Christopher Hitchens, ed., The Portable Atheist
(from
here).
Index of Original Excerpts | Responses | Key to Authors
|
|
|
Christopher Hitchens, ed., The Portable Atheist |
This is a collection of colorful and thoughtful responses to literary excerpts bearing on atheism. Unless otherwise mentioned, excerpts are compiled in Christopher Hitchens, ed., The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Da Capo Press, 2007), and page numbers refer to that book.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, How (and Why) I became an Infidel
Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, is Everything Permitted?"
Alfred Jules Ayer, "That Undiscovered Country"
John Betjeman, "In Westminster Abbey"
Chapman Cohen, "Monism and Religion"
Joseph Conrad, "Author's Note" from The Shadow Line
Richard Dawkins, "Atheists for Jesus"
Richard Dawkins, "Why There Almost Certainly is no God"
Daniel C. Dennett, "A Working Definition of Religion" from "Breaking Which Spell?"
Daniel C. Dennett, "Thank Goodness!"
Albert Einstein, "Selected Writings on Religion"
George Eliot, Evangelical Teaching
Anatole France, The Garden of Epicurus
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
Martin Gardner, The Wandering Jew and the Second Coming
Emma Goldman, The Philosophy of Atheism
A. C. Grayling, Can an Atheist Be a Fundamentalist?
Sam Harris, "In the Shadow of God"
Thomas Hobbes, "Of Religion" from Leviathan
David Hume, excerpts from The Natural History of Religion and Of Miracles
Penn Jilette, "There is No God"
H. P. Lovecraft, “A Letter on Religion”
Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Ian McEwan, "End of the World Blues"
H. L. Menken, "Memorial Service"
John Stuart Mill, "Moral Influences in Early Youth: My Father’s Character and Opinions"
George Orwell, excerpt from A Clergyman's Daughter
Bertrand Russell, “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish”
Salman Rushdie, "Imagine There's No Heaven: A Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen"
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
Carl Sagan, The God Hypothesis
Percy Bysse Shelley, "A Refutation of Deism"
Michael Shermer, "Genesis Revisited: A Scientific Creation Story"
Benedict de Spinoza, Excerpt from Theological-Political Treatise
Victor Stenger, "Cosmic Evidence," from God: The Failed Hypothesis
Victor Stenger, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
Leslie Stephens, An Agnostic's Apology
Charles Templeton, "A Personal Word" from A Farewell to GodCharles Templeton, "Questions to Ask Yourself" from A Farewell to God
Mark Twain, "Thoughts of God" from Fables of Man
Carl Van Doren, "Why I am an Unbeliever"
Steven Weinberg, "What about God?"
|
|
|
Ayaan Hirsi Ali |
Ali suffered from Islam culture by sexual abuse and suppression as a woman and a slave of God (Allah). She escaped and ended up in Holland. In Holland, she decided not to follow Allah and her clan after watching the Twin Towers topple in the name of Allah, when she was studying political science to understand her background. In turn, she became an atheist. As an atheist, she felt freedom and emancipation because religion could not stifle her anymore.
Her story is similar to that of a fundamentalist Christian becoming an atheist because of the absurd and awkward dogma. That a person escapes from the dogma means the individual makes a new relationship between the individual and self as well as the individual and others. This process plays a pivotal role in finding one self by doubting and wrestling with the dogma. Consequently, they will find their uniqueness and differences. Those characteristics help people to understand who they are as independent human beings. Indeed, this way is one that Christianity emphasizes. This is because “God loves differences” . For example, God created Adam and Eve, but this unity created diversity such as Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Babel and its tower.
Likewise, human beings are created to be themselves. And perhaps God allows people to do what they want to be happy in the world, so that God provides time and life without costs. Therefore, if people know exactly who they are, the world might be in peace.
However, if morality stems from a survival mechanism of human beings, since human beings chose to make society to protect them and be competitive to survive, is it not problematic to threaten the minority or to consider the majority as always superior to the minority?
Ali outlines the (primarily male) power and dictatorship that ruled her life during her time as a Muslim woman in Somalia. She recounts coming to terms with the fact that she could not force herself to pretend in believing something that no longer held any rational weight. She explains how the most difficult part of leaving her faith was the fear of burning in Hell, for she had vivid descriptions that had been passed down to her from a number of sermons, and those descriptions inflicted a deep-seated fear that trapped her for a long time in a faith she no longer wanted a part in (412). She notes addressing the problem of evil as a child, and she admits how romance novels gave her hope for a better future in her teenage years. It was in the moments of the 9/11 tragedy that Ali felt she needed to definitively decide where her loyalties rested, and after reading The Atheist Manifesto, she was able to speak aloud what she had known to be true for some time: she was an atheist (413). After this clarity, she speaks of her psychological journey to understanding how she must become her own moral compass and be responsible for making her own life meaningful here and now on earth.
Ali's account of religion puts an impetus on religious communities to examine the ways in which they cause harm alongside and sometimes in spite of the good and the meaning that people find within them. Religious traditions are complex, and it would be dishonest to ignore the atrocities that have been done in the name of religion's deities and sacred texts in favor of focusing only on the ways in which these traditions build communities, advocate love and justice to the world, seek Truth, and give purpose to humanity. To remain situated in a religious tradition is to take up the responsibility of knowing how that tradition manifests in the world, for better or for worse. If we take this responsibility seriously, then within our communities we will ask questions, engage in interpreting sacred texts for present-day realities and ethics, consider what practices and beliefs need adaptations, and remain vigilant to how religious traditions contribute to destruction so that it might be stopped. The biblical notion of binding and loosing scripture could be applied here as symbolic of us interpreting where our traditions, beliefs, and practices fit in our present-day world, and how we live them out faithfully.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali narrates her life journey from young Muslim girl in Somalia to atheist in Holland. Growing up a Muslim girl in Somalia meant she had to submit to Allah and to the male members of her family. Ali felt torn between her desire to be dutiful to her clan and God and her desire for justice and life. Submission for Ali meant slavery, which was enforced by the threat of hell. Ali's desire to submit finally broke when her father attempted to marry her to a stranger. She escaped from her clan to Holland, but still struggled with her Muslim heritage. She slowly acclimated to life in Holland, exchanging her hijab for jeans while reading the philosophers of the European Enlightenment. Ali still considered herself a Muslim, living in a state of cognitive dissonance as the changes in her circumstances slowly seeped into her religious life. The terrorist attack on 9-11 felt like a definitive moment for Ali to confront her growing cognitive dissonance and her growing doubt. Her doubt meant she no longer submitted. Ali realized that by asking the question whether or not she was a Muslim she was already an atheist and infidel. Empowered by her admission of atheism, she began to search for meaning in life free of cognitive dissonance. Previously life meant submission. Now life means freedom. Ali is free to be and free to die, no more and no less.
I wonder how much cognitive dissonance Ali has banished from her life? Ali felt strongly pulled in two irreconcilable directions. She could follow the strict dictates of her Muslim upbringing with its list of rules and punishments or she could follow her own desires, free to choose as she is wont. Atheism, since it has no creed, places no strictures on her desires. Will her conflicting desires not lead to some reassertion of cognitive dissonance? Of course, she is free to work out these conflicts on her own terms. Perhaps this freedom, the freedom to doubt and question, to challenge that which seems dissonant, is what Ali seeks.
In leaving the religion of Islam, Ayaan Hirsis Ali felt especially that she was “leaving Allah” (477). But she did not feel that change right away in the process. It was preceded by various doubt-causing conflicts. She resisted their implications as much as she could until her faith crumbled, little by little, and then finally gave way. The doubt-filled though innocent questions she had as a child returned with a vengeance. Her questions mainly concerned Allah's allowance of social injustice, including the particular forms she experienced daily but had learned to ignore through moral technologies of “shame and obedience” and fear of “betraying” her family and community. As she grew older, she struggled to contain a growing sense that her conformity to the cultural meaning of a good Muslim young woman did not express who she most truly was. Then there were the horrifying teachings of hell which, try as she might, she could not comprehend without living in perpetual fear. Last but not least, she was challenged by acknowledging her inabilities to repress her natural sexual imagination and desire (as a good Muslim young woman would do), and depressed by the dreadful prospect of a permanent marriage arranged by people who do not care what she truly wants, but only what is thought to be good for her. In all this, she was at odds with the Islamic identity she had been socialized into, but was far from breaking off her relationship with Allah. More directly than anything, reading books at university caused her to raise critical questions about her faith and eventually realize that the god she believed in was no god at all, and that the whole of Islam had been holding her back and keeping her spirits down. It seems that Ali's process of de-conversion was not very self-directed until her university years. For her, it was forced, little by little, but not forced from without (as was Islam) but rather from within. At the point when she most explicitly denounced her god, she explains, “I realized that I had left Allah behind years ago,” then looking in the mirror and putting words to that realization: “I don't believe in God” (p. 479).
I am inspired by the radical change in personal identity that Ali was able to make in spite of how dangerous, isolating, and painful the means of change were. She seems to have been so alone, save for the kindred spirits she found in the philosophers whose books she read. Her story shows how de-conversion can be the hardest undertaking a person chooses, or, what is perhaps more accurate in her case, the hardest experience a person cannot help but undergo. For some people it takes various different causes of resentment coming together repeatedly, accumulating and compounding, until it all reaches a saturation point and is then suddenly release, bringing “relief…and real clarity” (479). Although Ali does not seem to express it about her own case, for other de-converts the aftermath also involves regret, embarrassment, confusion, and other negative feelings which can be difficult to work through. The pattern is not unlike what occurs in cycles of abuse and the termination of abusive relationships.
For Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the development through and past religious faith “was a long and painful process” (477). In this short essay, Hirsi Ali describes her early religious identity as an obedient, Allah- (and hell-) fearing young woman, struggling to conform, yet peppered with the shame of wanting to ask questions. It wasn't until she was exposed to Western culture and Enlightenment ideas that she began moving away from her faith in earnest. She finally “admitted” to herself that she was an atheist after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and embarked on the quest of finding meaning and purpose and ethics without Allah or religion. She concludes that “the only position that leaves [her] with no cognitive dissonance is atheism” (480); but beyond a mere lack of dissonance, Hirsi Ali speaks of atheism as a philosophy that frees her to live authentically, responsibly, and morally– to be a “better and more generous person” without compromising her intellectual integrity or her personal will and vigor for life (479). She experiences atheism as a path toward living life more “intensely” – it “replac[es] both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell” (480).
Compared to some of Hirsi Ali's more politically and socially polemical pieces, this one was strikingly personal – focused not on anti-Islamic or anti-religion arguments, but rather limited to a genuine and highly relatable story of philosophical and ideological growth and development. From her youth, Hirsi Ali was driven and compelled by a desire for truth, wisdom, and moral integrity, which she eventually found in atheism. The story of a university student's movement away from the religion of her youth seems to be a common one – and one that I share myself. However, it is interesting to note the difference between the level of rebellion and courage required to detach oneself from the psychological, social, and spiritual bonds of a conservative or fundamentalist tradition as opposed to a more progressive or moderate tradition. For example, gradually moving away from some of the more traditional theism of my gentle, progressive Lutheran upbringing was a relatively smooth, minimally distressing process, during which I was able to maintain a connection with and fondness for my original community. But Hirsi Ali's passage from faith to atheism required a more stark denial and full rejection of her old community. For her, there seemed to be very little middle ground: after the September 11th terrorist attacks, she observed that “Osama bin Laden's justification of the attacks was more consistent with the content of the Koran and the Sunna than the chorus of Muslim officials and Western wishful thinkers who denied every link between the bloodshed and Islam.” Thus, she felt that she was forced to choose a side: if she did not support bin Laden, was she a Muslim at all? In addition to her personal beliefs, Hirsi Ali has also been an outspoken commentator on Islam as a social and political force. As Hitchens points out in his introductory comments about Hirsi Ali, she quickly turned from the “false hope that Islam could be open to a reformation” toward a belief that Islam must be defeated. However, Hirsi Ali's most recent book, published in 2015, appears to call not for the annihilation of Islam, but for its reformation; I would be very curious to read a sequel to this short autobiographical essay that might give an account of her seemingly evolving views on Islamic society.
Ali’s essay is a very courageous and vulnerable personal narrative of her transition from Islam to atheism. From her earliest memories she resented having to submit to her brother, but that resentment was tinged with guilt for questioning Allah. As she grew older, she was disturbed that family honor codes “seemed principally to reside in the control, sale, and transfer of girls’ virginity” (478) but still she kept her silence. It was only when her father arranged for her to marry a stranger that she finally rebelled by immigrating to Holland. There she studied political science, trying to understand “why Muslim societies – Allah’s societies – were poor and violent, while the countries of the despised infidels were wealthy and peaceful” (ibid.). After September 11th, Ali’s growing religious crisis finally came to a head. She picked up a book about atheism and “Before I’d read four pages, I realized that I had left Allah behind years ago. I was an atheist” (479). This dramatic change led to an exhilarating process of deciding for herself what morality she would embrace. Ultimately, choosing to be a good person seemed significantly more moral than being good because one feared hell. For Ayaan Hirsi Ali, abandoning the fear of hell and the hope of heaven only increased the intensity and beauty of her life on Earth.
Growing up in Evangelical Christian circles, I was often told that nothing convinced people to believe more than a good personal testimony. Apparently, that principle holds for disbelief as well. How can one argue against such a vulnerable and perfectly sincere confession? You cannot fake years of painful religious guilt, and nothing can replace the genuine evangelist’s essential conviction: I believe so strongly in the validity of my experience that I will honor it by sharing even the uncomfortable details. Did Ali need to mention that sexual cravings led her to finally abandon her family and country? Of course not. Will that confession be used against her by those who want to condemn her and tarnish her name? Of course. It is precisely in the lack of such calculations that one senses the properly motivated testimony. All her words ring true, including those concerning her commitment to realizing religious ideals of moral excellence and generosity “without suppressing my will and forcing it to obey an intricate and inhumanly detailed web of rules” (479). I resonated with her struggle throughout, but nothing moved me more than her closing words, which I will echo as part of my own creed: “Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more” (480).
This article is the touching story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, her journey from a believer to an atheist. In the article the author makes the argument that belief systems use fear tactics to exercise control over human beings. The author argues that once she came out of the clutches of believing in a God she was able to think freely and stand on her own reason with self respect. She did not have to accept contradictions any more or hide any thing. The author argues that morality comes not from the pages of a sacred book but from oneself because of one's need to function within a society. In short, the author through her personal story argues like any other atheist: life in this world is what is real only that life matters, not any superstitious beliefs about that life.
This article was very real to me because the arguments were backed with real-life experiences. In many ways I could relate to the writer considering the fundamentalist Christian upbringing that I had as a child. The Christian religion was seen only in the perspective of heaven and hell and being a Christian in my life was all about somehow escaping hell and securing heaven. So the story of the author resonates with me in a very big way. I agree with the author on the point that religion often does not give a person the freedom to think the way he or she wants to think. But I believe that any religion can be seen in many perspectives. I believe that if Christianity is seen only in the perspective of escaping hell, then it has failed in its purpose. But if the same religion is seen in the perspective of love it gives me a ray of hope (even if it is a belief) for counteracting the confusions and contradictions of this world.
As a child she was shameful and obedient. As a teenager she was afraid and as an adult she was free. In How (and Why) I Became an Infidel, Hirsi Ali traces her escape from the cognitive dissonance of the Muslim faith of her youth to her adult atheism. Having been exposed to Western philosophies in college, Hirsi Ali began to find secular life fulfilling and not damning. The 9/11 attacks are posed as the pivotal moment when Hirsi Ali was forced to choose sides. Through her choice, Hirsi Ali discovered a life with more meaning and intensity. Seeing herself in others allowed her to accept her own atheism and to realize the potential of a truly mortal life.
The sincerity of Hirsi Ali’s youthful experiences and her conversion to atheism are unquestionably sincere. Her testimony, however, is hardly compelling. It reads as a story written time and time again. Employing rhetorical vocabulary throughout, Hirsi Ali describes having Islam “drilled” into her during her youth and preachers “hammering” ideologies into her head. I do not mean to diminish the validity of her life experience, but to suggest that the inclusion of this piece (particularly as the final chapter of Hitchens’ collection) lacks a certain depth of dialogue. Religion restricts, atheism frees. No doubt this is true for many non-believers, but the level of discussion must be pushed and expanded, not simplified.
In “How (and Why) I Became an Infidel,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali outlines the steps in her rejection of the anthropomorphized view of Allah that her Somalian fundamentalist upbringing foisted upon her to her realization that no god is required for her to author the meaning of her own life. The first step in her journey is the inability to resolve the problem of theodicy and the threat of a loveless arranged marriage sends her packing to The Netherlands. There the clash between her inherited Islamic worldview and her university education plus the encounter with personal freedom leads her to bargain with Allah—surely he values education and the sins she is committing are small. The events of September 11, 2001 push her away from Islam and what she sees as its inherent violence while reading Philipse’s The Atheist Manifesto leads her to realize that Allah is a human invention designed by the powerful to control the weak. By “firing” her god, her parents, and her culture, Ali takes up the challenge to think for herself, develop an internal moral compass, and take on responsibility for her decisions (477, 478, 479). When asked why she does not convert to a more humane religion, such as Christianity, she responds that any religion that attempts to control behavior or paper over the certainty of death is one that does not accept life as it really is with its “mystery and beauty and pain” alongside its sadness, insecurities, and loneliness (480).
Ali’s essay raises the question of whether her flight to atheism is a well-thought-through decision or an example of the all-or-nothing thinking that characterizes fundamentalism. Is the drastic swing of the pendulum a step in her recovery that will ultimately lead to a middle ground between fundamentalism and atheism or her final landing spot? Studies of former Christian fundamentalists reveal that few if any ever return to the fundamentalist fold, but those who seek mental health care experience anger, hurt, guilt, and loneliness along with anxiety and depression about the meaning of life and lingering fears of punishment (see Darren E. Sherkat and John Wilson, “Preferences, Constraints, and Choices in Religious Markets: An Examination of Religious Switching and Apostasy,” Social Forces 73 (1995): 1014-1016; James C. Moyers, “Religious Issues in the Psychotherapy of Former Fundamentalists,” Psychotherapy 27 (1990): 42-43; Gary W. Hartz and Henry C. Everett, “Fundamentalist Religion and Its Effect on Mental Health,” Journal of Religion and Health 28 (1989): 209-210, 214-215). While Ali’s essay points to her resolution of the anger over sexism, the hurt of parental betrayal, the guilt over sin, and the fear of hellfire, her comment that Christianity’s “heavenly gardens” aggravate her hayfever may indicate a cynicism that suggests her journey is far from finished (480).
As a Somali female, Ayann did not feel comfortable to the Muslim tradition even before before her teenager, during the time she was growing, she tried hard to conform herself into the Koran code since she was in fear of hell what every preacher hammered into her mind. She escaped to Holland, ended up study in college, gradually she realized Allah or Hellfire did not punish her even she was not following the requirement, then the 9/11 made her to proclaim she had no God anymore. She was asked if she would like to adopt Jesus Christ, but for her he is just angel in her mother’s story. She chose Atheism which she read a book about, she believed she could get the relief as it has no cognitive dissonance to her, neither Paradise or Hell, death is forever, she wants nothing more than current reality.
It could be a sad or angry story for Christian or Muslim, but it tells the reality of secular world, when people has no fear or hope, they live on their conscience which they only believe in. The balance of the life depends on how the conscience reliable to be right and strong. People becomes rely on themselves more than any others. That does not mean they are better or worse, I believe it is just the way people choose to have their connection with the Ultimate, which is there no matter people accept or reject. Like every kid has a father, no matter they accept his father or not. In Atheist world, the Ultimacy is themselves, they become God for themselves, but they forget their conscience comes from the Ultimate still, no matter how they recognize their Ultimate.
Somali-born ex-Muslim Ayaan Ali presents a moving account of her slow break with an oppressive religious culture and her eventual conversion to atheism. Ali’s youth took place in a culture where Islamic faith was at the very center of life, culture, and identity. She writes, “All my life I had wanted to be a good daughter of my clan, and that meant above all that I should be a good Muslim woman, who had learned to submit to God – which in practice meant the rule of my brother, my father, and later my husband.” This particular form of Islamic culture was extraordinary repressive of women (their bodies, their desires, their autonomy), and the most important cultural value centered around the “control, sale, and transfer of girls’ virginity.” In order to escape an arranged marriage Ali found herself in Holland and attending a University. Gradually her worldview and faith dissolved, eventually inspiring her to become an atheist upon reading Herman Philipse’s The Atheist Manifesto. “Before I’d read four pages, I realized that I had left Allah behind years ago. I was an atheist. An apostate. An infidel. I looked in a mirror and said out loud, in Somali, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ I felt relief. There was no pain but a real clarity.”
This piece is an important reminder of just how liberating atheism can feel, especially for those who come from oppressive religious backgrounds (even one’s far more moderate than that experienced by Ali). I often find myself distancing myself from atheism ( I came to my religious naturalism not from a commitment to naturalism per se, but as a committed radical monotheist), due in part to its dismissal of the value of religious traditions, but seeing this woman’s journey away from an oppressive upbringing and towards an affirmation of her individuality and rationality as a woman was heart warming. The means for this transformation were simple: pluralism (her exposure to another culture), and education. As one piece of her worldview fell after another, unable to handle the internal contradictions and cognitive dissonance that her evolving worldview presented. Atheism became the only logical choice for her. Her last words are worth quoting at some length, as they are quite beautiful.
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
Hirsi Ali opens her essay with a the idea that becoming an atheist was not a quick and fun decision but a long and painful process. She ends her story with a simple and concise summation of her journey: an attempt to get away from cognitive dissonance. Hirsi Ali’s story starts with loyalty to her clan above all. Her relationship to religion is through her clan. She speaks of Hell as being a motivator for her to keep in line in addition to how her clan would react to her thoughts. The relationship that she has with the men in her family, along with the limitations placed on her simpy for being a woman, made her start to question. Eventually she was able to escape Somalia and make it to the Netherlands where she was able to reflect freely. In her search for a system that made sense, atheism provided the least cognitive dissonance. She writes that being able to admit to herself that she was an atheist brought her relief.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s text was incredibly moving. She writes of the oppression that religion had on her when she was young and how it pushed her towards seeking a better life. Starting the work with a notion of pain and suffering during the journey ensures that her words are not heard as attacking but rather as lamenting. Her story brings to mind some interesting questions. At what point is religion being used to defend a cultural way of life? And at what point is religion simply the scapegoat? Hirsi Ali had a horrible experience with religion that eventually led her to become an atheist. However, at what point is her focus on Islam truly Islam and at what point is it the culture in which Islam found itself? Or, are Islam and the culture separable and Islam is truly to blame for her oppression? These are just some of the questions that the text leaves me with.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali relays her painful journey from Islam to Atheism in the essay “How (and Why) I Became an Infidel” (477-80). She grew up in Somalia and from an early age learned the hard lesson of submission to the will of Allah. As a little girl though she could help but wonder why her opinion was inherently less valid then her brothers. The clan emphasis on obedience and the warnings of hell pushed her to try and be a faithful Muslim, wear the black hijab, pray five times a day and other commands of the Koran and Hidith, but, she relays, it was “books and boys” that saved her in the end. Reading trashy Western romance novels demonstrated for her that an alternative world existed where girls could exercise personal choice. So, when her dad arranged her marriage to a stranger, she ran away to Holland. It was at University, while reading Enlightenment philosophers, that she first realized she was an unbeliever. The relief was immediate and palpable. No more future hell-fire and, more importantly, her moral compass was located within herself, not an ancient book. As a new Atheist she frequented Museums in order to see really old dead people. Faced with bones thousands of years old, she realized that if it had taken Allah this long to raise the dead, then the chances of retribution for her enjoying her life were slim.
Ayann’s experiences of Islam as a child have a few basic similarities to the American Evangelicalism of my childhood. In making this comparison I do not want to downplay the injustice Ayaan experienced as a Muslim woman – something, of course, that I have never experienced. That is to say, I did not experience the lack of individual freedom she did. Nevertheless, a boy growing up in American Evangelicalism in the 1990s could also vividly know the fear of hell, or for most of us in those days the fear of being “left behind.” I can still easily recall scenes from my young imagination of my family’s clothes strewn in piles on the ground due to the rapture. For some reason I always assumed I would not be taken on the first round and would certainly have to suffer a bit longer than others for my sins. How would I fend for myself in their absence? I had few practical survival skills and no guns. This was also the era of purity vows and a push for abstinence. Fear of hell and Evangelical sexual ethics proved a powerful concoction that fueled a yearly cycle (liturgy if you will) of consistently surrendering my life to Jesus each Fall and Summer at Youth Camps. Finally, I can also relate to Ayann’s lurking doubt of the resurrection of the dead. As a teenager I can remembering reading Paul’s letters and being quite taken back that the early Christians expected Jesus to return in their lifetime. How long should we keep waiting?
In the first paragraph of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s essay, “How (and Why) I Became an Infidel”, she describes a number of social relationships and responsibilities which prevented her from initially leaving her faith. Even in the way that it is phrased, it seems that Ali was an atheist long before she was able to fully make the transition out of Islam. As she describes it, her sexual desire and her subordinate status under her husband eventually led her to escape altogether. Once in the Netherlands, she found solace in the ideas of European thinkers. Though she meant to reconcile Islam with their ideas, she felt that the events of 9/11 forced her to make a choice about whether to support Islam and that terrorist act as the will of Allah. After reading The Atheist Manifesto, Ali describes her relief and clarity at admitting her atheism to herself. This transition was not without its challenges, as she had to come to grips with what would happen to her after death and with choosing her own morality. She concludes her essay with the assertion that there is “no cognitive dissonance in atheism”, even as life remains nonetheless ambiguous.
Ali’s essay is emotional and visceral, especially for those people who can sympathize were desire to remain a apart of the community she had grown up in. I feel that desire too and wonder what kind of choice I will make about how to relate to both my Christianity and to the Christian communities that I have been a part of. That sense of relief that she felt in rejecting the supernatural is also something that I have felt. However, it is pointing out that there are no easy answers for death and for morality in atheism, either. I certainly agree that life remains ambiguous and that there are certain forms of behavior, such as those in which one partner dominates another, which should be excluded. The task of rationally justifying such an ethic now falls to all of us who would reject superstition outright. However, we must still contend with the potential insights that religion might offer, even if it takes a great deal of work to untangle them from a too fantastical cosmology.
In, How (and Why) I Became an Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali gives readers a detailed account of how she transitioned from a pious Muslim into an outspoken atheist. She notes that, from childhood, the tenets of her faith consistently seemed incongruent with her own ideas concerning justice and tolerance. Describing her personal rebellion against her religious community, Ali outlines fleeing from an unwanted arranged marriage and seeking refuge in a largely secular society. She begins her new life merely questioning her beliefs but describes how she ultimately abandoned Islam, intentionally neglecting to replace her faith with an alternative religious practice.
In this piece, Ali’s unapologetic vulnerability invites a unique sense of empathy and identification. For instance, although I do not know or understand what it means to live in a culture where female genital mutilation and arranged marriages are a normative practice, Ali’s examination of the guilt that often accompanies questioning the dominant religious tradition of one’s culture as well the internal conflict that stems from defining and accepting one’s sexuality in a hostile environment speak to my own experiences growing up as a skeptic in Fundamentalist Christian circles. Perhaps more striking, however, is her emphasis on the value of personal accountability in living an honest and meaningful life while divorcing oneself from theism. According to Ali, “living without God [...] means accepting that I give my life its own meaning.” Ali asserts that a life dedicated to the will of God inevitably means the suppression of all personal will and desire. Such a life lacks both individuality and a personal ethic. This is precisely the existence she rebels against and why I find her writing to be deeply compelling.
In Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography, Infidel, Ali stands in opposition to her male dominated, extreme Islamic upbringing. Ayaan Hirsi Ali explores her pilgrimage to atheism, her journey to becoming an infidel in the gaze of Allah and the rest of Muslim culture. Ali notes her early existential fulfillment to love Allah and be a good daughter for her clan. Submission to Allah, in Ali’s words, means to be in submission to one’s father, brother and husband. The fear of hell further instilled these Somali-male dominated values. Ali expounds, “the Koran lists Hell’s torments in vivid detail: sores boiling water, peeling skin, burning flesh, dissolving bowels. An everlasting fire burns you forever for your flesh chars and your juices boil.” (Hitchens, 584) Escaping the Muslim clan societies of Somalia, Ali is a political refugee in Holland. Exposure to philosophy, western culture and love began to slowly dismantle Ali’s Allah-centric worldview. It was not until the event of 9/11, done in the name of Allah, that Ali felt the necessity to choose a side. Ali’s journey to atheism, infidelity, results in self-acceptance and giving one’s own meaning to life.
Atheism as a reaction to a cultural upbringing is a fascinating phenomenon within the previous 200 years, (I am unaware of recorded cultural reactionary atheism prior to the enlightenment). One’s argument to abstain from theism due to a cultural abuse of power conveys the truth of experience. If one’s god is unable to do just or side with liberation, then what need does someone have for such an abusive deity. Too often within a reason centered framework, the experience of one’s lived truth is ignored. A truth that is unlivable/abusive is an abstraction of what it desires to be. I sympathize with Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s experience.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Anderson |
The title of this text is from the famous words of Dostoyevsky, “If God is dead, then everything is permitted.” Elizabeth Anderson insists that even if there is no God, human being can be moral. In terms of “the moralistic argument” and “extraordinary evidence”, she criticizes assertions of theism, especially Christianity and Judaism. Anderson rejects theistic accounts of morality, then claims that moral knowledge springs not from revelation but from people's experience. She also criticizes various aspects of theism, such as evidence of existence of God, presence of evil, fundamentalism, cruelty of God in the Old Testament, and other doctrinal issues. And she suggests her perspective on issues of moral embarrassments of Christianity, both good and evil teaching, and ascribing of evil in the Bible. To conclude, Anderson says “The authority of moral rules lies not with God, but with each of us.”
In this text, Elizabeth Anderson shows a fairly plausible criticism on Christianity. Though She denies all kind of theism, it is clear that the target of her criticism is Christianity. To my surprise, she cites a lot of texts of the Bible. However, I think her approach on the Bible is too literal. Nonetheless she criticizes Christian fundamentalists, she also commits same mistake. For literalism has been the most critical issue of exegesis in Christian history, I think that keeping a balance between literalism and allegorism is very important. The Bible is not just a textbook of morality or a technical manual for good living, because it contains various aspects of human lives as well as theological insights and testimonies. In addition, I think she misunderstands about revelation, judgment, and satisfaction. Notwithstanding her accounts in text is not convincing at all to me, her criticisms of literalism and historical wrongs of Christianity are worthy of mention.
In this short treatise against the “God of Scripture” and his followers, Elizabeth Anderson concisely yet systematically deconstructs perceived religious fallacies that propagate humanity's most heinous atrocities. Her writing style is intellectual and direct, if not blunt at times. In opposition to globally recognized beliefs that it is faith by way of religion that holds society together, Anderson submits it is community, a sense of living together in cooperation, that is the societal adhesive. She writes, “We know the basic moral rules-that it is wrong to engage in murder, plunder, rape, and torture, to brutally punish people for the wrongs of others or for blameless error, to enslave others, to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocide…” (335). While Anderson praises moral arguments in Scriptures that align with the aforementioned moral rules, she ultimately denounces religion and distills it to a pernicious farce founded on a scapegoat mentality and perpetuating mostly evil and wickedness in this world.
Anderson's aptly named piece reminded me of the passage in 1 Corinthians 10 that states, “Everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial.” I found this verse in between youth group bible studies and my illicit practice of masturbation. What did this verse mean? As an evangelical theist, I believed in God's manifest action in the world and acted in accordance the will of God as it was preached to me. This was the beginning of my developing a layered theology-theology organized according to importance. In step with Anderson's analysis, I began to choose scriptures like a Rorschach test: “which passages people choose to emphasize reflects as much as it shapes their moral character and interests” (341). As a changed my major to sociology, my faith also shifted to the macro. Justice and living fully so that my neighbor could live fully was and is paramount. In light of this, my little acts of perceived sexual immorality weren't that big a deal. Or were they? Are they? Anderson purports that we have individual agency and keen rational abilities, yet we need life together for survival. Now, I'm married. Now, I have a child. Is my individual sensuality and sexuality a weapon of mass destruction? Is it as acetone to the social glue? If not beneficial, it is permissible, right? At what cost? If not for my religious upbringing, would I even be asking these questions? How does my porneia affect future generations? Is it in step with nature or evolutionary biology? Anderson's logical understanding of the world certainly seems to simplify things. Stick to the real and big things.
Elizabeth Anderson weaves an argument for atheism by tracing and flipping two traditional theist attacks against atheism. The first and arguably more culturally entrenched argument against atheism is the morality argument. Simply put, atheism is the source of humanity's ills, massacres, and general moral ineptitude. In contrast, theism, by which Anderson means the Abrahamic religions, is the source of morality, with its moral authority resting in God. The secondary argument against atheism concerns proving God's existence, which itself is dovetailed with the morality argument. If God does not exist, does morality matter? God must exist because morality does. Rather than defending atheism against the morality argument, Anderson subjects theism to the same test, querying whether fundamentalist renderings of biblical inerrancy and competing liberal interpretations of the biblical account of God and God's morality can withstand the scrutiny of modern moral standards. Anderson argues there is much in the Bible that is clearly reprehensible, such as the genocides of the Old Testament, Paul's scapegoating of Jesus under God's judgement, and the apocalyptic destruction promised in the New Testament. She also notes much that is good from the Bible, notably its progressive ordering of land usage and usury to benefit the poor. Fundamentalist theologies fail the morality test for Anderson because they cannot clearly acknowledge and distinguish the good and bad morals from the Bible. Liberal theologies escape that criticism but fail to convince Anderson due in large measure to the inconsistencies of theism's source material. Anderson argues that the contradictory messages of theism (and all religions) are the result of humanity's psychological drive to make sense of meaningless suffering. Not only are the moral arguments all religions make the same pan-culturally, but so too are their claims for the existence of their particular God(s). The moral argument alone destabilizes their source material, which in turn destabilizes their already shaky claims for the supreme truth of their particular religious systems. In place of religion-centered moral authority, Anderson wants to create a system of reciprocal human moral claims, for which atheism is well suited. The moral argument then is not the bulwark of theism, but the province of atheism.
Anderson's arguments against fundamentalist moral interpretations are trenchant critiques of western theism. Similarly, her preference for a human-centered, reciprocal-claims-based morality is promising and in line, at least rudimentarily, with most forms of western, democratic social contract theories. I have two objections to Anderson. First, simply because one rejects inerrancy, must one also discard the whole of religious texts? Religious texts are about so much more than moral authority or proving the existence of God, both of which are primarily modern, western preoccupations. There is much within orthodox Christianity that struggles deeply with the seeming moral ambivalence and absence of God without tripping over fundamentalism. Robert Neville is a theologian who embraces the ability of broken of religious symbols to convey ultimate meaning. One need not refute all religious symbols when one renounces inerrancy. My second objection is in regard to the adequacy of human-based morality (and really all morality, including God-based morality). Take for instance Herman Melville's Moby Dick, in which the predestining God of Calvin is placed alongside perilous nature in the form of the whale, whose inscrutable malice dashes the Pequod as if it were no more than a fly. For Melville, morality is not the province of God. Rather, morality is left in the hands of the Pequod's captain and crew, who fail to live despite all of their moral claims upon each other. Starbuck's entreaties, Pip's death, or even Ahab's duty to the shareholders of the Pequod are enough to restrain Ahab's quest. Are humans ever able to live together morally?
Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” articulately addresses that the fundamentalist rejection of evolution is based on what they perceive as the moral repercussions of the argument rather than the science of evolution. She identifies the discomfort theists have toward atheists as the fear that without God, there can be no morality. Anderson argues that theism causes more grounds for immorality than atheism, then goes on to define what she means by theism and makes her case with strong arguments supported by scripture. She agrees with Kant’s categorical imperatives, but leaps from a rejection of Biblical literalism to a rejection of the Bible as a whole. She critiques religion’s truth claims because they are not upheld by the scientific method. Anderson concludes by stating that we as individuals have the authority to create moral rules through reciprocal claim making (346-347).
I really enjoyed Anderson’s argument. It was delivered well and maintained a cool rational quality despite the fact that she was clearly offended by the charge of immorality given to atheists. While I believe it was necessary for her to turn the tables on her accusers, I didn't buy her entire argument. There is a need for believers to keep their religion from being co-opted for injustice, just as all citizens have the responsibility to keep their secular government from power corruption and immorality. Theists and atheists both have the responsibility to keep power from corrupting their morals. Although I agreed with Anderson’s logical assessment of morality as reciprocal claim making, I do not believe it has to be so reductionist as to only work on a secular basis. Believers believe for a reason, many because of their personal religious experience, but Anderson never addresses why believers might want to believe in addition to the morality they perceive their religion brings. Her argument would be strengthened if she gave theists a way to check the morality of their own religion.
Elizabeth Anderson seeks to answer, and deny, the claim that without God we would descend into rampant immorality. Anderson flips the argument on its head by showing that theism leads to the belief that heinous acts are moral. To build this argument she cites a variety of passages from the bible that describe God as committing and condoning acts that are universally considered immoral. Since Anderson equates theism with following scripture she concludes that belief in God commits one to an ambiguous morality at best. If theism doesn’t give a morality it is absurd to think that abandoning atheism would lead to immorality.
It is a shame that such an elegant argument hinges on such a shallow understanding of religion. On one hand she seems to say that morality exists independent from theism, yet at the same time she is painting a picture of immorality bound to theism. You can’t have both; and of the two the former is more productive. Sure, you lose the great chance to call religion immoral but you gain the opportunity to explore the actual nature of morality. I can’t really blame Anderson though for just wanting to point out hypocrisy, it’s a great sport.
Elizabeth Anderson presents a convincing argument concerning atheism and morality. She reflects on the question raised by Dostoyevsky, “If God is dead, then everything is permitted.” Her argument is that this cannot be the case because morality comes before religion from the communal experience of humanity living together. Where theism, specifically monotheist and excluding deism, argues that a moral authority is necessary to preserve order, atheism asserts that communal experience provides proper understanding apart from a sovereign “authority.” A review of biblical texts clearly presents a God that is unjust and immoral. Between the vengeful God of the old testament and the harsh words of Jesus in the new testament, religion has no logical grounds to say that God is completely moral. First this would affirm that morality is something set apart from God; God is not necessarily moral in scripture. Even though some extreme fundamentalist might “bit the bullet” here, they still cannot logically claim that morality exists only with God. For more moderate religious individuals Anderson makes the clever argument hat a contemplation of morality should actually lead believers away from God rather than toward one. Since the stories in scripture of God acting immorally must be seen as such, one comes to realize that morality must exist apart from a theistic God. And if God is not necessary for morality, what is the point in belief anyway?
I really appreciate Anderson’s argument here. It is a clever way to justify why morality matters even outside of the context of religion. It seems to me though that she didn’t explore the idea of morality growing out of human proximity though. I understood her argument for morality through the view of an atheist to be primarily enforced and established by the government and a common sense mentality. Of course I should not harm another person because I don’t want them to harm me, seems to be the grounding of the morality she presents. Her argument focuses primarily on turning the burden of sin back to the theist. At the point where we lose an authority completely removed from human experience, we can really appreciate the value of morals. Still, I would question as humanity becomes more autonomous and individual if attacking theist is really the best use of argument. Morality springs from communal interaction. At the point where atheism gives not president or grounding for community, I wonder if theism still has something deep to offer in the community it provides that Anderson overlooks. For the majority of theists, religion seems to provide a point of holding human experience in common. I get the feeling from Anderson that she thinks the world might be more moral without theism. If the world became completely atheistic, I wonder what might bind humanity to the other? Religion gives a framework to see morality in a global sense and a system that confronts many individuals on a frequent basis. If this argument was presented to every child from birth to death, I can imagine the world have a majority of atheists, though I can’t imagine that it would be any more moral than it is today. At the point where an atheistic argument of this sort does not present a more advantages alternative, I wonder why the author really thinks it is important. If it’s for the purpose of attacking those who are immoral in their religion I completely support it, but would imagine it constructed in a different way.
Summary: Elizabeth Anderson starts her essay by first addressing the religious person’s critique of atheistic morals. This is mainly based on the idea that without reward and punishment, there is no moral authority and any system that gives credence to that should not be followed. She then uses the rest of her essay to systematically break down the flaws in this argument. This ranges from Plato’s critique of “Divine Command” theory to biological evolutionary evidence against a grand designer. Anderson spends most of the essay citing multiple evidences from the Bible of how God is morally bankrupt and that if one were to try to say that God is the ultimately line of morality, that morality is unclear and at times very apparently evil. Towards the end of the essay she expands to speaking more broadly of religion in general and how a moral dependence upon God is inadequate.
Critique: I thought Anderson spent a little too much time criticizing evil deeds in the Bible. I kind of saw it as “beating a dead horse.” She brought an abundance of points of why God is evil when I think a lot of the essay could have been better suited addressing how atheism itself can sustain its own moral model. She begins to do it a bit towards the end of the essay but still does not do it justice in my opinion. The phrasing of the title sounded much more like she was going to display a defense of secular morality but she spent most of her time attacking the morality of theism.
Elizabeth Anderson engages a question that many other authors in compilations such as The Portable Atheist tend to merely flirt with: the existence of morality in the absence of God. Anderson begins with a display in a California museum by creationists, which has the “tree of evolutionism,” whose roots are atheism in the soil of unbelief. Their primary attack on evolutionism, Anderson notes, is not scientific but moral. They accuse unbelief of fostering immorality, which leads her to explore this premise further, namely the Divine Command theorist perspective that the word of God dictates morality. Anderson spends pages listing out examples from the Bible that prove this God cannot be the dictator of morality, given the cruelty of God’s moral character revealed in scripture. In light of this, we must turn to something else. Anderson denies the acceptance of other forms of religious moral code via revelation or other extraordinary sources on a lack of credibility. Therefore, Anderson argues, morality must be a “system of reciprocal claim making” (347) to which every person who makes claims about morality is accountable to each other, for we all have “moral authority with respect to one another.” (346)
If any of the essays and writing found in The Portable Atheist have struck me as persuasive, it has been Anderson’s. While many authors in this kind of collection jump at the chance to point out biblical evidence for an unloving, immoral creator, Anderson takes the time to also identify and examine the arguments often made by her opponents, and does so with grace and thoughtfulness. Anderson is clearly on the search for truth that can be validated and proven, which I cannot help but admire, despite my disagreement with her conclusions. It is often helpful, in the piles of scalding and disrespectful literature on these topics, to find a thoughtful writer who wishes to engage in critical thought with her opponents rather than destroy their personhood. Both theists and atheists can learn from Anderson’s writing.
In her essay, Elizabeth Anderson argues that God is not necessary for morality to exist. She contests the notion that atheism inevitably leads to immorality and systematically deconstructs what she considers the fundamental arguments for an ethic predicated on theistic assumptions and beliefs. Her assertion throughout the piece is a very definitive stance is not merely that morality can be cultivated and maintained independent of religion.Anderson contends that the ethical principles that govern society may in fact do better without the input of religious doctrine. At any rate, she estimates that a belief in God does little to trigger or enhance our ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. She concludes by rejecting all forms of theism and supernatural thought, proposing that in its place humanity adopt a system of moral rules whose authority rests within the individual, of which she concedes is not absolute.
Anderson’s approach to arguing this issue works brilliantly because she refrains from demonizing religion absolutely. Although at times she ignores the nuances contained in New Testament texts and interprets its components at face value, she does not exclude from the discussion the fact that religious teachings and texts often contain ethical prescriptions that are beneficial to practitioners and perhaps even the larger society. Rather than deny or ignore them, she insists that these moral teachings exist independently of a divine agent and goes so far as to argue that appeals to a divine authority may undermine their legitimacy. Overall, Anderson offers a fair critique of religion, religious ethics, and the scant evidence for God while admitting her own biases along the way and presenting a viable alternative in the place of faith based moral frameworks.
|
|
|
Alfred Jules Ayer |
In this article, Ayer shares his near death experience. His experience does not incline him ro believe the existence of a supernatural deity. While believing that consciousness does not disappear with death, he refuses the idea of future lives. By presenting views from different atheistic philosophers (such as McTaggart and Broad), he emphasizes his thesis again that there is no God. His near death experience is a result of his brain working even while his heart had ceased to beat.
It is fascinating to see that Ayer mentions Greek mythology in his article. In Chinese mythology, there is also a river of Death. Dead people have to come across the river, drink a special soup that takes their memories away, and be ready for the next life. Why is there always a river in these “what will happen after your death?” stories? Ayer mentions Greek mythology because he wants to prove that he is not ignorant of things that theists might want to believe. I am curious in knowing how he explains the overlap between Greek mythology and Chinese mythology. In my interpretation, the significance of the river in Greek or Chinese mythology is that it represents the hope of a future life. When dead people come across the river, the water flows in them. The river water washes away from them the dust of their former life. They are renewed. If they are able to come across the river, each of them will become a new person. Ayer does not believe Greek mythology because he rejects the idea of a future life. I do not believe it, either. I do not know what is going to happen if dead people cannot pay for the ferryman. What kind of currency does Charon accept? What is the “form” of dead people when they come across the river? If they have bodies, will they drown if they fall down from the boat? If they are spirits, why do spirits have to rely on a boat? I do not think the author(s) of the story can answer my questions. The Greek (or Chinese) mythology is only a fiction.
However, unlike Ayer, I believe there is a future life. I guess every Christian wants to have an enteral life in the Kingdom of Heaven after their death. Claiming that there is no future life is cruel. If I was an atheist, I would not make a statement like this, even though I might think the idea of having a future life is ridiculous. The expectation of a future life is the hope that encourages miserable people to sustain their lives. If they are unable to get rid of troubles in their current lives, they need to know one day (maybe in the next life) that difficulties will be gone. Troubles are not going to stay forever. I do not care whether there is a future life or not. What I care about is how the expectation of a future life functions in a positive way to help people survive from the misery of their lives. Ayer and other atheist have the right to defend their disbelief in having a future life, but they should be careful not to deprive hope from the spiritual world of disadvantaged people. It is as cruel as telling a small child who has been waiting for her Christmas presents for a year that Santa Claus does not exist.
The essay is A.J. Ayer’s retelling of and reflection upon a four-minute arrest of his heart. Ayer describes his vision, while apparently unconscious, of an intense light accompanied by several entities that he mysteriously knew were associated with space and time. Supposing these experiences were not firings of an oxygen-deprived brain—which he later argued was a likely explanation—Ayer reflects on problems that arise with the notion of body-less identities such as an immortal soul. However, Ayer notes that even if there were another world beyond this one, it would, from our point of view, have no more of a necessary relationship with a god than this one and would bring us no closer to revealing anything about God’s existence.
By clearing room (however small) for other worlds, Ayer’s experience could profoundly affect the way we describe our world. If another world or worlds exist radically unlike this world, what happens to our epistemology of possibilities? If our data from this world do not correspond to the truths of other existing worlds, most propositions about our world would be rendered questionable. This would be doubly true if these worlds were linked by the migration of identities from one to another. The small allowance Ayer makes is an admittedly honest turn given an uncanny experience, however its ambiguity later warranted a weakening of his initial statements Ayer doubts that he saw something from another world, but the possibility haunts his readers. Unsettled by how the dark chasm of the possible could spit, spew, or send anything conceivable in our direction, we find ourselves in deep doubt. The night where all cows are black may produce aberrations of probability. Other worlds may be—it is as if Ayer gives permission to possibility as it peers at us through the smallest fissures within our world. In that moment when the possible invades, justification and rationality only do what they can do.
In That Undiscovered Country, the influential Atheistic-English philosopher AJ Ayer retells his experience of death and subsequent resuscitation and explains how this experience has influenced some of his philosophical beliefs. During a hospital stay for pneumonia, Ayer’s heart failed for four minutes. Medically, he was dead. However, Ayer recalls the experience vividly. Ayer recalls experiencing of an intense, bright red-light that seemed to govern the universe. The red-light had two ministers that helped govern space. The two minsters we no good at their job, so Ayer felt it was his responsibility to correct their “fuzzy” errors through his manipulation of time. However, before Ayer was to affect any change he woke from his experience. As a philosopher, Ayer has since reflected on his experience. First, he concludes that the most probable explanation for his NDE was that his brain continued to function in some sense while his heart stopped. Next, he considers how such a life-at-death could be possible. Ayer concludes that personal identity necessarily requires one or more bodies through time that a person might occupy. Therefore, any personal identity after-death must be bodily. Lastly, even if there is such a future life, it would not prove the existence of god. Since, according to Ayer there are no good reasons to believe god create presides over the present world, there is no good reason to believe that god presides over the next world. Ayer concludes with these words, “So there it is. My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be” (275).
Ayer’s piece offers some interesting reflections on NDE and what life-after-death must be like, if there is such a future existence. First, it is refreshing for a philosopher of Ayer’s caliber to talk about personal experience that become part of one’s evidence for religious belief. I think too often analytic philosophers act as though personal experiences are not involved in rational discourse because, then, not everyone is working with the same evidence. Richard Feldman’s epistemology reminds me of such a stance. On the other hand, personal experiences seem to be an important factor in what people find rational and irrational. Second, Ayer’s point that a justified belief in the existence of an afterlife does not justify one’s belief in god is thought provoking. This might be true. Of course, I would push back and want Ayer to describe what kind of afterlife he has in mind. It appears all that Ayer is willing to say is that existence after death requires at least one body—he recommends putting your personal make up of atoms. It seems that such a “putting back together” of atoms to make each person is like putting a puzzle back together. If this is the case, it doesn’t appear that nature could do this, even if one believes in a completely naturalistic version of the “putting together” of humans. Putting back together seems to requires some kind of intelligent agent. However, I agree with Ayer’s point but would want to add that when thinking about the existence of god in relation to arguments of an afterlife, one must explain what he or she means by “afterlife.” Whose afterlife? Which afterlife?
|
|
|
John Betjeman |
The quick, personal, self-centered prayer of a churchwoman is portrayed tongue-in-cheek in rhyming verse by Betjeman. First she prays for God to bomb the Germans but to spare their women if possible; if God cannot do this, she says she can forgive Him. Then she shows racial bigotry in asking protection for allied troops, especially white ones. She lauds her country and asks for “special care” for her home address. She smoothes over her own sins, and seems to offer her service to God if God will grant her petitions. She takes a moment to look toward heavenly reward for her service in the warless “Eternal Safety Zone,” before she decides she needs to get on with her life and make it to a luncheon. She leaves feeling a little better, feeling she has heard God’s word in her time at Westminster Abbey, when she has only heard herself.
Theists and atheists alike can be amused by Betjeman’s clever humor. Taking personal prayer to an extreme, he truly indicts many a Christian or supposed Christian whose faith or prayer-life is more ego- than theo-centric. Certainly this parody would have been equally fitting for many American churches in the wake of the September 11th attacks, when it was so easy for American theists to presume that the God of America was on their side, reducing (or rallying?) this God to a tribal God rather than a universal creator. Christians ought not be blindsided by the inappropriateness of this attempt to use or manipulate God. The Catholic Church emphasizes the transnational (and trans-temporal) community of saints such that personal prayer ought to be addressed to Our Father. Protestant psychologist Larry Crabb reminds Christians not to pray simply out of their needs, felt or real, because prayer “is not about making our life on earth as comfortable as possible, nor praying for everything to go right; it is about us coming to God as we are and relating to Him” (see A. Mozombite, “Larry Crabb: The Papa Prayer”). Betjeman succeeds in showing a form of personal prayer which is inappropriate and ridiculous.
In his satirical prayer written in 1940 England, Betjeman tells the prayer of a woman requesting of the Lord many trivial actions. She provides first an opening to the prayer, and quickly asks the Lord to bomb the Germans. Being written in 1940, it is difficult to imagine that this was not a direct attack at prayers that Betjeman might have heard firsthand. She then requests that He spare German women, but assures that if it not done, they will forgive the mistake. Only so long as she is not bombed herself. She then prays the prayer of all great nationalists, “Keep our Empire undismembered Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,” and for the protection of the blacks in Central America, but “even more, protect the whites” (p. 168). This woman in prayer goes on to agree that she will attend Evening Service, given that her schedule allows. But even this must be good enough, for she asks the Lord to reserve her a crown and protected finances. By the end, she rushes out of her prayer to make a lunch date.
It is nothing short of ridiculous to assume that Christians cannot laugh just as quickly as atheists at this unsettlingly accurate portrayal of Christian prayer. Growing up in the conservative evangelical South, I’ve heard many prayers that might not be so explicitly prejudiced, but I’ve heard my fair share that anyone with a third grade education could understand as simply selfishness. However, I am not one to subscribe to the thought that any good criticism of an action or organization demands it to be shut down altogether. Instead, it ought to bring about critical reflection and reform to how Christians understand and practice prayer. While we work to improve our relationship with the Divine, atheists can continue to gather, laugh about how stupid we sound, and write more wonderful satire. That’s fine with me.
Chapman Cohen is trying to establish atheism at the base of Monism. He emphasizes the importance of the individual in todays society. About the Monistic view of the individual, Cohen describes that it is utterly devoid of the dynamic which can generate any great social reform. And about the relations of the individual to society, he concludes that the society is not a mere aggregate of individual human beings but more powerful one, with examples of an army and a chemical compound. According to Cohen's opinion, society and the individual can not exist without each other. In this manner, he criticizes the individualism of Christianity, and deal the individual and society in terms of Monism.
Cohen's accounts in this text are political and sociological rather than religious. He criticizes theism and Christianity for their excessive undue emphasis on the individual. I feel that he regards that kind of individualism as a primary cause of modern social problems. I can partially agree with him for the historic example of the medieval church, because people merely believed salvation of individual soul at that time. However, the reason why I cannot totally agree is, Christianity has its social vocation. Human being who experienced salvation in the grace of God, will become a better individual, and will try to make a better society and world in the love of God.
Cohen's accounts in this text are political and sociological rather than religious. He criticizes theism and Christianity for their excessive undue emphasis on the individual. I feel that he regards that kind of individualism as a primary cause of modern social problems. I can partially agree with him for the historic example of the medieval church, because people merely believed salvation of individual soul at that time. However, the reason why I cannot totally agree is, Christianity has its social vocation. Human being who experienced salvation in the grace of God, will become a better individual, and will try to make a better society and world in the love of God.
Chapman Cohen was a man of his era, an age awash in scientific and evolutionary thinking. His worldview reflected the new paradigm in that it criticized theism in the face of monism, which disallows both the differentiation of fundamental parts of reality and the necessity for some sort of interfering or guiding divine principle. Cohen argues that monism, as well as beliefs such as Spinoza's pantheism, ultimately qualifies as atheism due to its denial of personal theism. With these ideas as his foundation, Cohen's piece focuses on the nature of the individual and society through Christian and monistic lenses. Facing theological criticism of monism as dooming the individual, Cohen writes that the individual is not and cannot be lost because it is an integral part of the greater societal system. He states, “We do not annihilate the earth by showing its place in the solar system...” (173). It is impossible to discuss the individual outside the context of his or her history, social situation, etc. just as it is impossible to discuss a society without knowing the individuals that make it up. He expresses this quality with the term “sociological atomism” (173), which roughly translates to the modern integral philosophers' phrase, “transcend and include.” Cohen refutes the Christian belief that morality is grafted onto the individual by pointing out the many moral flaws of the Christian church throughout its history. Instead, he writes that morality is defined by societal forces which work themselves into the individual. Essentially, the good of the group will equal the good of the individual. These societal forces, though, are not some “mysterious social ego” (174) suggested by religion, but are in fact just as much of a product of individuals as an individual is a product of his or her organs. Finally, Cohen ties it all together by stating that the individual is not the product of some supernatural origination, but a “necessary result and expression of social forces always in operation” (176).
As far as Cohen's ideas on the individual and society go, I find little to disagree with. To believe that a society is simply the sum of individual, all-wondrous human beings is silly. Cohen is absolutely correct in removing humanity from its peak upon the universal scale of importance, though I highly doubt his argument would have any traction on those of faith who hold humanity's divinely ordained centrality as their core principle. On the other hand, I find significant fault with the underlying nature of Cohen's arguments. His place in history contributes to both his fervor and his blindness. Coming up in the age of evolution and scientific discovery has created in him a worldview that accepts everything as a causal process that can be, in time, scientifically studied and analyzed. Thus his presentation of the individual and society has taken evolution and its tangential implications as complete and unalterable facts, quite the danger for a truly inquiring scientific mind. Even more dangerous, though, are the applications of this worldview to the monistic reality Cohen attempts to promote. He writes, “If there are any gaps they are in our knowledge, not in things themselves” (170). Now, certainly there are truths to this claim and it is a very potent critique of those who wish to establish a “God of the gaps” theory. However, as more sober reflections on the theory of evolution and modern discoveries about the nature of fundamental reality have emerged, his argument has the stains of scientism. In sum, this essay shows Cohen as both a brilliant sociologist and a short-sighted scientist.
Cohen discusses the ubiquity of narratives of gods intervening in births. In light of this, Jesus’ birth is highly unoriginal. Cohen asks: “What is the meaning of it all? Why were all these gods and demi-gods born in this manner?” “Commonplace” trivialities mixed with superstition, he answers (178). But what about scientific discoveries? He feels these should eradicate our superstitions. Death and birth, for example, were once conceived through superstition. Then came biology and we understood the reality of procreation in a purely physical way. Regardless, people still want to hold to the virginal conception of Jesus. Thus “all religion, no matter how refined,” has “its roots in the delusions that have their sway over the mind of mankind in its most primitive stages.” We want to believe in the supernatural births of a few special people. Hence Christianity’s ‘virginal conception.’ But Cohen reminds his readers that the “savage” mentality is the foundation for such beliefs. Thus we should consider the “psychology of religion” and focus on how people “came to believe” in these kinds of superstitions (180). In this way we may overcome our superstitions.
Cohen’s point is certainly worthy of consideration. No doubt the narrative of Jesus’ virginal birth is not unique to Christianity. In fact, I’ve recently read varying accounts of the birth of the Buddha Siddhartha Guatama. Lots of parallels. The only point of criticism I offer is that Cohen doesn’t explain why beliefs about gods intervening in births is problematic. He only shows that people from time immemorial have held such beliefs. But why does this fact negate the beliefs? Simply by appeal to lack of Enlightenment-Rationalist-Empiricism? This does not convince me to shed my “superstitions.”
Summary: In this essay Chapman Cohen presents an argument that secularism is in fact more cohesive and more monistic than any religion. He argues that all religions necessarily are dualistic or pluralistic. He argues that secularism is the only framework in which there are no breaks in the laws of nature or general foundation for the universe. He argues that everything can be traced back to a cause or an influence. He also spends a fair amount of time defending the idea that secularism does not degrade the importance of the individual but rather highlights their importance through a framework of evolutionary lineage, or a chain-link. He provides numerous examples as to why this is the case.
Critique: I really liked this article a lot. I think it became a bit weaker towards the end when he tried to delve more into real-world examples rather than just theory but overall I thought it was great. I loved the argument where he constantly acknowledges that Christianity focusing on the individual makes it no better than secularism focusing on the society as a whole. He used a great example with the sunset. A sunset doesn’t become less beautiful because one begins to understand the properties of light and laws of nature. Understanding the individual in terms of evolution and societal conditions doesn’t denigrate the individual. He is also right in that secularism is the only thing that really can be shown to be monistic. There is no break in the order from the beginning to the end. Everything is a string of actions and reactions. Everything has a cause to it that can be scientifically traced back. He said one line in particular that stuck with where he mentioned that any seemingly break there would be in the line does not mean that there was an actual break, but rather that their is a gap in knowledge on our part.
Chapman Cohen suggests that Christianity is nothing but another iteration of a mythological story in “An Old Story.” His initial argument against the uniqueness of the Christian story traces out several competing myths from all over the world, including ones from Persia, Greece, Mongolia, and Korea. Like with other stories, Christianity appears to be dealing with the problems of birth and of death. It is precisely misunderstandings about sex that Cohen sees as contributing to fantastical stories about supernatural birth and the kinds of religious practices that were believed to be needed in order for a woman to conceive. The Christian story is wrapped up in what Cohen sees as primitive beliefs, especially the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin mother. Whatever interpretations and understandings later develop from sex have to be traced back to these initial supernaturalist understandings of conception. Cohen ends his essay with the point that missionaries fail to see that their own understanding of the virgin birth is wrapped up in the primitive religion of the very people that they try to convert.
The subject of Jesus’s birth has always been a touchy subject for most Christians. One could certainly see how Jesus was perhaps born out of wedlock and how the story of the miracle of the virgin birth was created as a way for Mary to save face. I do wonder, though, if the Jewish people of the time were so unsophisticated as to have the understanding of sex that Cohen presents. However, it is difficult to reconstruct what people may have thought about Jesus’s birth prior to Jesus being received as a man of great talent and wisdom. We can certainly conceive of a scenario in which Jesus’s birth is reinterpreted after the fact to be a miraculous one because Jesus himself appeared to be miraculous. If Mary had been making such a claim all along, then perhaps the character and actions of Jesus himself served to vindicate Mary’s story within her own time. Unfortunately, because the virgin birth is presented as a singular act, it is unverifiable in any scientific sense. I certainly agree with Cohen that the event itself was altogether unlikely. However, his overall interpretation of the historical time period appears to miss the sophistication of the Greco-Roman world at the time.
According to Chapman Cohen, Monism, “admits of no breaks, allows for no interference, no guidance, no special providence” (170). In other words, there are no distinctions such as that purported between God and Earth or natural and supernatural. Offering a fairly naturalistic conception of the world, Cohen argues that atheism is the logical conclusion to rational thought; no natural sequences suspended or broken by supernatural interference. He contests what he deems as an overly individualistic conception of humanity, asserting that Christianity is wrong to posit the individual as taking any metaphysical priority in the cosmos. Further, he notes the dynamic relationship found between individual and nature that is uniquely propositioned by monistic thought. Cohen emphatically suggests that. rather than diminish the significance of human persons, seeing humanity in its broader context only widens the parameters through which we can understand people by illustrating their complex relationship to the natural world. Overall, individuals need not maintain the primacy they are given in Christian thought to be of significant consideration. The world must be understood as a holistic operating system, with each component acting as an influential force on the agents within it.
I agree with Cohen’s take on the overemphasis of the church on the individual. It is true that Christianity contains a distinctively social dimension predicated on individual interactions and collective efforts. Thus, Christianity is an interactive process between individual and environment. However, religious doctrines promoted by the Christian church tend to see individuals, not as the summation of external and internal factors working together, but as the product of an otherworldly divine process. It plays out as a deterministic account of human life, fixing them atop an undeserved pedestal amongst the order of creation. Cohen rightly removes humanity from our self designated throne, contesting arguments that posit a universe divided between the spiritual and the material. He refers to our species as a biological phenomenon that is fundamentally not disguised in any supernatural process but is instead grounded in a natural web of causation. In this paradigm, humanity is not given preferential treatment by virtue of their relationship to a perceived divine other. Rather, humanity is inextricably connected to the natural processes that lead to the emergence of life in the universe. Such a conclusion only expands how we might think of ourselves in relation to the contingent world around us, lending a far more accurate lens with which to view life through.
|
|
|
Joseph Conrad |
A misreading by certain critics of The Shadow Line provoked Conrad to write this brief note in which he denies outright having any intentions for the story to convey something about the supernatural (“The Story… was not intend to touch on the supernatural. Yet more than one critic has bene inclined to take it in that way…” p. 93). Conrad straightforwardly explains why he has no need of superstitious thinking that is common among the religious. He is incapable of attraction to the supernatural—implicitly defined in this note as reality which transcends the realm of human sense-perception—given his mind (unlike “common” minds), so continually enthralled in the marvelous everyday wonders of the natural world and inspiringly preoccupied with human beings. There are more than enough fascinating mysteries and disturbing terrors in ‘mundane’ human experience for any single human lifetime to encounter and ponder. What religion contributes is extraneous. Neither do the characters of The Shadow Line reveal anything necessarily supernatural in their experiences. Conrad raises some examples from the story and shows each can be explained naturally. Refuting the notion that supernaturalism lies at farthest reaches of his imagination, Conrad insists that he never ceases to find natural matters worthy of all his imaginative powers.
Besides being superfluous for a mind so imaginative, religious superstition violates what is most sacred in human life in view of inevitable death. This is Conrad's anti-supernaturalist claim. It feels like “desecration” (124) of the most meaningful existence that human beings can hope to achieve. Witnessing this desecration all around deeply saddens genuine “lovers of mankind” (124) such as himself. It sure is very saddening, and also very weird, to feel that religion, in many ways, desecrated what was most sacred—or, alternatively, what should have been most sacred but could not be due to religion—within your own unique human experience. For some, the content of this realization is the realization of having experienced ‘trauma’ from religion.
Conrad's brief author's note for his sea-novel The Shadow Line attempts to defend the novel from two misreadings. First, Conrad wishes to distance the seemingly autobiographical tone of the novel from the actions of his life. Much of the material Conrad drew from his work as a captain in the Eastern Seas and as such it benefits from his experience. Yet, Conrad pursues the ‘universal experience’ one has when one confesses one's memories, both their affection and shame, an experience that springs from what Conrad calls “the perspective of memory.” Clearly, Conrad envisions this sea novel as a psychological drama both unique to its characters and universally applicable to his readers. Second, Conrad articulates a clear distinction between the merely supernatural and the marvels and mysteries of natural life. Conrad explicitly states his avowed naturalism as well as the wholly naturalistic scope of his imagination. The world is enough to confound, terrorize, and enchant us without the need for the supernatural, which would desecrate the profound depths of consciousness and memory. Conrad notes the title, “Shadow Line,” may have something to do with readers' confusion regarding the psychological elements of the story, which readers take as supernatural rather than the effect of psychological shocks on the characters. In truth, Conrad wishes the shadow line to reference the demarcation from carefree youth to mature adulthood.
The selection from Conrad is brief and precise, but lacks context. He in no way intends to embrace the supernatural. Rather, his intention is to illuminate the psychological depths of the protagonist's life, in all of its terror, marvels, and mystery. Human life itself is wondrous with no need for the addition of the supernatural. A brief editor's comment regarding the context for Conrad's note, including a synopsis of the novel and the historical and social context of Conrad's life and work, would greatly benefit the reader. I know some Conrad and the themes with which he worked, but do not know The Shadow Line. Reading the note was like hearing one side of a conversation three quarters of the way finished. Given the work's subtitle, “Confessions,” and his emphasis upon memory and psychological development, Conrad seems to situate himself within the western tradition after Augustine investigating the phenomenon of human consciousness with all of its related wonders and terrors. He also places himself within the sea-narrative tradition, of which the most notable instance is Moby Dick, another confessional novel of psychological development for which the thread between the terror of the supernatural and the natural become subsumed into the malevolence of the whale. I wonder what the stakes are for Conrad's characters who face the majesties and mysterious of the world? Are they the same as those which confronted Melville's Ahab and Ishmael?
Joseph Conrad answers critics who find the supernatural in his short novel The Shadow Line by writing a preface. In the preface, Conrad states that, for him, the depths of imagination coupled with human experience and thought are more than enough to encompass what many might speak about as the divine or supernatural. Conrad argues that he would never entertain these ideas of the supernatural, being convinced that “whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature.” He continues to wonder if the title itself, “The Shadow-Line” might have something to do with the interpretation of the work dealing with the supernatural. His first thought for a title, “First Command” might have not lent the novel so easily to misunderstanding. Conrad concludes by saying the story is deep with a tone of dedication. The memory he has from the story is the undying regard of men for a captain who they served.
Not having read the novel The Shadow Line it is difficult to know what sense of the supernatural or divine that critics had attributed to the book. Nonetheless, his defense of his text makes for interesting reading. It seems that he rejects the “supernatural” because it would devalue human experience in some way. The question that arises for me is: does a belief in the divine necessarily cause the value of human experience to be less? I'm not sure that Conrad and myself differ much in the way that we think, though it is clear he is an atheist and I am not. The way he talks about the supernatural, as if the only way one can talk about the divine is by forgetting human experience, is quite curious. I wonder what he fears is lost in a belief in the supernatural, and if it is something more than a loss of human complexity.
Readers have accused Joseph Conrad of supernaturalism. In Conrad’s eyes, supernaturalism is a crime against human dignity. He could never sink to such a level, so he explains here that using supernatural characters in his book does not indicate he thinks supernaturally himself. Conrad is a naturalist, and he believes that descent to supernatural thinking limits the imagination, binds the heart, and handicaps one’s ability to experience life fully and honestly.
The first reaction to Conrad’s assertion should be to ask: why is there a problem with supernaturalism? Conrad claims that the “manufactured article” of supernaturalism warps understanding of “intimate delicacies of relationships with the dead” and desecrates memories of the living. But how might theistic thinking do such a thing? Many theists would assert exactly the opposite: in their view, a God-animated view of the world enriches relationships with the dead and the living. Conrad does not address this point. For this reason, poetic as his writing is, Conrad’s polemic has nothing against which to stand.
In the author’s note to his story The Shadow Line, Joseph Conrad addresses the unpredictable element readers bring to works of fiction: interpretation. The note is a response to critical analyses declaring the supernatural a central motif of his work. Conrad is compelled to address these critiques because he claims they contradict his “invincible conviction” that all human experience is encapsulated within the natural world. In fact, the “marvels” of nature are too grand for Conrad to even consider the supernatural. Conrad then reveals the biographical nature of The Shadow Line, fondly remembering his experience on the ship. He is awed by the way that life unfolded itself before him, but attributes his joy to the combination of luck and hard work, rather than to any divine intervention.
In the court of interpretation, Joseph Conrad is judge. Conrad responds to his literary critics as though they have critiqued his very essence, rather than his story. Clearly, interpreting the supernatural into his work of fiction is an incorrect interpretation at one level. Yet the truth is that his critics may not have been far off at another level. Even in Conrad’s own defense of his convinced naturalism, there is a supernatural undercurrent. The interpretative problem occurs because most of Conrad’s readership imagines mystery and wonder as otherworldly and supernatural. The readers’ critique may be apt, but their cosmologies may be muddled.
Joseph Conrad defends his novel The Shadow Line from the false assumption of critics that it deals with the supernatural, telling the reader that in fact it deals purely with the natural. In his concise note, Conrad takes the opportunity to expand on the issue of natural and supernatural by arguing against any need for the supernatural at all, instead choosing to appreciate what the natural world has to offer. Conrad is under the conviction that anything experienced by the senses is natural, and the sheer volume of natural experiences is far more marvelous and mysterious than anything in the “mere supernatural” (123). From this notion he extrapolates the idea that reliance on the supernatural can only result in sadness upon realization of its ultimate unreality. Tying his ideas back into the novel, Conrad explains that the story is about human identity and how the profundity and magnitude of our lives emerge. Though never specifically stating so, Conrad dismisses the idea of a theological God by rejecting the supernatural. Instead, he makes the case that natural wonders and mysteries are perfectly suitable on their own.
Conrad comes across as a naturalist in this piece, verging on Thoreau territory with his exaltation of the inherent mysteries of the natural world. He offers more than just a materialistic view of reality, though. His words describe a yogic awareness of the world. I admire his celebration of nature and his commonsense approach to the futility of devoting one's life to that which one cannot experience. The phrase “mere superstition” brilliantly encapsulates the limitations of the human ego and its defensive tendency to create a reality outside of itself. In this way Conrad manages to elevate the human person to a level of prominence without boasting or placing the individual on a pedestal of righteousness. His appeals to universal mystery and individual human dignity in nature strengthen his argument since these qualities are a common ground with many religious worldviews. However, Conrad's explanation is too critical for any efficacious attempt at conversion. His direct cuts at any superstitious belief are still fully visible and rather condescending toward those who have not seen reality for what it is. Thus, even though his underlying reasoning is strong, Conrad has difficulty merging the mystery and awe of reality with the absence of the supernatural, two concepts seen by the larger audience as mutually exclusive. Individual awareness of natural wonder is indeed a difficult thing to package.
In 1917 Joseph Conrad published a short novel, loosely based on his own experiences, titled “The Shadow Line,” about the young captain and crew of a ship stalled in the ocean (unable to pass “the shadow line”). In the course of the author’s note quoted in the Hitchens compendium, Conrad answers critics who have accused him of (or praised him for?) “touch[ing] on the supernatural” in the course of the novel. The author’s note is dedicated to forcefully rebutting that claim. The “mere” supernatural is ordinary, “a manufactured article,” a subject that, in light of the “marvels and mysteries” of the natural world, is “an outrage on our dignity.” The real world of men and women is plenty complicated and marvelous enough to produce awe and receive artistic treatment, without need of recourse to superstition. Quite without the supernatural, the natural world is full of “mystery and terror.”
It would be understandable if, for Conrad, the “terror” itself was the “mystery.” The background of the composition and publication of The Shadow Line is the First World War, specifically the end of 1916. These were the depths of the war. Between July and November of that year the British Army had lost between 400,000 to 500,000 men in combat in the Battle of the Somme, 57,000 on the first day of the campaign. Trench warfare, poison gas, and the armed tank had been developed recently, and unprecedented human inhumanity was on display. It is somewhat unfair to project a psychological motivation onto an author who explicitly rejects it. At the same time, Conrad is aware, and discloses, that “before the supreme trial of a whole generation I had an acute consciousness of the minute and insignificant character of my own obscure experience” (124). Though of course his own “obscure experience” was not limited to his time on a ship; his son, Borys, had joined the Army in 1915, and Conrad dedicates The Shadow Line to him and “All Others Who, Like Himself, Have Crossed In Early Youth The Shadow-Line Of Their Generation.” (The author’s note apologizes even for this, viewing it as “a most disproportionate thing – as but another instance of the overwhelming greatness of our own emotion to ourselves” (124).) It is in this context that Conrad wrote both the novel and its preface, and it is because of this context that one can view his preface as an expression of integrity, an admirable one, and sympathize with his view that an escape into the supernatural is morally reprehensible. In the face of 1916, one can imagine Conrad asking, of what use is the supernatural? When 57,000 men and boys lose their lives in one day? When the blood-soaked fields of France greedily swallow up fathers and husbands, sons and brothers? How could it not be a “desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity” to write of anything else? (123) The natural world, then, is of highest importance, and ultimate significance. For Conrad, the supernatural will have to take care of itself.
The primary point in this introduction to the novel The Shadow Line is that there is enough mystery and wonder within the domain of the senses. One does not need recourse to the supernatural in order to emphasize the pressure of the ambiguities and complexities intrinsic to the natural world. Conrad admits an unceasing fascination for the marvelous (mystery found within existence) and finds no interest in what he calls “the mere supernatural” (123). To Conrad, the supernatural is a sort of scapegoat which seeks to simplify the confusion and wonder of day-to-day living. He speaks of the depth of nature that reveals the immensity of complex webs of relationships and emotion. This is difficult to perceive and maintain in one’s awareness, therefore Conrad briefly suggests that fear and animosity are possible reasons for escaping to supernatural explanations for things. Essential to his argument is that the world is complex enough for the cultivation of an appreciation for the marvelous; conversely, supernatural explanations tend to oversimplify and defer the complexities of life.
There is a section when Conrad mentions “the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living” (ibid.) as one of numerous examples of the complexities of our existential and sensorial lives. I think often about the ways in which the past imposes itself on the present, either in the form of memories, reminders, or reverie. What is interesting to me is that in some circumstances, the past is seen to exert a discernable pressure on the present, for example when a curse uttered by a dead parent still limits the actions of the surviving child. What are the conditions for having a memory in the present of something in the past? How much control do we have over it and how often should we yield to its pressure? I am reminded of various cultures that practice ancestor worship and entreat upon the legacies of their ancestors for guidance into the future. With such worldviews, there is a shifting continuity between past actions, present recollection, and future intention. Meditation on the connection between the past and the present, as they conflagrate and move like smoke into the uncertain future, can be performed in either a naturalistic or supernatural worldview. Thus I see no need to prefer one or the other so long as the ethics of remembering can be embodied and recognized.
Joseph Conrad is widely known for novels such as Heart of Darkness, which chronicle the depths of madness depravity, and terror that manifests within the lives of ordinary humans. However, in his note to The Shadow Line, Conrad offers a perspective of the world that suggests creation is, in fact, a uniquely marvelous place. He asserts its marvel as existing without the influence of supernatural entities and defends his own work from accusations that its incorporation of such beings is what makes it intriguing and imaginative.
Conrad illustrates a deep reverence and respect for existence by asserting that the material world is enough to induce awe. By denying the significance of perceivably supernatural elements in his story, Conrad affirms not only the significance of the natural world, but also the fullness that exists within the human experience. According to him, H’the world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is.” He does not blatantly deny beliefs concerning God, but he seems to lean towards a naturalistic understanding of the world. Further, he notes that supernatural beliefs undermine the authentic magnificence that thrives all around us. This piece may appear to attack particular thoughts and attitudes on the surface, however between the lines Conrad is cleverly inviting readers to view the world as it is and to understand that creation is something to appreciate on its own terms.
|
|
|
Charles Darwin |
Darwin traces several lines of reasoning that had converged in his own thinking to form a certain belief in in God (conceived as the ultimate origin of everything, the “First Cause”), pointing out when and why in the course of his adaptations to evidence that theism became too untenable to maintain. For instance, in one of the more introspective reflections in this piece of memoir, he says that the powerful experiences of the grandeur of nature that used to elicit the “religious sentiment” in him no longer do. That peculiar God-friendly sentiment is prevented by what he has learned (through his own proper use of God-given intellect) in discovering the law of natural selection. Those experiences, he now realizes as he writes, were wholly natural responses to sublimity and beauty. No religious belief is essential to those experiences and, so interpreted, they cannot be taken as evidence of purposeful design by a God.
As Darwin describes attenuations to his convictions and the gradual lessening of the formerly strong impressions he felt in response to traditional arguments for God, it is evident that Darwin struggled. He did not let his faith go without a fight. He seems to have feared losing his faith. But the loss was inexorable (albeit slow) once the seeds of doubts had germinated, started to grow and cover over the “religious sentiment” and the accompanying idea of God that had been cultivated there. Meanwhile, no new, clear evidence which could lend credibility back to the Christian faith ever intervened in the process to reverse it. It was beyond his control. Such was his journey from a vague kind of not-quite-religious theism into agnosticism. I think the sheer abundance of de-conversion stories in which a person could not help but lose faith (despite fighting hard to keep it) is itself a sort of subjective evidence against several popular tenets of various forms of Christian faith, such as God's providence and guidance, God's availability and responsiveness to individual's real needs, and God's compassionate and vested interest in enabling the faith of every person to develop, not diminish.
Darwin relays his experience of transforming from a believer to a non-believer of Christianity. He illustrates the tension of desiring to believe, but being unable to force himself to do so in authenticity. He explains his shift in his way of talking about feelings of transcendence. Formerly he thought of them as inspiring a sense of the existence of a God who created such beautiful things in nature to give us those transcendent feelings. With time and experience, however, he shifts towards explaining feelings of transcendence as an experience of the sublimity of the natural world. Sublimity, he notes, can be felt in other phenomena such as music, but in no case does it provide a logical ground from which to argue for the existence of God. He also notes how pleasure and suffering play into the evolution and propagation of our species in a way that does not necessitate a belief in God, only a belief in naturalism and survival of the fittest. The excerpt ends with the Darwin's realization that although he can find no substantial evidence to back up a belief in God, there is also not sufficient proof to expel the possibility of its truth.
Darwin's premise for not believing in God is that he could not convince himself of the appropriate evidence to maintain that belief. This is interesting in that it begs the question: Which is more important in “doing” religion, belief or practice? Adam Seligman et al. outline this problem as a conflict between the modes of thought of sincerity and ritual, but the question remains (Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, Michael Puett, and Bennett Simon, Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1-15). There are plenty of religious people who are not convinced of the beliefs their religion has asserted to be true, but many of those individuals still practice their religion in order to make it true as such. They are living “as if” their beliefs are true, whether or not the beliefs are true. However, if one must maintain a level of sincerity in which one is convinced of the veracity of any given beliefs, then being a religious person becomes a much more arduous task in some ways. It is much more difficult to convince yourself that something invisible truly exists than to convince yourself to act in a way that would create the type of world and community you would desire to live in.
Darwin began to doubt his early belief of God while on the ship Beagle. In his understanding, developing science denounces the Christian faith as unreliable. Especially, he asserts the concept of suffering as a mechanism that empowers all beings to survive in natural selection rather than that comes from immortality. In addition, the sense of God is not different from a sense of sublimity. That is, it is impossible to discern whether a feeling comes from God or our mind when something such as sublimity touches us.
His autobiography reminds me of when I asked myself how to verify whether a feeling came from God or my mind. This debate led me to change my definition of God. What if God is everything that we conceive, not just a personal God? What if God is life or functions as any conception itself? What if, in terms of probability, that human beings become human beings by God's permission is higher than that by chance in natural selection?
I really appreciate his honesty that he remained Agnostic because he said, “the mystery of the beginning of all things insoluble by us” (Hitchens 2007, 96). We do not know the origins of quantum or God. However, Darwin shed light on a new concept of God for generations. Human beings cannot prove God before they know who they are, what all things are exactly, because all things might be God itself.
In this excerpt from his Autobiography, Charles Darwin describes the gradual change of his beliefs from orthodox Christianity to Agnosticism. He first began to doubt the existence of a personal God when he learned of the sacred texts of other religions. Why should Christianity be the only correct religion? From this doubt, he moved on to Biblical criticism, the failure of the design in Nature because of the law of natural selection, the problem of evil, a reason for suffering based on natural selection, a general lack of faith, and evidence from physicists that the sun will die and the earth will end. Finally, Darwin posits that humans who developed from the lowest animals should not be trusted with “such grand conclusions” as a First Cause or Creator (96).
I enjoyed Darwin's writing style, but often felt that he was very quick to solve problems with the atheist solution. His idea regarding natural selection and suffering seems a bit strange. While I appreciate his desire to explain suffering without reverting to the moral improvement argument, it seems that often the people who inflict suffering are the ones who survive, rather than the ones who endure suffering. Would not this mean that suffering would be consistently selected by nature? Happiness is not necessarily the opposite of suffering as Darwin seems to assume.
The selection of Darwin's Autobiography featured in the Hitchens reader describes the process through which Darwin's faith eventually melted away in the fires of experience and scientific inquiry, leaving only the residue of a conceptual system that was no longer viable. Darwin approached questions of religious dogma like a scientist: each proposition was a hypothesis to be subjected to empirical testing. However, as Darwin considered the evidence for and against the central tenets of the Christianity in which he had been raised – the divine nature of the scriptures; the immanent presence of a personal, omnipotent, and benevolent God; and an intelligently ordered creation – he found the evidence to be leading towards refutation rather than confirmation. Darwin saw the presence and prevalence of deep suffering in the world as evidence against an intelligent and benevolent first cause. And as he discovered the principles of natural selection, Darwin discovered that there was no more design in the origin of the varieties of species than there was in the ever-changing directions of the wind. Lastly, by invoking the image of being a colorblind man trying to be convinced of the color red, Darwin refused to consider the private experiences and convictions of others as evidence that might bring some balance to the scale. By rejecting inward experience, investigating the natural world, and meditating on the problem of suffering, Darwin saw his religious beliefs dissolve into nothing but the faint impressions of a past that cannot be recovered.
Darwin was an illustrious scientist, and as such, he privileged evidence available to the external, objective, and disinterested perspective of a scientist above that available only to the internal, subjective, and invested perspective of a believer. This follows from the fact that internal phenomena are not observable, testable, or repeatable. In other words, they are not accessible to scientific questions. And for Darwin, anything that could not be examined scientifically could hardly be counted as knowledge. Therefore, Darwin concludes his essay by lamenting that the problem of ultimate origins is completely insoluble by us, stating that it is best to remain agnostic: resigned to the humble position that we simply cannot know. However, I am intrigued by the fact that William James, who lived in the first generation to experience the impacts of Darwin's work, took an entirely different approach when speaking about religious phenomena. James, influenced by his epistemological musings on radical empiricism, privileged the subjective reality of individual experience over the objective reality of collective observation. For James, the really real is only that which we experience. Therefore, James is very interested in investigating the experiences provided by the phenomenon we call religion. For James, God is not confined to conversations about empirical causality or propositional validity. Instead, God is seen through the eyes of those who claim to have had an experience of God. James is not interested in determining the empirical validity of these experiences, but is instead interested in what these experiences do. What do they produce? Do they help or harm? Etc. Near the end of the section, Darwin speaks about how the state of mind that accompanies the experience of grand scenes is no longer connected with a belief in God but is more akin to what has been called sublimity. However, Darwin does not deny that the experience of a grand scene still produces a certain sense of grandeur. I wonder how James would interpret the presence of this phenomenon of grandeur, and I wonder how we might understand the different language games being played when trying to interpret grandeur in contrasting conceptual frameworks.
