by Grania Spingies
In the wake of complaints such as this one and angry reviews of Jerry’s new book Faith vs. Fact, one has to wonder whether any criticism of theism is acceptable or valid to a believer. One of the complaints that irks Jerry the most is the charge that he – or indeed we – as fellow atheists, have not read the right theology books, or not enough of them, or that we haven’t understood them properly.
The charge continues: therefore we haven’t truly understood religion, and therefore we lack the credentials to rebut it.
Of course, the charge is bogus. At very least, Jerry has read more theology than the average human being, more even than the average church-going believer. Tomes of Sophisticated Theology are rarely if ever referenced by ministers and priests in their sermons and homilies, because they know that those in the pews have not read them and don’t intend to either. The notion that the real answers to difficult questions lie between the covers of such books is simply a security blanket proffered where the congregation appear to be of above-average education and perhaps don’t literally believe in talking snakes chatting up naked women.
Perhaps because most theology books are rarely read, the champions of theology as Christianity’s best argument aren’t always aware of the fact that, for example C.S. Lewis (still so very popular after all these years, perhaps simply because he writes more accessibly than the average theologian) has been very comprehensively taken apart by other theologians.
However, I maintain that most theology is dead in the water from the outset. Here’s why: they all operate off the base assumption that God is real, and is moreover the Christian God of the bible. This is why theology fails to convince anyone who isn’t already in the club.
Lewis actually tried his hand at “proving” God with his infamous “liar or a madman” argument. Basically Jesus is God because he said so, and he wouldn’t have said so unless it was true, because we know he wasn’t a liar or a madman. Plenty of people have pointed out that those aren’t the only two other possibilities. And any non-believer who has read the bible can attest that in fact some of Jesus’s doings come across as quite mad (figs, anyone?). In any case, anyone can spot a circular argument. Cosmological arguments and Pascal’s Wager don’t get any better even though some of them use really long words with lots of syllables.
Anyway, the point here is to have a discussion about whether it is possible to satisfy a believer that your lack of belief is not owing to a lack of theology. If not, why not?
It’s tit-for-tat but to the charge one hasn’t studied any theology an atheist could answer back by saying they haven’t studied any atheism.
One could also say that most christians have not completely read their own source documents or studied the history of christianity. However, in an argument (discussion) between a christian and an atheist, neither will convince the other as they don’t come close to speaking the same language.
That’s not a good rebuttal though. It’s just the “tu quoque” fallacy – we can do better than that.
The believers won’t be satisfied by anything that rejects their own faith. About the only thing that will satisfy them is a sincere recital of the Sinner’s Prayer.
b&
I’ve read “binders full of” theology and still feel amused that it is one of the rare academic disciplines (perhaps the only one) almost totally consumed with the effort to prove its subject exists.
Chemists don’t feel compelled to prove the existence of chemicals, nor do literary critics prove the existence of poetry. Yet theologians realize that they are practitioners of an endeavor the usefulness and veracity of which are highly suspect, so they scream loudest when their Subject Guy Is denied. Do you suppose that Einstein would have lost any sleep if someone claimed that matter or energy do not exist (I mean in the common sense use of such a claim)?
(Rabbi) David Powers, Ph.D.
Well put!
The existence of chemicals are proved with every experiment. Poetry can be seen and read by all. God on the other hand can be added to or subtracted from an explanation about reality and it wouldn’t make a difference at best. Often, it makes the scientific theory even more complicated, adding mystery where there is none.
If Einstein (or any other scientist) met someone who denied the existence of atoms, he could easily prove their existence with a few experiments. Theologians can do no such thing.
Actually, for a century after John Dalton’s seminal work, the existence of atoms was still a matter of controversy. One of the things that finally helped to convince the sceptics was Einstein’s 1905 paper on Brownian motion.
As an aside, one of the interesting aspects of this controversy was the chemists came belief in (chemical) atoms first, generally speaking. (One exception seems to have been Mendeleev (!!))
sub
Nope, not a chance! As you say, theology texts are security blankets giving them comfort that all the answers to the questions those nasty atheists ask are there, having been worked out by the wise and knowledgeable theologians.
Quite obviously, if the naive and blinkered atheists had actually read the erudite and thoughtful theology, they would know they were wrong.
Since they’re still atheists, they can’t have read the theology! QED! Checkmate atheists!
I don’t debate theists as a rule, I gave that up when I realized that people losing their religion can be a very dangerous thing (long story).
But I always asked how they would know about gd if no one had told them about it, how would gd tell them to believe if someone hadn’t told them that gd said it.
I asked a priest one time why, if gd only made Adam and Eve, and they only had four sons, where did all the people come from?
He said “sometimes you just have to have faith” . I said that faith isn’t knowledge and I require proof, not faith.
That was ages ago, I am happier without any theists in my life, my family is atheist, I was raised atheist and theist have no place in my life.
I got interested in the “long story” of people losing faith and becoming dangerous.
Me, too.
Guy said he wasn’t religious, turned out he was very dependant on religion.
We argued about it a few times because it was getting worse (he wanted me to go to church with him, to be saved), one time whatever I said got through to him and he lost it, had a total meltdown.
I of course dumped him, life is too short.
He tried to commit suicide, first by drinking draino (wtf) and after he was released from that medical hold he sliced his wrists, all the while leaving me messages about how I took gd away from him and if there was no gd then he didn’t want to live blah blah blah…
He scared me, his reaction scared me. Every religious person I have ever met was “off” in some manner, haven’t met a sane one yet.
Sure as hell never dated one again.
Someone once observed that people will complain about their memory, but never their judgment. Our judgment is part of our identity, but memory is something external.
When we criticize someone’s religious beliefs, we are really questioning their judgment, their ability to reason correctly from a set of facts, so it’s not surprising that believers wish to recast the situation as reasoning correctly from a set of facts that atheists don’t have.
sub
I have not read any theology since I took a class called Psychology of Religion in undergraduate school–except for snippets of theologian claims that Jerry and others post here and elsewhere. But, I have read a lot of science books over the years and that is all I need to come to an informed decision.
