SPLIT TOPIC: The God Delusion

doctorj, you said that "tyrants have done and will continue to find something else that fits just as well if religion isn't available." I think it's just as fair to say the same thing about atheism. I'm an atheist for many reasons but one is the way religion is used to subjugate others. Women all over the world are treated less than human, like incubators, and servants. We aren't allowed to be in control of our own bodies because religious followers believe a fetus is more important than a woman. A fetus is a potential human being while the woman carrying it is a human being that is alive right now with family and friends. Women's rights are constantly being threatened by religion (I'm speaking mostly about America since it's what I'm most familiar with).

Also, if God is a benevolent loving God would he care more about rituals than if someone is a good person? For example you have 2 people, one goes to church/synagogue/mosque when they're supposed to, their wives cover themselves in burqas or wear wigs or dress conservatively. They follow all of the doctrines or creeds their religion requires but they are not a good person, they lie, steal, cheat or murder. The other doesn't follow any of those rules, doesn't go to church/synagogue/mosque but they are a good person. They genuinely care about and help others, care about the world around them and live a good life. What kind of God would love person one over person two?

I don't understand the many versions of God and the rules that God requires of followers. To me it seems that if God exists he is a very petty god to care about those things. And why is it that people can't believe that atheists can be good people? Why can't someone be good for the sake of being good? I don't need the threat of Hell to be a good person, I don't need commandments to tell me not to steal or kill.

I think of God like I think of Santa, the toothfairy, and Easter bunny. Nice stories that made me feel good as a child but then I grew up and didn't need those stories anymore. I'm not saying this to attack anyone who believes in God, I'm just telling part of the reason I became an atheist. I'll say it again, if believing in God brings you comfort and peace in your life then that's wonderful. Life is hard and we all need something to give us strength.

caseopele wrote: doctorj, you said that "tyrants have done and will continue to find something else that fits just as well if religion isn't available." I think it's just as fair to say the same thing about atheism. I'm an atheist for many reasons but one is the way religion is used to subjugate others. Women all over the world are treated less than human, like incubators, and servants. We aren't allowed to be in control of our own bodies because religious followers believe a fetus is more important than a woman. A fetus is a potential human being while the woman carrying it is a human being that is alive right now with family and friends. Women's rights are constantly being threatened by religion (I'm speaking mostly about America since it's what I'm most familiar with).

Naturally I agree with you regarding the way religion has been used to subjugate women. On the other hand, women have been subjugated in pretty much all societies up until very recently, regardless of which faiths the people had, so I'm not sure that belief in God per se is to blame.

Now regarding abortion: this is really only an issue in the US (and it perplexes foreigners no end). In most Western democracies, the debate is long since over, and the mainstream faith or faiths accept or do not actively oppose women's rights. What I very much hope for, is that the threat you perceive and which I agree is real lessens here year by year, as it did most other places. I get the impression that the power of the "religious right" in this country, forged by people like the thankfully late Fallwell in the 70s and 80s, has started to wane.

I think that as the largest developed country, some things move slower here. And I think that large-scale religions tend to be more conservative, which means that sometimes unfortunately the morals have to play catchup. For example, it took the majority of the Christian church many centuries to decide that slavery was wrong, but it did indeed come to that conclusion, and you will no longer find many Christians threatening you with slavery. So there is hope.

I think we have every right to be angry at those sections of those faiths that oppose women's rights. But I can't see that as a rational argument for rejecting all forms of religion. One could point to a church that preached strict equality and individual liberty (such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden) or one could even find a cult that preached subjugation of men.

caseopele wrote: Also, if God is a benevolent loving God would he care more about rituals than if someone is a good person? For example you have 2 people, one goes to church/synagogue/mosque when they're supposed to, their wives cover themselves in burqas or wear wigs or dress conservatively. They follow all of the doctrines or creeds their religion requires but they are not a good person, they lie, steal, cheat or murder. The other doesn't follow any of those rules, doesn't go to church/synagogue/mosque but they are a good person. They genuinely care about and help others, care about the world around them and live a good life. What kind of God would love person one over person two?

I agree that a God who cares more about rituals than about how people treat each other is not worthy of worship. I'd note that many Christians at least claim that God loves all people equally. I agree that there are some extremely repressive religious bodies. However, since a major component of most religious teachings is how people ought to treat each other, including prohibitions against lying, stealing, cheating, and murder, and since the law in many countries can trace some pedigree back to these religious prohibitions, I don't think we can use nasty religious people (e.g. Fallwell) to write off all religion, any more than we can use nasty atheists (e.g. Stalin) to write off atheism.

I'd also mention in passing that a major theme of the Reformation in Europe was salvation by grace vs. salvation by works, as well as what rules were made up by people and not compatible with a just God. i.e. religion itself has struggled long and hard with itself over the importance God places on performing certain rituals, whether it's enough to be a good person, etc.

caseopele wrote: I don't understand the many versions of God and the rules that God requires of followers. To me it seems that if God exists he is a very petty god to care about those things.

