Lately I keep wondering whether non-believers really need to take religion all that seriously. Not that theological debates can’t be intellectually stimulating (see the last thread), but isn’t a more sane state of mind for a non-believer simply…indifference? I don’t get exercised about angels and demons. I take it for granted that they don’t exist. Why is this one supernatural entity–God–worth a lot of mental effort?
I was amused to discover in Saturday’s New York Times that there are whole nations that largely agree with me. Actually, they go even further in the direction of indifference than I do, and maybe there are some lessons to be learned.
Peter Steinfels says this about Scandinavians: they are among the most irreligious in the world. At the same time, they score very high on surveys of happiness, and they have high levels of mutual concern. No breakdown of morality, due to disbelief.
The Scandinavian attitude about God is not strongly negative, but just “obliviousness” and “indifference.” In fact, they don’t even like to call themselves “atheists.”
A sociologist named Phil Zuckerman found the Scandinavians simply uninterested. “…[H]e concluded that ‘religion wasn’t really so much a private, personal issue, but rather, a nonissue.’ His interviewees just didn’t care about it.”
At least in the US, we are rather fond of definining ourselves clearly. Each person practically has a brand (huge exaggeration–but think about facebook pages, blogs, ring-tones, and the like). There’s also high intolerance for non-belief, making it more important to “come out” defiantly as a non-believer. Atheism has developed something akin to a gay-pride movement, because there is in fact a high level of misunderstanding and prejudice in both cases.
But back to the indifferent Scandinavians. They don’t let their indifference get in the way of tradition, community, and good fun. “Though they denied most of the traditional teachings of Christianity, they called themselves Christians, and most were content to remain in the Danish National Church or the Church of Sweden, the traditional national branches of Lutheranism.”
“The interviewees affirmed a Christianity that seems to have everything to do with ‘holidays, songs, stories and food’ but little to do with God or Creed, everything to do with rituals marking important passages in life but little to do with the religious meaning of those rituals.”
Makes sense to me, but then I’m also comfortable being a member of a religious community. The analogy is even noted: “Others may be puzzled or even repelled by the apparent dissonance, but Mr. Zuckerman, comparing it to the experience of many Jews in the United States and Israel, strives to make sense of it, and he suggests that it deserves much more study all around the world.”
Of course, the serious philosophical question is whether it’s reasonable to be indifferent to religious hypotheses, and just as indifferent to God as to angels and demons. The problem, I find, is that making this claim draws you right back into an argumentative stance. You actually have to make the case that the God-hypothesis is like the angel-hypothesis and the demon-hypothesis. And then you’re not being indifferent anymore.
The true indifferent just walks away and discusses something more worthy of attention. Oh, to be Scandinavian.
Why should “we” keep addressing these questions? Or as you asked in the previous post “Should we really take the time to wrestle with ideas like this? Is the God business really worth such serious consideration?”
It depends of course on what you mean by “we.” “We” in America obviously do because it is an enormously influential part of our culture. Apparently if you are talking about “we the Scandinavians” then not so much anymore.
There are many ways to approach religion. For a lot of philosophers it comes down to things like “truth claims.” But religion can also be approached from the perspective of anthropology, from the perspective of psychology, and probably from some other reasonable prespectives as well that have nothing to do with the truth claims of religion per se (e.g. a cognitive scientist might take a look at what kind of brains states are associated with subject reports of religious experience).
So in a sense it’s a very strange question to ask: why do we talk about this subject matter? We talk about it because it is still an enormously important part of our world, at a minimum from an anthropological and psychological perspective. In the United Sates religious people have significant influence on law, and on some views were directly responsible for the election of GWB in 2000 and 2004.
If one restricts it STRICTLY to questions of truth claims then winds up mystified. Why are so many people still clinging to what seem to be (from the Secular Humanist perspective) to arbitrary and unprovable worldviews? Max Palnck last writes:
“Though the extraordinary results of science are so obvious in the street, yet educated as well as uneducated people often trun to the dim region of mystery for light on the ordinary problems of life. One would imagine that they would turn to science, and it is probably true that those who do so are more intensely interested in science and are perhaps greater in number than any correponding group of people in former times; still the fact remains that the drawing power of systems which are based on the irrational is at least as strong and as widespread as ever before, if not more so. How is this particular fact to be explained?”
Max has his explanation and we can forward our own. But we remain interested in answering the question because it remains a question, unless (apparently) one is Scandanavian.
