Camels With Hammers

Asking Richard Wade About Whether Believers Are Literally Deluded

July 8, 2011 – 11:57 pm

In seven previous posts, I have discussed with the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, the problems with forming one’s identity based on one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), how atheists should respond to the possibly religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous, the ethics of advising people to lie about their atheism out of concern for their material or physical security, whether atheists have responsibilities to both confront and to replace religions, whether it is a good idea for non-believers and believers to avoid marrying each other, and whether or not it is psychologically accurate to call believers in God deluded. Below, in the final portion of our discussion, the topic turns to the accuracy and shrewdness of calling belief in God a delusion.

Daniel Fincke: How do you feel about Dawkins calling “God” a delusion and other language of atheists that treats religious belief as a psychological problem—even only “metaphorically”. Do you think it’s accurate? Is it fair? What has been your experience with the interaction between mental health and religiosity?

Richard Wade: There’s what you mean by a word, there’s what a dictionary says a word means, and then there’s what that word means to your audience.

In the strictest sense, a delusion is a false belief, a conviction of the reality of something that is indeed not real. So in the narrowest sense of the word, if I believe there is one more cookie in the cookie jar, but the jar is actually empty, that could be called a delusion. If I believe that a herd of purple flying elephants is headed right for my house, and the skies are actually elephant-free, that also could be called a delusion. In the case of the cookie, most people would use the word “mistake” rather than “delusion,” while in regards to the purple flying elephants, most people would use the word “delusion” rather than “mistake.”

One of the main criteria for defining mental health vs. mental disorder is to see the effects that a person’s thought processes and behaviors have on two important things in their lives, their ability to love and their ability to work.

So if a quirky thing attracts the attention of other people, but it does not rise to a level of severity where it interferes with making and keeping personal relationships, or the ability to do one’s livelihood, then it is just a quirk, an eccentricity, an idiosyncrasy, rather than a mental disorder.

Dawkins lays out a pretty convincing case that religion very much interferes with the ability of some individuals “to love and to work,” and the ability of whole societies to do the same. Regarding the ability to love, he spells out many examples of dysfunctional relationships between individuals, between sectarian groups, and between whole regions in very unloving conflicts arising from religious beliefs. Regarding the ability to work, consider that the world becomes more and more dependent on good, solid science every day. Faith thinking discourages rational thinking, and religious dogmas drag at society’s ability to understand, to accept and to support science, so religious beliefs definitely hurt our ability to make our livelihood as a civilization.

So I think that he has a good argument for calling it a delusion not just from the narrow dictionary sense, but from a psychological meaning as well. However there’s the way a word is heard by your audience.

Religious people will take umbrage at their belief in a god being called a delusion not only because they think they’re right, but also because they as individuals think that they’re doing just fine, with nothing interfering with their ability to love or to work. Their anger is probably at least in part about the connotation. They feel that the word “delusion” lumps them together with lunatics who play with their feces and need to be kept in locked facilities, lest they act on their delusions that they can fly off the rooftop, or they are the appointed executioner of some evil person. Even given that anger, I think Dawkins’ use of the word in his book was a good idea because it certainly gets people’s attention. “The God Mistake” just wouldn’t have that much punch.

As a counselor, I’ve worked with some very religious people, and I’ve worked with some very crazy people. Only rarely did I ever encounter someone who was both, and I never saw a link where one trait was a cause of the other, or where one exacerbated the other. What the religiosity and the craziness did was to color each other, or to give each other a flavor.

There was a recent incident at Virginia Tech where during a discussion at the “Ask an Atheist” table, a young man drew a cross on the back of his hand and asked others to stab him in his hand with a pen, saying something about proving that God exists. They refused, and he ended up stabbing himself several times with the pen. Eventually he was arrested and he was further violent with the police.

Several atheists commenting on blogs about this were quick to draw a causal connection between his apparent religiosity and his bizarre and self-destructive behavior, equating religion in general with severe and dangerous mental disorders. I think that is an ignorant connection to make, and an unworthy argument to attempt by exploiting this young man’s personal suffering.

It will take a psychiatric examination to know, but on the surface it looks like the young man has a serious disorder, perhaps schizophrenia. It often shows up when people are in their early twenties. In my opinion, it’s very unlikely that his religious beliefs have any causal relationship with his disorder. His religion did not “make” him go crazy, and it probably did not make it any worse, either. He would probably still be having trouble with bizarre thought processes and impulse control problems at this time in his life if he was previously an atheist or any other category about religion.

When people start to psychologically decompensate, they very often draw upon the ideas, stories, images, and terminology of whatever things were important in their upbringing in an attempt to express their confused thoughts and emotions. Those things aren’t the cause of the mental disorder, they’re just the vocabulary with which it is expressed. The religiosity and the craziness color each other, flavor each other.

So I think that in a broad civilization-wide view, god beliefs and religions are “delusions” in the psychological sense because they do harm to our ability to have better relationships with each other as individuals, as cultural groups, and as nations, and they do handicap our efforts to use science to better secure our livelihood as a civilization. As I’ve often said, nothing divides people from themselves or from each other as quickly, deeply and permanently as does religion. This is easy to demonstrate. Just say that statement to a believer, and then ask them to look at their own feelings about you. Chances are they will be feeling very divided from you, not just in disagreement with you.

However, I don’t think it is a good idea to draw that comparison on a more personal level, as in the kind of mental illnesses we see in troubled individuals. It’s not really accurate, and it’s also not a successful tactic. It won’t convince religious people to give up their beliefs. It’s only going to galvanize them against the more broad use of the analogy.

Read all the previous 7 parts of the interview, in which I ask Richard about:

The Origins of the “Ask Richard” Column

Anger In Families Divided Over Religion

Atheism and Religions As Bases For Identities

How Atheists Should Respond to Alcoholics Anonymous, and How Personal Values Influence Professional Therapy

The Ethics of Lying To Stay In A Protective Closet

How Atheists Should Confront And Replace Religions

Whether Believers and Non-Believers Should Avoid Marrying Each Other

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Social Psychology, Social Psychology | Comments (3)

Asking Richard Wade About Whether Believers and Non-Believers Should Avoid Marrying Each Other

July 7, 2011 – 11:15 am

In six previous posts, I have discussed with the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, the problems with forming one’s identity based on one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), how atheists should respond to the possibly religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous, the ethics of advising people to lie about their atheism out of concern for their material or physical security, and whether atheists have responsibilities to both confront and to replace religions. Below, in part 7 of our 9 part discussion, the topic turns to the wisdom of marriage between believers and non-believers.

Daniel Fincke: Okay, so, I don’t think you’d be one to give hard and fast rules for everyone. But from your extensive experience in marriage counseling, do you think marriages between believers and ardent atheists are a particularly bad idea? If you learn an atheist refuses to get involved with religious people, do you do more than just respect that choice but think it particularly wise or particularly closed-minded? Should atheists treat this as a key assessment for marrying people, especially with the prospective education (and possible indoctrination) of children in the future? What are the real issues that make “unequally yoked” arrangements work or fail?

Richard Wade: Relationships are the most complex things that people ever attempt. Putting men on the moon and returning them safely to Earth is not quite as complex. Even in the best of circumstances, starting with backgrounds and sets of values that match well, couples are faced with very very complex tasks of communicating to each other on multiple levels. Add to that they are often quite unfamiliar with and unconscious of many of their own issues, and add to that they are always changing, always a moving marksman aiming at a moving target, and you have an extremely challenging task to make connections.

Then enters the most divisive thing ever invented, religion.

Young couples learn their best and their worst habits of communication from their families of origin. They almost never have any formal training or coaching in how to effectively communicate, and in their new relationship, they tend to practice their worst habits of communication more often than their best habits. I often have wished that states would require some basic pre-marital counseling before granting marriage licenses. It is amazing what important things that courting people don’t discuss before marrying. They only find out important things about the other after they’re deep into commitments.

In the case of an atheist/theist couple, they usually have some discussions about religious issues during their early dating period, and if their differences are not immediate “deal breakers” they tend to gloss over their differences, telling themselves more than telling each other that it won’t matter. This is often because they’re drunk on their initial love and infatuation for each other. It feels so good, and they don’t want to spoil it. They often fall into subtle patterns of tacitly agreeing to avoid any topics, including religion, that would bring up the possibility of a future impasse. The “elephant in the room” syndrome begins to grow.

Atheists sometimes pride themselves on being clear thinkers, looking at things rationally, and they often accuse theists of wishful thinking. But all people who are in love are susceptible to the intoxication of our endorphins and all the other brain chemicals that are released during pair bonding.

So things go along pretty smoothly until the question of children comes up.

Suddenly both people become adamant about their viewpoints where they used to assume they wouldn’t care much. There seems to be something far more primal, far more biologically imperative in seeing to it that one’s offspring copy our most cherished beliefs, even if our mates do not. It’s a kind of intellectual version of our DNA insisting that it make viable copies of itself.

So if a couple with widely differing religious views were to ask me for advice, I would urge them to get several sessions of counseling from a counselor who can be impartial about religious issues, one who concentrates on helping them to fully communicate, to carefully think ahead about many issues that may emerge down the road, and to work out clear and realistic agreements.

That will probably help increase their odds of a successful relationship, but in general, I don’t bet much money on these couples lasting for very long.

You see, there is another compounding problem that multiplies the complexities: their parents and families. In all but very rare cases, couples don’t just marry each other, they marry each other’s families. Those families have all sorts of expectations and requirements for their child’s mate.

I don’t know of any good survey on this, so what I’m going to say is merely my impression from dealing with many “mixed” couples. It’s a process that gets tougher at every step. I think only a small fraction of atheist/theist couples survive the initial dating courtship. Only a fraction of that group then survives the early years of courtship and marriage, either by a healthy set of agreements, or more likely the mutual denial that I described.

Then even if that much smaller group somehow passes the trial by fire of what the heck to do about their children’s religious upbringing, at every step along the way they will have their parents and siblings pressuring them to not go further with that “unsuitable” partner of theirs. The disapproval, the emotional blackmail, and the outright threats of cutting them off can take their toll on even the most intrepid of couples.

So to answer your question, no I don’t have hard and fast rules about such couples, only guidelines about going into these relationships with their eyes much more wide open than they think they are. They should talk, talk talk about it honestly and fearlessly in many separate discussions, and a referee, an impartial counselor would greatly improve the chances that those talks would be thorough and useful.

In sober moments, we look at the odds of a proposition, we look at the likelihood of a venture’s success, we count the number of smoldering wrecks scattered along the same road we’re traveling, and we often wisely decide that what we’re considering is not worth the risk. But sober moments and love are seldom in the same head at the same time. To touch on that biological imperative I mentioned earlier, nature doesn’t give a damn about our individual happiness when it drives us to find a mate. The only thing that matters to nature is to reproduce those DNA molecules, period.

For our happiness, it’s up to us to use that big brain for something it that might go against its own central purpose. We have to think through the whole thing, projecting what will most likely happen during the next twenty to forty years of our bond with this prospective mate. It’s a guess at best, and it’s in a sense going against nature, but there we are, faced yet again with human nature.

Read the other 7 parts of the interview, in which I ask Richard about:

The Origins of the “Ask Richard” Column

Anger In Families Divided Over Religion

Atheism and Religions As Bases For Identities

How Atheists Should Respond to Alcoholics Anonymous, and How Personal Values Influence Professional Therapy

The Ethics of Lying To Stay In A Protective Closet

How Atheists Should Confront And Replace Religions

Whether Believers Are Literally Deluded

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion, Secularism | Comments (3)

Asking Richard Wade About How Atheists Should Confront And Replace Religions

July 6, 2011 – 5:00 pm

In five previous posts, I have discussed with the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, the problems with forming one’s identity based on one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), how atheists should respond to the possibly religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the ethics of advising people to lie about their atheism out of concern for their material or physical security.

In that last context, Richard finished his final answer by saying, “In short, on rare occasions, some people do not deserve being told the truth, because they do not respond to that truthfulness and candor honorably. There’s also the idea of it not being anyone’s damn business. Keeping private the details of our sex lives, bowel habits, and religious views is not being “dishonest,” it’s being prudent, and I think that prudence is a very legitimate principle that must be considered along with the principle of honesty.” The installment of our interview below picks up right there.

Daniel Fincke: You compared the forthright airing of religious views to oversharing about sex or bathroom matters. I suspect it’s the fact that religious ideas are inherently faith-based, unsupportable, and incommensurable that makes people feel frustrated. These inherently divisive and rationally insoluble features of religion make it logically impossible that religious adherents from opposing traditions can ever come to agreement with each other (unless they start abandoning what the most devout typically take to be the most foundational and non-negotiable beliefs). In that context, discussion is doomed from the start and only ends with frustration and conflict.

And so the secularist compromise has, understandably, been to allow people their private beliefs to be whatever they want as long as they keep them from the public sphere where their logical sectarianism can only create irresolvable divides. And that’s fine as a compromise for containing the influence of religion’s divisiveness. But the unfortunate side effect of this approach is that it turns people against philosophical discussion itself. All inconclusive (or just philosophically difficult) questions get a bad name. All debate about ideas is assumed to be as inherently emotionalistic and irresolvable through reason as religious debates are.

And to me that is a disastrous over-correction. I cringe when I hear even outspoken atheists say they don’t care what other people think, that they just want to be left alone, etc., as though philosophical debate in general and discussion of issues related to gods and religion in particular are matters that can only lead to conflict and never productive advance and agreement and learning.

Do you think I’m wrong about this? Do you think all atheists should be concerned with is political and cultural respect and equality and secularism in government? Do we not also have a responsibility to be modeling how people can talk about ideas in ways that are actually reason based, rather than faith-based (and so actually resolution oriented, rather than conflict perpetuating)? Do you think we should take an active interest in dissuading people of their religious beliefs, out of our concern for truthful living?

Richard Wade: Firstly, I never use the phrase, “All atheists should…”

Daniel Fincke: I don’t mean every atheist, I just mean, the only thing atheists should be worried about, in case that’s not clear.

Richard Wade: Atheists are people who are unconvinced of gods. Beyond that, their interests, their politics, their hopes, fears and needs can be very disparate. At this point in time, I’m very leery about seeing atheism as a cohesive ideology. It is for some, and their ideology includes many of the principles and aspirations that you have mentioned in your question. But what is important to those atheists may not be important to others. If from that ideology we build a dogma around ourselves, and then disapprove of other atheists who don’t live up to that, then it seems to me that we’ve built ourselves a new prison similar to the dogma that many of us struggled so hard to escape.

There is nothing intrinsically and universally virtuous about being earnest about philosophical questions, or being philosophically mature. That is a value shared by those who share that value, and not shared by those who don’t. Who is to say as if in a higher level of authority that one is superior to the other? Some atheists really do just want to be left alone, and while you and I might prefer that they be more engaged with their neighbors in critical thinking and discussion, I think it would be very arrogant and self-centered of us if we were to dismissively characterize as somehow “inferior” their honest desire to live simple lives and be left in peace.

As I said in a recent comment on Friendly Atheist, Calling oneself an atheist does not bring with it any obligation to follow some kind of atheist creed, dogma or precepts written by… who? No one owes any allegiance to such a creed, or ideology, or to any “cause,” just because they don’t believe in spooks in the sky.

I prefer atheists to be engaged in the on-going maturing of our civilization in any way they can, and any way that works for them. They may have an interest and a talent for that on a political level, but not on an interpersonal, one-to-one level. Others may have a better personal touch, and may have more interest in encouraging skepticism and critical thinking in face-to-face discussions over coffee, but they feel lost or overwhelmed or beyond their depth in bigger arenas. I encourage everyone to do whatever they are good at, and to be open to discovering that they might be good at more than what they originally thought.

Daniel Fincke: I agree of course that philosophical virtues are not the only important ones, and that not every one need have them or be much focused in life on the task of promoting them. And I am not suggesting we should be dogmatic or have narrow understandings of what all atheists should think about any particular issue (at least by virtue of their being atheists).

My concern was that you might want to banish such questions into the realm of the private too strongly, but I see you didn’t mean so strong a connotation. I think that it’s important that there be atheists out there challenging the hegemony of the major religions in matters of ethics and spirituality, and certain areas of philosophy, etc. This is not like just any other non-belief. This is a non-belief that leads to both disengagement with and challenge to massively overly influential authoritarian, regressive institutions that actively perpetuate bad thinking and some bad moral codes and attitudes.

And if atheists are not as passionate about defending rationalism itself—not any fine philosophical point in particular but the more general and basic primacy of reason in thought and practice—then we are not living up to a responsibility to be a counter-weight and a voice against injustice. Of course, though, not every atheist has to be focused on this any more than every environmentally concerned person needs to be primarily engaged on those issues, etc. But in general some atheists do need to orient around that. And I think that, without becoming dogmatic, we need to find a way to create alternative means for religious people to meet the needs they presently turn to religion for. What are your thoughts on how we might do that in order to make religion feel less necessary for people?

