'What challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes'

The people who challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes (Guardian)

I've been reminded that life is not as rational as Richard Dawkins sees it. Perhaps atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy...

They have their faith because what they believe in doesn't judge them. Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational?...

I am of the candid view that because religion is a way of worship and personal to everyone, it should rather be left out of debates.

It is a medium of personal communication and association with the supreme being and such personal choice can be very sensitive.

Out of every religion has come saints, legends, icons and of course, people of bad habits. No religion encourages bad habits but individual members have their choices to make. Such choices should not form basis for evaluation of any religious organization.

>1 John5918:
I would say Marx still has the best answer:
" The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

(Note: the link doesn't work, here's the essay again, The people who challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes).

It's nice that the ex-wall street trader has come to see the humanity of poor people. But he's still got some hangovers from his old life. He seems to have adopted an odd inversion of the notion of the rationality of capitalism, a concept which pops up more than one of his essays. My (very briefly considered) impression is that he has linked unbridled capitalism with rationality with atheism. And now that he is critical of unbridled capitalism he is supportive of irrationality and religion. It's all a very individualistic and moralizing take on economics and class. I think he'd be better served by Marx.

Rather interesting that he'd see a group that's core characteristic is denial as a rationale for faith.

>3 eromsted: Thanks - I've fixed the original link now (I think!).

Here's a clip from Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise on the subject:

"... no one can have lived in the world without observing that most people, when in prosperity, are so over-brimming with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be), that they take every offer of advice as a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair - if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, ...

... Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with Prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away from the wise, and written His decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!"

>1 John5918: What the fuck did I just read?

>3 eromsted: Thanks.

>6 jbbarret: Thank you very much!

#1 Thanks, John, I saw that. The point I took away from the essay is is to remember that there's a wide range of people in the world, far wider than the range of people who hang out on LT.

#3 Terrific post, eromsted.

And I think Jesse's got it at #4: there are people who (for whatever reason of personality or temperament or culture or deprivation) will never structure their lives along 'rational/intellectual' premises.

And while that's certainly something to keep in mind, I don't know as it's something that those who DO try to structure our lives 'rationally' should or even can emulate.

Granted, "Life is not entirely rational": but it's hard for us to see why or how a NON-rational approach to life would be superior.

>1 John5918: I need to at the very least quote you some Buber at this.

"Primal man's experiences of encounter were scarcely a matter of tame delight; but even violence against a being one really confronts is better than ghostly solicitude for faceless digits!" I and Thou, Martin Buber, tr. by Walter Kaufmann.

I have no idea what it's like to be in their shoes, but false hope just isn't going to solve anything. Action, in the actual world, of some form or other. Possibly by others than themselves...

And hey, why not...
"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." - Friedrich Nietzsche

(Hope I'm not ruining the good work of #3 & #6...)

>1 John5918:

Again we have the pragmatic argument for god. I.e., believe in god and things will look up. Don't believe in god and give up hope for things you really hope for.

This is equivalent to the sales pitch for UP-Your-Ass Detergent over Generic Detergent.

"Hey, folks, try UP-Your-Ass Detergent. You will see the difference - it will make your clothes whiter! You want white clothes, don't you? Then use UP-Your-Ass Detergent! It's only pragmatic!"*

*If you accidently inhale Whoop-Ass Detergent it will kill you. But we are focusing here on clean clothes. Ignore other considerations - like the fact that Generic Detergent is NOT a deadly poison.

#8

Maybe Marx was like half-right, and religion is the methadone of the masses.

>8 AsYouKnow_Bob:: I'm disappointed by the continued assumption that religious believers must not "structure their lives along 'rational/intellectual' premises." It seems to me the antithesis of the very demand to recognize the humanity that we all share.

Certainly there is a logic and rational for all religious thoughts and rituals and creeds ONCE one makes the assumption that the premises are correct.

Atheists question the logical basis of religious (supernatural) premises.

Not only do we question them, we are prepared to explain in some detail why religious assumptions originated, why they take the forms they do, why they persist, and why they are quite, quite wrong-headed and for the most part harmful.