Faust, I say in the very first sentence I’m asking a question about non-believers. Also, it should be clear that what I’m asking is not about sociology of religion, or anthropology, etc. Sure, religion obviously needs to be studied as an empirical phenomenon.
I’m asking why non-believers enter into debates about God, when they would not enter into debates about angels and demons. Would it make more sense to be indifferent, like we (non-believers) are on those topics–viewing them as essentially obsolete and obviously unreal?
Hi Jean,
I saw a bumper sticker the other day “I have nothing against religions, just the people who practice them.” I’d like to be able to ignore religion, but those who practice it won’t allow me to. There’s a whole state totally run by one religion and many others strongly influenced by others. The religious are determined to shove down our throats to the point of passing legislation heavily religious oriented. No, in this country you have to take religions seriously and never lower your guard against them.
I agree with your post. Many people reject the solutions offered by the religious, but I think without realising some of these people accept the problems. Perhaps organised religion operates a bit like the pharmaceutical industry - perhaps they realise it’s essential to create a need first before offering a cure.
I realised recently this had affected me. My parents had been devoutly religious for many years while I was really very young. Then it all turned nasty (it was a small Christian sect) and they grew very sceptical of religion in general. But they never really gave up on the problems and the questions religion tried to solve or answer. Although I was never brought up to believe in religious solutions, I think I was brought up to believe in religious problems. It’s only recently (by reading around philosophy) that I’ve realised these problems are actually quite artificial.
I think that the indifference attitude can’t spread to america, largely because of the theists… (coming from an agnostic that sounds kinda funny I’m sure.)
If I understand correctly, Scandinavians, theists and atheists don’t particularly put a lot of weight into their beliefs. So a theistic Scandinavian and an Atheistic Scandinavian are both in a sense indifferent.
Here in America, theists are very NON-indifferent about their beliefs, trying to force it upon others through legislation (prop 8). So it becomes an issue that we can’t be indifferent on.
Ralph, I agree there’s a value to doing battle against ideas you find absurd, when the ideas are influential and dangerous. On the other hand, there are some costs (as Paul says). You wind up drawn into intense conflict (as in the last couple of threads), and that is not only perturbing and fairly unpleasant, but it also take you away from issues that matter more. When I’m putting my mind to the existence of…angels, demons, God…I’m not working on my book about animals and ethics. Animals are in trouble in this world, and there I am worrying about a non-existent person. It is just a little weird.
But I’m not going to say you’re wrong. To the extent that religious ideas are still so influential, it’s not quite like worrying about angels and demons to think about them.
If Angels and Demons were part of our discourse in America the way God is, then there would most assuredly be many non-believers talking about them.
That was part of my point about anthropology. Insofar as any given culture has a strong compenent of belief about X, then even people who don’t believe X are going to have to deal with X because it is going to be an important part of the culture. Religioius people continue to forward many arguments for their cause, so non-believers must forward many counter arguments in response. Plantinga vs Dennet. Jean vs Beale. My Friend vs His Mom, Me vs the Jehovah’s Witnesses at my Door.
The other point about anthropology and pscyhology is that if we understand the function religion plays in culture and pyschology then non-believers might be better positioned to deal with religion on a direct practical level and not only as an abstract question of “how reasonable is it to believe in God” and whatnot.
In point of fact your whole post is really an anthropological one: Scandanavians are indifferent. Americans are not: discuss.
I used to be largely indifferent, but then I wasn’t so much any more. I think it may have been Stephen Jay Gould’s Rocks of Ages wot did it to me - that book started a really profound irritation, and then other things came along, and before I knew it - I was paying attention.
Well…..
Give me credit for one tiny little philosophical point–the one about angels and demons. The proper attitude is pretty low-energy–no, not real. There’s no duty to say more. Analogously, aren’t we entitled to say nothing much on the subject of God?
The Scandinavians then come in as proof that such a non-plussed attitude is well within the realm of possibility.
(Plus, there was some fun stuff about how the indifferent attitude will make you happy and not destroy morality. And you can still attend the church social and sing Christmas carols.)
I’m also thinking that indifference has some strategic value. Take the Flying Spaghetti Monster business. In a way, by making that argument, you give a theist room to fight back, make clever points, dodge around.
But what if you seriously thought the FSM is comparable to God? Then you would just ignore theists, marginalize them, make them feel like relics of the middle ages.
