Also I think it is a misnomer to accuse intelligent and thinking people of not having an answer to questions that are being put forward by another position. I agree that it is offensive on some level, particularly when the overarching explanation that the other party has is "shug, it's God isn't it".
For me, "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer to any question that is clearly something that nobody can know.
Finally it strikes me that in these kinds of questions the deist is not really in any stronger position given that there are plenty of different gods put forward, and clearly any belief in any specific attributes of God do not really answer all of the questions without shrugging.
The second question as it stands is too vague to address.
The ought from an is problem is logically the same for everybody (I think it's a cogent objection against the position that morality is evolved therefore we should be moral; but not against more sophisticated positions).
At the moment atheist explanations of the divine sense are Just So stories, but that doesn't mean science won't advance.
Saying that atheism doesn't work on a national level seems highly tendentious. I suspect that I don't care for the underlying assumptions. From a Christian point of view does Christianity work on a national level?
I don't think monotheists have a better answer to where the laws of logic come from either. (There's an analogue of the Euthyphyro problem here - if logic is a set of necessary relationships did God create them?) If by "atheists" you mean secular naturalists, then yes, I don't think secular naturalism can account for logic or mathematics.
I don't think monotheists are in any better a position to answer what consciousness is.
That I think leaves why is there something rather than nothing as the only question to which monotheism has an internally consistent answer and most atheist systems don't.
They brought up Platonic forms several times in the conversation. Which isn't something I'd properly thought about, but if one thinks that there are perfect forms of things that people desire then ideas like justice and logic would appear to be consistent with it. One could argue that these 'forms' overlap with concepts of a deity (or perhaps are creations or actions of a deity) but maybe it isn't necessary to have a God as well as platonic forms.
Suggesting that atheists (a term that allows theism to set the parameters of the debate) are unable to answer some questions that theists can is highly offensive.
"Atheist" is a funny one really isn't it? We don't identify people as Acryptobiologists or Aghostists. I think it often misleads Theists into thinking that there's a particular God that people don't believe in.
It also exhibits a rather christian-centric view. It's like, "how dare people not believe in OUR god? They are atheists."
Regarding: Why is there something rather than nothing?
This is an interesting question, but nothing like a "gotcha" for theism. The fallback answer for atheists is, "Cool, interesting question. Who knows? What does it ultimately matter?" God-of-the-gaps answers are irrelevant.
My old friend William of Occam shaves all of this down to the entirely natural bone. How does it help to make the infinite, eternal (presentist of course) ground of being intentional? Existence is impossible anyway so just throw in another impossibility?
Some of these are quite contrived and the atheists in question have a high regard for their own intelligence and a love of talking quickly.
Golly is that self-serving. Atheists have no answers for irrelevant questions I have raised. Therefore what?
I'm not sure these are the questions I would have chosen
Amen to that.
I don't think it is self-serving. They're examples of questions that people have put to them (the atheists discussing the points in the video) and the atheists have quite a fun time trying to answer them. Who is being self-serving? Me? The people in the video? The people asking the questions?
Suggesting that atheists (a term that allows theism to set the parameters of the debate) are unable to answer some questions that theists can is highly offensive.
"Atheist" is a funny one really isn't it? We don't identify people as Acryptobiologists or Aghostists. I think it often misleads Theists into thinking that there's a particular God that people don't believe in.
It also exhibits a rather christian-centric view. It's like, "how dare people not believe in OUR god? They are atheists."
There's also the interesting point from the video that if one postulates a deity that is far far away from humans and unknowable by humans then that's not far from an atheism anyway!
It feels like these kinds of questions are usually put to atheists by Christians (or maybe Jews or Muslims) without considering that there are a wide variety of other Gods that the atheist also doesn't believe in.
It feels like these kinds of questions are usually put to atheists by Christians (or maybe Jews or Muslims) without considering that there are a wide variety of other Gods that the atheist also doesn't believe in.
I think that's disingenuous.
Monotheism is a different system from polytheism. (Mormonism as I understand it is a form of polytheism in which the number of gods currently equals one.)
