even if (as I see elsewhere in this thread) people don't particularly like his version of philosophical pragmatism.

I think that it is a good time for an atheist offensive.

Yikes!

Now is NOT the time for new cultural "offensives."

Now is the time to focus on serious mainstream issues, and bring the country together around them, moving the country forward in a way we haven't seen in generations.

Take War and Peace, Rule of Law, Checks and Balances, Corruption, Health Care, Class Divides, Global Warming, and Energy Independence for starters.

btw, I'm an atheist, what you'd even call a hard atheist, though technically we're all agnostic, and it's difficult enough just to explain let alone launch an "offensive" on.

Jan-

I think that the comments being referred to aren't made in Harris's book, but are the kind of comments you see reading public blogs and commentaries. Back when Yahoo news had discussion boards, I would read plenty of derrogatory comments about theists written by atheists. Heck, I even posted a couple. I think such forums were very emboldening (maybe too much so) for atheists, for whom the anonymity of the internet played a refreshing counterpart to the more common social need for atheists to remain in the closet.

Of course, the philosophers know better, but who pays attention to them?

Not many, because they're too abstract. Religion does a good job of covering the philosophical and practical, usually in one or two books, from "The Start and Finish of Everything" to "Everyday Dos and Don'ts."

However, science is catching up fast and encroaching on traditionally "spiritual" territory like morality as surely as it did cosmology, which is exactly why fundamentalists despise and fear science so.

I never met a fundamentalist who would share moral authority. Fundamentalism is dictatorial by nature.

Primatology, brain scans, and other empirically based research to explain the evolution and physical basis of morality are extremely compelling. It's feasible that in our lifetimes a fairly useful "theory of the mind" could be written based in empirical evidence and spanning fields as broad as evolution to physics to philosophy.

Inevitably in the near future, The Science, will far surpass The Bible or other religious texts in regards to practical guidance for every day dos and don'ts. Science can ultimately offer a level of specificity and clarity no religious dogma can.

I should add, they'll probably agree on the major issues, just as the major religions and cultures already agree on really important stuff like the Golden Rule. Of course the questions presuming a Start and Finish of Everything, will remain for religion. But that's the most abstract niche of them all.

PS, now is certainly NOT the time to be pushing atheism, or frankly even discussing it within 100 miles of politics. There are too many more important issues. Besides, maybe the time for "pushing" atheism is never. I wouldn't want to be pushed towards it.

Having listened to Professor Rorty speak on this topic in public, I can say that I took away from his arguments the notion that religion in the abstract need not be incompatible with pragmatic approaches to epistemology and ontology, but the historical record is brimming over with anecdotal evidence that religion is more trouble than it's worth. Ignore it at your peril.

"Who is to determine what works?"

I think Rorty would say that we do. You and I do. And everyone else here, too.

Now, one hopes we will have a rich array of orderly, secular and fundamentally democratic institutions and systems in which to negotiate a functional consensus about what does and doesn't work. I would add that the extent to which religion supports or undermines our open, secular institutions goes a long way toward counting up the real value of religious belief.

Of course, by saying that, I'm sure I've pissed off half the regular readers of this site.

—s9

Well, I'm a-wonderin' about precisely that very thing, which is why I chose this subject for my opening post. I'm not saying that that game isn't worth the candle -- I'm saying it's not even playable.

Two points:

(1) I'm not "technically" an agnostic. I have a definite belief about the matter, and it is that I believe there is no god. That's called atheism. Of course, while I acknowledge I could be wrong, that is not enough to make me agnostic. I believe the verdict is in, and I have enough information to make what I believe to be the right decision.

(2) It *may be* the case that the primary obstacle to pulling together as a nation is to do some serious smack-down to the sort of "magical thinking" that religious conservatives bring to everything from Christianity to Iraq, global warming, poverty, the economy, abortion, etc., etc.

I don't have the answer. But the question is, CAN we move forward as a nation when religion is such a prominent influence in people's lives? History would seem to suggest that, in such a situation, you can only move backward.

This topic has been much discussed of late by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (among others) so I won't go over their points again. Instead a few others:

1. Many people have no idea what an atheist is, they just know it is a bad thing like a communist, fascist or whatever the bogeyman of the day is. Next time you are in a mixed crowd with true believers ask and see what sorts of answers you get.

2. Much religious belief depends upon people following the ideology unquestioningly. There is a strong correlation between people who follow a strong leader (that is they are subservient) and those who are fundamentalists and/or social conservatives.

3. This type of personality has been studied in depth by psychologist Robert Altemeyer. His work was the basis for John Dean's recent book "Conservatives without Conscience". Altemeyer has now summarized his 40+ years of research into an online, free book which you can read for yourself:

The Authoritarians

One of his key findings is that this type of person is impervious to logical argument. Anything which doesn't fit his world view is ignored or dismissed. Such people can also hold contradictory ideas simultaneously. These characteristics mean that changing their ideas is almost impossible.

So, if you want to understand why such debates never go anywhere read his book. It is always useful to know what makes your opponents tick.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

If the truth of a belief is to be determined by its usefulness (pragmatism) or it's coherence with the sum total of one's belief system (Duhem-Quine Thesis), then why exactly, according to his overal philosophical position, should not Faith play a public role?

A very good question. But I think Rorty would have a good answer: as he suggests in his hypothetical exchange with Carter ("OK, but since I don’t think there is such a thing as the will of God, and since I doubt that we’ll get anywhere arguing theism vs. atheism, let’s see if we have some shared premises on the basis of which to continue an argument about abortion"), arguments from faith can and do have their place in debate; they just can't be the last word, the conversation-stopper. "You may believe X because of your faith in God," I might say, "but I think X is a bad idea because it will lead to terrible social outcome Y." And that's what religious fundamentalists object to: the proposition that every proposition is open to skeptical scrutiny from all sides, including (of course) secular considerations like social outcome Y.

Now, one hopes we will have a rich array of orderly, secular and fundamentally democratic institutions and systems in which to negotiate a functional consensus about what does and doesn't work. I would add that the extent to which religion supports or undermines our open, secular institutions goes a long way toward counting up the real value of religious belief.

Of course, by saying that, I'm sure I've pissed off half the regular readers of this site.

And 53 percent of American voters, too! But I'm with you, s9. Cold comfort, perhaps, but there it is.

Read through the comments at the WaPo/Newsweek "On Faith" site.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/
You pretty much see the gamut. Atheist opinion is definitely well represented -- even if it's not always represented well. Personally, I find it gratifying to see so many leaving comments there.

I always like to go socratic on Christians like this:

Do you believe that God determines what is right and wrong? (Yes.)

Then you believe that certain actions are good or bad merely because God said so? (Yes.)

Then if God had decided that murder and torture were "good", then killing and cruelty would be morally commendable? (....)

Or do you think that God had some reason to make murder immoral? (Yes, that's it, he had a reason!)

So it's the reason that ultimately says whether things are right or wrong? (Yes.)

And those reasons can exist whether or not God does? (....)

Geez, I'm glad I left Charlottesville before the Lawn Preachers.  N-ROTCs were enough for me, but that was a different era.

I'm currently toying with calling myself a "non-religious Christian" because atheist is such a conversations stopper (and career stopper I might add.)

 This is why you need to change the terms.  "I don't subscribe to superstitions."  Avoid being too pointed in making that comment if you want to keep friends or jobs.

Better watch out on the murder and torture thing, after all, when Dick and George say its good, WAY too many people seem to go along with it.....

"If you believe in God, I don't. If you don't believe in God, I do."
-Alan Watts

To compromise with the left would mean they would have to accept morality arising without God, which would undermine their religion itself.

This is a theological problem within dominionist thought and strict literalist readings of the Bible. It does not have to be a problem for a religion as long as the focus is on the meaning of the text and doesn't make a fetish out of words and phrases. Frankly it represents the difference between a living religion and a dead one, but most conservative religious people would resists that idea coming back with the words mean something not nothing, to which I reply yes but don't get hung up on the ancient metaphors and confuse a tale about hospitality with a religious obligation to hate all homosexuals; at which point we start yelling and throwing things at each other.

The modern world is infused with Christian morality, even liberalism, socialism, and marxism; in a way by turning their back on modernity the Chritianist turns his back on Christian morality itself. But here I sound like Rene Girard so maybe its time to stop, but really, how realistic is it to paint the West as Godless when Christian ideas and ethics are present in the DNA of all our ideas and institutions. Just because you don't take orders from a priest or a minister doesn't mean that the influence of Christ is absent.

Bertrand Russell already addressed this issue in Why I am Not a Christian. To use Christian in the sense of nice guy is a bit of a put-down to any non-Christian who is a decent person.

Tom

I should point out that I realize how strongly people who adhere to religious beliefs recoil in disgust to see the core axioms of their spiritual life measured by secular methods, the welfare financialized and priced to clear at the optimal rate… that's why I'm writing under a pseudonym.