Are there ways we can do that and avoid the vices of religion that we are so worried about? And feel free to register any disagreements with any of what I just said too if you want!

Richard Wade: I didn’t think that an atheist dogma was where you were going with your first question about philosophical thinking. I just have been very aware of this issue lately, and I tend to jump onto a soap box when I think about it. As you say, “avoiding the vices of religion” in ourselves first is what I’m talking about.

Daniel Fincke: Okay. Is there any way we can be constructive and offer people substance without letting a paralyzing fear of rigidifying and dogmatizing prevent all positive advance “as atheists”?

Richard Wade: Many, if not most, atheists are capable of good, if simple, logical and rational thinking. But not that many are articulate. They are able to think clearly, but communicating those thoughts clearly to others is a very different, and much rarer ability. So we will always have far more atheists who agree with us, but are not going to be actively engaged in any kind of debate or dialogue on any level.

However, I think we are definitely in a very big historical trend, where with our newly found voices, the articulate ones will become engaged in the maturing of our civilization at the level at which they are proficient. Every one of them who eloquently speaks for rationalism wakes up several others who thought about it but never spoke about it before. A voice calling in the wilderness IS heard by others who thought they were alone. I think as a species we are reaching a kind of critical mass, where rational thinking will no longer be only a philosophical stance, but will become a constantly growing norm.

I think I’m more patient about this than many others. It’s funny how older people, who have less time left are often more patient than younger people who have plenty of time. I look at this in terms of the next 100 to 200 years. So seeing it in the short term, like say, the next election cycle, it can be very frustrating to see many of us not being responsible for countering irrationality and superstition by being passive or apathetic, or by our inaction supporting that “hands off religious ideas” double standard. I tend to say “Take a deep, slow breath, do your part as well as you can, but this is for the long haul.” You get to cut your one stone for the gigantic edifice of a better civilization, and many others yet unborn will add theirs on top of yours. So while each of our contributions may be small, each one supports what is added on later.

As to your earlier question, “I think that, without becoming dogmatic, we need to find a way to create alternative means for religious people to meet the needs they presently turn to religion for. What are your thoughts on how we might do that in order to make religion feel less necessary for people?”

I think in an earlier installment of this interview, I used an analogy about a civilization where everyone is addicted to heroin and no one knows what it is like to be without it. Referring to that again, we need to first step back from what we are assuming are actual “needs” and see if they really exist in people intrinsically and are not just created by their use of religion. It could be that much of what we “need” will become irrelevant once our civilization gets over the withdrawals. Then we can sort out what needs are truly built into human beings. Again, I’m speaking about the next couple of centuries.

Daniel Fincke: At least some of what people get out of religion is needed though. I’m talking about the numerous parents who feel anxiety and enormous responsibility at having a kid and feel compelled to bring them to the holy man and the congregation to make sure they “learn values”. If there is no other institution to fill that kind of void, you continue to have people lured back to religion out of insecurity about their own ability to instill values without institutional guidance.

Or the numerous people who use church as a vehicle for their desire for community, for their metaphysical curiosity and wonder, for their feelings of deep gratitude, their interest in meditation, their desire to be charitable. Obviously there already exist some secular outlets for some of these needs but the packaging of all these things together is what religion offers and some of those things do not have strong secular alternatives at all.

I don’t think those sorts of goods can be dismissed as only religious fictions the way, say, people’s desire to be “saved” is. Of course people could just find secular alternatives without an “atheist” banner. But I guess what I’m interested in is how we can decouple the association people have in their minds whereby these things go hand-in-hand with religion (or indispensably require it even) unless we develop alternatives that show explicitly that they can be achieved in secular, rationalist ways. Does that make sense?

Richard Wade: Well, we won’t really know for certain until we have very large numbers of people who are not mainlining on religion. People are remarkably inventive. We will invent solutions as we go along that we had not even envisioned we’d need just a short time before. Most importantly, we really should try to see the assumptions built into our very questions. For instance, you asked if there is not an alternative institution for parents to use to instill values into their children, they might be lured back to religion to fulfill that need.

Stop and look at that assumption framed in your question: Why an “institution”? That is a whole paradigm that might be not only unnecessary, but actually growing obsolete. Why must we have some building called something like the Ministry of Values, filled with specialists who do some special value-instilling service? Why not, perhaps a culture of values? We already have that anyway. When we build institutions to things, in other words, when we centralize something, we immediately invite rival institutions to be built, and the whole divisive process starts again. When values are learned from a culture that is rich with them, we have dialogues about the differences and nuances, and we can improve on them. When we put them into an institution that is separate from the rest of the culture, and identified as the “source” of these values, we stop the dialogue and devolve into diatribe.

Read the other 7 parts of the interview, in which I ask Richard about:

The Origins of the “Ask Richard” Column

Anger In Families Divided Over Religion

Atheism and Religions As Bases For Identities

How Atheists Should Respond to Alcoholics Anonymous, and How Personal Values Influence Professional Therapy

The Ethics of Lying To Stay In A Protective Closet

Whether Believers and Non-Believers Should Avoid Marrying Each Other

Whether Believers Are Literally Deluded

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism | Tagged Richard Wade | Comments (6)

Gays, Jesus, and Judging

July 6, 2011 – 2:12 pm

In response to my earlier post praising a young Christian man who reached out with love to what he thought was a lesbian couple being berated by a cruel and judgmental waitress, Justin writes:

Not to point out the obvious, but homosexuality is a sin,

You have indeed not pointed out anything obvious. Homosexuality is not at all obviously a sin. Disregarding the question of whether there are such things as “sins” at all, it is implausible that homosexuality is immoral. Homosexual love does not of itself violate anyone’s autonomy, harm anyone, or interfere with the development of moral virtues.

Assuming, for argument’s sake, that there were a personal God who was an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, morally perfect creator of all of nature, including humanity, as Christians believe, it would be absurd to believe that such a being would call “sinful” anything that was not also discoverable according to reason to be morally wrong. Just as a morally perfect God could not give humans the standard physiology we have and then sensibly call starving to death good for us, neither could such a God create in a small but significant portion of us a sexual orientation towards members of the same sex and recommend either total sexual and romantic abstinence or that these people get their sexual and romantic fulfillment from those they are not oriented towards naturally. If this argument is unclear, I recommend you read this, this, this, and/or this, wherein I develop these arguments in greater detail.

and Jesus would not condone it.

Jesus never condemned it, so how are you so sure he would not condone it?

Appeals to Jesus are actually superfluous in determining what is right and wrong. All that matters is what is true on the matter. Jesus, as given to us in the canonical Gospels—whether or not he ever existed at all, or is accurately represented in the Bible if he did exist—is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

But what is ethically interesting and valuable about Jesus, whether as a fictional character or historical figure around which myths have emerged, is that he represents a moralist who despised legalists and preferred the company of the overly-maligned. What Jesus seemed to understand when he said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” was that since no one is perfect, routine forgiveness has to be a part of our moral lives, even as we uphold moral principles in the abstract. The valuable truth that I think Jesus articulates in such passages is that the social order could not sustain all of us being thoroughly punished for our every wrong. None of us would wind up happier since even though we would be able to vent our punishment against those by whom we feel wronged, we would also be suffering punishment in return and that would not be worth it to us.

Of course, we cannot let everything slide, some people’s immoral actions reach a quantity or have a quality that makes them unendurable. But wherever possible, a spirit of “not-judging” seeks to understand each individual on her own terms before condemning her. Sometimes this means understanding the confluence of circumstances that led her to the bad place she wound up, and being able to grasp, in light of that information, how someone could wind up on the wrong path despite benign intentions. In this way, even when we see someone doing something objectively wrong, we can still have room for compassion for her for becoming confused or objectively weak, rather than mistakenly feel anger for her for being malevolent when in fact she is not. In those cases you might still judge the actions less than ideal but you can refrain from judging the person incorrigibly bad.

Other times “not-judging” means not assuming you have all the information about what someone else is actually doing and why. What might look flat out wrong from your own uninformed perspective might actually be right if you understood more about all the factors involved. None of us knows all the facts or feelings that make up another person’s life and so even though we can make generally true, abstract moral conclusions about what is usually correct to do or not to do, we cannot blithely assume we know all the relevant factors in some given person’s situation to be sure without careful investigation that in fact they have done the wrong thing and there are no mitigating or justifying factors obscured from our view.

The waitress was completely out of line, of course. And there’s no call for being tactless and hateful. But that doesn’t mean we as Christians should advocate sinful behavior.

What you should advocate if you want to retain the morally interesting and valuable part of the Jesus story is a willingness to save morality from the legalistic Pharisees who fetishize and ossify existing laws for their own sake rather than reinvestigate how received laws and their enforcement actually contribute to, or hinder, a good human life. When Jesus says that man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), the truth he articulates is that any good moral principle is justified only insofar as it contributes to good human lives. Taking a day off is good for humans, so the Sabbath was created. If, however, violating one of the Sabbath restrictions is better for humans (on one or all occasions) then by all means break the Sabbath.

Whatever genuine value the ancient Hebrews’ moral, legal, social, ritual, and dietary codes had was in their ability to enhance the flourishing of the Hebrew people and humanity in general. But, on the other hand, to whatever extent those codes failed to lead to human flourishing, and to whatever extent adopting them today would impede human flourishing, they were (and/or are) dangerous and should have been (and/or should today) be ignored.

Times and circumstances change. Our understanding of nature has vastly improved and our civilization has advanced morally in a number of ways. It is a dangerous foolishness that wants to ignore millennia of progress and say “man was made for the law”, and yet that is precisely what happens when fundamentalists say “homosexuals must be celibate or convince themselves they are straight because the laws of the ancient Hebrews are eternally inviolable”.

Contemporary fundamentalist, evangelical Christians are Pharisees through and through. Had Jesus been one of them, he would have never been Jesus. Jesus, whether real or not, is one of our culture’s symbols of moral reformation and moral reformers always are those who look evil to the protectors of the moral status quo. One cannot question the dominant morality of one’s time without, ipso facto appearing to be immoral for insubordinately questioning what is assumed to be morality itself. You cannot promote what is wrongly called immoral without promoting what most people think of as immoral. And you cannot call bad moral laws immoral without, to conventional ears, calling morality itself immoral.

To be like Jesus in his most admirable respect would be to side with a wiser understanding of morality against immoral conventions that are taken to be morality itself. It is to be what Nietzsche calls “an immoralist“. The regressive, fundamentalist, legalistic Christians who want to stop any and all moral rethinking and instead pretend that their own moral codes just were handed to them from God in the Bible from the beginning (even where this is laughably obviously false) are precisely the people who would have never had a mind opened to accept what Jesus was doing.

This is the sense in which I think the Christians who open up to gays are more Jesus-like. Insofar as Jesus was also a cult leader who encouraged his own deification and had his own very nasty authoritarian streaks, the regressive fundamentalist Christians are indeed his true followers too. But that is so much the worse for Jesus and not to those Christians’ credit or vindication at all.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Christianity, Christianity, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Jesus, Jesus, LGBTQAA, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion | Tagged Immoralism, Moral Reformation, Moral Reformers | Comments (2)

The History of the Singularity

July 6, 2011 – 10:48 am

Many philosophers portray the cosmic process as an ascending curve of positivity. As time goes forward, the quantities of intelligence, power, or value are always increasing. These progressive philosophies have sometimes been religious and sometimes secular. Secular versions of progress have sometimes been political and sometimes technological. Technological versions have sometimes invoked broad technical progress and have sometimes focused on the recursive self-improvement of artificial intelligence.

For some philosophers of progress, the rate of increase remains relatively constant; for others, the rate of increase is also increasing – progress accelerates. Within such philosophies, the singularity is often the point at which positivity becomes maximal. It may be an ideal limit point (an omega point) either at infinity or at the vertical asymptote of an accelerating trajectory. Or, sometimes, the singularity is the critical point at which the slope of an accelerating curve passes beyond unity.

Although thought about the singularity may appear to be very new, in fact such thought has a long philosophical history. To help increase awareness of the deep roots of singularity thought within traditional philosophy, I have compiled some historical resources. I’ve posted links to the following:

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit – The Phenomenology of Spirit, written by G. W. F. Hegel about 1800, is perhaps the first singularitarian philosophy. It describes the ascent of spirit to an ideal limit point of absolute knowing. At this link you will find a website that introduces and outlines The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Samuel Butler on Machine Evolution – Around 1870, the British writer Samuel Butler used Darwinian ideas to develop a theory of the evolution of technology. He argued that machines would soon become artificial life forms far superior to human beings. The chapters from Erewhon dealing with the evolution of machines are excerpted here.

Charles Sanders Peirce Evolutionary Cosmology — The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, writing in the late 1800s, developed an evolutionary cosmology. It portrays the universe as evolving from an initial chaos to a final singularity of pure mind. The evolution is accelerating as the tendency to regularity acts on itself.

Henry Adams on the Rule of Phase – Around 1900, the American writer Henry Adams (descendent of President John Quincy Adams) was probably the first writer to describe a technological singularity. His essay The Rule of Phase portrays history as accelerating through several epochs – including the Mechanical, Electrical, and Ethereal Phases. This essay contains what is almost certainly the first illustration of history as a curve approaching a vertical asymptote. The link takes you to an edited version of his essay.

Henry Adams on the Law of Acceleration — Henry Adams was almost certainly the first person to write about history as a self-accelerating technological process. His law of acceleration prefigures Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns. The link takes you to an edited version of his essay.

Teilhard de Chardin and Transhumanism — Teilhard is the fore-runner of all contemporary theorists of the singularity. He is among the first to seriously explore the future of human evolution. He advocates both bio-technologies (e.g. genetic engineering) and intelligence technologies. He discusses the emergence of a global computation – communication system (and is said by some to have been the first to have envisioned the Internet). He advocates the development of a global society. He describes the acceleration of progress towards a technological singularity. He discusses the spread of human intelligence into the universe and its amplification into a cosmic-intelligence. The link takes you to a published essay discussing the ways that Teilhard develops singularitarian thought.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Featured, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Science, Technology | Comments (0)

Asking Richard Wade About The Ethics of Lying To Stay In A Protective Closet

July 5, 2011 – 12:22 pm

In four previous posts, I have discussed with the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, the problems with forming one’s identity based on one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), and how atheists should respond to the possibly religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the installment of our interview below we discuss the ethics of advising closeted atheists to hide (or outright lie about) their atheism to prevent being disowned or discriminated against (or worse).

Daniel Fincke: So, you often advise people, especially young people who are under their parents’ financial roof, to be very cautious about coming out as atheists if it would cause them hardship. What would you say to those who say that both as a matter of ethical principle and as a matter of effectively breaking religion’s power, people should be honest and even willing to sacrifice for truth in these areas if necessary? Or to put it more in a more adversarial way: are you encouraging people to lie? Is that consistent with the values of truthfulness that are so important to many principled atheists?

Richard Wade: This comes up for me every time I read one of these letters where someone is under the authority or control of very intolerant religious people. It’s in a post I published recently, about an atheist woman who just discovered she has been hired by a “Christian based” company. I’m never completely comfortable advising people to deceive others either passively or actively. But I see these quandaries in life as an ever-shifting balance between the principles and the pragmatics. We have to acknowledge both in every situation.

Generally I encourage people to remain honest and to even be courageously forthcoming with the truth. But I do not think that I have the right to tell them to put themselves in harm’s way, whether it’s a teenager risking actual abuse or abandonment by their family, (and that does happen) or a newly hired nurse who really will be in a pickle if she loses her job at a “Christian company” while she looks for a more tolerant place to work. All these ethical choices exist in a context, not in a vacuum. The context includes people’s very legitimate material needs as well as their ideals and their principles.

I usually tell someone in such a predicament to carefully and discreetly investigate the situation first, to “feel them out” about how their parents or employer might react to being told that their child or employee is an atheist. Then if it seems obvious that it would not be in their best material or safety interest to be honest about it, I advise them to be as minimally deceitful as they can be for as short a time as they can be.

Invariably, someone commenting will say “Oh you should never lie. You should be brave and face whatever they do, and that will help all atheists to be more open”. With almost no exception, those people talking so bravely have never, ever been in such a situation where they might not be getting regular meals for a long time if they were to “out” themselves. In other words, it’s easy to talk bravely about principles and honesty and integrity when you’re not the one standing in harm’s way. If a big man with a knife and a gun approaches me angrily demanding where is Richard Wade, I’ll say that Richard went off in that direction. Then I’ll call the police. I have a very strong conscience, but I won’t feel guilty for lying to him.