Suppose we discovered tomorrow that Asgard, as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, existed and Thor battled Loki in the middle of New York. Would that require any atheist to adjust their views on metaphysics or human nature or ethics at all? It shouldn't. It merely opens up a number of interesting scientific questions. On the other hand if monotheism is true (*) then that does require readjusting those views.
(*) If Thor appears that is evidence for the existence of Thor. If Jesus appears with a host of angels that is not evidence for the existence of God.
How would / could you test the hypothesis of a conscious universe - in the sense of self aware and able to engage goal directed behaviour do you think ? Or is that like a white blood cell trying to consider how to see if it's environment thinks ?
Greg Bear's awesome Blood Music covers that.
Dafyd's
If Jesus appears with a host of angels that is not evidence for the existence of God.
is perfectly true. It would need the general resurrection.
@Martin, use of disparaging names is permitted only in Hell. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt for Young Dickie Dawkins as, for all I know, that's what his friends call him.
More of an issue is Pantheism as I said. Away with the fairies all of it. Pseudoscientific BS. All of it. Great sci-fi. Hoyle. Asimov. Lem. All created yearning masterpieces with it. But otherwise, ohhhh dear.
It is not clear whether, in this stream-of-consciousness, one, two, three and four word sentences you are attacking the argument or the person making the argument. If it's the latter, that would be a violation of Commandment 3, wouldn't it? So it's just as well for you that this particular Purgatory host hasn't the faintest idea what you are are on about.
Please post in a way that makes it clear that you are NOT violating Commandment 3.
I love Dr Clinton Richard Dawkins. It's entirely affectionate as people disparage him here as elsewhere, especially by just using his surname. I had a good friend we all called Young Dickie.
Sorry for the interpolation of possible ill will on my part.
And I'm certainly not disparaging @Lamb Chopped as she knows.
It feels like these kinds of questions are usually put to atheists by Christians (or maybe Jews or Muslims) without considering that there are a wide variety of other Gods that the atheist also doesn't believe in.
I think that's disingenuous.
Monotheism is a different system from polytheism. (Mormonism as I understand it is a form of polytheism in which the number of gods currently equals one.)
Suppose we discovered tomorrow that Asgard, as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, existed and Thor battled Loki in the middle of New York. Would that require any atheist to adjust their views on metaphysics or human nature or ethics at all? It shouldn't. It merely opens up a number of interesting scientific questions. On the other hand if monotheism is true (*) then that does require readjusting those views.
(*) If Thor appears that is evidence for the existence of Thor. If Jesus appears with a host of angels that is not evidence for the existence of God.
I'm not following how this is disingenuous. For example, if a Muslim is discussing God with an atheist, it isn't that he (the atheist) is unable to answer questions and therefore is somehow forced to believe in the Islamic deity. Even if that is true and the believer has illustrated to the unbeliever that maybe he (the atheist) should believe in a deity, there are other deities he could believe in.
I'm not following how this is disingenuous. For example, if a Muslim is discussing God with an atheist, it isn't that he (the atheist) is unable to answer questions and therefore is somehow forced to believe in the Islamic deity. Even if that is true and the believer has illustrated to the unbeliever that maybe he (the atheist) should believe in a deity, there are other deities he could believe in.
Nobody is forced to believe in anything. It's not as if monotheists are forced to become atheists because they don't have any satisfying answer to the problem of evil. It's just that the inability to answer questions is not one-sided.
All monotheistic deities are the same deity. It's not the case that there's an Islamic deity, a Christian deity, and a Hindu deity, only one of which can exist. On any plausible account of how names and descriptions refer, all those terms refer to the same deity - it's just that at least two of those assert something that is in part false.
(I suppose that if you're an atheist you could make the case that Hinduism is sufficiently culturally independent of the Middle East that there's no point in identifying the two ideas. But that's more a case of saying there's no point than of saying they're different.)
So they're essentialist atheists? Or maybe atheistic essentialists?
Sorry I missed this. But yes. Isn't that interesting.