—s9

Good and bad are not some dual between the forces of light and dark. They are the binary code of biological calculation. The absolute would be a universal state of neutrality, not a model of perfection, so the spiritual absolute is the essence of being out of which we rise, not a perfect being from which we fell.
Think of it in terms of the relationship between top down order and bottom up process. An example would be the corporation as top down entity in the eco-system of capitalism. Monotheism posits God as top down King. Pantheism posits God as bottom up nature.

I’ve never been able to stomach Anglo-American atheism, and I say that as a committed non-believer. Atheists in the United States and Britain just look like another Protestant sect to me, one that has perhaps carried its heresy further than others. All the standard arguments I hear from self-proclaimed atheists, their claim that religious people are superstitious, that they’re slavish authoritarians following some leader with hidden motives, that they’re incapable of thinking for themselves, are reflections of the long-standing fear among American Protestants of some Catholic conspiracy. For these reasons, I’d much prefer in an American election to vote for someone who showed a mature devotion within a religious community (someone like Jimmy Carter) over a vocal atheist who trumpeted some childish and naïve faith in human reason; just because I don’t believe in God doesn’t mean I do believe in the Enlightenment.

I think people should be permitted to get high on any drug they want, including God. If they're sane and sensible, they won't OD and they won't shun those of us who choose to abstain or who use milder drugs.

If not, they're intolerant. But do they view us atheists as too immoral to hold elective office? Or too moral?

The poll suggests a majority won't vote for us, so if we posit that they view themselves as moral, they must view us as the opposite. Which actually indicates that the majority (the shunners) are immoral or at the least, too high to make rational judgments.

Which is why I view the majority of American Judaeo-Christians as dangerous, in need of drug rehab or at least a sedative to restore them to a little more reality.

Kevin Hayden

PS, now is certainly NOT the time to be pushing atheism, or frankly even discussing it within 100 miles of politics. There are too many more important issues. Besides, maybe the time for "pushing" atheism is never. I wouldn't want to be pushed towards it.

This line of thinking tugs at the same vein in me as I am sure questioning god does in a True Believer. Once you fall over to the dark side, as I endearingly entitle my atheism, you relegate yourself to a pathetically small minority. Walking the streets of even the most cosmopolitan US cities, you can feel terribly lonely as everyone around you mires themselves in a conflagration of hypocrisy and outright lies.

I am currently living in Shanghai, and for those of you who haven't experienced life in a culture without religion, I would recommend a visit. It is truly eye-opening. Make all the stink you want about communist China, but there are myriad things this regime gets right that our perverted theocratic democracy get very, very wrong.

I am only 22. I want to have life in politics someday. Don't sell me out like this kozmik.

Good 4:

I agree with you about changing the frame away from theist/atheist. For me, though, framing in terms of "less superstitious" leaves things blurry and (I would guess) is quite likely to give offense.

When asked, I generally say that I was raised a supernaturalist but am now a naturalist.

I stand corrected. My impression was that individuals are dangerous, and the study of that phenomenon is the domain of Dangereal Studies, a new field of Social Sciences that indubitably deserves at least a dedicated society, a journal and a periodic conference.

Kevin and others: As a Methodist Christian, I am deeply concerned at the way in which religion has been invoked and used as a political tool since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. There is an unbroken trend there which is completely antithetical to the religious teachings I received as a young boy and still hold today. My wife, who is a serious Bible student, has the same reaction.

The reference to John Dean's book above is instructive because none of the Protestant sects in New England have an authoritarian aspect today. This is a recent change, however. When my father was a kid in rural southeastern Massachusetts, in the 1940s and 1950s, New England Protestantism was very authoritarian and straight out of the Scandinavian and Scottish/Welsh mold of Calvinism, Blue Laws, No Dancing, and being virulently Anti-Catholic. Up until my Aunt Millie died in the 1980s, she still chided my father about leaving clothes on the clothes line on Sunday, the Sabbath. Thankfully, all of this wackiness and authoritarianism and anti-Catholic bigotry was rinsed out the Protestant churches in New England in the 1960s and is gone today.

My take on some folks who call themselves atheists (but not all) is that I understand their revulsion toward religion but they try to be too clever by a half. The very last scene in Don DeLillo's White Noise with the German nun to some degree captures the source of my religious belief and non-belief. It was intended, I believe, to echo the scene with the Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov.

So for what its worth, I intend to bash dogmatic and flippant atheists with the same tools they employ to bash dogmatic religionists. The important thing is get beneath the stereotypes and talk to each other like the other is a thoughtful, sentient human being.

OK, so that was before the strand got interesting. I'll change my rating now. I initially thought that your first comment was a mere affirmation of personal belief without much direct connection to the Berube piece, but I have to admit it later sparked a genuinely interesting and commendable exchange on both sides.

The misuse of religion noted by Douglas is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote about the theologians of AEI. Officials of assorted conservative churches repeat their talking points.

On the other hand, I guess that I can agree with Douglas on most topics, but if he asks me, or if discussion veers to that issue, I will admit that religious belief is, in my opinion, irrational and all too often (but clearly, not always) it is a slippery slope toward rather dangerous irrationality. I may even appear dogmatic and flippant.

1) The fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative is a logical fallacy of the following form:

"X is true because there is no proof that X is false."

It is asserted that a proposition is true, only because it has not been proven false. The negative proof fallacy often occurs in the debate of the existence of supernatural phenomena, in the following form:

* "A supernatural force must exist, because there is no proof that it does not exist".

However, the fallacy can also occur when the predicate of a subject is denied:

* "A supernatural force does not exist, because there is no proof that it does exist.".

2) Agnosticism (from the Greek a, meaning "without", and Gnosticism or gnosis, meaning knowledge) means unknowable, and is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims—particularly theological claims regarding metaphysics, afterlife or the existence of God, god(s), or deities—is unknown or (possibly) inherently unknowable.

Technically there is only agnosticism, for all believers and non-believers.

Depends on your rules of epistemology.  In mine, simplicity prevails.  This just happens to be the same rule that brought us the modern world, with all its benefits and horrors.  But without it, some tragedy of the commons would have HAD to play out 100-200 years ago.

This rule also prefers NO supernatural beings, an unnecessary complication.

"It's the rhetoric, stupid"
I never imagined myself as a DLC apologist, but here goes:

I think that the sort of respect that some on the "left" would like us atheists to pay to religion in the public marketplace is illustrated, in its absence, by noted atheist author Sam Harris in an ongoing discussion with Andrew Sullivan, where Harris writes:

Where I think we disagree is on the nature of faith itself. I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not. Perhaps I should acknowledge at the outset that people use the term "faith" in a variety of ways. My use of the word is meant to capture belief in specific religious propositions without sufficient evidence-prayer can heal the sick, there is a supreme Being listening to our thoughts, we will be reunited with our loved ones after death, etc. I am not criticizing faith as a positive attitude in the face of uncertainty, of the sort indicated by phrases like, "have faith in yourself." There's nothing wrong with that type of "faith."

Given my view of faith, I think that religious "moderation" is basically an elaborate exercise in self-deception, while you seem to think it is a legitimate and intellectually defensible alternative to fundamentalism.

By construing religious faith as not merely separate from, but also "in conflict" with, reason, not to mention distinguishing it from the kind of faith "[t]here's nothing wrong with," Harris demands devaluing faith by anyone who claims to value reason, which, given the poll data you presented, poses a bit of a problem in the electoral arena. Must we really force people to choose between faith, on the one hand, and reason and science on the other? People also do not generally respond well to arguments that they are engaging in "self-deception," and I expect they will not be thrilled to discover that atheists think that moderation in the opposition of fundamentalism is no virtue.

All well and good, so we shouldn't overtly invalidate the role of faith in moral reasoning or liken belief in a particular religion to false consciousness, but how does one respond to the conversation-stopping religious argumentation in your examples? I suggest that we merely and politely acknowledge the incommensurability of our systems of evaluating the validity of faith-based arguments, leave them our literature on why we support, e.g., abortion rights, shake hands and part ways on those issues while still making use of the valuable, religious concepts we can reach via secular reasoning, such as caritas and agape, of which you have written elsewhere.

Is this the respect that adherents of religion themselves want? No. As Stanley Fish has recently written (from behind the NYT subscription wall): "But religion’s truth claims don’t want your respect. They want your belief and, finally, your soul. They are jealous claims." We cannot give the religious right any respect that it will value. As for our leftward of the religious right friends who want us to grant religious claims more respect in the political marketplace, I suspect that they have little interest in our souls or even the souls of swing voters, unless souls get votes in addition to the ones bodies get. They just want us atheists to stop offending the rather large number of voters who value both faith and reason--ours is not to reason how--while conceding the hopeless cavemen and zombie voters. For example, if we don't force people to choose between their Catholic faith and supporting access to birth control for all the rational reasons, they might somehow find a way to choose both of the above, and, somehow, they did just that.

I think you may have underestimated the appeal of, and need for repeating, the "usual arguments about competing for swing voters and trying not to piss people off unnecessarily." While trying to gain the votes of the religious right is a hopeless prospect, not losing the votes of the religious middle seems like a valuable goal.