So I reluctantly will even coach atheists in these predicaments how to lie the least that they must, and bide their time until they’re no longer under the thumb of these intolerant people. I think that the person to whom you tell the truth has some responsibility to make that truthfulness safe to tell. Some people will not honor a truthful atheist. The atheist’s lack of beliefs have nothing to do with their work or their duties, but the person in power will severely penalize them for demonstrating that courage and integrity.

In short, on rare occasions, some people do not deserve being told the truth, because they do not respond to that truthfulness and candor honorably. There’s also the idea of it not being anyone’s damn business. Keeping private the details of our sex lives, bowel habits, and religious views is not being “dishonest,” it’s being prudent, and I think that prudence is a very legitimate principle that must be considered along with the principle of honesty.

Read the other 7 parts of the interview, in which I ask Richard about:

The Origins of the “Ask Richard” Column

Anger In Families Divided Over Religion

Atheism and Religions As Bases For Identities

How Atheists Should Respond to Alcoholics Anonymous, and How Personal Values Influence Professional Therapy

How Atheists Should Confront And Replace Religions

Whether Believers and Non-Believers Should Avoid Marrying Each Other

Whether Believers Are Literally Deluded

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Secularism | Tagged Closeted Atheists, Honesty, Intolerance Against Atheists, Richard Wade, The Ethics of Lying, Truthfulness | Comments (9)

Asking Richard Wade About How Atheists Should Respond to Alcoholics Anonymous, and How Personal Values Influence Professional Therapy

July 4, 2011 – 10:29 am

In three previous posts, the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade and I have discussed the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, and whether atheists should replace religious identities with self-consciously atheistic ones. Along the way, Richard compared religion to heroin. In what follows I take that as an opening to transition the conversation to the topic of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Daniel Fincke: Speaking of drugs and religion—during your career as a therapist you specialized in addiction medicine. What would you advise an atheist to say if half way into a heated debate about the existence of God her interlocutor were to get emotional and insist that he just needs to believe in an AA-conceived “higher power” because otherwise he’d wind up in the gutter? Should we push rationalism and skepticism with such people or treat their religious belief like the methadone to their heroin in this case, i.e., not recommendable in general but necessary for some addicts?

Richard Wade: I often had this issue come up with patients of mine. The chemical dependency clinic where I worked relied heavily on 12-step concepts, and I had to do a lot of interpretation for patients’ specific needs. My personal method was intensely pragmatic: Find whatever works to keep you alive, and don’t worry about whether or not you are perfectly following your philosophical principles, if indeed you have even clarified them for yourself. So if believing in gods keeps you sober, fine. If that doesn’t work, find whatever will work!

The main problem is that AA and its 12-step cousins are everywhere, and there are very few secular support groups in between. When an agnostic or atheist asks me what the heck does he do with all that “God stuff,” I tell him to shrug and use the group of human beings he’s with as his “higher power.” Just as five men can lift a fallen tree out of the roadway while a man alone cannot, so five caring people who are right there to support him in his pain and doubt are more likely to successfully get him through it than he would by himself.

From an atheist’s viewpoint, that’s what’s really happening when 12-step program members succeed in recovery. The “higher power” was the camaraderie and encouragement they got from each other, even though they wanted to attribute it all to a deity. I hope that secular programs continue to grow and become more available, because addiction is like a plague. Millions of people are dying in slow and awful ways, and even the best methods are miserably ineffective. It’s dismal. It’s very unfortunate in the rare instances where the “God stuff” in AA is used to proselytize religion, and it’s usually corrected by group members. It’s just that I have seen so much abject misery and so much death from addiction that I just don’t care that much about sticking to esoteric or abstract principles. Just do whatever works, stay alive, and later you can sort out your philosophy.

Daniel Fincke: What do you mean about group members correcting against the “AA” stuff being used to proselytize—are they explicitly warned against trying to persuade each other into sectarian interpretations of God?

Richard Wade: In most 12-step meetings, there are rules and customs that they follow, and while many members will refer to God when they share their thoughts to the group, overt proselytizing is strongly discouraged. They talk about themselves, not each other. So they don’t say YOU should find God, even if they attribute God to their own recovery. They insist that it’s a “spiritual” rather than a “religious” program, but that’s where the ambiguity of that term spiritual can still be a problem. It has so much religious connotation. When sponsors work individually with new, struggling members, they are not observed by the group and they may abuse their influence with someone. Usually if a new person has strong objections to that, he or she can seek a different sponsor, but it’s tough when they’re desperate, scared, ashamed, and hurting very badly. They’re so vulnerable and not necessarily very assertive even when they’re at their best. I really can’t overstate how difficult early recovery from addiction is.

Even if they think “group” when they hear “God,” for atheists there still are serious problems with the 12 steps themselves, because they are very heavily influenced by Christianity. The surrender to a higher power, the abdication of self will, the prayer and meditation, the confession; so many things. I’ve seen some secular versions of the 12 steps written, and some of them are clever and offer a possibly useful angle on it for an atheist, but I think an entirely different method might need to be invented, even if it uses the parts that work in AA.

Again the problem is the huge scope of the plague of addiction. With so much suffering, there’s a tempting mass of victims for unscrupulous predators peddling cures. Somewhere in there might be someone with a legitimate idea, but it’s tough to get the support they need when they have to first show that they’re not con artists, and they have to get past others’ belief that 12 Step programs are the only thing that works.

Daniel Fincke: Yes, this is brutally tough, because human ennoblement and civilizational progress in the last centuries has come through people’s increasing political, moral, and intellectual autonomy. Yet the addict bears naked the limits of human autonomy. Many religious people want to characterize all humanity as being as desperate and in need of abject submission to something outside themselves, and therefore the addict saved by God has become a major modern conversion myth.

Richard Wade: Yes, exactly.

Daniel Fincke: Now, this raises a broader question. When asked about your own perspectives on truth and ethics, it’s clear you have well-worked out ideas that you are passionate about and willing to persuade others of. Yet, I was taken aback when you said that before writing your “Ask Richard” column, you had never actually given advice but had only helped people find their own solutions. So, I hear a little tension there. Do you feel queasy about encouraging people to adopt your own strongly held values in a therapy context? Do you separate your own confidence in your own values from an interest in people finding their own path? Is it not just the alcoholic that you would be willing to meet on his or her terms like that?

Richard Wade: The advice column is not therapy. I use some of the knowledge and skills that I employed when I was a counselor, but it’s a very different thing with a different purpose. In the column, someone describes a dilemma, and I offer one or two possible suggestions. I also hope that others reading it will find some useful insight or encouragement, and that others commenting will offer ideas I didn’t think of.

On the other hand, therapy is a complex, back-and-forth relationship that is constantly changing and evolving. The goal is not just to solve a particular predicament, but to help the client to develop predicament-solving skills, and a self image that includes “I am able to solve my problems both by drawing upon my own abilities, and by searching out skilled allies.” So if I were to quickly give advice to a therapy client for his presenting problem as I do in the advice column, I would not be helping him to grow both outwardly and inwardly as a successful problem solver.

As a counselor, I always saw the purpose of my job was to work myself out of a job, to become no longer needed by my client. It’s sort of like teaching them to fish rather than feeding them a fish. My own method of fishing might become apparent to the client during the therapy process, but I’m mostly interested in helping him experience the empowerment that comes from inventing his own method of fishing. If it’s something like mine, I still want him to take full ownership of the method that he’s putting together. If it’s not like my method a all, I have no ego investment in that, that’s fine with me. If his way works to his satisfaction and I’m convinced he’s really looking at it, great! His taking full responsibility for his successes and failures is absolutely essential. Several times former clients have come up to me in a store or on the street years later and told me that I saved their lives. I always reply that while I’m delighted that they’re still alive, I didn’t do that, they did.

Daniel Fincke: Wow, that’s terrific, I never realized how much being a therapist was like being a philosophy professor before, but we (or at least I) have a similar attitude about teaching critical thinking to students. It’s not about our own ideas but about working with the students to develop their own critical approaches to philosophical questions.

Richard Wade: Ah wonderful. What a fun job that sounds like.

Daniel Fincke: Yes, it is great. And it depends, for me anyway, on incorporating something you do also, which is to provide lots of affirmation. I think half the secret of getting students to open up is to validate them—not by humoring them into thinking every idea they have is perfect, or perfectly realized, but by making clear to them that their ideas catch the scent of the truth and are worth exploring.

Richard Wade: “We be of one blood, thou and I.”

Daniel Fincke: Yes, that’s been my impression!

Read the other 7 parts of the interview, in which I ask Richard about:

The Origins of the “Ask Richard” Column

Anger In Families Divided Over Religion

Atheism and Religions As Bases For Identities

The Ethics of Lying To Stay In A Protective Closet

How Atheists Should Confront And Replace Religions

Whether Believers and Non-Believers Should Avoid Marrying Each Other

Whether Believers Are Literally Deluded

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, God, God, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology | Tagged Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous and Religion, Alcoholism, Higher Being | Comments (21)

Asking Richard Wade About Atheism and Religions As Bases For Identities

July 3, 2011 – 12:11 pm

In two previous posts, I have discussed with Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column and the nature of family conflicts over atheism. In what follows we discuss the intersection of belief and identity.

Daniel Fincke: Part of the problem when families fight due to someone in the family becoming an atheist is that fundamental identities are at stake. Many religious people who watch their children or spouses defecting from their faith are not just seeing this as a change of mind but a rejection of their shared identities. And atheists who come at religion with a morally heated critique are making that rejection explicit. Both of these identities, the theistic and the atheistic, understand themselves at least in part through their explicit rejection of the opposite identity.

And we see with the botched attempts of religious people to “hate the sin but love the sinner” in the case of gays that when you do not accept a particular kind of identity, in a certain sense, you wish that people with that identity and that set of behaviors and beliefs just did not exist. Saying I love you but not what you do (or believe) does not cut it when, to a large extent, you are what you do and when what you do is flowing from something as basic to your self-conception as your identity is.

So the challenge becomes, how can we love religious people and how can religious people love atheists while both sides want the others’ entire belief structures and values to go extinct and each side responds to that desire coming from the other side as the desire for them themselves (or people like them) to just not exist at all?

Richard Wade: Yes. This is why all the shouting in the families that I just described is not about anger, it’s really about hurt. People confuse their beliefs and ideas with their being, with their sense of self. I think that is a major mistake.

Daniel Fincke: Right.

Richard Wade: I often say that “You are what you do, not what you think and not what you think you are. The most valid characterization of you is the pattern of behaviors, the doings that you consistently do. So for example, if you say you’re an honest man, but you lie and lie very often, then no, you’re not an honest man. You are what you do.

The same goes for our cherished beliefs and opinions. They’re stuff. They’re like the clothes we wear and the stuff we get so attached to. I get atheists mad at me when I say that their atheism is just another thing in their heads like coins are things in their pockets. They feel existentially threatened just as vividly as a Christian who has fully attached his sense of self to his beliefs. This is a mistake. Our beliefs and views can be very important to us, can guide us and benefit us, but they are not us. They are our prized possessions. We should hold them lightly in our hands and not squeeze them in a death grip.

This is one idea that remains from my Zen Buddhist days. Avoid being attached to anything. It causes you problems, it causes you suffering. We attach to a person or a prized object, or to an idea. Yes, yes, they are important to us, but to think of our ideas as one of our internal vital organs is going to twist our thinking, give us blind spots, and make us immediately react with a live-or-die, I-must-kill-this-or-be-killed sense of threat whenever someone challenges our ideas. It really spoils many opportunities for gaining understanding of others and of ourselves.

Daniel Fincke: But what if a conservative were to turn that around and say, “Gays are making a mistake by thinking that their same sex attraction is a matter of their being and not open to critique.” Of course, attraction is much less mutable than beliefs (and certainly less amenable to persuasion through argument), but beliefs still naturally play major roles in people’s self-understanding. How can we form a self, if not in reference to major, orienting beliefs? Isn’t it natural to think this is a major identity issue? Or is this Buddhist again—rejecting the idea of a self too? Isn’t, in fact, the increased atheist consciousness we’re experiencing, replete with calls to “come out of the closet”, really about precisely understanding atheism as a positive identity and not just an empty void of religion? Doesn’t this movement encourage people to identify their atheism as a core part of themselves that can theoretically be refuted with rational arguments but otherwise cannot be compromised without violating their conscience? Are you critical of the movement on this or do you think I mischaracterize what it’s doing?

Richard Wade: I think beliefs can be separated from identity, but it’s very hard to do, and very few people think so, and almost everybody is emotionally attached to their ideas, even those ideas arrived at in the most rational way. I saw this more than once as a kid, when some scientist at the museum could get livid at a challenge to some opinion of his that to me seemed quite abstract. To me, it seemed like just a coin in his pocket. Maybe it was a favorite coin of his, but the scientist reacted like someone was trying to cut out his liver.

By the way, I’m not implying that I’m not just as emotionally attached to my opinions and ideas. Of course I am. I just think I know why I get so livid when somebody challenges what I ought to think of as just a coin in my pocket. Realizing what’s happening only helps me to calm down a little sooner and to loosen up my death grip on yet another attachment. The things themselves don’t cause us unnecessary suffering as much as our desperate clinging to them as if we’ll drown without them does.

You ask about the movement encouraging atheists to think in “identity terms.” If that means what terms we use to call ourselves, well, the debate seems to be a long-winded loop tape. We seem to argue as endlessly with each other over our category label as we argue with theists over questions of the supernatural. Some atheists are identifying their selves with not just a term, but what seems to be becoming an ideology. Lately, I see atheists asking themselves questions about how would a “good atheist” handle some decision, or will they be a “bad atheist” if they do such-in-such. They also wonder about what conduct of theirs will help the “movement.”

Of course there is more to us than just a passive lack of belief in gods. We do stand for things. We have positive and assertive opinions about many things that are the root of our atheism rather than coming from our atheism. Many of us value critical thinking, open-minded skepticism, science, reason-based policies, and social justice (to name a few values that are very common among us). Those things we value can and seem to be congealing into an ideology, but it will be very unfortunate if we start judging each other by such a thing as “good atheists” or “bad atheists” or “not true” atheists. We find Christians and Muslims who do that to each other to be absurd and bizarre. I hope we can avoid that.

Daniel Fincke: So, if you’re saying all people should take a non-attachment approach to beliefs, including to their atheism, then how can we rationalists ever fill the void many people seem to feel for beliefs that orient themselves in the world and help them construct a coherent sense of self? Skeptics and atheists are often accused of offering nothing constructive to meet the needs people turn to religion for. Can we build solid institutions on the shifting sands of doubt?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Secularism | Tagged Buddhism, Identity, Richard Wade | Comments (5)

Asking Richard Wade About Anger In Families Divided Over Religion

July 2, 2011 – 10:55 am

Below is part 2 of my 8 part discussion with Richard Wade of the Friendly Atheist’s “Ask Richard” column. In part 1, Richard discussed how he became involved in atheist issues and discussed how the idea for his “Ask Richard” column came about. Below we talk about the prevalent theme of anger in the letters he receives for the column.

Richard Wade: Many of the problems the letters describe are appalling and heartbreaking. They are at the level of pain that I’ve seen in thousands of patients while I was an addiction counselor. My initial reaction still is often “Oh man, what the heck can I do for this person?!” But after brooding over them for several days, something begins to sprout, something about hope and possibility and positivism.

The letters are so varied in what they present, but they do fall into categories. The biggest group is about young people who are agonizing over how and when to tell their parents or their spouses that they’re atheists.

Another big category is people who are reeling from the explosion of anger, hurt and fear from their families or spouses after they’ve told them that they’re atheists. It has been an amazing education for me to see how much strife and unhappiness comes from this single conflict, and how tragically unnecessary it is.

Daniel Fincke: I thought atheists were supposed to be the angry ones, do you get a lot of angry atheists?

Richard Wade: I get a few who are really stuck in their anger, but basically anger is the smoke while hurt is the fire. Whether it’ s a Christian father raging at his atheist daughter, or a young atheist complaining bitterly about his religious parents, if I address the hurt rather than the anger, things seem to loosen up, and possibilities for a better outcome begin to appear. You’ll see a few repeated themes in my responses to the letters about family conflict.

For instance, I often encourage the atheists to keep an open door in their hearts for the possibility for love to return between them and their families, even when the upset is so bad, it’s like a hate grenade has exploded in the living room. Just be open to the possibility. People generally want reconciliation. They just have to work through their hurt.

Daniel Fincke: So, all these Christians assuming atheists are angry because we don’t have God are mistaken—they’re really angry because Christians won’t let them be atheists?

