Atheist Sign Included in Holiday Display on Public Property:
An atheist sign proclaiming that "Religion is but myth and superstition" has been included in a holiday display on public property in Olympia, Washington. The display at the Washington state capitol building also includes symbols put up by religious groups.
I'm not convinced that this sign is a good way to promote atheism. Passers-by who are not atheists themselves are likely to find it more offensive than persuasive. As a legal matter, however, I think that atheist groups should have the same rights to put up displays on public property as religious groups do. I don't object if theists are allowed to put up creches, menorahs, and so forth on public property so long as agnostics, atheists, and others are accorded similar privileges.
Most religions themselves have tenets which condemn other religions, but they do not choose those tenets to promote themselves in public.
I've argued for a while that diversity alone would kill many of these displays. I realize that the atheist sign stands out, but there are lots of other religions that people don't want to see promoted on public property either.
Is there a scientology Christmas?
Possibly. But support for humanism and space exploration is consistent with believing in God.
And another atheist voting that regardless of whether this is legal, I wish other atheists wouldn't do it.
This whole thing is stupid, no taxes on churches, no religious displays on the capital lawn. Would it really be so awful?
To turn the point around: Why can't religious people celebrate their religious beliefs without being needlessly antagonistic of my belief that supernatural claims are false?
All the groups are presenting displays communicating their most significant beliefs on the subject of religion. Given that for atheists this belief is that religious beliefs are unjustified whatever they put up to communicate this will be in direct conflict with the religious messages.
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This having been said I do agree it's both bad form and unproductive to put up an actual argument. I mean the religious groups didn't put up signs saying "Without Faith salvation is difficult/impossible." The atheists should have put up a display of the flying spaghetti monster. This would both symbolize their beliefs and avoid being quite so directly antagonistic.
@GV
You guys have got it right, I think. The signs are not equal. There is no reason that an atheist sign has to appear at the same time as the religious signs, anyhow.
I dunno. We have an aweful lot of deeply institutionalized Greek and Roman paganism in or public institutions and iconography.
Please elaborate. Can you direct me to a statement of their beliefs? What are their religious practices? Are they organized, and if so, do they have IRS non profit status? Are there atheistic ceremonies that are conducted?
...and acceptance of Christ as the savior is consistent with a belief that karmic reincarnation awaits one's soul until attainment of nirvana. But so what? Christians put up a cross, not a sign that says "Buddhists are wrong about reincarnation". And that was David Warner's point, as I understood it. Atheists would stand to gain by promoting some other aspect of their belief than "those guys are wrong".
If I had to pick an idea for agnosticism to promote or symbolize, it would be "I don't have to know an answer" or "doubt is ok, probably", or something along those lines.
Atheists believe that there is no God.
Having said all that, even as an evangelical atheist I still celebrate holidays like Christmas. There's nothing wrong with traditional annual celebrations just for their own sake, and if holidays with a religious historical veneer over their largely secular purpose didn't exist, then we'd no doubt invent something similar to satisfy the same desire.
Yeah, atheists might think there's no god, but that's not a belief. It's a rational analysis of the facts, not an act of faith which is by definition an irrational act- believing what's hard to believe.
Atheism is not a religion, it is a rejection of religion and the common foundation upon which all religions are built.
You obviously haven't seen the vitriol that gets directed at the vaguest hint of irreligiousity in the political sphere.
Why is it out-of-bounds to bring up faith-motivated attacks that have occurred abroad? After all, many faiths frame themselves in global terms.
I look forward to your answer.
Join that with the Flying Spaghetti Monster - a monster carrying all the other symbols in its tentacles...
As a basically atheist Washingtonian, I'd vote (metaphorically) that the "Religion is but myth and superstition" mixed in with religious symbols is just weird. Surely a more fitting message could have been chosen. A tinsel-covered double helix?
That being said, if the local atheists were going to insist on equal time, they ought to have come up with something that was at least witty. "Religion is but myth and superstition" is a damp squibb of a public pronouncement. It neither entertains nor challenges the passerby.
We in the carpool talked about this today. I said a billboard of the "COEXIST" symbol-cum-bumper sticker would have been better, even though it's ecumenical rather than atheist.
please don't feed the trolls. it will get you no where on this one. believe me, i know. people like smokey are immune to logic, reason and honesty.
In a country of 300 million people, where atheists could be between .4% and 10% of the population, and where they are considered by the majority to be "the most distrusted of minorities, more so than Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians, and other groups [and where] Many of the respondents associated atheism with immorality, including criminal behaviour, extreme materialism, and elitism"-- I'm going to suggest that if your question is simply who, numerically, does MORE obnoxious things to their disfavored group, it's the people in the overwhelming majority. How much that may factor into the number you hear about, pay attention to, or think significant, may influence your perception of "who does more bad things."
1) Are Buddhists atheists? Why or why not?
2) Are Taoists atheists? Why or why not?
Are all heathens godless?
Smokey: "Atheism is itself a religion."
The real fear of theists is to have to think about the possibility that they are irrational. They really want to prove that everyone 'believes' in something in a non-mindful manner, and therefore belief (non-mindful) being universal is not something they have to consider in its whole for themselves. More than they want us to believe in the god thing, they want to prove that we believe something.
They simply cannot fathom that rejecting to believe on the basis of lack of evidence differs substantially from either believing without evidence, or believing despite evidence.
The other theist trap is the idea that atheists have no basis for which to form a moral view. The simple retort is to view what a man does when no one is looking. I behave in consistent moral manner when no one is there to see. Yet are theists any better overall? In their view someone is always looking over their shoulder, yet despite this, they don't seem to do any better at staying out of trouble than anyone else.
To put their belief more precisely, they would argue that the ratbag assortment of incomprehensible properties theists attempt to assign to god (omnipotent, holy, timeless) do not amount to a sufficient description to make it possible to even determine what it would mean for god to exist or for god to not exist.
Atheism is based upon the unknowable, the non-existence of the divine and fundamentalist hate it when atheists try to confuse atheism with agnosticism. Can you prove that the divine does not exist? Can you prove that the foundation of all religions is false? Unless you can prove the non-existence of the divine then atheists are merely substituting faith based belief in the non-existence of the divine for faith based belief in the existence of the divine.
So what holiday is the atheist celebrating?
That's what all the other religious beliefs are doing, after all: you don't see Christmas stuff up at Eastertide.
To shoulder your way into a display in which you are not a participant, and in which your only intent is to rain on someone else's parade just strikes me as rude.
"Unless you can prove the non-existence of the divine then atheists are merely substituting faith based belief in the non-existence of the divine for faith based belief in the existence of the divine."
Not necessarily. They could just have come to the empirical conclusion that theism is inimical to that in which they do believe. The difficulty that atheists might encounter in attempting to present themselves more affirmatively is that these things in which they believe are so various.
ARCraig: fair enough, although in my experience atheists tend to be slightly more (unnecessarily) condescending and insulting. Richard Dawkins, e.g.
you have it backwards. it is not up to the atheists to disprove religion, it is up to the theists to prove their religion. those making affirmative statements bear the burden of proof. this is a common fallacy among those seeking to denigrate atheists.
all an atheist has to say is that "there is no proof that god exists, therefore he does not exist." it is the same line of thought that most people take with unicorns, magic and santa claus.
"But support for humanism and space exploration is consistent with believing in God."
As is support for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Contradiction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for distinctive traditions and thus plural displays.
gasman: Belief entails faith, not your 'evidence.' Sorry you don't understand that.
Paul of Tarsus didn't understand it either -- until the scales fell from his eyes on the road to Damascus.
Atheists should recall Hamlet: "There are more things under Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
Word up.
Arational does not equal unmindful. The mind does not only operate in rational ways. Then again its a little dicey to question the rationality of a religion which calls its Savior "the logos".
Or maybe cut a deal with Tim Burton to use the image of Jack Skellington in his Santa's hat.
"In your face" is always perceived as aggressive and insulting, so it rarely makes for effective PR or persuasion.
i don't understand why people have to stand on street corners and tell me that jesus died for my sins and if i don't repent i'm going to hell. so i guess we're even.
Even if you want to be aggressive, you could do something like: "Celebrating another year of loving my neighbor because of who they are, not because of a line from a book."
What display do you imagine agnostics would want to put up?
A six-foot-tall question mark.
You'd have to wait for Valentine's Day.
Those making affirmative statements bear the burden of proof? Guess who's making the affirmative statement at issue here? Who's the one saying: "Religion is but myth and superstition." As I said earlier, they're the ones making the argument.
I think it's fair to say that atheism is a belief. It's a really stupid complaint to assert that one's entire philosophy, which can't be proven either way, isn't something like a religion. It certainly is. And it's a really stupid thing to assert that ONLY religion has to prove itself. Heck, I think religion's done a fine job of proving itself. Paul didn't travel the world for his health, after all.
go look up the definition of myth and superstition. then go reread my post.
Heck, I think religion's done a fine job of proving itself.
i'd love to see some of this proof. a story in the bible doesn't exactly count...you can't prove something by referencing that which you are trying to prove. seriously, did no one teach you this stuff?
by the way, when are you going to prove that you don't beat your wife? or rape kids? i'll wait patiently by my computer.
Just like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
English really needs some new words in its vocabulary, as atheist cannot capture everything piled upon it: the existence of God, and the instantiation of that existence in a specific religion.
With regard to the existence of God, one may be a deist, agnostic, or, (my made up word) adeist: there is a god; the question is unanswerable (the stance of a dunnoist, also my made up word); there is no God.
With regard to religion one may be a theist or an atheist: there is a theology that is objectively or subjectively true; there is no theology that is objectively or subjectively true.
By objectively true, I mean that one is both a Deist, and a Theist. That is, one is certain God exists, and that God endorses a specific religion.
By subjectively true, one is either a Dunnoist, or an Adeist, but believes in the importance of a specific religion to a society. The religion may be a complete concoction, but necessary nonetheless.
