Guest Post by Chad
As promised, today we have a guest post from a Christian: Chad from Eternal Revolution. I’ve also written a post for his audience. You can read it here.
Happy Labor Day, everyone.
~I AM~
Apologetics or Apologies?
First, I’d like to thank I AM for the opportunity to present my thoughts to you here. It’s cliche to say, but I do believe we’ve become increasingly polarized as a culture. And, as a result, people are less willing to try to understand other viewpoints. It’s a challenging endeavor, but can also be a worthwhile one. At least I hope so.
The tagline of this blog is “Helping Mankind Overcome Religion”. That actually seems like a good idea to me. Over at my group blog, we primarily tell stories. A central theme that arises as you read through the personal narratives is the common experience of losing our religion and gaining hope in Christ. And I’m not just playing word games now. Organized religion has managed to keep more people from God than perhaps any other factor in history.
I realize some of you here have made attempts to join in some online dialogue with Christians recently only to have your thoughts dismissed without reason or deleted. I feel your pain – really. Too many religious folks have it all figured out. And it scares them if someone confronts them in such a way that makes them question whether they really do. Such encounters annoy me to no end.
I doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t already know, but ultimately, when this happens, you’re shaking the foundations of what amounts to a very fragile faith. It’s a faith that has not been examined but merely inherited in most cases. In this type of situation, there’s a certain comfort in religion, but it’s usually as far from a meaningful relational experience as you can get. And I suppose that’s okay for some folks. The problem though is when this sort of unexamined faith is exhibited on a broader scale, skeptics begin to (understandably) equate belief in God (or Christ in particular) with questionable logic or flimsy evidence.
However, this could not be further from the truth for many of us. I’m skeptical by nature. I don’t take things at face value. So I’ve had my crisis of faith. Only a few years ago, I seriously questioned the plausibility of the existence of God, not to mention one taking human form and dying on a cross and subsequently rising from the dead. It’s preposterous sounding sort of stuff I know.
The funny thing is as I read more, I realized I actually believe this story. In fact, I’m not sure that I could bring myself to believe in a God, period, were it not for this one man. Now I really would love to delve into the myriad of reasons why I believe in Christ and have you deluge me with counterarguments, but that conversation will have to wait. (If you want to get an idea as to how I’d structure the case for belief in Christ, you can look here.)
Right now, I’m in a frame of mind that’s pondering “Christian” behavior I’ve been noticing lately. The more cognizant of it I become, the more I feel an apology is in order. I apologize for some fundamentalists proclaiming that we are witnessing God’s wrath on New Orleans with the hurricane there. I’m sorry that when you turn on the TV you see preachers using guilt-trip techniques to get more money – not to feed the poor and downtrodden, but to built bigger facilities and buy private jets. I apologize for Christian spokesmen who call for assassinations of world leaders. I regret to see those who act as if Christ cares more about a political party than about the souls and suffering of human beings.
Quite frankly, a lot of this all makes me want to drop that ‘C’ label and come up with something else entirely to differentiate myself. Until… I realize I’m a hypocrite too. I don’t often live what I preach or believe. I’ve been judgmental towards atheists in the past. I’ve felt as if I were morally superior because of my beliefs. It’s pathetic, but it’s true.
Now understand, religion sets up rules and says if you obey you will be accepted. But Jesus Christ turned this whole thing upside down. He says if you are accepted – and only if you are convinced you are accepted – will you ever begin to obey. It’s not about being a good person. It’s about being a really broken person with all sorts of problems and loneliness and strife. That opens the door for the really great part. That’s the part about grace and redemption.
When I understand it’s not about me, but it’s a whole lot bigger, the weight of the world lifts. And even though I may go on feeling sorry for everything I’ve done (and all the things TV preachers have said and done), I know that God will not give me what I deserve. And I’m eternally thankful about that. So thankful in fact that I just want to figure out how to live in a way that will please Him.
“God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.” – Jürgen Moltmann – Nazi soldier turned theologian
Okay, okay. Now, let me have it. Tell me to stop believing in fairy tales. I love being outnumbered. Really, I do. Bring the noise.
September 5th, 2005 at at 4:12 am
I will say that you seem to be a shining example of a Christian – or at least the general connotation people attach to it. We all are guilty of painting broad groups of individuals with one brush.
You do point out some of the major problems with the religion. The superficial problems. As far as the issues of logic, you still seem to fall on faith, or subjective experience. I’m sure you’ve heard all of them, so I’ll not go there.
Upon deeper reflection of life, one of the only things I find more absurd than the idea of an active, intervening, pre-determinist god, is the idea of a sacrificial redeemer figure. I understand the idea behind them, and how people may feel the need for such, but not the actual need for such. I’ll read your case for it. In my mind though it still boils down to an omniscient god knowing ahead of time that his creation wasn’t going to buy his lie and messed up and sinned, which god really dislikes even though he created it, so after multiple generations of doomed people die, god decides it’s time to come to earth and kill himself, which somehow gets future generations off the hook – as long as they make the right decision using the free will they were given…by a god that already knows if they will or not anyway. Instead of him just making it work from teh get go, or fixing it without killing himself. Oh yeah, and then he reveals himself to a geographically select group of people, dooming even more generations in outlying, disconnected regions. Hmmm.
I’ve heard the arguments – no one can understand god, don’t try to put human characteristics on god, etc. But why would a god – much less one who’s self image was mirrored in man – create a man with such complex, yet structured behavioral, intellectual, and psychological traits – or create ANY ordered systems – that are so completely out of line with how the creator itself behaves? So maybe I DO try to attach human standards of logic to a god, but those same standards of logic seamlessly apply to all of that supposed god’s creation, so why not to the creator?
If nothing else, you’ve shown me that a hypothetical Christian – one who doesn’t push the religion down other’s throats and isn’t afraid to think and ask questions – actually does exist. I suspected you were out there.
September 5th, 2005 at at 8:17 am
And here I thought I would be dissapointed with this experiment. Thank you Chad.
September 5th, 2005 at at 8:57 am
Well written. I just don’t think that people really need religion to give them hope, or to their life meaning. Can’t we find alternatives that do not require suspense of logic?
But thanks anyways.
September 5th, 2005 at at 10:45 am
[...] say which I’ve posted in its entirety below and he has posted my essay on his site. Click here to read my essay. While I know it’s difficult, I feel very passion [...]
September 5th, 2005 at at 10:47 am
What I still don’t understand is, why does anything you just described require a supernatural force? It seems you’ve effectively reduced Christianity to philosophy, in effect doing the athiest work for him.
September 5th, 2005 at at 10:51 am
Just to let you know, I posted a comment on your article about your case for belief in Christ.
September 5th, 2005 at at 11:09 am
Chad, Nice post. I also feel your pain but draw a different conclusion. I agree 100% that it is usually established church and not religion or spirituality that causes the greatest harm. Participation in a group replaces any actual piety in most cases and the group and the self grow to be more important than the faith.
My father the Father (Episcopalian Priest) once described to me 4 stages of piety. The first stage is absolutism, the criminal in a 12 step program is a good example. The absolutist is incapable of deviation from the program without falling back on old patterns. Stage 2 has progressed to a point where he/she no longer fears falling back to stage 1 but feels an overwhelming need to persuade others to feel as they do and to belong to a group of like minded people. At stage 3 the individual becomes confident enough in their belief to incorporate dissenting information. Usually stage 3 involves a long period of doubt and reflection. Stage 4 is supposed to happen when you have gone through stage 3 and resolved your faith to an irrevocable point.
You appear to be in stage 3 of that description of piety. Most of the “religious” world is stuck in phase 1 or 2 forever. I feel that I also was once in stage 3. I then moved sideways to become a firm stage 4 agnostic. I do not believe that there is a God but will allow that I cannot prove that there isn’t, and even if there is a God he does not participate in any aspect of the observable world.
September 5th, 2005 at at 1:27 pm
Thanks all for reading and commenting. I really appreciate your willingness to do that.
Seth, I think you get to the heart of the matter with your question: “Can’t we find alternatives that do not require suspense of logic?”
I would imagine that the idea of the existence of miracles is a real obstacle for a lot of you in even beginning to try to understand where someone like myself is coming from. I would ask you to consider, however, whether any instinctive repugnance you may have toward the idea of believing in the miraculous is more emotional or aesthetic at root than it is entirely rational. It seems to me the construct of a modernist view entails a deep-seated longing for belief in more order and regularity in the world that is actually present. One example to illustrate a much less homogeneous reality than we would envision comes from scientific discovery: Newtonian atomism was much more the sort of the thing we expected (and hoped for) than Quantum physics.
While what I’ve just said is far from being some indisputable case for the existence in miracles, it does, hopefully, trigger some thought as to the underlying assumptions we make. So often we’re tempted to think of ourselves as being completely rational or unbiased, but it’s nearly impossible to extrapolate the emotional element from it entirely.
So, DUB, when you mention that much of my experience is subjective, I’m not going to deny that, but then again aren’t we all coming at this issue with a lot of preconceptions and ingrained opinions.
LBBP: That’s a good explanation of the four stages of piety. It makes sense though I’d imagine I’m in stage four as well, but with the caveat that I could still be wrong about a lot of things.
You also said, “…even if there is a God he does not participate in any aspect of the observable world.”
It’s interesting because I just got back from camping in the mountains of central Colorado with some friends and we all remarked of breathtaking beauty of God’s creation in our surroundings. We see it in all sorts of places and it’s deeply spiritual. An atheist or agnostic is looking at everything through an entirely different lens. That’s not an argument, of course, but an observation of the huge dichotomy in how we view the world.
September 5th, 2005 at at 1:51 pm
Well, I’m afraid this didn’t really change my stance on religion.
But it was quite enlightening, though perhaps not quite in the way meant by you. I realized I should actually read the bible instead of hearing about it from the correct, though rather slanted, point of view of atheists. I’m sure there are some interesting philosophical points that would be good to live by, but god-wise, I’m still an atheist.
All in all, the main theme I got from this was “I’m really, really sorry. But. . .” I heard you, in a rather Christian way, presenting the best story you had before us, then saying “Now, let me have it.” and effectively telling us to make you suffer. Well, suffering is what Christianity is based on after all, it’s just interesting to see it in action.
But, seriously, thank you alot for that Chad. It takes real courage to do that, and even though I still think your wrong, at least I respect you and your resolve now.
September 5th, 2005 at at 2:11 pm
First let me congratulate you for apparently not being one of the insane christian right that is currently working to dismantle freedom and sanity in America. However, I have to be honest in that I can’t give any support to the idea that a belief in Jesus as the son of god and personal savior makes any sense at all, that it is anything but blind devotion in the face of very convincing arguments to the contrary.
First off, with the Jesus thing, I have to agree with what DUB said. How the hell does it make sense for Jesus to kill himself and “save” us? God is sitting up there in the clouds and says “hey, I’d like humanity to be able to be saved for their sins” and god’s secretary says “okay, why don’t you just make it so? you are the one that punishes them for their sins as it is, you could easily let them off the hook” to which god responds “oh no no no, you have much to learn, I have to kill my son first, then I’ll tell myself to change the rules”.
And even if you could somehow bring yourself to believe “oh but god works in mysterious ways” you still have to find a way to dismiss the fact that there have been savior figures EXACTLY like jesus wayyyy before he ever was claimed to exist. The god Zeus had a half-man, half-god son Hercules with a mortal woman, just like the christian god had jesus with the mortal mary. Other savior figures rose in 3 days, turned water into wine, etc. It’s clearly made up.
September 5th, 2005 at at 3:27 pm
“Grace”, “redemption”, as if humans were naturally ugly and evil. Original sin is human-hating drivel. Original sin means people have to work their whole lives to “redeem” themselves. If I believed in that stuff, I would say “fuck it, why should I work all my life just to AVOID going to hell? Since I’m doomed to go anyway, might as well enjoy life whilst I can, and screw everyone else over in the process.”
Christ did not die for my sins, he did not die for me, he did not die for anybody. He died, that’s it. (If he really existed at all). Even if he was real, and did die, and claimed it was for the “sins” of others, why does this make god (or any supernatural deity) any more plausible? Its a nice archetype, a brave act for a noble cause, but it does not serve as proof for god(s), just as the warm fuzzies for you and other believers. Finding good qualities in humans through the tales of ancient civilisations is reassuring, but cannot serve as a basis for the belief in god(s), nor does it promote or encourage belief in a particular religion.
Most humans are a product of their upbringing and their conditioning. Were they born in another place and time, their beliefs, language, and worldview would be almost entirely different. But humans all have some things in common: we laugh, we smile, we cry, we (can) feel empathy, we are emotional. We are animals with slightly larger (size to body size ratio), more complex brains. We have more complex behaviour, but this does not mean there is a god, or that supernatural powers exist. It does not mean the world is ordered according to some divine will.
Our complex brains enable us to ponder in abstractions, and abstractions can go beyond models that work in the world around us. One such model, god, is the most powerful but useless model. A god that created anything or everything is a great explanation, and would work in all cases to explain origins, but it is useless to help make predictions, to help describe the workings of the universe. It is also used as a tool to control gullible people.
Had you been born on the moon and raised in isolation by impartial, non-religious robots, and had no knowledge of earthly beliefs, you would not know of nor believe in christ. So it would be for each and every human. Religion is just another meme, just another abstraction that has more control over behaviour than our supposed “free will”.
Sometimes little kids think there are monsters under their beds. Some are afraid to look, others to move, and still more to cry for help. The IDEA that there are monsters under the bed is so powerful in their minds, they actually BELIEVE there are monsters, and that they are residing under their bed. Every last kid that has looked under the bed was rewarded with the knowledge that there never was a monster under the bed. I looked, because I knew that what I thought to be true, and what IS true, do not always line up, no matter how much I desire them to do so.
Without previous knowledge of god, one would have no way of discovering god. Therefore, god is a manmade invention. Any and all qualities of god are all manmade. Any and all religious, social, and political structures created around the idea of god(s) are entirely manmade. Any and all good things humans have done in the name of religion has been entirely the result of their actions, not of the deity. All human actions, all human deeds, all human desires are entirely human, there is no outside force controlling our behaviour or our beliefs.
I cannot believe in supernatural powers because I understand that these things are just memes, and do not help me in any way. I can glean no insight from things that are beyond my understanding. I cannot use these beliefs to better my existence on earth. The most I could ever get out of them is comfort in knowing that something was watching over me, taking care of me. But that’s only if I assumed that these supernatural powers were kind and gave a shit about me. Besides which, this kind of comfort is only possible if I lie to myself, meaning I must convince myself these forces exist and have an effect on me, without any proof whatsoever. “God has not been proven to not exist, therefore, he must exist.”
Thank you for your post and your apology. It would mean more if you gave up religion.
