The sophisticated believers have risen to the challenge. They are attempting to present reasons for believing ... reasons for not being an atheist.One of the responses comes from Andrew Tatusko (Drew) on Notes from Off Center [God and Supernaturalism].
Drew is well qualified to represent the sophisticated view of religion ...
Andrew Tatusko is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (1999, 2000) from which he earned an M.Div. and Th.M. There he focused on philosophical theology, philosophy of education, and postmodern theory. From there he was a senior instructional designer at Seton Hall University where he worked on initiatives to integrate technology into teaching and learning. Currently he is the program activity director for a Title III grant to integrate technology into teaching, learning, retention and advising at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, PA.I'm looking forward to hearing his best arguments against atheism. I assume he's just getting started.
He currently lives in Duncansville, PA with wife Brenna, sons Alexander and Evan, Stella (Rhodesian Ridgeback mix) and Sophie (Rhodesian Ridgeback) and two cats Digit and Kit Kat. Drew has published articles on postmodern theory, theology, and education. He is working on his dissertation in an effort to complete the Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership, Management and Policy at Seton Hall University. The focus of the dissertation in on the influence of theological tradition on policy development in religiously-affiliated higher education since the 1970’s.
The other sophisticated believer is James F. McGrath on Exploring Our Matrix. McGrath is also well qualified to represent the sophisticated believer position. He is an Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University in Indianapolis (USA). He is the author of John's Apologetic Christology: Legitimation and Development in Johannine Christology [Amazon.com].
James is having trouble explaining his position and his frustration is showing at Not Geting Through.
If you are interested in this discussion then please read their blogs to learn more about how modern sophisticated believers refute Richard Dawkins and the other "new atheists."
See Sophisticated Religion for more discussion.
22 comments :
Tatusko: "To ask the question why this God as opposed to Zeus, Mithras, Allah, or Ganesha would be like asking me why I do not like fried cockroaches, speak English, eat pork, believe in the equality of women, and the civil right for gays to marry."
I don't know if its necessary to answer something like that; I would just let it stand as an own goal. Tatusko seems to be saying that his belief in the existence of God falls under axiology rather than epistemology.
Tatusko: "To ask for a naturalistic explanation for God that meets certain scientific criteria is therefore a categorical error. It is like trying to argue for the existence of chairs by examining the flight patterns of bees."
Matt McCormick: "The single most effective and important tool that people have discovered for finding their way through the dark jungle of our faulty belief tendencies, biases, and mistakes is science. One and only one epistemological virtue governs the conduct of science, and it is this idea that represents our single greatest hope for liberation as a species: For every hypothesis that we take to be true we must do everything in our power to find disconfirming evidence, if it is out there, to undermine it.
...
The insidious and widely popular view that religious believing and science are compatible disguises a dangerous urge in us that would destroy the one greatest hope for humanity. Science and religion are not compatible."
We atheists are doomed! No amount of our rational empiricism will ever be able to explain where love, truth and justice come from! These things can't be seen through the Hubble or an electron microscope! And there's no chance the theists who point this out to us could possibly be engaging in a reification fallacy, because these are the sophisticates we're dealing with!
"To ask for a naturalistic explanation for God that meets certain scientific criteria is therefore a categorical error. It is like trying to argue for the existence of chairs by examining the flight patterns of bees"
Imagine attaching a tiny radio transmission device to each bee within a swarm and released the swarm into a room that contained a chair. The signals from each device could be input to a computer that mapped the real-time 3D position of every bee. Is it really possible that this would not be a valid means of telling whether there is a chair (or chair shaped object) within the room, deduced purely from the flight pattern of bees?
I agree with the previous commenter who mentioned the problem of conservation of mass and energy. That is the real point that should be defended by those who believe in supernaturalism and science.
Please look at this article which gives a truly embarrassing flub by a man who is supposedly the most impressive to atheist debater to date according to a leader at the leading atheist website Infidels.org:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism
Look at the Doug Jesseph commentary
anonymous says,
Please look at this article which gives a truly embarrassing flub by a man who is supposedly the most impressive to atheist debater to date according to a leader at the leading atheist website Infidels.org:
Anonymous then points us to an article on Conservapedia. This is not a source that anyone in their right mind should take seriously.
But we already know that many who oppose atheism are not in their right minds, don't we?
Here's the entire passage that anonymous thinks is a deveastating argument against atheism. I'll leave it up to my readers to decide whether to pay attention to such drivel.
