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Like any half-decent atheist, I’m fond of a bit of religion....
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| LazFX |
Good Review???? anyone? who has read it?
...... I still need to take it out of the wrapper, but I need to read this.....
| quote: | Like any half-decent atheist, I’m fond of a bit of religion
Magnus Linklater
Thank God I’m an atheist. It’s a big step to take, but it was becoming difficult to cling to the agnostic fig-leaf any longer. As Lloyd George once said, if you sit on the fence too long it means that the iron enters your soul. Now, however, I am reassured by Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, that I can “stand tall to face the far horizon”. Atheism, he says, “nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind, and indeed a healthy mind”.
I’m a bit worried about that “nearly always” – an uncharacteristically fuzzy phrase surely, from the master of certainty; but at least I can stand shoulder to shoulder with the new president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, who announces that by embracing atheism we are resisting religious zealotry, “because the here and now is all there is, and our destiny is in our own hands”.
I suppose I agree with that. The notion of a life hereafter, the rewards of Heaven or the punishment of Hell are fantasies that I find it easy to dispense with, while the alternative – to seek the spiritual life within the confines of one’s own imagination – is a far more challenging proposition.
I wonder, then, why I find the militant convictions of the anti-religionists so chilling? Far from converting me, I find myself repelled by the way that Professor Dawkins so expertly picks off each and every argument put up by those who cling to their faith, while the virulence of Toynbee’s attacks on the evils of state-sponsored religion is unattractive, at best. They may be intellectually rigorous, but they do not win me over.
They seem, however, to be having a wider effect. A poll in The Sunday Times, carried out for John Humphrys, the broadcaster, whose book In God We Doubt is published this week, revealed that nearly half of those questioned – 42 per cent – think that religion has had a harmful effect. This may stem more from the current suspicion of Muslim extremists than a flight from faith, but it does suggest that we have entered a new and increasingly intolerant era, for which the God-assailants must accept some responsibility. “Perhaps we are having an effect now,” comments Professor Dawkins. And perhaps “we” are.
I cannot, however, share Professor Dawkins’s contempt for what he sees as the vacuity of those who proclaim their doubts about an external God, but still cling to the traditions or the comfort of organised religion. Nor do I warm to Toynbee’s visceral hostility to the idea of an established Church. I stood, earlier this week, at a funeral where the bereaved family – not themselves believers – took deep solace from a Presbyterian service, with hymns whose lines were rich in language and faith. We listened to words from Proverbs about the virtuous woman who is “a crown to her husband”, and felt that the surroundings of an ancient church were perfectly in tune with the messages of love and remembrance that ran through the service.
By the end of it, my atheism was still intact, but I was very glad to have been there. I cannot, like Professor Dawkins, think the less of anyone who takes pleasure from a familiar liturgy, nor deride those who fall back on a Church whose central tenets they reject. Professor Dawkins is expert at exposing, with pinpoint precision, the inconsistencies of this position. He compares those who take comfort from traditional religion to people stuck for the night on a bare mountain, who warm to the appearance of a large St Bernard dog, “not forgetting, of course, the brandy barrel around its neck”. Death, he says, is something to be approached without hope or fear. It is far more invigorating to face “the strong keen wind of understanding”, which comes with a complete absence of faith, than to cling to “the security blanket of ignorance”.
Methinks the Professor takes a little too much satisfaction in the eloquence of his own metaphors and too little account of the richness of the alternatives. As for Toynbee, I cannot quite follow her contempt for the evils perpetrated by our established religion. She cites the damage perpetrated by faith schools, the absurdity of a constitution that allows bishops into the House of Lords, and the extremism of Christian organisations that campaign against homosexuality, abortion and stem-cell research. There are arguments to be had about all of these, but I shrink from the shrill language with which she deploys them.
Do we really think, like her, that public services are “held to ransom by the weird sexual fantasies of unelected service providers”, or that faith groups are responsible for the “homophobic bullying” of young boys who are driven to kill themselves in our schools, or that religious leaders, “given an ounce of power . . . abuse it to deny basic liberties”? All this she ascribes to the overweening influence of our established religion, by which she must mean the Anglican Church.
Yet never in our history has that influence been so weak, its doctrines so torn by doubt, its preaching so uncertain. Listening to the Toynbee tirades one might imagine that this country was in the hands of a latterday Torquemada, or that Thomas Cromwell was once again sending heretics to the rack. Instead, we have an Archbishop of Canterbury who agonises, publicly, over the complexities of the Christian faith, and a Church that is on the point of tearing itself apart because the liberal argument on homosexual priests is becoming unstoppable.
What unites both Dawkins and Toynbee is their absolute insistence that we sign up to the fixed and rigid agenda they have set us. For one, it is a case of choosing between rationalism and stupidity. For the other, it comes down to the liberalism of the secular life, or the red-necked fundamentalism of state-sponsored religion.
