On what your creator’s been thinking.
The idea was an interesting one: to write a children’s book for children that are raised atheist. – Afterall, there’s a wide range of more or less religious or religion-oriented, some educative, others affirmative books for children of all kinds of faiths, particularly for Jewish and Christian children. – It could have been a book that would positively encourage some morale or another, independent of any religion, maybe lay out the history of atheist thinking.
Michael Schmidt-Salomon (author) and Helge Nyncke (illustrator) set their hands to task and created the book Wo bitte geht’s zu Gott? fragte das kleine Ferkel (What way, please, is God? the little piglet asked). Style, spelling, punctuation and capitalization mistakes in the book’s title aside, the book has stirred quite some controversy over here and even had the Bundesfamilienministerium (federal office for families, women and social issues – I’m not kidding you) move for the book to be officially listed as not suitable for children, which would have made it illegal for any minor to obtain or be enabled to get access to the book.
So what was all the fussing about? In a nutshell, a piglet and a hedgehog try to find out where God lives and go to the Temple Mount and try to visit a synagogue, a church and a mosque. The piglet and the hedgehog are rudely turned from each doorstep with reference to their non-affiliation with the respective religion. The rabbi, the bishop and the mufti sending the two animals away are portrayed with unpleasant features in the text as well as in the illustrations. In the end, those three representatives of the three Abrahamite religions get into a violent fight; the accompanying illustration shows the rabbi trying to suffocate the bishop with a Torah scroll while the bishop is hitting the mufti in the head with a Bible while the mufti is apparently trying to break the rabbi’s ankle. In the meantime, the intimated piglet and the hedgehog are sneaking off.
I am pretty sure all readers are aware that even non-believers of or non-adherents to Judaism, Christianity and Islam may visit synagogues, churches and mosques as long as they behave respectfully. So does this fatal contextual error give us a solid idea of the quality of this book? I think it does.
It is not a positive book, not a book that would positively affirm a child’s atheism, but a book that encourages scorn towards religions. It is a book that, by its illustrations, seems fit to leave children with a scary visual of rabbis, bishops and muftis. And at that, in my humble opinion, the book is nothing but pathetic, generalizing and using the same scare-techniques its authors accuse the religions of.
Taken to task on what seem to be not only anti-religious but antisemitic tendencies throughout the book, the author claimed that he, because of his last name, had been a target of antisemitic propaganda for years and that he had only aimed at tackling the extreme forms of religious observance. The book’s publisher describes the author to be an author, philosopher and musician as well as a spokesperson of the Giordano-Bruno Foundation.
Eventually, the book did not make the index of abolished books as the examiners did not see any bias towards a specific religion. And if not for the self-sustaining demographic of those that confuse cultural ignorance with atheism, we could be safe to assume that the days of the book were counted. Being as fond of diversity as I am, I still hope to see a few quality atheist children’s books someday. If the atheists cannot write those themselves, what about having some religious folks do it? I’ve already got a suggestion for a title: So you will, Godforbid, be worm food someday?
No chance of that, Froylein. I’ve learned my lesson. 🙂
Giyoret, glad if I can be of help. You’re a nice woman with a good sense of humour; don’t sell yourself below value just to get a Jewish mate, promise?
People, stop reading if you are not interested in personal revelation. I didn’t think it would come out like this but Froylein has some very interesting insights.
Ok, first what came to mind when I thought about this dream. I couldn’t really come to anything about the first part, even though of course it meant something. But the second part, since I had just posted and was thinking about atheism and religion, seemed to me to be about those two things. On the one hand there’s our favorite atheist Muffti, ignoring me, having sex with a crazy girl (I didn’t know Juliette Lewis’s mom is Jewish, btw), then with drink in hand telling me to take off my clothes and engage in risky skydiving behavior. Then on the other side, I’m with a bunch of Jews who are keeping me warm and are really attentive and although I was exposed I didn’t feel it.
(There must be something with the whiskey sour vs. champagne, on opposite ends of the building, but maybe that just highlights the opposites. Or maybe champagne is for weddings…)
NOW what is very, very interesting, is looking at this from a relationship point of view, and the emotional abuse you mentioned. Recently I have had a past relationship on my mind a lot, because we broke up a year ago around this time, and it was easily the most screwed up relationship ever in my life. He was Jewish, was uncomfortable about it, and his ex wife was Catholic and was raising their son Catholic. We actually met as a missed connection on craigslist, so our first contact was by email and then on the phone, and we had out first date after two days. When I first saw him I figured he was Jewish, but when we talked his name didn’t sound it, and my first name is [name deleted by TM] (ha ha) so when we met it came out that here was a guy who could “pass†superficially as a non-Jew, with the ex-wife and kid to boot, and a girl who was superficially no way a Jew, who wanted to convert. Funny the people we meet up with, isn’t it? He was not emotionally healthy or giving (with addictive and risk-taking tendencies) , and I have always been lucky to be around stable, happy people (and am that way myself), so he was hard for me to relate to. He came up with a lot of excuses for being that way, and I tried to break up with him a few times, but I guess I felt I could help him. I thought that his ex-wife was a way to “un-Jew†himself, and since she was negative and ignorant about Judaism, I thought he would welcome all my warm fuzziness. (Uh, no.) Because he was not exposing his son to anything Jewish even culturally, I had them come over for Hannukah dinner and we made latkes together and we were talking about the holiday and history. That night he brought me, um..a big Christmas tree. (Symbols, anyone?) So the story continued for months, limped along, and I really suffered, and then it came to a point where I had to choose a direction, and I ended it.
So recently I’ve been wondering how I could have been involved with him and now with Froylein’s interpretation it’s getting the wheels turning. Maybe I was the crazy Juliette Lewis and had to get away (in my car!) to something else.
I really have a lot to think about. I can’t thank you enough, Froylein!! And if this was all TMI for some of you–sorry, I had no idea when I brought this up.
Whoa, that is one crazy dream, G. Muffti knows nothing about dream interpretation. But Juliette Lewis is (was?) a hottie in her own cool way.
Froylein I really want to respond but am at work—but it is really interesting and I will post asap. Thanks!
froylein nails it. Wow.
Ok, here we go:
dreams aren’t ongoing films on our subconscious that take a while; they take (fractions of) seconds, so we’ve got a multitude of dreams during our sleep and then later, subconsciously, tend to link the images that appear in a way it makes sense to us (that’s why dreams often are considered mirrors of the soul – our subconscious interpretation and linking of the images represent supressed thoughts, fears, and hopes). So what we should interpret is Giyoret’s interpretation, so to speak. 🙂
Giyoret, I don’t know you well enough to tell, but have you ever felt or been under the impression that your convert status makes it more difficult to meet Jewish men, even those of the secular type, as in that you have to go out of your way while creepster-like Jewettes seem to have it easier while they can barely positively and affirmatively be defined as Jewish? Have you experienced attempts of emotional or physical abuse or an imbalance in a growing relationship with a possible partner of Jewish affiliation that you nonetheless felt intrigued by or comfortable with? Your reference to whisky sours as something you knew as a girl that “every party and church event” had is pretty striking (note, shnapps is for funerals and men only on Purim in more traditional circles). Do you occasionally feel a need to ‘connect’ the cultural sphere you’re coming from or parts thereof with those that you’ve chosen to join to feel more comfortable?
That’ll require a bit of an explanation on what dreams are and what we do with them before I can take my stab at this particular one. Since it’s 5:28am by me now, mind if I get back to you on that after breakfast?
froylein has a background in Jungian analysis. I’ll be very interested to get her take.
Eww, Tom, she’s crazy looking. That would make me sad. can we get some serious dream interpretatin here??
I have my ideas, but I’ll wait a bit.
Ovulation-heehee. Been there, done that this month. Definitely influenced by reading this thread and the conversation I had with my sis in NY who went to a Jdate Purim party last night.
Your friends are right– you really are a dead ringer for Juliette Lewis.
Giyoret, my interpretation is that you’re ovulating. It’ll be over in a couple of days.
Here is my Muffti dream:
So I’m at some house on a lake with Muffti and it has these big floor to ceiling windows, and I can see these groups of parachutists in the sky in the distance. So we’re chatting and this girl who looks like Juliette Lewis keeps interrupting and trying to lure Muffti away to have sex. One of the things I was saying is that people don’t drink whiskey sours anymore, and how when I was little it was something every party and dinner and church event had. This girl keeps interrupting and I say “Ok, I’m leaving†and they go in another room and I get into a mini Cooper that is on top of some truck or something and drive down like a Hot Wheels ramp.
So I go to this English pub sort of place and I see Muffti at the bar and he sees me, and in a second he’s there with two whiskey sours. There’s an open ceiling and more of these parachute people and Muffti says, why don’t you try it, I’ll go first. So he leaves for a minute and then lands in a courtyard thing with his parachute. So he tells me I have to do it naked, so I strip and am in this pub, and I’m waiting for them to call me for my turn. The bar was at one end of the building, but it was big and open and there were vendors setting up tables, so I wandered down to the other end where there was a champagne vendor setting up. So people start coming in, and it’s a Purim party, and these really cute guys in groovy kippas are surrounding me and we’re chatting and drinking champagne. My back was to this wall where a heater was, and one of the guys, with dark hair and eyes and wearing a coat was in front of me and his presence was keeping the front of me warm, and we were talking and he smiles and says “See, you probably forgot you were still naked†and I had. Then he said he would stay with me and keep me warm and we started walking towards the other end of the building.