It is worth nothing that essentially all theists are atheists who suspend skepticism at their own church's door.
Unfortunately, the "atheist" is tossed at very Cartesian cross-product of the variations on hand.
Of course, when, say Christians put up their creches, they are stating that every other religious belief is wrong.
That is true for every religion: every mosque is a statement that all churches and temples are complete errors.
Atheism is a religious belief (while not being a religion) that is making a statement about all other religious beliefs. It just takes them one religion further.
So, why should an atheist sign should be any more offensive to a non-atheist than a creche is to non-Christians?
Atheist and Agnostic answer two different questions. Atheist/Theist is a binary choice- either you believe in some kind of deity or not. Whether you think you know or can prove the existence of the deity is beside the point, that's what "Agnostic" answers (though "Gnostic" has a different meaning for historical reasons).
And not collecting stamps is itself a hobby.
Look up the original (pre-Sophist) meaning of "Myth" and then re-read your post. Also, while you are at it, check out a copy of F. M. Cornford's classic work "From Religion to Philosophy" at your local library.
Actually, regarding modern secular humanism, my own view is that it is nothing more than Christianity without God. In other words, it is a fully secularized version of Christian doctrine. This came out of the 17th century as a rebellion against scholasticism. In this sense it is a religion.
This sign strikes me as the same sort of attention-getting tactics as one sees with the crazy street-corner preachers holding "The End is Near" signs.
Me? I have more or less left the Abrahamic tradition for good. My beliefs about morality are somewhat further apart from the Secular Humanists and the Christians than they are from eachother.
BTW, secularizing religion is nothing new. F. M. Cornford convincingly showed in 1912 that the main Greek philosophical trends all originated in Greek religion.
Is that really the association you want?
Then there are agnostics, who understand that solid and proof of the divine is beyond any reasonable epistemological model we have to work with and therefore neither affirmative nor negative statements have any real value.
Me? I more-or-less am a polytheist with pantheistic tendencies, and an understanding of the problem which makes me both an agnostic and a gnostic ;-)
Either my car stops when I hit the brakes because of friction between the disc and the brake pad, or it stops because god made it stop. Throughout my life I have found the second answer to be entirely meaningless at best and pernicious at worst. "God made the car stop." Now what? Or the car didn't stop not because the brakes were malfunctioning, but because god let them fail.
Every question of this type has two answers - the real one and one with god in it somewhere. Theists seem to talk a lot about the answers with god in them, but when the question really matters, really matters, no one is ever satisfied with that sort of answer.
Yes, the laws of physics and god can coexist. That's fine but it is also makes god irrelevant. Atheism is then less about believing that god does not exist and more about believing that so long as the laws of physics DO exist, whether god exists or not doesn't matter.
Real answers allow us to ask another question and predict with reasonable certainty the answer. Real answers give understanding.
Recently, some legislator wants to insert language in a bill that would credit God for protecting the US from terrorist attacks.
That's all well and good. So can we blame God for when terrorist attacks occur? Like in Mumbai? Why is it that all good things happening are credited to God, but when bad things happen, no one blames him/her?
As they say, nice work if you can get it.
When a plane crashes and 200 passengers die, but 1 survives, people say it's a miracle he survived. But if a plane crashes, one passenger dies and 200 survive, they don't say it's a miracle that the guy died.
Well, one possible motivating reason would be that Jesus died for your sins, and if you don't repent you're going to Hell. If such were the case would you want people to not tell you?
What's the urgent atheist message? "If you repent your sins before undergoing personal annihilation at death, then you're a sucker and the rest of the annihilated dead will laugh at you and call you a loser?" Will the annihilated atheist hold an eternal grudge against all of the Christians who bugged him during life? Should we all embrace atheism, so that in our annihilated eternities, we will not suffer the embarrassment and shame of disapprobation from all of the annihilated atheists?
Why would any being whose ultimate fate is absolute nothingness give a rip about what an atheist has to say about anything?
Ironically, it is precisely to the extent that atheism is true that it is utterly unimportant and may be safely ignored.
Theism, not so much.
I would argue there's a difference between a display or symbol indicative of (or arguably supportive of) a particular religion (a Menorah, a Nativity scene, a Christmas tree etc.) vs. one which denigrates adherents of other religions (as this sign does of all adherents of other religions, except for believers in atheism).
I know there are big problems with non-content-neutral restrictions, but still, if you allow this sign "promoting" atheism (I doubt it does so, it suggest atheist=a**hole and so arguably should be supported by any believer in God as bringing more people to reject atheism...), then it seems displays denigrating other religions or specific ones should be allowed, as the original post suggested.
if there were just one religion in the world, your argument might make sense. But there are thousands. Many of them don't consider Jesus to be anything at all. So why didn't you reference Hinduism, with it's various gods and goddesses? If it's true that it's important to know the message, then you better high tail it on to India and learn what the Hindu gods have in store for you if you don't worship them correctly! Wouldn't you want to know that, so as to avoid eternal damnation? What happens if you don't conver to Mormonism? Or pentacostalism? Or Calvinism? There are dozens of tribal religions that require certain sacrifices for the gods, or else they will be angry. Wouldln't you want to know about them as well?
You'll need to cover all your bases, because how do you know which religion is the correct one? They all claim that, but what's the yardstick for measuring their accurateness? Unless you know something that no one else does, I wouldn't ignore all those other religions if I were you
Except the laws of physics don't exist. They're just an attempt by human beings to describe the universe. And so far humans have been 100% wrong every single time.
The only thing physics allows you to do is say "this is how it's always happened before, so I'm going to go with it." It's the smart bet imo, but it does not explain anything. At the root of physics is belief in the unexplainable. There isn't a physicist alive who can tell you the cause of any of the four fundamental forces.
Randy:
This particular group of atheists is organized, they do have a statement of their beliefs. They are tax exempt. And reading through their website briefly they don't seem to provide any rational, scientific, provable basis for their morality. And their nice little monument might be a wonderful place for someone to put up a cross. It'd also be nice if their dedication poem was a little more grounded in reality and acknowledge the millions of people killed in the last hundred years in the name of secularism.
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Put me down as another atheist who finds this sign offensive. I see the behavior of these nut cases to be indistinguishable from that of Fred Phelps.
Reject fundamentalism and revealed truth.
Live life like life is precious. Not like the afterlife is precious. (too bad the terrorists in Mumbai didn't read this one first)
Hope is not a method. Faith is not a plan.
Do the right things only because they are the right things.
Your post points to the problem at hand. If there's no heaven we shouldn't "give a rip" about anything? If there is no eternal reward or punishment then right and wrong can be "safely ignored"? It is the mindset of a child and it is this type of simplistic thinking that scares atheists.
The words "is but" I take to be short for "is nothing but."
Religion is not nothing but myth and superstition. Most religions, in addition myth and superstition, include instructions or commandments or codes of behavior. The Jewish scholar Hillel condensed these commandments to the maxim "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor."
While some hearts may be hardened by religion, other hearts may be softened by religion. Or, the heart-hardening may be in the form of cour-age (literally, heart-ness) that gives its possessor the strength to stand up for a good cause. Notably, many of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States, as well as the earlier movement to abolish slavery, found their courage in religion.
I believe the sign is both factually incorrect and unhelpful to the atheist cause.
Not exactly. The laws of physics are laws in so far as they allow us to predict behavior - not useful only in hindsight. If a prediction is wrong, we have to retest or rethink something we based the prediction on. So long as predictions hold true (every time), the assumptions underlying them are sufficient as an explanation of the phenomenon. Things are only unexplainable at the very bottom, and whether or not you can wrap your brain around them is not an issue so long as they produce the required result.
The type of 'explanation' you are referring to is meaningless. There is no such knowledge that would satisfy your definition of an explanation. Certainly not religious revelation. Scientific theories of fundamental things like the four forces are not equatable in any way with 'faith'.
You may find brake pads and discs and god as equally valid explanations for why your car stops but I doubt you live your life like it.
Meanwhile I drive by a church and on its sign has something to the effect that non believers go to hell, or come in or burn in hell, or repent or burn or something like that.
Personally I am of the opinion that public places should have no mention of religion at all, that way nobody is upset...then you can do as you please on private property.
Thats just the point, how can someone tell me the religion I just made up this second is any less "good" than any other religion. There is as much evidence for Timboism (my name is Tim) as there is for other religions. I have just as much faith as you do in yours. But I don't get a banner - you know why, because it's silly, but logically it makes as much sense as yours. Take em all down and hang what you want on your house/church.
However, the atheists here are just provoking. Saying something like Have a good Winter Solstice or Enjoy the Winter would suffice. Though I'm an agnostic...I guess mine would be Happy Holidays - which I guess is the agnostic sign.
The first strain is a guy looking around and saying to himself, "I don't see any reason to believe in God and so I don't. Nice day though."
The other is a guy running up to strangers, seizing them by the lapels, and screaming, "There is no God! If you believe in God, you're going to go to Hell! No, wait.."
My guess is 99% of all atheists are the first sort, but you can see why the other 1% gets the attention.
I prefer instead to say that there are many gods. This elicits a far stronger reaction. Now you're playing their game in terms of silly terminology.
If you want to really get a reaction then just claim that God aka yahweh and satan and any other supernatural being are all gods with full legal status as divine beings. A second tier god is still a god. Diversity in Divinity as they say.
So I would love to put up a sign there that reads
"ONE NATION UNDER ALL GODS"
I prefer instead to say that there are many gods. This elicits a far stronger reaction. Now you're playing their game in terms of silly terminology.
If you want to really get a reaction then just claim that God aka yahweh and satan and any other supernatural being are all gods with full legal status as divine beings. A second tier god is still a god. Diversity in Divinity as they say.
So I would love to put up a sign there that reads
"ONE NATION UNDER ALL GODS"
I prefer instead to say that there are many gods. This elicits a far stronger reaction. Now you're playing their game in terms of silly terminology.
