Secularism versus the Demonization of Atheists

[Immanuel Can]

There is no such thing as a correct and obligatory form of morality...

Well, if Atheism is true, you're quite right.

... and atheism has nothing to say about morality anyway.

True too. It's amoral.

It is the non acceptance of a specific truth claim with regard to the existence of a specific type of deity and nothing else

The problem is that this claim has, in itself, implications.

If there is no God, then there is no objective moral truth either; for how exactly could a moral claim be grounded then? It cannot. It can only be something contingent...like a statement of taste (as in, "I don't like murder."), or of social arrangement (as in "In this society, and at this time, we don't like murder.") But there can be no universal truth that murder, or rape, or child molestation, or even genocide and cannibalism, is wrong in an ultimate way -- for all people, for all time. So morality is as thin as tissue paper, as changeable as individual, as fickle as local social opinion, and as temporary as today's newspaper tomorrow.

That's what Atheism gives us.

[Greta]

It irks me to see so much denigration of the brilliant and decent Prof Dawkins.

Oh. I guess you know a different Richard Dawkins. I know this one: https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... reputation

No, he's not destroying his reputation at all. Shallow article.

However, I do acknowledge that millions of theists are working hard to try to destroy Dawkins's reputation. I find it ironic that so many theists such as yourself think of nothing about misrepresenting Dawkins. It's a direct contravention of Commandment #9, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. No one cares, or even says anything.

Seemingly there are theists with no more regard for the Ten Commandments than anyone else. Maybe you aren't actually religious? I see no evidence in your words. No special warmth or wisdom. You strike me as an instinctive conservative and cultural warrior with seemingly no more interest in the metaphysics that underpins spirituality than my dog. I see religiosity as a political rather than spiritual act for you, akin to women who wear hijab in solidarity with their culture, not because they are silly enough to believe God ordained that women's hair should not be exposed.

... he is a great thinker and teacher.

Maybe in biology. Definitely not in Religion or Ethics.

Of course he's a great teacher in biology - that was his field until numbskull anti-evolution Christians interfered with his work enough for him to consider dealing with them more important than his biology studies. Fortunately, he still presents interesting biological observations along with his critiques.

He is obviously not a teacher of either ethics nor religion, rather he is today a player in the politics of existential ideology. You will find that evolutionary biologists are the main scientific agitators, because they are the main victims of theistic interference in things they don't understand.

[surreptitious57]

If there is no God then there is no objective moral truth either for how exactly could a moral claim be grounded then? It cannot. It can only
be something contingent like a statement of taste ( as in I dont like murder ) or of social arrangement ( as in in this society and at this time we
dont like murder ) But there can be no universal truth that murder or rape or child molestation or even genocide and cannibalism is wrong in an ultimate way - for all people for all time. So morality is as thin as tissue paper as changeable as individual as fickle as local social opinion and as temporary as todays newspaper tomorrow

Morality is inter subjective or subjective and would still be so even if God were real due to the sheer scale of interpretation of his word which would exist. Do all Christians who accept the principle of objective morality agree on the moral interpretation of the Old Testament - no they
do not. Some interpret it literally. Some do not. So they are all subjectively interpreting what is supposed to be absolute truth. Now if it were absolute there would be no need for subjective interpretation. For there would instead be universal agreement with no ambiguity or confusion

Any human being who has free will is capable of making moral decisions regardless of whether or not they believe in God. Although just because morality is not objective is no reason not to have law based upon moral opinion of the legislators of the day. For imperfect law is better than no
law at all. Although just as morality cannot be objective then it equally cannot be non existent. So even if laws did not exist morality still would

[Belinda]

It irks me to see so much denigration of the brilliant and decent Prof Dawkins.

Oh. I guess you know a different Richard Dawkins. I know this one: https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... reputation

... he is a great thinker and teacher.

Maybe in biology. Definitely not in Religion or Ethics.

And by the way, you can see that he did, in fact, say exactly the stupid thing I attributed to him if you watch "The God Delusion Debate". It's on YouTube, and you can watch him do it live.

Don't you see, Immanuel, that the version of God which Dawkins denigrates is that version of God which the more intelligent, more responsible, religionists have abandoned?

Don't you see, Immanuel, that it's possible to be a Christian and to understand the saving power of Christ , and still be an unbeliever in the deterministic theory that is your version of God?