Re #12 - Friend Nathaniel - actually, I thought I was making assumptions about the 'drug addicts' of the OP...
...and actually, NOBODY finds their own reasoning 'irrational': every person - even the end-stage addict - is working to fulfill their own priorities.

As the original article suggests, people do differ in how analytical/impulsive they are.

>14 AsYouKnow_Bob: As the original article suggests, people do differ in how analytical/impulsive they are

Bob, I'm not sure whether the opposite of analytical is "impulsive" (perhaps intuitive or relational would be better words), but you're right that people see the world differently. In some of the old, old LT threads on religion and atheism the point was often made by me and others that faith is not a series of intellectual assertions which can be proved or disproved, but a relationship with God.

Much of the reaction to the original article by an atheist has been, to my mind, highly intellectualised, but I think what the bloke is saying is that when he got down and dirty with the poor and marginalised he saw something which challenged his purely analytical approach. When he formed relationships, intellectual analysis proved incomplete. Christianity is about relationships (with God, others and self) and is also highly focused on the poor and marginalised. That's not to say we've necessarily done well. The likes of Francis of Assisi and Francis, Bishop of Rome, and many others in between, have had to remind us of that preferential option for the poor and marginalised. But I think this atheist author is reminding us in his own way of what has often been said by Christians - if we want to find God, look first to the poor and marginalised, not to the rich and intellectualised.

Thanks, johnthefireman, for posting the link to the Guardian article. I had missed it.

I think there is, between the use of "religion" by Chris Arnade in his article and some of Marx's uses of "religion", the usual fuzziness about institutional religion, especially established religion as Marx saw it in England, Germany, and Russia, on the one hand and the profession/adoption of a particular religious "mythology" (if you wish) by individuals.

So, I disagree with most of the points Marx makes in the quoted passage, except as they may be understood in the context of an religion established as an integral component of a particular political and social system. I am reminded of the late Professor Rick Roderick expostulating, "Religion isn't the opium of the masses. Opium is the opium of the masses -- it works better!"

Roderick was commenting in general on, and in protest of, the pervasiveness of instrumental reason in modern society. He convinces me in his general position that it is not narrowly or specifically capitalism that is the ill at the core of modern society, but capitalism infused with, and controlled and measured by, instrumental reason that is the source of much of the ills that produce the destitution that Arnade describes in his article and the spiritual vacuum in which many modern Westerners live.

>8 AsYouKnow_Bob: AsYouKnowBob quoting >4 Jesse_wiedinmyer::

And I think Jesse's got it at #4: there are people who (for whatever reason of personality or temperament or culture or deprivation) will never structure their lives along 'rational/intellectual' premises.

I infer from this comment a notion that to structure one's life non-rationally is dysfunctional. Often this may be the case; but it is urgently important to realize at the same time that almost all art has its basis in irrationality, and that people who devote their lives to art also structure their lives to a significant degree along non-rational premises.

Instrumental reason is, somewhat, the forbidden fruit of human development. On the whole, I am deeply, fervently, grateful for it: unreflectingly (most times) I turn on the tap, expecting, and receiving, affordable potable water; I navigate my community on foot and by vehicle in comfort and safety; I have the luxury of becoming peeved if my supermarket doesn't have my preferred brand of ... well, almost anything; if I become ill, there is a high probability that I will become healthy again, and so on. There is the other side of instrumental reason, however, and it's not pretty and is, partly, responsible for many of the social ills that the first world is trying to address.

But we, the minority, who can afford in several different senses of that word to spend some of our time and energy chattering on LT, also have the luxury of engaging with a world that we find to be satisfactorily rational -- which is to say predictable in ways that are comprehensible to people of our education and backgrounds. This is the ne plus ultra of luxuries.

For most people alive today, and nearly every human who has lived before us, such a luxury is and would have been, in a very real sense, unimaginable. Increasingly, as I grow older, I think that we are the irrational ones, we who presume to believe that we can control our fates. We can't. For a very few of us during the past 150 years -- not more -- it has become possible to delude ourselves into believing that we can be, in an existential way, safe. This is utterly irrational.

