h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Whether or not there's a god is utterly trivial alongside the important matter of how to live our lives - and on this issue there's much to unite on with the more ept (?) religious"

Absolutely not! The existence or not of a god is of huge significance in how we live our lives.

They, of course, are making the usual theological mistake of assuming there is some such being as you say and then waffling about it. seems to be a case of someone somewhere thinking they are being dead clever by using negative claims rather than positive ones without actually realising the problems inherent in the approach.

OK...but:

Does it matter whether the religious think they're being dead clever?

Does it matter what they think, so long as they *do* the right things?

Is one any more likely to come up with the right answers (on how to live life) from an Atheist starting point?

Humph. Another article claiming that Dawkins is 'certain' about everything, which strongly implies the author has never actually read anything Dawkins has written on religion.

Does it matter whether it matters what the religious think?

Or, more to the point, as we saw on A Different Thread recently - how can you persuade the religious to do the right things if you don't share a common conception of what 'right' is? Is it right to encourage Africans not to use condoms?

Gif

And in answer to Ed's last question...

We are, I contend, more likely to come up with *more practical* answers for how to live life... but you'll need to define 'better' before I can answer the actual question.

Gif

Ed:

Isn't what the piece calling for, particularly in those last few paragraphs, a sort of Zen Buddhist version of Christianity? She wants to define the terms such that god finally sort of falls out of the equation.

My initial reaction to it is a repetition of what I've sometimes said before: we're not going to lose the religious impulse any time soon -- it's part of our evolutionary heritage. And, of course, we aren't going to lose our sexual impulse or our impulse to eat fatty sugary tidbits. But the fact that we have these impulses doesn't mean we should freely indulge them in what ever direction whim or authority figures tell us. Just so, we need to be reasonable in response to religious impulses.

This is were the perception that Dawkins, et. al. absolutely dismiss everything about religion is unfortunate and unhelpful. What really needs to be emphasised is reasonable discussion, not straw men, accusations, and hasty dismissal.

Actually...here we're getting into territory we've touched on elsewhere. I'd argue that things like 'better' *don't* have scientific definitions. They are inherently subjective. So, for example...it may well, arguably, be 'better' not to allow contraception, even if that means more deaths from AIDS.

No...of course I *don't* believe that. But I don't think I have a *scientific* reason for not believing it - even if I reject arguments that 'It's What God Wants'. (Although it would be possible to raise rational objections to the (disingenuous?) claim that promoting condoms might increase promiscuity and therefore greater net deaths)

I suggest that it's safer for we Atheists to admit that we don't have conclusive answers on such issues. In place of the certainty of Universal Values, all we have is opinions, best guesses, things we *think* will, as far as we can tell, from the scant and ambiguous data available, allow for a more rather than less tolerable life. But we might be wrong. Sure - others may reach different conclusions, and that's unavoidable. So if someone else thinks that - to use another topical example - that a reasonable life can be led by beating young women who step outdoors without a man's permission...then we may just have to either agree to disagree - or fight them for it.

>>Isn't what the piece calling for, particularly in those last few paragraphs, a sort of Zen Buddhist version of Christianity? She wants to define the terms such that god finally sort of falls out of the equation.

Yes. Possibly. And I'm hoping that Recumbentman will step in shortly and remind us that:
'All religion aspires towards Atheism.'

Dammit, Ed, that's just the kind of shrill, close-minded certainty you know the truth that the article is complaining about!



Gif

It is to be expected that religious things should be hard to define, since they are bound up with personal identity, and personal identity is "that which best evades definition", almost by definition.

How's that for obfuscation? Yet there's no getting away from it: the mind is a slippery chap. It is that which can change despite pressure to conform, and that which can hold firm despite pressure to change. More subtil than any beast of the field.

Another thing that seems true from recent experience is that there is more 'respect' on the theist side. Even theists who disagree over the fundamentals (and Warner, as a Muslim, was pretty much on his own) are mostly happy to disagree. Whether that's because they're insecure in their beliefs or just dislike confrontation I don't pretend to know.

The non-theist community, on the other hand, seems to see beliefs as things that should be challenged in order to determine whether they are true - and don't see that as a personal attack in any way.

Gif

'The non-theist community, on the other hand, seems to see beliefs as things that should be challenged in order to determine whether they are true - and don't see that as a personal attack in any way. '



Was that directed at me?

I'd like to relate an anecdote:


For a while now, ever since I was handed a chick tract in the subway station, I've carried a few copies of an anti-chick tract, just in case.

Today, I noticed at a local school a van belonging to one of those annoying North American Evangelical youth indoctrination groups. Now, I've certainly mentioned somewhere around here in the past that, unlike our neighbor to the south, We Canadians do not have an Establishment Clause in our Constitution. To the contrary, our government is bound by our Constitution to 'the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians'.

I was tempted to stick one of my tracts under the wiper of the van, but then I thought to myself, whoever is going to find this tract hasn't approached me, why should I approach them?