If you want to really get a reaction then just claim that God aka yahweh and satan and any other supernatural being are all gods with full legal status as divine beings. A second tier god is still a god. Diversity in Divinity as they say.
So I would love to put up a sign there that reads
"ONE NATION UNDER ALL GODS"
If it is to recruit more atheists, it is so poorly suited to the task it would be offensively stupid.
It does not seem to be celebrating a holiday or attempting to cheer anyone up.
I have a hard time imagining that the sign offers any inspiration to atheists. As a religious believer I would certainly draw no inspiration from a sign that read "Atheism is hyper-rationalist arrogance."
That would seem to leave the purpose of the sign as offering a gratuitous insult to religious believers. While that is certainly permissible, it is generally regarded as impolite to offer gratuitous insults to others.
"Theists seem to talk a lot about the answers with god in them, but when the question really matters, really matters, no one is ever satisfied with that sort of answer."
And what am I, chopped liver? That statement is so ahistorical it hurts.
Now that's funny...say, a nativity scene with a menorah next to Joseph and Mary (which probably is historically correct), with a handwritten atheist sign on manger wall, which is adjacent to a Sufi symbol, and Santa Claus lovingly watching over the baby Jesus...one of the many absurd consequences of the 1st Amendment.
Is there not an atheist day where atheists can celebrate the infinite nothingness of it all?
They fight hard to include those who merely do not believe that there is proof that god exists in the definition of "atheist", to stand alongside those who actively hold an affirmative belief that deities do not exist.
One isn't left long to wonder why that inclusion is important to them, as they immediately use that expanded definition to "prove" that atheists aren't merely 'believers' in an equally-unprovable thing.
Then they pretend that this is relevant to a sign reading "Religion is but myth and superstition", which clearly belongs to the atheist-believer camp.
Thus their response to criticism is mere word games, and if they have anything other then that, they sure haven't shown it.
"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it. "
--Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history"
And I wish they would stop.
Through personal experience I have found that it is far more effective to lead by example than to confront. I become militant only when confronted by militancy (for example, some of the "born again" Christians I met in college,)
As far as Christmas goes, it may surprise the theists among you that I wish Christmas in the USA would head back to its religious roots. The commercialization and secular rituals are far more annoying and intrusive on my life than the religious aspects.
Now, for my answer to Matteo's question, "What's the urgent atheist message?"
My message would be - "Don't live your life in fear of things for which there is no evidence of existence, be it gods, monsters, ghosts, Y2K glitches or whatever. And don't give money or political power to those who offer you something in the name of, or protection against, those things, without a lot of thought and something tangible to back up what they are claiming."
A bit too long for a bumper sticker or a sign, I'm afraid.
And if you say to me "Merry Christmas" I'll smile and respond with something like "and the same to you", because while I may not share your beliefs, I can appreciate and acknowledge the sentiment. I figure it is a two for one - tolerance and courtesy. That's sort of like "Peace on Earth, good will toward men", I think.
One should be able to be an atheist/agnostic/pagan and still have something nice and positive to say about one's community during the "holiday" season without deliberately attacking their beliefs. Or does being an athiest mean being an antisocial grinch and sourpuss?
I have no problem with the atheists being given a spot for their sign, but they should have the good grace to use it for the intended purpose, and not to just throw verbal 'sticks and stones' at their "competitors".
What in the world is a Santa Claus? Oh sure, it has Christian "origins" but the Santa Claus of today is a de facto secular symbol completely all but detached from whatever christian roots it once had.
If even the idea of a secular "Xmas" is too much for a militant Athiest, why not a sign that says "Buy gifts for people because we have to help the economy?" I think most would get a chuckle out of that. Likewise if it was a Flying Spaghetti monster wearing a santa hat or with gifts.
Some people, religious and athiest, just spend too much of their lives angry at something. I think it's a waste.
When no evidence supports a theory and massive amounts of available evidence contradict a theory, it not equally unsupportable to believe that the theory is false as it is to believe that the theory is true. In fact, this justifies believing that the theory is false.
Atheism is not a "religion" in the same way that religion is not a "superstition" - both are ways of attacking. Peace and goodwill can be had by all and should be - this time of year and every other time of year - but aren't because people can be numskulls.
All Religions are made up of beliefs.
Atheism is a belief.
Therefore atheism is a religion.
The use of beliefs is not exclusive enough. As in the following example:
All apples are fruits.
A pear is a fruit.
Therefore a pear is an apple.
The argument that Atheism is a religion gains strength as Atheists start acting more like members of a religion. Proselytizing and demanding equal space in an area set aside specifically for Religious speech being two examples.
As far as the laws of physics go, this is correct. However, you might find Werner Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy quite interesting. In part, based on Heisenberg's thoughts I have concluded that there is a fundamentally symbiotic relationship between non-scientific philosophy (and for that matter theology) and science, and that science cannot survive without the other.
Who was the first one to tell us that all matter was made up of energy? Hint: More than two thousand years before Einstein.....
That isn't much of a case for religion there, however.
The fact is that the laws of physics are not simply attempts by human beings to describe the universe. Werner Heisenberg (the one who came up with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) placed the process much closer to the attempt to project meaning onto the universe, insofar as data does not really imply theory (theory is what you get when you project your own ideas onto the data). In this regard the basic process is fundamentally in common with religious thought, though the structure of inquiry may be different.
Many Buddhists are atheists, but some are not. Some Taoists are pantheists, others are atheists. Hence atheism is an approach to religion rather than a religion in itself. Many world religions may accept atheists as members. I am not even sure it would be fundamentally impossible to be a Hindu and an atheist at the same time.
It isn't a matter that "not collecting stamps is a hobby" in the sense that no atheists have religion, but rather that atheism is an approach to one (and only one) religious question-- the existance and nature of the divine. As I have said, in the Modern, Western world, secular humanism is just a secularized form of Christian humanism.
Actually the tradition of splurging for Yule goes way back to Heathen Northern Europe. The idea was that splurging with the best things one has saved up will bring prosperity in the new year. So as one who follows and seeks to be like Odin, I see this sort of thing as a religious duty ;-)
Well, some of us know the Flying Spaghetti Monster's true identity.....
I think NAMBLA is more likely to be picking the sign for the U.S. Catholic Church.
I'm curious how far this inclusiveness goes. Starting with the least absurd (in my opinion) and moving towards the most absurd (in terms of permitting these on public property), how can we, in principle, distinguish between permitting the following:
(1) Merry Christmass!
(2) Jesus is the reason for the season
(3) Allah wishes you a happy new year
(4) Xenu wishes you a happy new year
(5) There is no god
(6) The flying spaghetti monster wishes you a joyous holiday season
(7) Chocolate cake is the best kind of cake
This is mostly directed at Somin: which of these should be permitted on public grounds, and which (if any) excluded? Are these distinguished by the critical mass of adherents? I can't see any semantic difference, except that (1) expresses an intention of the author and (7) could be (implausibly) written off as a different kind of pre-rational belief.
This is why Muslims are so instransigent, they know there is no reasoning with the other.
There can be no joy in Mudville. Every act5 is a political act. Just hope the Christians don't go all fundamentalist on you.
Your attitude seems to be, "Gosh there are so many religions and they can't all be right! So what's the use in even trying to figure it all out?" A great moment in intellectual bravery! No other field of intellectual endeavor would accept this attitude as a ground rule.
And, for the record, I have, in fact been to India, and for the specific purpose of conducting such a quest. I thought I'd find the answer there, but as it turned out, my trip around the world instead led me to Catholicism.
If atheism is true, what is the atheist's ultimate reward for being correct? Nothing whatsoever. What is the theist's cost for being wrong? Nothing whatsoever. Even if the atheist is 99.999% probable of being correct, his reward is zero.
The math on the other side: If Christian theism is true, what is the theist's ultimate reward for being correct? Everything. What is the atheist's ultimate cost for being wrong? Everything.
Pascal's Wager is not a proof of anything. However, it is an encouragement to be prudent in placing the benefit of the doubt. Atheist arguments seem pretty good as long as you've already assumed atheism. Assume theism as far as giving it the benefit of the doubt, and things look starkly different. Such being the case, where would a spiritually sane person place his bets?
The closest parallel would be a banner over the creche reading, "Jews are retards for rejecting Christ."
I can't agree with Smokey's tone, but I think his point is sound. "Religion" does not require a church, a holy book, or belief in a deity. Atheism is one religious belief system which, in common with certain other such systems, asserts that no deities exist. Welcome aboard. Feel free to mingle with the other passengers.
FWIW, I don't think agnostics should be automatically lumped in with atheists. They may self-identify as atheists, or maybe not. That's up to them.
It is absolutely sheer insanity, as well as a psychological impossibility, to decide what one will believe by this kind of reasoning. One can, however, attempt to rationalize one's beliefs this way.
There are no gods,
no devils, no angels,
no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world.
Religion is but
myth and superstition
that hardens hearts
and enslaves minds.
If there is variety among atheists and among agnostics, then surely one has to accept that there is also variety among theists.
F'rinstance, you'll find plenty of theists who would rather prove that everyone believes in something in a quite explicitly mindful manner.
Your argument only holds if you assign absolutely no value to truth, outside of what it can get you in practical terms. That's not absurd, but I don't think it's typical. It's especially questionable in the context of a bunch of people arguing over what's true and what's not.
I will never visit Pluto, but I think knowing Pluto exists is better than not knowing, and knowing Pluto to be lifeless is better than mistakenly believing it to be bountiful. With some hand waving to allow for being mistaken. I think my valuation on these points is pretty ordinary, even among those who will also not visit Pluto.