I think it illustrates that atheism can be as broad a category as theism (possibly broader if it includes things like non-deism).
In this instance, I think it likely that they subscribe to what could be described as secularised Christianity - putting it crudely, a mostly Christian worldview minus belief in God (the reference to "divine sense" being one clue). For example, this might include a morality and value system heavily influenced by Christianity.
The weak form of atheism (lacking a belief in God), can include anything. So it's an odd category, or not really a category at all. I think of my dad, who lacked belief, and he didn't care really. Why would you argue about it?
The weak form of atheism (lacking a belief in God), can include anything. So it's an odd category, or not really a category at all. I think of my dad, who lacked belief, and he didn't care really. Why would you argue about it?
Because that language is flawed. I know you're not saying the position is weak and lacks. Your dad did not have a belief shaped hole, as don't I. There is no lack or weakness. Those terms are loaded in common discourse, subliminally here. That's why I prefer the self explanatory, orthogonal term, if one has to have one at all, physicalist.
I'm not following how this is disingenuous. For example, if a Muslim is discussing God with an atheist, it isn't that he (the atheist) is unable to answer questions and therefore is somehow forced to believe in the Islamic deity. Even if that is true and the believer has illustrated to the unbeliever that maybe he (the atheist) should believe in a deity, there are other deities he could believe in.
Nobody is forced to believe in anything. It's not as if monotheists are forced to become atheists because they don't have any satisfying answer to the problem of evil. It's just that the inability to answer questions is not one-sided.
All monotheistic deities are the same deity. It's not the case that there's an Islamic deity, a Christian deity, and a Hindu deity, only one of which can exist. On any plausible account of how names and descriptions refer, all those terms refer to the same deity - it's just that at least two of those assert something that is in part false.
(I suppose that if you're an atheist you could make the case that Hinduism is sufficiently culturally independent of the Middle East that there's no point in identifying the two ideas. But that's more a case of saying there's no point than of saying they're different.)
I don’t think it makes any sense to think of all monotheisms as being the same deity, thus to me what you’ve asserted also makes no sense.
So they're essentialist atheists? Or maybe atheistic essentialists?
Sorry I missed this. But yes. Isn't that interesting.
I think it illustrates that atheism can be as broad a category as theism (possibly broader if it includes things like non-deism).
In this instance, I think it likely that they subscribe to what could be described as secularised Christianity - putting it crudely, a mostly Christian worldview minus belief in God (the reference to "divine sense" being one clue). For example, this might include a morality and value system heavily influenced by Christianity.
a physicalist believes only in whatever entities are referred to in physics - which includes Platonic entities like logic and mathematical entities, but doesn't include real secondary qualities like colour;
a materialist believes only in entities with a basis in matter (so they may believe colour has a real existence independent of our consciousness, but don't believe in mathematical entities);
a naturalist is both a materialist and a physicalist (so they don't believe in mathematical entities or real secondary qualities).
What does "work" mean in this context? Heck, what does it mean for any belief system to "work"?
For that matter what does "national level" mean in this context? That the majority of the population is atheist? That the state is officially atheist? That the ruling elite are all atheists?
What does "work" mean in this context? Heck, what does it mean for any belief system to "work"?
For that matter what does "national level" mean in this context? That the majority of the population is atheist? That the state is officially atheist? That the ruling elite are all atheists?
Of course, it’s not my question. I agree, it’s a bit of a dumb idea. I guess one could say that Ancient Rome was fairly successful in terms of longevity and was based on polytheism. The Holy Roman Empire was fairly successful and based on monotheism.
Was their success related to the official religion?
What does "work" mean in this context? Heck, what does it mean for any belief system to "work"?
For that matter what does "national level" mean in this context? That the majority of the population is atheist? That the state is officially atheist? That the ruling elite are all atheists?
Of course, it’s not my question. I agree, it’s a bit of a dumb idea. I guess one could say that Ancient Rome was fairly successful in terms of longevity and was based on polytheism. The Holy Roman Empire was fairly successful and based on monotheism.
Was their success related to the official religion?
