Faith Without Reason (A Response to Richard Dawkins, et al)

[Steve3007]

A member of Christian Heritage? That's a new one on me. Thanks. Is that a thing?

[YIOSTHEOY]

There are 2 things which I would like to see high school kids introduced to. One is Philosophy. The other is Comparative Religion.

YIOSTHEOY, I consider your post an embarrassment to human freedom. The first thing any dictator wants to do when he gets power is change what children are taught. Secular schools should be used to teach children how to learn - not what to learn. Your post complains about brainwashing children. That is exactly what your teaching schedule attempts to do - brainwash children.

Your straw man is phony because we already have mind control over our kids.

I would like kids to be taught tools that allow them to think for themselves.

That's why your straw man does not work.

Nice try though.

Are you trying to become an expert at Sophistry? Seems like it.

This straw man was very amateurish attempt however.

You would have been an embarrassment to Protagoras the Sophist of ancient Athens.

[Ormond]

That is to say that you cannot say Christianity is stupid, or silly, or irrational to believe, without also objecting to the truth of Christianity.

Hmm, just to be argumentative....

The Judeo-Christian god is said to be above all else, which would seem to include the rules of human reason. Thus, it seems one could both agree there is such a God and also define Christianity as irrational, that is, beyond the rules of human reason. Why limit your God to the rules of human reason? That would be a very small God, wouldn't it?

Atheists are essentially saying that human reason is "God", that is, the highest ranking authority which all else is subservient to. If you try to prove your God and religion are logical, aren't you essentially agreeing with them?

I thought Christian theory proposed human reason to be a very small thing indeed, which makes sense to me, whether or not there is something like a God. Perhaps I misunderstand...?

[YIOSTHEOY]

Quick question: I don't demand proof of anything from anyone except pure mathematicians because no such proof is possible (except in the now rarely used sense of the word proof as a synonym for "test"). I have nothing against religions. I am not religious and never have been and wasn't raised in any religious tradition.

What, if anything, should I be labelled as? (Please keep it clean.)

A member of Christian heritage. Or maybe an eater of bananas? (I am going out on a limb in my belief that you have eaten a quantity of bananas that excede one. If you have eaten one and a half then I think I am correct in saying you've eaten bananas rather than just a singular banana in your life time ... then again I am not really considering the skin of the banana!?! Now I'm confused!)

Correct -- 1 and 1/2 are plural not singular. The key is in the conjunction "and" which signals a plural subject. Here the subject is one and one-half.

-- Updated June 6th, 2016, 9:47 am to add the following --

Can you believe in something unimaginable? Obviously not because I cannot imagine it.

Dogs have no comprehension of what it is to be human nor I a dog. I can believe in a dog as having more direct experiential knowledge about nature than I do in some ways as I have more direct knowledge that it in others.

We have experience to guide us. The only higher being I can believe in would be part of some alien race. If this alien race remains beyond my physical comprehension then for me it may as well not exist although it may very well exist. I am certainly not going to gamble that these higher beings may or may not care or know about me and can help me anymore than I would be willing to dedicate time to an ant colony and employ special benefits for those ants which I deemed to be worshipping me (also the gifts I may bestow upon these ants may not actually be what they want).

I am not a strict atheist. I believe in deities of my own making. I undetstand that belief has power and that belief is dangerous. I do view peoples belief in some supreme conscious being to be a reflection of their own self projected into an ideal. My views are too complex to sum up here tbh.

The western world cannot escape its Christian heritage. That, if anything, is the biggest fault of the extreme atheists. Our mythological and cultural heritage is steeped in Christianity through media, clothing and language. Recognise it, accept it and live with it. You need not be religious to value cultural heritage.

-- Updated June 6th, 2016, 11:45 am to add the following --

(Nested quote removed.)

YIOSTHEOY, I consider your post an embarrassment to human freedom. The first thing any dictator wants to do when he gets power is change what children are taught. Secular schools should be used to teach children how to learn - not what to learn. Your post complains about brainwashing children. That is exactly what your teaching schedule attempts to do - brainwash children.

Exposure is not brain washing. Prolonged and forced exposure is brain washing. All social institutions spread there word in some way or another and it may be a little harsh to call any form of exposure "brainwashing" dont you think?

Any logical definition of a "God" is going to meet the "Alien" definition too.

God(s) are/is clearly Aliens.

We simply do not know if They exist unless one of them has contacted you personally, and you were able to ascertain that you were lucid, and you saw them, touched them, and heard them.

Agnosticism is an open minded skepticism and is purely scientific and logical.

Atheism is simply yet another belief system. It is illogical and irrational.

Theism is the classic ages old belief system and it depends on faith.

[Burning ghost]

YIO -

I was joking about the bananas ...

