Kenneth Hynek • 14th Jul 2009 • Religion, Catholicism, Religion, Christianity, Religion, Protestantism, Religion, Theology • Calvinism, Christ, damnation, emotion, evangelism, faith, Gamespot, God, Jesus, logic, Manichaeaism, Mark Shea, reason, soteriology, the Gospels
Mark Shea nails the first one, which I can likewise relate to:
Normal people do not pit God against his good creatures this way. But Calvinism (which Trent analyzed as a resurgent form of Manichaeaism) routinely does, at least in its anti-Catholic polemics. Of course, five centuries has done something to wear the edge of Calvinism into more demented hatred of creatures. Even the guy who wrote this would probably not slap his child if he sought comfort in the arms of his mother after a scraped knee or (like Calvin) have somebody flogged for praying at the grave of a loved one. Calvinists, after long exposure to normal human emotion, have backed down on the creatures are absolutely worthless in providing help and comfort. They have figured out, at least on a day to day basis, that humans rightly seek help and comfort from creatures all the time. That’s why there aren’t any Calvinist Child Rearing Books urging parents to punish their children as godless infidels when they call for their mothers after a nightmare, or Calvinist counselors slapping grieving parents around for their sinfully misplaced love of their dead child or Calvinist marriage counselors urging couples to stop finding love and consolation in the idolatrous love of their spouses.
Instead, the Calvinist zealot now confines his denunciation of enjoyment, supplication, and love of creatures strictly and solely to those creatures who happen to be dead. That’s what that qualifier about the “spirit realm” is all about. My combox Calvinist knows, at some level, that it’s insane to shout “trust in God alone” to a child who wants his Mother. He senses at some level what non-insane people know: that one of the ways God mediates his love and help to us is through creatures like our mothers. So he doesn’t denounce people for honoring their mother or asking her help. But when it comes to the Mother of God, all the demented rhetoric comes out full throttle, even though it is no more crazy to ask for her help than it is to ask for the help of our earthly mother.
The other thing is something I’ve noticed. Calvinists have this thing about “planting seeds” (not that way, sicko), and I notice the phrase is used in many of the debates that take place in the Gamespot Off-Topic Forum (and in the post-debate analysis conducted elsewhere). The dive-bombing evangelists come in, stir up anti-Christian vitriol with their whimsical, half-baked theological ramblings, and then — when logic, reason, and somewhat-more-sane Christians have dismantled their arguments and backed them into a corner — leave with a pithy comment about having planted seeds, and how the rest is in God’s hands.
This disgusts me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for evangelism. I’m just not for evangelism-as-a-means-of-damning-someone, which is why Calvinists mean (I think) with all this rhetoric about seed-planting. Banner images like this are not intended to actually compel people to seek salvation in Christ; they are made to use the reality of Christian soteriology as a weapon with which to sentence people to damnation (or, at least, that is the intent with which they are used). The Calvinist believes that simply by yelling “Jesus saves you, you damned rotten sinner,” at another person is a sufficient and fully legitimate mode of preaching the message of the Gospels; if the damned rotten sinner does not immediately go out and “get saved,” he deserves what he gets.
Of course, the person is vanishingly rare who will, upon hearing the above, go out and “get saved.” The Calvinist knows this, but spews forth his bilgewater preaching anyhow. The possibility that in so doing, said Calvinist is genuinely concerned for the salvation of the other is small, so small as to be non-existent against the statistical margin for error. The Calvinist can thus only be uttering his bilgewater preaching not to bring about the salvation of the other, but to ensure the damnation of the other (who, rightly, has indeed been informed of the truth).
Now, perhaps I am a Catholic pagan idolater infidel prostitute zealot, and a “Romanist” (17th century rhetorical polemics are just de rigeur, you see…) besides…but it seems to me that preaching to someone for the express purpose of ensuring his damnation is about as far removed from what is right, moral, and Christian as can be. Or nearly so.