Moreoever, there is practical value in believing atheism, in the joy of using your mind and being true to your self. We might disagree whether this is "a sense of accomplishment" or "smugness", but it feels good and that's of benefit. Some people do academic work in pursuit of the same benefit; is it irrational for a person to study a subject he doesn't expect to apply in life? I once read a book about the history of salt taxation in India; was that wrong? I do not, btw, mean to suggest that theists do not use their minds.
Shorter: truth is its own reward, and falsehood is its own cost.
Ever wonder why Christmas was placed on the calendar to coincide with Saturnalia, Yule, and the birth of Mithra?
for pete's sake. we have this frigging discussion over and over again. the same points get hashed over.
google it.
atheism is a religion (specifically strong atheism).
weak atheism is not, nor is agnosticism.
Smug self-satisfaction?
Actually, I am glad you found spiritual fulfilment in your quest. Of course, being a polytheist, I don't have to deny other religions' validity.
I would furthermore point out that although I disagree with many points of Catholicism (which are irrelevant to this post), I think the overall approach is not too bad.
this issue has been discussed ad nauseum and there is a name for the two flavors of atheism.
the first paragraph is weak atheism. saying you don't believe there is a god is weak atheism. it is also NOT a religion/belief system.
the second is strong atheism. saying you KNOW there is no god, is a religion/belief system.
strong v. weak atheism. well established distinction and ENDLESSLY wanked over in the past.
false analogy.
strong atheism (the brand of atheism that is a religion) does not merely NOT engage in theism.
it claims knowledge that god does NOT exist.
that is completely disanalogous to your above example.
I am not sure I follow you. In my tradition (as in Hinduism) we get a choice of gods to follow and a choice on how to follow them. This can help us be true to ourselves.
The second problem with your argument has to do with the concept of truth and knowledge. I will agree with you 100% that if scientific knowledge and material fact are the main measures of truth, then atheism is probably accurate. However, if we don't define truth about the divine to be in the same category as "there is a tree in my back yard" then the argument falls apart.
If "There is a god" is in the same category as that statement, I will argue that "there is a god" is false and you might find this to be an atheistic common ground. However, in any meaningful way, those statements are not in the same category. The gods and myths of whatever religions we follow (including both secular and Christian humanism) provide patterns for our own thoughts and actions.
So I would put statements like "There is a god" in the same category as "She has a tender heart." In terms of material facts, neither one makes a lot of sense but both statements are meaningful in other ways and once we get beyond the questions of material fact, we can determine whether or not they are true on a different sense.
The positive celebratory message, in the spirit of the season, would have been "Happy Winter Solstice". But instead this group put up a sign that demeaned and denigrated the beliefs of others. The public officials not censoring it is good for public discourse though, because by letting them put up the message they wanted, the true nature of this atheist group is shown for one and all to see. And that is the purpose of the First Amendment after all.
You need to get your distinguisher fixed.
Show me that there are millions of believers in your absurd green-hat God, and show me a library of books arguing for his existence and examining his nature based on philosophy, history, science, theology, and human experience, and I'll concede that you have a cogent point. Otherwise, not.
Thanks for the response. If you are a polytheist (a much more sensible position than atheism), then aren't you inherently denying monotheism, and hence the validity of monotheistic religions? Also, are you truly a polytheist, or more someone that believes that all the various gods are different masks of the divine unity (something more like Hinduesque pantheism)?
Perhaps a better phrasing would have been: "I see the personality traits of these nut cases to be indistinguishable from those of Fred Phelps." On the basis that they seem incapable of letting others choose how to live lives in the public space.
To those whose fate is eventual non-existence, nothing you've stated counts as an ultimate reward. All of the rewards you name can only be entirely fleeting if atheism is true.
I confess that I have a thirst for the "ultimate big win". It is simply not possible for an atheist to enjoy eternal vindication as an atheist. He will either find out he was utterly (perhaps disastrously) wrong, or he will cease to exist. Theism offers the possibility of a "victory dance in the eternal endzone", as well as providing the benefits you've listed (after all, it's not as if the theist doesn't also use his mind to the utmost, enjoy studying creation, and enjoy being true to himself). The type of atheism that results in public displays saying "Religion is but myth and superstition" is absurd, since it is based on the bald assertion of a universal negative, as well as an outright confession of ignorance (according to the judgment of anyone who has taken a deep look at both sides of the question; as far as I'm concerned, folks that assert that religion is but myth and superstition are theological know-nothings, whose ignorance is deep enough to include the fact of their ignorance).
It would be one thing if atheism had a 99.999% chance of being correct. However, I wouldn't even grant it a 50% chance of being correct. But even if it had a 70% chance of being correct, considerations of risk/reward would militate against it. Those who take the risk/reward considerations seriously ought to consider theism to be a very live possibility and seek out the strongest arguments in its favor, and see how they hold up to arguments against it. Many who do find that it becomes much more intellectually acceptable, and judge it as being much more probable than they originally thought.
For myself, I've found that atheist arguments seem somewhat convincing if you've already assumed atheism. And I've found that theist arguments seem even more convincing if you allow yourself the assumption of theism. Risk/reward considerations break the tie.
That and the possibility of eternal vindication. So why set your sights low only to win small?
The alternatives are fleeting victory (atheism is true and you're an atheist), fleeting defeat (atheism is true and you're a theist), monumental defeat (theism is true and you're an atheist), or totally bitchin' kick-ass unending glory.
As for me and my house, we'll take door number 2.
I was not very clear in my writing about being true to one's self. I just mean that acting on your beliefs is more satisfying that acting in opposition to them. And I don't suggests that theists can't be true to themselves too.
I like your point about the difference between "there is a tree in my back yard" and "she has a tender heart", but I don't see the same key distinction between them that you do. It's not about material versus immaterial, it's about objective versus subjective. A statement about tenderness is actually a statement about how the person (or group of people) making the statement judges things; it's subjective. A statement about a tree's existance is sensical independent of whoever makes the statement; it's objective. Similarly, the statement "1+1=2" is objective even though it's immaterial; it is sensical and means the same thing whoever says it, even though there is no material 1 or 2. "1+1=3" is immaterial too, and we know its wrong because we evaluate it in objective terms.
Plato, btw, would disagree with me.
As most people mean it, the statement "there is a god" is objective too. It is not a statement about how the speaker judges things, it's a statement that a self-aware and very powerful entity exists and interacts with the world. That existance might not be material, but it is still defined in objective terms and still subject to truth as strictly as the existence of a tree.
Or do you mean something more like "we ought to believe in a god" or "the ideals represented by a god are virtuous"? That sort of statement really is more like "she has a tender heart", but it's entirely separate from whether that god exists.
Are you arguing that it is a good idea to believe in god, or that god is real?
Great questions, for which I am not 100% sure of my answers. Any simple answer leads to more problems than it solves. For example, if I believe in absolute reality of my gods, then the question becomes whether Thorr and Indra (and for that matter Zeus) are the same god or not and if not, whether they multiply like amoebas as cultures bifurcate. If they are the same god, we end up with questions as to how we come to understand them.
Furthermore, we can run into questions of whether the Zeus/Apollo/Demeter oath formula of the Greeks, the Odin/Thorr/Freyr formula of the Norse, and the Christian trinity are all existentially the same (note that there are genetic connections between these formulae). If we assert that they are, then we run into questions which complicate things and if not, then we run into other problems.
If I had to provide an answer (this may make a lot of sense to you as a Catholic particularly if you have studied historical theology) I would say that the divine is an impersonal nature, of which the gods function as hypostases as the result of essentially a structural language formed by the mythic tradition (and hence religions function like languages of the soul). I suppose that makes my intellectual beliefs somewhat patheistic.
However, as much as that provides a basis for comparative studies, it is not very helpful in understanding life. In terms of practical religion, I see the gods as very much "real" and that they ignore the boundaries we see in the modern world of psyche vs mundi.
Risk/reward enters into the question of how much effort to put into the investigation of the question, and how open minded to be to theistic evidence/arguments, as well as how skeptical to be toward atheistic arguments. The goal being fair-mindedness. I find that all too many evangelical atheists are rather close-minded to theistic evidence/arguments and rather unskeptical toward atheistic arguments. They act as if the whole question is far more cut-and-dried in their favor than it actually is.
IMHO, it is far more rational to believe that God is real than to believe that he isn't.
I am not myself presenting specific arguments that God is real. Instead I am arguing for folks to take the question a hell of a lot more seriously than spouting off that "religion is but myth and superstition", which only illustrates to me that they haven't taken the question seriously at all, besides, perhaps, reading their Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, et al.
You have some good points there. However, suppose getting back to my examples:
"There is a tree in my back yard" has a meaning in the same sense that "1 + 1 = 2." In both cases, we can take the words or symbols at face value, and apply them in a material sense. If I say "she has a tender heart" I don't mean that in the same sense that "This stewed deer heart is really tender! Good job, chef!" "Heart" in the sentence does not refer to something which has a material applicability. In the second sentence, it is used in the same way as "tree" in my original example.
On the whole, we mean something fundamentally more abstract, as to the character of a person. And this abstraction is only imperfectly applied to material words "heart." Furthermore, this application is very subjectively based. "Heart" has different connotations in Hebrew, for example, then it does in English, for example. And if I translate the Indonesian phrase "Hati-hati" (meaning "Caution!") literally, I get "Livers!" In order to agree with Plato's theory of Ideas in this way, one would have to make those ideas contingent on language, which somewhat defeats the purpose (and brings us around to Kant but that is another matter).
So the point is that "she has a tender heart" is a sentence where the physical meaning of the words is not quite served by what we really mean. "There is a god" similarly seems to be another case where, if we are intellectually honest, must be in the same category if it is to be a valid statement.
I don't doubt that most people say "I believe in God" in a way which suggests that they see statements about God to be in the same category as statements about the physical nature of the tree out my window. However, many of these people can be proven wrong in the sense that one ends up having to choose between fundamental structural inconsistencies.* Furthermore, you are correct about most religions forcing people to choose between their understanding of right and wrong in a human sense and their understanding in a religious sense.
