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10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism
by Sam Harris
Reposted from:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1
December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times
SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was "not at all to be tolerated" because, he said, "promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist."
That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims "never to doubt" the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.
Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.
The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
When scientists don't know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature's laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.
From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn't have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.
In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1
December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times
SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was "not at all to be tolerated" because, he said, "promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist."
That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims "never to doubt" the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.
Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.
The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
When scientists don't know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature's laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.
From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn't have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.
In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.
Comments 1 - 50 of 86 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #14714 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 5:00 pm
There's a discussion about this piece going on over at www.fark.com , with all of the typical snark and foolishness, alongside the harried words of frustrated reasonable folks as well. Some seem to think that Sam is making straw-man arguments...which blows my mind, considering that, clearly, all of the myths he so effectively refutes are, in and of themselves, STRAW MEN! Sometimes people simply astound me...
Other Comments by Jared
3. Comment #14716 by aoratos philos on December 24, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Yes well put Sam, I particularly like the way he articulated this bit, and the part leading up to it:>>"There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate."<<
..now if all children were taught the value of appreciating epistemology, this bad reasoning, this causal misappropriation would be less likely to happen.. surely ?
Other Comments by aoratos philos
4. Comment #14726 by doomhead on December 24, 2006 at 7:16 pm
"only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president"This is only 14% less than any american politician seems to need to get into office. We're almost there...
Other Comments by doomhead
5. Comment #14728 by Fouad Boussetta on December 24, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I am happy this piece appears in a large circulation paper. Although the points raised are pretty obviousto non-believers, not so for a LOT of the believers. Hopefully many of the latter will read Sam's article
and correct somewhat their very negative appraisal of the former.
Other Comments by Fouad Boussetta
6. Comment #14747 by Aussie on December 24, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Comment #14726 by doomhead"only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president"
This is only 14% less than any american politician seems to need to get into office. We're almost there..."
Have a word to George who will be able to explain how even the full 14% is not really necessary.
Other Comments by Aussie
7. Comment #14748 by Aussie on December 24, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Can someone please explain how to invoke italics in these posts.Other Comments by Aussie
8. Comment #14751 by mintcheerios on December 24, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Another roundhouse of reason from Sam!Other Comments by mintcheerios
9. Comment #14752 by DV82XL on December 24, 2006 at 10:32 pm
"Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society."Atheists see that any supposed good is completely overshadowed by the harm it does. Suggesting that atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society is tantamount to saying that critics of heroin addition are overlooking the fact that the junky feels good when he is on the nod.
Other Comments by DV82XL
10. Comment #14755 by StephenH on December 24, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Very good article.I have no idea if that list is done in any particular order.
Personally, if so, i would have number 10 higher up the list.
Myth:
Atheism provides no basis for morality.
It's the morality argument that seems to be aired quite a lot by the creationists
Other Comments by StephenH
11. Comment #14770 by Sancus on December 25, 2006 at 1:36 am
Thanks, Sam!In later works I hope you explore points 7 and 10 more in depth. The "spiritual" question and the "moral" question are the two great unexplored canvases of atheism. Both are tied to phenomena that people experience every day, so they can relate to those issues directly. They are also open empirical questions, while the other points are more intellectually rational.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
I agree, but I think the only honest reason these experiences can't authenticate such claims is because we don't know much about spiritual experience. There are some unsaid a priori assumptions made in order to separate them from ordinary experience, which consequently prevents much empirical research.
Just throwing out ideas now... Perhaps these assumptions serve a psychological purpose, for if our dreams were freely allowed to intersect with our waking consciousness, we would be close to hallucinating beasts. Spiritual people may be trying, if somewhat aimlessly, to find other intuitive assumptions that help re-separate spiritual experience in a more beneficial way (e.g. for more creativity and imaginative capacity). What other benefits could be in store, when purely atheistic intuitive assumptions are combined with those more beneficial spiritual ones?
Other Comments by Sancus
12. Comment #14782 by Logicel on December 25, 2006 at 4:24 am
Aussie, below are the HTML codes you can use for bolding, italicizing, etc.:http://www.w3schools.com/tags/
You can also press the control key and the letter u to see what HTLM codes are being used in posts (so you can copy them yourself). After pressing the control key and the letter u, select 'find on this page' (to get to the code you want to identify that is being used)
Other Comments by Logicel
13. Comment #14784 by Logicel on December 25, 2006 at 4:33 am
Sancus said, "Just throwing out ideas now... Perhaps these assumptions serve a psychological purpose, for if our dreams were freely allowed to intersect with our waking consciousness, we would be close to hallucinating beasts. Spiritual people may be trying, if somewhat aimlessly, to find other intuitive assumptions that help re-separate spiritual experience in a more beneficial way (e.g. for more creativity and imaginative capacity). What other benefits could be in store, when purely atheistic intuitive assumptions are combined with those more beneficial spiritual ones?"______
What can I say? Sancus, we are ames soeurs. I brought this connection up between imagination and spirituality and the need to harvest it for better purposes a month or so ago on an earlier discussion thread here, and no one ran with the ball, so I let it go.
Other Comments by Logicel
14. Comment #14808 by hopeful on December 25, 2006 at 10:35 am
To me, this sentence sums up one of the sadder aspects of religion:"From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe."
Other Comments by hopeful
15. Comment #14831 by EvolvedDNA on December 25, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Excellent article...lets make copies and put them in the Giddeons Bibles in the hotel rooms of the world. Other Comments by EvolvedDNA
16. Comment #14838 by TheBear on December 25, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Outstanding article! Thank you, Sam.Other Comments by TheBear
17. Comment #14854 by Sancus on December 26, 2006 at 2:16 am
You just keep getting better and better, Logicel, don't you? :DI had lucid dreams in mind when writing that post. Do you ever have them?
Other Comments by Sancus
18. Comment #14858 by shadower on December 26, 2006 at 3:29 am
cool article. thank youOther Comments by shadower
19. Comment #14859 by Logicel on December 26, 2006 at 3:36 am
Sancus, I go through periods of having lucid dreams, lasting usually several months--the last one was about 3 years ago. I have to spend about an hour convincing myself that the lucid dream is only a dream after I wake up. So, yes, I seem to have a penchant for experiencing lucid dreaming.Have you read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes? RD actually referred to it in TGD, saying that--I am paraphasing here--it is either a work of genius or of a nutter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes
Other Comments by Logicel
20. Comment #14934 by Sancus on December 26, 2006 at 11:35 pm
I have not read Jaynes, because I have not been ready to even entertain the notion that my consciousness may be more highly evolved or advanced than another's. Even testing the shallow waters feels deeply anti-social and I do not wish to categorically alienate religious people. Nonetheless, I cannot ignore it while remaining honest, for what other explanation is there for people who do not own themselves, if they are not sufficiently self-aware?Furthermore, a rejection of self-ownership is not limited to the religious, but to many atheists as well. Even some atheists who embrace self-ownership nonetheless fall into a disturbing notion that their sense of self is wholly dependent on memes. In the forums I'm currently debating one such individual and I am nearly convinced he is incapable of introspection, a la Jaynes.