I think you kind of bypassed what I was saying about the logic of a creator. This is where the atheist argues not against the existence of god, but against the existence of a creator of existence ... for obvious logical reasons.

No atheist is going to refuse to believe in higher alien intellects. That is a reasonable and plausible assumption. Not only that it is conceivable. To believe in something inconceivable (like theists do) disregards logic. So if you say atheists are illogical you are in effect saying it is logical to talk about something not only existing outside of existence, but also being conceivable ... I don't need refute such a position because it is self refuting.

steve -

Judiochristian heritage to be more specific. You've never heard that before? Just means that regardless of your beliefs the mainstay has been judeochristian in western society since history began. This relgiomythical predominance has infiltraited our culture artistically and linguistically.

Or are you just pulling my leg? If so leg pulled! Cheeks reddened!

[Togo1]

It troubles me to put Hitchens and Harris in the same category as Dawkins, or to put either in the same category as Dennet. And to my mind that's the core of the issue. I'm much less excited about whether people label themselves as religious, atheist, or agnostic, than I am about the reasoning that got them there. Dennet argues his position in great detail, he dismisses simple sound-bite explanations in favour of a rigorous and properly argued position that doesn't take much for granted. Dawkins is primarily a scientist. As such his philosophy is a little weak, but he makes a decent fist at producing solid arguments, both inside and outside his specialist area. The big problem is squaring his arguments with his passionate hatred of all things religious. Harris and Hitchens I would class as populist entertainers, of the kind that have become popular in the last 15 years at atheist rallies and the like. The point about these people, is that, despite reaching the same conclusion, they disagree with each other. Dennet roundly rejects the simple arguments that Harris espouses.

So I look for proper use of reason. As someone who was taught both comparative religion and philosophy, I'm looking for ideas I can use, positions I could adopt, beliefs, I could try. If someone is a committed Hindu but can't tell me why, that's kinda irrelevant to me and my life. If someone is an atheist because 'religion is silly' then that doesn't really help me.

[YIOSTHEOY]

YIO -

I was joking about the bananas ...

I think you kind of bypassed what I was saying about the logic of a creator. This is where the atheist argues not against the existence of god, but against the existence of a creator of existence ... for obvious logical reasons.

No atheist is going to refuse to believe in higher alien intellects. That is a reasonable and plausible assumption. Not only that it is conceivable. To believe in something inconceivable (like theists do) disregards logic. So if you say atheists are illogical you are in effect saying it is logical to talk about something not only existing outside of existence, but also being conceivable ... I don't need refute such a position because it is self refuting.

steve -

Judiochristian heritage to be more specific. You've never heard that before? Just means that regardless of your beliefs the mainstay has been judeochristian in western society since history began. This relgiomythical predominance has infiltraited our culture artistically and linguistically.

Or are you just pulling my leg? If so leg pulled! Cheeks reddened!

Philosophy talks about the "creation of existence" as you call it under the paradox of existence.

Before long several "proofs of God" evolve thereafter containing their own paradoxes.

It is all mindboggling.

Suffice it to say that we exist -- Descartes proved this satisfactorily with cogito ergo sum.

Suffice it to say that others exist as well -- Bertrand Russell warned against the danger of assuming otherwise.

Suffice it then to say that existence exists. Sounds like a play on words but never the less true.

Now you end up smack dab in the middle of the "proofs of God" issues and debates.

Agnosticism and atheism both fly in the face of the "proofs of God" philosophical arguments.

And although agnosticism is a perfectly rational skepticism, atheism is simply an emotional belief system. You will never escape this.

Theism simply goes along with the philosophical "proofs of God" and then in one third of cases adopts a more rigid modern organized form of religion.

In two thirds of theism cases people simply believe in some form of unnamed God and do not participate in organized religion.

Theism is clearly a super majority.

Atheism is clearly a small minority -- maybe 5% overall in the USA or UK etc.

You will never succeed in arguing that atheism is rational. it clearly is not.

Agnosticism is rational from the perspective of skepticism only. Otherwise it too is irrational from the philosophical perspective -- at least the majority of philosophers to date.

[Burning ghost]

I did succeed. It was not very difficult.

[ShrimpMaster]

The main stance from any atheist argument always comes down to the atheist demanding proof. Which no religion has been able to do.

The immaturity of atheist ideology can be seen in a single word, the word atheist. Note how that word references nothing except a rejection of theism. It challenges only theism. It asks for proof only from theism. It most notably does not ask for proof from atheism, it does not demand proof of it's own fundamental assumptions. Typically it doesn't even know it has unproven fundamental assumptions.

There's no need to compose a response to Richard Dawkins etc. They don't merit a response. They aren't people of reason (on these topics) as they claim, but merely yet another flavor of chanting true believer ideologists.

As example, do you invest a lot of time debating Jehovah's Witnesses? Probably not, right? Dawkins and company should be largely ignored for the same reasons.