In October of 1997, atheist Jeffrey Jay Lowder, a founder of Internet Infidels, stated that he believed that in regards to atheism "the most impressive debater to date" was Doug Jesseph.[85] Yet Doug Jesseph claimed in a debate with William Lane Craig in 1996 that the origin of life had a detailed atheistic explanation(s).[86] In 1996, John Horgan wrote the following regarding what the highly respected origin of life researcher Stanley Miller believed to the case regarding naturalistic explanations of the origin of life: "Miller seemed unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as “nonsense” or “paper chemistry.”"[87] In addition, in 1996, John Horgan wrote the following in Scientific American: "The origin of life is a science writer's dream. It abounds with exotic scientists and exotic theories, which are never entirely abandoned or accepted, but merely go in and out of fashion."
Just out of curiosity, why don't all the "sophisticated" believers speak out against such amateurish displays of ignorance? Do we ever see examples of "sophisticated" believers criticizing the logic of fellow believers or is this another example of the sort of hypocrisy that's so common in theistic circles?
Actually Larry, I think that if you flip through the blogs of James and me you will find that we do speak out against a lot of ignorance, specifically from Christians. I have more in common with many atheists than I do with many Christians quite honestly. The fundamentalist door swings both ways and the problems are inherently obvious. And if you scroll though the blogs I have listed in my blogroll, you will find many other pastors and so forth who are quite clear in their positions against absurdity and lies told in the name of religion.
And I am not sure I like the term "sophisticated". More learned and more pragmatic than many Christians, yes and the data quite bears that out.
@Bayesian Bouffant,
I think my position asks the axiological question to the materialist, naturalist, or physicalist from whence comes value if the evidence for a rationally based belief must be rooted in the physical? Keep in ming that I come at this rather pragmatically and so, game theory is certainly nice, but not indicative of how the processes if decision making most people make in terms of what is most important to do in life.
Existence of God is not something that we can "prove" on any clear basis and Kant's problem was that he did try to do so through an axiological argument. Again, this is a question: The physicalist argument will say that the stuff of material reality is all we can know and therefore, any experience of the "spiritual" sort must therefore be representative of the same set. This seems to be an unprovable assumption about the nature of reality no? If unprovable, then the possibility that there is something that has real existence but will never be limited to the strictures of our sensual apparatus in order to control its behavior (as in a scientifically based test) is not an irrational possibility. thus the agnostic position seems to be a more rational than the atheistic position.
Moreover, belief in that which cannot be empirically validated, but has quite significant benefit to evolutionary fitness, as is the case with any socially constructed ideation, is not fundamentally irrational. Scientism is specifically the postulation that scientific rationalism will lead to progressive human improvement. Much atheism smacks of this latter for the same reason that religion according to the former is not fundamentally irrational.
I think my position asks the axiological question to the materialist, naturalist, or physicalist from whence comes value if the evidence for a rationally based belief must be rooted in the physical?
So I was right, you are confusing epistemology and axiology. The question of the existence of god(s) is one of epistemology. Thank you for stating your confusion clearly.
Existence of God is not something that we can "prove" on any clear basis
At least the entire paragraph was not a waste.
thus the agnostic position seems to be a more rational than the atheistic position.
I do not agree. Your admitted inability to supply evidence for your view does not establish that my atheism is dogmatic. Since I have drawn a provisional conclusion which is open to new evidence, I do not see that my position is in any way less rational than any other.
Moreover, belief in that which cannot be empirically validated, but has quite significant benefit to evolutionary fitness, as is the case with any socially constructed ideation, is not fundamentally irrational.
I don't think I can agree. The belief of itself most certainly can be considered irrational, even if its effects might be helpful to survival. Moreover, the evolutionary arguments are generally about the tendency to believe, not any individual religious belief. The distinction is an important one, since particular beliefs vary widely from culture to culture. It remains for you to establish why one variety of making shit up is preferable to any other.
Thanks for making the effort to continue this conversation. I've offered another post on my blog about my position and what I mean by "God" and how it relates to both historic uses in mystical traditions as well as the use in many strands of contemporary theology.
As far as "arguments" are concerned, I will limit myself to one that I wouldn't classify as an argument so much as a reason for my faith. I have had a religious experience which I do not think proves the existence of a "supernatural being" (although I once assumed it did), but it does prove that we inhabit a universe where conscious beings have such experiences. My aim is not to "prove" that reality has this sort of depth, meaning and significance, but to live and speak in a way that helps others to perceive reality in a similarly meaningful and deep way. But the whole point is that, for theologically educated Liberal Christians, panentheists, process theologians, and others, the issue is not about the existence of invisible beings within our reality, but the nature of Reality itself.
@Bayesian
"So I was right, you are confusing epistemology and axiology."
Or you could just answer the question rather than puffing up your sense of right. 'From whence comes value if the evidence for a rationally based belief must be rooted in the physical?'
"Your admitted inability to supply evidence for your view does not establish that my atheism is dogmatic."
As if that is what I was arguing. I could care less of your dogmatic positioning and that was not up for debate. Nice strawman.