The excerpt from Charles Darwin's ‘Autobiography’ narrates Darwin's slow decline of belief in the divine revelation of Christianity. He writes fondly about his former believing self, one who quoted the Bible to settle a moral question while on the Beagle and admired the grandeur of the Brazilian forest. Darwin identifies these religious sentiments, which were never that strong nor wholeheartedly in favor of an intelligent God and an immortal soul, as the recognition of the sublime. Darwin dismisses the evidentiary value of such feelings of the sublime, for or against the existence of God. Darwin asks: “how can the generally beneficent arrangement of the world be accounted for?” (94). Not only is the world seemingly beneficent for human life, but humans do actually seem to lead happy and pleasant lives, otherwise the species would not reproduce. Yes, suffering does occur, but it is to be expected in a system of natural selection, whereas it is unintelligible if a beneficent creator is its source. The final redoubt for Darwin's belief in God, he notes, was the notion of a first cause. But this too is doubtful because such speculations seem beyond the scope of human knowledge.
Darwin's autobiographical sketch plays a familiar tune. A young person grows into maturity and along the way his or her religious commitments evaporate like the morning fog under the burning rays of the sun. The process is slow and gradual. Darwin almost seems to mourn the loss or even death of his religious self. Though it is no longer comprehensible to him, his religious self afforded Darwin a ready answer to moral quandaries, an intelligent creator at the root of the world, and an awe-inspiring canvas of creation at which to marvel. It is the last piece, his sublime response to creation, that seems the saddest for Darwin. In the death of religious commitments, does one also lose a sense of sublime beauty? If so, we are all the poorer for it.
Darwin once had the conviction of the God of Christianity through some religious experiences. However, during the two years of his journey on the HMS Beagle, his faith in God had been gradually challenged by contrary evidence. Finally, he renounced his belief. The process of renounciation went so slow that he “felt no distress (94).” Eventually, based on his research, he denied the existence of an intelligent designer. The variety of species, he thought, can be well explained by natural selection without a designer. Moreover, because the sense of sublimity from nature or music is not different to that from God, the fact that sentimental beings can sense sublimity does not support God's existence. His conclusion: “one must be content to remain an Agnostic (96).”
Darwin's conclusion seems reasonable to me. How many things on earth are there that we know for sure? I believe that our feeling convinced about something is not by virtue of proofs but rather through our disposition to discover what needs to be satisfied without fail. We all know that the eye desiring something must find out what it desires. Thus, it can be said that human beings are not rational animals but animals rationalizing their conviction, taste, or inclination. Personally, I was impressed with the transition of his thought, which resembles my own. I have been hesitant to speak explicitly of the change in my mind. In my case, my devout parents and the church friends play the same role as Darwin's wife.
Autobiography describes Darwin's spiritual journey and especially his conversion. Instead of converting into a Christian, Darwin the former Christian becomes an atheist. In this article, Darwin shows the process of his conversion step by step. The first and the last step are the most crucial part of this process. During the first step, he is questioning the authority of the Bible. The Bible is no longer the holy words of God because many things presented in the Bible do not have evidence to prove that they are not fictional. With these doubts, Darwin came to the last stage of his conversion---the birth of Evolution by Natural Selection. The theory of natural selection, which originates from Darwin's research on the Galapagos Islands and many other places, offers an alternative when he no longer believes that God is the Creator. Although he claims that his belief in Natural Selection might be limited by saying that “I am content to remain an Agnostic,” he cannot become a Christian again when he has realized the living creatures on the earth might not look like their ancestors (96). He cannot ignore questions raised by Natural Selection. These questions challenge the authority of Christianity.
I was thinking of my great-grandfather when reading this article. Raised and educated by western missionaries that were sent to my city to preach God's Gospels, the first thing he did, after graduating from a Christian university, was translating Darwin's the Origin of Species from English to Chinese. This is ironic. He could not have studied at the university and became a biologist without the support of his church, but he spent a lot of time on spreading a theory that conflicts with his version of Christianity.
Under the power of high technology, modern people are used to dealing with difference. They do not feel panic when confronting a new idea that they have never heard of. Unlike people living in the twenty-first century, people in Darwin's age were more conservative. Claiming that God is not the Creator in that age might be like telling a person today that he or she is not a real human but a replicate of another human being; it's shocking. I understand how people in Darwin's age might feel about Natural Selection and evolutionary theory generally, even though I have never had similar experiences. I can imagine what questions they might want to ask: “where do I come from if I was not created by God? Do I still go to Heaven if God is not my Creator? If God is not my Creator, is He my Saviour? If God is neither my Creator nor my Saviour, where do I go after my death? Do I have a spirit? Am I going to have the eternal life? Is there a God at all?” Natural Selection theory might have caused a spiritual catastrophe in Darwin's age.
As a Christian living in the modern age, a question that I want to ask myself is “how do you keep your faith in God when you know you might be a descendant of monkeys?” I suspect that I “inherited” this question from my great-grandfather through DNA. Being a biologist who is keen on studying and promoting Natural Selection theory, he never abandoned his Christian faith. My father is also a Christian who believes that humans came from the ocean and were evolved from fishes. As for myself, I find it unnecessary to argue the origin of humans. Since I believe everything my father says, I accept his idea that our ancestors are fishes. This is what I do to harmonize this idea with my faith in God. While believing that God created the first human, I assume that I am another kind of human being that evolved from fishes. So, God created humans. He also created other living creatures, including fishes. I am from the ocean. Since God created the ocean and fishes that live in the ocean, I was created by God indirectly. God is my grandfather (God-fishes-me). In the article, Darwin mentions a few times that because what the Bible says is inconsistent with observations he made which later became evidence of Natural Selection, he found it increasingly difficult to be convinced by the Bible's authority. To put it another way, Natural Selection persuaded Darwin to believe that the Bible is a fiction. From my personal perspective, I do not think I have to deny the Bible because of discrepancies between the Scriptures and the scientific facts. Theologically, I believe that these discrepancies might be arranged to test Christians. Historically, the Bible is written by different human authors living in different periods of the history. I do not know how they wrote the Bible. Maybe they received God's words and wrote them down. Maybe they were inspired by some mystic experiences and wrote the Bible according to their interpretations of these experiences. Either way, discrepancies, inconsistencies, and contradictions cannot be avoided. Biblical authors are humans. Humans are imperfect and they make mistakes. Human mistakes cannot make me give up my faith in God.
In this short passage from his Autobiography, Charles Darwin recounts his slow yet steady intellectual journey from Christian faith to agnosticism, outlining and refuting several common arguments theists make for the existence of a personal God. First becoming disillusioned with the veracity of the Old Testament texts, he soon began also to doubt the status of the Gospels as divine revelation, noting especially logical and chronological inconsistencies and the incredibility of the miracles. In addition to doubting literal interpretations of the Bible, Darwin also addresses the dethronement of William Paley's argument from design in light of his own discovery of natural selection and the challenge that pervasive suffering poses to the idea of a benevolent “First Cause.” Darwin then deconstructs what he sees as the most popular argument for the existence of God: the religious affections. He notes that, though seemingly utterly convincing and instinctual, the “deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most people” (95) concerning the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are not reliable evidence for God; they are neither consistent across individuals or the races (in fact, even he himself seems to have lost the ability to experience the religious sentiment), nor are the associated emotions of wonder, admiration, and sublimity unique to religious contexts. Darwin concludes not by asserting the clear truth of atheism, but rather resigning humbly to agnosticism. After all, he asks, “can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?” (96)
A careful and thoughtful man, Darwin did not take lightly the consequences that he foresaw his work having on the integrity of Christian claims and popular theology. I admire both his caution in presenting ideas that contradicted Christian doctrine and which would likely cause much distress for people like his pious wife, Emma, and his devotion to the truth and his intellectual and scientific integrity. Though Darwin admits that he was never as swept up in religious sentiment as many others, he does seem to respect the religious impulse as an understandable and not wholly undesirable human tendency. Although a passage from Darwin is entirely appropriate and necessary for an anthology outlining the genealogy of atheism, as his work paved the way for a thoroughly naturalistic account of life, the tone of his description of his movement away from faith is far from anti-theist. Darwin could see clearly that the conclusions of his work were not compatible with current Christian doctrine but he does not seem to harbor any feelings of disdain or condescension toward the presence of religion in human communities. His arguments are refreshingly based on science and logic. The quality of his hesitant (though complete) rejection of the biblical accounts of creation and of a personal god, and his modest acceptance of agnosticism make me wonder if he would have been intrigued or open to the possibilities of less dogmatic understandings of the Divine had he had more exposure to alternative naturalistic theologies.
The excerpt from Darwin’s autobiography details the evolution of his religious beliefs in relation to his scientific endeavors. Darwin defined his beliefs as orthodox while he sailed on the Beagle, a belief he held to in the face of laughing criticism. His transformation was slow but, after the theory of natural selection, Darwin no longer found Paley’s intelligent design theory adequate. Viewing the world from the lens of natural selection, Darwin offers an explanation for the suffering of man as an evolutionary trait (i.e. one suffers thirst in order to find water for survival). He is hopeful, however, that the survival instincts that draw on pleasure rather than pain will increase and create a happier society. Although Darwin fell far from his previous orthodox belief and adherence to intelligent design, Darwin does not lose all faith, but bows to the mystery of the universe and proclaims himself an Agnostic.
Darwin, unlike many other voices in The Portable Atheist, is sympathetic to religion despite his turn from orthodoxy. I find this admirable. He does not rail against believers, but describes his own personal transformation. As someone who once believed, he understands religious experience and the emotions that accompany that experience. His voice is honest as he records his slow de-conversion from Christian orthodoxy. Darwin does not turn from orthodox Christian to fundamentalist atheist, but lives in the tension of Agnosticism, believing in natural selection as the force that creates the present.
In Autobiography, an essay written by the founder of modern biology, Charles Darwin, the author details his journey from Orthodoxy to Agnosticism. Darwin began his journey away from Christian Orthodoxy with the discovery of world religions, and “gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.” (94) He eventually gave up on the premise that he would one day discover proof of what was written in the gospels, and slowly abandoned Christianity altogether. Darwin says that the rate was so slow, in fact, that he “felt no distress.” (94) Later in life, he gave up on the existence of a personal God based on his scientific discoveries. Darwin even scientifically takes on the subject of suffering and happiness, and posits evolutionary reasons for human beings’ capacity for beneficence. He suggests that the argument for the existence of God comes from “deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons” (95), but that this argument holds no weight since human beings don’t all have “the same conviction of the existence of one God.” He concludes the article by saying that he sometimes feels compelled to look at a First Cause when attempting to explain the conception of this “immense and wonderful universe”, but concludes in the end that he is “content to remain an Agnostic.” (96)
This article by Charles Darwin is a fascinating account of a journey from Christian Orthodoxy to Agnosticism based on scientific discovery. In the introduction to the article, Hitchens tells us that Darwin considered the priesthood as a child, and had a very pietistic wife. He feared that his Origin of the Species would be like “confessing a murder” because of its implications. (93) I find it really interesting, therefore, that Darwin was so nonchalant in this article about the gradual loss of his own faith. I don’t know what it is like to discover one’s way into atheism since I was born atheist and am trying to discover my way into theism, but I would imagine that such a slow descent into agnosticism was troubling at points to Darwin’s worldview, as well. I was particularly annoyed with his scientific explanation for beneficence because I want there to be a theological explanation instead. Darwin suggests that it makes sense that the universe tends toward happiness because if we suffered to a ridiculous extreme, we wouldn’t be able to make more babies and our species would die out. Every time I look for a theological reason for the fact that the universe tends to be oriented toward love and cooperation despite an overwhelming cultural pull toward suffering and competition, something from science smacks me down. Damn you, Charles Darwin.
In this excerpt from his Autobiography Darwin recounts the gradual disintegration of his once fervent Christian faith. Darwin recalls that as a young man he was “quite orthodox” and often referred to the Bible as an “unanswerable authority” in regards to questions of morality. However, over time he found his faith waning as his knowledge of natural science grew. Darwin relates that his faith did not go easily, and he found himself desperately attempting to make the pieces fit in spite of cognitive dissonance. However, as time went on he found it harder and harder to preserve the faith of his childhood. Darwin writes, “I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.” Darwin goes on to say that even in spite of his inability to accept the Christianity of his childhood he nevertheless still maintained a strong belief in a First Cause, or Intelligence behind the cosmos. However, over time even this last remnant of his one-time theistic belief faded as well. Darwin concludes by writing, “the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.”
I found this piece to be truly interesting, well written, and poignant. Darwin adroitly communicates the fervor of his early belief in Christianity, and even more so, the pain of the gradual dissolution of this belief. And yet, one does not get the sense that Darwin lived the rest of his life in spiritual bereavement over this religious loss. Rather, it seems that Darwin, in his naturalist’s awe at the grandeur of the world, was able to maintain a positive and healthy outlook on his life and that of the world.
In this autobiographical excerpt Charles Darwin recollects his journey from Protestant orthodoxy to agnosticism. Darwin opens the narrative by describing the erosion of his belief in divine revelation. In light of expanding scientific knowledge, encounters with foreign religions, and contradictions within the gospels divine revelation appeared as an incredible assertion. The remainder of the discourse primarily revolves around Darwin’s examination of the question, “Does a personal and intelligent God who is the First Cause of the universe exist?” Darwin is reluctant to attribute the origination of the universe to “blind chance or necessity”; however, the evidence does not favor an intelligent designer either (96). The “beneficent arrangement” that humans see in nature no longer needs to be attributed to an intelligent designer due to the discovery of “the law of natural selection” (94). Darwin theorizes that pleasure, happiness, and suffering all accord with natural selection. Suffering, the bane of benevolent theism, is expected because “Natural Selection … is not perfect in its action,” and pleasure, since it stimulates the activity of species, is more prevalent, otherwise, species would fail to propagate (95). “Mind” also falls from the province of God since it is a tool formed by adaptation that facilitates the survival and multiplication of the species possessing it. With the disintegration of natural evidence for God’s existence, Darwin notes that the arguments are now bolstered by the inward, emotional evidence of individuals. Darwin doubts the worth of such evidence due to the lack of cohesiveness and conformity between individual experiences. When discussing the immortality of the soul a tenor of tragedy enters his narrative. Darwin perceives that human beings and all forms of life are forever progressing, albeit slowly, but the consensus among physicists indicates that the sun will eventually cool thereby terminating all life on earth. For those believing in immortality “the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful,” Darwin sardonically writes, but the eradication of such diverse and complex life strikes him as “an intolerable thought,” an absurdity that cannot be ameliorated (96).
Darwin indicates that his journey has been painless since it transpired “at a very slow rate.” But, upon reading the narrative, one senses a measure of emotional distress even amidst intellectual conviction (94). For those traversing a similar road such emotional struggles may be familiar and may also be accompanied by a sense of loss even when intellectual gains have been made. Given Darwin’s position as an intrepid scientific pioneer, he serves as a model and symbol for those following the trail he blazed. Readers who tend to focus on the ubiquity of suffering may also benefit from the change of perspective offered by Darwin. The role pleasure plays in human survival is worth considering, and Darwin credits happiness without viewing suffering flippantly. One may appreciate his agnosticism since it reminds the metaphysically inclined that their subject matter is elusive. Darwin’s agnosticism does not derive from weary skepticism, but from a serious consideration of the organic history of human cognition. Although the human mind is magnificent and dexterous, it is incapable of penetrating “the mystery of the beginning of all things” (96). Therefore, one should cultivate suspicion when delineating metaphysical themes.
In this selected piece from his Autobiography, Darwin set out to describe his own personal evolution from a Christian to an Agnostic. He began by recounting his voyage to the Galapagos Islands, aboard the Beagle, on which he apparently had developed a reputation for having strong moral character. He recounted instances during which he used the Bible as the fulcrum to leverage arguments concerning moral affairs. Yet, he also recalled how other various arguments, such as the implausibility of miracles in a causally closed universe and inconsistencies throughout Scripture, eventually eroded his faith in Christianity as a special revelation from God. Throughout this gradual surrender of his faith and creed to the dictates of reason and the discovery of natural selection, Darwin grew opposed to the prevalent arguments for a purposeful design, which is manifest in creation. He said, “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.” Yet, he did not intend to argue that the useful adaptations exhibited by organisms are merely the product of chance causes. Instead, he saw these as a rather expected outcome, according to the principles of natural selection. He also confronted the argument for the existence of an intelligent Creator based on the subjective experiences and personal convictions of individuals. However, he eventually rejected such arguments on the grounds that the variability among such experiences and convictions eventually proved too inconsistent as to be the foundation of any meaningful explanation. He stated, “It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence.” Eventually, he also comes to reject the further conclusion that chance can’t have had a causal-explanatory role in our creation, as our complexities seem to attest against this notion, on the grounds that the mind of man, having “been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals,” can doubtfully be trusted in arriving at “such grand conclusions.” It is on this final point that I wish to respond.
In their song Freewill, the Canadian rock band, Rush, aptly wrote that, “If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” I believe that this line really gets at the heart of why I find Darwin’s premises, which led him to conclude that Agnosticism was the best possible answer to the questions he faced, problematic. Ultimately, he suspended his belief in God on the grounds that, given our evolutionary heritage, our minds cannot be trusted in arriving at the God conclusion. Yet, he is apparently relatively at ease in arriving at this conclusion about our conclusions. To paraphrase Rush, then, ‘If you chose not to conclude, you still have made a conclusion.’ I do not intend to argue that Darwin should have been a Theist or an Atheist, for that matter, but rather, that he should have found stronger reasons for deciding to be an Agnostic.
Darwin explains how he abandoned his religious belief in a personal God. After the discovery of natural selection, Darwin became more skeptical about “Christianity as a divine revelation” (94). Christianity became less credible for him because the law of natural selection is supported by clear and rational evidence. The authority of Christianity is supported by implausible miracles written by irrational men (94). Moreover, the existence of suffering convinced him because it is compatible with his discovery of natural selection. He remained an agnostic since he could not conclude the issue with complete conviction.
Charles Darwin shows his struggles over the discoloration of his religious belief because of his scientific discovery. He was loyal enough to try to keep his religious belief, yet humble enough to accept his erroneous past. He is pious before nature and accepts that human beings are parts of nature. In one sense, he seems to be religious in that he maintains religious virtues within himself.
In this selection from Darwin’s Autobiography, the eminent scientist, who had once considered the Anglican priesthood, writes of how he has gradually lost his faith. The challenges to his faith that he recounts sound completely modern: a world of religious pluralism; the existence of suffering; the loss of a sense of religious feeling in light of what he knew about the development and constitution of the planet. Difficult though it may be, he follows the evidence as he finds it, and for him the process of natural selection, which itself, not a designer, has provided for the diversity of life on Earth, seems to require that he puts away those religious beliefs as an older child puts away once-beloved toys that belonged to his younger self, however sentimental he may feel about them. At the conclusion of the selected text, he also proffers a note of humility: definitive answers about such grand questions elude the grasp of a human mind that has “developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals.” It is his knowledge of the origin of our species, in other words, that leads him to say, “I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.”
Darwin’s prose is candid and thoughtful; I find myself quite sympathetic to his plight. More than anything, he seems to be a victim of his age – an age that he himself had more to do with creating than anyone else. How does one reconcile evolution and Christianity? Answers 150 years later, with various degrees of persuasion, come much more easily than they possibly could have for him. While he was clearly well-versed in his religion, theology wasn’t the focus of his training, nor did he have a community of scholars with which to explore these questions. (The situation would be different as early as a few decades later, with the writings of theologians such as Charles Gore and, later, Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple.) He lacked the resources – intellectual, cultural, social – to study the implications of his discovery, natural selection, in a rigorous way, and one must respect the personal integrity that led him to decide that he must “be content to remain an agnostic.” Though contentment seems far off: Hitchens writes that Darwin “did not abandon his religious views with a light heart,” and that certainly comes through in the tone of the writing. He sounds almost plaintive, as if in mourning over the passing of what had once given him so much pleasure, the “deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons.” He would have to do without. He knew, more than most, that evolution is not a painless process.
In Charles Darwin’s Autobiography the scientist examines his gradual falling away from religion and the mixed emotions that accompanied this transition. He writes that over time he had come to see the reliance of the New Testament on the Old as problematic as he found the latter to be an unreliable religious source. He also could not reconcile miracle narratives in either book, given that such events stood in direct contradiction to the “fixed laws of nature” (94). The prevalence of “false” religions throughout the world weakened the hold of Christianity on Darwin as well (94). He recounts how initially he would wish for the discovery of a definitive historical document that would wrest his religious beliefs from this growing doubt. He writes: “But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete” (94). Against the necessity of a Divine designer, Darwin argues that the law of natural selection can now account for the complexity found in the natural world. Addressing the nature of the world and the prevalence of suffering extant, he argues that this speaks more to the development of life through natural selection than to having originated from an intelligent First Cause. The excerpt from Darwin’s Autobiography ends with an analyses of the popular argument for the veracity of religion based upon individual convictions and feelings. He acknowledges that, though he may have had such an experience previously when surrounded by the “grandeur” of the Brazilian forest, this feeling of the Divine had long since left him and that in fact such natural experiences are often confused with a sense of sublimity (95-96).
Though Darwin makes the claim that his renouncement of religious belief was such a gradual process that it did not lead to any feelings of “distress,” he writes as individual who has lost rather than gained something of value (94). One of Darwin’s primary arguments against a Christian Divine creator is that the presence of suffering in the world is compatible with how living creatures have evolved by means of natural selection—a process that his scientific study affirmed empirically, whereas, conversely, the existence of suffering in the world is theologically problematic. Though this hypothesis is based on scientific and historical analyses and Darwin asserts that his findings have not caused him any undue duress, three points of tension stand out for me: 1) he questions the quality of knowledge that human beings can really possess provided that our present intellectual capacities arose from “a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals,” 2) he compares his new Agnosticism to being color-blind rather than being liberated into seeing a full new spectrum of colors, and finally, 3) the future of the human race becomes a source of tension, in that regarding the eventual dying of our sun he writes: “Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress” (96).
Darwin gives here an account of how he was converted from being an “orthodox” believer in Christianity, who was prone to “quote the Bible as an unanswerable authority” (93) on points of morality, to being convinced that the theory of natural selection has greater explanatory power than the notion of a personal God. Darwin gives the following reasons for his loss of belief in a personal God. First, the argument from design in Nature is not actually conclusive since there “seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows (94)”. Second, natural selection is all that is needed to account for the “beneficent arrangement of the world,” since natural selection promotes pleasure and happiness over pain and suffering. (Also, natural selection gives a better account for why suffering exists in the first place, making theodicy a more flexible enterprise.) Third, the “deep inward conviction and feelings” associated with belief in God do not prove God’s existence since they do “not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity (96)”. But despite these reasons, Darwin does not fully affirm atheism. Rather, he remains “agnostic” due to his mental inability to conceive “the immense and wonderful universe…as the result of blind chance or necessity (96)”.
Darwin is refreshingly honest in this short excerpt. It is a treat to be able to hear Darwin explain, in his own terms, the existential questions he wrestled with and the conclusions he reached in his research of the theory of natural selection. It is particularly illuminating to see that Darwin struggled with a mental block of “extreme difficulty” when it came to conceiving the universe as a result of blind chance. In this era of new atheism, where scholars tend to rejoice in nature’s randomness and gleefully mock those who would seek for a First Cause to the universe, it is helpful to remember that Darwin himself shared the existential sensitivities of those who identify with religiosity. He may have abandoned some of religion’s more dogmatic tenets, but he always soberly recognized what was at stake for humans and for the meaning of the universe as a whole if his theory was true.
In his “Autobiography,” Charles Darwin recounts how his work on natural selection convinced him that a supernatural, intelligent creator was not necessary to explain the phenomena of nature. He believes that the Old Testament was discredited by the need for the new revelation of Jesus, but the discrepancies between the Gospels and the presence of supernatural miracles discredit an intelligent designer as well. While he admits that he does not know how creation began, he argues that natural selection casts doubt on teleological and cosmological proofs of God’s existence. Moreover, the fact that not all humans believe tends to point away from inner convictions and religious feeling as evidence of God. Finally, he tackles the question of suffering by illustrating how hunger, thirst, fear, and pain rouse animals, including humans, to attend to their basic needs and to defend themselves against harm so that they “may compete successfully with other beings, and thus increase in number” (95).
While the position of some of Darwin’s contemporaries that suffering improves morals is itself morally reprehensible, at what point does suffering stop protecting creatures and become excessive misery? Darwin’s comment that suffering teaches creatures to be on the watch for potentially painful situations can justify some aspects of extreme pain as can the recognition that much of what humans call suffering can be attributed to human causes. While death can be viewed as necessary for natural selection to function and perhaps pain can motivate dying humans to accept death, the purpose of disease-related excruciating pain at the end of life seems to go beyond what natural selection requires for propagating the species. Darwin’s attempt to explain the problem of suffering through survival of the fittest falls flat because excessive suffering is not necessary to render any species “as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species” (95). Ultimately, when viewed through the eyes of evolutionary biology, excessive suffering may simply be an unfortunate by-product of the randomness of natural selection. The ultimate meaning of undue suffering may be as elusive to students of evolution as it was to those who advocated a First Cause or a personal God.
In this small selection from Darwin’s autobiography, he chronicles his movement away from a belief in God and toward a stance of agnosticism. Darwin both claims it to be a slow and untroubling journey through his scientific discoveries while also being “unwilling” to totally give up his orthodox beliefs in a Christian God. His unwinding of beliefs is rooted in a study of how creation came to be. He explains that he became less convinced of the truth of the Bible because of the inability of its facts to be confirmed, and he found more adequate proof for explanation for the way of the world to be found through natural selection. In a reflection on happiness and suffering, Darwin finds that the randomness of creation and the motivation for creatures to grow in number can exist without a “first cause”. His feeling about God could no longer compete with the evidence, and thus his belief faded. Though there exist a sadness in his contemplation as he moved from a suredness in God’s design, to his conclusion that “all sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued progress” (96). He admits that he can say nothing for certain about nature, and with that he admits agnosticism is the best place for his beliefs.
His admission of agnosticism I suppose is bold for his time, but Darwin’s use of happiness as a defense for natural selection seems inane. He separates suffering from “propagating”, as if they are mutually exclusive. I understand him to mean suffering as a lack of access to resources that guarantee success, but seems to ignore the very existential suffering that he chronicles through this piece of writing. Is it only he that has the privilege of the agony of thought? For him clearly, human beings are the pinnacle of creation to only continue to improve, but what does he know of the angst of an elephant? It is fascinating that he does not allow feelings to be of any sort of proof for god, but yet the feeling of happiness is indeed the proof for natural selection. It works because he thought of it, I guess.
This excerpt from Charles Darwin’s Biography explains some of Darwin’s religious beliefs. In this piece, Darwin describes some of personal thoughts on the topic religious faith in a twenty-seven-month period where he had much time to reflect on religion. First, Darwin recalls that disbelief was a “slow” and “creeping” kind of belief. Darwin did not experience a single-clear moment of disbelief that stemmed from a singular argument but a slow and progressive [regressive?] withering of belief. Second, Darwin finds a naturalistic worldview more compatible with natural selection than a theistic worldview. Natural selection necessitates massive amounts of animal and human suffering. This amount of suffering is more probable on a naturalistic account of the world than a theistic account. Darwin concludes, “Such suffering is quite compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species” (95). Lastly, Darwin considers and critiques arguments for the existence of God from feelings and from an Intelligent First Cause. Concerning the argument from religious feelings, Darwin believes that if these feelings were so accurate all people should have the same conviction about the same, one God. But, diversity of religious feelings makes this argument improbable. In addition, Darwin can confidently to clump religious feeling in with the “sense of sublimity. […Therefore,] it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music” (96). Concerning the argument from an Intelligent First Cause, Darwin found in much more convincing than “blind chance or necessity” (96). However, given the truth of evolution, Darwin, subsequently finds the argument lacking because he feels he cannot trust his mind on “such grand conclusions” (96) given that it evolved from the lowest animals. To conclude, Darwin calls himself an Agnostic.
The following paragraph is three personal reflections on the Darwin’s letter. First, I have heard many people profess that Darwin was a Christian, a Theist, an Agnostic, and an Atheist. This always confused me. What was he? It’s possible that at some point in his life he was all of them! However, I am delighted to read about Darwin’s religious beliefs in his own words. Based on this letter, which was penned about half way through his life, Darwin begins with orthodox faith as a professing Christian, then believes a kind of Theism centered around First Cause and, lastly, as a confessing agnostic. This seems to coincide with the slow and creeping movement towards disbelief. Of course, Darwin could have become an atheist later in his life. Second, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection deeply influenced his religious belief. The amount of animal and human suffering given the truth of natural selection is more compatible on a naturalistic worldview. The origins of “religious feeling” can be explained evolutionarily. Evolution of higher-human minds developing from lower-non-human minds causes Darwin to doubt his reasoning abilities on First Cause. It appears, therefore, that Darwin gave an honest attempt to merge his scientific finds with his religious beliefs. For a final observation, Darwin’s rejection of God is only “the God of the philosophers.” It would be a stretch to say that Darwin believed in the “God” of religious naturalism or “God beyond god” but Darwin does seem to use “Natural Selection” (capitalized) as an explanatory thesis in a religious manner (95).
Part 1.): This piece is methodical in how it is laid out: charting Darwin’s transition from religious orthodoxy to agnosticism. He deals with his doubts about religion, as well as his unwillingness to give his religious beliefs up. Along the way, he deals with the idea of Christian miracles, the “argument from design”, natural selection / survival of the fittest, and finally, and the difficulty of conceiving the last of these as the creator of human capacities. This is a short and concise piece.
Part 2.): Two sentences from the end of this piece are used by Flew, p106, to support the idea that scientists believed in Intelligent Design. But in fact, in the (mis)quoted part, Darwin was making the case for his indecision re. “the beginning of all things”, and therefore identifying himself as “content to remain an agnostic.” He clearly writes that Natural Selection has replaced the argument for development by Intelligent Design, and his writing at this point in the piece appears to me to be intentionally wistful: asserting that he cannot “know it all”, and that there remains a place for doubt when it comes to answering the “big questions”, e.g. the origins of humanity. I can’t tell whether Darwin was trying to say that Natural Selection would actually not be able to explain the earliest parts of human origins, or whether he was advocating instead for a general “scientific humility.” That he closes with an assertion of himself as an “Agnostic” – neither a believer or an atheist - makes me think he is asserting the former which, to me as an Atheist, is disappointing.
Darwin mentioned he would like to stay as an Agnostic, as his Faith dilute during the time he developed the system of evolution. He found himself confronting the evidence of evolution by natural selection, but he remained the belief of the existence of a creator, who might be no difference between God, Siva or Vishnu…He confessed that he might never be strongly developed into firm conviction of the existence of God, but he was not against Christian God, he rather kept this conversion privately.
I think he chose to believe the evolution is the natural select, as he was not able to attribute that to be the willing and plan of God, which is compliance with Christian teaching. But I argue his real issue was not about the evolution theory, even he did not write Origin of Species, he would still become Atheist, as he tried to build his Faith on science which is all about proof, the Faith is exactly on contrary to proof. Science is about reason and experiment, but Faith is about spirit and soul. Science could be a way to prove the marvelous creation of God, so it is not difficult for scientists to believe in the existence of the Ultimate. The personal God of Christianity has to be acknowledged by Faith first, then developed into conviction in mind through the way of holiness.
Summary: In this selection from Charles Darwin’s Autobiography, he explains how his understanding of the law of natural selection has led to the loss of his faith (94). As part of his arguments, he disputes the assumption that, suffering in the world is to promote moral improvement, since suffering is not exclusive to human beings but to all sentient beings (95). He is of the view that “the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection” (95). He also disputes the idea of an intelligent God that is experienced “from the deep inward conviction and feelings” (95). He views this point as unreasonable, and points out that, the argument would be valid if people from all races attributed these feelings and inner convictions to the existence of one God (96).
Response: Charles Darwin’s response to human suffering, concerning the notion that in spite of suffering, as evidenced by natural selection, “happiness prevails” sounds reasonably hopeful (94-95). His description of the biological process of natural selection presents a deep truth that presents an opportunity for contemplation. Of course not by an agnostic.
Charles Darwin’s short article is filled with his consideration of God. Naturally, the law of natural selection locates in the midst of his argument. His question is whether the revelation of God is suitable to the law of natural selection. At first, he refuses the belief in God because the old arguments, such as the creator of the world or the one first mover, become useless in natural selection. However, there are still many problems which cannot be explained by the law. According to natural selection, all intellectual being has been designed in order to be happy. However, there is great suffering in the world. Can faith be identified as an inward conviction? How can we interpret the destruction of the world? Can “the immortality of the human soul” be the answer? He concludes that “the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us.” He names himself as an Agnostic.
Charles Darwin’s argument is compelling. Many assertions of atheism usually inclined to a specific view. Darwin’s comments, however, is based on his hypothesis “the law of natural selection,” and he tries to develop a neutral conclusion so that it can make distinctive debates about religion and God. I think his point of view is valuable to us because he poses many notable issues, such as happiness, destruction of the world, soul, and relation between religions. He tries to solve these problems using his own word. Is it our turn to answer the subjects he poses? We cannot wholly accept his logic, the law of natural selection, but his logical effort deserves to be credited.
In this excerpt from Darwin’s autobiography, Darwin describes the slow and gradual process of losing his faith. First, he describes the loosening of his belief in the personal God of Christianity—a process of doubt that began over 20 years prior to the publication of Origin of Species in 1859. This shift was preceded by increasing doubts in the credibility of the Christian accounts of Jesus’ life provided by the New Testament. It was only much later in life that his belief in a theistic God that set natural law into motion also dissipated. This was born gradually as he came to further understand the implications of his theory of natural selection—the emergent features of an organism is often erroneously explained in reference to design. According to Darwin, all life is as it is due to arbitrary processes of selection guided by competition among species amidst complex and changing circumstances. However much Darwin has abandoned belief in God, he still finds interest in preserving an idea of species-oriented immortality, whereby a species becomes more perfect over time. He laments the inevitable destruction of our solar system and the end of an unimaginably long process of evolution and admits sympathy for belief in immortality. In the end, Darwin declares himself to be an agnostic, stating that such questions as the beginning of all things is insoluble and unbefitting our limited understanding.
Darwin’s faith seems to erode at a pace appropriate to the gradual tempo of natural selection. He seems to have lost his faith as a matter of mere consequence, his faith revealing itself to be increasingly irrelevant to his developing understanding of life. What is interesting is that Darwin says that his loss of faith is akin to becoming color-blind. He reports, “my present loss of perception of not the least value…” (p. 96). I would say instead that the value of his loss equals precisely the value of what is lost. What should be considered, or at least reconstructed, in order to give a proper autobiographical account, is the precise value of the faith that is lost. This would obviously require much contextual and reflective work; however, it is interesting to note how void of reflection Darwin’s account seems to be. Perhaps we have a possible worldview consequence of natural selection taken as a metaphysical principle—what does not contribute to the survival of species loses value and becomes an extraneous and arbitrary feature. To my mind, that is an overly-simplistic and reductive account of value.
In this short excerpt from Darwin’s Autobiography, Darwin narrates his journey from Christian Orthodoxy to agnosticism, confronting along the way several common arguments for and against the existence of God. It is of little surprise that Darwin, discoverer of natural selection, would resist the teleological argument, or the argument from design. He writes, “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection than in the course which the wind blows.” What is more surprising is to see Darwin addressing issues of biblical authority, theodicy, and of a human intuition towards the divine. Although at one time Darwin was secure enough in his Christian identity to quote the bible to settle moral disputes, at the time of this writing he has come to question the validity of biblical narratives and whether the writers of the gospels could possibly be eyewitnesses to the events they report, showing a modern consciousness that has been informed by historical criticism. On the question of suffering, Darwin speculates that happiness abounds in greater amounts than suffering in this world. “Pleasurable sensations…may be long continued without any depressing effect; on the contrary, they stimulate the whole system to increased action. Hence it has come to pass that most or all sentient beings have been developed in such a manner through natural selection, that pleasurable sensations serve as their habitual guides.” Darwin feels that while the abundance of suffering that clearly does exist in the world is problematic for belief in a personal God, that Natural Selection is compatible with a world in which suffering and pleasure imperfectly coexist. Although in moments of reflection Darwin feels compelled to posit the existence of some sort of God, he finds that he doubts the abilities of his mental faculties to make such a leap, asking “can the mind of man, which has…been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?” In light of this reality, Darwin is content to call himself an agnostic.
Given the prominent role that Darwin’s theory of evolution played subsequent debates about atheism it is interesting to read first hand some of his own interpretations of how theistic beliefs hold up in light of natural selection. What struck me about this reading however, was just how much of a modernist, post-enlightenment sensibility this piece displays. Aside from using the faculties of his own reason to judge the plausibility (or implausibility) of traditional religious belief, you have a person who is allowing his religious beliefs to be shifted in the face of new evidence from contemporary science and the historical critical study of the Bible. This, in a nutshell, is the post-enlightenment decline of religious beliefs in action. On that level alone, this piece has great historical interest for those who are interested in secularization.
The autobiography of Charles Darwin chronicles his turn from being a devout Christian to becoming an agnostic. Darwin reports that he started his voyage on the Beagle believing so strongly in the bible that he “remember(s) being heartily laughed at by several of the officers for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality.” Darwin does mention specific arguments that persuaded him against the existence of God and juxtaposes it to arguments given in favor of God’s existence. He mentions that he thought highly of the Intelligent Design arguments until the law of Natural Selection was discovered. He also mentioned that the presence of suffering in the world as something which convinces him of the non-existence of God would not be in line with Intelligent Design either. He also mentions other arguments as well and continually refutes them. At the end of the selection, Darwin does not claim that God does not exist but simply says that there is no way to know for sure if God does or does not exist.
Darwin’s writings are very interesting. Darwin is such a controversial figure, to hear the him explain his thoughts in his own words is important. The tone of the piece is fascinating in that it is almost sad. Darwin does not come across as happy to have become an agnostic and, at times, almost seems sad that the arguments for God failed. Darwin’s words illuminate an inner struggle and search for answers. Ultimately, Darwin did not find the answers provided by religion as adequate to his search. Because of this, Darwin found his work in biology to be more accurate, even though it did not disprove existence of God but did successfully disprove the traditional arguments for God’s existence as argued at the time.
In his Autobiography, notable biologist Charles Darwin traces the gradual dissipating of his religious views, particularly discussing when this process occurred alongside his observations of the natural world. He thought most poignantly of the viability of his religious conviction over the span of two years, between October 1836 and January 1839. He begins by questioning the credibility of the biblical text through the lack of its revelation to other religious traditions, the inconsistency found in the Gospels, and the inaccuracies present despite being described as an eyewitness account. Darwin then discusses pain and suffering, and contrasts it with pleasure, and suggests that pleasure serves as humanity’s habitual guide, and that the existence of suffering implies that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. He further still discredits his previous experience of inward conviction and strong personal feelings as viable evidence of the existence of God. Lastly, following his study of evolution, Darwin presents the unlikelihood of complete annihilation at the end of existence given the slow, drawn out process of evolution and identifies himself as an Agnostic.
I am particularly struck by Charles Darwin’s observations of his own transition from believing to agnostic, beyond the timeline of notable events. He notices that he was very unwilling to give up his belief, implying that this transition to unbelief was not initially planned, nor fully welcomed as it began. He also mentions that the process was so slow that he felt no distress at the time. This suggests that Darwin previously understood the process towards unbelief to be a rather tumultuous one and was caught off guard by how it infiltrated his once-stable, religious basis. This recollection almost characterizes unbelief as a parasite, something that comes into existence quietly and rather unbeknownst to the holder, and slowly carries out its work against the host’s preference. Upon discovery of the parasite, the seeds of unbelief, its reverse is difficult and almost impossible, as the ideas that are now within the mind of the close-to-unbelieving individual are impossible to ignore.
|
|
|
Richard Dawkins |
In Atheists for Jesus, Richard Dawkins poses a question: Why can't we engineer and propagate ‘human super niceness’, the kind personified in Jesus, Gandhi, and saints alike? The tone of this supremely written essay is witty and rhetorically tenacious. Dawkins begins by asserting that Jesus was “so radical a thinker”, “rebelled against many aspects of Yahweh's vengeful nastiness”, and “advocated niceness” (307). Human super niceness, which is a common occurrence among our species, is an antithesis to the theory of natural selection, which nurtures “selfishness at the expense of public good, violence, callous indifference to suffering, short term greed at the expense of long term foresight,” etc. The development of human super niceness points to the blindness of evolution—a realization that opens up an infinitude of cultural responses to the evolutionary facts of life.
At times, I laughed out loud. “If scientific theories could vote, evolution would surely vote Republican.” Richard Dawkins is hilarious and engaging with every well-crafted sentence. I wrote ‘Wow!’ and ‘Jesus, what a good question!’ in the margins that were dotted with smiley faces of various kinds and shapes. Dawkins' literary synthesis of atheism and the natural sciences—his movement from the concrete to analogy to metaphor—bedazzles me to my core. Note this series of brilliantly crafted questions on page 308: “How can we do it? How shall we take the minority of super nice humans that we all know, and increase their number, perhaps until they even become a majority in the population? Could super niceness be induced to spread like an epidemic? Could super niceness be packaged in such a form that it passes down the generations in swelling traditions of longitudinal propagation?” The human agency implied here is incredible! Atheists for Jesus affirms the core atheistic agenda, which asserts that human beings can be good without God. Yet, Dawkins (with help) posits there is a potentially amazing biological phenomenon at the core of this assertion: singularity! “The big brain achieved the evolutionarily unprecedented feat of genuine foresight: became capable of calculating long-term consequences beyond short-term selfish gain” (309).
Richard Dawkins is a fan of Jesus, after all. In this piece, he muses on the possibility of creating a movement, complete with T-shirts, that advocates for a post-Christian, “post-singularity enlightenment” super niceness (310). After explaining that the incidence of super nice people is antithetical to the evolutionary process, which is based on selfishness and reproduction, he notes that nonetheless, super nice people exist! Religious beliefs, even though they are “super dumb,” spread like wildfire, so perhaps religions could serve as a model for how to spread super niceness. After all, Dawkins argues, that seems to have been Jesus's intention. Dawkins recounts a conversation with the “post-Christian” former bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, who explained his departure from supernaturalism. This seems to have inspired Dawkins, in that it demonstrated the possibility of a religious person who embodied the positive aspects of religious beliefs (e.g. super niceness) without the “stupid” aspects. Though Dawkins admits that he has no idea how to create a super niceness movement or prominent “meme” in the “meme pool”, he does suggest that creating “Atheists for Jesus” T-shirts might be one place to start.
The general project that Dawkins is nonchalantly suggesting – of a sort of post-supernaturalist movement for super niceness –would actually induce me to jump on board. However, this current piece is so riddled with anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, sexism, political partisanship, and plain juvenile name calling that it is difficult to focus on his argument. For example, one of his most troubling assertions – namely, that Jesus was one of the “first” religious people to “publically advocate[e] niceness” (307) – betrays his deep misunderstanding for the Jewish tradition and history of religions. I was also a little confused by Dawkins claim that “in a wild population, [super niceness] would be removed by natural selection” (308)… and yet, here we are, super nice people abound. Does Dawkins not recognize any evolutionarily advantageous aspects of cooperation or various forms of altruism? Regardless of his frustratingly offensive language and lack of engagement in the profound history of religious philosophy, he does seem to understand that even if evolution would not select niceness, that we should. And I agree. I agree that Jesus was nice and I would love to see more nice people in the world.
Initially this essay appears to be Dawkins’ attempt at claiming Jesus for the Atheists. But it becomes an ode to human kindness and a plea to spread that kindness. From Dawkins’ evolutionary perspective, kindness is an anomaly. Not just an anomaly, kindness is an absurdity that defies the Darwinism typified by Dawkins’ selfish gene. Yet Dawkins sees this anomaly as a wonderful mistake that we should work to spread. His suggestion for spreading it: to make Jesus the super nice role model.
If Dawkins is intent on spreading niceness, why is he so mean in this article? Like a one-trick pony, even when he sets out to do something new, like speculate about the oddity and wonder of kindness, he can’t help but to fall back into bashing religion. Calling religion “super dumb” is not just juvenile, it’s poor philosophy with shifting definitions. Kindness is dumb because it’s not evolutionarily advantageous; religion is dumb because… well because Dawkins doesn’t like it. Well I don’t like shifting standards: so calling a intentional divinity ridiculous while attributing intention to genes is just plain dumb.
In Atheists for Jesus, Richard Dawkins articulates wonder and support for Jesus from a unique perspective. Jesus is often considered a great figure because of his revolutionary ideas about love, but Dawkins takes this a step further: Jesus, he says, was great because of love, but he was even greater because he represents an evolutionary oddity. He beat the odds of selfish programming by natural selection, and that is an amazing and rare occurrence towards which all of humanity should continually strive.
Being such a hard-lined, vicious polemicist against religion, Richard Dawkins is easy to call a villain. Indeed, in this article, he calls faith “stupid” more than once. But from this article we can discern that Dawkins’ primary enemy is faith in a personal God. He is not interested in dismissing something he considers moral, no matter the source. Dawkins is no stranger to kindness, and this article demonstrates just how fiercely he can support parts of a religion that are associated with morality rather than belief. It is a shame that debaters have had so little success convincing Dawkins of the nuances of theism. If that had ever happened, they could have joined forces in promoting the beautiful selflessness Dawkins finds so unique to the human species.
Richard Dawkins’s “Atheist for Jesus” is a sprightly essay about a peculiar human behavior: what Dawkins calls “super niceness.” Super niceness is a “saintly” capacity for compassion, mercy, or forgiveness. It is sufficiently rare among human beings that we note and marvel at it among ourselves. Dawkins attempts expand our perspective on super niceness in order to bring to light its evolutionary noteworthiness. Along with things like long-term foresight, contraception, and artistic expression, super niceness is a counter-intuitive evolutionary development, Dawkins argues. It has a certain kind of irrationality, at least in the evolutionary context. The genetic selfishness that sets the constraints for evolutionary biological unfolding seems to have developed its opposite in super niceness. Dawkins celebrates super niceness, and suggests that if it can be coupled to a further characteristically human behavior, what he calls epidemics of mimesis, then it can and ought to be spread through the species as much as possible. How, then, to do that? Dawkins cites Jesus as someone who, by the biblical accounts, preached and enacted super niceness. If we can excise the superstitious theism that science has outgrown, but keep the fine model of super niceness that Jesus (or Ghandi, he suggests) instantiates, then perhaps Atheists for Jesus can inspire more of it in the species.
Dawkins's brief and colloquial argument achieves something remarkable: it makes Jesus’ theistic beliefs accidental and not essential to his identity. Moreover, Dawkins does this not to discredit Jesus, but to reinforce his moral importance. This is a genial, clever, and staggering attack on traditional Christianity. While many moderate and liberal Christians are dumping oppressive attitudes to towards women because such Christians view the gender inequalities expressed in the Bible and the tradition as historical and cultural accidents, Dawkins is issuing a further and analogous challenge: why not dump the theism too? What is more, Dawkins suggests (though he doesn’t argue for it much) that the answer to “What Would Jesus Do?” is that Jesus would convert from a super nice first-century adherent of Judaism to a super nice 21st-century atheist. What Dawkins does not acknowledge, however, is the role that symbolically significant beliefs and practices play in the mimetic epidemiology of super niceness. If super niceness is a kind of two-fold singularity, in both societal and evolutionary terms, then the mediating symbolisms, myths, and practices that communicate (with all of the epidemiological connotation that carries) will presumably bear the same discontinuity, peculiarity, and perhaps seeming irrationality that characterizes the behavior it hopes to inspire.
Dawkins uses the seemingly oxymoronic title “Atheists for Jesus” to expound on the need for there to be more “super nice” people in this world. Dawkins is in awe that “super nice” people exist in the world, since it seems to go against the selfish evolutionary tendencies of “survival of the fittest.” If society were still “wild,” Dawkins asserts that “super nice” people would not survive. Nevertheless, these “super nice” people can do good for the civilized world and Dawkins hopes to spread this goodness by co-opting religious fervor through the movement “Atheists for Jesus.” In the article, Dawkins praises Jesus’ message of niceness and hopes to strip Jesus’ message of the supernatural theistic language, arguing that this language was simply a product of his times and is not essential to Jesus’ message of goodness.
I found Dawkins’s article amusingly biased. Dawkins picks and chooses what he likes about Jesus, citing only his message for the social good and never the passage where Jesus claims that he came with a sword to divide families. Perhaps Dawkins deemed this passage supernatural and threw it out. Dawkins is appropriating Jesus and not providing adequate reasoning for doing so. His methodology is a personal bias. I laughed that Dawkins quoted from the King James Version of the bible; the KJV always sounds so foreign to me. I also found it interesting that Dawkins goes against the Darwinian principles and claims that selfishness is not the answer in a global society. I found it brave of him to admit that society has changed, and so should the traits that get passed on in the evolutionary process.
In this article Dawkins is making the argument that there is no one good in this world and no one can be called “nice.” The author's main purpose for this article is to quash the idea that Jesus was the most nicest or the good person in this world and that is the reason one should follow him. Dawkins makes his argument with the help of Darwin's idea of natural selection that no one can be nice and kind because all “niceness” and “kindness” comes from self interest. Dawkins argues that according to natural selection if there were a minority of super nice people they would have been removed by now. Dawkins believes that it is human nature to imitate others and that is also for a personal gains. Dawkins concludes his article by arguing that at the maximum what we can do with Jesus is to see Jesus in the same way we see Gandhi or Mother Teresa who were nice people but had flaws and can not be worshipped for being nice.
On the outset I should say that I agree with Dawkins. This is an issue I am having personally as I believe in Jesus (human/God) as God. I think Dawkins has shown in a scientific way with the help of Darwin's hypothesis that no one can be good. I also think at the maximum what one can do is to say that Jesus was probably a good moral teacher; and that does not make him (Jesus) worthy of being worshipped or prayed to as a God. But, here is where I make the distinction between faith and reason. I think it is a belief or faith to say that Jesus is God. It can not have proofs and evidences. I do not believe that miracles or even resurrection is the one thing that makes Jesus divine. Miracles can happen and still happens and that does not make a person divine. I think the one thing that makes Jesus divine or different for me is the fact that he can forgive sins. Now, this can not be proved it has to be accepted as a belief or by faith. This can not be defended or proved. So, I think that as far as reason and evidence can go I am a follower of Jesus because he seemed to be a nice person like Gandhi or Mother Teresa. But my belief of him being God is based on faith. In this article I liked what Dawkins had to say about a person being nice and with logical reasoning I think he does a good job of proving his point that no one in this world can be “super good.”
(see "Response by David Rohr" under Richard Dawkins, "Why There Almost Certainly is no God")
In this short essay, Dawkins considers the un-Darwinian nature of “super niceness” and suggests the need to propagate super niceness in a population otherwise determined by the selfish nature of Darwinian natural selection and the genetic drive for reproduction. Considering that the homo sapiens is a unique yet arbitrary singularity in the long history of evolution, Dawkins nevertheless believes that this singularity has the opportunity to utilize energy or effort freed from pure genetic drives toward higher goals such as super niceness. According to the principles of natural selection, this shift cannot occur on the genetic level. Dawkins therefore proposes the idea of memetic engineering, with the corresponding idea of a meme pool, as a way in which super niceness could spread like an epidemic, in a similar way in which religious irrationality spreads across cultures.
Gerhard Dorn, the 16th c. translator and interpreter of Paracelsus, describes a similar process in his treatise Speculative Philosophy. He distinguishes between the Body, the aspect of the person which is governed by selfish impulses represented by the seven deadly sins. This initial self-oriented state is nonetheless unitive and whole. However, Dorn claims that the Mind must learn to free itself from the body in order to communicate with Virtue and to contemplate Truth and Beauty through the mediation of Virtue. This achievement is referred to as the birth of the spirit and engenders and internal duality in the individual. From there, the Mind must sway the Body to subject itself to the dictates perceived by the Mind through its tutelage by Virtue. This occurs through repetitive practice and continued contemplation, including repeated separations and returns to Virtue if necessary. When the Body finally rises to meet the Mind, and can now submit to these higher ideals, the Body and Mind are reunited and return to Earth. The individual in which this process occurs, however, is transmuted as a vehicle for the ideals of Virtue in this process of reconciled wholeness. Despite obvious differences between Dorn and Dawkins, Dorn does acknowledge that the impulsive drives of the Body can be transformed by the Spiritual activity of the Mind, similar to what Dawkins means when he suggests that “goal-seeking mechanisms, original favoured for selfish gene reasons” could be diverted [subverted? perverted?] “from their Darwinian goals and into other paths” (310). What Dawkins would call memetic activity distinct from yet interrelated with genetic activity, Dorn would call the spiritual activity of the Mind, distinct from yet interrelated with the activity of the Body. As a final note, I feel contemporary studies in epigenetics could throw some light on these topics: especially the profound fact that that the expression of a gene can be modified without fundamental changes to the genetic code. Perhaps Dawkins is unknowingly more religious or spiritual than he thinks?
In this reading Richard Dawkins focuses his critique, not on Christianity, but on the theistic framework that undergirds its philosophy. Dawkins starts off by highlighting his belief that Jesus was a radical charismatic leader of his time and often preached against many of the harmful laws of a tyrannical god. He argues that Jesus was a product of his time and therefore preached his message from a theist worldview but that the core of his message came from a place of radical love and unselfishness. Darwin contemplates this intense form of love he calls “super niceness” and how it presents an issue with the Darwinian theory of self-preservation. He comes to the conclusion that this super niceness should be able to be taught to humans considering that religion can teach people to also go against their most basic functions. It is at this intersection of radical kindness, religious inspiration, and modern science, that he sees an opening for atheist religious individuals.
I really enjoyed this this writing by Dawkins. I liked that his time and effort was not spent against religion but showing how it can be adapted to promote radical kindness around the world. As someone who find himself in the camp of non-theistic Christians, I really appreciated his acknowledgement of legitimately kind religious individuals who may simply be stuck within the metaphysical framework of their culture. I also really liked his focus on the evolution of the mind and humans developing the foresight to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term goals or pleasure. This allowed him to not give off the false reality that these super kind individuals are better than others but rather than they have the ability to recognize that their true best interest is to also promote the wellbeing of others and that though it might not have immediate benefits it will likely help one’s life in the long run.
|
|
|
Richard Dawkins |
Gerin Oil compares religion with a “powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of symptoms, often of an anti -social or self-damaging nature” (305). The author blames religion for the events of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks. He mocks monasticism, religious rituals (including prayers) and people's fear of a punitive God. He addresses problems such as gender inequality in the religious community. He believes that the development of religion is based on the sacrifice of humans' welfare. In short, the author treats religion as an intoxicating drug. He does not understand why so many people want to be toxic!
There are at least two ways to attack religion. Some authors in Hitchens' book fight against principles and doctrines of religion. By presenting scientific facts, they try to prove religion is due to imagination, illusion, or fairy-tale beliefs. They want to cause wars between religion and science. These authors are concentrated on the negative relationship between the essence of religion and principles of science, which I find very difficult to argue because nobody on the Earth knows the truth. The earthly world might not have an eternal truth. If religion cannot be proved, science cannot be proved either! Scientific principles are not permanent. They are built upon old theories that have been abandoned. Therefore, I am not interested in arguments that claim science has defeated religion. I prefer to be a peacemaker between science and religion, which I think should work together to discover the truth of life. The author of Gerin Oil represents another type of atheist who focuses on “symptoms” of religion. Their holistic attitude towards religion is determined by how they interpret religious people's behaviours. They are stubborn (although it is an unfriendly word!). It is hard to change their mind because their interpretations of religion are based on what they see and hear. I like the author's sense of humour, but his article reminds me of an uncomfortable experience in which I felt I was humiliated as the only Christian student at the school. This is how my history teacher describes Christians: “Christians are barbarians, maybe worse than barbarians. They eat the same bread and drink the water from the same cup, thinking the bread and the water are the flesh and the blood of another human. Only dogs do that! Guess what are the silliest animals in the world? Christians!” My experience teaches me that while everyone has the right to express his or her opinion, he or she should respect different views. Otherwise, it hurts. I do not think the author of Gerin Oil respects of religion, although I understand he is trying to present his atheistic views in a creative way.
In this article Richard Dawkins is portraying the issues religion brings into a society. The author is making his argument by comparing religion with a dangerous drug which he calls as “Grein Oil.” Dawkins builds his argument on the presumption that the idea of a God and religion is based on superstitions and these superstitions does not do any good to society it damages society slowly but subtly like how drugs damages a human being. Dawkins argues that religion damages society as well as individuals, it makes people run away from the reality of life and hide behind beliefs to satisfy their ego and unfulfilled ambitions. Dawkins argues that the most dangerous power of this drug is that secular governments turn a blind eye on them and children are exposed to this drug (religion) in a very easy way. Dawkins concludes that religion should not be injected to a child so that the bigger problems that religion brings to a society can be avoided.
In this article I think Dawkins shows the demerits of religion. I do accept that religion can be misused and bring a lot of hurt to people. I personally know many people who have got hurt from church and decided not to believe in God because of the abuse of religion. So, I accept Dawkins argument that religion is being misused and can be misused. But, I think religion can be used in a better way and be made as a help for the society as well. I agree with Dawkins because he shows the demerits of religion I also think that the idea of religion can have some merits, and that should be appreciated. I agree with Dawkins that all religions are myths and superstitions because no one can define and show real evidence to prove things. But, I think the irony of the matter is that the idea of God can only be understood with the fallen weak stories and myth's that we see in this world. Dawkins has written this article by only seeing one side of the issue. I think religion can bring social change, peace and harmony among people. If a person wish to hide against a superstition to satisfy his ego and unfulfilled dreams and if that works for him then why should any one have a problem with it? If religion or the myth works for a person to be a normal human being just like Richard Dawkins then why should he complain against his believes or superstition. I think Richard Dawkins is committing the same mistake theist are committing; which is to say that what they are believing is the only right belief and rest of the world are fools! As an atheist I think Richard Dawkins has the space to encourage others to have the freedom to believe or not believe; and thus look things in an unbiased way. But, from this article it seems that Dawkins is very biased by only showing one side of the argument.
“Gerin Oil” is a tightly organized, trenchant essay in which Richard Dawkins describes the effects of the fictional narcotic, Gerin Oil. Gerin Oil is the thinly veiled stand-in for “religion” in this humorous, yet tragic piece. The humor results from Dawkins’ keen irony, and the tragedy flows from the dark contemporary and historical events that serve as his evidence. Dawkins directly satirizes the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but by extension takes aim at all religious forms. The breadth of issues raised is equally vast and is achieved by using “low,” medium,” and “strong” “dosages” as a literary device. Dawkins discusses the somatic and psychological effects of Gerin Oil, and he places particular emphasis on the tremendous vulnerability of children. Cultic membership and sexual prohibitions are found to be byproducts of the habitual use of Gerin Oil. By means of the “low dosage” category, Dawkins calls attention to social forms of religious expression that appear to be innocuous, e.g., “marriages, funerals, and state ceremonies,” but may in fact be avenues to more aggressive forms of religiosity. (305) Ritual behaviors are targeted through the “medium dosage” category. Prayers that seek “private wishes” receive a lashing since their fulfillment comes “at the cost of other people’s welfare and mild violations of the laws of physics.” (305) The “strong dosage” category encompasses those who experience visions and hear voices, and, not surprisingly, religious innovators are found to be amongst the heaviest users of Gerin Oil. Concern over, and conceptualizations of, afterlife torment are transformed into ‘bad trips’ experienced by those chronically abusing Gerin Oil. Ratcheting up his satirical critique, Dawkins casts religious institutions and religious leaders as mafia type cartels that relentlessly and audaciously push the addictive narcotic. Unlike the situation with actual drug cartels, governments operate as subsidizing accomplices in the distribution of Gerin Oil. The topic of martyrdom dramatically closes the satire as Dawkins delineates the Catch-22 of persecuting a religious zealot.
Irony flows from Dawkins’ pen with a swiftness rivaling that of Muhammad Ali’s jabs. Like Ali’s rhymes, Dawkins’ work is also provocative. Yet, his evidence represents an oversimplification since he fails to account for the use of Gerin Oil, or “religion,” as a tool for attaining political and economic ends. There is no doubt that religion played a role in the European conquest of the Americas, the Salem witch trials, and the World Trade Center attacks, but it is untenable to claim religion as their sole cause. On another front, the framing of the piece subtly discloses Dawkins’ theory of the origin of religion. Dawkins perceives that religion is created by the few and distributed to the masses. From this point of view, religion is used to drug and manipulate the populace in order to satisfy the avarice of the elite. However, this may not be the origin of religion. Religion may be a democratic impulse felt by the majority that then undergoes institutionalization. With a shift in theory, the internal structure of Dawkins’ satire would collapse; although, his deft employment of the art of satire would remain unscathed.
(see "Response by David Rohr" under Richard Dawkins, "Why There Almost Certainly is no God")
|
|
|
Richard Dawkins |
By making some points of the controversy clear, Dawkins shows the implausibility of the creationist assertion of Intelligent Design, refuting the most typical arguments of them. First of all, Dawkins challenges the argument that the design is the only possible answer due to the problem of improbability by saying that evolution is not “a single, one-off event”(294) but “a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so”(294). It is like climbing Mount Improbable by seeking “the gentle slopes at the back”(295) of the Mountain not by incredibly leaping at once on top. Secondly, Dawkins is against the argument that the irreducible complexity proves the existence of the Designer. According to him, while the argument is assuming the perfection of the current status of an organ as a whole as it was designed, it has been easily observed that a certain organ was not used for the current purpose but for different ones, and that a part of an organ could function outside the organ as a whole. All of these are the effective ways of climbing Mountain Improbable. Lastly, Dawkins claims that the creationists' “worship of gaps”(297) will be continually losing their ground because “gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide”(297). He also asserts that we do not need all evidence for every step of evolution for conviction of it, and that the evidence we now have are sufficient to convince us.
To those who are hesitant to choose natural selection due to the problem of improbability—including myself—Dawkins' work is very helpful to settle anxiety of it and choose natural selection. Especially, both his shaping a new confrontation between Design and natural selection instead of an old and wrong one between Design and chance and his explanation of the problem of improbability with the analogy of climbing Mount Improbable did really a good job for the hesitant. On the other hand, one of his reasoning with which I cannot agree is that “Intelligent design suffers from exactly the same objection as chance”(293). This may not matter to many creationists and fundamentalist believers who think of God as existing by himself or herself or itself without any preceding cause. In other words, when people believe in God as a creator or a designer, their God is beyond laws of nature and the principle of causality. And this kind of belief is not destroyed by Dawkins' reasoning. Therefore, although he may well defend natural selection from the attack of the problem of improbability, yet he cannot attack one's belief system which is beyond reasoning by the same way of attacking done by the creationists.
In the first and largest of these excerpts Dawkins is mostly responding to intelligent design arguments concerning irreducible complexity. He makes two basic points about the ID position. First, it confuses the accumulation of incremental change via natural selection with the exceedingly improbable chance of randomly assembling a complex organ or organism all at once. The basic ID argument — “this biological feature is so complex that it could not have evolved by chance” — reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Dawkins compares this confusion to a mountain with an insurmountable sheer cliff on one side and a long, gentle incline which one can easily walk up on the other. Creationists stand before the sheer cliff admiring its impossible heights while biologists study the abundant evidence of life’s long ascent up the opposite side. Dawkins’ second objection is that ID, like all god-of-the-gaps arguments, represents a failure of imagination and an arbitrary cessation of inquiry. Whereas ignorance inspires scientists to seek greater knowledge, ID pseudo-scientists celebrate and cultivate ignorance because it opens up a space in which to hide God. In the second and third selections, Dawkins abandons the reflective style of the first selection in favor of more inflammatory and generally less interesting rhetoric. After reducing all religious phenomena to the activity of a fictional drug in the second piece, he chatters about evolutionary selfishness, super niceness, and “Atheists for Jesus” T-shirts for a few pages in the third.
Dawkins is an enigma to me. How can the same person speak so insightfully and enjoyably in one breath and transform into a belligerent and irritating clown with his next breath? The first essay, though a bit dull for Dawkins, is a firm and responsible rebuttal of creationist nonsense which I am happy to applaud. The second excerpt is mind-numbingly oversimplified and has more in common with the attention-seeking misbehavior of adolescents than with an adult conversation about religiously motivated terrorism. Dawkins reveals his simplistic understanding of religion by equating complex religious phenomena as diverse as terrorists hijacking planes, daily prayer, sexual asceticism, and the celebration of major life transitions at weddings and funerals. Rather than actually thinking about the differences between these religious activities, Dawkins is content to dismiss them all by comparing them to a dangerous chemical substance. It is exactly this reckless and lazy approach to religion that prevents the legitimate concerns of the New Atheists from being heard by contemporary religious people. Though slightly less offensive, the third article reveals an equally unsophisticated grasp of the relationship between biological heritage and the influence of culture. Dawkins seems perplexed by how wasteful activities like art and the religious cultivation of compassion were produced by biological evolution. Nonetheless, from the depths of his muddled musings a conclusion surfaces: “super-niceness is good!” Thanks, Richard. Really, that’s helpful.
Dawkins comtemplates the strangeness of humans being nice in relation to ideas of Darwinism and survival. It is counter intuitive that humans would use their capacity for others’ benefit. He cires Jesus as an exemplary nice human, and who, in combination with his highly evolved brain, demonstrated that being stupidly nice was something to copy. Dawkins is essentially saying that humans evolved into a way of caring for others, so why not live into it? There is no other explanation besides the absurdity of the universe.
His praise for human compassion is veiled in sly humor and but has no acknowledgement of the role of human institutions in the evolution of this compassion. The world is a funny and backwards place where survival led humans to care about others more than themselves. So why not also have small joke about Jesus and atheists? It is quippy enough to only be slightly offensive to those that believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but also thoughtful in his way of demonstrating that life without God is still full of care. He is also saying that humans don’t need God in order to know to care, but this short piece really only wants to chuckle at itself, not start a true argument.
Given the important role that the argument form design plays in theistic theology, Dawkins argues that a closer scrutiny would show that design is a proof of non-existence of god since design leaves us without any clue about the who designed the designer. According to Dawkins, it's ridiculous to give the coincidence all the credit for the complexity ingrained in living beings; however, design, which is a mere delusion, is not the only alternative explanation for complexity. Darwinism shows us that natural selection is the only plausible explanation since it demonstrates how the great level of complexities can be broken down to smaller ones in which the probability of chance rises. By espousing the natural selection as the only explanation, there will be no gab for god to fill.
My response
This chapter assures that it is almost certainty that no one is infallible from being bias even those who are devoted to the scientific thinking. One of the most important elements of a good critique, as I understand it, is to present ideas and opinions in the question as they are; I think that Dawkins did not succeed in performing this task in this chapter. First, he described the idea of intelligent design as an obstacle in the way of scientific progress since it depends on our ignorance of the natural explanation of natural phenomena. That is, the more natural explanations we know the more we reduce the gape for god to fill. This view of Dawkins based on the mixing between the natural causes and teleological once. Intelligent design does not contradict with natural explanation. As a matter of fact, many of proponents of intelligent design they are themselves scientists, and some of them believe in the common descent. Secondly, Dawkins insists on describing all of them as creationists. By doing so, Dawkins put those who believe in common descent between two options, either they become Darwinists or give up what they believe as evidence for common descent and become creationists. Dawkins is astonished that there are still people who can see the design in nature, and he imputes it to the low level consciousness they have because of not immersed in natural selection enough. It’s a kind of ad hominem attack, when the argument addresses personal considerations such as lack of intelligence and consciousness more than tackling the problem in question. As a matter of fact, it is astonishing that Dawkins is astonished that the proponents of intelligent design can see the design in nature and attribute it to the designer, in the time he gives all the credits to the nature section that he treats as a willing omnipotent omniscient being.
|
|
|
Daniel Dennett |
As a general rule, if you write books about a topic, you should be able to define it; thus, here, Daniel Dennett makes an attempt to define religion. Dennett thoughtfully suggests using a family resemblance approach to religions rather than trying to define it is a natural kind. He explains that “something as diverse and complex as religion” should be dealt with carefully, especially since “a great deal hinges on how we define religion” (for example, legal protections; 329). Very tentatively, and with much hedging, Dennett suggests that the avowal of “a belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought” is the common denominator of what he calls religion. He explains that the less personified Being of many people's faith disqualifies those faiths from the category of religion – such a belief might be present in a surrogate for, or in a former, religion, but “it is another species altogether” (330). Dennett closes by dismissing magical or “satanic cults” as non-religions based on the fact that the people who belong to them are “selfish” and “gullible,” whereas religious people are “well-intentioned, trying to lead morally good lives, earnest in their desire not to do evil, and to make amends for their transgressions” (332).
Dennett's feeble attempt to define the subject of his New York Times Bestseller book is utterly disappointing. Despite his own recognition that understanding religion is incredibly important, he seems impatient with the difficulty of the task, blaming his inability to organize his thoughts on the “pious fog of modest incomprehension” of religious believers rather than his own incapability to articulate or respect the complexity of religion – not to mention his apparently complete lack of awareness for the vast literature that already exists on the subject. Focusing almost entirely on belief, Dennett neglects the social, practical, and behavioral aspects religion – even though he explicitly says that such a focus “tends to distort and camouflage some of the most interesting features of religion”! Exactly. His careless fumbling between functionalist and structuralist approaches ends in an awkward ad hominem attack on practitioners of black magic. I was initially encouraged by Dennett's suggestion of a family resemblance approach to defining religion – a great idea! But my excitement quickly dissipated as I realized that Dennett had neither the credentials nor the patience to offer an adequate definition about religion.
In this piece, the author Dennett focuses on the discussion about how to define religion. By introducing different definitions of religion, including his own, Dennett shows how humans' perception of God is affected by different definitions of religion. Dennett points out that “drawing a boundary between religion and its nearest neighbors among cultural phenomena is beset with similar, but more vexing problems” (329). He reaches the conclusion that no matter how religion is defined, religious people are those who keep themselves from evil things and live a moral life.
I appreciate the author's attitude towards religion. As an atheist, he does not simply deny the significance of religion like some atheists might do (“Religion is rubbish”! “God is your imagination!”). Instead, he analyzes the inconsistency of the essence of religion that reveals how religion is under the influence of intriguing issues such as cultures and personal experiences. Dennett defines religion as “social system whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought” (330). “A supernatural agent” is the key point in this definition. This sounds like a fair definition from an atheist's perspective because whether God exists or not is the biggest argument between atheists and theists. Meanwhile, a danger lurks. As the author later points out, his definition verifies the legitimacy of “black magic” (331). I define the so-called “black magic” as false religion that encourage people to do all sorts of evil things that are against human moral principles in the name of one or more supernatural agents. For example, social problems caused by false religions such as “Falun Dafa” are big issues where I come from. Believers of Falun Dafa are asked not to see doctors when they are sick, kill their families and friends to improve their spiritual health, and burn themselves in order to go to heaven. It pretends to be a religion in order to confuse people. In fact, I just read a Wikipedia page that claims that Falun Dafa is only a spiritual practice. Therefore, in addition to the boundary between religion and non-religion, there must be another boundary between true religion and false religion. Dennett is aware of this point. He tries to distinguish religious people from “black magic” people by identifying the religious as those who are “well-intentioned, trying to lead morally good lives, earnest in their desire not to do evil, and to make amends for their transgressions” (332). It is true that religious people should have some of these virtues, but it seems to me that Dennett also believes that false-religion people are malicious, trying to lead evil lives and are proud of being evil. This is a generalization. False religion (or “black magic”) is evil, but believers of false religions are not necessarily being evil. As far as I know, many of them are innocent people who are deceived by evil spirits. Otherwise, who wants to burn themselves and think they are going to heaven?
After a prolonged exploration of metaphor about the challenge of finding adequate definitions of religion, Dennett gives a succinct overview of systematized groups who have benefited from a definition that has been too inclusive. His definition of religion is a “social system whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.” Though this definition excludes individualistic religion as depicted in William James' definition, Dennett believes the corporate element is necessary to his definition. The rest of the excerpt explains how this definition includes religions and excludes potentials such as groups of sport fans. Nevertheless, the crucial standard of his definition is that it requires supernatural agency and an attempt to gain the approval of those agents. Many of his other points are extraneous.
As in the majority of Dennett's writing, the reader should be keenly aware of Dennettian manipulation. That is, in his short discourse, Dennett fails to critically analyze his definition. A fundamental question that should have been answered is why seeking approval from a supernatural agent is important in a definition of religion. While failing to answer this question concerning his definition, he gambols through insubstantial tenets that have no relevance to his definition. Then, in his closing lines, Dennett throws a furtive jab at all people and associated belief systems that try to appease divine agents when said agents ask them to do evil things. This, therefore, answers the aforementioned question. His definition is crafted to define religions in terms that Dennett can then make absurd.
Daniel C. Dennett tentatively defines religions as “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought” (Hitchens, 330). His fundamental reason for adopting such a narrow definition is biological. The individual religious person whose religion is a private, one-person affair does not count as religious according to this definition. The few Satanist or demonic worshiping groups likewise fail to meet the terms of the definition. Those believing in a God as an abstract reality, an eternal and immutable Being that does not intervene in the world, belong to former religions. These former religions are much like Halloween or Santa Claus, both of which have religious roots but no longer are actually religious. Dennett's tentative definition highlights theists who believe in a supernatural, anthropomorphic God who acts in this world. In other words, religions are social groups with traditions who ‘invoke’ a deity or deities to act on one's behalf.
Why can atheists not engage productively with scholars of religion? Dennett claims to define religion as if he were a naturalist making some of the first classifications of the animal kingdoms. He seems to regard himself as an intrepid pioneer, blazing a path through the tangled jungle of religious phenomena. But how many scholars of religion have declared and defended theories and definitions of religion? 10,000+ scholars attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion each year, most of whom have received at least an introduction to a few of the very many definitions of religions. Dennett is far from an intrepid pioneer! Rather, he is a day late and a dollar short. Religious phenomena are varied. Religious phenomena are complex. Religious phenomena are not easily compared or categorized. Complex, fascinating, varied, polarizing, and convincing definitions of religion do exist. Dennett should follow the logic of his metaphor and seek the group of inquirers who work at the forefront of religious studies.
Daniel Dennett proposes a reconceptualization. Like thousands of thinkers before him, he is baffled by the vast array of components that may or may not be called religious, the different contexts in which the term “religion” is used, and what “religion” actually means. What do not baffle him, however, are the consequences of this confusion: unkind practices and unfair laws. Dennett proposes a clear and easy solution. A religion is organized belief in a personal god or gods, and anything else should otherwise be called “spiritual.”
Dennett’s reasoning is powerful and effective. There are many aspects of organized pursuit of approval from a deity that make it distinct. First, it comes saddled with doctrine and ritual and then, more importantly, it encourages in-group out-group behavior that actively works against universal community and love. Someone who practices spirituality alone, on the other hand, or who organizes with others but not in doctrinal pursuit of approval, poses less of a threat to societal cohesion. Dennett may want to consider less of a binary approach to these definitions. Instead of “religious” versus “spiritual” Dennett could probably come up with a dozen separate categories. But as a whole, the distinction he draws is an important one, and in the pursuit of universal humanity, Dennett is right to address the origins and sociological implications of in-group out-group behavior.
This Dennett excerpt uses the analogy of the biological category for vertebrates to aid his personal definition of religion. While cephalopods are not technically vertebrates, they were deemed “honorary vertebrates” in an animal cruelty law due to their complex nervous system. Much like cephalopods, Dennett argues that, in contrast to his definition of religion, many can be deemed “honorary religions” for having some but not all qualities of a religion. Dennett settles on his definition of religion as “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought” (330). His excerpt highlights the stakes of defining religion, since there are many benefits and consequences in the United States for whether or not a particular institution is deemed a religion.
I enjoyed Dennett’s exploration in defining religion. Defining religion is a difficult task, one I attempted in my undergraduate studies, though I was not particularly satisfied with the result. Dennett’s exploration of various perceptions of prayer and its efficacy highlight the immense variety of perspectives on the many aspects of religion. I believe that each individual creates his or her own definition of religion, just as each congregant listening to a Sunday sermon will have a different definition of God. Although religion is a communal endeavor, each individual carries it out on his or her own. Religion doesn’t fit well in a box.
With a healthy dose of sarcasm and wit, Daniel Dennett attempts to set the parameters for a “working definition of religion.” Dennett sees this as an important enterprise since a “great deal hinges on how we define religion” including “legal protection, honor, prestige, and traditional exemption from certain sorts of analysis and criticism (329)”. Dennett settles on the definition that religions are “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought (330)”. Dennett believes that this definition rules out those who would pray with no hope of being answered (such as those who pray to achieve psychological stability), those who are thoroughly individualistic (such as the religious person in “solitude” imagined by William James), and those who seek only to manipulate supernatural agents for selfish ends (such as satanic cultists). Of course, Dennett’s definition is not rigid and must allow for many cases that might blur the lines, but Dennett is ok with giving certain unique cases special consideration. Dennett gives the analogy of cephalopods that were made “honorary vertebrates” in the United Kingdom so that they could receive legal protection, and he suggests that some people who are not strictly religious according to his definition might still be considered “spiritual,” which for Dennett is an honorary religious category.
Dennett’s definition of religion is nothing short of presumptuous and he gives almost no substantial support for this definition other than a few scattered references to the beliefs of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Dennett’s reduction of religion to a belief in a “supernatural agent or agents” automatically ostracizes many followers of Eastern religion who emphasize harmony with nature rather than “approval” from a supernatural agent. His definition also rules out philosophical naturalists who still believe that religious practice orients one to ultimate truth. Despite the fact that Dennett calls his definition a working definition and “subject to revision,” his definition is still an unsatisfactory place to start since it doesn’t adequately take into account what many world religions offer in place of a “supernatural approval” narrative. I laughed at Dennett’s humorous foray into the definitions of cephalopods, but I think it is unfortunate that Dennett’s sense of humor is the most successful element in this piece. His attempt to give a working definition of religion that actually works falls quite flat.
In this short essay, Daniel Dennett attempts to defend a potential definition of religion to aid in its study and to clarify what it is what we are talking about when we say religion, as opposed to concepts like culture or politics. The question of a definition of religion is “what is the essence of religion?” or what are its “essential features?” The definition that Dennett has settled on is “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.” The supernatural agents that these religions engage may be placed on a continuum from more to less anthropomorphic, although he points out that although the religious elites of religious traditions that their God is eternal and immutable (near the farther end of the less anthropomorphic side of the continuum), that in the life of practitioners many people will still “pray to God…hope that God will answer their prayers tomorrow” and other acts that treat their God as an anthropomorphic agent. The most interesting aspect of this definition becomes not what it contains, but what it cuts out. Religions that engage God symbolically, but that do not believe in a literal supernatural agent, are not religions at all. “It is perhaps, a wonderful (or terrible) surrogate for religion, or a former religion, an offspring of a genuine religion that bears many family resemblances to religion, but it is another species altogether.” Similarly, the religious experiences of individuals who are not connected to established religions, what Dennett calls “private religion” is not engaging in religion at all because it is not connected to an established social structure. The stipulation that the supernatural agents in questions are one whose approval the religious practitioner seeks cuts out forms of religious practice in which supernatural agents are engaged merely for the working of a ritual (e.g., in forms of Black Magic).
Any definition of religion is likely to be problematic currently, as anyone familiar with debates in religious studies will attest. Definitions such as that offered by Dennett that focus on the belief in and engagement with supernatural agents are not uncommon, but they are certainly problematic in that they are incapable of registering naturalistic forms or religious life, nor do they recognize religions where supernatural agents are not of ultimate importance. One example of which would be Buddhism. While the practice of many forms of Buddhism is highly superstitious and involves a whole pantheon of supernatural agents, they neither perceive ultimate reality as a personal agent and the most important aspect of Buddhism is the liberation of suffering through enlightenment about the nature of reality and following the eight-fold path. Does such a religion meet Dennett’s definition? This is an issue that he does address in the essay: “Sharks and dolphins look very much alike and behave in many similar ways, but they are not the same sort of thing at all. Perhaps, once we understand the whole field better, we will see that Buddhism and Islam, for all their similarities, deserve to be considered two entirely different species of cultural phenomenon.” While his definition is less problematic than other – F. LeRon Shults’ definition of religion as “shared imaginative engagement with axiologically relevant supernatural agents” still defines religion in terms of supernatural agency, but includes an ontological (and implied moral) judgement in his definition by labeling the engagement as “imagined” – but it is still problematic because it reduces religion down to one (admittedly very common) characteristic.
|
|
|
Daniel Dennett |
Soon after Dennett underwent major aortal surgery to save his life, friends were eager to know whether his near-encounter with death had altered his atheistic frame of mind. Any change, even the slightest, in the direction of faith would likely (in this country, and with Dennett's fame) generate significant popular interest (as did A.J. Ayer's, whom Dennett mentions here, and also, though less reliably, Anthony Flew's). He takes this show of curiosity surrounding the personal impact of the incident as an opportunity to illustrate anecdotally why, unfazed even by the uniquely intimate terror of confronting his own mortality, he remains just as atheist as everyone knows he has been. This short essay introduces no break from his previous thinking on the question of God, and that very constancy in his thinking is part of his message. A little facetiously, he says he did experience an “epiphany” (p. 278), to wit, that with “greater clarity than ever before” (p. 278) he could understand what exactly he means whenever he exclaims “Thank Goodness!” instead of “Thank God!” His immense gratitude is for the many committed, talented individuals using technological innovations (owing to other individuals), responsible for his continued life. So this epiphany was no theophany. It implied nothing about God, while having everything to do with goodness of people and with how good it is to still be one. Thus he opens up a world of difference in attitude between those two expressions of gratitude. “Thank Goodness” properly gives credit where credit is due: to all the people, past and present—no gods among them—whose hard work in availing themselves of science for his sake made his survival possible.
The story of miraculous, thoroughly human interventions like this one in Dennett's life can be told comprehensively and accurately without any hint of the divine. Even the slightest inclination to give gratitude, even a small amount, to a God who shows no tangible evidence of being involved is, in an important sense, not just mistaken concerning God but wrongful toward the human beings who were tangibly involved. Dennett insists that his quasi-reverence for science is sincere but cannot be compared to religious faith because it is always tempered with awareness of science's fallibility, the overt mistakes and failures of scientists make in practice, and the immense capacity science has for improvement—unlike religion, he thinks. Are there counterexamples? Where in history or in today's world, if anywhere, have attitudes toward science learned from religious attitudes in these respects?
"Thank Goodness!" is Dennett’s response to the imagined hope that he would renounce his atheism after a near-death experience. Instead of recanting, Dennett explains why he remains an atheist. The essay is an elaboration on what he means when he says “thank goodness.” Goodness, for Dennett, is what saved his life: it is the rationality and hard work of scientists who constantly scrutinize themselves and seek to improve. This attitude stands in stark contrast to religious belief, which Dennett describes as exempting itself from critical scrutiny. He goes further by implying that those who do not follow his gratitude towards rational goodness are in fact doing harm by wasting their energy praying in ways guided by irrational beliefs.
Get off your high horse Dennett! Hitchens’ introduction to this piece is grossly sycophantic: thanks to “the great Daniel Dennett … we have a fighting chance of destroying the whole perverted myth of the unbeliever’s last minute wonderment” (277). The tone of the piece is so arrogant that it is nearly impossible not to respond in kind. I agree with his applause for human goodness and I echo his affirmation of the necessity of rational self-critique. But his tone makes me want to oppose him, which makes the possibility of advancing any discussion all the more unlikely.
Many unbelievers have undergo conversions following near-death experiences. Daniel Dennett is not one of them, and he wants everyone to know it. He briefly recounts his harrowing experience and then proceeds to deliver a sermon on thanking reason and rationality instead of wasting time on thanking God. He honors those who work hard in the medicinal field and maintain high standards to ensure no mistakes are made when the life of another person is at stake, and compares this to the standard by which the religious measure the success of a sinner. Even if one fails to be perfect, the agent can find solace in knowing that actions were performed with good intentions. In the medical world, Dennett says that intentions count for nothing if you do the wrong thing and a life is lost. Religion seems to be letting people off easy, especially with actions of gratitude. Dennett scoffs at the idea of thanking God through prayer when one could be doing actions to help the world to show their thanks to goodness instead.
I’m not sure I agree with Dennett that intentions count for nothing in the medical world, or that he is drawing an accurate parallel between morality and scientific precision. I’d rather have a doctor genuinely concerned with saving my life than a doctor whose main intention is to finish my surgery as quickly as possible so that she may win a bet with a friend. A nurse who intends to give a patient too much medicine certainly seems more morally responsible than a nurse who accidentally gives a patient an overdose. The effects may be the same, but there’s a difference between intending to do harm and neglecting to be precise, so Dennett’s discussion on that was unmoving. His need to forgive his friends who pray for him was irksome. I realize it’s like someone painting a really nice picture for a blind guy, but Dennett could try just thanking the goodness that they intended. Of course, since intentions count for nothing, it would make no difference to Dennett whether they were praying for his health or for a long, slow, painful recovery.