[As for the clamor on the left for less discussion of hockey in the marketplace of ideas, what's up with that?]

"Yours for Humanity" - Abby Kelley

How about theism vs. humanism?

I agree with this, but accepting that our culture is infused from top to bottom with Christian moral teachings, including liberalism, which is an offshoot of Renaissance humanism, doesn't mean that one necessarily accepts the dogmas of the incarnation, the resurrection of the flesh, the casting out (or even belief in) demons, original sin, providence, and the rest. No?

Why do you want to be opposed to them?  I am not opposed to practitioners of other superstitions, so long as they remain harmless.  If someone predicts a future using the Tarot and decides I am a risk to them, then harms me beforehand, I worry about the harm, not the Tarot.  Same with this more widely practiced superstition.

I thought you were asking for more value-neutral words than theism and atheism, where one of the words wasn't defined in terms of the other. That's all I was suggesting. So let me rephrase:

How about theism and humanism?

On April 6, 2007 - 9:34am nedbalzer said:

I remember someone (I think it was Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco) saying that faith was the opposite of certainty.

Many years ago I read this variation: "Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to."

On April 6, 2007 - 1:44am Douglas Watts said:

This is the kind of juvenalia that does not "help" the cause of atheism in the U.S.

Atheism has a cause in the U S? No one told me, and I'm an atheist.

I think a number of people believe in God because they fear the alternative.....that this life is all there is.

Thanks for the great response, Abby. You've gotten at yet another of my problems with Harris -- the starkness of that opposition between faith and reason, an opposition I never witnessed in my Jesuit teachers -- and you've reminded me of something that seems to be annoying some people upthread as well, namely, the self-congratulatory alignment of atheism with intelligence. The day Dennett chose the term "brights" was a very bad day indeed.

A couple of more specific things:

People also do not generally respond well to arguments that they are engaging in "self-deception," and I expect they will not be thrilled to discover that atheists think that moderation in the opposition of fundamentalism is no virtue.

I agree completely, and wish I'd said this so eloquently.

I think you may have underestimated the appeal of, and need for repeating, the "usual arguments about competing for swing voters and trying not to piss people off unnecessarily." While trying to gain the votes of the religious right is a hopeless prospect, not losing the votes of the religious middle seems like a valuable goal.

Fair enough, especially w/r/t not pissing people off unnecessarily, which always seems like a useful political goal (and which helps to explain why I don't work on campaigns). I may indeed be underestimating the appeal of the usual arguments for competing for swing voters, but then, I do keep wondering about how many voters we're actually talking about. I've come around, however, to the point at which I've abandoned the leftish fantasy of my youth, namely, the strange (and tenacious!) belief that the people are really clamoring for Democratic-Left Socialist candidates at the polls and turn to Republicans only because (a) they are disgusted with the moderate Democrats they are offered or (b) they are duped by the corporate media. So I agree that competing for those swing votes is a crucial thing to do if you're actually interested in winning elections. Which brings me to:

As for the clamor on the left for less discussion of hockey in the marketplace of ideas, what's up with that?

I wish I knew. I think it has something to do with hockey being primarily a Canadian sport unintelligible to swing voters (who were apparently unimpressed with John Kerry's hockey-playing with the Bruins in '04), but the way I figure it, this clamor is exceptionally wrongheaded.  Surely the more we talk about hockey in the US, the closer we'll get to universal health care.  If we have to accept Don Cherry into the bargain, hell, it's a small price to pay.

Out here in middle America, "humanism" (as in "secular humanism") has already been framed very negatively. Being a "secular humanist" is practically like being a Communist. So you're not going to get very far in winning language wars by labeling yourself a "humanist."

That being said, as Michael and others have pointed out upthread, you're also not going to be convincing the core voters of the religious right to vote for a progressive candidate however you frame the issues.

On April 6, 2007 - 10:29am tlees2 said: "Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to."

This is what people who still support Bush must be doing.

hahaha, excellent observation. :)

While these findings aren’t particularly surprising, the depth of the apparent core American belief that a person of faith must occupy the White House is somewhat frightening.

Welcome back, Professor!

Yeah, I know. That's why I left the "secular" part off.

I am pretty skeptical about the usefulness of trying to reframe an issue that's already been framed, for purposes of swaying political opinion. But it seems to me that whether or not one's objectives are to sway political opinion, some terms should be reclaimed anyway, and humanist is a prime candidate.

I'm not sure I see the point of reframing at all.  For my part, I don't care if calling myself an atheist frames my beliefs negatively; for society, any way you package it, people are going to see it for what it is (and vote accordingly, I guess).  So why bother going all linguistic.

If you want to see "material stuff," check out the Vatican; its many treasures (some left over from torturing people during the inquisition). Or you could check out the Falwells, the "Crystal Cathedral", the televangelists and their Barbie-Doll wives.

Our Prez & VP are overloaded with both religion and material stuff, and they have shared that wealth with all but the needy.

Believe it or not, it is possible to believe in the common good; of being a part of something greater than oneself; of wanting to leave the world better than one found it, and NOT to believe in any god at all. We actually believe that being honest and helping others is a good thing because it simply is THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Because that kind of person is who we want to be, rather than because fear of everlasting punishment.

In fact the last paragraph is not something that many "believers" are comfortable with; they pray to win the soccer game; to get rich; for a cure for cancer. They honestly think that a god is somewhere observing all the harm and death and destruction going on in the world without intervening in any demonstrable way, but will listen to one citizen who wants his paycheck to clear before the debit card registers at the bank!

Most of us were brought up with some religion. It is a journey to arrive in life without one, and unlike many religious people believe; it is not the lazy way out. It is not a choice one makes so that one can do bad things and get away with them. Both of those scenarios [refuting ones religion out of laziness or a desire to be a bad person] require the person to still believe but to be in denial. That may happen, but denial runs far deeper on the other side of the fence in my opinion.

Jan Knaus

I think you're wrong: You seem to have (misplaced) faith in post-structuralism. Post-structuralists have erroneously concluded that all "truth" is subjective because all assertions of truth are subjective. This is not only a logical fallacy, but a dangerous one at that--dangerous because it can be, and has been, used to justify and rationalize intentional ignorance. "Truth" ought to interest you, because it sure doesn't interest the Bush administration.

Oops, sorry: it's the Homosexual/Zombie ticket that gets 106% of the vote.

We have allowed religious people to define "atheism". Dostoyevski had a character say, "If there is no God everything is permitted." Who would go along with that?

Most people who call themselves secular are really sort of Spinozian monists -- like Albert Einstein, whose "God" is the ardent love of truth and the rewards of a virtuous life of cooperation and helping one's fellows while taking care of one's own needs.

Bertrand Russell (in his chapter on Spinoza in his history of Western Philosophy), says that Christians believe you should ardently love your enemy, which is good. Stoics say you should be indifferent to your friends, which is bad. The trouble, according to Russell, is that few can live up to Christian precepts, nor does he feel it is really desirable in many cases. But even Bertrand Russell, who wrote that he was not a believer, warned against man's making a god out of himself and forgetting his fallibility -- as the religious accuse atheists of doing.

I agree with those that say that the great religious traditions contain information (wisdom) that people have considered most important and often in symbolic form. Some of the wisest people in the world devoted their lives to religion, and we discard their wisdom at our peril. On the other hand, Emerson said, and I agree with him, that Jesus Christ attached insufficient importance to art and science. (It is a true of other saints as well.) It is a dilemma.

I'm sorry-maybe I'm reading different posts than you. I think the discussion here, from both atheists and religious people, has been quite civil. And while there may be an animosity directed toward those who are unthinking and religious (you must admit that such people exist, in numbers far to large to be comfortable), the animosity is directed much more toward the "unthinking" part than the "religious" part.

When I say, as I have above, that "faith" is dangerous, I don't mean to equate "faith" with "religion". Rather, by "faith" I mean the process whereby people are willing to believe a wide variety of things on the basis of little to no evidence, and are then unwilling to re-examine those beliefs.

There are plenty of thoughtful, intelligent, and great people out there who are religious, but for whom the process of believing without evidence is still generally anathema. I don't consider such people hypocrites, or deluded, or enemies. I happen to disagree with such people about one fact, but this fact is not a "conversation stopper." I consider smart, thoughtful religious people to be allies against the general and all too pervasive lack of rationality in society at large.

Of course religious people define "atheism," "theism" is their word.  Don't use it.

As with the professor, there is nothing wrong with reading the texts.  Just don't worship them.  Nobody worships the Greek gods anymore, although there are plenty of those texts around.  There is no dilemma. 

I liked the comments above re: fundamentalists. This is very true:

...that's what religious fundamentalists object to: the proposition that every proposition is open to skeptical scrutiny from all sides, including (of course) secular considerations like social outcome Y.

Fundamentalists have such a rigid position, that you're not going to be able to communicate with them on mutually intelligible grounds.