September 5th, 2005 at at 10:03 pm
Chad- Any particular reason you could share with me why one of my comments (a non-inflammatory statement on the topic of whether or not the resurrection was a historical event) was deleted/dissapeared from your website?
September 5th, 2005 at at 10:26 pm
SA, Your comment is up there now. For some reason, your comments needed ‘approval’ before being posted. Usually the spam filter doesn’t cause this problem, but occassionally it will delay the posting by giving me the option to ‘moderate’ it first (which I never do).
Mookie, Original sin is the one explanation that makes sense of all the conflict we experience in our lives. Whether it is manifest in selfishness, pride, war, addiction, whatever, there is some great conflict in the universe with which we are interacting. I don’t believe the inherent existence of conflict in so many areas of our lives would make sense to us were it not for original sin. The story of Adam and Eve (whether interpreted metaphorically or literally) and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil explains the essence human struggle that we face everyday.
Had I been born on the moon and raised in isolation, I’m pretty certain I would still feel this sort of inherent conflict. You mentioned little kids: why is it that little children will intentionally lie? Is there not some inherent sort of proclivity to act in a manner that is inconsistent with what we consider good morality? Why is it so hard to find someone you can really, truly trust and that won’t let you down? To me, God is the only source of unconditional love and that is an indictment against the sinful nature of humanity.
September 5th, 2005 at at 11:11 pm
That was a nice post Chad. It didn’t convince me, of course, but your willingness to actually come and talk to us, as opposed to just ranting, is appreciated.
September 6th, 2005 at at 1:31 am
“Had I been born on the moon and raised in isolation, I’m pretty certain I would still feel this sort of inherent conflict.”
Conflict? With whom? With what? You would be living on the moon, with no other humans in sight! Sorry, but I call BS on that. As Darth Vader says: “There is no conflict.”
The notion of original sin is also why you find heyzeus so appealing. You’ve accepted that humans are in need of “saving”. We are vile, wretched creatures, even newborn babies. Your favourite jew gets killed by these naturally evil humans and you think you owe him something.
Original sin is one aspect of religion that is very harmful, quite possibly the very worst. It makes humans inherently evil, justifying all manner of horrendous acts. Untold thousands have died because of this idea. The Inquisition (and other “purgings”) were based on this belief. The Native Americans in the New World were also subjected to this labeling. It was the job of the catholic church to “save” the inherently evil souls of the unbelievers. The golden age of christianity is known now as the Dark Ages. It was only when people stopped hating humanity and began to find beauty in the human experience that the Renaissance began and spread. Now you and your ilk are trying to drag us back into one. This is why religion sucks balls. Your apology is meaningless if you insist on finding humans sinful.
Why be good if its not in our nature to be so? That’s not to say that humans are inherently good; they are inherently nothing. We are CAPABLE of both great good and great bad, but again, our behaviour is more a product of our conditioning than of anything else. We don’t kill and destroy because we are preprogrammed to do so. We CHOOSE to take up arms against our fellows, we CHOOSE to subjugate and ridicule women, homosexuals, minorities, etc, we CHOOSE to rape and pillage the earth. I CHOOSE not to harm others, I CHOOSE not to be an asshole. I am responsible for my actions, and I try to be as aware as possible of the consequences of my actions. Sinning makes one a sinner, existing does not.
Original sin is such a hateful and negative idea. With it, you have insulted my very existence, and the existence of every other human on earth. Meaning that to be xian, I have to hate myself and every other human, because we are all a bunch of rotten sinners. This is why I find religion so repulsive and detrimental to human progress. Sorry, but fuck you. I am not inherently evil, I do not hate myself and all humans, I do not need to be saved, nor will I be going to hell. You can keep your religion to yourself, there’s plenty of hate out there already.
September 6th, 2005 at at 5:43 am
“Original sin is the one explanation that makes sense of all the conflict we experience in our lives. Whether it is manifest in selfishness, pride, war, addiction, whatever, there is some great conflict in the universe with which we are interacting. I don’t believe the inherent existence of conflict in so many areas of our lives would make sense to us were it not for original sin”
I am an Indian and was born in a Hindu family. I don’t believe in religion and god anymore.
The Hindu religion doesn’t have the concept of Original sin. I heard it when I started learning about Christianity.
The whole idea looked so absurd to me. In Hindu philosophy the child is considered to be pure and closest to the God. This philosophy also tells that we move away from God, as we start interacting and merging with the world.
So what you say, according to the Hindu philosophy, why there are wars calamities, crimes.
“Had I been born on the moon and raised in isolation, I’m pretty certain I would still feel this sort of inherent conflict”
What if you were born into a Hindu family like mine?
Will you would have believed in original sin and need for a savior to ‘save’ you. Remember you will be going against the norms of the society you were born into and brought up by doing so.
You accept the original sin idea because of you bringing up in that kind of philosophy while I feel it absurd because I was brought up in totally opposite philosophy.
September 6th, 2005 at at 8:10 am
Mookie, Original sin is the one explanation that makes sense of all the conflict we experience in our lives.
First of all – not really. Read some Lacan, for example. He claims that all our conflicts arise from the fact that we perceive and express the world through an inexact medium that always leaves a gap between what we say and what we mean – language. So that’s another explanation right there.
And anyway – who says our live must make sense? sure, we want our lives to make sense, because we are reasoning beings – but just because we want something to happen, doesn’t mean it will or should. Without Original Sin life is meaningless and makes no sense? fine. So life makes no sense. I don’t understand how the next logical leap is some cosmic AllFather with a little notebook and a penchant for stacking the deck in his favour.
why is it that little children will intentionally lie?
Because morality is a human invention. Living by it is not unnatural because we are inherently evil (Original Sin), but because we are inherently amoral.
To me, God is the only source of unconditional love and that is an indictment against the sinful nature of humanity.
That is very very sad. I much prefer human love, with all its faults and inherent “sinfulness,” if only because in this random and amoral world, to make a conscious choice to be moral and love is a much greater act of “Grace” then some supernatural being doin’ what comes naturally.
September 6th, 2005 at at 8:37 am
Chad, thanks for the friendly post. You ask whether the atheists dislike of the idea of God is aesthetic- maybe it is. You compare it to Newtonian and Quantum physics. Two points I have to make:
1. We accept quantum physics despite it’s nature, which makes some of us uneasy. We do this because it accounts for observable evidence and is not contradicted by observable evidence. We also allow the possibility that it is wrong or may need to be modified to account for new observations, etc. We base the knowledge on the observations. A bible, stripped of contradictions and false predictions would amount to philosophy, so why not make philosophy your faith?
2. Isn’t the idea of original sin, God, etc. basically a way to give the world meaning for those who believe. Surely, then, this is to make the world a more aesthetically pleasing place in which to live.
September 6th, 2005 at at 9:16 am
Chad Says:
To me, God is the only source of unconditional love and that is an indictment against the sinful nature of humanity.
*************************************************************
Really?
How so?
Seems to me that *true* unconditional love would accept ALL souls into heaven. Period. There wouldn’t be any…conditions to it (Like there are with Christianity). You wouldn’t *have* to believe, you wouldn’t *have* to repent, you wouldn’t *have* to do a damn thing. God would just love you, period. Warts and all.
Just as I will love my own son – unconditionally – until the day that I die. It doesn’t matter if he tells me he hates me. I’m a big enough person that I won’t cast him into a lake of fire for not loving me.
Nor would I let him cast himself into a lake of fire for making the “oh-so-tragic” mistake of doubting me. Even though I am supremely worthy, and he may actually deserve to be cast into a lake of fire for doubting or not accepting me, I still wouldn’t do it. [/smartassness]
Nor would I allow my nemesis to build a lake of fire which my son could even potentially be thrown in. I’d either put out the fire, or kill the nemesis who sought to harm my son. I love him. I’m weird like that.
Sorry Chad – The Christian requirement for hell absolutely removes the “unconditional love” classifier from *any* description of God. Any God that would create (or even allow) a “hell” is not worthy of mention.
No temporal “crime” – even the unthinkable “crime” of calling bullshit on the existence God – deserves eternal punishment.
In other words, the problem of evil (or suffering) is the coup de grace for Christianity. Any attempt to “explain” otherwise is a journey into apologetics-land.
September 6th, 2005 at at 9:47 am
Matt Says to Chad:
Isn’t the idea of original sin, God, etc. basically a way to give the world meaning for those who believe.
*************************************************************
Nope. Original sin is required by Christianity. Imagine what the concept of a person born without sin would do to the Christian doctrine.
What would this person need saving from?
Here’s something Chad may not know, but just in case…
Sin – “original” sin that is – was originally a very objective act of failing to act in accordance to the Torah. That is, it was very clear who had sinned, and who had not. If you ate Pork…boom…you sinned. If, on a beautiful Sabbath day, you looked outside your window and observed mana falling from heaven, and prayed silently to the Lord, thanking him for the wonderous gift, you were OK. No sin (think of it as a misdemeanor) had been committed.
However…if you looked out the window…sorry…”hole in the wall”… at the mana falling from heaven, AND you went outside to collect it…you just crossed the line buddy. You would have violated the Sabbath by working, and would thus be seriously fucked.
*shrugs*
Rules are rules.
Anyway, it was Paul (the apostle) who turned the Jewish concept of sin – a very clear description of some act that did not observe the Torah – into the modern Christian concept of sin as a *condition* which all people are born with.
September 6th, 2005 at at 12:48 pm
Hi Chad,
Thanx for the thoughtful post. This is a cool experiment that you and I AM devised, and Im glad its going so well. Civilized conversation between atheists and Christians on the internet is kinda rare, so its nice to have it here while it lasts
I was a Christian for the majority of my life. Not until I started thinking independently (17 years old) did I have a crisis in faith, and eventually become an atheist.
Let me tell you some of my major objections to Christianity, and if you got time, maybe you could tell me (and all the readers here) what you think of my objections:
1. Inherited guilt from ancestors. Chad, if I were to commit murder or rape, would it be okay to punish my children? Or my grandchildren? Should modern day Germans be punished for the crimes of their now-deceased Nazi ancestors? Or should modern day American whites be punished for the crimes of their racist slave-owning ancestors? The concept of inherited sin from Adam and Eve is morally repugnant, especially considering that it has been thousands of years and countelss generations since Adam and Eve ever lived (assuming the Biblical historical accounts).
2. Original Sin undercuts real morality. This is a bit of an extension or tangent from the first point I listed. Morality, and being “innocent” or “guilty,” must involve a choice or decision made on the part of the one being judged. What I mean is, for you or I to be judged as guilty or innocent, there must have been an action we performed or a choice we made DIRECTLY to justify such a judgement. To judge someone as “sinful” or “guilty” before they even made a moral choice or action, is NOT MORALITY but instead is an a priori judgement made on someone. Again, it is not a teaching or practicing of morality if a judgement is passed before a direct moral choice is made by the subject/person being judged.
3. Two wrongs dont make a right. In other words, punishing an innocent person for the crimes of another is not a path to forgiveness, justice, or salvation. Jesus was innocent, and he was sacrificed to pay the penalty for everyones sins. Lets apply this Jesus teaching to modern times: Can we forgive the crimes of the BTK killer or maybe Osama bin Laden, if we take an innocent 5 year old girl up to a cross and crucify her? Or what if we just hang her or shoot her? Would that be adequate to let the BTK killer go free? What if the 5 year old girl offered to willingly be sacrificed for Osama and BTK? This is obviously another concept that is morally repugnant. Now I have had other Christians tell me that this wouldnt apply because even a 5 year old girl has original sin, and only Jesus was pure enough to be sacrificed. But that response only ADDS strength to my argument, because it makes the sacrificial victim even MORE pure and undeserving of the punishment. If it is morally repugnant to sacrifice a 5 year old girl for the crimes of Osama, then it is even MORE morally repugnant to sacrifice the most innocent human that ever lived (Jesus). Two wrongs dont make a right, and it is only underscored even more when its Jesus instead of a 5 year old girl being sacrificed. To put it yet another way, I would not be satisfied if Jesus sacrificed himself to absolve the crimes of a murderer who killed my mom or sister or child. I would only find some satisfied if the murderer himself paid the price.
4. Sacrifice is always wrong. This is also a tangent of the earlier points. But seriously. When is sacrifice of any innocent person ever good; ever redeeming; ever absolving? Sacrifice is a primitive, barbaric, and downright EVIL concept that has no place in modern social thought. Any red-blooded, freedom-loving American should condemn sacrifice as worthless and evil, especially the types of people that fight against abortion and stem cell research (assuming that fetuses and stem cells are humans with rights, they are other forms of sacrifice), dontcha think?
5. The incoherency of the Jesus/God story. The centerpiece of Christianity is summed up as such: “God had to temporarily sacrifice himself to himself in order to circumvent a law he created himself that would have forced him to send his own deliberately flawed creations into a hell that he created himself.” Sorry Chad but logically, this story makes no sense.
September 6th, 2005 at at 1:03 pm
I am really enjoying this discussion (and I am procrastinating at my job!) -but I wanted to add a few things.
RMadison Says:
No temporal “crime” – even the unthinkable “crime” of calling bullshit on the existence God – deserves eternal punishment.
I am a Christian and the concept of hell has always really, really bothered me. Eternal punishment for temporal crimes. It is a difficult pill to swallow. I have read C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” and I appreciate his depiction of hell. It looks more like Suburbia in his book. The book also suggests that Jesus still pursues people in Hell. But I don’t have a good answer for this.
Butterfingers, you mention Lacan and I find this interesting. Lacan talks about the four discourses and includes in this the “Discourse of the University” which is a worship of “objective facts” and purports to be a Master Discourse. The discourse of spirituality and faith, in my opinion, most resembles the hysteric discourse (the bucther’s wife) which pokes holes in the airtight, scientific discourse of the university- the dominant discourse in our day and age. In other words, “faith” speaks to the gaps in language, to the symbolic, whereas science builds it’s strength on the illusion of being “true” and “objective”.
I think in all this argumentation over original sin and the mystery of the crucifiction we are missing a key point: these things only make sense from within the “myth” of Christianity. You have to be within it for it really to make sense.
The sad thing is that the rationalism, modernism, objectivity, and the scientific discourse are equally mythical. However, the myth that the scientific discourse rests on attempts to call itself “truth.” Furthermore, the myth of rationalism fuels itself by debunking, discrediting, and discounting all other mythical ways of thinking and knowing. It is like a myth with a safety shield by convincing those that think in those ways to think it is the “truth” and that everything else is “merely superstition.”
September 6th, 2005 at at 1:16 pm
I’m glad to see an example of a Christian who agrees on the issue of organized religion being a dangerous thing. I think that, and your general tone, show you consider this a spiritual and philosophical issue, not an issue of legislation and society. In other words, I’m glad to see one who is accepting of another viewpoint without proclaiming how wrong others are; at the very least, you’re willing to converse with atheists in atheist terms. From speaking with Christians in Christian terms, I know it can be very difficult to adopt such a different viewpoint. Let me first thank you for contributing to cross-wise understanding.