Whether I look at Dorrik Stow's Vanished Ocean, a survey of the history of epidemics, or simply a modern history such as Margaret MacMillan's The War that Ended Peace or Tuchman's The March of Folly, the lesson I learn is that the security that surrounds us is a bubble blown by a child at play, birthed and extinguished in a moment.

If you live outside the bubble, like the folks in Arnade's article, you find whatever patterns, structures, or myths that help you to survive. This is not irrational. It is, in my opinion, perfectly sane. It is the relief and shelter sought by humans since long before we have any written records.

So, while I have no belief in a cosmic puppet master, a pie-in-the-sky afterlife, or a human soul that has any existence separate from the living organism, I recognize that I have the gift of those beliefs because I am privileged to live inside the modern bubble.

Marx's view has to be contextualized. His critical view of religion is connected to his general critique of ideology (which includes German Idealism, political economy ala Adam Smith, etc.). Insofar as religion is an instance of ideology, he treats it negatively. From a cognitive standpoint, it is a distorting veil between thought and reality. From a political standpoint, it comprises one of the ruling ideas of the ruling class. From a moral standpoint, it is a form of alienation of "Man" from "himself"; it is alienated consciousness. On this last point, Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (to which Marx is indebted at the same time as he criticizes it as an example of "Young Hegelianism") makes an interesting counterpoint.

Feuerbach finds that "God" derives from the infinite consciousness of Man, which he distinguished from "Brutes". They are distinguished, first, because Man takes “his species, his essential nature” as an “object of thought,” and, second, by the fact that the consciousness of brutes is finite (limited in space and time) whereas the consciousness of Man is infinite. “Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man, is then identical with self-consciousness which man has of his own – not finite and limited, but infinite nature. But religion, expressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite. Thus it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which man has of his own – not finite and limited, but infinite nature. … Consciousness, in the strict or proper sense, is identical with consciousness of the infinite; a limited consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is essentially infinite in nature.” It follows from this that “Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the nature of man, rests on a delusion, an error …” (Feuerbach 1989, 2, 7). Marx’s criticism of Feuerbach’s philosophy is that human consciousness is finite, it is limited in time and space by social being.

I infer from this comment a notion that to structure one's life non-rationally is dysfunctional.

We're not irrational. And there's nothing wrong with irrationality, anyway.

> 17

Feuerbach was some sort of a pantheist rather than a materialist. OK.

Well, I can see Marx would be taken aback at such.

As for me, this has always been a distinction without a difference.

But Marx was quite punctilious compared to me. I'm pretty easy-going by nature.

>15 John5918: "a relationship with God"

'God'??? What's that? What are you having a relationship with?

>15 John5918: and 16:

I want to thank both @johnthefireman and @librorumamans for their careful and charitable explications of a point I tried (and failed) to make.

I'd like to expand a bit on my comments above. I was first struck by the following line in the essay linked at the top, "When I first walked into the Bronx I assumed I would find the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be."

This seems to me an odd bit of naivete. The notion that religion can be a consolation from hardship is fairly widespread. This idea of religion as consolation, plus the class issues raised, plus the actual discussion of drug users led me to think of Marx and the oft quoted, "religion is the opiate of the masses."

But this quote is, I think, often misused. That's why I included the longer passage. Looking to find an affirmation of humanity when confronted by an economic system that denies people their full humanity is natural. It is not a sign of irrationality. It is not an impulse to be berated. Rather, the task is to overturn the system which creates this need in the first place.

But to engage in that struggle one must have reason (hope?) to believe that a fuller expression of humanity is possible in this world. The quarrel with religion occurs only to the extent that religion says this hope and struggle are not needed as human fulfillment comes through one's relationship with god regardless of one's material circumstances.

The author worries, "They have their faith because what they believe in doesn't judge them. Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational? Who am I to tell them the one thing that gives them hope and allows them to find some beauty in an awful world is inconsistent? I cannot tell them that there is nothing beyond this physical life. It would be cruel and pointless."