At the same time, I want to somewhat resist the two categories that Abbey outlines above: fundamentalists vs. religious moderates who embrace reason and faith. I don't disagree with these two categories, but I see another category of people (who perhaps Abbey was including in her latter category). In my religion (Mormonism), along with all the strong right-wing adherents, I see a good number of people who not only want to think of reason and faith as not mutually exclusive, but want to be taken seriously when they make judgments using their religious morality.

For example, not only are their Catholics who can embrace both their Catholic faith and a rational explanation of why birth control is a good idea. But there may also be Mormons (I know a handful) who decide that they can support communitarianist/socialist ideas *because of* their belief in their Mormon faith. Which is not to say that secularists have an obligation to make these arguments to them.

But I do think that by differentiating between fundamentalists and those who want to make some of their political decisions using their religious morality, you're going to reach a much broader audience (which, I guess, returns us to the point of the "usual arguments about competing for swing voters and trying not to piss people off unnecessarily"). In my religious community, I know quite a few people who get nearly as (or just as) pissed off by getting lumped in with the fundamentalists as they get with the fundamentalists themselves.

I was referring to the dilemma of the most influential moral teachers throughout history downgrading the importance of art and science. Or course, if it were not for scholarship (science) we wouldn't be able to read them at all -- so perhaps it is more of a paradox.

I would rather poke myself in the eye with a pencil 23 times than debate, God, guns or abortion.

I agree, and I think it is an essential starting point for serious discussion about the nature of existence. What is this life? Could it be more than it is? Is life more for some people than it is for others? Who is responsible for making life less for some than for others? What are the obstacles to making life more than it is for everybody? Are the answers to these questions entirely concerned with material goods? Does the quality of our culture have something to do with it? What would it mean to say that the quality of life could be more than it is? How are we to understand the contradiction between what life could be and what it actually is? What do art and philosophy have to say about this? Is this fear perhaps the starting point for almost all human accomplishments? Is it perhaps the starting point for good and evil deeds alike? If this is a question that does not concern you, what do you think about in its place? How did you arrive at that point? Are there examples you could point to of people who have particularly good attitudes on this subject? Does this subject have a history? Are the solutions of yesterday adequate for the present?

Reframing is not A method for addressing this problem, it is the only method.

I dunno about this.  European religiosity is on the decline; I don't know that it has anything to do with reframing. 

I'd say that the method by which we will gain ground in society, as atheists, is, how absurdly can I put it, "The Great Historical March of Inductive Evidence."  Over time, the more ground that scientific explanations cover, the more people who will be persuaded to give up the idea of a divine creator.  Wm. of Occam was a theist, but the razor he pulled out, in the long run, cuts deepest against religion. 

The people most disturbed by religion are those who would simply replace one faith with another.

Alternate hypothesis: The people most disturbed by religion are those who have been most harmed by it.

From this point we could either design an experiment, or pray for God's wisdom to be revealed on the matter.

The Europeans solved their religion problem by exporting all their true believers to the US.

"if God had decided that murder and torture were good"

Have you stopped beating your wife? I am not a lawyer, but I think that question number 3 is probably in the same category. I think there are actually limitations on the ability of reason to decide moral questions. I always like to bring up the case of the sociopath, whose axioms about human behavior are different from yours and mine. The sociopath knows what he wants, knows how to get it, understands the risks, is willing to accept the consequences, and gets enjoyment from the suffering of others. Psychologists have never succeeded in devising a successful therapy for curing sociopaths. But the behavior of the sociopath follows from his assumptions with perfect logic. Nobody could be more rational than the sociopath.

That does not necessarily mean that they are competent. Look at the Bush administration.

Whit, you have raised issues that are very interesting to me, as a person who has made an informal study of Zen and the Jewish origins of Christianity. I would like a clarification, however. Are you identifying theism with anthropomorphic theism? I know people who consider themselves to be religious who do not have an anthropomorphic conception of God. Is that what this debate is all about? I do not know where the technical analysis of a theologian or philosopher would lead on the subject, but -- at least on a superficial level -- the Logos theology of the Book of John sounds like it might be rather similar to the panpsychic theory, and the Biblical concept of the Holy Spirit sounds rather like it might lead to the the spiritualistic. Is the question whether God is viewed as immanent or transcendant? Are the differences between these points of view primarily technical, or are they more substantive?

Precisely my point, really. For Christians who believe that God is the source of all morals, morality is completely subjective: i.e., completely dependent upon the beliefs and attitudes of a subject, in this case, God. Christians can only be grateful that God isn't a sociopath, because then murder and torture would be commendable.

But I think that actually most Christians do not believe morality is subjective, even when the "subject" is God. Christians don't think that it's just some accident God hates murder instead of loving murder. Murder isn't wrong because God says so: God says so because murder is wrong. Maybe God has greater insight into moral truths than humans, but there is some moral truth that God is relying upon when he commands us not to kill.

At least, that was my belief when I was a Christian, and I suspect that if people thought about it hard enough, that's the position most Christians would take. It's also a position that is compatible with the existence of morality in a Godless world.

duplicate

Philosophical materialists believe there is no separate substance constituting "spirit." It seems odd to me that theists wish to assert that God and souls are made of "substance" -- albeit a very refined one, but this spiritual substance is necessary for transubstantiation to take place during the Catholic Mass. Or so I understand it. To me it seems a kind of materialism to assert that spirit has substance or any kind.

Anyway, haven't these divisions of spirit and matter been somewhat superseded by modern physics, which tells us that matter is an illusion? There is only energy. But who knows what science will tell us tomorrow about the nature and dimensions of reality?

I don't agree with the representations I have read of Rorty's relativism, yet when I read Rorty I also feel there may be something to what he says in some way. I can't put my finger on what it is, but I wouldn't want to dismiss him out of hand.

That is an interesting reply, and it deserves more careful thought than I can give to it at this moment.

The drift of my thought was more along the lines that those of us who disagree with the sociopath tend to not be relativistic in our belief. Even though the sociopath is being perfectly rational, we believe that our contrary view is "really" true. That suggests a kind of Platonism to me, the belief that there is a reality of ideas that exists outside the beliefs of particular individuals, that is, the sociopaths. This reality could conceivably be identified with the Logos of the Book of John (but I am not either a theologian or a philosopher, so I will not argue back very hard if I am contradicted).

People who publicly self-identify as atheists tend to have atheism as the defining element of their lives.

Kind of a sad idea, that.  In this sense, Good 4 is right about negative definitions; I find myself thinking that, as an organizing principle for your life, atheism is about as good, and more or less equivalent to 'I believe there are rocks.' 

If you could produce a list of businesses that do this, I will be glad to boycott them.

I think you have a point that the label “atheist” is negatively defining. Something along the lines of rationalist would seem more appropriate. Calling a religious person/believer/Christian a “theist” even sounds a little insulting (those raving, radical theists!). But atheism is used in terms of not having a theology (the term is used in relation to belief), so the label has to indicate that specific subject somehow.

You are trying to make them co-equal.  If I agreed that they were co-equal, I would have been indifferent to how my children were raised.  I wasn't.  Theism is in error.  I am willing to treat it as a harmless practice, so long as it is harmless (something it is NOT today).

It strikes me that culture is unlikely to tolerate treating these conceptualizations of the universe as co-equal.  There is a struggle.  One must be ahead.  If we argue only to be equal, we will soon slide back to behind. 

I can't tell--maybe you are a relativist, but I don't think so. I mean, you do believe that there is a fact independent of our experience that, say, the Earth is revolving around the sun, or that you are sitting (or not) on a chair right now. And can you also consider that there is truth, independent of your belief, that 2+2=4? And that the statement "no chair is both all blue and not all blue" is false, independent of any belief on your part?

This does not necessitate a "Platonic heaven" of numbers, nor does the idea that there are truths of morality independent of personal belief necessitate that there is a "Platonic heaven" of morality.

I'm not saying that there are objective moral truths. I go back and forth on the idea myself. But I don't think that there is something obviously problematic with the concept.

People who publicly self-identify as atheists tend to have atheism as the defining element of their lives.

If someone asks me whether I believe in God and I say No, does that mean I probably "have atheism as the defining element" of my life? Very very stupid, Allsburg!

Most atheists, you see, just go about their lives. Questions of religion or irreligion are at most of academic intellectual interest to them, more often of no interest at all. There are a few public-spirited ones who find religion so pernicious and absurd that they feel moved to try to do something about it. But not many.

I don't think so... Too many religious wars for that to be the case.

Correction (to late for edit) I meant Aquinas.... I get my Saints mixed up.

I only asked for an example, not a reading assignment.  As to the common assertion that Bacon was the origin of modern science, I don't think the evidence is very strong. 

The fundamental requirement was a friendly epistemology, the nominalism that was just barely developing at the time of Bacon.  William of Occam was a very late (as in small child) contemporary of Bacon.  Duns Scotus was a somewhat late contemporary. Their rudimentary forms of modern epistemology were hardly enough to robustly support "science."

The practice on the ground was likely ahead of the curve, but not necessarily that much.

In any case, a RELIGIOUS argument against science is NOT a MORAL argument against science.  The original assertion is that MORAL leaders impeded and devalued science and the arts. 