Richard Wade: It’s not really about Christians not letting them be atheists. It’s about Christians not being willing to see them directly, as they are, real, rather than an idea that they have about “atheists.” They don’t see us, they see their concept of an atheist. So often Christians will tell us what we think, feel and do, rather than openly and sincerely ask us what we think, feel and do. And there is an opportunity for a manipulation. If someone tells me that I’m angry when I’m not, but they won’t accept my correction to them, that’s a little irritating. They pick up on that and say something about my irritation.

That’s downright annoying, so my next response is full of annoyance. Then they can crow, saying “See, I told you so, you’re an angry atheist!” By then I’m seeing purple. I’ ve been suckered into anger that he thinks confirms his first assumption.

Daniel Fincke: Do you think we are guilty of the same thing?

Richard Wade: Oh yes, we atheists are certainly capable of all the same kinds of prejudice, manipulations, unkindness, and unfair practices that we complain about in believers. I don’t spend as much time commenting on blogs as I did before starting the column, but sometimes I still find myself arguing with an atheist about his or her tactics with a theist if I see it as just as destructive as what we so often face from them.

Daniel Fincke: Are there any mistakes you think activist atheists are making? Is our confrontationalism as justified as we like to think? And regardless of its justification or lack thereof on moral or political grounds, do you think it is likely to be as counter-productive a way to persuade religious people as our detractors always warn? You’re someone who is passionate about healthy relationships. How can we be so confrontational and yet have a healthy discourse here? From the PR to the rhetorical to the personal levels, how might we improve what we’re doing already?

Richard Wade: I hope it’s not a vanity to quote myself, but there are a couple of things I often say. One is, “If you want someone to see something more clearly, don’t start by poking him in the eye.” The other one is, “Speak with your ears, not with your mouth.” By reading online I’m able to “listen in” on many, many dialogues. Some atheists get into these dialogues with theists just to vent their feelings. They’re focused on expression only. Other atheists actually want to persuade others of something instead of just venting. They’re focused on communication. But sometimes they make the mistake of not communicating with a strong sense of empathy.

They need to accurately imagine what it is like for the other person to hear what they’re saying to them. That’ s what I mean by speaking with your ears. They can say wonderfully logical, rational things, but if it begins with a deliberate or an inadvertent insult, or if there is an undertone of snide contempt, then it doesn’t matter. The message will be deflected, not received. Even if it is compelling by its technical points, it will not be persuasive in its effect. Now I fully understand that many religious people can be hair-trigger ready to take “offence,” and some are already offended just by our very existence. But if you get one who is actually talking to you, then use that opportunity skillfully with a delicate touch. Don’t blow your chance to change someone’ s viewpoint by indulging in a dumb wisecrack or using an insensitive tone.

I think you can get your message in deeper if you deliver it politely. I don’t mean being obsequious, or fawning, or meek. But you don’t have to shame or humiliate people into a wider view. Coax them. Imagine what would you need to be convinced if you were them. You probably have a pretty good idea what their thoughts are, and their basic framework. Instead of just sneering at it, get inside it and see where the openings are. Using empathy and understanding the other’s motives are the most important things in persuasion.

That’s where I see atheists fail when trying to persuade religious people to reconsider their ideas about atheists or about science, or about social issues. We need to be more patient. Plant seeds, and wait, and come back a little later and attend to them a bit more, and back off again. Don’t try for instant victories where your “opponent” will concede right there on the spot. That never happens, does it? Always give them a way to say “I’ll think about it” with their dignity in tact, and let them rest a while. That way they’ll be open for more seed-planting later.

Daniel Fincke: I completely, completely agree. I have a friend whom I have debated hours at a time and sometimes suddenly a key issue is clarified and he says, “okay, I understand, let me go think about that”, and it just ends there for the time being. You gotta let someone go when they’ve had enough and they have to go think things over before returning to the discussion.

Richard Wade: Yeah. and at that crucial, delicate moment, if you were to crow “Ha! I have beaten you!” then you’ve completely blown it. We should never go for trophies when it will rob us of a persuaded ally who now sees things our way. They might never fully realize that we were the one who persuaded them, and we won’t get that ego-boosting acknowledgment. So what?? We have a better situation. That is all that matters. Being an effective agent for positive change is so much more important than some fleeting feeling of personal triumph.

Continue to part 3 of our discussion, in which we discuss the pros and cons of seeing atheism as part of one’s identity. In the meantime, Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion, Secularism | Tagged Anger, Ask Richard, Family, Friendly Atheist, Religion, Richard Wade | Comments (7)

Asking Richard: A Conversation With The Friendly Atheist’s Richard Wade

July 1, 2011 – 12:00 pm

Recently I had the honor of interviewing my favorite atheist blogger, retired Marriage and Family Counselor and addiction medicine specialist Richard Wade who writes the “Ask Richard” column at Friendly Atheist. In his column, which was inaugurated two years ago this upcoming Sunday, Richard wisely advises atheists and religious people who seek his help in being true to themselves and to each other in matters of belief and (especially) non-belief. His responses to letters are unfailingly humane, affirmative, creative, constructive, compassionate, and pragmatic. I had a lot I wanted to ask him and Richard proved extremely generous with his time and his ideas. Over the course of four long interview sessions held in real time over instant messenger this spring, we talked about enough to fill eight blog posts. Below is the first installment of our entire freewheeling conversation, as it took place, with only minor editing for clarity and presentation. Over the next week, I will post the rest of the interview.

Daniel Fincke: How long have you been an atheist and how long has it been an important matter of self-identity to be an atheist? And how did you become an atheist and come to see it as important to self-identify as an atheist in an outspoken way?

Richard Wade: My belief in supernatural things was never very strong or focused because I grew up in a nonreligious family. My dad called himself an agnostic, although I suspect that he really used that term because it was a more socially acceptable word than atheist. My mom rejected her parents’ Baptist religiosity in her late teens, but she has remained what I’d call a deist with as little interest in any supreme being as it seems to have in us. They both worked at a major natural history museum as illustrators and exhibit designers, so all of their friends were scientists of many kinds.

So I spent many free days at the museum, and I loved it. I was surrounded by science and scientists. I went out on digs and helped in the lab. Listening to their conversations, I was impressed by how tough they were and how willing they were to risk having their ideas shot down by their peers. I realized that science can be a very demanding field emotionally, not just intellectually. As I grew up, I acquired a few vague deist ideas, basically because god belief is everywhere in the U.S., like the air. The most organized my beliefs ever got was when I became a lay member of a Zen center, and practiced zazen.

I began to lose interest in all of that, and for several years thought very little about such issues until 9/11 happened. Seeing those two towers come down, they were like the last two nails in the coffin of my interest in anything supernatural in any form. About I think 3 or 4 years ago, I stumbled across a website called On Faith, run by the Washington post.

I now call it the world’s largest text-only bar room brawl. I’d never done any blogging or commenting before, and it was fascinating, both in its intellectual demands and in its sudden brutality. I learned to be just awful there. I got very good at eviscerating people along with their arguments, and I’m not proud of that.

Interestingly, it was because of a young woman, a Muslima she called herself, that I woke me up to how brutal I was. She was an American who had converted to Islam. She took and took and took terrible abuse from other commenters there at On Faith with an amazing patience. I admired her for that, and I began to realize that I could do this in a completely positive and constructive way.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Featured, Islam, Islam, Religion, Religion | Tagged 9/11, Billy Graham, Richard Wade | Comments (6)

It’s Atheism, Not Adeism

June 26, 2011 – 12:32 pm

As I have expressed a number of times in the past, I am a gnostic atheist. I am an atheist in the sense that I neither believe in nor worship, appease, pray to, or in any other way imagine myself to interact with personal gods. Simply lacking such belief and refraining from related practices is sufficient to make one an atheist. I am a gnostic atheist in that I think that I know that such personal gods in fact do not exist. An agnostic atheist, by contrast, refrains from belief in personal gods and from pretensions to interact with personal gods but does not think their nonexistence is quite a matter of knowledge for one reason or another.

I am not such an agnostic because I do think that it is a matter of knowledge that there are no personal gods. It is no harder for me to dismiss the existence of Yahwheh or a personal Allah or a divine Jesus as fictional or mythical than it is for all of us 21st Century modern people to dismiss out of hand claims that Thor or Zeus or Spider-Man or Aquaman exist.

But some atheists are reluctant to call themselves atheists because there remain the various god conceptions of the philosophers, some of which are, or may in the future be, plausibly formulated. Might there be a single source of all being distinguishable from the known universe and fitting a certain, longstanding, traditional philosophical definition of the word “God”? Perhaps.

This or a number of other concepts one might formulate are, or at least could be, sufficiently conceivable and sufficiently consistent with our best science and metaphysics as to be reasonably plausible. One might for one reason or another disfavor belief in one or another of the possible metaphysical god concepts and yet still not think of one’s disbelief as raising to the level of knowledge.

I consider someone like this open to deism and agnostic about deist gods. I myself fit this description. But then why call myself an atheist if I am philosophically agnostic about whether some single “divine” principle which originates existence exists? Should I not just call myself an agnostic?

No, I should not just call myself an agnostic. The reason I am an atheist is because I am the opposite of a theist, not the opposite of a deist. And I am not agnostic about theism, I am agnostic about deism. I am gnostic about theism. I know Yahweh and a divine Jesus and a personally construed Allah, etc. do not exist with the same kind of sufficient evidence and degree of certainty that I know Aphrodite and Green Lantern do not exist.

An impersonal metaphysical principle which somehow accounts for existence or order, etc. is an entirely different thing. Proving such a thing exists would get you no closer to proving the existence of Yahweh or a divine Jesus than proving numbers are real entities would prove the real existence of The Count from Sesame Street.

Theists are quite fond of arguing for a deistic god and assuming that it is the same thing as providing evidence for a theistic one, when it’s not. Or, a bit more modestly, other theists think that the inconclusiveness and relative philosophical open endedness of the deist god question translates into a plausibility of the theist god.

But it does not.

I do not feel like participating in the equivocations of theists by granting them that lack of knowledge about whether a deist god may exist translates to lack of knowledge about whether the personal gods upon which religions are actually based exist or not.

The believer in a personal god is a theist. I do not believe in any personal gods, so I am an atheist. My considered reasons for disbelief raise to the level of knowledge by our ordinary standards for knowledge claims. Therefore, I am a gnostic atheist. That the existence of some deistic, impersonal god may very plausibly be proved to me is irrelevant. Even were I to come to be a deist by affirming the existence of a “divine” impersonal metaphysical principle of some sort, I would remain a gnostic atheist. The positions are entirely compatible.

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion | Tagged Agnostic Atheist, Agnosticism, Deism, Gnostic Atheist | Comments (12)

Uploading and Religion: Criticism of Stross

June 23, 2011 – 3:37 pm

Charlie Stross, author of the highly-praised novel Accelerando, has written an interesting skeptical article on the technological singularity. The article makes many good points — except when it comes to “religion”. When it comes to “religion”, specifically religion and mind-uploading, what he says is remarkably silly. Here it is:

Uploading … is not obviously impossible unless you are a crude mind/body dualist. However, if it becomes plausible in the near future we can expect extensive theological arguments over it. If you thought the abortion debate was heated, wait until you have people trying to become immortal via the wire. Uploading implicitly refutes the doctrine of the existence of an immortal soul, and therefore presents a raw rebuttal to those religious doctrines that believe in a life after death. People who believe in an afterlife will go to the mattresses to maintain a belief system that tells them their dead loved ones are in heaven rather than rotting in the ground.

Pretty much every statement in that paragraph is false — and reflects a surprising ignorance about both Western philosophy and Christianity.

Stross says; “Uploading … is not obviously impossible unless you are a crude mind/body dualist.” On the contrary, mind-body dualism is maximally congenial to uploading. Dualism says that minds are separable from bodies. And classical writers like Locke used this separability to argue that minds could swap bodies – as in his famous Prince/Cobbler case. Functionalism is also friendly to uploading. Functionalism says (roughly) that the mind is to the brain as software is to hardware. And of course, Moravec and Kurzweil are functionalists. Uploading is harder the closer you get to mind-brain identity. If my mind is identical to my brain, then uploading is impossible.

Stross says: “Uploading implicitly refutes the doctrine of the existence of an immortal soul.” Huh? It surely doesn’t refute the existence of a Socratic-Cartesian soul, thought of as an immaterial thinking substance. Nor does it refute the Aristotelian theory that the soul is the form of the body. Souls are perfectly compatible with uploading. On the Aristotelian theory, uploading merely copies your soul from some natural biological substrate to some artificial computational substrate. Writers like Tipler (and Barrow and Tipler) are explicitly Aristotelians. And when Moravec and Kurzweil talk about patterns, they are talking about Aristotelian universals. Here it’s worth pointing out that the Aristotelian soul-theory was taken up by Thomas Aquinas (in his Treatise on Man in the Summa Theologica). Writers like Tipler, Moravec, and Kurzweil are in fact adopting something very close to the orthodox Catholic theory of the soul. Uploading goes quite nicely with traditional theories of the soul.

Stross says that uploading “presents a raw rebuttal to those religious doctrines that believe in a life after death.” And that’s really absurd. On the contrary, uploading would be a kind of empirical confirmation of the Thomistic doctrine of resurrection, and thus of the Catholic doctrine of resurrection. Uploading is exactly analogous to the doctrine of resurrection as replication developed by the Protestant theologian John Hick. Indeed, many Christian writers use computational analogies to develop their resurrection theories. These writers include Reichenbach, Mackay, Polkinghorne, Ward, and others. And here it’s worth noting that Moravec and Tipler explicitly use the term resurrection when they discuss uploading or its continuation into ancestor simulation. Uploading is just a technological resurrection theory.

Stross says: “People who believe in an afterlife will go to the mattresses to maintain a belief system that tells them their dead loved ones are in heaven rather than rotting in the ground.” But this doesn’t even make sense. The whole point of uploading is that, rather than rotting in the ground, you’ll be living in a computer. So uploading, rather than refuting life after death, vividly confirms it.

Stross writes that if uploading “becomes plausible in the near future we can expect extensive theological arguments over it. If you thought the abortion debate was heated, wait until you have people trying to become immortal via the wire.” There are already extensive debates about it. Look at David Noble’s older book, The Religion of Technology. Or look at Robert Geraci’s brilliant book Apocalyptic AI. Or at the long list of publications on religion and transhumanism on my website.

Contrary to Stross, I think Christian traditions would encourage uploading. The pro-life doctrines of both Protestant and Catholic ethics would probably compel you to upload yourself (and others) if you could afford to do so. Uploading is just another form of life-extension technology, ethically no different than other life-support or extension technologies already in use. Indeed, it is easy to imagine Christian practices extending into cyberspace: you could get communion in cyberspace. And, if you had not yet converted to Christianity in your organic life, it is probable that you could convert in cyberspace.

Uploading would be a great confirmation of traditional Christian doctrines about life after death: it would be practical resurrection. Christians would surely say that if we can do it, then God can do it. Of course, they would also insist that our technical prowess can’t replace the glory of God. Human uploads, after all, won’t really be immortal – the sun will soon incinerate the earth, the universe will run down. Uploading will allow Christians to argue that God will upload us into heaven.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Culture and Technology, Cutural Criticism, Featured, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion and Science, Unintentional Comedy | Comments (3)

On the Rapture

May 20, 2011 – 6:26 pm

The rapture isn’t going to happen on 21 May 2011. And that implies an ordered series of disconfirmations: (1) Harold Camping is wrong about the Bible; (2) his way of reading the Bible (that is, Biblical numerology) does not reveal anything trans-scientific about the future; (3) evangelical ways of reading the Bible reveal nothing trans-scientific about the future; (4) no way of reading the Bible reveals anything trans-scientific about the future; and finally (5) the Bible carries no trans-scientific information about the future at all. But all these lead to (6) the Bible carries no trans-scientific information about objective reality. (It may carry considerable information about human hopes and fears, but not about objective reality.)

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Atheism, Culture, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Philosophy of Science, Probability, Pseudoscience, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Skepticism | Comments (3)

Hitchens On The Inappropriateness Of Asking Dying Atheists If They’ve Changed Their Mind

May 2, 2011 – 1:54 am

Glorious righteous indignation from a master of righteous indignation:

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism | Comments (4)

On Atheists And “Interfaith” Participation

April 30, 2011 – 8:18 pm

There is a lot of commotion in the atheist blogosphere about how and/or whether atheists should participate in so-called “interfaith” organizations in which (if I understand correctly) members of different religions cooperate on shared service projects, aim at shared goals together, and (possibly?) dialogue about where they might find philosophical, ethical, and political common ground despite their differences. Without attempting to sift all the various existing positions or identify the various camps fighting over this topic, I am just here going to list off my thoughts on the various issues raised by the question of atheist participation in “interfaith” groups.