This may be true as individuals, who alone are largely powerless to alter the material circumstances of the world. But it is not true in solidarity with others in a movement seeking to change a system which is not natural or inevitable, but a human creation. Such struggle requires a steadfast focus on the oppressions and possibilities of "this physical life."

>22 eromsted: But to engage in that struggle one must have reason (hope?) to believe that a fuller expression of humanity is possible in this world.

No problem with that.

The quarrel with religion occurs only to the extent that religion says this hope and struggle are not needed as human fulfillment comes through one's relationship with god regardless of one's material circumstances.

But religion does not say this. It's not either/or, it's both/and. Liberation theology. Catholic Social Teaching. The Old Testament prophets. The Exodus narrative. The gospel exhortations to help the poor and marginalised.

But it is not true in solidarity with others in a movement seeking to change a system which is not natural or inevitable, but a human creation.

But "solidarity with others" is anathema to capitalists, only individual charity is allowed, nothing that might aim to improve the lot of entire classes.

I used to think of "the opiate of the masses" all the time in Louisiana, where poverty, especially black poverty (very visible where I lived) goes hand in hand with intense religiosity. These people literally have nothing else--no status, no jobs, no education, no hope for jobs and education, no safety... nothing but "Jesus".

It's the most wretched thing.

But religion does not say this.

Well, religion is a big thing. It does sometimes.

And to expand slightly. It's true enough that socialists and liberation theologists have made common cause quite well. And it would be foolish to antagonize such allies only over religious doctrine.

But as Lola notes, charity and solidarity are fundamentally very different things. And I would say among church folk charity is the norm and solidarity the unusual exception.

I am not sure you can really say anything is the "norm" among religious people.

>27 Arctic-Stranger:
Wide variation does not rule out a norm. So, for instance, Dorothy Day would not have been Dorothy Day had her views been typical and institutionalized.

These are the words of an outsider, not an insider:

"I felt the Church was the Church of the poor, that St. Patrick's had been built from the pennies of servant girls, that it cared for the emigrant, it established hospitals, orphanages, day nurseries, houses of the Good Shepherd, homes for the aged, but at the same time, I felt that it did not set its face against a social order which made so much charity in the present sense of the word necessary. I felt that charity was a word to choke over. Who wanted charity? And it was not just human pride but a strong sense of man's dignity and worth, and what was due to him in justice, that made me resent, rather than feel proud of so mighty a sum total of Catholic institutions."

Well then, you could say that charity is the norm in American society, not just among church folk. Why single them out? (Except that maybe they do more of it?)

>28 eromsted: but at the same time, I felt that it did not set its face against a social order which made so much charity in the present sense of the word necessary. I felt that charity was a word to choke over.

There's an interesting article by Dr. Paul Farmer about Catholic Social Teaching and Public Health about this:

http://www.pih.org/blog/dr.-paul-farmer-how-liberation-theology-can-inform-publi...

Farmer identifies three key elements in the establishment of an effective public health system:

1) preferential treatment of the poor -- that is, health care, free of cost for those who can't afford it.
2) confrontation of what he calls "structural violence" -- these are the institutions and things in society that keep the poor, poor.
3) accompaniment -- what you might call "follow up care." That is, not just dispensing the necessary pills but making sure people take them, can make all their doctor visits, continue to follow the prescribed treatment.

In the end I wonder about "solutions" that end all our problems. We will, I believe, always need charity, as long as we have hearts. That is not to say that we cannot take on structural issues. I believe we can and should, but a few thousand years of human history leads one to believe that while we can make life better, we do so with humility, in that we often do not know what kind of havoc we cause with some of our solutions.

One can choke over charity all they want, but in the end there will always be a need for it.

>29 Arctic-Stranger:
The author of original essay (Chris Arnade), in that piece and several others that I read, frames an opposition between atheistic and dehumanizing rationality in service of greed and profit and humanizing religious compassion and charity. My point is that compassion and charity are not so much the opposite of capitalist dehumanization as its mirror, providing consolation to both the giver and the recipient without undermining the system which produces the injustice in the first place. This charity need not be religious, but has typically been historically, and religion has provided the coherent moral language for this practice. There are tensions in these traditions, and some (like Day) have followed the ideas to more radical conclusions, but that is unusual.