Planting seeds from which faith can grow doesn’t mean spewing a venomous iteration of the message and then shrugging it off when nobody listens; it means preaching a message that actually speaks to others and encourages them to further explore a fledgling, nascent faith. It means teaching something which is true, and encouraging the other to seek after more and deeper truths from that starting point. Bellowing at someone that he’s a dirty rotten sinner destined for the Pit might make for good catharsis, but it’s actually counter-productive to spreading the Good News (actually, believe it or not, it makes the Good News sound like Bad News) and, moreover, sets up the one who bellows it out as a stumbling block in the other’s walk with Christ.
Jesus had something to say about stumbling blocks. It involved millstones.
Anyhow, it’s been a crazy day, and I haven’t had time to do much in the way of blogging, or to give complete and just answers to some threads in the CU. I’ll attempt to do so tomorrow, though I of course make no promises in this regard.
Kenneth Hynek • 4th Feb 2009 • Religion, Atheism, World News, British News, Religion, Christianity, Religion, Islam • Algeria, atheism, Britain, Calgary, Canterbury, Caroline Petrie, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Cold War, Earth, engineering, faith, Islam, John F. Kennedy, logic, London, men, Mohammed Atta, Moon, New York, PZ Myers, Religion, Robin Williams, Rome, science, Soviet Union, United States
There is so much illogic — and then in just two short sentences! — in this latest example of bus-side advertising for atheism in Britain.
Where to begin?
Let’s pick apart that first sentence. Does “science” really fly us to the Moon? Well, various avenues of research and development did develop the technology used to get astronauts off the ground, get them out of Earth‘s atmosphere, land them safely on the Moon, and then bring them safely back the way the came. So it could be argued that “science” played a role.
But then, by that same logic, “science” also gave us the airplanes that Mohammed Atta and his cohorts used against the Twin Towers…so if science can take the credit for landing us on the Moon, surely it must also take the blame for the just-shy-of-3000 Americans who perished on that cold September morning seven and a half years ago?
Ah, but there’s the second sentence to consider! Those airplanes weren’t flown into the buildings because of science, but because of Religion! It was because Atta and his accomplices were carrying out what they felt was a religious mission that they used those planes to fell the Twin Towers!
As Robin Williams might say: Really!
Because by that same logic, then, it wasn’t science that flew us to the Moon, either; it was politics (the space race, and in particular the race to the Moon, must be understood in the context of Cold War-era competition between the United States and the Soviet Union), it was economics (John F. Kennedy‘s “We choose to go to the Moon” speech included a large section making rather a big deal out of the job creation potential of the space program), and it was…well…because the Moon was there.
As noted: there’s a lot of error in just two sentences, some of which has been enumerated above. However, it should be noted that perhaps the biggest error is in the second sentence, with its blanket statement that “Religion” is what flies planes into buildings.
As Robin Williams might say: Really!
Which religion? When was the last time nineteen Amish men hijacked a plane and flew it into a pair of skyscrapers in New York? When was the last time a handful of Baptist churchgoers orchestrated and pulled off a devious plot involving numerous bombings in the London Tube? When was the last time a Catholic blew up a bus during rush hour?
There are two errors at work here. The first is one that Christopher Hitchens, in particular, has been guilty of in the past: drawing specific examples of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam and using this as an example with which to broadly condemn all religions (even though most other religions — Christianity being no exception — simply do not have the necessary theological basis for preaching or justifying an agenda of violence, which Islam does).
This would be a little like condemning all men as violent misogynists because one deranged male (himself the son of a wife-beating Algerian Muslim, incidentally) once shot up a class full of female engineering students and…oh…wait, yeah. Anyhow…
The second error is what blogger Shawarma Mayor notes is wrong with the advert: it scrupulously avoids any mention of Islam, despite invoking the image of an event that was perpetrated by Muslims, and which has not even been attempted, on any scale or in any locality, by adherents of any other faith, because of that faith.
But then, it’s easy to condemn religion in the broad sense than specifically condemn Islam. It’s easier to condemn Christianity, if one wants to be specific, than to condemn Islam…even if one must use the crimes of Islamic fanatics in order to illustrate one’s polemic against Christianity. But then, Rome does not issue fatwas. Nor does Canterbury, come to think of it.
Scratch an atheist, find an illogical coward.
* * *
Hmmn…looks like Calgary is apparently “next in line” for these atheist advertisments.