Some atheists are understandably wary that by participating in “interfaith” groups, they would be tacitly conceding that “atheism is just another religion” or “atheism is a faith-based position like any religious one”. Atheism is not, itself, a religion. But, then again, neither is theism. Atheism and theism are themselves just philosophical positions. There exist already numerous theistic and atheistic religions. But learning someone is either an atheist or a theist tells me nothing immediately about whether that person either is religious or to what religion she belongs if she is.

Atheism is also not a “faith”. And, again, theism is not itself a “faith” either. Again, atheism and theism are both just philosophical positions. To have a “faith” a group of people must orient their lives, beliefs, and practices out of a willingness to loyally submit to shared beliefs and practices, even, and especially , when those beliefs and practices are irrational and require genuine sacrifices of good things from the members as tests of trust, devotion, submission, and true belief. A faith, in this way, demands some degree of subordination of members’ intellectual or moral consciences such that they believe and act, to one degree or another, what the community demands, even beyond their personal abilities to judge proposed beliefs or practices good.

There could be atheist faiths oriented around faith-based, irrationalistic ideas and practices that simply have nothing to do with gods. But simply being an atheist does not by any means automatically entail even minimum commitments to an atheist community–let alone willful submission of one’s mind and will to any dogmatic, counter-rational claims or loyalty-testing sacrificial practices of the atheist community. Being an atheist itself simply means not believing in gods. It does not default one into anything more robust than that.

Of course atheists have other beliefs too and in many ways atheists may agree in common on various kinds of issues more with each other than with religious people, but just being an atheist does not default one into any kind of robust faith. And even where atheists do share like mind on issues in part due to their shared atheism the views held can be (and I think usually are) held for reasons that are neither implicitly nor explicitly “faith-based”. Even were atheists wrong about a great number of issues that would not make them the sorts of people who deliberately hold beliefs that they think are unsupported or counter-indicated by evidence as the self-consciously faithful do. Atheists can make bad assumptions or bad inferences and have faulty perceptions and biases, etc. without making a virtue out of intentionally believing what they admit goes against (or “beyond”) logic and available evidence.

So, in this way too atheists do not have “faith”. Typically their atheism is not chosen by willful faith, and nor is it reinforced by such an act of counter-rational will. It is typically grounded in skepticism and even if it is mistaken, it is so because of something different than faith. And the other beliefs of atheists share are typically not self-consciously or willfully faith-based either. Again, if they are wrong, it is due to other intellectual errors and not due to the will to defer to a tradition or a group or a god, even against the best standards of reason and evidence which they know.

But all this said, should the word “interfaith” itself be a stumbling block?

While I don’t think atheists should have faiths, since I think they’re offenses to reason and conscience, I do think there can, and probably needs to be, new atheist religions which harness what good tools religion has in the service of genuine, non-cultish, non-authoritarian rationalism. And notice I say there should be atheist religions, plural, not an atheist religion. Why do I say this? Because I think that there are multiple kinds of ethical, spiritual, and other self-formation practices and rituals which can be beneficially developed for people and that different atheists should have different groups for exploring different approaches to the good life.

Currently, under the hegemony of irrationalistic religions, there are pernicious cultural assumptions that faith-based religions are the only paths to communally developed and shared ethical, spiritual, and ritualistic practices. In a pluralistic society we need to allow multiple acceptable approaches to the good life to flourish and we also need points of contact, dialogue, and cooperation between such groups lest their separation into competing, non-communicating communities fracture the larger culture and make a more fundamental political common ground impossible. So, we need inter-good groups. Given religious hegemony and the backwards assumption that conceptions of the good stem from faiths only, the current default is to call these groups “inter-faith”.

And, insofar as these groups initially arose as a way to reduce inter-religious conflicts, it was a propros they be called that. The reason is that it is precisely faith, both in the sense of adherence to dogmatic assertions that are not acceptable, or even rationally defensible, across traditions and in the sense of loyal, trusting devotion to one’s own tradition, which causes the divisions that “inter-faith” groups are currently premised on soothing. Interfaith groups are morally and politically necessary (though possibly futile) because of faith’s specific work of creating (or, in modern eras, sustaining) incommensurable divisions of people into different intellectual, moral, and identity camps. Faith is the cancer and interfaith is the treatment to contain it, if not quite cure it yet.

So how to situate the atheist here? Well, we fit in that our position is incommensurable with the other faiths’. And when some atheists do not want to tacitly legitimize the theistic religions by holding hands with them and playing nice, they are being challenged to overcome incommensurable intellectual, moral, identity based barriers just as much as the different religious leaders are when they have to acknowledge each other’s religions as minimally acceptable too. This is a good exercise for atheists, just as it is for the religious. We all need to learn to find the ways to see each other’s common humanity and common values and build cooperation based on that. And we all need to have positive, constructive, interpersonal interactions and shared projects with those who have different philosophies and identities from ourselves.

Atheists really shouldn’t be there monolithically, as atheists. Ethically, there are many different kinds of atheists and they should probably represent their own various traditions distinctly. And the multiple delegations of atheist representation should lead the way in advancing a key philosophical shift in both cultural perception and the self-understanding of current inter-faith organizations. Currently interfaith groups are an attempt to unite people with theoretically incommensurable beliefs, practices, and identities by appealing to their shared commitment to faith. No matter how much they disagree about the particulars of values and metaphysics, they at least all affirm the importance of faith. In this way, they represent the very antithesis of the anti-faith, rationalistic, activist atheists and the sort of union which is based on precisely the thing we atheists oppose most vociferously on principle. In fact they could very well function as an alliance for faith against atheism as their shared greatest threat (and often theists do precisely this).

If they are to really be a group that is about overcoming theoretically incommensurable barriers then they must do this not on their affirmation of the fundamental importance of faith (which is the real source of their irresolvable divisions in the first place) but they should be based rather on their shared humanity and concern for the good. And if they shift their emphasis to this, then there will be no puzzle or contradiction in including humanists or transhumanists or skeptics or any other of a myriad possible stripes of moral atheists. And one of the ways to get them to make this shift in their own self-understanding is for atheists to join them in the first place. The reason for this is that when atheists are routinely understood to be (a) deniers of the value of “faith” and yet (b) full participants in “interfaith” groups, then the term “interfaith” will become an obvious misnomer over time and atheists can use this as impetus to change the designation of the groups from being about faith to being about shared humanity and shared commitment to the good, as they should be.

This is the best way I see to get our place at the table and to assure that the table does not rest on faith alone.

Finally, joining interfaith groups does not mean abandoning outspoken denunciation of faith-based beliefs where appropriate. What it means is challenging the ideas that faith is the one unquestionable value that should unite people and that accepting it as good should be the litmus test for being either a good person or a tolerant one. Atheists need not compromise their principles to join these groups any more than the religious have to abandon their faiths or the particulars of their doctrines to join them. All we need leave behind is any prejudices that those who are in error in one matter are in error in all and that those with different views cannot share and be profoundly bound by, other values and goals.

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism | Tagged Interfaith | Comments (5)

Synthese Intelligent Design Controversy

April 27, 2011 – 1:36 pm

The philosophy journal Synthese has become embroiled in a controversy regarding a special issue entitled “Evolution and its Rivals”. The chief editors of the journal have behaved in ways which have struck many philosophers as inappropriate. You can learn more about the controversy at the Leiter Report. If you’re an academic, you may wish to sign the petition demanding that the editors respond to the controversy appropriately.

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy at William Paterson University. Many of his papers can be found here . All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Evolution, Featured, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Religion and Science | Comments (0)

Singularitarianism as Religion Entails Testable Predictions

April 14, 2011 – 12:33 pm

Singularitarianism is religious. Specifically, it is a kind of millenarian movement. It will therefore develop according to millenarian patterns. Millenarian movements can develop in several ways. The first way is good: the movement turns into a positive mature religion. The second way is bad: the movement turns into a self-destructive cult. The third way is neutral: the movement just fades away. Each of these developmental trajectories has been well-studied and has its own distinctive features.

The thesis that singularitarianism is a religion yields a testable prediction: singularitarianism will develop along one of these paths. The social course of singularitarianism can be studied (and is being studied) using well-established methods in the sociology of religion.

The thesis that singularitarianism is a religion entails that observable variables are correlated with probabilities of future development.

First example: if singularitarians isolate themselves into their own networks (refusing to participate in trust-networks by using conventional methods to establish legitimacy or credibility), then singularitarianism is more likely to be going down the negative path; if singularitarians engage conventional trust-networks, seeking legitimacy through standard channels, then singularitarianism is more likely to be going down the positive path.

Second example: if singularitarianism focuses more on highly charismatic personalities rather than on impersonal research projects, then it is more likely to go down the negative path; otherwise, it is more likely to go down the positive path.

Anyone familiar with the literature on millenarian movements will easily make a large number of other predictions.

My own hope is that singularitarianism develops along the positive path. I think it would be good to have a religion of reason.

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy at William Paterson University. Many of his papers can be found here . All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Culture, Featured, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Pseudoscience, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science | Comments (0)

The Singularity as Religion

April 11, 2011 – 1:34 pm

I think much of the culture and discourse around the singularity is religious. I say this based in part on my reading of David Noble’s book The Religion of Technology and my reading of Robert Geraci’s Apocalyptic AI. Both are fantastic books. And I’ve compiled a long list of articles and books on technology and religion on my website.

The singularity as religion might not be an entirely bad thing. Religion can be a positive force in many ways. At the very least, singularitarianism would be an interesting new type of religious engagement.

I’m going to explain why I think the singularity is a religion. I’ll do this by replying to ten reasons I’ve seen on the Internet on why the singularity can’t be a religion:

(1) The singularity isn’t Christian or Abrahamic. My reply is that lots of religions aren’t Christian or Abrahamic. I claim that the singularity is a new religious movement – it need not look like Christianity or any Abrahamic religion. To scholars of religion, it pretty clearly does incorporate many elements of Christianity. Nevertheless, I think the singularity is a fairly novel form of religious participation. It often looks to me like a kind of animism in which technology (especially computers) is the locus of the sacred.

(2) The singularity is atheistic. My reply is that religion can be atheistic. I take it that atheism is denial of theism – which mainly means denial of the Abrahamic God. There are many ways to be religious without believing in God (here one thinks of Neoplatonism, some forms of liberal Protestantism, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism, and a host of smaller movements). So the fact that most singularitarians say they don’t believe in “God” doesn’t mean that they aren’t building a new religious movement. Indeed, I think singularitarians are often reviving old Neoplatonic ideas. The Super-AGI looks lots and lots like the Plotinian Nous. And there’s an old tradition of Western animism that seems to be re-activated in much singularitarian writing: the material becomes infused with spirit; dead matter wakes up and turns into mind-stuff, into pure computronium.

(3) The singularity isn’t about anthropomorphic projection – it doesn’t posit a human-like deity. My reply is that deities obviously don’t have to be human-like. The Neoplatonic One is a totally abstract entity with no mind or personality whatsoever. Of course, my reply is tempered by the fact that many singularity activists portray the Super-AGI of the future as a mind built initially by humans. So the Super-AGI may be human-like. Or the divine for singularitarians could just be pure abstract rationality. It’s possible to worship pure reason – especially if it has an incarnation as a concrete entity, namely, the Super-AGI.

(4) The singularity doesn’t posit the appearance of a god of any kind. My reply is that no matter how secular or profane the singularitarians say they are, the singularity is the locus of an ambivalent holiness (in the sense of Rudolph Otto). The singularity is numinous. The Super-AGI of the future may not be a god in the Abrahamic sense; but it is divine nonetheless. It will be full of super-love for us or full of super-wrath. It will be an extreme good (ushering in the new golden age) or an extreme evil (destroying the human race). The singularity (or the Super-AGI) offers damnation or salvation. It’s interesting to note how many singularitarians seem to think that the singularity promises personal immortality (or even the resurrection of the dead). The Time Magazine cover says it all: “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal”.

(5) The singularity isn’t the second coming of Christ. My reply is that singularitarianism very closely fits the pattern of millenarian or apocalyptic movements. The Great Event has been interpreted as the return of Christ, as the landing of the UFOs, as the Mayan apocalypse, the emergence of the Great Computer. It will, in any case, be a radical break; it will be the ending of profane history and the beginning of sacred history. The appearance of the Super-AGI will be the breaking apart of secular history. I love it when singularity activists talk about “event horizons” beyond which we cannot see.

(6) The singularity is based on rationality rather than faith. My reply is that reason and faith are not opposites. One sense of faith is that it is belief in things unseen – in things to which we have no empirical access. It may be highly rational to believe in such things. A Platonist may have an entirely reasonable faith in the existence of purely mathematical objects. Or a modal realist may have an entirely reasonable faith in the existence of other possible universes. For older writers like Kant and Hegel, reason goes very far beyond the empirical structure of the universe. Or perhaps to be rational is merely to engage in logical symbol-manipulation. If that’s right, then Anselm’s ontological argument is a wonderful piece of pure reason. The Five Ways of Aquinas are rational. The very impressive work of Alvin Plantinga on modal ontological arguments is extremely rational. And it’s worth noting that Auguste Comte tried to develop a religion of reason.

(7) The singularity is based on science rather than superstition. My reply is that much of what I read about the singularity goes so far beyond any scientific data or present technical achievement that it looks very unscientific. Perhaps someday there will be an artificial general intelligence that far outperforms humans. But plenty of scientists and engineers seem highly skeptical about the grandiose claims of singularitarians. Are any of the claims of the singularitarians empirically testable? Verifiable or falsifiable? Only in some indefinite future. This is what John Hick called eschatological verification. But that’s not science at all. An interesting point here is that many singularitarians don’t seem to be interested in scientific research – such as writing papers for peer-reviewed journals. There is no such thing as the singularitarian research program in any standard academic or commercial sense. It looks like what Feynman called “cargo cult science”. And singularity activists have their own version of Pascal’s Wager. The singularity is so overwhelmingly transformative that even if it has a teeny-tiny chance of happening, the reward or punishment for us will be extremely great. It’s so easy to see! You just have to write out an expected utility equation.

(8) The singularity is naturalistic but religious involve the supernatural. My reply is that religion can be naturalistic. There’s even an interesting movement called religious naturalism. The singularity is a kind of religious technologism. Technology is the locus of the holy or the sacred. Here I’m thinking of Durkheim and Eliade. Of course, this reply is tempered by the fact that, for singularitarians, the Super-AGI of the future often does seem to have supernatural powers, even if it is made of some kind of matter.

(9) The singularity will be human-made, not made by some deity. My reply is that there is a large part of religion that says that humans have to do the bootstrapping for the kingdom of heaven. The Old Testament has elaborate instructions for the construction of various technologies: the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, the Temples. Only if these are built in exactly the right way will God appear and live among the people. Singularitarians of a certain sort say that after we build the first AGI, it will become recursively self-improving. This fits the pattern: we do the basic gruntwork that shows that we’re holy enough to receive the blessing; then the divine appears and takes over.

(10) The singularity doesn’t have the appearance of a conventional religion – it has no rituals, no clergy, no scriptures, no churches. My reply is that it does indeed have all these things – they are all slowly taking shape. Some singularity groups look more like churches than like scientific research foundations, political think-tanks, or business enterprises. After all, they’re not doing experiments, writing peer-reviewed research, trying to influence legislation, developing products or services. For scriptures, well, the big names are pretty obvious. As far as I can see, there does seem to be a kind of ecclesiastical society forming around the singularity. There are singularity “activists” and “evangelists”. Some singularity activists are highly charismatic personalities. Much of what singularitarians do is make claims about the future that look more like prophecies than like empirically grounded extrapolations. It’s not clear that religion needs rituals. Still, I can easily see the day when the singularitarians develop explicit liturgies and ceremonies. Perhaps they will incorporate as a religious organization to gain various legal benefits. Your kids might get married by a singularitarian celebrant or you might have a singularitarian funeral. Here again Comte comes to mind – he worked out some liturgical structures for his positive religion, including catechism, saints, a religious calendar, etc. It would be a short step to move from a religion of humanity to a religion of super-human reason.

I’ve listed ten reasons why I think singularitarianism is a new religious movement. I might add that I think Clifford Geertz had a pretty nice (though very abstract) definition of religion. And I think singularitarianism fits Geertz’s definition (but that’s for another time).

My main interest is this: if singularitarianism is a new religious movement, then what should we make of it? Will it mainly be a good thing? A kind of enlightenment religion? It might be an excellent alternative to old-fashioned Abrahamic religion. Or would it degenerate into the well-known tragic pattern of coercive authority? Time will tell; but I think it’s worth thinking about this in much more detail.