I'd agree that there is great variety of belief about God, and that people have made up some petty rules. Imagine four blind people coming across an elephant. One feels the trunk and says it's a snake, another feels the tail and says it's a broom, another feels the leg and says it's a tree, another walks right past it and says forget it there's nothing there. We can hardly assume the elephant does not exist on the basis of these independent reports.

caseopele wrote: And why is it that people can't believe that atheists can be good people? Why can't someone be good for the sake of being good? I don't need the threat of Hell to be a good person, I don't need commandments to tell me not to steal or kill.

I agree with you. I also think that atheists can be bad people. And I also worry a little over the fact that some secular ideologies have led to great suffering, and whether others that are more benign will have the staying power that religion has proved to have had. There is a danger that secular humanists will be outbred by fanatics. Atheists are generally not as good at organising and meeting weekly as religious people.

caseopele wrote: I think of God like I think of Santa, the toothfairy, and Easter bunny. Nice stories that made me feel good as a child but then I grew up and didn't need those stories anymore. I'm not saying this to attack anyone who believes in God, I'm just telling part of the reason I became an atheist.

I understand and am sympathetic to this point of view. However, religion continues to play an important role in the world vs. the other entities you name. For example, how many adults practice monotheism vs. Santaism? That makes me want to keep questioning and studying rather than just declaring God dead.

Also: reducing religion to mere stories, creeds, and rituals designed to make people feel good ignores the fact that most practitioners report some kind of actual transcendental experience or direct communion with the divine -- that's not something you get from Santa, Toothfairy, or Easter Bunny.

But at the end of the day, if some people want to believe in magic, I say let them. Attempting to force people to change their beliefs has a terrible history. What really matters, just as it is court, is what people do, not what they claim to believe.

There are still a few things I wouldn't mind arguing about and maybe we'll get to them, but I certainly agree with this statement. I would stand arm in arm with religious people against any atheist group that tried to restrict religious peoples' rights. Separation of church and state goes both ways and needs to be solid. In the U.S. of course, the danger is in the other direction, as it normally has been...

BigGuy wrote: Em -

Again, no offense meant. However, I can't change the fact that I would probably view these beliefs you hold so strongly as primitive and superstitous. It's unlikely that we would agree much on this subject.

OMG , that's disgusting.

It says "Whatever" , just in case you may have been blinded by the sight of this thing.

sprite, I made a point of saying that I was just telling one of my reasons for becoming an atheist. Why is my personal experience condescending to you? I never said anyone believing in God is immature and needs a security blanket, I think you saw something in my words that wasn't there. I certainly wasn't sneering at your beliefs nor disrespecting people who believe in God. You took a simple personal experience and imbued it with your own implications. Please do me the courtesy of not putting words in my mouth.

renopithicus wrote: It is when
this basic spiritual impulse gets institutionalized and transformed into an amazingly specific set of claims about the nature of God, what God has done/will do in the future, what God wants/does not want, the nature of human beings, etc. that things grow ridiculous.
...
I don't know, and I suspect it's a mistake to lose any sleep over whether our predefined concepts of God or even more fundamental concepts like 'agency' are adequate to whatever is out there. Whatever it is, it's pretty awesome. Why isn't that enough? Why must we worry so much about packaging it?

I thought about this... from a detatched logical standpoint, especially looking in from the outside or from a different tradition or culture, I agree the packaging God comes in can look pretty ridiculous. And yet, for so many people, the packaging is important. The packaging is there to give form and substance to what would otherwise be disparate and diffuse beliefs and experiences, and create something shared among a community. The packaging creates continuity and a shared history. Through creeds and laws it codifies insights into human nature and ethics, and through rites it codifies practices that alter consciousness and promote intimacy. It exists because it serves human needs. Marketers know that what would otherwise logically be meaningless symbols can acquire enormous value when people recognize them as brands; institutionalization of religion is a similar process. It presents a coherent time-tested package that is easy for ordinary people to adopt, a package which can be reproduced, and which can also slowly evolve.

It is one thing for an educated person in their 30s with an above average income and no children living in NYC to say that Physics and Biology have removed the need for organized religion in order to make logical sense of the world. But can a single mother in a small poor community somewhere else in this country say that the triumph of secular humanism and advancement of social services have removed her need for the local church/synagogue/mosque? The United States is not Scandinavia, where the welfare state has replaced many practical functions of the church in most people's daily lives (other than working out a way to cure an epidemic of ennui, isolation, loneliness, depression). In the US, people are left to their own devices to a greater extent, and organization through religion is one of humanity's oldest responses to the need for structure, continuity, and security.

For example, when I was a kid, my working single parent didn't have much money or time to build a network of friends in a new town. There were times of crisis when the first and only people on the spot to help in practical ways were from the church -- you can't buy this quality of insurance with money, it comes from being part of a community. And it's hard to establish that depth of community without the regularity and sense of shared purpose and shared narrative that organized religion provides -- I don't see atheists (outside of the minority of atheists participating in organised religion or an equivalent such as communism) providing much of an alternative.