The tract stayed in my pocket.

I realize that, in real life, anyway, I'm not going to seek out an argument. In fact, I will do what I can to avoid one, even if my interlocutor seems to be seeking one. This isn't blind respect for religion -- it is respect for the person.


Now, in an online forum which is obviously devoted to the discussion of a particular subject, I will be quite happy to confront someone who barges in with unsupported (unsupportable?) religious pronouncements which certainly can have no real purpose except the polemical.

Similarly, if someone knocks on my door to spread their Good News, I am polite, I politely suggest they keep their paper as it will be straight to the recycle bin if it stays with me. I've yet to have anyone in real life be anything like as insistent as their counterparts online.

Hey Ed, interesting subject. It seems to me that there is something interesting in this apophasis stuff, which relates to what in philosophical and psychological circles is sometimes called 'tacit knowledge'. That is, knowledge that cannot be made explicit, spoken or written, but that nonetheless is still knowledge. The obvious example is: throwing and catching a ball. Something that most people can do more or less, but that is still way beyond the abilities to describe explicitly (witness: failure of robots to be able to do it). Tacit knowledge is real and serious (and may in fact be a more fundamental type of knowledge than explicit knowledge, which may be a specific type of tacit knowledge).

Another analogy is poetry. People find meaning in poetry, but that meaning is not necessarily what is written. Sometimes it can be analysed and explained, sometimes not. Or take Wittgenstein, whose Philosophical Investigations is probably the greatest work of philosophy of the 20th century, but consists of loosely ordered paragraphs that are each almost independent of the other, no one of which on its own makes a lot of sense, but taken as a whole suggest an entirely new way of looking at the world, an alternative vision of the meaning of knowledge itself.

In other words, tacit knowledge is not just physical knowledge, it's everything that isn't explicit, encompassing things like judgement, the ability to make educated guesses, expertise, etc. So in principle, I'm sympathetic to the idea that there can be knowledge that you gain only by taking part in a practice.

Where does this leave religion? It used to be my contention that as I hadn't engaged in the practice of religion, and hadn't had the same experiences as religious people had, I couldn't rule out the possibility that, at least from their point of view, there might be a basis for their religious beliefs (even if faulty). This would broadly fit with apophasis.

I don't think this any more though. And I think Ed's wonderful notion of the funny fimbly feelings helps to explain why. We have to separate religion from the funny fimbly feelings. Engaging in a practice might give us these FFFs, but that doesn't create a connection with the explicit aspects of religion: the religious texts, the social institutions, etc. If we jump from the experience of having an FFF to participating in a religious institution, we're simply making a mistake. It's like saying: I have an FFF, such-and-such says that also have an FFF and that it is God - therefore my FFF must be the same FFF and must also be God - I will do what such-and-such says. I'm not saying that FFFs are necessarily meaningless, I'm just saying that there is a very unwarranted jump from feeling FFFs to 'believing in God', and while some might like to say that the two are the same, they are very much not (and saying they are is just promoting an agenda).

Ed's other interesting point was about how you live your life. Given that the kernel of religion has no empirical component, it can be evaluated purely in terms of morality and ethics. So does this mean that William James was right about religion? That we should evaluate it purely based on the good or bad effects it has on the way you live your life?

Just a quick thought, Dogster:

I'm reminded of Gould's (sad mistake, to my mind) non-overlapping magisteria. Certainly I see your suggestion of other ways of knowing, but there is always an overlap. There are aspects of ball-throwing which can be investigated empirically, for example. And there are certainly religious claims which can also be investigate by science.

Would you not agree that where there is an overlap, if science contradicts ball-throwing, science wins?

But is there an overlap? Religion doesn't really make testable claims, it makes moral and ethical ones. Science, as Ed has said, says nothing about these. When fundamentalist Christians say the world is only so many thousands of years old, then there's an overlap and science should win. But most of the time, they retreat from testable propositions (and the apophasis stuff is the ultimate expression of that).

prayer, for example?

'When fundamentalist Christians say the world is only so many thousands of years old, then there's an overlap and science should win. But most of the time, they retreat from testable propositions'

As far as most of the time, you don't live in North America, do you, Dogster?

Also, moving away from the science/religion issue, there is the civil society issue wherein religious groups try to influence a government into imposing laws on the whole society which suit a particular religious outlook.

Hi Anhaga,

>I'd like to relate an anecdote [about respectful atheism]:

Don't be so shrill! You're attacking me personally!



Gif

And then, of course, there's this sort of thing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7978981.stm

I'd hope that even most theists wouldn't be swayed by that sort of thing - the main effect will be to make the unpleasant even more convinced they are correct. Though no doubt there will be a few people who find it convincing.

Gif

On this thread, I'd prefer to avoid highlighting the excesses of religion. I'd like its main purpose to the discussion of Atheist ideas - which will, of necessity, often mean contrasting them with religion - but I think we can take 'Some religious people are evil madmen' as a given.