Allsburg,

Are you trained philosophically? Because if you aren't, you may not be very happy with the kinds of answers you could get to these questions.

First, and foremost, the effort to establish the ground for finding facts independent of our existence has been one of the longest and least satisfying struggles in philosophy. Kant used the words noumena and phenomena to help address this distinction. The use of phenomena implies our subjective experience. Subsequently an entire branch of philosophy has grown up known as phenomenology. Almost all of your weird European schools of philosophy have some link to this branch.

Interestingly, the British empiricists simply BANNED the notion of noumena. While the pragmatists ruled it irrelevant.

In common language we still use the word phenomena, but noumena has gone out of usage.

There is a major group of smart people who believe in noumena, normally they are called naive realists. Otherwise, they are known as scientists. They would do well to read Quine, not that they would understand him.

"Who is to determine what works?"

I think Rorty would say that we do. You and I do. And everyone else here, too.

I think you are missing my point. I'm a realist, Rorty is an at least epistemological skeptic. How can an epistemological skeptic say, with a straight face that "yes I understand your belief in God but I see it as an impediment towards furthering our discussion on abortion". How can Rorty justify that? only by fiat. Because Rorty and his pals say so it must be done that way. We have entered the realm of coercive debate.
Once you abandon the notion that we are trying to get at the truth, all you are left with is trying to force your preferences on others. You have no ground for claiming some sort of epistemological or ontologically preferred position.

I'm an agnostic. I've read enough cosmology to suspend final judgement on the matter. But Rorty seems to be a TRUE BELIEVER on the matter. There is no God. He would deny it of course, but his every pronouncement supports that view.
So what am I saying? Basically that Rorty, Quine et al cannot ultimately appeal to the usefulness of science to reject theism. The issue has been empirically shoved back to Plank time and what happened and why it happened before that time is not open to empirical investigation. So a theist can say the evolution of the cosmos starts at Creation and evolves according to the laws that God set forth including the Anthropic Principle that led to our emergence.
In short, Rorty wants to have his cake and eat it too.
His claim that evoking God is a conversation stopper is besides the point. Next thing he will say is that the ultimate truth about us is that we need to keep conversations going. Absurd.

However, Buddhist, starting in a very reasonable way, immediately leap to totally arbitrary constructs like karma, transmigration of souls etc.

All of which is rather puzzling since one of the most fundamental tenets of Buddhism is anatman, 'no self,' which as far as I recall means no soul.

But Buddhists weren't materialists; their denial of souls arose from the fact that you can analyze psychological/spiritual things into constituent parts, just like physical ones - it's this divisibility that is the core of the Buddhist denial of substance.

So if I really exist only as a momentary aggregate, and have no soul, what do I care how my parts are reborn? 

Naivete is such a beautiful thing.

I don’t fear that this will become commonplace. But it is telling that it is taking place at all and without dissent. This decade has seen a shift like that of the late ‘40s and ‘50s (Commies!=One Nation Under God to Terrists!=Our Christian Nation). The video report was generic and seemed oddly vague. Most of the articles were dated a year or two ago saying that the chaplains are brought in as counselors or stress consultants but…

http://www.corporatechaplain.com/

Providing a proactive, faith-based Employee Assistance Program to employers who care for the emotional, social, and spiritual health of their employees.

atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2006/09/04/smallb1.html Mendenhall recognizes there may be some concern about adding a spiritual dimension to the workplace but asserts that there is no goal on the part of his organization to convert employees to any religion. "I think there are some people that do the latter but those kinds of things don't work well in a corporate setting, particularly not in Atlanta where we have people from so many different backgrounds and with so many different ideas."

http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2005/09/05/focus2.html?page=2 Underhill stressed that the chaplains don't bring up the subject of religion until the employee does, instead focusing on getting to know employees and providing someone to talk to.

buseth.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_buseth_archive.html Some businesses use "outside chaplains" - contracting with firms that can provide trained individuals in many parts of the country. Coca-Cola Bottling hired Corporate Chaplains of America, of Wake Forest, N.C.; American LubeFast worked with Marketplace Ministries, of Dallas. Chaplains get to know employees by spending regular periods at offices or plants and then are available 24/7, whenever needs arise. Others hire their own chaplains: Tyson Foods, Inc., a major food supplier, has 127 part-time chaplains serving at 76 sites. Charles White, who trains and supervises Tyson chaplains, moved into the workplace after pastoring in a Baptist church in Kentucky for 20 years. Some observers express concern that major chaplain agencies are founded by evangelicals, and that such chaplains will press people inappropriately to convert. Some, such as Mr. Cress, acknowledge that conversion is their ultimate hope (he sends a daily e-mail to chaplains asking if anyone has converted). But these chaplains also insist they are living their faith by example rather than actively proselytizing. There has never been a legal complaint lodged against their services, they add. Still, at the conference, Jewish chaplain Shira Stern emphasized the importance of "learning how others hear what you say."

The ethical theory on the surface is just a kind of Golden Rule, but the intention, I think, is to reduce the demands of morality to simple rationality.  The categorical imperative, do only that which you could will that everyone else do, is an attempt to show that behaving in ways traditionally thought of as immoral is to be irrational: if you lie, by your action you are saying that it is okay for everyone to lie, but if everyone lied, there would be no point to lying because there would be no trust to betray.  

The idea behind the Critique of Pure Reason is that the world we live in is in part structured by 'innate ideas,' or in more modern parlance, by human cognition.  I thought this was just bizarre when I first read it, but when I got to graduate school and became acquainted with cognitive science, I saw that there are many neo-Kantians in cognitive psychology.

But connections to Christianity?  Between an ethics that makes morality into just a species of rationality (never mind consistent evidence that human beings aren't rational, in the narrow sense that logicians like), and a psychology that emphasizes the fact that we live in a world that is shot through with what we project onto it, I have a hard time seeing how those links could really make much sense.

Devon, It isn't specifically his analysis that is influential (although it certainly influences EVERY academic whether they know it or not), but the force of his vision is overwhelming. You cannot find a modern moral notion in or out of religion that cannot be traced back to Kantian roots. There are even Kantian roots in the ever-so-anti-Kantian Utilitarianism, and, therefore, the entire body of economics.

I will add... the noumena/phenomena distinction that I have discussed elsewhere on this page is linked to the rise of Hegelianism (the one strand of modern philosophy I have only lightly looked at, so the link isn't all that clear to me).  Hegel is still the star for modern rationalists (CHRISTIANS, for example, REPUBLICANS, for another).  Again, they don't have to understand him, or even know his name.  His influence is overwhelming. 

Hegel is still the star for modern rationalists (CHRISTIANS, for example, REPUBLICANS, for another). 

Let us not forget Marxists, though they get less modern by the day.   

Not really confining his dances to a three-step.

"Have you stopped beating your wife?" contains a (potentially) false factual assertion within it. It is not an illegitimate question when the factual assertion is true and confirmed prior to its having been asked. The normal reason it is suggested as a typical biased question is that one assumes that it can be used in an ambush where there is no evidence in hand in the first place.

On the other hand, the "If God had decided that murder and torture were good?" question is strictly associated with the premise that morality follows from God's will. If God is in any way constrained, the morality does not follow from God's will. It comes from somewhere else. Thus, God could decide that it is an unpardonable sin to tell social lies ("Yes, Mom, you look lovely."), but not even improper to commit grotesque acts (Depraved torturous and psychologically abusive murder). If this is not within the scope of God's will, then God is constrained. This is not only a problem with the the theory that morality flows from God's will, it also creates a problem with the theory that God is omnipotent.

By the way, the same theory of morality flowing from God's will could mean that God could be just stringing along all the Christians (or fill in the blank).  If God is omnipotent and morality flows from his will, then he is not subject to it.  Consequently, he could actually prefer those who show a little defiance and independence, but find it fun to string the more compliant along.  In this sense, Christianity (and other similar religions), which are structurally rationalistic, are at the same time utterly irrational at their core. 

OK. It exists, but appearances are illusory. It it exists in a form that the attendants at the Council of Trent never imagined. They thought it was at the bottom of a continuum of impurity(matter) -- purity (spirit). I like the idea of describing a human being as process. It has attributes of a system, as well, does it not?

I can see your point about giving offense.  But, it just isn't that clear to me that I care.  I generally wouldn't say anything unless challenged.  The challenge would reduce the resistance to giving offense.  Some have suggested that the frames should be parallel or equal.  I cannot imagine that that would be a stable cultural phenomenon.  Thus, I recommend claiming the higher ground.

Only if you pay too much attention to philosophy professors (or, what, literary criticism professor, i.e., failed philosophy professors).  Pragmatism is powerful if you stick to the main tenants and ignore the modern day Scholastics. 

He was NOT referring to religion. -NeoLotus

...

I am currently living in Shanghai, and for those of you who haven't experienced life in a culture without religion, ... Make all the stink you want about communist China, but there are myriad things this regime gets right that our perverted theocratic democracy get very, very wrong.

In a thread about religion...