Yeah, that’s a tired charge. Jerry could point out (well, he has pointed out) that he’s read a ton of theology, but of course that just isn’t good enough for believers: “Coyne has read x theologian but has not read y theologian and therefore his arguments are flawed because of what he hasn’t read.” Snore. But there’s only so much time in the day and Jerry can’t read everyone. But what Jerry HAS achieved with his book is to point out the common themes that most theologians share (the “nonnegotiables,” as he rightly calls them), and, to me, that’s perfectly acceptable.
And not only is it true that most believers in the pews don’t read theology, many believers don’t even know, as Jerry pointed out (and I was shocked by this), that Genesis is the first book of the Bible! Yikes! So much for believing, as it were, that believers are sharp and up to date on apologetics!
By the way, just as Hitchens provided a terrific Afterword to his book and Dawkins provided a new Preface for “The God Delusion”, I would recommend Jerry doing something similar for the paperback release of his book: simply offer a list (in a manner similar to what Dawkins did) of the most common complaints and criticisms that the book has received — and then deftly swat them all away. (Yes, I would be happy to buy a revised edition and then give the hardcover away.)
Barry
P.S. Per Jerry’s request from an earlier post, I’m gathering up some edits to send to him for correction for the second printing. Yes: I’ve already read the book once, and now I’m midway into reading it a second time with my editor’s hat on.
“…simply offer a list (in a manner similar to what Dawkins did) of the most common complaints and criticisms that the book has received — and then deftly swat them all away.”
Which might often consist of merely providing the page numbers for the places he’s already addressed those very complaints in FvF.
They insist you read truckloads of theology before you can rightly reject theism (if then), but you don’t have to read anything, or even be able to read, to be a believer in good standing. Uneven standards?
Very!
good point!
It’s a doubly bad standard because theology is such an awful read. It’s like saying, “You can’t reject theism until you’ve spent a few years in a coma”.
Try telling that to Eben Alexander…
It never seems to occur to theologians that if doG wanted people to find it it wouldn’t have hidden itself so well that it takes years study of an arcane non-subject to “know” anything about it.
Nine year old children spontaneously plow through the seven volumes and 4,224 pages of Harry Potter and come away with a vivid understanding of the world and characters it describes. After a lifetime of cajoling, shaming, pressure, and sincere efforts, not to mention hundreds or thousands of excerpts read aloud to them, most adult believers in Christianity have not fully read the Word of God on which they supposedly base their entire lives.
I think the argument against Biblical veracity need be no more elaborate than this observation. If I were to judge purely on the quality of the work, I’d have to say J.K. Rowling is more likely to be God than YHWH/Jesus.
I would bet that most athiests have read a lot more theology than theologists have read science! Perhaps the counter charge should be that before a debate between the two camps takes place that theologists have to read some biochemistry, genetics, geology, biogeography, and a host of other scientific disciplines. I’ve read the bible – it didn’t impress! But then, of course, that is a theologist’s only “real reference!”
“I would bet that most athiests have read a lot more theology than theologists have read science!”
I just got through the part of FvF which addresses Plantinga’s argument that evolution and naturalism are not compatible. I congratulate Jerry on refraining from the appropriate response, which is profane laughter.
To me the most glaring problem with the ‘not enough theology’ argument is that there are different standards applied to believers and non-believers. No faith leader insists that followers must have studied master’s level theology before they are allowed to believe. And no pastor or Imam would seriously say to one of their flock that their belief lacks legitimacy because they have not studied theology with enough depth and rigour. They would of course be welcomed with open arms. We infidels must fill our heads with years of theological study for our non-belief to be considered legitimate and on a sound footing. Why aren’t believers held to the same standards? Why are their beliefs considered legitimate even if they have never even looked at a theology book, let alone a book on atheism.
Excellent point!
Absolutely! It’s not only possible to satisfy a believer that your lack of belief isn’t due to a lack of theology, but from what I can tell that’s usually the default assumption — even when dealing with the very sophisticated. The most common reason given for atheism isn’t ‘irrationality.’ It’s ‘spiritual blindness.’ For whatever reason and to whatever degree of culpability, when all is said and done and the books and scholarship are put away, we atheists are emotionally unprepared to respond to God.
This is where the immunizing strategy of religious faith takes over the debate. Yes, they’ll cite arguments and evidence however they can. The Argument from Design, the Argument from Cosmology, the Argument from Morality, the Argument from Beauty, and so on and so forth. They’ll sometimes thump the Bible or Quran or Book of Urantia and insist it all successfully predicted modern physics — or a 6,000 year old earth. Science!
But even the most enlightened apologist citing the most rarefied version of God and our blissful submission to sublimity will still agree that the necessary precondition to finding any of those reasons reason enough to believe is a state of open willingness and receptivity. You have to be spiritually prepared. You have to meet God and its best arguments “half-way.”
Now WE consider that an unethical and irresponsible surrender to gullibility, subjective validation, and self-interest. When we talk of reason and rationality we refer to the common ground of philosophy and science. But THEY try to frame it as simply being “open-minded” in the ordinary sort of way, with the “closed-minded” approach framed as prejudice, perversity, pride, and pig-minded stubbornness. They sneer at our attempts to explain them and wave theology over our heads, but when it comes to actual reasons for our atheism they prefer to see us as being like holocaust deniers. The problem is not with our heads, but with our hearts.
SATISFY a believer that my lack of belief is not based a lack of theology? Oh my dear, that assumption practically gives them an afterglow.
I don’t mean to change the subject (I’m not really because this does play into a larger theme of Jerry’s book), but speaking of an “irresponsible surrender to gullibility” (nice phrase), get a load of this incredible news story, so incredible that it appeared on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times. Read it and be amazed:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/06/06/us/ap-us-fortuneteller-alleged-scam.html?_r=0
I don’t know; seemed like money well earned, to me.
As an atheist, I’m probably less amazed than some of the general public. From an outsider’s perspective, claims about cleansing sin, protecting ‘energy,’ and “‘twin flames’ being kept apart by negativity” don’t sound very different than religious beliefs which are more traditional, common, or privileged. “Same shit; different shovel,” as I always say. The real red flag is the demands for money. Lots of it.
Concerning New York psychics — I heard this story at TAM. A couple of prominent skeptic scientists once wandered the streets of NY City looking for “psychics” who would agree to be tested in a study they had designed. Again and again, they panned out on every single storefront psychic they tried — until one of the professional psychics helpfully suggested they try the bulletin board at a New Age bookstore.