So "working" in this context relates to state longevity, regardless of internal conditions or external conflicts.
I would argue that one of the ways the Roman Empire and the pre-modern Holy Roman Empire "worked" was delegating a lot of governance to local authorities. This meant rules and laws and customs (including religious practice) could vary widely throughout the state. A lot of this was due to limitations of logistics and communications. This changes significantly in the early modern era with the advent of the printing press, widespread literacy, and increased state bureaucracy. Suddenly people were being subjected to a lot more centralized state power than they were used to. This typically involved a central authority trying to enforce more uniformity (including religious uniformity) on people who weren't used to it. The result were the European Wars of Religion. The Thirty Years' War was a particularly nasty example, centered on the Holy Roman Empire, involving widespread destruction and starvation. Of course, given your criteria this counts as religion "working" because the HRE still existed afterwards.
I was contemplating whether Confucianism could be considered a theistic belief. I don't know much about it, but it feels like the God is essentially irrelevant to the belief system.
Seems like the civilisation where Confucianism thought dominated could be considered successful by most measures.
It depends on what you mean by theistic. In modern usage, theistic implies that God is personal. But that wasn't so I think for the Greeks; and Aquinas having demonstrated (*) the existence of 'that which everyone calls "God"', then goes on to argue that the God he's demonstrated must be personal (**) - which means he presumably thinks people can believe in God without believing God is personal.
Clifford Geertz thought there have been four independent rationalised cultural systems of thought, organised around God (Judaism), the Logos (Hellenistic philosophy), the Tao (China), and Brahma (India). I think they can each be called monotheistic even the two cases that the central concept isn't personal. Modern Western secular rationalism is an outlier in being rationalised without any explicit central concept to be rationalised around.
... Modern Western secular rationalism is an outlier in being rationalised without any explicit central concept to be rationalised around.
I'm not convinced it's seen as being quite that clear-cut these days - for example:
Where did our modern secular age come from? What was the source of the Western idea that belief in God is optional or irrelevant?
...
A decade ago, Notre Dame history professor Brad Gregory argued that it came from the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin certainly didn’t intend this result, as Gregory argued in The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, but their rejection of ecclesiastical authority led to an individualism that ultimately undermined the entire Christian project. If people could interpret Scripture on their own, maybe they could rely on their own reason to understand everything. And if that was the case, should it be surprising that many contemporary people would come to disavow any need for God at all?
Peter Harrison’s Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age accepts some of Gregory’s findings but pushes them in a new direction. Yes, he concedes, modern Western secularization was the product of Protestant thinking. But even if Protestantism led people to reject the supernatural, it’s worth asking how much of the Protestant worldview modern secular people have unwittingly retained.
Well I guess it isn't surprising, but it feels like an effort to say that atheists aren't really atheists because they have a Christian worldview. That secularism is actually Christianity.
Which I'm sure has an element of truth to it, but also ignores the impact of how transportation has bloomed in recent centuries bringing with it the mixture of ideas, religions and philosophies.
I think the idea is that Protestantism started the decoupling civil authority from religious authority. Reading Luther's On Secular Authority, and whatever Calvin's similar treatise was, one can see that their views were quite different from what western societies hold now, but were also vastly different from the tight union between church and government that existed before.
Well I guess it isn't surprising, but it feels like an effort to say that atheists aren't really atheists because they have a Christian worldview. That secularism is actually Christianity.
Which I'm sure has an element of truth to it, but also ignores the impact of how transportation has bloomed in recent centuries bringing with it the mixture of ideas, religions and philosophies.
No, it's not saying either of those things.
Saying that atheists in the West have imbibed aspects of Judeo-Christian culture and tradition isn't the same as saying that secularism is Christian.
I'm not convinced it's seen as being quite that clear-cut these days - for example:
Where did our modern secular age come from? What was the source of the Western idea that belief in God is optional or irrelevant?