That being said, now I’ll go into some questions and constructive criticsm.
How did you emerge from your crisis of faith? I would imagine that one either has it, or doesn’t have it. You became skeptical of the beliefs of your religion, I presume, but then found something that made you believe them again with much less or no doubt. I would think there is no tangible evidence to bolster your religious position, nor logical reasoning to support it. Of course, that’s by my standards, so I’m wondering what made the cut in your case.
Each religion believes itself to be “the one true” religion, and I see this sentiment reflected in your statement, “But Jesus Christ turned this whole thing upside down.” The key word here is “but.” Yes, the Christian dogma may be significantly different, but it seems to me nothing is upside down. The rules are are different; it’s now “believe!” instead of “do!” But it’s still just commanding an action, and hence I don’t really consider it particularly different. A real turning everything upside down would be a god who comes to earth (you must agree with me on this), gives humanity a set of rules and such (again, you gotta be with me so far), and then judges people how the follow them (still part of Christianity, right?). Now, turning things upside down would be a shy god, or a wily god, one who doesn’t want anybody in heaven who followed illogical rules and believed perposterous stories. Let me be clear that while this would be an interesting philosophical debate, I’m not trying to attack, just understand what makes you think Jesus’ rules are fundamentally any different than any other religions’.
Finally, a directly philosophical question. All these bad things humans do, for which (in god’s view) they ought to be punished, how bad can they really be? I am happy to admit, it’s a nice idea, and would be truely graceful of god, that any bad things somebody does, they are pardoned for when they realize the error of their ways. So, because god is so gracious, what ever we do, no matter how bad, we can be forgiven. The one and only thing you can do, the way I understand it, to get punished for eternity, is to disbelieve. There’s a lot to be said, stuff you and I are probably familiar with, about what this would say about god’s personality and responsibility in creating humans. That’s not what I’m trying to ask. What does it really say about living a way god would want you to, avoiding doing things he does not approve of. Good for you, if you decide to honor your god by living a way you believe he would approve of. But on some level, it seems like he wouldn’t really care, so long as you believe. After all, there’s only one thing — disbelief — that will keep you out of heaven; belief or disbelief is the real issue, how you live your life completely second.
September 6th, 2005 at at 1:17 pm
The question is whether you consider what you “know” subjectively or what actually is reality to be more important. Lots of people “know” things about the way the world works. Scientific knowledge is the only form of knowledge that can actually be proven to agree with the way the world actually seems to work.
September 6th, 2005 at at 2:12 pm
…whereas science builds it’s strength on the illusion of being “true” and “objective”.
Uh, you know, when the airplane you are in successfully lifts off the ground in New York, flies across the country, and lands safely in San Francisco, that’s pretty “true” and “objective.”
Don’t kid yourself that physics is just another subjective belief system. It makes you look sorta stupid.
September 6th, 2005 at at 2:23 pm
I enjoyed reading your thoughtful post, Chad.
You mention, and others have commented on this, that original sin explains all human conflicts. How can Adam and Eve be guilty of sin if they had no knowledge of good and evil before eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? If this doesn’t make sense, then the whole basis for Christianity doesn’t make sense and effectively falls apart.
September 6th, 2005 at at 2:35 pm
Chad, thanks for sharing.
Did you go deeply into all the major religions and then decide Christianity best answered the questions you had or was Christianity what you were raised in by your family/culture?
If you tried a bunch of them, I would be fascinated to know what your questions were that only Christianity could answer.
September 6th, 2005 at at 2:38 pm
Sportin Life,
No need for personal attacks- please don’t call me stupid, it is inappropriate.
I assure you- there are many philosophers that support my arguments. For example, a neo-pragmatist (Richard Rorty,etc.) would say that we can fly in a plane and we trust that it works- but we don’t need to appeal to some higher system of “truth” to trust that it works. Just because we trust that we will safely arrive at our destination doesn’t mean it is “objective.” All truth claims are contingent (Check out “Contigency, Irony, and Solidarity”).
As far as other thinkers, I urge you to check out Thomas Kuhn’s book on Scientific Revolutions (he talks about paradigms and paradigm shifts) and Foucault’s work on power and language (maybe his book on the Birth of the Clinic) which discusses the way that experts use language to gain power over others (the way a scientist gains power by using words like “irrelevant” or “unempirical”). To Foucault, the scientist is just as guilty as the religious for using words like “truth” to discount and discredit others.
And calling my argument “stupid” is a power (oppressive) move to discredit me! (similar to the religious that attempt to silence the voice of others)
September 6th, 2005 at at 2:58 pm
Joel, the beauty of science is that it doesn’t matter what the scientist says because his work will be checked by others who are quite willing to call him out if wrong.
It’s true that you don’t need to understand how a plane works to believe that it does, but if you believe it flies across the Atlantic Ocean because it is painted with the “Virgin” logo on it, you will be upset with your purchase of a Virgin Mobile cellphone.
September 6th, 2005 at at 3:07 pm
Joel Says:
The sad thing is that the rationalism, modernism, objectivity, and the scientific discourse are equally mythical. However, the myth that the scientific discourse rests on attempts to call itself “truth.” Furthermore, the myth of rationalism fuels itself by debunking, discrediting, and discounting all other mythical ways of thinking and knowing. It is like a myth with a safety shield by convincing those that think in those ways to think it is the “truth” and that everything else is “merely superstition.”
*************************************************************
First, thanks for your comments Joel
However…. (like you didn’t know *that* was coming!)
I think…well…I think you and I see “rationalism, modernism, objectivity, and the scientific discourse” through totally different lenses.
I get the sense that you feel that rationalism, modernism, objectivity, and the scientific discourse “grow”, or “progress” at the expense of the sacred, the mystical, and the supernatural. It may feel that way to you, but that isn’t the case.
*Note* I’m really speaking more for science here than anything else, because I’m not sure what you mean by “modernism”, and rationalism and objectivity seem pretty clear to me.
Anyway, science doesn’t fuel itself at the expense of mythology. Science is fueled by the joy of discovery. I suppose one cost of doing science is the loss of certain types of ignorance (For example, learning that humans have evolved over millions of years, and were not created in a single act about 6,000-to-10,000 years ago), but that shouldn’t be a bad thing. In fact, the cliche’ is that when science answers one question, two more questions are raised, so (paradoxically) it could easily be argued that nothing has contributed more to our ignorance about the world than science!
As far as objectivity being a “myth”…OK, I can see that. I don’t think it’s very practical to get into those philosophical bits of hair-splitting, but some people like that kind of stuff. I don’t.
Ultimately, we *have* to infer that “What looks red to you also looks red to me” Howerver, science has quantified “red” as photons with a wavelength of 680 nanometers, so at least in that sense, it’s pretty damned objective.
Oh yeah, before I forget…science doesn’t deal in “truth”. Truth is a concept that is best discussed in philosophy. Science deals in reality, and in empirical facts. Anybody who told you that (for example) “Evolution is *true*” was overstepping the bounds. Evolution is a fact. I guess you could argue whether or not it was true, but why? Aren’t facts the things we should base our decisions on? What’s wrong with knowing the facts?
OK, enough rambling for this post. I just sensed a little bit of “anti-science” bias in your comments, but I think your justification for that perceived bias may be a little off base.
[/2-cents]
September 6th, 2005 at at 3:15 pm
I’m sure the effort was genuine, etc., but honestly, this is just a “kinder, gentler” version of the same old groundless b.s.
September 6th, 2005 at at 4:59 pm
A couple of you asked for more of my own story as to how I emerged from doubtfulness to a strengthened faith. First of all, I needed to know that smart people believed in God and had solid, logical reasons for doing so. That’s about the time I came across C.S. Lewis and read “Mere Christianity”. Shortly thereafter, I read G.K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy”.
Atheistic arguments (i.e., Bertrand Russell) were no less brilliant, but something about what Lewis and Chesterton were saying resonated in my heart in addition to my mind. They had explanations for weird phenomena that skeptics did not seem to satisfactorily explain. For instance, why would I experience a nagging sense of guilt over various decisions? What was the source of this internal conflict between right and wrong?
Every other religion was about behavior. Each one was all about adhering to all the right steps and doing all the right things. The problem was I could never measure up to something like that. Unlike a lot of you here, I don’t think that the concept of sinfulness is a negative thing. It’s just realistic. I don’t particularly like it or dislike it. To me, it just is because it reflects my own nature as a human being. And the one religion that offers hope outside of my own actions is Christianity. It is the only one that offers grace.
Lily, this may just be “groundless b.s.” to you and that’s okay. But to me it speaks uniquely to the human condition in a way that is truer than any naturalistic/materialistic/scientific idea ever could be.
September 6th, 2005 at at 5:08 pm
Chad said:
“For instance, why would I experience a nagging sense of guilt over various decisions? What was the source of this internal conflict between right and wrong?”
Cha,d that guilt is your own internal morality system that you developed via your own personal experiences. You understand that other people are very similar to you, and the way you act towards them (kindly or unkindly) will affect them the same way that their treatment of you affects you.
Its called identity and relation. You identify with others and relate to them in terms of humaneness. You subconsciously understand the golden rule and you know that other humans want to be treated the same way you want to be treated.
You did not get your moral code from the Bible, and if the Bible never existed, you would still have the morality that you have.
There is no supernatural handing-down of moral code necessary for you to have the morality you have. This is evident in the fact that millions of people develop the same moral codes that you do without ever hearing of Jesus or the Bible.
September 6th, 2005 at at 5:43 pm
Chad/Aaron: I think it’d be fair to say that, when you try to find non-religious explanations for things like morality and consciousness that are traditionally based on religion, you’re walking into a quagmire. I doubt any of us are the brilliant psychologists/neurologists/philosophers who will find complete or easily understandable solutions here. But, Chad, I would say: how do you imagine this nagging guilt makes its way to you, if you believe it comes from God? At what level do you imagine it enters your awareness? At any level you can point to – from signals in the brain matching what you’d get from hearing the words “don’t do that”, down to a gut, chemical feeling of unease – there must exist a physical manifestation of this guilt; so why couldn’t that physical manifestation have a physical cause in your biochemistry and the makeup of your brain, rather than needing to be put there somehow by an intervening God? And if God merely fashioned people so that these physical manifestations would occur – well, if we’re pushing the intervention back that far, why have it at all? Why not simply say ‘it is’? This is similar to the problem of how God could ‘guide’ evolution – and why we neeed a God in the picture if the guidance is essentially undetectable.
Wow… that took longer than I expected, and it wasn’t even my main point. My real question, Chad, is about how you speak of sin. I can understand that a set of expectations – especially rigid religious ones – can be hard to live up to; indeed it’s probably impossible for a person to always be their ideal. But the problem you describe seems to me to only matter in a religious framework. You say (if I’m following you right) that all other religions had sin, but you could only fail in them, by sinning; whereas in Christianity, you could sin, and be redeemed, which seemed to you right and proper. Leaving aside the fact that there are plenty of ways to sin and atone in any religion I can think of (some would say that atonement is the strongest mechanism for an organised church to control its members, by convincing them of their own sinfulness), why do you need this rather slapdash solution – why can’t you just lop the problem off at the root, by leaving aside the notion of sin itself? It’s problematic, I know – where do you draw the line between ’sinful’ and ‘immoral’, for one thing – but in a way it’s similar to the first difficulty I mentioned: in order for God’s forgivness to comfort you, you have to take it as permission to forgive yourself – so why not just forgive yourself?
I think this is the real root of the a/theist difference of view. I honestly can’t understand why certain things *must* be seen to come from God. I would say that when people act from their own selves rather than their belief of God’s will, it is better in just about every way. I think most theists – at least those of a philosophical, rather than a dogmatic, bent, if I can describe you like that – would say just the opposite: that humans are too flawed and impure and sinful and so on for something to have worth unless it comes from beyond them. To be honest that seems a hateful notion to me. I would almost say that it is a sin – that it disfigures the soul.
September 6th, 2005 at at 6:13 pm
Chad: I just tried to post another comment to your blog and got an error message. I tried to post it twice, actually, the second time under the name “S. Anonymous”. I thought perhaps the spam filter was responding to my name as some kind of ad hominem attack (“stupid”), but I guess not.
Anyway, I’ll just copy my post here:
(This is a response to comments at http://www.eternalrevolution.com/archives/2005/08/01/having-faithâ?¦-for-good-reason/ for anyone else who wants to follow this conversation).
Chad: Thank you for clearing up the matter of why my posts say “awaiting moderation” (on “I Am’s” blog) when I post them. One of my posts on your page actually did disappear completely, but it doesn’t really matter that much. I was just afraid that I inadvertantly offended you or your blogmates.
You said:
“But what I can’t fathom is why so many were willing to be humilitated, persecuted, and often killed for such beliefs. That takes the faith to a whole different level – it had to be one in which they believed entirely and without question.”
Even if many early Christians died for their beliefs does that really say anything in support of the truth of Christianity? If so, how does this idea of truth determined by willigness to die factor into the truth of the beliefs of suicide bombers, death cults (like Heaven’s Gate), witches, Baal worshippers, and the multitude of other non-Christians who have been killed/tortured or killed/tortured themselves for their beliefs?
“Jews were deeply offended, particularly (and ironically) the really religious ones.”
Is this statement based on the Bible or another source?
It’s not really that ironic if you investigate how many Jews nowadays see Jesus (they say that the Biblical Jesus didn’t really meet the OT requirements for being a messiah).
“The thought of this person going around calling himself God would be an offensive enough form of blasphemy to have him killed.”
Perhaps, but not necessarily.
This point assumes that Jesus actually existed and called himself God while he was alive.
“Roman leaders – especially Caesar – would also be deeply offended because he expected the people to, in essence, worship him.”
The Jews didn’t worship him. Christianity could have been considered another sect of Judaism.
Christianity also contains pro-Roman teachings like “Give to Caesar what is Caesars…” and taught Jews that they were to focus on spiritual battles and not battles with the Romans.
“I really think Jesus was a highly offensive person to many, many people.”
Again, this point assumes that Jesus actually existed and acted like he did in biblical accounts.
Anyway, even if the people were extremely offended, which I admit they may have been, I don’t see how this helps uphold the statements in your article.
September 6th, 2005 at at 7:08 pm
Sorry, that link I posted should be: http://www.eternalrevolution.com/archives/2005/08/01/having-faith%e2%80%a6-for-good-reason/.
September 6th, 2005 at at 7:37 pm
SA, sorry about the problems you’re having posting comments. I don’t really know why that is. I hope that is not a widespread problem b/c I’m enjoying the conversation and don’t want anyone’s thoughts to get left out.
September 6th, 2005 at at 8:46 pm
Chad: I’ve found that I can still post on your site using a different name and a fake email address, so we can continue our discussion on your blog.