That’s where they hit the jackpot. Many self-proclaimed psychics who frequent the ‘Spirituality’ section at New Age bookstores were pleased and happy to be tested. Not so pleased and happy when they failed, of course — but the fact that they agreed in the first place helps to place them in the “sincerely deluded” pile.
I wouldn’t say the same about the professional psychics who run businesses in NYC. My guess is the vast majority are scam artists who KNOW they are scam artists. They give hope for money.
Assuming this didn’t come from The Onion – how did anyone that stupid, nay braindead, come to have $700K?
It is a false presumption of the right that big money is always earned. Especially since they did away with the inheritance taxes. Oh excuse me, of course I meant “death taxes.”
It’s a comment I’ve frequently heard – something along the lines of, “I just can’t imagine life without a spiritual dimension, and the fulfilment that goes with that.” It’s the constant refrain that atheists are lacking somehow emotionally.
Theists wage an internal and external war between 2 major defenses of theism:
1.)Belief in God Is Reasonable
vs.
2.) “God’s Not A Hypothesis: He’s My DADDY!!!”
That second one comes in both folk versions (“I asked God to help me find my glasses and He did!”)and sophisticated versions (“God is the way of bliss.”)
I grew up Catholic, and after I gave up on Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general, I did feel like I was missing something. But it wasn’t the “spiritual dimension”, it was the ritual. I manage to indulge my liking for ritual by hanging out with NeoPagans. They aren’t dogmatic, there’s no indoctrination, they don’t give a damn about your theology (or lack of it), anyone present can participate instead of just being a spectator and they’re more fun. I’ve heard a lot of flaky opinions, but I’ve never had anything forced on me.
+10 Exactly! That you are overtly blocking the obviousness of God somehow is the #1 immunizing strategy of all the religious people I’ve met. Argument, reasoning, etc., are a distant second to questioning some aspect of your character.
The exact nature of the flaw they see in your character depends on the kind of religion. Some fundamentalists may see you as being under the influence of Satan or a demon (I’m not using hyperbole here). What should be plain and obvious to you, the truth of their fundamentalist sect, is obscured by powerful outside forces. Other fundamentalists and evangelicals are very (very!) likely to imagine that sin is your problem. You are too wedded to your life of sin, and since God will call you out of that life of sin that you love, you run from him. If you live a life that overtly conforms to Christian morality, so that they can’t see any obivous sin to indict you on, they will invoke some hidden sin or just invoke a general unwillingness to submit your life to God. “Pride” is the word here. You are too full of “pride” to accept God, to submit to God. And this is self-verifying diagnostic to them since every time you exhibit confidence in your arguments, in science, etc., it will get chalked up to your pride. See, they think, so much pride, if only you were willing to be humble and “let God into your life”.
As you move into other religions they may still invoke pride as a kind of “sin” that blinds you to the truth of what they are saying or, as Sastra notes, some generalized lack of openness. You are too narrow, too rigid, too devoted to reason which, after all, is only one path to truth.
If “Linda” is still listening in, this is incidentally another reason it can be hard to leave religion behind. You know, before you leave, that as soon as you leave religion people who the day before thought you were a great person will now think bad things about your character. Even if they don’t say it out loud, you know from how they talked about other people through your life that that’s what they will think. This is just another of the many costs one has to bear if you want to leave. Most people don’t see any great reward in leaving religion. Unless they are scientists it probably doesn’t cause them too much daily cognitive dissonance pain, for example. The costs of leaving religion, on the other hand, are very obvious, and often socially enforced, so… for most people there just isn’t much motivation to rock that particular boat. If you come up and rock their boat, they aren’t going to be happy about it either.
I mostly speak to people attending a pentecostal church. To them, a personal religious experience is proof of God. They think I’m an atheist because I haven’t had a religious experience yet. (I say yet, because that’s what they say).
Evangelicals don’t bother with books and rational arguments. They appeal to emotion, as one can clearly see in the documentary “Jesus Camp”.
The sneaky truth is that we pretty much all accept our beliefs on emotional grounds. For the most part, we believe whatever our cohort believes. Needless-to-say, everyone thinks they’ve arrived at their beliefs rationally; but, even if they are rational beliefs, it’s the social group which decides the main outlines. This is as true of college professors as of telephone linemen.
I disagree. There are a lot of people who grew up in a religious cohort in the Deep South and yet they lost their faith or never accepted it in the first place.
As studies of the brain have shown, the dichotomy between “reason” and “emotion” is a false dichotomy. People who have damage to emotional centers cannot make good decisions. Of course we accept our beliefs “on emotional grounds.” That’s not the question; it’s a matter of extent.
When we talk about frank appeals to emotion over reason, we’re not all “pretty much accepting our beliefs on emotional grounds.” Not in the same way. And the criteria we use to determine reliable sources really does make a difference. In a diverse culture we not only pick our experts, we often select our social group. Context matters. The person who follows spiritual insights and the person who accepts scientific theories are not doing the exact same thing emotionally.
I think your “sneaky truth” is more like “sloppy distinction.”
In my case when I was seven in 1949 I got to my mother’s Methodist sunday school class and shocked her by saying that I did not believe anyone ever walked on water and Jesus believed people were sick because they were possessed by “demons” and that he had a method of driving out these demons. I told mom that there were not any demons. She said she wasn’t so sure. I got in trouble with numerous critiques of many stories in the Bible but was still forced to go to church and sunday school until 8th grade. I had a notebook with quite a few quote and stories that I had critiques. My brother join the Marines right after high school in 1958 which was after my sohomore year. I buy another karger notebook and went through the Biblle systematically. Later in life I went through the Bible at least seven times and was invited into Christian study groups but my critiques unset them and I was expelled at Geneis 3 and about ten years later another group of coworkers claimed they were open-minded and would not kick me out! Well somewhere around Genesis 23 or 26 I was kicked out. I am 72 and have read hundreds of books on religion and freethought and atheist books and many philosophy books. I am a history major with emphasis on labor history and civil rights , black history, American history,slavery, Civil War and a lot more. My experience has been that few reigious people have much understanding of what the Bible actually says. They are believers not in an sense students of what the Bible actually claims!