If your goal were to bring The Age of Theism to a close (so to speak), that might be what you’d do. You wouldn’t just say God is like the FSM, you’d actually walk the talk. No more debating theists!
Granted, I maybe feeling just a tad more interested in ostracizing theists than usual today. I wonder why?
If one finds angels and demons as not worth spending one’s thinking time on, then I would agree that it is not worth spending one’s time on an anthropomorphic god either. But what about a theologian’s concept of God — in the extreme case, the God of negative theology? Or nontheistic religion? Certainly a non-philosophically-inclined nonbeliever wouldn’t spend time on it, but the only reason for a philosophically-inclined person to not think about it is because he or she has made a commitment to a particular ontological position (some kind of materialism) that excludes such notions. That is, the word ‘indifferent’ doesn’t really apply in that case.
That is, before one can be indifferent to talk of angels and demons, one must be indifferent to talk about the God of unsophisticated believers, and before that one must be indifferent to the God of theologians, and before that one must be indifferent to religion in general (as having possible truth value), but before that one must be committed to a particular philosophical point of view.
Jean,
Well I think this goes to the question of what
“the real” is. There is scientific reality, which is objective truth, truth independent of the subject. And then there is subjective truth, that which is true FOR the subject. If I am hallucinating on acid and seeing pink dragons flying around my room they are not objectively real, but they are part of my immediate perceptual reality. If I told you I believe that devils visit me every night and tell me to do terrible things, you might think that I have a mental disorder that is altering my reality.
In my opinion culture is a subjective reality experience machine. Religious practices can alter people’s consciousness. There is plenty of evidence for this. Angels and Devils are (no longer) primary entities in our discouse, but if they were there would be non-believers there to argue against them.
Are you entitled to say nothing much on the subject of God? You bet! Will you then be conceding cultural ground to people who will advance arguments as to why God should remain important? Most certainly. Will this have any consequences? See: California, Prop 8. Or APA petition regarding Sexual Orientation vs Acts.
Speculating on your state of mind (presumptuous of me I know) you have tried to run your course with religion, you’ve investigated it yourself, reviewed all the arguments that interest you to your satisfaction, and now you’d like to be done but something won’t let you! What is this thing? Why can’t you be Scandanavian? It is culture.
You haven’t investigated Scientology’s claims about murdered space aliens in volcanos, because Scientology not only doesn’t have much purchase on our broader culture but it is not implicated in the history of Western Philosophy. Christianity is. What sense can we make of our great philosophers without situating them in the historical struggle of reason with (and sometimes cooperation with!) religion? It seems to me that there is still stuff trying to play out along these lines as tired as a debate as it might seem to some.
As for the question of the happy happy Scandanavians, hapiness in and of itself seems pretty plastic to me and is a fairly nebulous concept. What would a survey of those in Brave New World tell us? That Brave New World is one happy place. The garden of the lotus eaters has many delights to offer.
On the subject of hapiness I’m thinking of reading your book. I’ve spent so much time on this blog forum lately it seems like I should at least survey some of your work :)
“Then you would just ignore theists, marginalize them, make them feel like relics of the middle ages.” This will only work if you get the majority of the culture to do it in unison. How do you get from here to there?
I’m not indifferent, as most of those who contribute here will know. I’m not indifferent, because the people who believe in god do such terrible things. Not only that, but the god that so many people believe in is so revolting. They talk about a god of love, but the god they believe in is not loving, and that says something about them, something, I think, that is very significant.
To be able to prostrate oneself, if only in one’s mind, before such a horrid monster as the god of the OT or the god of the NT or the god of the Qu’ran, is to make a personal statement about oneself and one’s values. I don’t really care a lot if people believe in a god, but I think people should know how horrible the gods are that they worship. And so they need to be reminded of this from time to time.
Nowadays unbelief is becoming, as you suggest, Jean, a form of rebellion, but that is largely because some of the consequences of believing in horrible monster gods have become clearer and clearer. Human bombs, murder of doctors who provide therapeutic abortions, insistent cries for the end of vital freedoms, women being stoned to death because they have been raped, acid being thrown at girls because they want to learn, people killed because of cartoons: these are all expressions of religious belief, the belief in monsters.
I think this is something that needs to be said very clearly, that believing in such monsters will have monstrous consequences. And so I cannot be happily indifferent, and those who are merely cultural Christians should take a look at what the monstrous beliefs that underlie their culture are like, and what they can lead us to do, because if we do not face the demons now, we will face them later.