"Since I have drawn a provisional conclusion which is open to new evidence"
Great so an experience of God is possible. You simply need evidence that is satisfactory to your sense of reality. Welcome to agnosticism. Unless no belief in anything outside of nature is indubitable. Then you are no longer an agnostic and atheism suits you quite well. Either god is possible but not all that important (agnostic) or god is quite impossible (atheist). Unless you want to redefine atheism go ahead, but that is a semantic argument that will lead nowhere fast so I suggest you snip it quickly.
"Moreover, the evolutionary arguments are generally about the tendency to believe, not any individual religious belief."
Another way to phrase it sociologically, religious ideation is not in itself a symptom of irrationality in as much as any other ideation. It is a way of structuring cosmological order rooted in a given experience. A specific kind of religious belief is one socially constructed instantiation of this - as all religious beliefs or systems of belief must be must be or they do not exist. That it is a social construction does not therefore negate that the source of the experience giving rise to the religious ideation was and is in fact a reality as opposed to a delusion or a fiction aka. "making shit up". The tendency to believe is the issue here since you are asking for differences of type or, a symptom of this tendency. Gain, you are working in semantics and not substance and we went nowhere by your line of argument as a result.
Bayesian, you have said nothing new here. Now for more interesting activities, like the refreshing feeling one has after a good pee. Cheers.
Drew says,
Great so an experience of God is possible. You simply need evidence that is satisfactory to your sense of reality. Welcome to agnosticism. Unless no belief in anything outside of nature is indubitable. Then you are no longer an agnostic and atheism suits you quite well. Either god is possible but not all that important (agnostic) or god is quite impossible (atheist). Unless you want to redefine atheism go ahead, but that is a semantic argument that will lead nowhere fast so I suggest you snip it quickly.
Hmmmm ... I can see that you have not read up on sophisticated atheism. :-)
Atheism is the absence of belief in god(s). It the state you are born into and it's the state that many people never leave because they do not encounter any evidence of god.
Agnostics say that you can never know for sure if god(s) exist or not. That's an obviously true statement. I am agnostic about the tooth fairy even though I live my life as though tooth fairies don't exist.
Similarly, I am an agnostic atheist, although if I had to make a bet I'd bet that god(s) don't exist. I have a friend who is an agnostic Jesuit priest. He would bet differently.
Drew says,
Another way to phrase it sociologically, religious ideation is not in itself a symptom of irrationality in as much as any other ideation. It is a way of structuring cosmological order rooted in a given experience. A specific kind of religious belief is one socially constructed instantiation of this - as all religious beliefs or systems of belief must be must be or they do not exist. That it is a social construction does not therefore negate that the source of the experience giving rise to the religious ideation was and is in fact a reality as opposed to a delusion or a fiction aka. "making shit up".
Drew, there are thousands of people who sincerely believe they've been abducted by aliens.
Do you consider that a "reality" as opposed to a delusion?
There are lots of good things about postmodernism but you seem to be emphasizing only the most ridiculous aspects of it.
Like it or not, there is a difference between reality and "making shit up."
James F. McGrath says,
As far as "arguments" are concerned, I will limit myself to one that I wouldn't classify as an argument so much as a reason for my faith. I have had a religious experience which I do not think proves the existence of a "supernatural being" (although I once assumed it did), but it does prove that we inhabit a universe where conscious beings have such experiences.
Why do you think this is such a profound statement? I experienced dreams and powerful emotions when I was just a youngster. Of course they are real experiences.
My aim is not to "prove" that reality has this sort of depth, meaning and significance, but to live and speak in a way that helps others to perceive reality in a similarly meaningful and deep way.
What kind of "depth" and "significance" are you talking about? Do you believe that the fact you dreamed about something powerful and mystical makes it real?
How do you feel about the question I asked Drew? People who think they've been abducted by aliens sincerely believe they've experienced something deep, meaningful, and significant? Do you interpret that as evidence of aliens?
If not, how am I, as an outsider, supposed to see the difference between what you say you experienced and what they say they've experienced?
"Do you consider that a "reality" as opposed to a delusion?"
I will address this three ways: all of which might piss you off even more :-)
First, it is a reality to those who say that they have been abducted. That is the way that myths work as meaning making structures. However, it does not therefore mean that all such meaning-making structures are correct or are mirrors of reality as it were.
Second, my address was to the question of why one would have a specific religious belief as opposed to a more general tendency to have a a specific religious belief. There are reasons why that specificity exists and a rationale for that is what I was offering.