Heh…I wonder if PZ Myers would suggest that the organizers of this campaign keep their disbelief to themselves? You know…because that sort of thing would be…logically consistent, and non-hypocritical, on his part, given his comments on Caroline Petrie.
Yeah…I thought not.
Kenneth Hynek • 23rd Jan 2009 • Religion, Atheism, Religion, Christianity, Religion, Islam, Site News • atheism, emotion, God, Internet, Islam, logic, metaphysics, OS X, Religion, science, social autism, Vox Day, Windows XP
Avid followers of the sidebar content will have observed that I’ve been involved in a discussion with a certain jolly atheist. And while it was an interesting discussion, it’s worth noting that it didn’t begin on the best note:
Of course, new atheism is not all that new. There have always been rational men, though very few.
This is, of course, the tired old implication that only atheists are rational people. It’s one of the more common forms of what Vox Day has termed social autism that one encounters especially in dealings with Internet atheists.
But the discussion proceeded well enough from that point, for a bit. Then jolly atheist made this remark:
For any knowledge to be considered as serious for the atheist, needs scientific proof – that is objective, rational proof based on experiment, testifiable and falsifiable.
This, of course, reduces to positivism, more or less, and thus suffers from the same inherent logical flaws that positivism does. But it also establishes a baseline, and served — within the discussion — as a kind of minimum expectation that I could apply to anything that jolly atheist said.
Because surely, if he were to make any formal statements about e.g. the falsity of religion, or the non-existence/cruelty of God, then surely he would be able to back up these statements with “rational proof” that was “testifiable [I think he meant testable] and falsifiable.”
Well, as the debate rolled on, he made any number of interesting assertions, but the evidence provided in support of said assertions was pretty thin on the ground. I chastised him for this a few times, until I decided to draw a line in the sand. After all, as the self-professed “rare” rational man that was party to the discussion, he should have been able to produce — per his own standards — rational proof based on testable and falsifiable evidence for so direct a statement as this one that he made:
Any religiosity is a function of emotions.
He also had this to say:
You may add reason as well; no problem for me. This only proves that you have created God emotionally and by illogical reasoning! And so far, we would be in agreement. You have created Him! Not vice versa..
There is, of course, much that is wrong with the above statements:
1) Religiosity is not, itself, an emotional process by definition. The process of conversion is an emotional one, and always begins in the heart. But religiosity is not conversion, especially for someone like me who has never been a convert to another faith or philosophy.
2) jolly atheist supposed rationality and logic evidently failed him at one point. I remarked that my Catholicism was the result of rational inquiry into, and testing of, the Church’s doctrines, which I concluded to be the highest truth at a result of said investigation.
His response to me, seen above, is that because my Catholicism was a result of rational inquiry, this somehow proved that it was actually irrational and based solely upon emotions. That is, I suppose, atheist logic for you, good reader: when religious people exercise reason and rational inquiry, it’s actually emotion-driven irrationalism.
I suggest an alternate conclusion, namely that it is more likely that by this statement, jolly atheist‘s latent social autism is showing.
3) I didn’t quite see how he could assert that we would agree over a point such as my having created God in my mind and heart.
Then he said this:
You cannot claim that I, as an atheist, insist on his non-existence through my emotions and illogical reasoning, because I cannot feel for what there isn’t!
To which I replied that while I wasn’t insisting on anything concrete, it was worth noting that, since jolly atheist had earlier appealed to the “problem” of evil and suffering in his attempt to argue against my faith, there might in fact have been a strong emotional component to his atheism, despite his assertions to the contrary.
Moreover, it should be noted that there are a number of emotionally-driven “predictors” for atheism. For example, “[i]f you encounter an intelligent, self-centered boy with zero social skills, you can predict he’ll turn out to be an atheist by the time he’s 25 with a high degree of accuracy.” That’s a pithy observation by an author I’m something of a fan of, but in general it rings true — atheism can be strongly correlated with the display of traits that could be termed “social autism” earlier on in life.
Likewise, in my own experience, I’ve noted a high degree of correlation between atheism and “daddy issues” (or just general issues with parental authority). A number of atheists I know are atheists because they have experienced e.g. crisis of faith in the wake of personal traumas or the loss of loved ones.