The last debate about Christianity was very tiring and utterly pointless. More about Scandinavia.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=gqchf08syrq7qfcxqfzjh9d949ndm2k2
I’m not sure that unbelief is just rebellion for rebellion sake…. I think its a reaction.
I came across a pretty disturbing statistic the other day, that compared surveys of Americans’ belief about abortion. In the 70s the majority of americans were in favor of it, something like 68%. Today its something like 43% for and against. Clearly with the Bush administration’s re-election there is something to be said about taking the religious beliefs that people sprout their values seriously and showing how it is perhaps incoherent.
Wayne: I don’t live in the U.S., but I live in a country, Chile, where abortion is totally illegal. The point is not to argue with religion, as we did with Mr. Beale, but to organize political campaigns in favor of abortion or of homosexual rights. Those campaigns don’t need to get medieval, as the recent conversation with Beale was forced to since Beale is a Scholastic, but can be based on other arguments. For example, in Chile, although abortion is illegal, divorce and the birth-control pill, both condemned by the Church, are legal and homosexuality is no longer illegal either. Why? Christians, maybe not Beale, are generally not entirely consistent in their life-style and often can be convinced by arguments that have nothing to do with theology, which surely is the most dismal field of knowledge, if it can be called a field of knowledge.
Faust, You’ve read my mind quite well. Why can’t I be Scandinavian, indeed?! It’s annoying. I keep trying. You’re probably right about the reasons.
It does sound absurd to think that the very few non-believers could simply stop taking the believers seriously, in a country like US. However, in some places the proportion is different, so that strategy would make more sense. Within the philosophy it’s also different, so there’s a bit more to be said for the marginalization strategy. Except that philosophers love argument just for argument’s sake. So nobody’s about to go Scandinavian!
If you read the book, hope you will enjoy!
Eric, Yeah, the Scandinavian approach doesn’t do anything about all that. I should mention that I have friends who are religious good guys, and also know about lots of religious good guys from human rights work I’ve been involved in. But you know the picture isn’t all one color, so I won’t go on and on.
Drawing no conclusions here…just thinking aloud. I’ll have to look at amos’s link.
Jean,
First, I totally agree with Amos. The debate that took place in the last week was tiring and pointless. What was the point?
Second, your above response to my comment I find curious, which is a euphemism for something; I’m not sure what.
” When I’m putting my mind to the existence of…angels, demons, God…I’m not working on my book about animals and ethics. Animals are in trouble in this world, and there I am worrying about a non-existent person. It is just a little weird.
But I’m not going to say you’re wrong. To the extent that religious ideas are still so influential, it’s not quite like worrying about angels and demons to think about them.”
I agree, worrying about angels, demons and a non-existent person is weird. I’m a perfectly good atheist without giving any of that a thought. It almost sounds as though in order for you to take a strong stand on something it must take up all of your mental energies. I deplore a great deal of the way animals are treated, but it doesn’t require everything I have to stay focused on it. Of course, you’re writing a book related to the subject which is very different.
Hey, could someone tell me how to highlight a quote?
http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-Live/Society–welfare/Reading/Are-Swedes-losing-their-religion/
A little knowledge to fortify the argument. And that is really the trouble, most people outside the various religions and even those within them do not bother to acquaint themselves with even basic knowledge of what the faith involves. Moral: don’t trust a native informant. Recently in our discussions with N. Beale no one bothered to find out what the Anglican/Episcopalian church’s view of Natural Religion is. Google Anglican proofs of the Existence of God and you will be surpised to find out that most believe, including pastors, that the existence of God is not demonstrable by natural (unaided) reason. The position of some was like unto the Catholic. Due to the occlusion of innate denial (original sin) we are unable to appreciate the force of the converging and convincing arguments that reason provides.
One in 10 Swedes thinks religion is important in everyday life. That to my mind is about average for most societies in the West. When you decouple religion from the need to appear respectable and upstanding that may be all you are left with anywhere.