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3412&start=20
If only he had one lucid dream, I wonder, he would not think what is to me a palpably weird thing. I do not know if Dawkins takes the same position, but it appears similar. Susan Blackmore has developed memes further, so I should read her next. What an incredibly stale idea, though, it seems to me, reducing not only religion but our very sense of self entirely to replication.
Is there no sense of uniqueness? Any personal uniqueness at all? No dim sliver of originality in creative expression? I am not encouraged by Susan Blackmore's articles on Edge.org, where she professes her quest to remove her sense of individuality, which appears to her illusory. How bereft of vitality that goal seems! Thankfully, and amusingly, I do not know how she will ever be capable of reaching that sad goal, because her brand of secular Buddhism is her own unique creation.
This is not the road atheists ought to be going, unless they genuinely enjoy going around in circles. There is even something disgustingly postmodern and self-contradictory about it.
jdaigle's notion of a wholly replicative sense of self appears to stem from or lead to the idea that morality is purely a social concept. That seems very weird to me. Since religions do not agree either, I wonder if this is why Dawkins appears unable to take the morality question seriously.
Harris appears to take a slightly different position from Dawkins about the nature of morality. Harris puts more emphasis on an individual's "moral intuitions" while Dawkins more on social norms and the "changing moral zeitgeist." Although Harris appears to be closer to self-ownership, I was disappointed to read this article a few minutes ago:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=harris_25_6
In the middle of the article he says something very encouraging, similar to what I quoted in the above post.
It is an empirical fact that sustained meditation can result in a variety of insights that intelligent people regularly find intellectually credible and personally transformative. The problem, however, is that these insights are almost always sought and expressed in a religious context.
However, he follows with something so remarkably wayward, as if to trip.
One such insight is that the feeling we call "I"—the sense that there is a thinker giving rise to our thoughts, an experiencer distinct from the mere flow of experience—can disappear when looked for in a rigorous way. Our conventional sense of "self" is, in fact, nothing more than a cognitive illusion, and dispelling this illusion opens the mind to extraordinary experiences of happiness.
Am I more conscious? More self-aware, than Harris? My goodness, is my consciousness more evolved than the Buddha? While that may at first appear sacrilege, and I still am not yet ready to entertain the notion, Logicel, you have confronted me with it.
My feeling of my self, and my command of it, has allowed me to experience things many very intelligent people do not even seem able to think about. I have flown over cities no one has ever seen, stood on planets in galaxies that could hardly exist in our universe, awakening powerful and soul-stirringly beautiful life with my presence, and they all know me. I've read the minds of so many people that no one has ever met. Even when I am not aware that I am dreaming, I have tasted many varieties of that anxious moment before death, that feeling, God please let this be a dream, and lo! my prayer is answered.
I do not know everything about me. In fact, I think I am just getting to know me, which is why I so strongly resist thinking I am more self-aware than others. Yet, I am self-aware enough, introspective enough, and I have properly meditated enough to experience many wondrous creative products of my being. They are not from God or an imaginary being, they are creatively designed by the very real me, I who am not illusory. If I thought I was illusory, and ignored my creative talents, I would miss out on so much beauty.
I wonder if this is why people who cannot lucid dream miss out: they think they do not exist. At the same time, I have to suspect that religious people are missing out as well, when they do not take the reigns of their spiritual experience and explore the true depth of possibility open to them. Perhaps someday brain-scanning technology will allow me to share my experiences -- it would be splendid to share such beauty! I am an amateur, but others are not even aware that they can be amateurs, preferring instead the ignorance of self and the cheap aimless bliss that offers. It is an intoxication. No ability to command, control, or create, because there is no one to command, control, or create. It is the dream of a slave to get rid of these things.
The slave wants to pretend he doesn't exist, because he wants to get rid of himself. He has no power, so he would rather turn his weakness into power by making ignorance of self an intellectual virtue, and then proceed to take drunk happiness in it.
Harris is not a slave, except perhaps to experience. This is not regrettable for an ordinary scientist, but it is for a scientist who wants to understand spiritual experience first-hand, in my opinion. One cannot be a slave to experience, if one wants to create it.
What do you think, Logicel? Like I said, I'm an amateur, and you're the only other lucid dreamer I've met here. I have never met a lucid dreamer in person. Sometimes I think the greatest impediment to exploring more lucid dreams is the fact that I have to wake up to the "slave morality" of society, of which I am compelled to be a part for my social well-being, even though it insists that some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen are illusory -- including my self.
Other Comments by Sancus
21. Comment #14939 by David A Robertson on December 27, 2006 at 2:29 am
I realise that disagreeing with the atheist consensus on this website gets one immediatly labelled a 'troll' (such is the certainty of this 'clear minded oasis') but I would request permission to allow a different perspective on Sam's article. Plus this is the only way I know to respond to Sam directly. So here goes...Dear Sam,
The following is a response to your article in the Los Angeles Times on Christmas Eve 2006 concerning 'myths' about atheists. As a Christian I can appreciate the concern that any believer feels when they think their faith is being misrepresented so I do share your pain and appreciate your efforts to demythologize. The question remains as to how successful you have been.
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
Unfortunately you get off to a bad start. It's not a good idea to attempt to counter a myth by creating another one. Christians do not believe that life is meaningless and can only be redeemed by happiness beyond the grave. We do believe that life on earth has meaning both on earth and beyond the grave.
