-
Website
http://willwilkinson.net/flybottle -
Original page
http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/04/12/easter-thoughts-of-culture-war/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
The only institutions hosting such debates are either Chrisitan colleges, where your chances of persuading the students are very low, or philosophy departments, where most of the students are probably athiests anyway.
Also, becoming a prominent anti-religion voice correlates with being a pariah in some circles, and at high enough (eg Hitchens) prominence, death threats.
Regardless, the fact that a lot of people out there would much rather be referred to as agnostics rather than atheists is important.
Agnostics say they don't know, it's not possible to know, or they don't know with enough certainty.
Claiming 100% certainty is a bit ridiculous. Just look at quantum mechanics...those physicists who claimed 100% certainty about their scientific world-view probably felt a bit silly once quantum mechanics started getting fleshed out.
Which is to say, I agree that in practice there's no significant difference between atheists and agnostics. The latter are functional atheists who are trying to sound polite.
Those who say I really don't know shouldn't label themselves atheists. They should label themselves agnostics. Because there are those who do claim certainty or near certainty and they identify themselves as atheists. When I hear 'atheist' (and this is from a wide variety of experience), I take that to mean 'I believe god does not exist'.
I don't think I've ever met an atheist who claims the latter, and I've known a lot of atheists.
It's generally an article of faith for atheists just like it's an article of faith for theists. Neither side has proof.
The argument that the word 'agnostic' is meaningless is ridiculous. People use it all the time and not just to be polite. They use it to describes themselves as someone who doesn't know, doesn't have faith in either atheism or theism, etc.
I make the claim with considerably more certainty than I make claims like "Aliens are not amongst us." and "9/11 was not an inside job."
Perhaps the better way to characterize the difference is to say that athiests have a model of the world utterly lacking in such supernaturalism. It isn't simply that we 'do not believe'. Rather, I think athiests would claim to have a reasonably coherent mental model for how the world works, and a set of tools and processes for learning more about it.
We're sorry, but your 'god talk' is superflous to that model. Except as childish conversations along the lines of Santa Claus, unicorns, and juju-zombies. Rather than say 'do you believe?, it might be more helpful to ask 'do you accept as reasonable?'.
When someone says they are an agnostic they often think they're giving some middle ground answer, but this is wrong (again, according to prescriptive English). Agnosticism addressees the answer to the question of God's existence can be known. Thus there are atheists who do not believe in God but think this belief cannot be justified in the way necessary to make in knowledge. But there are also theists who believe in God but don't think this belief can be appropriately justified (Kierkegaard thinks along these lines).
Professional philosophers are rarely careless with words so I'm really quite surprised by your experience. Most of my philosophy professors are atheists and I go to a catholic university. I'd estimate most of the majors are too.
Geez.
I like your point (2), though, except that I find that atheist philosophers of religion whom Plantinga debates (e.g., Quentin Smith) want to focus their efforts and limited time on pressing arguments that are formally in issue.
Thus, I don't care about those types of debates, and indeed, they rarely happen (Hitchens never devotes 30 seconds to it in any of the many debates I've watched). Instead the debates focus on what can be debated, which is what God could be given what we do know.
==>
I know you're trying to be amusing here, but of course those smart kids at Biola could easily typecast (and summarily reject) you as the kind of overconfident philosophy nerd churned out by heathen analytic-leaning philosophy departments at secular universities. The tone of your post suggests that you are not at all interested in existence-of-God debates yourself, or at least would approach one with a mildly patronising mindset. Sure, most of their arguments may be turd polish, but at least the Biola graduates are earnest about what is (or should be) a weighty existential issue.
The students at these Christian schools are just collecting ammo.
Okay, joking aside, I feel somewhat similarly. I really do wish Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens weren't always the "go to" guys on this issue. There are plenty of others, and I'd like to hear from them.
Certainly there are good (if not sound) arguments for false conclusions!