Dennett provides an account of a recent surgery where he was put under anesthetic and technically died as his heart stopped beating. His account of a “near death experience” calls into question the reactions of other philosophers such as A.J. Ayer who, after having a near-death experience, questioned his atheism and his life-after-death beliefs. Dennett wants to “thank goodness,” the goodness of humanity that is. He thinks through all the groups of people who went into making his life possible after major surgery. Still, he does not worship medicine or treat science as a religion. He continues to argue that religion might make one feel better about themselves, but it does not hold them up to the same difficult and trying standards that science does. In response to those who pray for him, Dennett remarks that they would be better served putting their mind to a productive task. He concludes by offering that religious individuals should be held to the same ethics of science and medicine while they continually ask themselves the question “what if I'm wrong?”
I struggle with Dennett's writing here. I would want to throw back many of the questions to him that he has thrown at the religious. Just as he argues that prayer is something to be scoffed at, a waste of time, I must wonder how helpful his writing here is. I'm sure he knows this though. It seems that his audience must be the atheist community. More frustrating is his argument that science and medicine have a “higher” morality than religion. I struggle deeply with this statement, especially in the context of the United States. Not to say that science has not provided many great advances in way of creating life, but it has also shown itself to be a dangerous, wasteful, and expensive regime. I am thinking specifically about the context of palliative care. In the United States, our obsession with never dying and the ludicrous belief that someone can live forever has lead to a huge problem of health care. Many elderly are kept alive with thousands of dollars worth of treatment, by contrast with medical treatment of the elderly in France and other European communities. I would challenge Dennett to rethink his position. The obsession for perfection that he praises in science might actually turn out, with the distance of history, to be a most unhealthy and unethical quest.
Rather than positing abstract arguments about theism, Dennett begins with the very concrete and personal experience of nearly dying from a torn aorta. Having passed through this harrowing experience, Dennett is proud to have, unlike A. J. Ayer, emerged firmly committed to his atheism. Rather than thanking God, Dennett expresses gratitude to the incredible expertise of the doctors and technicians who kept him alive through a complicated nine hour surgery. He also praises the work of scientists like Allan Cormack whose invention of the C-T scanner was essential to saving Dennett’s life. In contrast to religion where good intentions are acceptable, the medical community holds itself to far higher standards and, consequently, never stops improving. Although Dennett appreciates the sympathy he has received, he is offended by those friends and family who said they were praying for him. In his words, “I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said ‘I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health’” (280). Because such people have not abandoned their superstitious supplications in spite of research demonstrating the ineffectiveness of intercessory prayer, they are “subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking” (280). Overall, Dennett argues that wasting time praying when one can do tangible good is “morally problematic at best” (280).
Though I find Dennett’s rhetoric a bit extreme and generally unkind, he offers two criticisms of religion that should be taken very seriously. First, by thanking the many people whose commitment to improving this world saved his life, Dennett implies that religious people’s efforts and gratitude are squandered on imagined worlds rather than invested in the real world. Of course, religious people are often very thankful to those people who help them and they quite often make real, lasting contributions to this world. Still, when religious faith becomes a way of escaping the difficulty and responsibility of this life, I believe it warrants Nietzsche’s charge of nihilism, which Dennett echoes. Secondly, there is no doubt that the efficacy of modern science and medicine is largely a result of unceasing self-criticism. While scientists, doctors, and nurses must constantly ask “What if I’m wrong?”, religious communities are notorious for discouraging critical thought. Of course, this is not always the case. Religion can also inspire courageous resistance to social injustice and even outspoken criticism of one’s own tradition. Although Dennett’s protest assumes a simplistic opposition between medical goodness and objectivity, on the one hand, and religious otherworldliness and defensiveness, on the other, he also offers helpful criticisms that religious people should take seriously. Reframed by his critique, the question becomes whether or not participation in a religious community and engagement with religious rituals, symbols, and practices can help people make real-world contributions and continually improve themselves.
When his heart began to pump anew and his brain warmed to its normal temperature, Daniel Dennett had a second chance on life. After enduring a nine-hour surgery to repair a “dissection of the aorta,” Dennett was left affirmed in the goodness found in humanity. Though he appreciates the good intentions of friends and family who prayed for his quick recovery and safety, Dennett believes he owes his life to a chain of humanity. From doctors to technicians, the reason and open inquiry employed by medical professionals led to his resurrection. Good intentions, Dennett claims, do not save lives, but rational action does. By putting motive aside and working diligently to make the right decisions to save him, medical professionals show themselves to be morally superior to the devout who held him in prayer.
Daniel Dennett is right to thank the line of doctors, nurses, technicians, and inventers who cared for him and treated his condition. Without modern medicine, he would not have lived to write this piece. The men and women in the medical profession are held to a gargantuan standard: sustaining human life. They have sacrificed a great many things that most take for granted and have worked stunningly hard in classrooms and labs to acquire the skill and knowledge it takes to carry out their professional obligations. To suggest, however, that these men and women are more moral or more deserving of thanks than those that extend their love and compassion, is misplaced. Dennett writes that he appreciates the good intentions of those who cared enough to pray for his recovery, but that good intentions are not enough. Whether or not Dennett believes in the power of prayer, it is unfair to depreciate what these individuals know as their most potent healing power. The lack of knowledge or opportunity to provide medical care to Dennett, does not diminish the fact that they attempted to use what resources they had at their disposal to love and restore him.
In this essay, Daniel Dennett reaffirms his atheism, in spite of his recent brush with death, and thus addresses the adage that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” He speaks rather candidly of his ‘salvation,’ but says that he owes his thanks, not to divine providence or intervention, but rather to science, medicine, and the good will of other human beings. Dennett presents nothing in the way of a novel argument against Theism or intelligent design in this essay. Instead, he addresses the impotence of religion and religious belief or practices in actually accomplishing anything worthy of thanksgiving.
I found this essay especially interesting, as it is concerned with the relationship of causality to goodness. In a conversation I had with an atheist friend of mine, some years ago, he mentioned to me that he had a great deal to feel thankful for, but that he often had to resist the temptation to give thanks to God. Instead, if I remember correctly, he seemed to prefer to give thanks to chance or to a certain serendipity, which he had chanced to encounter. I find such a conception useful in contrast to Dennett’s more human explanation of goodness (“fantastic human-made fabric of excellence”). For instance, Dennett might not have found himself so thankful a few hundred years ago or even in our present age, but in a third-world country. Yet, in his particular case, he was thankful precisely because he found himself in the right place at the right time, or, in other words, in a good place at a good time. Good, in this way, is ascribed to a person, place, or thing according to its function, and this is subject to interpretation and circumstance. In Dennett’s case, the goodness for which he is so thankful refers to the doctors’ skill and expertise, and while they did, in fact, prove to be good for Dennett, they may well have not been for other patients. It is true that an excellent surgeon greatly improves the odds of receiving an excellent surgery, and so, one can conclude that the surgeon may, after all, have a lot to do with the outcome of things. In other words, he or she is the good cause of good effects. On the other hand, correlation does not prove causation, and this makes giving thanks a little more difficult than Dennett would have his reader believe. He says, “The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.” Although I generally like Dennett’s work, this claim, to me, seems to be little more than empty rhetoric. I believe that goodness is created, not because it is already present and a debt of gratitude is owed to it, but rather, because it is absent in one respect or another.
In this essay on responsibility Dennett recalls his annoyance at friends who prayed for him during a major surgery and subsequently thanked God for his recovery. Dennett ironically references some famous cases of atheists converting to theism following a near-death experience and expresses his own renewed sense of atheism by contrast. He reflects on repaying debt where it is due: to the doctors who saved his life and the millions of researchers and inventors whose creativity and risk culminate in modern medicine. Religious people, he suggests, are as responsible to the object of their gratitude as anyone else.
Dennett manages to carry several sincere points on lightly ironic legs in this essay. That we ought to clean up our language and reorder common thought to include our responsibility and gratitude to mortals is not the least of them. However, it is important to acknowledge that we often face uncertainty about who or what to thank or blame for both good and ill. The wheel of fortune and the vicissitudes of chance do not reciprocate our thanks or curses in the same way as those gestures are meant—so they are left hanging in the void with no object at all. This is Dennett’s major concern. Even so, our thankfulness tends to be more often expressed in symbolic responses and attitudes than by active repayment, but they are still the responses of the responsible. On the other hand, Dennett adds that he, “prefer[s] a real good to a symbolic good” (281). If thankfulness entails taking responsibility for both good and ill then it is vital that we adjust our language to reflect those debts. Life in the wake of deus absconditus is dim. Because we are alone both our responsibilities and responses need to land somewhere tangible. We answer to other, responsible faces, whether they are God’s instruments or not.
In “Thank Goodness!” Daniel Dennett states that science holds its members to higher standards of moral responsibility than religions do. As evidence, he cites the contrast between right intentions in religion and right outcomes in science along with religious celebration of leaps of faith versus the scientific condemnation of anything but the methodical application of reason. While he found the intercessory prayers of his religious friends and the good wishes of his fellow brights boosted his morale, he wished they had invested their resources in a more effective and therefore more morally responsible fashion. Likewise, thanking goodness for the success of his open heart surgery by perpetuating goodness is far more useful than thanking God, which is merely symbolic. For Dennett, those who practice religion have much to account for in the moral realm, not the least of which is their stubborn adherence to a tradition that may be wrong (281, 279, 280, 281).
While Dennett sets up intercessory prayer and worship of God as straw men by assuming that all who pray are requesting a supernatural event and that worship of God does not lead to meaningful action in the world outside the worship space, his most serious assumption is that science contains moral standards (281). Through the “unlimited application of reason and empirical inquiry,” science interrogates nature, but science has no means of deciding which aspects of nature to tackle (279). As a method of inquiry, science has no inherent capability to determine whether to improve treatment of aortic aneurysms, a problem primarily of the developed world, or to find a cure for AIDs, a terminal illness suffered mostly by those in the undeveloped world. If science does contain moral standards, then it also has a lot of suffering to account for as well. The development of the machinery of war must count among its sins of commission, and its failure to stop the deaths of millions of people who die from diseases that are neglected by the pharmaceutical industry is surely not something for which to thank goodness. The methodological tools of science are morally neutral, but the humans who make the choices of how to employ the tools are not, and whether they are scientists and/or religious people, they need to ask the question, “What if I’m wrong?” (282).
In this essay, Dennett discusses his recent near-death experience and its affect on his stance as an atheist. Though he does not change his atheist perspective, he describes a new appreciation for the phrase “thank goodness.” He is thankful for the goodness of the team of doctors, the technology, and the discipline of science. All contributed to his successful surgery and recovery. He admits that, though he is grateful for the goodness of modern science, he does not worship it in a religious sense. He still holds science to the same standards of careful investigation that he holds religion. In fact, he believes that science and medicine hold “higher standards of moral responsibility” than any religion. He then discusses his feeling toward friends and family prayed he would not die during his operation and recovery. He appreciated this support and readily forgave what he took to be the gullibility and foolishness involved in such prayers. Rather than resorting to prayer, he would prefer that caring people dedicate their energy towards situations they can really change. Dennett is sure that we should not focus on thanking God, or repaying God, for it is an irrational response if God is truly omniscient and omnipotent, but it does make sense to thank goodness, or to repay it. In repaying goodness, at least one would be contributing some physical good to this world.
Dennett’s opinion of the believer’s use of prayer and its imprudence has created an interesting critique of Christian faith that could be useful in deepening the believer’s meaning of prayer. He uses the example of the believer’s prayer of thanking God. As a believer, when a prayer is answered in a positive manner, it is expected that one thanks God for this response. The idea of thanking a God who is both omniscient and omnipotent and thinking it is actually doing some good is absurd. In thanking God, the more rational approach for the believer would be to couple this prayer with an action. Dennett’s use of sarcasm can make the believer irritated, but he is offering a way for the believer to deepen their definition of thanking God. The problem being addressed is in the contentment to not physically repay the goodness that God has provided. How can the believer do this? One approach is to be more open to our modern context. Looking at science and medicine, Dennett touches on holding religion to the same moral standards as these disciplines. Instead of considering science the enemy, the believer should be using its empiricist perspective, the careful questioning and reflection, to understand what it means to be religious, progressing into a deeper sense of faith. Dennett is a self-proclaimed atheist. To become upset with his insensitivity is of no use for the believer. Sometimes, an over-simplistic view of religion is a way to realize some weaknesses in the believer’s faith. This critique provides the believer with an opportunity to justify the prayer of thankfulness. Being concerned with physically doing some good and being humble to criticism, the believer can combine the pragmatism of science and the humility of religion; enabling them to more usefully contribute to goodness in our modern world.
After telling his experience with a disease recovery, Dennett asks whether he should worship medicine and science as an act of returning the favour. Unlike what religious people do when they feel gratitude, Dennett holds that science should always be a subject to constant criticism. Dennett proceeds his comparison between religion and science in terms of good intension, returning the favour, and leap of faith. unlike religion, good intension does not matter in science; it does not help people to cure for example, but actual medicine does regardless of the intension of any pharmacist or doctor. Leap of faith is a crime in science and medicine, but it is a virtue in religion. Returning the favour to god is a ridiculous idea since he has everything, but return the favour to the goodness in a secular world by doing good things for others can is beneficial and plausible. In a nutshell, the moral standards given by a secular world is of paramount importance.
My response
I think that Dennett attempt to favour secular scientific morals over religious once did not go so well since he compared totally two different systems; however, they could overlap sometime to constitute a better component. Dennett did give a deficient picture for religious morals. in Islamic tradition, for instance, good intension is not enough for an action to be regarded as a correct action. whether it is religious matter or not, action has to be correlated with knowledge. Returning the favour to god is not by giving him something he does not have but rather by using whatever you are gifted with for the benefit of others. The leap of faith is not preferable as many theologians understand. Further, evidentilst theists, belief that belief in God has to be built on evidence otherwise it is not considered as a valid belief. The point is that religious morels are not merely abstract values, but they have many practical aspects as well; even prayer should be correlated with actions.
In “Thank Goodness!” (277-281), Daniel C. Dennet, reflects on a recent near-death experience in order to dismantle the old saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” After the incident many of his friends reached out to him because they were curious if he still held to his atheism. Had he had an epiphany and turned to God? In fact, he did have an epiphany, but not a theistic one: he realized that it is better to “thank goodness” than to “thank God.” Thank goodness means that he is thankful for all the human goodness, work, and skill that made his continued health possible. The difference between the two kinds of gratitude leads Dennet to reflect on some fundamental contrasts between the religious and medical worlds. Whereas religion teaches that what really matters is the heart or intention, in medicine it is accuracy that carries the day. Taking a leap of faith would be a grave sin in medicine. A few bold pioneers can step out in bold new endeavors but this cannot be a methodological norm. At the same time, Dennet wants to let all his religious friends know that he forgives them for praying for him. Yes, he really means this. To say that they were praying for him is no different than telling him that they cast a voodoo spell for his health. After the Harvard Benson study people should realize that there is no evidence for the impact of intercessory prayer on medical recovery. In conclusion, Dennet suggests that the best part about saying “thank goodness” instead of “thank God” is that you can actually repay your debt.
Dennet’s essay addresses some of the complications faced by the prayer-er. Should, for instance, we think of prayer as primarily impacting those who pray or God and/or external circumstances? I do not know how this came about in my life, but one day I realized that I had stopped believing that prayer primarily impacted the world around me; instead, I had come to see prayer as something that primarily helped the prayer-er. We are thankful for something so we say thank you; we are concerned or worried about something so we vent these anxieties. But, how is it possible to think that our prayers (which are not always consistent mind you) can actually impact the “mind” and “actions” of an all-powerful and all-knowing God? Take the example of the mother who stays up at night praying for her “prodigal.” Will this practice over time actually help the child or are the hours upon hours of prayer more of a way for the parent to deal with their own issues of control and anxiety? There are entire series of books on the power of prayer. But power to do what? Power to impact external circumstances or the person praying? Stormie Omartian, for instance, has practically created a whole franchise on the power of prayer: The Power of a Praying Grandparent, The Power of a Praying Parent, The Power of a Praying Mom, The Power of a Praying Woman, The Power of a Praying Husband, The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children, The Power of a Praying Church, and so on. One thing that prayer seems to have the power to do, at least in the case of Omartian, is sell books.
Daniel C. Dennett, a world-renowned philosopher, known as one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, published a piece titled Thank Goodness! Dennett asks the question, to who does he owe gratitude for? His previous near-death experience via a dissection of the aorta, Dennett critiques the idea that one must be thankful for an indeterminate being to show blessing upon the outcome of a very physical embodied event. Challenging the notion of prayer, Dennett grips the reader to cease wasting their time praying and begin doing something useful. If family members and friend are busy praying for healing, they are not using their time to educate themselves on medicine and health topics that would better inform them of the event. Dennett is thankful for his doctor, surgeons, nurses and the endless supply chains to source specific drugs to his near-death body, he does not know how to be thankful for someone’s prayers to a divine being on his behalf. Dennett inspires us to repay our debts to goodness by creating more good in the world and benefiting everyone around us. Goodness comes in many forms, not purely in the form of intercessory prayer.
I found Dennett’s argument to be absolutely fascinating. Dennett’s thankfulness for medicine to heal him and the massive supply chain that led the supplies and training to aid in his recovery moves me to realize that there are so many events and phenomena that lead to healing and recovery. I do not know how I feel about the entirety of his argument. His rhetoric was pointed and did not aid in further discussion. However, the reader is commanded to do more good in the world.
|
|
|
Albert Einstein |
Einstein denied the concept of a personal God since his early fascination with natural science. Instead, he started taking as his new religion the infinite, marvelous universe before his eyes, and said he believes in “Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of that exists”(157). He claimed that the ground of a genuine religion must be awe at the mystique of the cosmic structure not the fear of something unknown. In addition to ‘awe’, morality featured strongly in his understanding of religion: “the most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our action. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our action can give beauty and dignity to life”(158). To him, morality is made only by human effort for themselves and their society not by a law-giver who governs the universe and his creatures with the principle of punishment and reward. Einstein really hated that.
Was his naturalistic religion what made it possible for him to accomplish such excellent scientific achievements? I believe that the Ultimate, or the truth, is demonstrated through the logical structure of reality, thus allowing every person—religionists, philosophers, artists, and scientist are, of course, more excellent in doing that—to grasp a revelatory glimpse of truth or the ultimate. In this respect, Einstein's insights and his scientific breakthroughs are too great to be explained without noting that he received a divine revelation. Einstein's religiousness of Nature's wonder looks similar to that of medieval mystics and the German Romanticists.
Einstein is an agnostic. He does not believe in a personal God, but he believes there is religious emotion such as sublimity. He rather believes “in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists” (Hitchens 2007, 157) than a personal God as an anthropological concept. In particular, he emphasizes morality as the most important human endeavor. He also mentions that this morality is “based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary” (Hitchens 2007, 159).
I strongly agree with his definition of God as an anthropological concept and religious emotion that all human beings can feel. I, particularly, integrate both concepts into the images of God. Each individual has his or her own image of God. Introspection plays a pivotal role in understanding the God that dwells in human beings. However, there is another way to understand God; which is looking outside of oneself. Human beings rest on other such as father, mother, neighbors and even environment. Without this dependency, it is impossible to identify oneself because human beings are social animals. Human beings recognize God in this relationship. Einstein might define this as religious emotion. As a result, we need inner introspection and magnanimity toward others because both are mutual ways to identify ourselves and understand God.
In this section, the reader is confronted with fragments of Einstein's thoughts on “religion.” These fragments are terse and repetitive, but they still contain essential beliefs. In many of these fragments, the reader is exposed to the Einstein's perplexity toward those who posit a personal divinity that can control or manipulate the world. After almost every disparagement of divine agency, Einstein praises the beauty and complexity of nature. Nature may possibly have been Einstein's divinity. His religious devotion seems connected to the awe-inspiring force of profound incomprehensibility caused by the universe he critically examines. As for faith, he hopes for more laws of nature to be discovered. In this way, then, Einstein may have had religion.
Einstein's selected writings are quite illuminating. For years, people—at least in sects of Christian fundamentalism—have appealed to geniuses such as Einstein to support their belief in God. Their solace was in their ignorance. These selected writings, though limited and chosen for a specific reason, show the diversity of proclaimed religious commitments. Einstein may not have been a deist, and this can only be ascertained by a careful reading of his writings. The risk of misinterpretation is hovers around all written work. The illuminating quality of these selected writings is their ability to show how easily one can be misinterpreted.
“God does not play dice with the universe.” Every time I hear this sentence I roll my eyes. How many people have uttered this quote with different purposes? How many entirely out of context? How many arguing that Einstein believed in a determinate God? This collection of quotes by Albert Einstein does a great service: it helps clear the air around Einstein’s beliefs. He did not believe in a personal God. He did not believe in an omnipotent, just, and omnibenevolent God. He did not believe in an afterlife. Instead, Einstein believed in a grand harmony and beauty in the universe. This worldview has enabled naturalism to rise to a nearly divine conception of reality.
Since Einstein, many scientists such as Richard Dawkins have talked of and promoted “Einstein’s God.” Presumably, by this view, the natural world as apprehended by Western science is an acceptable mode by which to practice spirituality. Yet this set of Einstein quotations reveals an important and under-emphasized difference between Einstein’s view and that represented by Dawkins. To Dawkins, knowing the universe makes it beautiful, and mystery is an enemy to be vanquished. To the contrary, in Einstein’s view, the greatest part of all of his scientific endeavors was the fact that the universe was beyond complete human understanding. This was a defining characteristic of Einstein’s cosmic religiosity. Contemporary scientists would do well to read these quotes carefully before using them. Otherwise they might find their Einsteinian appropriations deflating their own balloons.
“Selected Writings on Religion” by Albert Einstein is a compilation of quotes by Einstein from various sources on God and the nature of the universe. According to Hitchens, Einstein’s opinion on religion was often asked for since his intelligence in and of itself was considered “almost godlike” (155). In his writings, Einstein does not advocate a pure atheism, rather, he rejects that notion of a personal God, one who takes an interest in human affairs. He suggests that this kind of theism is naive at best, childish and primitive at worst (155-156). Yet, Einstein does write in deep appreciation of the “mysterious”, saying “he who can…no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle” (156).
Einstein’s spirituality is inspirational to me, particularly in my Unitarian Universalist context. He claims to be a “deeply religious nonbeliever”, which is how I always fashioned myself since I was a small child (157). I also agree with the claim that a personal God is a concept that is hard to take seriously. However, I do understand the human tendency to want to create God in one’s own image in order to feel held and loved. It is, after all, the only way many of us can conceptualize God in a way that brings us comfort. I would never want to take away this way of conceptualizing God, regardless of how idolatrous it seems. I recognize my own need to create God in my image in order not just to honor the mystery and amazement of the unknowable, but to feel as though I matter to this God—that I am bound up in an inescapable web of mutuality that won’t let me go. Yes, I know that this is irrational. But sometimes we all need it.
Though not a sustained argument, this collection of quotations supplies some of Einstein’s basic objections to anthropomorphic theism and it suggests the contours of his cosmic mysticism. The power of science to explain events in terms of efficient causation leaves little need for God as an explanation of this-worldly events. For Einstein, the sweep of material causation also encompassed the traditional notion of soul: “Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning” (162). Though there is little elaboration here, the problem of theodicy clearly troubled Einstein: “only His non-existence could excuse Him” (158). Einstein also firmly resisted the traditional belief that God is necessary for morality, suggesting that action based upon fear of punishment or hope of reward is less than moral. Instead of supernatural hopes and fears, the basis of morality ought to be “sympathy, education, and social ties and needs” (159). Despite this firm resistance to personal theism, Einstein experienced the power, order, and beauty of the natural world in a transcendent and even mystical way. In his words, "The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. . . It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man" (156-7). Einstein’s cosmic mysticism, though opposed to most popular conceptions of God, resonates well with apophatic traditions, modern radical theology, and religious naturalism.
Like his brain, Albert Einstein’s thoughts have been fought over since his death. The space inside his cranium is something of a holy site for modern people, and understandably so. Both his miracle year of 1905 and his subsequent formulation of the general theory of relativity are easily mythologized as moments of divine revelation. Beyond his work in physics, Einstein’s beliefs about religion are also highly contested with both traditional religious people and atheists claiming him as a champion. This collection of excerpts, though overall a bit redundant, reveals the ambiguous nature of that dispute. On one hand, Einstein spoke frequently of experiencing a profound awe before the universe’s grandeur, and he characterized this deep feeling as religious. He was also a committed humanitarian and strongly believed that, “The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions” (159). Here, Einstein walks well-trodden religious ground and is easily embraced by the faithful. On the other hand, Einstein clearly believed that most of the conventional content of the word “God” reflected little more than thoughtless anthropomorphism and pitiable self-delusion. These critical comments receive the enthusiastic approval of Hitchens, but it is far from certain that Einstein would approve of Hitchens’ flatly anti-religious agenda. In the end, Einstein’s thoughts on religion remain significant because they point to a vast and mostly unexplored territory between discredited anthropomorphic theology and the complete suppression of human religious impulses advocated by the New Atheists.
This piece consists of a variety of writings and quotations from Albert Einstein, all of which centered on his understanding of God, religion and science. Some are pithy epigrams, such as the now famous “God does not play dice with the Universe.” Others include significant portions of his correspondences with friends on issues relating to religious belief. As Hitchens notes in his introduction, Einstein’s sometimes enigmatic references to God and the natural order have made him a figure often claimed by both Atheistic and Theistic camps. What comes across in this collection of quotations and writings is that Einstein belongs to neither camp. His references to God are always symbolic, pointing to the magnificent, incomprehensible yet nevertheless intelligible structures of the natural order. In several passages Einstein rather bluntly asserts that the idea of a personal God is for him nothing more than a childish belief. Thus he writes, “I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar.” And yet, upon being asked whether or not he believed in God by a Rabbi, Einstein resists a clear-cut Atheistic response. Instead he writes, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” It seems abundantly clear that Einstein cannot be pegged down as either a Theist or Atheist; instead, he intimates a deep, even mystical reverence for the profound structures of the natural order.
I found this piece to be both enjoyable and insightful. The short excerpts offer a window into one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, on a topic that is not often associated with this eminent scientific figure. Einstein’s criticisms of certain types of religion are perhaps more pertinent today than ever, especially amidst the ongoing controversy surrounding the “intelligent design” debate. Einstein puts his finger on what may be the crux of this debate, stating, “The main source of the present-day conflict between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.” However, regardless of his critiques of anthropomorphic religiosity, what comes across most clearly in this piece is Einstein’s own deep-seated spirituality, which would probably best be categorized under the genre of “religious naturalism.” While I find Einstein’s iconoclastic naturalism to be in many ways compelling, I nevertheless question the social suppositions and implications of such a view. It seems safe to say that this type of religious outlook is not capable of sustaining the existential and spiritual needs of most ordinary people. Thus the question is, to what extent are anti-anthropomorphic religious views such as Einstein’s inherently elitist?
This chapter provides a collection of quotes that outline the spiritual views of Albert Einstein. These show that Einstein did not believe in a personal God, an afterlife, or an eternal soul. But he also stated clearly that he does not see himself as an atheist. In a number of statements he describes a spiritual sense in which both the knowledge and the emotion – of “the profoundest reason and most radiant beauty” and “the orderly harmony of what exists” – led him to describe himself as “a deeply religious nonbeliever” (157).
Einstein’s discoveries in physics were possible because he thought outside of the box, and not merely in response to how others looked at things in the past. He approached religion in a similar way. As he took a fresh look at unanswerable questions (Why is there something, rather than nothing? What causes natural laws to be as they are?), he identified a realm of mystery and wonder that “theists” and “atheists” can both share. Just as his theory of relativity gave a new perspective from which to understand the physical world, Einstein’s views on religion offer a distinctive framework for interpreting human spirituality and religion.
Part 1.): Einstein said that he believed in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists. His god “appears as the physical world itself.” He often refers to himself as having a “religious feeling”, when he contemplates the interconnectedness and precision of the material world. “The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. … There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being.” He states: “I have never imputed to Nature a purpose of a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.” So, he is “religious” – but not in a typical Western theistic way.
Part 2.): Einstein came to lose his belief in a personal god at age 12, after reading books on science. I have a note in the margin of my text, that my classmate Muhammed took note that my disbelief in a personal god came at the age of 12 or 13, since he had noticed before that such changes often came at this age. Einstein wrote of his spiritual journey: “The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.” I feel the same about my Spiritual Atheism: not as easy as believing without cause, but it is the only honest choice (for me) to be made. Said Einstein: “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever … This is a somewhat new kind of religion.” And as a response to Freud’s belief above that without God people will become uncivilized to the point of murder, Einstein also wrote: “The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.” This guy was a righteous dude.
In excepts from Einstein’s commentary on religious matter, we can clearly understand his status as an Agnostic, who believes in Spinoza’s God, the creator of beauty and the order in logical simplicity, this God has no interest in human affairs. He cannot accept a God with rewards and punishments, he also doesn’t believe in eternity of life as well as the personal God. He believes the moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life could be already naturally there, human is in no need of a law-giver, religion is just a way of the mind implantation by traditional education machine.
Some people might have very strong self-discipline, Einstein might be one of them, but most people don’t. I believe it is important for human society to stay in order with the enforcement of law, the law of morality. From Christian point of view, it is a part of the creation of God and is bestowed to Christian society. The problem of misuse of ministry and church during past 2,000 years is the issue which keep people away from this. Einstein survived from Nazi’s persecution, he knew very well the German church stand on the side of Hitler, how can he believe a God would allow the Holocaust of 10 million Jewish? He has all right to make his own decision, but the Faith is not about choice, the Faith is all about if our lives really be changed and shaped by the believe in Christ.
In these selections of writings and conversations, Albert Einstein portrays his sense of religiosity to be inspired by what he calls “mystic emotion” characterized by the fact that “the impenetrable manifests itself in highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty.” In fact, his understanding exceeds the impersonal nature of deism and leans towards a version of Spinozan pantheism that recognizes nature to be the extension of God’s continued self-revelation. Einstein’s reformulation of this idea suggests that we can engage, albeit partially, with the impenetrable through our efforts in science and reasoning. There is subsequently a corollary relationship between what we know and the depths of our ignorance. This understanding of God is formulated in direct contrast to anthropological concepts of God whereby God is considered to be a dice-player, a personal intervening deity, or the judge of his creation. Instead of such self-assured and self-projected models of God, Einstein prefers to cultivate “an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”
I was inspired by Einstein’s differentiation between a mystical appreciation for the mysteries and depths of nature and the ethical realm pertaining to humanity. To Einstein, moral striving is a purely human activity that depends upon education instead of myth. By defining ethics as a particular and pressing social task, he places himself in a long line of humanist and existentialist thinkers that have sought an approach towards human morality that is not dependent upon religion or theology. Although I support the efforts aimed at a secularized morality, I find myself more drawn to the theological ideas of Schelling, some strains of Pietism, Kierkegaard, Tillich, and Neville, whereby ethics becomes the direct consequence and response to innovations in theological understanding. A commonality between these thinkers or religious movements is a radical asymmetry between Creator and creation whereby the human subject finds herself constantly located in the tensions between necessity and freedom on the one hand, and the real and the ideal on the other. Ethics, in these metaphysical frameworks, becomes a religious duty, or else the product of spiritual labor, which requires the adherence to particular ideals through simultaneously responding to the immediate conditions of existence. In my opinion, revolutions in thinking are essentially revolutions in logic. Consequently, all relevant critiques of an existing logical system (such as atheistic critiques against certain varieties of theism) should offer up new logical systems as replacements that still maintain cohesion in a worldview. A question I would pose to Einstein would be: “What are the logical possibilities for a new ethics founded upon or integrated with your sense of mystical wonder and appreciation?”
Given Albert Einstein’s unquestioned brilliance and his paradigm shifting advances in physics, it is unsurprising that countless people (both theists and atheists) would be interested in understanding his beliefs regarding God and religion. Rather than presenting any kind of systematic statement of Einstein’s personal beliefs, Chavez has offered us a series of quotations from a variety of sources, including shorter writings, public addresses, and correspondence that offer snapshots of his distinctive religious vision. It is clear that Einstein was not a conventional theist in the Judeo-Christian mold. He states that he left his Jewish faith behind by the age of twelve, and he states repeatedly that he rejects any conception of a personal God, especially one that is involved in the reward and punishment of human beings. In one such instance he writes, “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own – a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.” At the same time he seems uncomfortable with the designation of atheist, claiming he doesn’t share their “crusading spirit” and expresses (understandable) anger when atheists “quote [him] for the support of such views.” In presenting his own views, Einstein was fond of drawing parallels between his own views and that of the philosopher Spinoza, who claimed that God and Nature were equivocal concepts (deus siva natura). This manifested itself in a sense of wonder, appreciation, and reverence for the immense beauty, complexity, and law-like orders of the universe. An especially beautiful picture of this naturalist piety is worth quoting at length:
“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms – it is in this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man…. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.”
It is almost astonishing the level of interest in the religious insights of a man who was trained neither in philosophy nor theology, but it is a measure of the immense esteem with which people hold Einstein’s incredible intellect (a devotion that, Hitchens points out, bordered on idolatrous). In Einstein’s writing we see a naturalistic piety that stands dwarfed before an immense cosmos full of orders and beauty and mystery. While it is unclear whether or not Einstein’s curiosity ever forced him deeper into that sense of wonder and mystery, into the very ontological conditions for the universe, his sense of reverence for the world is infectious. It may well be, in the words of his biographer Ronald W. Clark, “belief enough.” As a religious naturalist theologian I felt called by his words that charged religious teachers to abandon the personal God and to “avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.” It seems a worthy vocation, at least in my estimation.
|
|
|
George Eliot |
George Eliot's analysis of the writings of Dr. Cummings, a popular evangelical preacher of the time, makes a stunning case for the moral damage done by the particular brand of dogmatic Calvinistic Protestantism which insists that the only good is that which is done to further the “glory of God.” Eliot describes Dr. Cummings as a man of genuine conviction and zeal. However, she convincingly illustrates that this conviction and zeal is not driven by piety and love, as Dr. Cummings would claim, but by a deep sense of exceptionalism and superiority grounded in a lust for power. Eliot illustrates how Dr. Cummings's writings seem to glow with pleasure and self-satisfaction whenever he is engaged in argument with whatever straw man or infidel he himself has created. However, it is not Dr. Cummings's constant combat with straw men or propensity for circular reasoning that Eliot is ultimately concerned about. Her deepest concern is for the moral damage done by Dr. Cummings's insistence that deeds motivated by human sympathy and compassion alone are neither good nor worthy of praise. Only those deeds done whilst consciously being dedicated to the “glory of God” are worthy of the title good. Therefore, Dr. Cummings's God is one who cares not at all for human pain or suffering, turns an indifferent eye at the cultivation and dissemination of human knowledge, and turns up a nose at human attempts to secure justice for the downtrodden. Instead, Dr. Cummings's God only cares for acts of human goodness when those acts are dedicated solely toward himself. Dr. Cummings's God is the God who only comes to parties thrown for him, but he doesn't really like parties, nor the people at those parties; he just wants the presents. Furthermore, Eliot is concerned that Dr. Cummings's harsh, fear-driven rhetoric will convince his listeners that their eternal soul is at stake and their salvation depends on the acceptance of his espoused view of the world. Eliot notes that when commitment to a certain belief as fact and membership in an exclusive community is held up as a necessary condition for salvation people will readily adjust their interpretive and observational lenses to find evidence for this fact and this fact alone. In other words, when people's personal safety (eternal safety) is at risk, epistemological honesty becomes secondary to ensuring physical and spiritual deliverance. For this reason, Eliot cautions her readers that Dr. Cummings's teachings have not only perverted ideas of human goodness and exchanged altruistic sympathies for self-serving bargaining, but they have ultimately served to breed a view of love that is nothing but love of the clan. “But the Love thus taught is love of the clan, which is the correlative of antagonism to the rest of mankind” (87).
Upon reading Eliot's description of Dr. Cummings's Reformed, Calvinistic, pre-millennial, dispensational theology, I was immediately struck with memories of sitting in countless church and chapel services where this exact same theological message and rhetorical methodology was practiced. I might as well have been listening to Dr. Cummings himself; the rhetorical resemblance is uncanny. I remember trembling in my chair, feet dangling a few inches off the floor, as the preacher joyfully expounded upon what torments awaited those who did not share the same beliefs as himself. An air of invincibility surrounded him. (It was always a him.) It didn't matter if David himself had been there with a slingshot; no mere mortal could touch this boisterous, fiery character. He spoke with the confidence of one who had seen the whole plan, who knew what was coming, and who knew what to do. The solution was so simple: agree with me, hate all the people I hate, don't ask any questions, and you will be saved! As I nervously shook, my ears filled with a chorus of amen's and hallelujah's every time the preacher condemned something the congregation also hated. (Infidels will burn! Amen! Blasphemers will burn! Amen! Democrats will burn! Amen! - Mind you, this was Texas.) They seemed to cheer a lot louder whenever someone they disliked was being disparaged then whenever the preacher would begrudgingly admit that even these could be saved – even though they definitely wont be. It seemed that more than proclaiming a message of unconditional love and radical hospitality like the one encountered in the Gospels, the preachers I knew found it much more expedient to cultivate an ideology of superiority based on common disgust, cultivated victimization, and fine-tuned fears. However, as I realized later, the reason I was shaking in my chair was not because I was worried about burning in hell. Instead, I was slowly coming to realize that I wanted nothing to do with this God. I couldn't worship the God of superiority and hatred, and I certainly couldn't celebrate the eternal torture of those with whom I might disagree. I had to find another way.
Eliot’s/Evans’ piece is an eloquent diatribe against Evangelical preachers centered on the detailed criticism of the popular Evangelical preacher Dr. Cumming. Her pointed critique of the position of Evangelical preacher and the preacher’s devoted adherents does not pull any punches. She deems Dr. Cumming a hypocritical man addicted to power who only acts to elevate himself in society. After exposing Dr. Cumming’s intentions as contradictory to his outward presentation, she concludes that what makes humankind good is a force more powerful than the creeds and dogmas of religion.
I found the beginning of Eliot’s/Evans’ amusing. There’s a necessity for exposing religious hypocrisy, but the scathing critique of Evangelical Teaching goes too far. The piece becomes exactly what it is trying to denounce, dogmatic. Speaking in absolutes, Eliot/Evans does not leave room for good intentions among Evangelical preachers, even if she gives no credence to their beliefs. Can’t a mis-informed/wrong-believing person still be well intentioned? Despite her claims to the contrary, Eliot/Evans makes the mistake of dehumanizing her enemy and categorically demeaning all Evangelical preachers.
Mary Ann Evans (1819-1890), writing under the nom de plume of George Eliot, composed an attack against the publications of the evangelical teacher and apologist Dr. Cumming. She criticized his work because he molded Christian scriptures to say what he needed them to say, even if they contradicted other scriptures. Evans selected lengthy excerpts from Cumming’s writings on the unbelieving infidel, the inerrancy of the Bible, and the traits in the Christian character. Her commentary on these selections showed Dr. Cumming’s hypocritical hatred in his writings—while purporting to write about a God of love.
If a church body does not judge its leaders and point out the hypocrisy in their speech, then I believe that a critique from someone outside the church is necessary. I would consider Mary Ann Evans’ writing as a prophetic word—bringing an appropriate corrective to insincere talk of God’s love. I believe that Evans’ explicit acknowledgement that she does not personally know Dr. Cumming makes her argument beneficially more universal. Her writing should be seen less as a personal vendetta and more as a timeless critique against anyone in the Church who preaches love and hate with the same lips.
George Eliot displays very little patience or interest in sympathy as she provides critique for that of a popular preacher of her time, Dr. Cumming. She begins with a mocking start that holds similar emotion to that of a sermon, but is stark and biting against the evangelical preacher. In her take down, that is, critique, she constantly points out the incoherence of the preachers arguments as he speaks out against things like sinners, satan, and Roman Catholics. She detests that while trying to preach the truth about God, he repeatedly forgets to engage with the truth.(78). Intellect and logic are seen, for Cumming, to be markers of sin and doubt, and Eliot seems annoyed that he bears no semblance of humility. However, the crux of her argument against this preacher is that teaching is rooted in emotional manipulation, anxiety and fear of God. She finds this rather morally reprehensible. The idea that this god Cumming is preaching would indeed cause a further gap to grow between humans instead of a furthering of compassions lead her to conclude that he is not only annoying, but dangerous. She concludes with a plea towards humanism, a trust that people can be good to one another without the guilt of a god preached to them each Sunday.
Her frustration with the displays of a preacher are funny and frustrated. She seems to see it only as another way that a man can fly around in society without much consequence or question. This beginning summary of how a preacher decides to come to be is a delight in its showy demonstration that she too knows bigs words. The most telling aspect of the essay is a final line of the introduction in which she balks at the fact that these men wander around in society without criticism. Her anger seems to come more from the fact that they do not have to engage in any sort of balance or check with their insane ideas more than the fact that they have they insane ideas. These preachers do not respect what she respects, that is reason and critical thought, and therefore they can never really properly engage. Just as she is not apart of his community neither is he apart of hers. They can yell at each other through writing, but it seems their audiences will never collide enough to exit out of an echo chamber of anger at one another’s arrogance. Though it is satisfying to read in its slick anger, Eliot continues the tradition of saying mean things about someone you disagree with.
Summary: In this essay, George Eliot critics evangelical preaching by targeting a popular evangelical preacher (Dr Cummings) in her era. According to Eliot, Dr Cummings employs both literal and figurative translations of the scriptures when it suits his purposes (Chapter 10 (75). He was quite inconsistent with his facts and a lot of contradictions were detected in his preaching and writings (80, 82, 84). Eliot cites a number of preaching excepts and writings from Dr Cummings in which he ungraciously and maliciously criticizes non protestant believers. Eliot notes that Dr Cummings teachings were devoid of genuine charity which was a basic tenet of Christian orthodoxy (86). His habit of maligning non-Christian protestant believers through dogmas and supernatural suppositions raises critical questions concerning the morale development of his congregants (88). Eliot also presents evidence to the effect that Dr Cummings was doing a disservice to his congregants by denying them the right to intellectual freedom; or the ability to engage in “the free search of truths” (78).
Response: Its quite unfortunate, as to the chaos that the effect of dogmas combined with the unconscious tendencies of the human mind can lead to. With Eliot’s criticism of supernaturalism as a result of the implausibility of Dr Cummings preaching, it makes me wonder about the notion of spirit. Aside from the idea of the Holy spirit, notions that are mostly implausible but are dearly held beliefs and hopes are usually assigned to spirit. It is obvious supernaturalism falls short of reason but how can one reason out a view, in terms of the fact that, as valuable as reason is it is really not all that its cut out to be.
In the essay “Evangelical teaching” George Elliot opposes the writings of a well-known minister named “Dr. Cumming.” The piece is punchy: if a man with moderate intelligence but great ambition wants to flourish in 19th century English society they should become an evangelical preacher. By “evangelical” Elliot implies a version of English Calvinism, something akin to what is often labeled “puritanism.” The first intellectual mistake of an evangelical preacher like Dr. Cummings is the shackle of the verbal inspiration of scripture. If one begins with this first principle, they may never freely inquire about truth, but will always seek out facts that confirm the teachings of their text. No longer, then, will evidence be the litmus test of veracity, but only if it accords with Christian scripture. The second mistake of Cumming’s is his uncharitable attitude towards his enemies (the infidel and the Roman Catholic), which, in turn, leads to the noxious notion that the notion of the “glory of God” should be the arbiter of ethics. Elliot asks a poignant question: “If I believe that God tells me to love my enemies, but at the same time hates His own enemies and requires me to have one will with Him, which has the larger scope, love or hatred” (86). The Evangelical preacher’s conception of God causes him to love some people for the sake of God, while simultaneously hating others for the same reason.
This essay leads me to wonder if Elliot was rejecting the notion of the “arbitrary” God of the Calvinist Puritans for another more benevolent version of the Divine, or if she rejected the notion of a personal God all together? At the same time, it also makes me wonder if she rejected the “evangelical preacher” in favor of other more liberal preachers. My knowledge of her writing is limited to this essay, Middlemarch and Silas Marner. Though, probably not an “evangelical preacher” her depiction of Dr. Causabon in Middlemarch is an equally devastating but not as direct critique of the present-day clergy. He is a curmudgeonly priest whose great scholarly project is working out a “key” to all mythologies. His scholarship seems like new kind of Protestant asceticism, which attracts the young beautiful Dorothea but then eventually comes to reveal its true colors: lifeless, cold, and self-serving. Causabon remains a warning to me that I must pursue scholarship with a perpetual eye towards how what I am doing can be used for the good of others.
George Eliot’s essay, “Evangelical Teaching,” rebuts the arguments of Dr. Cummings, an English evangelical preacher. The essay itself does not name the particular works of Dr. Cummings that Eliot has in mind, though she does present many of the arguments which he makes. At the beginning of the essay, Eliot suggests that preachers are the sort of people who have strong opinions on matters of theology and weak opinions on material matters of the present. Once Dr. Cummings is mentioned by name, it is already clear that Eliot views both him and preachers in general as the kind of people who refuse to look at the facts. For Eliot, Cummings’ refusal to examine evidence that may be contradictory towards his faith is his greatest shortcoming. Cummings’ suggestion that the truth of the Bible is self-evident, for instance, is not an argument at all, but rather an acts which dodges the relevant questions. To conclude the essay, Eliot turns to a rebuttal of Christian cosmology. Rather than accept that humans are bystanders in a cosmic war of good-and-evil, she finds it more plausible to believe in the goodness of human nature without any need of reference for a divine source.
I found Eliot’s reading to be quite humorous, though she may have done herself a disservice in her portrayal of Cummings as a bumbling fool. Cummings seems to be a person who was well-meaning and incorrect. The goal of such an essay does not appear to be to convince a person like Cummings of the veracity of a different set of positions, but rather to ridicule him (and people like him). It is worth asking whether one should take the sincerity of religious people seriously. It is also worth asking how one should handle people who lack the same capacity for analytical rigor. That Christian cosmology has absurd elements does not make that cosmology necessarily untrue, even if it does make it increasingly implausible from a scientifically informed perspective. If we are more interested in truth than in the ruthless defeat of their opponents, it may be worth considering what it is within religion that people appear to be holding onto so strongly.
|
|
|
Anatole France |
The author believes that there are undiscovered facts behind miracles. Humans should not be amazed at miracles but do nothing for them. A man of science would want to know what causes miracles. The author questions the definition of miracle which is “a breach of the laws of nature” (113). He points out that since humans do not grasp all laws of nature, they cannot decide if a miracle is actually a breach of the law of nature they do not know. Miracles cannot be proven.
I agree with France's logics that since no one knows the whole system of the nature of laws, a miracle cannot be proved as an exception of the system. France is not intended to discourage the belief in miracles. Rather, he tries to encourage people to find out scientific principles that might undergird these miracle stories. The spirit of exploration is vital to the development of science. Otherwise, how the world would look like if humans in the twenty-first century still worshipped thunder like their ancestors because they did not know what thunder is and how it happens? Humans are superior to other animal species because humans can contemplate life. That is why the author believes “this notion of miracles” (a breach of the laws of nature) only makes sense to infants, who do not have complicated thoughts. It does not mean miracles do not exist. France cannot deconstruct the concept of miracles because people from different backgrounds define miracles in their own ways. For example, I understand a miracle as an unexpected life event that shows God's purpose. My understanding of miracles has nothing to do with science. It is connected to my personal life. Even though I know thunder is a sound wave that is created by a lighting which came through a hole in the air, I can interpret thunder as the warning from God . Laws of nature account for the origin of thunder, but who wrote laws of nature? From a Christian's perspective, God is the author. Therefore, thunder is a miracle because it is from God. Generally speaking, a miracle is a celebration of life. It is a reflection on your life experiences with a gratitude attitude. What would have happened if I did not meet him/her? What would have happened if I was hit by that car? What would have happened if I decided to give up on school? Looking ahead, a belief of miracles motivates people to be positive. It is like the hope of the future. Since there are different definitions of miracles, I am not worried scientist's negative attitude towards miracles.
Anatole France takes issue with the argument that there are no miracles because an example of one has not been proved. France believes this claim to be foolish on two levels: First, it makes a sort of category mistake. By suggesting that a miracle can be “proven,” we are essentially changing the definition of a miracle. According to France, a miracle is that which occurs in the world yet contradicts the laws of nature. However, since the world is universally governed by the laws of nature, of which we admittedly do not have perfect knowledge, any event that seems to contradict our knowledge of the natural world must actually be governed by natural laws that we do not yet have knowledge of. Therefore, for France, a supposed “miracle” is really an opportunity for further investigation into the laws of nature that invites revision of how we understand those laws. Second, “miracle” is really a word we use to refer to a phenomenon that has not yet been understood: a form of explanatory shorthand. According to France, referring to something as a “miracle” is merely an infantile way of classifying a phenomenon that has not yet been explained, but is, in principle, explainable.
In many ways, France's critique of the way the concept of miracles is often employed and understood bears resemblance to Richard Dawkins's often quoted critique of the “God of the gaps.” Those in the new atheist movement often level this critique at creationist or intelligent design proponents. The new atheists claim that creationist and intelligent design arguments rely on using God as the cause for natural phenomenon that we cannot explain. However, as the explanatory power of science grows, aided by the leaps and bounds made by technology, the new atheists claim that the need for God as a final cause will be eventually pushed out of the picture by undeniable empirical evidence. In the meantime God is reduced to existing in the gap between our awareness of a phenomenon and our ability to causally explain it. I wonder if all this disagreement is not predicated on a fundamentally flawed premise: namely, that God exists in any way that is relevant to empirical validation. Furthermore, it is easy to see how this mode of discourse privileges empiricism as the only valid epistemology. I wonder what happens to the discourse if we challenge the universalized, omnipotent, explanatory claims of empirical methodology? What if God is something that cannot be spoken of in empirical terms? In fact, it seems clear that any attempt to speak of God in wholly empirical terms is doomed from the beginning. What if God is truly experienced not in that which is not yet explained, but in that which is fundamentally unexplainable? What if God lies beyond claims about objective reality? It seems to me that we must ask whether or not God lies within the bounds of human knowledge, or if God dances somewhere just past the edges.
This short except from Anatole France’s The Garden of Epicurus behooves philosophers to abandon miracles. A miracle, says France, is a striking event. Certainly it merits awe and wonder. How could that coma patient have healed so quickly? Why did a new star appear in the sky? How do tornadoes take perfect leaps over homesteads? But apparent aberration from natural law does not merit classifying it as such. A miracle should be treated as any other unknown phenomenon in the natural world: it should be an event to be investigated. An event-to-be-explained-later-by-science. An event of wonderful, but definitely natural, origins.
Ever since humanity began thinking systematically about the cosmos, says France, it has continually brought more and more puzzling phenomena under the web of natural law. This pattern in history has demonstrated that all of experience belongs to the realm of natural law, even if humans do not yet have the tools for understanding. To a naturalist thinker, this argument is ad oscuros. Basic. Obvious. But that is the exact problem with France’s argument. He dismisses the miraculous because it is outside of nature: nothing could possibly be outside of nature! But it can, and in the minds of many, it is. In his wholesale dismissal of supernaturalism, France fails to engage worldviews in which God exists remotely. In such an instance, God might set specific laws by which the world operates, and only very occasionally act in direct contradiction of them, in such a way that miracles could be spotted as true aberrations. France calls this reasoning “infancy of the mind.” I would call it instead “metaphysically and epistemologically distinct from naturalistic interpretations of the cosmos.”
In this article the author approaches the meaning of miracle from a different perspective. The author argues that no one should say that there are no miracles because no miracle can be stated as an established fact. The author believes that noting happens out side the limits of nature so nothing is a surprise to nature thus there is nothing that can be called as a miracle. The author questions the definition of miracle because human beings do not know the law of the nature and can not understand what does it mean to breach the law of the nature. The author believes that we should not mix a question of fact with one of principle because as a matter of principle the man of science is ill qualified to verify supernatural occurrences. This is the reason the author believes that there is no miracle.
In this article the author gives his understanding of the meaning of the word miracle so as to prove that there is nothing called as a miracle. I think the author was not able to make a good argument against the traditional understanding of the word miracle because he believes that human beings are not qualified to understand what does it mean to breach the law of the nature. The author was not able to give a decisive answer for why does a miracle occur? The author through the article educates his readers how should we approach a miracle but, does not answer why does a miracle occur. I think even if human beings put miracles in perspective and try and attribute it towards some thing that can happen in the ambit of nature, they should still answer the question why does some thing which is unnatural happen. I think miracle is a fact because it is some thing that can be proved, but the source of the miracle and the reason for it is unclear and debatable.
Anatole France examines the nature of miracles in his book The Garden of Epicurus. The excerpt from this text opens with France stating that no event occurs outside the bounds of natural laws, and that to label an inexplicable occurrence as a miracle is to preemptively assign meaning before adequate knowledge has been reached. France notes that the working definition of a miracle involves an occurrence that cannot be explained by natural law, which then allows clergy to speak of a higher knowledge to which human beings are not fully privy. France reiterates however, that such ‘unnatural’ occurrences merely represent an incomplete understanding of natural laws and that in fact, many famous miracles within the Christian faith have now been shown to have scientific explanations.
In his analyses Anatole France fails to account for the predictive nature of certain miracles. For instance, while the appearance of the star that guided the three wise men can be explained according to natural laws, it was not so much the physical manifestation of the star that was miraculous but rather the timing of this manifestation.
Summary: In this chapter on Miracle, Anatole France denies the existence of miracles in light of the fact that none has ever been proven (Chapter 13 (112)). The scientific discipline she points out, is ill qualified to verify supernatural phenomenon since the verification of such instances “presupposes a complete and final knowledge of nature,” which is not accessible to anyone (113). In the same sense, there are no identifiable or physical parameters to measure or determine miracles (114). To this end, he concludes that in response to the matter of miracles; it is either a phenomenon exists or it does not, and if it does, “it is part of nature and therefore natural” (115).
Response: The idea that it is impossible to “certify that a fact is in contradiction with the universal order that is with the unknown ordinance of the Divinity,” presupposes that the divine is a being, and the universal order though not completely known is perceived as a concrete concept (114). Which is not conclusive.
In his “enjoyable squib,” Anatole France outlines his issues with the religious idea of miracles. He starts by stating that “no miracle can, from the nature of things, be stated as an established fact; to do so will always involve drawing a premature conclusion.” He defines a miracle as something which cannot be understood according to natural laws. This means that declaring something as a miracle assumes the expectation that no matter how much science learns it will never be explained. France points out that it is impossible to know what is beyond the realm of science and speaks to examples, of which both the appearance of a new star in the sky for the magi as well as the bleeding host are discussed. Both of these, as well as other examples, have scientific explanations today which were unknown when they were declared miracles. France ultimately draws the conclusion “either it is not, or it is; and if it is, it is part of nature and therefore natural.”
This texts speaks directly to the idea that religion starts where science stops. Religion explains the unexplainable while science explains the mundane. The question of miracles is not a new debate. In the United States during the mid 1800s, the question of miracles often separated the Unitarians and the Trinitarians: the Trinitarians opting for a literal reading of the miracles while the Unitarians finding ways to interpret the miracles as a part of nature. France, however, is writing almost one hundred years after the American debate on miracles and is informed by a major blossoming of scientific research. The orthodox argument of religion occupying the realm after science is a line of arguing which continues to today, making this essay very relevant. France’s question is very simple and has not been sufficiently answered by those who take the miracles literally. The piece is sharp, to the point, and still very applicable to today.
The central claim of France’s “Miracle” is such; Miracle’s don’t exist. Any event claimed to be a miracle is nothing more than a natural phenomenon. France draws from famous events considered to be miracles in their time which were proven to be nothing more than a scientific event, such as the star of the East that guided the Wise Men to Bethlehem in the Gospels, which was understood as a miracle for ancient astrologists, but we now know was nothing more than a blazing star lightyears away that burned out. He fittingly ends his piece with the argument, “either [a miraculous event] is not or it is; and if it is, it is part of nature and therefore natural.” (115)
France is an orthodox follower of the Enlightenment. As this movement has cycled through Western thought and matured, philosophers have accepted that any event must be rationally explained, including miracles, to which France has written. For those of us who have not climbed on board the Enlightenment Express, this piece of writing feels like the old man at the end of the street who mutters under his breath at kids playing in the street: dry and unimaginative.
|
|
|
Sigmund Freud |
Freud strongly asserts religion is illusion. He states that religious ideas and science pave the way for constructing society and high morality, but science weakens the belief of religion. He does not give as much weight to religion as the ancestors did. The ancestors had to give much weight to religion due to infantile science, but now, we do not have to. This is because science will improve itself further and further.
To begin with, his concern is true. More and more Christians are becoming Atheists or Agonistics. It is not only because of the advance of science but also Christianity's reaction to science.
However, this chapter makes me ask whether we can believe science. Is science fact beyond any doubt? Furthermore, is it possible to find or investigate a certain fact through limited reason in finite human beings? Can our observation be objective? Are many scientific research results influenced by the researcher' perspective and expectations?
We should think about science as a proper method to assess our life because religions have almost failed.
Freud states that religion, which comes from humans' wishes, is an illusion. Because religion is an illusion, it cannot be proved or judged. While admitting that science cannot explain every question, Freud insists that science is the only approach to studying and interpreting the “reality outside ourselves” (148). He critiques the equivocal concept of God, which he thinks was self-created by theists. He does not like the idea that God is the center of everything and humans are insignificant. In the second part of his essay, Freud defends the validity of psychoanalysis. He also addresses the issues about humans' sufferings. He claims that as a long-term ruler of society, religion does not bring human happiness and improve human well-being. As a result, he reaches the conclusion that religion is becoming less reliable because more and more people are convinced by the scientific spirit which “brings about a particular attitude towards worldly matters” (153).
Freud questions the effectiveness of social functions of religion, claiming that religion is not helpful in reconciling the relationship between their personal lives and civilization. Freud's assumption is that since religion dominates society, it must be responsible for the development of humans. I think this assumption does not work in the modern context in which religion has become a personal choice. As Freud later points out, “religion no longer has the same influence on people that it used to.” (153) If Freud believes religion is not reliable anymore, why he expects religion to do everything like a leader of society? In addition, he does not clarify his definition of happiness when he criticizes religion is not being effective in making humans happy. Different definitions of happiness shape humans' attitudes towards religion. It is like different perceptions of suffering affect humans' relationship with God. If people believe suffering is redemptive, their painful experiences will make them better people and their sufferings will bring them closer to God. In contrast, if someone considers suffering as a torture, he/she might want to blame his/her personal suffering to God and run away from Him. My definition of happiness is related to human suffering. I agree that religion, at least Christianity, should do something when Christians are suffering, which I believe is an inevitable part of humans' life journey. Christians do not expect God to remove their sufferings. Instead, Christians want to figure out the values of suffering so that when they have passed God's training course of suffering which empower them and make them stronger, they will know God's will and serve His mission. God's mission is what gives Christians the true happiness. I do not know why Freud feels he has the authority to represent the human community stating that religion does not bring humans happiness. As a member of the human community, my religion makes me happy.
When children enter an unfamiliar landscape, they become frightened. Trembling from this encounter with seemingly infinite unknowns, they scan the horizon, eyes darting from place to place, and feel every cell in their bodies yearning to find a familiar, protective face. Much like these children, Freud understands human beings to be caught in a world we can't fully comprehend. This lack of absolute comprehension is terrifying as we are constantly forced to encounter the contingency of the unknown. Moreover, like the child, we desire protection from the dangers of this world in the presence of a strong protector: an omnipotent father. According to Freud, these fears, and the desire for protection they produce, are the seeds from which human conceptions of God grow. “Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of a moral world-order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of earthly existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place” (144). Therefore, according to Freud, religion results from human projections of the desire for divine protection, moral order, and immortality onto the objective structures of reality. Freud, like Feuerbach, saw religion as the externalization of human consciousness that served to alienate humanity from its true self. In short, belief in God results from an illusion.
Freud, however, is careful to make the distinction between an illusion and a delusion, arguing that religion, categorically, belongs to the former. Delusions are those perceptions or assertions that a clearly contradictory to reality. Illusions, on the other hand, are beliefs that are derived from human wishes. Illusions need not necessarily be false. However, Freud maintained that illusions often lead us to interpret reality based on how we want things to be, not how they really are. Like Marx before him, Freud was concerned that religion acted more as a crutch for civilization to lean on (and to beat others with) than it did to help heal its broken bones. Freud agreed that religion had been a great help in taming humankind's asocial instincts, but he claimed that religion was now felt more as a heavy veil that must be shaken off in order to see the world as it really is. According to Freud, only when the religious shroud has been removed and our pacifying illusions seen for what they are, only then we can begin to reconstruct a vision of civilization built on realities rather than illusions.
At the beginning of part VII, regarding the charge that religion is an illusion predicated on the desire for wish-fulfillment, Freud wonders aloud “may other cultural assets of which we hold high opinion and by which we let our lives be ruled be of a similar nature?” Somewhat in passing, Freud admits that it may be true that many of the foundational ideas upon which the western weltanschauung has been built may indeed be illusory as well. Take causation for instance. Some few centuries before Freud, Scottish Philosopher David Hume pointed out that scientific observation never actually observes the process of causation. All we truly see is a constant succession of phenomena. It was for this reason that Kant proposed a structure of reason within the human mind that served to fill in the gaps by imputing causation. However, if we were using Freud's categories, might we say that the explanatory structure of cause and effect is somewhat based on an illusion: a desire that the world be fundamentally and reliably ordered? Just because this concept has continually proven itself useful doesn't make it less illusory. It is for this reason that William James distinguishes between two orders of logical inquiry in his Varieties of Religious Experience. The first order regards existential judgments: from where does this phenomenon originate? What has caused it to exist? The second order deals with evaluative judgments: what is the value or worth of this phenomenon? What is its significance? James insists that to collapse these two orders of inquiry into one by insisting that the explanation of a things origin necessarily explains away its significance is a grave mistake. I wonder if Freud is not guilty of making that mistake here?
Freud's treatment of religion is that it ultimately serves as a crutch for wish fulfillment (Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion,” in The Portable Atheist, ed. Christopher Hitchens (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007), 144). Primarily, the protection we desire as a child is a lifelong desire that is not satiated by a merely human and imperfect father, so we create a more powerful, supernatural one. He makes the distinction between illusions and delusions, stating that illusions do not necessarily contradict reality; they just have a motive behind them primarily to fulfill a desire. Delusions on the other hand, do contradict reality. So religion is an illusion because it is used to fulfill the deep desire for protection and safety. Some needs, he says, cannot be fulfilled by science alone. A noticeable point of focus in Freud's excerpt is that the God he seems to always be implying is the God of Western Christianity. He makes a note of this bias once, but at times it is difficult to discern whether or not he is conscious of his assumptions about people's belief in the specific type of God he presents. With that being said, his use of the word “religion” is problematic in that he uses it synonymously with “a belief in God,” whereas contemporary study of religion is more keenly aware that religion in the broadest use of the word does not necessarily assume a belief in God (i.e. Buddhism).
In this text, Freud is talking about the illusional aspect of religions. He describes the psychical origin of religious idea as illusions and most urgent wishes of mankind. As his account, religious ideas such as the benevolent God's providence alleviate our fear of danger of life. Therefore, Freud says that illusions are derived from human wishes and religious believes are psychiatric delusions. About religious doctrines, he claims that they are also illusions and insusceptible of proof because they are based on their psychological nature. Freud is putting psychological foundation to the criticism of religion, following former atheists. He insists that psycho-analysis is needed in order to evaluate the truth of religions. For many thousands of years, religions have failed to enhance happiness of mankind. In addition to that, the development of science has decreased the influence of religion. While Freud says these, he praises effectiveness and suitability of the scientific spirit or scientific thinking. Therefore, he believes that the relationship between civilization and religion must be revised fundamentally by intellectual and scientific thinking.
Sigmund Freud is talking about religious origin. As a psychoanalyst, he is trying to find the origin of religious ideas in terms of psycho-analysis. His approaching to religious ideas is interesting, because I also believe that religiosity is derived from the deepest part of human nature. However, I have a doubt for universal applications of mental matters like psycho-analysis. There have been a number of debates about whether psycho-analysis is science, it is clear that Freud thought he is scientific. But, I suppose that matters of mental process are prone to be differentiated by each individual person.
Consequently, I think that Freud's criticisms of religious ideas can not be admitted for all religious situations. Freud criticizes that religious ideas are mere illusions and religions have not been helpful to civilize the world. Although I should admit some negative effects from the errors of religions, in my opinion, it is not truly agreeable. I mentioned that religious ideas come from human mind, but it does not mean that they are delusions. Religious thinking is not only mental process, but it helps people to face its reality. With religious ideas, I believe that human being is able to attain practical insights of reality.
In the piece from The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, writes with an empathic, humble tone and as a concerned fellow human. At several turns in the work, Freud gives human beings a plethora of intellectual slack. The conversation centers on illusion as a state much different from error and not at all as horrid as delusion. He admits that science is predicated on an ever-evolving universe, and therefore believe if you must but first look at the thousands of years' worth of religious failings. Freud writes, “Religion has clearly performed great service of human civilization…But not enough” (152). From the beginning of the selection, the esteemed author seeks to answer the concerns or debate points of the opposition—the theist—and yet he dawdles to address these points in specific and concrete ways and then dangles in the conclusion. Of course this last observation could be a limitation of this particular selection.
If Emma Goldman reads as a mother, Freud reads as the father he is. In The Future of an Illusion, he is surprisingly empathetic to those who have fallen prey to ignorance and illusion. He writes with caution with respect to injury, specifically to the fledgling field and profession of psychoanalysis. Yet, there is plenty of steadfast assurance in his literary voice. Honestly, I was hoping for a link to the realm of sexuality in this piece, and maybe it exists in the larger work. Freud seems to be acutely focused on responding to the theistic opposition—the illusion—than forging a uniquely atheistic future.
Freud's The Future of an Illusion gives a foundation for his theory of the origin of religion. If one posits religion as an illusion, then a critical observation can be made concerning its psychological origins. A belief becomes an illusion when it is driven by wish fulfillment to the point that the person who holds it disregards its relations to reality. Religion, then, proposes claims that inspire hope for a wish fulfillment, e.g. heaven. From this wish fulfillment, those who abide by the illusion's implications begin to structure the wish into their view of reality. Inasmuch as illusion can be binding, people once captive to the illusion can become disillusioned through education. With education, scientific thought begins to flourish uninhibited.
Freud makes a valid point in his theory of illusion. If religion is found in oppressed, indigenous, and uneducated societies, then the proposition that an illusion based on wish fulfillment is the core of religion might be true. However, this theory lacks the ability to empirically analyze religion in order to ascertain why people believe it and follow its tenets. When someone goes to an area where religion is a foundation of society, they cannot walk up to a religious adherent and expect an unbiased answer to questions concerning why they practice their religion. Through observation and critique of ritual, however, there might be room for at least one type of empirical study. Nevertheless, there are still speculative areas of observation, especially when using observation to find an origin. Therefore, although this theory seems plausible, it lacks the ability to be proven.
In this piece, Freud holds religious belief under the lens of psychoanalysis. He classifies these beliefs as illusions, created to fulfill the wish for protection and love. Illusions are distinct from delusions, which are essentially in contradiction with reality. At first glance this may seem to give illusions more credibility since they are not necessarily false. Instead, illusions completely disregard any relation to reality. The rest of this critique comprises Freud’s response to possible objections or rebuttals, the majority of which he dismisses by asserting the rationality of his view.
The quickest way to earn the friendship of a bully is to beat up another kid. Freud’s baby, psycho-analysis, has a tenuous relationship with science. Throughout this article we see him allying himself, and psycho-analysis, with science against religion. Is this partially motivated by wanting to earn the friendship of the science bully? This is a far from a perfect analogy. I don’t think science is a bully. I do think psychology is a legitimate science. But I also think this insecurity made Freud’s analysis less sympathetic to the healthy functions of religious belief.
In The Future of an Illusion Freud explores the relation between religious ideas and civilizations. Freud’s key point is that ideas of gods, and religions, are “illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind” (147). In childhood, Freud argues, we feel helpless. This helplessness is overcome by our reliance on our father. Beyond childhood that same helplessness remains—and we seek a “more powerful” father—resulting in the notion of God as Father. This is a “father-complex” (ibid). In this way “the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of a moral world-order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice…” (ibid). For Freud the term illusion denotes beliefs that are driven by wish-fulfillment and can be neither proven nor refuted. Thus the psychological factor of fear is the “psychological foundation” upon which our illusions of God and religion rest (151). Religious beliefs cannot yield knowledge of reality. Only science can. Freud hopes that in the future religious illusions will yield to scientific knowledge. Only by science can we “learn something about external reality” (150). Last, he wants to encourage civilization to fear “educated people and brain-workers” no more. These are “vehicles of civilization” that can facilitate a “fundamental revision” in society for the better (153-54).
In response, I find Freud’s points valid and insightful. However—aside from appealing to empirical investigation of reality—he never explains why religious ideas are illusory. Why are they illusions? Because they cannot be scientifically verified, he says. But so what? I reply. That people erect ideas to satisfy psychological needs does not negate the possibility of their tenability. Everything hinges on the standard of measurement one employs. Freud’s standard is “observation and reasoning in scientific work” (150). Surely Freud wouldn’t deny that the spin one puts on scientific data may skew its tenability every bit as much as the spin a religious extremist may put on religious claims. That psychological motives drive ideas does not necessarily nullify ideas. Freud complains that civilization needs the idea of God but shouldn’t because God is illusion. But what if civilization needs the idea of God because God is real? Thus the chicken-egg argument seems to undermine the strength of Freud’s claim. However, I must add one important caveat. Freud was a genius and I am not. So he may have understood the human psyche to such a degree that he is able to posit this claim. I wonder, though, how one could know which is contingent on which—the idea or the psychical need.
Sigmund Freud’s title The Future of an Illusion tell his readers exactly what this piece is about, that religious belief is an illusion and the unmasking of this illusion will have future effects that must be considered. Freud says that the psychological origins of the religious belief is an illusion and wish-fulfillment. Freud tells his story. The ancients feared the world, feeling helpless like a child. “Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life;” says Freud (147). In a more technical manner Freud explains what he means by “illusion.” Saying, “Thus we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself no store by verification” (148). Religious belief, for Freud, is an illusion because it is motivated by wish fulfillment and cannot be verified—proved. After asserting that religion is an illusion, Freud spend the second part of this piece laying out the worry and concern for unmasking this illusion. To be fair, Freud makes it clear that he is not the first to argue for atheism and wants his readers to believe that others have done it better. Freud believes that he is only adding a “psychological foundation” to previous atheistic criticisms. Freud’s has three main concerns about the future in promoting atheism. First, Freud believes that some will reject his psycho-analysis from the basis that “it leads to a denial of God” (152). Second, while religion has done much social and ethical good for human civilization, it is has not done enough. Atheism is much more fit to do social good, today, as people have “little to fear from educated people and brain-workers” (153). Lastly, Freud worries that unmasking God will cause a period of conflict when the lower-class finds out that God does not exist, they will not fear eternal punishment.
Freud’s idea of religion as illusion is not convincing, yet interesting. Freud believes that he is taking down theism because religious belief is predicated on wish fulfillment. However, all Freud has pointed out is that most humans long or desire for God to exist. This does not mean that God does not, in fact, exist. It could be the case that most human’s long for God to exist and it is the case that God does exist. It would only be illusionary if God didn’t exist. Which, Freud has not successfully argued. In fact, many atheists are accused of basing his or her atheistic beliefs off of wishful-thinking. Many not only do not believe God exists, but, also, do not want God to exist. How many people are atheists because they desire to live in a world where God is not real? Setting aside Freud’s conclusion, I think his comments of theism and religious belief can be well adopted by a serious theist. Meaning, Freud raises issue that I think serious theistic and Christian theologians should consider. For example, Freud worries that theism or Christianity can any longer aid social and ethical life. Many theologians wonder how religious belief can aid in freeing humanity rather than it “feeling like a yoke which must be shaken off” (152). Freud acknowledges the benefits that religious belief has had in history but wonders how it could make humanity “happy,” in the contemporary world. Is religious belief outdated and only binds people like Emma Goldman and Sigmund Freud believes or can religious belief be liberating, freeing, and bring “salvation” like it was intended to do, even for the contemporary man and woman?
Part 1.): Freud asserts that [Western] religious beliefs are illusions. They are not quite delusions; that is: they are not inconsistent with reality. Rather, they are wishes; they possibly may come true, although unlikely so. Belief in God begins with the child’s sense of vulnerability. From this vulnerability comes the wish/need for a protector. The child first bonds with their father as this protector. As s/he grows, however, the vulnerability remains. The bond is therefore transferred – at least in part – to God. God is adopted as the ultimate protector. The establishment of a world-wide church acts as a guarantor of protection - like travelers checks – it is good wherever one goes. The offer of an after-life makes the promise of protection unending. Says Freud:
the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of moral world-order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization;
Freud acknowledges that religion has benefitted humankind greatly, particularly in “taming asocial instincts. But not enough.” Humans are not happy with their lot. And while science is largely to blame for the loss of religion’s influence, this is only because religion has left humans wanting more out of life.Part 2.): I support the bulk of Freud’s argument, but I do have a few bones to pick with him. One is that children are sexual. I do not believe this, in the way Freud meant it. Freud discovered that many of his well to do clients had a history of incest as children. When he published this it caused a scandal that nearly ruined him. Fast on his feet, he changed his “discovery” to the idea that children had sexual desires for their parents. The psychoanalysis by which he “discovered” this is not, therefore, an objective tool of science – “an impartial instrument.” Second, chemistry has never held that the transmutation of metals into gold is practically possible. Third, “[A]nyone who admits to a sense of man’s insignificance or impotence in the face of the universe” is in fact, in a sense, religious. Such is also the case when “They give the name of ‘God’ to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves;” if by that one means the kind of spiritual journey described in the left-most column of lecture last week. I also do not agree that: “If [people] are taught that there is no almighty and all-just God, no divine world-order and no future life they will feel exempt from all obligations to obey the precepts of civilization. … If the sole reason why you must not kill your neighbor is because God has forbidden it and will severely punish you for it … - then, when you learn that there is no God … you will certainly kill your neighbor, you can only be prevented from doing so by mundane force.” To be fair, I have the advantage over Freud in this regard, however, in that I live in a time when the belief in God is greatly diminished, compared to his time.
Summary: In this essay religion is referred to as an illusion (Chapter 21 (147). An illusion of the human psyche in “fulfillment of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind” (147)). The illusion is fed by the human need for protection which transitions from the human father object in childhood to a stronger and more powerful protector in later life (147). Illusion in this sense is characterized by the disregard of a particular belief’s relation to reality, thereby discounting any grounds for verification by the holder of such beliefs (Chapter 21 (148). Nonetheless, scientific research provides the basis for testing the knowledge of reality outside one’s self (148). In this regard, there is the suggestion that as opposed to the futile engagement of religion to curb human instinct in the hopes of promoting happiness and reducing asocial behaviors, there is the need for a fundamental reevaluation of “the relationship between civilization and religion” (Chapter 21 (153, 154)). As noted in the translation, and per the advance of the scientific spirit, the non-existence of God cannot be kept even from the uneducated masses forever (153-4).
Response: My encounter with atheistic rhetorics bring my attention to concepts and suppositions that I find my Christian and Ghanaian traditions take for granted. This is a noteworthy piece. The argument on the possible effect (uncontrollable immoral behaviors) of scientific research on the uneducated religious masses is quite understandable. I wonder what it would look like in a tradition where both religion and culture play a key role in managing asocial/immoral behaviors. I understand this is in a Eurocentric context but it seems too much emphasis/value is placed on the intellect and the scientific spirit. And perhaps that is understandable because this is what the situation looks like at the present.
In this excerpt from
The Future of an Illusion
Sigmund Freud takes his time psychoanalyzing religion and its place in society. He describes it as if were a disease that humanity is infected with but is unable to fully cure. He presents this need for religion as a misunderstanding of the mind and the way we function as human beings. There are not too many points, if any, where Freud actually goes into any arguments against theism. He may do this purposely as he mentions that many before him have already spent their time doing so. His overall assumption seems to be that if we can fix the way we think by learning more about science and how we work as human beings, we will be able to get past our own faltered illusion of God.I personally didn’t really like this excerpt as much as I thought I would. It was kind of lackluster since he didn’t really seem to talk about atheism all that much, or at least directly. He also talked a good about himself and what people would think about him and how they would take his comments. He also seemed to be all over the place in the article. It was hard for me to find one nice continuous train of thought. He did do a good job of proving a underlying basis for the psychology behind religion and why it is we cling to it as humans.
|
|
|
Martin Gardner |
Gardner begins his essay discussing the failure of Jesus’ predictions about his second coming and the ways that Christians have rationalized that false prophecy. According to Matthew’s account, Jesus says unambiguously, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (NRSV). Hermeneutic justifications vary, but the most common responses are to associate the kingdom’s dawn with the transfiguration or to assume that phrases like “some standing here” or “this generation” (see Matt. 24:34) actually refer to a future generation. The latter interpretation never fails to produce some bold souls who actually set a date. This approach is thrilling — until the day after, when battered faith is tended through recalculation. After this overview, Gardner turns to a third rationale: the Wandering Jew. According to the dominant form of this legend, a Jewish shopkeeper saw Jesus struggling past his door, burdened by the cross. Without an ounce of compassion, the man struck Jesus and told him to hurry to his death. Jesus responded by cursing the man to live until the second coming. Thus, the Wandering Jew is a cultural legend used to cover Jesus’ error with venomous anti-Judaism. After presenting multiple versions of the tale, Gardner ends abruptly with an account in which the Wandering Jew continually tries to kill himself “but arrows spears, clubs, swords, bullets, mines, and trampling elephants have no effect on him” (217). Gardner’s essay is wrapped around a silent center, which is the source of its haunting power. Is it necessary to identify the hateful Christian logic behind this tale? Does anyone need to be reminded of its consequences?
Although not really an argument against theism, Gardner’s essay is quite damning for dominant forms of Christianity. To begin with, the spirit of modern criticism has resurfaced the long-suppressed trauma caused by the parousia’s delay. Jesus promised to return within a generation and belief in his coming was central for many of the earliest Christian communities (throughout the New Testament, but see especially 1 Thessalonians). Faced honestly, the failure of Jesus’ prophecy is good reason to doubt both the perfect inspiration of scripture and aggressive claims about his full divinity. That said, the deepest problems Gardner raises are not concerned with the rationality of traditional Christian faith, but its moral adequacy. To feel the full weight of the charge, one must see beyond Hitchens’ relatively superficial assessment that “stupid ideas have stupid consequences — and nasty consequences as well” (211). The horrors of Christian anti-Judaism are not rooted in the legend of the Wandering Jew; that hateful tale was produced quite naturally by a cultural already steeped in poison. Tracing the evil waters to their source leads to the often bitterly supersessionist collection known as the New Testament. It was texts like Matthew 27:25 and John 8:44 that inspired pogroms throughout the history of Christendom. I find little consolation from the fact that Matthew and John are two of the most deeply Jewish texts in the NT and the books’ authors would probably be horrified by the disaster their writings inspired. For me, there can be no reclamation of such texts. After the Shoah, nothing but an unqualified rejection is adequate.
In this article Gardner shows the progress of the myth of the “wandering Jew” from the time of Jesus up until now. In the first part of the article the author discuses the second coming of Jesus. Over the 2000 years since Jesus' birth and death, the Christian community has believed in the second coming of Jesus and some predicted the date of Jesus' second coming. In the later part of the article the author shows how the interpretation of the second coming of Jesus mentioned in Matthew 24 led to a string of different myth's about the wandering Jew. For example, some people thought that the Apostle John could have been the wandering Jew because he supposedly never died. The wandering Jew became a favorite topic for plays, poems and novels. In his conclusion the author quotes from Shelley's poem which describes the efforts of the wanderer to kill himself in wars, but arrows, spears, clubs, and mines have no effect on him.
I think the article by Gardner was an attempt to unpack myths about the wandering Jew, who is usually linked to the person of Jesus Christ. While not associating Jesus with the wandering Jew directly, the author uncovers the chain of myth that has been prevalent in the Christian community of faith for the past 2000 years. I liked the article because I was able to see that the author did not take any sides on the issue but faithfully presented the understanding of the wandering Jew over the centuries. This article helped me to understand that we usually create our own form of “wandering Jew” in the way it suits us. I appreciated the author's note that the wandering Jew tried to kill himself because none of the things of the world has any effect on him.
In his essay “The Wandering Jew and the Second Coming,” Martin Gardner elucidates the theological implications of biblical inconsistencies. Gardner is concerned with Matthew 16: 27-28 in which Jesus implies that the Second Coming would occur within the generation of his ministry on earth. With the passing of first-century Christians, a series of biblical reinterpretations attempted to make sense of Jesus’ prophecy. As generational interpretations proved fruitless over time, new interpretations were adopted to make room for a Second Coming not bound by specific time restrictions. Moving from this example, Gardner recounts a diverse collection of exegesis and literature on the myth of the Wandering Jew. Gardner subtly reveals the absurdity of expanding ambiguous biblical references into allegorical stories. The metaphors become stretched so thin that the stories no longer reflect the true nature of their scriptural beginning.
The opening section of Martin Gardner’s essay is a tight, tidy study of Christian responses to troublesome New Testament passages. Gardner’s primary implication that fundamentalist and literal interpretations of the bible are often ignorant and sometimes dangerous is one that both atheists and liberal theists can affirm. This type of common ground is critical to deepening the dialogue between theists and atheists. The second portion of his essay, however, reads as though it were simply tacked on at the close of Gardner’s study of Matthew. Gardner’s point becomes lost as he describes various literary approaches to the myth of the Wandering Jew. Gardner lacks a concise attitude toward these stories and their implications. The examples of how far writers expanded the myth are entertaining and sometimes confounding, but Gardner’s lack of a coherent thesis is evident.
The tale of the Wandering Jew is, for some, an example of how religion will create fantastic and absurd stories in order to defend the infallibility of their sacred text. The fable the Wandering Jew is such an example. This legend originates from Christian believers trying to explain the discrepancy of a comment that Jesus made in Matthew 16:27-28. In this verse, Jesus makes a comment about a person, whose identity is unknown, that will “…not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Similar comments appear in both, Mark 8:30, 9:1 and Luke 9:26.27. Christian communities interpreted Jesus’ comments in the Gospels to be an allusion to the imminence of the Second Coming, meaning the person or people that are mentioned in the passage are a reference to the present generation of Christians. However, this concept was discarded after generations passed and the Second Coming didn’t “come.” Other scholars and believers regarded this text as actually referencing to a specific individual. Who is this person that is destined to walk the earth until the day of the Second Coming? Different explanations were created from being a reference to the Transfiguration of Christ to an undocumented incident where a man hit Jesus as he was carrying his cross, where upon Jesus told him that he would remain on earth until His return. This story has generated hundreds of poems, plays, and novels that dramatize this event. These dramatizations range on a wide spectrum of holy to more hilarious and ridiculous. With this history, Gardner provides people with an interesting example of how far a believer will go in order to protect the sanctity of their scripture.
The legend of the Wander Jew is an interesting phenomenon. How does such an absurd story continue through a faith tradition as a factual event? Thinking about an old, confused man walking around the Earth for two millennia is a bizarre idea. For some believers, with a more literal approach to the sacred text, they find no problem understanding this story to be factual because of a deep belief in the infallibility of the Biblical text. It is a way for believers to “fill in the gaps” of the texts. However, more secular writers, poets, and playwrights have taken a different perspective when understanding the significance of the fable of the Wandering Jew. From a secular perspective, this story about a man/woman who cannot die and is cursed to wander the Earth has to do with the concept of immortality and the necessity of death. With many stories depicting this character watching the ones they love die around them, while trying futilely to end their life, the reader gains insight into how much meaning our lives have in death. Without death, what would be the significance of any moment, possession, or relationship in this world? There would be no reason for attaching meaning or our personal feelings to any place or person. It is embracing the inevitability of death that people are enlightened to the risks in life, the moments that we stand back in gratitude of life’s mysteries and splendor. Though the reasoning behind the creation of this myth may be rather unjustified or foolish, in another perspective, this story provides the reader with an appreciation for the world and the people around them.
