Post by blindness on Jun 24, 2020 13:53:20 GMT -8
blindness, thanks for your detailed response, and for obviously taking my post in the spirit in which it was intended.
Clearly, this subject is a pet peeve with me as well. I have two specific points and an observation, which I will try to keep brief, and general where possible.
1. I consider atheism a religion in that it consists of one or more personal beliefs, ultimately articles of faith that can neither be proven nor disproven, that shape an individual's world view. These beliefs do not need to be shared with anyone. Nor do beliefs in other religions need to be shared. Indeed, the denominational fracturing of religious beliefs in various heterodoxies is a constant in our world history. I wouldn't say this about you, but a lot of atheists make it clear they don't believe it's a religion because they look down on all religions, or more to the point, all people who are religious.
2. As far as shared cosmologies are concerned, it's turtles all the way down. They are all based on story that cannot be demonstrated as fact by 99.99% of the people that choose to believe them. This specifically includes the Big Bang, which as you rightly note, is just a theory in the first place. Very little of it has been "confirmed many times over". You just presume it has, which is, indeed, a "leap of faith". And there are several significant problems with the observed universe the Big Bang Theory cannot address. Then there's the question of what happened before the Big Bang, or why the Big Bang happened in the first place. Conversely, young theologians constantly come up with new ideas, indeed saying, "Guys, what we believed all this time was all wrong". That's where "Intelligent Design" came from, which, let's be clear, I don't believe in the slightest instance.
Now, I wholeheartedly believe in science. Science has practical applications that make all our lives better. As Neil Degrasse Tyson said, "The good thing about Science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." But religion also has practical applications that can make our lives better.
Finally, the observation. You wrote atheism does not "color the world in moral tones". My question in my previous post, that you asked me to connect the dots on, was based on the assumption that lack of moral coloring applies to your specific atheistic beliefs, and if it does, how can you say whether anything anyone does is right or wrong? As it relates to trump, you could rightly say he's incompetent, that he communicates at a low grade school level, that he is significantly lacking in cognitive and leadership skills; but without a moral coloring book, how can you say anything he's done is right or wrong? But maybe I've misunderstood you these last several years; maybe you're not not saying anything he's done is right or wrong.
I'm excited to read your response.
I consider atheism a religion in that it consists of one or more personal beliefs, ultimately articles of faith that can neither be proven nor disproven, that shape an individual's world view. These beliefs do not need to be shared with anyone. Nor do beliefs in other religions need to be shared. Indeed, the denominational fracturing of religious beliefs in various heterodoxies is a constant in our world history.
Can a faith be called a religion unless it is shared by others? I see the aspect of communality to be an essential ingredient of religion. I don't know that one's idiosyncratic beliefs would really qualify as such.
As for whether one's article of faith can be proven or disproven: the essence of atheism is a negative statement. It states that there was no sentient deity out there that matches the way the terms is understood in religious traditions we know about. By its very nature, this is not a statement that can be proven, and we have had many exceptionally brilliant people debate this back and forth over millenia, and very clearly there has been no "killer" argument that has settled the question either way. Which means this is a matter of choice (whether conscious or unconscious) whether one sees the evidence of there being such a deity in all the mundane things around us and the questions we cannot answer, however indirectly. So the way I see it, it comes down to this: Is there a unifying explanation to all this (= everything) that's brought about by the actions or decisions of some being, some intelligence that made all this happen ... or there was not actor involved and it just happened, however odd that sounds because that supposed actor does not provide for us incontrovertible, tangible, and unambiguous signs of "hey, it was me" (whatever his/her rationale may be).
Now,. here is the kicker: suppose we finally find out that all life on earth was actually created by a committee of alien races because they just wanted to experiment with us. and they have been messing with our environment, and major events in our history because that's what they do. How would religious people and atheists respond to this? For an atheist, this would be a very interesting discovery, and it would negate the randomness that they have embraced all their lives, but I have a hard time imagining that they would be inclined to start worshipping these aliens to give us plenty or good health or good fortune. I can almost see them organizing an act of rebellion against them.
Let me step outside of my comfort zone and imagine howI think religious folks would react to this kind of revelation, even though it would confirm their basic premise of an outside intelligence creating and shaping our lives. I think (and bear with me), the reaction would be to say "oh yeah? But who created those aliens? God almighty. So who says that God is not behind the scenes, using those aliens as his/her instrument?" That's because (and I may easily be wrong in this) I feel like for a religious person, the faith in a deity or a supreme actor or action has primacy, and this high actor or action must remain in the abstract to fill that "deity" (or deity-like force) role. Correct me if I am wrong on this.
I wouldn't say this about you, but a lot of atheists make it clear they don't believe it's a religion because they look down on all religions, or more to the point, all people who are religious.
Yeah they do. Sorry about that. Members of my tribe can be real a-holes sometimes.
As far as shared cosmologies are concerned, it's turtles all the way down.
Now in all the years and in all the silly and unnecessary debates about religion that i have engaged in, the clear pattern I have observed has been the way people of faith have a stopping point to all those turtles. It seems to me that they point at the stacked turtles and then say that just at the point where you can't see any more turtles, there is the one true divine turtle and all this insanity stops there. Whereas an atheist is more likely to say "I have no idea what's there beyond my turtle horizon, but I am happy to assume that they're all turtles and it never ends." IOW, what I have noticed is that religious belief almost always serves as the means to introduce order and purpose into all the crap that makes no immediate sense to us. The atheist approach is to say "yep, it is chaos and there is no purpose to any of this. It just is."
So I still see a deep difference between religious and atheist approaches to these big questions.
My question in my previous post, that you asked me to connect the dots on, was based on the assumption that lack of moral coloring applies to your specific atheistic beliefs, and if it does, how can you say whether anything anyone does is right or wrong?
OK, so this sounds like "what is the source of morality if not God?" type of question. To me that's really an easy question, though I have seen religious folks plaster a "because God" label on what I am about to say:
Generally, I think morality comes from two different sources: internal and external. I think the internal one is not there at birth, but it is an internalization process that happens as a child grows.
(a) The external sources are the usual ones. It's your mom and dad, when you're a kid. Then it's Santa. You don't want to receive coal in your stocking. Then God starts playing a bigger role as you stop worrying about mom and dad and Santa. The essence of this morality is "look we have a set of behaviors we like and a set we don't. So as you go about your own business, you need to think about whether we would approve your actions or not". This is WWJD. This is the need for role models. This is one's concern for one's good name.This is the imaginary people looking over your shoulders at all times with approval or disapproval.
(b) The internal sources are the ones that develop over time. This is your mom telling you to not pull the wings off that fly because what if you were a fly and someone giant was ripping your arms and legs of. With some people these kinds of lessons become internalized. The Golden Rule becomes ingrained in you. You don't have to think about "what if" any more. It's just you and your self image as someone who behaves this way or that way that guides you. This is "I don't care if anyone is looking, or will ever know, I just can't do it" type.
I have been the latter type most of my life more than former. I do recognize, however, that a lot of people don't have that internal drive ingrained in them. For those, the externally driven morality is society's only hope for civility and good behavior. And you know how that also keeps breaking down in the age of anonymity. You see it breaking down with privileged people who know they can get away with it.
You can overlay onto this picture, God and religion or absence thereof any way you see fit. I think they are related in the sense that they fit into the picture, but I don't think there is any dependency either way. That said, if you are atheist, you don't have God's commandments or the Prophet's sayings to dictate a set of externally driven moral code to live up to. You just have to live up to what the society around you expects. IOW, you don't have to worry about whether eating pork is immoral, but you may have an independent opinion about the morality of eating meat for other reasons.