Anyone good at dream interpretation?
Hmmm, was somebody blowing?
Ach, such was my youth…
I swear I had the weirdest dream last night about Muffti and me and a Juliette Lewis looking girl and some parachuting people and whiskey sours. I’ll post when I get the chance.
That’s what I get for reading this before I go to bed..
Actually tho I’ve been thinking about it and it’s kind of fun to analyze, given the topic.
Is Muffti getting cheeky?
‘Incoherent’, eh? To quote my namesake, that joke isn’t funny anymore. Hey, you try to prove God exists after you’re up all night celebrating St. Patrick’s day by tossing eggs at British economic interests.
Does that mean you are baking hamantashen that look like sylvia plath? or is the Marathon named after her? Or is it a marathon in which you read as much SP while baking and the winner is the one who finished the most pages combined with the most Hamentaschen?
Muffti doesn’t privilege ‘analytic’ approaches for ‘knowing’ – he thinks vision is generally a way to know things. HE thinks so is hearing and he thinks those are neutral with respect to background philosophy or theology. Though Muffti thinks Morrissseey had something grander (and, with all due respect, more likely to be incoherent) in mind by approach to knowing.
Nah, Tom, not that part. Muffti’s and my friendship is strictly platonic.
Say no more, froylein, say no more….
Tom, Muffti’s still alive and kickin’, but part of the conversation has shifted to emails between him and me. 😉
What froylein and Giyoret are saying is that belief is not entirely a matter of analytic thought. In fact, it’s mostly not about that. Religion speaks to a variety of human needs, especially emotional ones. Does Muffti perhaps err in privileging an analytic approach over other ways of knowing?
Great job with this post, froylein. Obviously Muffti has had to limp off the field in defeat, but he’s been quite sporting about it, and I’m sure you’ll keep him in your prayers.
Bang-bang daddy you’re dead, eh, Ben-David?
Ben-David, you read Sylvia Plath?
BTW, I plan on doing more posts in the future that hardly anybody reads but that could be followed by some interesting exchange of concepts.
113 comments? About a children’s book?
So I opened the thread…
Oy Vey.
Proof of God’s existence, atheism….
While I’m in the middle of the Sylvia Plath Hamentaschen Baking Marathon….
Muffti need not worry; my bf will still rather use disposable plates than do the dishes…
Believing may be rational in philosophical terms, but in theological terms, it’s a no-go area. It’s considered a heartfelt conviction, not based on ratio.
That’s a lot of presupposed conclusions there, F’lein. Why isn’t believing rational? And what do ‘ratio’ and ’emotio’ mean exactly? Muffti is no latin scholar. But he thinks beliefs are not emotions. They are propositional attitudes and function essentially as representations of the world. So tehy most certainly have an object both grammatically and ontologically speaking.
and, yeah, Muffti was a rather poor cleaner (he still is but gives the bottom of the plate a quick wipe)
Would Muffti agree that humans’ mental activities could be categorized into ratio (including sensus) and emotio? So since believing isn’t rational (Catholicism has this tradition that before the reading of a portion from the torah / OT, believers make a little cross with their thumb on their foreheads, mouths and hearts, which stands for thinking, speaking / confessiong and believing), would it make believing a part of emotio? And, despite being transitive verbs (in most contexts), if contextually emotions require an object, would that object be taken for granted even if not named?
I’m trying to see whether Muffti sees an analogy between believing and other emotions.
ck, he seriously didn’t clean the bottoms of the plates?
You would have had way more success if you had said ‘Muffti, my faith in god sometimes lingers and I will strike down in a murderous rage anyone who has mildly pissed me off!’
If God saved Muffti’s, he saved your’s too!
But, yeah, that was pretty funny
ck: Thanks for doing the dishes Muffti, but these big pieces of gunk stuck to the bottom of the plate indicate to me that you didn’t clean the bottoms…
muffti: Why should I clean the bottoms? We don’t eat on the bottoms?
ck: Uhm… but we stack the plates one on top of the other.
muffti: Oooooh yeaaaah…
Believe me when I tell you muffti, that day, God saved your life.
Heh. Good times, good times…
😉
ck, the Big Guy really keeps you in line? I’m not joking here–you base your actions on what you think pleases him? Wow. I don’t think I do anything because it pleases God. I’m not concerned at all if he is satisfied or happy with what I do. I think it actually makes more sense to develop compassion for your fellow man and let that guide your actions than to “do it for God.” And I think that is much harder in many cases. It’s easier to think of God not only as a good guy who knows and likes you much more than your crabby neighbor, but who also happens to dangle a highly convincing sword over your head to remind you who’s in charge. So why concern yourself with your neighbor anyway? What does he matter?
It’s not that hard to enter a house of worship, or light some candles and feel peaceful. But go outside and mill around amongst humanity, and see if you can conjure up that same feeling. It just isn’t as easy. In that case, a religious perspective helps get you there–but is that, in the end, genuine? Some would say it’s superior if you do it even when you are not moved, but I disagree.
Froylein didn’t ask me, but I think you need an object to love. You love something for what it gives you, I think spurred by gratitude. Even things that seem self-sacrificing, like motherhood.
Jeezus. and to think Muffti was your roommate. It’s people like you that keep Muffti from being a proselytizer 🙂
Froylein, Muffti really doesn’t understand the question. Do you mean can people feel love for nothing in particular, just love? Or just hate that is aimed at nothing? It sounds virtually incoherent to Muffti and in verbal form (at least in english) it seems to enforce a grammatical object (i.e. ‘adam loves’ is ungrammatical unless its taken to be a generic predication). But muffti doesn’t really have strong opinions on this either way. Why do you ask?
Of course there is no “proof” in the scientific sense of God’s existence!! But I feel God and I sense God in ways that cannot be measured by science. And yes Muffti, but for the existence of God I would be a total and complete douchebag. I’m not an innately nice guy, I am not innately good. What I am is a total shithead motherfucker and every day I struggle with my desire to throttle people that piss me off, take advantage of those that are weaker than me and generally conduct myself in a way that pays no heed to what’s good for anyone but me. The only thing that stops me from doing these things is the fear of worldly retribution from the law and the fear of divine retribution for those things I am reasonably certain I can get away with.
I still would like to know from Muffti whether he thinks that love or hate can exist without being directed at an object.
Believers do not prove the existence of God; we know what we can prove and we cannot believe what we know lest we drift off into cultism.
In reading all this, I am wondering: don’t you all agree with Muffti that there is really no proof, and doesn’t it come down to, for whatever reason, you LIKE to believe in God? You can make up a whole bunch of reasons for believing so it seems very logical and normal, but in the end it fulfills your needs (social, personal, etc)and that’s about it.
OK! Can you mail me my own packet of Kool-Aid?
Here’s still more depressing news. Religion’s the product of weakness. Ah, nothing works like a heavy dose of our own falliability, and foxhole-style reminders of our vulnerability and mortality. Maybe Nietzsche was right, and religion is for the weak…. An inversion of values in which the healthy and strong are rejected.
What if we can’t resolve the issue upfront– there’s no compelling “evidence” one way or another, but we’re asked to believe- now. What then? Faith at least allows us to continue the inquiry. As our experience of it unfolds, we’re better able to come to conclusions. Many folks in our culture find nothing to compel them to believe in God, so they roll over and fall back to sleep. They blithely ignore the questions that somehow still engage Muffti, our heresiarch.
Again, it’s faith, not science, that occupies the space between certainty and doubt. Faith is the space to explore this terrain. In this regard, it can be compared to….philosophy, peut-etre?
Strange is one way to put it, amigo…
Consider the following offer, then. If you are brave enough to overcome skepticism and send Muffti 10$ a day for the next 30 years, salvation shall be yours. Don’t ask how it will happen – the Muffti’s powers derive from a source you can nary understand at first pass. Muffti will send you a short book with a metaphorical history detailing the wonders that he has done and some general laws about how to live and pray (mostly which will consist in sending extra money on Muffti-Mondays). Naysayers will try to persuade you otherwise but keep on the path. You won’t really see Muffti intruding in your life, making things better, but know he is there watching and at the right time he will make every thing allright.
This is no easy task. To help you, Muffti will set up some representatives that you can consult with and discuss the metaphors in the aforementioned books. This is a kind ness from Muffti but they will require some living expenses in order to help you out…5$ a week to them will help them help you which ultimately helps Muffti.
Scoff now at your own peril. Muffti is not to be trifled with. Failure to act will lose your salvation. You may be skeptical but know ye that only many years of conformity and attempts to resonate with the Great Grandness of the Muffti will ultimately provide you with the comfort your so desperately need and seek.
Peace be with you.
Muffti, my apologies for failing to add an irony alert. (In fact, I kept the $10 bill the old lady with the walker dropped in front of me at the store…. But enough of that.) I agree that human behavior won’t cut it, one way or another.
In a perfect world, we’d be able to demand evidence “before [we] believe in stuff”. Sadly, though, if any faith has any shot at making sense we have to buy into it and live it out for a period of time. I don’t think anything short of hearing a voice in a burning bush, or tasting water turned into wine, will relieve us of this paradoxical requirement. We’re asked to accept, arguendo as it were, that this religion thing will resonate, make sense of the world on some deep level, despite (not because of) towers of Babel and the like. After years of this, we’re then qualified to make a decision about it.