I wouldn’t be surprised if you planted some doubts along the way that may have led to a few people coming to their senses!
I also disagree. In my field of science, people very seldom have discussions about their religious inclinations, so the suggestion that atheism is the result of peer pressure is almost entirely unevidenced.
Huh?
I believe that, if I drop something, it’ll accelerate to the center of the Earth at about ten meters per second per second, with all sorts of footnotes about aerodynamics and Relativity and the like.
Where on Earth is the emotion in that!?
b&
It’s pretty difficult to have a rational discussion with an evangelical of any stripe.
As a teenager, I met some Church of God-Holiness
teenagers who assured me that I would go to Hell for plucking my eyebrows, wearing lipstick (Tangee. Remember that stuff?!) and wearing any sort of adornment.
I was raised in a Pentecostal church, and yes, for them it’s all about this “religious experience”. I once saw a video of Richard Dawkins being interviewed by a Christian fundamentalist (British, I think). After Richard answered all of the interviewer’s critical questions with great aplomb, the interviewer pulled out his trump card: he described his personal conversion experience, which involved some of electric shock running through his body, and asked Richard to explain that. It was clear that this was the ultimate “gotcha” as far as the interviewer was concerned.
St. Augustine: “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but seek to believe that you may understand.”
This sentiment has its own analogues in our modern era. For example, during the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas trial, Harold Coffin, witness for the defense (the defense being the state of Arkansas, which had just passed a pro-creationism bill), admitted under oath that one could only fully understand the relatively recent origin of the Earth with scripture as a guide. In fact, there are strains of Calvinism, such as Kuyperianism, which hold that believers and non-believers have completely different understandings of the world, that only belief can give you access to “reality” as God created it. Most believers may not quite hold with Kuyper that believers’ and non-believers’ respective total worldview is different, but they will agree with the notion that belief entails something ineffable that gives you a “gut feeling” guiding you toward truth. Most people aren’t arguing along theological lines—hell, most believers don’t read theology.
So how to counter the argument that one hasn’t read enough theology in order to provide an honest critique of religion? If I were to approach a whole biology department and say, “Name a dozen keystone texts that I would need for a basic foundation in biology,” the various members of that department could probably agree on just such a number, no matter their own particular specialities. Ergo, if criticized for your poor understanding of theology, simply say: “Okay, name for me the dozen foundational texts I would need to have a proper grasp of the subject. Now, as I am criticizing faith in general, rather than a specific form of faith, I need you to get together with people who share your propensity for faith—Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Sikhs, Wiccans, Scientologists, and the people who follow Tony Alamo—and all agree upon the set of texts I need. I am sure that you are up to the task and I look forward to reading your recommendations.”
Your point about ecumenicism is telling.
How many of these Courtiers have rejected Hinduism and Islam on the basis of exhaustively tackling the work of Hindu and Muslim theologians?
0
Ayup.
I commented on the on-line review of ‘FvF’ in NatGeo. Until I came along, all the comments were of the nature Grania mentions above. I hadn’t planned on commenting, but couldn’t help responding to someone who went on at length about how all these scientists haven’t read any theology and who do they think they are etc. I haven’t been back to look how my comment went down, although it quickly got several likes, even though no one else had written anything in support of Jerry at that point.
Could you give us a link to that review, please?
I presume it’s this:
In Age of Science, Is Religion ‘Harmful Superstition’?
It’s an interview, rather than a review. I haven’t looked at the comments yet.
The charge often comes down to the view that we understand somebody else’s religion okay, but it’s the wrong one and therefore weak. The implication of course is that it’s no wonder that we’re atheists. One of the top #10 Apologetics has got to be the “Well, I Don’t Believe In THAT God Either.” It couples well with a disinclination to be pinned down as to what God they DO believe in.
I’ve been in discussions where I’ve literally repeated someone’s definition of God back at them and waited for approval, then and only then trying to put it into my own words. I keep seeking their feedback back and forth this way until we’ve got something they’ll agree is a ‘good enough’ description of God — and yet it has enough clear content to consider as a hypothesis.
If we ever get to this point, I then ask questions concerning what we both just agreed on.
They can’t throw theology at me this way, unless they do so at the beginning (as in “What’s my definition of God? Read Aquinas.”)But it’s still a very slow process and they’re still likely to try to deflect or pull out or backtrack. A God which is comprehensible enough to be wrong is not The Greatest Being Imaginable. Like all imaginable beings of the imagination, it has to be fuzzy on the details.
Isn’t that the same as saying one hasn’t read enough astrology? As if reading more would make it more believable? If god is only available to sophisticated theologians, where do all those other believers get off?
Read the Bible, parts of the Koran, and had two religion courses in college. That was more than enough to convince me that the probability there really is a sky fairy is < 10^-75 (or some other very small quantity). If any theist has proof that the probability is greater than that, I’d be happy to hear it. Oh, and while they’re at it, perhaps they could explain why there are so many different versions of sky fairies.
Or go back even further to the worship of the Blue Sky (as the Mongols did) or other visible earthly or cosmic features/totems (such as mountaintops, lightning and thunder, etc. as the earlier Judaism did). I wish more people would familiarize themselves with world mythologies and/or take Comparative Religions courses.
The variety of atheist who might have the greatest possible credibility to a theist is that of a former theist who, despite their experiences and training, later fell out of love with the idea that there is a god. Of course I am sure that an active theist would still dismiss the former theist as well since obviously they did not pray hard enough or they did not study enough religious philosophy.
I haven’t read it yet, but was there is an article in the July/August 2015 edition of Discover magazine titled “A User’s Guide to Rational Thinking”. It includes the following:
“The Irrationalist in You”, “A Field Guide to Irrational Arguments” and “How to Stop Shouting: 6 Strategies for Conversing with Someone Who Has Irrational Ideas”.
Impossible and I simply do not care if anyone was to aim “your lack of theology” at me.
But then again I’m just not important enough and a threat as the professor is, so I will probably never have to argue the point.
It is pleasing that he is well versed and qualified to swat them back, as are most of the new atheist of note.(Nod to the Hitch)
But a myth is a myth and I do not require a god to answer questions about the universe and it’s biological entities.
