Boudry’s Ten Commandments for faitheism

October 7, 2014 • 10:33 am

Philosopher Maarten Boudry at Ghent University, whom we’ve featured on this site before (see here and here, for instance), is a fierce opponent of accommodationism and has written a slew of good papers, sometimes with collaborators like Yonatan Fishman, on misconceptions about the “supernatural” and on failed attempts to reconcile science and religion. In other words, he’s a philosopher after my own heart. He’s now produced the Ten Commandments for Faitheism, which I post with permission below, along with Maarten’s introduction:

I tried to come up with Ten Commandments for Faitheism, which, as Russell Blackford pointed out on Tw*tter, was coined during a reader’s contest on your website. [JAC: I found the post in which “faitheist” was coined by reader Divalent, it’s here.]

The Ten Commandments of Faitheism (Belief in Belief)

  1. All religions are equal
  2. All religions are benign
  3. Thou shalt not blaspheme or offend any faith
  4. Thou shalt give special exemptions and privileges to all religions
  5. Thou shalt respect what is done in the name of faith (except when not ‘true’ religion: see 9. & 10.)
  6. Thou shalt not challenge the faith of the Little People
  7. Every religion is a race (and thou shalt not be racist)
  8. Holy Books can mean whatever we want them to mean (except what they literally say)
  9. No ‘true’ religion can incite hatred and violence
  10. No ‘true’ religion can clash with science

Feel free to add your own commandments. I’ll add a few:

11. Thou shalt regard God-guided evolution as equivalent to naturalistic evolution. After all, theistic evolutionists are our Allies.
12. No matter what Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris says, thou shalt deem it both “strident” and “evangelical.”
13. All science is just a form of faith.

UPDATE:

1. Please note that this is a lighthearted spoof of faitheists, though there’s a heart of seriousness in it.
2. “Faitheism” represents the attitudes of atheists who are soft on belief, like Karen Armstrong or John Gray.  DO NOT mistake it for religious belief.

 

89 thoughts on “Boudry’s Ten Commandments for faitheism”

  1. Feel free to add your own commandments.

    What, try to follow that act? Even I know when I’m faced with an insurmountable challenge….

    b&

  2. I’d amend no. 4 though to “Thou shalt give special exemptions and privileges to all religions, unless our religion happens to be in the majority, in which case just special privileges for ours.”

    2. Minority religions (other than one’s own) probably don’t qualify for most of the commandments.

    1. Great response from Dr. Moran.

      I would add that Chituc’s 8 is completely bonkers. I can’t wrap my brain around how he sees the gnu defense of marginalized and mistreated groups as a “cheap rhetorical” trick – using them as “props”. It absolutely is legitimate to criticize religiously motivated bigotry. How does one fight bigotry without pointing it out?

      Besides which, he’s got the cart before the horse. Pointing out the mistreatment of, say, women and gays is not a means to an end. Their full equality is the goal. If religion didn’t mistreat anyone we wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it.

      Dr. Moran was right when he characterized 8 as “bizarre”.

  5. 14. To be an atheist is okay. We will let you live, unlike in the past. But talking about your atheism makes you a bad person.

  6. – No true believer can be a racist

    -No actions derived from belief can ever be a hate crime

    -Unbelievers shalt not judge the rationality of any belief

  7. 14. All criticism of religious dogma / doctrine / ideology etc. is actually a personal attack on religions people.

  8. 15. Misogyny is a valid proctice of religion and can not be chalenged.
    16. Religious indoctrination must be accomplished at the youngest age possible.

  10. Well, turns out I love all the additional suggestions here! Give yourselves all a +1.

    Lol’d at Boudry’s # 8.

    1. How about this variant:

      You must not offer any criticism of religion until you have read N+1 books on the subject, where N = number of books you have read.

    2. Excellent.

      Though I think most faitheists have little to no problem criticizing religious extremism. They want it limited to that. Otherwise, you’re being ‘unsophisticated’ and acting as if all religious people are extremists.

  12. Thou shalt never, ever doubt thy faith and thou shalt terrify children into submission so that they too will never doubt.

    Thou shalt pity the atheist for he/she hates God.

  13. The scriptures are the literal word of G-d, whose commandments are righteous, absolute and unchanging. Until secular society comes to a consensus that those commandments are barbaric, at which point they become metaphorical – all the rest, though, totally righteous, absolute and unchanging.

  14. HOLD ON A SECOND! A lot of these letters are assuming that “faitheism” is religion. It’s not–it’s the form of atheism that is sympathetic to religion. The commandments were (and should be) written in that light.

  16. Really very uncomfortable with assertions 1. and 2. Really cannot imagine these two propositions as thoughtfully offered except by a complete non-believer in any.

    1. all religions are not equal, mine is superior.

    2. all religions are not benign. Mine is the most benign except when there is cause to be otherwise.

  17. An addendum to one of Jerry’s addenda:

    12) Don’t forget “militant”, because Sam and Richard are out there literally using force to advance their ideas.

  18. – Religions are hallowed by being the only non-basic behavior known to man that will survive indefinitely.
    – Science is cursed with having to make theological statements on behalf of their organizations.
    – Thou shalt not put teapots in orbit around the Sun between Earth and Mars. Verily, the burden of proof lies on the non-teaists.

  20. Thou shalt respect other ways of knowing…even the ones that have not produced knowledge.

    Thou shalt describe any atheism advertisement ‘militant,’ or ‘offensive,’ even if it’s just an ad giving the .com address and phone number of an atheist group.

    Thou shalt respect all believers definitions of blasphemy (if they say it is, it is), and attempt to avoid blasphemous acts in a believer’s presence or knowing.