September 7th, 2005 at at 1:20 am
Sorry I’m late to the party, Chad . . . I hope it’s not over.
As I’ve read through the threads here and at Eternal Revolutions, two points made by the atheist commenters caught my attention above the cacophony of all that has been said. Though said by various people in various ways, these two points begged (at least in mind) clarification. That’s not to say that anything I could add here will be terribly unique or persuasive . . .
1) “Original Sin”
Original sin is such a hateful and negative idea. With it, you have insulted my very existence, and the existence of every other human on earth. Meaning that to be xian, I have to hate myself and every other human, because we are all a bunch of rotten sinners. This is why I find religion so repulsive and detrimental to human progress. Sorry, but fuck you. I am not inherently evil, I do not hate myself and all humans, I do not need to be saved, nor will I be going to hell. You can keep your religion to yourself, there’s plenty of hate out there already.
Mookie’s tirade is quite visceral, but hardly has anything to do with the concept of original sin as it is understood by most Christians. To say Mankind is afflicted with original sin is no more insulting to any member of the group than it is to tell somebody they are too short to ride a roller coaster. To be insulted by such a statement is to merely find the insult one is looking to suffer. Now, I do readily recognize that there are strains of Christianity (unfortunately, usually the ones with cable TV programs) that make their money out of equating original sin with “inherent evil.”
I (and I suspect Chad) don’t think that’s what original sin is all about. Instead of “inherently evil,” think instead “inherently broken,” and I think you’ll have a better handle on what the doctrine is about, and certainly more in line with Jesus’ language of finding the “lost” – the lost sheep, the lost son, the lost coin. I don’t believe we are forever being “punished” in the retributive/punitive sense for the sins of Adam and Eve, as some have decried here. Rather, we are all born into a state of lostness and brokeness that is a result of their choice.
Think of it this way: if my parents had decided to renounce their American citizenship and move to Ecuador before I was born, I could not then claim that America was unfair in “punishing” me by not allowing me to be an American citizen by birth. My citizenship-status is a function of where I was born and to whom I was born – a fact, not a punishment. Likewise, by their choice to act independent of God’s will and rule, Adam and Eve renounced the intimate connection to God that was their original condition. Like it or not, their choice had consequences for all their progeny, but not in the “punishing an innocent person for the crimes of another” model that rankles Aaron Kinney. They willingly moved to a new spiritual zip code, foreclosing the possibility of anyone ever becoming a citizen of God’s Kingdom by birth. From their offspring forward, we all now have the need to become “naturalized,” if you will, into the citizenship that should’ve been our birthright.
To read a hatred of humanity into the doctrine is to take the televangelist’s bait. It’s not there, at least as I see it. And to see it as an issue of “crime and punishment” is, IMHO, to sorely miss the point.
2) The Sacrifice of Christ
First off, with the Jesus thing, I have to agree with what DUB said. How the hell does it make sense for Jesus to kill himself and “save” us? God is sitting up there in the clouds and says “hey, I’d like humanity to be able to be saved for their sins” and god’s secretary says “okay, why don’t you just make it so? you are the one that punishes them for their sins as it is, you could easily let them off the hook” to which god responds “oh no no no, you have much to learn, I have to kill my son first, then I’ll tell myself to change the rules”.
Delta’s inventive sarcasm aside, the question she raised was a common one: why did Jesus have to die? The answer, to me, is simple: he didn’t have to die; we did. Again, this flows from our lost condition. Think of a child lost in the mountains: if he is not found, he will die. Death is the consequence of being separated from all that sustains his life. In the spiritual context, that is our Creator/Father, God.
Of course, all of us throughout our lives do our own share of sinful/evil things to pile on to our original brokeness. In each case, why should a holy God ignore our broken, sinful selves and “accept ALL souls into Heaven” without “conditions,” as RMadison suggests? To do so, without something that repairs and cleanses our condition, is to toss God’s own holiness and integrity out the window, and for what? So that we can have our cake and eat it too?
Consider this: we send our children to school not to torture them (their opinions notwithstanding), nor to make them earn our love via a diploma. Rather, it is simply this: we love our children too much to leave them in their original state of ignorance and illiteracy. We make our children do all kinds of things they find undesirable because we know the good it will produce in them, and we love them too much to leave them in their condition without that good being developed. (I must confess that C.S. Lewis made this argument far more eloquently than I in his The Problem of Pain.)
Likewise, God loved us too much to leave us lost. Yet, his holy nature required that our condition be dealt with. The idea of a payment being required isn’t new or all that bizarre – it’s the central basis for any system of justice (criminal, civil, tribal, etc) the globe over. If your mule runs through my fence, causing my ox to escape, then justice requires a payment be made. If I steal your checkbook and go a-shopping, causing your mortgage payments to bounce and your house to be forclosed upon, then justice requires a payment be made. Likewise, our condition vis a vis God required a payment be made.
Jesus made the payment on our behalf. Thank God his blood was worthy currency. We need only to accept it. It’s not that hard. I just don’t understand the complaints of “Why did it have to be THAT way?” as if “THAT way” is so terribly hard, obtuse, or unfair. We’re like a person who takes a broken watch to the jeweler for repair, and, upon being told that the battery is dead, complains that they don’t want the battery replaced, they want the watch fixed. “But that will fix the watch” says the jewler. “WHY? Why does it have to be fixed THAT way?”
How does Christ’s brutal experience do this for me and everyone else? I don’t know. I really don’t. I have no idea how the shedding of his blood, the separating of his spirit from his body, makes me whole again and restores me to the connection with my Creator that was originally intended. Though I’ve been a Christian nearly my whole life, I no more understand how it works than I understand how this computer works, however proficient in its use I may be. All I know is this: that same Jesus walked away from his death alive again, and he said this is how it works. Call me a lemming, but I’m buying what the Man who defeated Death is selling. Or, better put, I’m humbly accepting the enormous gift he’s offering.
Of course, none of what I said “proves” the existance of God. Obviously, it is a proposition that is immune to such proof either way. But, hopefully, critiques of Christianity in particular can become a bit more fair by taking it on its own terms instead of upon misperceptions and sterotypes. After all, wasn’t that the point of this whole exercise?
September 7th, 2005 at at 1:37 am
[...] nse turned out to be, I’ve decided to exercise my editorial perogative and highlight my comment over at The Evangelical Atheist here. ——— [...]
September 7th, 2005 at at 1:47 am
[...] hell. You can keep your religion to yourself, there’s plenty of hate out there already. Mookie’s tirade is quite visceral, but hardly has anything to do [...]
September 7th, 2005 at at 3:02 am
Lance, your replacement of “broken” for “evil” does refute my earlier point, it does not fit the context of the Fall story, and it would not explain why God punished Adam and Eve for acting on a natural predisposition to be broken. I maintain that original sin is a fallacious concept.
Perhaps, you presume that God had to allow evil to allow freewill, but this is, likewise, clearly irrational. In my experience, adhering to an irrational belief system prevents one from thinking rationally on tangential issues. Think of the Fall story as belonging to another religion, one to which you have no ties or commitments. Then, sit down and analyze it. Try to find flaws. If you find one, then you have proven that the story and any beliefs built on it are fictitious.
September 7th, 2005 at at 3:04 am
In the first sentence of my previous post, I intended to write “does not refute,” but the Devil tempted my subconscious mind and it caved.
September 7th, 2005 at at 3:19 am
Rmadison:
Thanks for your post- I have been working on this all day and I have done nothing productive at my job!
Anyway, I think you’re right- we are looking through very different lenses. And it is not that I am necessarily anti-science. I am just saying “the emperor has no clothes.” Do you remember that story? The emperor walked around naked until someone finally had the guts to call it out. I feel like modern society has cloaked itself in the language of science using words like “facts, reality, and validity” but it stands there naked.
Let me unpack this more. You suggest that evolution is a fact- not really. Nobody was around several million years ago to say what really happened. I put my trust in the creation myth, you put your faith in the evolution myth, but who knows?
And yes, I recognize the mythical nature of science and I agree with you- but it is a myth that attempts to discount other myths (like religious myths).
Let’s take the color red. We talk about “red firetrucks” and “red ketchup.” We can all agree what the color red looks like. However, the word “red” does not mirror something objective in the world (not even damn objective!). We have created “red” in our language systems and culture. There is only language. We can’t speak about something that exists apart from language. In fact, one has to always use language to refer to the photons of light- these are social constructions. So it makes no sense to even speak in terms of objective and subjective- both are bound in the words we speak.
I think where we go around and around is that you keep appealing to “reality” and the “facts.” I say, the “facts” rest on an illusion. Even saying the word “fact” is dubious to me. The word “fact” suggests faith in the “higher power” of scientific logic.
September 7th, 2005 at at 3:24 am
Joel- I was attacking your proposition, not you as a person. And while it may be rude of me to use terms that imply a power relationship, doing so doesn’t affect the validity of either mine or your argument one way or the other.
As far as your proposition goes (that there is no meaningful concept of “objectivity” and that physics is epistemologically equivalent to say, Chaldean mythology), I’ll say it again: it’s preposterous.
The fact of the movement of you or I across the country in an airplane is objective. It works no matter who is the passenger, and it doesn’t depend on whether the passenger chooses to believe he’s moving or not. Are you actually claiming that science, through the social process of discovery that Kuhn describes, could have settled on a different physics that works? One in which, for instance, a solid cube of lead with a chair on top and a big propeller can get you to London in six hours? What are you claiming?
Yes, I’ve read Kuhn. It’s a great book. Very thought-provoking and of course extremely influential. I’m actually doing my thesis in history of science right at this moment. I think you misread Kuhn badly if you think he’s claiming that there is no basis in observed reality for scientific knowledge.
Just because scientists are social actors who naturally seek to increase their power and influence just like all human beings, and yes, are sometimes subject to self-delusion about what they actually do know and what they don’t, is no reason to throw up your hands and claim that any possible statement can be “true” and that all possible interpretations of reality are equally valid. That is intellectually dishonest.
Foucault makes some interesting claims about the power of language and about how language shapes not only interpretation but perception itself. But there simply are limits to how far off the beaten path you can get before your airplane, objectively, drops out of the sky. If you want to talk about sociobiology, for instance, or some “science” like that, I’ll race way ahead of you to rip it apart as (predominantly) a whole load of garbage. But if we’re talking about Newton’s laws, any claim that they don’t describe something that exists outside of our own minds–and that would still exist, even if every living person forgot those laws or died–is an absurd sort of nihilism.
September 7th, 2005 at at 6:53 am
I would like to add something to the discourse about postmodernism, even if it is a bit off-topic.
Joel: “And it is not that I am necessarily anti-science. I am just saying “the emperor has no clothes.” ”
I disagree. by denying the existence of independent reality, you are effectively saying that the emperor cannot have clothes. You are mistaking the use of the word “truth” with its metaphysical meaning. In the strict sense, science is not in possession of the truth, just striving for the best possible explanation for the observed facts (Which is what the aveage Joe would term “truth”, I think). This explanation must be testable of course, since it would only be another narrative otherwise. Checking against the outside world is what makes science science. And by the way, dreams and myths do not lead to dramatic improvements in livespan and dramatic reduction in human suffering. Science does.
Joel: “You suggest that evolution is a fact- not really. Nobody was around several million years ago to say what really happened. ”
Well, in a way, we were there. Because history leaves traces which we can decipher. If you deny that, then you are opening a Pandora´s Box and C.S.I. would make no sense. And how would you argue against the notion that we all were created last tuesday?
Joel:”Let’s take the color red”…
Now we are in the deep end of postmodernism. I disagree with the notion that “red” does not represent something in the real world. Of course, objects do not come labeled “red” by the creator, but they have this intrinsic value of being “red”, even if I would call them blue. Just because language reflects our human nature, is imperfect for describing nature and subject to personal oddities and misinterpretations does not mean that this affects the outside reality.
Joel:”There is only language. We can’t speak about something that exists apart from language”. This is true, but trivial. Caveat: The reverse is definitely not true, it is not true that nothing exists apart from language. Was gravity nonexistent before Newton? If I don´t have a word for “commercial”, do I need a Tivo?
With saying “In fact, one has to always use language to refer to the photons of light- these are social constructions”, you are a worshipping language and mistake the tool for describing reality with reality itself.
I think that this is the whole point of the postmodern exercise: What else can you do, when the things you believe in are not real? Change your beliefs? No. Deny reality itself.
P.S.: Please excuse mistakes or unclear sentences since I am not a native speaker.
September 7th, 2005 at at 8:59 am
Joel,
that comment you made about nobody being around a few million years ago to witness evolution must make anyone who deals with science cringe. I suggest next time you get sick and go to a real doctor, just think about what you wrote. He will use the same science and deductive reasoning tools to cure you that have revealed the fact of evolution. Or you can go to a witch doctor and take your chances, the placebo effect is known through many reproducible experiments to cure enough times to give rise to the concept of ‘miracles’.
Chad: you never answered my earlier question: what questions did you need answered in your life that only Chrsitianity could explain? Did you look at other religions and if so, how did they NOT answer those questions.
Personnaly, I always saw that as the crux of the atheist/theist debate: what itch do you need scratched to put it bluntly, is often what differentiates us into those two camps. I am an atheist for over 40 years now and I HAVE to have real verifiable answers and I can accept that sometimes accidents and therefore bad things happen for no other reason than random chance. I like to investigate the circumstances that cause things so I can reduce those random happening as far as possible. I seldom found religious folk who can accept that fact of random stuff happening, like storms etc.
Yes, before I am told to do so, I HAVE read C.S.Lewis, and Chesterton, the prose is great in an old fashioned way, the convoluted illogic to try make sense of the insensible was kind of like watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire slayer: fun but you know its all pretend.
September 7th, 2005 at at 9:23 am
All I know is this: that same Jesus walked away from his death alive again, and he said this is how it works. Call me a lemming, but I’m buying what the Man who defeated Death is selling. Or, better put, I’m humbly accepting the enormous gift he’s offering.
I’m having some difficulty following your analogy. If Jesus, as a man, paid for humanity’s sins with his blood, why do people need to accept it? Wouldn’t it fall upon god to accept or decline it, since the transgression of sin against god is what needs to be repaid? Or are we to understand that god somehow made a transgression, and is trying to repay humanity with Jesus’ blood, meaning that the repayment is eternal bliss in heaven, but only if we accept the payment?
Also, if this is such an important issue to you, how can you be satisfied without knowing how or why it works this way? I can accept “it just feels right” as a justification for believing it, but not for how believing alone can be satisfactory.
Science as a Myth
Take a story, or specifically, the first half of a story. Then let anybody who wants to finish it with a second half. All else being equal, you’ll probably have as many different endings as you have authors. But, what if there is a method by which to finish the story. Perhaps, some way of continuing the story with the same themes, characters, and settings. With such a restraint, the resulting stories may be still quite different, but becoming more similar.