For people like me, failed high school, so what is an academic? they look funny… When questioned I try to have my wits about me and give a considered answer in small bites.
Large bites, one can choke theory.
An example, a young immigrant at my place of work. He offered up in conversation, I’m a Muslim. I replied and added if you were born here in New Zealand you would be a Christian
Sorry but I had not finished, I asked the young chap, which god is the true god, he looked at me and shook his head like he understood the implication. I left it at that but it felt like a penny had dropped.
Like with everything, there’s going to be a range. You’re not going to satisfy some theists because you didn’t focus on the right arguments. You’re not going to satisfy others because you didn’t read the right materials. And you’re not going to satisfy the theists who believe that God is to be experienced and as such no amount of reading is going to accurately convey to an outsider just what the totality of a God belief is.
You can’t win. Either learn to take pleasure in destroying the arguments and all the attacks on your person that come with doing that, or take up a less intellectually-degrading hobby.
If a non-believer desires to criticize a religion, that’s up to them. In the US, we do have a constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech, so more power to them.
What bothers me about those doing so is not that they do it, but that they usually do it so predictably. On reading such critiques, one would think that the only religion is Christianity, and that Christianity is only composed of evangelical fundamentalist, literalist, inerrantists who, invariably, hate science, and who wish to control other people’s lives. And yes, there are most definitely religious people of that stripe, and more than just a few. But that’s a bit like saying that political people only come in one flavor (Republican), and only of the Tea Party variety. Are there such political people? Yes, very much so! But every time someone goes for an easy target and pats themselves on the back for “telling it like it is”, they are simply adding fuel to the pointless fire of tribalism among humans, at least IMO. (And yes, the other side does it as well. But that just reminds me of the scene in 2001 where the rival ape-men tribes are going at it with one another. What a lovely example to set for others. Yes, I very much think both sides are acting foolishly!)
Look, I am a Christian, but very non-mainstream. And, as such, I am very much not an evangelical fundamentalist, literalist, inerrantist, I like science, and I have no wish to control other people’s lives. I have read some portions of Jerry’s book (basically, the specific parts that I felt would bother me the most), and I came away with mixed feelings. I could see that he’s obviously not just ranting against religious people, and he seems to have his own set of mixed feelings about them. But whatever helpful points he is trying to make, he still seems to be preaching to the choir, and is using examples apparently meant to incite an emotional response in his readers. And I am sorry, but trying to bring out an emotional response in others is usually not a prelude to careful, considered thinking about a subject.
Jerry is an unabashed non-accommodationist. He seems to despise NOMA, something I find puzzling. But then, I think of NOMA differently than many do. I can learn both the rules of dining etiquette and the rules of rugby, but I have no problem figuring out when to use the dress and rules of each! To me, they really are non-overlapping. Thus, I don’t use science to learn more about God, nor do I engage in my religious belief and practice in order to further understand science. I can easily accommodate both in thought, just as I can accommodate both rugby and fine dining in thought.
But if I recall correctly, the point Jerry is attempting to bring out in the book is not entirely that religion and science (or the people involved in such endeavors) have to be at each other’s throats. He is trying to point out that the two sides approach information gathering differently. I would agree, but not for the reasons he is giving. I think Jerry has a hammer (his toolbox of science) and sees everything as a nail. If he can’t use his hammer on it, it’s obviously not worth spending time on. However, to be fair, he does acknowledge the need for things like poetry, art, and music in people’s lives. But he still seems to think that if people aren’t approaching religious belief and practice like a scientific effort, they are doing something wrong.
I’m sorry, I must disagree. Maybe it’s only people like me, but I am pursuing my religious beliefs and practice in order to find out more about something that may not be obvious from one’s initial starting point, but that will only be determined by committing to the pursuit, and then embarking on the journey in order to see what will be revealed as one proceeds. Thus, if I decide to become married, I have no idea whether that marriage will succeed or fail or what I will think about it at the end. If I decide to have children, I have no idea whether doing so will be a blessing or will involve tragedy and pain for myself or others. If I decide to climb a mountain that is difficult, or that has not been climbed before, I cannot tell whether or not I will succeed or fail, and if I will consider the effort to have been worth it. And if I decide to travel to Mars, what will the outcome be?
So when I am considering the subject area of God, I am exploring an area of thought that does not necessarily align with everyday life or thinking, or is quickly determined by a quick Google search. (If it did align, or was easily found, why would I need to bother making a redundant journey?) And since I am not considering it to be an everyday sort of exploration, it really doesn’t lend itself to study in the way that Jerry might like it to be. To me, it’s about the impact it has on one’s life and outlook. Thus, I am looking to have my life and my outlook altered by my journey, just as I would if embarking on a marriage, having children, or going to Mars would. And, as such, what I find, and how I will be transformed by it, will be very subjective, and will relate very specifically to me, although what I find may also have meaning to others that I may encounter along the way. I may very well come to value things that others (believing or non-believing) consider to be valueless. But there is no way that I am going to find out such things by staying where I am, or simply looking at the everyday. One cannot climb a mountain from one’s armchair, or have someone else make a personal effort in one’s stead.
And that’s just it. I have no problems using science where it seems to make sense to do so. (I would definitely use available science to prep for a Mars mission, but that still will not give me the answer that actually taking the journey will reveal.) So, religious thought and endeavor (to me, at least) are focusing on a very different area of thought and experience. So when people like to critique religion simply because they don’t find it to be a subject that they find any value in, I sort of wonder if they do the same with other subjects that they don’t see a need to explore or to value such as philosophy, veganism, stamp collecting, or watching pro sports?
I don’t see an automatic need to be in conflict with others just because their areas of interest differ from mine. I would much rather focus on the areas people can find agreement with. With the rest, we can agree to disagree, and stay on friendly terms.
But maybe that’s because I don’t consider engaging with others in good will and seeking kindly accommodation as fighting words.
My 2 cents.
Oh, that’s at least a dollar 😉
I read your criticism carefully and I don’t think you’ve really engaged with the major theme and thrust of the book. For example, here:
Impact on your life? Do you care more if your belief is true — or only that it’s useful and has made an impact?
What do you mean by “God” — and how would you test your hypothesis?