And why are you accusing us of bad faith? I thought you were a Rawls guy. Don't you believe in reasonable pluralism? Can't we honestly think we're correct and be reasonable without acting in bad faith?
Man, I LOVE this blog, but when you say stuff like this it makes me think your biases are showing through in a silly and disrespectful way. Why can't we get any respect from you? Why not treat us as intellectual equals? You don't accuse folks who defend moral realism, defend social democracy, or substance dualism of bad faith! Why say it about us? Why can't we just be one more reasonable group of people who just so happen to be wrong?
You also say: "But I’d also guess that they find the arguments so boring that it’s a drag to prepare."
Most philosophers are largely unaware of the arguments made in the philosophy of religion. And those non-believer philosophers with phil religion credentials respect philosophers who believe. Just ask Richard Gale or William Rowe or Antony Flew. It's guys like you - who I bet don't carefully study analytic phil religion because of your biases - that don't respect us.
Will, aren't you just another liberal displaying unjustified biases against people of faith? I thought as a classical liberal you would understand what it is like to have your views dismissed by people who don't understand them. I thought that you'd be fair enough to give heterodox philosophers the time of day, to be fair and even handed.
I have lots of respect for people with lots of different false beliefs. I think I'm justified in believing religious beliefs to be false. (And you probably think you're justified in disbelieving all the religious beliefs you don't have.) Anyway I think its curious and victimy of you to complain about "unjustified biases against people of faith." If there are some great arguments that you think I haven't heard, I'd be happy to hear them.
What gets lost in the fray when the debate about theism rages on is that religion - at least the Catholocism that I know - is (should be) a faith in revelation. A revelation that occured some 2,000 years ago that you, nor I, nor the students at Biola have the ability to prove or disprove. The practice of argument development at Biola that you discuss is indeed distasteful and in my view unethical, specifically on scientific grounds, for this very reason.
Maybe the empirical revelations in biology and astrophysics of the following 2 millenia has convinced you and others, significantly, that this spiritual revelation was a big scam. Mabye this is the grand falsifiability experiment. Fine, and as an empiricist I would mostly agree with how you developed such a conclusion. But the issue at hand is still whether or not you can disprove the religious tenet, and you can't.
Due to this frustration (let's not even get into multi-verse theory), Hitchens, et al. extrapolate the rules and regulations of particular religions and pinpoint the selective disagreement with some, or all, of the rules as sufficient evidence that even the devoutly religious are discretionary thinkers (those silly humans, who knew?), picking and choosing faith a la carte. It follows then that those who accept revelation in true faith then disregard the requirements of that faith are hypocrites. There is some truth to that, but again, does this disprove revelation? No.
So where does that leave us? Where Ockham was 700 years ago. For us religious folk, faith must remain as simple faith, nothing more. There can be no experimentalism, no rationalizing doctrine and emipirical findings (i.e. no natural law or creationism or Intelligent Design.) There can be no thoroughly crafted argument to prepare against the philosophy and science of non-believers or those of another belief system. We should accept - with open arms - all of the facts divulged by rigorous empiricism. We should welcome the thoughts of Hitchens and Dawkins as challenging and explanatory, not counterproductve and critical. Each new empirical revelation opens up our world and universe to more questioning and more exploration; this can only be seen as a wonderous achievement of man.
The only response a believer can have when challenged on theism is "I believe." You must accept that response, and accept the fact that you can't (yet)disprove their belief.
It might sound 'victimy' but when religion comes up, you pretty regularly express a lack of respect for the position that simply doesn't arise when you discuss other views you disagree with. Perhaps I'm missing some good counterexample but I'm a pretty faithful reader of your blog.
I mean, the Society of Christian Philosophers is the largest sub-group in the APA - we have over eleven hundred members. It includes dozens of metaphysicians, epistemologists, ethicists, etc. of the highest quality that have spilled a lot of ink defending their positions. You're undoubtedly familiar with some of their work in other areas. Does Alvin Plantinga suddenly become a bad philosopher when he's talking about God rather than epistemology? Does Linda Zagzebski become a bad philosopher when she defends the compatibility of God's foreknowledge and free will rather than virtue ethics? Does Peter Van Inwagen become a bad philosopher when he defends belief in God rather than libertarian free will? I just don't get it. What about us makes us different and not worthy of being taken seriously by enlightened reasonable pluralists like yourself?