Strange, eh?
Ummmn, Morrissey, that’s illegal!
Muffti doens’t really understand the question. He still hasn’t heard an argument for God’s existence or seen any evidence for it. He is unpersuaded by arguments for god’s existence. He thins that in general before you believe in stuff you should have SOME evidence for their existence. Muffti doesn’t think there are any green goblins under his bed that are invisible and undetectable by any human instruments. He can’t get any positive evidence that they aren’t there in that since, since they are undetectable, but he still doesn’t believe in them…
Muffti doesn’t understand how human behaviour could be a basis for their being a god. Maybe you could elaborate? It just seems like a non-sequitor to Muffti. so you sat down and burned 10 bucks because you thought it was wrong to keep other people’s money. That is certainly well explained by your believing that it iwrong to keep other people’s money. How does it show that there is a God?
Think of it this way. If everyone behaved in evil ways, you would NOT take that as confimation of their being no god. and if all societies had different laws you would also not take that as confimration fo their being no god. So why are you inclined to think that conformity and universality suggest that there IS a god?
That describes Muffti pretty well.
The most exotic, slender and fetching of orchids, surely.
Then rank me somewhere between daisy and dandelion.
As it says in Deuteronomy, froylein: let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend.
This whole thread has left me with an identity crisis: ck’s traditional, Middle’s agnostic, Muffti’s atheist. And I’m chopped liver?
I suppose Muffti is saying that all conclusions are on some level, albeit far-fetched ones in many cases, speculative. He’s curiously categorical, though, in finding “no evidence” that there is a god. Is this because you’re unpersuaded by the arguments religious folks make (having apparently assigned them the burden of proof) or because there is affirmative evidence showing there is no god? If the latter, what’s your evidence? Surely it’s not, say, human behavior (evil, etc.), since you seem to reject human behavior as a basis for asserting there is a god.
Hmmm, you don’t run off with miscounted change as it down the road will lead to rising prices (if such mistakes add up) or the unemployment of the cashier (if they does so more often; I once overheard cashiers at a NYC supermarket talk about that three incorrectly keyed in prices will get you fired), which will result in higher expenses for society, so it’ll get back at you in some way.
Once I found a ten dollar bill in a the gutter of one of my neighborhood streets. Mindful of my duties as a Christian, I went house to house, banging on doors, accosting neighbors, rapping on car windows, all in the hope of finding the owner. Alas, I failed. That evening, I considered keeping the bill; but to have even entertained such a thing sickened me and kept me from sleeping.
The next morning, I took a match to the bill, and as it burned, I reflected on the blessing of having been given the morals and values to have acted in such an exemplary manner. As this shows, God does indeed exist.
Muffti agrees…though he doens’t like the way you described his efforts and training! Muffti doesn’t want to make strong arguments seem weak. He’d like strong ones to be strong and weak ones to look weak so he knows what he should believe.
Muffti also is using ‘evidence’ in a way that is compatible with the falsity of what is evidence for. his atheism doesn’t rely on a proof of God’s non-existence: he’s pretty sure such a proof is either impossible or bound to be unpersuasive. He thinks just like you do: take in all the evidence and see what conclusion it warrants. and in the case of God, he sees next to no evidence for God and a great deal of evidence against (at least certain conceptions of God). So he’s led to think there isn’t a god, pending further evidence to the contrary. Muffti isn’t tryin to be stubborn – he once was a believer. But he has yet to find anyone who can give him any evidence for god. (the closest he has come is the so called fine tuning arguments which are at least attempts on general probabilistic grounds to argue for the probability of their being a god).
Does that make one agnostic? Muffti doesn’t think so – Muffti thinks that you are a human being rather than an alien with a strange interest in jewish blogs (you are a catholic with a strange interest!) He has no incontrovertable evidence that you aren’t an alien, just a lot of good reason to think that you are one. Nonetheless one could in theory bring Muffti evidence that would persuade him that Morrissey is really an alien, or a think tank of aliens, or maybe god himself amusing himself arguing on line. Taht doesn’t make Muffti an agnostic about your humanity, does it?
In general we have no ‘proof’ for the stuff we believe. Muffti believes that the woman he calls ‘mom’ actually gave birth to him, but maybe he was secretly hatched from an egg and no one has the heart to tell him sot hey came up with a clever story…maybe muffti isn’t writing these words but is dreaming (hat tip to Descrates) or stuck in a cave watching shadows on the wall that he mistakes for reality (his neck is a li’l sore this morn). Every amount of evidence is compatible with devious interpretations and hypotheses. If that makes one an agnostic in general then Muffti guesses he is an agnostic about the existence of God. but that can’t be the sense of agnostic peole are interested in…
Muffti agrees: presumably science isn’t in the business of telling people what to do with change or what is right and wrong. What isn’t clear to Muffti is that religion and the god are required to answer the question. Muffti doesn’t believe in God or religion but he typically doesn’t run off with people’s miscounted change. Most atheists don’t seem to either. When they are mad they typically don’t run around killing people. People have values and since functioning societies seem to have come before religion (organized religion after all requiring a stabel social circumstance) it looks like these values were first in people’s decision structure, not religion.
In fact, Muffti finds it hard to believe that deep down you are doing the right thing by giving back change simply because you are scared of the threat of otherworldly non-quantifiable divine retribution. Is that honestly why you give back change to people? If God gave you a free pass would you keep it? Coz if that is the reason you do it, you aren’t half the good dude that Muffti always has thought you are.
I’m quite curious about how Muffti would frame an argument for atheism. He’s adept at playing defense, and indeed he (and/or his beleaguered parents) have invested significant time and money in honing skills at making the stronger argument appear the weaker. So, let’s have it, dude. Or are you a Middle-style agnostic?
When you use the word “evidence”, you seem to mean data which incontrovertably leads to a conclusion. I don’t view “evidence” in the same way. If a suspect in a murder is the same race, height and weight as that reported by an eyewitness, such facts are evidence of guilt. They hardly mean proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The killer could be someone else.
Re the second of Muffti’s questions: religious people make a mistake if they think allegiance to the 10 C’s or the equivalent are needed for good, ethical living. This is a kind of test of faith. There are good people (e.g. most of my friends) who worship no god. The Catholic Church teaches that there have been saints in all cultures at all times. There are bad people who flourish. Kant was right that we must obey moral precepts without regard to any expectation of earthly reward.
I heard a priest once remark in a homily that the spiritual choice we face is usually not between good and bad– most people can identify evils and reject them– but between good and better.
In short, God does not make it obvious that His way is best. Hardly a surprise, eh, if one believes we are tasked with being faithful people. (All of this may be too Christian for some Jewish contributors, whose God is a God of world-historical intervention. Ours showed up, gave us some instructions, and left us largely to our own devices.)
So, nothing is certain if we’re to rely solely on reason. But isn’t this very uncertainty more appealing than atheism, which I understand (correct me if I’m mistaken) to posit that reason excludes the possibility of God– that God can be shown affirmatively and conclusively not to exist? Is such a position more attractive, more defensible, and more humane than the middle ground between certainty and doubt that is the life of faith?
I’m not remotely trying to prove the existence of God. I’m just saying how does science answer the question of whether or not you should return the change? In some cases it is in your interest to return the change and in some cases it isn’t. Religion however tells us that no matter what the empirically determined cost/benefit analysis is, you always return the change unless doing so would endanger your life or something. And what element in this equation is it that makes it so? God and the threat of otherworldly, non-quantifiable, divine retribution.
TM: It is weird! that’s why there a mystery about there being something rather than nothing. But Muffti’s point was saying that it just is is no weirder than saying that ‘god created it’. So you have equal weirdness which b muffti’s lights essentially means that positing a god doesn’t really explain anything here. On the one hand you have the mystery and unanswerable question: why is there something at all? On the other hand you have the question ‘there is something because god wanted there to be. Why did god want it to be that way and why is there a god rather than no god’.
Muffti is reminded of the ‘explanation’ of why the earth stay in place : it on the back of a turtle. A natural question is ‘what holds up the turtle’ and the answer is ‘turtles all the way down’.
CK, Muffti has no idea what you mean. How could it be scientifically determined to be better for you not to return the change? Better for you survival? Better for what? But even if we waive that, presumably what makes you return the change and not take it is a psychological explanation. Perhaps its because you have faith; perhaps because you were raised in such a way; perhaps you have a genetic predisposition to favouring certain action types in combination with the environment you were in. Whatever that is, Muffti doesn’t really see what this has to with the question at hand, i.e. whether or not there is a god and whether religion and its values are required in order for their to be ethics and values.
sigh – look Muffti dude, the point I was trying to make is that all these early codifications came from the same region, so it’s possible a certain amount of cross-cultural fertilization had occurred. More importantly though, while there are some similarities, the polytheist codes are mostly horrific.
In any case, we’re now officially going in circles. You’re a strict empiricist. OK great! I prefer a combination of reason and faith and TM is somewhere in between that. Ultimately, my perspective is a broad one and does not depend on any kind of empirical evidence at all for its sustenance. None. Zero. Any historical or scientific fact you can throw at me doesn’t change a thing. At the end of the day the quantifiable and the scientifically determinable do not answer all my questions.
If I go to a store and receive more change than I am owed and it can be scientifically determined that it’s better for me to not return the extra change, what in the realm of science would prevent me from stealing? See what I mean?