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy at William Paterson University. Many of his papers can be found here . All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Atheism, Culture, Featured, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Pseudoscience, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Science, Technology, Uncategorized | Comments (4)

On The Conflict Over The Meaning And Cultural Influence of Political Secularism

March 22, 2011 – 11:00 am

In this post I just want to jot down some thoughts about a knotty issue. I probably will not make much progress in untangling all its strands but hopefully will stimulate a discussion that straightens things out at least a bit.

Is political secularism inherently neutral or antagonistic to religiosity? There are a couple of ways to answer this question. The establishment clause of the 1st Amendment aims to prevent the government from either favoring or disfavoring religion. Not only is the government not allowed to establish a specific religion but, contrary to the desires of many fundamentalist, politically right-wing Christians, the government should not even take an interest in encouraging people to private religiosity. It should be entirely neutral on the question as to whether people are religious or not.

Contemporary right-wing fundamentalist Christian seem generally okay with the prospect of the government not establishing a specific religion (or at least not a specific sect of Christianity!) as a national religion. But they want the government to actively promote private spirituality. They want the government exhorting people to prayer and they want not only prayers at government events but even are perfectly happy to hear clearly sectarian prayers which invoke a specific conception of God (or, even, Jesus himself) in these prayers.

In the most egregious and highest profile instance of this attitude, Rick Warren displayed an obnoxious disrespect to non-Christian Americans across the land, by responding to vocal concerns he would give a non-inclusive, sectarian prayer at Obama’s inauguration, by saying during the prayer itself that he made all his supplications to the divine “in the name of the One who changed my life—Yeshua, Esa, Jesus, Jesus”. Knowing that many fervently desired he omit all sectarian reference to the specifically Christian God, he defiantly insisted on saying the name four ways in order to stress unambiguously and selfishly that this prayer was made in the name of that God.

This was clearly an allusion to the Christian idea that prayers can only be made to God through Jesus who is the priest and intercessor before God. The Christian idea is that we cannot approach God directly but only through an intercessor. In the pre-Christian, Jewish era, this intercessor was a Levitical priest and after the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, this intercessor is Jesus. Apparently Rick Warren is convinced that America cannot come before God except through Jesus either. Not that I think that a secular country like America should as a collective “go before God” in the first place. But if we are going to do so ceremonially, the message sent should not be that we do so through the mediation of a particular religion’s intercessory agent as though he is a necessary and exclusive means of accessing the divine. This does not represent the full American public.

In contrast to this desire both to have the country explicitly encourage both religion in general and a specific religion in particular, the 1st Amendment is set up to prevent the government from either actively encouraging or discouraging religion at all. This is to be left entirely to private individuals and groups. In this way, the 1st Amendment mandates neutrality about religion. The irreligious, the religious, and the religious of all denominations are all alike free to adhere to their respective consciences without the government taking sides.

But despite this neutrality, the principle of secular government inherently favors secularism specifically insofar as it is definitionally an opposition to religious government and in principle an insistence that secular standards of reason, evidence, and value be the only decisive factors in governing. Specifically religious considerations are not to be given weight in decision making. Religious values may influence legislators’ minds but they can only validly influence legislation if they can also find legitimate secular expression and support.

The notion of “secularity” itself is a term of opposition to religiosity. The word “secular” evolved precisely to mean the “worldly” in contrast to the “non-worldly” church. In the New Testament the “world” is a hostile Other to the Church. Christians are not to be “of the world”. So, the secular has never been merely a comfortable alternative sphere to the church but always a realm which competed for power over the mind and the heart of the Christian. Christians enjoy the freedom of conscience that comes with the government not forcing them to accept any specific theological doctrines.

But there have always been Christians hostile to the means of protecting their own freedom of conscience taking the form of an outright secularism that not only permits autonomy to the irreligious mind but that actively excludes Christian from any explicit authority in lawmaking. Implicitly these Christians recognize that this represents an actual preference in the most important and most influential public decisions for thinking that is indifferent to Christianity at best and suspicious of its potential influence at worst. They recognize that this is a tacit legitimation of the ultimate independence and superiority of secular reason, standards of justice, and value priorities over explicitly religious ones.

Of course, on one level, they can understand the political secularism as not saying religious reasons and values are outright inferior but as ill fit for the specific context of government. And it is true that many a secular American legislator since the founding has assumed that the Church is an authority in matters of spirituality and private morality and that these powers over conscience in the most intimate and personal matters are no consolation prizes for religion.

But, nonetheless, over time political secularism has functioned as more than a principle of neutrality between the denominations which privately dominate the hearts and minds of the populace. Political secularism has made a robustly secular culture possible and cultural secularism has steadily undermined and eroded the power of religion in the culture. Politically secular values have increasingly become culturally secular values which have called loosened people’s abilities to unquestioningly defer to religious authorities in private matters any more than they have been accustomed to do so in public matters.

The more religion has effectively been denied legislative authority the more accustomed people are to compartmentalizing religion’s influence and to treating it as not an absolute authority. This makes relativizing and limiting its influence in personal matters much more natural over time. And fundamentalists recognize this effect the strongest. That’s why they want the government to recognize the dominion of their God. They realize that the consciousness of being under God’s command is undermined when people think that God does not control the weightiest matters of law. To impress people with the (illusory) sense that God is absolutely and inescapably sovereign over the universe and over their very souls, it really helps if you can at least make them first feel like he has authority over how the country is run.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats | Tagged Political Philosophy, Political Pluralism | Comments (9)

My Appearance on the Ardent Atheist Podcast

March 19, 2011 – 11:09 am

So, last Wednesday night I went on the Ardent Atheist show and you can now stream it just by clicking here or, if you would like to download it free from iTunes, by clicking here and selecting episode 005.

The comedians who I had the privilege of being on the show with were really great too, so be sure to listen to the whole show. Most of what I had to say could be read in much more depth in the following Camels With Hammers posts:

Apostasy As A Religious Act (Or “Why A Camel Hammers The Idols Of Faith”)

My Atheistic Reply To Rabbi Adam Jacobs’s Open Letter To The Atheist Community

Top 10 Tips For Reaching Out To Atheists

Last week was a busy week of catching up for me after recovering from being sick the previous week, so it’s still been a while since I’ve churned out new substantive writing. I should get back up to speed with regular writing any day now. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Your Thoughts?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in About this Blog, Featured | Comments (1)

Meet Jesy Littlejohn, Founder of “Rainbow Bridge”, Grove City College’s Unrecognized LGBTQ Awareness Group

March 14, 2011 – 11:16 am

Grove City College, my alma mater from which I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Religion in 2000, is an Evangelical Christian college which ranks among America’s most religiously and politically conservative colleges. Princeton Review ranks Grove City among the “Best Northeastern Colleges” and among the 373 best colleges in the country overall. Of the students at those 373 colleges, Princeton ranks the students of Grove City as 8th most politically conservative, 9th most religious, 11th most ”Stone-Cold Sober” Schools”, 14th best at not doing marijuana, 7th most not drinking beer, and 6th in not drinking hard liquor.

Grove City ranks #3 for “Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution”, which is a category “based on a combination of survey questions concerning political persuasion, the use of marijuana and hallucinogens, the prevalence of religion, the popularity of student government, and the students’ level of acceptance of the gay community on campus.”

And, most relevant to today’s interview, Grove City College is ranked by Princeton Review as the single most “LBGT-Unfriendly” school among the 373 best colleges.

So, since I am personally a fierce supporter of the full ethical and legal dignity of gays, I was delighted recently to learn of the formation of a new gay/straight group on campus called “Rainbow Bridge”. (The campus has a popular bridge by the same name.) Recently, Grove City’s student newspaper The Collegian ran a somewhat lopsided article about the group’s first meeting (March 2, 2011), which focused more on the views of the group’s detractors than of its founders. I reached out to the group’s leader, senior Jesy Littlejohn, and she graciously agreed to an interview about who she is as a Christian, as a gay person, as a Grover, and as a gay Christian Grover, and what she hopes her group will offer to Grove City College.

What follows is our interview, unedited except for minor issues of style, grammar, spelling, and clarity. You can learn more about her group and offer your views on it by going to the Rainbow Bridge Facebook page.

Daniel Fincke: How long have you been a Christian and how did you come to be one?

Jesy Littlejohn: Well that’s a fun question. I was raised in a “church” of sorts called The Way International. I won’t bore you with the fundamentals of their beliefs, but we’ll say that they are a “we’re the truth and all other denominational churches are liars and heathens” kind of church. There were SO many contradictions in their teaching, things that weren’t even in the Bible and they would tell them as absolutes. Everything to them was absolute. Needless to say I didn’t really understand it, but I was forced into it. I believed in the whole Jesus/God bit, but other than that I didn’t understand a word of what was taught.

When I moved to PA in 2005, my parents couldn’t find a place that was a part of the Way so they stopped going, which wasn’t a problem to me. My Senior year of high school, things got really bad for me, and my friends could tell. One of them, Emily, said I should attend church with her.

First I would go to youth group, then Bible study, then a full service. She knew that my former church opposed any other church and I had never even stepped foot in another church, so she thought she’d ease me into the process. Long story short I loved it, and within a few months I converted to Methodism and really called myself a Christian. I changed my life completely, transferred out of Slippery Rock University after my first semester, and ended up at Grove City (where Emily also goes).

Daniel Fincke: So you specifically transferred to Grove City because it was a self-consciously evangelical Christian school then?

Jesy Littlejohn: Yes. I had applied to SRU December of my senior year, before becoming a Christian. It was an inexpensive school, and I knew nothing of the reputation of the college concerning religion (it didn’t matter then). When I became a Christian I invested myself in learning more about my choice of college and wasn’t pleased, nor were any of my new found Christian friends. Within a month of being there I was miserable, and held myself to a higher standard than most of the people there. I wanted to leave, I wanted to be in a Christian place to help foster the new scheme of beliefs I had. Grove City was right down the road and I knew people there. Plus it was “Authentically Christian”–could it have been more perfect? Nope, at least that’s what I thought.

Daniel Fincke: I see, so what do you mean when you say that becoming a Christian “changed your life completely” and involved “holding yourself to a higher standard”? What did this mean in practical terms?

Jesy Littlejohn: Well, in a lot of ways I looked at how I had been living, how my parents lived, how my classmates lived at SRU and I, honestly, looked down on them. I thought that I knew the answers. I looked at my parents’ religion and looked at mine and believed mine was better. I looked at the way my friends lived at SRU and knew I was more moral (I didn’t cheat, have sex, fool around, use profanity, engage in homosexual activity, etc). When I became a Christian I stopped listening to secular music, I spent most of my time reading the Bible instead of books for leisure, I spent most of my time at the church instead of anywhere else. I stopped watching offensive TV programs, and the like.

Everything I did was based on whether the church would approve. Still, even in all of that….I slipped. I wasn’t perfect, but I would read my bible or pray extra hard to make up for it. It cancelled it out in my opinion.

Daniel Fincke: Now, there are a lot of Christians at Grove City who would say that your embracing your homosexuality is a matter of “slipping” and not “holding yourself to a higher standard” or completely letting Christ change your life. What do you say to those sorts of challenges?

Jesy Littlejohn: I would say I used to be one of them. When I came to Grove City I thought life would be perfect. When I came out, to myself and a SMALL handful of others, life changed. My entire view of Scripture changed. I didn’t know what to believe or what to adhere to. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be gay, or at least that was what I was taught for as long as I could remember, so I prayed. I prayed God would make me straight, would put a man in my life. I prayed, my friends prayed, my mentors prayed. Nothing worked. Over the summer, and since initially coming out I realized that there ARE other views and interpretations of scripture. There is no absolute. Still it didn’t do anything to help me in my confusion.

But to answer your question, to the people who say I am slipping, or go as far to say I am not a Christian, I blatantly tell them they are wrong. It’s the whole Plank vs. Speck bit. They have no right to question my religious authenticity any more than I have the right question theirs. I pray, I study, I have a relationship with God that is my own. He and I are on the same page. If He wants me on a different path than I am, in some way He’ll make it known. I have been waiting for 3 years now, though, and I’ve not been told to deviate from where I am walking.

Daniel Fincke: Now you say you “came out to yourself” at Grove City. What does that mean exactly? How far back do you remember being attracted to girls and/or women and were you ever in relationships with boys and/or men, and if so how did you feel about them? How did you come to identity as gay? Would you have come out earlier if it weren’t for so much stigma against it?

Jesy Littlejohn: Well, for as long as I can remember I have been attracted/drawn to girls, before I even knew what being gay was. It just felt right to me. It didn’t take long though to understand that whatever it was I was feeling wasn’t supposed to be there. So I did everything in my power to push it down and not pay attention to it. It didn’t always work, but I tried nonetheless. My Freshman year at college, for whatever reason, I couldn’t push it down anymore. So I quietly and slowly admitted to myself that I was gay, that what was going on was real and not just a flippant curiosity.

I was in ‘relationships’, if you can call them that, with a boy. It was 5th grade though, so I don’t know how much it counts. He was my first kiss though. Honestly, though, I felt nothing. I liked the fact that I was kissing someone. It made me feel grown up, but other than that there were no sparks or anything. My Freshman year of high school that boy came out. The whole thing, looking back, is incredibly ironic!

Daniel Fincke: (laughing) See, he spread it to you! Or maybe you spread it to him…

Jesy Littlejohn: (laughing) It’s all fucked up in the end!

Daniel Fincke: (laughing)

Jesy Littlejohn: I don’t know if I would have come out earlier though. Just with the nature of my family and the culture I grew up in…it would have been too hard, too traumatizing. I think I came out when I was supposed to. I was putting myself up on a pedestal and I think I needed to be reminded that I wasn’t better than anyone, that I had issues I needed to confront. Retrospectively, I was a total bitch when I became a Christian. I was everything I can’t stand now. I think in the end, I needed to see myself for what I was doing, what I was. I am not saying being gay was the solution, but identifying it, not hiding, not being hypocritical anymore…that was the solution.

Daniel Fincke: But when you first came out it was in a “confessional” way, right? It was a matter of seeking help? What were those first conversations with Christian friends and mentors like? And did you come out to anyone who was either secular or at least not a “Grover” kind of fundamentalist Christian, and was that experience any different?

Jesy Littlejohn: Absolutely! I was scared shitless. I first thought I was going to hell and needed to change ASAP! I only told a few people, and it was basically a “what do I do!” A lot of those conversations consisted of “We’ll pray for you and with you” or “We can beat this” or “Here’s a link to this ministry, it might help you” or “It’s going to be okay. God loves you and will help you fix this”….On the other end of the spectrum, I have a friend, Stephanie (who for all purposes is my mother minus any biological relation), who is NOT a Christian, is completely gay-friendly, and honestly suspected my sexuality before I even told her (and she was the first person I told). She was all for exploring it, not hiding it, and being me. She understood my being a Christian and respected it. She was the one who initially told me that it was okay to be gay and a Christian.

She introduced me to a Pastor and his wife in Monroeville, who preached a gay-friendly message and reconciled the gay lifestyle and Christianity. They were awesome and awe inspiring. I loved them. They made me feel better about myself, like I wasn’t someone who needed to be fixed.

Still it was all very confusing. I almost lost my friend, Stephanie, in the process because I was still so wrapped up in my Christianity that I thought I had to purge myself of all things not Christian, that were encouraging my sexuality.

I realized in the end, though, that I couldn’t keep listening to everyone else’s views–for or against. I needed to make up my own mind, have my own one-on-one with God. I reconciled with Steph. I reconciled with my friends, and for a while my sexuality was a moot issue. I didn’t talk about it unless I wanted to. When people asked I was honest but other than that I didn’t concern anyone with it unless I was the one who initiated the conversation.

I made my sexuality my own.

Daniel Fincke: And did you develop friendships with a lot of other gay students at Grove City along this way? Did closeted students start seeking you out as word spread? Did out of the closet students? Were there some you tried to “kick the gayness” with and were there others who encouraged you to stay out?

Jesy Littlejohn: Honestly, I didn’t meet another gay student at GCC until this year. I was walking my girlfriend, Sara, to her car and was holding her hand. When she got in her car I gave her a kiss and said goodbye. It turns out that in the process of this brief exchange someone saw us. An hour or so later I got a message on Facebook from a Grover, who was gay and had seen Sara and I and was inquiring about my sexuality. From there things became a whirlwind. Suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork and were everywhere. People don’t think GCC has gay students, but they are VERY wrong! I have made friends since that first initial moment of being caught, but it hasn’t been an abundance. If anything Rainbow Bridge has been a huge help networking with people, and has opened up a lot of doors.