Garder takes time to point out the absurdity of an idea of the second coming of Jesus Christ through the myth of the Wandering Jew. He explains that in an effort to make sense of one of Jesus’s quotes, a myth came about that a Jewish man had to stay alive, wandering the earth until Jesus’ return. And since Jesus has not come back, so the man’s fate is to wander. Noting the popularity of the myth being retold in poetry and novel, but also there to explain the suffering of the day. In the end, Gardner concludes that there is a real cruelty in the hope of the return of Christ if for the perpetual suffering of humanity. If the only cure for the Wandering Jew is for Christ to come back, then why would he not return already? The second coming never having come is at the fault of the humans miscalculating the dates or misunderstanding the signs, and Gardner assigns the arising of the myth of the wandering Jew to the greater myth of the second coming. One funny belief begets another. Which ultimately ends in tragedy.
This might be the editing, but this piece just ends abruptly. It is a rapid and brief history of the use of the figure throughout western writing, Used as one of those explanations that make no logical sense, Gardner seems to have forgotten his task and merely offers another of those lists of weird things humans do when they belief weird things. He fails to truly point out the absurdity he may have been going for because the novels and poems he is recounting only seem to ring out the tragic. He provides a summary of a silly little mess, and no conclusion for it because the conclusion for taking a passage of the bible literally is to create a man who cannot die because Jesus did.
Martin Gardner’s The Wandering Jew and the Second Coming is ultimately a critique of Matthew 16:27-28 and those who defend it. The verse suggests that Jesus told his followers that he would return before some of them would die. He along with many others acknowledge that this is an issue considering how it has been two millennia since then and Christ has still not returned. He pokes fun at Seventh-Day adventists and other Christian sects who work to explain this by finding or creating some loophole within the text. Ultimately, every possible date and event given for Christ’s return has failed and he uses that to show how strong their will to hold the Scripture as true really is. Gardner then begins to make mention of numerous tales of the wandering Jew who could not die until Christ had returned. He eventually ends the piece with detailed lines from the stories themselves providing vivid detail on this fascination with the wandering jew and the return of Christ.
I was not a big fan of this reading. The first red flag I saw was that in his mention of the verse he constantly referred to a common belief on its interpretation by religious persons who are trying to defend the text. In a debate that seems to revolve around what the verse means, the question never surfaces, “what was the author’s intent?” This was shocking to me considering it could have helped shed a lot of light on it’s purposed interpretation. If Matthew was really writing sometime in the 80s CE and Christ supposed ministry was in the early 30s CE, then there is a strong likelihood that most people from Christ’s time period were dead on soon on their way too dying. This likely would have been considered by Matthew and therefore shaped his intentions with the meaning of the verse, but that thought is never considered. Gardner then spends far too much time discussing the multitude of wandering Jew stories that have les ro do with God’s existence and much more to do with why these legendary stories were so popular. The fact that he spends so long on the topic and even took time at the end to write out the stories towards the end left me very unsatisfied.
The excerpt from Martin Gardner’s “The Wandering Jew and the Second Coming” (211-217) gives an overview of how the legend of the wandering Jew arose to justify Christ’s claim in Matthew 16:27-28 that “There be some standing here, which shall not taste death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” First century Christians unanimously thought that the second coming would happen in their lifetimes. When this did not happen, Christians began interpreted Christ’s words in various ways, for example, as the transfiguration or the formation of the church. Nevertheless, the millennial fervor of Christ’s immanent return persisted in numerous Christians sects through the centuries. One of the strangest ways that Medieval Christians attempted to demonstrate accuracy of Christs words was through the legend of the wandering Jew. Maybe some poor soul alive during Christ’s life was cursed to wander the earth until the second coming. The identity of this “wandering Jew” has also shifted through the centuries. In the 17th century scores of people even claimed to be this wandering Jew. A wandering Jew even popped up in the USA in 1868. The essay then gives an overview of 19th and 20th century literature on myth of the wandering Jew from Eugene Sue’s Le Juif Errant (18844-45) to Percy Shelly “The Wandering Jew.”
The first time I encountered the legend of the wandering Jew was in Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960). Though, until reading this essay I had never considered this legend as a way to rationalize Christ’s words in Matt. 16:27-28. Instead of the theory of the wandering Jew, I was taught in an evangelical bible school that Christ’s Olivet Discourse should be interpreted through prophetic interchange. That is, Christ’s prophecy interchanged back and for the between describing an immediate event (the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE) and the second coming. Trained in this kind of hermeneutic I could easily understand Christ’s statement as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem or the inauguration of the Kingdom of God in something like the nascent Christian church. My imagination was not stretched far enough to consider the possibility that maybe god had cursed some poor Jew to wander the earth in order to safeguard Christ’s prophecy from infelicity. Unfortunately, the bizarre legend of the wandering Jew is a small instance of the larger problem of the history of Christian depiction of the Jews in general as a cursed people destined to suffer for the sin of killing Jesus.
|
|
|
Emma Goldman |
Emma Goldman says the God idea is becoming more impersonal and indistinct as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and increasing correlation between science and modern society. She criticizes theistic ideas and religious doctrines and insists that the important things are on earth, not heaven. Therefore, as the philosophy of atheism roots on the earth and in this life, it has a power to break mankind's fetter and reawake human mind. Atheism is not only denying of gods, but also the strongest affirmation of mankind.
In this text, I could find Emma Goldman's misunderstandings about theism and Christianity. I will comment two of those misapprehensions. Goldman says that the conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. It means that the concept of God was just derived from human fear of natural phenomena and uncertain future, and from human curiosity for killing time. I think that it is too partial point of view, because there have been numerous religious insights, prodigies of nature, and struggling to find the significance of existence in human history. Though human needs, like desire to overcome or relieve fear, are important issue in religion, however, to regard religious believes as mere products is an obvious error. Goldman also asserts that “the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice“. It is also one of other serious error. Human reason is one of important requisites of Christian faith especially in tradition of Methodist Church and justice is also important topic in the Bible. Goldman is committing a generalization error based on misapprehensions of Christianity.
The tone of ‘The Philosophy of Atheism’ is clear, authoritative, and yet gentle. Emma Goldman writes, “Theism…is the theory of speculation. Atheism, the science of demonstration” (130). Goldman is the exemplar of that systematic demonstration. It is unambiguous that the intended purpose of ‘The Philosophy of Atheism’ is to provide a concise and yet solid understanding of all that atheism is. The content of the essay enables the reader to live forward in power knowing that humankind was made to be free. In Emma Goldman's words, “Atheism…is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty” (133).
Emma Goldman's work reads to me as a mother narrating the Ultimate Story to her child. I can hear her share the story in melodic whisper. She begins at the dawn when primitive humankind fabricated the god story. “In the beginning there was fear and curiosity and ignorance,” she spins. “Then human beings began to realize themselves, and they grew in intellect and awareness. They outgrew belief in the imaginary, and yet some still believed and their religion fueled ‘the industry of befogging the human mind and stifling the human heart’” (131). “Because of this, ‘man has been bowed into the dust, -a will-less creature, broken and swarting in the dark’” (132). “And yet, atheism is on the horizon. Can you hear the freedom cry, my child? Theism is the nightmare. Come, awaken yourself to the beauty of the earth!” It is a story that does not need editing and interpretation like the children's bible stories I've given up reading to my son. In some sense, it is a story he already knew. Emma Goldman is a literary freedom fighter!
Emma Goldman begins her essay by describing how she sees the ongoing history of Theism revealing a concept of God (what she calls the “God idea”) becoming religiously defunct over time in the increasing vagaries of de-anthropomorphizing theological abstraction. Where this process occurs, God is being refashioned into something severely less understandable in terms of humans' felt needs and wants-the underlying source, she claims, of all theology-and, contradictorily, no longer appropriate to fulfill its originating existentially-motivated religious purposes. Theology, in the vain service of protecting God from the onslaught of critical, science-minded doubts, is actually removing the God idea further and further from the hearts of its human designers. And it seems there is little else the above-average theological mind could have done differently in reaction to the many recent triumphant advances of scientific understanding. For Goldman (although perhaps a sad sight for more sympathetic, reverent, or at least more nostalgic atheists to see) theism's dire situation is reason for great relief and excitement. The “demonstrative” methods and discoveries of science-outmoding entirely the “speculative” methods of theology-have started to cast an ever-widening vision for humanity, the realization of which, Goldman's believes, requires a humanistic spirit of striving optimistically and cooperatively for the betterment of ourselves and our shared world, simply because we want to and can successfully do so without the help of an evil-if-existent, non-existent God (belief in whom hurts us and our chances). Moreover, she believes this must follow the death of God, because we can only free ourselves to improve ourselves by destroying the illusions of unreal supernatural beings that limit our potential. She predicts the trend of atheism she notices all around to continue in spite of the desperation of theists struggling against this radical change in the “collective consciousness” (which is the start of that radical improvement-a huge maturational move forward). Theists obviate their own desperation in their heightened existential anxieties, as the the faith-leaders among them resort to corrupt practices of profiteering and and power-mongering to preserve the societal status of their personally sustaining piety and worship, their ostensibly progressive programs of thought like “tolerance” for religious diversity and opposing religious beliefs-a meager and strained lesser-of-two-evils attempt at a solution (atheism a greater evil than religious inclusivism)-and other various “frantic” efforts. All such faithful travail will fail to slow or reverse the change for which, as it were, the whole human world has been groaning in pain that the religious, by virtue of their religiousness, have not much felt.
The positive atheism Goldman defines is inseparable from a humanistic, life-affirming, world-enhancing global project for a new creation: a better human consciousness, in which the old (theism) is gone and the new (atheism) has come. This structure of her message, her good news, is uncannily similar to the Christian one that hers rejects and is meant to replace: Atheism, my atheism, is the way, the truth, and the life! Only through Atheism can we be rescued from our worsening condition! Might there be some alternative, still very humanistic, vision in which religions can have an important constructive role to play? How important is the spread of atheism to the human progress she envisions? Must it rely on the premise of her kind of atheism, or just, for instance, increased cognitive flexibility in religious belief? How can religion or religious people change in order to support (or possibly lead in some ways) humanity in making the changes it needs? Questions like these are not raised in her essay. Granted, her writing here is highly rhetorical, very effectively so; perhaps these sorts of questions would have been incidental to, or distracted from, the main message of her essay. Even so, one wonders whether the questions even occurred to her.
Emma Goldman criticizes Theism because it destroys human beings generally. She denounces the idea of God because this results from human fear of what they cannot understand or perceive. Subsequently, all religions take advantage of this to force people into religions, which paralyze and shackle humanity's power of reason and drive people into unrighteous and immoral action in the name of God. Instead, she argues that Atheism will emancipate human beings from all God-heads, and let them expand their minds. Also Atheism empowers people to know that “justice, truth, and fidelity are…related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race” (Goldman, 133).
I agree with Goldman's analysis and criticism of religions in terms of their relations to human nature (fear), economics and politics, and justice. However, it is more plausible to regard her as anti-religious then as an atheist. She rarely discusses how people turn away from God; rather she focuses on how religion has a negative effect on human beings. Furthermore, I am doubtful that human beings are reliable about creating justice. She contends that only people who are standing against God can overcome injustice. This is because, as she writes, “based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness” (Goldman, 133). But justice might remain a problem for human beings even if there were no religion. In this light, I would like to ask, doesn't the scientific knowledge that she argues for start from fear and hope? Are we not afraid of many things, driving us to seek understanding and control? Do not many people suffer from irrational phobias? And do not phenomena that are unexplainable also cause fear at times? Fear may be a universal aspedct of human life and not distinctively related to religion. Goldman presents some partially emotional arguments and this strategy would be easily exposed by opponents. The name of this chapter should refer to her wrath against religion than to the philosophy of atheism.
Emma Goldman’s essay, “The Philosophy of Atheism,” identifies a pernicious essence in the theisms of the world and of history. That essence has its origin in “fear and curiosity” and grows in influence in direct proportion to human ignorance and weakness. The philosophy of atheism is, for Goldman, an attack on the parasitic ideology of theism, but also a positive promotion of human intelligence, liberty, and strength. At the turn of the 20th century, Goldman identified in theism a vague coalescing of theistic beliefs under the banner of “tolerance.” She writes, “It is characteristic of theistic ‘tolerance’ that no one cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe.” In this tolerance, Goldman identifies a new version of the age old strategy (whether conscious or unconscious, she admits) of social elites to use religious adherence to effect social control. This leads to all kinds of suffering and evil that, in the patent falseness of theistic belief, God neglects to interrupt, despite God’s supposed omnibenevolence. Goldman insists that no rescue will come for human beings until Man, not God, will “rise in his mighty wrath” and set things right through rationality, liberty, and strength.
Goldman is an impressive writer and one is hard pressed not to be stirred by her evocation of the achievement and unfolding potential of human beings. Those familiar with the prophetic tradition in biblical monotheism will recognize the feeling at once. Hitchens mentions Goldman’s disdain for “the Soviet ‘experiment’” and it would have been nice to find in an excerpt of her work some sense of the applicability of these critiques to ostensibly atheistic absolutisms. As it stands, the religious person is likely to read Goldman’s essay and think, “My goodness, what prophetic zeal this woman had! And what eschatological hope she had for human beings, albeit naturalistic. What faith in and charity for any society that embraces the good news that there is no god under which we must bow and scrape and be enslaved.” Goldman powerfully promotes her vision and hope for a post-theistic humanity, and does so with the form and force of religiosity. As a brief aside, it is worth noting that Goldman (like others in this collection) seems essentially to link atheism and materialism, which on this reader’s view is a repetition of the short-sighted baptizing of particular metaphysical systems by making them essential to doctrine that one finds in the Christian tradition.
Emma Goldman’s philosophy of atheism is rooted in the promotion of human liberty and intelligence. She describes the philosophy of theism as a theory of speculation that makes claims about an unreal world in which figures such as gods or spirits can limit the actions and aspirations of humans. Meanwhile, the philosophy of atheism, or “the science of demonstration,” offers a concept of an actual world in which the actions of humans are open to possibilities. Morality isn’t figured by the demands of the god-head but rather by humans deciding for themselves what is best, as individuals and as communities. Goldman asserts that atheism is a growing movement, as evidenced by the God-idea becoming progressively less defined, and she implies that it will eventually fade away completely. She credits the emergence of the God-idea to ignorance and fear, and suggests that as humans continue to learn more about the actual world, their anxieties will lessen until they have no need to make claims about a spiritual world.
Goldman’s matter-of-fact tone describing the emergence of the God-idea made me cringe. It’s a historical certainty that people create myths to meet their psychological needs, but it’s also possible that there really is a theistic God that chooses to relate to creation in the way best fitting for the creation’s time or needs. Religion, or God, could be found even while it is created. She seems just as close-minded about every last possible religious persuasion as the unforgiving god-heads or religious leaders she indicts as being unjust or limiting to religious followers. If she had offered her history of theism with just a little less certainty she would have been giving the many theisms a more charitable reading, but as it is, she straw-mans their creeds from the start.
Goldman argues that the origin of religion can be found in the primitive questions of man who weakly attributed the name God to those things that were unexplainable or terrifyingly powerful. A tolerance of other religions is expressed as weakness in current religious denominations. As the world becomes more aware of the truth of a demonstrable atheism, Goldman argues, they rush to save dying mystical institutions. She paints of picture of religion close to that of Marx and Nietzsche; a herd of weak people beat into submission. The human mind though is not built for the static truth of religion. We are finally realizing as a race that the world is composed of chaotic forces rather than static consistency, she continues. Atheism fights against the absolutism of theism. Being a negation of gods, atheism becomes the ultimate affirmation of life and humanity.
I found Goldman’s argument quite difficult. Though some of her points can be found in Anderson as well, her presentation is more hostile to religion. I want to press Goldman on the idea that religion is static and always supports an absolutism that denies life. I would first question how science and atheism a like don’t assert absolutism in the same way that religion does. If atheism was so fluid and smart, wouldn’t it realize that it is just another way of belief rather than ‘the’ way of belief? To say that theism necessitates absolutism makes me wonder how science doesn’t do the same. Goldman argues that we are finding the “truth” that life is chaotic forces rather than static deity, but this being the case how can we know anything about the world? And what purpose would any belief have if one thought it would be inevitable proved to be a mere “chaotic” happenstance. I struggle to see how Goldman doesn’t fall into complete atheistic relativism as she tries to attack religion with the most vicious argument possible: god is dead primarily because there is no meaning in creation to begin with.
In this essay the author talks about the philosophy of atheism by looking into the history of belief in a deity. Goldman argues that religious belief in God has been forced on people as an idea of absolutism without freedom. Goldman believes that ignorance and fear is the root cause of the idea of God. The author makes the distinction between theism and atheism by arguing that theism is the theory of speculation where as atheism is the science of of demonstration. The author argues that the philosophy of atheism is the emancipation of people from ideas of God, which are created by human beings, and the elimination of which would help to create a world in which can imagine and think freely.
The writing style of the author helped me understand the main idea of the essay, which is the philosophy of atheism. The author kept repeating the phrase “philosophy of atheism” through out the essay and contrasted it constantly with the opposite viewpoint. I agree with the author's contention that theism is a theory of speculation, because it is a matter of faith. But the irony is that there is no other way but through theism to come closer to the idea of God. I think the author raises a valid question on the notion of love and goodness in God in the essay. Most of the religions, including Christianity, preach that God is love but do not understand the justice of God through the concept of love. I believe that God's radical love can forgive anyone and God's radical forgiveness and justice may not be understandable by human beings. I believe that God's love and forgiveness has the power to change anything that we might think that can never be changed. This essay also helped me to understand that most atheisms are not against the idea of God but they aim to deconstruct the myths created by human beings and thereby provide a space to think freely about the idea of God.
According to Emma Goldman, humankind’s overwhelming adherence to theism is linked to two correlated developments in history. When humankind was ignorant and undeveloped, theism flourished. As the human mind became edified and utilized, scientific inquiry and discovery has slowly replaced the need for theistic belief. Theism represents a projected and hyperbolized human image that binds humankind to fear, oppression, and ignorance. Atheism, however, presents a hopeful alternative. By removing oppressive deities and projections, atheism allows the liberating power of the human mind to heal a world withered by theism.
Emma Goldman could have saved herself (and me) time by whittling down her essay to the few sentences it encapsulates. The paper could have easily been replaced by the sentence: “Theism is an ignorant projection of humankind that enslaves the world, while atheism does not.” Goldman paints with a broad brush in her critiques of theism (all of theism!) going as far as to ask, “do not all theists insist there can be no morality [in atheism]?” No, they emphatically do not. The title of her paper is “The Philosophy of Atheism,” yet Goldman never gives any substance to any philosophical school of atheism beyond that it is not theism. Theists empathic toward philosophy could write more compelling treatises than Goldman.
Emma Goldman’s penetrating essay “The Philosophy of Atheism” is a veritable State of the Union Address, but instead of outlining the state of the American union, she details the state of atheism and theism (religion) in modern society. From Goldman’s vantage point, atheism is steadily becoming the philosophy of the populace and is threatening the ancient rule of theism. What is fueling the revolution? Human courage—courage engendered by “the restless march towards knowledge and life” (132). Goldman theorizes that religious ideas were originally created by human beings in response to their felt fear and curiosity toward nature and that throughout history religious vitality has correspondingly increased or decreased with the growth or decay of human knowledge. In the modern period, human beings are gaining extensive knowledge of the physical world and are coming to understand that they control social states and, ultimately, human destiny. Religion is facing extinction because knowledge is dispelling fear. Religious elites are aware of the swelling rebellion and are preparing a defense because they, who run “the largest, the most corrupt and pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the world,” do not want to lose their standing (130). But for Goldman, these defense tactics disclose weakness not strength. Declarations of religious ‘tolerance’ and the concomitant recession of exclusivist doctrines indicate the enervation of religious institutions that can no longer enforce their ideologies of fear and submission. Theism is also hemorrhaging theologically. The gods who are supposedly loving, just, and merciful are deafeningly silent and indifferent to human suffering. The philosophy of atheism responds to this void with a resounding call for “MAN” to “rise in his mighty wrath” and establish justice and forge relationships of love without the aid of the gods (132). Driven by a spirit of liberation, Goldman pronounces the goal of atheism: “the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads” (133). Once the immorality, injustice, and mental oppression promulgated by religion is eradicated, “freedom and beauty will be realized” for the human race (133).
Goldman’s energy is contagious. She presupposes a philosophical anthropology that affirms the capacity of the common person to reason soundly, to act justly, and to revolt against trained docility. Goldman keenly and tersely points out the complicity of religion, business, and politics in fostering the docility of the populace for exploitive ends. Her robust voice being finely tuned to the needs of the laboring oppressed has the power to penetrate this acquiescence and generate courage. Having an historical advantage, one can now see that her conviction of atheism’s progress was overstated, but this does not diminish the two-fold critique (behavior and theology) she levels at religious institutions. The theory of origins that Goldman propounds may be problematic since it overlooks the potential for compound influences to launch religious speculation, e.g., admixtures of biology, society, individual fear and awe, but her treatment of religion as a tool that has gone awry opens a fruitful field of investigation. As a tool for explaining the unknown, has religion outlived its usefulness? Are the current religious configurations suited to the mysteries faced by contemporary life? Has the tool suffered such corruption that it has become too hazardous to use? Is it irreparable and should it be discarded and replaced by a new tool? Is atheism a more suitable tool? Answers are rare jewels mined by strenuous labor, but Goldman is an exemplar of boldness and courage because she demands that humans take responsibility for the tools they create.
Emma Goldman was a great proponent of justice, a defender of the poor, a prophet shouting down the excesses of a capitalist system that exploited those without power. In this selection, she identifies religion as a tool of that system, a way for bankers and heads of state to profit, literally, “from the subdued, tamed, and dull masses” oppressed by theism and its claim of theistic omnipotence and exclusive source of meaning. Religion is, happily, on its way out, “growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events” (129). Its continuing marginalization can be seen in the “anxiety of the theists” who see themselves losing their power, once so absolute. Gods, which have so long served to “lash the people into obedience, meekness, and contentment,” are fading into oblivion, opening up the grand possibilities of atheism’s “liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities.” Where theism “has kept humanity in helpless degradation,” atheism is “the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty,” so that, finally, “freedom and beauty [will] be realized” (132, 133).
In my earlier days, my anarcho-punk brethren and I celebrated Goldman for her whole-hearted dedication to the cause; she was a hero, and deservedly so. In an age where industrial capitalism reigned supreme, and the exploitation of workers was brutal and so visibly apparent, hers was one of the few voices that spoke up courageously for justice. And hers was one of the voices that participated in a vigorous debate between anarchists, socialists, and communists, the combined efforts of which resulted in the federal labor protections now taken for granted by many. But I think that, distasteful as it may have been to her, Goldman would have done well to spend a little time dwelling on the doctrine of original sin. This need not require her to believe in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, or the Fall. In fact, it need not imply any religious conviction at all: the history of evolution shows that in our genetic past cooperation was limited to the members of one’s group; the ability to be directed beyond one’s own context to help members outside the group, as Goldman certainly was, is a relatively recent, and laudable, phenomenon. I believe this means, however, that, even if religion is the “largest, the most corrupt and pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the world,” it is still doubtful that with or without it any of us will be ultimately successful in “usher[ing] in justice upon the earth” (130, 132). On the contrary, the various attempts to do so, to do so in absolute ways, have generally resulted in tyranny and oppression, as she saw herself as she grew disillusioned with Soviet communism. God bless Emma Goldman; we’re a better country because of her. In her effort to throw out the bathwater of injustice, however, she might have lost the baby of wisdom, too.
An anarchist and political activist, Goldman’s essay consists primarily of a critique of religious oppression and an apology for human freedom. As the argument goes, the human spirit possesses untold potential, yet religion’s restraining fear and violence fetters the human spirit to the pre-Promethean dark. Despite humanity’s evolutionary development beyond the religious impulse organized religion, she suggests, still manages to claim power over the huddled masses. The philosophy of atheism Goldman proffers is one of liberation from the threats of dubious gods and their human prophets. Prometheus, she argues, should be unbound.
To be sure, religions have profited immensely from the fears and anxieties of their adherents. However, in her haste to make sweeping historical generalizations, Goldman oversimplifies the human experience of the religious while elevating human power to an extreme. In particular, by saying that, “beauty as a gift from heaven has thus proved useless” (133), she suggests a radically anthropocentric relation to the world. One first wonders if human beings should ever use beauty. One could also argue that there is a category of beauty that comes from nowhere else but heaven, even if by heaven we must mean some religious space in the human imagination. After all, what else could produce the Psalms and the Gita? Did some evil shape the ecstasy of St. Teresa and Bernini’s marble response to her account? I would not be the first to suggest that a certain interpretations of the Prometheus myth betray basic assumptions about the human condition. Whatever one’s evaluation of human potential, Prometheus’ fire must always come from some Olympian other: either from the gifts of evolution or the strange offerings of the anonymous, it comes from without.
Goldman describes religion as the limiting of human creativity, engament and change while Atheism offers potential. Theism is the weilging of power over thought, then action that leads to division. She takes it down in economic and warlike terms, giving weight to its influence on human history. She sees a beauty in a world no longer defined in religious terms, and believes it will only blossom further when not compared to the uncatchable hope of another world to come. She concludes with an ode to humans and their capacity for graduer unhinged by the burden of a god that could only limit the potential that is the human.
Once again we find that humans are the pinnacle, and it is only after this fact has been figured out that we will truly have a future. Goldman’s love of humanity, her faith in its potential, and her trust in its ability to live into morality are rather stunning. Might be because she has the ultimate enemy of theism to place all of the problems of the world, but she overlooks the bleakness that nature has inside of itself as well. She is looking at a sunrise in spring through the branches of a cherry blossom tree while baby birds chirp. She doesn’t seem to want to recognize that this earth that will open up in beauty to humans once they stop treating it like a hotel also floods, and etc. with all the weather metaphors. It does not care about us anymore that we had it while blinded by religion. Her hope for human harmony forgets or never realized that we are surviving animals. I admire her faith in the potential for humans, but overcoming religion does not eliminate all of the other issues that she argued against in war, greed, or capitalism. We always find new ways to suck.
Emma Goldman’s The Philosophy of Atheism is a powerful cry arguing that atheism is ultimately for the good of humanity and that theism has bound humanity and stunted its growth. Goldman is direct and unbridled saying that the idea of God and Divine Truth is “the most corrupt and pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the world, […]. It is the industry of befogging the human mind and stifling the human heart.” Belief in God or religion, then, has done nothing for the human good but has merely profited off consumers, abused humanity, and commends injustice. Goldman’s philosophy of atheism contrasts theism. Atheism is ultimately a down-to-earth, flexible, non-metaphysical view of the world that doesn’t not bind humanity but actually encourages humanity to reach its potentially. While theism is stuck in the metaphysical heaven, by-and-large ignores the real and demanding problems of the world, and is a static formula that demand compliance. Goldman wants humanity to rise up and be what it can without theistic belief saying, “No, not the gods, but MAN must rise in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all deities, betrayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to usher in justice upon the earth” (132). For Goldman, man is responsible and must be up for the challenge to change the world for the better.
Goldman’s piece was entertaining to read. However, it should be obvious that she has largely incorrect. Each of her critiques, while containing some truth, are wildly over-stated. First, belief in God is not static and fixed. I can only speak about my own tradition, Christianity, saying that belief in God—what is means, looks like, how it is expressed, how it has been used, etc.—is not static and fixed as Goldman would like to believe. Even New Testament Christianity, for example, writing the New Testament in Greek as opposed to Hebrew and not having Gentiles obey Jewish deity laws and circumcision displays huge amounts of flexibility. How much flexibility does Goldman want? Can anyone do anything? Second, Goldman believes that atheism is less metaphysical that theism. Well, it’s not. Goldman’s views of the universe are just as metaphysical as theistic belief but only of a different kindof metaphysics. Isn’t rejecting belief in Infinite Being, a metaphysical comment? However, she does provide a social critique of Christianity that should be taken seriously—that Christianity ignores the real-world problems on earth and waits for God to act. Based on the New Testament, Jesus would have “amen-ed” Goldman’s comments here which means that maybe Christianity isn’t the problem when it comes to social relief but “Christians” are the problem. Further, the early church tried tirelessly to oppose such views and ethics in Gnosticism. Third, Goldman charges theist for enslaving humanity and stunting its growth and productivity. Historically, this is simply not true. There has been many growth’s that theism has aided or directly been involved with. Additionally, Goldman’s powerful comments would only be true if God does not exist. However, if God does exist it would appear that atheism would enslave and mislead humanity.
Part 1.): Goldman writes that theism is on the decline. (I assume her writing this piece occurred about the time of the First World War.) She asserts that God is becoming more “nebulous”, as science explains more and more of how the world works. She asserts that the degree to which the human family can get along will depend on how well humans can learn to get along without God. She asserts that religion is the largest industry in the world – larger than even the manufacture of weapons. She also asserts that all theisms have “painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness”, yet those deities do not respond to the world’s crises. It is up to humans, she avers, to bring in a time of justice, to save the earth, to create in a new world here on earth. Humans must do what God has promised to do and yet has left undone. Such is the only way, she says, to “the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.”
Part 2.): Emma has it wrong in one particular way. While religion may be the poison she asserts it to be, it does not capture adherents by making them dumb. It attracts converts through its language of love – which humans yearn to hear. God’s love for humans, and humans need to love each other. The gospels are love letters, of Jesus’s love for men and women. Atheism can and does attract adherents by pointing out biblical inconsistencies, and by science showing how the world works. But for atheism to become the vital tool for human emancipation that Goldman wishes, it is going to have to say something about love. Love of humans for each other, love of humans for their planet, love for the plain sake of love. Atheism may liberate, but without some predilection toward love, atheism will liberate us only to a spiritually empty - if illusion free - void.
Why do people become an atheist? What does atheism mean? What is the purpose of Atheism? E. Goldman’s short essay, The Philosophy of Atheism, provides brief but acute answers to the questions. According to Goldman, atheism is sensation against theism. Through history, the concept of God has been used to suppress the human being, especially reason. By citing M. Bakunin's words, “the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice,” Goldman argues that the true meaning of Atheism is emancipation from the shadow of God. The purpose of Atheism is against not only all features of God but also all possibilities for supporting God. She believes that the only way of recovering true humanity is Atheism, and only through the relationships with atheists, the humanitarian and beautiful community could be established.
This article is full of hurting and thrusting assertions against Theism. Every argues which E. Goldman raises is valuable for us because all her critics are crucial problems of the current church. Can we say “no” about her state, such as “the truth is that theism would have lost its footing long before this but for the combined support of Mammon and power?” As she says, God is love, goodness, justice, and mercy, but can we say the current church is full of those characteristics? Her assertions and critics, perhaps, are not criticisms against God but ourselves and churches now. Theologically, one can give hundreds of reasonable responses, but it is also true that religion, especially Christianity, still have many things to look back. One thing I want to say is that rightly K. Barth suggests the concept of the humanity of God. True humanity is in God, and it does not spoil the humanity of people.
Anarchist author and activist Emma Goldman wrote her piece at a time when the idea of God was becoming increasingly implausible in the light of contemporary knowledge of the world. She writes, “…the God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.” While theists are scrambling to figure out how to “bring the masses back to God,” the atheist Goldman celebrates the decline of a morally repugnant institution of social control. Goldman sees religion as “the largest, the most corrupt and pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the world…. It is the industry of befogging the human mind and stifling of the human heart” and gods as “a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.” As a part of her larger anarchist philosophy, Goldman sees the end of religion as being as essential to the liberation of humankind’s mind, body, and spirit, as the oppressive forces of capital and the state. Without awaiting the assistance of silent gods, Goldman sees atheists as being able to take charge in the fight for justice. She writes, “No, not the gods, but MAN must rise in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all the deities, betrayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to usher in justice upon the earth.” Her vision of atheism is a hopeful and positive one that champions “the concept of an actual real world, with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities…. Atheism…is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.”
I love the positive, life-affirming vision of atheism that Goldman lays out in this essay. Her humanist ethics focus on how humanity is responsible for transforming the world around us, and I believe that she is largely correct that, in modernity, it has been the humanists (“the godless ones”) who have been the great champions of “truth, justice, and fidelity.” What keeps sticking out to me as I read this is her attitudes towards metaphysics. She sees theism as being an oppressive form of “metaphysical speculation,” which is to be contrasted with atheism as the “science of demonstration.” The problem is that her very statement that there is no God is, in itself, a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality (one that denies transcendence and the idea of a personal God). You can never escape metaphysical thinking about the world because the assumptions that you make color your thoughts about everything in reality. I find myself wondering what she would think of the more fallibilistic, hypothetical metaphysical speculation endorsed by Dewey, Whitehead, or Neville, if she had encountered that. That one flaw does not diminish the essay’s many strong points, but as it is so central to my own philosophical interests it really stood out.
Summary: Emma Goldman begins her Philosophy of Atheism by first highlighting humanity’s unreliable history with theism and the way it holds back human society. She sees theism as a tool that keeps people from really understanding their neighbor and working with the rest of the humanity because their focus stays on deities above and their will. A major problem she finds is the system of reward and punishment. It is part of a industry that is “befogging the human mind and stifling the human heart.” Ultimately she sees theism as a dying breed of thought that is continually being revived through its entanglement in the minds of the masses. In the second half of the essay Goldman spends more time discussing atheism and how it is ultimately the opposite of what we find wrong in theism. It allows for humanity to recognize that the heaven which we need must necessarily be made here on earth rather than negating the world for something that is other.
Critique: Overall I really liked the essay. I thought she did a great job highlighting a lot of the problems of theism and how it causes major setbacks in human society. She spent a lot of time showing how the ideals of atheism could be harmful but not as much showing how that was implemented in real-world occurrences. This could just be due to the length of the essay in general but I would have liked to see more than that. I would have also liked to have seen atheism used as a self-sufficient philosophy in itself, and not just a fix for some of the problems of theism.
In The Philosophy of Atheism Goldman asserts that the history of the conception of god is nothing but a history of the development of man thinking, from infancy to maturity. The idea of god begun with the primitive man as result of fear and ignorance, which have been always the seeds of all superstations, and ended up with impersonal obscure concept of god who is about to die with the rising of atheism. The light of reason has always been victorious in the fight against theism, but poverty and fear were always there to revive it again. Now theism is dying, and atheism is coming over. Under atheism philosophy, man will be liberated from fixed futile theistic morals that have been imposed by fear and terror, and only through atheistic philosophy man can achieve freedom and beauty.
My response
A brief study to the history of religion shows that the idea that religions begun with a personal god then they adopted impersonal god as mankind thinking devolved is not an accurate idea. people believed in all sort of gods all the time. In the time of the ancient Greek, philosophers like Aristotle believed in impersonal god when there was a theistic Jewish believe. Then Christianity overcame the philosophical gods and then Islam became dominant in the north Africa and middle east; both of them call for personal god untill now. The point is that believing in personal and impersonal gods has nothing to do with human developments. the same goes with idea that belief in god is a creation of fear and ignorance of natural phenomena and people will get rid of it as they develop. It goes without saying that humans have reaches in this era a high level of understanding the nature. However, belief in God still has a bouncing presence. Reason has always been compatible with the main concept of god; no wonder the majority of philosophers through history belief in some sort of god.
In this angry essay written in the early-mid twentieth century by the Russian-American anarchist, Goldman claims that the philosophy of atheism is the cure for the pain and suffering imposed on mankind since the beginning of the gods. Only man, she says, can save itself. “Man must get back to himself before he can learn his relation to his fellows.” (133) Goldman begins with the idea that theism becomes more obscure through time, that the idea of god becomes more separated and impersonal as the human mind grows in its capacity to rationally understand the phenomena of creation, which she thus relates to god existing, for humans, out of curiosity and fear. As the world slips slowly into atheism, the world realizes that the conception of god cannot relieve the problems of our current existence, the deaths and poverty in nations whose gods remain silent. In this silence, man must “break his fetters,” she writes, “so that he can begin to fashion out of his...illumined consciousness a new world upon earth.”
While one must respect Goldman for her courage and passion in writing a piece such as this in its time, one cannot help but wonder how she might have edited her piece had she survived post-1945, when world history solidified its deadliest century, and World War II, the deadliest man-made catastrophe. Not to mention the creation of the deadliest weapon of human history: the atomic bomb, created not in the name of god(s) but science. If the conception of god is truly to blame for the pains of the world, out of which only mankind can save itself, the twentieth century leaves us little room for hope. Religion does not have a clean track record: no. But when man held the reins without religion in the passenger seat, the competing track record was saturated with the ink of human blood.
Emma Goldman’s chief assertion in her essay, “The Philosophy of Atheism,” is that science allows for humans to move beyond their need to appeal to a God. Claims about God are inherently speculative in her view, whereas scientific claims are rooted in knowledge about the real world. She suggests that God concepts are really just ways to command the obedience and attention of the common people, which succeed when the people abdicate their responsibility for morality and justice. Atheism offers the potential to take on these responsibilities for deciding morality and truth by looking at how the world works. In fact, she sees a beauty and possibility in the world that theism obscures. To goal of Goldman’s atheism is to allow humanity to break free from its theistic chains.
Goldman’s appeals to atheism as an aesthetically better worldview than Christianity. Evangelical Christian apologetics almost always makes this argument in reverse: the world is more beautiful when it is thought that there is a God in it. Similarly, Christians often argue that God desires for people to take on responsibility. However, Goldman disputes this version of responsibility since no person is allowed to decide the content of that responsibility for themselves. If religion is about control, as she suggests, then it would seem that Christianity is also invested in maintaining certain kinds of social structures and practices, which is undoubtedly true given how invested conservative Christians in America today appear are in a certain kind of social order. I do feel a tension, though, in having all people select their own morality, especially given the utility of social norms. I do not imagine that Goldman conceived the potential problems of total relativism, especially when it comes to defining common civic values. It is certainly true that Prometheus has been let loose and that we have been given responsibility to decide our own norms, whether we want to or not.
|
|
|
AC Grayling |
Grayling identifies any interest in branding atheism ‘fundamentalist’ as a great display of buffoonery. It is merely a ploy to reframe atheism in their own terms, when really atheism is something entirely separate from religion's terminological assets. That is, to mark atheism as a sort of religion (or to qualify it as such) assumes common ground. Grayling despises this conflation--atheism does not brainwash its young, it does not champion an oppressive ideology, and it does not constantly and hypocritically reinvent itself in order to survive. Atheism rejects the rotten fruit of religion, and so Grayling sarcastically asks: what is a moderate atheist? Someone who is only partially repulsed by these things?
Grayling is sharp-witted—and to the fine-tipped point in this selection. For believers to call unbelievers anything other than what unbelievers, in fact, want to be called is out-of-bounds, so to speak, in terms of constructive dialogue. Grayling does well to point out the inadequacy of religious language in characterizing those operating outside of a religious worldview. The role of religion regarding atheism is not to redefine atheism--especially not in terms and methods neither owned nor operated by atheists!
In this piece, Grayling swiftly and decidedly dismisses the notion that atheists can be deemed “fundamentalists” – at least not if the term “fundamentalist” is meant in a pejorative sense. He begins with a compelling account of the horrors of religion – from the crusades to the exploitative prosperity gospel to accusations of faith-based education as child abuse – he goes on to attack the violent history of religion, its “breath-taking hypocrisy” (474) and its intellectual vacuity, claiming that any “averagely intelligent adult hitherto free of religious brainwashing” would believe the Christian myth of the virgin birth. His first main argument against the label of “fundamentalist atheist” is based on a normative claim; his second argument reframes the debate and suggests a logical definition of atheism as naturalism. First, Grayling insists that atheists should be firm and complete in their condemnation of the evils and “absurdities” of religion (475). In light of his diatribe on the overwhelmingly negative influences that religions have had throughout history, a position as a “moderate atheist” seems nearly as unethical as a fundamentalist religious person who might condone some of the harmful acts of religious groups. Instead – and this constitutes his second main point – Grayling suggests that “naturalist” is a better, more exact, term for atheist non-supernaturalists, and “supernaturalists” is a better term for theists. This labeling shifts the burden of proof to the supernaturalists who must “refute the findings of physics, chemistry, and the biological sciences” in order to justify their belief (475).
Although I disagree with Grayling's characterization of the history of religions as being full of nothing but shocking horror and cruelty, his writing style and arguments were so compelling, witty, and convicting that it was hard to not jump on board! His first point, on the absurdity of being anything besides a full “fundamentalist” atheist is well put. However, I think there might be a helpful distinction between an atheist defined as a naturalist, which is a philosophical position, and anti-theist or anti-religionist, which can be understood as a normative stance against the existence and views of religion in general. From this piece, it seems that Grayling holds his ethical anti-theism/anti-religion views just as strongly as his philosophical scientific naturalism. On the contrary, whereas I am a thoroughgoing naturalist, I do not share his anti-religion approach.
In this excerpt from his book Against All Gods, A. C. Grayling argues that the term “fundamentalist” cannot be applied to atheists. Atheism, he believes, is a claim that cannot be held in variations of intensity the way that Christianity can be. Referencing Christian history such as the Crusades, Grayling argues that Christianity is oppressive. Atheists, he claims, should be called “naturalists” as opposed to theists, who should be called “supernaturalists.” In this way, Grayling divorces science from religion. With reason on the side of science in his argument, he can easily claim that Christianity is unreasonable. Only atheism is “fundamentally sensible” (476).
I found Grayling's tone offensive. His method of assuming certain opinions and particular definitions within the argument he was making on the page is very frustrating. He never seriously discusses the meaning of the word “fundamentalist,” but instead discusses negative Christian stereotypes as facts that describe most Christians. He believes in his cause just as much as Christian fundamentalists do. Therefore, his condescending tone actually weakens his argument.
“Can an Atheist be a Fundamentalist?” by A.C. Graying is an excerpt from Grayling's book Against All Gods, and is a poignant, opinionated, and straightforward essay in conversation with Christian perceptions of “fundamentalist atheists”. Grayling defines a Christian definition of a “fundamentalist atheist” as “Those who deny people the comforts of faith… and the companionship of a benign invisible protector in the dark night of the soul”. (473) Grayling himself defines a “fundamentalist atheist” at the end of his work with the phrase “fundamentally sensible”. (476) Grayling raises concerns around indoctrination, religious communities access to youth in maintaining religious congregations, and having an age of consent and process for persons to choose to be a part of a religion or not. All while outlining a laundry list of the atrocities that Christianity has brought into the world. Graying's work almost seems as griping, evangelical, and fear-mongering as some conservative Christian denominations. Instead of a preoccupation with saving souls, Graying has almost an agenda of saving “intellects” from the irrational and oppressive holds of Christianity.
A.C. Graying's argument read like an angry YouTube comment, parts of it were too entertaining to take seriously and others were too harsh to even allow myself to hold. That is to say that Graying made me feel an array of emotions throughout the piece. The seemingly never ending laundry list of Christian history eventually felt like he was beating a dead horse and then turned to the audience with a “But Atheists have never done those things so we aren't like them”. This piece was obviously a dramatic reactionary piece to the concept of “fundamentalist atheists” as juxtaposed to “fundamentalist Christians”, and Graying spent most of the time attempting to generative an emotional and cognitive dissonance between the two. The condescending tone of his work made me think about how he works with people with learning or mental disabilities, since he holds the human intellect to such high esteem. Where does he see people with disability within this sort of intellectual elitism?
Grayling argues that the Christian accusation that atheists are also fundamentalists is an impossibility that only serves to belittle their own intelligence. In the brief excerpt “Can an Atheist Be a Fundamentalist?” from Against All Gods, Grayling purports that Christianity has always been oppressive and as a result there is no need to allow Christians the “comforts of faith” (473). His argument rests on the basis that atheists are more appropriately titled “naturalists,” and theists should call themselves “supernaturalists.” This redefinition allows Grayling to shift the grounds of the argument to give him the upper hand, but does not adequately address the charge.
I didn't appreciate the tone of this article nor did I agree with the argument. Rather than “the coldest and purist water of reason” that Hitchens promised, I found Grayling’s words of to be bitter and somewhat arrogant. He never seriously addresses the charge, but mocks his accusers and skirts the question. By my perception, Grayling’s rant serves to prove the accusation more than disprove it. Grayling asserts he is correct, just as Fundamentalists believe they are correct. Moreover, Grayling is attempting to create converts for the good of the world just as Fundamentalists try to convert people to save their souls.
This piece takes up a fairly common objection of theistic religious adherents to contemporary atheism, namely that some atheists are “fundamentalist atheists.” Grayling quickly sets out to show that “moderate atheism” would already be a kind of concession to the theist position, and so would denature atheism per se. In turn, Grayling argues that “moderate theism” is an evasive form of religious hypocrisy, seeking to maintain fanciful beliefs in the masses by distancing itself from the facts of the traditions from which contemporary religion was birthed. Hatred for otherness, the suppression of women, and the violent punishment of heresy are all undeniably associated with Christianity for Grayling, and to try to pretend otherwise in attempts to be “moderate” are outright deceptive. The deception is bolstered, on Grayling’s account, by the continued practice of providing very young children with “religious education.” Rather, he suggests, let children grow up with no mention of religion, and when they are adults, present the relevant religious ideas and see who takes them up. He wagers none will, because they have not been manipulatively held in an “intellectual infancy.” Lastly, Grayling proposes that atheism really ought to be better named “naturalism” and opposed to “supernaturalism,” by which he characterizes religion as the belief in supernatural entities. Naturalism is not a religion, by these terms, and cannot thus be a form of fundamentalism.
While Grayling is probably quite correct that philosophical naturalism cannot be fundamentalist, he seems quite wrong about atheism, including his own. If one finds in fundamentalisms the refusal to acknowledge or integrate phenomena, information, or even questions beyond a narrow band of “fundamental” truths, then it seems materialist atheism that takes religion to consist only in unparsimonious belief in supernatural agency is (in this restricted sense) fundamentalist. However, even noting that Grayling’s arguments hang on a rather narrow definition of religion, the phenomenon described by that definition is staggeringly widespread. In this respect, Grayling's attacks must be taken quite seriously. Certainly there is a good deal more to religion than belief in supernatural agents and literalistic approaches to religious practices. However, a great deal of religious adherence is characterized by such “intellectual infancy.” This may imply that religious belief is inherently intellectually infantile. On the other hand, it might merely imply that religions are failing to develop the intellectual lives of their adherence, thereby inhibiting many religious people from achieving religious maturity. Furthermore, such maturity need not be subject to the criticisms Grayling levels against religious “moderates” because its difference from stupid, irrational, and immoral forms of religious living would not be a hypocritical strategy of cultural appeasement, but the very marker of its authenticity.
Grayling entertains the notion that an atheist might be called a “fundamentalist.” He argues that there is no reason to speak about atheism as if it has different “sects” or followings such as religion. Through his argument against an atheist having a title other than just that, he attacks the merits of religion, claiming that the only reason it survives is because it attaches to the young. He continues to show that since one can not be a moderate atheist, neither could one be a fundamental atheist. Atheism in necessarily only the disbelief in the supernatural and therefore cannot be spoken of as if that disbelief ties people together. Atheists are tied together only because of their intellect, not because of their actions towards or against the religious. He finally moves to call atheism "naturalism"—this being a philosophy or theory rather than a common ground upon which people would gather.
Grayling's argument rings true to my hear. I hear where he is coming from, arguing that an atheist cannot be classified into a group in the way required by the name "fundamentalist atheist." Still it is an interesting question to wonder what binds an atheist to any part of humanity. If Grayling is right, I wonder where atheist might find commonality with other people. Even though his argument is rational on an intellectual level, I can't believe that some atheists aren't attracted to other atheists who think in a similar way. I wonder then, if atheism was a large enough movement, like Christianity, if it might not produce different categories or subgroups. Conversely, I would think it reasonable to make the same argument that Grayling has presented concerning Christianity. It seems that it would be just as easy to claim that Christianity involves belief in the divine, and all Christians have that in common regardless of subgroups. At this level I wonder what real impact Grayling's argument does have, or from where it gains its authority.
This essay considers the question whether atheism is an extreme position of an idea that can be called fundamentalism. The author's answer is "no." The author argues that some theists are moderate and others take an extreme position. For example, some Christian theists believe that there is an everlasting hell for those who do not believe (the extreme view), but there are also Christians, including Bible-believing Christians, who do not believe in the concept of an everlasting hell. By contrast, for an atheist there is no moderate position because everything that they believe is backed with reason and is not speculation. The author describes the atheist as a naturalist because atheist believes in a nature that is governed by natural laws whereas the theist is a supernaturalist who believes in supernatural entities such as angels and demons and gods and goddesses.
I think the essay basically has only one central argument, namely, that an atheist is not a fundamentalist because the atheist position is not based on a supernatural idea. I liked the author's conclusion that religion is centered on a belief in supernatural entities and, since atheism rejects supernatural entities, it cannot be called a religion, and cannot be fundamentalist either. I agree with what the author argues because, since an atheist only believes in what reason can measure or prove, there cannot be variations of atheism from the moderate to the extreme. At the same time, since scientifically we cannot disprove the existence of God, I think taking a position on the basis of hypothesis and not actual evidence is an extreme position and can be called a form of fundamentalism. So, while I agree with the argument of the author in respect of the differences between atheism and theistic fundamentalism, I still think that atheism can be an extreme form of ideology that can properly be termed fundamentalism in respect of its attachment to an unprovable hypothesis (the non-existence of God).
A. C. Grayling’s article, supposedly about atheism, is in reality a poor conflation of theism with fundamentalism. In a deluge of vitriol that consumes several paragraphs, Grayling claims that theism is responsible for centuries of mass-murder, that theists hold “profoundly false and primitive beliefs,” and that re-inventions of Christianity are “breath-takingly hypocritical.” It is only on the last of four pages that Grayling finally addresses atheism. Atheism should be called “naturalism,” says Grayling. This is because “the term fundamentalism already sells a pass to theists.”
I was hoping that Grayling’s answer to the question “Can an Atheist Be a Fundamentalist?” would be yes. His answer instead is “not even close.” Grayling arrives at this conclusion through faults in elementary logic and definitions. What he asserts is this: 1) a theist is a supernaturalist (not necessarily true), and 2) an atheist is a naturalist. It follows then that, since 3) supernaturalism is the definition of fundamentalism (definitely not true), atheism is anti-fundamentalism. Grayling at no point indicates that he understands fundamentalism as separate from theism. Fundamentalism cannot possible exist in philosophy, in politics, or in any realm outside of the question: “does God exist?” A dictionary would have done Grayling wonders. Indeed, this article so blatantly fails to address its own question and premises that fortunately no one but the most blind atheist could take it seriously.
This article is starting with a question, that is, “what would a non-fundamentalist (atheism) be?”. A. C. Grayling's short inquiry is leading us to the conclusion that every atheism is and should be fundamentalism. He wants to separate atheistical thoughts with theological thoughts. Also, he seems to make all belief in God is fundamentalism. Therefore, in his text, there are only fundamental atheism and fundamental theism, and he translates them into naturalism and supernaturalism. The reason why he tries this exclusive dichotomy is evident as follows:
People with theistic belief should be called supernaturalists, and it can be left to them to attempt to refute the finding of physics, chemistry, and the biological sciences in an effort to justify them alternative claim that the universe was created, and is run, by supernatural beings.
A. C. Grayling shows his radical thoughts about theism in his passage. It seems that in his mind there are only black and white. Dichotomy might be the best description of his article. He does not want to make a gray area, and it means no conversation between atheism and theism is needed. In his article, he refutes the idea of “attempt to describe naturalism(atheism) as itself a 'religion.'” He argues that religion should have premises including a supernatural being, and as naturalism does not have it, atheism is not a religion. Yes, It could be a possible assertion. However, naturalism has a belief system in the midst of it. That is the belief that everything can be interpreted and explained by reason and proof. If some thoughts are based on metaphysical assumption, it is not a science but a philosophy. Atheism is just one philosophical approach to the world. It is not a naturalism or science.
A.C. Grayling, a British philosopher who is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, attempts to have the concluding statement to the question, can an atheist be a fundamentalist? For Grayling, a fundamental atheist is an unfortunate classification by the super-naturalists upon the naturalists for questioning one’s religious system. Grayling pointedly continues, arguing that those who claim fundamental atheists to be an insult are not one’s who should pointing the finger of disapproval. The religious systems are the cause for histories of wars and violence. Grayling uses two stories to bolster his claims. Often in Nigeria, Pastors will claim that if the congregants keep on attending and donating to their churches then the congregants will be blessed with higher income. In the Catholic community, Grayling argues that the Catholic church is notorious for reinventing one’s theological agenda for adapting to society. One such example is that the Catholic Church only endorses condoms in marital relationships in societies with rampant HIV infections. Grayling concludes by writing that Atheism cannot be categorized as fundamentalist or as a religious because it does not hold to the categories of super-naturalism that Grayling deems necessary.
Graylings pointed critique of religious systems are necessary attack on the abusive religious systems of the past. I struggle with his argument because at no point does he genuinely self-analyze his own bias and perspective. Fundamentalists are not tied to super-naturalism. Fundamentalism can corrupt any system or thought process for the sake of perpetuating its own existence by creating strong in group/out group relations. Grayling does not take into account that the secular notion of progress brought on by 19th century liberalism resulted in the two largest wars of human history, WW1 and WW2. An abusive fundamentalism can find itself in any system, any time and any place.
|
|
|
Thomas Hardy |
God's Funeral is a haunting elegy that captures the spirit of bereavement. Thomas Hardy opens with the image of a train; there is the presence movement and progress, however slow and foggy. The narrator of the text (presumably Hardy) is plagued by an unsettled conscience when he sees in the distance “an amorphous cloud” that seems to take many forms. A concert of lament bursts forth and in quatrain VIII sings, “And, tricked by our own early dream And need of solace, we grew self-deceived, Our making soon our maker did we deem, And what we had imagined we believed” (127). There is a strong undercurrent of bemoaned displacement throughout the poem, as well as lost sense of belonging.
Empathy is my response to Thomas Hardy's poetic lamentation. The whole melancholy work reminds me of a passage in Matthew that says, “Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” The examined life is oftentimes a lonely existence. The slow-steeping train symbolizes humankind creeping and groping (as the text echoes) toward true enlightenment—that small light on the horizon. Yet, some willfully choose belief in “the man-projected Figure” and some chose the enlightened, twilit path. In quatrain XIV, Hardy masterfully writes, “I could not buoy their faith: and yet Many I had known: with all I sympathized; And though struck speechless, I did not forget That what was mourned for, I, too long had prized” (128). At times, I, too, feel a foggy sense of displacement from an evangelical community and subculture that firmly and forever believes and shouts, “Still he lives in us!” (128).
Thomas Hardy paints a picture of a funeral service for God and faith in his poem, “God's Funeral.” After describing the funeral train, Hardy briefly catalogs the history of God as evident in the Old and New Testaments. Eventually, God “ceased to be” and the story of God became a myth (127). Some onlookers view the scene with sorrow, not knowing how to fill this void in their hearts, while others cling to their old beliefs. Hardy sympathizes with those who cling to faith, remembering his own. At the end of the poem, there is a light on the horizon, lending an air of hope to the future without God. However, Hardy ends by “mechanically” following the crowd.
Thomas Hardy paints a picture of a funeral service for God and faith in his poem, “God's Funeral.” After describing the funeral train, Hardy briefly catalogs the history of God as evident in the Old and New Testaments. Eventually, God “ceased to be” and the story of God became a myth (127). Some onlookers view the scene with sorrow, not knowing how to fill this void in their hearts, while others cling to their old beliefs. Hardy sympathizes with those who cling to faith, remembering his own. At the end of the poem, there is a light on the horizon, lending an air of hope to the future without God. However, Hardy ends by “mechanically” following the crowd.
Hardy's beautifully worded images in this poem make my heart ache for him. He is leaving behind the God he knew and loved for a glimmer on the horizon, which he follows mechanically. The mechanization of his being is fascinating to me. Without a personal God, he seems to lose some of his unique personality as a human, merely becoming one piece of a crowd. Without God, why are humans so special? Because of our brains? The herd mentality of the crowd at this funeral seems rather primitive.
Thomas Hardy's poetic portrayal of a funeral procession for God begins with a description of Hardy's own gradual arrival at the knowledge of the death of God. He laments that “by contagious throbs of thought; Or latent knowledge that within me lay” (126) he arrived at atheism in spite of himself. The middle portion of the poem narrates the lamentations of the other “mourners” as they remember their success in fashioning for themselves the God who has since “quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be” (127). They remember the “sweet… blest assurance” that their “man-projected” “myth” had afforded them for so long (127). Hardy imagines noticing and sympathizing with a few straggling believers who cried “Still he lives to us!” (128). But Hardy knows he can no longer “buoy their faith” and instead continues on “mechanically” with the rest of the non-believers.
Hardy's poem maintains a strikingly different tone than many of the other readings in Hitchens's anthology and I am glad he includes Hardy's perspective – one that, while recognizing gods as human conceptions, is not anti-religion. The tone and content of the piece struck a cord with me personally, as my own gradual move toward a non-theistic religiousness has included, at times, some reluctance, nostalgia, and lingering hope. However, unlike Hardy's “dazed and puzzled” mechanical march toward un-belief, I do see the “pale yet positive gleam” that Hardy searched for on the horizon in stanza XVI (128). For me, this light represent not a renewed belief in the Christian God of my youth, but a thrilling and spiritually moving perception of the depth and meaning emergent from the natural structures of the universe. Whether or not Hardy was able to find spiritual solace after the death of God, I do think that his depiction of the grief inherent in his loss of faith echoes an experience that I imagine is more common than it may seem.
In Thomas Hardy's poem “God's Funeral” we are presented with an account of a funeral service for the divine. At this funeral the thoughts of three groups are represented. The first group is that of the atheists. Stanzas VI through XII lament the creation of God. They present an overview of the ways and reasons that God has served humanity. The atheist perspective concludes by questioning what humanity might turn to in the absence of God. In Stanza XIII we find a second group of mourners in denial of God's death. Hardy sympathizes with the group and their inability to accept the death. A final group who “stood aloof” are able to see a light in the distance that the other mourners do not. In the end, being confused by these “sick thoughts,” the narrator follows the majority.
The poetic account of God's Funeral is both brief and perplexing. Upon a first reading, the funeral of God seems quite hopeless. God is dead and even though there are those who deny the present reality, the truth is God was created by us, and now, even for the educated man, the only thing to do is fall in line with the other mourners. Still, the complexity of the account is quite surprising. I wonder as well “who or what shall fill his place?” (XII). The “pale and positive gleam” (XV) is seen first by the narrator and then also by “a certain few who stood aloof” (XVI). It might be then that those who are at a distance from the funeral itself have a better perspective. These distant few are markedly different from the other two groups whose thoughts are expressed in the poem. It seems that there might be something important to be said for those who do not participate in the funeral to begin with. Perhaps distance from divine death provides a point of view that is neither lament or denial.
Hardy’s poem, “God’s Funeral,” takes on the voice of the prophet, specifically the prophet as a witness to a vision. Like Ezekiel or Amos, Hardy tells us what he’s seen. Except that Hardy describes, not a theophany encountered in solitude, but his emergence from solitude to join a party bearing the paradoxically enormous and amorphous corpse of God. The thoughts of God’s pall-bearers are heard as a chorus, expressing the all-too-human admixture of memory and anxiety that characterizes grief in the face of loss. They narrate the myriad ways that God had been known to them and they marvel now at knowing too that God is gone. A few voices shout their denials, but Hardy’s narrator can no longer join their party, though he sympathizes with them. Instead, he joins the number of the funeral parade, noting with a few others (though the many fail to note it) a dull but growing morning light on the horizon.
Expressions of atheism such as this are, I think, at once the easiest for the traditionally religious person to hear and also the most existentially challenging. The indignant, ironic, sneering atheist is just an opponent to be, perhaps argued with, but ultimately not taken too seriously. The reluctant atheist, on the other hand, has a desire (and maybe even love) for God with which the traditionally religious person can sympathize, only it is metaphysically unrequited. So they might put their arm around Hardy and offer consoling words about patience. They might even confide their own doubts. However, the person who mourns the loss of God’s reality in their life can thus be a kind of Trojan horse for the faith of the traditionally religious person. Someone who endures a painful loss of God, when they might just as well grit their teeth and pretend to believe in hopes they someday might again, is someone whose very presence challenges the stifling of doubt. They incarnate a moral fortitude and integrity that argues for the seriousness of atheism just by being. Hardy’s poem seems among the gentler expressions of atheism in this collection, but it presents one of the most thunderous challenges to those who cling to God.
In this poem, Hardy provides a narrator who describes how God began to make less sense to him as the concept emerged more as human made endeavor summarized in the line “And what we imagined we believed”. He explains God’s death through the passage of time, the comfort of the masses holding onto the myth of God as a means of purpose and direction, and his own mourning at losing the comfort of a God. The narrator concludes in scene with the hope of a sunrise, however no such light has actually come, thus landing him in the place “twixt gleam and gloom”. The only progress made by the narrator is that God does not exist, and he seems to make no other active choices concerning belief after that. This poem is for the space after the realization that God is not there and before any other explanation is found. It is less centered around mourning God, and more concerned with the grief of the narrator at the discovery of his illusion having disappeared.
As a fan of Hardy’s novels, I find his poem long and simplistic, though honest. Summarized best as “God is not real, sad face.” It provides no answers or further actions, and allows the reader to remain in the upsetting and lazy place of “welp”. I enjoy that he does not seem to claim a superior place because he realized that God, by God’s lack of existence, could not help him. To now not believe in God was not this freeing nor illuminating moment, but instead a rather unimpressive encounter with reality. The Hardy melancholy lives on in this poem, though no earth’s were shattered nor minds blown upon reading. One guy found out that God is not there. Please read his novels to find out humans are terrible in all sorts of unique ways.
Thomas Hardy’s God’s Funeral is an emotional, poetic piece that expresses the loss of belief in God. Hardy’s piece is not a powerful triumph that proudly throws off belief in God but softly expresses remorse and lament. The poem’s momentum picks up in Part 6 through 12 in which a speaker explains some of the reasons for disbelief in God and expresses disbelief as an existential problem—“And, who or what shall fill his place?”. The speaker disbelieves in God because God is simply man’s projection, a critique that mirrors Feuerbach’s. Furthermore, the speaker explains, humanity dresses up this projection up with anthropomorphic qualities such as anger and evolves towards justice and, then, long suffering. However, this is only trickery and self-deception. The speaker ends his speech with despair and longs for past security in belief—“How sweet it was in years far hied”—where God listen to his prayers. Lastly, in Part 13 through 17, the author seems to respond to the speaker. He, too, feels remorse and lament for disbelieving in God, saying, “Still, how to bear such loss I deemed.” The author ends the poem surrounded by a crowd of those who no longer believe in God, seeing “A pale yet positive gleam low down behind.” It’s not obvious the author has answered his question—“And, who or what shall fill his place?”
Thomas Hardy’s poem was enjoyable to read and reflect upon because it appears to be an honest, vulnerable man wrestling with remorse and sorrow for no longer believing in God. This remorse is not remorse for failing to believe as if he has let others down, but remorse in the sense of trying to figure out how to live his life without belief in God and wishing that he could still believe in God. This expression of remorse and lament by Hardy was extremely refreshing because I find that mostly people are relatively proud of his or her own disbelief in God. Liberation rather than lament is what is most often expressed. In some ways, I think that this poem functions similar to Nietzsche death of God where Nietzsche predicted that since so much of western society was predicated on God actually existing, find out that he doesn’t exist will cause much conflict. Similarly, Hardy expressed the internal conflict and honest emptiness that comes from throwing off belief in God when one has believed in God his entire life. It’s almost like realizing that Hardy no longer believes in God is a life event, like a mid-life-crisis, that requires and demands healthy reflection. I think that it would be personally and psychologically healthy for new-found atheists to learn to reflect on and find ways to express his or her radically new worldview. Such a massive change of belief requires it.
Part 1.): Hardy describes God’s funeral train of mourners. He manages to rhyme his description with tightly elegant prose. The first stanza reads:
I saw a slowly-stepping train-
Lined on the brows, [eye brows?] scoop-eyed and bent and hoar- [gray with age]
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.
Part 2.): Unlike my other choices, I picked this piece because I happened to see it in the collection. I am “wowed” by Hardy’s command of language, managing to depict mourning and the substance of the passing of God, within rhyming verse. The first stanza, above, is as good an example as any of the others – although I had to use my dictionary to look up the Old English: “brows”, “bent” and “hoar.” (“Bent” here may mean Old English “direction” or modern “bent over with sorrow” – or perhaps both?)
Hardy captures God’s former glory:
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon [i.e. “soon”?] to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvelous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.
“And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?”
God’s Funeral is an interesting poem. The introduction labels it as an obsequy, or essentially a funeral service. The poem is set at the funeral for God and the author places himself as a spectator and as a mourner. In the fourth quatraine, Hardy recognizes that this God “symboled none the less Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.” After, he discusses how he recognized the human construction of God. Then, he describes what this God’s relationship was and ends with him mourning this loss.
The poem is fascinating in its orientation. Unlike other atheist writings, this poem dives into the grieving process. The implication here is that Thomas Hardy earnestly wants to believe in a God but is incapable of it. The sincerity of his sadness is quite amazing. This seems to imply that, at least in how Hardy views it, his atheism is not a choice but a necessity; he cannot but believe that there is no God. The openness about this dynamic, and the self-reflective nature of the poem, may make this an easy starting place for many theists who are trying to understand different atheist views.
Thomas Hardy reflects on the loss of his faith in God through his poetic composition, God’s Funeral. He begins by describing a compelling, somewhat unstoppable, but not fast-moving, forward motion, noting that somewhat unconscious thoughts and knowledge are welling up feelings of despair in him. The forward motion takes on a large, growing, anthropomorphic form, exuding power and love, causing the observers to incline towards it. Hardy then describes realizing that the grouped inclined towards the figure have been self-deceived, and have created this image themselves out of their desire for relief and safety. Over time, this image is dismantled and destroyed, and this group is left in an anguish of biblical proportions, mourning the loss of the blessed assurance that came long with the presence of the now-imagined figure. Hardy notes an audience observing this anguished group. The audience appears to be holding onto the faith that is now lost by this mournful group. However, a small swell of light pushes in on this sad scene and those with animated questioning minds press on towards it, even if not fluid and comfortably.
I am somewhat disturbed by how much I think I resonate with this poem. The aspect of it being a poem allows it to impact the reader significantly differently than the other mediums presented in this anthology in that it more so appeals to the emotional process of unbelief further than the intellectual understanding of the process. The poem reads as numbered steps in a sequence, the content of the poem encouraging the image of a steadily moving, driving force. These aspects highlight different details of coming into unbelief. The brief foreword to this section eludes to the sentiment of bereavement that Hardy is desiring to communicate through this poem, and further echoes the emphases on loss in loss-of-belief. That as this process of belief is coming to a close, there is something to be mourned as a result. Lastly, although the title of God’s Funeral implies that the being that is dead is in fact God, I interpreted this poem to not run congruently with my rudimentary understanding of death of God theology. From the poem itself it appears that while the being that could represent God is destroyed, it is not the same sequence that is present in death of God theology when it potentially occurs at a specific point in history. Hardy’s account is more abstract, suggesting that it references personal experience within humans rather than a notable theological event to stand as significant for all.
In God’s Funeral, Thomas Hardy creates a poem that vividly depicts the fall away from faith. Hardy writes mainly from a point of view of sorrow. In the second half of the poem Hardy makes multiple mentions of how much peace it would bring him to know that God was there by his side or that God was the one controlling the cosmos. He writes as if this realization that God does not exist has caused him incredible amounts of pain. In fact, he notes that the pain of God’s absence is too much to bear for some and that many will still stand in there belief and say that God is with them. Whichever side one finds themself on in the debate of God’s existence, many will be able to empathize with the pain of no longer having a God to believe in.
Overall I thought this was a great poem. Hardy makes it very clear and concise how it feels to have God taken out of one’s life. Having gone through this myself I can very much identify with a lot of what he is saying to the point of feeling the pain in his words. There is a certain comfort in knowing the most powerful being in the universe is on your side and Hardy captures that perfectly. I also really liked how he expressed his belief that God was created by humans in order to give us a sense of control and power. That concept mixed with the revelation of God’s death makes for a beautiful, yet painful tale.
In this poem, Hardy lets go of his past theism in a poignant and respectable manner. In the beginning Hardy, or the narrator, seems captivated by a magnificent form, seeming almost as a man of great size and with mystical features such as wings. It even possesses virtues such as love, and naturally draws crowds. But soon, using quotations to voice the concerns of the people, we see that this is perceived as just a myth, approaching oblivion. It may have been pleasant during prayer, but in the march forward, must be left behind. We see a small few who reject the notion and insist that he still lives, but for our narrator, he moves with the larger crowd away from faith in this legend, though he has long cherished it before.
There is great worth including a piece such as “God’s funeral” in a compilation such as this. While many of the surrounding pages are full of assaults and aggression against theism, a piece like this functions as a reminiscence for those who, too, have once held an admiration and love for god in some form. This piece allows those who have abandoned that life to say a final goodbye of sorts, and to move forward with whatever it is that lies ahead. I may not be in this crowd that Hardy follows, nor am I convinced that it is such a large movement leaving theists merely “in the background” (128) as the piece conveys, however we all do leave behind some notions of belief through life, and this piece reminds us not to hate our past selves, but to acknowledge what once held our affection.
|
|
|
Sam Harris |
Harris’ “In the Shadow of God” is a meditation on human atrocities that have resulted from the presence of religion, particularly the Christian religion, throughout the history of the world. Harris does not hold back from delivering graphic descriptions of acts of torture (such as those during the Spanish Inquisition when the “Spanish Chair” was used for the roasting of feet and the boring of mice into bare abdomens) or from reporting on some of the worst injustices that one can find in any annal of history (such as an account of a fevered old woman on her deathbed accused of heresy and burned at the stake). Harris focuses on three primary targets of religious prejudice and torture in his essay: heretics, witches, and Jews. In the accounts that he records, he paints as ugly a picture as one could imagine for how these three groups have fared at the hands of murderous Christians. Interestingly, Harris argues that acts of violence depicted in his essay “have arisen, logically and inevitably, out of Christian faith.” (472)
It would be wrong to turn a blind eye to the sheer horror of Harris’ accounts, and one needs to be cautious about being too dismissive of the argument he tries to make concerning the consequences of Christian faith. He presents what is simply too serious a subject matter and too perverse a history for one to be callous toward his attempt to highlight Christianity’s worst stains. Nevertheless, Harris is biased in the material he chooses and seems to pick out of history only the most grotesque episodes he can conjure in order to be exceedingly provocative. He is also relentlessly hostile toward Christianity as a religion and gives it far too much singular credit as the propagator of human suffering and cruelty throughout history. Still, Harris’ essay has punch to it, and forcefully reminds its readers to be sober about the dark side of religious faith. For that, it deserves credit.
|
|
|
Thomas Hobbes |
Hobbes tracks down a path of the development of religions, revealing how irrational and superstitious the path is. The primary causes which form a religion are the nature of human psychology, the human ignorance, and the rulers' pursuit of interests. Men defies everything to overcome the fear of the future and obtain security and blessings, thus having “as great variety of gods as of business(16).” Rulers take advantage of this human tendency to make their regime firm and constant. Then, Hobbes also tracks down a path of the decline of religions, revealing that four essential elements – wisdom, sincerity, love(or justice), and miracle - which if, a religion fails to have them, lead it to collapse in the end.
Hobbes analyses and criticizes a religion from a psychological, historical, natural, and political perspective, which looks similar to and preempts that of Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud. One of his blames on a religion is for the fact that it has been used as a means to keep people in compliance to rulers. However, he overlooks as Marx did, the monitoring role of a religion over a society in which it is getting involved. Nevertheless, his critic of religion is quite justifiable in that a religion has often failed to play that role in human history. In my view, it has rarely succeed in doing so.
Hobbes critiques the ‘seeds of religion,’ which he identifies as ‘man.’ Religion springs from man (following Hobbes' gender exclusive usage) out of three different sources or longings. Men search for the causes of harm and benefit. Men search for causes of beginnings. Men in the absence of evidence assign causes from speculation or authoritative sources. When men are ignorant of causes, they are fearful and anxious. They look for ways to ease this anxiety. Such balms and the pursuit of causes lead men to supernatural powers such as the Gods of the Gentiles or a primal first mover, i.e. God. Hobbes elucidates the seeds of religion in terms of the religions of the ‘Gentiles,’ the Roman, Greek, and European pagans with which he was familiar, in order to demonstrate the absurdity of most religious ideas. The equivalence Hobbes makes between the Gentiles and Christianity is clear. All religions spring from the same seeds and are similarly stunted. Not only are the religious growths stunted, but men bend the offshoots of religion for political purposes of control, namely to promote the peace of the commonwealth and rule of the state, as when a religious seal is placed on a king, whether Protestant or Catholic. Men are the seeds of religion and its gardeners.
Hobbes' portrayal of religion resonates with many later thinkers, notably the masters of suspicion and their psychological and social analyses of religion (think here the critiques of religion from Freud, Feuerbach, and Marx). There do seem to be natural seeds or sources of religion within humanity. Religion also upholds the social order in many societies, providing a shared moral framework and structural confirmation of power. Hobbes' portrayal veers toward stressing the self-serving nature of some religious tendencies. One prays to seek favor for oneself and one's kin group. The power hierarchies support religion because it supports them. Yet there are many instances in which religion does not support one's favor or dominant power structures. Religion can be oddly self-defeating and demoralizing; religion rebels against our expectations.
Fitting to a man known for his political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes' excerpt outlines how religion might be used for social control. Specifically, how does the powerful class in society control the masses or less resourceful of society? He states that fear is what sustains religion as it is used by the powerful to manipulate ignorance, and we need look no further to find a religious person than the one who looks too far into the future and cannot calculate the reality or causation of his or her own circumstances, hence turning toward religion out of fear (32). Hobbes shares the idea that all things to happen, good or bad, can be attributed not only to God but to creatures resembling angels, demons, or otherwise in the attempt to explain all phenomena unexplainable by scientific means. It is precisely these gods and creatures that rulers of society might engage and utilize to bring about the obedience and passivity of the people, for Hobbes states if the people are convinced by their rulers that the gods have mutual desires and interests with those rulers, then the rulers can escape the wrath and judgment of the people so long as they believe they are worshipping and serving the gods (35). In laying out this thought, Hobbes clearly outlines religion as a powerful and manipulative force of peacekeeping and negotiation between rulers and their societies.
Hobbes' excerpt is potent and fascinating to consider for religious persons trying to take a more “objective” stance on religious thought, for the manipulative potential of religion calls for a vigilance and re-evaluation of one's religious beliefs in a way that can potentially chisel out the facets that exist for no other purpose than to pacify fear; for pacifying fear is not a good way to do religion because it likely will lead to further ignorance and fear of difference. In this case, even attempts by others to break down fear by introducing difference can lead to even more fear (Freud's “narcissism of small difference” fits well here I think). In one interesting aside, Hobbes briefly mentions is the idea that “heathen philosophers” who are separated from religious ideas still can arrive at the idea of a first mover, thereby recognizing early on in the excerpt that the principle of a first mover is strangely not always necessarily tied to religious ideas but can paradoxically provide a parallel between religious and non-religious people (33). That idea seems to me to have found a common ground between religious and non-religious people by leaning into a common desire or need to ponder issues of ultimate reality, which could be a point of interest for the field of inter-religious dialogue. Regarding Hobbes's idea about attributing events and circumstances to supernatural creatures and causes, in extreme cases, I think this manner of thinking eliminates human responsibility, discouraging the dynamic and forthright action of society to affect change. If there is always something or someone on which to place blame for an action, then what use is it to have punishment or reprimand any person for doing anything? If manipulated in the right way, immoral people could take great advantage of this line of thinking to commit atrocities that a society imbedded in this thought could not logically refute. Overall, this excerpt provided a very thoughtful take on the dangers of religion.
In this portion of Thomas Hobbes's famous work, Leviathan, he derides religion for the purpose of defending true Christian faith against paganism. Since he only sees evidence and results of religion in humans, he believes that the cause, or “seed of religion” must also be within humans. Religion is particularly in the nature of humans because only humans are curious about the causes of events, because humans believe that the cause of things must also be that which determined their beginning, and because humans create causes for things that have no apparent causes. Religion, or paganism, springs from the combination of unknown causes and fear, whereas an eternal, omnipotent, monotheistic God was not created out of human fear. Continuing to upbraid paganism, Hobbes discusses the ways in which humans project themselves into the gods they create and have made gods of everything. Humans create religions based on these gods either for their own good, or to conform to God's commandment. The first type of person creates political religion with pagan gods, and the latter creates divine politics, usually based on the monotheistic God of Israel. Politicians use religion as a method for controlling their populations. Without miracles and divine intervention on earth, humans consistently return to creating their own gods in a pagan manner instead of following the true God. The problem of religion according to Hobbes is “unpleasing priests” of every denomination.
Reading Hobbes is nearly always depressing. Anyone who believes that the life of humans is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” leaves little room for hope. This section regarding religion continues in this depressing vein. Although he attempts to uphold the Christian God in some manner, primarily by using the term “religion” instead of specifically “paganism” or “politicized religious hierarchies,” I do not think that he makes a clear distinction between a monotheistic God and the gods of the pagans. Hobbes makes an argument for why humans create religion, but does not make a clear argument as to why the God of Israel does not fit into this category. This lack of precision is undoubtedly because of the dangers of being a public atheist during his lifetime.
By employing the phrase “not fruit of religion, but a man only,” Thomas Hobbes criticizes, not religion per se, but politically corrupted religion. Curiosity about causes of the world and of things in the world results in anxiety and fear, which eventually leads to religion. Fear and ignorance conjure superstition, with its invisible ghosts and gods, all with the power to overshadow people’s rational ability. These superstitious powers of religion function within human societies and cultures to keep people in obedience, and maintaining peace and law. Truth in religion is nothing but the manipulation of individuals for the sake of corporate political interests.
“Perpetual fear” and “ignorance of causes” expresses Hobbes’ idea of religion. He disagrees with the idea of Church–state unity and severely criticizes it. He points out the unfair advantage enjoyed by people in religious institutions when religion merges with politics. Hobbes’ argument was valid at that time, when the Church had power over politics. His rational way of looking at religion could have helped people resist both corrupted religious and political systems, and also resist superstitious ideas and faith. We can still appreciate Hobbes’ point on religion, especially when we witness religion overpowering politics and manipulating the dignity of human being. However, a question rises: if religion is completely separated from state and reinforces the value of human existence and life, would religion be still the object of criticizing?
Leviathan, a masterpiece of Thomas Hobbes, suggests a philosophical approach toward religion in the chapter “of religion.” Starting from “the one first mover,” this article is filled with philosophical arguments about God and religion. T. Hobbes reframes these disputes and generates his perspective on human nature. According to him, “the seed of religion” is the common sense of the human being. When people encounter the other, it brings about fear toward the world. He argues that religion is originated from the question about the cause, and it leads people to the question about the first mover which becomes God; He also asserts how cpolitical approaches in the history are connected with religion. For him, religion is just a fantasy people’s weakness create.
T. Hobbes’ all arguments about religion is very familiar to me. Those assertions are repeated through the history of Christianity. “The seed of religion” is similar to Schleiermacher’s notion, and “the one first mover” has been used from Thomas Aquinas to the present. A. Flew also uses the concept to demonstrate his argument. One different point of Hobbes’ assertion is that his notion of religion seems to be limited to the totemism. He identifies all high religions with superstitious though they have significant differences. Can religious ethics and eschatological views be explained just as the problem of fear? If religion is coming from the question about the cause, does it dispute his idea that religion is created from “the ignorance of second causer?” Even though he quotes the bible at the end of his article, his arguments do not contain what religion Christianity says. For him, all biblical notion about God is just fantasy.
|
|
|
David Hume |
David Hume asserts, “The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events” (26). This primeval propensity led to the conjuring and the crafting of a terrifying God made in the image of the ignorant, cowering human. Hume recognizes the contradiction and inconsistencies of a deity imagined solely on the basis of power and knowledge, disregarding goodness. A question arises: Instead of a barbarous God who transcends earthly conceptions of justice, why not a God of goodness? Hume writes, “In short, all virtue, when men are reconciled to it by ever so little practice, is agreeable: All superstition is forever odious and burthensome” (30). This pitying diagnosis is of delusion by practice of superstition, or needless religious ritual. The remedy for such an ailment is moral virtue, unfettered by the artifices of man-made religion and accessible to all.
The benevolent essence of The Natural History of Religion points to a truly concerned author. Hume writes in line with his colleagues: he is a liberator of humankind from delusion. Hume writes with pity for the misguided Brachmans, Talapoins, and those practicing Rhamadan. It is clear that Hume is rooted in his human responsibility and urges his fellow human beings to at least consider that “the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures” (30). It seems that Hume calls for a reorientation. He recognizes religious fervor as wrongly ascribed energy—energy that could be expended for the ends of moral virtue. While in agreement with Hume, I wonder (as I do with most atheist writers) if there could be more affirmation, at least from a cultural sensitivity perspective, of the religious practices that atheistic individuals find abhorrent but that may actually serve to orient the individual in a roundabout way to the same end as Hume proposes (i.e. rituals and subsequent purpose of Rhamadan) without forfeiting the atheistic agenda.
Hume shows how superstitious a religion is by revealing the contradictions between religious practices and morality. The first contradiction lies in the development of religion. Men deify some objects of terror and ascribe all the virtues to them. But the gods of goodness, love and benevolence was once objects of terror and considered as devils who are evil. The second contradiction is the difference of moral criterion between gods and men. Gods are allowed to do what are prohibited to do for men. Then, Hume claims that religions do not improve morality because he thinks that religious people tend to try to receive gods' favor not through “virtue and good morals(28)” but “frivolous observances, intemperate zeal, rapturous ecstasies, or the belief of mysterious and absurd opinions(28).” So, according to Hume, we cannot derive morality from religion, but rather, morality is a sort of social duties, and human beings have a strong inclination to be moral.
The anecdote he took as an example about a young man was very impressive. Just as he found that gods do what are banned for men, and that in the name of those gods is morality justified, so we can find in God of Christianity some immoral behaviors which are reprehensible and even punishable for men - such as war crime, massacre, or discrimination - and also observe in the name of that God are the values – such as love or human right – justified. From the perspective of history instead of theology, it seems that a religion functions as a means by which men relieve their anxiety and justify their needs and behaviors.
In Hitchens's first selection of David Hume, Hume asserts that religious superstition finds root in man's fear of future events. We create gods by ascribing every excellence we find in the world to the so-called divinity, while at the same time pushing all categories of terror out into the same divine space. Hence, religious feeling varies depending on one's understanding of what is good and bad in the world. Religionists are caught in the paradox of sentiment and vengeance, and obey something they believe to hold the maxims of justice. In this way, Hume extracts, religion favors observance over virtue. Religious observance, of course, could mean anything. Observance does not necessarily have anything in common with happiness for the self or for others; no, observance is only qualified by whatever arbitrary maxims are placed in the hands of the divine. In this way, superstition is unsafe.
Broadly explaining away religious behavior in terms of a collective universal feeling is of little interest, and use, to me--there are other conceptions of human religious feeling that boast an equal amount of generality and logic. Hume does point to something vital, though: the conflict between religious observance and virtue. It is true that religious ethics, in a pure sense, are distinguished by congruity to their qualifiers (that is, a Christian ethic is rendered appropriate so long as it is identifiably Christian), and this sort of circular morality presents an open field for atheistic defense. However, it is also true that religious observance might entail social interaction. Here, the ‘safety of superstition’ might actually be identified in terms of its virtue, bridging what Hume found contradictory.
David Hume asserts that religion rises from the human fear of the unknown. Humans create gods with power and knowledge, with whom they must find favor in order to lead more pleasant lives. While they may worship a god out of fear, the god doesn’t deserve their praise unless that god is also good, so many religions, especially those that are monotheistic, attribute benevolence to the deity. Hume points out that believers seek the favor of the divine not only by being good, because any decent person can be good whether they wish to be favored by the deity or not, but by adding on rituals that often result in wasted time, unnecessary pain, or the adoption of a view for no other reason than perhaps the deity prefers for the believer to adopt that view. Why would a benevolent deity demand such trivial and/or harmful practices? Hume’s conclusion is that religion can meet the call for human decency, but the need for believers to set themselves apart as worshippers of a deity often means a call for behavior or attitudes that are pernicious.
This excerpt from The Natural History of Religion highlights Hume’s concern for morality and responsibility, of both humans and a possible God. I appreciate that Hume, and most others who are (at the mildest) weary of religion, refuse to let God off the hook for the presence of both moral and natural evil. Many religious believers appeal to limited human understanding in comparison with a God’s-eye-view of the world, but that’s a really unsatisfactory response for when bad things happen to good people. Anyone can look at the state of affairs in the world today and wonder how it can be that the God of theism, the “God of the omni’s” (omnipotence, omniscience, omni-benevolence), can co-exist with such a state. Hume’s points draw out the unlikelihood of such a god existing, but they don’t rule out the possibility of a more unattached, deistic god.