I accept what you say about atheists regarding life as precious, that life should be really and fully lived, and that our relationships with those we love are meaningful now. However you need to define what life is (for example do atheists regard a life in the womb as precious?), what really and fully lived means, and how you know what love is? Is love just a genetically determined chemical reaction? In fact without definition your answer to this myth is just, well, meaningless. The only way you can counter this accusation is to tell us what you think the meaning of life or the meaning of the universe is.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
The simple way to counter this would be to point out that there have been many crimes committed by people in the name of religion. Religion has in many ways been a curse to humanity. However you choose rather to go a different route and claim that in effect Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were religious. You manage this neat trick by a series of presuppositions which are in themselves questionable. You assume that atheism = reasonableness. Killing millions of people is not reasonable therefore, hey presto, Stalin et al were not real atheists. It is a circular argument which could only appeal to atheistic believers. There are many of us who think that we are reasonable and also believers in God. You will need to try another tact to prove that this 'myth' is false. It is actually very simple. Please let us know any state which has been officially atheist which has behaved in a reasonable and moral manner. Once you have such a state then you disprove that myth as an absolute. Meanwhile atheisms track record in running countries still stands.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
You don't answer this charge at all. Instead you meet accusation with accusation – which ironically is exactly the kind of thing that dogmatists do. The problem here is that anyone who claims any truth is open to the accusation of being dogmatic. Why should you not be dogmatic about truth? The trouble is that far too many atheists seem to assume that what they assert is self evidently true, that they are more intelligent than others (as your friend Richard Dawkins puts it, they are of a higher consciousness) and that anyone who disagrees is irrational and ignorant. Sadly, whilst there are some atheists who reflect a more humble and considerate approach, dogmatism does appear to be part of the DNA of atheism.
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
I'm afraid you do not answer this 'myth' at all. Citing Darwinian evolution as an explanation of why atheists do not believe in chance in the universe just does not work. You cannot just assume that the Darwinian view in terms of biology on earth is analogous and applicable to life in the universe. In order for matter to evolve there has to be matter to evolve and there has to be the right conditions for that evolution to occur. One either believes that these things 'just are' (or we would not be here to discuss them) or that they were designed/created in that way. It is chance or design and most atheists do appear to favour chance.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Again you do nothing to answer this 'myth'. It is possible to be a good biologist, physicist, chemist et al and be a Christian, just as it is possible to be a good scientist and be an atheist. Atheism is not a scientific fact but it is a naturalistic materialistic philosophy which would like to claim science as its own. That claim is false.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
This is the same accusation as dogmatic. And again I have some sympathy with you. Anyone who claims to know a particular truth always runs the danger of being called arrogant. Yet your answer to this is not to defend the concept of truth it is again to attack those you consider your enemies. You claim that pretending to know things one doesn't know is the life blood of faith-based religion. In doing so you misrepresent all religious people as hypocrites, liars and ignoramuses. In so doing you justify the accusation of arrogance. You also write "When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty." Are you sure? Are you certain that atheists don't determine that there is no God and then look for science to provide the backing? If atheists draw their opinion from science then what about those scientists who are not atheists? Are they bad scientists? Stupid? Dishonest? Until you recognize that atheism is a philosophy and belief system as much as any religion then you will always be open to the charge of being arrogant.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
Again your problem here is with language. 'spiritual' is a good buzz word in our society that you do not want to give up so you have redefined it to mean feeling good about anything. And on that level of course atheists can feel good about a Beethoven symphony, a dram of Glen Morangie, or a sunset over the Grand Canyon. But spiritual means of the spirit, non-material. Are you really saying as a scientific atheist that there is such a thing as the spirit? As the non-material?
As for no Christian being certain that Jesus rose from the dead – I disagree. Here is one Christian who is as certain that Jesus rose from the dead as I am that my wife exists.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
This is an easy myth to debunk and you succeed in this by simply stating that there could be aliens somewhere out there. However I think what this accusation is really stating is that atheists tend to limit truth only to that which is empirically verifiable by human beings. In other words, whether intentionally or not, you limit the universe to what we can understand of it.
"From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. " This is a neat trick. But one that only works if you downplay the glory of biblical Christianity which magnifies the beauty and immensity of the universe and does not limit it to human understanding, or what 'science' can explain.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Again you make the fair and correct point that just because something appears to be beneficial it does not necessarily mean that it is true. And you are also right in pointing out that legalistic, moralistic religion can be quite harmful. However you fail to understand that religion is a whole lot more than that. We do not help the poor because of reward and punishment from God but rather because of a theological belief that all human beings are made in the image of God and should be treated with equal dignity and respect. On the other hands many atheists seem to think that the world is divided into good people and bad people. Is it not the case that you argue that in this world good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things, but it is only religion that makes good people do bad things. I'm afraid that this simplistic division of the world into good or bad is not one that Christians can share.
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
And again you do not answer this at all. If the atheist basis for morality is simply that which is hard wired into us after thousands of years of evolution then it is a pathetic basis and easily contradicted. Morality presupposes free will – we are free to choose either right or wrong. But if we are hard wired then where does the free will come from? Furthermore atheists do not believe in an absolute morality which means that all morality is relativistic and subject to change. As Dawkins so brilliant put is in The Blind Watchmaker - "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe had precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference". That is the atheist position – no good, no evil, just blind pitiless indifference.
Overall you have singularly failed to deal with these myths. I am sure there will be those who applaud you and be delighted that your polemic was printed in the LA Times (see the first post on this thread), however you are preaching to the choir. Those who are not committed atheists, and who are thoughtful and intelligent people will need a lot more evidence before these particular myths are disproved.
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22. Comment #14942 by Logicel on December 27, 2006 at 2:57 am
Sancus, I was unable to locate that forum thread, so I will discuss lucid dreaming a little bit here.Looking up the definition of lucid dreaming, I realized that a psychologist describing my waking state where I had a difficult time understanding that what took place in my dream was not real is not considered to be lucid dreaming. What! Can an expert be wrong? He apparently thought that lucid dreaming is when the dream is particularily 'real'.
Lucid dreaming as defined in Wikipedia is when you are conscious of dreaming. Doesn't everybody do that? (I hope that made you laugh!) Seriously, most of my dreams are lucid then. I suspect that I taught myself how to lucidly dream when I was a kid. I needed to be conscious during dreaming in order to stop wetting my bed in my sleep.
I definitely think that there are different levels, styles, and abilities regarding consciousness.
The Economist in its recent issues discusses how developments in neuroscience--in which I am very interested in--are challenging the notion of free will and choice and thereby really shaking up law and religion. Remember S. Harris is an neuroscientist.
Second Life, the web based virtual reality is interesting in this regard. Though resisting it at first, I then realized that it was very mentally and creatively stimulating.
I am sorry I cannot do justice to all the issues you have raised in this short reply. Point me to the forum thread where this is being discussed, and perhaps I can go into more detail.