  21. I like Dawkins’ admonitions much better:

    1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

    2. In all things, strive to cause no harm.

    3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

    4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

    5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

    6. Always seek to be learning something new.

    7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

    8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
    9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

    10. Question everything.

    1. I’m not sure if #10 on Dawkins’ list is valid (of course, if it is valid, then I also have to question 1-9).

  22. Thou shalt hold religious believers to a lower standard such as thou wouldst children.

    Thou shalt lie to religious believers, and also chastise those others that do not see the wisdom of lying to the believers.

  24. – ‘Most believers are Sophisticated theologians’, and those who worship a Big Beardy in the Sky are straw men invented by atheists who know nothing about how the religious really think.’

    – ‘When someone claims they carried out an atrocity in the name of a God they mean ‘anti-colonialism”

  26. Fatheism is like getting an intellectual cold/flu to an atheist. This illness can persist for years with strong reoccurrences, but it is an illness and it has a cure:

    purge the thought that you can make everyone happy all the time, i.e., accommodation is not justified just because you don’t want to hurt the other guy’s feelings.

          6. Ahnold!

            …Wot? It starts with, “A,” and it’s a name used by funny-speaking burly white guys with a bad attitude and loud reed instruments….

            b&

          12. Lol!

            Not that anyone’s dying to know, but that campaign is actually the reason I came up with this ‘nym. None of the music blogs I followed ever really got into the nitty-gritty of music, preferring to preoccupy themselves discussing stuff I termed “peripheralia” – stuff that was tangential to music but not essentially musical itself. It made me ask: “where’s the (musical) beef?”

            So I started “musical beef”. The beef has been scant of late.

          13. Names are curious that way. How many people named, “Smith,” do any metalworking? How many “Baker”s have ever even turned on the oven?

            I might be a bit of an anomaly…”Goren” means, “miller,” as in one who turns grain into flour. I buy wheat in sacks from the local Mormon grain / survivalist store every year or three. I have a tabletop electric-powered grain mill (about the size of a large food processor) in which I’ll grind the wheat as needed. So, when I make bread, I weigh out the amount of wheat, send it through the mill as I’m measuring out the water and yeast and salt, and then dump the fresh-ground flour into the bowl.

            Nothing smells like fresh-ground flour…there’s something beautiful and primal and intoxicating about it. And bread made with fresh-ground flour, even from wheat that’s years old, is far superior to bread made with even week-old flour.

            And it’s brain-dead easy to do, the wheat is dirt cheap and lasts, literally, for millennia if stored properly…for me, it’s the ideal fusion of technology and tradition. Grandpa Goren, who grew up in Ukraine in the family that owned one of the town’s two actual flour mills, would approve….

            Cheers,

            b&

          14. MacPherson means “son of Parson”. Proof that priests married and reproduced back in the day. 😉

          20. “None of the music blogs I followed ever really got into the nitty-gritty of music…”

            I read about that when you first showed up here and I clicked through via your Gravatar. Sounded really interesting, but I discovered most of it was way over my head. 😉

  30. †) Thou shalt not kill–Jesus–or Santa
    ‡) Thou shalt not covet your neighbors coexist bumber sticker

  31. Always give the faithful the benefit of the double because we know not their ways.

    Give credit to all ideas without evidence because they most likely are also religious.

  32. Although these probably could fall under some of the other commandments, I’d make it explicit:

    “Thous shalt consider religious belief to be intrinsic aspects of a believer’s basic identity, like race and sexual orientation.”

    “Thou shalt never tell anyone that their religious or spiritual beliefs are ‘wrong,’ for that is what the fundamentalists do.”

    “Thou shalt limit thy criticism to religious extremists.”

    These pretty much define ‘accomodationism.’ I might add in another odd one which puzzles me:

    “Thou shalt consider natural explanations for why people believe in God as reasons to shut up, not as ammunition.”

    WTF?

    6.) Thou shalt not challenge the faith of the Little People

    Ah, maybe that’s it. The Little People Argument — this is why they can’t help themselves.

  33. I prefer the faux religion I came up with a couple of years ago with a couple of my coworkers. It’s called Bendorianism (after a combination of our chat room names). It has two Commandments, which we actually changed to suggestions, because more just seem too pushy:

    1. It is suggested you indulge in 4-6 beers (or the equivalent intake of the alcohol of your choice) during a night out.

    2. More may be consumed, but don’t blame us for any feelings of future illness; these and any further suggestions made by Bendorians are subject to the discretion of the individual.

  36. Thanks a lot for all the input, folks! My favorites entries thus far:

    11. Thou shalt not offer any criticism of religion until thou hast read N+1 books on the subject, where n = number of books thou hast read.

    12. Thou shalt describe any criticism of religion as a phobia.

    13. Most believers are Sophisticated theologians.

    I would like to keep the basic list to 10, but one essential tenet of Faitheism is really missing, as Jerry pointed out: the idea that atheism is a religion too. To point out the irony, perhaps the last Commandment should read:

    Thou shalt, despite all of the above, use ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ as terms of abuse for atheism.

    Or just shorter and pithier: “Science ia a form of faith, too.” And then drop one of the other Commandments, perhaps 6 (which is a bit redundant).

    1. I’m not sure you should equate science and atheism in that last commandment. Better to focus on: Atheism is a religion, but one which requires more faith than others. Although the latter might be more a religionist’s view than a faitheist’s.

      /@

    2. Just to add my support for 11 above, as proposed by eric at #11 above.

      Neatly encapsulates the whole courtier’s reply industry.

      Although of course its N+1 and N, not N+1 and n.

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