I think Gregory is making a post hoc error. I'd say the rise of secularism as an alternative to sectarianism is a reaction to both the rise of Protestantism and the various technological changes that facilitated it (moveable type printing, widespread literacy, etc.). As I noted earlier these same technologies also facilitated a consolidation of state power, and a lot of people didn't appreciate the uniformity being forced on them. People are very attached to their religious convictions and if a change of government means you're going to have to change religions then civil wars and wars of succession are going to get very destructive very quickly. The appalling carnage of the Thirty Years' War, among others, led to the rise of classical liberalism, the idea that people had certain liberties that were beyond state control. Foremost among these was religious liberty. So in that sense the rise of secularism and the idea that God is optional (in the sense that people now had options in the kind of God they believed in) is indirectly the result of Protestantism, albeit in the sense of a negative reaction to the Wars of Religion that accompanied its rise.
I think the idea is that Protestantism started the decoupling civil authority from religious authority. Reading Luther's On Secular Authority, and whatever Calvin's similar treatise was, one can see that their views were quite different from what western societies hold now, but were also vastly different from the tight union between church and government that existed before.
I'm not so convinced that Luther and Calvin marked as clean a break with what went before. It's not for nothing they are referred to as 'Magisterial Reformers.'
Calvin's Geneva had a pretty tight union between church and government and Luther depended heavily on the support of the German Princes.
I think we have to look at the legacy and influence of the 'radical Reformers' and, as has been very shrewdly observed, the impact of The Thirty Years War for the development of the ideas we are talking about.
I'd also add the French Wars of Religion and the Civil Wars across the British Isles in the 1640s and 50s.
None of these would have happened, of course, if it wasn't for the Reformation. Which isn't to give pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism a free pass, nor to give the Orthodox a pat on the back for not having one - although we can quite proud of that.
But we are where we are. The Enlightenment is often referred to as the 'Illegitimate child of the Reformation.' There was light in the Enlightenment. I'm not one of those Orthodox who think we should bring back the Tsars or the Byzantine Emperors.
Modern 'free-thinking', individualism and Western forms of atheism derive from the turmoil of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the religious wars of the 17th century and a corresponding reaction to all of that.
And I can certainly understand how and why.
That isn't to say that all atheists here in the West are culturally Christian, but it is acknowledge the historical roots.
The appalling carnage of the Thirty Years' War, among others, led to the rise of classical liberalism, the idea that people had certain liberties that were beyond state control. Foremost among these was religious liberty. So in that sense the rise of secularism and the idea that God is optional (in the sense that people now had options in the kind of God they believed in) is indirectly the result of Protestantism, albeit in the sense of a negative reaction to the Wars of Religion that accompanied its rise.
Modern 'free-thinking', individualism and Western forms of atheism derive from the turmoil of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the religious wars of the 17th century and a corresponding reaction to all of that.
I think this view fails to take into account the distinctly different attitudes to authority found in Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism, which reflect to a significant extent their distinct histories. Which is also relevant to this:
... None of these would have happened, of course, if it wasn't for the Reformation. Which isn't to give pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism a free pass, nor to give the Orthodox a pat on the back for not having one - although we can quite proud of that.
I’m not knowledgable about this, but is there really a measurable difference for people living in Calvin’s Geneva versus those living under the Prince-Archbishops in Salzburg in terms of authority? In one the authority lay with Calvin and his mates, in the other it lay with Paris of Lodron and his ancestors.
* of course ironically Salzburg was secularised after the prince-archbishops, which just meant the authority wasn’t direct from the church after 1803. In retrospect maybe Salzburg isn’t the best example, just one in my mind as I was recently there
I think the birth of modern Western secularism is usually traced back to the Netherlands of the seventeenth century, which was relatively tolerant - Wikipedia says Catholics were forbidden to hold services but I think any other variety of religious belief was permitted. (And I know of at least one Dutch Roman Catholic convert in the period, Vermeer.)
Some of these are quite contrived and the atheists in question have a high regard for their own intelligence and a love of talking quickly. I'm not sure these are the questions I would have chosen
Thanks for sharing these. They're kind of all over the place, ISTM.