Why is everything in italics at the moment?
Anyhow, there are various influences on the decalogue (note its two versions, one in Exodus one in Deuteronomy, which critical exegesis can track back to certain periods of Israelite / Jewish history). Whether Abraham existed and in what way we cannot tell as there is only one source referring to him, and that one was codified millennia after his supposed time of living. I’m too lazy to type everything I’ve studied on Pentateuch editorial history, Genesis in particular, explanatory legends and the decalogue, but you can look the gist of it up at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com. The fact that even the biblical accounts of Abraham do not state he was abiding by the later allegedly given laws tells us that even the editors working on the torah didn’t assume him to have known those laws.
Muffti doesn’t really see how any theory could be in conflict with what the bible says.
Thank you. My work is done.
Now, just as an aside, there are a couple of movements in Judaism that wouldn’t take offense to the manner in which you characterized the Tower of Babel story.
Again, this isn’t about me, so I don’t think I’m the right candidate for your question about the biology class. To the faithful person, however, the faith in the “Book” or in his religion’s explanations for God’s actions will certainly be enough. If the bible gives you a covenant between man and God or between Israel and God or tells you the story of how God created all and thought “it was good,” that’s plenty to go on. From there to cheeseburgers being unkosher is a mere skip and jump away.
And if you want to marshall some superiority by claiming that science gives you a better platform for understanding the universe, at the end of the day it doesn’t even give you something like “it was good.” It just “is” according to science. Isn’t that just a little weird? No less weird, say, than ascribing it all to god or gods?
TM, Muffti wasn’t trying to disprove God – He agrees that a divine story is perfectly consistent here. He waS answering CK who claimed that the universality of the 10 commandments derived from religion and faith rather than reason. HE agrees that an almighty fellow could have put that in our heads if he wanted to. He just thinks no such being did it and no such being is required to tell the story. In any case, Muffti has no idea how to argue against someone who thinks that a genetic story is really ‘just the same as’ a story about people building a big tower, just sort of rephrased and reshuffled around to be comprehensible. If that is the level of hermeneutics that is allowed, Muffti doesn’t really see how any theory could be in conflict with what the bible says.
As for the how and the why, Muffti doesn’t really understand the question but as he keeps saying, insofar as there is a question there religion doesn’t answer it either. You keep pretending that positing a god explains something. Let me ask you…say you had a biology class and the question came up ‘why do some people have blonde hair, and others brown’ and the answer was ‘because there are genes and that’s how they want things to turn out.’
Would anyone in their right mind take that as an explanation of anything whatsoever absent a theory of the gene, what it does, under what influences environmentally it was correlated with blonde or brown hair…no. You’d think that was labeling a mystery. Yet you do the exact same thing with religion and you call it a grand answer the wonders of the questions of why and how.
Muffti calls ‘bullshit’ and doesn’t see you doing anything to dispell the associate smell.
CK, Code of Ur-Nammur, 2050 BC. Abraham? At most liberal estimate 2000 BC. It don’t add up so you can make up all the fake history you like but it don’t mean shit. Muffti thought your point was that faith and revelation from God are required to make certain value universal which, as you are wont to do, you pretended weren’t universal beforehand. all signs point to them being universal (albeit with rather harsh punishment – not that stoning people isn’t sort of harsh itself but the torah happily lists occassions on which that may happen). Unless GOd came and reveled himself to ur-nammur, Muffti calls ‘bullshit’ once again.
What he is always tickled by in these sorts of conversations is the ad hoc manner in which people are willing to joyful engage in dispute. all of the sudden its the jews running around influencing the babylonians (during roughly the time they are supposed to be in Egypt as slaves by muffti’s calculations), or the way the tower of babel suddenly becomes universal grammar explained in a nice way that has the benefit of a quick homilie about why you shouldn’t build real estate on god’s sky-territory.
And Froylein, Muffti ain’t going to be telling no priest about his sexcapades. Let those guys get their jollies from their own flock 🙂 as for pied piping…let the music be your master, will you heed the master’s call?
Muffti wrote: CK, Hmmurabi had a god? Good point. in fact he had many many gods so far as Muffti can tell. are you telling Muffti they came and told Hammurabi the laws? Coz otherwise one might think that hammurabi, using reason (and probably a common genetic predisposition towards certain preferences) came up with these laws using reason…the very thing a little while ago you said was NOT responsible for making these things universal. You self contradicting shit weasle
Again muffti, if you’re going to use Wikipedia then read it. The section on Hammurabi is not that long. Do note that of the legal codes enumerated, “most … come from similar cultures and racial groups in a relatively small geographical area, and they have passages which resemble each other.” Now I know that the earliest code predates the 10 Commandments by 500 years, but they don’t predate Judaism or Abraham. It might be possible that the Jews, as they are wont to do, influenced the civilizations around them.
That having been said, some of these non-Jewish laws are retarded and a tad harsh (to say the least) with liberal use of capital punishment for what are relatively minor offenses, amongst other things.
So yeah… I’m tired. Zzzzzz…
I like it when Muffti’s spelling goes apeshit. It’s weasel, not weasle!
So if I get what you’re saying, ye Ol’ GrandMuffti, you’d like me to believe there’s some secular explanation for common ethics or “universality” like an “innate tendency” that comes to us from a “common genetic background and a survival tendency.” That’s really amazing and possibly even true. It is also exactly as possible that, you know, when god created creatures, he programmed them with survival tendencies and common innate mechanisms that lead them to the same conclusions. I mean, forgive me as the sole agnostic in this discussion but your explanation is no more satisfying than that of the believer who sees god behind everything. The problem is you don’t answer the Why or the How. Again.
It’s the Camus coming out of Muffti. Oh, we’re so alone and, oh gosh, there’s nothing out there that gives us meaning. It just all…is.
Oh, as for language, I seem to recall that somewhere in Genesis – that would be the book, not the band – God straightens out all the mixed up languages so people can communicate with one another. Sure, you could say that’s a myth, but then again, so is the notion that we’re all descended from one genetic pool and therefore we all possess, regardless of nation and geography, a similar lexical tendency. Even if you’re right, your claim still doesn’t disprove that of Genesis. That author just put things in a manner those folks could comprehend while you’re giving us 21st Century verbiage.
The thing is, and here is where I understand the scientist who remains religious, that anything you’ve said can be explained away as being designed by God. Genetic predisposition; 2 eyes and 2 arms; survival tendency; language commonality; etc. There is nothing there that a believer cannot explain in a manner that keeps true to the idea of some supernatural being or force guiding these things. Your idea that it is all entirely disengaged from the supernatural seems to be no more convincing or provable than that of the person of faith in God.
Unfortunately, for once, the truth isn’t somewhere in The Middle ™, it has to be one or the other, but after all this commentary, nobody has convinced me of the existence or absence of God.
You guys are a real piece of work 🙂 First you tell muffti that its god’s revelation that made the laws universal. muffti pointed out that these laws were come by even by people who were thinking fo legal codes. Next you guys tell muffti that the universality actually gives evidence for God’s plan. apparently its pretty damned hard to bring evidence against god’s plan, isn’t it? We call that ‘unfalsifiable’ where Muffti is from and that ain’t not compliment.
Sigh. TM, Muffti doesn’t think universality shows that God’s plan isn’t at work; he just htinks that universality bears no evdience on there being a religious foundation for ethics. There may just be an innate tendency towards common a common ethic which is what you usually posit when you see universality amongst distinct groups. But why should innateness give any evidence whatsoever for there being a god?!? All it points to is a common genetic background and a survival tendency. Woop-dee-doo. You can see God in anything you like if you try hard enoguh but you don[‘t really have any particular reason to.
Language do have common syntactic structure – that’s the whole point of minimalist syntax. That suggests that we have a common genetic source for a commonly structured linguistic module. What does that have to do with there being a god? Nothing.
Similarly Morrissey, you can describe the commonality as a ‘strivng towards god’ but that is wishful interpretation at its more self confirming level. If you really think God is what and who put this common vision in all of us, then fine. The point is that faith didn’t seem to be necessary to come up with these ethics, a commonly structured values module in the head did – just like a commonly structured linguistic module allows us to explain teh incredible commonalities in syntax. Everyone also (on the whole) has 2 eyes adn 2 arms. Does that prove also there is a god? No. It proves that we are commonly genetically structured.
CK, Hmmurabi had a god? Good point. in fact he had many many gods so far as Muffti can tell. are you telling Muffti they came and told Hammurabi the laws? Coz otherwise one might think that hammurabi, using reason (and probably a common genetic predisposition towards certain preferences) came up with these laws using reason…the very thing a little while ago you said was NOT responsible for making these things universal. You self contradicting shit weasle 🙂
Sigh, Muffti. Even Hammurabi had a God. The issue at hand is not me trying to posit one set of faith-based principles over another. It’s about faith and reason. Some people choose one over another and in that respect your position is merely the flip side of a coin with religious fundamentalists as heads and you as tails. The position I am advocating is one that combines reason and faith, acknowledging strengths and the weaknesses of both and trying to find a proper balance. Empiricism alone simply does not answer all my questions.
Muffti makes a lot of good points about religion. I don’t know that it neccessarily leads to no God, but it makes my brain buzz.
I feel like a little mouse, and he’s the Pied Piper…uh, oh……..