It's also somewhat amusing to read criticism of atheistic Wall-Streeters when it used to be the Commies who were the atheists.

So no, I do not mean to single religion as the problem. But contra Arnade, it's no solution either.

>30 southernbooklady:
#2 being the really hard one.

Again, as I said, I believe one should confront structural issues, but I am not as optimistic as I once was that we can really change things. Some things can and do change. The Civil Rights movement is a great example of how people, Christians among them, but also many others, confronted a structural change. They did make life better, however it is not like they ended racism.

I once heard a fascinating discussion on the differences between King and Malcolm X, and the point was made that Malcolm took on the harder task--economic development in African-American communities. King was going there, and had he lived, he would have bumped into a wall that was a lot more unforgiving than even Bull Conner.

So I would say that 2 is not just the hard one, it is the almost impossible one.

But we could still try.

>31 Arctic-Stranger:
Well yes and no. And this is my difficulty with librorumamans wrote above as well. Yes, there will always be accident and illness and natural disasters and various misfortunes that will call for human compassion and aide. But it is one of the amazing achievements of humanity that the ancient dangers like famine and plague are so greatly reduced. Now the greatest threats to human security are self-inflicted, economic and political oppression and inequality. Even environmental threats are now largely a product of our own actions. And in as much as these social institutions are human creations, they are subject to human change.

But we could still try.
Good enough for me.

And in as much as these social institutions are human creations, they are subject to human change.

Which, IMHO, makes them even harder to change, because WE have to change in order for there to be change in the world. And for the most part, people do not want to change.

Call me a pessimist, but I have been in the change business for the last 20 years...longer. And people will not change bad habits even if those habits are killing them.

I am not saying change is impossible. I have been through some radical changes in my life. But they are damn hard.

No, it is not necessary to wait for the "human nature" to change, or even opinion. With that rubbish we'd still have slavery and disenfranchisement for everyone who wasn't a white male. What is necessary is reform from above, or revolution from below.

Clutch a few Molotov cocktails instead of bloody crucifixes.

>25 eromsted: Agreed. I should have been clearer. It just gets very clumsy when one has to keep saying "some manifestations of religion".

>26 eromsted: charity and solidarity are fundamentally very different things. And I would say among church folk charity is the norm and solidarity the unusual exception

Well, our experiences of religion may be very different, but I have found solidarity to be a central tenet of much of the religion which I have experienced. Again I point you to Catholic Social Teaching. And I wouldn't knock charity - it has provided education, health care and many of the other things which lift people out of poverty and hopelessness.

>28 eromsted: While that may be the valid experience of one observer, you'll find many outsiders and insiders who will also present a different view. I recall a symposium I participated in in South Sudan in 2011 where a number of South Sudanese speakers identified one of the key roles of the church in the liberation of Africa precisely as reinforcing the dignity of the human being in the face of colonial powers who denied it.

>30 southernbooklady: Thanks, Nicki, for having a look at Catholic Social Teaching. >32 eromsted: You're right, of course, Eric, that structural violence is the hardest to confront, so it's not surprising if we're not always very successful, but you're doing religion an injustice if you don't accept that it is a key part of many people's religion.

>33 Arctic-Stranger: But we could still try.
Good enough for me.

And good enough for me too. We are trying. It's part of the daily experience of the church to which I belong.

Clutch a few Molotov cocktails instead of bloody crucifixes.

Because, empirically speaking, that strategy has been so successful in the past.

Actually I was just thinking we had to change our habits. Want to do your part to end global warming? Put up your damn car keys! (Not aimed at any one individual) Power down your house at night. Work the land instead of plowing through paperwork on a desk. Learn to live with cold and heat.

Want to end oppression Stop doing things that cause oppression!!

I was not thinking we all had to have a social justice kum by yah moment.

>37 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "I suppose Arnade has caught Dawkins lurking around, being extremely nasty to people in the streets, telling them how stupid they are."

LOL

#39

LOL, priceless! Yeah, what a shame that the American revolution didn't go in for ahimsa and carping letters to the editor!