You can use whatever standard you choose to get yourself out of bed. But, what I originally said is still correct:

I'm an atheist, what you'd even call a hard atheist, though technically we're all agnostic

Unless you miraculously levitate out of bed, you are, I am, the Pope and Dawkins are ALL agnostics whether or not we believe or admit it. So far, Dawkins and I admit it. That leaves you and the Pope.

Theism and atheism are both agnostic. Most people don't understand that, but it's a useful point.

Does this analysis take into account the gay zombie caveman (caveperson) vote?:)

Tom

The stopped conversations and unmentioned issues are not only about abortion. Religious doctrine also concerns social assistance, where some argue that a personal relation w/God precludes government intervention in social problems.

A rarely spoken issue is defending Christianity against Islam, thus the current wars. General Boykin let the cat out of the bag, but mostly it is a private undercurrent. (Personally, I don't care to defend Christianity, but would fight against Islamic domination because it's a religion.)

An oft-asked question, famously stated by Dostoevsky, whether morality survives God's absence, should be no question at all. But even evidence of apparently moral behavior by professed atheists or the example of China's history, which depends mostly on Confucianism, does not convince the adherents of God-derived morality.

I actually had this conversation with a colleague at work (it didn't get "stopped" but it didn't accomplish much, either). He contended morality was from God, I offered the usual counters, and he responded that the examples weren't "true" morality. This is similar to the (Searle, I guess) anti-Dennett position that mechanism isn't "true" consciousness, merely a simulacrum.

Where the conversation should end up is with Dennett's response to those claims: there is no way to distinguish between apparent and "true" consciousness. There is similarly no way to measure whether morality is Godly or merely internally defined by human society, in the case of individual actions. If they look moral, they are, and asking the morally acting person why he does so yields only testimony, not observed facts.

It seems very difficult to find acceptance for this distinction--just as in discussions of consciousness we can quite reasonably speculate about mechanism while continuing to feel a rich interior life of mind and emotion, we can speculate about the evolutionary success of primate social structure and morality while continuing to act on our personal beliefs.

Perhaps my view could be put this way---rather than the post-Eden knowledge of good and evil being our downfall, it is our awareness of knowing that is problematic. And for me it is not our downfall but our ascension, that we are aware of the possibility of good and evil.

We need not invoke Heaven and Hell to remind ourselves that "all" is most definitely not "permitted." There is the impossibly rich social context for us and our friends and family, which imposes moral judgement in real time, as well as in the form of history. Our actions that affect others carry moral weight, regardless of imagined future reckonings.

These discussions have taken me somewhat out of my depth. But obviously there may be kinds of matter (energy) that we cannot experience subjectively. Physics -- science -- provides sufficient nourishment for the most mystical temperament.

I tend toward Spinozism myself, having been brought up in a "secular" household. Yet I always had a nostalgia about religion, particularly the simple faith of children. I know my great grandfather was said to have been both very religious and very kind and good. I could see from the way my grandfather spoke of him, what an impact he had made (my grandfather rejected religion, though he revered his father and tried to live an upright life). I also have personally known other people who are sort of artists of morality -- a few of them were my professors in college -- others were relatives, aunts, acquaintances, people with great emotional insight and lovableness, whom it is a blessing to have known and who do good things wherever they go. Historically, one thinks of Saint Francis, Buddha, and Jesus himself. I don't want to discount this. And I don't feel that people who attack religion always demonstrate awareness of its positive aspects.

On the other hand, this morning I heard on NPR a rabbi who had been hired by some Methodists to "renew Christianity," -- he was saying that the real enemies were "secularists." It makes my blood boil.

But what is pleasure?

Dobson doesn't think you're a Christian unless you're his kind of Christian.

This reminds me of when my mother went fundie for a while. On one of the rare occasions when I was willing to subject myself to her company at that time, I mentioned a new friend of mine, but one that I had become quite close to. Of course she wanted to know the person's religion. I said, "Seventh Day Adventist."

Her reply: "You must get away from that person! He belongs to a cult!"

My (atheist) husband at the time shared with me this stunned-yet-amused look.

I was so amused by this that I asked her what other faiths constituted cults. She answered, very promptly (and robotically): Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Christian Scientists. Apparently, so were the Unitarians. Kid you not.

When we were alone in the car, the hubby said, "Can't believe that cult business! How close were you to asking her when she became the pot calling the kettle black?"

Because if anyone was demonstrating cultish behavior, it was my mother (let's not get into examples to prove it). But she couldn't see the mote for the proverbial log in her own damned eye.

Like most fundies, only her belief was the right one. 7th Day and the rest weren't real Christians.

But she saved her real scorn for those Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and, of course, the Catholics. Goodness gracious, the vitriol she spewed about them! Of course, I had some fun tweaking her for having made the Lutherans a lot richer by sending all three of her children to their school. Or, when I really wanted to get her going, I'd tell her that, if I ever decided to become Xian again, I'd become a Catholic. Talk about fire and brimstone time!

Order a wee bit of "The Macallan" -- 1937, perhaps.  I'll wait.

I think he was making a trope on this, from the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

This definition works as well in secular world as in the religious one.  Thomas Jefferson wrote of "Self-Evident Truths," axioms upon which American independence would be based, because he had never seen equality, or unalienable rights.  I seldom see justice but I have faith that there is such a thing.  Robert N. Bellah identified what he called "Civil Religion". The link takes one to a reprint of the essay, and an introductory paragraph to a reprint of it in the 1990s.

aMike

I don't mean that there aren't quiet atheists. I don't mean that there aren't atheists who will tell you their positions if you ask them politely. And I certainly don't question the very real fact that such people constitute the majority of atheists. What I mean is that the only ones whom most of the public are familiar with are the ones who shout their atheism from the rooftops. Such people seldom make good leaders.

Hmm...

There is an old rule that says a word that draws no distinction has no meaning... 

Then you seem to be saying that agnosticism is an impossible position.

Why aren't you interested in truth? How can you hope to apply your ethics without knowing what's true? I.e., what the factual circumstances of a situation are?

I'm not saying that I fall into the misconception. I'm saying that this common misconception is driving the poll results referred to above. And that the misconception is so common because the public only hears from the most vocal and vehement of atheists.

See Devon's point above. Agnosticism is not about what you "know", it's about what you "believe". And, fortunately, Kozmik doesn't get to decide what I, the Pope, or anyone else "believes."

Main Entry: 1 ag·nos·tic
1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/agnostic

jesus f'n christ. I'm not interested in truth in this context.
A lawyer's obligation is not to the truth but to his client. If he feels an obligation to the truth that supersedes his ethical obligations to his client (except in extreme cases) he risks disbarment.
Think about the implications of that.

As far as religion is concerned if someone is unable to argue from values rather than doctrine, I walk away. But I walk away from lots of argument. I usually walk away from discussions of zionism. I only engage them here for the audience of the uncommitted.

The capacity for faith is universal and so is faith itself. True sceptics shrug at religion, but they understand and defend the rule of law.
Of course the most important role of religion is as the old foundation of law. "We do this the way our ancestors did."
The ACLU is basically a conservative institution. Law are "technicalities" People who need truth are offended by that.

then again, you might want to say that the origin of modern science is the emergence of the self-replicating molecule in the primordial muck.

Well that 2+2=4 is a mathematical truth and nobody would dream of asking someone to go out into nature to discover this truth. So the argument is silly. Even Quine had to admit sets as real objects over which bound variables range. I don't think anyone from realist to emotivists would maintain that for there to be moral truths they have to have some sort of spatio-temporal position like quarks. If Rorty said that, he is sillier than I thought.

A lawyer's first obligation is to the rules of the court, not the "truth."
He may not lie in defense of his client, but he also may not betray him, even if he knows that the client committed the crime of which he is accused.

An advocate, in the discharge of his duty, knows but one person in all the world, and that person is his client. To save that client by all means and expedients, and at all hazards and costs to other persons, and, amongst them, to himself, is his first and only duty; and in performing this duty he must not regard the alarm, the torments, the destruction which he may bring upon others. Separating the duty of a patriot from that of an advocate, he must go on reckless of consequences, though it should be his unhappy fate to involve his country in confusion.

Or in the Big Bang, but either of these would be esoteric.

Actually, I might not agree with you on that. Given that the laws of our universe at the micro level are probabilistic, it certainly could not have been established with certainty at the momnet of the Big Bang that life would emerge on a planet Earth. And without that there would not have been any proto scientist to get the scientific ball rolling.

You're moving closer. I'm dragging you bit by bit, but you'll get there.
A lawyer's obligation is constrained by the rules of the court, But his obligation to the court is ethical, having to do with an obligation to perform his duties. The finding of fact is the result of the process in which the judge the lawyers and everyone else must play their part.
"Truth" does not understand technicalities. The law must.
That's why TV is full of lawyers, moral ambiguity makes great theater, and lawyers exist in moral limbo.

Writers, lawyers, and actors are all atheists at heart; but some of them spend their lives fighting it off.