Other Comments by Logicel
23. Comment #14947 by JohnC on December 27, 2006 at 4:50 am
David A Robertson places himself in an absurd position in his reply to Sam Harris. Does he really want to affirm all these propositions about atheists? If belief in a personal God is required as a basis of morality, then were Spinoza and Einstein, to take two examples, amoral or have no basis for the morality they professed and practised. Perhaps they were deluded, and unfortunately died before Mr Robertson could point out the error of their ways.As a matter of empirical fact these myths held by a large number of Americans about atheists (a classic in-group, out-group phenonemon) are false. There are hundreds of millions of atheists around the world who are living testament to this reality. Sam's rhetorical (in the non-perjorative sense that Cicero used the word) article is not about proving this blindingly obvious fact; it is trying to get Americans to think through their silly prejudices and question their own beliefs.
We can have a stimulating discussion about the basis of human morality and free will, for instance, but such a debate does not alter the fact that all human beings possess a sense of morality, whatever their beliefs about matters supernatural. Ditto for the other nine myths, for myths they are.
Other Comments by JohnC
24. Comment #14948 by Deoradh on December 27, 2006 at 4:54 am
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot's regimes were totalitarian, and since they were totalitarian could have no form of opposition in their one party states. They didn't arrive at atheism through rationalism or humanism you simply weren't allowed to be a member of any other organisation other than the Party or believe in anything but the Party doctrine.
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25. Comment #14955 by Kingasaurus on December 27, 2006 at 8:31 am
---- As Dawkins so brilliant put is in The Blind Watchmaker - "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe had precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference". That is the atheist position – no good, no evil, just blind pitiless indifference. -----David, this is truly pathetic. Just because the universe IS pitilessly indifferent to our well being (a fact which even cursory observation proves), doesn't mean there are no qualitative differences in the ways we decide to order our societies.
If you can't think of one good secular reason why a society which prohibits murder and theft is a better place to live than a society which allows these things, then your mind simply isn't functioning properly. I don't need a god to tell me that one of those societies is a preferable place in which to live.
Chimpanzees and other primates have complex social structures where there are sophisticated rules of behavior, inculding altruism and punishing the detrimental behavior of certain individuals. There is also the famous test where a monkey will starve itself when it realizes that taking food that is offered results in one of its fellow monkeys receiving an electric shock.
Now, are these non-human primates completely morally clueless, and then require a chimp Lawgiver to come down from the mountain with stone tablets before they can figure out how they are supposed to behave? Of course not. There's a lot of hard-wiring of our behaviors, and to pretend otherwise just isn't facing reality.
And if you don't think the universe is pitilessly indifferent, I'll throw a few tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and planet-killing asteroids your way. I'm sure there's some hidden "plan" going on there and you'll make out just fine.
Other Comments by Kingasaurus
26. Comment #14956 by BillySands on December 27, 2006 at 8:52 am
Good article. Go on any church message board and you will see these myths. Maybe we should encourage others to bring the message of the god delusion to churches via their message boards. David A Robertson has inspired a few of us to do that on his site http://www.fcosonline.org/I have Just skimmed David Robertson's post. There is so much wrong with it. I wont waste my time on it, but will point out how arrogant it is of the religious to claim their particular brand of religion is the only true one.
-YAWWWWN!
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27. Comment #14957 by seals on December 27, 2006 at 9:20 am
" "From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. " This is a neat trick. But one that only works if you downplay the glory of biblical Christianity which magnifies the beauty and immensity of the universe and does not limit it to human understanding, or what 'science' can explain. " I haven't had the time/perseverance to plough through David's reply (comment 22) properly, but picking out this para from (8) at random, I'm wondering how, in what way does biblical christianity "magnify" the beauty and immensity of the universe? (as if it isn't beautiful and immense enough already). Is the word universe actually mentioned in the bible - wasn't it a flat earth scenario? In what other sense could it possibly be meant, as "world" would otherwise be adequate?
I have to confess, while Sam's article is clear and easy to read, even for me, David's comes across as so much waffle, of which the above is an apparent example. I'm baffled by the waffle and can't figure out if there is anything behind it (but I doubt it...)
Other Comments by seals
28. Comment #14958 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 27, 2006 at 9:53 am
As for no Christian being certain that Jesus rose from the dead – I disagree. Here is one Christian who is as certain that Jesus rose from the dead as I am that my wife exists. David, you are either a liar or genuinely deluded. How could you possibly be certain of such a thing?
Were you there? Did Jesus appear (not in itself a clincher) to you and explain the details?
This is an outrageous claim, back it up with something substantial, or retract it.
Other Comments by briancoughlanworldcitizen
29. Comment #14959 by David A Robertson on December 27, 2006 at 11:12 am
24. Comment #14947 by JohnC on December 27, 2006 at 4:50 amGuys thanks for the polite responses. I am genuinely interested in these 'myths' and am glad to get your take on them.
"David A Robertson places himself in an absurd position in his reply to Sam Harris. Does he really want to affirm all these propositions about atheists?"
No – I don't. I think there is enormous danger in making sweeping statements about any group of people. However I think that most of them have some truth as regards the philosophical belief system of atheism.
"We can have a stimulating discussion about the basis of human morality and free will, for instance, but such a debate does not alter the fact that all human beings possess a sense of morality, whatever their beliefs about matters supernatural. "
Yes – on that we would absolutely agree. The question is where does this sense of morality come from?
25. Comment #14948 by Deoradh on December 27, 2006 at 4:54 am
.
"Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot's regimes were totalitarian, and since they were totalitarian could have no form of opposition in their one party states. They didn't arrive at atheism through rationalism or humanism you simply weren't allowed to be a member of any other organisation other than the Party or believe in anything but the Party doctrine. "
Deoradh, that is precisely the point. If you have the truth and if you know that all other opinions are not the truth but are in fact a dangerous virus then what does one do with a dangerous virus? Eradicate it.
26. Comment #14955 by Kingasaurus on December 27, 2006 at 8:31 am
I'm sorry that you think it is pathetic. I think that there are many reasons why stealing could be considered advantageous. The point I was making is that if you state the universe has no justice, fairness etc then at best you are only going to argue for a human construct which is temporary and changeable.
Interesting about monkeys and hard wiring. One assumes then that if morality is hard wired we have no choice in it and therefore we cannot be held responsible for what we cannot help?
28. Comment #14957 by seals on December 27, 2006 at 9:20 am
" "From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. " This is a neat trick. But one that only works if you downplay the glory of biblical Christianity which magnifies the beauty and immensity of the universe and does not limit it to human understanding, or what 'science' can explain. "
"I haven't had the time/perseverance to plough through David's reply (comment 22) properly, but picking out this para from (8) at random, I'm wondering how, in what way does biblical christianity "magnify" the beauty and immensity of the universe? (as if it isn't beautiful and immense enough already). Is the word universe actually mentioned in the bible - wasn't it a flat earth scenario? In what other sense could it possibly be meant, as "world" would otherwise be adequate?"