Quit the pig-ignorant platitudes and take some time to look at the effects of the great modern revolutions (bourgeois and communist), for instance: abolishment of absolute power, democracy, separation of church and state, laicity, proclamations of universal human rights, universal education, enfranchisement of women, progressive legislation including presumption of innocence--not significant? Not improvements? Not successes?

Is anyone normal yearning for feudalism?

> 37, 40

All this goes back to my original question about religion, which I first considered when I was about 6 years old and considered a serious subject until I was in my mid-twenties:

Is it true? A simple three-word question. Is it TRUE?

The question is NOT - is it useful or pragmatic? - or does it give hope to people who are downtrodden? or does it psychologically satisfy? or is person X better off with it and person Y may not need it? or does it help people to be more moral and less immoral? or is it intuitive for most people and will thus never go away? or people are just gonna believe so we might as well acquiesce to the inevitable?

To reiterate, the ONLY important question is "Is it true?"

With all these other side-considerations you can just replace religion or god-belief with any of an infinite number of non-falsifiable claims and you can many times get the same result. So, then, would that make it A-OK to go with one of those other claims instead? If not, why not?

If there is no sound argument or evidence to base religious belief upon then it is like any other non-falsifiable claim - with no claim to respectability or importance or seriousness or relevance or having anything whatsoever to do with the real world.

It all seems to come down to - people just believe in stuff - no evidence required - so that's that.

No wonder so many poor atheists are flummoxed, nonplused, standing with mouths gapped open and eyes stretched wide at the sheer mindless credulousness that IS religious belief. No wonder they think religious people are NUTS. What other reasonable explanation could there be?

Is is true?

To the extent that we can say anything is true, Yes!

>42 JGL53:: "No wonder so many poor atheists are flummoxed, nonplused, standing with mouths gapped open and eyes stretched wide at the sheer mindless credulousness that IS religious belief."

No wonder so many religious believers are flummoxed, nonplussed, standing with mouths gaped open and eyes stretched wide at the sheer and mindless misrepresentations that you continually make of their religious belief.

JGL, there's a strawman calling for you on the other line.

>43 Arctic-Stranger: Is is true?

To the extent that we can say anything is true, Yes!

Heh. Or, to the extent that we can say anything is true, no.

> 45

A-S either has no understanding of the concept "evidence" or he just doesn't give a damn.

He probably has no frigging idea that he is basically arguing for solipsism and radical subjectivism. I.e., all claims are equal on their face because none are provable in absolute terms. So, e.g., Science - voodoo - christianity - scientology - cargo cultism - Australian aborigine animism - islam - wtf ever: take your pick, they each have equal claim to validity. No one can tell you that you are a NUT simply because there are NO standards to judge - or so A-S seems to aver.

A-S: "I believe it. Then it is true. Not just for me but for all. Because I say so. Why the hell not?"

If A-S was a teddy-bear he would be the cutest little bright-eyed teddy bear in the universe.

I find it interesting you attack me instead of refuting me.

>46 JGL53: A-S either has no understanding of the concept "evidence" or he just doesn't give a damn.

Arctic has a fine understanding of debates that arise from mutually incompatible positions, which is why I'm sure he took my post in the genial spirit in which it was offered.

Not only did I take it as genial, I also agree with it.

For the thinking religious person, the troubling thing is the degree to which his intellectual peers dismiss his beliefs. Highly-educated, thinking believers are relatively rare. One may side with the intellectual elite, but your world view puts you constantly at odds with them.

For the secular liberal, the troubling nugget here is that people you care about the most find meaning and solace in the ideas you hate the most. Secularism is related to high levels of education, yes, but also to being rich, or at least comfortable and insulated from want and injustice. One may side with the poor, but one cannot really stand alongside them, for their world views differ so much.

Pick your discomfort.

>50 timspalding:: "Highly-educated, thinking believers are relatively rare. "

I think this is one of the things that causes some of the odd tensions we see in this group, because on LT, highly-educated is more the norm among the believers. That disconnect between the community here and the overall religious demographic is part of what leads to the disconnect when the atheist side (broadly speaking) charges religious believers with stupidity and ignorance, despite obvious evidence to the contrary among the very religious believers with whom they are conversing.