It isn't clear to me that "analytic rules" (rules by agreement) cannot be changed. It also isn't clear to me that they are not the easiest one's for God to change, rather than the hardest ones.

They are social constructs. If everyone believes (surely God could change people's beliefs?) that the rule is something else, then IT IS.

The above is answers both one and two. There are no analytic rules in nature.

By the way, I was truly expecting this comment
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/apr/05/skepticism_about_faith#comment-230473
to get a response out of you...

The preface, "As a Christian, ..." violates the basic necessity of democracy that nobody should be too sure of themself. That's what makes it such a conversation stopper.

This conversation is tedious and apparently the the word agnostic is fundamentally mysterious and unknowable to some.

You are hardly the only one who has a special word that applies to all cases. When you stretch your word so thin, it loses its original meaning, which was to ROBUSTLY call out the case where someone is in ACTUAL doubt.

In your present usage, those people are indistinguishable from people who have no doubt at all, although YOU think they should have doubt. THUS, your word has lost its meaning. Another word to toss in the trash bin of English. No matter, we has such a plethora of words compared with every other language.

God Is Love in Christianity. Love as we may follow Divine love is defined by Christ. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Divine Love. The Father sent His only begotten son into the world because God so loved the world.

Love is defined as patient, kind, good, temperate, humble, seeking the best for others, and so forth. Following God is about following Love and living same. All are called, and the walking is not always easy. Some quit. Some fall down and get up but never quit. God, I believe, helps people along who want help.

And so, God is morality in Being. The law was God's shadow. Christ is God incarnate. His life is more than the law, it was beyond the fulfilled law and onto greater life than merely the legally compliant life. It was on to a Spiritual ascent in this life and into the next. It's about both being interrelated.

This all depends on just how broadly you define religion. I tend to define it very broadly: a practise of faith, and under this definition, would claim that atheists and agnostics also engage in a type of it.

Individuals whom I've met, that were members of Shangai's capitalist class have been well-educated, and very realistic in their world views, but at the same time have expressed great devotion to the veneration of family. If I led the discussion topics such as the Analectics, Ten Wings, Yarrow Stalks, etc, often they react with anxiety. This is caused from both their Government's suppression, and the tendency of the West to cheapen their faith (The Tao of Winnie the Pooh? give me an effin break). These persons have a great deal of faith, and their actions are viewed from within that framework. There is a great variation in the manner they practise their faith, and in their degree of belief. There are those who have learned to use it to their advantages, and know when to use a strategy based upon faith (hypocrisy). This is not significantly different from any other societies' variations in the population's religious practises that I can discern. A main difference is that the devout have learned not to express their faith outwardly. It still affects their society.

First, good morning, and respectfully I suggest that I do not have a problem with God and Love being synonymous, because in reality they are One.

If naming were the issue, then reality would be contained in rhetoric alone. It isn't.

Love has never been any other than relational among persons. God Is Love is saying that God Is the Person of Love from Whom all created good is.

If God contrains Himself, God is not constrained by another. If Love constrains God, God is not constrained by Love, but Love and God are merely One and consistent by supernature. Two Lights in the spectrum are yet one spectrum. The scriptures say: "God is love." And God is loving, to put it in the active aspect.

Infinite Love self-constrained is not self-constrained because of force, it is self-constrained because of its supernature. Power is not only that which is expressed, it is also that which is withheld, or self-controlled. God is a God of self-control. With self-control is creativity alive.

God and Love are omnipotent because they are relational, that is, Love means little without a person, and a person means little without love. Their Oneness Is. Think of this also in the zen sense.

Divine Love is God and Divine implies Infinity. Infinity of Love and power most definitely mean that within the infinitude of power choices, power accorded humanity to self-determine exists. This is why God is not a neocon.

Warning: Long post

PC, I'm using the second person to highlight what you've written rather than indentation controls which seem to have disappeared from my comment window. Please don't take the "You" or "you" as disrespectful, even though they aren't the optimum way to address someone. I could better use your name and come across less offensive, but in brevity, I've just used "you."

You say that "many" who "profess faith in Christianity" are bigoted in their beliefs about non-Christians as atheists often are about Christians. That is a fair distinction, because those practicing Christ's life, example and teaching, are not bigoted. However, bigotry is intolerance too, and intolerance usually means doing something that really cuts into the belief freedom of another, or their existence. It can't really mean that they leave every time someone of the point of view they dislike comes into the room, as this is merely exercising one's freedom of association. As to being intolerant of another's belief freedom or existence, most Christians, the great plurality, don't take intolerance to that level.

You say: "Far too many Christians base the whole of their morality on a desire to live forever, nothing more . . "

This is not so accurate. It may be more accurate to say that far too many Christians are mercenary about their faith, thinking only of what they can get out of it, which is a narcissitic barrier to a true relationship with God and others.

However, Christian morality does not distinguish between who lives forever and who does not. It says that morality is part of determining the differences in "how" a person carries on through eternity. Life in Christianity speaks of spiritual life, that is being spiritually alive in harmony with God who Is Love, and one with God.

A person may become an island keeping God out of oneself, for the sake of asserting one's independence from God as opposed to accepting one's interdependence with God. Rejection of relationship with the Source of Love is something God allows in God's omnipotence. For the Sovereign, allowing others' freedom is part of the aspect of power we all recognize as "self-control" or withholding of power.

You also say of many Christians: ". . and yet they have the arrogance and pride to doubt that a human could walk without their faith as a moral actor on this earth."

This is sometimes true, and sometimes not. Christians usually hold the views expressed in the following verses, if they've learned of them:

"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another." --Romans 2:14, 15

and

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. Revelation 20:12-14 (in Context) Revelation 20 (Whole Chapter) Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Revelation 20:13-15

and

“And you will seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

and

Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains" (John 9:41).

If I [Christ] had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin (John 15:22).

and

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions FOR the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked (Isa 11:1-4).

and

Romans 2
God's Righteous Judgment
1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?

5But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6God "will give to each person according to what he has done."[a] 7To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11For God does not show favoritism.

12All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) 16This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares."

---
You wrote to me:
"You claim to be a Christian, yet in other places on this website, have shown that you have no problem with waging war."

The Lord instructed the Centurion not to quit his job, being a warrior, but to be just and merciful.

In Matthew 5:38-48, a beautiful passage regarding how each of us should deal with persecution of the individual self.

He does not say that we should allow others to kill us or our loved ones as part of living the life of patience and compassion in the face of violence, theft or persecution.

Neither does He tell us we must kill those who seek to kill us. Room for self-defense or defense of others seems left to us, however, not in hate of our enemies, but blessing them and praying for them. Also, the option of giving ourselves up to martyrdom is also there, which is the path to perfection.

However, in the Christian faith there are differences in rewards which do not go to salvation. And there are teachings for which God is aware some are capable and others are not, that is, in certain ascetic feats of self-purification, however, these don't differentiate salvation even if they may relate, they instead speak to reward. Remember when the Lord said of a woman challenged by a legalist for coming near to him and washing his feet with tears, that she'd been forgiven much because she'd loved much.

You have written asking of me:

"Give me testament then, just by answering a simple question; how can you justify killing humans, and still claim faith in Christianity? These are entirely exclusive beliefs."

Justification of killing is not the point. Christianity doesn't justify "killing" even if some erring Christians may try to justify it in that error.

Justice regarding the person who kills, considering his or her capacity and circumstances, is the point. That is, just as in Western legal systems the mental state of the accused matters as to whether he or she should be guilty of murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide or no crime at all; and also the circumstances, i.e. was it self-defense? Was the person in fear for their lives or a loved one's life? Such very human survival impulses are taken into account. God is incomparably more just than are men. He sees the hearts, and He can see how each heart judges itself, with its conscience within. Look at the case of Moses, who was enraged when he saw his fellow Jew being beaten by an Egyptian slave driver. He killed that Egyptian and suffered for it. Was he forgiven? The Christian text says that the devil had contended for Moses and that the Archangels did also. God advocates for each of us, realizing the state that we are born into in this world with its history and many habits of wrongdoing, some even systematized, such as usury.

You wrote:
"Christians are not supposed to kill in His name, but instead are to suffer, be persecuted and die in His name. Show me using Biblical citations, where I am in error on this. The New Testament supersedes the Old Testament in case of controversy between between citations."

First, see some of my above answers that are relevant to this question.

I don't think the issue is "killing in his name," as this would never be possible unless a love for one's enemy were truly in a warrior's heart while killing the enemy in self-defense and praying for the enemy's soul who was trying to murder in aggression oneself or one's countrymen or family or what have you.

If stopping a person from perpetrating yet deeper and more profane evils falls to the act of a warrior in defense of others, or self-defense to be able to continue in defense of others and succeed in defense of many more lives (save the many by stopping the attackers), then war is a different case then killing intentionally without justice, i.e. murdering, which is what the Old Testament refers to in the Sixth Commandment Thou Shalt Not Murder, by the rendering of the Hebrew word.