In other words: emotional reasons, all.
Now, the above reasons are your reasons may not be jolly atheist‘s reasons, specifically, for being an atheist. His appeal to the “problem” of suffering and evil suggests an emotional component to his worldview, which I previously noted, but it’s equally possible that he hasn’t experienced shattering loss/personal trauma, that he doesn’t have “daddy/parental authority issues,” and that he was a very sociable little lad.
In my last response to him, I posed a question at the end, but also a challenge at the beginning. Following up on his comment, above, concerning how religiosity is always a function of emotions, I drew a line in the sand: this being another one of those statements which, per his own standards, repeatable and testable evidence should be cited for, in order to be considered valid and truthful, I opted to hold him to the standards he had previously professed.
I told jolly atheist, plainly, that I awaited his presentation of repeatable, testable evidence justifying his statement…or that, in the absence thereof, I awaited his retraction of it.
And since this was hardly the first time I’d pointed out that he was violating his own standards, I made the line a bit firmer, and let my patience run out.
And so, until such time as jolly atheist either a) presents evidence meeting the above criteria or b) retracts the relevant statement, I won’t be quick to publish any additional comments he submits. In fact, I will delete any submitted comments which do not present the evidence, or the retraction, as requested.
Oh, and my question to him (provided he satisfied the stipulations set out above) was: had he been brought up an atheist, or did he convert? If the latter, what events in his life had precipitated that conversion? If the former, how far back up the family tree does that atheism go?
Well, jolly atheist wrote back. And no, I didn’t publish the comment, because he didn’t provide the testable evidence as requested, nor did he provide a retraction. And so, until such time as he does, his comments won’t be published, and have in fact been deleted.
But he did say a few things that, for sport, I’ve decided I want to respond to all the same. But to contextualize my later responses, I need to cite his last remarks first:
I’m an ex-muslim. It still says so on my birth certificate which I intend to change. I have questioned the faith, decided it’s no different from superstition and left it behind. I’m the only atheist in my family, though the others are not very loyal muslims either. So, it’s not emotion at all. It’s reasoning!
Note that there is no actual reasoning in the above statement; he says that he is an ex-Muslim from a very faithful Islamic family, and from this concludes that his atheism is not emotionally-derived or driven, but is in fact based solely on reasoning.
Really?
Admittedly, one cannot draw concrete conclusions from the above statement…but it hints at certain possibilities. Perhaps he had a crisis of faith stemming from the realization that Islamic doctrine is full of contradictions and false claims — if so, that’s an emotional process in addition to being the outcome of potentially rational inquiry. Perhaps he has issues with his parents, and so rejected the faith they hold dear out of spite or anger — that too is an emotional process, and in fact is also irrational.
He keeps coming back to the issue of natural disasters, so perhaps he lives in a part of the world that sees a lot of that kind of turmoil, and perhaps has even lost someone near and dear to him. Though unfortunate, if that is in fact the case, that is not a rational reason for losing or rejecting one’s faith — it is in fact an irrational reason, and then an emotionally-drive one.
Yes, I’m speculating…but I’m doing so from the evidence that jolly atheist has himself presented, and I can’t help but think that his atheism is not nearly so free from being emotionally-driven as he claims it is. Certainly, lurking in the subtext of what he has said, it is not hard to find several subtle hints that his atheism is, in fact, largely predicated on emotion.
Knowing that he is an ex-Muslim, by the way, also helps explain why he thinks that the “problem” of evil and suffering is an objection to the Christian faith. It isn’t, of course…but it is an objection to Islam.
Two year-old dying in an earthquake – there need not be any building; a break on earth would be enough. A crippled child born – how can you punsih a child for the wrong of his parents? And we are talking about an all-powerful, all-good god.
Within Islam, everything happens solely through the will of Allah — if Allah wills is, the ground will shake and crack; if Allah wills it, the ground will be calm again. There’s no room for free will in most Islamic theology — there is only inshallah. Knowing that jolly atheist is an ex-Muslim, then, we can see that his reliance on the “problem” of evil and suffering — which is not a problem at all for Christians — can be explained away quite easily.