Example: the vast majority of the most active religious believers in "Let's Talk Religion" are perfectly happy with the theory of evolution -- yet, time and again, they are called upon to answer for their supposed distrust thereof.

>51 nathanielcampbell:

Exactly. Every time I'm attacked for being stupid because I believe in God—especially by people who can't seem to manage capitalization!—I'm tempted to demand a $1,000 bet on who has the higher GRE score.

I would not take that bet. Of course there is a huge difference between education, test scores, common sense and ability to function intelligently through life. Some people have more of those than others. But having one does not mean they have all.

I get the hostility to religion by the intelligentsia. They are often coming out of pretty negative experiences, live among people whose notions of religion are somewhat primitive, or are working out of biases and stereotypes that stem from not knowing any religious people. It is rather like the latent racism of liberals.

>50 timspalding: For the secular liberal, the troubling nugget here is that people you care about the most find meaning and solace in the ideas you hate the most.

As the epitome of the card-carrying secular liberal (it really doesn't get any more liberal than me!) "Hate" is probably not the word I would use. It's more that religion just doesn't "work" as a way to live -- its comforts are illusory and therefore hollow. That's a personal conclusion, of course, but one I have come to after due consideration.

It seems to me that religion is a way to overlay existence with a kind of moral order, for lack of a better phrase. And this to me seems an utterly doomed endeavor. The stars in their courses are indifferent to whatever moral reality we insist upon (I can hear Galileo muttering "yet it moves" under his breath). Life on earth is indifferent to our ideas of what constitutes a moral existence....it grows, reproduces, and dies over and over again in a myriad of different ways and combinations. The moral directive of life might be "whatever works."

So as an attempt determine what is "good" or "evil" religion seems hopelessly irrelevant to the purpose. Even restricted to the realm of human endeavors (and I don't think religion really means to limit itself this way...it's scope is usually universal) the moral order it lays down for us seems to conflict constantly with what really happens. Saying that this is because we live in a "fallen" (ei, "not perfect") state from which we can be redeemed is not the comfort it is supposed to be because we live in a world where the innocent suffer. The notion that this could be somehow intentional is....well, a horror, really.

So as far as philosophies for living go, I'm more inclined towards the "shit happens" view than the "it's god's will" view. But "hate" doesn't really come into it until someone tries to impose that religious moral order where it doesn't belong, and it starts to interfere with my ability to live my life the way I see fit.

I'm tempted to demand a $1,000 bet on who has the higher GRE score.

2290, though I was drunk at the time.

Edit - Oddly enough, drunken Jesse GRE scores seemed to be the inverse of sober Jesse scores. I'd normally be able to ace the Verbal portion (or come awfully close) in an extremely short period of time and have to work at the math and logic portions. Iirc (and it's been quite some time, as should be obvious by the fact that we're discussing a logic score), I managed a 780 on both math and logic and only a 730 on the Verbal while not being able to tell the difference between cursive and printing (true story on that part.)

>55 Jesse_wiedinmyer:: Part of that is that the quantitative portion is easier to get a perfect score on. The year I took it, I scored a 700 verbal and a 770 quantitative, yet the former was in the 98th percentile and the latter in the 88th. (This was after they switched the third part from a score out of 800 to an essay graded out of six; apparently, my 5.5 on that was also 88th percentile).

Not particularly. It's not that it's easier to get a perfect score, it's simply that there are quite a few foreign language students that take the test for Engineering careers and the like. So the distribution on the scores for the math portions (which these students do very well at) are weighted to the high end.

> 47

I am not attacking you. What is there to attack? Ditto any serious "argument" coming from you. I just point out the obvious.

You have no position on ontology any more substantial than partially-congealed Jell-O. So you start out behind the eight ball and just stay there.

When and if you ever state a position more substantial than an unapologetic support of solipsism and radical ontological relativism THEN I will address such with counter- arguments, if I disagree.

In the meantime I will just point in amazement at the wonderful wonderful that is you.