When I accepted my sexuality and entered into my relationship with Sara I lost a lot of friends. People said they could associate with me if I was struggling with my sexuality, but now that I am okay with it, good with it, and accept it, they can’t. Being with Sara just cemented that for them. It was in their face. I was no longer something they could fix, I wasn’t their project anymore. I was my own person and they didn’t have a say so anymore.

It’s been a very lonely year, a lonely end to my time at Grove City. But Rainbow Bridge has helped and been very encouraging in the process. I lost some friends, a lot of friends, but gained a whole new group. We aren’t super close, but I can go to them if I need them. And for the first time in the 4 years of being here, I don’t feel alone.

Daniel Fincke: This is exactly the problem with the attempt to try to love gays while hating homosexuality—it’s nearly impossible to love someone while hating their love relationships. And wishing them to be alone—romantically and sexually and emotionally unfulfilled, in perpetuity.

Jesy Littlejohn: EXACTLY!

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Christianity, Christianity, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Interviews, LGBTQAA, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates | Comments (6)

Philosophy Can Debunk Myths About Atheism

March 13, 2011 – 12:55 am

Many people are taught many strange things about atheists. For example, supposedly atheists can’t be moral, can’t have a source of “meaning” in their lives, and can’t attain knowledge. Many atheists will say that they are being misrepresented by theists because they believe morality, meaning, and knowledge can exist without God. The theist might say, “You’re just being irrational. It’s impossible to have morality, meaning, or knowledge without God!” We need philosophers to study the evidence and justification for various beliefs so we can know whether God is required for these things or not—but philosophers have already been doing so. I will not prove that morality, meaning, and knowledge are possible in a godless universe, but I will discuss one atheistic worldview (atheistic emergentism) that seems compatible with these three things. Philosophers can defend this worldview in much greater detail than I can here. I will not prove that morality, meaning, or knowledge exists; but I see no reason to think these things could only exist if God does.

Before I begin, it should be noted that the theist’s claim—that God is required for morality, meaning, and minds—is an extreme position. We have no reason to believe this claim unless it is supported by very strong evidence. It’s an extraordinary claim and it requires extraordinary evidence. The fact that atheistic emergentism is a plausible worldview that can have morality, meaning, and minds can debunk the theist’s extreme claim. The theist must prove that atheistic emergentism is impossible or we will have no reason to agree that God is required to have moraliy, meaning, and minds.

I will briefly discuss atheistic emergentism; then I will discuss if morality, meaning, or knowledge requires God.

What is atheistic emergentism? It’s is a form of physicalism that states that everything is physical and natural rather than supernatural, but it also says that some things are “greater than the sum of their parts.” Rather than saying that only atoms and motion exist, the emergentist can say that some things exist because the right “material conditions” have been met. For example, the human mind seems to exist because we have a brain, but it is more than just the brain itself. It is greater than the sum of its parts. To say that the mind is physical or natural doesn’t mean it’s a solid object. This is an overly-restrictive understanding of these terms. The mind is quite strange and wonderful, but that doesn’t mean it’s a soul. One philosopher who advocates an emergentist explanation of the mind is John Searle.

An opposing view to emergentism is eliminative materialism, the view that only atoms and motion are real. The eliminative materialist could say that the mind is nothing but the brain and the brain is nothing but atoms and motion.

One claim against atheism is that atheism can’t account for the human mind. This is not a popular argument against atheism because it is so absurd, but Jason Dulle implies this argument when he asks, “What can explain the origin of the soul: an immaterial, conscious, personal, and rational substance? From whence could it come? Surely it cannot be a material source. Material things only producer material things, are not conscious, are not personal, and are not rational.” Dulle says that the mind isn’t compatible with naturalism by definition. He decides that solid objects seem physical and the mind doesn’t, so the mind must be some other kind of entity. Dulle seems to assume that atheists must be eliminative materialists and he ignores the possibility of emergentism.

1. Does morality require God?

Many theists think morality comes from the nature of God or his commands. They say that the atheist can’t have morality for various reasons. For example, it is argued that morality requires rational altruism, but they don’t think we can demand altruism without God. Without God, we merely evolved like the other animals and we have no choice but to be selfish.

An eliminative materialist might be unable to account for rational altruism because people would just be a cluster of atoms in motion; and it’s unclear how such a being could be rational, moral, or conscious. However, we can reply that if rational altruism is possible, then it is possible because we have rational minds. The mind is more than just the brain and is capable of wonderful things. It is plausible to think that we could try to help a strangers at our own expense simply because we think the strangers’ lives have value. The motivation for such a decision could come from “empathy” and many have suggested that empathy evolved to encourage mutually beneficial behavior.

Moreover, we could have evolved the ability for rational altruism, even though it enables us to break free from selfishness (and become a reproductive disadvantage). Perhaps I can use empathy to motivate altruistic behavior even when I don’t expect any benefit in return. Not everything we evolve is guaranteed to give us a reproductive advantage at every moment and some of our evolved traits can even be a reproductive disadvantage on occasion. For example, we evolved to enjoy eating sweet foods, but that enjoyment can lead to unhealthy eating habits. Our enjoyment probably gave us a reproductive advantage in the past, but it doesn’t always provide an advantage anymore.

2. Does meaning require God?

Many theists think that life would have no meaning without God. There would be no “intrinsic value.” Nothing would be good “just for existing.” Some people say that, “the universe doesn’t care about anything” and “we have no reason to believe that human beings are special if God doesn’t exist.” The belief that nothing has any intrinsic value for the atheist is tied to the objection that atheists have no way to “ground morality.” If nothing has intrinsic value, then it’s unclear why morality is rational. It seems rational enough to want to help others at our personal expense if the people we help have inherent worth, but it’s not so clear why it’s rational if they don’t.

Not all atheists believe in intrinsic value or the inherent worth of human life, but I find it plausible. It generally seems better to exist than not. A universe with lots of happy people in it seems better than a universe without people. Certainly if the atheist thinks that only atoms and motion exists, then there is no room for intrinsic value, but the emergence theorist could say that meaning (intrinsic value) could emerge into existence just like our minds given the right material conditions. In fact, intrinsic value seems to only exist because minds exist. My life has value because I have a mind and pain is bad precisely because it exists as a bad sort of mental state.

The existence of intrinsic value does not entail that the universe cares about us. The universe is not a being with thoughts or desires, but intrinsic value doesn’t require any thoughts or desires. Suffering seems like it is bad before anyone experiences it and decides they dislike it. In fact, people seem to dislike it precisely because it’s bad rather than the other way around.

3. Does knowledge require God?

One of the more shocking claims that some theists have made is that knowledge couldn’t exist without God. Many theists think that knowledge is a product of the soul—an immaterial entity capable of transcending the material world to help us understand the truth. Theists sometimes say that atheism would entail that our mind is merely a product of evolution and that the ability to attain knowledge would not necessarily provide us with a reproductive advantage. (Similar arguments were given by both Luke Nix and Jason Dulle.)

I find it incredibly plausible that we can attain knowledge—sufficiently justified true beliefs—even if our knowledge is limited and fallible. However, I don’t think God has to exist for it to be possible to have knowledge. We can have beliefs, so it’s not surprising that at least some of our beliefs can be true. We could have some true beliefs by chance if nothing else. The real issue is how it’s possible for us to have justified beliefs. Why is it possible for us to reason about which beliefs are appropriate? Again, rationality seems to be a product of our mind and the traits we inherit from evolution do not always provide a reproductive advantage. Moreover, I find it plausible that an ability to be rational could be a reproductive advantage quite often. Rationality helps us think in terms of concepts, detect deception, achieve goals, create natural science, and so forth. This all seems very helpful for survival.

Conclusion

In general, the theist’s outrageous claims against atheism are based on misrepresentations of atheism by assuming that all rational atheists must accept “eliminative reductionism.” These arguments are extreme because they require us to accept that it’s impossible for atheism to be true given various “facts” about reality. We shouldn’t accept this sort of an impossibility unless every atheist worldview is incompatible with the “facts,” but the theist rarely attempts to prove that. Instead, the theist takes the most extreme and implausible of atheist worldviews and proves it to be inadequate rather than discussing relatively plausible worldviews, such as atheistic emergentism. It’s like assuming someone is an idiot with terrible beliefs and then using those terrible beliefs against the person.

I think one of the reasons that theists think that theism is so much more rational than atheism is precisely because they don’t really understand atheism. They think atheism requires absurd commitments that it doesn’t. If theists knew that atheism is compatible with very plausible worldviews, then more people might become atheists.

Emergentism is compatible with both theism and atheism. Even if God exists, I find the emergentist explanations to be more plausible than the “supernatural” explanations given by many theists. The fact that we have minds because we have brains is plausible given the connections scientists have found between the brain and mind. A brain dead person does not seem to have a mind. The fact that our brains evolved without the interference of God is greatly supported by our current biological evidence. There is no evidence that God interferes in evolution. The fact that intrinsic value exists because minds exist is plausible given our experiences of happiness, suffering, and our own existence.

Guest Contributor James Gray has an MA in philosophy, manages the Ethical Realism blog, and is the founder of the Philosophy Campaign.

By James Gray | Posted in Atheism, Epistemology, Ethics, Featured, Naturalism, Philosophy | Comments (15)

Atheistic Design Arguments

March 7, 2011 – 3:45 pm

All design arguments reason from the organization in our universe to the existence of some divine designer. What does this designer do? Design implies deliberate selection from a plurality of alternative possibilities. It cannot be selection from one possibility nor can it be random selection. It has to be rational selection.

According to Leibniz, God selects our universe for actualization because God knows that it is the best of all possible universes. But how does God know that? It’s not sufficient to say that God just knows it. God’s knowledge of the best universe requires an explanation. And Leibniz gives one: God runs a search algorithm. The search algorithm starts with a sorting algorithm. God compares possible universes with respect to goodness:

The infinity of possibles, however great it may be, is no greater than that of the wisdom of God, who knows all possibles. . . . The wisdom of God, not content with embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them one against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection or imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. It goes even beyond the finite combinations, it makes of them an infinity of infinities, that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the universe, each of which contains an infinity of creatures. By this means the divine Wisdom distributes all the possibles it had already contemplated separately, into so many universal systems which it further compares the one with the other. The result of all these comparisons and deliberations is the choice of the best from among all these possible systems. (Leibniz, Theodicy, sec. 225)

The output of this sorting algorithm is an ordered series of equivalence classes of universes. All universes in the same class are equally good. Leibniz uses an architectural metaphor to illustrate the output of the sorting algorithm. The totality of possible universes is like a library. The library is organized into levels. Each level is an equivalence class of possible universes. Higher levels of the library have better universes. Leibniz refers to the library as the Palace of the Fates. Leibniz describes this Palace in a story in which the goddess Athena takes a priest Theodorus for a tour of the mind of God:

You see here the Palace of the Fates . . . Here are representations not only of that which happens but also of all that which is possible. God, having surveyed them before the beginning of the actual universe, classified the possibilities into universes, and chose the best of all. . . . These possible universes are all here, that is, as ideas [in the mind of God] . . . . They went into other rooms, and always they saw new universes. The halls of the Palace rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful universes. Finally they reached the highest hall which was the most beautiful universe of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could not see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to infinity. That is because among an endless number of possible universes, there is the best of all . . . but there is not any one which has not also less perfect universes below it: that is why the pyramid goes on descending to infinity. (Leibniz, Theodicy, secs. 414-417).

According to this Leibnizian story, the divine designer runs a search algorithm that involves two steps: first, it sorts the universes; second, it actualizes the universe that comes out on top in the sort. But if that’s all the divine designer does, then it isn’t God. All the design arguments show is that there is some computer running a trivial search algorithm. The computer is not a person; it isn’t conscious; it doesn’t have free will. It isn’t God. It isn’t even any of the Gods of the Philosophers. (Or, if it is, the term “God” is so trivial that it’s not worth arguing about, not worth worshiping, not really worth much of anything.) The designer is simply an abstract mathematical machine. It converges to a solution (to a final or halting state). The solution is the universe.

Design arguments are wonderful! They justify the existence of a platonic computer that is in no way divine. Atheists ought to use design arguments against theists. Why don’t they?

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy at William Paterson University. Many of his papers can be found here . All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Physics, Religion and Science, Science | Comments (1)

The Atheistic Fine Tuning Argument

March 6, 2011 – 5:56 pm

Every one of the standard arguments for the existence of God can be reformulated as an argument against the existence of God. Consider the Fine Tuning Argument.

The theistic version of the Fine Tuning Argument goes like this: (1) The Fine Tuning Argument is sound. (2) If the Fine Tuning Argument is sound, then there is a Tuner. (3) Therefore, there is a Tuner. (4) If the Tuner is God, then God exists. (5) The Tuner is God. (6) Consequently, God exists.

The atheistic version of the Fine Tuning Argument goes like this: (1) The Fine Tuning Argument is sound. (2) If the Fine Tuning Argument is sound, then there is a Tuner. (3) Therefore, there is a Tuner. (4) If the Tuner is not God, then God does not exist. (5) The Tuner is not God. (6) Consequently, God does not exist.

The fourth premise in the atheistic version follows from the definition of God. If God is a tuner, then God is essentially a tuner. It’s not possible for God to exist and for God to fail to be a tuner. The theist, on learning that the Tuner is not God, can’t say that God’s busy doing other things or that fine-tuning the universe falls outside of God’s job description. On the contrary, it’s part of what it means to be God.

The fifth premise is what the atheist has to justify. The atheist has to prove that the Tuner is not God. This can’t be done by just blithely saying that the Tuner might not be God. It isn’t enough to just point to some other alternative possibility. Mere possibility is not what is asked for here. The atheist has to demonstrate that the Tuner is not God.

The way to do this is to present an alternative that is clearly a better explanation for the fine tuning than God. The argument goes like this: (1) The Tuner has a feature F if and only if F is required for tuning the universe (say, for life). (2) If the Tuner were God, then the Tuner would have additional features. (3) Therefore, the Tuner is not God.

Finely-tuning universes for life doesn’t seem to be very demanding. The assumption behind all the fine tuning arguments is that tuning involves setting the values of some finite number of numerical parameters. If there are n parameters, then their value ranges are the coordinate axes of an n-dimensional space. Each point in this space has the form (v1, . . . vn). The Fine Tuning Arguments always seem to assume that these values are plugged in to some fixed system of equations E. Thus E(v1, . . . vn) is the form of some possible universe. It’s usually also assumed that the equations apply to some initial conditions. They act as an operator on the initial conditions i. Any initial condition is a member of some set of initial conditions I. So the full form of a universe is (E(v1, . . . vn))(i). This form has to be tested for life. Here’s the algorithm:

algorithm FineTuneForLife() [
for every point (v1, . . . vn) in the space (P1, . . . Pn) do [
for every i in the set of initial conditions I do [
if (the form (E(v1, . . . vn))(i) permits life),
then make a universe with that form;]]]

Either there is some machine (some computer) that can run the algorithm FineTuneForLife, or else there is not. If there is no such machine, then perhaps the Tuner is God. If there is such a machine, then the Tuner is not God. The Tuner is merely a computer. More precisely, the Tuner is the simplest machine that can run the algorithm FineTuneForLife.

I doubt that any finite state machine can run FineTuneForLife. I’m not sure that any Turing machine can run FineTuneForLife. But Turing Machines are not very impressive; there are far more powerful transfinite computers. The outer limits of computation are said by some mathematicians to be equivalent to the constructible hierarchy of sets (also known as L). If there are models of our physics that fall within the constructible hierarchy of sets (also known as L), then there is a machine that can run FineTuneForLife. So the atheist has to defend this claim: there are models of our physics that lie in L. And I think that’s a claim that is very easy to defend.

It’s worth pointing out that FineTuneForLife is a simple brute force search. There are almost certainly very powerful ways to optimize that search. More optimal searches usually require less powerful computers.

It’s also worth pointing out that human beings already know how to finely tune toy universes for artificial life. Small numbers of human beings, working for only a few decades, have already produced impressive software universes that contain life-like structures. So, how hard can it be to run something like FineTuneForLife? Does it really require an intellect whose power transcends that of every logically possible machine? The successes of artificial life suggest that fine tuning isn’t all that hard. If it can be done by a machine, then God does not exist.

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy at William Paterson University. Many of his papers can be found here . All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Religion and Science, Science | Comments (0)

What’s Worse For Atheism: Being Confused For Being Too Much Like Bad Religion, Or Too Little Like Good Religion?

March 3, 2011 – 9:00 pm

As part of an ongoing dialogue with Greg about the legitimacy of the term “evangelical atheism”, I wrote two posts in which I argued that despite some serious principled differences in methods that we should always stress distinguish us from faith-based proselytizers, some activist atheists should not bother defensively, or with offense, trying to deny charges that they are being broadly “evangelical” in some broad senses of the word, if in fact they actually are.