I have seen Christians called obnoxious disrespectful louts when they attempt to convert others. I suspect you follow neither the interfaith nor the ecumenical conversations, which is where such statements are made, and I doubt following those conversations would be profitable. The works of apologetics seldom, if ever, make it into those conversations and they won't exite comment until they do.
Hitchens is an author, journalist, and literary critic. I'd bet he represents the athiest side because he has a greater incentive for attending debates regarding the existance of God. On top of the speaker fees he gets valuable publicity. On the other hand, philosophy professors have other paying work. Attending a debate that, in the past, has never been concluded costs them time and effort for doubtful gains.
I've read some of Hitchen's arguments against and many of the religous arguments for the existance of God. None of these arguments are sound while being universal.
When Hitchens uses history he tends to talk only about the cases that prove his point, while ignoring instances that could be used to prove the opposite. Basicly he does cherry picking so that he doesn't get bogged down in the many complexities in the historical record. On the philisophical level he seems to assume that Natural Realism is simply true. Unfortunately for him whether Natural Realism is true is still an open question. A case in point, there is continuing debate regarding the necessity of Platonism in Mathematics.
As a rule the apologists claim to prove more then the presented evidence can actually prove, a weakness fatal to sound proofs.
A galactic alignment of stars that spelled out, in the night sky, in English, "Buddha was here! LolZ!", would be interpreted by them as a trial of their faith.
The only thing you can hope to achieve is some proseletizing of your own. No one was ever converted to faith through reason, and I doubt the reverse is true. You can only appeal to their emotional and moral compass, and do so while not getting their backs up.
Tricky, that.
I don't know about that. There are all sorts of reasonable arguments. Pascal's wager, humans needing a god, etc.
Put your money where your mouth is, sir.
I read your blog daily and hold a deep respect for your thinking and share many of your views, but this post came across as smug, patronizing, and (ironically) sanctimonious.
While I am not a bible-thumping graduate of "training for the argument of the existence of God," I am nevertheless a Christian. I am also a libertarian, a lawyer, and an implacable contrarian, who after many years of skepticism finally succumbed to what I now view as solid, rational, and powerful evidence supporting both the existence of a God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Having come to this conclusion independently and without intellectual coercion, I would expect someone with your self-professed value-set to demonstrate a more reasoned opposition to my chosen position (and the position of millions of other classical liberals).
I don't doubt your sincerity or your intentions, and I don't suspect a lurking animosity in your prose. Nevertheless, the tone of your post was tactless and disrespectful, especially on Easter.
And while slightly off-topic...by all means...please share with us in a future post the basis for your conclusion that "none of the arguments [for the existence of God] are any good, of course." I would love to read it, and I would love to respond.
I realize the theme of your post wasn't trying to sum up the nature of the cosmos or anything, ....but I'd be interested to hear what some of these "bad arguments" are, and why you feel that way. I suppose several other of your readers would too.
In fact...to support multi-verse theory, one seems to need a whole lot of...faith.
Note, also, that you should not assume that this point "came into existence". Logically speaking, there's no grounds for assuming that if something exists, it came into existence, i.e., that there must have been a time in which it didn't exist prior to when it did.
Argument for God:
1. Jesus Christ was a real person who lived and died somewhere around 4 BC - 30 AD.
2. Jesus Christ claimed to be God, and was crucified and died for this claim.
3. Jesus Christ rose from the dead, which verified his claim to be God.
Therefore God not only exists, but existed in human history as the man Jesus Christ.
I'm happy to further support any of my numbered claims, if you wish to bring specific objection against them.