Despite his profession of having rejected the Islamic faith, he has not shed all of its intellectual trappings, and it is still the lens through which he views all other religions. Which is itself one additional irrationality on his part; arguing against Christianity with objections that are properly targeted against Islamic theology makes about as much sense as arguing in favour of wireless mice in a debate about which operating system — Windows XP or OS X — does a better job of managing task priorities.
It should also be noted that he did address my request for him to justify — with evidence matching his own established criteria — his statement that all religiosity is emotional in nature.
You want “evidence that religiosity is emotion?” And you won’t publish my comments – I couldn’t care less. You just referred to and I started writing. I can stop just as easily. At this point, again, it is a clash of our truths and it’s funny of you to ask for proof. By now, you know that my truth lies in evolution and that involves body and mind only and it’s all there is to it. So it is oly natural that I should regard religion as emotion because there is no place for metaphysics in science.
The last half of the last statement is true: there is no room in science for metaphysics. But I am not asserting that there should be; science is concerned with the physical realm, not the metaphysical, and thus can and should only be used to describe and draw conclusions about the physical realm. Which means, in turn, that science cannot be used against the metaphysical either — and therein lies yet another irrationality in jolly atheist‘s thinking, or, rather, an irrationality already noted, way back at the beginning of this article.
The first half of the last statement is not true, necessarily: although one could dismiss Religion as merely emotional because science has nothing to do with, or say about, metaphysics, others have argued that religion is mere delusion on the same grounds; emotionalism is one possible conclusion, but not the only one. And one further notes that whatever the conclusion might be — emotion or delusion — said conclusion does not actually follow from the assertion given to justify it.
Note also that while he asks, as though to confirm, if I want evidence confirming that religiosity is merely emotional in nature, he never actually gives it! He just goes on to remark about my threat to delete his comments. What’s even funnier is his assertion that his truth “lies in evolution,” as though I somehow rejected evolution as a legitimate theory (hint: I don’t).
But in the end, this debate was, by and large, fruitful. It established that jolly atheist is a positivist, and that his atheism is probably a lot more emotionally-driven than he cares to admit. It is my hope that this will be a good jumping-off point for him, then, to re-evaluate the error of his atheist philosophy, or at least of his justification for his beliefs.
And if, at any point, he wants to present that evidence I asked for, I’ll be happy to let him comment here again.
Kenneth Hynek • 23rd Jan 2009 • Religion, Atheism, Entertainment, Celebrities, Entertainment, Humour • atheism, Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, demotivators, faith, God, logic, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, science
Who doesn’t like demotivators? And really, who couldn’t like demotivators that poke fun at e.g. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and/or Christopher Hitchens.
Because let’s be honest: Dawkins is basically an arse, and his whole approach to preaching the message of his atheism is to attempt to demean everyone who disagrees with him about God.
(hat tip)
Dennett is an interesting fellow, but in the end winds up contradicting himself by arguing for having what amounts to faith in science as a whole, but against the notion that said faith should be held to the same standards as should Religion be.
Dennett is also a classic example of how even atheism is not a question of “shall we believe?” but, instead, “in what shall we believe?” And while he dismisses belief in God as illogical, he somehow thinks it logical to believe that the three pound piece of meat situated a few inches behind its eyes, with all of its random chemical interactions and unpredictable hormonal surges, is capable of reason purely on its own merits.
(hat tip)
Christopher Hitchens is many things: sober and sane are not two of these. And if you ever need an example of emotion-driven atheism masquerading as hard, cold logic, Hitchens is your best example.
Update: But wait, there’s more!
Sam Harris is an interesting study in the correlation between atheism-cum-political ideology and violence. He’s on record as saying that he has no problem with torture if it is done in the best interests of the state, and he’s also on record stating that those who cannot be convinced to abandon certain beliefs — those the state deems nonconstructive to its goals, basically — should be killed off.
And yet, if you try and point out that atheists in recent history (the 19th and 20th centuries, basically) have a pretty good track record when it comes to doing both of those things, he kind of gets all defensive. It’s weird.
(hat tip)