Jerry addresses at great length WHY the existence of God is a fact claim and WHY there is nothing mean, wrong, or silly about approaching it seriously around the philosophical table of debate. All your complaints about how you’re not hurting anyone etc. are beside the point on this point at least. Do you care about going on a journey towards the pursuit of truth — or are you too excited about going on a “journey?” If the journey ends up at ‘atheism’ — does that also count as growth and impact?
And is there a reason it cannot be both?
This is where what Jerry is interested in and what I am interested in go in very different directions.
Basically, science is focused on examining the material world and trying to determine how it works. Science is wonderful in this regard and the scientific method is a very useful tool in carrying out scientific research. I rather enjoy science and seeing what it reveals about the material world.
However, religion (at least, the religion I was raised in and still practice) is focused on the spiritual, i.e. that which relates to God and God’s kingdom, none of which is material at all. Very specifically, God is not material at all, and thus when one is thinking about God and that which relates to God, one is not about thinking about matter, energy, time or space. If God exists in eternity (a time-less state), and infinity (no boundaries or edges, i.e. a space-less state), and is Spirit itself (a matter-less, energy-less state), then one is in a very different ballpark from science.
Science attempts to measures change (impossible in a timeless state), and mass and energy (impossible in a matter-less, energy-less state), and very much looks for boundaries and edges (impossible in a space-less state) in order to measure and quantify what is going on with regard to matter-based phenomena. Basically, the tools which make sense in a matter-based state are not at all useful in a state not based on matter.
Dr. Coyne, being a scientist, is focused on that which is material, and that’s exactly as it should be since he is researching matter-based phenomena. Your question also seems to be centered on a materialistic view, and if you are asking how does God relate to matter, I guess I am saying God does not.
So specifically, I don’t think one can point to anything in the material world and say conclusively “There’s God” and be able to have everyone agree that such is the case. Which is why I am not focusing on the material in my own journey. So, no, although my journey is about seeking God, I do not think it is possible to examine matter to find God.
As I said, I am going in a very different direction from Jerry. I respect him and his work in biology, but I don’t think he really has a clear grasp on this whole God question if he thinks God can be found in matter, or be disproved by not finding God in matter.
I very much care about the pursuit of truth. I just don’t think it lies in the realm of materialism. And no, I am not “excited”, in the sense that I am not a giddy schoolboy off on a lark. I consider what I am engaged in to be a serious undertaking. It’s just not one that focuses on matter.
I daresay it would, but only if atheism is actually proved to be the truth of things. As it is, I have yet to see anything offered by atheists as conclusive proof regarding the question of God, mostly because they seem to be only concerned with materialism or naturalism. And since I consider that to be the wrong area to investigate, I guess I would say, color me unimpressed. IMO they are barking up the wrong tree.
Why don’t you read the whole book? Much of what you are saying is based on what you think it says, rather than what it actually says. For example, the book spends quite some time with dealing with the type of super-elusive God you claim to believe in.
Also, how can you both claim that your idea of God doesn’t interact with Matter, and that you are a christian?
If God doesn’t interact with matter, is the resurrection of Jesus a myth?
ctcss wrote:
No, but you’ve avoided the question. The hypothetical is that you have to choose between reality and religion — what you want to be true and what really IS true. Given that situation, would you try to adjust to the less appealing truth, or would you prefer to maintain the views which you believe make you happier?
In other words, if God does not exist (and never has) — would you WANT to discover this? It’s a very important question if you wish to see yourself as an open-minded ‘seeker.’
The “tools” Jerry uses are both science and philosophy and come down to a honest, consistent attempt to be thoughtful, reasonable, and unbiased concerning what we believe and why we believe it. These methods would not be confined to a “material world” but surely would apply to the spiritual as well. We’re talking about a close, deep examination of everything.
If your “journey” is completely internal, how could you tell the difference between a God which was only a psychological concept — and a God which actually exists outside of your own mind? Again, how would (or could) you test this?
I don’t think you have a clear grasp on the whole God question if you’re not asking it as a real question.
Could you give some examples then of the sort of thing which would constitute an adequate ‘disproof’ of God? What would it take to change your mind?
>If your “journey” is completely internal, how could you tell the difference between a God which was only a psychological concept — and a God which actually exists outside of your own mind?
Great response! This is the crux of it. Even if the journey is completely internal and there does exist a God not bounded by time and space as described by ctcss, this God still has to interact with matter for an individual to have this completely internal experience (alternatively, God could interact with the soul which has to interact with matter, same difference).
So many people have internal subjective (mystical) experiences and then want to attribute them to some sort of unevidenced external “objective” source. This source varies depending on culture and beliefs. Beware conflating internal experience and external explanation.
“Basically, the tools which make sense in a matter-based state are not at all useful in a state not based on matter.”
Okay, cool. So, what tools do you use instead of a reasoned examination of evidence? How do you know they’re reliable?
+1
“…that which relates to God and God’s kingdom, none of which is material at all. Very specifically, God is not material at all, and thus when one is thinking about God and that which relates to God, one is not about thinking about matter, energy, time or space.”
Of course. And you are aware of it how?
It seems that this poster is backed into a dualist corner to me, which just heaped another unsupported assertion on top of the rest of it. Maybe our immaterial minds are aware of the immaterial God, and this makes our material brains aware of it how? Or is the brain not aware of God and the mind is? This seems to be going against a whole lot of neuroscience for a proposition that is an inherently different domain than science and “compatible” with it.
He or she isn’t just backed into a dualist corner: they’re also trying to introduce and deal with the concept of a Mind “outside of time.” Presumably God considers, makes choices, and acts on intentions. Now remove any and all of the variables involved in “time” from this, like an arrow of causation. It’s an inconceivable mess.
One of the best explanations of time I’ve ever encountered is that it’s Nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
The only coherent way for a god to be “outside of time” is for the god to be outside of our time, but still in a time of its own — with the perfect example being a computer simulation such as the Matrix. But that’s clearly an unsatisfactory example, at least in modernity, if for no other reason than that it would make pimply-faced teenagers playing Sim City gods in their own right. It’s probably also a problem because it means we might not be the center of attention, after all, and just an accidental idle curiosity resulting from a byproduct of the divinity’s physics homework assignment.
b&
“To me, it’s about the impact it has on one’s life and outlook.”