-- Updated June 6th, 2016, 12:08 pm to add the following --

I should add that it might be worthwhile to watch Christopher Hitchens videos to see a master intellectual entertainer at work. I admired his skill at that. I think Hitchens was savvy enough to understand that he was working in show business and flooded his rhetoric with emotion for that reason. It might be instructive to realize that when anyone does this for a living there are agendas which compete with pure philosophy.

Hi Ormond, duly noted. My post was more for personal reasons to help myself understand the material in Warranted Christian Belief and because I enjoy defending Christian thought. It really isn't fair, because it is so easy

-- Updated June 6th, 2016, 11:24 am to add the following --

That is to say that you cannot say Christianity is stupid, or silly, or irrational to believe, without also objecting to the truth of Christianity.

Hmm, just to be argumentative....

The Judeo-Christian god is said to be above all else, which would seem to include the rules of human reason. Thus, it seems one could both agree there is such a God and also define Christianity as irrational, that is, beyond the rules of human reason. Why limit your God to the rules of human reason? That would be a very small God, wouldn't it?

Atheists are essentially saying that human reason is "God", that is, the highest ranking authority which all else is subservient to. If you try to prove your God and religion are logical, aren't you essentially agreeing with them?

I thought Christian theory proposed human reason to be a very small thing indeed, which makes sense to me, whether or not there is something like a God. Perhaps I misunderstand...?

Hi Ormond, the response would be that the model is not intended to imply that God is subject to human reason. It actually does the opposite. The sentence you quoted was intended to show that a person cannot reject Christianity without a factual objection to the truth of Christianity. As far as the model on how you come to know God, Plantinga shows that human reason is not necessary. I think the paragraph that stated that the best was regarding God as a properly basic belief and how knowledge of God is occasioned through the sensus divinitatus. Note the difference between how you come to know God and how you object to the truth of Christianity. Two distinct claims.

[Steve3007]

Burning ghost:

Judiochristian heritage to be more specific. You've never heard that before? Just means that regardless of your beliefs the mainstay has been judeochristian in western society since history began. This relgiomythical predominance has infiltraited our culture artistically and linguistically.

I'd heard of the concept of being a non-religious person who lives in a nominally Christian society but I didn't know it had a sort of "official" name of "Christian Heritage".

The trouble with labels, of course, is that we have very little control of what other people understand by them. Take "atheist", for example. When I was growing up, in the UK, I wasn't religious and neither were most people I knew. In those days the standard practice in England, when you had to fill in the "religion" section in a form but weren't religious, was to put "C of E" (Church of England). That was the standard default answer for non-religious people. Then, as I started growing up, I thought it a bit odd to label myself as "C of E" when I'd never attended a church service, been Christened or done any of the other things that religious people do. And it had never occurred to me to believe in this strange amorphous concept that people referred to as "God" but which nobody seemed to agree what it was. So I naively thought that "atheist" was a good label for a non religious person because, etymologically, that's what it appears to mean. It appears, at first glance, to be another word for "not religious".

But I've now learnt from talking to various people in places like this that it doesn't actually mean that at all. Apparently, it means you have an unquestioning, unshakable conviction that this God thing doesn't exist and that something like science, or humanity or reason or something takes its place. Who knew! It seems that all this time I'd completely misunderstood what this word means! People have now set me straight and it seems I can no longer consider myself to be this word that I thought meant "not religious" because I'm told that it actually means "religious", but with a different religion.

So I guess the lesson is that words mean whatever the loudest voices say that they mean, and you just have to go along with them and forget about etymology.

[Ormond]

Apparently, it (atheist) means you have an unquestioning, unshakable conviction that this God thing doesn't exist

I've spent years discussing this online, and can't remember anybody claiming that "atheist" equals "unquestioning, unshakable conviction that this God thing doesn't exist", though that is true in a minority of exaggerated cases.

What typically happens on forums (not representative of atheists as a whole) is that a series of seemingly firm atheist conclusions are dished up (often served with a tangy snotty sarcasm sauce). If the poster finds themselves among those who agree, the assertions become firmer and firmer. If the poster encounters an effective challenge, they will often then retreat in to semi-agnosticism, a more defensible position.

What all atheists seem to share is the (typically unexamined) faith based assumption that the rules of human reason are binding upon all of reality, and thus any gods that may be contained within. Some atheists are very sure, many less so, and plenty somewhere in between, but they are all referencing human reason as the "rule book" that they consider authoritative for the question at hand. Even agnostics typically use the human reason "rule book" as they judge they don't have enough evidence etc. And as we've discussed, even fervent theists will do much the same thing.

Few people, most theists included, seem not to grasp the enormous scale of the God proposal, encompassing as it typically does everything everywhere for all time.