1. Christ is a Greek title given to the Messiah. There was no such person who went by that name. Jesus of Nazareth was likely a real person though there are those who dispute his existence. I'm not familiar enough with the issue and its not important enough to me to investigate. Still, if you're a believer you ought to consider this view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Myth
2. I'd like to see the claim that Jesus claimed to be God confirmed from a non-Biblical source. I'm not convinced of this.
3. Jesus of Nazareth did not rise from the dead. This is the most likely probability because, as a rule, people do not rise from the dead. To convince anyone that some person has risen from the dead you need to provide very reliable evidence. No such evidence exists for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
3B. Even if Jesus of Nazareth did rise from the dead that does not verify his claim to be God. How does that follow at all?
I have a number of problems with this; but lets begin with definitions--what do you mean by God? if you mean a being that stands in a creative relationship to the universe, who possesses the traditional triple omni attributes (omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience) and has lists of rules that we must follow or else, then number three is plainly invalid (that is to say it simply does not follow from the premises given). Even if I were to grant that a person named jesus did in fact rise from the dead after three (or two) days, it does not follow that he is omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent--and it certainly is not even close to suggesting that this person created the universe. That seems like a non-sequitur on the level of 'it rained today, therefore I am a cloud'
incidentally I think you are going about it backwards, since without a background belief in the existence of a specifically abrahamic deity, the probability of jesus actually having been resurrected is so vanishingly small as to be laughable.
I think number 2 is potentially problematic, considering that the gospels are essentially theological treatises written years after the fact by unknown persons from different countries who may have had theological axes to grind. even number one is questionable, more or less on the same grounds, there are no contemporary sources, what sources there are come late, and have an agenda. There are of course some independent sources, but those too are working with secondhand information (probably from the Christians themselves) but they have so little detail as to be almost useless. There is also almost no corroborating evidence for ancillary events which should be well substantiated; to wit
(1) no mention of herods slaughter of the first born in bethlehem outside of the gospels
(2) no empirical support whatsoever for the story of the star leading the wisemen (and in fact almost no possibility of empirical support, after all how on earth could a star point out an individual house? that doesn't make a lick of sense.)
(3) no mention of the dead rising in Jerusalem outside of the gospels (you'd think somebody might have written something down)
etc. etc.
When your only source material is chock full of things that are almost certainly lies, on top of improbable and poorly substantiated supernatural claims, it is in my opinion too unreliable to consider history, and far too unreliable to base your life on.
One overall response I will make to your post, GBM, is that I'd prefer to restrict discussion to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus (ignoring questions of the philosophical concept of "God", wider biblical reliability, etc) since my understanding of God and the Bible is mediated foremost through my understanding of the person of Jesus.
So on to Jack's wonderfully enumerated objections.
1. You are right that there are those who dispute Jesus' existence. However, these people are far outside the mainstream (in fact, as far as I am aware no academic historian of any note is of this view). The vast weight of historical scholarly opinion is behind the existence of the man Jesus of whom the gospels give account.
2. Why the insistence on a non-biblical source? It is very difficult to get independent sources for any aspect of history as old as the life of Jesus, so throwing out the gospels in their entirety as partisan is really a problem. Rather, read them understanding who they were written by and for (generally, eyewitnesses of Jesus' life to early Christians).
Jesus was crucified for blasphemy - for claiming to be God. All the gospels attest to this. An alternative explanation requires a vast conspiracy of early Christians to fabricate a deity-claim. There is no historical evidence for such a conspiracy.
3. I think you are right to require "very reliable evidence" that Jesus rose from the dead. I put this question to you: what would constitute "very reliable evidence", say, of the events described in Luke 24?
3b. The key thing here is that Jesus actually predicted his resurrection. When someone can raise themselves from the dead (and not only that, but call it beforehand), that makes us consider their other claims a lot more carefully.
One other point for GBM - as far as "working backwards" goes, I believe it is the most consistent way to argue, as a Christian. The Bible is clear that while we can know a bit about God just by looking around (see Romans 1), the actual nature of God is most visible in Jesus (see Hebrews 1).