Something that I think people intellectualizing about "myths made up by primitive goatherders" seem to forget, is that to a lot of ordinary people in congregations, the specific beliefs (or dogma) are more or less irrelevant. What matters is the sense of belonging, of subscribing to a package deal, and all the benefits that go along with that. So for example, let's take the central rite of Christianity, known variously as Mass, Eucharist, Holy Communion, etc. The official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that bread and wine literally change (magically if you like) into the substance of Jesus' body and blood (transubstantiation). The official teaching of most protestant churches is that the bread and wine are non-magical symbols or a commemoration of Jesus' last meal. Do you think the above single mother gives a damn whether she's supposed to believe there's a physical transformation event going on or not? Even heard of "transubstantiation"? Hell no, the real magic is in the atmosphere, the music, the meditation, the not-everyday surroundings, the sense of the sacred, and the repetition of a familiar formula by a large number of people at once. There's also the fact that she's getting free childcare and a break from the daily grind for an hour, plus a chance to chat to people afterwards who are most likely in a positive frame of mind. For a lot of ordinary people, it's a pretty good deal, and for many in fact it's the only deal in town.

This is part of why I say atheism may be correct in narrow material sense, but misses the point when it comes to what humans want and need socially and spiritually. It does not matter how much you appeal to someone's logic and reason when atheism isn't selling what they're buying.

It seems to me that there's a lot we can agree upon here if we take stock. No one denies the robustness of organized religion as a sociological phenomenon. While organized religion gets a lot of bad press nowadays, no one denies that organized religion does some good in the world, that it offers people consolation and in some cases material support.

Perhaps there's controversy about whether the good things provided by religion (the sense of community, for example) could instead be provided by other kinds of organizations/institutions, which would then not also bring with them some of religion's darker possibilities. I do think this is an interesting question. (I think it was Bill Maher who said "I'll turn to religion when atheists and agnostics are suicide bombing each other".)

I think there's also some question about the significance of religion's 'story' once you cease to take it literally. If we aren't taking it literally, then whatever holiness it retains is all in the interpretation. But then, what's to bar Huckleberry Finn or Silas Marner from having this kind of holiness? One response is "nothing", and while I don't see anything to prevent a religious person from embracing this response, I have the sense that most of them would not embrace it. Maybe I'm wrong.

More generally, I don't like the way these discussions tend to be divisive and to put people on the defensive/offensive. My guess is that we all have more in common than we think. Indeed, I believe that the intellectual curiosity that fuels the science that Dawkins admires is one very small step away from the spiritual impulse--that sense of connection to something vast, unknown and extraordinary--that makes people interested in religion in the first place.

Wired interview with Douglas Rushkoff, including a discussion of Open Source Religion, and the origin of Judaism.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/crowdsourcing?currentPage=4

I'm an atheist too.

Literally the only time my atheism comes up is when religious people bring up God and then try to draw me into an argument or try to convert or control me. And they always get so angry when I pop holes in their arguments, or pitying in a condescending way when I don't want to engage on the topic. I consider faith to be pretty personal and am kind've creeped out by people who insist that I believe what they believe, or who don't respect what I believe. I'm happy to live and let live but it's hard with people who want to proselytize or fight. I've had Christians approach me at work (I'm a secretary in an office) and ask me if I believe in God and not take "I don't talk about religion" for an answer. At work! Horrifyingly inappropriate. (I guess it also comes up when very religious people try to make public policy based on their personal beliefs, but that's not personal.)

I don't know... I sometimes get a feeling of transcendence in communion with nature. I don't worship nature, though, so I guess it's different. And nature doesn't prescribe rules. I think that the golden rule is a good one but it’s been around longer than a couple of thousand years. I appreciate some of the stories and myths of the religions, but then, I appreciate old fairy tales, too. And I deeply appreciate art, religiously inspired or, just as likely, not.

I've heard of scientific studies that showed that a lot of people on good LSD trips report the trip as being transcendental in a spiritual, even religious way. Maybe it's some chemical thing?

Or, maybe it depends on a person's comfort level with the unknown that determines whether they chose to be religious or not? I don't need answers to some of the dark, scary questions that we all face. The questions are invigorating to me and I don't need everyone to feel the same way. I find that religious people who I get along with well tend to be those who also enjoy the questions and who don’t claim to have all the answers...

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion.

My rule of thumb is this. If a person, religion, church or other institution tries to convince me that it has "the answers", then I keep walking.

I'm surprise god hasn't posted on this thread yet.

/waits for god to post.

here comes one of the deities.

we got yahweh, god posting on ph forum. hmm i wonder when allah and others gonna show.

/waits for bal

but but i do!!!

i'm your biggest fan since they invented the fan.

renopithicus, excellent rule!

armchair_warrior wrote: how bout i sacrifice you one of each of creations creatures.

No dice. Has to be at least two of every kind. And 7 of the clean ones. I also take Amex and Diners, but none of the lesser cards.