Theologians don't believe in the version of God that Dawkins doesn't believe in.

Karen Armstrong:-

Religion is a practical form of knowledge. You learn by doing it, like dancing or driving or swimming. You can't learn to swim by reading a text; you just have to get into the pool and flap around until you acquire the knack. It takes years of disciplined, dedicated hard work before a dancer can move with grace, but if she works at it, she can take human movement into a new sphere.

Religion does the same, and in all the traditions you adopt a disciplined way of life and take part in rituals that teach the mind to go deeper than the rational level. Praying five times a day helps Muslims get beyond the preening, prancing ego. When you interrupt your work and point yourself in the orientation of Mecca, you're reminding yourself of your true priorities.

In the ancient Benedictine tradition, you don't just get it all in one go. It requires a monk to develop very slowly over years of practice. St. Ignatius, on the other hand, embraced the new efficiency of modernity. Ignatian spirituality is a crash course in mysticism. One 30-day retreat, and you're set.

Religion is hard work. Above all it demands a compassionate lifestyle. This is the test of religiosity in every single one of the major world traditions. Most of our doctrines were originally calls to action.

And from the same interview with theologian Karen Armstrong:-

Dawkins' critique is not informed. Richard Dawkins on theology is frankly painful to read. As British literary critic Terry Eagleton said in his review, "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."


I recommend the article especially as it's much shorter and more entertaining than the one that Immanuel recommended.

http://www.uscatholic.org/node/5076

[Immanuel Can]

It's a direct contravention of Commandment #9, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. No one cares, or even says anything.

I wonder what God thinks of Dawkins' "witness" in The God Delusion.

I believe we shall find out.

He is obviously not a teacher of either ethics nor religion,...

Indeed so. And this is the thing about a PhD. A PhD qualifies you with a certain set of research skills, plus very narrow specific knowledge in one area. It does not make one wise, nor does it qualify a person in areas outside of that narrow competency. For that, one must do a whole lot more.

However, the temptation of a person who has already achieved some letters after his or her name is to speak as if special competency in other areas had come packaged with the original PhD. And that's when things break down, and someone who has knowledge in one area speaks folly in another.

That is Mr. Dawkins' unfortunate plight. He appears to imagine that having some knowledge of biology makes him competent to speak about faith, about morality, about pre-history and cosmology, about political, social and sexual matters as if he were well-informed and authoritative. But evidently, he is not. He's simply overreached. And that is how he is destroying his own reputation now.

[Immanuel Can]

Morality is inter subjective or subjective...

If so, it is not obligatory to anyone.

Do all Christians who accept the principle of objective morality agree on the moral interpretation of the Old Testament - no they
do not. Some interpret it literally. Some do not.

I disagree with this claim. I have never met a Christian who interprets the entire Old Testament -- or the New, for that matter -- as completely literal. Every Christian I have ever met knows that some of it is poetry, some is metaphor, some is parable, and so on. The discussion surrounds those parts that are capable of being read either way, or about the hermeneutical context in which a particular precept or commandment appears. The variance is not absolute, but is rather nuanced. To speak generally, among Christians the broad strokes are generally agreed upon, and the details of interpretation are what remain to be settled. That is why we can speak of "Christians" as of-a-piece, and not merely of a random aggregation of competing cults.

Any human being who has free will is capable of making moral decisions regardless of whether or not they believe in God.

That is not the question. We all know that is true. What we don't know is that if I don't like people having ice cream on Tuesdays, and you don't like people killing their children, by what right I get to prevent ice cream or you get to prevent infanticide. You need to be able to explain to me why infanticide is wrong, even if I like it; or I need to be able to show you why ice cream is wrong to consume on Tuesdays, even if you want it very badly.

That's what it means to legitimize morality: and that is what Atheism just cannot do.

Although just because morality is not objective is no reason not to have law based upon moral opinion of the legislators of the day. For imperfect law is better than no law at all.

Were the Judenrein laws in Germany better than no laws at all? Is Sharia better than freedom? It would be hard to see why.

It is true that absence of law terrifies people; but their terror does not prove that laws are good...only that people are terrified without laws of some kind. But those laws may be arbitrary or draconian, and still fit the bill of saving them from the terror. Many times, people will prefer totalitarianism to extreme and persistent uncertainty. None of that makes totalitarianism right. That is, none of it legitimizes totalitarianism.