All this leaves me feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Despite my new-found position, I still seem to be on the shifting sands of uncertainty. Is there, I wonder, something called an atheist heretic? |
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| Sunsnail |
| I'm a moderate atheist I guess you could say. I respect and tolerate anyone's beliefs :) |
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| Krypton |
I have my reasons for believing in a divine Creator. The existance of data and information, our inability to physically communicate information outside of our universe, the existence of alternate realities, our inability to trace the universal timeline to the very instance of the big bang, etc..
I've said before, you either assume a super-intelligence, or you assume not. And from those assumptions come the rest of anyone's beliefs. An antheist would say, "How can there be a god?". I would say, "How can there not be a god?" Can't be in the middle, and the gap is wide between these two fundamental worldview axioms. This is why the sides will never agree on the inherent nature of the universe. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
I've said before, you either assume a super-intelligence, or you assume not. And from those assumptions come the rest of anyone's beliefs. |
Hardly. |
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| Krypton |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
Hardly. |
Hardly what?
People's fundamental world views revolve around those two assumptions. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
You have Christians against abortion, Christians in favor, Christians against premarital sex, Christians who want to permit it, Christians for the death penalty, Christians against it, Christians for the Iraq war, Christians against it.
Seems a bit odd to say that belief or disbelief in God somehow "determines" the rest of somebody's worldview when two people who believe in the same God can be opposed on so many issues, doesn't it? |
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| Krypton |
You're mistaken. Christian by and large have a consensus on all issues. Whatever minority disagree with the fundamental doctrine does not constitute a major conflict within Christendom.
The culmination of the axioms I mentioned are the main world views of theism, pantheism, and naturalism. Each fundamental world view has an ultimate assumption at its heart from which more supplemental opinions are inherently based.
And don't take me as saying different views never overlap. That's not what I'm saying. But there is a general consensus unique to each world view. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
Christian by and large have a consensus on all issues. |
They do? That must be why Anglicanism and Episcopalianism are splitting in half over whom to ordain as priests.
| quote: | | The culmination of the axioms I mentioned are the main world views of theism... |
Which "theism?" Islam? Christianity? Native American religions? Ancient Greek religion? Wicca? All theistic, all very different. |
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| HardTranceProd |
I think this is an appropriate thread to provide the following two links.
Richard Dawkins visited Lynchburg University in Virginia, USA, one of the more conservative parts of America, and had a Q&A session with the students and staff.
I warn you that the video is long (over an hour!), but I promise that you will be entertained like never before.
First, the Q&A session (Part 2):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_z85O0P2M
And if you have some time, his presentation before the Q&A (Part 1):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe7yf9GJUfU
You can watch Part 1 at a later time if you're busy, though it's still very interesting. But Part 2, the Q&A session, maaan!!!! Richard's wit is amazing, fun, I'm at a loss for words for how intelligent and witty this man is.
enjoy |
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| Krypton |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
They do? That must be why Anglicanism and Episcopalianism are splitting in half over whom to ordain as priests.
Which "theism?" Islam? Christianity? Native American religions? Ancient Greek religion? Wicca? All theistic, all very different. |
Are they representative of Christendom? No, their issue is an internal denominational controversy.
You're missing the point. People's belief systems are all based on fundamental axioms that provide the support for their world view. When all differing world views are catagorized into the most basic catagories, they would be theism, pantheism, and naturalism. At the heart of theism is the axiom of a supreme creator god outside of the cosmos. At the heart of pantheism is the axiom that god is the cosmos. At the heart of naturalism is the axiom that the cosmos is all that is, was, or ever will be. Got it? From these most basic and fundamental of assumptions provide for the lense through which people view the world around them.
Answering the question, "Why do we exist?", if you asked the theist, panthiest, and naturalist, you are bound to get 3 different answers. Perhaps their views may overlap in some places, but the worldviews are separated by their fundamental assumptions. Atheists assume there is no god, theists assume there is a god, and pantheists assume that everything is god.
You seem to want to argue about the existance of god or something. That's not my point, and that's not what I'm argueing. My objective is to point out that everyone's worldview has a foundation, and as I stated, the foundation is each person's interpretation of the nature of existance and where it comes from. |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sunsnail
I'm a moderate atheist I guess you could say. I respect and tolerate anyone's beliefs :) |
same here, but I will call anyone's religion out when they use that religion to either encroach on my rights or the rights of others. Plus I will throw up a few details about their faith if and when they use that faith to justify a behavior that flows against society. |
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| Subey |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
You seem to want to argue about the existance of god or something. That's not my point, and that's not what I'm argueing. My objective is to point out that everyone's worldview has a foundation, and as I stated, the foundation is each person's interpretation of the nature of existance and where it comes from. |
I'll try to reword your argument for MrJiveBoJingles to see if it helps.
A ghost lives in my house.
I do not believe in ghosts. I will never interpret any 'ghostly' phenomena in my house as being sourced by the ghost. In essence I will never travel down that road of exploration far enough to find the ghost. |
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