Hume begins by observing that anxious fear of future events most often leads to religion in human beings. He then goes on to note that, “Our natural terrors present the notion of a devilish and malicious deity: Our propensity to adulation leads us to acknowledge an excellent and divine.” Thus, Hume provides his assessment of the internal factors giving rise to human religiosity, and, in so doing, also observes the peculiar ways in which “superior beings” seem not to be subject to the dictums, which govern human morality. He also observes, for that matter, that favor with the divinity of a given religion is not necessarily attained through living up to a moral code, but by performing otherwise arbitrary rituals and ceremonies. Yet, in Hume’s evaluation, the greatest religion would be that which was founded upon acting rightly, rather than superstitiously. He says, “In short, all virtue, when men are reconciled to it by ever so little practice, is agreeable: All superstition is forever odious and burthensome.” (30) Finally, he notes, these superstitions give rise to even greater fears, which are usually exploited by religious authorities: “The more tremendous the divinity is represented, the more tame and submissive do men become his ministers: And the more unaccountable the measures of acceptance required by him, the more necessary does it become to abandon our natural reason, and yield to their ghostly guidance and direction.” In conclusion, Hume’s account of the natural history of religion is an interesting interpretation of the various dynamics at work in the causes and effects of religious behavior.
I think Hume is entirely correct in his analysis of the natural history of religion. I particularly enjoyed his examination of some of the “bad influences of popular religions on morality.” By treating the tension between religion and morality in such a manner, Hume raises serious questions concerning the role of religious injunctions among the governing principles of the commonwealth. This piece, therefore, has illuminated for me what I have so often heard atheists saying—that governances based on the religious presuppositions of a particular interest group is a fundamental violation of the rights of those persons not sharing their views. It is not altogether clear to me, however, that this excerpt somehow evidences Hume’s atheism. If anything, it seemed to me that Hume was arguing for religious beliefs and moral practice to be predicated upon right reasons, rather than against belief in God.
An anxious fear towards an unknown future is the origin of religion, according to Hume. Moreover, popular religions set a bad model for human morality, while blinding human minds with superstitions. These superstitions are like crimes. Superstitious and devotional faith increases blind religious passion, and eventually leads to questionable actions. Belief in miracles is a good example. Miracles do not make sense since they are against the laws of nature and human reason.
Hume does not seem to despise religion, but criticizes superstition that evolves from blind faith. Blind faith and stunted reason result in all sorts of ridiculous and absurd events. Miracles cannot be proofs of any sort because miracles themselves cannot be proven. This shows the sense in which Hume wants to speak of faith that can be questioned by reason. Faith must be questioned for its validity regarding the value of human life. The foundation of religion should not be miracles or any other kind of event that would promote blind faith, but should be reason that can lead religion to sound belief and action.
Hume’s main aim in “On Miracles” is to pit supernatural accounts of miracles in the Scriptures against a “species of reasoning” that he describes as the most “common,” “useful,” and “necessary “ type of reasoning known to man, that which is “derived from the testimony of men.” (33) Hume gives as much weight as he does to the human testimony of experience because, according to him, all discoverable connections between objects are “founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction.” (33) Thus, experience, for Hume, is primary in epistemology, and the best tool for assessing experience is one’s own testimony or report of that experience. It follows that the “proof” or “probability” that a report of a certain experience, such as a miracle, is true depends upon how many other reported experiences can corroborate the first report. Since the corroboration of testimony for miracles is incredibly weak, one must conclude that miracles lack any evidentiary force and thus should not be considered to be credible.
I would respond to Hume by pointing out that humans absorb a huge amount of human testimony in their lifetime that is never tested for its corroboration against other reports but is rather inherently trusted. This does not mean Hume isn’t correct to demand a high standard for testimonial corroboration when it comes down to brass tacks and one has to decide whether a report is credible or not. Nevertheless, we must take responsibility for the fact that our ability to deploy our reasoning powers in practice is overwhelmingly dependent upon information that has been absorbed into human thought without ever being corroborated according to Hume’s high standards. We take much for granted in our use of language, our understanding of history, and our assumptions about natural processes. This does not mean that we should therefore be willing to take miracles for granted and consider them credible, but we should at least recognize the implicit limitations in a methodology that relies so heavily upon testimonial corroboration in order to establish credulity. We rely on many other activities (including a good amount of uncorroborated trust) in order to interpret our experiences (and to establish our interpretations as credulous) and this is something to be recognized and taken into account. As to the question of whether miracles actually occur or not, I sympathize with Hume. The credulity of miracles has not been sufficiently established by empirical methods. But Hume limits his methodology too much by reducing his case against miracles to a case about testimonial corroboration. Hume fails to appreciate just how complex the establishment of credulity is when one takes into account humanity’s reliance on non-sufficiently corroborated but correct epistemological beliefs.
In this book, Hume established his empirical theology as the only way in reasoning the fact. “Evidence derived from the witnesses and human testimony,” but if the testimony to establish is too “extraordinary and marvelous” which more than “unusual” then the testimony itself is in vain, as it violates the laws of nature. In his mind the testimony cannot be used to be the foundation of a system of the religion, but he is not trying to deny of the possibility of the miracle. He further claimed that not only reasoning is impotent to convince us the Faith, but also the belief of such Faith from a rational man cannot prove us anything.
He is skeptical to all as well, the example of the death of Queen he used shows us there is no way to prove anything if man did not want to believe. If this does happen, no matter how famous of the man, or how virtuous and charitable of this man, from Christian view, I have to say this man has no Wisdom, even though he is extraordinarly rational. For his experience was all based on the limited natural knowledge of his own, and such experience was in short of proof of the sourcing and accuracy, how a rational man can use this as a standard to all facts around him? Hume’s theology might be unique but truly useless. Epicurus claimed the religious inferences drawn from our experience of nature are “uncertain and useless”, I would like to say, the inferences drawn from our experience of nature to doubt the Faith are useless and meaningless, as St. Paul said, Faith is base on the Grace God prepared for those who love him, what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived.
The essay by David Hume concerning miracles casts serious doubts upon the reliability of witness testimonies to miraculous events, and thereby, into the heart of religion itself. Given the role that miracles play in the founding of new religions (e.g., the miracles performed by Jesus and his resurrection), as well as the apologetic role that miracles play in justifying religious faith (i.e., that Jesus performed miracles is claimed to be proof of his divinity), it is unsurprising that a skeptic, such as Hume, would turn their attention to the idea of the miraculous. While human beings often rely upon the testimony of witnesses to determine the truth of a given situation – on the use of testimony, Hume writes that there is “no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life” – our experience of testimony as reliable is challenged when the evidence being reported flies in the face of our observable experience, as is the case in reports of the miraculous. Hume defines a miracle as a “violation of the laws of nature,” meaning something that acts in a way that contradicts commonly held experiences and the results of experimentation. He writes, “Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happens in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden…. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.” The very fact that such occurrences do not line up with common experiences and experimentation is what makes them miraculous, and, in the case of miracles performed by religious figures this is the entire point – it was through his acts that violated the laws of nature that Jesus “proved his divine mission.” In response to this, Hume has crafted a maxim that is devastating to such miraculous accounts: “[No] testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” Given the human tendency to be moved by “surprise and wonder,” the documentation of miracles that turned out to be deceptions and hoaxes, and the occurrence of miracles chiefly in countries that do not have access to education and contemporary science (meaning the science contemporary to Hume), Hume claims that “no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion.”
It is hard to escape the force of Hume’s argument in this essay. When you are faced with a testimony of a miraculous occurrence, you need to ask yourself whether it is more likely that the established laws of nature have been violated or whether the person reporting it is either mistaken or deceitful. Although I could quibble with Hume over his definition of miracle as a “violation of the law of nature” – it does not leave room for understandings of “miracle” such as the existence of those very laws of nature, or moments of experience that grasp us with the intensity and depth of existence – but, given the general understanding of miracle that most people are operating under and the role of that understanding in religious apologetics I will set that aside. My biggest complaint about Hume is that I find myself cringing when he characterizes people as “ignorant and barbarous.” While I get the truth at the heart of that statement, that in cultures without access to education (especially in the sciences) that supernaturalism and superstition thrive, it is statements like that that allow contemporary people to dismiss Hume (and other enlightenment thinkers) as a racist and not wrestle with the force of his arguments. A final question: as Hume characterizes the Bible as a book “presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous,” what were those barbarians in tune with that we as a civilization have lost?
David Hume observes that the prevalence of religion as part of humanity stems from a widespread fear of the future and the inability to know future events. Often these fears are personified into the forms of a harmful and malicious deity that requires specific worship. Votaries are caught in an endless cycle of internal struggle; the more fearful of the deity they become, the more they believe the deity is in need of their worship. There is further contradiction between the ideas of religion and the natural inclinations of humanity. Faith’s insistence on buying into superstition is man-made and self-perpetuating. Worship appears to be not much more than superficial action to participate in absurdity, and further veneration of a deity that has been watered down to a smarter, more impressive human creature. In mentioning the practice of Rhamadan and other religious practices that promote self-deprivation or harm, Hume suggest that this is further participation in a superstition that is less than benevolent, while it still appears to hold that as its goal. Subscription in this superstition does not appear to promote moral behavior, as those who participate in the most dangerous crimes and other acts of harm towards society are typically the most superstitious. The internal weakening of one’s moral frame is perpetuated by a participation in this superstition and is even encouraged further by priests and others of religious leadership. Hume renounces the desire to pursuing wispy guidance on the grounds that this action departs from natural reason and commends his own desire to indulge the universal properties of human nature.
In critique of the church and other outlets of belief, the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy arises as a necessary concern. The Christian faith specifically, in the various ways that it is carried out, begins with the understanding of humanity’s deep and unchangeable brokenness. The church, offers itself and its beliefs as the solution of this brokenness, while consequently perpetuating this depraved humanity model. It is a very self-saving model for the church and plays into the very aspects of human nature that Hume highlights, combatting fear and anxiety of the unknown to come. The church works to both perpetuate and alleviate that fear in such a way that keep people participating but not fully receiving anything substantial enough or permanent in order to leave the endless cycle. The resounding narrative of the believing body being the wretchedness of humanity promotes the interests of the superstition, and, it follows, the need for Christ and further participation in the cyclical narrative.
The Portable Atheist contains three excerpts from David Hume: “The Natural History of Religion” (26-31), “Of Miracles” (32-45), and “An Account of My Last Interview With David Hume, Esq.” (46-49). In the first essay Hume critiques popular religion first for its immoral constructions of divinity and secondly for its superstitious practices. If decency and virtue should judge human behavior, why not divine? It seems, in fact, that the gods are not subject to norms of human decency. Not only does basic morality not make up the nature of the gods, neither do they constitute the essential traits of human religion. Instead of virtue people are drawn to an array of trivial and outlandish practices. The second essay “Of Miracles” ridicules the fact that the religion rests on the authority of past testimonies of miracles. Of course, human testimony is one of the most basic forms of reasoning. What do you do though when the facts testified about are not only marvelous but indeed miraculous, that is, against the laws of nature? Hume explains that you should not assent to the credulity of a miracle unless its opposite would be more miraculous. Would it be more miraculous for a person who testifies that someone was raised form the dead to be correct or to be deceived? The case against miracles is furthered by the fact that humans have a basic propensity towards the marvelous. Christianity rests on the claims of past witnesses to the miraculous. Therefore, the true enemies of Christianity are those who attempt to defend it based on reason alone, not the assent of faith. Even the present experience of faith is described as miraculous. The third essay contains an account by James Boswell of Hume’s faithfulness to his worldview at the end of his life. For Hume eternal life was not only incredulous but also undesirable.
A lot has changed in the study of religion since Hume’s critiques of superstition in the 18th century. There is a big difference, for instance, between Hume’s use of the term “popular religion” and how it tends to get used today. Whereas Hume this phrase was synonymous with “barbarous” and therefore debased; whereas today there has been a huge movement to recover and value “popular religion.” For instance, over the last few decades historians have attempted to get away from history of religion as the describing the lives of those in power and instead attempted to reconstruct the religious experience of the common people. For the history of Christianity this leads to a lot more “superstition”: holy men and women, saint shrines, relics, and apotropaic practices. The value of popular religion today also seems to stem from a rejection of the basic sympathy between religions and cultures. Whereas Feminism has helped us to recover the contributions of women to religion, Post-Colonialism has made us cautious of all attempts to assert the superiority of European culture or norms over and against other cultures. Lastly, in some quarters of religious studies today there has also been a movement back to the transcendent nature of religion itself. Robert Orsi’s History and Presence (HUP, 2016), for instance, argues that the study of religion must take into account the real presence of the gods, that is, of supernatural agents who act upon the world and can also be acted upon.
David Hume begins “On Miracles” with the assertion that Christianity cannot substantiate its claim through sensory evidence. The claims of the Christian story are based off of events that are highly improbable. We define probability, in part, by the frequency of an event relative to our experience. Since Christian claims come the testimonies of witnesses, Hume aims to cast doubt on those testimonies by pointing to the fact that their stories contradict our normal understanding of the world. Testimonies do not provide sufficient evidence to say that a miracle happened, especially since the normal operations of the natural world are verifiable. Because such miracles do not seem to occur in the present day, Hume finds it likely that all old stories that refer to miraculous events (even those which are not explicitly religious) should be regarded with some suspicion. However, religion tends to support stories that violate the normal operations of the world more so than any other kind of story, which he believes should cause any reasonable person to doubt that these stories are true. Faith leads one to believe something that contradicts one’s own reason.
Hume’s argument against miracles appears to be quite simple: why would we believe a fantastic story that goes against our normal experience of the world? A miracle is, by definition, an event that contradicts one’s normal experience, so it would seem that Hume has taken issue with an entire class of phenomena. One of the most notable points that Hume uses against miracles is that they do not occur with the same frequency in his day as they seem to within the Bible. This fact has led many Christians to conclude that the miracles of Jesus’s time were perhaps exceptional, something which should not be expected at all in the present. However, one may wonder what the point of Christianity is if God is not going to act in the present day. I happen to agree with Pentecostals that one should believe in God only if one believes that God intervenes actively in the present. However, Hume’s argument that miracles contradict both our experience and our reason remains a grave problem for anyone who wants to maintain a supernaturalist position. Given that unlikely outcomes are still possible, it would seem impossible to establish a correlation between religious activity and any given miracle. While we can never disprove miracles entirely, that our prayers do not seem to make miracles more likely should be troubling to any religious person.
|
|
|
Penn Jilette |
In this essay, Penn Jillette declares that he is beyond atheism because he believes that there is no God. The atheist position of not believing in God is passive in comparison with his active belief in no God. After discussing the spectrum from theism to beyond atheism, Jillette outlines the ways in which his belief in no God has enriched his life. He is satisfied with the plenty that is around him in the world. He must treat people in an ethical manner since he does not have the option of forgiveness in the afterlife. He believes that he can scientifically improve his life and that the human race could possibly fix the problem of suffering.
It is interesting to note that, like theists, Jillette must take “some leap of faith” in order to actively believe that there is no God (349). He glorifies the scientific method and the human senses as the only ways of obtaining true knowledge. While he believes that “no God means the possibility of less suffering in the future,” a Christian would say that the fact that there is a God means the possibility of less future suffering (350). In many ways, Jillette and many Christians have similar life-enriching results because of their respective beliefs.
She believes that “there is no God” (Hitchens 2007, 349). She argues that becoming an atheist paves the way for taking care of herself and others instead of serving God. Believing there is no God sheds light on self-development through introspection, and “gives her more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever here” (Hitchens 2007, 350).
She cannot also be free from criticism of the distinction between an Atheist and an Anti-religious like Emma Goldman. Like Goldman, Jillette has a partial view of God's image as transcendent. She regards herself as independent from God in that she believes focusing on herself and others around her separates her from God. I would like to say what Jillette is going through is the process to broaden the view of the image of God. What if she knows God in a different form as immanence? If she knew this image of God, she would understand that suffering or other life experiences are ways to learn the variety of images of God. In this sense, I ask myself, are human beings as finite creatures able to be free from the concern of infinity? If finite human beings grasp the concept of infinity, do they still experience purpose, desire, or appetite?
In this article, Jillette describes his “non-God-faith”: “I believe there is no God” (349). By avoiding expressing his view in a negative form, he skips the endless argument between atheists and theists: Is there a God? Instead, he discusses what benefits he receives by believing the world without God: be happy with what he has; be careful about not making mistakes; maintain an open attitude to new ideas; interpret sufferings in a positive way; and spend more time on beautiful things that make his life better.
I was struggling to understand the first two paragraphs of the article. At first, I thought Jillette was trying to illustrate his personal faith in which God does not play a role. It could be a faith that is related to atheism but superior to it. The rest of the article denies my initial understanding. It seems to me that the main theme of Jillette's theory is no different from other atheistic ideas I know: there is no God. The only difference I observe is that, rather than stating “I do not believe in God,” Jillette says: “I believe there is no God.” How does the “I believe” thing make a difference? I tend to believe that the assumption underlying this “I believe there is no God” statement is that everyone will have to worship something. In other words, I believe there are no real atheists. Everyone has to believe in something. Although atheists refuse the image of God that any religion might produce, it does not mean that they will refuse a spiritual support. That is why I call Jillette's theory the “non-God-faith” in the first paragraph. His spiritual support is the things that are highlighted by his disbelief in God (blue skies, rainbows, love, truth…). Who says that only Christianity (or Buddhism or Islam) is a faith? I have been asked to repeat the following statement since I was in the elementary school: “I am the future of communism. I believe in Marxism.” Marxism is the faith of a country. Marx is God. Marx's philosophy is the Bible. Therefore, my argument is that there are not distinctions between theists and atheists. The sacred world and the secular world should not be separated from each other. Of course, theists and atheists should not treat each other like enemies. Everyone has the right to believe in what he or she wants to believe.
Penn Jillette declares his position on the atheist-theist spectrum as being “beyond atheist.” This means that not only does he not believe in God, he believes there is no God. Jillette claims everyone should start out in the atheist position and then move either beyond atheism or towards agnosticism and theism based on the evidence that people encounter. Jillette then goes on to recount how his step beyond atheism has impacted his life, and says that he is fulfilled through the love of his family and the wonder of the natural world. He points out that he can only be forgiven by people’s “kindness and faulty memories” (349), and that this makes him more thoughtful. He says believing there is no God has left him more open-minded, because his dialogue with others doesn’t halt when the other says something contradictory to his faith (or lack thereof). Jillette concludes with commentary on how his belief that there is no God has calmed his anxiety about the problem of evil.
Jillette’s essay struck a major chord within me. One of my frustrations with people who contain high levels of religiosity is that they are so put off by hearing another’s opinion or idea reflecting different assumptions. Elie Wiesel once discussed how answers end dialogue, but questions keep the dialogue going. Jillette is able to brag about his ability to maintain dialogue, but there are open-minded religious believers who are able to carry on conversations without their faith providing an answer that ends the discussion. There just needs to be more of them.
Penn Jillette in this essay takes on a conventional atheistic point of proof to argue that there is no God. Jillette believes in the truth of “real things” so that he can believe and not speculate. The author argues that there is no need for the idea of God in this world because with out the help of God human beings can love, care and be moral and enjoy the realities of this world. The author argues that human beings should not wait for an external power to come and clean the evil in our society, rather human beings should work together against the greed and violence of this world to make it a better place. If we believe that there is no God then it means that human beings will put an effort to make the system right and less possibilities of evil acts will happen in the future. So, the author urges his reader to believe in all the things that one can prove so that the world would be a better place to live.
I think Jillette's essay contradicted on his fundamental argument that to believe in some thing it should be real. Jillette in the essay is doing the opposite by taking a leap of faith (which it self is an action of believing in some thing which can not be proved or seen) to make his point and believe that there is no God. He says that he is going one step further from other atheist who are still in the realm of searching for the proof. I think this contradicts his claims because if one can take a leap in faith to believe there is no God then why should a person be stopped of taking a leap of faith in believing that there is a God? I think Jillette's essay was poorly thought and is incoherent. I agree that human beings should be aware about the things of this world and involve in making in a change rather than waiting for God to come and change the system. But I do not believe that evil is prevailing in the world because people are waiting for God to come and change the system. If morals was for survival how can a superstition about God stop a natural man from fighting for his survival? How can people get stuck on God and wait for God to come and make the change? So, after reading almost 10 articles in three weeks on atheism and why one should believe in it I think, Jillette's arguments was not articulated as well as others who write about atheism.
Penn Jillette is “beyond atheism.” Jillette expresses a firm belief that God does not exist, rather than being content to not believe in God. Atheism, Jillette claims, is easy. Most truth-seeking individuals assume no belief in God as a starting point and are still searching for evidence of a supreme being. Jillette’s belief that God does not exist, however, informs his life and worldview in positive ways. Without God, the joys and hopes of his mortal life become more fruitful and significant.
Jillette’s exposition on the nonexistence of God may be brief, but its compelling value is equivalent to a dissertation on the subject. Jillette makes a positive case for an atheistic worldview because he describes how his disbelief enriches his life. Rather than making an appeal for atheism in opposition to theism or religion, Jillette allows atheism to stand on its own merit. Not believing in God makes life more vivid and substantial for Jillette. For many theists, the strict rationality of atheism is unappealing and restrictive. It becomes difficult to see the underlying intellectual merit of atheistic philosophy. By painting a more human and emotive picture of atheism, positions like Jillette’s may allow theists to “come to the table” in an open and constructive dialogue that removes stereotypical biases.
In the terse, yet touching essay, “There is No God,” Penn Jillette articulates the positive reasons for his “beyond atheism” position. Jillette proposes that holding a negatively supported atheism is “easy,” but eventually insufficient. Fulfillment and direction in life derive from affirmations, and in this piece Jillette expounds the declaration: ‘This I believe: I believe there is no God.’ (349) Jillette begins by embracing the world as he experiences it. This bear hug of life’s abundant treasures is found to be satisfying and there is no need to look to an afterlife for greater joys. Turning to morality, Jillette excises the need for God’s forgiveness by means of an appreciation for the “kindness and faulty memories” of others who forgive his missteps and inspire him “to be more thoughtful … the first time around.” (349) In the realm of learning, Jillette finds life to be more eventful and adventurous without the presence of a God who provides certain answers. All the people of the world engage a common, accessible reality that is constantly being discovered and debated, which is much more fluid and exciting than self-enclosed, inaccessible, and unassailable views. Next, Jillette’s manifesto addresses the problem of suffering. If one eliminates the classical conceptions of God, suffering is a quantity that may be diminished through human endeavor since it is no longer viewed as a tool of divine instruction. In conclusion, Jillette recapitulates his bear hug of life. He writes, “Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.” (350)
Jillette’s essay is clearly life-affirming and seeks to avoid a saccharine tenor that could be imbibed by a person with such celebrity status. But is he successful in this attempt? For those robbed of justice, robbed of physical security, robbed of personal development, robbed of political voice, is it enough to hope that someday suffering will be lessened in the world through the labors of the humane? For those whose one life has been decimated by the deeds of others, is Jillette’s closing exclamation an effective antitoxin against the darts of despair? Transitioning swiftly to another point, Jillette’s advocacy of open-minded learning coupled with his attack on fundamentalist thinking is appreciated; however, given that the majority of the world’s population is religiously oriented and that atheism is a statistical minority globally, the numerical composition of his atheistic learning community is comparatively sparse. For Jillette, this means that active dialogue with the populations of the world entails communicating with those who have religious perspectives that are radically different from his affirmative position thereby making “agree[ment] on reality” more complicated than he envisions. (349)
Penn Jillette, in “There is No God,” recognizes that there is a big difference between simply not believing in God (which is a type of atheism that Jillette calls “easy”)(349) and the actual act of confessing an atheist creed, confessing a positive belief that “There is No God.” Jillette goes on to argue that this positive belief is truly a “leap of faith” that provides the believer certain “rules to live by.” (349) Jillette seems to see his positive atheist creed as a pragmatic guide to his life, teaching him to be content with “love, blue skies, rainbows, and Hallmark cards” and providing more room in his life for “belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex,” and “Jell-O.” (349-350) What Jillette can’t stand is the believer who absolutely refuses to be corrected or changed. Jillette sees atheist faith as a faith, contrary to dogmatism, that allows one “to be proven wrong,” which in Jillette’s opinion “is always fun.” (350)
Jillette’s piece is a short, fun read and it treats serious subjects such as human suffering and the temporality of human life with a nice comedic flair. I appreciate his acknowledgment of the “faith” component involved in an atheism that positively affirms that “There is No God,” and I respect his willingness to take responsibility for his faith. Jillette’s core belief in human fallibility is refreshing and something to embrace. I also like Jillette’s love of Jello-O, something that is certainly a cause of joy in this world no matter how transitory it might be.
P. Jillette’s short article shows the archetype of atheism of the public. In the text, the author spreads his main idea about why he believes there is no god. Roughly speaking, the reason why he does not believe in God is he does not want to because the belief in God is just in the area of belief. In his example, God believer is described as an exclusive and narrow-minded person, and he identifies this figure as a belief in God. What one believes in God means s/he refuses any arguments about God and makes him/herself being solipsistic. In Jillette’s thought, believing God is admitting oneself as a non-social and unreasonable person. Most of all, he refused the faith of being God because he does not want to believe.
Frankly speaking, this short essay merely has arguable points because the ideas of Jillette are full of his personal experiences and emotional response against theism. One agreeable point is that both atheism and theism are a belief system. In the midst of them, there is the belief of oneself. There have been numerous attempts to prove God’s existence, such as Anselmus, Aquinas, and so on. Now, we know that we could not prove it but only could suggest that there is more evidence of being God. One thing I read interestingly is his criticism about omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. These traditional and Hellenistical figures of God are not biblical ones. Those are also one arguable point of Theodicy. Theologically, we can answer about the problem of evil in our society, but these answers are not familiar with the public. Jillette's comments and critics show that we need more conversation with the public and more dialectic approaches to our belief.
In “There Is No God,” Penn Jillette presents some of the benefits that he sees to an atheistic worldview with characteristic wit and a touch of heart. Jillette takes the more aggressive stance of firmly believing that there is no God, as opposed to merely not believing in God, and asks what sort of values and morals can be derived from such a position. For Jillette this involves an appreciation for this world as all that there is, and for that to be enough. “It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world, and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more.” The impetuous for ethical behavior comes from the fact that human beings have no divine forgiveness to rely upon, requiring us to “try to treat people right the first time around.” Not having an iron-clad belief in God allows room for doubt and to be proven wrong. Most importantly, not believing in God eliminates the theodicy problem, because suffering is not caused by a divine being. “[It] means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed, all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future.” Given what a painful reality the problem of evil and suffering can be for believers in God, such an observation really does show the kind of hope that an atheistic worldview can provide.
I’ve always liked the comedian/magician/libertarian activist Penn Jillette (I watched his television show Bulls**t! for years), and I was pleased to see an essay of his in this volume. I loved his take on people who redefine the concept of God to mean something other than personal theism. “You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car…Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word ‘elephant’ includes mystery, order, goodness, love, and a spare tire?” That being said, I found this article very light in real content (I should not be surprised, I’m reading a comedian rather than a philosopher or theologian). Jillette makes a big distinction between simply not believing in God, which may simply be the result of not being convinced, versus believing that there is no God, which connotes a study of the evidence and making a reasoned judgment. In this piece, I saw no evidence of that search, study, and judgment – only the result. It honestly makes me wonder how earnest and thorough his search and study was when he decided to throw his stake in with atheism. While Jillette claims to be open to correction and being proven wrong, it’s hard to see that as a serious sentiment when he says “Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong.” As long as you agree on that fundamental principle, we can have a real discussion. As much as I enjoyed parts of this piece, it left me wanting a lot more than was offered.
Penn Jillette, an American magician, juggler, comedian, musician, filmmaker and full-time atheist, brings his miracle exposing lens to argue to not believe in deity. To believe in god, one must first believe there is no god, then look for evidence for a god. However, the need to find a divine authority is not a necessity for life. He believes that having a god figure keeps one from truly experiencing the present. Jillette writes, “believing there is no god means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want o be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.” (Hitchens, 689) Then, the human experience is not hindered by the necessary god figure to rely upon for emotional, social and ethical support. Humans are the source of all suffering and the source of all life, responsibility of one’s actions is the focus for Jillette. Thus, Jillette believes that without a God, humanity can truly imagine a possibility of a future with less suffering.
I am incredibly sympathetic with Jillette’s perspective. I value any theological system that acts as a mirror unto its creators. Humanity must look in the mirror and see the source of suffering and injustice as one’s own actions. One cannot rely upon an external deity for emotional and ideological support. I believe this is why I identify with the mystical ground-of-being God camp. Is it possible for the narrative arc of the universe to have a bent towards justice? Is this just a human construction elevated to divine status? I wrestle with these questions daily, yet I do not know if my mere wish of a divine presence bent towards justice is merely my own personal desire.
|
|
|
Omar Khayyam |
Omar Khayyam wrote in Medieval Persia—a time and place in which it was quite out of vogue to make such an overt attack on religion and culturally held views about God (shockingly, maybe more so now than in the eleventh century). Still, there were mullahs even then! Yet, such is the beautiful allowance that comes with the vehicle of poetry. In true Persian form, Khayyam points to nature, to love, to wine, to beauty as forms of the ultimate. It is clear in his rhythm and rhyme that he is tasked with debunking the delusions of the masses, and he does this not only by pointing to that which is all around but he does this in the beautiful truth-telling of his own poetic craft. In his words, “The magic words of life are HERE and NOW.” (8)
Poetry from Persia is my soul blood. For some reason, the structure and imagery, despite the translation, communes with my depths. Khayyam writes a treatise against the absurdities of religions in poetic form! His wit and candor leads you from the end of one line to the end of the next and into the wonderful abyss of all that can be said and understood and all that cannot. In the expanse, there is wine, and love, and beauty, and presence. So, who cares? When one who sets all sights on what is to come relinquishes those self-imposed chains, heaven and hell break into the now and they bid the being to live! “Men talk of heaven,--there is no heaven but here; Men talk of hell,--there is no hell but here; Mean of hereafters talk, and future lives,--O love, there is no other life—but here” (8). This singular, yet expansive realization was one of the most liberative truths of my life. I let go the fear and “all the little poisoned ways of wrong” and drank the wine of Nature's goodness and fell in love.
Khayyam's poem reflects the inner workings of one who lives and thrives on the present moment. He repeatedly uses phrases to emphasize the beauty of here and now, and he throws doubt and negligence to the concerns of a somewhere far beyond. However, he alludes to his struggle in trying to understand what that somewhere far beyond might entail. Instead of speaking of the “Divine” as a more religious person might, he refers to the “Secret” (29). The Secret is described in a manner that paints a picture of a tease who flirts with a guest that she has no intention of being with, but she is alluring all the same to the unsuspecting guest. The Secret is elusive from humankind, and Khayyam wonders aloud if he has intentionally been left out of a group of the privileged few who have been given the seductive knowledge about the Secret he has sought for so long. In all this reflecting on what is behind the universe, Khayyam seems very direct in speaking that he does not believe in God after all the time he spent trying to uncover the mysteries of God in vain (30). However, he wavers between direct language speaking against his belief in God and language that allows for the ambiguity and possibility of God or something beyond (although I suppose it might also be heavy sarcasm). Regardless, his language acknowledging God is tinged with bitterness, likely due to his own anger for not understanding the Secret in any depth.
Although his poem is denouncing religion in one fashion, if Khayyam's poem were forcefully pigeonholed into a category reserved for the religious, it seems his words fit best within the apophatic tradition. He expresses a care for the Divine, or the Secret as he says it, but he also realizes he can never grasp at what it truly is or what it means. However, he has reached a place that many never do, and that place is the one where he can admit that he has no epistemological advantages. With that, I would think apophaticism fits him well, for he finds uncertainty a good enough neighbor to live with. His poem would likely resonate quite significantly with an audience who sits on the edge of religious devotion and atheism, for it illustrates beautifully the tension that exists in a human perspective that remains restricted from inheriting the answers to the mysteries of the universe such as whether or not God is real. Khayyam's poem makes it okay to voice that discomfort and maybe even blame the Divine for making the Secret so difficult to understand. While voicing that tension, there is an emotional equilibrium that can be brought back to a place where, at least for the devoutly religious, the tension and bitterness one feels towards a divine being is often considered unwelcome or dangerous.
This deceptively spritely poem touches on topics as weighty as life after death, eroticism, and searching for Allah in vain. He begins with an admonition that people should spend less time and energy on dreaming of heaven and more time savoring life on Earth: “heed not to-morrow, heed not yesterday; The magic words of life are Here and Now… To all of us the thought of heaven is dear – Why not be sure of it and make it here?” Khayyam returns multiple times to this “seize the day” mentality throughout the excerpt. Sexual imagery and references to drinking wine and drunkenness abound, lending credence to interpretations that highlight Khayyam's apparent hedonism. Most poignantly, Khayyam seems to be expressing frustration with his failed attempts to find Allah. Several times he writes of seeking and feeling close to a revelation, only to be disappointed. Thus, he tells the reader, “The Search has taught me that the Search is vain.” He encourages the reader to, rather than seek God, “[d]ive as you will in life's mysterious sea.”
As is often the case with poetry, I am hesitant to take the words and images too literally. The poem seems to say: “I sought Allah, I didn't find him, so he probably doesn't exist. Therefore, it is probably pointless to focus on the afterlife, especially when this world is so much fun.” This may indeed be the message that Khayyam intends to send; but it might also be possible to interpret the stanzas as presenting more nuance and tension. For example, the explicitness of his stanzas about eroticism and alcohol make me wonder if those images are actually referring to a more mystical arousal and intoxication. That being said, presented here in the context of Hitchens's anthology, Khayyam's poem seems to offer a seething, satirical critique of religion (“Believe me, I can quote the Koran too, The unbeliever knows his Koran best”) and world-denying asceticism (“The wintry soul that hates to hear a song”). He seems even to mock the idea of a divine plan, suggesting that God created grapes for wine and created Khayyam to drink: “That God had chosen me to sing His Vine, And in my dust had thrown the vinous leaven.” As such, Khayyam's piece fits well in the genealogy of Hitchens's style of atheism - reflecting not only a disbelief in a personified creator God, but also a disdain for institutionalized religion.
Omar Khayyam, in his long poem from eleventh-century Persia, illustrates the doubt that God “had revealed himself to some men and not to others” in humorous prose (7). He also expresses satirical disgust with those who use this so-called revelation to exploit other people (7). Khayyam writes about the improbability of an afterlife saying “men talk of heaven—there is no heaven but here; men talk of hell—there is no hell but here.”
This poem is long and conceptually dense, so I choose to focus on the stanzas in which Khayyam claims that there is no afterlife. I come from a religious tradition that has long concerned itself with this earth as the final destination, claiming that religion is to be lived for the purposes of this lifetime. It is a radical concept, especially in eleventh-century Persia, to claim that heaven should be “made here”. If there is no other life but here, as Khayyam claims, we must make heaven here—building the kingdom of God here on earth. If all church leaders and theologians made this claim, I believe that rather than social disorder and chaos, we would have a large group of human beings trying to make this lifetime as just and equitable, as sweet and good as heaven should be.
The selections from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat provide a lyrical and witty criticism of religion in eleventh-century Persia. Written in verse, the tone of this piece is largely personal as Khayyam ranges from his own insights to critiques of other assumptions about God. His main critique is against those who assume exclusive ownership of God’s secret, and he is not light in his critique:
Do you think that unto such as you,
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave the Secret, and denied it me?
But Khayyam does not merely name-call. Instead he highlights the absurdity of assuming that God made pleasure only to be avoided. This Epicurean philosophy gives this piece a colorful, joyful air.
Rather than a dreary, logical attack on religion, Khayyam’s words act like a jester: dancing around religion poking fun at its absurdity and stuffiness. This style effectively asserts a positive philosophy focused on the plentiful delights of this world. Indeed: “O love, there is no other life – but here.” Hitchens’ inclusion of this piece begs the question: is hedonism atheism? While Khayyam clearly critiques religion and certain assumptions about God, this critique arises out of an infatuation with a God who is abundantly present in the here and now. This is the danger of poetry, absent from dry logic: one can easily see what they want to see within verse.
Part 1.): This piece actually succeeds at being both poetic, a critique of theism, and an assertion of Khayyam’s own spirituality: Look not above, there is no answer there; Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer; Near is as near to God as any Far, And Here is just the same deceit as There. Khayyam goes on to express his belief that indulgence in simple pleasures is the way to go, for we only have the here and now in which to live. There is no hereafter.
Part 2.): I have heard of the Rubaiyat all my life, but never had an idea of what it was. When I saw it listed in the Portable Atheist, I jumped at the chance to read it. What “sends me” about the piece is mentioned above: it is a critique of theism, an assertion of Khayyam’s spirituality – all the while remaining throughout a great piece of poetry. The Rubaiyat is a wonderful piece of (or for) adolescent rebellion. It shows that atheists can be eloquent. We are not stupid, uncultured heathens. We have class. Atheists can claim Khayyam as their own with pride. Khayyam borders on the risqué – but he does not cross the line into promoting boundary violations: But here are wine and beautiful young girls, Be wise and hide your sorrows in their curls, Dive as you will in life’s mysterious sea, You shall not bring us any better pearls. The rhyme scheme of the Rubaiyat caught me a little off guard. I had never before encountered “AABA.” Doubtless this owes to my lack of exposure to great literature. At first reading, this sounded to me like only “half a rhyme”; but such is changing, with repeated re-readings.
The text by Omar Khayyám is a very sharp text. Written about 900 years ago in Persia, modern Iran, Khayyám directly attacked the theistic claims of Islam. Interestingly, Khayyám uses the poetic form of a Ghazal. This is the form that much of the Sufi poetry coming out of Iran, including poetry by the greats like Hafex, Rumi, and Attar to name a few. Khayyám challenges the ideas of the afterlife, pointing towards what reads like a form of existentialism. He, also, challenges what he perceives as some illogical aspects of Islam: God’s decision to reveal to Muhammad instead of everyone, god creating temptation for sin and expecting us to not go there. He also attacks the hypocrisy of the religious at the time. Khayyám, in short, simply went after everything.
This is a quite shocking piece, even bordering on scandalous. Khayyám does not seem afraid of what could happen to him through his writing phrases like calling Muhammad and his companions a “maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew.” In true humility, Khayyám is shocked that Muhammad received the revelation and not him, asking the religious believer to be astounded by that. The direct mimicking of the Sufis was also an interesting choice, essentially using their own style against them. However, in spite of Khayyám’s sharp tongue, many of his points are quite valid. I agree with his desire to live this life first, that this is where heaven and hell lie, that much of what is the religious organization now is corrupt and committing greater sins than those they persecute. However, his irreverence is shocking and may deter from people hearing his argument.
Omar Khayyám’s 12th century Persian poem Rubáiyát celebrates a naturalist philosophy similar to the Epicureanism of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. The image of wine is used to promote a mortal approach to happiness and then to critique a traditional understanding of God. If you want to be happy, then by all means do not relegate your happiness to the after-life; instead, be happy today. Heaven is in our midst and so is hell: “O slove, there is no other life – but here” (8). Omar then mocks the idea that God would create things like wine and women and make it a sin to enjoy them. Lastly, the author mocks the idea that God would reveal secrets of life to some and conceal them from others. How convenient! If God keeps secrets after all, then how can anyone be so sure that they are the ones that have been chosen to know the mysteries?
A 12th century Muslim poet mocked the idea of special revelation and yet many American Christians in the 21st century still refuse to see the problematic nature of the claim to possess unique and exclusive revelation of God. When I say unique revelation of God, I do not merely mean a fundamentalist theory of verbal inspiration or inerrancy. Instead, I mean the concept of unique revelation itself, whether in Jesus Christ or in the Christian Canon. One of the first places to begin troubling such claims is with Judaism. Christians throughout the centuries have had a particularly hard time swallowing the continued presence of Judaism after Christ. If Jesus was the Messiah, the unique revelation of God and the savior of Israel, then why do the Jews of all people not recognize these facts? At the same time, if you cannot accurately read the Hebrew scriptures apart from the claims of the New Testament, how do Jewish believers continue to read and profit from their scriptures in synagogues throughout the world? Maybe, Christians have assured themselves, God has blinded them and kept them from recognizing their own savior. But, if we are to follow the wisdom of Omar Khayyám, what kind of God would give the revelation of salvation only to some and not to others? Or even worse, what kind of God would withhold this revelation from the very people chosen to carry it forward? Does God, then, chose you only to condemn you?
|
|
|
Philip Larkin |
According to Hitchens, “Aubade” by English poet Philip Larkin is a poem about lovers parting at dawn, in this case the lover being life itself (207). Larkin’s poem speaks to his belief that there is no life beyond the grave, and his horrific fear of death. He references religion’s failure to try to dispel the fear of death with the delusion of eternal life, asserting that religion was “created to pretend we never die” (208). He similarly denounces the specious “stuff” that claims we shouldn’t fear nothingness. “Courage is no good” he writes. “Being brave lets no one off the grave.” He concludes that the only certainty in life is the nothingness of death, and that while we can’t escape death, we also can’t accept it (208).
This is a gorgeous poem in its profound and real treatment of the human condition—the haunting truth that we are alive and have to die. Larkin speaks to a larger audience than just atheists in this poem, given that most of the world’s human population has feared death at one point or another, regardless of religious or scientific explanations of why one shouldn’t. His content is empathic and haunting in the way it cuts through the rational, irrational, and simplistic ways in which all human beings try to ignore, gloss over, or justify the finitude of our existence in an attempt at quelling our horror. “Being brave lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood” (208). Death is our only guarantee, and there is no sense deluding ourselves into thinking we can be other than dead one day. That Larkin gives chilling and frank voice to this fact feels like a public service in its honesty.
An aubade is a poem that refers to lovers parting one another at dawn. In an aubade by Philip Larkin, the lovers parting one another are less of a personal nature, but more of a separation of Larkin from all of life. The setting is in the early morning of the day, just as the sun is rising. Reading and entertaining the questions of how and when death will happen as the curtains slowly turn yellow to orange; the reader begins to feel that same fear and anxiety of the unknown. No courage or bravery will stop this inevitability. Larkin sadly describes the futility of religion in trying to comfort or strengthen believers in understanding this inevitability. Trying to rationalize the concept of not having a sense of sight, taste, and hearing is a failed “trick” by religion to help people cope with death. Now, the light in the room is giving shape to objects and a shadow to others, life is filling the room. Larkin makes his point that life continues even with the fear that one day, it will all be gone. One’s intention should be avoiding an obsession with fear and the use of religion to limit how we live our life. It is better to rationally accept, not control, this fear and continue to experience our lives.
The imminence or certainty of death is an uncontrollable part of life. People try to escape this certainty using prescription drugs, cosmetic makeup, self-help books, and even religion. Religion is used, at times, as a way for people to cope with death. It is a comfort for some to believe that one day they will see their loved ones again, or that something lies beyond this world. However, this is a very crude perception of religion. Larkin’s poem points this out to the reader. Religion is more that just a crutch or safety net used to escape reality. It is a belief system or construct that provides the believer with the ability to relate and understand a community. It gives direction to how the believer should live. The use of religion as a “cure” for death is limiting the potentiality of religion. Death is but one aspect of life, just as it is only one aspect of religion. The fear and anxiety of death is natural, for it is part of the human condition to fears or express apprehension for the unknown and mysterious. This poem is expressing a clear idea to the reader or believer: focus on life. It is graspable and unfixed, something people have some control over and the ability to change.
|
|
|
Philip Larkin |
In Philip Larkin’s “Church Going,” the narrator has entered an empty church mid-week and tentatively engages its solemnity. We are told that this is his common practice, and yet each visit leaves him disappointed. Moreover, he is not even sure what he was looking for with which he is now disappointed. It also leaves him wondering what it will be like when churches not only fall out of use, but completely out of the collective imagination. First he imagines they might be avoided out of superstition and then that they might be pursued for similar reasons. He settles, it seems, on indifference and neglect; that only a dusty and shrubbed patch will remain unrecognizable and unremembered by those who stumble upon it. And yet, he identifies in those very people doing the avoiding or pursuing or forgetting an impulse towards reverence, even if there is no place in which to be so reverent. That, he suspects, will endure when churches have not.
Larkin’s poem follows the imagined forgetting of churches by someone who can’t seem to forget (or even resist) such buildings himself, despite his unbelief. There is a recognition in the poem that being left to superstition is a kind of debasement of the achievement in “seriousness” that the church embodies. It is, however, a version of the virtue of seriousness the narrator has left behind and can not seem to recover. It is a poem that brings to light faithful piety’s faithless, but no less pious, cousin. In fact, it makes me think of an inverse case that may be just as worthy of committing to verse. What of the person who is haunted by their deep and serious belief in God, and for just that reason cannot bear to go near churches? Might we narrate a parallel fellow who, when passing a church, crosses to the far side of the street, not out of superstition, but because he can’t bear the lack of seriousness so many churches embody. Or would both Larkin’s narrator and the God-haunted soul prefer their churches empty?
“Church Going” by former Anglican turned atheist poet Philip Larkin is a poem that imagines the death of the local church. In the poem, he places himself in an empty church, looking around in “awkward reverence” at the relics, pews, icons, and organs. He describes the musty smell and the echo, and pronounces “’here endeth’” more loudly than he intends to, both nostalgic and grateful that churches are no longer in use (209). He muses that superstitions and beliefs “must die” and wonders what will remain once disbelief has similarly gone (210). He concludes with a stanza that admits that the need for church will always be present as long as there are people who wish “to be more serious” and are pulled to hallowed buildings in order to make meaning of their lives, or to “grow wise in, if only that so many dead lie round” (210).
This poem is respectful and even reverent of the role of the church in the lives of the human species as vaunted places people frequent to make meaning of their lives and deaths. However, the author seems to suggest at the end that as long as the “dead lie round” it is impossible for the church to help people grow wise. This is fair if we are only talking about churches who seek to give people a solution to their mortality. What about churches who seek primarily to help people make sense of their mortal lives? Who seek not to comfort people with answers about immortality, but instead to help people live this one life they have been given meaningfully? I belong to a church that concerns itself with this life and not the next. I agree heartily with the author that there will always be a need for a communal place to go in which one attempts to become more wise. This is a good and worthy reason for church, and not all churches attempt simply to anesthetize people with promises of life everlasting.
In the poem, the writer went into another church, which was similar to all others, felt bored, untouched, and routinely. He wondered the meaning of keeping coming back every week, he also wondered what happened if less and less people coming back. People still died whatever if being wise or being disbelief. He also tried to picture what will be the last few people look like, as he don’t think churches will be revived anymore.
We Christian all shared his feeling sometime, some leave and some will still come back, for there is something there as the writer hinted. In my trip in England for study of Methodist history this Summer, I do see many churches experienced fewer and fewer attendance, and many of them are in conversion to multiple use in communities. Over 25% of church in England participate in the Flesh Reflection movement, in many places, churches have been renewed and become the centers of communities again. With Faith we understand God would prepare for our good in his plan, the plan is not we can foresee. We know the door to heaven is narrow, we also hear Lord told us in Matthew 13:4-6, “As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up, some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil, It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants was scorched, and they withered because they had no root.” We pray for being in good soil, and strength our Faith only in God, for we only care his eyes, not worry why our neighbors not coming to church as they usually come.
Philip Larkin’s poem “Church Going” follows the speaker’s reflection on a church building. It begins with the speaker’s reflection on a visit to an actual church building. The speaker is surprised that someone still takes care of it, exploring the font and the lectern before leaving. The speaker admits to still stopping there often despite the disappointed feeling that they end up leaving with. The main question presented is what to do with these buildings as they continue to grow out of use. As superstition dies, so too belief dies. All that remains is the building itself and the surrounding area. In fact, the last remaining events that churches continue to host, such as weddings and funerals, do not seem to need to be done in a church at all. This leaves the speaker with the question of what the church is for. If anything, it appears to be necessary for people to follow their compulsion to be more serious. The speaker wonders if the dead bodies in the church graveyard have more to do with that feeling of seriousness than religion does.
This poem presents church buildings as empty, dying spaces that no longer have any utility in society. It is so easy to pciture: the old European churches that stand at the center of communities in physical location but that are nonetheless disconnected from the cultural pulse of the city. One can still touch the bricks and attribute meaning to them, but the superstitions and beliefs that used to sustain the building are now gone. Yet, the speaker cannot seem to explain their own compulsion to continue to explore that space. Perhaps it is true that Western culture is haunted by Christianity, as Catholic historian Charles Taylor suggests. The emptier that these spaces become, the riper church sites are for such hauntings. Even if contemporary society is haunted by Christianity, our collective inability to maintain a belief in the supernatural cuts us off from the meaning and significance that these great buildings used to provide. The meaning is murky, trapped behind a veil of amorphous concepts. But, like the speaker, I wonder if there is still something there to be persevered or if it is better to simply ignore my personal compulsions and move on, letting superstition rest with the dead.
|
|
|
H. P. Lovecraft |
In this excerpt, Lovecraft is critiquing agnosticism and the ambiguity it accepts as part of life and human thought. He tries to draw hard distinctions between religiosity and rationality in an attempt to paint a world that he seems to believe is largely black-and-white (131). He goes further to lay out the importance of the thirst for knowledge as a significant aspect of humanity that he paints as mutually exclusive to religious loyalties. He then explains morality as a phenomenon that can exist independently from religion, for morality is the “adjustment of matter to its environment” (132). Although he admits one cannot completely dismiss the good that has been done in the name of religion (specifically Christianity for him), Lovecraft maintains that one can be highly moral and reject religion, as he claims is the case with his own life.
Lovecraft's false dichotomy between upholding religious beliefs and having a desire for knowledge fails to address the nuance of thought in religious people. Whether a person's religion is being used as a function to pacify fear, a crutch for another ailment, or a means to reach a transcendent experience, religious people are no different from the rest of the world in a deep desire to know their place in the world, their relationship to nature, and their relationship to whatever is beyond present life. For as much time as he spends laying out the importance of his desire to know his relation to all things surrounding him in nature, he fails to note how not knowing affects his relationship to the world. It is within this “not knowing” that Lovecraft's argument would have been more interesting. However, he merely points out how he likes to know the nature of things. Since I presume that a significant portion of religious people would say they also like to know the nature of things, it appears as though Lovecraft is just blowing steam, angry at an idea (religiosity) that he likely does not fully understand as an outsider.
In a short letter to a friend, author HP Lovecraft details his avoidance of religion and his acceptance of atheism. Lovecraft also writes on his views of morality in relation to religion as well. He focuses on the belief that morality, at least in terms of the history of the Judeo-Christian tradition, preceded it, and is not necessary for someone like Lovecraft, who describes himself as “intensely moral and intensely irreligious” (136). Lovecraft also mentions all the non-religious, or at least non-Christian, support of many philanthropic causes, including the Red Cross as well as aid provided by countries like Belgium which remain largely secular (136-137).
Lovecraft's analysis, as brusque and informal as it may seem, of the relationship between religion and morality offers an interesting view into how non-believers and even non-Christian believers are subject to the ad hominem attack that only those of the Christian faith are moral enough to engage in charity work. This particular slight has been used to justify many a strawman argument against atheists or others of little faith as selfish, or overly misanthropic. Yet, the existence of effective charities without religious affiliations as well as public-service outlets with no faith connection flies in the face of such an accusation.
In this letter to Maurice W. Moe, H. P. Lovecraft criticizes his friend's particular kind of agnosticism and makes a broad argument against a religious basis for morality. He believes that the urge to know and understand our environment and ourselves is a particularly “human impulse” (134). Questioning and a desire for certainty are at the heart of the human condition, or at least at the heart of Lovecraft's personal experience. An entity, or being, does not precede morality for Lovecraft. Instead, morality is based on science and aesthetics. It is the manner in which humans adjust to their surroundings. Lovecraft will not stand for any kind of lie, but instead must know facts with absolute certainty. Christianity may have some good effects on people, but until faith has a basis in certainty, Lovecraft is not interested in it.
I appreciate Lovecraft's desire to know the way the world works with certainty, but I cannot share his dogmatic adherence to the scientific method as the only means for obtaining such knowledge. The scientific method occasionally fails, or is otherwise unable to fully explain natural phenomena. He leaves no room for these possibilities, or for any other type of knowledge. Using science as a source for morality seems rather strange to me, but is more objective than using aesthetics as a source for morality. What is the source for Lovecraft's aesthetics? Since aesthetics are often connected to religion and Lovecraft rejects religion, I would be very interested to hear him explain how he grounds his aesthetics.
Lovecraft's letter to his friend Maurice W. Moe was a fantastic experience of not only thought-provoking apologetics but also a window into the dynamic relationship between friends of very different ideological footings. Lovecraft opens his letter with a blunt critique of Moe's perspectives on who humans are and why humans behave the way they do. Lovecraft places Moe's argument into a series of binaries of the two kinds of men. 1. Men are either instinctual savages or impulsive philanthropists. 2. Men are either lovers of the self or lovers of their race. 3. Men are either concerned with self-gratification or altruism. Lovecraft on the other hand states that he is more concerned with the fact that all humans have an “acute, persistent, unquenchable craving TO KNOW” (134). This desire for knowledge leads, according to Lovecraft's argument, to a deepened understanding of morality and claiming that morality is not the “essence of religion” (136). He does not claim that it makes religion immoral but rather places the non-religious on a moral footing that does not involve divine reparations for one's immoral actions.
H.P. Lovecraft's letter, in my mind, read as an extended monologue from Vizzini, the balding Sicilian villain from Rob Reiner's film The Princess Bride. VIzzini speaks in exuberant, over-the-top, and INCONCEIVABLE circles around Westley, the protagonist of The Princess Bride¸ with an almost arrogant logic that, may or may not hold true, from the tone leaves the audience feeling amused, standing alongside Westley, and distrusting of the Sicilian. Lovecraft's letter felt similarly. Lovecraft's dramatic use of ALL CAPITOL LETTERS, parenthetical side comments, and borderline-narcissistic self-gratification of thought throughout the letter made Lovecraft's thoughts more comical than constructive. Though his theories around his own morality and how they are rooted in science and aesthetics really sparked my interest. Lovecraft writes “My morality can be traced to two distinct sources, scientific and aesthetic…whilst my aesthetic sense is outraged and disgusted with the violations of taste and harmony...” (136) Lovecraft elevated aesthetic ideal, that holds ground for moral opinion, can lead to some really interesting conversations around ethical aesthetics. What does an atheistic ethical aesthetic look like? Is it an aesthetic of dress, architecture, behavior? Does this fall into a conversation around policing of peoples behaviors and bodies from a purely visual perspective?
HP Lovecraft’s letter makes a broad case against religion’s monopoly on morality. Since the piece is a letter, inevitably it wanders in thought and approaches stream-of-consciousness at times, but holistically it presents a cogent, lyrical and compelling case: morality is a human construction. Humans evolved needing to understand and navigate the world, and as such developed norms of productive interaction. Religion, according to Lovecraft, co-opts this process. It arbitrarily chooses the moral, and it demands that people follow it. Lovecraft does not like this phenomenon one bit.
Lovecraft’s letter, as one of several dozen essays on atheism collected by Christopher Hitchens in 2007, is perhaps the best reasoned and the most fair of them all. Instead of conflating religion with evil or demonizing actions of entire sects, Lovecraft attacks only one specific action of religion: the dogmatization of morals. Lovecraft argues that humans have an equal chance at good morality and good works without religion, and contemporary atheists deserve more of this support. It is only with increased acceptance and decreased fear between both camps that America can move forward. Lovecraft, in granting credit to both theists and atheists, gives the future a fighting chance.
Responding to a letter in which his friend Maurice W. Moe asked what he had against religion, H.P. Lovecraft criticizes agnosticism, a certain kind of pragmatism, and religious morality. Lovecraft’s charge against Moe’s “agnostic” is that it leaves out Lovecraft’s assertion that the Judeo-Christian theism is not true, meaning that the problem isn’t that Moe’s agnostic doesn’t know whether or not theism is true, the problem is that Moe’s agnostic must know that it is not true but is claiming ignorance instead. Lovecraft criticizes Moe’s pragmatic uses of religion, in which Moe claims that religion can foster altruism and combat self-gratification, because pragmatism ignores the burning desire many humans have to know the truth about the way things really are. Lovecraft isn’t concerned with the uses and effects of religion, whether they be good or bad, so much as he is with the truth of religion, and he isn’t convinced that religions boast truths. Lovecraft’s criticism of morality is closely linked with his criticism of pragmatism, because not only does Lovecraft find the morality can stand completely independently of religion, but even if religion always led to good or right action, the ontological claims of religion may still not be true.
I sympathize with Lovecraft’s frustration about wanting to know how things really are, but I don’t share his snub of the usefulness of religion. Human knowledge has limits, and theology may be outside of those limits, but that doesn’t mean that religion has no usefulness. Humans don’t need to know how the eye works in order to see, they just need to know that they are seeing. Lovecraft seems very certain that the Judeo-Christian theism is not true, and I would have liked for him to elaborate more on why he believes that to be the way things really are, because it may have helped me to understand more of why he has such an intolerance for the pragmatic uses of religion despite its epistemological uncertainties. For that matter, it would have been helpful to learn why Lovecraft thinks we can know for certain that a religion is spouting falsehoods about ontology or metaphysics (not history or natural science) instead of statements whose truth values we don’t know at all.
In a letter to H. P. Lovecraft, his friend Maurice W. Moe asked simply what Lovecraft had against religion. Lovecraft's expanded response answers Moe's question in addition to providing a personal commentary on the nature of knowing, morality and religion. In short, what Lovecraft has against religion is its childishness, and what he has against those who support religion in the face of knowledge is their firm grasp on morality as the linchpin of their belief system. Lovecraft criticizes Moe for a recent article in which he characterizes the agnostic human being as a person seeking balance between the two poles of self-love and altruism, leaving out what Lovecraft believes to be the central feature of humanity: the desire to know. The human being desires to know its place, its relationships to others, its potential, its extent, and its limits. Lovecraft admits these desires may sound foolish, but he prefers them to the alternative of intoxicatingly slumbering through life in “a happy, swinish, contented little world – the gutter,”(135) a not so subtle smothering of organized religious belief. Once a person knows the situation around themselves, only then can morality emerge. Lovecraft characterizes morality as the relationship of matter to its environment, having nothing to do with religion except the occasional human deification of a natural element. He firmly believes that this view of morality stands on its own on purely scientific and aesthetic grounds. One ought to be moral because of one's direct relationships with other aspects of the world and because of one's duty to maintain harmony and decency. Thus, Lovecraft sees the main issue at stake between atheists and theists not as a debate over the usefulness of religion, but over the application of the innate human desire for knowledge. In his view, the agnostic thinker wishes to know, which has nothing to do with conduct or morality. Lovecraft concludes that one can easily admire and support the philanthropic works of religion while at the same time being true to oneself as a thinking human being.
The informality and well-placed humor of Lovecraft's letter provides levity to an otherwise scathing critique of both his colleague and the religious community. His opening tone certainly charms the hearts of the “new atheists” as he eloquently and verbosely dismantles Moe's article, slighting his intelligence with lines such as, “I can see that in your philosophy truth per se has so small a place...,”(134) and belittling his ideas by taunting them in all capital letters. The mockery continues on a more general level after Lovecraft expresses all his “foolish” questions abut existence, reducing religious people to swine who cannot think for themselves, and culminates with the crude straw man summary of Christian cosmology, complete with a final “Bah!” Amid all his bluster and dry humor, though, resides a rather insightful and moderate argument for an agnostic, if not atheistic, worldview. Entity does indeed precede morality, and morality is indeed the desirable interaction of the individual parts of the grand human system. Thinking this way, one can easily begin to separate morality from religion without having to cast out religion entirely, as Lovecraft points out with his defense of the many humanitarian activities of the Church. The problem with his argument, though, is its narrow focus on the highly reasoned human worldview, something that cannot be said to have existed at his time nor even fully at the present en masse. It is a personal letter that should be taken as such; it is intellectual incest between two members of the reasoned population. (I merely assume Moe is of the same class because Lovecraft's tone suggests he would not waste his time with someone who wasn't.) While Lovecraft's presentation would make for fine entertainment, his bravado undermines the legitimate points of his argument.
“A letter on Religion” is a letter of H. P. Lovecraft writing to Maurice W. Moe, wrote, “What I have against religion.” According to Lovecraft, Moe’s article seems to show an agnostic view of religion. Lovecraft starts developing his point by criticizing agnosticism. In his point of view, as desiring to know is the human nature, agnosticism is against the human instinct. The story of Jesus is also unreasonable and groundless notion which is zero persuasive. For him, religion is nothing but rubbish. He develops his argument by comparing morality and religion. He demonstrates that morality developed superior to the Christian religion and coexistent religions. The similarity between morality and religion makes religion useless, which is his assertion. Religion does not have a basis which can be examined and has no advantage over morality, so he is against religion.
Many arguments of Atheism point out that religion does not have an objective fact which can be proved. It looks like many people are confusing religion with natural science. Initially, every religion has an unexamined premise, such as eschatology and atonement. The story of Jesus is also in the same domain. Many attempts have existed for finding out the material proving Jesus, especially the resurrection of Jesus, but it fails. Verifying all religious concept is impossible. However, It does not mean religion obstruct the human instinct, the desire to know. From the first, religion is an answer about human origin. In the midst of it, there are questions from the human being. Christianity is on the road to find answers about the world and filled with unexpected encounters with a superior being which we call God.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft writes a responsive letter on the topic of religion, or the lack of need for it, to a friend, Maurice W. Moe. Although making it very clear his disinterest in religion, Lovecraft writes critically but somewhat positively about the merits of religious organizations and their contributions to the world. He highlights that a key part of human existence is the irresistible desire to know things and finds it problematic to intentionally limit the horizon of human knowledge through disregarding these undeniable characteristics of the human mind. In contrast to this rather positive view of the human mind, Lovecraft also refers to human beings as “fly-speck-inhabiting lice” and sees the job of redeeming such creatures as incredibly problematic, citing this as his main problem with religion. Concerning morality, he notes that morality is not the essence of religion, in contrast to the opinions of the intentioned receiver of this letter. Notably, Lovecraft strays from comments on the basis of religion, like his morality discussion, but notes the social service capacity of Christian societies and that not much affiliates them with religion any longer.
The concluding section of Lovecraft’s letter touches upon the secularization that has occurred over history in the various “Christian countries” and societies as well. I am led to consider hospitals, universities, and welfare- organizations that were seeded as an extension of the church. Many organizations that have deeply benefitted society as a whole find themselves rooted within religious traditions at least to start, and have since shifted the focus from the religious to specifically social service. This piece appears to stand apart from others within the anthology in that it voices respect, albeit guardedly, for the contributions of religion in the world.
Lovecraft’s “Letter on Religion” is a piece written in response to Maurice W. Moe’s essay, “What I have against religion.” Lovecraft criticizes Moe for not going far enough in asserting that Christian mythology is untrue. For him, humanity has a strong desire to know everything, a desire which culminates in the fields of philosophy and theology. The problem with religion is not that it has no moral utility (a point which Lovecraft is willing to concede), but rather that religion is not rooted in the truth of the world. Thus, religion can be described as a true phenomenon which can be experienced, even if we are unsure why people have religious experiences at all. Faith does not have the concrete foundation that it purports to have, making it a dubious position to hold in a rational era.
Within Lovecraft’s agnosticism, it is important to assert that Christianity lacks firm ground to stand absolute claims, even if the absolute truth itself remains unknown. I wonder if this kind of agnosticism leaves room for the potential that Christianity might be true, or at least partially true in some dimension. I think that confidence in this regard is a key difference between agnosticism and atheism as they are advocated today. Personally, it would seem that the boundary questions of science at this particular point in time were less developed than they are now. Perhaps it is advances in science that lead to a further divide between agnosticism and atheism because atheism tends to go beyond what agnosticism is willing to claim. I also wonder if agnosticism should have the same role in explicitly disproving faith rather than making claims about uncertainty. Unfortunately, even agnosticism is still left with the problem of what, if anything, one can firmly rest one’s reason on. For Lovecraft, such a foundation surely has to exclude a dimension of faith.
|
|
|
Lucretius |
Lucretius uses strong language to speak against religion, and he is hesitant to attribute any redeeming qualities to it, but rather uses myths and powerful imagery to evoke feelings of discontent with a religious perspective on life (24). His poem suggests the uselessness of religion in the idea that liberation for humanity can come through the letting go of religions rather than seeking liberation through religions. Further on in the poem, he introduces the atomic theory that he believes to be an adequate replacement for religious beliefs, using it to illuminate causation of all things in a fixed state of growth and rebirth, discounting the idea of anything coming from nothing, for if that were true then chaos would ensue because nothingness could not bring the order required to manufacture a universe (25). In the last stanza, Lucretius gives an evolutionary case for the conventions that allow humanity to dwell together and take care of one another in what seems to be an attempt to illustrate how religion is unnecessary not only in explaining the beginnings of the universe, but also in sustaining it through human kindness and dignity (27).
To me, the most interesting aspect of this poem is the way Lucretius illustrates the notion of a chaotic nothingness that is unable to sustain life as we know it. I find it interesting because it not only critiques a specific concept of religion that promotes creation out of nothingness, but within that it also critiques a specific type of anthropomorphic God who creates from nothing, making that God seem at the least an insufficiently capable God were that type of God and world to exist. And because the God who creates from nothing is also often labeled omnipotent, the critique questions many of the other characteristics of this type of God. I would doubt that this idea would lead to any profound change in belief because it is an easy idea to work around from a religious perspective (God created from nothingness, but all that was created was designed to re-create through DNA, and so on). But it does bring to light some interesting observations worth discussion and it challenges assumptions, regardless of how true or untrue they actually are in the end. Perhaps most importantly, the perspectives of whether or not the universe came from nothing by God or atoms reveals more about how the individual would relate to the world around her, believing that the world was either carefully crafted by a being (and maybe even for her benefit) or evolved from detached science. Surely concern for the earth and its inhabitants might differ in some people based on these beliefs, which is of great importance as we continue down a path of environmental awareness.
In his poem De Rerum Natura, Lucretius attempts to explain Epicurean philosophy, or more broadly speaking, materialism. He begins with a brief description of the atoms, or “seeds,” which form “things” or the “matter” of life. Throwing off the bonds of religion, he has discovered this through scientific observation of the universe. Drawing on the ancient Greek myth of Iphigenia, he deduces that the gods are unable to create from nothing. Therefore, he concludes that nothing can be made from nothing, but everything must be made from “seeds.” The seeds and forces of nature create matter and ensure that everything is not in a state of chaos. To explain death, Lucretius states that mortal things are reduced to their original seeds. For human beings, this material includes both the mind and body. In the final selection, Lucretius explains how humans became social creatures. He begins to explain how morality can exist in a world without gods by writing that, once they began to live in houses next to each other, people adopted good conventions through discussion. The fact that the human race has continued to survive serves as proof for Lucretius that society has functioned based on good conventions.
My reactions to Lucretius now are very similar to those I had when I read nearly the entirety of De Rerum Natura in Latin seven years ago. At times, his thoughts and writing are exceptionally strange, although these selected passages generally omit the particularly eccentric portions. Peculiarity aside, Lucretius' extremely primitive understanding of atoms vaguely resembles a modern understanding of atoms, which is surprising considering the state of science during his lifetime. However, I also think that Lucretius has some holes in his argument. If nothing can come from nothing, what is the origin of the seeds? I realize that, if you answer from God, then you have the problem of where God came from, but Lucretius has created this infinite question. Regarding potential chaos, Lucretius seems to be assuming a certain nature of the gods that may be in line with his contemporary paganism, but does not necessarily need to be true of a deity. Finally, how did humans actually decide what is right, good, and moral? Perhaps they discussed the issues as he writes but, at some point, someone had to have the upper hand in deciding whose ideas should become laws. Why should they be able to decide? From where does their authority come?
The excerpts from Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura highlight a two-fold criticism of religious belief. First, Lucretius argues that supernatural explanations for things and events in the world are really non-explanations. Second, he argues that, in addition to its irrelevance to understanding nature, religion serves to debase the morality of a culture, not edify it. Opposed to superstitious accounts of natural phenomena Lucretius offers a materialist atomism. The order and continuity displayed in the unfolding of things and events owe their explanation to the arrangement and rearrangement of infinitesimal bits of matter. Human beings are no exception, being thoroughly mortal in mind as much as body. Morality, then, is not to be grounded in obedience to the interests of god or gods, nor in eternal rewards or punishments, but rather in nobly staring down the religious impulse and investigating the laws of material nature. The last section, from Book V, section 39, implies that the move to cooperative civilization and culture is what has inculcated in us a weakness that lends us to religiosity. One might infer that the exhortation to stare down religion offered earlier in the text would constitute a return to our natural vitality and strength.
Though the readings in this collection are presented in more or less chronological order, it is fitting that this excerpt leads off The Portable Atheist. It seems a microcosm of the New Atheist’s position. Not only is religion morally suspect (or outright reprehensible as Hitchens has it in the Introduction), but it is superfluous for explaining anything in the world of Nature, including ourselves. That Lucretius appeals to materialism as well sweetens the deal for Hitchens. I wonder, though, about the translation of the word “supernatural” in this excerpt. The western conception of the supernatural was developed in medieval theologies precisely to resolve the conflict between God’s agency and human freedom, but could apply to the “natural” explanation of any phenomenon as well. Nonetheless, it is common enough in contemporary parlance to refer to a kind of invisible, paranormal agency in nature as “supernatural.” In that respect, Lucretius's meaning is not obscured, but it may serve to conceal the existence of more nuanced theologies of the supernatural. As far as Lucretius’ exhortation to seek proportionate explanations for natural things and events, it ought to be praised, even if such praise ought to be succeeded by a review of Aristotle’s criticism of atomism as an approach to biology in De Anima, Book I.
The concept of Atomism existed 2500 years ago, but emerged in Greek philosophy by Leucippus and Democritus, the tiny and infinitely atoms crashed each other and made being by themselves, including visible materials and invisible conscience, without help of gods. The primary atom is the beginning of world. The idea was developed by Epicurus, and said the gods played no part in human world. Later in the era of Roman Empire Lucretius showed many of this forefathers’ idea, and argued the religion was immoral as well as untrue in his On the Nature of Things, he said the atom and void are eternal, the laws of nature are immortal.
I would say the God and the Primary atom is one step away, who create the primary atom, secondly, I would take Plato’s argument on Epicurus, how to believe the random crash of atoms can create everything in beauty? Even we can try to argue the harmony exists on every status of the conflict, but why every time we appreciate the beauty of created world when we are in the nature. I would rather believe there is one God, the creator of everything from nothing.
Summary: Titus Lucretius Carus is of the view that nature forms “things” out of “primary atoms of nature” and the things later disintegrate back into atoms (Chapter 1 (2)). He refers to religion as a burden on the human soul, and explains that religion causes human kind to act in an insane manner (performing human sacrifices) in the name of religion (2, 3). Lucretius is of the view that, religion can be destroyed by the “unseen workings of nature” (3). With the help of the nature of science it has been proven that, all things were created by the order of nature and not by the will of the gods or any supernatural powers (3, 4). He illustrates this point with the growth of fruit/flower plants and animals, and points out that these were all created from definite seeds, each stemming from a "place where dwells its substance, the primary atoms” (4). Lucretius posits that, all creatures have some peculiar power and indwelling intelligence that determine the seasons and times for flourishing and death (4). In the same fashion, he also notes that both the soul and the mind were mortal and also disintegrate back into atoms (5).
Response: The points presented are quite compelling especially concerning Lucretius and his colleagues’ argument that “the world was composed of atoms in perpetual motion” (1). There is also the recognition of the mortality of the human mind and soul (which finally disintegrates back into atoms), an argument against the religious notion of the immortality of the human soul. His dichotomy between the matter of creation been the result of the order of science and not by the will of the gods is quite opinionated.
Lucretius was a thinker who lived during the Ancient Roman Empire. The piece was written in the form of an epic poem, like those of Virgil. Book I introduces atomism and critiques the notion that the gods were involved with the creation of the world. Lucretius uses atomism, the belief that everything is nothing more than atoms which come together and then break away, to explain how it is that the world as it is came to be. Saying at the end of Book I, “That from appropriate atoms each creature grows great and is nourished.” Book II refutes the notion that the order of Nature and the laws of Nature have nothing to do with anything divine. Book III tears down the notion of the immortal soul. Book V tries to explain why and how the notion of religion emerged.
This book was absolutely amazing to read. I was thrilled to find out that the journey of this book was one of persecution. The poem itself was difficult to follow at times but made some incredibly points. I was very interested in Lucretius’s attempt at explaining how it is that the variety of animals came to be naturally. The notion may not have been evolution but I could not help but see parallels between arguments made by atheists who look to evolution to answer the question of how the beauty of the natural world could have come to be without intelligent design. I was interested in Lucretius’s thoughts on the origins of religion as being that of providing morals and answering the big questions. I cannot help but feel Lucretius trivializes much of what religion actually does for people but cannot help but see much of modern attempts at explaining the existence of religion.
The Latin poem de rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”) by Lucretius is the oldest source included in Christopher Hitches anthology The Portable Atheist (2007). For Lucretius ultimate reality consist of small natural particles of primary atoms. In turn, Lucretius believes that the founding myths of religion unnecessary burdens people with fear and actually promote immoral behavior. In order to evidence such religions barbarism, Lucretius turns to the story of the sacrifice of Iphianassa (Greek: Iphigenia) by her own father: “Trivia’s alter befouled with the blood of Iphianassa . . . pure maid foully slain in wedlock’s appropriate season, that she a victim might fall ‘neath the slaughter of her father, so that a happy and lucky dispatch to the fleet might be granted” (3). In fact, if one looks at the world around them they will realize that things did not come about by the will of the gods, but rather germinates, like a plant, from seeds. This leads Lucretius to establish his fundamental maxim for understanding the nature of things, namely, that nothing comes from nothing. If this is the case, Lucretius also suggests that humans do not possess an immortal soul, but instead the human constitution is a mortal psycho-somatic unity; therefore, when the body dies, so too does the mind/soul. On the other hand, what does perdure after death are the infinitesimal particles of atoms (Book III, stanza 15).
I first came across Lucretius poem through Stephen Greenblatt’s Pulitzer prize winning book The Swerve (Norton, 2011) which argues that the discovery of De Rerum in the 15th century by the rare-book hunter Poggio ushered in the modern materialistic worldview. In reading this short excerpt (coupled with Greenblatt’s narrative in the back of my mind) I am struck with how Lucretius intended his poem to function as “good news” for those who suffer from religious terror and the fear of death. This is of interest to me because one of the strongest impulses towards religious belief is the comfort received from believing in life after death. But, could it be “gospel” that when we die we cease to exist? I think this is what Julian Baggini was getting at in his positive case for atheism, which began with the lack of evidence that life perdures after death. With this in mind, is it possible to be a Christian and believe in a an inherently mortal human anthropology? I know this is what some Christians who hold to “soul sleep” seem to profess; but I do not mean that humans are “mortal” until the resurrection, but rather mortal period, with no resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15). What would it be like to be a Christian and believe only in this present life? In other words, is it possible to be a Lucrecian-Christian?
|
|
|
Karl Marx |
Popular perception aside, Karl Marx is sympathetic to religious believers. Diagnosing a “reversed world” where the few have control over the many, Marx observes that Germany is a country that has never lived in a state of freedom, and identifies that the promises of its philosophy, which could bring that freedom about, have never been fulfilled, never been brought to a liberating fruition. When people are “mastered, ruled, [and] possessed” it is no wonder that they find consolation in religion; they have little else. (All italics are in the original.) In one of the more beautifully articulated critiques of religion, Marx writes, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” His criticism of religion, therefore, is not intended for the ultimate purpose of abolishing religion; religion will abolish itself when the “reversed world” is set right, and that will be accomplished when the organization of the state is corrected. “Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of right, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.” It is, he writes a “positive abolition of religion.”
While the majority of the selection deals mostly with the role of philosophy in Germany, the critiques of religion it includes are fairly mild, and do come across as quite sympathetic. Condescending, perhaps, but in a paternalistic, not vitriolic, way. Besides, is he not in some sense correct? Are not the consolations of religion some of the only consolations available to many people: people who struggle to put food on the table; people who are politically marginalized; people suffering from sorrows both minor and significant? Weren’t the religious practices of African-American slaves in the American South a source of comfort to them in a culture that did not respect their humanity? Was that religion not precisely “the spirit of a spiritless situation,” as Marx wrote? Do we not hear any number of people who have come out the other side of a tragedy claiming that it was only their faith that kept them going? Just so, I think, and thank God for it; consolation is consolation, in my book, and philosophical and theological speculation is a luxury unavailable in the midst of disaster. (It would be a particularly cruel 19th-century theologian who would go to a plantation and inform the slaves that, on the contrary, God isn’t concerned with them personally.) And, in fact, it appears that Marx’s prediction has come true: in many parts of the world a lack of religious affiliation seems to correlate with higher standards of living, and vice versa. Perhaps Marx was right, and religion will abolish itself after all. I doubt it, though; even Sweden hasn’t been able to completely expel the lacrimae rerum from its shores, cleverly-designed and well-insured though they may be.
Part 1.): Marx believed that religion is the opium of the people. By this he seems to have meant that religious feeling is an expression of people’s oppression. Not believing in God, he thought that religion could bring only “illusory happiness”; and that religion must therefore be done away with, if people were to ever find true happiness. Hence, the “task of history” was to see through the falsehood of religion, come to know the process by which people are alienated, to build an ideological framework for bringing about the end of alienation, and to engage in the political work of bringing that end about. Marx focusses on the state of these issues in Germany, at the time he is writing, (the year is not stated.) He believes that Germany is behind France and England in its development regarding these issues. In order to evolve, Germany will have to generate a class unity, and a “revolutionary daring” which inspires “political violence.”
Part 2.): I never knew that Marx was poetic. His writing is certainly such and appears to come from the heart. One should never trounce such sincerity. But I hate the way he writes. It may be impolitic for a Divinity student to barf at sentences that are a paragraph long, but I will hereby declare my independence and state my aversion to such. But even more, Marx continually creates sentences that begin and end with a word given two different but related meanings: The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. (p65.) The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. (p65.) In the struggle against that state of affairs criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. (p66.) It’s like he’s trying to rap. And it drives me nuts.
In this excerpt from a longer essay, Karl Marx transposes Hegel’s dialectical method of philosophical inquiry to pertain to the relationship between thought and material reality. Thought, which has its highest form in philosophy, initially represents an inverted world whereby the material and immediate suffering of humanity is deferred in favor of religious projections. Material suffering is subsequently deflected, or ideally contained, in these religious ideals which functions to distance ourselves from material and social reality. This is the reasoning behind Marx’s claim that religion is the opiate of the masses. The development of critique, according to Marx, has progressed along discernible lines of revolution. For example, Luther signifies the transfer of the origin of guilt and shame from religious authorities to the heart of the Christian. In the same way, the birth of the modern nation-states indicate a transfer from national consciousness to social consciousness. Germany has not followed this path, and has instead advanced a theoretical and speculative philosophy that has abstracted itself exponentially further from material reality. Although this leads to a social sphere that is intrinsically an anachronism, it also has paved the way for the culmination of philosophy—namely the self-critique that engenders from its own collapse. Marx argues that the emergence of the proletariat is a material consequence of this collapse of philosophy, which in turn reveals the true, final, and unending goal of philosophy—to continually reveal through critique and revolution that the essence of humanity is empty in nature. To declare the essence of humanity to be empty amounts to it being unfinished, the ultimate status of freedom—thus inspiring Marx’s declaration that as nothing humanity should aspire to be everything. This amounts to a radical shift toward social and material reality as the only possible ground for any future philosophy. Subsequently, religious ideals such as justice, salvation, or freedom become practical and existential demands to be fulfilled in the domain of society through the sweat and blood of collective effort and sacrifice.
Marx’s logic descends genealogically from Hegel’s hierarchy of social bonds—whereby each individual unit is subservient to its more inclusive genus. Thus, the individual serves the family, the family serves the tribe, the tribe serves the nation, etc. In Marx’s vision, the individual evaporates within an overarching teleology of progressive critique which occurs on the historical, that is social, level. Individuals, described in Marx’s essay in general terms such as “the man” or “the German,” derive their moral dictates from social demands, and therefore have no significant identity apart from their identity with a social group. In my opinion, such a collective vision dilutes the actual vehicle of moral decision—namely, that single individual who must make ethical decisions from moment to moment. Therefore, I am more drawn to Schelling’s conception of finitude to be the crucifixion of thought against the backdrop of the real. To Schelling, essential freedom cannot reside in an inclusive generality such as the “social” but rather only exists as a tension between the individual’s struggle to reconcile necessity and freedom with the demands of the spirit, or the auto-genesis of life itself. Ethics for Schelling is thus derived from nature, considered as the self-revelation of a fiery life-impulse towards movement, growth, and expansion that precedes and breaks through any contingent order.
|
|
|
Ian McEwan |
Taking up a similar theme to Hardy’s “God’s Funeral,” H. L. Mencken’s “Memorial Service” might also be called “A Eulogy for Forgotten Gods.” Mencken selects and highlights the formerly dominant gods of defunct cultures. Ironically, he asks after their burial places, begging the question: where will our God(s) be buried when our civilization forgets them? “The hell of dead gods,” Mencken writes, “is as crowded as the Presbyterian hell for babies.” Such lines mock the certainty of our religious formulations and the deeds performed in their light. More than just the lost names of gods, Mencken lists human labors, large and small, conjured for the sake of these gods, and many of those are as forgotten as the gods themselves. The great weight of this selection, however, is meant to be carried by the list of names, like those found on memorial monuments to give one the sense of loss, even though those who bear the names listed are forgotten. The lists hammer home the contingency and variety of the gods we make, serve, and forget.
Of course, one wonders why the same could not be done with the names of nations. Mencken might have just as well listed theories of matter and change, from Heraclitus to Einstein. Perhaps he would have preferred to proffer a grand historical list of biological theories, from humours to synapses. Why not offer us a survey of architectural forms from little known and long forgotten cities? The contingencies of human understandings are wild, whether they be of the sacred or the profane. Ideas emerge, gain dominance, flounder, re-emerge, are forgotten, are rediscovered, are catalogued and studied. Some are marvelous and advanced, whether right or wrong. Some are primitive, though fruitful for further understanding. Some are merely stupid. Why should the ideas about God and religious life be any different? Mencken succeeds at proving a point about humility, though at first blush it seemed he was speaking of God.
Ian McEwan’s “End of the World Blues” is, despite its informal title, an elegant and nuanced meditation on the tradition(s) of apocalyptic social movements and their cultural resources, specifically the vision of John of Patmos recounted in the biblical Book of Revelation. McEwan notes in particular the recurrent strategies for managing the built-in obsolescence of any particular (often murderously) apocalyptic movement, including the secular versions manifest in the 20th century. Among them, he recounts the birth of the Seventh Day Adventist movement, both as an illustration of failed prophecy’s resilience, but also to give some history to America’s own characteristic apocalypticism. The Seventh Day Adventist brand will rear its head again at the end of the essay, as McEwan reminds us of the family resemblance the Branch Davidian sect bears with the whole history of apocalyptic movements: “...the strong emphasis on the Book of Revelation, the looming proximity of the end, the strict division between the faithful remnant who keep the Sabbath, and those who join the ranks of the ‘fallen.’” McEwan hearkens to such contemporary instances, however, only after noting that we do stare into the possibility of our civilization’s demise, only that we have the historical clarity to know and every experiential reason to believe that the God-who-is-likely-not-there will not intervene. As much as we are our own greatest danger, so too are we our own highest hope for salvation.
McEwan’s essay insists the reader acknowledge the difference between the exigencies of fiction and the exigencies of fact. Just because projecting a reconciling and purifying end makes good narrative sense does not mean that conjuring and being faithful to such a fiction makes good sense in fact. It is frustrating, though, that he does not note the entanglement of fictive projections about the future and the forces for shaping how humans respond to the facts. He does note that science needs “its poet, its Milton,” but he fails to expand on the necessity of such poetic mediation in moving human beings into the future. Certainly, he is right to fear and condemn apocalyptic hopes that flatten the difference between death and life, success and failure. Such thinly masked nihilisms are terribly dangerous. This essay gestures, perhaps most of all, to the empty space where more deeply moral stories could be told to move us into our future. On the other hand, perhaps Mr. McEwan believes that, when one traverses to that empty space, one will find his novels.