Thanks for your honest responses, guys.
It is very difficult to get independent sources for any aspect of history as old as the life of Jesus...
Is anyone else seeing a problem here?
"3b. The key thing here is that Jesus actually predicted his resurrection. When someone can raise themselves from the dead (and not only that, but call it beforehand), that makes us consider their other claims a lot more carefully."
First and foremost, from this it still does not actually follow that Jesus was God. he could have been a prophet whose saying were corrupted by later generations, he could have been a guy who got really lucky, he could have been a magician to rival Houdini, he could have been a space alien, he could have been an evil demon sent by Buddha to test our faith. the point is that he could have been any number of things that were not actually God. Now you could say that what you are doing is making a reference to the best explanation argument, but that turns on us having already accepted that your version of God exists.
Second where is your proof that these books were written by eyewitnesses? I'm rather surprised to hear you make that claim since conventional dates seem to suggest that Mark (the earliest) was written some 40 years after these events purportedly took place? Incidentally perhaps you are right that the gospels stand on all fours with other histories of a similar age (I do not think this is true for a number of reasons but I'll grant it to you for a moment) why is this not a good reason to treat statements purported to be made by historical figures of that age as probably inaccurate, rather than saying that the gospels must be 100% accurate recordings of the saying of jesus? Especially given some apparent inconsistencies in those same statements, especially;
"JOH 10:30 I and my Father are one.
JOH 14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I."
It seems to me much more plausible to accept that things probably happened in a manner somewhat similar to the manner described in those ancient sources;
Julius Ceasar probably won the battle of Alesia, although perhaps not quite in the manner described in his book; but I would absolutely not be willing to bet my life on his having actually uttered the words "Et tu, Brute?" Similarly, there may have been a guy named Jesus who ran around performing magic tricks, but I think that it is foolish to bet your life on his actually having said "I am God."
Anyway curious for your response.
Claim 1 (Jesus of Nazareth existed somewhere between 4BC and 30 AD) is an ordinary claim, as we know people existed in this time, and the gospels are sufficient evidence to prove it.
Claim 2 (Jesus claimed to be God and was killed for this) is also an ordinary claim. People have claimed to be God, people have been killed, and people have been killed for claiming to be God.
Claim 3 (Jesus was resurrected, verifying the claim to divinity) has two distinctly extrordinary claims. Resurrection has not elsewhere been observed, and nor has divinity. To prove claims 1 and 2, I am happy to accept the Bible. For Claim 3 I want highly reliable secondary sourcing. Absent such sourcing, I don't grant that you've come close to meeting the burden of proof required to ask people to radically re-think the nature of the universe.
2/3. I'm not in any way suggesting throwing the gospels out as evidence. When I ask for a non-biblical source I do so because facts are best proved by giving multiple sources. Claiming that the biblical account was wrong does not commit me to any kind of conspiracy theory since the gospels, as GBM mentioned, WERE NOT eyewitness accounts. They were written 40-80 years after Jesus had died. The gospels did not begin early Christianity they likely sprung from the oral tradition of the early Christians- at least according to the consensus view among mainstream historians. Further, given that it was written partisans would it be at all surprising to you if they exaggerated some events to make their savior look better?
And the thing is, I don't think you disagree with this. There are thousands and thousands of religious texts and there is no way you take them at face value. If you did you'd be a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Pagan in addition to being a Christian. You need to provide a standard that will lead me to accept the gospel claim of resurrection but doesn't at the same time require us to accept the evidence for other miracles. You wanted to know what I think would constitute "very reliable evidence" for the resurrection. Frankly, I don't think Jesus's disciples even if they saw and talked to someone who said he was Jesus had very reliable evidence that their leader had really rose from the dead. Its not surprising that they believed he had since these were superstitious times. But if some friend of mine died and then someone appeared to me looking just like my friend and claiming to be him I'd ask him a lot of questions to ensure he knew things no one else could know. And then my conclusion would be that he had never really died- not that he had been resurrected. That might change if I saw him floating up into the sky... but the point is even if the disciples really saw everything they claimed to have seen they still barely have enough evidence to justify a belief in the resurrection. Mass hallucination is actually way more likely in retrospect given that such events don't violate known laws of nature.