* For example, Christians say that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and benevolent. They say that he sent his son to the world to deliver humanity from sin, and that belief in the ideas of Christianity is required to obtain this promise. However, if we are to believe this, why only save really the people in the old Roman Empire? Why would people from other parts of the world have to wait longer for such deliverance? Since most people believe in the religions of their parents, why make Christianity and hence a positive afterlife a matter of a lucky birth? Is this really benevolent or just?
just because these topics were discussed before, doesn't mean that the matter is settled. nor does it mean that your belief on how the argument went is how the argument actually went.
Have you read "The Everlasting Man" by Chesterton? If not, you might find it quite fascinating, as it examines (in splendid language), the relationship between the various polytheistic myths and the Incarnate God-Man of Christianity. The idea being that while God provided a direct revelation to the Jews via the Old Testament, he also provided an indirect, intuitive (and somewhat murky) revelation to the gentiles via polytheistic mythology. Eventually, Christianity would finally synthesize the revelations of both Athens and Jerusalem in the definitive revelation (via God becoming Man) of the New Testament. It's a great book!
Given that you believe in a higher realm of archetypes you might be greatly fascinated by the book "Meditations on the Tarot" by an anonymous author. The book is quite esoteric and "deep" and rocked my world about a decade and a half ago. It brought me from a state of India-influenced pantheism to full-bore Catholicism, by completing and then utterly transcending my pantheistic, archetypic understanding. Honestly, the book is nothing short of thermonuclear. It's the real juice.
Just noting the math side of our discussion only holds up if we are using the same assmumption that we are talking integer arithmetic (floating point arithmetic is another matter).
Might be an interesting book, but have you considered the influence that Platonism and Neoplatonism had in the early church and how many of these parallels might be better explained by borrowings? Plato, for example, first formulated the Trinity, and Georges Dumezil has largely shown how homologous structures have their roots in older Greek religion (F. M. Cornford also suggested that most Greek philosophical thought had its origins in the religious thought-- this too largely means that any Christian philosophy derived from Plato via St Augustine or even earlier sources, or from Aristotle via St. Aquinas are ultimately pagan in origin).
Perhaps in the end, the quest is more important than the path.
Now, even if the choice was between "no god" and "god", here comes the subtle hole. If I say that I believe in god because of the Pascal's Wager analysis, do I really believe, or am I just claiming to, perhaps falsely. And won't this powerful entity know if I am lying? (I may fool even myself, but not Him/Her/Whoever/Whatever).
(Now I best stop, lest I start into the "possibly proper litany", a satire of political correctness written before political correctness was even named as such.)
It is amazing what the Western Mystery Tradition has to offer, is it not?
A lot of people look Eastward in search of what they think does not exist in Europe, but it does exist as you discovered.
Ok, I will one-up you. There is a growing understanding that pre-literate cultures organize their knowledge of the world, society, etc. through mythology and hence religion. There may be hence an evolutionary advantage to be open to religious thought over a hundred thousand years that a few thousand years with writing cannot erase. It seems quite possible to my mind that the religious experience points towards something we might be able to consider "real" and has positive benefit to society and the individual.
At very least, I would argue that the divine is as real and as meaningful as love, and even if one can reduce both experiences to chemical pathways in the brain, you can't get rid of the deep personal meaning, can you?
It's not, but it is funny.
This is a silly distinction. There is no equating the belief that there is no God for which there is no justifiable evidence, with the belief that there is a God for which there is no justifiable evidence. My strong belief that there are no unicorns is not a religion, as it is premised upon by the utter and absolute lack of any evidence of the existence of unicorns. If anything, this is merely a handy rhetorical trick for religious believers who want to demean atheist arguments.
Suppose I don't believe that I'll win the lottery. Suppose someone could convince me that I'll be a lot happier if I believe I'll win the lottery. Maybe I'll live longer. Does this justify believing I'll win the lottery? Or is only evidence that I will in fact win the lottery justification for believing that?
At least for me, it is not psychology possible for me to believe something absent evidence that it is in fact true. I am simply incapable of it, no matter how much I may believe it will benefit me to believe something.
In any event, the dispute between theists and atheists, to the extent there is one, is over whether the theistic claims are true. Many atheists will readily concede that some people are better off believing in God and society is better off with some people having such a belief.
Perhaps. However you didn't get to my main points which involve meaning. Once we get to points involving meaning we can get to questions of truth. See my point about the sentence of "she has a tender heart" vs "that beef heart is very tender and well cooked, thank you."
If I say "she has a tender heart" it probably has absolutely nothing to do with her physical heart, and hence you may argue that I have no way, absent cannibalism, of determining whether she has a tender heart. But that would be missing the point. In the end we must define meaning before we can assess truth.
BTW, I think the general theist claims about specific deities having an existence independent of our traditions is wrong (and the same sort of misunderstanding mentioned above). However one might eventually conclude that this could lead to pantheism as easily as atheism, but the question comes back to in what way the experience of the divine suggests some form of reality behind it. I dont think one can simply dispute the validity of the experience because you don't like the conclusions, but at the same time, most of the conclusions out there are problematic.
If you have an actual argument or point to make, I haven't detected it.
ray_g,
All that Pascal's Wager asks you to do is to take the question seriously. You'll have to use your noggin to figure out what the true religion is. And in the event you reach the point that you could go either way on the question, the Wager may help clarify things. It is not intended for the atheist who has convinced himself of a universal negative. Another premise of the Wager is that giving faith the benefit of the doubt and living as if God were real will most probably result in spiritual contact with God, confirming that choosing faith was the right move. At least to the inner sense, God then becomes an empirical fact rather than merely the conclusion of an argument.
An atheist denying that such an inner sense can perceive God as an empirical reality carries about as much argumentative weight as a blind person denying the existence of colors. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
"Meditations On The Tarot" discusses the Platonist/Neoplatonist question pretty extensively...
It is amazing how one man living 2500 years ago can shape theological discussions so much regarding every religion in the modern world. Even Mahayana Buddhism and Vedantic Hinduism show Platonic influence.
Since you probably have studied the Tarot and Platonic philosophy to some extend, what do you think of the correspondences between some of Plato's images (for example the chariot of the soul drawn by the good/bad horse pair in Phaedrus) and images on most tarot decks?
Does God exist in the same way as colors? Since colors are how we perceive a different underlying reality (certain frequencies of light), are colors entirely in our mind?
If some people told a blind man that the object in his hand was green, and some red, and some invisible, and some ultraviolet, and some polka-dotted, I would not be surprised if the blind man rejected claims about color. He might conclude that people who claim to experience color really do experience something, but he shouldn't conclude that they are correct about the nature of their experiences.
Matteo: My point is that you have no point. Pascal's Wager is simply a threat -- "believe or else bad things will happen to you". It has no place in rational debate which seeks to determine what is actually true and not whether it is to our advantage to believe various things independent of their truth.
Yes, if someone points a gun to my head and insists that I claim to believe in god, I will make that claim. But if someone points a gun to my head and insists I do believe in god, what can I do? Rational people's brains don't work that way.
So, in this regard, you have largely shown that my objection doesn't apply to Abrahamic religious thought. But what about Mahayana Buddhist thought, or Taoist thought? I would argue that these traditions are open to the ambiguities I am trying to elucidate.
For that matter, I argue that even polytheistic religions pose that problem.
If you want to say "I don't believe in the Abrahamic thesis" that is one thing, but if you want to then generalize to non-Abrahamic religions, and argue that the case unconditionally generalizes, then that is not valid IMO.
I would say whit's "strong atheism" is distinguished by the desire of its adherents to convert others. "Live and let live" atheists are "weak;" Richard-Dawkins-type atheists are "strong."
This reminds us that many religions lack a God or gods, and still operate perfectly well. Confucianism, for example. This suggests that atheism could indeed be a religion, provided that it had a system of beliefs.
Pascal's Wager a threat? What, if you don't listen to it the Wager is going to come after you with brass knuckles? The Wager only asks you to take the question seriously and evaluate it soberly, with the benefit of the doubt correctly placed. That's it. It is not in itself an argument for God. It invites you to consider such arguments with an open mind. It does not assert the existence of God as a truth. If you are so damned sure of atheism it has nothing to offer you. Interesting, though, that you feel threatened by it.
You're like a person who sees a sign that says "Danger: Thin ice." and responds, "I'll be damned if I'm going to obey anything that threatens me with an ice-cold dunking if I don't heed it! I WILL NOT BE THREATENED!!!" Well fine. But you just might find yourself getting dunked anyway.
If it is logically possible that you could f*ck up your eternity via an ill thought-out rejection of God then I can't see what's wrong with the Wager.
In any case the Wager is addressed to seekers who haven't quite found yet, not to scoffers who sit in smug assurance of a universal negative. If you are 100% certain of yourself, then more power to you.
"Since you probably have studied the Tarot and Platonic philosophy to some extend, what do you think of the correspondences between some of Plato's images (for example the chariot of the soul drawn by the good/bad horse pair in Phaedrus) and images on most tarot decks?"
That's a good question that I do not have a ready answer for. The Meditations book does get into the exceedingly deep archetypical symbolism of the Tarot deck and ties it to all sorts of things from "golden Dawn"-style Hermeticism, through Neo-Platonism, through the Kaballah, to the Christian Revelation. I probably would need to reabsorb myself in that work before I'd have anything specific and intelligent to say. For me it became a jumping off point for embracing Catholicism, so detailed knowledge of Tarot or Neoplatonism are not really part of my "mental furniture" at this point.
"Does God exist in the same way as colors? Since colors are how we perceive a different underlying reality (certain frequencies of light), are colors entirely in our mind?"