Although I am a non-believer I realise religion does matter because of its impact on me and my vital interests. As a local columnist said: “Faith can move mountains, but it sometimes puts them down in the wrong places.” But the philosophical aspects of religion are a challenge. If we take the British analytic approach the language we use we gets us to a point where our inability to use language precisely enough leaves us up a confused and confusing creek without a paddle. Similarly with the proofs or disproofs of God using classical approaches. I much prefer the scoundrel’s approach using induction (not that I think induction is flawed - our thinking about it certainly is, but that is another argument), and analogous arguments from parallel and allied fields, such as science, psychology and sociology. I also like to examine why so many Americans are religious while so many Scandinavians (and even fewer New Zealanders) are. What purpose does religion have? Freud and Marx made some penetrating observations (yes, I know these were sociological and psychological in nature but they do have philosophical import). Why are people religious when it obviously is not necessary for a moral society? Indeed, strong belief may be a major impediment to a moral society. Is it because “non-supportive” and highly competitive societies result in so many people who believe they are failures and they seek consolation for their perceived inadequacies in a belief in a loving God? Is it a case of at least someone loves me, flawed critter though I be? This could also be the case in societies where the majority are strongly repressed by a cunning minority. Here religion can take a highly secular form whereby the leaders are made into Gods - by their own decree usually. If I lived in North Korea I would desperately need consolation, especially as I cannot speak Korean! So there is the use of religion as a tool for political control by evil and powerful people.
Another question bothering me is why did monotheism supplant the far more rational polytheism of, say, the Ancient Greeks? Was it because of the Father Figure syndrome? Any answers?
But the most fun of all is to be had by functional analytic analysis of the Bible (or the Koran) itself. Not only is this fascinating, it also provides ammunition to protect yourself against proselytizing missionaries who seek to convert you. To them I ask what Jesus said was the path to salvation (ans=Faith and the Law) and what Paul said (ans=Through Faith alone). They can’t both be right so who are we to believe? Neither in my case, but if you are a follower of Jesus then you have better give up eating pork and book in for a circumcision.
This example makes the political purpose of religion clear. Jesus was preaching Judaism; Paul was preaching compliance to any state. One was anti-Roman; the other pro-Roman.
Now for the induction: I am a happy and moral person (I don’t even get parking tickets) therefore religion is unnecessary for a moral life. The Scandinavians also prove this (though not so convincingly as in my case because I don’t have any criminality in me). But the parallel arguments from sociology and psychology indicate strongly that religion is a construct (otherwise how come there are so many of them) for a real and often evil purpose. It offers some seductive benefits for believers, but we would be much better off finding real solutions to the problems people face.
I know this is rough philosophy, but what do you expect from a scientist?
Ralph,
To create a highlighted quote–
[blockquote]Your sentence here.[/blockquote]
Except all the brackets should be angled ones like this: < ...>
Tricky to explain, since if I write it the correct way the code will work instead of being displayed.
I’ve been writing my animal book for 3 years, and will be done in 30 days, when it is due at the publisher. It is not always easy to stay focused. While writing my first book I did no blogging or any other internet stuff, but I do recall at a certain point deciding it was time to learn how to play the guitar.
Jean,
Thanks for the instructions.
From personal experience the guitar is a better instrument to learn to play in later life (past 10) than the cello.
Scott wrote:
Scott:
Your assessment is entirely correct. I would add that even when the materialist philosopher takes up the study of religion he is hobbled by the polar concept of rational/irrational. He has no room for the non-rational.
Affecting a whimsical misprision of ‘naturist’ I offered the observation that ‘Naturalists use a different beach’. With nothing between them and the water, no togs of comforting dogma they sport like dolphins. I see them for the most part doing lengths in swimming pools that are filled by the great ocean they are unaware of.
‘Whiggery’ said Yeats.
And what is Whiggery?
A rancorous rational levelling sort of a mind
That never looked out of drunkard’s eye
Or out of the eye of a saint.
Michael,
Yes. I think there is something to what you say. How does the rationlist deal with the irrational? What is the irrational FOR? If the irrational becomes FOR something (usefull) hasn’t it then been subsumed by reason and rendered inert?
I have to admit while I was following the debate of prior threads I thought of Kierkegaard who in his high dudgeon wrote against the apologists:
Great quote, Faust.
Faust:
How does the rationalist deal with the irrational? In the way that you might expect. Show that if you hold this, you cannot hold that and that there are exceptionally counter-intuitive implications and so forth. However even with science there does arise the point where a paradigm shift takes place and the ratio of one point on the curve does not predict the ratio of the next. This is ushered in by what Coleridge called the Protophaenomenon.
From Essay VII on the Principles of Method.