As it stands I imagine some disciples really did think they saw Jesus. Their beloved leader had just been murdered and claiming to have seen him would have brought any disciple extra respect in the movement. Over time I think those stories were exaggerated and merged until we were left with the resurrection myth which was then written down.
I guess to answer the question very reliable evidence of Jesus's resurrection would be the same kind of evidence it would take to convince you that someone rose from the dead today. And frankly that kind of reliability didn't exist back then. So its probably true that even if the resurrection did occur we still wouldn't have enough reasons to believe it really happened (though certainly one can imagine MORE evidence then exists now). But then this is true with just about every supernatural myth of the ancient world.
3b. Sure, if I believe that someone rose from the dead it makes sense to consider his claims a lot more carefully. It might even shift the probability toward God existing. But a guy dying and coming alive again does not make it the case that that guy is also a omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator who answers prayers and sentences people to eternal punishment for finite crimes and awards people eternal happiness so long as they believe he's the guy responsible for it. (Apologies if I included something you don't believe, I'm merely pointing out that theres a whole lot more to the God thing that coming back from the dead).
I wonder, without considering the evidence you think you have for his existence, what probability would you assign God's existence independent of anything else. What is the probability that a being so incredibly complex comes to exist? My answer is somewhere on an asymptote approaching zero. I mean its really a staggeringly unlikely event even if it really did happen- far more unlikely than a 747 being put together by a tornado for example. Given an initial probability anywhere in this range however, it seems strange that a guy claiming to be God dying and coming back to life is sufficient evidence to reverse the probability.
Furthermore, many people that I have talked to claim absolute free will for themselves. I define absolute free will as the ability to take action not determined by genes, experience, random chance, or the will of another being with free will. Acting in such a manner almost by definition requires some part of you to make decisions not subject to the laws of physics, and is therefore immaterial. According to wikipedia, "the soul is the immaterial part of a person," and therefore to have free will implies one has a soul. The existence of a soul is a pretty clear step in the direction towards theism. If you assume that one has a soul, and occam's razor that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity," and making as few assumptions as possible, I came to the conclusion that many of the tenets of Jainism are correct. The thought process is pretty long and complicated, and I don't want to bore people with three or four pages if rambling (though I can if anyone is curious) I'm pretty sure much of my reasoning about the consequences of having a soul are influenced by prior beliefs about my religion, but I'm pretty sure they have at least some merit.
Since my rather shaky speculative metaphysics leads me to the conclusion that many of the beliefs of my religion are true, I choose to believe the elements that have no basis in even faulty logic such as the belief that eating animal products, or products that grow underground are false. I don't think its impossible to change my beliefs. Someone would either have to convince me that I do not have free will, or would have to convince me that the conclusion I reach based upon my belief make an excessive number of baseless assumptions.
So the question becomes why I assume that I have free will. I assume free will because it gives me meaning and purpose. I think libertarianism loses a lot of its force if one doesn't assume free will (why is government coercion any better or worse than coercion by the laws of physics?). I was wondering if anyone could point me to any works of philosophy that specifically deal with free will, and its implications by any philosophers.
So the burden of proof falls to the positive claimant for God, and for free will.
I would base a positive claim for free will on two distinct pieces of evidence. First, introspection. On introspection I have the distinct experience of making free choices. This experience leads me to believe I am capable of such choices. Also, others report similar choices. Second, humans do not react to things in predictable manners. If human action were predetermined, we ought to be able to predict reactions; so far we cannot, and this inductively implies that we have free will.
I don't believe there is much of any convincing positive evidence for a God in general, and definitely not for the Christian view of God as omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenefecent. Feel free to take up the burden of the positive claimant though.