Another good question. Science can tell us about the wavelength and quantum energy level of yellow light, as well as which elements and compounds can radiate it or reflect it, but it cannot tell us the tiniest thing about what the color yellow looks like. How it looks is a strong primary fact about reality that science is in principle incapable of addressing. Consciousness and sense perception within consciousness are operations on the spiritual plane. Since God is a spiritual being, perhaps there is a kind of correspondence. Colors objectively exist, but are only ultimately perceived in a spiritual operation. God objectively exists as a spiritual being, and can be perceived spiritually by those whose interior faculties have been awakened by God via the act of faith. Absent the awakening of these faculties by God via the act of faith, a person will only see what the atheist sees. That is, nothing. Which, perhaps, is precisely what the atheist wants to see, given his unwillingness to make the act of faith and his unwillingness to carefully consider reasons why the act of faith would be a rational choice (and being willing to be convinced of such; in my case a friend helped me by asking me to temporarily pretend that all of the theological arguments and descriptions I was reading were true. This allowed me to finally allow the arguments to sink in enough to see that the whole thing held together pretty well. Absent this willingness to believe, I would have disparaged each particular argument individually and never seen the forest for the trees. Once I saw how it all hung together I was on firm enough ground to try honestly making the act of faith, with the resultant awakening of interior spiritual perception).
In my opinion, to find atheist arguments at all convincing, and to find theistic arguments wholly unconvincing, one must already have settled the question in advance of the investigation. God exists. He can be known to exist. Anyone who wants to find Him and thirsts to find Him will find Him.
Good way or not, if promoting is the intention then it has no business on public property.
I prefer the Walt Kelly interpretation: If good fellowship and the brotherhood of man is the program, then I as an atheist want to be at the party.
If the religionists can stand 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,' they should be able to handle a Christmas card with an atheist sentiment.
As I said before, perhaps the quest is more important than the path. Also I will confess that my interest in Platonism (as an Indo-Europeanist) would probably be different from yours (as a Catholic). I.e. I am more interested in comparisons of structures to Vedic, Norse, Iranian, and Celtic sources than I am how things have survived in Christainity. So perhaps the Tarot question was unfair.
The existance of colors question though is really interesting. The fact is that, from a scientific perspective, colors don't exist in themselves in any reasonable way. Yet we perceive them. From a scientific perspective, God probably doesn't "exist" either. ("Exist" in scare quotes because I am not sure the statement is meaningful in this context).
I have yet to meet a Theist who believes literally that there is a God who resides up in the sky (i.e. heavens), nor have I met an atheist who denies the existence of colors. Perhaps the discussion needs some adjustment....
What makes "Atheism" "a religion" any more than "monotheism?"
Would you say that monotheism is "a religion?"
Would you say that pantheism is "a religion?"
Would you say that polytheism is "a religion?"
Secular humanism may be "a religion" but atheism is an approach to religious thought. It is not "a religion" any more than the above examples are. One can be an atheist Buddhist, or an atheist Confucian, just as you can be a monotheistic Christian or a monotheistic Muslim.....
People have been arguing the merits of theism vs atheism since before the time of Plato. No, I don't expect to convince you of anything, and no, I don't expect that this argument will accomplish anything more than both sides having fun. After all, what can be said now that hasn't been said in the last two and a half millenia?
kant covered this stuff pretty extensively. take it from a philosophy major : noumena vs. phenomena (color would be the latter) etc.
some other points. how do you know god "probably" doesn't exist (from a scientific or any other basis)? i really don't want to get into statistics and probability, let alone game theory, but i see no justification for such a statement.
the problem with such metaphysical wanks is that we have no "ground" to stand on. we can't assign probability (or even likely or less likely) because we don't have a sample.
iow, we don't have 100 universes that exist without god, and 50 that exist with a god, therefore it's more likely than not... given a universe... that god doesn't exist.
we can;t step outside our frame of reference because that's all we have ever had.
it's metaphysical wank. we'll find out when we die. or we won't (cause if we don't have an afterlife, there will be no we there to find out...)
all we KNOW is that we (or actually, all i know is that *i* exist) exist.
we have *no* way of knowing if stuff can exist without a prime mover or not. we have no way of assigning probability.
we know stuff exists. we have no idea how it could exist (iow if a god is required to make stuff or not).
you can make a leap of faith and say ... god(s) did it
or take a leap of faith and say god(s) did NOT do it.
either is necessarily a leap of faith, and a belief system. it's definitional.
saying "i don't know" or "it is not possible for me to know given the available data" is not a belief system.
it's really that simple.
it's not "my" strong atheism. for pete's sake. google it. these are not my invented terms.
they are a way to differentiate a belief sytem (god does not exist) which falls under atheism, with a non-belief (i don't believe in god).
saying you don't believe in god is NOT the same thing as saying god does not exist. that's just basic elementary logic.
you can be a strong athieist and have no desire whatsoever to convert anybody. you are simply not understandign what the terms mean. google if you need more explanation. i've provided it as clearly as i can.
i didn't "equate" them . nor do the millions of others who use these terms. i didn't invent them. they are merely descriptive of what exists in the world. equating means i am assigning them equal value. i did not. i merely said they are both belief systems because by definition they are. they require a leap of faith into the unknown.
example: assume two futures trading systems. one chooses positions based on whether a commercial is on channel 5. in other words, go short when there is a commercial and stay short until it's over then go long. that's a trading system. assume another that uses analysis of the NYSE tick, the NYSE trin, the putcall ratio, pit information (i get an audio feed from the spooz pit), market profile development, and sector rotation. they are both trading systems. acknowledging that they are both trading systems doesn't EQUATE them. one may be excellent and the other completely stupid.
whether or not there is "justifiable evidence" is of course purely your opinion. but it's largely irrelevant.
what is clear is that "stuff exists"... like a universe man!
and it is a natural question (i am not aware of any society on earth that has not asked it and pondered it extensively)... to ask why? how? etc.
we have no way of knowing if universes can exist without god(s) since we can't step outside our frame of reference.
we do know ours exists, and we do know god(s) either exist or they don't, as a direct cause of ours.
you can make a leap of faith and say: god(s) did it.
or make a leap of faith and say god(s) didn't do it
or you can say "i don't believe in god" or "i don't know if god exists" which requires no leap of faith, and is thus not a belief system/religion.
you can make a leap of faith and say ... god(s) did it
or take a leap of faith and say god(s) did NOT do it.
either is necessarily a leap of faith, and a belief system. it's definitional.
this is little more than a rephrasing of the god in the gaps theory. it is only persuasive to those who already believe in god(s). if this was already as extensively discussed as you say, then you should already know this.
When a person says, "your wife is cheating on you", it is irrational to respond, "how interesting, you've just stated a logical proposition that may or may not be true". We understand what when a rational English speaker says "your wife is cheating on you", he means (roughly) "I have reason to believe that your wife is in fact cheating on you". A statement of a claim is in fact vouching for it, and vouching for a claim includes vouching for its meaningfulness and specificity.
If these claims are ambiguous to the point where they are not capable of being true (or even denying a set of facts that is capable of being true), then they are false claims.
A claim implicitly also claims to claim something.
What I am really saying is that the scientific perspective is circumscribed by an assumption of atheism. This doesn't mean that scientists are not able to be theists, nor does it mean that they can't draw from religious frameworks in the building of theories, but that such theories are circumscribed by an assumption of natural mechanism. For "God" to "exist" in a "scientific" way, we would have to redefine one or more of those terms.
Hope this helps.
As I say, theoretically I am a pantheist, but in practical religion, I am a polytheist.
Note that miracles would be outside the scope of scientific inquiry.
Ok..... So you are an atheist from the perspective of popular views of God, but an agnostic as to other possibilities?
Just seeing if I correctly understand you.
Also, I am not a Catholic, though I understand similar reasoning to be behind the Catholic doctrine of Non-Overlapping Magisteria.
The problem with gaps theory is that a lot of things don't properly fall.
From a scientific perspective, the assumption is that of a lack of knowledge. I.e. "we don't understand this so therefore there must be a natural mechanism we don't understand." Note though, that there is a debate among certain groups of quantum physicists whether this assumption holds true for quantum probability matters (are, say, electron spins like dice in the sense that they behave according to natural mechanisms? Or are they "strictly probabilistic").
However, this assumption from a scientific perspective, IMO, only works for things which are valid subjects of scientific inquiry. If a miracle occurs, that is not properly subject to the scientific method and therefore one may have to fall back on other assumptions.
The point is that different categories of phenomena may demand different assumptions.
I guess the question is what you assume to be just before what we can be reasonably certain of from a scientific perspective. However, let me throw out an alternative idea for you.
Suppose that the universe as we are capable of perceiving it is a product of our own perception. Let us further suppose that although large developments generally behave according to predictable rules which we can understand, occasional, personal events do not. It seems that in these cases, personal religious faith makes a lot of sense as does the idea that the mechanisms of the universe are natural and that scientific inquiry as to the origin of the universe is also valid.
I am an agnostic, but find the attitude of SOME of those who profess to be atheists (the "Brights" for example) rather offputting, at times arrogantly condescending, and, to be honest, incredibly intolerant.
So ARCraig, please enlighten us all, especially we agnostics who'd just love to get our butts off the fence, with the "facts" that rationally prove beyond any doubt that there is no God.
You've made a strong claim, so it should be straight forward, right?
Maybe not, Hah?
I think your statement is based on giving theistic claims special treatment. For example, if someone said "I've considered the possibility of a luminiferous aether and have rejected it", would you respond, "well, all the popular views of a luminiferous aether, but what about other views of a luminiferous aether?"
Either "luminiferous aether" means something or it does not. If it means something, then I've rejected that something. If it doesn't mean something, then I can't possibly accept that something since there would be no something, so what would you even be asking about?
But I reject the agnostic position on anything. I don't believe it's logically possible for something to be both a continuously true meaningful statement about the state of affairs in our universe and be demonstrably unprovable. (Explaining precisely why would probably exceed the scope of this blog or any relevancy to this subject, it gets into deep notions of what it means for something to be 'true'.)