No – there is no flat earthism in the Bible. And the Bible does speak about the universe and the glory of the heavens etc.
"I have to confess, while Sam's article is clear and easy to read, even for me, David's comes across as so much waffle, of which the above is an apparent example. I'm baffled by the waffle and can't figure out if there is anything behind it (but I doubt it...)"
Isn't it interesting how when we read something that we don't like we find it easier to dismiss as waffle, rather than let our own presuppositions be challenged.
29. Comment #14958 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 27, 2006 at 9:53 am
As for no Christian being certain that Jesus rose from the dead – I disagree. Here is one Christian who is as certain that Jesus rose from the dead as I am that my wife exists.
"David, you are either a liar or genuinely deluded. How could you possibly be certain of such a thing?
Were you there? Did Jesus appear (not in itself a clincher) to you and explain the details?
This is an outrageous claim, back it up with something substantial, or retract it."
It all depends how you work out truth. I was not at Hitlers death but I believed it happened. Napoleon has not appeared to me but I don't really doubt he existed. And I have never been to Seattle but I am fairly sure it exists (although it may all be a plot by Bill Gates). In terms of the resurrection of Jesus I have examined the evidence for it and came to the conclusion that the most reasonable assumption is that Jesus did rise from the dead. Since then I have experienced something of the power of the risen Christ in my own life, however I realize that that is not proof for you. Yet I was simply responding to the statement that there is no Christian who is certain that Jesus rose from the dead. I am.
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30. Comment #14961 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 27, 2006 at 11:49 am
In terms of the resurrection of Jesus I have examined the evidence for it and came to the conclusion that the most reasonable assumption is that Jesus did rise from the dead. Since then I have experienced something of the power of the risen Christ in my own life, however I realize that that is not proof for you. Yet I was simply responding to the statement that there is no Christian who is certain that Jesus rose from the dead. I am. You cannot possibly be certain based on this evidence. You could perhaps form the view that the probability is that Jesus did rise from the dead, but even that is a terrific stretch.
We have tens of thousands of mutually corroborating reports of both Napoleon and Hitler, you can go to Seattle anytime to verify it's existence. What have you got for Jesus? Heavily edited 3rd century political propaganda, and perhaps 2 additional dubious alternate sources, and maybe some low grade hallucinations. Come on! This is equivalent to the existence of your flesh and blood wife?
If I was to tell you now, that I am Jesus and I have risen from the dead, how is my post less credible than the agenda riddled third hand hearsay of the new testament?
Other Comments by briancoughlanworldcitizen
31. Comment #14962 by Vardu on December 27, 2006 at 12:10 pm
While braincoughlanworldcitizen's response to David A. Robertson pretty much says it all, one would have to draw the conclusion that David is definitely deluded if he believes that Jesus arose from the dead based on the available evidence.Jesus' resurrection is just another variation of that common Middle Eastern theme - from Egyptian mythology to the Orphic rites - of the dying and reviving god.
Can one imagine anyone saying that they are as sure that Osiris arose from the dead as they are that their wife exists? And is there any less evidence that Osiris did so than there is for Jesus?
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32. Comment #14963 by JohnC on December 27, 2006 at 12:57 pm
David, in now rejecting the "myths" on the altogether reasonable basis that "there is enormous danger in making sweeping statements about any group of people" for the weaker proposition that "most of them have some truth as regards the philosophical belief system of atheism", you have changed the terms of the debate. Indeed, it is highly questionable that there is such a thing as "the philosophical belief system of atheism", certainly in the singular. Which parts of which beliefs? Your case, in short, has collapsed.Meanwhile, you are "certain that Jesus rose from the dead" on the basis of both evidence and revelation ("the power of the risen Christ in my life"). Well, the latter is a purely subjective phenonemon that can be legitimately quoted to support your claimed sense of personal certainty but cannot be enlisted in any rational definition of a truth statement (since we have no way of distinguishing between the thousands of such mutually incompatible claims made by religious adherents throughout history). So we are left - surprise, surprise - with the evidence.
Now the largest group of New Testament scholars (as distinct from apologists) to examine this evidence using modern methods, the Jesus Seminar, concluded that the resurrection, and even the empty tomb, are not supportable empirical conclusions from the evidence (primary, secondary and archealogical). Specifically, that belief in the resurrection is based soley on the visionary experiences of Peter, Paul and Mary (of the 1st century, not the folk group).
Many Christians of course reject this conclusion, some going so far as to declare the Jesus Seminar a tool of Satan. But you cannot both claim your belief rests on the evidence and then summarily reject the most comprehensive scholarly effort to test that evidence. Bummer.
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33. Comment #14964 by Steven Mading on December 27, 2006 at 1:38 pm
I was with Harris right up until the last one - number 10: "10) Atheism provides no basis for morality."Actually, that's true. The error that the anti-atheist crowd makes is that they sneak in the unspoken premise that "therefore atheists won't be moral". The error is in their assumption that morality cannot come from anything other than one's stance on supernatural things. They assume quite falsely that since they believe their morality comes from their supernatural beliefs, that this must mean everyone else in the world has to base their morality on supernatural beliefs also. They cut out the possibility of a person who does have morals that come from something entirely unrelated to their stance on the supernatural. In so doing, they sweep under the rug the acutal moral foundations most atheists tend to use and arrogantly act like they don't exist.
So the problem isn't that the phrase "Atheism provides no basis for morality." is false. It's actually true. The problem is that it has about as much relevance as saying "Stamp collecting provides no basis for morality." Yeah, so? Who said that that has to be the source of morality in an individual? Just because stamp collectors don't derive morality from the hobby of stamp collecting doesn't mean they don't derive morality from something else instead.
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34. Comment #14965 by goddogit on December 27, 2006 at 2:04 pm
WHY are people here still throwing anything but offal to that David R. troll? Because he flatters you with his "thanks for the polite responses"? I mean, what is it?He isn't funny. He provides no insight into any subject. His respect for truth is of a classic creationist type (yeah, he claims to have no objection to ToE, but his arguments for Xianity have the same "cute" style trough which shines only one clear communication "I, David R., cannot be wrong. And when I am, it isn't important.")
He occasionally claims to be tolerant towards others, even atheists, but would ANY of you want to live under a government composed of believers of his stripe?
I do wish you all would stop feeding the vain, pompous ass that goes by that name here.