I had a rather entertaining Chemistry teacher in high school. One of the things he was fond of saying right before a quiz or test was, "Instead of saying to yourself, 'I don't know.' say to yourself, 'Self, what do I know?' " I suppose with the kind of questions listed above I'd start by positing what we know, and how (ways) we can &/or came to know them. This may pigeonhole me as a materialist, but that does much more for me than being a theist does these days.
I am led to wonder if there are many atheists who were formerly Buddhists or Muslims or Sikhs or Hindus or adherents of other non-Christian religions. (Maybe I just don't hear about them.)
Some of these are quite contrived and the atheists in question have a high regard for their own intelligence and a love of talking quickly. I'm not sure these are the questions I would have chosen
Thanks for sharing these. They're kind of all over the place, ISTM.
I had a rather entertaining Chemistry teacher in high school. One of the things he was fond of saying right before a quiz or test was, "Instead of saying to yourself, 'I don't know.' say to yourself, 'Self, what do I know?' " I suppose with the kind of questions listed above I'd start by positing what we know, and how (ways) we can &/or came to know them. This may pigeonhole me as a materialist, but that does much more for me than being a theist does these days.
This is oh so good. Thank you!
A line from an old song springs to mind, ' 'Don't know much about history, don't know much about the French I took .... But I do know ... that I love you ....'
Comments
For me, "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer to any question that is clearly something that nobody can know.
Finally it strikes me that in these kinds of questions the deist is not really in any stronger position given that there are plenty of different gods put forward, and clearly any belief in any specific attributes of God do not really answer all of the questions without shrugging.
The second question as it stands is too vague to address.
The ought from an is problem is logically the same for everybody (I think it's a cogent objection against the position that morality is evolved therefore we should be moral; but not against more sophisticated positions).
At the moment atheist explanations of the divine sense are Just So stories, but that doesn't mean science won't advance.
Saying that atheism doesn't work on a national level seems highly tendentious. I suspect that I don't care for the underlying assumptions. From a Christian point of view does Christianity work on a national level?
I don't think monotheists have a better answer to where the laws of logic come from either. (There's an analogue of the Euthyphyro problem here - if logic is a set of necessary relationships did God create them?) If by "atheists" you mean secular naturalists, then yes, I don't think secular naturalism can account for logic or mathematics.
I don't think monotheists are in any better a position to answer what consciousness is.
That I think leaves why is there something rather than nothing as the only question to which monotheism has an internally consistent answer and most atheist systems don't.
It also exhibits a rather christian-centric view. It's like, "how dare people not believe in OUR god? They are atheists."
Golly is that self-serving. Atheists have no answers for irrelevant questions I have raised. Therefore what?
Amen to that.
This is an interesting question, but nothing like a "gotcha" for theism. The fallback answer for atheists is, "Cool, interesting question. Who knows? What does it ultimately matter?" God-of-the-gaps answers are irrelevant.
I don't think it is self-serving. They're examples of questions that people have put to them (the atheists discussing the points in the video) and the atheists have quite a fun time trying to answer them. Who is being self-serving? Me? The people in the video? The people asking the questions?
There's also the interesting point from the video that if one postulates a deity that is far far away from humans and unknowable by humans then that's not far from an atheism anyway!
It feels like these kinds of questions are usually put to atheists by Christians (or maybe Jews or Muslims) without considering that there are a wide variety of other Gods that the atheist also doesn't believe in.
Monotheism is a different system from polytheism. (Mormonism as I understand it is a form of polytheism in which the number of gods currently equals one.)
Suppose we discovered tomorrow that Asgard, as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, existed and Thor battled Loki in the middle of New York. Would that require any atheist to adjust their views on metaphysics or human nature or ethics at all? It shouldn't. It merely opens up a number of interesting scientific questions. On the other hand if monotheism is true (*) then that does require readjusting those views.
(*) If Thor appears that is evidence for the existence of Thor. If Jesus appears with a host of angels that is not evidence for the existence of God.
Greg Bear's awesome Blood Music covers that.
Dafyd's is perfectly true. It would need the general resurrection.