Morality also cannot be legitimized by people's fear of living without it.

Although just as morality cannot be objective then it equally cannot be non existent.

Unicorns are not objective either. Would it then be your view that therefore they cannot be non-existent?

[Immanuel Can]

[Don't you see, Immanuel, that the version of God which Dawkins denigrates is that version of God which the more intelligent, more responsible, religionists have abandoned?

The pejoratives don't strengthen your case: they're just ad hominem. You should dispense with those.

...the deterministic theory that is your version of God?

If you think I'm a Determinist, then you haven't been paying attention. You should perhaps take a look back at my position on the Determinism strand.

Theologians don't believe in the version of God that Dawkins doesn't believe in.

Yes. Now, Dawkins hates it when people say that, and he protests it's unfair: but he's opened himself to that charge, because of the way he tries to make a reductio out of the God concept (the "Flying Spaghetti Monster," for example), and then mocks the creation of his own fevered brain. He simply will not deal with God as a rational concept, one that has occupied and engaged some of the best minds in human history for several millennia and motivated some of the greatest art, literature and science the human race has ever produced; he wants to pretend it's as irrational, transparent and silly as his own FSM, and then disprove that, handing himself a cheap and easy win at the outset.

And this is why his arguments continually miss all rational Theists.

[Arising_uk]

At the end of the day, every one of us is a truth-absolutist.

No we are not. That is just your 'God' speaking.

[surreptitious57]

I have never met a Christian who interprets the entire Old Testament - or the New for that matter - as completely
literal. Every Christian I have ever met knows that some of it is poetry and some is metaphor and some is parable

The number of Christians you have met is but a very tiny number of the total number [ there are after all over two billion of them ] and
some of them are fundamentalists who interpret the whole Bible literally. It is therefore entirely irrelevant that you have not met any

[Immanuel Can]

The number of Christians you have met is but a very tiny number of the total number [ there are after all over two billion of them ] and
some of them are fundamentalists who interpret the whole Bible literally. It is therefore entirely irrelevant that you have not met any

I don't think you know what -- or how -- a "fundamentalist" thinks. I don't think you know how hermeneutics work, or what "literalism" really entails. And I say that because of your own remarks, not out of any malice. It appears to be the fact.

For example, believing in a literal Exodus does not imply not knowing what the Psalms are, or that the Song of Songs is poetry, or that the Prodigal Son is a metaphor, or that Revelation is full of pictorial imagery. No fundamentalist is required to believe, contrary to the clear indicators of the text, that there is only one kind of writing in the Bible, the literal fact claim.

One other thing I'm pretty sure of...that my basis for assessing accurately what they believe is almost guaranteed to be far deeper than your own. I doubt very much you have a broader, deeper more interdenominational or more multicultural experience with all kinds of Christians than I do. It's possible, of course -- anything is -- but any independent assessor would have to admit it's very, very unlikely.

So I think I'm quite safe to say that on this one you're shooting very, very wide of the truth.

[Immanuel Can]

I wish to emphasize that in justifying mortality, he runs afoul of Hume’s Guillotine as much as atheists; but, unlike atheists, he also runs afoul of Hume’s Fork...

Neither, actually. For Hume assumes a world that contains only material facts...no moral facts. The Guillotine refers to a world containing only material facts, and the Fork only to statements pertaining to it. Yet I would argue we do not live in Hume's supposed world.

Ironically, Hume's Fork falls afoul of itself, as has often been pointed out. Hume can't pass his own test. The belief that facts are only material cannot be shown by any "prong" of the fork itself...so Atheists have to take Hume on faith!

Meanwhile, we Theists do not believe in a world of merely material facts. By definition, Theists believe the world has not only physical facts but moral ones as well; and that the latter are revealed by God. You can dispute that, of course; but whereas Atheists are unable to live in rational consistency with their own worldview, Theists can live consistently with theirs. And while logical consistency is not an absolute verifier of truth, it is a first-order falsifier of nonsense...that is, such rational consistency would show that whatever else was true, Atheism was irrational.

We can observe morality.