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35. Comment #14967 by jefferson on December 27, 2006 at 2:35 pm
I don't know... I kind of like seeing non-atheists argue on our boards. I only start to hate it when they become ridiculous on a David Matthews level, or the libellous peter123 or whatever his name was. I think it would be kind of boring if it were just atheists talking amongst themselves. I enjoy the occasional argument with theists. I have a naive hope that maybe we can pin them against the wall and get them to admit that they are delusional.Thing is, I don't think that they see themselves as being trolls. What they are arguing, to them, is the truth. But as long as they don't go completely off the rail, I'm game for a go.
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36. Comment #14968 by Jiten on December 27, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Good post Steven Mading.Thanks! Other Comments by Jiten
37. Comment #14970 by seals on December 27, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Re: post 35Ah you're right, just fell into the trap. It is I know, useless to attempt discussion with the type of person who may well believe he's scoring brownie points with god by coming to this den of vipers to have his faith tested... if you believe in the validity of faith, everything that's said, every setback or disaster becomes just another test, en route to the big payoff at the end. It's like a weird obsessive game involving interpreting bible verses. I had friends who do this stuff, they were nice folk... although I'm not 100% an atheist, I lacked the wherewithal to join their circle.
Other Comments by seals
38. Comment #14972 by Kingasaurus on December 27, 2006 at 4:23 pm
---I think that there are many reasons why stealing could be considered advantageous.----Would you like to live in a society where your neighbor could jump the fence and steal from you anytime he likes? Almost nobody else does, either. That's the point.
----The point I was making is that if you state the universe has no justice, fairness etc then at best you are only going to argue for a human construct which is temporary and changeable.----
You mean like god-believers finally deciding slavery was wrong after millennia of thinking it was fine and dandy?
----Interesting about monkeys and hard wiring. One assumes then that if morality is hard wired we have no choice in it and therefore we cannot be held responsible for what we cannot help? ----
Hard-wiring refers to "rules of thumb" (as Dawkins puts it) in the brain with an evolutionary history. It doesn't mean you're a robot or that nobody ever misbehaves. It does mean you will share many things with most other people. Most people prefer freedom to slavery, comfort to discomfort, safety to danger, life to death. People derive benefits from living in groups, and all societies are trial-and-error attempts to do this in the best way possible.
Latching on to ancient writings doesn't give you a "foundation" for anything - especially if you latch on for faith-based reasons. Your decision to follow Book A rather than Book B is an arbitrary decision made within yourself. What's foundational and transcendent about that? Claiming a transcendent foundation for morality is just that - a claim.
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39. Comment #14973 by goddogit on December 27, 2006 at 4:33 pm
Arguing with theists who have the least sense of honesty is great! (And I mean the LEAST sense: David R. is not one of them, but of the ilk of Xian who smilingly strikes up a random conversation on the street before inviting you to his church or blabbing on about the "holy spirit" just in order to log more "conversion points" in that RPG heaven his inflated image of his saccharine-saintly self plays 24/7 in. [puff! huff!] Long dang sentence, sorry!)I find myself much in sympathy with the "deistic" and "pantheistic" crowd, and am rather annoyed at Dawkins slagging of those positions, although I have come to see what I think is his real point (though still not quite agree with it). I have no real quarrel with the many fine theist scientists out there - I simply don't understand how they compartmentalize belief in something as absurd as the Catholic Church or the Resurrection or the dietary restrictions of the Torah, Koran, etc. with their knowledge of their fields (BTW atheistic "cultural background" practice of such religions is entirely different in my view). I cannot understand, indeed object to, offering the nutcases, cranks, and merely dishonest with the respect that any sort of engagement implies.
"Pass them by, boys & girls! Pass them by!"
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40. Comment #14974 by jbannon on December 27, 2006 at 4:59 pm
From David A Robertson:"As Dawkins so brilliant put is in The Blind Watchmaker - "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe had precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference". That is the atheist position – no good, no evil, just blind pitiless indifference."
This is just the standard "atheism=nihilism" defence and as such it misses a very important point. Ever heard of levels of description David? At one level of description all I am is organised matter, but then the same goes for any object: a brick, a bolt, a bar, a cup (all travel downwards not up). The point is that at the level of the universe this quote makes sense but it does not make sense at the level of humans, just as my examples don't make sense at that level. Humans create their own meanings David and their own morality. There is no "god" to guide this creation, just the faculties we possess as a result of our evolution as a social species. Far from this meaning that we are prisoners it means that we are to some extent in control of our own destiny, both individually and collectively. Try thinking positively without your god for once, it might do you some good.
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41. Comment #14979 by Sancus on December 27, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Logicel, by lucid dream I mean when there is direct control over the dream experience, i.e. realizing that the dream is a direct manifestation of self, that one owns the dream, thus enabling a pure and seamless creation of anything imaginable.There seem to be many degrees of self-awareness in dreams, but I really mean a degree sufficient to enable dream creation. I hate to use the words "God" or "omnipotent" for I think they miss something important, but essentially I guess that's the order of magnitude of awareness and power I'm talking about.
Although I must stress again that those words miss something very important, if only the fact that I am neither God nor omnipotent, not even in my fantasies. I suppose in my dreams I could be, but that kind of conscious assertion of total control seems unnecessary, pompously authoritarian and obstructive, impressing no one and embarrassing me to my self. To say the least, uninteresting!
The forum thread is here.
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3412&start=40
I'm always interested in hearing what you think, Logicel. :)
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42. Comment #14995 by cretin on December 28, 2006 at 1:11 am
3) Atheism is dogmatic."You don't answer this charge at all. Instead you meet accusation with accusation – which ironically is exactly the kind of thing that dogmatists do."
David sorry but did you really read #3? The only "accusation" I can find is "Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity." It may not have been expressed in the kind of language you would have prefered, but isn't it a correct description of how religious people actually look at their faith?
Read again, and don't let your feelings get in the way.
"The problem here is that anyone who claims any truth is open to the accusation of being dogmatic. Why should you not be dogmatic about truth?"
Have you read "The God Delusion"? There is a chapter in it called "Why there almost certainly is no God" and here we find something important. We are not talking blind "truth", we're talking _probability_.
And, unfortunately, probability doesn't come to the support of God. Richard Dawkins argued for it in above named chapter, if you feel up for the challenge.
"The trouble is that far too many atheists seem to assume that what they assert is self evidently true, that they are more intelligent than others (as your friend Richard Dawkins puts it, they are of a higher consciousness) and that anyone who disagrees is irrational and ignorant. Sadly, whilst there are some atheists who reflect a more humble and considerate approach, dogmatism does appear to be part of the DNA of atheism."