@Martin, use of disparaging names is permitted only in Hell. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt for Young Dickie Dawkins as, for all I know, that's what his friends call him.
More of an issue is Pantheism as I said. Away with the fairies all of it. Pseudoscientific BS. All of it. Great sci-fi. Hoyle. Asimov. Lem. All created yearning masterpieces with it. But otherwise, ohhhh dear.
It is not clear whether, in this stream-of-consciousness, one, two, three and four word sentences you are attacking the argument or the person making the argument. If it's the latter, that would be a violation of Commandment 3, wouldn't it? So it's just as well for you that this particular Purgatory host hasn't the faintest idea what you are are on about.
Please post in a way that makes it clear that you are NOT violating Commandment 3.
North East Quine, weary Purgatory Host
Hostly hat off
I love Dr Clinton Richard Dawkins. It's entirely affectionate as people disparage him here as elsewhere, especially by just using his surname. I had a good friend we all called Young Dickie.
Sorry for the interpolation of possible ill will on my part.
And I'm certainly not disparaging @Lamb Chopped as she knows.
Sorry. As above.
So, that's me down to 2 lives.
I'm not following how this is disingenuous. For example, if a Muslim is discussing God with an atheist, it isn't that he (the atheist) is unable to answer questions and therefore is somehow forced to believe in the Islamic deity. Even if that is true and the believer has illustrated to the unbeliever that maybe he (the atheist) should believe in a deity, there are other deities he could believe in.
Sorry I missed this. But yes. Isn't that interesting.
All monotheistic deities are the same deity. It's not the case that there's an Islamic deity, a Christian deity, and a Hindu deity, only one of which can exist. On any plausible account of how names and descriptions refer, all those terms refer to the same deity - it's just that at least two of those assert something that is in part false.
(I suppose that if you're an atheist you could make the case that Hinduism is sufficiently culturally independent of the Middle East that there's no point in identifying the two ideas. But that's more a case of saying there's no point than of saying they're different.)
In this instance, I think it likely that they subscribe to what could be described as secularised Christianity - putting it crudely, a mostly Christian worldview minus belief in God (the reference to "divine sense" being one clue). For example, this might include a morality and value system heavily influenced by Christianity.
Because that language is flawed. I know you're not saying the position is weak and lacks. Your dad did not have a belief shaped hole, as don't I. There is no lack or weakness. Those terms are loaded in common discourse, subliminally here. That's why I prefer the self explanatory, orthogonal term, if one has to have one at all, physicalist.
I don’t think it makes any sense to think of all monotheisms as being the same deity, thus to me what you’ve asserted also makes no sense.
Again this to me makes no sense.
a physicalist believes only in whatever entities are referred to in physics - which includes Platonic entities like logic and mathematical entities, but doesn't include real secondary qualities like colour;
a materialist believes only in entities with a basis in matter (so they may believe colour has a real existence independent of our consciousness, but don't believe in mathematical entities);
a naturalist is both a materialist and a physicalist (so they don't believe in mathematical entities or real secondary qualities).
What does "work" mean in this context? Heck, what does it mean for any belief system to "work"?
For that matter what does "national level" mean in this context? That the majority of the population is atheist? That the state is officially atheist? That the ruling elite are all atheists?
Indeed not. Christians were considered atheists in Rome for denying, the divinity of Caesar, and polytheism. Buddhists are non-physicalist atheists.
Of course, it’s not my question. I agree, it’s a bit of a dumb idea. I guess one could say that Ancient Rome was fairly successful in terms of longevity and was based on polytheism. The Holy Roman Empire was fairly successful and based on monotheism.
Was their success related to the official religion?
So "working" in this context relates to state longevity, regardless of internal conditions or external conflicts.
I would argue that one of the ways the Roman Empire and the pre-modern Holy Roman Empire "worked" was delegating a lot of governance to local authorities. This meant rules and laws and customs (including religious practice) could vary widely throughout the state. A lot of this was due to limitations of logistics and communications. This changes significantly in the early modern era with the advent of the printing press, widespread literacy, and increased state bureaucracy. Suddenly people were being subjected to a lot more centralized state power than they were used to. This typically involved a central authority trying to enforce more uniformity (including religious uniformity) on people who weren't used to it. The result were the European Wars of Religion. The Thirty Years' War was a particularly nasty example, centered on the Holy Roman Empire, involving widespread destruction and starvation. Of course, given your criteria this counts as religion "working" because the HRE still existed afterwards.