In this printed address novelist Ian McEwan critiques an apocalyptic fascination in the major theistic religions. By apocalyptic McEwan means either the destruction of the world or the violent purification of the world for the benefit of an elect group. To debunk the apocalyptic obsession, McEwan presents the history of doomsday prediction as an embarrassing series of failures. Because the impulse to rationalize or even decode apocalyptic literature has always accompanied efforts to help history reach its end, McEwan sees significant danger in allowing such trends to develop unchecked. Because Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all contain apocalyptic claims, McEwan worries that their interactions, particularly their universal claims and shared emphasis on Middle Eastern geography, could be volatile and their violent prophecies self-fulfilling. Ultimately, McEwan suggests that a lack of curiosity, especially scientific curiosity, is largely responsible for apocalyptic religion’s impulse to resign itself to or encourage a violent end to humanity.
Conspiracy has the double effect of thrilling and giving coherence to an otherwise chaotic story. Apocalyptic number games and predictions similarly feed our yearning for plot, no matter how confused the story may be. But is the lust for coherent narrative so surprising when one’s view of history is as linear as a single human life with its beginning, middle, and end? McEwan acknowledges that the human species feels its mortality as intensely as its individual members, and the future—the end—is the one thing in which we may have some authorial say. McEwan rightly identifies the all-too-frequent toppling from the knife-edge of eschatology into the apocalyptic. That is, when predictions and hopes calcify into unjustified determinacy. But this toppling is the freakish edge of authentic hope. Embedded in the apocalyptic mindset also lies a secret hope that comes with tentative messianism or cautious eschatology—or, as Jacques Derrida was fond of suggesting, the messiah is always coming, but never arriving. After all, even progressivist hopes predict a future utopia or at least hope for the coming of peace. Such a peace would be, in some sense, the end of history. If conflict is an essential ingredient of plot, then the advent of universal peace signals an end of both conflict and narrative. Perhaps this is why only narrative can accurately express the human longing for its own story; the hope that, as John Donne quietly prophesies; that death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die (Sonnet 72).
McEwan contemplates the relationship between humans and the certainty of their end in this essay concerning thought around the apocalypse. He explains the history of the idea of the “end of times” from mostly a Christian perspective because it is the one that seems the most devoutly maintained in the world. Following along with the popularity of the Book of Revelation, he outlines how the apocalypse has been reshaped throughout history, as it has continuiously persisted on not happening. McEwan’s frustration with the entire concept of the religiously inspired “end” is its actual consequence of human destruction. He points out that apocalyptic movements have often been, though quite dangerous and deadly, on the fringe. However, when applied in a geopolitical context and stirred around with nuclear weapons, there is the true reality of human extinction. For Mcewan, ndd times thinking may be rooted in religious myth, but that no longer matters when actual tools of destruction are so easily deployed. McEwan sees no mercy or decency in end time thinking, and he does not wish to become a victim of it either. Because the future truly is unknowable, he pleads that those with end time faith will learn from their destructive history.
McEwan assumes his audience is with him, knows his conclusion, and he does not seem to need to get very passionate or persuasive. This essay reads more like a sizzle reel of the weird shit people believe then an essay on the dangers of religious zeal. However, it also drools through a history of tragic and avoidable violence like he himself avoided being duped by a cult leader trolling through medieval Europe. He wishes for religious people to learn from history, and he pays lip service to the historical context where in which these apocalyptic movements came out of, but in his consideration of the role of power McEwan is only concerned by those with end times faith having it. He does not concede the fact that abusive power structures seem to make an escapism found in an apocalyptic myth much easier to catch on. Overall, let's agree that predicting the future is a bust, and instead not kill each other. Cool. But let us also not fool ourselves into thinking that religion is the only danger lurking in our globalized world.
Mr. McEwan begins his lecture (or possibly this particular segment) to Stanford students with a poignant existential reflection. Using the example of the photograph, McEwan invokes the image of a photo taken of the lecture hall and viewed two hundred years later; All in the picture will have since passed away. This begins a discourse on the nature of individual mortality, which first emerges to a child as simply a startling truth, almost incomprehensible to such immature minds, and then is more critically reflected upon during adolescence, realized “as a tragic reality which all around us appear to be denying, then perhaps fades in busy middle life, to return, say, in a sudden premonitory bout of insomnia.” (p. 352) After quoting and engaging with Larkin’s Aubade, he analyzes the American obsession with the apocalypse – namely the pinnacle of apocalyptic literature: The Book of Revelation. Through polling figures that, even he admits, seem a little too romantic to be true, he provides evidence that the Apocalypse is nearly synonymous to American thought, and that this affects American life as we know - despite the technological advances of our time. Even among communities that inaccurately predicted the time of the Apocalypse, McEwan notes, they still find explanations to keep their faith alive rather than wither away along with their failed expectations. He even notes similarities between Christian apocalyptic beliefs with that of other religions, and modern updates to the story, i.e. nuclear weapons. After a few more thoughts on the nature of curiosity and religion, he ends with a somber inquiry on our future, given our past. McEwan states, “We may yet destroy ourselves; we might scrape though.” And “The believers should kow in their heart by now that, even if they are right and there actually is a benign and watchful personal God, he is, as all the daily tragedies, all the dead children attest, a reluctant intervener” and everybody else must assume there’s nobody up there. Either way, he says, “there will be no one to save us but ourselves.” (p. 365)
It’s difficult not to be allured by the beauty of the way McEwan speaks. It feels as if even his terribly cynical speeches delivered to some young people of high intelligence belong in one of his novels. But it seems as though the remaining point made, when you strip away the educated language, the (possibly untrue) statistics, and the dark beauty of the piece, is a story of hopelessness. There’s no reason to believe in God, and the world is still a dark place of dead children and daily tragedies. The only hope remaining belongs to those who are to blame for the atrocity. If I were to believe this, I see no reason not to go home, put a gun to my mouth, and pull the trigger.
|
|
|
H. L. Menken |
In this short piece, H. L. Mencken provides a long list of names of gods from traditions that have become either nearly or fully extinct. He mocks the gods' previous claims to power and points out the absurdity of worshiping any god that will, inevitably suffer the same fate as all the other gods of history: death, disrepute, and obscurity. Mencken contrasts the vehemence with which each god was worshiped and revered with the dreary irrelevance that marks their expiration.
Though his tone is somewhat derisive and crude, Mencken's point is well taken and strong. The startlingly pure arbitrariness of the time, place, and religious tradition into which each human is born provides an incredibly strong argument against belief in any specific god, including those gods who currently hold places of status in our own world. Personally, I find this argument extremely compelling. It seems very similar to theories of secularization, which argue that religious pluralism and the genuine encounter with people who worship other gods would lead to a crisis of confidence in one's own religious belief. Surprisingly, the evidence has not supported this theory. Though I understand the current theories within the cognitive science of religion outlining the ability for people to ignore evidence like this – of the arbitrariness of specific beliefs in gods – and continue in their faithful embrace of their god(s), it remains a puzzling and extraordinarily interesting topic of study and reflection for me. It makes me wonder, on a fairly personal level, what makes me so different? Why am I, though still a spiritual and non-theistically religious person, convinced by this logic while other people are not?
“Memorial Service” by H. L. Menken is a remembrance of all of the gods who have died over the centuries—from Jupiter to Huitzilopochtli. Menken humorously remembers the ways in which these gods were worshipped with virgin sacrifices and the like as the one true God, worthy of praise. He mockingly says “lead me to the tomb” and the graves of these dead gods, pointing out that they do not exist, so forgotten are they. He asserts that dead gods have “company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded as the Presbyterian hell for babies” (144). Menken points out that all of these gods once had their hey day of sorts; that human beings attempted for generations to figure out what they wanted, and worshiped them heartily, and yet they died anyway. He goes on to list over a hundred gods who once enjoyed prominence, and have disappeared into obscurity.
Menken seems to suggest mockingly in “Memorial Service” that the death of gods throughout the centuries is indicative of the fact that one day the Abrahamic God of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions will also go the way of Huitzilopochtli, joining the other gods of obscurity in hell for gods. I agree with the author that this may be the case, but that doesn’t shake my own faith, personally, despite having aligned myself within the Protestant tradition. I think this piece of writing does nothing more than support the notion that human beings through all space and time have had the need to make meaning and order of their world through the creation of god-concepts. This enduring tendency of human beings to make meaning of their lives through some sort of theological lens, in my view, underscores the deep need for religious traditions rather than rendering them silly and irrelevant.
Mencken’s essay is a litany for dead, forgotten, or now derided gods. He offers only one myth in any detail: Huitzilopochtli, a now obscure and apparently bloody Mexican deity who claimed the lives of thousands through human sacrifice. Mencken then lists dozens of gods once considered omnipotent and worshipped with as much devotion and fervor as the gods of contemporary religion.
At first blush the timbre of Mencken’s brief essay falls somewhere between melodrama and slight sarcasm. However, he manages to convey revulsion toward each anthropomorphized deity as it dies or evolves into the next. Mencken is compelling because, with dark wit, he exposes the mortality of immortals by laying their names, like corpses, on the altar of contemporary religions: once-robust faiths that frayed beyond recognition and fragments of bloodthirsty gods that no one cares about anymore. That our gods have their origins in faded memory of Odin or Osiris rings like the death of legitimacy in the ears of believers. That our god could die is a dramatic myth, but that he could fade into obscurity, indifferently discarded like potsherds to be found by future generations, is horrifying. That our myths like their myths are mortal: this is madness. If origins of myth always return to the evolutionary processes of human beings, then all things religious are at stake.
In “Memorial Service” H.L. Mencken makes the points that gods are cultural inventions and that, when a culture dies, the gods die with it. The evidence for this is that either no one remembers past gods’ names or the gods have become the butt of jokes. According to Mencken, gods enslave humans through their “demands and impositions” and religious activities are at best a waste of time and at worst the cause of needless suffering, sometimes on a massive scale (144).
While no one can deny the human suffering that has been caused by those espousing religious causes, Mencken’s view of all religious practitioners as laboring unceasingly to satisfy whimsical gods ignores not only the benefits that religion has brought to societies and individuals, but also the fact that human abuse of religion is responsible for the suffering done in the name of a god. The image of the early church caring for victims of plague in Rome is much closer to the ideal of the Gospel of John’s Jesus who came to bring abundant life than are photographs of Hitler’s soldiers marching into a Berlin church bearing swastikas. Weighing the acts of compassion motivated by religious impulses on a scale against the atrocities committed in the name of religion is difficult and ultimately not useful. Humans cannot demand that gods and religions be abandoned while they hold their fingers onto one side of the scale; instead, humans must take responsibility for their choices.
Summary: In Memorial Service, H. L. Mencken shows how some very prominent ancient and not so ancient gods that were both revered and feared because of their perceived eminence were now forgotten (Chapter 20 (143- 4)). He makes mention of ancient Rome’s Jupiter who was once a god of the civilized, the very fearsome Huitzilopochtli who constantly had to be appeased with human blood, Quetzalcoatl, and Dis (144). He points out that most of these gods were forgotten but they had “company in oblivion” (144). Some of these gods were once at power (or were even held in higher esteem) with some revered deities of our contemporary societies (143, 145). The Alien G. Thurman was once a contemporary of Allah and Buddha; Baal was mentioned in the Old Testament and seemed to invoke fear and trembling just like Jahveh (145).
Response: Mencken presents a very persuasive argument in this piece, he points out the fact that other gods mentioned in the Old testament were revered and considered at power with Jahveh in some contexts. It is interesting how the Christian tradition (and may be in Judaic context) might view this. The fact that Yahweh/Jehovah is still revered is commonly considered a testament of Yahweh/Jehovah’s eminence or authenticity.
There is a saying in some non-religious circles that goes something like this: Everyone’s an atheist, some of us just go one God further. In the essay, Memorial Service, H. L. Mencken expands upon that expression by exploring the numerous deities that have fallen out of favor throughout history, going so far as to sequentially list a host of gods no longer worshipped or revered as holy. He contemptuously deconstructs the historic sanctification of various deities, unapologetically implying that supernatural figures still relevant to modern religious traditions are just as capable of diminishing from our mainstream consciousness and slipping out of our collective awareness. Although the faithful may regard them as transcendent, Mencken suggests that these deities are no more omnipotent or immortal than their predecessors. After All, Tezcatlipoca is said to have consumed literal virgins and even he is entombed in a divine cemetery of sorts. In many respects, Mencken conveys their falsehood and alludes to a cognitive error of supernatural belief in general. The mere fact that such powerful symbols can collapse into obscurity is evidence of their human construction.
Mencken wonderfully critiques modern religion by orienting ancient traditions as the focal point of his essay. In this way, he cleverly illustrates the apparent absurdity in classic modes of theism and infers that many of the beliefs and conceptualizations surrounding “God” only carry as much legitimacy as a crowd of believers is willing to bestow upon them. Without followers, gods fade from significance, even those said to be responsible for magnificent feats of divine intervention. From this viewpoint, all of the world’s religions are susceptible to decay. Neither are any immune from scrutiny nor subject to preferential treatment. Overall, Mencken eloquently demonstrates the logical inadequacy of God as traditionally conceived by humanity and seriously challenges readers to take their atheism to the next step by questioning the theistic assumptions still relevant to contemporary society.
|
|
|
John Stuart Mill |
Not all rejections of the concept of a personal God happen for solely epistemological reasons. Even if the conversation is couched in epistemological language about truth and knowledge, this terminology often serves the function of providing support to what is essentially a moral critique. This is precisely the strategy that John Stuart Mill ascribes to his father, James Mill. John Stuart Mill, being the child of one of England's greatest statesman, was privy to an enviable circle of educators and interlocutors as a young boy. During his education amongst the likes of statesman philosophers, such as his father and Jeremy Bentham, JSM was exposed to the great myths of the Greeks that had shaped the moral consciousness of his father. JSM describes his father as having absorbed in equity the best characteristics of the ancient Greek Stoics, Epicureans, and Cynics. According to JSM, James Mill was able to mold these historically competitive schools of thought into complimentary systems of values that ultimately lent a vigorous character to his moral convictions. It was these same moral convictions that eventually led James Mill, and JSM, to reject the idea of an autonomous, omnipotent, and benevolent creator. JSM attributed this rejection partially to the unsolvable nature of the epistemological questions concerning the nature of being, but he insisted that the main reason for the rejection was a moral one: if this world, so rife with suffering and injustice, is the product of a being that is the placeholder for our greatest ideas of goodness and truth, then the bar is set too low. JSM believed that the acceptance of a God, which was supposed to epitomize our ideas of perfection and goodness, that would be so uncreative and unforgiving as to ultimately deal with evil by eternal torture in Hell would lead to a standard of goodness that was ultimately too low and base to ever inspire true social progress. The story of James's and John Stuart Mill's rejection of popular religion serves as an archetypal example of those thinkers who have rejected the popular depiction of God on moral grounds. JSM saw that this God is not truly a call to be more just or loving, but is rather a morally problematic being that breeds passivity toward unjust suffering.
At one point in this excerpt, JSM states that “though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does much more” (67). This phrase leads me to wonder about our attitudes towards stories. During the medieval period, much sacred text was read through a deliberately allegorical lens: the point was not to insist that these stories were historical facts that represented the actual events of a distant past, but instead the point was to read these stories as indirect moral formation that needed to be molded to speak to the concerns of today. The value of sacred text lay in its malleability and ability to transform the reader, not in its factualness or accuracy. However, in the modernist revolution, which convinced itself science could penetrate every area that was once considered a mystery, the idea of mythological interpretation as a form of indirect moral formation was denounced as unnecessary and false. Yet I wonder, are we not creatures of narrative? Are we not people of stories? Isn't the epistemological approach of modernity its own story: namely, an eliminative tale that takes a reductive and singular approach to truth? I wonder if the problem arises not so much in the mode of story itself, but when a certain story takes itself too seriously and begins to canonize a singular interpretation to the detriment of all others. It is good to reject a certain telling or interpretation of a story when that story leads to stunted growth or a confusion of the good with that which is destructive. But I wonder if in rejecting the use of story altogether (or at least in pretending that one story is the only story and is, in fact, not a story at all) we are bankrupting ourselves of one of our most important tools for moral formation in exchange for a rigid, one size fits all, narrative that only serves the interests of a few. Just as JSM rejected popular religion on moral grounds, many thinkers striving to be postmodern have rejected modernist assumptions about truth on similarly moral grounds. This chiastic pattern of rejections is one that intrigues me.
In this piece, John Stuart Mill begins by observing the essential, though complex, import moral education has for all of us. He shares with the reader the case of his father’s evolution to religious disbelief on moral grounds, that is, on the grounds of theodicy, and says that, “[His father] looked upon it [religion] as the greatest enemy of morality . . .” (58). Thus, he goes on to detail his father’s argument, from moral premises, against maintaining any belief in a God or gods. Furthermore, he notes that his father made it a priority to verse him, even as a boy, in ecclesiastical history, especially the Reformation, and the various views concerning the question of creation. Mill states that he was one of the rare cases of individuals who had not grown up religiously, and so never experienced religion as personally relevant. Yet, he notes that, although his father had instilled beliefs that were contrary to public opinion, he also encouraged the bad habit of keeping his thoughts to himself. He goes on to recount the moral convictions, which his father maintained apart from religion, much in the same vein as the Greek philosophers. Hence he observed that his father’s life exhibited the qualities of the Stoic and the Cynic, and that he valued temperance and devalued pleasure a great deal. Mill concludes by briefly appraising his father’s character: “All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings in his opinions; which is truly difficult to understand how any one, who possesses much of both, can fail to do.” (62-63)
Because this piece was more-or-less a look at his father’s worldview, and not his own, I do not suppose that there is much in the way of a philosophical response to Mill that I can offer here. What can I say? Although there is probably little use in disputing the formative role Mill’s father played in his overall development, I think Mill’s childhood probably sucked, as it appears to have been absent of any imaginative indulgences. Moreover, I would guess that his father’s atheism probably had much less to do with that development than did his moral austerity and indoctrination. Whatever the case, I have come to believe (though I may change my mind further on down the road) that the real pedagogical aim of a parent should not be to teach his or her children what to think, as Mill’s father clearly had taken pains to do, but rather, to teach them how to think, which may or may not result in atheistic beliefs.
In this selection J. S. Mill described how his father impacted him through conversations and education. His father selected certain books for his son’s intellectual and moral formation, but John Stuart claimed that apart from these readings, the biggest influence on his character development came indirectly from the way that his father lived. Mill described his religious belief as being ‘neutral’ all his life, as opposed to rejecting religious belief. He claimed that his father raised him to see the inconsistencies of a good God creating a universe with so much bad in it.
Mill does not claim any of his own morality to have come from religious teachings; however, he does leave open the possibility that moral teachings come from traditions and other ancient writings. Because he uses these other ancient sources, would he not also be open to the moral teachings that come from religious writings? He does reject belief in a God, but even so, I do not believe that is reason enough to discredit the moral teachings of all people who believe in supernatural beings.
Mill grew up with no religious affirmation because his father rejected religious belief based on logic, evidence, and morality and this influenced on Mill. Mill’s father was a philosopher, who regarded religion as immoral. For Mill’s father religions propagandize their creeds and beliefs, which cause disregard for genuine virtues. Religions exploit people’s feelings of good and evil, which prevent people from thinking logically and rationally. Feeling does not decide good and evil, but right and proper actions.
It is unfortunate that Mill had no experience of religious belief. From religious belief, one can learn how to be sincere and honest. Mill’s father was quite correct that religious belief could become a fanatical madness. This is why we need to raise theological concerns about the validity of belief and religious systems in every situation. In doing so, religion can keep the virtue of openness and tolerance. Moreover, Mill’s father was right that feeling itself is neither good nor evil. However, action itself may be neither good nor evil as well, but the result of action can be good or evil. Furthermore, Mill’s father mistakenly disregards feeling when it is actually an integral part of achieving a good result. Without desire to do good deeds, how can one achieve good results when there is a sweet temptation? Without willingness, how can one act right in a difficult situation? Willingness and desire are the passion of life and can be learned from religious belief as well. Proper religious affections will sincerely wake and stimulates human being’s ultimate concern.
In “Moral Influences in Early Youth: My Father’s Character and Opinions,” John Stuart Mill puts out the call to other atheists to join him in dispelling public misconceptions that atheists are less moral than Christians by using the example of his atheistic father’s life. In the process of describing his father’s teachings, Mill argues that morality is not connected to belief in God for three reasons. Using the problem of evil, which drove his father to atheism, Mill unlinks God from the ideal of the good by illustrating how ignoring the reality of evil in a world created by a perfectly wise and good God forces God to become an enemy of morality. Secondly, Mill points out that the morals which society attributes to Christianity are not limited to Christianity, as evidenced by Socrates’ writing (60, 61, 58, 61). Lastly, Mill argues that if “graces of character” are the marks of genuine religiosity, then atheists are as religious as believers (61). For Mill’s father, actions have consequences which can be good or evil; therefore, motives have little significance while outcomes are of paramount importance. More importantly, Mill’s father advocated and role modeled the virtues that promote human flourishing, particularly temperance and tolerance (62). However, the greatest lesson Mill learned from his father was the “equal freedom of all opinions,” an opinion which unfortunately both Mill and his father dared not express publicly until after both their deaths (63, 57).
Just as Mill thought that many of his fellow religious skeptics were afraid to speak openly because of fear of weakening public morals, many church members who hold nontraditional theological viewpoints bite their tongues because of fear of shattering another’s faith or of being thought less than faithful (60). They would rather be kind than right, but often the result is that they are nice rather than kind or right and open-minded discussion is avoided. As an example, I led an adult Christian education forum at my church which dealt with theodicy. One woman’s response to the problem of balancing God’s mercy and justice was that she simply did not want to discuss it because it would damage her faith. A man said he used times of trouble as lessons from God. When I pointed out that this viewpoint makes God a rather harsh teacher during times of excessive suffering, I was met with blank stares. When I suggested replacing anthropomorphic projections onto God with gratitude for the gift of creation, no one agreed or disagreed. While I learned many lessons from this experience, my biggest lesson was one that Mill’s father also taught him: kindness is not avoiding discussion, but expressing opinions without intellectual errors and in a nonjudgmental way that affirms the individual (63).
In John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography the philosopher describes the influence his father, James Mill, had on his intellectual and moral development during his formative years. The excerpt from Mill’s Autobiography opens with him recounting how from the very beginning, he was instilled with no religious belief. His father had renounced his belief in religion at a young age, and so though he had Mill read ecclesiastical history and study the Reformation, he did so to ensure that Mill reach an informed understanding of the conceptual dangers found in religion and the violences perpetuated by religion. A seminal text in James Mill’s renouncement of Christianity was Butler’s Analogy, which argues that the nature of this world cannot be reconciled with the Christian God. Concerning this, Mill writes of his father: “He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open contradiction” (58). Mill writes that his father’s moral centering bore great resemblance to the virtues as espoused by the Greek philosophers, and that the import of these beliefs was expressed all the more poignantly through his father’s conscientious practice of them. This faithful adherence to moral principles leads to a point of contention with ‘religion in practice’ for both Mill and his father. Regarding the unreligious, Mill argues that oftentimes they are more religious in the true sense of the term than are religionists, and that in fact: “The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete skeptics in religion…” (60).
John Mill’s argument against religion rests heavily on the proposition that the true nature of an ideology can be judged by the success or failure of its practitioners to enact their espoused beliefs. Though, he also makes the move of reclaiming the word religion from the religious—taking the moral and ethical imperatives from religion and discarding the Divine (60). Mill’s reasoning appears to be that there are better, more productive ideologies and ways of living in the world, and religion has not been one of them. To an extent this argument is sound. If there is no Divine creator, however, then all ideologies are creations of the human intellect, including religion. The failure of religion then does not rest with religious belief, but rather with its creators, its “unfaithful” adherents. Though Mill does acknowledge a human tendency to create ever more intolerant forms of the Divine, he fails to follow what such an assertion can say about human nature and instead chooses to focus on the effects of these failed human constructs.
Mill sets out to discuss problems with religious beliefs and to encourage people towards tolerance and acceptance of persons with varying beliefs. Much of this excerpt recapitulates his father’s views on Christian creeds. Mill’s upbringing did not involve “any religious belief” (57). His father had rejected “all that is called religious belief” by appealing to the theodicy problem and the logical contradictions of Christian dogma: How could a “good and wise being” be the “Maker of the universe”? How is the notion that a “world so full of evil” can be attributed to “an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness” tenable? Mill’s and his father reject these beliefs via morality. Religion is a “mental delusion” and “the greatest enemy of morality,” he notes. Christianity perverts morality into “doing the will of a being” that is “eminently hateful.” Mill recalls his father asking him to consider “a being who would make a Hell—who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment” (58). Mill opposes Christianity because it ignores the contradictions and consequences of its creeds and fosters “blind tradition” (59). In light of this point he encourages a change in attitude. He hopes for religious persons to embrace liberality in discussions with those outside their camp. He encourages tolerance, equality, and the “equal freedom of all opinions” (63).
While reading this excerpt I found myself smiling. I know all too well what Mills is getting at: the resistance many religious people exude towards considering problems inherent in their claims. That the God of Christianity is believed to have created Hell and predetermined humans to dwell there for eternity is indeed a widespread tenet of Christianity. However, many Christians—those who think well—would not assert such nonsense. I like Mills candor and agree with his observations. However, he is not talking about atheism or God. He is talking about what people do with those ideas. He is exposing religious hogwash and he is correct. But I think it important to distinguish between the ideas and the way the ideas are employed; and he doesn’t.
Part 1.): Mill reviews the effects on himself by the teaching of his father. His father’s conversion to atheism was long and mentally difficult. The deciding issue for James Mill was the inconsistent notion of an all-powerful and perfectly loving God, that would create a world where a sizeable portion of his creation will burn forever in Hell. This, he thought, was part of a larger moral inconsistency, where people avoid thinking about the hateful side of their religion, (e.g. Christianity), in order to maintain a source of “spiritual comfort”, (my term), requiring no wrestling with conscience or intellectual work. Thus, people’s real virtues / moral standards never improve. The life of Mill’s father emulated the work of ancient Greek philosophers: the Stoic the Epicurean, and the Cynic. In the influence of the latter, he had little truck with pleasures. He was not unfeeling of them, but rather held that they generally not worth the price at which they come – “stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences.”
Part 2.): James Mill (father of John Stuart) would have made a great Vulcan. He was halfway there. Though not “insensible to pleasures”, “he deemed very few of them worth the price which … must be paid for them. The greatest number of miscarriages life, he considered to be attributable to the overvaluing of pleasures.” “For passionate emotions of all sorts, [despite how exalted they were], he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness.” He was also wary of the motive of “conscience” in human behavior. “Conscience” can lead one to do good or ill. “He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience.” The problem that I see here is, if conscience cannot be trusted, then just how can it be decided, (by individuals or society), what is good behavior and what is ill? (This looks forward to the critique of John Stuart Mill that was to come later, regarding who is to decide what constitutes “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”) However, James was also a connoisseur of upright personality: those who displayed conscientiousness and rectitude he valued highly. However, his highest value, (somewhat akin to the “Prime Directive”), was the non-interference with those with whom one disagrees. The “equal freedom of all opinions …[is] the highest moral order of minds, possible.”
Summary: In this essay, John S. Mill writes about his non-religious father’s character and morals that influenced his life. He had been raised without any religious beliefs (Chapter 8 (57)). Mills’ father had been educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism (57). His father had struggled with religious concepts of God’s omnipotence and benevolence, which he found to be in contradiction with the suffering in the world (58). He also found the idea of the maker who created hell for his people to be quite disdainful (58). After some research and much reflection, Mills’ father had “yielded to the conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known” (58). From his father Mills had learnt that there was no answer to the question of “who made me?” (59). His father’s opinion was based on this statement and also found dogmatic atheism to be absurd (58). His father also found religion to be “the greatest enemy of morality” and prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention (58, 62). Mills father, though a high minded and a very conscientious person was also able to admire the qualities of even those he disagreed with (63).
Response: This is an insightful piece. It is interesting how Mills describes his father’s convictions and where they stemed from. I have come across individuals and especially men who do not necessarily identify as non-religious but are not so religious either, who portray such strong moral characters. I still found the rhetoric to be very strong and a bit egoistic.
An influential Scottish philosopher/statesman, John Stuart Mill, recounts his modeled religiosity from his father in his autobiography. John Stuart Mill’s father is remembered as an individual whose moral perspectives were not derived from a religious narrative or tradition, rather John Stuart Mill’s Father moral influence is directly derived from various ancient Greek philosophies such as Stoicism, Epicureanism and Cynicism. As a result, John Stuart Mill’s Father modeled an alternative morality that stood in opposition to the religious establishment. The religious establishment of his day dictated all social actions and social values. This is why John Stuart Mill advocated for Women’s rights and abolishment of slavery but never published any critique of religious until after his death. On religion, John Stuart Mill struggles to cope with the idea of a transcendent deity who is fully good and powerful, yet is unable to fix a world of suffering and injustice. John Stuart Mill grew up religiously free in an era that was saturated in religious dogma. Thus, John Stuart Mill is an anomaly in that he is not an atheist in a reaction against the religious establishment. Rather, John Stuart Mill was raised apart from the religious establishment as an outsider. His father modeled to him how to live morally apart from the establishment.
Upon reading the autobiography by John Stuart Mill, I am struck by the father’s desire to raise his son to be a-religious. The ancient Greek philosophies became the framework for John Stuart Mill to construct his world view. Thus, John Stuart Mill was unable to faithfully engage in the religious rhetoric and community of his transitioning pre-modern society. It amazes me that someone would wish to live in silent opposition to the establishment and yet live in fear of the establishment given the fact that his anti-religious scholarship was published post-mortem. o
|
|
|
George Orwell |
Many of children of clergy or devout religionists have become skeptical of both “the dead shells”(166) of doctrines and the rituals that have eventually come to the duties. People who have grown up under strict Puritanical parents may be sympathetic to Dorothy, the protagonist in Orwell's novel, who finds no meaning in her religious practices. With the delicate delineation of character, Orwell aptly showed the bleak religiosity and her inner conflict caused by meaninglessness and uselessness of her religion. Then, he makes readers feel a kind of sense of liberation by illustriously depicting the color sense of light, which illuminates the place and lets “a flood of joy [run] through Dorothy's heart”(167).
The Christian formula of Salvation, comprised of repentance from and forgiveness of sin, since it became a mere formula, has been the requirement to be accepted for all Christians. And the words formula and requirement inevitably refer to the loss of meaning and life in a sense that while life itself is dynamical and creative, a formula is static and inflexible. Modern people need a new religion or religiosity as one that is described as “a momentary spear of sunlight”(167) in the novel instead of an old one that has lost its relevance to their life. Just as the spear of sunlight encouraged Dorothy to pray again, so would the new religion or religiosity allow people to pray anew.
This excerpt from Orwell's book introduces Dorothy in a moment of doubt during the Eucharist. In between her kneeling and her acceptance of the wafer from her father, she has a lapse of faith and believes she physically cannot pray (160). There is no clear cause for this feeling, but she notes that all her words felt meaningless and void, and so they could not be spoken with honesty. In this fearful moment, she only experiences a rekindling of faith when she witnesses a beautiful display of nature through a door in which sunlight shines down upon a rush of brilliantly green leaves that blow into the building. It is this moment that snaps her out of the doubt and back into a love of God, in which she feels capable of prayer and worthy of accepting the wafer.
The interesting part of this excerpt is the experiential nature of faith and belief. What made it easier for Dorothy to believe that she could pray and love God was the display of nature, but that display made her feel a sense of awe. I wonder if this example relates a similar sentiment found in many religious circles that religious experiences can most effectively bring us back to a mind of worship when they elicit some sort of emotional response from us. The evangelical praise and worship team that stands on a stage of bright flashing lights and a surround-sound system is one example that comes to mind in which sensory perceptions are stimulated to evoke feelings that give a sense of awe and connectedness to a moment in time in which God is understood to have made God's presence known. After considering how emotions are used to achieve “effective experiences of faith,” an important question to bear for all religious people is: in moments of negative feelings or no feelings at all, how is faith sustained, and what is the purpose of its sustenance?
In this excerpt from George Orwell's A Clergyman's Daughter, the protagonist, Dorothy, faces a moment of doubt at the communion railing. Unable to pray for the forgiveness she initially seeks, her senses are drawn to her surroundings. The Eucharist suddenly seems like distasteful medicine and she hesitates taking the wafer in her chaotic emotional state. However, with the flash of sunlight outside on luscious green foliage, she is reminded of her faith “by a process deeper than reason” (167). She then offers a prayer of thanksgiving and takes the wafer.
Hitchens seems to believe that this story demonstrates that faith diminishes when it returns after periods of doubt, but this was not my reading of the passage. Perhaps in the wider context of the book Hitchens would prove correct, but in this passage Dorothy's faith seems to return fully. Every religious person I have ever known has experienced doubt occasionally; it is only natural. In this passage, Dorothy is blessed with a moment of grace through which her faith floods back into her heart.
In this short excerpt from George Orwell's book, A Clergyman's Daughter, Dorothy (the title character) is seen receiving communion from her father during an Anglican service. The narrative follows Dorothy's thoughts as she tries to pray for forgiveness in preparation for the sacrament. Struggling to focus her mind on her prayers, she is hopelessly distracted by the relentlessly mundane details of the room and people around her. As her father draws closer with the wafers and wine, she describes a “deadly blankness” in her mind – she feared that “actually she could not pray” (166). Her doubts escalate and she even wonders if it would not be better for her to draw back from the altar and refuse the sacrament. However, in the moment of decision, she glances over to an open door: through it shines an intense ray of sunlight. It triggers a “flood of joy” in Dorothy's heart and “[brings] back to her, by a process deeper than reason, her peace of mind, her love of God, her power of worship” (167). She accepts the communion wafer with joy.
Hitchens's inclusion and editing choices for this piece are actually quite puzzling. The passage lies near the beginning of Orwell's novella, before Dorothy declares that she has lost her faith (at least her loss of faith in the God she once believed in). But Hitchens leaves out the last sentence of the paragraph, which reads, “She took the chalice from her father, and tasted with repulsion, even with an added joy in this small act of self- abasement, the wet imprint of Miss Mayfill's lips on its silver rim.” Had he included this last sentence, I think his point would have been made even more poignantly. With this short excerpt, Orwell seems to be drawing somewhat of a contrast between the dingy, monotonous, and uninspired church service, complete with the pretentious self-important piety of Miss Mayfill, which Dorothy finds thoroughly irritating and distracting, and the beauty of the natural world outside. It is only after she catches a glimpse of the “transient, matchless green” of the leaves struck by sunlight that she is able to pray and receive Holy Communion “ardently joyfully, thankfully” (167). The exclusion of the last sentence is odd in that its presence would seem to further juxtapose Dorothy's social position and blossoming spiritual response to life outside of the church with the old wealthy Miss Mayfill's traditional piety. In any case, though later in the novella, Dorothy loses her faith, this passage in isolation is highly interpretable as one that demonstrates the salvific promise of God's love even in the midst of overwhelming doubt. On the other hand, read differently, it could be an evocative critique of the ineffectiveness of the institutionalized church for spiritual vitality. If the latter interpretation is the one Hitchens intended, including a longer passage with more backstory and the last sentence of the current passage may have helped to make his point.
Orwell's brief contribution to this text concerns a small part of a larger work, involving the title character being thrown into a crisis of faith, in no less opportune a moment than standing in line for the communion wafer. Her doubts and trepidation about receiving the communion and fully accepting faith are assuaged, however, by a flash of light shining on the outside world, renewing her faith. Hitchens prefaces this contribution by referencing Kirkegaard's notion of having to take multiple leaps of faith in life with his and allegedly Orwell's rejection of that premise.
The section can be interpreted in many different ways, which can be seen as a validation of the criticism that Hitchens' skews some of the writings to fit an atheist worldview. However, one can see the value in this piece as a critique of abductive reasoning that follows some people of faith (as well as those without faith) in their conceptions of the existence of God. The idea that a certain act of kindness, a beautiful view, or a natural process working as part of a larger system can be seen as proof of the existence of a deity can be seen as patently ridiculous and lacking any sort of introspection (a lateral assault it would seem, on derision to the atheist abduction of life existing on “sheer luck”). While Hitchens' editing may seem suspicious, the piece holds up as a critique on an all too common way in which some justify their beliefs.
In this snippet from a longer narrative, Orwell colors a truth in concert with Kierkegaard-the idea that faith is a game of leap frog. In other words, faith is not a one-time decision or commitment; it is a perpetual surrendering to delusions and illusions that come and go as often as the sunlight shifts in the sky. In the vignette, supposedly the clergyman's daughter kneels in affirmation of her frozen faith. She awaits the communion wafer in stone-cold apathy, her once fervent religious fires dowsed by, as Orwell insinuates and the reader assumes, an innate awareness that religion is dull and false. But she sees the brilliant light of day that reflects as a rare gem, and she is brought back to her delusion.
The clergyman's daughter is my bosom sister. She acts out a familiar sentiment and plays a role that I played with such awing persuasiveness that it is quite alarming, even to myself. For many years, I played well the role of religious, Christian leader in my pious adolescent circles, and much of the time it was false. Raised in the Christian evangelical south, my faith was largely based on underlying fear-fear of hell and life beyond death that could be never-ending torment with burning lakes of fire and such. In response, I was “saved” at least twelve times as an adolescent and recommitted my life over and over and over again. Yet, I was a liar, and in my heart I was all that I condemned. Still, I was brought back to the altar and made clean, or at least clean enough to receive communion. I yielded to flashes of light. They distracted my discontent like something shiny might attract a squirrel. There was always a sensual nature to my falsehood and my perpetual conversion. I got off on the coming back and accommodated my diet to malnutrition much like the starchy, dead communion wafer savored on the clergyman's daughter's tongue. [Hope Hamilton]
The clergyman’s daughter, Dorthy, had come to the altar to take holy communion. She was focused on her environment, the carpet, smells, and other people, rather than the blood and body of Christ, the place where she strongly believed her focus should have been. Her father had the wafer for her to take, but she hesitated in fear of not being authentic. Dorthy's father did not notice because he was focused not on her, but on another woman, Miss Mayfill, who ensured that everyone saw her piety by her extreme movements and gestures of the cross. Dorthy just happened to see a green light come in through the doorway, as she was hesitating to take the sacrament. She saw something in the light and regained the ability to pray and took the sacrament with thanks.
This story seems interesting because Dorthy's original intent to find forgiveness before she takes communion is substituted by her prayer of thanksgiving. Her father holds the wafer for her to take as if it is a medicine, meant to cure her sins. Dorthy must know this, that her father feels communion is forgiveness, as she is herself trying to find a prayer of atonement. Her ability to transform in a way, and partake of the sacrament out of thanksgiving rather than atonement is intriguing. Reflecting on the apparent insincerity of Miss Mayfill, this story seems to draw out the question of necessity and creation that religion often forces upon individuals. If Dorthy wouldn't have been searching for a prayer, she probably wouldn't have ever noticed the green light in the way that she did. This story raises a few questions. First, does religion always draw something out of the individual that would have not been there otherwise? Second, is religions ability to demand a creation of both feelings and ideas ethical, harmful, or somewhere in between?
This excerpt from George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter tells a brief story about a flash of doubt that descends upon a clergy man’s daughter in the midst of taking communion. She finds that her disbelief renders her unable to pray, or take the communion wafer into her mouth for a moment due to the “chaos in her heart”. (166) Her ability to pray is quickly restored after she sees a flash of green light, that brings her back to a “process deeper than reason” (167). She takes the wafer, offering praise to the Lord.
I guess I’m not sure why this excerpt is in Hitchens’ book. Every person of faith experiences similar doubt at one (or many) points in their religious life. The clergyman’s daughter’s faith is restored within moments of her doubting by a “process deeper than reason”, which I suppose is a dig against all of those who trust in that process, and seems to suggest that the more doubtful moments this girl experiences, the more atheistic she will become. I beg to differ. I trust that all religious people experience moments of doubt; that these moments are signs of mature faith, not future atheism.
This excerpt describes the crisis of faith when one does not feel connected to the divine presence. The piece follows the thoughts of the clergyman’s daughter as she attempts to pray for forgiveness before receiving the Eucharist. She attempts to pray, but the words are empty. She feels the social pressure to follow the ritual and take the wafer, but is morally conflicted since her receiving of the Eucharist would not line up with her inner spiritual state. The crisis is resolved when the protagonist sees the beauty of the verdant leaves and bright light of nature returns her ability to commune with the divine. She finds peace where there was turbulence in her soul, and happily receives the wafer.
I’m skeptical that this is a piece of atheist literature. Although I’ve only read a page out of the entire work, what I read was a crisis of faith that was quickly overcome. Reading through my own lens, I read the story as a girl who felt disconnected from God. She was tormented by this disconnect and did not want to take the Eucharist, because taking it would be dishonest as her actions would not line up with her faith. For the girl, rituals are important because of the meaning behind them, and are worthless without that meaning. She was saved from this dilemma as she reconnected with God through the beauty of nature. As a result, she accepted the Eucharist and did not have to live with the hypocrisy of acting in opposition to one’s beliefs or the social stigma of refusing the Eucharist. How is this read through an Atheist lens? I can’t help but see this as a beautiful description of the relationship between doubt and faith. I personally view doubt as an important component of faith.
In this novel, George Orwell is portraying the need of a God who can be more than just a dictator of morality. In the novel the author shows how the protagonist starts responding to God in a much clearer way when she encountered God with out the baggage of any myths, or perceptions. In the novel the author clearly shows how people respond to the idea of God when it is understood only through a single perspective. The author summarizes his writing by showing that the true way of responding to the idea of God is to make it free from any myth's or perceptions. For the author the only way to encounter God and respond to God is through the nature which is pure and not adulterated with any human thoughts or perceptions.
Through the novel the author is raising questions on the belief that God is the giver of morality and he punishes those who are immoral. I think the author would argue that the image of God as a moral giver is a myth and people should unpack this myth and evolve to a better understanding of the basis of morality. The author has touched the nerve of one of the issues that encounter all those who believe in God; which is the guilt of wrong doing and the shame and fear which is involved in punishment. I think the story was even more personal to me because being a Pastor's son I could relate exactly with what the author was trying to portray with his protagonist. I think one of the reason that most people believe in God is because of the belief that God can forgive sins and restore a person who has committed a sin. While I agree with the author's contention that we should evolve to a post- theistic basis for morality, I wonder how can we understand morality with out a moral giver. If morality is just for the survival in a community; why people are immoral and why would people want to take the risk of destroying the peace of a community if it is for his/her own survival? The question then boils down to the problem of evil. As a response to the author's argument, I believe that the idea of God should be understood in many different perspectives and not just one. I think in the novel the author only looked at God in the perspective of a moral giver. The author does not negate the idea of God but, argues that the idea of God should not be adulterated with the myth's of God being a moral giver. The question that this novel raises to my mind is how can we understand God with out the short comings that we have and we see in this world?
In this short excerpt from his novel A Clergyman’s Daughter George Orwell paints a beautiful picture of the dialectical relationship between faith and doubt that pervades even the most earnest of believers. This story gives us access into the inner spiritual life of Dorothy, a young priest’s daughter, while she prepares to receive the Eucharist. While waiting to receive the elements, she tries to focus her heart and soul on God, but instead finds herself overcome by a state of doubtful impassivity: "A deadly blankness had descended upon her mind. It seemed to her that actually she could not pray. She struggled, collected her thoughts, uttered mechanically the opening phrases of a prayer, but they were useless…nothing but the dead shells of words…" (166). While Dorothy appears to be tottering on the precipice of doubt and disbelief, she nevertheless experiences a saving grace. Glancing out the side door of the church, she beholds a brilliant sphere of sunlight penetrating through the clouds and illuminating leaves upon the doorway. This magnificent sight fills her with a sudden rush of hope and joy, and she finds herself able to pray once again. The story ends with Dorothy praying with joy and thanksgiving as the communion wafer “melts upon her tongue.”
I found myself intrigued by Hitchens’ preface to this piece. He interprets this vignette as pointing to the “diminishing returns” of faith in the face of doubt. However, as a Christian I found this piece to be spiritually edifying and uplifting. Whereas Hitchens seems to interpret this story as describing the initial tottering of an edifice bound to crumble, one might just as easily interpret it as pointing to the often painful, though far from futile tension between faith and doubt. Christians have traditionally understood the sacraments to be conduits of divine grace. Some traditions even go as far as to claim that the divine is supernaturally present within the elements of bread and wine. Thus believers often find themselves in a state of spiritual vertigo prior to partaking of this ritual. The great Christian theologian Paul Tillich understood grace to consist of accepting divine acceptance, in spite of feeling oneself to be unacceptable. In my mind, this piece illustrated the possibility of accepting divine grace, even in the face of profound doubt.
In this excerpt from George Orwell’s first novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter, the “nonbelieving” reader experiences Dorothy’s participation in the Eucharist from a privileged point of view—Dorothy’s psyche. Immediately swept up into Dorothy’s inner observations, the reader finds her kneeling at the altar anxiously attempting to offer a prayer imploring forgiveness before the approaching clergyman, her father, stands over her with proffered host in hand. But, alas, her attempts fail. Dorothy’s attempts at prayer are mechanical and abundantly hollow. It is not a lack of awareness that brings Dorothy to this impasse for she makes numerous sensory observations, but it is a dearth of desire that generates the stillborn prayer. With the host hovering before her, yet with prayer unspoken, Dorothy contemplates fleeing the altar instead of incurring the condemnation that attends an impenitent reception of the sacrament. Fortuitously, Dorothy is spared embarrassment and condemnation by a “sidelong” glance that spies the radiating beauty of sunlight through verdant leaves. This “flash of living colour” breaks the spell of lethargy, and “by a process deeper than reason” restores “her peace of mind, her love of God, her power of worship” sending a prayer of praise crashing through her mind as “the wafer melted upon her tongue.” (167).
Orwell’s point is poignantly made by means of masterful contrast. In the first paradigm, Dorothy is reluctant to swallow the medicine of immortality due to her inability to generate a meaningful prayer of forgiveness. No matter how she tries to stimulate the prayer, her findings are drab and her efforts are futile. Boots “shuffle,” voices “murmur,” and she kneels on worn red carpet and smells “mothballs.” (166) The regal “Body and Blood of Christ” accompanied by an intimated penal atonement theory is even an innocuous stimulant in her case. (166) In stark contrast, the second paradigm, which arises serendipitously, is overflowing with magnificent freshness. A “spray of leaves” is struck by a “spear of sunlight” making the doorway “gleam” a “matchless green,” a green “greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic waters.” (167) It is the vitality of nature that has the power to enrapture Dorothy not the staleness of human construction, theory, or fear. In its original setting, the depth of this pericope may be rushed over, but in the isolated setting of Hitchens’ collection, Orwell’s imagery is as potent as carbon monoxide to a canary.
Opening this excerpt, Orwell’s main character, Dorothy, is praying. She is asking forgiveness before taking the Lord’s Supper. Suddenly “the current of her thoughts” is interrupted with the immediacy of the Eucharist. She is nervous about partaking of the “Body and Blood of Christ.” Still more, her father is the priest administering the sacrament. As the elements near her “a deadly blankness” overtakes her mind and interrupts her prayer. She tries to say the words of her prayer, but she fears the words are merely “mechanical.” Her father approaches her. He extends his hand towards her with “the wafer,” as though holding a “spoon of medicine.” She cannot accept the sacrament because of the “chaos in her heart” (166). She gazes towards an open door. She looks outside. She is struck with the beauty of nature. The sublimity of sunlight, the greenness of leaves, and the appreciation for God’s aesthetic sensibilities—“by a process deeper than reason”—, overpowers her fears. Forgetting her fears she feels free to take the Eucharist. Christ’s body “melt[s] upon her tongue” (167).
Orwell does a good job of pointing out the importance of psychological factors involved in religion. Do we worry too much about sacraments and prayer and judgment from a ‘God’ we hardly comprehend? Perhaps. It is relevant that he shows how fleeting these religious states of mind can be, while also poignantly capturing their power over us. I too recall moments of intense distress while considering myself before Eucharist. If you believe you are in some way ingesting the body of Christ it is no small thing for your psyche to bear. But for me there is something about aesthetics more powerful than these moments. I was immediately caught up in the existential angst Orwell’s protagonist experienced. I also cheered when aesthetics set her free!
Dorothy agonizes within herself before partaking in the Eucharist in this short passage. Orwell describes a moment within her unfolding crisis of faith in which she seems desperate to properly partake of the Eucharist but finds herself seemingly devoid of the capacity for prayer and bereft of conviction or passion. This hinders her appropriately taking the elements and drives her to ask forgiveness of a God to whom she does not seem to be able to pray. She glances to the side and sees an unconvincing, even pitiable, display of devotion by a genuflecting geriatric woman. Just as she begins to leave the communion rail rather than take the elements inappropriately and thereby incur divine judgment, she sees this marvelous ray of light, resplendent in spring’s green. Somehow, she takes this to be a sign from the Lord, and finds it possible to pray and praise again. So she stays and takes communion.
Orwell skillfully fleshes out the woman’s inner turmoil, to which many believers may be able to relate. Then as he describes the devout, decrepit old woman his subtle satirization of believers begins to unfold. His portrayal of a woman bound not only by an aging body but by fool-hearted belief is followed by one who desperately wants to believe but honestly finds it difficult. The ray of light may have had some deeper significance within Dorothy’s experience, but in this passage it seems merely the aesthetic rapture that saves the heroine from her distress. Orwell masterfully depicts either projection and self-deception or a moment of mystical faith. Because he does not present an argument to be accepted or rejected but tells a story demanding interpretation, the literary format is a useful tool for talking about atheism.
Orwell gives an eloquent description of a clergyman’s daughter, Dorothy, wrestling with “chaos in her heart (166)” over whether or not to take a sacramental wafer. She finds herself frozen before the altar, unable to pray, and distracted by the brute mechanics of her surroundings. She hears the shuffling of boots and the “clear low voice” of her father the minister commanding her to “Take and eat,” she sees the “worn strip of carpet between her knees,” and she smells “dust and eau-de-Cologne and mothballs (166)”. These sights and sounds and smells overwhelm her and she is prevented from uttering an authentic prayer for forgiveness. But suddenly, a ray of light comes into the room carrying a green tint from the outside leaves it has passed through. Dorothy is miraculously renewed “by a process deeper than reason” and she finds it possible, “somehow, because of the greenness of the leaves (167)”, to pray and to take the sacrament once again.
It is difficult to discern here just how Orwell wants his readers to interpret the ray of light that transforms Dorothy’s heart at the end of the passage. Some readers might take it to be a true indicator of nature’s mysterious and transcendent qualities that really do provoke faith within the human heart. Others might interpret Orwell as doing something a bit more cynical by suggesting that such a profound conversion could occur through such trivial means. I suspect the latter, that Orwell means to show that our hearts are easily captivated and swiftly changed when we are desperate for existential respite. I think that Orwell’s description of Dorothy’s journey, understood in this latter sense, is an accurate and stunningly realistic portrait of how the human heart quickly grapples and comes to term with its own chaos within.
The excerpt from Orwell’s novel finds the protagonist, Dorothy, about to be share in the sacrament of communion. As the moment of ingesting the “body of Christ” approaches, Dorothy is having an internal struggle with justifying her participation. She cannot find reason to partake; there is no meaning in her action. She desperately tries to think of something as her father approaches with the communion wafer. She panics, almost to the point of breaking her routine and not taking the wafer. If she did partake, she would be participating in a lie only to please her father and follow routine. As she looks through an open door, however, she glimpses a beautiful ray of sunlight peering through the clouds, giving color and life to nature outside the church. While beholding this scene, she is reminded of her love for God and of this sacrament. She is able to take the “body of Christ” with joy and thankfulness, praying with all of her heart.
In the introduction to this excerpt, Hitchens alludes to Kierkegaard’s concept of a “leap” of reason. This concept has to do with accepting the existence and understanding of God and how one must have faith to believe in something irrational. Orwell illustrates this concept with Dorothy’s struggle to find something that reminds her that the world is inspired by a higher power. I tend to have Dorothy’s problem in times of misery and depression. How can a good God put trouble and pain in my life? Why does God not show God’s self in my everyday life? How can I be sure that God exists and is good? I then realize the selfishness in these thoughts and recognize the way they attempt to tame and confine God in a convenient way that suits my needs. I have reduced God to a god of my desired success or a god my preferred answers. The journey and the mystery of life are dismissed, and along with them the present moment in which the most deeply satisfying answers arise spontaneously. Dorothy recovers awareness of the present moment in the beauty of nature and its colors. She panics over the loss of routine, familiarity but it is the sudden break of clouds that fills her soul with understanding. It is being aware of the “now” that provides her with strength.
In this scene from A Clergyman’s Daughter, Dorothy experiences an internal struggle with her faith in God during a moment of prayer and communion. At church, Dorothy is kneeling and finding it hard to pray and receive communion. The narrator describes her thoughts, saying, “the Body and Blood of Christ, of the purpose for which she had come here, she was as though deprived of the power to think. A deadly blankness had descended upon her mind. It seemed to her that actually she could not pray” (166). Dorothy experienced a moment of emptiness, blank-ness, and confusion why she was there is the first place—silent “chaos in her heart.” But, suddenly, she turns her head to the south side of the sanctuary to see the sun piercing through the clouds, exposed to the greenery of the earth. The narrator says, “A flood of joy ran through Dorothy’s heart. The flash of living color had brought back to her, by a process deeper than reason, her peace of mind, her love of God, her power of worship” (167). Dorothy finds the spiritual strength to pray and receive communion.
This excerpt from A Clergyman’s Daughter offers an illustration on the nature of faith for 21st-Centruy Christianity. In fundamentalist circles, it is common for belief to be propositional, bold, confident, unwavering, and beyond doubt. Many in this country believe faith must take this form to be genuine faith. Those who make TV and media appearances representing the community of faith or Christians are often of this form and tenor. This causes those outside of the church to form the belief that genuine faith is beyond doubt and exceedingly confident. Even those inside the church have this view of faith, too. Many see his or her pastor expressing bold and unwavering faith. Pastors do not often talk about his or her doubts, short comings, and uncertainties—times when he or she echo’s Dorothy’s experience finding it hard, no, impossible to pray. This confident and unwavering form of faith while genuine for many is not the only form faith can or should take. In fact, I would argue that something like Dorothy’s account of faith better display’s faith than the certainty-faith illustrated above. The faith that I am advocating for is a lived faith. It is a faith that is seriously engaged with the world, including its harsh realities. It is a kind of faith that openly acknowledges the doubts people have and is happy to “sit” with them. Not necessarily problems to be solved but realities to be lived through. It’s the kind of the faith that sometimes—many times—does not feel like praying (Rom. 8:26). It’s the kind of faith that is not naïve. It’s the kind of faith that is not simplistic or satisfied with pad-answers. It’s the kind of faith that many would call unbelief and ask “what’s wrong?” Nothing is wrong. The church does not need examples of people who have indestructible faith but we need examples of people who have authentic faith. This is the kind of faith that has a chance in the 21st-Century.
The exciting story of George Orwell is questioning of the Eucharist which is performed repeatedly. Dorothy, the main character of the novel, feels nothing though participating the Eucharist. Even she cannot pray. The wafer the father gives and the mumbling words “take and eat” come to her creepiness. It feels like “a spoon of medicine” for her. The salient point of this story is that Dorothy feels awe from the greenness of the world seen through the doorway. At that point, she can pray and praise the Lord.
The Orwell’s story has an important issue of Christianity, the Eucharist. Still, the Eucharist plays an essential role in the Christian tradition. Catholic believes that practically Eucharist mediates person with Jesus, so it is the center of the church and faith. Furthermore, as the Eucharist can be performed only by priests, it supports the hierarchical structure of the Catholic church. Protestantism also counts on the Eucharist. Though the theology of it varies, no one dissent the Eucharist is one of the most valuable traditions in the Christian history. However, the crucial problem is what general Christians feel from it when they are performing. Like Dorothy, people can feel God more when they feel awe in nature. It is an important issue because it is not about the old argument of natural theology but the worry coming from the Sitz im Leben. The Eucharist is the highlight of the Christian liturgy, but many people feel that it is a tiresome procedure in a worship service.
A selection from The Clergyman’s Daughter offers insight into the experience of a silent and disengaged, if even present, deity in a common space of worship. Dorothy, the protagonist, is described as she prepares to take part in communion and finds that she not in the space to receive as she might usually have been. Her struggle is recounted as she considers the communion wafer before her in the hand of her father. Her experience is contrasted by another woman in the scene who takes the attention of her father as well as a result of her elaborate motions of crossing herself. Dorothy considers not participating at all in light of her distracted state, considering it better than to partake in such a manner. A look sideways, a look away from her current struggle, through an open door which reveals sunlight through the trees presenting itself as the brightest green is the catalyst of change in Dorothy’s experience as she receives the vibrancy of life through the greenness and found her prayer ability to have been renewed. Communion is accepted, the ritual is continued, and joy is once again in that space.
The ritual is not enough. When striving for connection with a deity, the deity itself must be present in a way that is felt by the one seeking. Otherwise, outside experiences and stimuli can provide the desired effect. When the pathways toward the theistic goal are no longer working, new pathways are forged through which to find fulfillment. The mechanical is lifeless, destined to become dry, stale, and unusable; the ritual can only take one so far. The exhausting cycle continues as seekers come time and time again to receive what is unreachable, convinced that the ritual is what works.
At the surface, George Orwell’s image from A Clergyman’s Daughter of the trouble of a young woman [whose name is Dorothy]’s experience taking Eucharist from her father, the clergyman, seems almost benevolent: the story of hope in a greater reality that can be found in the most insignificant of places. The daughter kneels for prayer that she might receive forgiveness through the body and blood of Christ, but finds herself only in the presence of a tattered church service: unable to utter a prayer. Any resemblance of the beginning of a prayer is realized to be nothing more than meaninglessness, and there exists only emptiness, in her mind. As her father offers the body of Christ, the small wafer, Dorothy does not, cannot, bring herself to receive it, for “better, far better, to step down from the altar than to accept the sacrament with such chaos in her heart!” (p. 166), until she catches a glimpse of beauty through the window in the form of reflected sunlight off a pile of leaves. In the moment of the flash of color, Dorothy is so moved that she is overcome by a peace and love of God, she is able to take part in the Eucharist again.
When one begins to examine this image, it is clear that this moment of beauty and of what seems to be Divine interaction through nature is meant to be nothing more than a futile stirring of emotion. It is not the story of renewed faith or the proved existence of God in her heart, but of volatile devotion to the Divine. I can’t say that this isn’t a worry among those of us who still believe in finding a personal God in the material world, but perhaps Orwell just didn’t spend enough time with Kierkegaard.
A short expert of From A Clergyman’s Daughter by George Orwell recounts a brief moment in which the clergyman’s daughter was receiving the Eucharist in a high liturgical service. As the daughter is receiving the bland wafer her mind is silent. She is unable to pray or contemplate her experience. She notes the smell of dust and mothballs as her mind is at unrest. The protagonist’s bleak reality is ruptured. Looking outside, the clergyman’s daughter accounts for the bright sun’s rays and vibrant greenery. Here, Orwell shifts the tone. The clergyman’s daughter gains hope and joy despite her inability to process the individual religious experience. This odd excerpt is a wonderful insight into Orwell’s atheistic perspective. Orwell understands the decline of religion and the decline of immortality to be evidence for us to move towards a post-theistic basis for morality. In the narrative, it isn’t until the main character looks outside and recognizes the beauty of nature that her joy was restored.
I understand Orwell’s distaste for establishment and organized systems of knowledge construction. As a famous dystopian author, Orwell is not fond of looking towards the institution for meaning. I wish I paid closer attention to my reading of 1984 in high school because that would be incredibly beneficial for my thoughts right now. Both Orwell and John Stuart Mill are reacting against the institutional religious experience. I imagine they would be more kind to a spirituality that is without institutional backing. Does this give them the ground for being atheist even though they are deeply anti-establishment? I am not attempting to discredit their atheism/their experience but rather I wonder how their response would be in a heavily secular era.
|
|
|
Salman Rushdie |
Rushdie pens a letter to the sixth billionth citizen of the world, who, upon reading the letter, will certainly be wondering two particular things: from where he came, and how to behave. Rushdie urges his future reader to approach these questions through tenacity of mind over and against religious dogma. Religion becomes a cultural and individual pit of intellectual submission. This is not all: religion encourages people to think and act violently toward others, refuses to tackle realistic problems that emerge from its teachings, and only heightens zeal in the face of opposition. In terms of both morality and ontology, religion infantilizes the human mind and spirit. Think, think, think, Rushdie implores. Operating within the boundaries of ancient superstition immobilizes the modern subject; thinking for oneself, by contrast, offers a method for profound engagement with reality.
Rushdie renders religion a retardant for answering questions that matter. Investigation can only be pure if it is free from the paradigmatic blindfold of religious dogma. It seems problematic, though, to assume ethics must be independent to be authentic. Religious communities offer a level of intellectual participation much deeper than Rushdie's metaphors of captivity. There is freedom, albeit a restricted freedom. Surely, religious thinkers have been violent and wrong and oppressive, and have been so communally. This is a noteworthy challenge to religious ethics, but one that is presented too simply.
Salman Rushdie addresses the six billionth person with the advice to seek answers two questions. How did we get here? How should we live? Religions, Rushdie acknowledges, have many answers to both. The many creation stories may inspire, but the living religions will not settle for mere inspiration. Rather, the living religions will coerce conformity of belief and action for the sake of cultural and individual identity. This coerced conformity while in the guise of religion is a pretext for some people to have power over others. Religions are wrong. They are wrong with their creation stories. They are wrong with their moral systems of oppression. Religious wars are being fought, and not merely across religious cultures. Religious fanatics persecute the people of their own religions, e.g. American fundamentalists against abortion providing doctors. Religious fanatics also persecute unbelievers. In place of religion, Rushdie urges the six billionth person to grow up and embrace human knowledge and freedom, i.e. the secular freedom of Voltaire against the dictates of religions.
Rushdie advocates passionately for intellectual freedom against the scourge of religious violence and oppression. He is not wrong. Religious violence and oppression is abhorrent. Rushdie also advocates leaving religion in order to be rid of religious violence. Must one disavow religion in order to disavow religious violence? I think not. A religious person can disavow violent religious fanatics. To think otherwise is a fallacy by association. The task of living peaceably with a wide range of humans who hold disparate and conflicting views is incredibly challenging. Religious and moral differences are not easily overcome even within modern liberal democracies. It is easy to think that removing religion will allow humanity to live together in an idealistic, rational utopia. People are much more complicated than that.
When, in 1997, the six-billionth human child was soon to be born, Salman Rushdie contributed to an anthology of letters to the child sponsored by the United Nations. This piece is Rushdie's expanded version of his letter. It captures his disdain for and sadness concerning what he sees as the irredeemably negative effects of religion – both on individual and social levels. He also expresses empathy for someone who enters such a world riddled with gods and religions. Focusing on two central human questions – “How did we get here?” and “How shall we live?” – Rushdie explains that, unfortunately, such questions are much more difficult to address authentically when religious answers dominate both the public and private conversations. In the latter half of the letter, he takes on the issue of religious wars, noting that his prognosis of the matter has actually changed over the years. Rushdie says that whereas he used to argue against the reductive “clash of civilizations” theory, he now sees the “harsh truth” and warns the six-billionth child of the possibility of a “war of religion” if “the worst of us are being allowed to dictate the agenda to the rest of us” (382). Thus, he calls for a “revolution” of sorts – he calls for people to “choose mind over dogma,” to “put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatized and plain” (382, 383). This requires, he admits, developing a certain level of toleration for the fallibility of human knowledge and a creative approach to the secular-ethical positions, which may be “fuzzier” than the sharply defined religious laws, but he insists that such challenges present the opportunity for true freedom and possibility. Thus, though at certain points in the text, the future seems bleak, he ends with an uplifting note of encouragement and hope: “Imagine there's no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky's the limit” (383).
Rushdie's letter is not exactly a pleasant bedtime story for a newborn. He is clearly both angered and saddened by the continued influence of religious traditions and genuinely troubled by the possibility of widespread religious war, and he is more than willing to throw the baby out with the bath water (irony intended, as he does not seem excited about the world population reaching six billion). Though I do have some empathy for his position – since, given his position and experiences he has likely known intimately some of the worst aspects of religious fanaticism and horror – I strongly disagree with the suggestion that the world would be a better place without religion in general. Further, I do not believe a world without religion is even a possibility. At least not any time soon. Thus, I believe the ethical approach to religious terror, institutional corruption, infantilizing fundamentalism, and harmful dogmatism (for example in the context of sexual ethics, birth control, and STI prevention) is one of effortful, critical, hard-won reworking and reform. Rushdie seems to anticipate all-out war, and he insists that “the victors in such a war must not be the closed-minded, marching into battle with, as ever, God on their side” (382). What, then, does he hope for? Does he hope that an atheistic regime will “conquer” religious people and impose atheism upon them, thereby eradicating religion? This is both unlikely and terrifying. I believe there are compelling ways to approach the effort to decrease the influence and incidence of harmful beliefs and practices, but Rushdie's approach does not seem helpful in that regard.In this letter to the sixth billionth person alive, Salman Rushdie tells all children that religion is a fallacy. He blames religion for the overgrown human population. He also describes what is going to happen in wars of religion. In order to survive miseries brought by religion, the author encourages children to challenge the dominance of religion and fight for their freedom.
If I was able to read this letter as a child, I might want to agree with Rushdie. Religious stories are not only stories for children from religious families; there contain principles of religious doctrines. Principles impose restrictions on children. Children do not understand why they have to wear their best clothes to the church, a boring building where they are required to sit quietly for hours. At least this is my childhood experience. I was too shy to attend the Sunday school. So I had no choice but to listene to sermons, although I did not understand. When the minister was preaching the glory of God, I thought she was saying the pesticide of God because the word pesticide and the word glory sound alike in my mother tongue (and as a result, for a long time I thought God was a gardener because He used pesticide). I did not enjoy the church. I was there only because I had to be there in observance of my family tradition. Why is Sunday a church day? Why spends a day inside when the sunshine is good enough to do some family outdoor activities such as a picnic? Questions like these never left me alone when I was sitting in my pew and staring at the sunshine that came in from the gap between the church door and the floor. Now as an adult, I can answer my childhood question. Children have to be in the church or synagogue or temple because it is where they receive moral teachings that tell them how to distinguish right from wrong based on their cultural context. These teachings are crucial in the development of their cognitive abilities. If children are taught that Jesus is a good man, they are more likely to regard Jesus (rather than Voldemort) as their moral standard because they want to be good. It is important to let children know what kind of moral principles they should follow because children are born to learn. Learning by imitating is how they grow up year by year. Rushdie calls religion “the policemen of our liberties and behavior” and he encourages children to fight against “the policemen” (383). Is it bad to have religious policemen such as Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam? If we need policemen to organize the traffic and catch criminals, we might also need religion as policemen to regulate human morality.
In this piece Rushdie is writing to the theoretical six billionth citizen born to the world. It was part of a larger book from the United Nations to commemorate the population event. In his letter, Rushdie urges the new citizen to look at the world without dogma or religion, and gives many reasons why religion's harmful effects are still felt around the world. Rushdie cites population control issues due to religious backlash against birth control in countries form his native India to the United States. He sees lack of treatment for sexually transmitted diseases as a growing problem. He also cites religion's still prevalent effect on free speech, one that censors artists (a problem he knows all too well). He criticizes Muslim countries for what is seen as silence from a majority to the scant minority of extremists who brutalize their people, considering it to be just as wrong as committing the acts themselves.
This piece is an important one for sure, and definitely helps to point out many of the ways in which religion is implicit in the brutalization of bodies, the censoring of speech, and the harming of the environment with policies that increase the population to dangerous heights. In terms of censoring speech Rushdie knows the harms of that all too well, as he has had a fawta on his head since 1988 due to his book The Satanic Verses. However, sometimes the prose can hit Muslims a bit too harshly, as points about being silent in the face of extremism are somewhat exaggerated, and Rushdie could have benefited from indicting Christianity as well for being guilty of the same crimes (it was, in fact, only a month after the release of his controversial book that radical French Christians threw Molotov cocktails into a theater showing Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ objecting to the portrayal of their messiah; see Steven Greenhouse, "Police Suspect Arson In Fire at Paris Theater," The New York Times, October 24, 1988.). However, this is a good letter that shows a modern person's view of how religion can harm in a more plural environment and also provides good evidence on how it can affect lives on the smallest level.
The classic Beatles' song Imagine reemerges under the pen of Salman Rushdie's plea to the six billionth world citizen born in the year 1997. Remain as you are, little being. In the purest sense and sensibility, concern yourself with the two most pressing, simple questions: How did we get here? And then, how shall we live? Rushdie warns the little one: Though the stories of humanity are beautiful and tantalizing, do not be beguiled to foolishness by such narratives. He urges the future to live in the freedom to think for one's self. Then, in step with human development and process, Rushdie urges imagination, the simplest of all human liberties.
For quite some time, even before I was a mother, Kahlil Gibran's On Children spoke to my soul. Prior to holding the life I made in my arms, I knew its inherent truth. This child, so fresh and new, was born with all the innate knowledge, realized in his purity and unscathed being. I remember regularly looking into his eyes, while he suckled at my breast, and thought, “You know, don't you?” Rushdie's letter to the six billionth world citizen propagates this truth by celebrating the individual worth and agency of the smallest among us. It is a message of hope for future generations, one that I have to admit seems true and right. Yet, as a mother, what shall I do with the stories of humanity? Do they need qualification? Or liberated interpretation? Do some narratives need to die altogether and be forgotten? If they need so much editing, is it even worth it? What about tradition and shared story with humanity throughout time?
In 1997 the UN sponsored an anthology of letters to the six-billionth person, projected to be born that year. In Salman Rushdie’s letter he describes the pitfalls tied to belief in God. God is an alluring answer to the question: why are we here? But, taking this answer sacrifices your intellectual and ethical self, leading to a dangerously fearful view of others. Instead, Salman urges the newest citizen to be comfortable with the fuzzy and contradictory space of freedom.
Of all the things that you could tell the six-billionth child warning them about the close-mindedness that often accompanies religion is a worthwhile message. Salman especially has seen the damage that those mindsets can wreck. But he talks about “battling” such dogmatism. Is this the kernal of dogmatism within his own mindset? If I was just born I wouldn’t want to be recruited on either side of the fight. But in Salman’s world there is no third way, sorry six-billionth baby.
In his letter to the sixth billionth living member of the human race, “Imagine There’s No Heaven,” Salman Rushdie raises two questions and offers one warning. The questions, which he views as universal responses to human life, ask, “why we are here?” and, now that we are, “how shall we live?” The warning offered is to beware the numerous failed answers proffered by religions. On bare factual terms, Mr. Rushdie notes, every religion has been just plain wrong about the answer to the first question. While he might go on to warn against the impending conflict from all these competing wrong answers, Rushdie instead warns against the violence (merely cultural and otherwise) that the purveyors of these wrong, religious answers effect against their own. This, to him, is the great “war of religion,” and it is waged, not against the apostate (though surely them too), but against the faithful. As to the second question, he insists that, as H.L. Mencken is said to have quipped, for every complicated question, there is an answer that is simple. And wrong. Instead, Mr. Rushdie encourages the newest citizen of the world (and thereby all of us veterans) to select the more difficult, unsteady, and irregular path towards ethical behaviour constituted by a great secular conversation. This, Rushdie insists, is freedom and without such freedom, no authentic ethics are possible.
I wonder if Mr. Rushdie’s inversion of the concept of “religious war” is not a preemptive evasion of the religious response to his warning. After all, such antagonism towards religion, even at its “most sophisticated,” as not just factually wrong about where we come from, but morally wrong about where we ought to go, is to step into the fray constituted by the sort of “religious war” Mr. Rushdie wishes to downplay. The secularist has, in fairly short order, come to be haunted by broadly religious character of their commitment to an interpretation of the universe and a vision for the good life. Insofar as Mr. Rushdie finds that interpretation and/or vision is true and good, then he is called into the struggle for directing, in his one six-billionth contribution, to the direction of history. To be committed to participating in human history puts atheists like Rushdie where they least want to be: side-by-side with even the least sophisticated religious nonsense as one option among many. Perhaps Mr. Rushdie’s opposition would be better effected by supporting and praising what he finds the humanly authentic impulses internal to religions, letting human accomplishment displace the nonsense on its own.
To mark the ominous occasion of the human population reaching six billion people, Salman Rushdie wrote a brief, but potent essay addressed to that newborn. Rushdie draws his title from John Lennon’s mind-expanding suggestion to “Imagine there’s no heaven.” The essay is loosely structured around two basic questions that have always plagued human beings, “How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?” (380). These are generally worthwhile questions, but they are particularly important in this context because the inability of atheism to provide definitive answers is one reason why many people — including potentially that six billionth person — find atheism unappealing. Rather than trying to satisfy this desire for certainty, Rushdie implies that atheism’s ambiguity on these two points is actually a virtue. Religious people dogmatically believe their own creation myths, but it’s obvious that these ancient texts are themselves reflections upon a great mystery, not revelations of certain knowledge. Why not simply admit that we don’t know and wait for relevant scientific information? Likewise, Rushdie questions whether the black-and-white clarity of religious morals is really a good thing. Morality is always “fuzzy,” so the most rational approach is to demand that people think for themselves, participate in cultural discussions on controversial issues, and take responsibility for their actions. Clarity, Rushdie seems to argue, is a false value; better to favor the freedom and intellectual honesty of unbelief.
Rushdie’s essay is so beautifully written it makes me wish I was the six billionth world citizen! His deep empathy is tangible and, combined with unmistakable sincerity, it persuades without argument. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the piece is a rhetorical gem. By replacing the conventional phrase “God-forsaken land” with “God-ridden land,” Rushdie encapsulates into three simple words his thoughts about the perilous connections between religious authority and social health. Many of his comments reflect the pain of someone who has moved from religious insider to outside. For instance, there is no doubt that the following statement reflects personal experience: “[Your stories] will be called the heart of your culture, even of your individual identity. It is possible that they may, at some point, come to feel inescapable, not in the way that the truth is inescapable, but in the way that a jail is” (381). Rushdie’s heartfelt pleading compels us to “Live in your own time” (383) and his courageous voice helps us to feel just how beautiful “the world undogmatized and plain” (ibid.) can be. In that sense, his essay pays a worthy tribute to Lennon who also helped people imagine that life could be full of hope and goodness even with God and his paradise.
In “Imagine There's no Heaven,” Rushdie writes a letter to the six billionth person born in the world. The letter begins with a caution in respect to religion. First, Rushdie warns that living religions require a dangerous degree of participation and imprison life. Then Rushdie explains that current human knowledge has shown these religions to be false. Next Rushdie blames religion not only for overpopulation but also for the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Religion is and will continue to be the cause of war and death. Rushdie goes on to talk about morality. He explains that religion might make ethics an easier task, but it also turns morality into a markedly dangerous black and white game. Freedom, Rushdie argues, requires a conversation about the ethical rather than a clear answer. He concludes by saying that, without an idea of heaven, the world is more free.
This is an interesting letter to read. My first impression is that it is quite pessimistic. Rushdie seems to think this six billionth person born in the world would be better off not knowing any religion at all. I find this a difficult conclusion to reach. Rushdie has made some clear assumptions about religion and the main goal of the institution, which, according to the letter, seems to be heaven. It seems to me that this letter might be more effective if, rather than attack religion and then encourage one to forget the idea of a heaven, it made a positive attempt to explain a brief history of religion and then encourage one to re-imagine heaven as something present. The negative nature of the letter was quite a turn off for me at least. Even though I could resonate with many of Rushdie's critiques of religion and don't disagree with his conclusion, I find myself wanting to argue against the attacks he aims at religion because of the way he frames them rather than their merit. Even though I disagree with the nature of the letter, the idea behind the letter does seem like a message we should hear more often, even in the religious context.
In his letter to the six billionth world citizen, Salman Rushdie describes how human beings have made blind faith central to determining their existence in this world. Rushdie claims that religion is seductive and can claim the heart of one's culture and individual identity. Rushdie argues that the sacred texts of different religions often claims to solve the great mystery of human existence and uses those text to take control over people. Rushdie believes the real war that religion has unleashed is the “sphere of influence,” the sheer control that religion enjoys over the lives of people. Religion unleashes war against the minority – the unbelievers and those who disagree with its ideals and practices. So, the author's advice to the sixth billionth world citizen is that he or she should not look into religion for the answer of existence because human understanding about truth is imperfect and cannot lead to the ultimate truth.
This excerpt is a creative piece of work that expresses a thoughtful critique of religion and the way it has been perceived. I agree with Rushdie that religion can be misused to take advantage of people by the sheer control over people that it permits. I think it is important to note that Rushdie does not question the authority or the power that has enabled human existence but he does question the myths about the existence of human beings that have been developed through blind faith. I think Rushdie does a good job of unpacking those myths. But my critique of Rushdie is that he stops with unpacking myths and with critiquing the blind religious faith that produces such myths. He has not gone forward in seeking wisdom or truth about the meaning of human existence. I agree with what Rushdie argues about imperfect human knowledge. Rushdie says “Imperfect human knowledge may be a bumpy, pot-holed street” but then in the next sentence he seems to contradict himself when he admits that “it is the only road to wisdom that is worth taking.” I think it is ironic that the only way to find or even come close to the truth is to go through all the imperfections of this world. Thus, after reading this article I do not agree with Rushdie's conclusion that the answer to the question of human existence is not to imagine that there is no heaven; rather, we should unpack the myths of heaven and search for the truth about the meaning of human existence through the imperfections of this world.
In a letter to the soon-to-be six billionth child, Salman Rushdie wrote to express his fears about the world into which the child would soon be born: a world filled with wars and problems caused by religious belief. Rushdie does not explain the reasons for his atheism, but he encourages the child to not even consider an alternative. His main points of contention with religion are its tendencies to cause war, its officials who claim authority and try to monopolize morality, and its overall oppressiveness.
Rushdie writes with a lot of anger. The way in which he dismisses all forms of religion is so abrupt that it leaves no room for any sort of exception. I find that it is harder for me to listen to and meditate on the ideas of an author when he or she seems entirely shut off to any sort of dialogue—and that is what I experience when I read Rushdie. His matter-of-fact writing makes claims, leaves no room for discussion, and insults anyone who doesn’t agree with him. I suppose that in a longer article he might possibly have room to be gracious.
Salman Rushdie begins his letter to the six billionth world citizen with two questions he or she will be faced with: How did we get here? And how shall we live? Framing his letter around these two questions, Rushdie takes the first question as an opportunity to introduce and dismantle the concept of religion and the second question as an inquiry into the nature of morality. He tells the new citizen that one of the first things they will face in this world is the presentation of some grand Being that exists beyond their perception and comprehension. This ineffable part of reality carries with it certain stories about how this world and those of us in it came to be. They will be elaborate and exciting stories, but Rushdie warns that one cannot respond to them as literature since only stories belonging to “dead” religions can be literary. These stories will come to define the new citizen culturally and individually, and over time they may feel restrictive and limiting. Rushdie then identifies these stories as the basis for religion, a source of great evil (and some good) in human history. Despite these stories being completely disproved, religion carries on under the blind faith of its followers, leading to overpopulation, premature deaths, and the wars that will define our world for the next several decades. Specifically, Rushdie notes that the wars of religion are not massive clashes of civilization, but more often the violent oppression of another religious group within the dominant group's realm. To go against these tendencies, though, would be to choose mind over dogma, and human knowledge over religious stories, a task Rushdie believes is easier than one thinks. When it comes to matters of morality, the second question for concern, Rushdie puts it in perspective; one can chose to listen to oneself decide or one can listen to a law-giving entity outside of oneself. He questions whether self-morality inevitably leads to the sort of cultural relativism that has lead to inexcusable acceptance of terrible human rights violations. He answers by saying that even though freedom is fuzzier than hard-line ideology, it at least allows for a realm in which such matters are open for discussion, thereby allowing the innate morality of humanity to step in. Rushdie ends by telling the new citizen to imagine no heaven, to put away the stories, and to grow up and govern ourselves.
I am disappointed by Rushdie's article and believe his personal history and relations with religious extremists have tainted his view, causing him to mislead the six billionth world citizen on the nature of religion. As a brilliant and well-read writer, Rushdie should know better than to limit religion to the cartoonish caricature he portrays in this letter and in doing so he comes across as elitist and somewhat ignorant. Rushdie's strong craft in writing has allowed him to deliver this letter in a subtle tone that may seem innocuous on the connotative level, but his dismissal and prejudice of religious people comes across as mocking. It's as if every time he chooses to mention that religion has done some iota of good in this world, his sentence ends with an understood condescending, “bless them.” On the content level, his over-simplification of religious stories and their foundational structures for belief is not only disingenuous but dangerous. Disbelief in a religious system does not permit ignorance thereof, and blatant misrepresentation of a belief system's stories elicits scorn and ridicule on the same level that Rushdie is criticizing religious believers. Rushdie's inverted perennialism encourages the reader to brush aside all religions as the same damaging forces that once every few hundred years pull off a good deed but otherwise act as prisons for our minds. I am confident that much of Rushdie's bile toward religion stems from his own dealings with extremists and it only serves to weaken his argument for a post-religious society. In the end, even his final solution of just listening to the song, putting religion away, and “be[ing] the policemen of our liberties and behavior” (383) sounds glib and distantly idealistic. I believe Rushdie's promotion of atheism fails under the same analytic and critical thinking his article espouses.
In his letter to the six-billionth child in the living global population, Salman Rushdie presents a plea to a new generation to advance beyond religion and commitment based on blind faith. Rushdie, himself a target of religious violence, cites religion’s history of begetting war and injustice in the name of gods who, in all probability, are not there. With other like-minded thinkers Rushdie highlights dead gods and their cults as case subjects in a religious history strewn with discarded deities. He ends his essay with a call for honest, peaceful engagement with one another as we float in a lonely cosmos.
Rushdie’s polemic is effective but contains a serious flaw. To paraphrase a single line, he admits that we may appreciate past religions for their beauty without much danger. Contemporary religion, on the other hand, requires more of its supplicants than it can justify with the aesthetic. I do not think that an argument should so easily sunder the aesthetic and the ethical. Certainly, religion persistently bewitches our species. Yet it is not enough simply to admit that its lure is vaguely connected with evolutionary processes: the question remains far too beautiful and terrible to ignore its meaning. Rushdie and others fall into the trap of reducing religion to a dynamic of fear and power rather than understanding it as a response, quite appropriately, to the sublime. In its most neutral interpretation religion is a structure of meaning referring to something that appears unnamable. Still, Rushdie is far too quick to dismiss its ambiguity as childishness. Rather than seek meaning in a compelling system of beauty and ugliness he abandons the question altogether by severing it from morality. This is all well and good if one is willing to abandon the call of the aesthetic in favor of a truly ascetic ethic. But an artist should know better.
Rushdie writes an open letter to the 6th Billionth human, begging this human to not fall into the pitfalls of religion. He explains the mess that religion has made of humanity and the world, that it is irrational yet grasped onto. He is upset by the grandness of religiously inspired violence in the scheme of human history, but Rushdie is more so mourned by the minute ways in which religion gets in the way of compassion. Humans are not taking care of other humans because of the created boundaries between them. However, has has begun to see that the small and local violence between humans is raising to a radical and war like space because “the worst of use are being allowed to dictate the agenda to the rest of us” (382). He implores the 6th billionth human to ignore religion, and hopes that eventually the rest of humanity will too. He hopes in individual freedom of thought unburdened by religious fairy tales and in the potential of a new and irreligious future.
I will focus on one of the final sentences of this letter, as Rushdie envisions a world in which “we could put the stories back in the books, the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmitized and plain” (383). An interesting and idealistic thought for a person so incredibly disdainful towards religion that humans would be able to scrub all religious heritage from their thinking and perceptions. He is a novelist for goodness sake, and he wishes to scour all religious story from the earth? I can understand hoping that people do no belief that the religious tales are true, but he wants them ignored. Does he maintain that this is his particular perspective? He plainly sees the world? The arrogance of putting stories away is the willingness to erase so many people. How can he guarantee that humans without a religious story will be so much better to one another? The hopeful potential he sees in humans without religion puts the blame on the wrong enemy. We will always find a reason to hurt one another, and he is essentially asking them to get more creative with their excuses once religion is so luxurious irrelevant in his limitless future.
In 1997, former Muslim Salman Rushdie wrote a letter to a UN-sponsored anthology addressed to the six-billionth person. That year, experts estimated that the sixth-billionth person would be born. Rushdie organizes his letter around two questions that the sixth-billionth person will inevitably ask him or herself, “How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?” (380). Rushdie attempts to answer these to questions by disaffirming theism and affirming atheism. Answering the first question, Rushdie finds some creation stories horrifying and, yet, some beautiful. However, as he states, “As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common.” Unfortunately, at this point, Rushdie does not offer any positive answer to the first question but continues to blame religion for making people feel like they are in “jail,” the over population of the globe, war, and being irrational. Rushdie answers the latter question, saying, “how to live? what is right action, and what wrong?—it comes down to your willingness to think for yourself.” After admitting that freedom is “fuzzy,” Rushdie recommends the sixth-billionth person to “put the [religious] stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world dogmatized and plain” (383).