No, this is not true. What you can "observe" is only that human societies seem to have a strange propensity to believe in things called "moralities." Whether any of these is "right," an Atheist can never know. Moreover, as per Hume, even the idea of "right" can make no sense to an Atheist, in this context. It must be, as Hume thought, emotive; an arbitrary "I like" or "I dislike" this or that moral...not a statement of the rightness or wrongness of that particular moral itself.

Atheism cannot even show that Atheism is moral.

We cannot observe God.

Apparently, you cannot. I believe you. But you cannot say more, for you could not possibly know what other people can observe. Moreover, IF, as Theists believe, God has made Himself knowable, then the Atheist is not only wrong about that, but obstinately so, and in defiance of real evidence. Other people might indeed know things about God; and while the Atheist's ignorance might be understandable, his insistence about what others do not know would not. That would simply be irrational again.

The key question again is always, "Has God spoken?" If He has not, then we are all poking about in the dark equally, and nothing can be moral or immoral in any universal, agreed-upon or binding sense (i.e. it cannot be believe to be legitimate). If, however, He has spoken, then true claims about God can be made, and even if not everybody is equally acquainted with the evidence, morality exists and is binding and universal.

[Hobbes' Choice]

You have your history and law completely wrong. The pilgrims persecuted religious minorities, and never, ever, allowed religious freedom.

Legally, it is only if a government forces one to pray that the act is illegal. A student at a public school in the USA can pray on their own, that's not a violation of the law, it's just that the government cannot give official support to such actions, because that would be in violation of the First Amendment.

Prayer doesn't work anyway, so I'm not sure why anyone thinks prayer in schools is a good idea.

True. The "Pilgrim Fathers", so called, fled Britain BECAUSE of religious toleration. A toleration they found utterly unacceptable as it allowed other Protestant groups, and EVEN Catholics the same level of freedoms as each other.

[davidm]

This thread has been nuked all the way back to July 6, and to I Can's response to me on Hume, whIch response, though I correctly assumed he had made it, I had not actually read until now.

How can this be explained?

Easy. it's God's will!

[Greta]

It's a direct contravention of Commandment #9, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. No one cares, or even says anything.

I wonder what God thinks of Dawkins' "witness" in The God Delusion.

Maybe you should read it rather than make bad guesses as to its content based on the title? Most of the book is about the workings of nature. If God exists, then Dawkins's brilliant insights - and mistakes - are part of its physical expression.

It seems to me that many believe that God thinks like judgemental Republican - made unto their own image.

[Belinda]

[Don't you see, Immanuel, that the version of God which Dawkins denigrates is that version of God which the more intelligent, more responsible, religionists have abandoned?

The pejoratives don't strengthen your case: they're just ad hominem. You should dispense with those.[/quote]

Sorry. I do think that you yourself are intelligent. I suppose you must be responsible or you would not bother with the discussions. You must know that many people are put off understanding science because they have been badly taught about God.

..the deterministic theory that is your version of God?

If you think I'm a Determinist, then you haven't been paying attention. You should perhaps take a look back at my position on the Determinism strand.[/quote]

I'll pay more attention . But you could have put me right immediately

Theologians don't believe in the version of God that Dawkins doesn't believe in.

Yes. Now, Dawkins hates it when people say that, and he protests it's unfair: but he's opened himself to that charge, because of the way he tries to make a reductio out of the God concept (the "Flying Spaghetti Monster," for example), and then mocks the creation of his own fevered brain. He simply will not deal with God as a rational concept, one that has occupied and engaged some of the best minds in human history for several millennia and motivated some of the greatest art, literature and science the human race has ever produced; he wants to pretend it's as irrational, transparent and silly as his own FSM, and then disprove that, handing himself a cheap and easy win at the outset.

And this is why his arguments continually miss all rational Theists.
[/quote]

Well I have read his books and I did understand them.

For your own part, Immanuel, you may understand that there are all too many people who cannot advance beyond the Santa Claus god, or beyond the judgemental god. Pastors have to preach for the sake of the lowest common denominator of intelligence in their flocks, and many pastors don't understand metaphysics. Some pastors may understand metaphysics and in a spirit of kindness have to patronise those members of their flocks who don't. Faiths often cause closed minds.

You yourself spend too much energy castigating unbelievers when you might possibly argue coherently for faith; it would be interesting if you could and would.

Your point about faith's nurturing great works of art is a good one, and deserves a separate thread. I can think of objections to your thesis and also support for it.