Science is a very specific restraint on how to proceed from the first half to the second half. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough that almost every story ending is the same on a large scale. Any scientists, anywhere, starting with the same half will come to virtually identical endings. Compare that to myths: where you start has little relevance to where you end up.
September 7th, 2005 at at 9:31 am
Uberkuh -
your replacement of “broken” for “evil” does refute my earlier point, it does not fit the context of the Fall story, and it would not explain why God punished Adam and Eve for acting on a natural predisposition to be broken.
“Brokeness,” if you will, is a condition that is “original” to me, you, and everyone else down the genetic stream from Adam and Eve. They suffered from no such original condition. Their decision to sin was pure in form. They had, from their creation, a complete and fully intimate connection with God, yet they decided that that was either not enough or itself unnecessary. Whether they exercised that choice by physically eating a forbidden fruit or whether that imagery is metaphorical isn’t important to me.
September 7th, 2005 at at 9:42 am
Ollie -
Think of it this way: we are lost on the far side of a great divide. Our home, and our Father, are on the other side. Like I said earlier, different spiritual zip codes. Jesus did what we could not – bridge the gap. He has provided the way for us to be restored to where we belong. We need only accept this gift and walk across the bridge he has built. What good is accomplished by spanning a great chasm with a bridge if the folks on the other side refuse to get up and walk across?
September 7th, 2005 at at 10:53 am
As I am not from a Christian majority society, the story of Adam and Eve are foreign and stupid to me.
Anyways,
1. What is meant by that they didn’t knew good and evil? Were they stupid? Or didn’t have the use their ability to think?
2. Why the God wanted them to stay that way? (he didn’t wanted them to eat from that tree.)
3. Why he was so upset when he got to know that they have acquired that ability. (What he feared… that they would become atheists after acquiring ability to think and decide!!)
4. Why he didn’t know it when they were eating the fruit? He is God after all.
Any answers Lance or Chad
September 7th, 2005 at at 11:03 am
Lance –
Thanks, that answers my question. The how and why accepting the sacrifice is the bridge is something you can’t explain though, correct?
September 7th, 2005 at at 12:07 pm
Lance:
Original sin/broken human. Rebellious angels (demons). Satan/Lucifer. A son who God had to kill, but even then he couldnt kill him correctly, for he came back to life. AND his son has to come back to Earth again someday to fix things again (like that will work!) Multiple genocides in the Bible, with humans still fucking up over and over. Hurricanes that kill Christians. Hell. Your God fails at all his creations. Your God fails at all attempts to fix things. Your God fails at practicing what he preaches.
Your God is a failure.
Your Christian God cant do ANYTHING right, nor make a single sentient being that ever does anything right. Let me ask you Lance, WHERE did your God EVER succeed in doing ANYTHING correctly?
Lance, your God is not a God. It is nothing more than a maniacal, jealous, angry failure. If God did exist, he wouldnt have the attributes or the failures that your Christian God myth has. Your God is merely a make-believe entity that mirrors the insecurities and fears of the ancient ignorant humans that invented him.
September 7th, 2005 at at 12:24 pm
Ollie -
Yeah. The very mechanics, if you will, of how the shed blood of Jesus restores us is a mystery to me. I don’t understand it, though I’m no means “satisfied” with my ignorance, as you have suggested. Rather, I am simply admitting that which I do not know, and acknowledging my suspicion that I may never find certainty in this matter due to the shortness of my life.
For instance, I truly don’t understand how a lot of the things upon which I rely actually work: this computer, telephonic communication, Tylenol, my own brain. I guess you could say that I’m “satisfied” in the not knowing, which is easily lampooned as a religiously medieval fear of knowledge. On the contrary, I consider myself quite thoughtful and in constant “learn” mode. However, my life is just too short to try to understand every nuance and implication for everything I hold important. Instead, I make a conscious choice to allocate my resources of energy and time in such a way that I know how to use my computer effectively (mostly), my telephone to communicate with others across the miles, my medicine to cure my headache, and my brain to think through the problems I face in life as well as to contemplate the beauty which I encounter along the way.
Likewise, understanding the nature of my spiritual problem, the resolution Christ provides, and the implications of that resolution for how I live my life are quite big in and of themselves. I’m just too busy with that to pursue the quite possibly unattainable brass ring of understanding the mechanics of how the bridge was built. Again, I readily acknowledge that it is my faith in the word of the Man Who Conquered Death that fills that particular gap.
September 7th, 2005 at at 12:49 pm
Lance –
Fair enough. I’d think you’d be better off living a good life for its own sake than either for Christ or heaven, but I’ll admit that that is just playing the “what if…?” game.
Most christians I’ve talked to say they believe because they got the right telephone call with the right news at the right moment, or had some tremendous experience and/or vision which makes them forgo any secular explination and turn to the devine. Care to share what yours was, if you had one?
September 7th, 2005 at at 1:13 pm
Joel Says:
I am just saying “the emperor has no clothes.” Do you remember that story? The emperor walked around naked until someone finally had the guts to call it out. I feel like modern society has cloaked itself in the language of science using words like “facts, reality, and validity” but it stands there naked.
Let me unpack this more. You suggest that evolution is a fact- not really. Nobody was around several million years ago to say what really happened. I put my trust in the creation myth, you put your faith in the evolution myth, but who knows?
Yep, I remember the story. But it wasn’t a person with “guts” who finally pointed out that the emporer didn’t have any clothes on, it was a child who didn’t know any better. All the adults were too caught up trying to pretend that they were virtuous enough to see the magical fabric.
That “emporers clothes” argument cuts both ways as well. I’m not caught up in any sort of peer group that would pressure me into “experiencing God”, so I just come out and say it: “Um, excuse me guys…I don’t see any credible evidence for the existence of God. I think you guys may be seeing something that isn’t there.”
Also, you’re perfectly entitled to use the “If nobody saw evolution happen, we can’t know that it did happen” argument. Lot’s of people (mistakenly) do. However, as I’ve indicated, it is 100% incorrect.
For example, by your reasoning, since nobody* saw Laci Peterson die, we can’t really say for sure how she died. Never mind that her head was cut off, and she was totally dismembered. Nope. Since nobody saw how that happened, we have to consider that it was an accident. Or, maybe she did it to herself?
Since nobody* saw it happen, don’t we have to keep all options on the table?
[/ridiculousness]
* No. Somebody saw it happen. Science – as a way of thinking – tells us that the probability that Laci Peterson cut off her own head…and arms…is very, very low. So low as to not be worthy of consideration. Science – as a way of thinking – tells us that she was murdered. We don’t have to see the murder to know that it occurred.
Same thing with evolution.
There is evidence. For example, it is an observable fact that humans and chimps share several “ubibquitous genes” (Cytochrome C, for example). It is also a fact that there is only one known mechanism – namely heredity – that can cause two different organisms to have the same gene. Therefore, it is a fact that humans and chimps share a common ancestor, from which we both acquired these identical ubiquitous genes.
We find/discover/reveal the facts via science, and start connecting the dots…we may not know what the picture is going to look like, but we form a hypothesis (suppose all the dots we had gave the impression that the final picture would be of a circle. Even though we only have 1/2 of the dots aka facts, now we know where to look for the other facts if our “circle hypothesis” is accurate.), test it, and gradually improve our understanding about how the world works.
September 7th, 2005 at at 1:26 pm
Their decision to sin was pure in form. They had, from their creation, a complete and fully intimate connection with God, yet they decided that that was either not enough or itself unnecessary. Whether they exercised that choice by physically eating a forbidden fruit or whether that imagery is metaphorical isn’t important to me.
Lance, you completely ignored my first point, which supports a following observation that theists tend to think irrationally around their irrational religious beliefs. Again, the fact remains that it is logically impossible for Adam and Eve to have sinned if they had no knowledge of good and evil before eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I hate to get all informal and throw down the gauntlet here, but you would have to be a moron not to see this. It is a very simple and straightforward point, especially if you take Genesis literally, which is staring straight at you like headlights. Do yourself a favor and get off your high horse before it melts and you crash like Icarus who was “ravisht with desire of heaven.”
September 7th, 2005 at at 2:30 pm
Uberkuh moves for the check and mate. Nice one.
Cha-ching!
September 7th, 2005 at at 3:24 pm
Lily, this may just be “groundless b.s.” to you and that’s okay. But to me it speaks uniquely to the human condition in a way that is truer than any naturalistic/materialistic/scientific idea ever could be.
Um, yeah, if you define “truer” as “completely lacking one scintilla of evidence.”
September 7th, 2005 at at 5:08 pm
Ollie -
Sure, though my story is far less exciting. I had no “tremendous experience,” nor did I find God at the depths of despair and depravity.
I have been a Christian since I could read. Obviously, my faith at that time was child-like and an heirloom of my mother, though that’s not to say it wasn’t quite genuine. I grew up straddling two disparate worlds: on the one hand, I went to a very fundamental, independent Baptist school from 1st grade through high school. On the other hand, I experienced the realities of alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence at home . . . all at the hands of a father who knew the Bible with the best of them. I had every reason to cast aside my faith, whether because of my father, whose “faith” had no effect on his behavior, or because of my “fundie” educational environment, whose empty legalism was oftensuffocating. That would’ve been the easy way. Frankly, I’m often surprised at how or why I didn’t end up going that route.
But, needless to say, I didn’t go that way. I have never left my faith, nor have I had a “crisis of faith,” as some have put it. That’s not to say that I haven’t critically examined and re-examined what I follow and why, for I have. Through my experiences growing up, in college and law school, as well as a prosecutor for five years, my faith has remained present and strong, even if my understanding of what it means and demands has grown and changed. But these processes occurred from within as a result of my pursuit of the ideal of Christ, not an external “crisis.”
A secular explanation of our origin, our failures, and especially our accomplishments as a species just don’t hold any water to me at all. It matters not to me the mechanics of how the Creator created; the importance for me is that he did. Evolution as a theory of origin is dubious indeed. In fact, to call any theory of origin “scientific” is just using language to cloak the mystical in a robe of supposed certainty. Nothing about any theory of origin can be replicated and tested, as the scientific method demands. All demand faith, whether in the creative force of a Designer, or the invisible spark that not only ignited the Big Bang, but then flipped the Life switch in the primordial ooze sometime thereafter. If the ignition of Life before which there was no life is a natural phenomenon, why has Man been unable to replicate it despite his monumental advances in everything else? I raise this question not as “proof” of the theory’s validity (it doesn’t), but to argue that, at the end of the day, Theism and Atheism find the playing field quite level on the issue of our origin: the security of scientific certainty is unattainable for both.
If not for the “original sin” explanation for Mankind’s inherent brokeness, what secular rationale can satisfactorily explain why, after all these generations, Mankind continues to fail to address such obvious problems like poverty, crime, and all the other bad social conditions that have been eradicated in the utopian fantasyland of Star Trek? (Sorry, but Star Trek: TNG reruns are playing as I type.)
On the other hand, without the explanation of a Chief Designer, how can one rationally explain the evolution of only the human species to such heights that planted a flag on the moon? Why have no other species attained such greatness? In fact, forget the excellence of manned flight, modern medicine, and the Sistine Chapel. Take the most uninspiring, elementary accomplishment like a child’s stick figure drawing. Though mankind made such unsophisticated drawings back when a den of caves passed as a subdivision, no other species has ever so much as created a simple doodle depicting the hunt, even those with whom we share so much DNA in common. Why? Even at its most primitive, Mankind’s creative spark (that part that is “the image of God”) is what separates us from every other living thing with whom we share this orbiting rock. Without a purposeful Designer, the only explanation is a fortuitous spin of the evolutionary lottery wheel, after which it must’ve broke.
Hope that tome (probably longer than you were looking for!) answers your question, Ollie. Undoubtedly, I’m sure, it’ll only spark several more.
September 7th, 2005 at at 5:22 pm
Actually Lance, the theory of evolution says nothing about the origin of life, it only says what happened after life arose.
source: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IAorigintheory.shtml
And it’s not faith if you have enough evidence to believe or accept it.
September 7th, 2005 at at 5:34 pm
Uberkuh -
I didn’t ignore your point purposefully. Frankly, I don’t really understand it, for all you do is assert –
“it is logically impossible for Adam and Eve to have sinned if they had no knowledge of good and evil before eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
How? Why? You don’t need to take Geometry to be able to draw a right triangle. Even if the story of the Tree is to be taken literally (a conclusion I have not made), why does its fruit (and the understanding it brings) logically have to precede the decision to disobey the rule of God laid down beforehand?
Perhaps I don’t understand your point because you have failed to clearly explain it, as opposed to my being a “moron” who sits on my “high horse” of ignorance . . . Aaron’s cheerleading notwithstanding.
September 7th, 2005 at at 5:37 pm
Question -
If it’s not a theory of origin, then why in the world do its proponents fight so vigorously against any theory of Intelligent Design, which is obviously a theory of origin? Why the turf war if they are addressing two different things?
September 7th, 2005 at at 6:18 pm
First of all, evolution is not a theory of the origin of life like the page says.
Secondly, scientists probably fight against I.D. so vigorously, or just ignore it, because I.D. is not a scientific theory.
They have no evidence to support their “theory”.
This
article tells it like it is.
September 7th, 2005 at at 7:39 pm
Lance wrote: “Even if the story of the Tree is to be taken literally (a conclusion I have not made), why does its fruit (and the understanding it brings) logically have to precede the decision to disobey the rule of God laid down beforehand?”
Adam and Eve could not have known that they decided to commit a sin against God if they did not have knowledge of good and evil. Thus, they could not have been held accountable for sinning. You would not hold out a cookie jar for a child, let him eat from it, and then slap his hand because he disobeyed you.
This is all elementary, and I would fail to see how you miss it if not for the fact that you are, first and foremost, committed to irrational religious beliefs that profoundly influence your decision making abilities. I can see that you are sharp, but, when discussing religion, there is a sharp contrast between your intelligence and your use of it. Religion blinds you to the obvious.
September 7th, 2005 at at 7:51 pm
Lance,
Darwin looked at all the diversity of life and came up with a theory to explain it. He posits that organism change and adapt over time, over several generations as a result of random mutations. Those adaptations that were benefitial (or at least not detrimental) are retained because they allowed the organism to be successful enough to breed. From this, we can see that many organisms share a common ancestor, and, if you go back far enough, possibly even one ancestor. This may be the part about origins you mean.
Darwin’s theory of evolution was attacked by religious nutballs on religious grounds, not scientific grounds. At the time, humans were ignorant as to the nature of DNA, which helps to explain how and why adaptations occur. Even so, there was still plenty of evidence in Darwin’s time, fossils, for example. DNA is still more evidence of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“Intelligent” Design is a new attack by the same nutball mentality, on different grounds. Proponents of ID claim that their idea is just as good as Darwin’s in explaining biodiversity and the change of organisms over time. They disguise religion in the words and mannerisms of science, and do a very poor job of hiding it.