Oh, and indeed, I’m looking forward to my trip. I bought two memory cards for my new camera today as I plan on taking lots of pictures.
Not a sin per se, Tom, but the receiving of sacraments requires baptism as the initial step (cf. F.-J. Nocke, Sakramententheologie); so a priest would need to require that (cf. Codex Iuris Canonici) to fully go through with confession + absolution. Muffti could, however, confess his sins to a priest, and the priest would be tied to secrecy of confession, but it wouldn’t equal to the sacrament of penance.
froylein, not sure if that’s officially a sin, but I’ll look into it and get back. I know you need an answer, what with vacation coming up.
Some of those common values obviously have to do with proscribing obviously bad behavior. But Moses and Jesus and Lao tzu and Mohammed put forth a common, affirmative vision, too. If you’re a believer, it’s evidence that human beings commonly strive to do good, strive toward God, if you like. There’s a distinctive kind of seeking here– a drive to transcend limits. I think this is more than simply a “disposition to find certain actions to be valuable and others to be avoided”. My dog’s good at that.
Oh, and Muffti, you could only go to confession as in one of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church if you were a member of that church; but feel free to tell priests about anal sex. 🙂
Oh boy, you guys ain’t going to convince each other. Each of your positions requires faith.
Hey Muffti, if different cultures and religions come up with more or less the same kind of laws, why do you think it’s not part of god’s plan? Wouldn’t that make more sense than different cultures randomly coming up with similar rules hundreds of years apart and thousands of miles apart? Or if it’s pre-configured into our DNA, why is that the case? I actually agree with Tom, that the commonality of many elements in our culture poses a bigger problem for your view than for his.
Not all languages share common grammatical structure. But yes, why wouldn’t that point to the divine?
And Muffti, “Why” are we here? Is it just an accident of fate and the universe? Is there no purpose to the universe at all – all those planets and solar systems gone to waste?
Muffti, frum people claim it does… Tell a Chasid there are more than seventy languages in this world and see his reaction…
How does other cultures positing the same moral and legal values provide evidence for god or anything like it as opposed to an innate disposition to find certain actions to be valuable and others to be avoided?!? Does common grammatical structure in all languages point to the divine as well?
Muffit, check out Toumani Diabate’s new album ‘Mande Variations’– he’s a Muslim from Mali, so it might not be half bad (actually, it’s sensational).
The fact that other cultures posit the same moral and legal values as Torah Judaism or Christianity is, if anything, further evidence that God or something like Him exists. Beyond the prohibited behaviors (theft etc.), it shows a broadly-shared, affirmative human desire for goodness and right conduct…. A common human aspiration to live with integrity. (It doesn’t prove anything, however.)
I probably part company with the more orthodox Jewish readers on this site in stressing the “mysteries” of creation. Catholicism having messed with my head, I don’t read the Bible literally. The Bible, including the NT, poses as many questions as it answers, for me anyway. But that may be a minority view, I don’t know.
Froylein asked:
It depends what you have in mind. Religion was partly responsible for producing the Vatican whcih Muffti thinks is a very beautiful part of the world. Does that mean that Muffti has to go to confession inorder to enjoy it? Pretty clearly no.
Morrissey said (admitted?)
You can proceed away to these questions. You basically gave Muffti all he was looking for – positing a ‘god’ who is omnipotent etc. does not explain jack shit. It raises tons of questions that you can then go on to ponder but it’s not an explanation. THat’s not to say its not a partial explanation – it renders the universe the product of intentional rather than unintentional means, but it doesn’t seem to do much more than that. essentially it leaves the universe just as mysterious with respect to why as the thought that hte universe is cold and impersonal.
CK claimed:
Muffti finds this awfully hard to believe, especially since there are plenty of law codes that predate any realistic date at which the mosaic law was ‘passed down from god’. Hammurabi and teh codex of Ur-Nammur both predate it by a good 500 years. A quick (granted Wikipedia’d) look at the latter reveals:
1. If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed.
2. If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.
…
28. . If a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels of silver.
Let’s see, that accounts for ‘no murder, no stealing and no false witness bearing’.
Muffti loves it when religious people pretend values started with them and god passing down a bunch of unheard of laws. It’s bullshit so far as the empirical record goes, amigo.
So are they something like the smurfs? Are the women bloggers a collective Smurfette? Is Rabbi Yonah Papa Smurf? Who is Gargamel?
Bet the Crown Heights folks paid for a one-way ticket out of town for that atheist agitator.
Tom misrepresents the history of “the characters.” It’s well known I’m Finnish in origin, ck is Moroccan and Muffti did grow up in Canada but only after a difficult childhood in Crown Heights. I’m blond, ck is ck and Muffti looks like a Yemenite child kidnapped by Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Baffin Island was just a way-stop.
Watch out, froylein, this site is secretly dominated by a Canadian cabal. All of the characters you know and love, O’Middle et al., grew up together in a tiny, seaside Jewish community on Baffin Bay.
Not sure what they do for nook up there, but there aren’t many of ’em, so draw your own conclusions.
This is so apropos and yet so random…
Just Not from Their Government
Man: At least Canadian homosexuals take it up the ass.
Bar
New Jersey
via Overheard Everywhere, Mar 17, 2008
Muffti is not delicate as far as I can tell, but I’m not sure whether it’s fair to discuss his girlfriends if we could discuss…… him. 🙂
The good thing about this thread is that by now, anybody who isn’t interested in atheism vs theism vs sexual practices vs corny country music by Belgians (!), has likely stopped reading and moved on to some other posts, so I can as well share that I’ve just baked 14 trays of cookies and that I’m going on vacation next week.
Muffti asked: But that just dodges the question: what is explained by invoking God? what deeper understandign do you have from being told that a source that is impenetrable to your understanding is responsible for the whole big shebang?
Well, on a very basic level, sometimes we are called upon to make a choice between good and evil. And yes, the notion of a social contract and the fear of worldly repercussions might make us choose to do good, but what happens when you know with absolute certainty that you can get away with it? What’s to stop you from not choosing evil if in doing so a significant benefit is conferred upon you? From the perspective of social cohesion, and in many cases, to protect the weak from the strong, the notion of divine consequences works quite well in keeping folks in line and defining a notion of morality, what is right and what is wrong, that goes beyond mere utility.
So to answer your question – “What is explained by invoking God?” – well, the difference between good and evil for one. Is this effective 100% of the time? No. But humans are imperfect by nature.
And I love how atheists say that they can arrive at a notion of morality and discern between right and wrong without God. Yeah, but then they ignore the religious foundations of these notions. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness etc. – these were not always universally accepted principles. That they are now is not a testament to human reason but rather to a faith in a God that introduced these values to mankind.
Is McMuffti involved in this discussion, or can we talk behind his back?
Hey, who said what I feel or don’t feel about anything sexual? We were discussing Muffti’s girlfriends.
Just a lil’ ol’ white lie, Giyoret, to make O’Middle feel less alone about them “unnatural” sexual practices….
What’s wrong with me? It’s 5 pm and I’m still sober.
Begosh and begorah, Tom, why er ye averse to oral sex? It gets the old peat fires bornin’, ye know…quicker than a nip of Jamesons, to be sure…
(Make that O’Middle and McMuffti for the balance of the day.)
I, too, have a profound aversion to oral sex, Middle. Thanks.
Hey, don’t look at me! ck and Muffti brought it up and then Froylein, um, resurrected the topic. I think that if God had wanted…uh, never mind.
A fn. to Middle’s obsessive curiosity about that lonesome byway: Middle, it’s 95 per cent in the head. And we now know that Muffti favors music not performed by xian or Jewish artists. He must have the world’s greatest collection of sitar and gamelan albums.
Hmm, getting back to Muffti’s question, I think the answer is that if we conclude that the universe is the product of authorship– even if we know nothing further along the lines of the intention or purposes of such authorship– were impelled to inquire further, to try to understand. It’s tricky, because xtians (and Jews, too, as far as I know) are strictly bound not to pretend to God-like powers of understanding. So our faith teaches us that the ‘why’ will remain a mystery.
Nonetheless, even from the point of view of Nietzschean will to knowledge, it would be odd to stop with aknowledging that some sort of authorship informs creation. It’s different, right, if we stipulate at the outset that the universe is the product of totally impersonal forces? If we reject this view, how not to proceed onto questions of His responsibility, ours, the meaning of suffering, etc.?
Middle, Muffti and I sufficiently discuss any private topic via email. Afterall there’s a challenge to make Muffti blush, which might be tough, but not impossible.
I think Froylein’s question had something to do with anal sex.
No idea, Middle; lately I’ve occasionally had lines disappearing, but it might well be me accidentally highlighting and thus deleting something while typing.
Would Muffti say that love and hate always need to be directed at an object or could they exist without a target?
I was wondering whether Muffti finds it fair that many atheists will gladly accept the positive things religions have brought about but reject the obligations that have come with them in observance. Wouldn’t that compare to only going to work for the coffee breaks and picking up your pay cheque? Wouldn’t that require that atheists re-structure their lives to be completely atheist?
What happened to my comment #43? I actually wrote something beyond quoting Muffti.
He certainly does. He loves hamburgers and beer and hates most country music. He’s not really in full comprehension of your last question however…
Does Muffti believe in love / hate?
Would Muffti skip on off-weekends / holidays / basic human rights that the Ancient Greek society did not provide for to pursue a fully atheist lifestyle?