My argument was that we should instead focus the debate on good vs. bad ways to enthusiastically and confrontationally press the question of people’s religious beliefs in the public square, rather than deny whatever obvious formal similarities exist between us and our faith-based opponents.

Then, exhibiting the Nietzschean, perspectivalist dimension of my views on effective inquiry, I went on to defend zealousness in advancing our atheist, rationalist, tentativeness-championing side of the debate, arguing that such emotional and personally invested engagement had rational benefits that detachment does not always have. I also explored other ways in which provisional willingness to hold propositions passionately could be part of an effective pursuit of the truth. Along the way, I also pushed back against Greg’s assertion that by saying atheists had some “evangelical” traits I was somehow implying our philosophical positions or methods of inquiry were as flimsy and faith-based as our fideistic opponents’ (something I’ve never said anywhere).

Essentially replying to both of these posts at once, Greg offered the following rejoinder (occasionally quoting me, as will be indicated by the blockquotes within blockquotes). Starting just a couple lines into his reply:

Dan then proceeds to offer examples of religious words being applied to non-religious examples. Fair enough. He has some examples. I have some examples to the contrary. What this would seem to suggest is that the word’s meaning is in the process of being negotiated. Dan embraces religious words and applies them to himself. I do not. I suspect there is content to these words that influences the discussion (against us) and I suspect the use of these words is an attempt to confuse careful distinctions we need to make.

Nowhere have I ever said anywhere on this blog that this is a matter of just “equal and competing ideologies”.

Perhaps – I have not read every entry (of course, you haven’t read all I’ve written either. Otherwise, your straw man from earlier would not have happened), However, I think Dan, myself, and the reader will be aware that this claim is used, even if without the word ideology by the religious on a regular basis.

The attempt is to suggest that, given an environment of epistemic nihilism (or thoroughgoing skepticism, if you like) that all options are equally substantiated and thus equally valid. with nothing to choose between them. The religious person will then imply that they are then justified in affirming/choosing their dogma by means of a contrived mental/emotional function they call faith. Now, what faith really represents, it seems to me, is the distinction between an affirmation and a positing, a justification (albeit a poor one) for affirming truths instead of tentatively positing. I suspect this is the ultimate source of the, “well you can’t prove me wrong” conceit. Essentially, this attempts to turn all discussions about epistemology into “it’s my word against yours” disputes, with the faithful having a trump card (faith) that those not afflicted wth faith, and actually taking the matter seriously, are too honest to play. This puts the faithless at a seeming, albeit only illusory, disadvantage. Nevertheless, it is an illusory disadvantage that is persuasive.

I bring this up because it is an argument I am attempting to answer, and because whether Dan does or does not claim that “this is just ‘equal and competing ideologies,’” the religious often do in argument, with the intent of confusing matters by dropping the convesration into a epistemically nihilistic hole and then offering faith as a means of escape. This argument, despite its errors, is nevertheless persuasive/influential because most are terrified of the abyss (a colloquial way of saying people are unwilling to confront much less embrace uncertainty/not knowing/fallibility). Even the much-discussed Nietzsche blinked…

And this is where the use of the word “evangelizing” comes into play. When we speak of evangelicals we think of religious persons and with respect to religious content. Now, by “religious content” I do not (just) mean the symbolic cannibalism of christianity or the Mecca-centricity of islam or the “we are the chosen” mentality of judaism. I mean the approach to matters epistemological. To call the atheist or skeptic “evangelical” is to imply that the atheist/skeptic is playing the same epistemic game of affirming without substantiation that the thiest/dogmatist is – making unsubstantiated, indeed unsubstantiatable, truth claims. I put it to you that we are not (at least not in better thought out cases) doing this. I put it to you that the use of the word “evangelical” is an attempt to frame the conversation within a realm that we then have to go to great pains to fight our way out of to get to the real point. When an atheist adopts the weaker version of “evangelical,” applying it as if mere passion of advocacy is all that is being referred to, we are allowing the theist/dogmatist to frame and control the context of the discussion in a way that is stacked against us. We then find ourselves attempting to assert truth claims, and we lose by default.

Rather than just getting roped into their quagmire of “yours is an expression of faith, too” drivel, I offer another way. That other way is the recognition that we are tentatively positing, rather than affirming. I recommend that we adopt tentative positing as our engine of exploration, I recommend that we adopt a mentality of tentative positing in order to allow room for growth and change, and I recommend that we talk the talk (as well as walk the walk) of tentative positing as well. That means stepping outside the context designed so that we lose the rhetorical fray. Now, this is not a trivial or semantic distinction – it is a distinction of basic mindset with respect to knowledge, certainty and how we approach our inquiries, be they empirical or metaphysical. The religious make wild claims about Truth and knowledge and certainty and they do so with a persona of absolute confidence. We have been trained to think this is a rhetorical strength and people are actually moved by it, so we try to do the same thing – decimating our own position in the process and playing a game stacked against us.

In a way Dan and I are disagreeing to agree. He seems, at times (correct me if I’m wrong) to be sharing similar epistemic views to mine (or vice versa) on a sub-rhetorical level. We seem to be parting company when it comes to rhetoric. Now, that doesn’t mean we are merely disagreeing on semantics. While it is true that we humans stipulate stiulations at will, the stipulations are also how we understand things. Now, the language is under constant negotiation and that includes our stipulations.

Dan approaches the word “evangelize” entirely from the perspective of enthusiasm. I approach it from a content basis. We have both presented natural language examples in support of our differing approaches. Which is right? Well, neither, of course. They are stipulations. However, we can ask which is useful for a given purpose and get a coherent answer. Just as distinctions between terms leads to precision in other inquiries, so too it can here. To treat evangelism as mere passion allows faith-promoters to control the rhetorical battlefield and obfuscates the critical difference between affirming as true and positing tentatively. To treat the content as interesting, as I do, is to promote further inquiry (what about the content is different?) and defence against the theistic claim that atheism is just another faith, which most of us recongize as the mere rhetorical ploy it is. I put it to you that Dan is playing the faith-purveyor’s rhetorical game and is destined to lose becasue of that. Worse, he is, perhaps unknowingly, presenting passionate presentation as valid argument (or at least legitimate rhetoric).

So, when looking at this discussion between Dan and I, I think we have to ask ourselves a question and ask it seriously. Is there a difference between an athiest and a theist? Is there a difference between someone who argues from faith and someone who doesn’t? Or is it just a matter of louder and louder talking heads? If there is a difference, what is it? I offer a difference – the difference between a mindset of tentative positings and the mindset of faithful affirmation. I answer the claim that skepticism and science is just another faith.

For some folks, recognizing the potential for fallibility is something you do only when driven into a corner and pressured. For me, it is up front and open. My language reflects that.

I just think conversations about the word “evangelical” are easier if we do not pointlessly try to restrict an understandable analogy or deny that at least part of our goal mirrors our enemies’ (we, like they, do want to confront people about their fundamental beliefs—an endeavor which many people automatically assume must be impolite). I think the conversations would be better spent articulating how our approach and our views vindicate our adoption of the goal and how our methods of pursuing it and their approaches and their views do not.

I hope the reader will see from what I wrote above that I do not see the distinction as pointless. And I would hope, given something Dan writes in another post about (to paraphrase) “adopting a position to test it out” that he would be willing to hold (tentatively) the possibility that it might not be pointless. The difficulty with Dan’s paragraph here is that he is assuming a context of inquiry and honest consideration of alternative views. Interestingly enough, it is my view (of tentative positings rather that faithful affirmations) that promotes the context that Dan seeks to exploit, while Dan’s view results in endles arrays of screaming heads, all trying to be more fervent than the other. Before we can learn we must have a context in which we can learn, don’tcha think?

If you can find ANYWHERE on this blog that I have said that we atheists “just have faith” too, I’ll have to hunt down whoever stole my password and started posting under my name!

My point is NOT, a thousand times NOT, that in terms of how we form beliefs it is the same thing as our opponents. I have qualified over and over and over again that what I want to distinguish is that the only way an “evangelical” atheist is like an evangelical religious believer is in terms of matters like enthusiasm, in terms of willingness to make matters most of America considers too private for public consumption a matter of public confrontation, a willingness to organize people into productive ethical communities around their common views about religious matters.

And from the first post on this topic and in seemingly everything I write I always always always am at great pains to distinguish that what separates the rationalist from the irrationalist is the stance on faith. I have never equivocated for a second on this point and so it is just a distortion for you to tar me as saying anything remotely like that.

Did I say that passion was itself a valid argument? No, I did not. What I said was that passion is not the enemy of reason insofar as it focuses the mind and gives it access to various aspects of the things otherwise inaccessible. But, entirely contrary to faith-based reasoning, I explained numerous ways in which properly passionate thinking and arguing corrects against prejudice, and that is by deliberately alternating one’s perspectives to try to see and feel what things are like from outside of any given passion.

This is not a point about valid argumentation. Ultimately, propositions are true or false, regardless of how we feel about them and propositions have both logical relationships to each other and have grounding in the real world (or not) and these are the ultimately decisive things with respect to validity and soundness of arguments.

What I am talking about is how real live human beings can themselves investigate things most sensitively and how arguments can sometimes advance through paying sensitive attention to all parts of reality. I gave examples of how this imaginative kind of reasoning works and how it enhances our goal of avoiding prejudice, not by feeling things from no side whatsoever, but by being able to feel things from all sides and assess what comes to light from all those various perspectives having seen through them all thoroughly, understood them in their best and worst, most and least illuminating vantage points on the world.

In light of that, we can have a stronger sense of how propositions relate to the world, whether they are true or false, having investigated them from as many possibly insightful angles as possible, so that we may then logically assess them with a surer sense of their truth as premises.

Most of the rest of what you have to say is debate over strategy, which is fine. I am not an evangelist and I have not owned that word, even though I have said that if people want to call me evangelical about my atheism, I am not going to waste the effort fighting that. That statement is not formally identical to saying I am a faith-based thinker. And, seriously, read the dozens of installments of my “Disambiguating Faith” series (all available on the left hand side of the website) or just search the site for the word Faith and you will see I do not give a quarter to faith (except for one special sense of the word that has nothing to do with religion at all).

I DO think that there are other things people call “religious” or “spiritual” that could possibly be salvaged from faith-based/authoritarian/traditionalistic/regressive/superstitious belief-structures and practices and my goal is to separate out those things and admit their genuine value and try to constructively think about how to meet people’s cravings for these things in ways that have nothing to do with all the abusive, irrationalistic stuff that goes with faith, authoritarian beliefs and morals, traditionalism, regressivism, and superstition.

Your primary worry is that if we adopt or are tarred with any connotations associated with the religious we’ll be dragged down to being thought of as no different than they are in the most important senses in which we absolutely need to distinguish ourselves.

But my primary worry is that if we do not stop trying to disassociate ourselves with whatever might ever possibly confused with the religious or spiritual, we will be misconstrued as abandoning many things that are good and which have been exploited by faith and superstition rather than put to the service of truthful, rationalistic, empirical approaches to life and knowledge. We will reinforce the impression in the public mind that we cannot offer those things because they are incompatible with our cold rationalism and so we can only address part of life and human psychology and not all this other stuff that people find really, really valuable.

I see the charge that we “have faith too” as a last ditch projection on their part that they few people genuinely believe in any enduring way. It’s an “I know you are but what am I” attack. I don’t think it sticks when we are simultaneously getting accused of being too cold-bloodedly rational. That’s what people really understand and that’s why their more persistent and fundamental objection to us is that we are elitists trying to rob the poor masses of their precious, life-sustaining superstitions.

And I think the charge that really does stick to us (whether or not it has any basis in fact) is that we are insufficiently attuned to questions of value or meaning or that we offer nothing positive and constructive to meet human needs for these things, for rituals, for community, etc. (Amazingly, the rotten, counter-productive job authoritarian religions do at meeting these needs is not held against them since they at least publicize so well their intentions to do them!)

So, my concern is this: to make clear that what I am against is faith (defined clearly as belief against preponderance of counter-evidence or on insufficient evidence), superstition, emotional manipulation, closed-mindedness, traditionalism, regressiveness, and authoritarianism of thought, practice, and institution.

Those are my targets. Insofar as the existing religions are steeped in these awful things, I vituperatively attack them. But when it comes to any other things associated with religion, if they can be disentangled from their associations with those things then I am interested in proving we can have secular forms of them that can retain what people find genuine value in. There are many good things improperly thought to be the proper provenance of the existing institutional religions and I think we should fight against that just as much as we should distinguish that we are not faith-based believers.

I have no problem with your adamant desire not to be tarred as “just as faith-based” as the religious are. But I don’t want to be tarred as inherently less spiritually deep than the religious are because that redounds to our disadvantage just as much (and it is, or should be, false).

So, to me, the issue is saying, “here is a truth-conducive way to utilize your passions most effectively in reasoning (since you are not a robot) and here is the way not to utilize your passions in reasoning (in a faith-based way)”. And “here is the way best to engage in public debate about fundamental identity-forming beliefs and values and here is the wrong way to do it”. The words “tentative” and “zealous” and “evangelical” are not the point. It is how properly to be tentative, how properly to be zealous, how properly to be “evangelical” that interests me.

You may be right that I will be misunderstood. My hope instead is to take away from our enemies the ability to put us on a needlessly defensive back foot by calling us something others will think makes sense. I don’t want to fight over the words, but the methods. Now, in other areas, I agree with you. I cringe when Dawkins or other prominent atheists admit to having a kind of “faith” but try and define it as not the bad kind. I want to carefully distinguish faith beliefs from rationally proportioned beliefs and hold the line on the language there. That’s the real fight to me, not whether or not I am temperamentally “evangelical” in some flexible sense of the word.

Finally, Greg ended his post by quoting without permission from a private message I sent to him and drawing implications I certainly did not intend:

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion | Comments (8)

Alan Cooper: Your use of the word “function” (rather than something more neutral such as “effect)...
James Sweet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S pecial_pleading
Heuristics: Theist here. Why is there something rather then nothing? This is because God is a necessary being, he...
Daniel Fincke: Thanks so much, Richard!
Richard Wade: Congratulations! I was hoping for the past couple of weeks to hear this news. I wish you all the best,...
Daniel Fincke: Hey, thanks, John! Hopefully you will find more of my unpacking of what’s going on in...
John M.: Hi Daniel, This is my reading of Nietzsche on morality and it’s so nice to see you interpret him in...
Daniel Fincke: Thanks, everyone. Colin, I will make a point to address Nietzsche and evolution at some point. To do...
Norman: What an awesome experiment in human behavior! – The woman actor who was lesbian – just became a...
Tisha Irwin: I love this idea.

Intro Link and Graphics

Subscribe

Newest Posts

Top Categories

Search

Welcome Links

METAETHICS

TELEOLOGICAL / CONSEQUENTIALIST ETHICS

VIRTUES

PLEASURE, PAIN

GOOD WITHOUT GOD

MORAL PLURALISM

MORAL MUTABILITY

MORAL INTUITIONISM

SUBJECTIVISM

RELIGION WITHIN REASON

MEANING AND "SPIRITUALITY" WITHIN REASON

APOSTASY

SYMPATHY FOR THE RELIGIOUS

CIVILITY BTWN ATHEISTS AND THEISTS

ROMAN CATHOLICS

APPLIED ETHICS

NIETZSCHE

PROBLEM OF EVIL

ATHEIST SOLIDARITY

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

REASONS FOR ATHEISM

ERIC STEINHART ON METAPHYSICS

AGNOSTICISM, ATHEISM, & THEISM

FAITH AS LEAP

JUSTIFIED BELIEF VS. FAITH BELIEF

FAITH AS CHOICE

TRUST VS. FAITH

FAITH AS TRADITIONALISM

UNCERTAIN BELIEFS

BETTER THAN FAITH

OPTIMISM

FAITH AS RATIONALIZATION

EMOTIONAL REASONING

HEROIC FAITH

DOUBT VS. FAITH

CHILDREN'S REASONING

ATHEISM DIFFERS FROM FAITH

DEISM VS. THEISM

POLITICAL VALUES

EPISTEMOLOGY

METAETHICISTS

KANT

MOTIVES

ETHICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY

GAYS AND CHRISTIANITY

DISCRIMINATION

RELIGION'S VICES

SCIENCE VS. FAITH

MODERATE RELIGION

ANTAGONISTIC ATHEISM

BAD BIBLE

PSYCHOLOGY AND BELIEF

NO TRUE CHRISTIANITY

PERSONAL

Your Thoughts

Blogroll

Counter and Badges

1. Does morality require God?

2. Does meaning require God?

3. Does knowledge require God?

Conclusion