Neither accidental killing (Numbers 35:22-25) nor justifiable homicide (Ex. 22:2) are a breaking of the sixth commandment. Neither killing in war nor capital punishment are necessarily forbidden in this commandment since God required both in certain cases (Ex.21:12). So the preferred translation is, “You shall not murder.”

In the Old Testament, God altered the timing of the existence of death for corrective and purification purposes among peoples who had devolved into the most inhumane practices and cultures. It was corrective in this life, however, did not constitute eternal judgment. However, the way the Old Testament depicts it, when God ordered death, God ordered death. That is, God was the responsible agent without any buck passing, and even then, often you could trace the many warnings to the peoples so corrected.

One must take the context of truth into account: If this life is but a short phase before we die compared to an existence for each of us in the Infinity context of God, then how God employs death (even by natural causes at the end of a long life lived) must be seen in that context, or it is taken out of context. That is also true no less in the New Testament times and thereafter.

Regarding death in general, if death is a curse for having sinned, it is a corrective curse that we may not sin. In the Old Testament, following every curse, God gives a blessing to weight man's struggles (curses) (notice how we often curse when we struggle with something) toward success in overcoming the struggle with her/himself. You could try to argue that God has cursed all of mankind with the capital punishment of a limited life span. However, looking at death from another side, death is an aid to spiritual purification, motivating us to change our ways. The life of a child takes freedom of the parents away in exchange for love and toil. However, this is not a death sentence on freedom, yet an investment in a more permanent state of free being -- freedom from selfishness, which is among the worst of the task masters with which we imprison ourselves.

Would we be perfect? Do as Jesus did or would do, that is, loving others so much as to give our lives for them. Who is like Jesus in this? Well, those who are we honor as sanctified among us, that is, saints purified in this life.

If, as I admire about those who believe in reincarnation, there are many chances for people to be purified in lives, the difference in the Christian faith in the nature of the path of purification as overcoming ignorance, overcoming passions of self, and overcoming evil with love, are paths open to all. The reality: we fall on the path.

Organized faiths are how people bolster their interdependent help toward the goal. Love and purification are related. Love that is pure, and purity that is loving are interdependent. We call God the One unity of all in Love, and Love as containing all of the law and prophets. It is the active agent of becoming good, not a legal or instructional tenet challenging us. A book may give us wisdom, however, a master of love shows us how to live that wisdom.

We do not know what there may be by way of purification left in the processes mysteriously concealed beyond each of our deaths. Some writings of the scriptures and the patristics may speak to this.

You have written:

"You cannot will to wage war;
You cannot will death upon humans,
and still be a Christian.
You must choose between them."

Yes, if war is one's desire, or death of humans is one's desire, so one intends war or death in and of themselves. However, if defense of others, of innocents, or of something which preserves the lives of many more at stake, giving all of them more time to live and repent and do good on earth, is the true intent, then killing is not the intent.

Sun Tzu's teachings are in harmony with this, (putting the higher generalship at winning without shattering the enemy's country or unsheathing the sword) and so are other eastern martial teachings, such as when a samurai responds in training to an attack, if the attacker is killed, it happens as if snow falls off of a branch and buries a crow swooping in on a baby bird in a nest. The aggressor, not the innocent victim, is the guilty party, and the justice of just Budo responds to cut off the injustice. If a man chooses to embody the injustice, so is the man cut off.

As to wars of aggression, you can see what I think the most egregious case of what you warn us against above is resident: in the aggressor. This is recognized by those who believe a war must be in self-defense, i.e. national defense. I believe this.

However, I do not believe that once we are stuck in a war, as in Iraq, our responsibilities end to rectifying the situation insomuch as we have impacted it or caused it to be ill. Who would argue that one should abandon fixing what one has broken, leaving it for others? Would you? What I would argue along with you, is that if after having done what would fix it, yet another's intransigence or will to break it again intervenes to break our efforts to fix, then we may clean up our work area, leaving it for the other to fix if they will.

Then, for whatever injustices we've done, then comes the difficult road of repentance. Contrary to the allegations of many, the Christian conscience, as anyone's conscience, eating away at itself and avoiding the facing of a wrong, is itself a life-sapping punishment within one's own soul. It is a burning we understand as fire.

I realize that some who are pacificists will argue that no war is ever justified, even in self-defense or defense of others or masses. I do not think the question is whether the war is justified, but I think the question is whether the people waging the war are on the side of defense of themselves or others, and do no more than is necessary for that goal. If so, then while war cannot be said to be just because it was waged in defensive relationship to a murder campaign of aggression, all of those people participating in self-defensive war are not themselves either condemned for defending others or themselves.

I suppose you could consider the Samaritan. He came upon the man on the road who had been beaten. What if he'd come upon the attackers beating him, and sat by patiently while they beat the man. What if the man died? He can't know. What is the right thing to do? Intervene with necessary force, correct? And if the attackers turn and escalate force to deadly force, and the Samaritan killed one or more of them, would the Samaritan then be condemned as a murderer? Should he? I do not think so.

In your words:

"You cannot will death upon humans,
and still be a Christian.
You must choose between them,"

You seem to be saying that no one is allowed to be a Christian who is provoked to act in a situation of moral ambiguity to weigh the cost of moral decisions. For instance, if an enemy attacks your country or another's and is intent on raping, pillaging and murdering civilians to punish them, if you will to kill these armed bands before they can accomplish their continued path (janjaweed in Darfur for example) you are saying you cannot be a Christian. You could as well say that you cannot be a Buddhist and will to stomp a lethal scorpion crawling quickly toward your baby on the floor.

You also seem to set a law that one cannot be a Christian who has acted outside of the Christian faith or practice. You are saying we cannot be human on our way to harmony with Divinity and yet fall down on the way and yet still be on the way. This is a sort of legalistic trap that says, "Ahhhh. Gotcha, you can't be a Christian anymore." Or, "you can't be a Buddhist anymore because . ." and so if you use your will power to engage in an argument that turns up a logical fallacy or is untrue, but you did not intend it, does that mean you cannot be a logician? Does it mean you cannot any more claim to be a philosopher?

It is because we are human and vulnerable and provokable that we become Christians, so that we have a way to transcend our fallen nature and seek purity. To repentance serve future sin is of course a false faith. However, repentance that follows human falling into sin by provocations, weaknesses, illness, and temptation but not sinister design, is different. Buddhists of Tibet seeking purification through pilgrimages up arduous mountains are not unlike this in their efforts. The mountains are sacred to them because they hold death in them and cause humility in the one climbing. And humility from the chance of falling, and in arising from falling, mark the promise of redemption for humankind.

War is hell. However, if fighting out of it ends the hell sooner for others, is it right to take the identity and faith of others away from them who will to so fight? Tell that to those who liberated the concentration camps with deadly force against defending Einzatzgruppen, Himmler's deviants or others.

I am not a theologian, but I remember reading somewhere that skepticism can be a form of faith and was advanced as such in the eighteenth or seventeenth century. Perhaps someone who knows more than I do can refresh my memory.

I also recently came upon a book, I forget who wrote it, that maintained that agnosticism was a form of faith. The author maintained that there is no reason why agnostics cannot pray, comparing an agnostic praying to a shipwrecked person calling out for help in the middle of an ocean.

It all depends on who is defining what is orthodox and what is heretical and staking out what issues are going be the ones dividing the sheep from the goats.

An agnostic who prays is not an agnostic any more.

Jan Knaus

I think it was the English historian Trevelyan whose at whose wedding service the minister intoned: "Oh, God, if thou exists or not ..."

I don't see how you drew that conclusion. I, personally, wouldn't go there. I am not in doubt. But, I see no reason why particular people could not be in doubt. If you suggested that the dominant position of society as a whole was doubt, that would strike me as odd or at least transitory.

Scary, ain't it.

Hastert?

Jan Knaus

But a Deist God who created the cosmos in such a way that things would evolve such as they actually did is not incompatible with any historical induction.

No, it is just incompatible with facts.

Has it ever occurred to you that if things had not evolved such as they actually did, we would not be here discussing it? Maybe on other planets or in other galaxies things went awry. Why in this cosmos would a god so smart that he/she could make evolution occur, leave so many things out? And why limit life to one planet? And for such a relatively short time-frame.

If there were really a benevolent and wise and all-knowing deity, I would REALLY expect him/her to do a better job than this. And why was his/her presence kept from humankind for so many generations? Pagans went on for thousands of years worshipping the sun, the moon, fire and water. Deism only began when people in power realized they had to figure out a way to keep the miserable natives quiet. What better way than to convince them that their reward was in ANOTHER life? AFter this one? So make the big man rich and suffer silently and then you get to go up to heaven!

There is not one word in the bible that tells of anything that is beyond the imagination of men. Heaven in the clouds; hell down below and full of fire. If that is the best that a devine genius can do, I am not impressed.

Scientist go about discovering the Laws of Nature. do they ever question why the cosmos is law-like rather than chaotic?

Does it ever occur to them that they have no answer to that question?

You are surely joking, or has it ever occurred to you to read a book other than the bible?

Jan Knaus

Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water....

Jan Knaus

I wasn't arguing with the other two characterizations.