Morrissey, that’s a lovely tale but if we are going to take Hitchens as the poster child for atheism, it’s only fair that Muffti gets to point out no end of preachers, pastors, rabbis and imams who exhibit about as much confidence in their being a God and him having a purpose that they, of course, can divine. Muffti ain’t never seen Pat Robertson answer a question about faith with ‘hmmmn, sometimes I’m not THAT sure there is a god…’
as to the question why is there something rather than nothing, Muffti’s whole point has been that claiming that there is something rather than nothing because god wanted it that way is no real answer at all. He doesn’t really get why anyone gets street cred for having ‘answered’ the questions and ‘grappled with its implications’ or ‘addressed the fundamental question’ by doing so.
Muffti has a great deal of respect for the religious nonetheless – though he knows no shortage of the intellectually lazy amongst their ranks, content with a belief and the instructions of a book – and of course atheists live a life that is frequented by many of the same questions. The implications of a world that doesn’t ultimately rectify injustice, that is an indifferent to suffering as it is to joy, the coming to grips with the realization that finality truly is oblivion rather than salvation are staggering. If the claims about foxholes are true, most atheists can’t stand up under the psychological pressure. On both sides, Muffti thinks you find reflective and non-reflective people and since the mystery of meaning and purpose are indeed deep mysteries, its not surprising you find people that avoid and ignore them on both sides and people that take them on with sisyphean efforts no matter what their take on God and religion might be.
Another suggested title for Muffti: Heather Has Two Mommies But No God Or Anything.
froylein’s comment illustrates the perhaps surprising irony that it’s religious people, and not atheists and scientists, who occupy the middle ground between knowledge and belief, faith and doubt.
The Hitchens-style polemicists– including Nietzsche himself, though not including more measured skeptics like Hume– radiate a nimbus of certainty. Religious belief is pathological; the impulse to believe itself may be genetic, or in any event a matter for clinicians. Then, there are straw men, like the Genesis creation story or the Virgin birth; attacking them fails to address the fundamental questions, such as the one ontologists ask– why is there something and not nothing?
Mature faith acknowledges, even accommodates doubt. Muffti is right that we do not know God’s purposes. We can’t answer all of the ‘why’ questions. We cheerfully acknowledge that such human limits are precisely why faith is required. Further, such limits obviously underlie doubt as well. My faith journey, and I believe that of many or most other people of faith, amounts to a kind of ongoing dialectic between faith and that deadening, trap-door feeling that maybe all of this is random, purposeless, ultimately tragic. One can’t have one without the other. I’m not sure of God’s purpose in creating us. But he manifestly did not create robots.
The atheists I know, an often rather intellectually lazy bunch, are content to play defense– mocking the foibles of institutional religion and judging faiths by the standard of their most feckless, falliable members. Fair enough, we can take the criticism. But perhaps atheists would do well to take their cue from religious people, and adopt the nuances, and live with the uncertainties, that we take on as part of our commitment to grow in our understanding of the divine.
But that just dodges the question: what is explained by invoking God? what deeper understandign do you have from being told that a source that is impenetrable to your understanding is responsible for the whole big shebang?
How is that an explanation?
Okay, that may be true for you but it is decidedly untrue for most believers in most religions. That’s the point.
Just returned from a Catholic funeral, and the priest in his sermon clearly stated that believing is not knowing. Mixing up beliefs with knowledge is typical of cults, so the major religions should stay clear of such approaches.
Sure, there is such a movement afoot. But it’s nto like the movement of evangelicals in the 80s or something. It’s a few guys writing a few books that people consider thought provoking. Muffti walks down one of the quads on his campus and sees frat and sorority advertisements, political parties (‘young _____s’) and various religious organizations appealing to your need to find jesus/etc. He sees no one standing around with flyers saying ‘reject religion and find your inner scientist’. No retreats for atheists to talk and support eachother. No ‘let’s changet he world with atheism’. As pointed out, we arent’ proselytizers (for the most part).
Science and atheism are related but the one is not at the heart of others. Many scientists are religious despite excellent understanding fo the gene, and many atheists are suspect of science’s ability to explain all. Muffti is suspicious of such an ability. Niether is philosophy – many philosophers are religious and theists (often you find ones that are one but not the other) and many atheists know little or no philosophy. This is what you woujld expect Muffti thinks, from disciplines and beliefs that are distinct from one another….
As has been pointed out before, science and religion need not be hostile to one another. The way you put it, the two have different goals. And Muffti is fine wit religious people. But he doesn’t see how the thesis that there is a god explains anything. Put it this way, after reading the chumash, do you know why God created the world? Do you have any insight into God’s psychology that tels you why he created man and woman with the ability to reason but not to fly? Do you know why he declares some animals edible and others to be filthy abominations (of his creation)?
of course not. Those are just mysteries engendered by religion and you get standard answers that aren’t explanations but put-offs ‘his nature is infinite so we can’t understand it’. ‘that’s one of the mysteries that tests are faith….’ That’s fine but Muffti thinks it’s bullshit to swap in a mysterious, unexplainable entity and they pretend that you have found an explanation. You’ve basically labeled a cause that we know next to nothing about (especially when we start to admit that these are all creation myths and that our holy books are meant to be read metaphorically).
All this is to say that religion doesn’t really seem to compete with science on answering questions, niether how nor why.
Glad to have found a post topic that Muffti enjoys. 🙂 He should beware though of confusing the wrong-doings of individual adherents to a faith with that very faith’s doctrine.
(Off topic: I’ve explained the Catholic Church’s stance on condoms in another thread; it’s not as easy as people make it out to be and pretty close to the Orthodox Jewish view on condoms. The population explosion, BTW, largely has been taking place in predominantly Muslim countries, and demographically, it marks a necessary step provided Muslim countries will eventually permit access to science like in the Western Hemisphere. Europe faced such a population explosion in the mid-18th century (won’t go into the details as to why now lest I get chided).)
Not off topic, but an inside bynote:
No, no, no, you do not get off so easily, mon petit atheist.
Religion most certainly explains (if you believe, that is) the why and the how. You may think the answer “God wants it that way” is childish but it answers the question for hundreds of millions and perhaps billions in the world today. Historically, as a percentage of the world’s population, the people who bought this answer represented a vast majority.
There are other ideas that can be found in religions. In ours, for example, the idea of a covenant with god or the idea that god created and saw what he created and thought it was “good” are enough to convince some fairly astute people that god intended things and then made them happen. These ideas may not satisfy Muffti, but they satisfy many people and are definitely explanations believed by multitudes as to the why.
With respect to the how, I can point you to any number of creation myths, not to mention the reliance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which together link over half the world’s population, upon the biblical stories and subsequent explanations of these stories to explain the how.
Here I think you’re being a little disingenuous, or at least backing off your earlier claims. Science is at the heart of atheism. What freed believers from the shackles of faith was the ability to reject supernatural explanations thanks to scientific progress. In fact, it is science that makes plain that the book may not be God’s word since it isn’t perfect. You essentially agree with what I write here in your 3rd paragraph.
But science fails to explain both the why and the how. A religious person may not have the sophisticated understanding of a gene that a scientist possesses, but that religious person understands the gene is, at the most, predetermined by god herself, or at the least a part of a broader plan for mankind. The gene is not accidental and is also considered to be holy, in some respects. Science merely knows the gene exists and perhaps what the gene does. This leaves the atheist struggling to explain the same. After all, without a god to give greater meaning to everything (no matter how simplistic you find it), you are on your own trying to explain what the hell that gene is doing there in the first place.
This applies to the issue of the lab as well. What I meant was that we don’t know why anything exists. Why do we exist, why did we create cities and communities, why do we seek knowledge, why do we want to sleep with that blonde in the lab, etc. This is a bigger why. It’s a Why. And yes, science can explain that I have testosterone flowing through me and it drives me to desire that blonde woman, but it can’t explain Why. Oh, to reproduce? But Why? Oh, to keep my gene pool going (survival and Darwinism)? Great! Yes! But Why? Why do I want to have my gene pool survive and why am I here along with all these other creatures in the first place? We are looking for the big Why and neither science nor atheism provide it. Religion does, even if you find the explanation lame and simplistic. If you believe that god is the, for example, master of the universe and its very creator, than the answer “that’s how god wanted it” is very satisfying.
I have no beef with your last paragraph, but you have to admit that there is a movement afoot that has a definite anti-religious and pro-atheist flavor.
Truthfully, Middle, adn we’ve been through this before, this seems to betray a very deep confusion in a lot of ways. First, religion doesn’t explain anything – how does telling us that there is a god explain WHY we are here? It just names a mystery. There is no theory of god’s actions. There is no theory of why genes are the way they are or why a gene in a certain environment express the phenotype blonde coming from religion. Muffti doesn’t even understand how anyone could have ever confused that for an answer to a why question. It’s as little an explanation to be told that god wanted it that way as a little kid getting told that mom wants it that way explains anything to the little kid.
Second, science doesn’t achieve atheism. Muffti merely said it was correlated with it. The aim of science is to understand the fundamental forces behind phenomena so we can understand how the universe works. The more that we can find that is law goverened in the physical world the less we have to rely on supernatural explanations because supernatural explanations aren’t explanations. They are just passing the buck of a mystery to a mystery that we name.