In this strongly worded and sometimes confusing letter, Rushdie attempts to provide advice to the sixth-billionth person and take-down religious belief. One wonders whether Rushdie does not so much care about providing helpful advice, but, rather, is using this letter as a platform bash religion. Obviously, the sixth-billionth person will more than likely never read this letter. Therefore, the letter was written to you and me and the future inhabitants of the globe. How might the sixth-billionth person in the world had felt if he or she did read this letter? Seeing that world population is more religious than not, we might safely assume that the sixth-billionth person is religious. Would Rushdie have unnecessarily offended the sixth-billionth person? Would Rushdie’s tone and “graceful” rhetoric have looked appealing to the sixth-billionth person? Seeing how Rushdie blames the rising population on “the misguidedness of the race’s spiritual guides” and push against birth control, would the sixth-billionth person feel welcomed to planet earth by Rushdie or would he or she feel like they were part of the problem? While I do think Rushdie made several interesting points in his essay, his harsh and aggressive rhetoric proved to stand out the most. Which forces the question, what are some of the effects of a harsh, aggressive rhetoric in atheism-theism debates and dialogues? How does this rhetoric effect those involved in the debates? Those listening to the debate? Those watching watchers of the debate? The degree of the rationality of the proposed arguments?
“How did we get here?” “How shall we live?” These two questions are the fundamental questions which constitute a religion. Basically, religion is something experiencing about the origin of the world and suggesting the way people live, so-called ethics. In a similar vein, the Bible also has two categories, proclamation and imperative. The former Muslim, Salman Rushdie, states about the two questions through her letter, which religion does not have a proper answer. She indicates two weaknesses. The first is the fallacy which religion has had from its origin. Many religions have told the origin of the world and the human being. However, according to her, those are “quite simply wrong.” The other is the argument that religion has oppressed the world. For her, a war of religion is not the war between religions but the oppression which religion imposes to the society. She also emphasizes needlessness of the ethic coming from religion, because it is the dogmatized one. She believes that if we abandon religion, we can “see the world undogmatized and plain.”
The assertions of Rushdie look like reasonable but has a considerable error, the generalization error. She generalizes the superficial aspects of religion to the whole religion. All religion represses the society because some did. All religion confines liberty of the human being because some did. Those are her assertions. In history, religion used to commit such roles, but not always. How can she explain the role of religion which led to the progress of the world? She has a weak argument. The question of the origins of the world also has poor logic. Every example she suggests is mythology. A myth is not a religion. It is one kind of narrative literature. Many theologians already overcome it on the process of Entmythologisierung in the religious field. The myth is not true cause it is an animated story. The origin of the world explained by religion cannot be proved as it is the religious proclamation rather than science. Also, she lays many evil deeds to a religion’s charge and tries to move the morality of people into the safe place, without any grounds. This article is full of extreme optimism.
Written as part of United Nations anthology, Rushdie’s “Letter” prepares the hypothetical “six billionth world” citizen to answer the “two sixty-four thousand dollar questions”: “How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?” In response to that first question, the perennial ontological question, Rushdie introduces a variety of mythic/religious stories that have been offered up as answers to this inescapable question. Although these stories are dismissed as “quite simply wrong,” Rushdie does acknowledge the beauty and appeal of theses stories. He writes, “Unfortunately, however, you will not be required to make a purely literary response to them. Only the stories of ‘dead’ religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you.” Rushdie unpacks the pervasive influence of these stories upon cultures, which can often appear “inescapable” and like a prison for those who cease to identify with their culture’s religion. For Rushdie, the greatest danger of religion seems to come from the threat of religious violence directed from religious authorities and political powers towards their own citizens. “The real wars of religion…are the was religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their ‘sphere of influence.’ They are wars of the godly against the largely defenseless…” The most concrete examples he brings forth come from the world of Isalm – which is understandable given his own history. His advice offered to this fictitious child is to embrace atheism. “To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities.” On the ethical side of things, the second sixty-four thousand dollar question, Rushdie says this allows us to escape a moral authority that “infantilizes our ethical selves” and frees us to make our own moral decisions.
Rushdie has first-hand experience of the threat of Islamic extremist violence that most of us can never imagine, and it is understandable that he would take the position that he does in this piece. Although I think he paints Islam with too broad of a brush – the particular variety of Islam that he views as threatening is a specifically Arabic form of Islam that is distinct from the forms found in places such as Indonesia – there is still a tendency amongst liberals, both religious and political, to ignore the severity of this problem (although without question that problem extends in the opposite direction as well). I found myself a bit disappointed by the end of the piece as he assures us that the worldview that he defends does not slide into complete moral relativism, yet I found his explanation lacking in depth.
Salman Rushdie writes a conversational but hard-hitting letter to the six-billionth citizen of the world in Imagine There’s No Heaven. He starts by acknowledging that it is inevitable as a human to consider questions such as existence of humanity and what is the best way to exist as an individual or a species. He warns against religion and its requirement to believe in an invisible being “somewhere up there” in heaven. Rushdie explains that living religions are demanding institutions for those who take part in them in that one’s, culture, stories and identity becomes deeply intertwined with the somewhat inescapable community groups that often do more harm than good in the world as a whole. According to Rushdie, the only common thread throughout religions in that they are all simply wrong, but this has not deterred zany believers from persisting. He goes on to discuss wars of religion, and sees them as between the religions themselves and those that find themselves within each religion’s “sphere of influence.” To conclude, Rushdie ends his letter with wisdom and advice to the dear six-billionth person. He urges his future reader to consider morality as the willingness to think for oneself and to realize that morality is not an external concept. His last desire is that the world would be seen “undogmatized” and plain, unhindered by the systems of religious belief.
Salman Rushdie’s letter offers a unique perspective in that his reflection is not personal, nor does it solely specify the Christian God as the one to be rejected. His approach focuses on the systematic influences that religion has had on the world, and rejects those instead of one specific tradition. He rightfully cites the sheer amount of evil that has been done in the name of religion and I am particularly struck by his observation that despite religious stories being found as wrong, the devoutness of those who follow them has not changed, if anything, they have strengthened under the concept of blind faith. He speaks in rather black and white terms, going to the extremes with the majority, if not all of his examples. Although earnest, his letter comes across as extremely negative and is dismissive of other significant advances of religion. However, I appreciate his critical lens and find his comments on morality and the encouragement to play a part in the regulation of our own liberty and behavior as striking and energizing, rather than dismissive and unhelpful.
Written in the style of a letter, beginning with “Dear Little Sixth Billionth Living Person” (380), this piece encourages this sixth billionth person not to shy from questions of our existence as humanity, but also to reject the religious stories that provide rationale and comfort, to which he even acknowledges might strike one as seductive. Dead religions have the best stories, but living religions require more than listening ears, Rushdie warns. Maybe more importantly, these religions are the force behind much violence and evil, which no amount of comfort in stories can surpass. After writing fairly extensively in such a short piece on the problem of religion and violence, particularly that of the Islamic tradition, Rushdie imparts a small piece of advice: to live in one’s time, not holding onto faith of the past, so that humanity might flourish into the future. As to the question of morality which Rushdie anticipates this sixth billionth person to wonder, the answer lies in one’s ability to think for themselves. The conversation that lives within the question of morality is one of freedom. Rushdie then concludes with encouragement and wit, “Imagine there’s no heaven...and at once the sky’s the limit.” (383)
If I were to write the response piece, “Dear Sixth Billion-and-One-th Person”, I might encourage my recipient to embrace stories, for I hold that stories are our most powerful tool to conveying truth. Fiction might compel common people most, J.K. Rowling has made that clear, but never underestimate the power of non-fiction. It is fair to note that history might not shine the spotlight of glory on religion, however the twentieth century certainly did not glamourize the non-religious world. Somebody always has the reason to believe, somebody always has the proof not to. Embrace the wisdom that lives in the six billion people cohabiting with you, and believe for yourself. Live in the search for truth, little person number six billion and one, because it dwells around you; there’s no need to look up to the sky.
Salman Rushdie writes an unflinchingly honest letter addressed to the six billionth child born in the world which criticizes organized religions and their corresponding supernatural constructs. He bluntly states that an increase in scientific knowledge about the natural world has rendered religion essentially useless as a tool for understanding natural phenomena, pointing out that the true commonality among religions is the degree to which they paint an inaccurate picture of reality. Rushdie laments that this apparent wrongness has done little to diminish the furry and zeal of religious devotees, citing the tremendous amount of religious violence that is frequently enacted against anyone who contests the inerrancy of sacred beliefs.
Rushdie presents valid arguments against the dogmatism promoted by many of the world’s leading religions. However, his insistence that our ethical standards need not be bound to doctrinal assertions in ancient texts is what makes the piece stand out. He vilifies the moral dichotomies presupposed by religious orders referring to them as an infanalization of human morality. Rushdie does not offer a clear answer to the question of ethics in the contemporary world, yet he refuses to accept religious orders that offer moral prescriptions without lending sufficient evidence to support their claims. It would be easy to view Rushdie as a bitter atheist who is merely scornful towards religion. That, of course, would be simplifying a much greater goal. Rushdie’s antagonism towards religion does not manifest out of spite. Rather, his purpose is to implore humanity to think beyond a fictionalized reality and see the world for what it truly is. In this task, he succeeds.
Sir Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian writer whose fictional work is often set on the Indian subcontinent focusing on disruptions and migrations in between Eastern and Western Civilization. In his work, “Imagine There’s No Heaven,” A Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen, Rushdie constructs a readable and contemplative letter, providing advice to the newly 6,000,000,000th citizen of the world. The literary work centers around two questions that the 6th billionth individual will likely ask themselves at some point, how did we get here? And, how shall we live? Rushdie urges the newborn that they will strongly be encouraged to imagine there is a heaven with at least one god in residence. These beautiful and seductive stores, enticing, provide a cultural and existential identity. Yet, Rushdie argues that religion’s inability to be up-to-date with modern identity and culture is the result for rampant sexual ignorance and deaths caused by lack of medical attention. The religious experience even grips those who do not identify with a particular tradition. Religious wars are often the godly verses the ungodly defenseless. Rushdie urges the 6th billionth citizen of the world to choose mind over dogma and to trust in our humanity instead of dangerous divinities.
Rushdie’s brilliant work, “Imagine There’s No Heaven” A Letter to the Six Billionth Citizen of the World is a brilliant thoughtful piece of literature that provides space for the reader to truly ask the questions unto themselves. Rushdie has seen the religious hatred develop in his experience living in India with conflicts between Hindus and Muslims. I can sympathize greatly with what he is stating. In reaction to a powerful religious system, I would be curious as to if his life would actually be better if Rushdie was raised in a secular nation? Would the critique be different? Would Rushdie be critical of secular nation-states? I would love to read Rushdie’s letter to the 9th billionth citizen. I would hope the content would be dramatically different as humanity would no longer be gripped by abusive religious systems.
|
|
|
Bertrand Russell |
Bertrand Russell’s “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish” is exactly that-- a history of man’s failure to be rational. The history mostly centers on people in power effectively convincing large populations to continue degrading a minority, whether that minority be based on religion, ethnicity, or gender. Russell paints these unfortunately true episodes against the backdrop of religious or political leaders and philosophers who insisted that the minority group be punished for some sin that occurred long ago, such as Jews being persecuted for the death of Christ, or women being denied rights because of Eve’s unfortunate penchant for apples. He recognizes that not all absurdity comes from religious belief, but that much of religious thinking is driven by opinions that contradict one another.
Russell’s article is a delightful read, as he wrote with a gentle sense of humor. I think his piece would be soothing for unbelievers, as he moves quite quickly through sometimes humorous, sometimes sad episodes where religion has led to logical fallacy. For the believer, Russell seems to be issuing a challenge of sorts. He seems to be asking if theologians realize that their metaphysical claims can’t be empirically proven, or if they realize that their sets of claims have internal contradictions. While Russell seemed content to chuckle fondly at the ridiculousness of human reasoning in general, he certainly had a bone to pick with the effects of faith on reasoning, but he never quite reached a level of hostility.
|
|
|
Carl Sagan |
Sagan begins and ends by presenting religion as subservient to human needs and comparing the character of superstitious delusion to extra-terrestrial life. He traces demonology from Hesiod to his own contemporary zeitgeist, climaxing with the inquisitors and prickers of the early modern world. Indeed, Sagan provides his weightiest descriptions when dealing with papal-endorsed witch hunts. Along with his readers, he cringes at the mass murder instigated and affirmed by religious thought.
Sagan tells the heart-breaking truth. Religious fervor and moral tragedy are intertwined throughout history. All told, though, there is little connection in Sagan's argument between historical fault and contemporary religious behavior. Indeed, the religious mind is continuously re-shaped in light of the moral failure of the past. Christianity especially is able to hold its history over and against its mission with an eye both critical and repentant. Sagan's piece is stirring, but tired.
Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World traces the belief in demons from Socrates’ writings in antiquity through the late medieval period. Sagan also discusses the witch-hunt obsession as a way for the Church to permit mass murder and profit from it. He uses this history lesson to argue that although we do not believe these things today, we are not truly separated from such superstitions. Sagan highlights the fact that religions will still charge their opponents with “sorcery” and the mentally ill are still referred to as “demonic” (225). In the last paragraph, he relates these demonic beliefs to the UFO stories today in order to claim that the only way we can hold onto religion in modernity is if we still believe in the reality of demons.
I was left wondering, how does this fit in today? What exactly is the critique? Sagan seems to set up the critique that the religious created a God of the gaps with the entire supernatural world and God is the only entity left. He seems to want to say: “look, you’ve believed silly things for ages, why are you hanging onto God?” He assumes that the religious are deluded, and the only way they could be so deluded is if they still believe in demons and thus need the saving grace of religion (namely, Christianity). I found Sagan’s argument and point to be vague and difficult to follow.
This piece is a brief history of the belief in demons. The history opens and ends with allusions to the idea that belief in aliens is the modern manifestation of this ancient belief in demons. But if this is the thesis that Sagan is trying to argue, it is not adequately developed. Instead the piece is a litany of horrendous actions caused by the belief in demons. The piece culminates with a description of the “Hammer of Witches,” a defense of and tutorial for the torture of witches. After reading this piece one is left with a feeling of disgust at the horrors caused by superstitious beliefs and fears.
I wish I had not read this piece. My childhood memories of Sagan walking with me among the stars have been replaced by this tour through the wretchedness of humanity. Sagan does not make a direct link between the belief in demons and religious belief. Nor does he take a specific stand as an atheist. But is obvious why Hitchens would include this selection: it is impossible to not have a visceral repulsion to the violence people have condoned with religion.
In “The Demon-Haunted World” astronomer Carl Sagan takes on the wild superstitions of religious, specifically Christian, belief by establishing a parallel between religious belief in supernatural demons and belief in aliens. To do this, Sagan lays out a condensed history of demons in the Western worldview. Originally demons were neither supernatural nor evil at all, merely intermediaries between humanity and the gods. Demons were not given the qualities of good or evil until the later Platonists formulated the idea, an idea that was absorbed by the early Christians and taken to the next level. Augustine fully vilified demons, presenting them as animalistic creatures who prey on the weaknesses of humanity, spawning witches with unknowing human victims. Pope Innocent VIII later embraced these notions and set the wheels in motion for extensive witch hunts that epitomized the brutality and harsh consequences of superstitious belief. Sagan describes an entire civilization turned upside down over the fear of demons and their spawn. The fear never fully ceased, merely giving way to a more restrained and localized fear of that which is beyond our perception. Sagan specifically points out the similarities between demon possession stories and modern alien abduction stories, culminating in a rather opaque conclusion. In the end, he wonders, do we have an alternative to these sorts of belief or are we programmed that way?
For all the significant, important, and intellectually stunning contributions Carl Sagan made to scientific literacy, his role as the soft-spoken bulldog of scientism has always confused and bewildered me. In this particular piece, his thinly-veiled attack against religion, specifically Christianity, is not only weak, but incomplete. He attempts to force a comparison between demons and aliens, engages in tired and ineffective historical critiques of religion, and ends with questions that exempt him from committing to the attack he just levied. Right from the start Sagan's premise of correlating religious beliefs and aliens through the tool of demons has too little weight. Since Sagan helped set up and promote SETI, it's difficult to swallow his insinuation that superstitious beliefs aren't real because aliens aren't real. Also, the comparison fails on his own historical grounds because, to my knowledge, alien abduction stories have not led to anything remotely resembling an inquisition. This brings me to my second criticism. Playing the “Christianity has a rough history and popes are immoral” card takes all freshness and creativity out of his presentation. I understand his attempt, but the history of science isn't so rosy, either, and thus at best the result is a null argument. Finally, Sagan ends this piece rather inconsistently and incompletely. He suggests that in order even to understand the nature of religious belief, we ourselves must believe in these demons, embracing the worldview he has just spent the last few pages belittling. Again, I do understand his attempt to throw in the uncommitted soft-spoken voice at the end, asking us to consider such a “strange” worldview from the outside, but it seems to throw off his whole argument. Instead of a strong conclusion or confident suggestion for progress, Sagan's questions create a defeatist and overly passive tone to the piece. It is a weak argument from a brilliant man.
In this brief selection, Sagan writes about the history of the belief in demons. He explains that they were used as an explanation for all sorts of dangers and maladies over the world, and were embraced and defended by the old quoted philosophers and religious leaders. Writing amazed at the staying power of the demon narrative, and its unprovable believability over the centuries, Sagan then explains how the trope of the demon was deeply manipulated in order to create and maintain the centuries long hunt for witches. There was no way to not prove a witch, once accused she was only and always a witch. Doubt of discovery meant that the person too had been hoodwinked by a demon. Sagan is in awe of the power of such crowd control, and he is awed further in the modern belief in the power of demons as an explanation for evil in the world. They are tied to a deviousness, sexuality, and bodies, that, for Sagan, create a clear influence for the funny absurdity for the behaviors of aliens in their supposed abductions. He cannot fault humans for their continued belief because it has been strangely perpetuated over and over again in history, but he does seem to wonder what else could have been thought about if humans had not been consumed by demons.
Sagan is quite sensitive to both the pervasiveness of supernatural thought about demons, and also the consequences of it. His narrow focus on the suffering of woman in the witch trials points to a knowing and yearning for them to have realized that all this fear was not about a demon at all. Instead power and control seem to be at the root of the use of the demon myth and its ability to hang around through all of history. It explains evil so much better than an uncertain world in which humans are just that bad (even when they hunt down women to burn alive, there is an order to the madness). The ever present explanation of the demon is unexpectedly tied to aliens in the last paragraphs of the essay, almost as if he was too proud of that connection to leave it out even though it seems extraneous when demon belief is still so prevalent. We don’t need a modern example, but Sagan loves space, so go for it. He almost loses his point with the aliens, but gets back on track in stating that is only reasonable that so many humans would fall to demon myth when it is so beneficial for so many systems to maintain themselves. Demons only seem to prove themselves when humans cannot face the worst of themselves. It is the easier path, and it has lasted so long because, well, humans cannot seem to face their demons.
|
|
|
Carl Sagan |
Sagan begins his discussion of “The God Hypothesis” by noting that “God” is a very ambiguous word. When most Jews, Christians, and Muslims speak of “God” they refer to “some being who is omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate, who created the universe, is responsive to prayer, intervenes in human affairs, and so on” (227). However, Aristotle thought “God” was entirely unconcerned about human affairs and the famous 20th century theologian Paul Tillich denied that God was a supernatural being. In addition, people from other cultures around the world think of God in radically contradictory ways. Many in India imagine God — and believe they experience God — as a blue being with an elephant head. In Sagan’s words, “the subject seems to me to be somewhat confused” (227). After this introduction, Sagan offers mostly routine rebuttals to arguments for God’s existence (230-5). Particularly well-stated is his rejoinder to Kant’s moral argument. Like crocodiles that guard rather than eating their eggs, human morality is based upon naturally selected instincts that powerfully motivate social cooperation (233). Arguments from religious experience also fail because of the diversity of beings encountered in such experiences and the fact that ingesting drugs can often produce religious experiences (235). After mentioning the problem of evil, Sagan concludes by pointing out how easily God could have confirmed his existence. From dictating scientific knowledge to the authors of diverse religious texts, to writing the Ten Commandments on the moon, to placing “a hundred-kilometer crucifix in Earth orbit” (238) — if God wanted to communicate his existence to us, it would have been incredibly simple.
For some reason
I always associated Carl Sagan with the type of scientific reductionism that is
needlessly hostile to and hopelessly ignorant about religion. I happily repent
of my presumption! What most impressed me about this essay was Sagan’s
understanding of religion.
With so many atheist scientists speaking about religion as if Evangelical
Christianity was the only game in town, Sagan’s basic sophistication was quite
refreshing. Not only did he acknowledge that many theologians like Tillich do
not think of God as a supernatural entity, he was also clever enough to think
that other religious traditions like Hinduism might have something relevant to
say about God — a revolutionary idea that has still not occurred to some
professional theologians. Sagan also scores points for presenting clear and
strong arguments against theism without lashing out against religious people as
if they are his mortal enemies. Instead, he remains convivial throughout, even
displaying a good-natured sense of humor. Especially in the concluding section
where Sagan lists ways God could have proved his existence, Sagan demonstrates
that he is not an atheist who hates the idea of God, simply one who doesn’t
think there are any good reasons to believe God exists.
In “The God Hypothesis”, Carl Sagan introduces the perspective of natural theology, which he defines as knowledge established by reason, and not by authority or revelation. He looks from this perspective at arguments for the existence of God. He examines the cosmological and ontological arguments, and arguments from consciousness, experience, and design. He finds these unconvincing and says “It is very much as if we are seeking a rational justification for something that we otherwise hope will be true” (pp. 235). He sees the problem of evil and the need to struggle to believe as further evidence that puts the existence of God in doubt, and he gives several examples of how easy it could have been for God to give clear evidence of God’s existence.
Along with examining traditional “proofs” of God’s existence, Sagan discusses the range of ways in which God is envisioned. He makes that point that, with Albert Einstein’s view of God as similar to natural laws, virtually everyone could be seen as a believer. And, with a view of atheists as “anybody who doesn’t believe exactly as I do” (pp. 226), the pool of atheists might be equally as large. Apart from the small number actively opposed to traditional Western (mostly Christian) religion, the term “atheist” has little value. It implies an accept/reject position, with respect to a concept (God) that is inadequately defined. Richard Dawkins made the point that, as we admit disbelief in Vishnu and Zeus, most Americans are atheists. The only question remains “which god(s) do you not believe in?” A mirror question should also be asked. When Gallup polls and other surveys claim that more than 90% of Americans believe in God, they include those with such fundamentally different views as a God who is active in the world (including literal actions described in the Bible), to a non-involved deist god, to a vaguely defined “higher power.” To give a more accurate sense of what people really believe, they should not ask “Do you believe in God?” Instead, they should ask, “Which God do you believe in?”
|
|
|
Percy Bysse Shelley |
Within this excerpt of Percy Shelly's A Refutation of Deism, Shelly is continuing the conversation around atheism by responding to a response of his pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism. Shelly sets out in this work to underscore the atheist response to deism and creationism. His critique falls on three main points outlining the absurdity of attributing God as intelligent, the fallacy in creationist arguments around design, and the realization that Order and Goodness are based on subjective perceptions of one's own reality and are not a strong foundation for generating a cause or origin of Being. Shelly's argument explores these three points through a pairing of the laws of physics and a logic-centric rationalism.
My personal response to Shelly's piece was wrapped up in his use of the laws of physics as a means to build his argument against the existence of God. He outlined these specific laws as “the laws of attraction and repulsion, desire and aversion, suffice to account for every phenomenon of the moral and physical world”.(52) And I am hesitant to say that these laws can explain these phenomenon, though it is true that his argument is dependent that there is a universal understanding on what the physical and the moral worlds are. I think of the charismatic traditions within Catholicism and Pentecostals as people who experience the divine in an abrupt, intense, physical, and embodied spiritual phenomenon, though it could be argued that even those experiences exist within those laws as well. Shelly's piece left me with more concepts to ponder, instead of disenchanting the concept of God for me. Though I did enjoy his definition of God “God signifies an agreed certain propositions rather than a presence of any idea”. This simplistic understanding of God speaks to my early childhood, though it does not speak to my current theological understandings of God. Overall, I enjoyed reading Shelly's argument even if all it did was foster nostalgic and contemplative thought more than swaying me towards agreement.
The presupposition that the universe is designed implies that there should be a Creator. However, this is a false presupposition because the creation of the universe cannot be properly proved according to Shelly. For Shelley, one should rather assume that the universe is eternal because the power and effects of the universe are incomprehensibly unlimited. Moreover, there are different kinds of energy and effects, and they are too diverse to think that they have the same source. In fact, there are certain orders and laws in nature to which these energy and effects are subject. The universe is harmoniously running based on those orders and laws of nature. Some are good and some are bad in relation to human beings. The universe is neither good nor evil in itself since good and evil only make sense in relation to human beings. In the same way, the term God has been invented and certain qualities are attributed to the imagined object. Hence, God means nothing, but is a word of abstraction.
Shelley was brilliant to draw these inferences in the late eighteenth century, when scientific technology was not yet good enough to come up with contemporary theories like a big bang theory. There are several theories that attempt to explain the beginning of the universe such as the big bang theory or multiverse theory. Shelly was correct to place the category of good and evil in relation to human beings. Moreover, it is true that the term God expresses certain qualities by virtue of how human linguistic systems work. We invent a word, and we attribute certain qualities to that which we take the word to refer. This does not mean, however, that the qualities do not exist. Shelley refers existence to a form of material only, but we may say that ‘love exists!’
In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s text A Refutation of Deism the writer works to expose the fallacies and inherent contradictions espoused by religion. In the excerpt provided, Shelley begins by exposing the human tendency to assert the existence of a Divine Creator as simply an uninformed response to the complexities of the natural world. He likewise asserts that the human postulation of an intelligent Designer in response to the systematic harmony of the universe is really a projection of the human intellect onto these empirical observations. From this Shelly argues that, through such reasoning, the same questions regarding the perfection of the Universe in its operations and the question of its origin must then be applied to this postulated Intelligent First Creator, which leads to an infinite series of ever more perfect gods and a complete disregard for empirical knowledge. Presuming the absence of definitive proof for an origin of the Universe, he concludes that it is a far more plausible hypothesis that the Universe has always existed. In addressing causality, Shelley states that it is nonsensical to attribute all the variability of effects in the world to one Divine cause. He writes: “It is vain philosophy that supposes more causes than are exactly adequate to explain the phenomena of things,” and “The laws of motion and the properties of matter suffice to account for every phenomenon, or combination of phenomena exhibited in the Universe” (53). Turning to the perceived suffering and evil in the world, Shelley claims that these are simply derivatives from the human tendency to establish biased relational categories, such as a preference for order over disorder. Finally, Shelley argues: “There is no attribute of God which is not either borrowed from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is not a negation” (55).
Shelley makes three assumptions during the formulation of his argument that I find problematic. The first relates to the necessity of natural laws, the second to the inherent intellectual and moral character of the Atheist, and the third to the implicit limits of human reason. Shelley himself admits to the continued mystery behind the functioning and ordering of natural laws, however he asserts that these principles are fully accounted for by our current understanding of the law of motion and the properties of matter (52-53). In defense of his attacks on religion, Shelly writes: “It is among men of genius and science that Atheism alone is found, but among these alone is cherished an hostility to those errors, with which the illiterate and vulgar are infected” (55). This defense reads as pure rhetoric, and discredits any human experience that does not originate from a privileged education and an elite intellect. Finally, Shelley makes the argument that there can be no evidence of the existence of God as deduced from reason (56). However, he appears to allow for the possibility of reaching some form of understanding of the Divine through personal revelation (55). I would argue that when Shelley allows that some form of revelation of the Divine could be possible, but stipulates that this experience is mutually exclusive from human reason, and then throughout his writing discredits any form of knowledge derived from revelation, he creates an inconsistent picture of both the laws governing the Universe and of the nature of human experience.
Summary: Percy Bysshe Shelley refers to the concept of God as an abstraction, he is of the view that the word God “signifies the agreement of certain propositions, rather than the presence of any idea” (Chapter 7 (55)). He notes that “the mind is the effect, not the cause of motion, that power is the attribute, not the origin of Being” (56). The intelligence that is observed by the human mind in organized entities (or design) does not prove the existence of a contriver (50). The tendency of the mind to attribute design to the existence of a contriver is based on human experiences of past contrivances by fellow humans (50). In this sense, the intelligence that is observed in universal systems/world is an attribute of the universe and not of an absurd notion of an intelligent creator (50-51). Based on the tenets of scientific research, Shelley posits that “a precise knowledge of the properties of any object is alone requisite to determine its manner of action” (52). This is to further refute the idea of the hypothesis of a deity or another Being in charge of creations in the universe (53).
Response: Shelley presents a sound argument, especially with his supposition on that the misconception of the universe been a design leading “to a conclusion that there are infinity of creative and created Gods, which is absurd” (51). The absurdity of this situation can be observed in the numerous gods and deities created by humanity in the course of history and even in the present. As part of his arguments, Shelley notes the advances of scientific research in discovering causes that match or are equal to known effects in the universe. Throughout history, quite a number of these facts/causes have been refuted and adjusted in some instances, thereby rendering scientific research (though highly valuable) not absolute. In this sense, provided these absurdities do not develop into conditions (which is usually the case), perhaps, the tendency of the human mind to concoct the absurdities of a contriver or some other deities can be viewed as needed reprieves to rest the mind from its continuous workings.
In this passage, Percy Bysshe Shelley refutes the fundamental arguments of Deist forms of Theism, claiming that they are unnecessary inferences that lead to unnecessary conclusions. The form of Deism that he is arguing against suggests that the universal thrust of life and the ordered harmony of the universe necessitates the postulate of an intelligent Creator. To the Deists, complexity and order must have its origin in a Creator who is capable of instantiating that order. Against this conclusion, Shelley suggests that if this line of reasoning were to hold, then a complex and intelligent Creator would also need a series of effects to justify its existence ad infinitum. As an alternative, Shelley suggests that it is reasonable to believe that the Universe has endured for all eternity and suggests that what we declare to be order is just a consequence of our familiarity. This is the most interesting part of Shelley’s argument: the idea that good and evil, and order and disorder, are “expressions denoting our perceptions of what is injurious or beneficial to ourselves, or to the beings in whose welfare we are compelled to sympathize by the similarity of their conformation to our own.” From his perspective, all judgments are projections and therefore all arguments founded on our judgments are untenable. Deism is consequently an unjustified position, since its conclusions rely on logical inferences derived from the domain of our own familiarity.
In many ways, Shelley’s argument is analogous to a line of thinking generated in contemporary phenomenology: namely that there is no X without the positing of X. In other words, the judgment of something as good or ordered is ineluctably the positing of it as such. This type of circularity is actually what is the unjustified position nowadays—contemporary philosophers such as Quentin Meillassoux have resorted to arguments concerning ancestrality, or the existence of a world prior to human consciousness in order to justify the reference to objects. Similar appeals were already voiced by philosophers such as Emile Boutroux and Charles Peirce in the late 19th century. Charles Peirce was especially noted for suggesting that it was order, rather than chaos, that needed to be explained by science. Although the formulation of many Deist’s conclusions may now be considered invalid or obsolete, the presence and persistence of natural laws, apart from and including human thinking, still requires explanation. This does not mean that the explanation must be a theist position. Unfortunately, however, we can no longer believe along with Shelley that the Universe has endured, essentially composed of the features which we name order, for all time. Therefore, our understanding of the mystery itself deepens and endures.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s essay Refutation of Deism attempts to deconstruct prevalent theistic views of his day. Shelley starts by naming the argument for God and then subsequently tears it down. These arguments for God center around the notion of creation: a masterpiece needs a mastercraftsman, intelligent design needs intelligent creator, there has to be one ultimate cause of everything, the perfection of each animal for its environment, and that the universe has a perfect order to it. Shelley finishes the essay with his thoughts that the notion of God came from superstitions and uneducated people trying to make sense of the world.
This essay is a wonderful primer for those who are interested in the logical reasons behind someone becoming an atheist. Going through and naming the different arguments for God and then taking them apart one by one was an interesting approach. The arguments Shelley refutes are still relevant today and his refutation is strong. However, the structure of this essay leads not to the destruction of God but to the rejection of the God as understood by those who make those arguments. Shelley’s essay leaves open the possibility for a theistic agreement if God is not anthropomorphic.
Percy Bysshe Shelley comments on the design of the Universe as well as the nature of humanity in an active engagement with the beliefs of creationists. His points are concerned most poignantly with the behavior of matter and the resulting lack of necessity for a creator or sustainer. Citing the experience of a man to realize that there was a time that he prior to his birth did not exist, Shelly notes that this generative power appears incomprehensible, but the understanding is not applicable to an eternal Omnipotent and Omniscient Being in that the incomprehensibility is made even more obscure. Concerning matter, it is the necessity of it that rules the world and keeps it in “order” and it is vain philosophy to suggest otherwise. The concepts of good and evil are only abstract expressions to describe human perception of what is harmful or helpful. Further it is unreasonable to understand a universal system when a human’s own perception is the only relation to anything. Concluding, the frequency at which belief in God occurs is not a compelling evidential component in that humanity has made a large number of mistakes in the past as a whole.
It may be futile to present a point that obviously was not being argued against in this selection but Shelley’s affirmation of atheism through the refutation of deism does little to combat the deity of process theology. Each component of his argument adequately engages a deity, or lack thereof, that is necessarily deeply involved in “creation.” It is possible that the more hands-off deism of process theology stills remains under such characteristics. The known laws of matter and motion, perceptions of order and disorder, and the human understanding of good and evil are acceptable under the understanding that God is not as “in control” as the creationists assume. Shelley succeeds in refuting a singular deism, that of creationists, but fails to consider other possibilities of deism. This shortcoming is indeed forgivable, however, given that the concept process theology did not yet exist at the time of Shelley’s writing and therefore not available with which to interact.
In this work Percy Bysshe Shelley spends his time focusing on the fallacies revolving around intelligent design theory. Shelley analyzes and refutes every argument that seeks to suppose that it was God who created the earth. He does this through two major lines of thought. The first is that he finds issue with the belief that all things created must have a creator. He believes this is fallacious thinking due to a very limited human perspective. We assume everything that has came into being has to have a designer because that is how we bring things to life, but that if we were to get rid of this bias there would be no logical reason to presuppose that this must be true. His second argument largely falls upon the idea that we no longer need to suppose a God to explain the creation of the universe because science is continually coming up with naturalistic explanations for how the world has come into being.
I really loved this writing by Shelly. I thought the opening line of the article was great. I loved that he specifically argued against intelligent design theory because a lot of Christian apologist want to try to merge that idea with evolution and insert god as the source of evolution. All we know is the observable universe and so it if we can make sense of everything that exist without going outside the laws of the universe, why would that not be the better alternative? To me it’s kind of like telling a kid that the presents under their Christmas tree could be from Santa or it could be from their parents. You might have been told it was Santa who brought you the presents but if you think about it you never have seen this man, no one can confirm his existence, and your parents do live right there with you. Of course the argument is more complex than that but it’s the same idea. I was really glad to see somebody tackle this subject.
|
|
|
Michael Shermer |
In this brief article, Michael Shermer retells the Genesis creation story by fusing literal details from the Biblical text with scientific theories such as the Big Bang and Darwin's natural selection. Shermer includes God creating certain professions to aid people in understanding some of the absurd aspects of this scientific-creationist hybrid account.
Initially, Shermer's account of creation is amusing, but it quickly becomes so sarcastic and abrasive that it is almost offensive. He is clearly speaking to a very specific kind of creationist here, but seems to be ignoring the fact that there are other ways of combining religion and science. He assumes that humans can truly understand God's reasoning. Is that not the height of hubris? The God he describes has very human characteristics. This God deliberates, which is an action contrary to the traditional Christian doctrine of God.
Michael Shermer retells the story of Creation from the atheistic perspective. The first day, God created the Big Bang and also the Earth. The second day, He created galaxies which are collections of fusion makers. The third day, He ordered the waters to be gathered together and make oceans. In a similar way, He created mountains that would cause earthquakes. He put special organisms near volcanic islands to confuse humans, although humans were not even born yet. The fourth day God created animals and asked them not to “evolve into new species“ (268). The fifth day, God created fish. He then made the decision that living creatures are allowed to be slightly evolved. The sixth day, God created humans. How God created human beings is a mystery because there are different versions of the Creation story. The seventh day, God was tired. So He decided to take a vacation. Humans named God's vacation the “weekend“.
The highlight of this article is the problem mentioned in the second day. Science has proved that most of the stars are older than the Earth, but in the story of Creation, stars were created later than the Earth. Has science proven the Bible wrong? I do not think so. There must be something that can resolve conflicts between the Bible and science. For example, God might have made starts earlier than the Earth. It is biblical authors' fault for claiming that the Earth is the oldest. Or the Earth we are living on now is not the original Earth that God created. The original Earth, which has vanished for some reason, is older than any stars because it was created on the first day. The Spirit of the Bible should not be denied by science, nor should the Bible and science be enemies. Since human knowledge is too limited to perceive the Divine Providence, why should humans try to evaluate the Bible with human knowledge? Of course, my defense for the Bible is based on the assumption that God exists. If someone wants to prove me wrong, he or she should challenge my assumption first by proving that God does not exist. Then the fundamental argument begins (Does God exist? Is there a God?). The argument never ends. I believe that the Creator cannot be proven by creatures, but He can be identified. Christians identified God in their own ways such as through spiritual experiences and practices. Christians want to identify God not because they want to prove that God exists, but because they want to discern God's will. It is important for Christians to live in God's will because it is how they serve His mission on the Earth and receive true happiness
This chapter reviews the hexameral literature. Shermer takes advantage of science to explain Genesis rationally and scientifically. He argues for scientific knowledge such as the Big Bang, fusion, plate tectonics, and evolution to make the hexameral literature reasonable. He admits God allows people to use science in order to reveal the origins of the myth of Creation.
His argument could work to convince some fundamentalist or conservative Christians away from literalism. However, I'm not persuaded because myth and science cannot stand on the same ground. A myth is not created in order to be analyzed, but science is based on analysis. If a myth is to be analyzed, it has to be analyzed based on historical, cultural, linguistic background. Without this process, any analysis ought to be just assumption. If Shermer really wants to interpret the Bible scientifically, he should discover a formula that explains how the elements constituting water can change to the elements of wine, and how a human can walk on water.
Michael Shermer's “Genesis Revisited” is a classic example of modern trolling, an act of antagonistic mockery in which the perpetrator uses the source material of one's opponents to demonstrate the ironies at work within the original material. In other words, Shermer parodies the logic of fundamentalist, six-day creationists by re-telling the Genesis creation myth as a mashup of a six-day-creationist timeline and modern science. Shermer begins by citing October 23, 4004 B.C. at noon as the beginning moment of creation from which God created the Big Bang, quantum foam fluctuation, cosmological inflation, and an expanding universe. The combination of prima facie ridiculous fundamentalist assertions with difficult-to-reconcile natural evidence, such as dinosaur fossils which predate the creation, and plausible evolutionary theories continues through all six days of creation. Shermer renames the Garden of Eden as the valley of the shadow of doubt, placing humanity in the midst of the valley, out of which theologians, paleoanthropologists, anthropologists, and mythologists arise to sort all of God's confusing creations such as conflicting creation stories of Adam and Eve, the fossil known as Lucy, and creation myths. At stake for Shermer's parody is the status of the creation myth. His trolling serves to illuminate the idiocy and futility of attempting a literal reading, whether scientific or fundamentalist, of the Genesis myth.
Shermer's trolling parody of fundamentalist renderings of the creation story is acutely funny, irreverent, and biting, effortlessly surfacing many of the most basic challenges, theological and scientific, to interpreting the Genesis myths. Perhaps his sharpest critiques occur during his causal explanations for God's actions, which are typically attempts to resolve human confusion. For example, God creates ‘tired light’ so that the cosmic distances light travels from the stars are no impediment to light reaching earth even though the earth is only six thousand years old, thus preserving the creation story. Shermer pushes a question: What else did God create to preserve the literal creation story? Such additional elements of creation only add to humanity's confusion and God's tiredness. The acrobatics attempted to reconcile a literal creation story with observed phenomena in the world indeed serve to confuse humanity and tire God, and wears thin the fundamentalist interpretations of God.
In a careful retelling of the Genesis creation story, Michael Shermer spins the delicate formation of the cosmos, earth, animals, and humans into an almost accidental pastime for God. Shermer adds in both the details from a literal reading of Genesis and a scientific account of natural history, which leaves God creating fusion light makers that are timed so that they aren’t too old before their light reaches the earth, God planting fossils in the earth that appear to follow Darwin’s theory of descent with modification, and God creating professions such as theologians, anthropologists, and mythologists to explain the confusion that God was aware of creating.
Shermer’s version of Genesis is an amusing way to point out the commitments a literal reading makes, namely, that science is wrong. If one reads the Bible literally, Earth must be a planet that is too young for the processes biology and geology use to describe the formation of the state of affairs we see today. If Earth is too young, those processes are wrong and must be revised, and the evidence supporting them must be explained, hence the planting of fossils. Shermer’s God notices this to be confusing, because it is confusing. I’d rather have a sacred text that I’m not sure how to interpret than a deceptive deity whose supposed word I could never trust at all. An intellectually honest Christian ought to take into account empirical evidence that runs counter to his or her (meta)physical assumptions.
In this article Shermer creatively narrates the creation story from the perspective of science. He uses his imagination and touches on the creation of human beings, galaxies, animals, and other things that we see in this world.
This article helped me to read the biblical creation story in a different perspective. It is interesting that the author writes the creation story in the perspective of God “creating things.” In that perspective I can see evolution as created by God and still be a creationist. It was interesting to imagine that the Big Bang was created by God. I think such a perspective helps us to understand that the biblical creation story is also creative thinking of a person about the divine creation of the world. I enjoyed the humor of the author because it helped me to be more engaged in the article (e.g. the creation of theologians and God becoming tired and creating a weekend).
Attempting to emphasize the absurdity of a six-day creation narrative, Michael Shermer describes what the Genesis story would look like if it were consistent with today’s scientific understandings of the origins of the universe. He gives scientific explanations of light, galaxies, continents, animals, and people, and also provides cynical answers to questions that are posed by so-called young-earth creationists (people who accept the biblical age of the universe, about 6,000 years, as being literally correct). Shermer claims that the fall in Genesis (the severed relationship between humankind and God) is due to humankind’s skepticism, and he scoffs at the absurdity of imagining that God would be angry with people who use their reason and intellect to reach conclusions that contradict literal scriptures.
Shermer’s wit must make even the most stubborn young-earth creationist laugh. Although his intention was to jeer those who believe in a creator God, I could see this piece supporting arguments for a cosmos with no creator, or—depending on who is reading it—a cosmos with a great creator. A person who reads the account in Genesis literally could read Shermer’s account and say, “yes, the fact that God is able to create everything like this truly does attest to God’s greatness.” However, that type of reading still requires one to close one’s eyes to the glaring inconsistencies that Shermer points out. The intended target of this piece is very limited and detrimentally so. Can a claim that there is no God be based only on a couple chapters of scripture, in the Christian and Hebrew Bible, as understood and interpreted by a small number of believers? Though I do not think this piece does much to refute the idea of a belief in God, or even a creator God, I do believe that it does a good job of pointing out the impossibilities of a literal reading of the creation account.
The story of how the universe was created has been debated over for centuries. Science claims one scenario, religion another. Michael Shermer articulates this argument in his own version of how the world was created. Using a very scientific explanation for the steps of creation and evolution of this planet, there is also an element of a personified God controlling these reactions and steps, as part of a divine plan for the universe. Starting with the big bang and its consequences about six thousand years ago, there is the presence of God carefully creating all of these processes; however, there does not seem to be any reasoning in this story about the purpose of creation. Next creating the galaxies, stars, and their steps of development outside of Earth, and then forming the natural process within our planet, God becomes tired of “creating.” It is after all of this that God creates the creatures of the planet with perfect precision. It seems as though God is done, according to Shermer, but then God also creates misleading evidence to confuse human beings about the origin of creation. Finally after the process is completely finished, God decides that everything is good, and creates the weekend to relax. In this cosmic comedy, the concept of an intelligently designed world is being questioned as rational or unreasonable. It is a well formulated and poignant essay that shows the humor in trying to incorporate a scientific worldview into the Genesis creation narrative framework.
It is difficult explain the existence of God from a scientific perspective on how the universe was created. Is it really essential for a creationist to accept a universe that was designed with specific intentions? Does accepting the scientific worldview destroy God? It is a very scary thought for some believers. Michael Shermer shows just how strange the creation story is. It is central in the faith of a strict, fundamentalist Christian to believe in the sacred Biblical scriptures as fact. With this deep belief, for one to admit that the scientific explanation has some validity, would mean that science has finally caused religion to submit or “tap-out” in this interdisciplinary wrestling match. This would not destroy religion; it would only affect some Christians’ image of God. This humanly, usually male, personified image would be lost, along with the concept of a more advanced being or creature controlling of our daily lives. With this transformation, the believer takes a step into mystery, deepening their sense of God by defining goodness, love, hope, or ecstasy and creating a more meaningful sense of God. There is room to grow and say God does not directly interfere in our lives, but is the essence behind kindness and hope for what is right and true. Then, the intentions of a believer focus less on defending a story and the book that contains and more about finding reasons to help and be in communion with people. The believer should not be naïve or obstinate in approaching science. Coming to this realization can be disrupting and upsetting, but beyond that is a sense of liberation; acknowledging reason and helping the believer grow in their faith by more honestly defining what God is.
Dr. Michael Shermer made a story to ridicule Genesis, which happened in 4004 BC, with creating the Big Bang, followed by cosmological inflation and an expanding universe, he also created tired light to offset the conflict of the age of light in galaxy. Michael tried to mimic the scripture of Bible, made the story of creating water, animals and man. He also tried to say all the theology and relative ideas are absurd, by saying God created them to cover his misfunction.
I enjoy reading the story as a joke that God our heavenly Father could be tied, angry and bewildered like our parents. I am surprised to see the article said Michael created a black day for fundamentalist Christianity, I think it overstates the affect. Michael might be a kind of believer, but his believe is not in Faith. At the time we believe God is immeasurable and omnipotent, how we can try to look at his acts in the eyes of human, try to understand his creation in the limited knowledge of human. I have no other answer, only thing I can say the atheist is treating human is God and putting self in the own control. If that is somebody’s cosmological, keep it self, there is no way to prove anything with the assumption of other’s wrong. The Truth is there, but no everybody will agree the same way, we can live with it. The only thing I worried for Atheism is its self-pride will end up individualism which might cause more problem in the Peace of human society.
Michael Shermer transforms the Genesis creation story. As he mentions, his story is “a mere extension of what the creationists have already done to Genesis in their insistence that it be read not as mythic saga but as scientific prose.” It is an article that changing and reshaping the Genesis creation story by grafting onto the knowledge of the modern science. Inevitably, it contains mocks and somewhat interesting point. The part God creates theologians, paleoanthropologists, anthropologists, and mythologists due to the development of the scientific knowledge is the most creative one. This full of mocking article is finished announcing that God is tired because of his creation.
How can we read the Genesis creation story? There have been numerous arguments about it. It is a well-known fact that Genesis 1 is a theological reflection against the Babylonian creation myth. However, non-Christians do not seem to be interested in the fact that the main point of Genesis 1 is creation itself. Even though the creation story is never explaining the procedure and the principle of the creation, many people try to understand it as the procedure and the principle. The Sherman’s article is on the same page. He reframes the creation story of the Bible by using the modern scientific knowledge and the notion of the modern civilization. However, it is based on the premise that Genesis 1 is not a true story but merely a myth. No subject Bible wants to say belongs to here. There is only ridicule toward the Christianity.Shermer’s piece pokes fun at the creation story as written in the book of Genesis when it is held up as equal to, or even more authoritative than, the Big Bang. Shermer takes various elements from the Genesis creation story and intermixes it with scientific facts. For instance, Shermer writes that God created Hawking Radiation, Red Giants, evolution (on a micro level), and many others. The humor Shermer throws in, however, is over the inconsistencies between Genesis and the Big Bang. Some examples are: He writes that God was happy He created light so that He could see what He was doing, that microevolution was permitted but not macroevolution, and that the contradiction in when Even was made “confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God created theologians to sort it out.”
The story shows some true holes in the Genesis story if it is taken literally when placed alongside the scientific explanation in the big Bang. While the humor is witty, it can sometimes detract from the larger argument that Shermer is trying to make while at other times point even more closely to it. One point Shermer wants to make is that the Big Bang and the Genesis story simply don’t match up. He does this effectively when he mentions how certain things, as we know them, could not have been formed at the same time: stars and fossils are two examples. He also points out incoherency within the story itself, like the two separate stories surrounding Adam and Eve’s creation. The Humor, however, is mostly directly at the idea of a supernatural agential being who actively chose to do all of this at once as explained through the Bible. This is evident, first, in God’s creation of other people to figure out what he had done. It is also most evident in the last line: “By now God was tired, so He proclaimed, ‘Thank me it’s Friday,’ and He made the weekend. It was a good idea.”
This humorous recreation of the creation story in Genesis written by a former pastor-turned-atheist, aims to reveal the logical absurdity of religious creationists who insist that the biblical story be read as a literal understanding. Shermer begins as Genesis 1 begins, “In the beginning...” where he adds “specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon – out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang...” From the beginning, Shermer speaks the language that many religious creationists would be familiar with, adding his own pieces of personality to reduce the story to absurdity. With lines like “He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing” (267) and “this caused confusion...so God created theologians to sort it out” (268), the readers are left with the clear idea that their version of the story, to readers like Shermer, is riddled with gaps in which humans have created explanations and insisted as God’s answer.
The cleverish writing in this piece shows that Shermer is familiar with the source material, which proves to be an effective mode of criticism. While the overuse of extremes at times can take away from what might be a rather powerful argument, this piece still leaves religious creationists with an argument to ponder. Shermer effectively builds an argument in a creative form that speaks the familiar language of his opponents in order to more clearly make his point.
Michael Shermer challenges literal interpretations of the creation account in Genesis by delivering his own narrative of events, reinterpreting the story through the lens of modern science. Through this style of writing, he reveals inconsistencies within the original text and makes apparent the logical fallacies associated with the thesitic assumptions that accompany literalistic biblical understandings. For instance, he humorously notes the fact that there are two different stories regarding the creation of Adam and Eve ultimately remarking, in a rather tongue in cheek style, that this is the reason for the existence of theologians.
Shermer’s piece comes across as overtly snarky and he frequently takes unecessary sarcastic jabs at the theistically minded. However, despite the deprecating humor that pervades the piece, he cleverly demonstrates the logical inadequacy of relying on Genesis as a source for understanding the cosmological and biological origins of humanity. Further, he attests to the poetic nature of Genesis, suggesting that religious stories are not devoid of existential value when interpreted correctly. This suggests that he has a mature conception of the functional utility religious structures offer. Therefore, he does not attack the institution of religion. instead, he simply challenges theological interpretations that are inconsistent with rational thought. While his point would go further without the low blows to the religious, his argument is clear, concise, and helpful.
In an odd twist of events for fundamentalist Christianity, Michael Shermer abandoned his conservative religious Christianity and embraced the stance of a skeptic. In his work titled, Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, Shermer pokes fun at the creationist perspective by constructing a scientific revision of the creationist narrative. One such example, “God saw that the land was barren, so he created animals bearing their own kind, declaring Thou shall not evolve into new species, and thy equilibrium shall not be punctuated. And God placed into the rocks, fossils that appeared older than 4004 BC that were similar to but different from living creatures.” Shermer’s critique of the creationist perspective calls into question their religious narrative’s monopoly on truth. By using archeological evidence and a variety of sciences, Shermer is able to deconstruct the historical creation narrative.
Shermer’s over reliance on historical and archeological evidence for constructing truth is evidence of his inability to construct truth apart from scientific verifiable facts. If God or the bible is unable to be historically verified then is claim to truth dissipates. I reject such a narrow view of truth. Although I do agree with Sherman in that a historical creation narrative is pure bonkers, I do not find that to be enough evidence to be considered a skeptic. Yet, if one’s epistemology is built on the scientific method then I understand how a narrow view of truth results.
 |
|
Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza |
Spinoza's primary claim in his excerpt is that religion is used to control chaos in the world by creating order that gives people morals and social structure. Religion benefits humankind by allowing the belief that we can have control in our lives. Spinoza suspects that the people most prone to religion are those who live in less fortunate circumstances, for the weight of helplessness is much heavier, which leads to seeking out the tools one might use to improve the quality of life. Those more fortunate people, however, will likely already feel like they have control in life if all is going well enough to give the appropriate amount of pleasure and meaning. He furthermore asserts that fear plays a significant role in one's turn towards religion. Fear can turn people towards a search to eradicate said fears, and often religion is comforting enough to soothe such worries because what better to help the fearful and powerless than an all-powerful being who can save you from your circumstances? Finally, he suggests that dogmatism in religion is used in dangerous ways to manipulate fears into beliefs that give a cause for the most zealous behavior, regardless of its morality, “so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety.”
Spinoza's excerpt illustrates well how religion can be used not only as a powerful tool of manipulation by the powerful, but also as a source of comfort and alleviation of fears by the less fortunate and fearful. Giving weight to both of these functions, however shallow or abysmal they may seem, adds to the complex nature of religion the dialectical relationship that power, meaning, and experience have as three important facets of religion. For example, power influences how authorities can utilize religion to enforce laws and behaviors, and in response to power a society can internalize how its members (perhaps in response to the fear of power) will live out their religion and how symbols will be interpreted in light of the extant power structures. The influence of these social forces and factors will culturally color the experience that society has of religion. It seems that Spinoza's examples of the functions of religion implicitly point to these factors of power, experience, and meaning.
Spinoza attacks a superstitious religion from the beginning of the article, explaining how it arises – it is “engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear(22).”Because of the irrational, emotional feature of superstition, it is “no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses(23),” which causes men to keep pursuing a novelty for their satisfaction, making them aggressive against those who have different ideas - for him, this came to appear as excommunication. He ridicules a republic for its failure in actualization of freedom. We can see him being so disappointed with the excommunication that he says if they had a genuine belief “they would not insolently rave, … would be as marked … for mercy as they now are for malice, … would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compassion(25).”
Generally, people who are much concerned with doctrines are less likely to be generous to those whose belief are not identical whit theirs. Most of them belong to ‘a religion of sacred book.’ What matters most to believers of such a religion is an interpretation of the book. As Spinoza criticized in this article, theirs belief is often reduced to “a formal assent rather than a living faith(25).” However, since every person has his or her own unique, distinct domains of life, the interpretation of a text should be as diverse as the number of people in the world and in the human history. Plus, what is very interesting in interpretation is the fact that people's domains of life are too peculiar to share without misunderstanding. Therefore, I would argue that the interpretations of the sacred books colored by doctrines are to be rejected, and that one should be allowed to read the text as an open text as literature. This attitude does not destroy the teachings of a certain religion. Rather, it amplifies the relevance of a religion to human life. So, I do agree with Spinoza's decision to “examine the Bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and unfettered spirit(25).” And I'd like some friends of mine who were worried about my ‘heretic’ belief and the search for truth to ‘read the Bible for the first time again’ – the Book of Borg that I bought at Barnes&Nobles' bargain section but did not read yet – without their prejudice and assumptions.
In this excerpt from Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise, he sharply critiques superstition as a function primarily of human fear, but also of human vacillation between fear and hope. Superstition takes the form of religion in society, which people use to the exclusion of reason. Reason, for Spinoza, is the highest faculty of human beings and should be the sole source of their judgment. Spinoza sees evidence of his analysis of superstition in the people who practice religion around him in society. The principles, beliefs, and faith they profess do not seem to coincide with their actions. He sees no evidence of “Divine light” in religious people.
I appreciated Spinoza's critique of people who blindly follow religion in a superstitious manner and of church leadership. Spinoza almost exclusively refers to “religion” in his critique, not to faith. I wonder if he would differentiate the two, or if faith would be too close to superstition for him. Also, I would be interested in what he would say regarding the medieval discussions about the intellect and will. Does reason reside in the intellect for Spinoza, or are there elements of the will active in the rational faculty? He relates reason to the human mind, which could mean that the will is not a part of the process of reasoning. Such privileging of the intellect seems to overcompensate for the problem he outlines; instead of being too emotional (i.e. superstitious), humans in his system would be overly rational without feeling. Granted, I am pushing his beliefs to the extreme, but some balance seems necessary.
“Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear” (39). This succinct phrase from Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise nicely sums up his penetrating critique of popular religion as a misguided way of seeking to win “fortune's greedily coveted favors” for oneself (38). Spinoza critiques superstitious religion as an unreason driven by terror that seeks to turn fear into hope through a sort of cosmic bargaining system: either through searching for signs, providing sacrifices, seeking sanctuary in the divine, or some other method of appeasement. However, it is not the particular mode of bargaining that Spinoza seems concerned about. Rather, Spinoza worries that this need to escape the terror of living drives people to reject Reason in favor of a superstition that promises safety. While this tendency to reject Reason in favor of a promised safety may certainly provide certain epistemological challenges, Spinoza seems far more concerned with the ethical and political implications of such fear-driven credulity. Spinoza connects the human propensity to accept superstition as a means of managing fear to the willful ignorance that allows people to be manipulated by a despotic state: one that fills their mind with prejudices and exchanges conformity for protection. Furthermore, Spinoza claims the fear that drives people to accept the prejudices of a despotic state in order to preserve their safety is same the fear that drives certain Christians to accept the pre-judgment that proper interpretation of scripture must be guided by a belief that every passage is true and divine. Therefore, Spinoza concludes that he must set out to write a treatise that will expose these prejudices for what they are: pre-judgments accepted with credulity for the purposes of turning fear into hope. In this passage, Spinoza's deepest insight is that fear can, and often does, cause us to give up the search for truth in favor of settling for a prejudiced comfort.
I have seen, and regrettably participated in, the exchanging of epistemological honesty for comfort many times. I agree with Spinoza that much of popular religion is driven by a deep sense of terror at the enigmatic and unpredictable nature of the world around us. However, I would like to tweak his use of terms a bit in favor of what I think is a more nuanced understanding. Many existentialist thinkers talk about anxiety as a feeling of deep discomfort that pervades human existence. As Kierkegaard put it in The Concept of Dread, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” While this discomfort is somewhat unavoidable and inescapable, many find it untenable for daily life: they feel it is impossible to function normally in the world without somehow mitigating these feelings of anxiety. They insist, more or less consciously, that just as it will not do to try and walk down the street in a state of dizziness, so we must find a way of balancing ourselves amongst this constant flux in order to function. However, where things get tricky is deciding how to balance ourselves. I think one primary way that we choose to balance ourselves is by turning these nebulous feelings of anxiety into a concrete feeling of fear. Anxiety is amorphous; it is hard to combat. Fear, however, has a form and a face that can be fought against. Therefore, in order to regain a sense of agency, we often turn our anxieties into fears. However, the problem is the fears we form don't always directly correspond to the real source of our anxiety. Oftentimes, they are just an attempt to fix the pain of a wound rather than an attempt to heal the wound itself. Depending on what we fears we form, we may often find ourselves giving up our own search for truth in exchange for accepting whatever prejudices and opinions will combat our fears for us. Furthermore, I think we often start out searching for truth, but we stop short once we find comfort. Spinoza was worried that the human desire for balance in a world of dizziness was enough to produce passivity and acceptance towards unreasonable ideas or political manipulation, and I think he was right to be worried. However, I remember once listening to a famous tightrope walker discuss how she developed her incredible sense of balance. When asked how she learned how to balance so tenderly on such a thin rope, she thought for a moment and then replied: they key to tightrope walking is not learning how to balance, it's learning how to be comfortable being unbalanced. I wonder if this is not also true for anxiety. Maybe the key to dealing with the dizziness of anxiety is not seeking to find balance at any cost, but learning how to be comfortable in the dizziness.
As Spinoza makes clear in this introductory passage, the political agenda of his treatise is to argue that a government should prioritize the total intellectual freedom of individuals (opposite of the common policy across ‘Christian’ Europe of precluding it by criminalizing intellectual deviance from the official state-mandated theology). A government is never justified, Spinoza argues, in establishing anything resembling a law within the private world of the individual's mind. The treatise is intended to expose how falsely this use of power has been justified with unbiblical claims of divine authority. One of Spinoza's most important premises is that to grant the full extent of intellectual freedom would not weaken, but strengthen, personal piety and thus the whole society. Spinoza's makes his case through his own pioneering, Reason-guided method of interpreting the Bible (the common, holy ground shared with his opponents)-that is, inquiring in a “careful, impartial, unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning it [the Bible], and attributing to it no doctrines, which I do not find clearly therein set down” (p. 25). Spinoza searches the stories of the prophets, chosen by God to be exemplars to the rest of their societies, for a definite biblical answer to the theological and ethical question of what God requires of people, while keeping the derivative question in mind concerning the domains in which civil authorities are justified, and not, in lawfully binding individual freedom. The answer he presents by way of scriptural exegesis is that the interest of a government should be only to preserve the rationally (and, as Spinoza shows, biblically) manifest core of righteousness-namely, justice and charity-and should never extend its ruling power to intervene in the realm of ideas, theological or otherwise. What evidently matters to the God of the Bible, and what should matter also to any government supposed to base itself on biblical principles, is righteous behavior-not the putative correctness of opinions measured by conformity to traditional theological norms.
For purposes of understanding classical theism/atheism debates, I am somewhat less interested in the political ends of Spinoza's treatise and more interested in what he claims in this passage about the fear-origins and solely palliative functions of “superstition,” and about the “misconceptions” of religion engendered by much “popular” mixing of the former with the essence of the latter, misconceptions he wants to clear up in order to secure his premise that the true meaning of religion (or “piety”) can be reduced to ethical requirements of justice and charity. This reductive redefinition of religion is supported by a series of observations about human nature giving rise to superstitious beliefs and rituals that, although gratuitous and corruptive, have become part of what is usually understood to be religion. I think it is oversimplifying, not to mention suspiciously convenient for Spinoza's purposes, to reduce religion like that. It is not clear to me how any of the supposedly extraneous, superstitious stuff is less a part of religion than its ethical injunctions. And relying on the Bible as grounds for proposing a definition of religion is, in my mind, begging the question. But all of that is easy for me to say, living where I am and when I am. I can't blame Spinoza. On the other hand, very interestingly, Spinoza claims that the superstitious tendencies he describes are just as natural as “emotional impulses” in humans, and that we are all somehow predisposed to generate gods and spirits and the like in order to cope through imagining their help. Superstition is the result of trying to make up for what we do not have but feel we need. In other words, it is product of deprivation and compensation. The argument for this criticism is inductive (e.g. “very numerous examples of a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact…”), and by now has become tiringly familiar to us, except that whereas Spinoza applies the criticism just to superstition, protecting religion from his criticism by defining religion's essence in non-superstitious, purely ethical terms, many others since made the criticism about religion as such, thinking that if there be some core to religion, it is probably comprised of the superstitious stuff, not so much (or perhaps just as much as) the sacred ‘why’ and ‘how’ of becoming better people. Having now, centuries later, plenty of evidence from cognitive science of religion for various evolved cognitive biases (some of which Spinoza seems to point out) and resulting proneness in general to inferential errors in this most peculiar realm of human experience of which religion, historically, has been the examiner (now along with science)… are we now being led back by the best evidence to agree with deprivation-compensation claims like Spinoza's?
Spinoza's scathing critique of superstition, or as he calls it “the mockery of human wisdom” (22), and its “wholly repugnant” exploitation at the hands of religious institutions or leaders has proven, since its publication in the seventeenth century, to be a timeless reflection on the danger of allowing fear and abuse of power to influence religious beliefs and institutions. He condemns the corruption and cheapening of true religion that occurs when the influence of men of “sordid avarice and ambition” overshadow any honest love or worship of God. When such arrogance and venality finds its way into religious leadership, “enthralling men's minds with prejudices, forcing their judgement, or employing any of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition,” this is a shameful perversion of religion, bearing no resemblance to the “old religion” and showing no evidence of the “Divine light” (23, 24, 25). Spinoza laments those who “mistak[e] superstition for religion” (22) and argues that true piety “cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure” (24) unless a society enjoys a free exchange of ideas and embraces reason instead of “credulity and prejudices… which degrade man from rational being to beast” (24). The passage closes with a brief critique of a literal reading of scripture and a declaration of the very limited authority of the prophets – Spinoza advocates for a “living faith” rather than a “formal assent” to the Bible (25).
I was surprised by my reaction to Hitchens's inclusion of Spinoza in this anthology. I consider Spinoza to be a representative of my camp of radical theologians and religious naturalists; so I felt somewhat defensive against a “new atheist” such as Hitchens claiming Spinoza as a part of his own genealogy. Though I was intrigued by my own “us/them” mentality, I do think that Spinoza's legacy is a complicated one that does not necessarily point to atheism. Spinoza argues against superstition here, and certain personal conceptions of God elsewhere, but it seems quite a stretch to identify him as an atheist, and I find Hitchens's dismissive suggestion that perhaps Spinoza would have formally renounced the idea of a Supreme Being had he not been in a “general climate of persecution” flippant and presumptuous. I would argue that Spinoza paved the way not for atheism, but for the resistance to both atheism and superstitious religion through radical and alternative theologies. In my mind, Spinoza's legacy is one of the strongest forces that may help maintain a certain reverence and religious energy among people who do not believe in a personal God and who might otherwise be resigned to leave religion altogether. I certainly agree with Hitchens that “the idea of a personal or intervening god is made very much more difficult to defend as a result of Spinoza's intellectual exertions,” but this does not preclude other non-personified god concepts and certainly not religion in general, much of which is non-theistic in outlook.
Spinoza shows how people are prone to credulity in their faith by criticizing reasoning step by step. Human beings are easily swayed in times of doubt when they encounter a fact that they cannot interpret. When this happens, this triggers superstition and they prefer to follow programed sequences of actions that they are used to from the past: pray or implore God for help. Prophets play a key role in prayer; people will exalt them because people are likely to think the prophets have the light of wisdom. This easy triumph leads faith to an assent of belief in the Bible rather than a living faith. Spinoza longed for faith based on reason, thereby setting biblical interpretation free from the prejudice that comes from the prophets.
Spinoza is a good model for those wanting to interpret the Bible by reason. However, here arise some questions. What if people are likely to be credulous, even though they are able to interpret the Bible in reason? What if rational analysis leads people to be anti-Christian? Is monotheism rational? A short passage cannot be enough to answer these questions, but his thought might be controversial in just these ways. Especially, reason is based on physical fact and repeated occurrence because we can predict what will happen sequentially. However, acknowledgment of God is not rational because God has no physical perspective and predictable repeated occurrence. Consequently, the believer's approach is to lean on emotion rather than reason.
The excerpt from Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise critiques superstition and challenges the special morality of religion. Spinoza argues that superstition is a crutch for the masses deemed necessary due to the inability to control all aspects of life. Fear, Spinoza believes, is the root of humankind’s reliance on superstition. The creation of various religions is a result of this fear-driven superstition, and the differences among the religions further divides the people rather than uniting them. Spinoza does not see anything divine their claims of religious and moral superiority. Finding flaws in claims of divine-authorship, Spinoza announces that he has analyzed the texts from a critical perspective, free of prejudice and outside influence.
I enjoyed Spinoza’s critique of church leadership: “Verily, but if they had one spark of light from on High, they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice; if they were concerned for their opponents’ souls, instead of for their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compassion” (24-25). I do not personally come down so hard on the clergy, but do find this critique purposeful for examining one’s true intentions in relation to the church. I was interested to read Spinoza, since I know him in relation to his contributions to biblical studies but had never read his work. I found in Spinoza a harsh critique of religion and spirituality, but never did Spinoza renounce God. Hitchens admits this in his introduction to the excerpt, but claims the climate of persecution silenced Spinoza’s public renunciation of God. I’m somewhat skeptical of Hitchens’ assumption.
Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise is a sharp critique against superstition. Spinoza links superstition to fear, both of which stand in sharp contrast to reason. From this perspective religion is often little more than institutionalized superstition. The aim of this piece is to urge the use of reason to dispel the superstition, and oppression, from religion. The danger of not doing so is apparent in the hypocrisy between Christians’ professed virtues and lived. Reason has the power to liberate and without this freedom of thought “piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure” (24).
By excommunicating Spinoza, his opponents simply gave more credibility to his argument. Spinoza’s critique is aimed at methodology more than the content of religion. Throughout his work he tries to reclaim religious terms: for example he associates reason with the Divine Light. Spinoza’s description of those who are prone to superstition is far from compassionate. From his, somewhat haughty, perspective the world would seem to be split between imbeciles and wise sages. While his critique of superstition is insightful it is understandable that the religious leaders feared him shining the ‘divine light’ of reason on their holy scriptures.
While living in the 17th century safe haven of The Netherlands, Benedict de Spinoza witnessed a culture whose freedom of speech and worship created a relatively stable state that allowed for a reasoned view of the Divine. This selection begins by establishing the difference between superstition and religion. People under duress and ruled by fear are more likely to fall prey to any belief system that offers a way out, particularly a system outside the realm of reason. Thus, the restless masses tend to find comfort in a superstitious view of God who would rather leave signs in the most ridiculous of places instead of in the human mind. This “dim notion of God” (23) catches on quickly and spreads easily through a society, culminating in the use of such a conception in justifying war and other horrors. Amid the acceptance of these views, the established hierarchy of the Church becomes more of a chain of power than spiritual guidance, causing the ecclesiastics leading the masses to seek attention rather than dispense wisdom. Spinoza remarked that only under this explanation could the Christian religion of love, peace, and joy result in a population immersed in hatred and fear. In personal repose from the outside madness, he claimed that blind acceptance of human commentaries as sacred doctrine misses the essence of the Divine. And, upon further inspection of the Bible, the words of the prophets are useful only on matters of morality. Thus, Spinoza's critique addresses the conflation of religion and superstition into a system that loses sight of a reasoned Divine in favor of the emotional tendencies of humanity.
Spinoza's presence in Hitchens' compilation provides an intriguing alternative to the “new atheism” propounded by Hitchens and his ilk. Spinoza’s essay is not a refutation of God in the traditional sense, a fact that even Hitchens seems not to fully grasp in his introduction to the selection. Above all Spinoza's writing offers a social commentary on the use of religion in his time (it works for our time as well). Reason was in the air and therefore he had to reconcile seemingly disparate aspects of his own personal worldview. He accomplished this feat by becoming aware of how religion worked in the population at large. Being one of the flag bearers for a new paradigm, Spinoza's seeming immodesty when labeling the rather ignorant tendencies of the masses was not without warrant, but neither was it direct mockery. He said eloquently what I wish I could say when meeting with people who belong to what Spinoza thought of as the “masses.” Yet what separates him from mere blusterers of the atheistic cause is that he understood the nature of the human mind and the social history to which the masses have been subjected. Alongside that insight he also grasped the potential of the human mind for reason and thus believed the more enlightened view of God was assured. Therefore I do not find Spinoza's belief to be atheistic at all. It is simply focused away from the admittedly strained view of God (the “dim notion of God”) held by much of the population and toward a more impersonal and truly transcendental God. I find little to disagree with in Spinoza's critique. As someone who is immersed in the potential of reason yet unwilling to go the full atheist route, I find comfort in an argument that remains sound to this day.
The lure of hope and the paralysis of fear can easily breed superstition that overshadows human reason. Fear, uncertainty, and lack of control foster superstitions through imagination. Superstition creates and supports religion, and simultaneously curtails the freedom needed to exercise rational judgment. As people fight for freedom under dictatorship, the freedom for human reason should be preserved and fought for. In the latter case, the misconceptions of religion can be disclosed. After the manifestation of religious superstition, people can learn true faith including true religious virtues.
Spinoza points to fear as preventing free exercising of rational mind against religion. The fact that fear is intimately related to safety and power, shows how powerful fear-driven religion can be within politics, particularly by suppressing freedom of the rational mind. However, Spinoza almost seems to argue that religion is finally not powerful enough to completely submerge the human rational mind, and that true religion can be learned precisely through cultivating rational thought. The relationship between religion and rational mind should not be against each other. Rather, religion should be able to support the free exercising of human mind and vulnerable to correction. Therefore, for Sponoza as much as anyone, “you will know the truth, and it will set you free.”
In the brief space of this selection from Spinoza’s Treatise, the author makes three points. First, he identifies the source of religious superstition as fear – a justifiable fear in many cases, he seems to hold, seeing as how life is unpredictable in its combination of comfort and difficulty. During times of comfort, the well-off are without need of recourse to superstition; when challenged, however, superstition raises its ugly head, and the supplicant is “wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God.” Second, he criticizes the faithful for the inadequacy of the way they live out of their faith: they should have “pity and compassion” for their fellows, but instead are malicious, self-interested, and vengeful towards one another. Third, in an interesting (and, to this reviewer, unexpected) turn at the conclusion of the piece, Spinoza examines “Holy Writ”, approaching it independently and even with ostensible disinterest. He concludes that while the “prophets” have given moral guidance, the “speculative doctrines” they espouse are unimportant and without authority.
Spinoza’s keen observation that intense religious piety seems to correlate to moments of crisis still rings true; the hoary adage that prayer will never be banished from schools as long as teachers give pop quizzes has some bearing here. (A more sympathetic version of this same observation appears in the selection from Marx as well.) For all of his criticisms of his superstitious contemporaries, however, he seems to assume a qualitative distinction between “superstition” and “religion.” While he dismisses the former, he seems to respect the latter within certain bounds. More than a vociferous atheist, in fact, Spinoza sounds like a proper Englishman annoyed by the religious practices of his more charismatic neighbors: it just isn’t how these things are done! His second point, for example, regarding the proper use of religious zeal, is the teaching of a reformer, not an atheist revolutionary; who could argue with a plea for more compassion? Likewise his third point, which assumes the authority of the prophets, even if it circumscribes the sphere of their influence. He could have chosen to disregard the prophets wholesale, or held that they shouldn’t have any standing in the community at all. But he didn’t reject them; he reinterpreted them. It may be the case that Spinoza’s “innermost convictions” are impossible to discern through the distance of history, as Hitchens says in his introduction, but, from this selection, it is hard to see Spinoza as one of Hitchens’ fellow evangelists.
In his Theological-Political Treatise Benedict de Spinoza writes critically of the difference between the practice of religion—which is rarely practiced, versus the practice of superstition—which is widely practiced. Of the latter, which he focuses on more fully, Spinoza writes: “Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune,” and that it is this combination of insecurity and desire that elicits a turning away from true religion (21). Spinoza states that these fears and hopes, which are fed by emotions rather than reason, have caused both the layperson and the ruling class to treat religion as a device rather than as something holy, and that in this regard religion has been turned into an establishment through which upward mobility may be procured and has been wielded as a tool for political purposes. Spinoza argues that just as true religion has been abused so too has scripture, through the development of Christian doctrine by means of a faulty methodology. Instead of approaching scripture as a study of the Sacred Books in and of themselves, theologians have forced the scripture to conform to Platonic and Aristotelian thought, and instead of grappling with the mysteries—which would speak to an active and discerning faith, theologians simply affirm them (25).
The points at which I have difficulty following Spinoza’s argument are where he deals with the necessary primacy of Reason in understanding scripture and in practicing true religion. As he discredits the employment of Platonic and Aristotelian thought for such endeavors, I assume that Reason must not be a direct correlate with logic. My best guess would be that Reason represents an openness to the Divine light, and so it would involve a process of spiritual discernment rather than a system of logical proofs (25).
This essay, from the mid-1600s, begins with an examination of superstition. It identifies emotions, notably fear, as a basis for superstition, and it points out that politicians often harness such thought processes for their own ends. The author appreciates living in a free republic, where people can worship and think as they like. He sees this freedom as critical to piety and peace. But he feels that religion, as commonly practiced with a focus on ceremony and authority, despises and stifles reason by treating it as opposed to faith.
While Spinoza’s views have been expressed by many in modern times, they were radical in the 1600s. Spinoza was ultimately excommunicated for his views. But, apart from this censure, the Jewish faith has a long history of welcoming inquiry and varied perspectives on holy writings, and it has been more open than Christian traditions in accepting liberal views. For example, the recent US Religions Landscape Survey (Pew Forum, June, 2008: 4, 5, 31) reports the following differences, based on religion:
In this excerpt of Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza attacks the origins and effects of religious superstition. For Spinoza, religious superstition opposes political, social, and public peace because it opposes freedom and reason. Hence, this is a treatise that argues against theological ideas in order to preserve political order. Concerning the origins of superstition, Spinoza notices a demographic, so to speak, of the superstitious person. Superstitious people are “those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages” (22). For example, those who are in danger or have need prayer and seek God’s help. In these cases, reason and wisdom is rejected in favor for God’s strange intervention—when the people are superstitious seemingly everything either comes from God or is an attack from the Devil. Furthermore, superstitious people live by fear. Spinoza says, “Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear” (22). Only when humanity is “under the dominion of fear” and feel like they are not in control does humanity become superstitious. Concerning the effects of superstition, Spinoza believes that superstition is an enemy of freedom that leads to piety and public peace. For Spinoza, religious superstition controls the masses. Rather than reason, superstition “causes many terrible wars and revolutions... clogs man’s mind with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason” (23). This clogging of reason is used to control masses of people to make them act in ways that they would not otherwise, like participating in slavery. For Spinoza, then, religious faith becomes almost synonymous with superstition that generates credulity and prejudices that degrade man “from rational being to beast” (24).
Spinoza’s critique of superstition was entertaining and probably quite fresh for his time. However, today, his critique seems quiet too simple and dismissive. I found Spinoza’s characterization of the superstitious person as overly greedy of the material things, fear-based, and the tendency to over spiritualize everyday actions quiet compelling. In my experience, religiously superstitious people tend to simply paint actions as “from God” or “from the Devil.” Spinoza characterizing the superstitious person as fearful is quite persuasive. Why did the tornado hit town? No one knows. The meteorologist can only provide a physical explanation. Superstitious allows for those who are afraid to provide a superstitious answer to the question that explains why and who is responsive for it. The superstitious person “finds” an answer to the event that they can’t make sense of in order to feel like is it understood and within their control. Concerning effects of the superstition, I believe that Spinoza’s too hastily conflates superstition to irrational prejudice. The German philosopher, Gadamer critiques the enlightenment’s understanding of prejudice. The enlightenment viewed prejudice in a negative sense that was irrational and based on authority. Spinoza would fit in well this characterization. However, it’s not clear that religious superstition is either irrational or that prejudice is unfounded or irrational. The world could be just the way that these superstitious people purport it to be. According to John Hick, the universe is religiously ambiguous in that one can rational construct a worldview based on their experiences of the world both religiously and non-religiously. Lastly, those prejudice and trust in authority actually takes rationality to preserve such structures. It’s not clear that Spinoza recognizes his prejudice as he evaluates Scripture near to end of this pericope.
In this book, Spinoza courageously pointed out the superstition comes from the doubt, fear and greed, and he analyzed how the superstition formed from the former experience in mingle with the context. Superstition is nothing to do with reason and nothing to do with God either. He further argued that the ministry and kings try to use the beauty of religion to rule the people with threat, deceit and force. He didn’t see any Divine light were in them. Finally he dared to question the mainstream interpretation of the Bible with mentioning that the manmade moral doctrine was not the true religion which mattered people a little.
Spinoza lived in 17th century, the era of Enlightenment, he is same as other pioneers who started reasoning on everything around him. He did conform neither to Jewish synagogue nor to the Calvinist and Catholic authorities even he lived in Holland where was considered the most freedom of religious believes during the time. He is not an Atheist, he just pointed out the hypocrisy of the state and church and advocated the separation of them. I do like his commentary, the problems he described 500 years before still exist to the day, Maybe God give us a true heart towards Him, not towards to the world.
Summary: After his perusal of the Bible, Benedict De Spinoza is of the view that “the authority of the prophets has weight only in matters of morality, and that their speculative doctrines affect us little” (Chapter 4 (25)). This is in support of his position on the separation of church and state (25). He explains that the church which had been turned into emoluments with its ministers turned dignitaries were taking advantage of the masses’ weak tendencies to superstitions (23, 24). In the wake of the republic, Spinoza sees it as his responsibility to point out the constraints brought on by following religion (the Christian religion) blindly (23). He explains that the minds of the general public have been filled with prejudices and misconceptions (superstitions) by men of questionable characters (24).
Response: Spinoza’s treatise is written in response to the problems of religion in his era. As noted in the introduction, he does not denounce the notion of God as Supreme Being but points out the importance of exalting reason over human misconceptions and superstitions (21, 25).
In the introduction to “Theological-Political Treatise,” Spinoza differentiates between superstition, popular religion, and living faith. Superstition, according to Spinoza, is motivated by fear and is by nature inconsistent insofar as it is governed by the emotions. Popular religion, on the other hand, is characterized as respect for ecclesiastics. Living faith is constituted by full devotion to the light of human reason, understood to be united in essence with the Divine light of God. Deviation from reason is thus deviation from our true nature, which according to Spinoza’s pantheistic metaphysics, is identification with the Divine as such. To live according to the light of reason, therefore, is true religion, living faith—which can forever be discerned from other attempts at religion in that it is unwavering, self-penetrating, and unchanging. In Spinoza’s system, freedom is defined as the capacity to access and employ reason without inhibition. Therefore, true piety or political peace is impossible without the capacity to judge or think independently. Contrasted to this conception of freedom is the idea of human bondage, which constitutes all human activity that occurs at a distance from the light of reason.
Everything for Spinoza, and many of the early modern philosophers, depends on whether or not reason is identical with the Divine and if freedom should thereby be defined as the preservation of reason. I will briefly point to an alternative conception of freedom by contesting Spinoza’s understanding of superstition. When Spinoza interprets the example of Alexander resorting to divination when he is faced with uncertainty and an insurmountable difficulty, he describes Alexander’s change as motivated by fear and weakness. While that may be the case, I feel that it is a better interpretation to say that Alexander was motivated by an exhaustion of reason. This is similar to Kierkegaard’s knight of faith who ceaselessly expunges his will in order to make space for the divine order of the spirit. Similarly, Heidegger, toward the end of his life, makes an emphatic distinction between calculative thinking and contemplative thinking. Calculative thinking works with givens toward specific ends through the logic of available reason. Contemplative thinking, however, is characterized by 1) releasement toward things (die Gelassenhiet zu den Dingen) and 2) openness toward the mystery of the procession Being. It is clear that these thinkers have in common an intimation gleaned by speculative thinkers such as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme, given metaphysical grounding by Schelling, and psychological support by C.G. Jung: namely the contingency and limits of human reason. From this perspective, superstition would have to be further delineated into categories that differentiate between the modes of superstition truly dominated by fear or concealed attempts at manipulation, and sincere modes of divination that operate through a submission or suspension of reason—a paradoxical act of effort aiming towards the receptivity required to dialogically respond to revelation. From this differentiation a more thorough, or at least alternative and therefore competing, definition of authentic religion could proceed.
Spinoza’s “Theological-Poltical Treatise” covers a surprising amount of ground for such a short piece, touching on the origins of superstition, religious and political violence, and even the dissonance between philosophical speculations and the interpretation of scripture. For Spinoza, superstition is born of existential insecurity and fear. As human beings feel oppressed by the natural world and fate (or circumstance) they are drawn to superstitious beliefs as a way to improve their lot in life and seek security. He writes: “The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery… No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption… Anything that excites their astonishment they believe to…[signify] the anger of the god or of the Supreme being.” Superstition is rejected as fundamentally “misguided,” the “phantoms of dejected and fearful minds,” that is “engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.” Seeing the connections between irrational superstition and sectarian violence – he quotes Curtius in saying “The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition” – Spinoza makes an impassioned plea for religious liberty as essential the flourishing of both peace and religious piety.
The inclusion of Spinoza in an atheist collection like this is an interesting as his own reflections on ultimate reality would certainly challenge that label – although he certainly rejects a personal God he would more accurately be described as a sort of non-reductive pantheist or a proto-religious naturalist. As a result I found myself disappointed that this was the Spinoza piece that Hitchens decided to include in his atheist reader. Rather than showing how a seemingly atheistic thinker presents a vision of God, or Ultimate Reality, or Nature, that is intellectually compelling and spiritually evocative, Hitchens included yet another piece that bashes superstitious popular religion. My first reaction to reading this piece was a sense of deep disappointment over the intellectual laziness and cowardice of the anthology (and Hitchens himself), even though I did find parts of Spinoza’s piece insightful. The element of this piece that stood out the most to me was that Spinoza makes a clear distinction between superstition and religion. He refers to superstition as “misguided religion” and that superstition is frequently mistook for religion. Unlike many of the authors in this volume, Spinoza is able to make a conceptual distinction between the two and supposedly could see a vision for religion that was not inherently superstitious. After a week of reading Sam Harris I found myself craving that kind of subtlety and nuance.