When we say there is no evidence for ID, we mean there is no way to verify whether the idea explains how and why creatures change over time. “God did it” doesn’t really get us anywhere. It can’t be refuted, but, at the same time, it cannot be verified, so its meaningless. Besides which, even if it were true (which it isn’t), it wouldn’t add any insight into the workings of the universe. Sure, we could ask questions, like “why did god do it?” “to what end?” “why make things so incredible complex at so many scales?” “why are there billions and billions of stars when just one (ours) would suffice?”. But these can’t really be answered, so, in the end, ID is a dead end. It is meaningless religious blather.
Why are atheists (and other non-ignorant people) so vehemently opposed to ID being taught in schools? Because we recognise that a) its just a bunch of BS, and b) it is one particular creation MYTH out of hundreds, and so favours one particular religion over several other, equally unplausible origins, and c) is steering people into zones of ignorance and superstition that are horrifying and dangerous (think psycho muslim/xian/jewish fundamentalism, ie, terrorist thinking).
“Mookie’s tirade is quite visceral, but hardly has anything to do with the concept of original sin as it is understood by most Christians. To say Mankind is afflicted with original sin is no more insulting to any member of the group than it is to tell somebody they are too short to ride a roller coaster. To be insulted by such a statement is to merely find the insult one is looking to suffer.”
Actually, I think I understand the concept of original sin a lot better than most xians. Believing me to be broken or sinful is the same as saying “I think you are defective. I think you need religion to fix your defective nature. There is certainly something wrong with you.” I find it espcially insulting because its ignorant and human-hating. A big “fuck you” goes out to all who believe in that nonsense. Why? Because this idea has brutalized humanity for far too long. I would say it to a catholic monk torturing a Native American. Yes, I would insult someone for believing humans are broken, sinful animals that need to be “saved”, even if they did not choose to torture me to be “saved”. No one would fault me for saying “fuck you” to a fascist, so it is with this.
Original sin amounts to creating a problem when there really isn’t one and offering a solution that really isn’t needed. Those who believe they have the problem are quickly divested of their money, their dignity, their logic and reasoning skills, their free will, and their ability to comprehend reality. All to buy a bunch of air – shoddy, unnecessary merchandise that makes humans ignorant, violent, and competitive, among other things.
September 7th, 2005 at at 8:09 pm
I want to thank everyone for your comments. I have really enjoyed the debates. I can’t continue doing this or I won’t get my work done!! I don’t know how you guys (and women) have the time for all this
Anyway, I do find it interesting that (at least in my corner) the Christian vs. atheist debate has transformed into a postmodern philosophy vs. logical positivism debate.
Frankly, I don’t know anything else to say- I know we will continue to go around and around and around in circles. And you are free to dispute this, but I think that it is just human nature to defend the ideas and beliefs that we put our faith in.
Thanks again, folks, for letting Chad and Ed and the Eternal Revolution crew into the discussion!
September 7th, 2005 at at 10:11 pm
Thanks for participating, Joel. I have to say that I’m fascinated to see postmodern sources and ideas used for christian apologetics. (Not all that surprised, though, since they’re useful to attack science.) I have always associated them in my mind with leftist politics and with what some call “moral relativism.”
I wonder how open the majority of christians are to the idea of multiple truths.
September 7th, 2005 at at 10:40 pm
Boy, I showed up here buying the promotional advertising that this would be a heady, intellectual, respectful exchange of ideas, beliefs, questions and explanations where conversion and persuasion were not the goals, but simple sharing and a better understanding of our counterparts from across the wall. Instead, I find name-calling, f-bombing, and a palpable condescension. And what the heck is “xian” all about?
Nevertheless, I will try to respond further:
Uberkuh -
Your analogy of offering the cookie without further guidance is misplaced. Said child would be guilty and punishable if, after setting the cookie jar on the counter, I said “You can’t have any cookies before dinner.”
For someone so intent on taking the Eden story literally, you’re leaving out the obvious, most important part: God’s warning not to eat of the Tree else death would surely follow. Eve’s colloquy with the Serpant evidences that even before sampling the forbidden fruit and gaining its prohibited insights, she clearly knew the rule God had laid down and the wrongness of violating it.
I think the better question is about that Tree: if literal, what “knowledge” would it bestow above that which Adam and Eve already knew? If allegorical, what does it stand for? I don’t know either answer, but I’m quite certain that simply calling an edited version of the story “illogical” or “elementary” doesn’t make it so.
Mookie -
Would you equally say “fuck you” to the “monk” who helped found some of America’s finest universities, hospitals, etc. Or, to use a more concrete example, would you say “fuck you” to the Southern Baptists who have set up so many mobile kitchens that are feeding those afflicted by Hurricane Katrina? Or how ’bout the innumerable other people of faith who, historically, have stood in the breech to help those in need when catastrophe strikes? Or would you similarly have your pedetrian vulgarity ready for the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. because he, too, believes such “nonsense”? And I guess Pope John Paul II deserves The Finger as well, his work in helping all of Eastern Europe throw off the chains of tyranny notwithstanding?
It’s so easy to use the worst of the religious world as a foil for your ideas, but it’s also intellectually lazy. It’s the Nebraska Cornhuskers (back when they were a football powerhouse) scheduling Eastern Montana Tech A&M for homecoming. While the victory is clear, it’s hardly a conquest worthy of respect. In each case, the tactic reveals the same goal: stacking the deck to assure an easy victory.
September 7th, 2005 at at 11:29 pm
Lance Corporal wrote: “Your analogy of offering the cookie without further guidance is misplaced. Said child would be guilty and punishable if, after setting the cookie jar on the counter, I said ‘You can’t have any cookies before dinner.’”
The point is that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before committing an evil act. Thus, they are not to be blamed.
You must take this story literally, because it is the basis of your faith, as Chad admits.
Lance Armstrong wrote: “For someone so intent on taking the Eden story literally, you’re leaving out the obvious, most important part: God’s warning not to eat of the Tree else death would surely follow. Eve’s colloquy with the Serpant evidences that even before sampling the forbidden fruit and gaining its prohibited insights, she clearly knew the rule God had laid down and the wrongness of violating it.”
No. She gained this knowledge only after eating from the evil tree.
(As an aside: OMG, it’s an evil tree! Run!!)
Lancelot wrote: “I think the better question is about that Tree: if literal, what ‘knowledge’ would it bestow above that which Adam and Eve already knew? If allegorical, what does it stand for? I don’t know either answer, but I’m quite certain that simply calling an edited version of the story ‘illogical’ or ‘elementary’ doesn’t make it so.
No. These questions are relatively unimportant to the central problem you continue to ignore. Literal of allegorical, the problem is identical: No one but God is responsible for creating beings with a natural predisposition to disobey him.
Assuming for the moment that God can choose at all (as well as a hundred other problems), he could have chosen to create beings that never disobeyed him and yet still had freewill.
I pray that the incoherent deity you waste your life worshipping spare you eternal damnation for consistently not using the brain he gave you. Amen.
September 7th, 2005 at at 11:38 pm
Hey, everyone do me a favor. Take a deep breath before submitting your next comment.
September 8th, 2005 at at 12:12 am
Lance,
“xian” is shorthand for christian, like “xmas” is for christmas. It is not a bad thing (unless, like me, you find xianity repulsive).
And yes, a big fuck you to any and all who believe that humans are inherently evil. I say “fuck you” to hate. Would you not do the same for something that has caused the suffering of untold millions? Even the goodly folks that mean well are spreading and upholding a meme that has set back humanity a thousand years. Sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons, but usually, especially in the case of religion, its the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.
The flaming began with Chad’s post and his human-hating. You may feel a lot of heat from some atheists, but remember, we witnessed the idiocy of religion when some very pious and very brainwashed religious nutballs slammed two planes into two towers. Only muslim you say? What about McVeigh, what about the jews being dicks to the Palestinians? I could go on and on.
When I say religion sucks balls, I really do mean it. I have known people that are have been warped, twisted, and abused by religion. I see no redeeming things about religion. The morals and the spiritualness points are meaningless when you couple them with lies. I can find morals and spirituality (if that’s what I seek) on my own. Like Sinatra sang, “I did it my way.” I don’t need religious dogma and superstition to help me along in life. I need an open mind that works using logic and reason.
Could I have said all this without the flames? Yes. I just think its more effective to let people know they really are ignorant, brainwashed fools. They are not inherently flawed, they were just raised with bad memes. And in these times, when folks have access to mountains of information, and yet continue to believe in backwards things that demeans humanity, that is being intellectually lazy. I don’t start from the premise that religion is a pile of horseshit, I start from “what memes are good for humanity and which are bad?”. You start from the belief that humans are evil sinners who need to be fixed to resemble some vaguely defined perfection. I reach my conclusion after years of scrutiny, you reach your conclusion because someone told you that’s the way it is. My way involves thinking, questioning, reasoning, your way involves unthinking, unquestioning, unreasoning faith.
When you remove original sin, the rest of xianity makes no sense. And if the basis of your religion is hate, then that may explain all those bad things humans do to each other.
September 8th, 2005 at at 1:22 am
[...] So it turns out that Chad’s experiment seemed (or seems) to be going quite well. In his guest post at The Evangelical Atheist, Chad makes note [...]
September 8th, 2005 at at 1:34 am
I’m sorry, Mookie, did you say something about hate? Pot. Kettle. Black. Is this thing gonna deteriorate now? We were doing SO well…
September 8th, 2005 at at 1:54 am
I AM is right.
God does not exist.
And, we are becoming unruly.
September 8th, 2005 at at 3:00 am
Lance,
As far as I can remember, God did not tell Adam and Eve that it was wrong to eat of the tree, but rather forbade them to do so because ‘they would surely die’. The snake then convinced Eve otherwise. Here, Eve does not have any knowledge that disobeying God is wrong, she is simply told something bad will happen if she does, and when convinced nothing bad will happen, happily eats. Since at this point she had no ‘knowledge of good and evil’, how is this a sin? Is any disobedience to God, even if we don’t know his will, a sin? Doesn’t the fact he’s supposedly basically unknowable make that a little awkward for theists?
September 8th, 2005 at at 3:28 am
‘they would surely die’
It’s a bit off-topic, but worth mentioning: god blatantly lied about this. That’s always sort of irritated me. The serpent in fact tells Eve the truth. And the bible makes clear that the reason he doesn’t want them to eat the fruit is jealousy.
When he sends A&E out of Eden, he says specifically (Gen 3:22-23): “See, the man has become one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life; and eat, and live forever.” He doesn’t send them away for disobeying. He sends them away because he’s frightened that they could become as powerful as he is.
I understand that you guys take the tale allegorically, but it looks to me like the allegory of original sin doesn’t really quite fit the source. (I realize the interpretation you subscribe to is old, but it doesn’t seem to be the interpretation that the author of the story had in mind.) Are you familiar with the gnostic christian interpretation? It makes more sense to me. By that I mean aesthetic sense. I certainly don’t believe in gnostic religion any more than I do orthodox.
September 8th, 2005 at at 3:34 am
He doesn’t send them away for disobeying. He sends them away because he’s frightened that they could become as powerful as he is.
Ah, I see that Yam (heh heh) has already noted this. Part I: Eden.
September 8th, 2005 at at 4:23 am
I am (me, not Yammy) a foul-mouthed vulgar sumamabish.
But I must say, that in the reading of these “debates,” I have been a little worried – and even a little shamed – about the language and approach we’ve chosen to use on our side.
I understand the passion (the drive, not the movie, folks). I understand the complete sense of bewilderment. I’ve been witness to complete lapses of logic and wanted to gouge my eyes out of my face for having to be privy to it. I also don’t necessarily subscribe to the notion that there is any spectacular merit to “civility” and being “proper.” I am adamantly against forced conformity, and champion individuality, but recognize the social and civil need for the application of “manners.”
But, I doubt that I would see Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Richard Carrier, et al. saying “Fuck you!” in a debate. Not that they’re superior to us, but it’s a point.
Also, these Christians (I’ll spell it out for you, Lance) are being quite atypical, which means they’re being respectful. I’ve yet to see any of the theists put us down for our disbelief, much less doom us to an everlasting punishment in a lake of fire. But I have seen atheists demonstrating characteristics that may cause the other side to mumble things like “See, they’re all the same. I told you so.”
Remember, if we cannot win them to our side, our hopes are to at least influence respectful discourse. The most likely (realistic) win for us is breaking down some of the myths held by so many about us. Remember that we ARE discriminated against and the victim of some ridiculous stereotypes.
Also, remember that you are effectively handing out ammunition. If you present a sound argument that is difficult to honestly challenge, you the messenger or the delivery of the message will be attacked in the actual message’s proxy. In the theist’s moment of introspect, I want him/her thinking about what s/he’s heard, and actually asking questions. Not just resenting me for being an arrogant, immature antagonist.
Remember, it was Jesus who called people fools and idiots. So, I ask all of us atheists, when faced with a deluge of logical inconsistencies, contradictions, irrationalities and (perceived) ignorance, to ask themselves a simple question: What Would Jesus Do?
Because that’s obviously not what we want to model ourselves after.
September 8th, 2005 at at 8:10 am
DUB:
I echo your sentiments exactly.
That’s why it’s so hard for me to tell people how to express their ideas. I would resent it if someone did it to me. “Take a deep breath” was the most I could bring myself to say, but you’ve expressed if beautifully.
September 8th, 2005 at at 9:04 am
Lance –
The theme for this blog post was understanding and learning, so a lengthy explination is quite appropriate. Let me recommend you learn a bit more about the scientific method. It may not change your opinion, but I think it may help you understand the atheist’s positiion a bit better. In brief, religious explinations require a lot of faith in a lot of different things; god created the universe; god wants this; god is being truthful; Jesus was the son of god; Jesus arose from the dead; Jesus really is the way to heaven; and so on. In science, yes, we have a number of assumptions, too, but they are far less in number, and much more benign. To scientists, an explination positing fewer assumptions is stronger, since anything can be explained with enough assumptions.
This is one of many things that annoy atheists about Christians, or theists in general. Even if you reject secular explanations for the human condition, there are many other religious explanations, such as the Buddhist ying-and-yang, the Greek navel separation myth, and New Age ideas of karma. I have tons more respoct for somebody who holds a belief because it makes sence to them, than for somebody who proclaims their explanation is the only, or the only one that makes sence. In particular, it can get frustrating because here we are, offering a rigorous explination, but some religious people won’t even bother to listen.