That said, if one is willing to accept free will, one also wonders why one doesn't have the ability to do whatever one wants. Why doesn't the soul transcend the body, or why are we unable to make certain decisions. The only answer I can think of is that the soul is somehow mistaken about its identity and thinks that it and the body (including the mind) are one and the same. I think.
Just off the top of my head, in the context of Matthew there is a clear distinction between whatever is going on in verse 52 (I'm not sure about what that is - I'll look up some reference material )and the resurrection of Jesus.
In the context of the narrative of Matthew, Jesus' resurrection can be taken to be the final and most convincing of all his proofs of deity.
"Weak and strong atheism:
Strong atheism is a term generally used to describe atheists who accept as true the proposition, "gods do not exist". Weak atheism refers to any other type of non-theism. Historically, the terms positive and negative atheism have been used for this distinction, where "positive" atheism refers to the specific belief that gods do not exist, and "negative" atheism refers merely to an absence of belief in gods."
"Dawkins describes people for whom the probability of the existence of God is between "very high" and "very low" as "agnostic" and reserves the term "strong atheist" for "I know there is no god". He categorises himself as a "de facto atheist" but not a "strong atheist" under this definition."
Are you a strong atheist? And if so why?
Happy easter (if americans say that)
Why did all the miracles end 2000 years ago?
Why did God ask folks to sacrifice their sons and farm animals in the Old Testament?
Don't you get a whiff of barbaric ritual from this?
I know, I know..the Bible is full of parables.
I hold out hope of the existence of God.
Of all living creatures on this planet, only one clearly does not belong. And in who's image are we "made"? I can't say that I have read everything about evolution. I can say that I do not believe that we "evolved" from apes. Why are there still apes? We could be some extra-terrestrial kid's science project. I have no idea. I can only conclude that we are all much more primitive in our thinking (relative to our existence and origins) than we want to think. All of our theories are just that and no more.
Maybe all of these events have naturalistic explanations, but they are the same sort of events that were called miracles 2000 years ago.
Is your post in jest? Asking why there are still apes is like asking why there are still bacteria.
Then why attack religion and not all superstition and irrationality? Many atheists believe in ghosts, ufos, astrology, marxism, racism, 9/11 conspiracies etc. If religion would die tomorrow, people would just substitute it with other superstitions, cults and silly behaviours. We would still be left with our basic cognitive biases.
On a collective level, moderate religion may be a good way to concentrate and manage our superstitions. We don't want competition in the production of bads.
The only reason to argue with such people is to help honest third parties.
(For what it's worth, I do accept that maybe 1 out of 50,000 or so theists might not be irrational in light of her theism. Also, I realize this post is smug and dismissive, but theism is ridiculous and deserves that.)
I have no answers. My admittedly weak point is that if we "evolved" from apes, what was the purpose of the evolution? Certainly not survival, as there are still apes. I know that we share most of our biological makeup with apes. No one can convincingly explain to me how some apes suddenly got (technically, like inventing weapons, communications, transportation, etc.) intelligence.
We had a common ancestor. It split up and these new branches had different evolutionary pressures, which pushed them further in different directions. Some needed to become more human in order to survive, some didn't.
If there is an evolutionary reason for white skin color, why are there still people with black skin? Because there was no reason to (re)develop white skin in Africa.
Simple answer: There was none.
Asking that question is like asking "What is the purpose to salt dissolving in water?", or "What is the purpose to fire?", or "What is the purpose to orbital mechanics?". They are all nothing more than natural processes which appear to be the consequence of certain basic physical properties of the universe.
If you say to a rational, curious empiricist, "But isn't that a remarkable co-incidence? Doesn't it seem obvious that there had to be a governing first cause to calibrate a universe so suitable for us?", they will respond by replying "If the universe wasn't configured that way, you wouldn't be here to ask that question, and I wouldn't be here to respond to your question by asking what you believe were the meta-conditions which allowed for the creation of your agent of first cause?"