Try changing "atheists" to "christians", "muslims", "communists", "liberals", "Real Madrid fans" or just plainly "people". It's not connected to atheists or christians, it's connected to people.
The big difference, I would say, is how one reach one's conclusion. If one reach it by a claim like "The Spaghetti Monster is true because I have a book saying so" I think we'd all agree that that person isn't very rational. And a claim like that is highly compatible with other claims for the "truth" of religion.
If so, what's the difference between christianity and The Spaghetti Monster-religion? Except from popularity, which isn't very relevant, I can't see any.
Atheists tend to use probability to reach conclusions (on faith anyway), which I think is a much better way of doing it. Don't you?
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43. Comment #14999 by Aussie on December 28, 2006 at 2:24 am
DAR wrote:As for no Christian being certain that Jesus rose from the dead I disagree. Here is one Christian who is as certain that Jesus rose from the dead as I am that my wife exists.
David, are you any more certain of this postulate than my Indian friend is certain of his belief in the existence and role of Lord Brahma, Vishnu and Krishna. Perhaps your certainty is somehow of a higher quality than his?
The irony of your position is that your religion requires you to be an atheist with regard to his gods and you therefore need to join with us in rejecting them.
Welcome aboard brother. As we share a lot of common ground we can work together, hand in hand, debunking 95% of the gods currently being worshipped in the world today. We will just have to agree to disagree about the other 5%.
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44. Comment #15000 by Aussie on December 28, 2006 at 2:51 am
Many thanks Logicel,Your suggestion worked like a charm
I was using square brackets (like are used in other fora to which I contribute - including the forum on this website) rather than angle brackets.
BTW I am trying to get a little time between family Christmas commitments to write something sensible on "the Faiths of Finance" - a subject we were discussing on the BC thread.
FYI I also use both Technical and Fundamental Analysis extensively in my own trading. It is not the use of these techniques that I object to but rather the unquestioning belief in their validity, and the awe in which they are held, that puts them on a par with Astrology.
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45. Comment #15002 by Homo economicus on December 28, 2006 at 3:27 am
Just returning to Sam's article rather than Robert's post . . .What a brilliant succinct rebuttal of claims made negatively against the atheist position.
When it comes to Stalin et al I think it is a stronger position that what they carried out was wrong to anyone's sense of justice. What is needed against such people is a mind that is always ready to question belief, even ones' own. And not afraid to challenge it, despite the consequences.
Whether Stalin was a pseudo religious figure or an atheist misses the point. He did wrong, atheists and God believers can agree, the issue is would we have spoken out against him at the time in Russia? Or become dissidents, or just try to survive?
And does the world have a moral responsibility to stop such people from committing genocide?
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46. Comment #15004 by Duff on December 28, 2006 at 3:50 am
Mr. Robertson, I once had a personal, burning testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ. I, like you, "knew" he was the son of God. I was as sure of it as you seem to be. Now, these many years later, after actually learning something about life and science and psychology and many other things, I now know what I actually had was a thoroughly brainwashed mind; effectively created by parents, the church, and a society that discourages anyone to actually think about these things.Now, I am convinced that there are three kinds of religious people: those who are incapable of rational thought, those who are intelligent enough, but have been brainwashed not to think, and those who are intelligent, have thought about it and even though they know they are believing in truly impossible things, chose, none-the-less, to commit intellectual suicide and continue to believe. The last type doesn't deserve anyones respect.
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47. Comment #15017 by David A Robertson on December 28, 2006 at 6:52 am
Thanks for (most) of your responses. Interesting stuff.31. Comment #14961 by briancoughlanworldcitizen You could perhaps form the view that the probability is that Jesus did rise from the dead, but even that is a terrific stretch.
"We have tens of thousands of mutually corroborating reports of both Napoleon and Hitler, you can go to Seattle anytime to verify it's existence. What have you got for Jesus? Heavily edited 3rd century political propaganda, and perhaps 2 additional dubious alternate sources, and maybe some low grade hallucinations. "
Interesting really. Of course it is about probability – as is everything. However it seems as though you have already predetermined any evidence. The Gospels are not 3rd century, not political and what hallucinations are you referring to? As to you being Jesus I guess I will have to leave you to work out why that does not work.
32. Comment #14962 by Vardu on December 27, 2006 at 12:10 pm
"Jesus' resurrection is just another variation of that common Middle Eastern theme - from Egyptian mythology to the Orphic rites - of the dying and reviving god."
Yet another atheist myth. I guess you guys must all read the same '101 ways to evangelise Christians' book. Or perhaps this is coming from your extensive knowledge and research in Egyptology and 'the common Middle eastern theme' of resurrected gods! Or maybe its just google! How true it is that in a postmodern society we are ahistoricist.
"And is there any less evidence that Osiris did so than there is for Jesus?"
Yes.
33. Comment #14963 by JohnC on December 27, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Thanks John .
I would be interested to know what different philosophical atheist belief systems there are.
"Now the largest group of New Testament scholars (as distinct from apologists) to examine this evidence using modern methods, the Jesus Seminar, concluded that the resurrection, and even the empty tomb, are not supportable empirical conclusions from the evidence (primary, secondary and archealogical). Specifically, that belief in the resurrection is based soley on the visionary experiences of Peter, Paul and Mary (of the 1st century, not the folk group)."
This would be the same group who decided that they would determine truth by voting with coloured balls?! I would suggest that rather than go for this kind of mickey mouse 'scholarship' you instead refer to those who teach and write peer reviewed articles in the discipline. You citing the Jesus seminar as the most scholarly approach is like me suggesting that AIG are the norm for studying the science of evolution.
34. Comment #14964 by Steven Mading on December 27, 2006 at 1:38 pm
"Actually, that's true. The error that the anti-atheist crowd makes is that they sneak in the unspoken premise that "therefore atheists won't be moral".
Stephen you are right that atheism does not provide a basis for morality. You are wrong in assuming that non atheists all assume that therefore atheists won't be moral. I would argue that atheists are moral – although they have no real intellectual, consistent and logical basis for being so.
36. Comment #14967 by jefferson on December 27, 2006 at 2:35 pm
."I think it would be kind of boring if it were just atheists talking amongst themselves."
Amen. It is..
41. Comment #14974 by jbannon on December 27, 2006 at 4:59 pm
"Humans create their own meanings David and their own morality."
Yes – I understand about the levels of description. I find your point here interesting. The question then becomes whose meaning and whose morality? What if I decide that Jews are vermin and need to be extinguished. What if that is my meaning and the meaning of the majority of people in my society? Does that make it right? Just because society agrees, or I have to power to enforce my own morality?