Third, I would never say that any religious ideation is absolved from exhibiting a delusional pattern of behavior. Alien abduction speaks to a very physical event for which nothing can verify if such a physical event actually occurred. Delusions are defined by the pattern of behavior that is evoked whether a prevalent belief exists about it or not. So there is a difference in the behavior between feeling a great sense of peace in prayer and hearing a voice of God telling you to do something quite literally. The second would be considered delusional since it refers to a physical event that no one can corroborate. Delusion is a measure of behavior not belief.
the point is that many people believe in God do not exhibit any signs of delusional behavior. And again, I am pointing to the possibility that God exists here. If there is a reasonable possibility that this is so, then it puts this point about delusion in proper context.
Drew says,
the point is that many people believe in God do not exhibit any signs of delusional behavior
That's not the way I see it.
The point is whether God exists. If he doesn't, then their beliefs are delusional whether you admit it or not. To me, those people are exhibiting all sorts of signs of delusional behavior.
And Larry, if there be proof ever that God does not exist and I can be adequately convinced that my beliefs rooted in my experiences in the church were nothing but mental phantasms, then I am purely willing to jettison those beliefs. However, the alternatives advanced to this day are not at all satisfying to prompt me to do so at this point in time. My stance is thus one of critical realism which is a quite responsible way to go I think.
BB: "Your admitted inability to supply evidence for your view does not establish that my atheism is dogmatic."
d: As if that is what I was arguing. I could care less of your dogmatic positioning and that was not up for debate. Nice strawman.
BB: "Since I have drawn a provisional conclusion which is open to new evidence"
d: Great so an experience of God is possible. You simply need evidence that is satisfactory to your sense of reality. Welcome to agnosticism.
I call my position atheism. I do in fact not believe in any god(s). I think George Smith would call this position "agnostic atheism." (Or was it "atheistic agnosticism?") Since you consider agnosticism to be more "rational" than atheism you must be using different definitions, and I am sure that you are agnostic about orbiting teapots, etc.
Drew wrote: "Great so an experience of God is possible. You simply need evidence that is satisfactory to your sense of reality. Welcome to agnosticism. Unless no belief in anything outside of nature is indubitable. Then you are no longer an agnostic and atheism suits you quite well. Either god is possible but not all that important (agnostic) or god is quite impossible (atheist). Unless you want to redefine atheism go ahead, but that is a semantic argument that will lead nowhere fast so I suggest you snip it quickly."
It's really annoying... getting lectured about the differences between an agnostic and an atheist, by somebody who hasn't got a fuckin' clue what either an agnostic or an atheist actually IS.
There are people who run around telling 'god-stories', trying to get other people to 'believe' that these 'god-stories' are TRUE. Taking the Christ-cult as an example, these god-stories essentially assert the claim that the 'truth' of existence and reality depends directly from the myths, superstitions, fairy-tales, fables, and fantastical delusions of an ignorant gaggle of Bronze Age fishermen and peripatetic, militant, marauding, murdering, genocidal goat-herders.
OK... so... there are a distressingly small percentage of human beings ARE NOT so stupid, gullible and/or cowardly that they can be bullied, cajoled, threatened, deceived, coerced, frightened, tricked, manipulated or bamboozled to the point where they can be made to believe that such outrageously ridiculous codswallop is ‘true’. That ABSENCE of stupidity and gullibility earns these folks a label: atheist. That is IT... that is ALL... that is the ONLY thing that defines an 'atheist'. The 'atheist' makes no claims pertaining to the existence or non-existence of God... the 'atheist' is simply NOT PERSUADED by the arguments proffered by the 'theist', in support of their assertions that god DOES exist. Atheists simply don't 'believe' (the ILLUSION of knowledge) that the theists' 'god-stories' are 'true'.
For the agnostic, the concept of 'belief' is stupid and irrelevant. You either KNOW something, or you DON'T. If you DON'T know, then there is no justifiable basis for asserting 'truth' claims pertaining to the existence or non-existence of deities. So, the agnostic makes no such claims: "I don't know; therefore... I can't say."
OK... here's where it gets interesting. As a logical consequence of perceiving the concept of 'belief' to be stupid and irrelevant, and not having a justifiable basis for asserting 'truth' claims pertaining to the existence or non-existence of deities, the agnostic DOES NOT 'believe' that Gods DO exist. That statement is TRUE whether the agnostic acknowledges the applicability of 'belief', or not... or whether the agnostic WANTS it to be true, or not. ALSO, that state of NOT 'believing' that deities DO exist happens to conform precisely with what DEFINES an 'atheist'... NOT 'believing' that Gods DO exist. So... ALL agnostics are atheists... but NOT all atheists are agnostics. The only difference is that your run-of-the-mill atheist is simply relying on his bullshit alarm, and is not overly concerned with performing any mental machinations respecting the relative merits of knowledge vs. belief.
I like what Stephen Colbert has to say about agnostics: "Basically, an agnostic is an atheist without any balls."
OK... I acknowledge that that is not precisely true in all cases... but it IS funny.
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