In an excerpt from the Theological-Political Treatise Benedict Spinoza suggests that the origin of superstition is fear. When people are prosperous and fortune is on their side, they do not go on pilgrimage to a holy shrine; it is when calamity strikes, that people scrape and pray to whomever is listening. In prosperity superstition dissipates. This is why prophets rise to power when the state is in its greatest peril. Spinoza also observes the travesty that those who profess the Christian religion quarrel with violence and vitriol towards their enemies. What distinguishes a Christian from a Turk, Jew, or Heathen then is not behavior, but rather what they wear, where they worship and group phraseology. If the divine light does not shine through their behavior, then maybe it is evident in their doctrine. Spinoza laments, though, that most Christians are not even capable of assessing the light of their own doctrines due to their a priori acceptance of the divine nature of scripture. Instead of assuming divine inspiration of scripture, one should instead arrive at this position after much scrutiny.
At the end of the excerpt Spinoza advocates for what could be labeled an inductive approach to biblical studies. There is a trace of irony in saying this though because what Spinoza implied differs from how inductive bible study tends to function today. Spinoza relates how he personally determined to examine the scripture “afresh in a careful, impartial, and unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning it, and attributing to it no doctrines, which I do not find clearly therein set down” (25). So far inductive-bible-study-advocates would nod their head in agreement. But where they differ from Spinoza is in that most inductive bible studies today take the inspired nature of scripture a priori, not a posteriori. That is, people seek to inductively study the scripture – build their beliefs upon what they observe not what they are told – because they believe (from what they are told) the bible to be divinely inspired. Spinoza, on the other hand, advocated that the divine nature of the text was also one of the preconceived ideas that should be laid aside in the inductive process.
|
|
Jewish |
Protestant |
Catholic |
|
Views of Scripture… |
|
|
|
|
…Holy book is the literal word of God |
10% |
46% |
23% |
|
Conception of God… |
|
|
|
|
…Personal God |
25% |
72% |
60% |
|
…Impersonal force |
50% |
19% |
29% |
|
Agree that… |
|
|
|
|
…There is more than one way to interpret the teachings of my religion |
89% |
64% |
77% |
|
|
|
Victor Stenger |
Victor Stenger uses a scientific perspective to argue against the likelihood of a supernatural God as the creator and guiding force of the world. He examines theories and available evidence – on the nature of matter and energy, the origin of the universe, and the order in natural laws – seeking gaps or inconsistencies that might support the view that a supernatural event may have played a role in how these came to be. When he doesn’t find this type of evidence (as observations fit with natural theories), he concludes that the universe appears to have a purely natural origin. He says scientists have described several scenarios by which the universe could have come about “from nothing”, including his own theory, in which “our universe is described as having ‘tunneled’ through the chaos at the Planck time from a prior universe that existed for all previous time”. (pp. 321) He acknowledges that none of these can be proved, but concludes that “any argument for the existence of God based on this gap in scientific knowledge fails, since plausible natural mechanisms can be given within the framework of existing knowledge.” (pp. 321)
As Stenger makes a case for wholly natural understanding of the world, he doesn’t acknowledge that some of the theories he uses to support his view are as wild (and potentially false) and hard to understand and accept as the image of a supernatural God. It makes sense for physicists to ponder theoretical possibilities. But, it’s important to also recognize that some things are unknown, and some things may forever be unknowable. (For example, why is there something, rather than nothing? And how did natural laws come to be as they are?) Rather than attempting to explain that no one yet is able to understand, we may just accept and appreciate the fact that some things are unknown and that, because of this, they can prompt the type of wonder, appreciation, and awe that, for many, is at the core of a religious sense. Many theists have a similar impulse. On some level, they accept that God is unknowable. But, despite this, they claim to “know” that He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, and that He hears prayers and may act in the world. Rather than assigning presumed qualities of what they think He might be, they – along with atheists - might adopt a humble mode, and become comfortable saying, “We don’t know”.
Even though atheism usually asserts that since no god can be proven it is the burden of theism to prove and defend religion, Stenger takes argument a step further. In seven arguments, Stenger explains how an atheist can account for miracles, created matter, order, beginnings, the expansive cosmos and physics. His final exploration is the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” and was the most intriguing investigation I found. Short and to the point, this final argument proposes that nothing is actually more unstable than something, and the universe moves towards stability. Backed up by the previous six arguments, Stenger can assert that the universe moves toward disorder, but on the same level diffuses energy. Nothing is so unstable though that it would require more energy to remain nothingness than to become something. Becoming more complex, less energy is needed for something to remain. It is then natural for something to exist.
I found this argument from Stenger very provocative. This answer to the question is quite convincing. I cannot personally validate the claim but it does seem reasonable to me. In previous sections he as well deals with the ‘god of the gaps’ argument that I am tempted to bring back here asking what if God is that force that causes the something? I wonder though how this final argument doesn’t actually overturn what Stenger’s atheism to begin with. If it is natural in the world for there to be something rather than nothing, it would as well be true that for humanity we naturally need the idea of god to understand the world. Theism, over time, becomes more and more complex, just like the universe around us. If the thought process of humanity follows the laws of the universe that Stenger has provided here, it seems that atheism is spending a ton of energy to move toward the direction of “nothing” in vain. It seems that Nietzsche might have been right after all. Something must occupy the throne of God after humanity tore him from it. It seems then, if atheism understood itself better it might be moving to enthrone a god of diversity and difference that could represent the entirety of the universe rather than atheistic anthropocentric humanism.
|
|
|
Victor Stenger |
The age old metaphysical question—Why is there something rather than nothing?—is addressed by Stenger. He points to the weakness of the theistic answer and offers an answer through physics. “This question is often the last recourse of the theist who seeks to argue for the existence of God from physics and cosmology and finds that all his other arguments fail,” he says (326). He points out that the theist’s facile answer does not answer the question. Rather, it only perpetuates the question, because the inevitable reply to the theist is: “why is there God rather than nothing?” (ibid). Stenger argues that the complex structures of nature derive from “processes of self-organization” as evidenced in a snowflake. The snowflake as snowflake on earth limits it to the earth’s atmosphere. But the snowflake in “most of the universe” would be an “eternal” snowflake, he argues. Accordingly ‘nothing’ is more likely the origin of the universe than God: Since “many simple systems of particles are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy,” “‘nothing’…would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter,” he says (ibid). Therefore “the transition from nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring” God (ibid). As a result it seems more likely that “there is no God,” he concludes (327).
I am left quite confused. This argument seems absurd to me. I must be missing something. First, Stenger’s starting point (at least where Hitchens’ citation of Stenger begins) is to complain about the “theist who seeks to argue for the existence of God from physics and cosmology and finds that all his other arguments fail” (326). But then Stenger does exactly the same thing, not with God, but with his concept called “nothing”. I agree that theistic answers to this metaphysical question are exceedingly tenuous. But he undermines the strength of this point by appealing to physics. Let not theism answer metaphysical questions, he says. But how does his conjuring of physics in response to meta-physics escape the strength of this rebuttal? Massive contradiction, it seems. Further—and more importantly—Stenger’s argument is based on imaginative fantasy: Imagine what would happen to a snowflake in outer space (where you don’t find them) and add to that the simplicity of how we imagine ‘nothing’ (which is not) would ‘be’. Here we have proof for atheism, says Stenger. Oh, and this is 60 percent likely, he adds! My reply? Nonsense. ‘Nothing’ is here analyzed from ‘something’—by a ‘something’ named Stenger—whose brain produces a type of Chimera named ‘nothing’. Then he makes ‘nothing’ a ‘something’. Do I have to point out the fact that ‘nothing’ is not simple or unstable or anything else if ‘it’ ‘is’ truly nothing? ‘It’ could not facilitate future complex structures or become a universe or be or do or progress or evolve or function in any way whatsoever. If ‘nothing’ is nothing—no-thing—no predicate whatsoever can be attached to ‘it’! Need I continue?
In this work, Benedict de Spinoza observes some of the absurdities and inconsistencies of superstitious beliefs, which he claims are rooted in humanity’s inability to control its circumstances. He notes that instead of using reason in the face of certain obstacles, people tend to look to some rather ridiculous explanations of events when their prosperity is threatened. “Only while under the dominion of fear,” writes Spinoza, “do men fall prey to superstition . . .” (22). His appraisal of supernatural and superstitious beliefs is intended to show that they arise from natural causes, and not from any divine or ghostly source. Yet, his purpose for this treatise is not only to shed light on the absurdity of maintaining such beliefs, but also to detail the inhumane effects of doing so. He accuses religious authorities of exploiting the fears of the superstitious masses, “which keeps them down.” Next, he observes the disparity between the Christians’ faith and deeds, or rather, between what they profess to believe and how they behave. Finally, he brings to light some ways in which Christian doctrine, at that time, was being contrived by religious academics to fit the natural philosophy of the ancient Greeks, and thus to share in its greater capacity to explain the world. His final conclusion has to do with the degree of influence scriptural authors have had and why. In Spinoza’s assessment, for example, the greatest contribution of the prophets is in the moral realm.
I like Spinoza, but I was really let down here. For the sake of brevity, I shall attend to only one of the issues that I have with this excerpt. He observes from the outset that, “Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitably . . . they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity.” (22) My initial reaction to this observation was, “No kidding!” But, my attention was held, nonetheless, upon reading his pseudo-disclaimer, which immediately followed: “This is a general fact I suppose everyone knows . . .” He then goes on to state that, “superstition’s chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind . . . and rejecting human wisdom as vain . . .” I might point out that if one has operated by reason and human wisdom, and encountered peace and prosperity in so doing, then it does not seem altogether unreasonable that these methods should be abandoned in the face of despair and destitution. Of course counter-intuitive explanations will be invoked upon the realization that intuition itself may not be sufficient to provide an account of or solution to various problems. I might add, however, that it is often precisely when those counter-intuitive claims turn out to be correct that things get interesting (see Copernicus).
|
|
|
Leslie Stephen |
After a brief note about the contemporary origin of the term “Agnostic” with Thomas Huxley (whose position he means to defend and also claim for himself in this apology), Leslie Stephens proceeds to use the term broadly to refer to a person who asserts three principles. The agnostic is one (1) “who asserts-what no one denies-that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence…”, (2) who asserts, furthermore, in agreement with certain theologians, that this sphere beyond the reaches of human understanding includes all knowledge except that derivable from experience, and (3), disagreeing with the same theologians, however, that “theology lies within this forbidden sphere.” This last agnostic claim regarding theological dogma is the focus of Stephens' apology, which takes the form of a polemic against the theologians whom he oppositely terms “gnostics,” both for convenience and because of their dogmatism in matters belonging to that “forbidden sphere,” before which the agnostic attitude is humbler and more careful (despite accusations of theologians to the contrary). The whole plea of his rhetoric and arguments is that it is unreasonable and in many cases, worse, hypocritical and self-defeating, for a gnostic theologian to criticize the agnostic by appealing either to revelation or to rationality, or to accuse him of some inherent moral fault-say, arrogance-in agnosticism. Stephens' apology for agnosticism involves numerous contentions about particular issues: that the consistent application of reason to theology would lead (as it often has) to a choice between pantheism or atheism (p. 103-104), leaving personal theism behind; that there is wisdom in not trusting in the abilities of rationality so much as to adjudicate in these questions; and that the problem of evil is insoluble for the theologian, short of paying too high a religious price (p. 105).
Stephens does not quite make clear what sort of reply the agnostic ought to provide in defense from the atheist's possible criticisms, or what exactly the latter might be. It is easy for me to be as convinced as I am by his arguments in defense of agnosticism and his simultaneous attack of dogmatic theological self-defensive maneuvers. I have noticed many of the same internal inconsistencies in various theologies and have often felt the force of my own logic preventing every conventional theological option for my belief. But as I try to figure how how atheistic or agnostic I am (feeling for now that I am both at once, in certain senses, without contradiction) this essay got me thinking about whether I might criticize Stephens in the manner of his criticism of the “orthodox writers” (p. 102), for advocating a stance that does not move quite a far enough in response to evidence, that stops short, resting content with a less confrontational, and perhaps more comfortable, opinion. Besides, must atheism always be more dogmatic than agnosticism?
Leslie Stephen’s essay, “An Agnostic’s Apology,” begins with the basic claim that the agnostic position fully acknowledges the limits of knowledge and faculties. He contends the assertion that God is fully knowable in the way that Christianity professes, especially given the facts that we can observe about the world. Stephen finds it far more likely that humans have a strong desire for something like a God, even if the facts do not support this particular conclusion. Reason necessitates humility when it comes to dogmatism in the area of any topic that is fundamentally unknowable. When revelation is excluded, he suggests that pantheism and atheism are the only two viable intellectual positions. To take on a pantheist position is also to deny the personal God of Christianity, for such a God is a contradiction in terms since the natural world is obviously unjust. Theologians, then, abandon logic when they are faced with these sorts of contradictions, which is why they are unable to reach a consensus with one another.
After reading this essay, I wonder about the distinction that Stephen might make between atheism and agnosticism. There are certain parts in the essay where Stephen appears to be advocating for atheism instead of a position of a strict agnosticism. In fact, he begins in a place of stipulating the limits of human faculties and knowledge, but he proceeds to trust human logic to the utmost degree in dismantling the problems of theism. I wonder if Stephen possessed any uncertainty when it came to whether there could be something like a Christian God operating in the world. What kind of facts might be persuasive in convincing Stephen that there was a God? I do worry that the position he advocates for in this paper may not have the flexibility that makes contemporary agnosticism attractive, especially if Stephen’s position is ultimately unfalsifiable.
|
|
|
Charles Templeton |
In the brief excerpt from his A Farewell to God, Charles Templeton reflects on his friendship with the televangelist Billy Graham. Templeton and Graham were young evangelists together until Templeton resigned from his church in order to attend Princeton Theological Seminary. They met to discuss Templeton's decision and their growing differences. Templeton challenged his friend's dogmatic belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible. For Templeton, Graham's fundamentalism seemed to be a dangerous rejection of critical thinking that amounted to ‘intellectual suicide’ (283). Graham gently dismissed Templeton's concerns, stating that a literal belief in the word of God was his path and it worked for him. Templeton persisted, requesting that Graham attend Princeton with him to grow intellectually. Graham declined but offered to attend a university outside the United States. Templeton demurred. The two friends had made their choices. Templeton chose intellectual growth. Graham chose the Bible as God's Word. Years later, the two met again. Graham still believed the same fundamentals he had as a young man. Templeton pitied him his stagnation.
Templeton's story reads as a friend's lament. His tone of regret and sorrow is completely missing from Hitchens' introduction. The introduction refers to Graham as a: “boring racist charlatan” and a “mediocre demagogue.” In contrast, Templeton characterizes Graham as being principled and authentic with an “invincible innocence” even if it is nonsensical. The introduction only serves to score rhetorical points against Graham while ignoring the content it attempts to introduce.
Charles Templeton reflects on his long, intimate friendship with Billy Graham, the famous evangelical preacher who markedly influenced numerous conversions during his mass-evangelizing, often televised ministry. The reflection mostly concerns the loss of their relationship, why it was lost, and what that loss meant to each of them. Sadly, it was due simply to important disagreements over the very same Christian ideas over which they had always bonded—the very substance of their intimate conversations and their work together all those years. In a friendly but serious debate they had after a while of being apart, Templeton accuses Graham of “intellectual suicide”(283) for quitting his curiosity and honest questioning through accepting the truth of the Bible wholly and literally. Graham defends his position. In doing so he witnessed better spiritual results in his ministry (a decidedly un-intellectual justification, in Templeton's view), results which Graham believed showed evidence of the Bible's truth. Through this back-and-forth they came to realize they were talking past each other. Evidently they lost respect for each other and eventually lost interest in what each other thought and felt about the controversies between them. But they kept what respect and interest in one another they could. And they never stopped loving each other. Despite both wanting to maintain closeness, Templeton's gradual and unpreventable de-conversion on the one hand, and on the other Graham's unmovable fundamentalist faith, caused a painful rift between them that widened with time. It was “inevitable,”Templeton says (283). Three times in this short passage Templeton expresses how sad it was for him to understand why their relationship, for all intents and purposes, ended.
I can relate extremely well to this story (not just because my mother delights to recall becoming a Christian through Billy Graham's ministry). I myself have several stories of meaningful relationships that can only be described as having a similar structure: Christian faith was the prime factor that bonded the two of us but then, over time, that very faith became the main cause of separation. Some of these relationships I've lost altogether. Others I still somewhat maintain but they have weakened (conversations precariously hanging between unbearable awkwardness and hurtful contentiousness). Still others have adapted with the changes and are still going strong. Some of the losses still greatly sadden me. Others have been easier to accept. It all depends.
In this excerpt, Charles Templeton, the man who was once Billy Graham's right-hand man and co-evangelist, recalls a few encounters with Graham that served at the turning point in the relationship between the two men – the moments at which they both realized, quietly and sadly, that they had lost common ground. Templeton had begun to find it impossible to sustain belief in the Christian evangelical literal interpretation of the Bible. He speaks fondly but mournfully about his old friend's decision to remain committed to an image of God and a method of scriptural interpretation that had lost any semblance of plausibility for Templeton. Noting that he feels sorry for Graham, who, in his mind, had “given up the life of unrestricted thought” (284), Templeton affirms that though his mind had changed, Graham's beliefs remained sincere: “there is no feigning in Billy Graham” (284).
This short excerpt highlights both the nostalgic pain and cleansing liberation that can (sometimes simultaneously) accompany the decision to move out from under the “scared canopy” of a certain religious framework. For Templeton, the opportunity to go to Princeton Theological Seminary – where he could unashamedly explore new or alternative ways of thinking about and ordering the universe, exercise the gift of free thought, and seek salvation from the call to “intellectual suicide” that he saw inherent in the Christian evangelical belief system – seemed to hold ultimate value (283). However, it meant leaving behind his friend and his credibility among an entire community of believers. Billy Graham held strikingly different values. Freedom to explore theological-philosophical questions seemed incidental to the much more compelling (in his estimation) experience of feeling that “the Holy Spirit uses [him]” and that he sees “results” among his followers (283). This highlights the complexity and diversity of approaches individuals take toward religious choices and behaviors: for Templeton, choosing what to believe was a matter of logic and plausibility – two criteria that Christian evangelicalism is not likely to satisfy – but for Graham, who conceded that he had neither the time nor intellect to engage in philosophical or theological debate, the decision of what to believe came from his experience of his community's response to preaching that took the Bible literally. Though I find myself more in Templeton's intellectual camp, I do understand and have empathy for Graham's decision. I do not feel sorry for him, as Templeton does, because I think humans have a tremendous capacity for living happily and productively in created worlds (in fact, is that not what we all do, to a certain extent?), especially when those worlds include thorough acceptance and belonging within a community. Though I, personally, seek and find fulfillment and “the good life” in the pursuit of wisdom, truth, and intellectual cultivation, I understand that others have different priorities, and seek “the good life” in very different ways – ways that traditional religious structures serve quite nicely.
Reading Charles Templeton’s “A Personal Word” is an exercise in human understanding and empathy. Billy Graham, a prominent American evangelist, was a friend of Templeton’s, and this note serves as a eulogy. The two were young friends and preachers together. As Templeton prepared to study theology at Princeton, he invited Graham to join him, but Graham gently refused in order to pursue televangelism. They tried, but failed, to be friends for the rest of their lives.
What is so poignant about this piece is the bittersweet way in which it humanizes Billy Graham. Graham is quoted asserting that Templeton felt sorry for him, and Templeton here confesses that truth. This is because Graham stagnated. Graham preached the same exact ideas and sermons at age 70 as he did at 20, whereas Templeton continually asked new questions in an attempt to deepen his understanding of the world. Templeton did not hate Graham for his fundamentalism. Nor did he dismiss his friendship because of their polar views. Instead, he looked at the moment at which their paths diverged, and he saw one of the greatest tragedies of the human race in Graham: the fear of the unknown. From this moment, Templeton teaches us that validity of belief is not important. What is important is progress, and having the courage to question beliefs is the only way to ever dynamically move forward.
Charles Templeton is a de-converted ex-evangelist and friend to evangelist Billy Graham. In “A Personal Word”, Templeton gives a sweet account of his friendship with Graham. Templeton tells the story of how he and Graham parted ways with Templeton’s decision to go to Princeton. Templeton tries to persuade Graham to soften some of his positions on the inerrancy of Bible, asking Graham, for instance, how he can possibly still believe the creation accounts in the Old Testament, given what we know about evolution. Graham tells him that he doesn’t accept evolution, and that there are scholars that support him. Graham earnestly said that he needed to preach the Bible as truth—that there are “results” when he says “God says” or “the Bible says”. Templeton then asks Graham to come with him to Princeton, and Graham replies that he couldn’t possibly go to an American school since he was the President of a Bible college in the states. Graham suggests that they go to Oxford together as an alternative, and Templeton refuses, musing that he believes the religious landscape in America might be completely different today if he had decided to go to Oxford with Graham. He ends the essay empathically saying that Graham is the only evangelist he would trust, and that he misses him.
This is a sweet, heartwarming and sad story about a failed friendship and a failed opportunity. I found myself identifying strongly with Billy Graham in his desire to remain ignorant in service to God and humanity. Don’t we all want to maintain our innocence? I know that Billy Graham caused a lot of harm to the religious climate in America, but I believe Templeton that he was a man of integrity. This story makes me sad, and I enjoy musing along with Templeton about what would have happened had they gone to Oxford together. Perhaps we wouldn’t have Christian rock bands.
In a moving piece, Charles Templeton recounts his fading friendship with Billy Graham. He briefly accounts for his own disillusionment from religion, and then chronicles what that meant for his relationship with the famous evangelist. Templeton wanted Graham to join him at Princeton, to further their education, but Graham insisted that his authority and knowledge could come from the Bible, and at any rate, he couldn’t attend a university in the States while being president of a fundamentalist Bible college. Templeton admits to feeling sorry for Graham for giving up a life of intellectual adventure for a life of repetitious preaching. Templeton concludes that he disagrees with Graham but respects his ability to believe with “invincible innocence” (284).
I loved Templeton’s piece, though I imagine the circumstances that led him to write it must have been painful. It’s not easy to maintain friendships when two people are in different places, much less when they occupy different intellectual and spiritual spaces. His honesty about feeling sorry for Graham reminds me of the sort of pity I often hear from theists toward atheists: theists sometimes feel sorry for atheists because they limit their lives from entering a spiritual level. Templeton seems to understand that everyone has their lives fulfilled, or at least thinks that they have their lives fulfilled, in different ways. He respected Graham for following the path that led to his fulfillment, while remaining authentic in his pity for Graham not achieving the sort of fulfillment that Templeton so valued in his own life. I take that pity to drive not from smugness so much as from genuinely wanting what is best for a friend, and I think this can go both ways in relationships between atheists and theists.
In this touching piece lapsed Evangelical Charles Templeton recounts the gradual dissolution of his close friendship with Billy Graham. At one time the two worked closely with one another in their now-famous evangelical “crusades.” However, Templeton’s gnawing doubt eventually led him to reject fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. Templeton recounts a conversation with Billy Graham in which he attempted to convey the impossibility of accepting the biblical account of creation without a sacrificium intellectus. Graham simply replies that the only thing that affords his preaching any power is precisely his deference to an unquestioned external authority, i.e. the Bible. Templeton then asks Graham to accompany him to Princeton in order to further their theological education. Graham refuses due to the fact that he is currently the president of a fundamentalist college in Minneapolis, but in an act of genuine friendship, promised that if they were accepted to a college overseas he would go. Templeton goes on to tell of their gradual but steady drift apart and ponders what would have happened if he had taken Graham up on his offer. “I am certain of this: he would not be the Billy Graham he has become…” Templeton’s piece illustrates one of the great tragedies of fundamentalism: that in demanding a sacrifice of intellect, it often precipitates the sacrifice of any relationship involving difference.
I found Templeton’s piece to be profoundly moving. He writes with brutal honesty, refusing to pull any punches when it comes to the ostrich-mentality anti-intellectualism of fundamentalism. Yet his profound love and respect for Billy Graham shines through just as clearly as his critique. Templeton’s conclusion seems to say it all: “there’s no feigning in Billy Graham: he believes what he believes with an invincible innocence. He is the only mass-evangelist I would trust. And I miss him.” As a former conservative Evangelical, I resonated with Templeton’s painful realization that leaving fundamentalism often comes at the cost of straining close relationships.
An excerpt from Charles Templeton’s book, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, “A Personal Word” offers a glimpse into the character of Templeton and his former associate and friend, Billy Graham. The piece opens with a brief description of the vast divergence in background between Graham and himself. Graham, a Southern farm boy who had graduated from fundamentalist Christian colleges, and, Templeton, who had a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, managed a friendship despite their dissimilarities. This backstory sets the stage for the narrative’s impending crisis and establishes three themes of the excerpt: (1) Graham’s earnestness and simplicity that paradoxically slips into self-deception, (2) Templeton’s open-mindedness and curiosity, and (3) the genuine sorrow Templeton feels for Graham. The crisis occurs when Templeton and Graham find their intellectual commitments in conflict. Templeton, who is preparing to matriculate at Princeton, challenges Graham’s promulgation of biblical creationism in light of the demonstrable veracity of evolution. Graham rebuffs the challenge on three fronts. First, conservative scholars reject evolution. Second, his “preaching has power” and produces “results” when he interprets the Bible literally and employs authoritative phrases like ‘God says’ or ‘the Bible says’ (283). And, third, since “wiser men” have exhaustively debated theological issues for ages without resolution, he has “decided, once and for all, to stop questioning and accept the Bible as God’s Word” (283). Unable to dissuade Graham from his position, Templeton senses that Graham has committed “intellectual suicide” (283). As evidence for this tremendous claim Templeton writes, “Forty years after our working together he is saying the same things, using the same phrases, following the same pattern. When he gives the invitation to come forward, the sequence, even the words, are the same” (284). Templeton expresses profound sorrow for his lost companion as he observes the consequences flowing from Grahams’ abandonment of “unrestricted thought,” and he closes the eulogy with these moving, yet, condemning lines, “There is no feigning in Billy Graham: he believes what he believes with an invincible innocence. He is the only mass-evangelist I would trust. And I miss him” (284).
“A Personal Word” is a tale of two perspectives. It consists of two existential monuments and two deaths and is capable of generating two sorrows and two joys. From Templeton’s perspective the existential monument and the death is Graham’s while the sorrow for his “lost” friend and the joy of having chosen enlightenment is his. From Graham’s silent perspective it is Templeton who faces the existential crisis and decides to terminate his “believing” self. It is now Graham who suffers and Graham who rejoices in his steadfastness. From either perspective a not-so-subtle contrast arises. Templeton constructs an “either/or” narrative, knowingly or accidently, that mirrors fundamentalist cognition. How one responds to this piece depends upon one’s vantage point, and from where I stand, my sympathies lie with Templeton. I find it ironic that I am moved to “proclaim” my stance, to choose my side, to be identified as “this” and not “that” in this review. I am participating in a striking trait of fundamentalism—stark self-identification.
|
|
|
Charles Templeton |
Charles Templeton asks important questions in this piece. Questions about denomination, inherited faith, and miracles are all relevant, especially in an age of abundant information and scientific knowledge. Consistently, Templeton’s questions push against hard-lined Christian belief. They urge the reader to consider how their religious views hold up in light of contemporary science and post-modern plurality.
Only someone wholly ensconced by dogma can persist through Templeton’s battery. It takes a hell of a backbone to defend an all-loving and all-powerful God who gives infants HIV, for example. Unfortunately, Templeton makes a common error. He equates Christianity as a whole with fundamentalism. “Christian belief” entails in his definition belief in consignment to heaven and hell, the Earth was created in six days, and that man was literally created out of a handful of dust. While this may be true for millions of Christians, it is certainly not true of them all. To paint the Christian faith as such is to paint it into a box, and to further polarize the divide between theists and atheists in contemporary America. The world does not need that. Instead, what it needs is education, understanding, and acceptance of the fact that spirituality cannot in any fashion be as black and white as Templeton portrays it.
In this piece the one-time evangelist and now agnostic Charles Templeton asks his Christian readers to think through a series of questions which, according to Templeton, indicate the implausibility of the Christian faith. Templeton goes on to offer an irreverent list of pointed theological questions that Christians tend to gloss over or evade. Many of the questions concern the age-old problem of theodicy, that is, the problem of how a benevolent, omnipotent God could allow evil. Some of his questions point to the social/historical contingency of religious belief, asking “Is it not likely that had you been born in Cairo you would be a Muslim…” Other questions focus more on the fact of hypocrisy and rapacious consumerism among contemporary Christians. Templeton asks, “If Christians all worship the same God, why can they not put aside their theological differences and co-operate actively with one another?” And more pointedly, “Why, in a world filled with suffering and starvation, do Christians spend millions on cathedrals and sanctuaries and relatively little on aid to the poor and the needy?” Templeton’s questions range from ancient theological dilemmas to penetrating analyses of contemporary Christian faith, to rather callow objections that any educated Christian could effectively respond to.
I found Templeton’s skeptical catechesis to be enjoyable, and in some cases insightful. For the most part, he is just reformulating the typical gamut of questions that have been posed to Christianity over the ages. However, there are passages where Templeton’s experience of having once been an insider within Christianity affords him acute insight into the problems of the contemporary Church. Reading Templeton might not only lead believers to question their faith, but also push them to address the hypocrisy and Culture-Christianity so prevalent in the American Church.
Charles Templeton feels that much of Christian faith is impossible to accept as fact. He lists two dozen questions to support his view. These point to many inconsistencies in the alleged qualities versus the apparent actions (or inactions) of God, and also to the fact that coincidence of birth seems to be the largest factor in determining faith identity.
The author’s points are all logically sound. However, like many who criticize religious belief, Templeton offers nothing as an alternative. Given the range of needs that prompt religion (and with emotion often more prominent than rational thought), it seems likely that improbable beliefs and inconsistent views will continue to prevail until something more compelling takes their place.
|
|
|
Mark Twain |
Mark Twain’s objections to traditional theism are twofold: God is not good and the Christian religion is oppressive. Concerning the first point, Twain argues that only a malevolent creator would design flies. From his perspective, flies serve no positive purpose. Instead, they appear to be engineered for both maximal annoyance and dreadful efficiency in spreading disease. These hellions swarm on an earth as filled with suffering as it is devoid of divine intervention. Why is it, Twain asks, that we condemn people who refuse to aid the poor and starving, yet we never accuse God of all-powerful neglect? Not only is this idea of God unthinkable for Twain, but overall Christianity has done more to oppress than to liberate the human spirit. The threat of hell and damnation, which almost necessarily precedes the joy of salvation, is nothing less than poison and those who administer it are cruel and false physicians. Far from being a beacon of justice and peace, the Church has happily accommodated the most ruthless of human schemes. For centuries the Church never thought to challenge the vicious institution of slavery. It was only after the world began to reform itself that the Church adjusted its position and then took credit for humanity’s moral progress. For Twain, if there is any hope of a genuinely comforting and beneficent religion, it depends upon the world’s relentless criticism and purification of existing ecclesial institutions.
Initially, I thought Twain intended the fly to be a humorous example, but as his rhetoric grew deadly serious, I realized that this was no occasion for jest. “Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs – feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning . . .” For Mark Twain, the fly is not merely a nuisance, but the incarnation of all that is wrong in the world. One could easily respond by arguing that flies aren’t really that bad or by pointing out that, according to evolutionary theory, God didn’t actually design the fly, but such responses are superficial. Evolved or not, the fly testifies that the universe does not revolve around human wants and needs. But even this point misses the heart of the matter. Ultimately, the anatomy and habits of the fly are tangential to the larger problem raised by where the fly lands: a dying child, an exhausted mother, a mangled soldier, and animals born to bear the weight of human aspirations and to die unthanked. For Twain, the fly is not merely an insect but a symbol of the decay and death which it harvests to live — the same death and decay we all live by. Though he apparently still lived in a divinely designed world, Twain surveyed all that had been made and had the courage to utter, “it is not good.”
In Thoughts of God, Mark Twain denies the idea that God is merciful. He recognizes that the Christian scriptures make claims of God’s mercy and preachers preach of God’s mercy, but in lived experiences there are actually “no instances of it.” Twain’s main example of God’s mercilessness is seen in the creation of a fly. Twain asks the reader to imagine what sort of a man would create a fly, which torments the “unoffending as well as the offending”. In conclusion, he says that it could only be a man “destitute of feeling”. In Bible Teaching and Religious Practice, Twain claims that the Church declares itself the leader in advancing morality and justice, but instead, it is actually guilty of advancing injustice. Twain uses the example of England’s role in the slave trade from Africa. He asserts that John Hawkins’ work as a slave hunter was the “invention of Christians” and he claims that Christianity had a monopoly on the slave trade for a quarter of a millennium. Twain is insistent that the Church was not at the forefront of ending the slave trade; rather, it was at the tail end.
In Thoughts of God, Twain’s claim that God has never been merciful is contingent upon on his understanding that God’s interactions with the world must be directly observable. Twain insists that a “concrete example” of God’s grace is unobservable because he is only looking for Red Sea crossing type experiences. I believe that God’s grace is observable in that community of people who follow after and call Jesus their Lord—those who indirectly enact God’s grace by their attention to relieving the suffering in the world. Twain’s biggest complaint raised in Bible Teaching and Religious Practice is that the Church continues to use the same texts that embraced slavery and other abhorrent practices. What Twain sees as hypocrisy, I see as a hermeneutical issue. I cannot deny that the Christian scriptures have been used (wrongly) in many times and places to suppress people and cause all types of evil. Time has brought with it a continual shifting in interpretation of Christian texts, and Twain insists that this hermeneutical change discredits the morality claimed by religious traditions. However, I view this hermeneutical shift as a sort of self-correction—attesting to the living nature of the Christian scriptures—and it affirms the message of scripture, rather than discredits it.
Apothecary poisons and “curative” terrors evolved into humane or relatively benign treatments as a result of the advancement of medicinal knowledge. This progression is analogous to the civilizing of religious practice over time, according to Twain, who returns to this analogy throughout his essay. Twain says that while many of the same chemicals and tools are available to doctors in his day as were available in the past, medical professionals have now moved away from use of injurious substances or practices toward relatively therapeutic ones. In essence, the pharmacy has the same resources but the physicians employ them differently, more appropriately. Likewise, he asserts that while Biblical texts have not changed over time, the interpretation and practical outworking of those texts have gradually become less damaging. Moreover, he credits the influence of “the world” or the laity for pressuring the clergy into changing interpretations of, and the corresponding prescriptions of acts of obedience to, the scriptures. Among the more dreadful episodes in the history of Christianity, he lists atrocities of slavery and slaying of witches and heretics, and he disparages Christians’ roles in abolishing those acts. Twain concludes by offering hope for the improvement of religious actions as a result of the maturation of the enlightenment.
While Twain offers a useful word picture and fair criticism regarding the changing practices of the Christian church over time, he seems to rely more on rhetoric than fact in his assignment of blame to Christians for various evils. Never mind that slaves had existed in various cultures for thousands of years – Twain singles out Christian England as propagators of slavery who were merely fortunate to wake to the error of their ways via the smelling salts of the enlightened world. Twain does admit that, after the help of the enlightened ones, there was a Christian who championed the cause of abolishing slavery, but Twain says the man was not part of mainstream Christianity. Admittedly, defining “Christian” is problematic. Yet Twain has no trouble pointing out that someone doing “good” is actually an unorthodox Christian, nor does he call the label into question if an ambitious potentate (or someone else) is committing harmful acts while claiming to be Christian, no matter how their actions may call that name into question. Twain selects his definition of Christian to be as negative as possible. Likewise, Twain has scathing reviews of Christian roles in witch trials. But the catalyst for one group of them was a young girl who, according to the physician, might have been “bewitched.” The doctor was a man of the world or laity with no particular connection to Christian priests and officials. Furthermore, the trials did not wane until a tract published by Rev. Increase Mather convinced Judge Phips to dismiss “spectral evidence.” Both are reasons to reassess the role of Christianity in witch trials. While Twain has great facility with word pictures and he does point out some odious parts of Christian history, this particular excerpt is a less than satisfying indictment of Christian theists.
Part 1.): Twain depicts religion’s role in medicine, slavery, and the murder of “witches.” In the case of each, he asserts that “the world corrected the Bible.” In the case of medicine, he asserts that religion taught cure by poison. Medical practice was changed by patient revolt, and the arrival homeopathy – the latter being based in Christian love as opposed to the “hell fire and brimstone” of “Allopathy.” The enslavement of Africans was a thriving business in the Christian West, because slavery was depicted in scripture, and the Catholic Church owned slaves. It came to an end by the opposition of people who recognized it as morally unjust. The execution of witches, commanded by the Bible, came to an end when people realized that there were no witches. In each case, Twain points out, people corrected the Bible, and the church came in at the end of the social change, supporting the movement it had previously fought.
Part 2.): Twain points out that when a member of the Church rises to oppose a practice as unjust, the member is usually “illegitimate”, that is, they are a “member of some despised and bastard sect.” In each case, the church promotes a homeostasis; the push for change comes from outside the mainline church, until the change is essentially won. Other issues which could be cited as similar to this are women’s suffrage, child labor, and marriage equality. As Twain points out, in each case, (child labor perhaps being an exception), the text in sacred scripture remains, only the practice changes. I’m tempted to say that Twain was ahead of his time - but it is more accurate to say that he had a sharp eye about when the time for change would come.
The excerpt from Mark Twain “Bible Teaching and Religious Practice” suggests that the text of scripture has remained the same, but promoted by laity practices have changed. He first explains this process through the analogy of medical history. “The Christian Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes” (119). For eighteen hundred years the clergy kept his patients religion-sick: “he bled him, cupped him, purged him, puked him, salivated him” (119). The physician only damaged the patient. Then the patient revolted against the physician. The physicians, in turn, amended their practice to get back into the profession. Next, Twain turns to the example of slavery again reiterating that the bible has not changed, instead the practice has. The world corrected the bible, not the church. It is always the pulpit that yields last to change. “It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession – at the tail end” (121). Twain then tells the same story with witches.
The impulse of most Christians that I know regarding these given examples (slavery or witch-craft) is either to explain what the text really meant through historical distance or to make some convoluted distinction between timeless and culturally construed truths in scripture (I’ve always had a hard time knowing what in the hell people mean by “timeless truths” in the bible). Historical explanation: the slavery in the A.N.E or Greco-Roman world was not racial like it was in America. Or some assure themselves, like William Webb in Slaves, Women and Homosexuals that the biblical perspective on slaves and women gradually changes, but the prohibitions against homosexuality stay consistent through the bible. It is very hard for a committed Christian, on the other hand, to look a biblical text square in the face and say that it is wrong, dangerous, irrelevant or just plain unhelpful. I tend to fall into another problem: the historical reluctance to say anything at all through agnosticism about what a text of scripture actually meant or through stressing the plurality of perspectives in the Christian bible.
|
|
|
Mark Twain |
Twain asks why we hold God to a lesser moral standard than that to which we hold each other. If we actually search for the goodness often ascribed to God, he prods, will we find it? Perhaps we are more patient with God than we proclaim he is with us! Twain renders God's mercies as commonplace (who wouldn't save someone from death) and his behavior (say, afflicting the just) as altogether sinful.
Twain's genius lies in his ability to approach a topic as haunting as the sinfulness of God by reflecting on flies. Perhaps Twain is right--maybe God, if held to the moral magnifying glass of humankind, would turn out sinful. I'm not sure this assessment is very helpful, though, insofar as man's moral testing may not interest God at all. Religious thought tends to garner its sense of morality from whatever god(s) it observes, so perhaps the real question should be: does God pass his own moral test?
Mark Twain's sarcastically biting piece from the Fables of Man marvels at human beings' capacity to live in cognitive dissonance with their experience of everyday reality. Twain discusses a particularly Calvinist understanding of the world that sees creation as the tightly controlled system of a supposedly all-powerful, all-loving God constructed solely to bring that God glory. However, in order to disturb the thoughtless acceptance of this claim, Twain asks the reader to meditate upon the common fly. Twain paints a picture of the fly as nothing but a disturbance that serves to worsen our sufferings, insult our food, and breed amongst our garbage. What purpose could the fly possibly serve in bringing God glory? What glory is there to be found in a soldier's wound that becomes infected with maggots? What glory is there in pestering the sick child? What glory is there in the red lumps left by a fly's bite? Furthermore, if the fly is to bring God glory, why do so many spend so much effort trying to kill the fly? Ultimately, Twain's meditation on the fly evolves into a deep moral critique of the idea of a personal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and glory-hungry God. Surely a God who can cure a child's sickness is morally responsible if that God does not do so. As Twain points out, the only way to resolve this conflict is to propose that there is a different moral law in heaven than there is on earth. However, if this be the case then all human moral conversation about the divine falls apart and human beings must admit that we are entirely unable to truly recognize the good. And if humans are truly unable to recognize the good, then what is supposed to attract us to God other than pure terror?
As Twain has elsewhere said, “The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven” (Wit and Wisecracks, Pauper, 1961: 12). The fact that there are still jokes reveals that there is still sorrow. Twain was a master at using humor as a tool to unmask the deeply uncomfortable and absurdly unjust realities that we often accept in the name of religious order. Furthermore, it is impossible to ignore Twain's critique of the blind faith in a providential understanding of grace, goodness, and glory that is totally other and inconceivable by humans as a mechanism of breeding passivity towards suffering in the name of social order. Twain asks us, what are we willing to live with in order to have a sense of divinely sustained order? Maybe the deepest insight of Twain's critique is that human beings will even prefer a promise of an order they admittedly do not understand to no order at all. Furthermore, Twain's unmasking of the cognitive dissonance between the way we claim to believe and the way we actually live is important for understanding how religious practices and religious beliefs can often function independently of each other, only connected by a somewhat willing ignorance and an opaque sense of the other. I think the question Twain is asking us is: how much injustice are we willing to passively accept so that we can sustain our normative vision of the world? At what point does a morally irresponsible concept of God as a neglectful parent become untenable? Or is it better to have an abusive and neglectful parent than no parent at all?
In these two excerpts, Mark Twain uses biting rhetoric, polemics, and caustic wit to expose the Christian God and the Church as unmerciful, hypocritical, and amoral. Twain argues in “Thoughts of God” that no God who made the fly could possibly be merciful and loving. If a human created the fly, humanity would not praise the creator or creation, so humans should similarly not praise God. Human suffering, he feels, is beyond any suffering Christ may have felt. If there is a God, His moral law is different from the moral law He expects humans to keep. With similar overtones, in “Bible Teaching and Religious Practice,” Twain blames religion for the slow progress of change in civilization. Accusing preachers of omitting the love and compassion of the Gospels and focusing on damnation, he writes that they only slowly change when the dominant culture demands it of them. While the practices of society may change with religion eventually claiming responsibility for progress, the Biblical text remains backward and bigoted. Twain's primary example is slavery.
In the first excerpt, Twain seems angry at God and haunted by the problem of evil. As I was reading all I could think of in response is Job 38:4 and Genesis 3:17-19. His dismissal of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross seems especially harsh. However, considering the pain and suffering evident in this world, his frustration is certainly understandable. In the second excerpt, Twain reacts against established religion, church hierarchies, and a very particular kind of Biblical exegesis. I would argue in response that there can be, and often is, a vast difference between established, politicized religion and Christianity. Twain's overwhelming frustration prevents him from making this differentiation, but considering the abomination of slavery occurring around him, his anger is again completely understandable.
“Thoughts of God” by Mark Twain is a humorous maligning of intelligent design. Twain posits that a loving God who planfully orders creation would not invent the fly. Not only do flies serve little purpose, they also breed on the festering bodies of dead animals and humans. Twain points out that any human being inventing this squalid and malevolent creature would never be forgiven by others; shamed into hiding (117). Instead, human beings worship the creator of the fly. Twain condemns the Christology of sacrificial atonement, saying “we hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it” (117). He goes on to discuss the fact that we hear much about the goodness and mercy of Christ, despite having little credible evidence save for the Bible to prove it, and points out that in countries where people worship God, people suffer miserably and die. He asserts that “the proper place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the field to Himself” (118). Finally, Twain posits that God must be a sinner because God violates His own laws, inflicting suffering on God’s people.
This is a very effective piece of writing by Mark Twain. Not only does it grab the attention by pointing out the impossibility that a loving, merciful God would create something as useless and disgusting as a fly, he laughs at the irony of worshipping such a God, as well. Not only is Twain insulting God as a terrible Creator, therefore, but he is also disrespecting those of us who choose to spend our time attempting to please a creator who mocks us with the invention of a fly. Lest one doubt the seriousness of Twain’s critique, the second part of this essay is particularly scathing in that it criticizes Jesus as no better than any other human being capable of altruism. Further, Twain suggests that God is a sinner given the fact that he inflicts suffering on human beings—breaking God’s own laws. It is hard to argue with this kind of rhetoric when one believes in an anthropomorphic God who intervenes in human life. Twain picks apart theodicy in this essay by challenging the notion that God is loving and that God is all powerful. How can that be so if God is capable of creating a fly, torturing human beings, and breaking God’s own laws? If God is all powerful, why do good people, as well as hapless animals not capable of sinning, suffer? And, if there “was never a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve” (118), then God cannot possibly be loving.
The witty diatribe against the fly cloaks a strong critique of God’s morality. Twain leads us to imagine how we would regard any man who created something as bothersome and useless as a fly. It is easy to admit that we would condemn such a man. Yet we forgive God? The fly serves as a small example for the larger problem of evil. If we see suffering which we could relieve but do not, then we sin greatly. Yet as Twain points out: “There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve” (118). While this piece is essentially an expression of the problem of theodicy, this old problem is presented in a novel and convicting way.
I pity anyone who becomes the target of Mark Twain’s anger. His insights are lucid and given in the vernacular, which inspires trust. God is painted by this argument as the cause of suffering and indifferent to that suffering. Twain seems exasperated with this callous God, but his fury blazes against “the trained parrot in the pulpit” that still attests to God’s goodness and mercy. Twain will have none of it. Is it possible to face the ubiquitous suffering in the world and still call God good? How dramatically does that require changing our idea of God?
In this witty, comical, and penetrating piece, Mark Twain examines the question of how the common conception of God as creator can stand up to our most everyday experience of the created order. Twain cites the traditional Christian conception of God as being intricately involved in creating and crafting the natural world in order that human beings might know his glory and benevolence. Playing on this grandiose notion of a magnificent, benevolent, Creator God, Twain calls it into question by citing the existence of the creature known as the fly. Given the aforementioned conception of God as the one who calls things into existence in order to dazzle mankind, Twain insists that we must assume some divine purpose, some “long-felt want” which the creation of the fly fulfills. The simplest of believers need only reflect for a moment upon their experience of this vexing creature to see Twain’s comical but insightful point. As Twain notes, “…we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.” The irony of Twain’s short piece does more than any philosophical argument against God. Arguments of theodicy threaten to force the believer into self-contradiction, or heretical denial of the essential attributes of God. Twain’s short piece threatens the believer with the absolute ridiculousness of arguing that God did in fact have some magnificent, divine purpose in creating the fly. Kierkegaard once quipped that the best response to Hegelian metaphysics was laughter. Twain seems to suggest the same response in regards to traditional Christian doctrine.
I found this piece to be insightful, beautifully written, and hilarious in its wit and irreverence. Twain demonstrates that you don’t need to delve into the intricacies of Darwinian theory in order to perceive the problems inherent within the traditional notion of God as creator. Instead Twain appeals to our common sense: If God created in order that man might participate and glory in God’s goodness, then what’s the deal with all these flies? Surely an omniscient and omnipotent God could have come up with a creature less baneful to we image-bearing human beings. Twain’s biting wit may bring readers to laugh out loud, but Christians (especially those who subscribe to so-called intelligent-design theory) should take this piece with absolute seriousness.
This excerpt, taken from Twain’s Fables of Man, calls into question the moral character of God in light of the design argument defended by so many Theists. Briefly, the argument from design is that creation operates according to the preformed, predetermined design or will of the Creator. On this account, God is often conceived to be both architect and builder, and, therefore, nothing exists or occurs apart from his intention. Twain, however, considers the fly. More precisely, Twain asks us to imagine the Creator of the fly, as if it were a human being, and then to asses to morality of that person, if the fly did, in fact, accomplish everything he intended of and for it—nothing more, nothing less. He said, “In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just—upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.” From this consideration, Twain goes onto consider the double standard that is seldom realized with respect to God not being held to the same moral code that we apparently are. He said, “If men neglected ‘God’s poor’ and ‘God’s stricken and helpless ones’ as He does, what would become of them? . . . It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth.”
The issues at stake in this essay are so well put that one hardly realizes that this essay actually does little to refute the existence of God. At best, it calls into question the goodness of God as a being capable of improving the quality of life, as measured by the living. One may, then, be persuaded to get pretty upset with God upon reading this essay, and, therefore, to reject belief in his existence on those grounds, but that makes as much sense as denying the existence of life. “Life” it is said “isn’t fair!” It is understood what is meant by this expression, as one comes to understand his or her own existence as being subject to various contingencies and the mutually excluding desires of others. This realization, however, should not lead one to the conclusion that such a thing as fairness doesn’t exist. On the contrary, it is the absence of fairness that so often brings itself into being.
In Thoughts of God, Mark Twain denies the idea that God is merciful. He recognizes that the Christian scriptures make claims of God’s mercy and preachers preach of God’s mercy, but in lived experiences there are actually “no instances of it.” Twain’s main example of God’s mercilessness is seen in the creation of a fly. Twain asks the reader to imagine what sort of a man would create a fly, which torments the “unoffending as well as the offending”. In conclusion, he says that it could only be a man “destitute of feeling”. In Bible Teaching and Religious Practice, Twain claims that the Church declares itself the leader in advancing morality and justice, but instead, it is actually guilty of advancing injustice. Twain uses the example of England’s role in the slave trade from Africa. He asserts that John Hawkins’ work as a slave hunter was the “invention of Christians” and he claims that Christianity had a monopoly on the slave trade for a quarter of a millennium. Twain is insistent that the Church was not at the forefront of ending the slave trade; rather, it was at the tail end.
In Thoughts of God, Twain’s claim that God has never been merciful is contingent upon on his understanding that God’s interactions with the world must be directly observable. Twain insists that a “concrete example” of God’s grace is unobservable because he is only looking for Red Sea crossing type experiences. I believe that God’s grace is observable in that community of people who follow after and call Jesus their Lord—those who indirectly enact God’s grace by their attention to relieving the suffering in the world. Twain’s biggest complaint raised in Bible Teaching and Religious Practice is that the Church continues to use the same texts that embraced slavery and other abhorrent practices. What Twain sees as hypocrisy, I see as a hermeneutical issue. I cannot deny that the Christian scriptures have been used (wrongly) in many times and places to suppress people and cause all types of evil. Time has brought with it a continual shifting in interpretation of Christian texts, and Twain insists that this hermeneutical change discredits the morality claimed by religious traditions. However, I view this hermeneutical shift as a sort of self-correction—attesting to the living nature of the Christian scriptures—and it affirms the message of scripture, rather than discredits it.
Twain here discusses the theistic notion of an intelligent or purposeful or moral or merciful God, as a ludicrous notion. Why do they insist on this notion of God? Consider the fly, he says. What intelligence or purpose or morality does the design of the fly entail? Twain turns these theistic claims on their head by focusing on the fly. Twain shows that the theist must admit the fly entails a malevolent and unmerciful creator who laughs at our prayers. Why did God create the fly? To “wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to”; to “persecute the sick child…settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting”; to “worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable”; to “settle upon the soldier’s festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays…with none to listen but you, Fly”; to torture the person “perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs—feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning” (ibid). Surely, Twain argues, we would not consider the inventor of the fly moral or intelligent or purposeful. So, why do we believe this about God? If we look at the fly we see that theisms God “turns his indifferent back” on poor and suffering humans (118). Twain closes by marveling at the stupidity of theism: “daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies…and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself” (ibid).
I must admit that Twain has an excellent point here. However, lively and poignant as he is, he is really talking about the age old theodicy problem. Read the book of Job and you find the same enigmatic paradox. I have no complaint, aside from Twain’s assertion that prayers are not answered by God and those praying “linger and suffer, and miserably die.” Quite a generalization, I think. However, that all too often preachers ignore these issues and congregants naively whistle their way around the theodicy problem, is undeniable. Though I am a theist, I take Twain’s point and would not try to argue around it.
Mark Twain considers the fly, as a way to prompt reflection on beliefs about God. Why, he asks, should such a torment have been created by a wise and loving God? He says that many, over the ages, have felt that the fly has a purpose, but none have been able to explain what this might be. He subjects God to the type of scrutiny a human would endure for creating such a pest. Then he goes further and asks why, if observing suffering without trying to relieve it is considered to be a sin, God’s acceptance of massive suffering is given a pass. As they accept “one moral law for heaven, and another for the earth” (pp. 118), Twain sees the preacher as a trained parrot and the congregation as blindly accepting his words.
Mark Twain’s questions raise enough valid points that anyone who really considers them will recognize the inconsistencies he saw. His sharp view of human folly is presented with humor, as in the line from Puddin’head Wilson that “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Some readers enjoyed his humor, and some felt he made valid points. But the fact that most people largely ignored him supports his view that beliefs are rarely examined. And while questions are sometimes asked, this is often done in ways that leave the answer much the same as it began.
Twain draws the reader’s attention to a most perplexing concept, the existence of a fly. It has no real practical or beneficial use in this world except, as he explains, to annoy and disrupt the lives of every other creature. Constantly swinging and swatting, we watch the fly dance around our intentions, irritating us more. Twain asks the reader to imagine a person or God that would be willing to create something so completely useless and at the same time so utterly aggravating. How could a supreme being send pain and annoyance for no apparent reason, Twain asks. The fly not only provides annoyance, but its sting provides a reminder of excruciating pain and death on the wounds it inhabits. With its erratic flight and pestering buzz, its life is a misery to everyone except the One who created it. Twain then asks how this Creator and Maker of moral laws must be judged for this. A Creator cannot say that one action is a sin or abomination and then commit it without repercussions. Bringing his frustration with the divine Judge into a more immediate context, Twain wonders how clergy can stand in front of an obedient congregation and not question what they proclaim, and equally how congregants can not question what they hear. Without the occurrence of such questioning, Twain believes there can be no progression in the life and understanding of someone who professes that there is an almighty God.
Twain’s metaphor of the fly is beautiful. Where do the pain, suffering, and injustices of this world come from? Can we attribute them to an almighty Judge and Creator without also reproaching such a deity? In the worldviews supported by fundamentalist Christian churches, entertaining these challenges to God’s goodness and wisdom is unheard of. The comfortable routines of clergy and congregation are highly prized so the sharpest challenges are suppressed; after all they would only create trouble and confusion. This social structure, together with the pomposity of ministers and the supposed naiveté of believers, perpetuates blind, irrational belief. Rather than conforming to this disastrous pattern, however, religious leaders should respect the intelligence of believers and have confidence that sharp questioning need not destroy faith in God. To discuss Twain’s critique in church would not lead to a mighty collapse, with burning churches and public executions of clergy. On the contrary, it would open an avenue to a richer, deepened sense of the word “faith”. People would be able to grow in their faith, understanding that there is more to faith than black and white distinctions and comforting predictability. To entertain difficult challenges to faith would give honest believers a glimpse of ultimate reality in the truest sense: reasonable, mysterious, and richly connected to daily life.
In this excerpt from Fables of Man, Mark Twain considers the intelligent design argument in relationship to the existence of the fly. The writing is harsh and satirical and tone, speaking sarcastically of the “intelligent” designer who would send the fly to annoy and pester everyone, including the “sick child,” tired mothers “pathetic in faith,” and soldiers with “festering wounds” (p. 117). This in turn leads to a renewed attack on God’s permissiveness concerning suffering. Why does this intelligent designer create something that amplifies suffering? And what does that say about such a designer? The object of the excerpt is clearly to render absurd through satire the idea of a loving and intelligent designer.
Though I supportive of the method of using humor to argue certain points, I feel slightly defensive when Mark Twain mocks those who believe in a loving God. This is an issue I sometimes have with some vocal atheistic positions that move from making arguments about metaphysical positions to personal attacks on people who hold certain beliefs. It is an unjustified inference to declare that everyone that has faith is pathetic or miserable or unteachable (ibid.). These are judgments that are formed from a particular interpretive perspective regarding the relative value of holding certain beliefs. Obviously, Mark Twain believes that the idea of an intelligent designer is a ludicrous belief rendered obvious through meditating on the fly. From that reasoning, anyone holds such a view is stupid or gullible. However, it would be a more fair assessment to actually engage other positions to garner the value that they perceive when holding a particular belief. Without engaging the other side, the resultant judgment of their character can only be arrogant projection and likewise an unfounded belief.
In Thoughts of God, Mark Twain satirizes creationism and calls into question the true moral legitimacy of a supreme creator. Twain does not blatantly claim that theistic assumptions about creation to be false. However, it is clear from his descriptions of the natural world that much of what human attribute to a higher being, is either slightly arbitrary or inconsistent with the religious narratives that lend divine purpose to everything, even something as tiny and seemingly insignificant as a fly. Twain uses the example of the fly to imply that perhaps is not as consistent as many tend to believe it is. Further, there is a level of absurdity in believing there is a benevolent and loving God who would intentionally create such a pestilence to humanity as a common fly. He ends by pointing out the hypocrisy in holding contrary ethical standards when it concerns qualifying the moral aptitude of the divine.
Twain highlights the cognitive dissonance that permeates much of religious life. The harsh reality of the world is often at odds, of not altogether contradictory, with religious attitudes and assumptions. In this case, the devil of is in the details as it is not the voluminous cosmos, with all its staggering intricacies and vexing magnitude, that challenges basic theistic beliefs. Rather, it is a fly, the existence of which becomes problematic for any believe who affirms the world stems from the mind of a grand creator who gave consideration and forethought to their creation. Overall, the piece is soaked in beautiful irony and Twain gives the believer ample reason to critically reflect on how they view the universe.
 |
|
John Updike |
In this brief excerpt from his novel Roger's Version, John Updike describes an argument regarding the need for God to explain the origin of the universe and of life. This argument takes place at a cocktail party between Dale, the theist, and Kriegman, the atheist. For the most part it is a one-sided argument, with Kriegman confidently and assertively explaining why God is not necessary. To explain the origin of the universe he uses an argument that, according to him, relies on chance, dust, geometry, and reason. He explains the origin of life by using an argument regarding clay and crystal formation.
Whether or not his argument regarding the origin of the universe is scientifically sound, he still has not actually explained how the universe was created from nothing. Based on his explanation, the universe was created by dust particles floating around and the laws of geometry and the space/time continuum. That is something. That is not nothing. This selection reminds me of a pulpit joke. It is a bad joke, but relevant. The Devil visits God and tells him that with all of the scientific and technological advancements on earth, we no longer need him. God says that he understands, but asks the Devil to do one last thing for him. The Devil agrees and God asks the Devil to build a sandcastle. As the Devil reaches down for some sand, God says, “get your own sand.”
This short excerpt from Updike’s book Roger’s Version centers on a cocktail party argument over the need for God to explain the origin of the universe and of life. For the most part, it’s a one-sided argument with the main character Dale cowering before the cocky but brilliant Kriegman. Concerning the origin of life, Kriegman confidently cites the argument that crystalline clay provided ‘scaffolding’ for early chemical evolution. This eventually led to the RNA world, from which the evolution of life itself was apparently simple. Kriegman’s case for the origin of the universe from nothing is even more theoretical, though he presents it with the same confidence. Hidden beneath a barrage of physics terminology, Kriegman’s argument seems to be that, if there were absolutely nothing, even nothing contains “potential geometry” (243) capable of spontaneously producing the universe we know. He concludes as boldly as he began, “Nothing to matter, dead matter to live, smooth as silk. God? Forget the old bluffer.”
As far as Kriegman’s actual arguments are concerned, my only real objection is to his confidence. As I understand it, theories about the origin of the universe and life remain quite speculative and difficult to test. Nevertheless, I have little interest in the form of gap-theism Kriegman argues against. This limited designer is intended to secure religious goods that have already been lost due to more proximate knowledge. Specifically, the undirected and deeply contingent nature of evolution leaves little or no room (or need) for such a creator’s intentionality to explain human (and other) life. In addition, the easy sanctification of particular religious values is no longer possible after recognizing how deeply all human knowledge is socially constructed (a lesson learned from various disciplines including comparative religion, sociology, anthropology, and postmodern philosophy). Ultimately, I cannot assess the religious value of Kriegman’s arguments without more context. What is most important to understand about such arguments is what actions or non-actions they are intended to justify. As I understand it, the basic religious task is to receive life with sincere gratitude and to respond by living compassionately towards one’s fellow creatures. That quest can be fulfilled equally well in frameworks that attribute unlikely contingencies to God and in those that assume such individual events are individually improbable, but ultimately inevitable.
This excerpt from John Updike’s novel, Roger’s Vision, follows a conversation at a cocktail party between Dale and Kriegman. Kriegman is talking to Dale about the origins of life and the universe, waxing on and on, even interrupting Dale at multiple points in their conversation. This particular excerpt purports to give the reader access to Dale’s thoughts, which curiously depicts how Dale used to find something revelatory in the “almost-magic, almost-revelatory” number three. The conversation thus takes place at a curious moment for Dale, who appears to no longer to see the reality of the Trinity in the triad of quarks. Thus, the reader follows along as Dale comes to realize that he no longer believes what he once did. At the end of the excerpt, Dale finishes the argument which Kriegman is making on behalf of unbelief, expecting to get interrupted. It is here that the full force of the thoughts which had been stewing in Dale gush forth: a biological explanation which has no need for God.
Dale is a character that I found quite relatable, especially as I have begun to take science more seriously and the idea of a personal God less seriously. The arguments which are going on in Dale’s head touch on the other parts of his social situation, from Esther to Roger to the other people at the party. Dale has engaged with the arguments in such detail that he can finally recite them against the position that he used to hold. While I do not find myself being nearly as decisive in favor of atheism as Dale is in this moment, I think I also understand Dale’s feeling that the evidence in favor of theism is far thinner than any theist would hope. If science can explain so much of the origins of life, it would seem that there are no longer any gaps that are necessary for God to fill.
 |
|
Carl Van Doren |
Carl Van Doren thinks faith is a certain kind of quality, trait, or habit that comes naturally to some but not to others. Some people seem to have been born with faith, whereas others seem born without whatever is mentally required for developing faith. In Van Doren's view, contrary to the popular religious views he counters, faith is not good to have. We are better off lacking this “gift” (140). There are people who not only lack faith, but also simply do not need faith or even want faith. Moreover, a reasonable and morally integral person might be incapable of faith: “An honest unbeliever can no more make himself believe against his reason than he can make himself free of the pull of gravitation” (141). For these individuals, faith is not simply a matter of choice. One must have the disposition for it and be able to maintain it without being aware of self-contradictions, awareness which would preclude faith. Like many other authors, Van Doren also emphasizes that non-believers are no less (and, if anything, likely to be more) intelligent or decent people than believers. Overall Van Doren makes a case for agnosticism, not so much for atheism. But perhaps he also can be read as invoking the presumption of atheism in insisting that the burden of proof is entirely on the believer, that all evidence the believer might use cannot prove the religious conclusion, so that one is more justified in not believing than in believing. Van Doren specifically attacks three often core religious tenets: beliefs in the existence of gods (obviously anthropomorphic projections), in the actual occurrence of revelations (contradictory results—obviously not from a divine source; and, besides, belief in revelation depends on the unproven assumption of god), and in the possibility of life after death (pure wish-fulfillment, from the strong wish to survive and have ongoing significance). Faith cannot appeal to majority belief or to similarities in belief across different groups of people to argue for the rational obligation to believe. Both moves are fallacious. The main point of the essay seems to be that no person is obligated (whether rationally, morally, or otherwise) to believe and that, on the other hand, a person may indeed be obligated by his or her reason to disbelieve. It does not make moral sense to think that people will be held accountable and found to be at fault for not believing, as though failing a cosmic responsibility not clearly revealed or not revealed at all. The religious, by contrast, tend to let their desires rule over their actions and thoughts (this is the “emotional aspect to be considered,” 140), whereby believers who have the same doubts as the non-believer control or diminish those doubts by allowing their emotion-driven wishfulness to be fulfilled in fantasy.
My criticism of Van Doren in this essay is that he frequently generalizes too hastily and perhaps inaccurately. For instance, he claims that it is so clearly the case that the harm done to the world by religious people far outweighs the harm done by nonreligious people (bottom of 141). Another example is in his confidence, stated near the beginning of the essay, that he can speak fairly of all non-believers because all non-believers essentially agree about what it means to be a non-believer (and share the same “spirit” and “language,” 138). To my mind, the first claim needs to be demonstrated; it desperately needs supporting data, which he does not present (and what I know off the top of my head makes me a little skeptical that the data would lean Van Doren's way). The second claim patently oversimplifies.
In this selection, Carl Van Doren contents that faith has survived from an earlier stage in human development. He also argues that faith denies reason and evidence. The reason he is an unbeliever is that gods, revelation, and immorality are programed and projected by assumptions. He allows believers to believe what they want to but he argues it is not right for believers to try to persuade people to follow their widespread faith assumptions because assumptions cannot be truth and, in terms of moral quality, the believer's morality is much harmful than the unbeliever's.
Van Doren's argument sheds light on my theological perspective. He suggests a space for co-existence between believers and unbelievers by allowing and accepting who they are and what they want. And I strongly agree with his definition of faith and gods. I believe all objects of faith are projected by the human mind. Therefore, religions insist on God as a personal being, even though no one has met or seen what God looks like. In this sense, what I worry about is whether reason can find truth. For example, although arithmetic is usually called an certain truth, it is doubtful that arithmetic is also a cultural universal such that all people agree that 1+1 = 2. Is the finite human being able to find truth? Can truth be found by scrutinizing, or is truth a fact that everyone accepts everywhere? Finally, does truth matter? His idea paves the way for enlightenment to people who are on the fence either being a believer or unbeliever. However, it is a prerequisite to listen carefully to where religions begin. I think it is birth and death. Without a solid explanation of these, reason might be merely another assumption.
Carl van Doren draws a distinction between the believer and the unbeliever: while the believer denies reason and evidence against the existence of God, the unbeliever adheres to reason informed by evidence against the existence of God. Van Doren then launches into his view of how gods are given anthropomorphic characteristics, gods are dropped when their attributes fail to meet celebrated social norms in changing societies, and gods that seemingly stand the test of time have had their character revised to the point where they might as well be different gods. He thinks people create gods and devise theologies that include a life after death because people are afraid of dying, but desiring such a state of affairs does not make it obtain. He maintains that even if an afterlife were appealing, most unbelievers prefer intellectual honesty over conceding reason for the sake of comfort, and he insists that his outlook is not bleak because it stems from courage instead of fear.
I think van Doren gives a smooth, honest version of the disillusioned atheist standpoint. I think religious truth, and truth in general, can be discovered as they are created, found, and theorized. This is not always the case, but I think it’s unfair to say that, just because believers want a God to exist, that God does not exist. Of course, this is not exactly what van Doren is saying, as he only argues that desiring God does not cause God's existence. But then desiring God and seeking comfort can't count as evidence against God's reality.
In this article the author argues that belief in God is a superstition and there should not be any obligation for him to believe in some thing which is made up of superstition and which is unbelievable. The author believes that enlightenment is the key to unbelief and people who are enlightened choose to believe because they want to be in the safer side. The author is in the view that life after death is a wish and like any other wish it will remain only as a wish for human beings. The crux of the author's argument is that the idea of belief is just a guess work because there is no fact in it and it can not be proven. The author chooses to take his stand to be an unbeliever because belief's are not backed with reason and facts that can be tested or measured.
I think this article contains one of the basic arguments on why a person choose not to believe. The main reason a person to choose not to believe is because belief's can not be backed by reasons or facts, believes are imaginations or wishes. I do not agree with the author's argument that wishes would remain as wishes forever. If the author makes statements that can be verified and has facts I think he should show the evidence of how a wish can not be fulfilled. It is same as asking the question of how can one disprove the existence of a God? I think it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, depending on what one means to prove. The meaning of the word belief itself is to accept that the concept is unbelievable and thus should be believed. I agree with the author that belief is some thing that can be captivated but it should not be insisted. I believe that belief is a choice and people should have the freedom to choose what they believe or disbelieve. But one of the important point that people of belief should learn from unbelievers is that the creation of beliefs and superstitions may take us far away from the real God. One should learn how to unpack these superstitions and find the real God. The author of this article wishes to stand along the side of unbelievers because there is no belief that is authenticate or authoritative that may show the real truth with out fiction. The answer for this is not be an unbeliever and give up but to strive to unpack ones understandings of God and try to find the truth. I think those who choose to be unbelievers are not any better than believers because they give up on their search for the mystery of the idea of God. I think believers should not just stop being believers but should be open to facts of the issue and constantly learn and be changed in their pursuit of knowing God.
Carl Van Doren calls himself one “without the gift of faith” (138). He does not argue against belief in a certain Christian or Hindu god, or against a certain dogma or doctrine; rather, he discounts any and all notions of deities existing throughout history. The reason for this disbelief is settled entirely on the lack of “trustworthy evidence as to a god’s absolute existence” (139). Van Doren tackles the question of whether morality exists apart from belief in God and he answers affirmatively—although he acknowledges that other atheists’ opinions may differ. His historical studies have allowed him to recognize that unbelievers have done less harm to the world than believers and they are also capable of having a more positive life outlook than believers.
In the beginning of this selection, Van Doren points out that his standpoint as an un-believer is automatically assigned an inferior position in debates, because of the negative terms used. He claims that the title of un-believer insinuates denying reason and evidence—both of which he claims to be adhering to closely. I empathize with his frustration of being loaded with the burden of proof, and it is fascinating to see that believers and unbelievers share this lament. Apparently, whoever holds the pen gets to assign the roles. Van Doren’s argument that atheists have historically caused less harm than theists is not reliable. Of course, statistically, more theistic people have done harm than atheistic people because the vast majority of people who have lived have been theistic. However, these numbers do not necessitate the conclusion he reaches, and he does not provide any numbers anyway, so his claim is unsubstantiated.
Carl Van Doren is an unbeliever. Which is not to say – or not only to say – that he is not of this or that sect, neither Papist nor Protestant, neither Hindu nor Buddhist. He is an equal-opportunity unbeliever, denying the reality and authority of “any god…any doctrine…any scheme of mortality” that has ever held sway over the minds of men (139). Others may believe, of course, but theirs is a faith that is “a survival from an earlier stage of thinking and feeling” from a time less enlightened; it is “a form of superstition” (138). The religious beliefs of adults have all of the credence of children’s convictions about Santa Claus: charming in their own way, perhaps, but certainly not worthy of influence. Van Doren, instead, will take the bold route, the honest route, the route of unbelief. It is the path of courage rather than fear.
But it’s pretty austere in Van Doren’s recounting, austere enough that one almost wonders if he isn’t really making the opposite case. While he asserts that unbelievers have filled the world “with knowledge and beauty, with temperance and justice, with manners and laughter,” there isn’t much laughter in evidence (141). He denies the bleakness of the unbelieving worldview, but his counterexample to the satyrs, sea monsters, and angels that enrich or enriched human life is…physics. (“Each discovery of a new truth brings him a vivid joy” (142).) Of course, if he finds the claims of theism utterly without merit, it is true that it would compromise his moral integrity to believe otherwise on the basis of cathedrals with flying buttresses and hymns with catchy tunes. But it is a flat world he has offered. And nowhere was that more clear than in a stray comment towards the end of the piece. “Breathing myths,” “comforting legends,” and “consoling hopes,” he writes, may be very beautiful, it’s true, but “they have, as the unbeliever sees them, no authority beyond that of poetry” (142). But hold on now! Poetry has no authority? He explains: “That is, they [the myths, etc.] may captivate if they can, but they have no right to insist upon conquering.” Perhaps. I am not one to lecture an English professor, especially a Van Doren, on the importance of poetry. (Mark Van Doren taught Allen Ginsburg, even.) But it seems that this is a failure of imagination, in more ways than one. Are there not truths to be found in poetry, in music, in myth? Is austerity the only defensible aesthetic? Are we limited to the verifiable, the measurable, the observable? Van Doren (Carl, that is) seems willing to say that we are, though he doesn’t sound very happy about it. And no wonder: in “stick[ing] as closely as it can to the evidence,” the evidence he has chosen has taken out all of the fun. What happened to the laughter?
Carl Van Doren addresses the reasons for why he is not inclined towards religious belief. He begins with a defense of the unbeliever in general, stating that they are just as intelligent and virtuous as the believer and that in fact their numbers are greatest among enlightened communities. He then calls attention to the difficulty inherent in such a discussion, as: “Belief, being the first in the field, naturally took a positive term for itself and gave a negative term to unbelief. As an unbeliever, I am therefore obliged to seem merely to dissent from the believers no matter how much more I may do” (138). Doren argues that just as the term belief precedes the term unbelief, so too do the imaginative and wishful aspects of religious faith precede a turning towards, and reliance on, reason. Applying this use of reason to the concept of god/s, he notes the ever-changing landscape of deities; the countless number of deities who are no longer remembered, the transformation of attributes of those who are and his observation that deities appear to be made in the image of the believer rather than vice versa. Doren offers a similar critique of revelation, arguing that though many attest to its veracity and that in some forms it has withstood the test of time, both of these ‘proofs’ rely upon assumptions (not reason); that a deity has chosen to communicate through a unique human individual and that longevity can act as a test of authenticity. Lastly, Doren examines the belief in the immortality of the soul, which he argues is a form of wish fulfilment and an attempt to imbue justice and meaning into human existence. Doren concludes with the assertion, that on the whole, the unbeliever has afflicted less violence on the world than the believer and that: “They have, instead, done what they could to fill it with knowledge and beauty, with temperance and justice, with manners and laughter. They have numbered among themselves some of the most distinguished specimens of mankind” (141).
There are two instances where Carl Doren’s argument becomes problematic. Firstly, Doren argues that the believer cannot cite the shared experience of revelation as proof for its existence, given that not everyone has this experience and so it cannot be a universal truth. He does however appear to have no difficulty arguing for the universality of his own personal experience. Secondly, Doren’s argument for the unbeliever rests heavily on the ethical character of the unbeliever, and how the unbeliever has acted with greater dignity and respect for his/her fellow human beings than the believer throughout human history. However, when the unbeliever obtained a majority rule in Russia and China in the 20th century, I would argue their rule was no less oppressive than their believer predecessors.
The Professor of English at Columbia University, Carl Van Doren, wrote Why I Am an Unbeliever in which he critiques theism on three main issues including god, revelation, and immortality. Next, Van Doren he answers common “secondary questions” that he and other atheists are asked. Before raising his three main issues mentioned above, Van Doren takes up the issue of labels. Interestingly, Van Doren reverses the usual terms in which so-called “believers” are the true “unbelievers” and so-called “unbelievers” are the true “believers.” Van Doren says, “What they (unbelievers) call unbelief, I call belief” (138). Van Doren does this because, historically, theism was viewed as positive while atheism was viewed as negative. However, for Van Doren and his fellow atheists, theism cannot possibly be positive seeing that it is superstitious and denies reason. Atheist and unbelievers and the true believers. In particular, Van Doren raises issue with three common theistic beliefs: god, revelation, and survival of death. While Van Doren makes several critiques of belief in god, his most expounded criticisms include the definition of god being revised so frequently that “he is really another god” (139) and that gods are, merely, fashioned in man’s image. Van Doren critiques a doctrine of revelation because he believes that it is founded on belief in god. Hence, belief in god is necessary for belief in revelation—of which he just denied. For his last critique, Van Doren says that belief in the afterlife is wishful thinking and has no evidence. To conclude, Van Doren answers a few common questions that people have for theists. He spends most of his time answering the question whether or not he “at least regret[s] the bleak outlook of unbelief?” (141). The answer, for Van Doren, is a resounding No because he is guided by truth, evidence, and reason. “Each discovery of a new truth brings [the atheist] a vivid joy. He builds himself up, so far as he can, upon truth, and barricades himself with it,” says Van Doren.
Carl Van Doren’s 1929 publication was an interesting, personal explanation for unbelief. In my opinion, the most thought-provoking part of the piece was the Van Doren’s exposition on the true nature of a “believer.” Who can claim to be the “true” believers in the world? Van Doren begins to express some of the negative associations and labels of what it’s like to be an atheist. In this sense, Van Doren is a fore-runner in much of our class discussions on the lack of freedom for atheists to express their views, publically. Van Doren wants to reverse these two identities. For him, “believers” are negative and “unbelievers” are positive. Hence, unbelievers are the true believers. Of course, I agree with Van Doren. If god does not exist, atheism is right—then, they are the true believers. Second, Van Doren’s observation about atheists as true “believers” points to another very important point: that atheist have belief, too. Maybe, even faith. Of course, Van Doren will argue that his positive belief in atheism is more rational that the theist’s. However, it still seems that Van Doren is actually saying that he is does have belief and faith. This is a point that I find many atheists do not prefer to acknowledge. Lastly, Van Doren’s belief is the opposite of Thomas Hardy. Where Hardy lamented his unbelief, Van Doren proudly faces life as an atheist.
Carl Van Doren, through his discussion of god, revelation, and immortality, dissents the belief that there is no ethics without the grounding of faith. He notably draws on the demographic of unbelievers and highlights that they are most prevalent in areas that have been touched by enlightenment. Van Doren understands his unbelief in the eyes of others to be a belief system in its own right, one that he has greatly tested by various means. The conception of a god is merely a signal of an imaginative and wishful humanity’s inability to deal fully with the reality of the universe. Further, revelation is just as unconvincing in that even as prophecy has perhaps persisted throughout history, it is not proven itself to be divine. Van Doren observes the widespread desire of world religions for immortality and credits the religions that highlight this desire as keen, while still arriving at the conclusion that ultimately it is not at all definitive. In regards to the ethical nature of unbelievers, Van Doren provides that unbelievers have done less harm to the world than believers, having not brought the atrocities and harmful thought systems that appear to come from places of strong religious belief. He concludes in warning, that the greatest believers are the greatest tyrants, subliminally asserting his understood superiority of unbelievers.
Statistically there is indeed evidence that unbelievers- or more secularized societies- are not committing atrocities and crimes in the name of religious conviction, or at the same rate as less-secularized nations, contributing to Van Doren’s point that unbelievers have done less harm to the world than believers. However, one cannot decidedly conclude that secularism is the only, end all be all cause of the well being of humanity. The factors that contribute to the overall safety, satisfaction, and well-being of a society are complex; influenced by economics, geography, history, among others, rather than just widespread religious belief.
In this article Carl Van Doren very straightforwardly lays out his reasoning for taking the position of the unbeliever. Most of the reasons he gives are due to the lack of evidence or reasoning by believers. He sees many of the concepts and theories revolving around the divine as hopeful wishes and leftover ignorance from the past. Concepts Doren tackles throughout the article include: the afterlife, the nature of the divine, the need for belief in supernatural beings, and changing moral values in humans. Overall, Carl Van Doren clearly lays out why the unbeliever position fits him better than that of the believer and does so with little to no hesitation
I thought this was a pretty bland article to read. If you are an unbeliever you will naturally see a lot of similarities in the line of reasoning. Most of the reasons that Carl Van Doren gives for not being a believer are fairly universal to all atheists or agnostics. Lack of evidence is basically the basis for the entire paper. It is either why Doren sees a lack of evidence for a potential hypothesis or that believers are failing to recognize the lack of evidence for their position. Overall the article isn’t a bad read, but it doesn’t add anything to the conversation in my opinion.
|
|
|
Steven Weinberg |
In “What About God?” Steven Weinberg outlines why the notion of a personal God falls into the realm of wishful thinking. For Weinberg, the evidence of science points to an impersonal God because God’s concern for humans is so hidden as to not be found, the fundamental physical principles persistently have little to do with humans, and the universe does not suggest a meaning to life. Weinberg rejects other scientists’ attempts to reconcile religion and science. Stephen Jay Gould’s concept of religion and science as occupying separate magisteria fails to account for the fact that humans do not mentally separate the two in their day-to-day lives while John Archibald Wheeler’s resolution of the quantum mechanical problem of wavefunction collapse by postulating the necessity of some type of intelligent life is positivism taken to an extreme in Weinberg’s mind. John Polkinghorne’s placing of religion and science within the same framework is problematic because the aggregation of human religious experience does not point to a common understanding of revelation in the same way that all scientific experiments point to the same type of physical reality. While Weinberg admits that science cannot provide motives for human action or console in the same ways religion can, he thinks humans must decide what they believe. If they choose to ignore logical reasoning and invent a personal God, he admires their ability to make that decision in spite of his personal objections, but sitting on the fence of ambiguity as liberal Christians do is worse. For Weinberg, the price of being part of a “grand cosmic drama,” is too high, and so he chooses to be intellectually honest with himself, which provides “satisfactions of its own” (378, 379).
While Weinberg’s characterization of liberal Christians as theologically befuddled was difficult to hear, his point is valid in the sense that many people, and not just some liberal Christians, want both the solace of a never-ending perfect existence in the hereafter as well as the belief that they are facing the reality of death. Unfortunately, this way of thinking often leads to talk about social justice, for example, with little action or a defeatist attitude toward eliminating injustice in the world. A middle way is to face the inevitability of death, but at the same time recognize that out of suffering can come the motivation for making the world a place that honors the dignity that all humans deserve. The transcendent experience of having one’s own awareness touched by another’s through empathetically entering into another’s pain fuels the desire and hope for alleviating suffering. This is the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection—victory can come out of defeat. While these encounters with divinity are all too infrequent in our busy world of commerce and perpetual “doing,” they can become the presence of God in our lives and they can become the consolation of an “interested God” (368).
“What About God?” tackles the seeming futility with which humans attempt to extrapolate ultimate meaning from a chaotic universe that consistently operamotes without any obvious existential purpose in mind. He chronicles the vast demystification of the universe that has followed in the wake of scientific advancement, affirming that nature is not a lens through which to gain any extraordinary insight into “God”. Aside from meaning, he also explores how humanity uses the term “God”, suggesting that only physicists can employ such language without blushing from embarrassment. In this way, he compares the language of God to the endeavors of a physicist to describe the ultimate laws of nature. However, Weinberg alludes to a particularly vexing incompatibility between a comprehensive scientific understanding of the universe and basic religiosity, choosing to define religion as consisting of the beliefs and doctrines held by the majority of faithful adherents. This necessarily excludes the more abstract theistic interpretations of liberally minded theologians like Paul Tillich and instead encompasses the vast segment of the population who insist on beliefs that, as he might put it, have “nothing to do with factual reality” (371). Weinberg concludes his argument by once again affirming a sense of inherent meaninglessness in the cosmos. He conveys empathy towards the temptation to assign divine significance to our precarious existences, yet insists that it is a temptation to be avoided alongside any faith in a divine agent
As it concerns this piece, I am less concerned with Weinberg's heavy exploration into physics and his refutation of God on scientific grounds alone. My interest here rests in the way Weinberg actively resists the urge to impose value on the universe, criticizing those who assume a spiritual life for the sake of happiness or existential security. He notes that not everyone has as much control over what they believe, but is adamant in the imperative nature of adjusting our beliefs to fit a rational model of thought. I understand his reasoning behind these claims and believe them to be valid complaints against the religiously oriented. However, I question his overall assessment because I find complaint in the overall utility of this type of argument. It is a privilege to be able to critically engage one's own belief system this systematically, and that point seems to be lost in Weinberg's thought.
[AMK] Aiden Kelley, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[APL] Andrew Linscott, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[AS] Amanda Spears, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[BJT] Brice Tennant, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[BLT] Benjamin Thompson, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[CSA] Caleb Acton, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[DR] David Rohr, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[ERD] Eric Dorman, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[FA] Finney Abraham, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[HJW] Hong Jongwook, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[JCD] Joel Daniels, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[JH] Jonathan Heaps, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[JM] Jonathan Morgan, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[JNH] Josh Hasler, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[KC] Kasey Cox, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[KGL] Karen Lubic, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[MDJ] Moon Doojin, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[MG] Melissa Grimm, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[MS] Mark Shan, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[RBB] Robin Bartlett Barraza, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[RLS] Roy Smith, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[RZ] Robin Barraza, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[SR] Stefani Ruper, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[SRG] Sarah Goodloe, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[TBM] Todd McAlster, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[TK] Tyler Kirk, member of the 2012 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[TW] Thurman Willison, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
[ZTR] Zachary Rodriguez, member of the 2009 Atheisms and Theologies Seminar at Boston University