In other words, you don’t care much about the truth about God’s existence because the idea that’s He’s real makes you happy. That’s just wishful thinking.
But if you are exploring this God area, I’d like to know how you do this. What method do you use to explore the God area? Can you test the very existence of God Himself (I assume it’s a He) with that method?
My second but less important argument is about your charge that we deal mainly with the fundamentalist christians. Have you read the list of apologies that pope John Paul II made? He apologized for silence during the holocaust, he apologized to slaves, to women (half of humankind right there) and Galileo. The Vatican hasn’t apologized for the slavery in the Irish Magdalene laundries, nor for the treatment of the LGBT community. To this very day, they’re called ‘disordered’ by the catholic church. Have I mentioned hiding pedophiles and priests who committed genocide in Rwanda?
I can make a similar list for protestant leaders. Leaders in the American protestant community include Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Ted Haggard, Pat Robertson. These are/were big shots. Even in the Church of England Graham Dow , the bishop of Carlisle, argued that the 2007 floods in the UK were the result of a positive attitude towards homosexuality.
The people who made these fanatical statements are/were leading figures in the christian community. Don’t tell me atheists deal only with fundamentalists on the fringes of society.
“On reading such critiques, one would think that the only religion is Christianity…”
Yesterday the charge was that high-profile atheists only ever attack Islam (which, of course means they’re racist), today we have ctcss claiming we only ever go after xianity. What will be “the only religion we ever criticize” tomorrow, I wonder.
Wicca.
Does the God in your “very non-mainstream” Christianity interact with the physical universe? If so, then science and religion are not “non-overlapping.” After all, if you set up a picnic in the middle of pitch during a match — or if you start a scrum in a crowed dining room — you’ll find that the rules of etiquette and the rules of rugby soon intersect.
If your God does not interact with the physical universe, what makes you think that he, she, or it exists — the undetectable and the non-existent being asymptotically equivalent?
Precisely.
“Look, I am a Christian, but very non-mainstream.”
Yes, isn’t it interesting how each religious person has their own idea of what the true religion is? Why, it’s almost like they’re making it up themselves.
Imagine if each person had their own conception of gravity. Would that in any way add to your conviction that gravity was a true thing, and that we had a proper understanding of it?
Almost, yes. 😉
Theodicy is the only thing I have had a believer agree with me was an issue, and he was a thoughtful man who’d spent 7 years in India as a missionary. He agreed that the problem of evil was real and had no answer for it. He was just prepared to wait til he met God to find out I think.
The world simply doesn’t look like it has an all powerful protector. It’s a mess.
Or, as Ben would say, even a protector who is powerful enough, or benevolent enough, to dial 911 when a child is about to be abused or murdered.
I don’t read theology just as I don’t join discussion sites concerning Lord of the Rings, Star wars or Star trek. I don’t learn how to speak Klingon even though it is of more use than the musings of someone whoe believes in mythical sky monsters. I see no point in having philosophical discussions on things which are not real and have no evidence to prove them. Philosophical discussions are not evidence. Show me the evidence not your deluded ramblings.
That’s a shame. LotR, Star Wars and Star Trek (particularly) are all fertile grounds for philosophical discussions.
As Bruce Lincoln, professor oh History of Religions at Chicago U points out, “religion” is a genre of stories we tell each other, and ourselves.
There are as many “stories” as there are faithful, and probably many more, as people continuously jockey for their variant to become dominant, change their mind, have insights.
Jerry’s “error” is believing that “religion” is a meme (Dawkins) that can be transmitted like DNA, when the thing is as plastic as it comes: its strength derives from its very vagueness. Einstein’s equations are a line long – and factual. “Religion” is a whole library struggling to make sense of itself.
The argument of “you’ve not read enough X” is just a lazy “Appeal to Authority” cop out.
If the problem is not reading theology then that must mean theology has a good argument that has not been dealt with. If theology has a good argument that has not been dealt with, present said argument and either (a) it will be dealt with, or (b) it will not. Either way, the need for reading said theology is removed unless (c) it becomes unclear as to whether said argument is dealt with or not, and thus it needs to be examined in more detail.
If one cannot present an actual argument from the theology not read then how can it be argued that there is actually anything challenging in it?
If you can’t convince me using regular language and logic, wrapping an idea up in a theological semantic mind game is not going to help.
Indeed. One of the ways that we know that Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and Darwin made significant contributions is that almost no one bothers to read Galileo, Newton, Einstein, or Darwin in order to learn these subjects. No one says, “Read Newton if you want to understand motion.” That’s because Newton’s writings contained good and useful ideas that have been polished and refined and tested so that what you are presented in Physics 101 is the essential essence of Newtonian mechanics, pedagogically distilled, but usually with very few words of Newton himself. And, of course, this is how it should be. Since the person who first lays out an idea is pioneering their writing is going to be ponderous, laborious, and full of things that turn out later to be irrelevant. To say nothing of the mere shift in style of language since their time. Their aim, to convince an audience of their contemporaries, will necessarialy be at least slightly off-the-mark as we are no longer their contemporaries. So anyone who has actually contributed to human knowledge in the past is almost certainly not the best initial source for learning about that topic in the present. So when someone says that to understand God you need to read theologian X, or to understand philosophy you need to read philosopher Y, I take it as a virtual admission that, were I to read these sources, I’d find only layers of obscurity surrounding a vacuous core. Otherwise that person could summarize themselves what is contained in those books.
Good point. When someone clearly doesn’t understand natural selection, I don’t tell them to read On The Origin of Species – I try to explain natural selection to them.
Indeed. It’s trivial to explain why, if we evolved from apes, there are still apes (same reason your cousins are still here); or what good is half an eye (cover one of your two eyes). Yet the answer to theodicy is, “read Aquinas”; and the explanation for why, “God existed forever,” is better than, “the Universe existed forever,” is, “read Plantinga.”
b&
Yes, you can’t possibly see His Nibs’ nakedness unless you’ve first studied every ruffle and ribbon in the royal wardrobe.
Sub
If more people read the Bible ,there would be more Athiests I fancy.