You need to get out more.
To be more precise: as there are non-theistic religions, so could there be atheistic religions, because belief in god is not essential to a religion's existence.
whit's post introduced the concepts to this discussion, as well as to me. And googling is a low yield way to learn about anything.
Ok. There are two questions here:
1) Existence of the divine.
2) Form of the divine.
It seems that rational inquiry would start of asking if there is something behind the worlds' religions without addressing the question of form, and then, if this pans out, moving to the form question. In short the inquiry should be:
1) Can we show that there is or is not something behind the religions of the world? (the religions don't have to understand this correctly for the answer to be "yes"-- this is not a question of validating specific religious views.)
2) If there is, what form does it take? (This need not suggest that any religion is entirely correct either.)
In my opinion, most people go about this backwards. They start out by asking "Do I believe in the Christian model?" and then generalize that answer to theism vs atheism.
On question one, I would suggest reading The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto and Myth and Reality by Mircea Eliade. Both of these works are fairly strongly anthropological works rather than religious ones and help shape the discussion relating to the function and experience of religion. No, neither one is trying to convert you to anything and both are fairly academic. Just to round this out with some additional background, Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy would also be worth reading to provide a different perspective.
My own view is that religion covers certain topics that are not readily subject to normal language. The works by Otto and Eliade provide some windows into this process.
If we can get on the same page regarding the first question we can address the second question which raises as many problems as the first.
However, like difficult problems, they probably have solutions.
True, it's an argument from authority, but what an authority!
Are these people sufficiently literalist to believe that the space shuttle might give concrete proof of God's existance?
I too know plenty of people who believe in one true religion. I think they are wrong, but none of them believe we can reach God in a rocket ship.....
it is staggering to me that people will argue a point without even doing BASIC research. iow, they form opinions, THEN do research to support that opinion. that is of course , backwards.
there is a qualitative difference between saying "i don't believe in god" and saying "god doesn't exist". that is intuitively obvious.
so, the concept of strong and weak atheism was developed. it's nothing new. people arguing about whether or not atheism is a belief system who don't understand the difference (whether or not they know the terms) are arguing from ignorance.
Without 2, we cannot investigate 1. We cannot ask "are there elves" and then say "ahh, so there are elves, now what are they?" This is another example of trying to give theistic claims a special status that no normal claim gets. No other claim gets its validity investigated before we try to figure out what it's claiming.
I hold theists to the same standards I hold those who make other existence claims. They must explain what it is they are claiming with sufficient specificity so that I can understand what it is they are claiming. If not, their claims are false because they violate the implicit claim that they are in fact claims.
absolutely false, when it comes to strong atheism. the scientific perspective does not assume "there is no god", any more than it assumes there is no bigfoot.
it doesn't assume the existence or nonexistence. it looks for evidence of stuff.
again, there is a big qualitative difference between strong and weak atheism.
what science doesn't do is see an effect, and ASSUME that god has anything to do with it. it looks for a rational basis to explain X.
absolutely false, when it comes to strong atheism. the scientific perspective does not assume "there is no god", any more than it assumes there is no bigfoot.
it doesn't assume the existence or nonexistence. it looks for evidence of stuff.
again, there is a big qualitative difference between strong and weak atheism.
what science doesn't do is see an effect, and ASSUME that god has anything to do with it. it looks for a rational basis to explain X.
In short, I claim:
1) There is something behind the divine or mystical experience.
2) This "something" defies our ability to comprehend in normal language.
3) This "Something" does not respect the boundary of inner vs outer, and hence is not a valid subject for scientific inquiry.
4) One function religious systems have is helping us comprehend this experience and hence bring us closer to what we experience of the divine. Religions function like language system in this regard.
Let's start here and see where we go....
Not formally, but there is an assumption that every phenomenon has a natural mechanism behind it, which effectively amounts to an absence of theistic activity in our world.
In reality, what this actually does is simply place things like miracles outside the scope of scientific inquiry.
For example, for your third claim, I think scientific inquiry is the only rational way to evaluate claims, whether inner or outer. Scientific inquiry is not just one tool, it is the toolbox. To put it another way, there is no other form of inquiry, and if there were one, its results would have no persuasive force because they would not contain any reasons to believe they were correct.
Your fourth claim assumes what you want to prove.
Am I a theist in your viewpoint? We certainly disagree, do we not? Or am I different because I don't believe what you are reacting against?
So unique, non-repeatable events which defy a natural mechanism explanation should be examined using a toolbox which was built for looking at natural mechanisms?
Furthermore, if you look at the development of the scientific method, it was almost entirely a reaction against the idea that an observer can discover truth by observing itself. Hence inward reality is not subject to scientific inquiry in the way that psychological behavior is (see Carl Jung, Synchronicity for more on this problem).
No. You wanted some claims we could address. All claims here are built on the ones which come before. I.e. unless we are prepared to accept the first claim, none of the other claims are valid. The fourth claim largely assumes a set of things:
1) That the first three claims are valid and
2) That religion has some role relating to forming the specifics of the mystical experience.
So.....
What is your take on the mystical experience?
that is an entirely different thing than assuming there is no god. sorry.
for example, many claim that god works through the natural world and the natural laws that he created. thus, assuming a natural mechanism says NOTHING about god existing or not.
it is simply a false claim that science assumes god does not exist. it is correct to say that science makes no claim that god does exist.
furthermore, what is or isn't a "natural mechanism" has changed over time, especially with the discovery of quantum aspects of nature.
iow, science is not a "strong atheist". i have yet to hear any scientist claim science has proven god does not exist.
your point is simply false. sorry.
again, not at all.
a TRUE miracle would exceed scientific inquiry, or else it wouldn't BE a miracle. i'm not aware of any "proven" miracles, fwiw.
it's largely tangential to the point. science is about a method. that method does not say "god does not exist". it makes no assumptions one way or the other about god.
individual scientists may come to different conclusions about god, but that's irrelevant to what the scientific method has to say about god - which is nothing at all.
...
However, this assumption from a scientific perspective, IMO, only works for things which are valid subjects of scientific inquiry. If a miracle occurs, that is not properly subject to the scientific method and therefore one may have to fall back on other assumptions.
The point is that different categories of phenomena may demand different assumptions.
so in other words, what you are saying is that miracles are proof that god(s) exist, if we assume that god(s) exists. this is not a very meaningful argument because it forces you to assume what you are trying to prove. in order for miracles to be proof of the existence of god, you have to show that god caused the miracle. you don't get to wave your hands in the air and say "therefore god must exist".
Yes.
Some of them are sufficiently literalist to believe that they could nominate Jesus for president of the United States and elect and seat him.
I suggest you spend some time with your radio listening to the show "To Every Man an Answer" presented by Calvary Chapel. There will be a station in your neighborhood, probably several. (6 out of about 24 in my county)
If there were a single once-only unique non-repeatable causal mechanism, we would lose very little by not understanding it. If there were frequent multiple non-repeating causal mechanisms, they would form a repeat by which we could understand them.
As for "natural mechanisms", it's not clear to me how you're using the word "natural".
I haven't had any mystical experiences. And nobody else has been able to describe their mystical experiences such that I have any idea what they're talking about. So I don't have a take on mystical experiences, except that I think most people are simply being credulous in order to justify beliefs that they have psychological attachments to.
I do know that people's mystical experiences have been used by different people to justify contradictory conclusions. So whatever they are, they are definitely not evidence of contradictory conclusions. Any mechanism that yields equally persuasive evidence for contradictory conclusions is not a valid way of providing evidence to support conclusions.
Ok, perhaps it is limited to any concept that I (or most other world religions) would recognize as God (and is explicitly outside what logical positivism finds meaningful).
I always thought Thomas Merton's point (as a Catholic) about mystics being more similar around the world than Catholics (yes he was including Buddhists too) might be fairly apt. I don't think Merton was merely justifying his prejudices since not all Buddhist mystics are theists anyway, at least not in any sense that makes sense to Christians.
Unfortunately, you have to pursue mystical experience via a religious path, this doesn't require belief but getting the experience does require effort.
My suggestion-- go to a silent Quaker meeting for a year. Don't worry about what you believe. Most Quakers probably won't be able to tell you what they believe in ways that will make sense to you anyway. Just spend an hour in silent meditation every week. Come back and maybe we can talk more.
BrianK:
Take the following two questions:
1) What is behind the mystical experience?
2) If I take two entangled electrons and separate them in a non-entangling way, does each electron have a definite spin?
In the first case, you run into problems approaching the matter with the scientific method because the question makes no sense from a logical positivist perspective.
In the second case, you can, and it does make sense.
For me proof of the divine is in the mystical experience. As an occultist, I do believe we can accomplish things that seem to violate the laws of physics, but that these are somewhat untestable from a scientific perspective because of the specific mechanism (manifestation of ideas along a path of least resistance) involved.
Atheism is not a religion by simple word usage. If I ask, "Are you religious," we expect an atheist to say "No," and indeed if asked by someone else "Is he religious," we would say, "No, he's an atheist."
When people say "Atheism is a religion" they don't actually mean what they literally say. Rather they mean something like, "Atheism is similar to religion in the ways that the atheists themselves are critical of." Now to make this clear and useful you really need to be more precisce about the way it is similar and so forth.
it's simply not an assumption (not God).
iow, science does not assume notgod(tm). it makes no assumption either way.
that is a HUGE difference.
just as the difference between strong and weak atheism is.
strong atheism has the primary attribute of weak atheism, fwiw, non-belief in god, but ALSO has a stronger belief , there IS NO GOD.
that *is* a leap of faith, and it is a belief system. and it does claim knowledge about that which the strong atheist has no certain knowledge, just as the theist has no certain knowledge.
it's really that simple.
for all we know (KNOW) there is no god, or there may be an actual dood with a grey beard and a slight case of acne. god only knows. science does not claim to know whether there is god or not. science does not even address that question. maybe one day it can. but it certainly can't now.
for pete's sake. there is no proof that god exists. it's a leap of faith. it's that simple. much like strong atheism is. which is a smarter leap of faith (if either is), is another question entirely. but there is no proof god exists (except my daughter's love, says live (the band)), and there is no proof he doesn't exist. therefore, either belief is a leap of faith.
i have no problem with strong atheism. i have a problem with strongatheists who are so devoid of logic (when it comes to their religion), that they can't admit the unavoidable truth. they claim knowledge about that which they have no knowledge.