For what it’s worth, Muffti thinks that the explanation of how people got to be atheists is probably as heterogenus as the explanation of why people are theists. He thinks that the 2 things you name help. In fact, he thinks that it’s a pretty good reason to reject religion when you find out it is giving you false information, just like you stop taking advice from someone who consistently gets things wrong.
Of cousre we can explain why we are in teh lab in the first place – we want to know more about how things work. Why do we want to know about how things work? probably it’s a decent survival strategy. There’s one deep question fo cousre that we don’t know – why is there anything at all. Short of a theory of what god is and why he wants what he does, religion just seems to say ‘that’s how god wanted it’. Which is not an answer anymore than saying ‘that’s just how it is’. Unless Muffti si way misunderstanding religion.
Muffti vehemently disagrees moreover that scientific theories are anti-religious polemics. He does agree that they often get used that way, partly because they show that religion just is giving us false information. The gurus of atheism, by the way, are just three prominent examples amongst millions and millions of us who are happy to live and let live. Other than Dawkins, as well, none are scientists. As far as spreading ideas far and wide, all scientists attempt to do that – when you discover stuff you want to promolgate it.
The how is how we and everything else got here.
The why is why we and everything else got here.
Religion and science both attempt to explain the how and religion attempts to include the why. Assuming you are right, and I think you are, that science, technology (an offshoot of science) and literacy (access to the scientific information) are the driving forces behind increased atheism and decline in religious populations, I would say that science achieves this in two ways.
First, in that science challenges many fundamental premises of the ancient religions which dominate the world today. Second, because science seeks to eliminate the premise of a supernatural anything controlling nature or living things. In both cases, science seeks to present its case through investigation and logical presentation of facts. Atheists rely on science to buttress their arguments and I would venture that most atheists got that way because science made it evident to them that the mainstream religions were providing false information.
The problem is that even as we investigate scientifically, we can’t explain how or why we’re in that lab in the first place. Or why there is an option in our genes that gives us blond hair. Or why the materials with which the lab was built exist. Or why the sun outside is warming our world. Or how all of it came about…
I think you have to consider that many scientists believe in god. Obviously they feel that science doesn’t offer all the answers. If that’s the case, then you have to address the fact that an imperfect argument is swaying plenty of people away from religion and into atheism. You claim there’s no comparison to religion because atheism is simply a contradiction that god exists, but the very rejection of a supernatural and the acceptance that things just are is a statement about existence.
I am suggesting to you that scientific theories in and of themselves are often equivalent to anti-religious polemics (as the struggle over evolution indicates) and the gurus of atheism out there (as listed in the Guardian’s article) are seeking to spread these ideas far and wide. Imperfect ideas…that require a leap of faith to accept. Just like any religion.
Quiet, you.
You know what would be cool? If Dennet’s first name was Asam. That would be so fucking cool…
p.s. Muffti thinks you are very intelligent.:)
Muffti’s point was that atheism is compatible with many different political systems and moral codes. Muffti doesn’t think the mere belief in god has ever led to evil – it is hte belief in God + the adoption of a certain moral code and /or the perversion of that for evil ends. IN other words, there are really two questions here:
1) Is there a god?
2) Is religion a good thing?
Atheists don’t have religions on account of their atheism, nor political systems. They adopt them, but teh belief in atheism is just a negative belief: there is no god. So Muffti can’t help but think that the author is massively confused on this issue because he mixes the two up. In fairness, Dawkins et al mix this up as well sometimes when they aren’t being careful (Dennett less so).
Of course it is simplistic to claim that people believe the religion that they are raised with: the truth is simply don’t know why people do this, adn there is no straightforward reason to think taht everyone believes on account of teh same cause or reason. At this point, it’s basically just speculation and Muffti freely admits that. He was giving his best guess at one cause of it.
What you claim is playing into the arguments made by the author is nothing of the sort. Muffti was sayign that there is a straightforward correlation of mounting of scientific data and willingness to atheism (coupled alos, curiously, with a growing tendency to reject current science, at least in america, by what now make up the religiosu right. Notice the fight over teaching evloution). This has nothing to do with leading atheists inculcating or following others – sure people will write books and articles saying what they believe but Muffti sees no way in which this mimics a religion other than it engages in the transmission of arguments and debate between two rational parties. If that is your standard then taking a chemistry class is basically doing the same thing as religion does.
And what exactly is this how or why that it doesn’t answer (yet)?
Muffti completely agrees with you, incidentally, over how to challenge the author – that was muffti’s point about atheism being a negative belief. beyond that, atheism is basically compatible with just about anything. There is no enforced code of ethics, common vision, leadership…so Muffti thinks we are basically converging here.
If you’re going to make the case that atheism hasn’t brought about violence, you should address some of the points the article raises, particularly about the Communists and the Nazis.
It also seems simplistic to blame how people are raised with religion as the reason for their belief in god, especially the intelligent people to whom you refer. Many people change their views on religion, not to mention religions, over time. This includes some fairly intelligent people. I’m not sure that I count among the intelligent people, but I have trouble ruling out the existence of god and wonder how anybody can. There are enough question marks about the possibility of some supernatural presence that one has to consider the possibility, in my opinion.
Um, this plays into the argument made by the article’s author. He is saying that the leading atheists as well as those who follow their lead and those who are convinced to join their ranks, are essentially mimicking religions in their attempts to inculcate people with a set of beliefs. In this case the tool is science and technology and while it explains many things, it still cannot satisfactorily explain how or why.
If I were to challenge the author, I would take a different tack. I would seek to show some of the common elements that are shared by religions and cults and then contrast them with Atheism and its believers. That should eliminate the argument that atheism resembles religions. What it won’t do, however, is eliminate the “faith” part of the equation. The religious folk can’t prove what they believe is true, and the same goes for the atheists. At some point, each group takes a leap of faith…
Muffti is actually yet to see one convincing case in which athiesM itself has led to evil – loads of cases in which atheisTS have done evil things but has anyone actually ever gotten up and said ‘in the name of no god, I do this’ and then done something horrible?!? Good luck finding Muffti a credible case. It’s not surprising beacuse atheism is a purely negative belief and so consistent with just about any moral system you attach it to that doesn’t ground itself in God. Similar, the mere belief in God has never caused a lot of evil. Likewise the mere belief in God coupled with the idea that he tells you what to do and then its being carried out in particularly horrible ways? Clearly happened over and over again.
For those still reading at this point, no one knows just why intelligent people are led to believe in God and the reliability of old books despite the fact that they tell very implausible stories. In fact, shallow as its current state might be, that is exactly the sort of question Dawkins et al are trying to answer (especially dennett) thoguh Muffti has to say he finds the meme theory too weak to be anything like a real theory. Muffti is guess is pretty simple: you don’t easily get over what you are raised with and most people are raised with a religion. Not surprisingly, then, you get a lot of people with religions. Giving up family traditions and beliefs does come with a huge cost, by teh way: the scorn of your community in some cases along with the requirement that you find a new set of values or a new way to ground the old ones. That’s a massive cost.
Religions seemed to have formed under contexts in which there was no competing scientific method and they were the best explanations at hand for what was happening. The crises of faith that have ensued seem to have been the result of being able to successfully study many of those things that were once thought to be impenetrable to the human mind, and yet regular, and so presumably penetrable and made happen by the mind of the divine. What you should be worried about is why so many have started to find atheism so plausible and wonder especially why it correlates with a time at which literacy rates, scientific knowledge and technological advance are at unprecedented levels. Hmmmn….wonder if those things are connected?
Good points, well expressed, ck. I like a good debate.
Whatever Muffti has to say about religion, keep in mind that without religion he wouldn’t be who he is.
Ass f***ing aside, Dawkins himself noted that he doesn’t want to do away with things like Christmas – he (jokingly?) suggested that he’d be in favor of creating a group called “Atheists for Jesus.” Dawkins clearly possesses a set of moral values – yet dismisses the religious origins and context in which those values were formed. The notion that all people of faith are “uncritical” is insulting, especially in a free, liberal and non-theocratic setting where one could easily dispense with religious practice and belief with little or no consequence. Why do otherwise intelligent, educated individuals persist in faith-based belief systems despite the fact that these do not stand up to the scientific method? I guess they look around them and see that indeed, not everything is quantifiable and that religion answers questions that science cannot.
So religion can be used for evil? So what! So can atheism, so can a Rose, so can a butt plug. I can use Dawkins’ hardcover book to smash someone over the head and kill them. I can manipulate a secular, atheistic society and turn it into a genocidal entity. Democratic, Freedom loving Nations can be manipulated into serving greedy corporate interests and in doing so commit all kinds of evil. Does that mean that all these things, especially the butt plugs, are innately evil? Uh… I think not.
In conclusion, Wo bitte geht’s zu Gott? fragte das kleine Ferkel sounds like a shit book, why mess with little children?? Let them read Aesop’s Fables or Mother Goose. But banning it is a dumb idea too.
TMI-hehe. And people wonder why Jewish Mother is sitting on the sidelines!! My clothing-optional sukkah seems so tame, all of the sudden….
I for one like to hear what our deep-thinking, ass-f***ing Muffti has to say about religion. Really! I think most people look at a specific religion and decide if what they get out of it is worth the personal sacrifices it will take to be a part of it; they are usually not concerned with what effect it has on things in a general sense. And that might be completely different.
The Middle is pleased to have sat this one out. And there was a moment there where there was just TMI.