When faced with the “you haven’t read enough theology” defence, you could do worse than counter with “Well, you clearly haven’t read JL Mackie’s Miracle of Theism.”
As to the justification of science, which in FvF Jerry refers to as “the circular argument” that science gets results:
A solid idea, but it needs a catchy name to garner acceptance. Fortunately, it already has one: bootstrapping.
The Jesus of the gospels is, for want of a better word, a fictional character inhabiting a fictional world. This fig tree scenario is one of the evidences for that.
On the surface, this pericope doesn’t make sense. Why would Jesus curse a fig tree? But then if you read it in the original language(s) it begins to make sense.
Notice the sequence of events:
1. Jesus and crew come across a fig tree. “May you never bear fruit again!”
2. Jesus goes to the temple and fucks shit up
3. Jesus and crew leave the temple and come across the fig tree, now weathered. “Wow, Jesus you so cool!” the disciples cry.
The first thing to note is the odd names of the towns that Jesus comes across when cursing the fig tree. One of them is “bethphage”. Bethphage literally means house of unripe figs. Jesus just so happens to cause a fig tree to be unripe in a place called house of unripe figs.
It should be noted, of course, that the Jewish temple also stops “bearing fruit” since it was destroyed in 70 CE.
Some translations remove the “bethphage” in the text probably because of this. At this translation there’s no mention of bethphage… in English. But on the very same page, in Greek, it retains it (Βηθφαγὴ)!
And then there’s Bethany, which means “house of mourning”. Jesus just so happens to visit this town, called house of mourning, and an unknown woman is mourning over his (impending) death.
There are a truckload of other literary allusions/plays on language in the text. It’s much more likely on the balance of possibilities that this is a literary creation and *not* something that actually happened.
In addition to the rest of your analysis…it helps to understand the motivation behind it all.
The fig tree was then and remains to this day the symbol of Rabbinical Torah study.
And the Gospels and Jesus are the ultimate source of anti-Semitism, explicitly and intentionally crafted as such.
Nothing special about Christianity that way. Orpheus is the perfect example of anti-Thracian hostility, even though he’s portrayed in the story as Thracian himself. That’s just the way they did things in those days…demonize the old to scare people into the new.
…running amok at the Temple, “brood of Vipers,” as a child “astonishing” the Rabbis with his wisdom, “Pharisee” as an insult, the portrayal of the Sanhedrin as a bunch of poo-flinging monkeys, and on and on and on and on….
b&
One of the 1-star reviews is absolutely amazing with it’s N+1 fallacy. The reviewer plucks one passing sentence from the book about the resurrection of Jesus and proceeds to lambaste Jerry for not addressing 700 page volumes of “prominent authors” demonstrating the historicity. Then, the reviewer continues by saying that if the resurrection is a historical fact, it’s game changing. Come again? Even if there were reason to believe that it was widely acknowledged that Jesus resurrected, how does any of the other stuff about omnipotent deities follow? The review itself is a perfect piece of supporting evidence for the thesis that faith and fact use incompatible epistemologies.
As to whether one can read enough theology to make these people happy? Maybe, but one thing is for sure, you could never write enough to satisfactorily rebut it all; that would require a work that may number in the millions of pages. They will always cherry pick some random sentence either from a theological piece or your rebuttal that they feel isn’t adequately covered. This nicely underscores how faith and science are incompatible as well, for to believe all this nonsense, one must simply declare belief–no questions asked.
The charge that arguments against theism fail because the author isn’t familiar with theology is an example of the genetic fallacy.
If those making that charge made a proper argument, based on Sophisticated Theology ™, and referred to it as such, that would be a different situation.
Failure to do so is not excused by a “it’s too Sophisticated” defense. Summarize all that complexity into lay terms. Any expert worth he/his salt should be able to do so. I do so every day in my introductory classes.
I think it was Einstein who said that, if you can’t explain something to your grandmother, you don’t really know it.
a=without
The “You haven’t read enough theology books” gambit was actually shot down very effectively in FvF, for example, in “Conflicts of Philosophy,” (Ch. 2) and “The New Natural Theology,” (Ch. 4). The people making the charge are basically parrots who can’t think for themselves and don’t have anything to say beyond this particular canned opinion. The problem isn’t that Jerry hasn’t read enough theology, it’s that they either never read FvF or lacked the mental ability to comprehend it.
Which books are we actually supposed to be reading? After all, Christians have been fighting furiously among themselves over such questions as the number of persons of the deity, the number of natures of Christ, whether it’s permissible to celebrate Communion in only one or both kinds, at what age you need to be baptized to get into heaven, etc., etc., for going on 2000 years. You have to love the historian Procopius, who wrote about a conference of such pious combatants in Rome in the 6th century. He said that he would not record what they were squabbling over for posterity because it was an embarrassment to the faith. These issues matter. Countless bloody wars have been fought over them, and genocide committed in their name.
Fast forward to our own time, and David Bentley Hart tries to tell us he’s “bored” by these issues in general, and by the question of the Trinity in particular. After all, everyone is really worshipping the same god. We know that’s nonsense, because the Quran says quite explicitly that anyone who believes in the Trinity, or associates the word “begotten” with Christ, both essential parts of Christian doctrine, will burn in hell for quadrillions and quintillions of years, just for starters. Muhammad made it quite clear that he meant what he said, and was not writing allegories or metaphors. Hart’s prescription for “finding God” is a course of mystical meditation which, indeed, has always been a sure fire way to “find” any god, or gods, you happen to be looking for.
In a word, FvF demolished this particular version of the “sophisticated Christian” charade, along with all the others that have been trotted out to date. Unfortunately, the parrots haven’t been supplied with any better arguments, so they will continue to squawk the various versions of this one for some time to come. We will just have to keep whacking the moles.
” We will just have to keep whacking the moles.”
Which is probably our actual eternal hell.
We clearly lack the sophisticated fashion sense to appreciate the emperor’s dazzling garments.
There’s another phenomenon, which NPR covered a few years back in a series on priets who find themselves becoming atheists. Which is that a surprising number of believers who enroll in a theology program at university become atheists. The process of studying religious textsm and the history of religion leads to doubt, in many theology students. Knowledge is a dangerous thing, it may be far easier to maintain faith when you have not studied the Bible and other religious texts in depth.