Maybe I read more into the demarcation problem than you do, but the general criteria for science has historically been based on two prongs:
1) A proposition must be testable or at least falsifiable.
2) The proposition must address phenomena which are observable via the senses (though use of appropriate tools does not invalidate this rule).
This means certain sorts of questions are fundamentally excluded. This includes such things as an invisible, omnipresent, and omnipotent being, for example. Carl Jung makes a clear argument that it also excludes questions of the structure of the psyche because these violate the second prong (phenomena don't include the results of self-observation).
(Personally, I would demarcate science in such a way that mathematics was excluded since that is basically a set of closed systems of deductive logic rather than a system of exploring any set of phenomena. Mathematics being useful to the sciences no more makes it a science than it does logic, of which it is a proper subset.)
exactly. therefore, it is not a leap of faith to say that god doesn't exist. it is a leap of faith to say that god does exist. no matter how many people may believe in something, saying that something does not exist in the face of absolutely no evidence that that something does exist is not a leap of faith.
it's the same way as unicorns, santa claus, tooth fairies, etc. saying that santa claus does not exist is not a belief system because there is no proof that he exists.
a simple "yes, god exists because i assume he exists" would have sufficed.
Not quite the distinction I would make.
Any of those statements could be an element of a belief system, but you don't have enough there to create a real system of belief out if it.
Atheism is not a religion because it doesn't tell me what you *actually* believe. You could be a Buddhist, a secular humanist, and/or a Taoist....
Why?
My belief is based on experience, not the other way around. Your view seems to be that you have never had a mystical experience, so I am providing a path for you to have one even absent revisiting your views. (Note: Quakers do not even have a formal creed, and so they are not even united in belief.)
Failing that, take up yoga. I don;t think you need to be a Hindu to get the benefits of that.
My view simply is that if you want an experience that might cause you to reconsider (note I did not say change your mind-- I have already noted that atheism and mysticism might not necessarily be mutually exclusive), this is the way to go. However, if you don't want to seek out such an experience in such a way that you don't first have to change your beliefs that is your choice. But then it is a matter of faith on your part rather than a rational search.
which again supports my point. you keep doing that, yet denying (or imo not understanding the point).
think long and hard about the difference between the two statements
1) god does not exist
2) i don't believe in god.
and get back to me. it's really that simple. there is a substantial difference between the two.
one is a statement about ultimate truth. (whcih can only be reached by a leap since there is not convincing proof either way). the other is a statement about how one parses the evidence and whether one decides to make a leap of faith to go beyond evidence.
it makes all the difference in the world. science does not assume (1). not at all. i've made it about as clear as i can.
Nobody else gets to say, "I see that you and I disagree, but if you follow this one year process, you'd agree with me". Everyone else presents evidence and argument.
A rational search?! It's rational to spend a year doing something because someone assures you that you will believe in pixies (which he can't explain) after that year? Seriously?!
I never said anything about belief. I was just saying it would help you challenge assumptions. That is all.
The point is that my belief in my own specific theory is based on two prongs, and currently we don't have anything we can talk about. The two prongs are:
1) The mystical experience (This is NOT the same as the religious experience, and it is NOT predicated even on belief IMO)
2) The function of religion relative to the mystical experience.
My views are not related to believing in things I can't experience. I figured we had that common ground at least.
My purpose was not to challenge your beliefs but rather offer you what you asked for, which was a description of the mystical experience so we could continue the dialog. I recommended the Quakers because they are the mystics I have known who are most welcome to those who "believe" "differently" and for whom "religious belief" is a phrase that probably doesn't apply to them anyway in the usual sense.
Personally, I don't *care* what you believe. I don't even think that belief has anything to do with an afterlife (religious traditions can help in other ways, but belief is irrelevant). However you have helped me see that you, like the vast majority of Theists I have met, believe what you do based on your own fears and prejudices, rather than an attempt to explore the subject. I suppose that is more of a human problem than a religious one though....
Right, because I haven't invested a year your way, I haven't explored the subject. All the explorations I've done of the subject were wrong, and if I'd just invest one more year your way, I'll see the error of my ways.
The first few times I heard claims from mystics and theists, I did investigate. I went to their churches, read their holy books, you name it. The next few times, I still did. And again. And again. Over and over.
At some point, am I allowed to say I've had enough? I mean, I try to keep an open mind. But how many times do I have to investigate the same claims that aren't even comprehensible?
I've earned the right to say, "Okay, that's enough. If you want my attention with a new variation on the same ideas that I've already investigated and found to not even be comprehensible, you have to come to me with evidence."
Ok. The only problem is that I am not convinced that the mystical experience can be reduced to simple words, and it certainly cannot be reduced to propositions acceptable to logical positivists.
Personally *I* am not certain what shape the divine takes in itself or even if it makes sense to assume that it is a being as opposed to, say, a higher level of order ("Heaven" to the Confucians), or even hidden capacities of the psyche (restricted to an inner god-self with some ability to shape elements around us).
I simply suggested that you look for such an experience without predicating it on belief. You might conclude for example, that there is nothing more to the experience than the effects of quiet on the mind, and that quiet meditative contemplation can provide breakthroughs but that these are simply neurological in nature. At least we would have something to talk about rather me being asked to undertake a task equivalent to defining colors to someone who has never seen them.
IMO, you have fallen into some of the traps of the scholastics of the Middle Ages by expecting truth to be something which can be found divorced from experience, and of which science was a reaction against.
Furthermore, I provided some ideas on how you could obtain such an experience. I hardly told you how to live your life any more than I might have if you told me that Siberian shamans didn't exist and I told you to tell me that after visiting them. Of course this is not exactly the same because I personally believe that the mystical experience is shaped to some extent by religious belief system and hence the experience is only the beginning rather than the end of the inquiry.
If you feel that I was giving you too few ideas, here are some others:
1) Take up Tai Chi and Chi Kung.
2) Take up Buddhist meditation techniques (just use the techniques, avoid studying the theory)
I think it would be interesting to see what sort of mystical experience an atheist would have, don't you? It might even help change some of my views and help us all move a little closer to a truer theory. Consider it a bit of a meta-scientific experiment.
THat is the problem that I am offering a solution to. Perhaps there are others, and certainly saying you don't want to find a way of comprehending the claims is one way forward :-)
Just a note that maybe such a thing is not worth your time and effort. That is fair. Truly understanding analytical topology is not worth my time and effort either. But at least it clarifies where we stand.
Honestly, I don't even know how I would know a mystical experience if I had one.
In any event, even assuming for the sake of argument that mystical experiences exist and if I followed your recipe I would have one, it still self-evident that they're not evidence of anything. Such experiences have led people to a variety of contradictory claims and provide no mechanism to filter the valid claims from the invalid claims. So to the extent they produce beliefs, they produce false beliefs at least as easily as they produce true ones.
So as a means to validate claims (other than, perhaps, that such experiences exist), mystical experiences are useless.
Why isn't this is precisely what you are asking me to do?
Not quite useless. I am not even sure we agree that mystical experiences exist. The next question becomes after that, whether there is something transpersonal and "real" behind them.
First, I was not asking you to do anything that would necessarily change your belief, just something that had the potential to challenge your assumptions. What you find on the other side may only be subtly different than what you find right now, but at least it would give us grounds to continue discussing the key questions.
Ok. Suppose instead I hand you a large pile of anthropology, psychology, and such texts. Would that be a better way forward? In which case, I recommend:
"Psycosynthesis" by Roberto Assaglioli (Clinical psychology) and
"The Idea of the Holy" by Rudolf Otto (comparative religion/anthropology).
Note that the drug question comes up sometimes in groups I do belong to. I think there is a fundamental difference between a disciplined act (routine meditation) and a rapid chemical effect (drugs). My biggest concern with drugs in a religious or mystical environment is the question of atrophy (something is easier to access, so one loses one's natural abilities). I also have concerns about losing critical thought when seeing drug experiences as legitimate.
But hey, if we want to talk about the nature of the drug experience itself, it helps if we both are talking about the same experience and presumably have had the same drugs.... Otherwise, as here, one side simply has no basis to understand the other.
My ex boyfriend's grandfather is a big time atheist. He actually went to meetings, so I wouldn't put it past them. It sounded pretty organized, having meetings. I wondered what in the heck they DO at the meetings?
"Hey Bob."
"Hey Larry."
"Still no God, eh?"
*sips coffee* "LOoks that way."
"How're the wife and kids?"
"Oh, they're doing good, ya know. Billy's getting A's and Sally's learning the violin. How about yours?"
"Eh, Marge got into a car accident but she's ok thank -- " *sheepish look* "Well, you know."
"Ya."
"Ya."
*sips coffee*
I can't imagine we would want signs saying Jesus is Lord and you're gonna burn if you don't believe in Him. We just don't go around sticking signs up like that because that's pretty hateful. At least, I HOPE no one's doing that. It's really not loving.
And I hardly see how atheism is a great example of soft hearted people with such hate going on towards people of faith. Doesn't look like the ole atheism is doing much good for their hearts and minds if this is all they can focus on.
(BTW, what is with them only putting up signs at Christmas and Hanukkah etc.??? Isn't atheism a year-round thing? Don't they have all those other months where there aren't any Nativities? Why take such offense to it being displayed for a few weeks when it's NOT displayed for the rest of the year?)