So let me talk briefly about humanity and the human condition. As an aside, homo sapiens were NOT the only species to achieve our level of sophistication. Another species called homo neandertalis (I may have the name wrong), was wiped out by homo sapiens as the latter took over space and resources from the former. Once in a prime position to achieve dominance, it’s easy to wipe out any competition. As for the ails of society, we have addressed many of them. The US has welfare, Canada free healthcare, and all nations have police of some sort. It’s certainly not perfect, but we are making progress.
So, the short answer is, “Yes, evolution works that way!” It doesn’t have to make sence to you, nor do you even have to accept it. But, if you are willing to consider rational, secular explinations, you probably have more in common with many atheists than you do with some Christians.
September 8th, 2005 at at 11:23 am
Sportin life,
I really wish I could keep a dialogue going. I was having a blast! But, I swear, I will get in deep shit at work if I keep doiing this.
a few (quick) things- you’re right about Kuhn (I should be more careful when I name drop) and you definitely are more knowledgable concerning the history/ philosophy of science- I am more of a “dabbler.” most “pomo” folks re-interpret Kuhn in a way that helps their cause, by suggesting that even scientific evidence is contingent upon a specific scientific community (which suggests that even “objective” phenomenon is interpreted as such within the context of the community)- but that is, of course, our little “pomo” spin on Kuhn.
as far as Christian postmoderns, there is a whole school of thought called “narrative theology.” The emphasis is on the “story” of the gospel, rather than scientific proofs and evidence. I think Christians were tired of trying to supply proofs for the existence of God/ Jesus and decided to try a different approach. After all, for Christians the “magic” of Christianity is in the story itself, not it’s ability to be empirically tested (that is more the rules of logic, science). So, in a way, a narrative theologian might say that there aren’t really multiple realities, just multiple stories- that was my whole focus in my blog on the eternal revolution site.
but I speak more the language of fairy tales, that’s why the atheists are getting tired of talking with me!! I am completely illogical, intellectually irresponsible, and I like it that way!
thanks again sportin life- and if you want to e-mail me personally (without a forum) drop me a note at joelgivens@gmail.com
September 8th, 2005 at at 2:36 pm
Theists are demeaning all humans with orginal sin, agreeing with and promoting all manner of torture, brutality, and oppression, whereas I choose to curse those who propagate this horrible meme, and I’m made out to be the villian.
I will apologise to theists if they apologise to me and all of humanity, past and present, for their beliefs that have brutalized humans for over a thousand years. Also, my curses are not so much for the person as they are for the belief, the meme. When a person identifies with the meme so much that they carry themselves merely as a receptacle for the meme, then the curses can seem to attack that person. A person cannot be inherently flawed for being born, but they certainly can adapt an inherently evil meme and become so twisted by it that they are no longer distinguishable from the meme. If people do still have free will, then they can reject these nasty ideas that spread ignorance and hate. If they choose not to do so, then they have made their choice, and so are worthy of the curses.
“…Mookie, did you say something about hate?”
On the campus of the university I attend, bands of xians routinely pass out fliers for sermons and religious gatherings to the students. They bother us incessantly with their pushy tactics, and refuse to leave campus, even when told by the campus police. The students have no time nor desire to deal with them or their creepy ministers, and do all they can to avoid being bothered. Fliers end up all over the sidewalks, in the bushes and trees, in the lectures halls, always a big mess. To me, this is xianity in a nutshell. It seeks to undermine knowledge, logic, and reason, and only ends up making a big mess, getting in everyones way. Hate against such a thing is not unjustified. I AM makes posts accusing god(s) of being dicks, which they most certainly are. Hating an idea that subjugates humans is healthy hate. It brings people together to put an end to detrimental ideas.
“I’m sorry, Mookie…”
Chad is partially forgiven, because he apologised, sort of. It still doesn’t mean quite as much as it would if he stopped hating humans. He has yet to renounce his belief that humans are defective, evil, grotesque animals, but these things take time. He may only be beginning to regain his own mind from the torment of the xianity meme. Soon he will cast off the ugly shell that has corrupted his mind and those of others, and will understand why some atheists are so upset with it. He then will dance around it mockingly, cursing it to release all the anger and frustration he felt when he was a self-loathing xian. Chad will be welcomed with open, loving arms to brotherhood of humanity (at least, that part of it that does not hate humanity), and will enjoy being a slightly smarter, slightly less furry, inherently wonderful monkey like everyone else. Reality, positiveness and hope await you Chad. You have only to give up hate.
September 8th, 2005 at at 2:48 pm
In a vain effort to meet some of the theists halfway, I will “clean up” some of my previous posts, replacing some of the more insulting words with ones that may seem more appropriate to them.
Original sin is such a hateful and negative idea. With it, you have insulted my very existence, and the existence of every other human on earth. Meaning that to be xian, I have to hate myself and every other human, because we are all a bunch of rotten sinners. This is why I find religion so repulsive and detrimental to human progress. Sorry, but {you are inherently flawed}. I am not inherently evil, I do not hate myself and all humans, I do not need to be saved, nor will I be going to hell. You can keep your religion to yourself, there’s plenty of hate out there already.
A big “{you are inherently nasty and cruel}” goes out to all who believe in that nonsense. Why? Because this idea has brutalized humanity for far too long. I would say it to a catholic monk torturing a Native American. Yes, I would insult someone for believing humans are broken, sinful animals that need to be “saved”, even if they did not choose to torture me to be “saved”. No one would fault me for saying “{you were born ugly and rotten}” to a fascist, so it is with this.
And yes, a big {there was and still is something horribly wrong with you from the moment you were born} to any and all who believe that humans are inherently evil. I say “{you are a naturally grotesque monster}” to hate. Would you not do the same for something that has caused the suffering of untold millions?
Is that better?
September 8th, 2005 at at 3:02 pm
DUB, IM (I lifted that moniker from a subsequent thread of yours) -
I appreciate your posts. To be honest, I left the discussion quite exasperated last night. DUB had me pegged, as I indeed left thinking “stereotypes largely verified.” Glad to see that needn’t be the case.
Understand, I have no problem hearing that I’m horribly wrong and the litany of reasons why. It wouldn’t be the first time, and won’t be the last. However, the anger on display and the utter lack of respect for the person(s) holding the “uneducated” view is shocking, and disheartening. I really don’t understand it. For all the talk of the primacy of logic and reason that supposedly characterizes the atheist perspective, I have seen far more emotional, irrational Klingon-esque anger and hatred than the calm rationality of Vulcan logic. (Again, forgive the Star Trek analogies, but it’s all that’s worth anything on daytime TV. Unemployment sucks.)
I don’t understand the fusing of concepts that are separate and distinct. “Hatred,” Mookie, is NOT the same as saying there’s something wrong or “defective” in all of us. If it were, than what distinguishes a medical diagnosis from a spiritual one? Do you really believe that an oncologist “hates” his patient when he tells her “I’m sorry, but you have breast cancer?” C’mon . . . you can say is he wrong, or even call him a quack, but to say that his diagnosis, and even his entire field of study, is based upon patient “hatred” because it causes him to say there is something wrong or defective and needing repair in his patients is absurd. In like manner, feel free to say that my “diagnosis” is in error, or even that I’m practicing quackery, but saying hatred is my motive and modus operandi is both unfair and unproductive. Contrary to the the teachings of Terrell Owens, et al, telling somebody they are wrong is not “disrespecting” them; calling them a delusional moron, though, is.
In his post over at Eternal Revolution, IM said “I will NEVER support any measure that would take away your right to believe or to practice your faith in a way that doesn’t harm others. I want to convince you, not destroy you.” I’m guessing he said that in order to allay a fear he has sensed that Christians are afraid of atheists; afraid that if given the opportunity, atheists would seek to end a Christian’s right to believe and practice their faith that is so central to them.
While his statement was appreciated, conversations like this gut statements like that of their believability and reinforce the Christian suspicion. If, as many have argued in one form or another, religion in general (and Christianity in particular) is more than just the “opiate of the masses,” but rather is a social disease of the most destructive sort, than what reason exists to allow it to continue, let alone prosper? There is no logic to allowing a belief and practice that has so little upside (according to the atheist estimations exhibited here) to counterbalance the parade of horrors for which it is responsible. I’m open to what other rationales for freedom of religious thought and expression may exist that atheism would espouse, but I don’t see them from here. The whole situation makes the assurances of the secular world look more and more like a pragmatic “saying what HAS to be said” by a group who, as DUB put it, is currently on the wrong end of the discrimination and power scales.
Finally, this guilt-by-association thing is pointless. Heck, the whole point of this exchange was to illustrate that the negative stereotypes of each other are no proxy for dealing with real people and how they really present themselves. If ya’ll would rather return to passing around the stereotypical Christian Straw Man (Hah! the brainless scarecrow of Oz . . . brilliant!) and taking turns beating him senseless, then just say so, and I’ll say “Good day” and be gone. But, you would actually have an interest in understanding the hows and whys of why I believe so dearly in concepts and precepts that you find illogical, irrational, and primitive, then I’ll be glad to lay my cards on the table and answer any questions ya’ll may have. I know that’s what I was seeking — learning the hows and whys of you ya’ll believe (or don’t, however you want to put it) the way you do.
Make no mistake: you don’t have the monopoly on being flabbergasted at the thought process of the other. For instance: the most simple of technologies mankind has ever employed, or the simplest forms of artistry he has ever enjoyed – all have had a designer. Yet, when it comes to the most complex systems we see — the human body; the brain; the planetary ecosystem; heck, the human cell or even the atom — or the most beautiful things the material world has to offer — pick your favorite spot on the planet, or your favorite Hubble Telescope image — the concept of a Designer is not only rejected out of hand, but derided as lunacy. Frankly, that thought process just doesn’t compute in my brain. Like a Quattro Pro formula involving an empty cell, it comes up “ERR” every time I ponder it. Yet, I feel no need to see you as stupid, moronic, or any other perjorative terms that would label you as less than me.
And that’s the rub: though I do, indeed, believe humanity is inherently broken, and enters life in a condition that differs from its intended design, my view levels the field, removing any basis for one feeling superior to the other. On the other hand, the comments here drip with a sense of arrogant superiority. Even if correct, it’s certainly unbecoming.
September 8th, 2005 at at 4:24 pm
Hey Mookie and/or Humble Mookie,
Soren Kierkegaard was no intellectual slouch, and he defined sin as “building your identity on anything but God” and explained how that leads to internal slavery and narrowness of spirit. He (and other lesser followers of Christian spirituality like myself) would tend to make the polar opposite argument that you are making – minus the bomb throwing and vitriol.
Historically, most of us have made choices to center our lives on ourselves and on the pursuit of things rather than God and others. This has led to a loss of peace – within ourselves and in nature itself. War, hunger, poverty, racism, bitterness, injustice, meaninglessness, despair, and death are all symptoms of the bondage and enslavement of spirit we are in when we choose self-centered lives over God-centered ones. (Please don’t tell me that I’m describing religion b/c I’m not defending religion, I’m defending Christian spirituality. Religion is mostly self-centered as well, as in: What can God do for me?)
September 8th, 2005 at at 4:57 pm
Lance Says:
For instance: the most simple of technologies mankind has ever employed, or the simplest forms of artistry he has ever enjoyed – all have had a designer. Yet, when it comes to the most complex systems we see — the human body; the brain; the planetary ecosystem; heck, the human cell or even the atom — or the most beautiful things the material world has to offer — pick your favorite spot on the planet, or your favorite Hubble Telescope image — the concept of a Designer is not only rejected out of hand, but derided as lunacy.
You’re missing the point.
Pretend for a minute that there really is a designer. (You already think that, so it should be easy!)
OK, so what?
Well, the “theory” of Intelligent Design still doesn’t belong in science class. It ain’t science. We’ve already agreed (hypothetically) that there is a designer, so merely stating that there must be a designer is being redundant. To be science, we must know how the designer did the designing…at least have some testable (or even potentially testable) mechanism. ID doesn’t have that. Not even close.
Also, the concept of a designer is not rejected out of hand by science. Science can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a designer who, by the theists own definitions, must have an existence that is supernatural. That is, “above” nature.
Since science is limited to studying physical phenomena – nature – it cannot – ever – address the question of “Is there a designer?” with any meaning.
It’s apples and oranges. Science can’t deal with the question.
Anyway, back to the “Let’s assume there really is a designer”.
Fine. Which theory explains how the designer created the diversity (yet connectedness) of life that we witness on the Earth better: Evolution*, or ID
Evolution* says that the diversity of life can be explained by natural forces such as mutation, heredity, and natural selection. We can observe these phenomena in the lab, in the fossil record, and in our own genetic code.
ID says…”At some unknown point in the past (somewhere between 5,000 and 5,000,000,000 years ago), or maybe in an ongoing process (?) an unknown designer, (possibly supernatural, but possibly natural with supernatural intelligence) working with unknown – and possibly unknowable – mechanisms – did some designing to many things which look designed.”
Summary of what ID “explains”:
Who (Designed) = Don’t Know
What (was Designed) = Whatever we say was designed*
How (was it designed) = Don’t Know
When (was it designed) = Don’t Know
Where (was it designed) = Don’t Know
*Note* By assuming there is a designer, now we’re wearing the “Theistic Evolution” hat. TE people believe that “God did it…but he did it with evolution.”
Care to prove them wrong? Can you prove that God did not “do it” through evolution? As a Christian, why would you even want to?
September 8th, 2005 at at 6:29 pm
Lance:
Here are some questions; these are things I genuinely don’t understand about theistic beliefs, and especially about those who associate themselves with a given church or doctrine. If the questions seem thorny or difficult, please understand I’m not asking them just to give you trouble. I really do want to know how a person like yourself answers these questions.
Firstly: do you believe that God is omniscient – that he knows everything that has, does, or will happen, and knew all this from before the creation of the universe?
Do you believe that he is omnipotent – that there is no thing that he cannot do, and if he does not do something, that he has a good reason, rather than being simply powerless?
Do you yourself believe that humans have free will – that we can make choices and take actions that God would not approve of, but that he does/can not prevent us? Or do you believe that everything we do is known by God in advance, and that he could if he chose either cause us to do things differently or could have created us so that we would do things differently, but that he chose not to?
If you do/do not believe any of these things, does the church to which you belong? If your beliefs and those of your church differ, how do you reconcile that? At least one of you must be wrong, after all. Or do you believe that two contradictory beliefs can both be true (when referring to the same concepts, speaking at the same level of meaning, etc etc insert all required postmodernist disclaimers so we can speak usefully here)?
Do you believe that the Bible is the literal word of God? Do you believe that only some of it is literal? How do you decide which parts to accept as literally true, and which to reject? How do you arbitrate between your beliefs and those of others of the same nominal faith?