Muffti isn’t defending Dawkins here but he disagrees completely that calling faith ‘lethally dangerous nonsense’ and ‘preposterous’ makes you militant, at least not in the sense of ‘militant’ that gets used in the dangerous sense. It certainly makes you provocative. SO does calling atheists, at large, proselytizers.
Muffti agrees that the case for religion being the greatest cause of misery today is awfully hard to swallow – (though he thinks there is a good case to be made that it is a cause of much misery, strife and the general holding back of science). he also thinks that like residual costs in economics, it’s awfully hard to judge the misery caused by religion in terms of its side effects: do the doctors that get assassinated by nutso count as adding to religion’s cause of misery? Does the Vatican condemning condom use AND abortion simultaneously count as contributing when a young woman brings a child she doesn’t want to term? What about their ban on divorce, leaving many people stuck in miserable marriages? Do boys molested by their priests add up or is that on the priests had not the religion? And that’s just the catholics! Muffti has no idea how to count the plusses and the minuses here and he suspect no one else really does either.
In any case, he thinks misery caused is a kind of shallow indicator of the goodness or badness of something: surely you have to balance misery caused with happiness/welfare caused and, as well, whether or not the misery would be caused whether or not the phenomenon. Chemotherapy causes a great deal of misery but there is great call for it’s eradication. Furthermore, Muffti thinks it’s pretty darned stupid to lump all religions when judging.
What we should really be asking, in Muffti’s opinion, are two questions: (1) is religion doing anything good for people that wouldnt’ be better served by a lack of religion and (2) should one be an atheist or a theist (and (3) – does the answer (2) have any bearing on whether or not religion should be promoted). Muffti thinks that people have fairly uncritically accepted that the answer to (1) is ‘a great deal’ and ignored an awful lot of the bad that it has caused, or assuem that the good outweighs the bad. This has been one powerful arguemnt for the promotion of religion in general: the good it does makes it indispensable. Muffti thinks Dawkins et. al. do a nice job of showing that there is a LOT of bad that gets caused which could be avoided.
Anyhow, Muffti isn’t really sure how he got called on to defend St. Dawkin’s here. Muffti has no interest in that. But he does think that what you just said is much more cogent htan anythig in the Gray article you linked to.
Well not only do I not proselytize, but I’m not militant either. Dawkins however, well… he’s called faith one of the world’s greatest evils, akin to smallpox but harder to eradicate. He’s also called faith “lethally dangerous nonsense,” “preposterous” and sees organized religion as having a “malignant influence” on society. Well, if he’s not a proselytizer for atheism, he sure as heck sounds pretty darn militant – especially since he makes no distinction between the vast majority of people who practice their religions peacefully and the minority who are violent fundamentalists.
I mean you’re a big fan of scientific evidence. Do you really think that religion is one of the greatest causes of misery on earth today? How many people died in 9-11? 2,300? How many people died in traffic fatalities in the US in 1998? Over 45,000. Is it religion that allowed these fatalities to occur? Or could we look at the greed of car and oil companies and the politicians that they control who prevent the implementation of life saving measures like say, safe and efficient rapid mass transit? That’s just one example and was probably influenced by being at Kelsey’s for 5 days… but you get my point.
Extremists come in all shapes and sizes, Hitler, Mao, Stalin – these weren’t religious people. Neither were the folks behind the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhoff Gang, the PFLP, the DFLP, the Shining Path etc. The corporations that pollute the earth and use marketing to promote a lifestyle of waste and mindless consumerism, these aren’t religious institutions.
Dawkins sells a lot of books, but it don’t mean he’s right.
Muffti isn’t writing off John Gray; just John Gray’s article.
Where is the evidence, however, that atheists proselytize anymore than you do? Muffti sees not a shred of it, unless you consider writing books to be an effort at proselytization.
But dude, I’m not militant about my beliefs, nor do I proselytize. You really ought to at least look into John Gray a little before writing him off so quickly…
When Muffti comes over in May there had better be copies on your bookshelf, amigo 🙂
That’s a rather personal question there, CK! But fair is fair and since you answered Muffti’s question, the answer is oui, a few of Muffti’s past lovers have been kind enough to allow a few forays in that direction.
You can say anything you like about Dawkins, Hitchens the like. What’s annoying isn’t saying things that approximate negativity – what’s annoying is when a smart guy like you (who Muffti well knows thinks himself extremely bright) dissembles and fawns over some piece of shit Guardian article that manages to miss the point of its own target. That’s what Muffti found peculiar. There is a lot of interesting debate to be had over the Dawkins and Dennett stuff – in fact, what makes Muffti smile is that last time he saw Dennett the dude said quite straightforwardly that his intent was to open up a debate to advance further research on the nature of religion, belief just like cultural anthropologists currently due with respect to old religions.
Extremely close minded and militant Muffti’s ass. The phenomenon is called ‘projection’ and if you don’t know it go search your book shelf for a basic psychology text.
Muffti asked: “CK, have you even read Dennett or Dawkins?”
Muffti, have you even practiced anal sex? Heh. Uh oh! Did I even dare imply anything even approximating negativity about St. Dawkins? Don’t wanna do that! Raise the ire of militant atheists and all – that’s unpleasant stuff, yes it is. “The Selfish Gene” and “The God Delusion” are on my bookshelf, read, contemplated and ultimately… well, let’s just say that I disagree. I haven’t read Dennet but am somewhat familiar with his work. Suffice it to say that my faith and belief in Darwin’s theory of natural selection coexist. Duh! I told you I was dumb!
CK, have you even read Dennett or Dawkins?
A strawman argument is an argument that you make up to represent your opponent’s which doesn’t actually faithfully represent his position. So, no, you shouldn’t attack strawman arguments. But you should call an argument a strawman argument if you see one 🙂
Sorry Tom. You have a point. Muffti’s appologies for the abuse.
MIddle, Muffti doesn’t think that what you say about atheists is true. Certainly some atheists push an agenda starting off wtih the premise ‘obviously there is no god’ etc. But Muffti thinks that’s an unfair characterization of atheists in general. In fact, Muffti challenges you to find an atheist of any repute who claims that it is obvious. These guys who claim to be doing religious anthropology like Dennett don’t claim its obvious – in fact, they work incredibly hard to explain why a belief they take to be false is so widespread.
The claim, which Muffti thinks is a fairly subtle one, is that belief in God is unjustified on the basis of the evidence and philosophers, laymen, members of the nearly all monotheistic religions have written on both sides of the issue. what’s really shitty about the article, in fact, is just that point that you are saying is good, Middle: the guy claims that atheists are every bit as bad as theists in pushing their point, that it becomes a sort of religion for them, but muffti can’t see one shred of textual evidence for this claim other than some gestures towards certain totalitarian states that had atheist leaders.
I’ve read the article now. It is kind of rambling as Muffti tells us, and it does appear to attack some straw-man arguments, and includes some speculative declarations. However, there are also many good points in there, including the premise that atheists like to believe and push their beliefs as if their correctness is so obvious and absolute that, well, that it resembles the divine.
You know, Muffti, we help you out with an idea that’s gonna make you a hell of a lot more money than your lover-of-wisdom gig, and all we get is abuse?
waaah waaah waaah! “speculative and uninformed?” please explain. Like I said, I’m too dumb to get all the references and big words. Aren’t you supposed to attack strawman arguments?
Someone, an atheist perhaps, is a little touchy…
It was rambly and attacked clearly strawman arguments. Not to mention speculative and uninformed. Otherwise…
The Guardian article was a lovely (albeit lengthy) critique of the “proselytizing atheists.” I think I said that already.
What the hell is htat supposed to mean? 🙂 atheists don’t believe in God. We don’t recognize that there is a God and so we don’t have to deal with him and hte various contradictions that he brings along with him (just tell Muffti once and for all – can he make hot sauce so hot even he can’t taste it or not???) what’s absurd about your comment is the thought that the burden of proof is on atheists to provide a rationale for god – not the people who walk around believing that there is some invisible force controlling everything that somehow only revealed him or her or itself in ancient books full that are dubious at best in their plausibility and authenticity and accuracy.
If you want a title, what about: Good news Kids, You’re Free and Your World is Understandable!
As for that ‘must read’, what exactly was so must read about it CK?
Just read the article TM, it’s awesome. Not everything has to be about Israel ya know!
*sings* You can get it if you really want. You can get it if you really want. You can get it if you really waaant, but you must try, try and try, try and tryyyyyy. You’ll succeed at last.
Alright, breakfast time for me…
The Guardian is that pro-Israeli paper, right?
Oh atheists… speaking of which, I just read a totally rad article called The Atheist Delusion that appeared in The Guardian. What a spectacular critique of Dawkins, Hitchins and atheist fundamentalists. Really, must reading material. If I were smarter I’d turn it into a post.
One of my fav bonmots:
God is dead. (Nietzsche)
Nietzsche is dead. (God)
I <3 Muffti though.
…And for the slightly older, pre-teen crowd: “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret… God? Hello?? Are You There??? Hel-loooo! Hey! Where Are You!!!”
The book also exemplifies atheists’ propensity for criticizing religious practice, as opposed to dealing with the notion of God directly. Dumping on the big, bad major faiths is really the easy way out.
Muffti’s my choice, though, to fill this market niche. Some proposed tittles: Suck It Up, Boys and Girls: There Is No Hope. Or: Meaning Is For Sissies.