Few people, most theists included, seem not to grasp how incredibly small human beings and their reason are upon such an unimaginably vast stage.

I propose we are most likely comparable to some form of bacteria trying to understand the Internet.

[Steve3007]

Few people, most theists included, seem not to grasp the enormous scale of the God proposal, encompassing as it typically does everything everywhere for all time.

Yes, you're right. I'm just grumbling about labels really and puzzling over the fact that "not religious" appears to mean the opposite of "atheist" even though, etymologically, they seem to be virtually identical. More a point about the oddities of language than questions of the infinite.

It does seem to be "the infinite" that you're talking about. As I said in that other thread, most conversations that appear to be about God aren't about the infinite but are just amusing puzzles. I agree that if they really were attempting to be about the infinite then they would be beyond reason.

-- Updated Tue Jun 07, 2016 2:05 pm to add the following --

Actually, Ormond, to continue my grumble about language, I have to pick you up on this minor niggle.

I said this:

Apparently, it (atheist) means you have an unquestioning, unshakable conviction that this God thing doesn't exist and that something like science, or humanity or reason or something takes its place.

You quoted this part:

Apparently, it (atheist) means you have an unquestioning, unshakable conviction that this God thing doesn't exist

and then went on to say this:

What all atheists seem to share is the (typically unexamined) faith based assumption that the rules of human reason are binding upon all of reality, and thus any gods that may be contained within.

So, although you say you've spend years discussing this online and can't remember anybody claiming that atheist equals an unshakeable conviction that God doesn't exist, you've then (it seems to me) said something fairly similar yourself - that all atheists have unquestioning faith. Especially if you leave the last part of my sentence on about atheism being equated with a faith in the infinite power of science/humanity/reason. You seem to have kind of confirmed what I was saying in that sentence about how atheists are labelled. At least the last part of it.

Just saying.

[Ormond]

Yes, you're right. I'm just grumbling about labels really and puzzling over the fact that "not religious" appears to mean the opposite of "atheist" even though, etymologically, they seem to be virtually identical.

To join your quibble fest, a reminder that one can be religious and atheist. Not only that, if you're gonna start going on about entomology, well then, you're an insect too. So there!

It does seem to be "the infinite" that you're talking about.

I just mean that human beings are very very small in the grand scheme of things and it seems reasonable that whatever model of reality we might arrive at is likely to be incomplete, maybe in the extreme.

So, although you say you've spend years discussing this online and can't remember anybody claiming that atheist equals an unshakeable conviction that God doesn't exist, you've then (it seems to me) said something fairly similar yourself - that all atheists have unquestioning faith.

I didn't say that all atheists have an unshakeable unquestioning faith that a god doesn't exist. That is clearly not true. Some do, but they are few.

I DID say that atheists typically have an unquestioning faith that the rules of human reason are a qualified authority to reference in coming to a position on the subject.

And I will say again that such a faith is typically so strong that it is not seen to be faith at all, but rather an obvious given not requiring examination or questioning.

As example, an atheist debater will typically say something like "that's not logical!" as if that automatically settles the question. That's exactly like a theist debater saying, "it's in the Bible!" as if that automatically settles the question.

In both cases the qualifications of the authority being referenced are merely assumed by the speaker, not proven. In both cases it's remarkably easy to challenge the assumption of binding authority being made. In both cases nobody wants to hear any of this, because the show we've grown comfortable with must go on!

Especially if you leave the last part of my sentence on about atheism being equated with a faith in the infinite power of science/humanity/reason.

If the rules of human reason are not held to have infinite power (binding everywhere) then the atheist position immediately collapses in to full blown agnosticism. Thus, a person calling themselves an atheist is shown to believe in such a power.

What I've been saying all along is that atheists have essentially the same relationship with reason that theists have with their holy books. In both cases, an unwarranted leap is being made from proven powers on the local level in human affairs, to a claim of infinite power, an ability to know or reasonably presume what the fundamental nature of all reality is or isn't.

To aim back towards the topic of the thread...

A good response to Richard Dawkins et all is to call upon them to become loyal to their own chosen methodology, human reason. Or, if you want to fire things up a bit you can call them heretics to their own stated position.

If we use human reason to challenge the infinite authority of human reason in exactly the same way that we reasonably challenge the infinite authority of holy books....

The whole God debate carnival comes crashing down, because nobody has anything that can survive the challenge.

It's at that moment, in a person or society, that a door can open in to a new conversation which seeks to understand and meet fundamental humans needs in a manner which is reality based, and hopefully involving far less conflict.

[Sy Borg]

Richard Dawkins and others did a truly great - and kind - thing by helping to liberate millions of people from the pointless fear of hellfire and eternal retribution. The "New Atheists" deserve our gratitude and respect.

[YIOSTHEOY]

I did succeed. It was not very difficult.

Don't kid yourself.