If as you suggest above you don’t feel that evolution is a fully adequate explanation for the state of the world, how do you imagine the reality differs? I’m not looking for a scholarly treatise on divine biochemistry or anything. Really the question is, at what point do you think God intervenes? You seem a rational guy, so I assume you acknowledge that evolution is a solid scientific theory, and that your objection is that you require a guiding hand to give its products meaning – that you would class yourself as a ‘theistic evolutionist’ as rmadison says (if I’m wrong, please let me know). I assume therefore that you accept that certain mechanisms of evolution operate as described by theory. So, where does God’s hand enter in? Do you believe that he somehow causes certain molecules to form despite low probability in the primordial soup? Do you think he culls certain species to give others a better survival chance (or anything similar that could fit the bill of ‘natural selection guided by God’)?
In a more general vein related to the questions above – I assume you accept that the world *does* proceed according to the laws discovered/described by science, at least most of the time (ie outside of miracles). If you imagine God can directly intervene in the operation of the material world, and produce miracles, how does this affect your trust in physical law? Do you believe that – for example – if God grants your prayer for a sunny day tomorrow, he will actually somehow prevent rainclouds from forming that otherwise would have done so? How do you imagine this could be distinguished from rainclouds simply not forming for natural reasons? If you don’t think they can be distinguished, why do you need to see God’s hand at work at all? And if you think they can be distinguished – and if it turns out that the evidence for God’s hand that you expect to see is *not* visible – how would that affect your faith?
I could go on – there’s a lot about how theists seem to view the world that I don’t understand – but if nothing else, I need to sleep, I have work in the morning! I hope these questions give you something to think about. If you have any about my own views, please ask.
September 8th, 2005 at at 6:36 pm
rmadison -
I appreciate your effort, but I’m afraid you may have read something into what I’ve written that isn’t there – I’m not here advocating that a theory of origin – any theory of origin – should be taught in school. Such a question is inherently a philosophical/religious/metaphysical one, not a scientific one. When I brought up the ID in schools debate, it was only to illustrate that Evolution isn’t as hermetically sealed from the question of origins as somebody (“Question”?) was making it out be.
Surprised as you may be to hear this, I don’t think any theory of origin should be taught in schools, and likewise, I’m not in favor of “prayer in schools” as that term is used generally. Parents, not schools, should be teaching such things, and I find some over-the-loudspeaker morning prayer to be a hollow, religious exercise that accomplishes nothing but cheapening the whole exercise of prayer.
Bonus: I think these fights over stone monuments to the Ten Commandments are ridiculous and utterly misguided.
September 8th, 2005 at at 6:45 pm
Morgan -
Wow, that’s a lot. I will be glad to answer your post as best I can, but not now. Frankly, I’ve waited 8 months to watch meaningful football, and the Opening Kickoff is fast approaching (today should be a national holiday, IMHO).
Also, this comment thread is getting quite long. An answer to your query will be lengthy. Instead of doing so here, I will write something and post it on my blog, with a comment here directing any and all to it. It won’t be tonight, or maybe even this weekend (see above), but I will do it. I just want to make sure I take my time to -
1) sort out the answers to your questions, ’cause I know that, right now, I don’t have the answers to all of them, and
2) lay them out in a coherent manner.
I’ll let you know here. Thanks, Morgan – I appreciate the sincere inquiry.
September 8th, 2005 at at 7:00 pm
Hah! That’s what I get for not paying attention to the sporting world. I appreciate your feeling my questions merit such consideration. I’ll try to join in the discussion, though my net connection will be disrupted somewhat over the next while.
I hope we can both learn something from the discussion.
September 8th, 2005 at at 7:08 pm
Chad,
I like existentialism, and found Sartre’s words on the matter more enlightening; Kierkegaard believed in original sin. If all we are certain of is that we exist, then how and why do we include original sin? It adds very little meaning to our existence, and, at least to me, does much to demean it.
Historically, most of us have made choices to center our lives on god(s) and on the pursuit of spreading the word of god(s), rather than nature and others. This has led to a loss of peace – within ourselves and in nature itself. War, hunger, poverty, racism, bitterness, injustice, meaninglessness, despair, and death are all symptoms of the bondage and enslavement of spirit we are in when we choose God-centered lives over nature-centric ones.
I think that is far more accurate.
Crusades, jihads, slavery, inquisitions, chauvinism, purgings, all are done in the name of religion. Religion may not be the sole reason why people do these things, but it certainly makes it easy when you believe humans are inherently flawed. I don’t see a straw man here, I see the perpetuation of hatred. Could be because I have not been brainwashed by the idea of original sin, could be because I don’t find anything inherent about human nature, or it could be because I’m just a nasty, close-minded atheist. Take your pick, but I still say my point stands. You can deny the negativity of original sin all you want, but you have yet to actually address it in connection with all the bad things humans have done to one another.
I’ve beaten this original sin/human-hating drivel to death and mutilated its corpse, but you refuse to accept it as a driving force behind brutality and subjugation. Those god glasses you got on are really warping your perception of reality. I’ll refrain from talking about it any more because I think I’ve said all that I can. The rest is up to you.
“building your identity on anything but God”
What is god? How do you define god? You mentioned Star Trek: TNG. Watch “Who Watches the Watchers”. In it, Troi tells the people “That’s the problem with believing in gods, you never know what they want.” (or something to that effect). It was in response to the people determining what to do with the captive crew in order to appease their god. How do appease something that is not known to exist? How do you build your identity on something that is not defined?
Lance:
“Finally, this guilt-by-association thing is pointless.”
That’s right, it is pointless. Stop feeling guilty for being human. Stop associating yourself with beliefs that label you an original sinner.
Did you completely ignore my earlier post on the matter of ID? I’ll clean it up so as to appear more “civil”. Here are the words of the heathen once more to enlighten you:
Darwin looked at all the diversity of life and came up with a theory to explain it. He posits that organism change and adapt over time, over several generations as a result of random mutations. Those adaptations that were benefitial (or at least not detrimental) are retained because they allowed the organism to be successful enough to breed. From this, we can see that many organisms share a common ancestor, and, if you go back far enough, possibly even one ancestor. This may be the part about origins you mean.
Darwin’s theory of evolution was attacked by religious people on religious grounds, not scientific grounds. At the time, humans were ignorant as to the nature of DNA, which helps to explain how and why adaptations occur. Even so, there was still plenty of evidence in Darwin’s time, fossils, for example. DNA is still more evidence of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“Intelligent” Design is a new attack by the same religious mentality, on different grounds. Proponents of ID claim that their idea is just as good as Darwin’s in explaining biodiversity and the change of organisms over time. They disguise religion in the words and mannerisms of science, and do a very poor job of hiding it.
When we say there is no evidence for ID, we mean there is no way to verify whether the idea explains how and why creatures change over time. “God did it” doesn’t really get us anywhere. It can’t be refuted, but, at the same time, it cannot be verified, so its meaningless. Besides which, even if it were true (which it isn’t), it wouldn’t add any insight into the workings of the universe. Sure, we could ask questions, like “why did god do it?” “to what end?” “why make things so incredible complex at so many scales?” “why are there billions and billions of stars when just one (ours) would suffice?”. But these can’t really be answered, so, in the end, ID is a dead end. It is meaningless religious blather.
Why are atheists and others so vehemently opposed to ID being taught in schools? Because we recognise that a) its just a bunch of nonreality, and b) it is one particular creation MYTH out of hundreds, and so favours one particular religion over several other, equally implausible origins, and c) is steering people into zones of superstition that are horrifying and dangerous because they are based on religious texts and not on empirical data.
Better?
September 8th, 2005 at at 7:18 pm
Lance, I just tried to correct your false assumption that evolution is about the origin of life.
I disagree that the question about the origins of life is “inherently a philosophical/religious/metaphysical one.” Maybe those three should be focused on the why and not the how.
Science could one day unlock the secrets of how life started on this planet. In fact, I’ll leave you with this:
David Liu, a chemistry professor at Harvard, said in the newspaper that while living systems are complex, science should provide the answers.
“My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention,” Liu was quoted as saying.
source: here
September 9th, 2005 at at 6:17 am
[...] We’re been sorting through some of the issues by swapping posts with non-believers (here and here). Ask questions and decide if you really believe this stuff. I would [...]
September 9th, 2005 at at 12:20 pm
Mookie -
To answer your question about my ignoring your arguments about the teaching of ID in school, see this comment.
September 9th, 2005 at at 3:47 pm
hey all you folks that had questions about Christian postmodernism. check out this interview with Brian McClaren- he does a much better job explaining it.
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/beta/god_article.php?id=1012
September 10th, 2005 at at 9:54 pm
I have persused the comments here and am struck by two things– one is the level of hatred expressed by some atheists towards Christians and what they believe. While nothing new, it never fails to surprise me. The other is that Christians have allowed the argument to be focused on philosophical or logical proofs for the existence of God (not just here but in discussions carried on in academia and in other fora).
In fact, Christianity does not need such proofs. Its claims rest on another premise; namely, that God took on human form and entered the world at a specific point in history. 1 John starts out by saying that (paraphrasing) “God became man. we saw him; we touched him”. The books of the New Testament were all written within the life time of people who were witnesses to what happened. Our faith rests on belief that they were honest witnesses to what they saw and heard Jesus do and teach. And since he accepts the Old Testament and its teachings, so do we.
One needs to read the Gospels and Acts and decide whether they are persuasive or not. In another book one of the apostles writes (and, again, I paraphrase): “We’d be a bunch of pitiful idiots to preach a lie”.
If one accepts that they are telling the truth, then philosophic proofs become irrelevant, as does not understanding every aspect of the story (like exactly how atonement [the death of Jesus on the cross] works).
Let me forestall one objection in advance. The life of Jesus is the best attested ancient life we have. The books of the Bible were all written during the lifetimes of many hundreds and, even, thousands of people who were witnesses to the events they describe.
If you want to dispute that it wasn’t published in the “Palestine Gazette” within days and weeks of the events, be prepared for hordes of aging Classics professors to descend on you. The earliest surviving manuscript we have of Caesar’s Gallic wars dates from around 1000 ad. Yet if you say that Caesar didn’t conquer Gaul or, even, that he didn’t exist … boy I don’t want to be there when the Classicists arrive!
September 16th, 2005 at at 12:22 pm
Colleen – you may want to watch “the god who wasn’t there” – it may shed some light on this jesus character you like to talk about so much. in case you don’t watch the movie, and i’m guessing you won’t because it doesn’t seek to affirm your faith, as the name implies, let me just tell you the underlying concept, reinforced by fact and solid evidence: jesus was a composite of many different myths from many different cultures, homogenized and pasteurized for your comfort.
September 16th, 2005 at at 2:26 pm
Jahrta,
Interesting that it took 2,000 years for someone to figure out that Jesus did not really exist. You make an assumption that Colleen would not want to hear any evidence that doesn’t affirm her faith. I suppose you consider yourself to be a completely objective person with no biases yet you seem to fail consider some “fact and solid evidence” in support of the existence of Christ.
The fact is there are numerous extra-biblical accounts that mention the existence of Jesus Christ and were written sufficiently close to the life of Christ to be historically credible.
Cornelius Tacitus, the well-known and respected ancient Roman historian who lived in AD 55-120, records in his great work, the Annals, the fact that Emperor Nero blamed Christians for the great fire that occurred in Rome around AD 60. Tacitus goes on to explain who Jesus was and how and where Jesus was executed.
Josephus, the Jewish historian, wrote about Jesus around AD 90-95. In addition, Roman historian Suetonius (c. AD 120) and The Talmud (Jewish oral tradition and commentaries compiled AD 70 to 200) both refer to Jesus as a real, historical person.
September 17th, 2005 at at 2:57 am
Heh, I managed not to comment about this post until now. Just figured it was good timing for the 100th comment. Have you had a post go over a hundred yet?
September 20th, 2005 at at 11:18 am
Morgan:
If you’re still around, I have posted the first part of my response to your many questions at my blog here.
September 20th, 2005 at at 1:54 pm
Chad, just because Tacitus wrote about jesus 60 years after he was supposed to have died doesn’t mean that we should accept anything he wrote as flat-out fact. Tacitus, like any historian in those days, relied heavily upon word of mouth handed down from person to person. it had been how many decades in a primitive world before these stories reached tacitus, and you expect him to get all the details right?
September 20th, 2005 at at 4:42 pm
[...] ation that developed in response to the guest-post by Chad (of Eternal Revolution) over at The Evangelical Atheist, one of the commenters posed to me [...]
September 22nd, 2005 at at 8:14 am
jahrta: The problem with your stance is that it destroys the basis for believing that we know anything about the past. Tacitus most certainly did not rely on word of mouth! Writing had been invented, you know. Letters, state documents, official histories, etc all existed and are well known to historians. It is simply nonsense to suppose that “decades” had passed before the story reached Tacitus or anyone else. Besides which, 60 years still means that there were likely people alive who actually witnessed the events in question.
But the more important point is that you don’t seem to understand that history is not a word of mouth proposition at the time period we are talking about.
Now there are huge gaps of course, and that is why I brought up Caesar’s Gallic wars. But there is enough written testimony about him and the wars for us to be pretty certain he existed and that he really did push into Gaul.
September 28th, 2005 at at 2:08 pm
“Besides which, 60 years still means that there were likely people alive who actually witnessed the events in question.”
Back in those days people VERY seldom reached their 60’s. So even if a mere baby in the time of christ, any witness would have to be weighed with a certain amount of careful consideration
September 29th, 2005 at at 8:23 pm
That is a common misconception. People lived to ripe old ages in those days too, just not as many as do today. There are certain milestones ages that we know about. I can’t remember and am too lazy to look it up but I think I recall that if a child lived to be 5 he made it past the first hurdle. There are other markers along the way but you get my drift. If you made it past them, you generally lived to a fine age.
September 29th, 2005 at at 9:03 pm
Remember that the biblical life span is 3 score + 10=70 years. Life spans have been remarkably consistent through out all recorded history. It is life expectancy that has changed but that is something different. Today, very few women (in our country) will die in childbirth. They died in horrible numbers earlier on. Men, likewise, if they survived military service and dodged serious disease also lived to ripe old ages.
So, I got curious and looked up some famous people real quick– here are some examples:
Plato– lived to be 80
St. Patrick (b. 387) lived to be 105 or 75 depending on which sources you consult.
St. Martin of Tours (b. 316) lived to be 80 or 81.
St. Augustine (d. 430) at the age of 76
Tacitus (the historian: b. 56 AD? died ca. 120)
Hadrian (emperor b. 74 AD died 138 AD)
Emperor Augustus (63 B.C. – 14 A.D.)
I could go on and on but you get the idea.
April 28th, 2006 at at 1:09 pm
[...] I empathize with what he’s saying. It’s unfortunate that the “good news” of the Gospel and story of God’s amazing grace can be overshadowed by an intrusive and arrogant approach too often taken. Apologizing and explaining what it does NOT mean to be a follower of Christ can be a good start – as was my intent with this experiment last year. [...]