43. Comment #14995 by cretin on December 28, 2006 at 1:11 am
David sorry but did you really read #3? The only "accusation" I can find is "Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity." It may not have been expressed in the kind of language you would have prefered, but isn't it a correct description of how religious people actually look at their faith?"
No.
"Have you read "The God Delusion"? There is a chapter in it called "Why there almost certainly is no God" and here we find something important. We are not talking blind "truth", we're talking _probability_.
And, unfortunately, probability doesn't come to the support of God. Richard Dawkins argued for it in above named chapter, if you feel up for the challenge."
Yes I have read the God delusion (about ten times!). I have also written a series of reviews on it – the first of which was graciously put up on this site and got quite a response. You can find the rest of the articles at the Free Church website – www.freechurch.org under the heading Todays Issues. You do realize that the chapter is headed 'why there is almost certainly no God' not because Dawkins has any doubt but simply as a rhetorical device. There is a sense in which nothing is absolutely certain – at least in a scientific sense. Dawkins puts belief in God at the same level as belief in the Tooth Fairy. I am 100% certain that he is 100% certain there is no tooth fairy. So let's not play rhetorical games and try to be honest and say what we really mean.
As regards the issue of probability my response was "You tell us that "even if God's existence is never proved or disproved with certainty one way or the other, available evidence and reasoning may yield an estimate of probability far from 50%". Really? Why such a confident assertion? Anyway science has moved on since you made that unqualified and unsupported assertion. The Times reported (Nov 20th 2006) that the actual figure was well over 50%. "The mathematical probability of God's existence is just over 62 per cent. So says a German science magazine. P.M. tried to settle the issue by using mathematical formulae devised to determine plausibility and probability. Researchers started with the hypothesis "God exists", then tried to analyse the evidence in favour or against the hypothesis in five areas: creation, evolution, good, evil and religious experiences. The scientists applied the formulae to calculate how statistically probable different answers were to questions such as "How probable is it that the evolution of life took place without God?", and "How probable is it that God created the Universe?" Their conclusion will be cheering to many, although not, perhaps, Richard Dawkins." Hoisted by your own petard.
."If so, what's the difference between christianity and The Spaghetti Monster-religion? Except from popularity, which isn't very relevant, I can't see any."
If you are serious about not seeing any difference then I am afraid there is nothing I can do to help you.
44. Comment #14999 by Aussie on December 28, 2006 at 2:24 am
"David, are you any more certain of this postulate than my Indian friend is certain of his belief in the existence and role of Lord Brahma, Vishnu and Krishna. Perhaps your certainty is somehow of a higher quality than his?"
I have no idea. I don't know your friend.
"Welcome aboard brother. As we share a lot of common ground we can work together, hand in hand, debunking 95% of the gods currently being worshipped in the world today. We will just have to agree to disagree about the other 5%."
I agree. Away with falsehood wherever we find it. Religions should not be exempt.
Homo – Yes I agree – we all need to unite to fight facism and evil.
Duff - I guess it's quite simple for you. Now that you have learnt the truth (having become an expert in science, psychology and many other things) you have risen to a higher consciousness. You now know that there are only three kinds of religious people. Those incapable of rational thought, those who have been brainwashed and hypocrites. Congratulations you have just provided proof once again that many atheists are dogmatic and arrogant. Just one thought – what about those of us who do not fit into your neat boxes?
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48. Comment #15020 by JohnC on December 28, 2006 at 7:27 am
David, I'm afraid you can't dispose of the Jesus Seminar in such a cheap and unworthy fashion: these were not people picked off the street; 14 of its number are regarded as leading NT scholars. Their method of decision-making was novel, but hardly negates their conclusion. A serious person, as distinct from an oily polemicist, would engage the argument rather than indulge in the equivalent of an ad hominem dismissal. Like it or not, they are still the best credentialled single group of scholars to have examined this issue. And all you propose as an alternative is that your private examination of the evidence persuaded you otherwise. Perhaps you should be writing less and thinking more. Other Comments by JohnC
49. Comment #15022 by beders on December 28, 2006 at 9:06 am
David wrote:" The mathematical probability of God's existence is just over 62 per cent. So says a German science magazine. P.M. tried to settle the issue by using mathematical formulae devised to determine plausibility and probability."
P.M. is hardly a scientific magazine. I'm german and I read P.M. for quite some time when I was a kid. Great storytelling, but scientific? Not really.
Other than that you are dodging the one argument that truly matters: Where is your evidence?
Hearsay doesn't count! Even if your parents, your priest or any other authority you might have insist that Jesus really did rise from the dead. It doesn't make it one bit more true.
I'm pretty sure you investigated the hard biological/medical problems of a resurrection considering Jesus' cause of death.
Is that in any way plausible?
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50. Comment #15025 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 28, 2006 at 9:33 am
Interesting really. Of course it is about probability – as is everything.I'm glad to hear you admit it. Now address the question, is it really equally probable that Jesus rose from the dead and that your wife exists? I take it your wife does actually exist? With your track record so far, there is some residual doubt in my mind:-)
However it seems as though you have already predetermined any evidence. The Gospels are not 3rd century, not political
Oh come along now, this is not even controversial. Even most theologians accept that the bible as it exists was cut and paste together by a committee of clerics in the 4th (my apologies for the error) century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible#Canonization_of_the_Old_Testament_and_New_Testament
You denying it is so just makes you even more ridiculous than you already are.
and what hallucinations are you referring to? Um ... yours? Jesus touching your life etc. Not full blown I'll grant you. There is hope yet:-)
As to you being Jesus I guess I will have to leave you to work out why that does not work.
Thats a bit easy isn't it?
In we take your world view as given, lets consider that, despite having access to the original hebrew scriptures, and extensive schooling in same, the jewish priests were so certain Jesus was not the messiah, they had him crucified ...
Are you aware there is a guy currently claiming to be Jesus? He has a ministry, a following and seems like a nice chap. Have you personally verified that he isn't Jesus? Seems the Pharisees and Saducess made a bit of a blunder last time round, how can you be certain this guy isn't the real thing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24A2vpl_xew
Or this :
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,181681,00.html
Given the fairly low bar you set for evidence, you really ought to check these people out, I mean they are actual flesh and blood, not just some 1700 year old scribblings. You don't want to get caught like the pharisees etc., but God wouldn't do that to you would he? Yet ... he did it to them ... is he messing with your head?
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1. Comment #14708 by Richard Dawkins on December 24, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Richard
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