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin
Seems like the civilisation where Confucianism thought dominated could be considered successful by most measures.
Clifford Geertz thought there have been four independent rationalised cultural systems of thought, organised around God (Judaism), the Logos (Hellenistic philosophy), the Tao (China), and Brahma (India). I think they can each be called monotheistic even the two cases that the central concept isn't personal. Modern Western secular rationalism is an outlier in being rationalised without any explicit central concept to be rationalised around.
(*) YMMV.
(**) Not his terminology.
Ok then.
Which I'm sure has an element of truth to it, but also ignores the impact of how transportation has bloomed in recent centuries bringing with it the mixture of ideas, religions and philosophies.
No, it's not saying either of those things.
Saying that atheists in the West have imbibed aspects of Judeo-Christian culture and tradition isn't the same as saying that secularism is Christian.
I think Gregory is making a post hoc error. I'd say the rise of secularism as an alternative to sectarianism is a reaction to both the rise of Protestantism and the various technological changes that facilitated it (moveable type printing, widespread literacy, etc.). As I noted earlier these same technologies also facilitated a consolidation of state power, and a lot of people didn't appreciate the uniformity being forced on them. People are very attached to their religious convictions and if a change of government means you're going to have to change religions then civil wars and wars of succession are going to get very destructive very quickly. The appalling carnage of the Thirty Years' War, among others, led to the rise of classical liberalism, the idea that people had certain liberties that were beyond state control. Foremost among these was religious liberty. So in that sense the rise of secularism and the idea that God is optional (in the sense that people now had options in the kind of God they believed in) is indirectly the result of Protestantism, albeit in the sense of a negative reaction to the Wars of Religion that accompanied its rise.
I'm not so convinced that Luther and Calvin marked as clean a break with what went before. It's not for nothing they are referred to as 'Magisterial Reformers.'
Calvin's Geneva had a pretty tight union between church and government and Luther depended heavily on the support of the German Princes.
I think we have to look at the legacy and influence of the 'radical Reformers' and, as has been very shrewdly observed, the impact of The Thirty Years War for the development of the ideas we are talking about.
I'd also add the French Wars of Religion and the Civil Wars across the British Isles in the 1640s and 50s.
None of these would have happened, of course, if it wasn't for the Reformation. Which isn't to give pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism a free pass, nor to give the Orthodox a pat on the back for not having one - although we can quite proud of that.
But we are where we are. The Enlightenment is often referred to as the 'Illegitimate child of the Reformation.' There was light in the Enlightenment. I'm not one of those Orthodox who think we should bring back the Tsars or the Byzantine Emperors.
Modern 'free-thinking', individualism and Western forms of atheism derive from the turmoil of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the religious wars of the 17th century and a corresponding reaction to all of that.
And I can certainly understand how and why.
That isn't to say that all atheists here in the West are culturally Christian, but it is acknowledge the historical roots.
* of course ironically Salzburg was secularised after the prince-archbishops, which just meant the authority wasn’t direct from the church after 1803. In retrospect maybe Salzburg isn’t the best example, just one in my mind as I was recently there
Thanks for sharing these. They're kind of all over the place, ISTM.
I had a rather entertaining Chemistry teacher in high school. One of the things he was fond of saying right before a quiz or test was, "Instead of saying to yourself, 'I don't know.' say to yourself, 'Self, what do I know?' " I suppose with the kind of questions listed above I'd start by positing what we know, and how (ways) we can &/or came to know them. This may pigeonhole me as a materialist, but that does much more for me than being a theist does these days.
This is oh so good. Thank you!
A line from an old song springs to mind, ' 'Don't know much about history, don't know much about the French I took .... But I do know ... that I love you ....'