The evidence before our eyes is that human beings have devised a vast number of intricate belief systems; gods, spirits, guides, trees-that-breathe-butterflies. They're all mutually exclusive. None of them is a useful predictor of anything. If you're going to find reasons to reject the overwhelming number of these belief systems, why not discard the last one also?
We didn't evolve from any of the other species of apes you see alive today. Rather, we share common ancestors with them. Also, though the disparity between our intelligence and theirs is significant, remember that we involved from other homonid species, some of which were more intelligent than the other currently living apes.
Some of us atheists/agnostics aren't out there mixing it up because we don't buy the antiquated modernist versions of truth, certainty, and science on which the new atheists base their claims.
Evolution is just a way of seeing the world. It's a very helpful one; it's useful to us in achieving our aims. But the idea that it is "true" in the sense of "representing the world the way it really is" just seems outdated.
Stanley Fish put it well in a column back in 07. On the new atheists' reasons:
They are good Darwinian reasons; remove the natural selection hypothesis from the structure of thought and they will be seen not as reasons, but as absurdities. I “believe in evolution,” Dawkins declares, “because the evidence supports it”; but the evidence is evidence only because he is seeing with Darwin-directed eyes. The evidence at once supports his faith and is evidence by virtue of it.
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/atheis...
Will, I'd love to see you talk with someone about this oh BhTV. But rather than watch you debate a believer, I'd like to see you test your views on science and certainty against a postmodernist, a pragmatist, someone who would challenge you on those fronts.
There is more complexity in a single cell of the most primitive bacteria than there is in all human contrivance. There are more surprising innovations, more solutions to hard problems. Move to other cells, other species, and the the splendor multiplies.
By contrast, our human beings' bodies are badly "designed" (our guts hang from our ribs, our eyes are inside out, our liver chemistry is woeful). Our engineered solutions to our gross biological problems are primitive, fragile, and terribly inefficient. Our over sized brains make us vulnerable to parasitic organisms--species like Zea mays, Cannabis sativa--and parasitic thoughts--fear of the dark, illusions of memory.
We are barely beginning to understand, still less to appreciate, the grandeur that resides in the tangled bank of our universe.
The real battle is to just get them to stop eating so much red meat, which is going to kill them.
Likewise, the real battle is to get the Christianists to stop reading the Bible so literally that they think two dudes kissing or doing a little science in a lab is going to bring the apocalypse. You don't need to disprove God exists to make the world a better place. I thought you were a incrementalist?
Will, I like Walter's suggestion that you debate Stanley Fish, even though he is a joke and an intellectual fraud. Before doing so, take a look at this paper ("The Vacuity of Postmodern Methodology") in Metaphilosophy. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/1186...
I've seen Fish present his thoughts before, and he actually makes the bullshit moves that Shackel complains about. In particular, Fish did "the postmodern shuffle". He said that there's no objective reality. When someone pointed out this is self-refuting (if true, then Fish's claims are not true, etc.), he retreated to saying trivial things like, "Our understanding of the world is mediate by concepts."
Your link didn't work for me. I usually enjoy Fish's columns (though I often disagree with them) but I want to clarify that I wasn't suggesting that Will debate him.
What I was suggesting was something much broader: that the interesting debate, to me, would not be over the existence of god, but over the verifiability of the claims made in such a debate.
We can make it sound more positive than that. For example, we can build a beautiful story from the big bang through evolution to us and note how incredibly lucky we are to exist, and why we must make the most of our lives because this is all we have, etc, etc.
Those interested primarily in fighting culture wars may find that advocating a watered-down Christianity is more effective than marginalizing themselves with a frontal assault on theism.
Twin studies should that religiousness is partially genetic:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/...
LOL! Will, I didn't realize you were so ignorant. To claim 100% certainty on these points belies your ignorance.
Can you prove there isn't a god? Until then, maybe you might get more respect for your beliefs (that there is no god) if you show some for the beliefs of others (that there is a god).