There is an analogous situation in the matter of the non-rational except that the non-rational is a permanent affront to the rationalist. The non-rational is ‘what is shown but cannot be known’ (Wittgenstein). It is of the nature of being itself and therefore cannot be detached in order to be demonstrated. It involves a transcendental claim - this is how things must fundamentally be for things to appear as they do. In contradistinction to the irrational, holding it does not produce absurdity nor can it be countered by evidence. It isn’t like the argument from design which can be countered with ‘ no design and if design, malign design by a bad god which is not the god that it is supposed to demonstrate. Brandon at http://branemrys.blogspot.com/ has a very good note on this today with some donnish demurring in the comments.
How is this Design did/didn’t to be subverted? Both parties are claiming to be rational. Move to the non-rational. The underlying assumption of both is that material is inert. On the one hand it requires infusion and supervision and on the other the idea is that when left alone it will eventually become complex enough to become a suitable subject for the emergence of proto-mind. Suppose instead that the being of things is information, that just by existing together they inform each other. Voila! Simple information - Daisy world, Complex information - mindedness leading to the simultaneous monitoring of events by language. Human Consciousness is just talking into your own ear. What is Being such that it can go this journey? Very non-rational.
I’m not using the word “indifferent” to mean uncommitted or agnostic. I’m using it to mean unengaged. If you think angels are simply not in the running, you don’t get drawn into discussions about whether they exist. You believe they don’t, but don’t bother doing battle over it. I am indifferent (in that sense) about a lot of religious doctrine–just would not spend my time debating it, however much it plays a role on the world stage. I’m still not sure why God is a more engaging topic (if you’re not Scandinavian!).
Why God is an engaging topic:
I’ll take a stab at this directly without reference to any of the prior conversations. God is engaging because unlike leprechauns, tooth fairys, and even generic angels and demons, “God” represents, in language and in theory, the limit of human experience and imagination. We often throw around the term “God” as though we knew what we were talking about. People ask “do you believe in God?” and then take the answer to have actual significance! At a minimum people should be asking “are you a Theist, Deist, or Pantheist, or none of the above” though most people couldn’t even give an account of the difference between the 3. So I have to laugh when people say X number of people believe in God according to X survey and then we think we have learned anything of significance. Rationlists have fun with the incoherence of the serious examinations of any given individuals God concept. See “Battleground God” on this very website.
Here is my defenition of God: God is that thing in any individuals system of belief that they hold in highest esteem, the thing around which they organize their activities and actions, that for which they live, and for which (if their worship is serious enough) they are willing to die. The “God” of religions emerges from the mind’s natural attempt to externalize “the ultimate thing that can be thought of” into a first cause not only for this or that individual but for the whole universe. Thus the esoteric religious experience becomes the basis for an exoteric codification of this or that God concept which groups of people can choose to hold as their primary motivator.
Do rationlists have a god? Yes. They worship Reason. Lord Russel, high priest of heroic atheism, once remarked that although the problem of the existence of God had never bothred him, the ambiguity of certain mathematical axioms had threatened to unhinge his mind. Einstein, saying that “God does not play dice” found his version of the universe butting up against new data that he found difficult to assimilate.
I don’t want to make the claim here that rationalists are just as “religious” as religious people (we would have to give some account of “religion” for that), I am simply pointing out “God” is an innordinatey flexible poetic metaphor and is not incoherent in statements as various as “Reason is my God” “Bono is my God” “Jesus Christ is my God” “God does not play dice.”
So why do we keep talking about “God?” Because it’s very hard to live without her/him/it. Because the concept signals something about how our imagination works, and how our imagination supplies drivers for our ontological commitments.
My point is that finding God to not be an engaging topic is based on your finding ontology to be an engaging topic. That is, if someone produces an interesting philosophical argument against materialism, you are (if you are a committed materialist) obligated to find a flaw in it, much as a scientist must consider evidence against some favored hypothesis. (Of course there are practical limits to this obligation, that is, one may get tired of responding to every crackpot theory that comes along, but one cannot assume that all anti-materialist arguments must be crackpot.)
Actually, what I find unengaging about arguments like Plantinga’s is that it operates at the ‘God’ level and not on the ontological level. But that also applies to most all arguments against God and religion in general. In other words, I am indifferent (in your sense) to all arguments for and against religion that do not address fundamental metaphysical differences. For a discussion to have some hope of being fruitful, it has to work within a common ground, or it has to be precisely about that disagreement over common ground, which in this case is basic assumptions about reality.
Faust, I’m very, very worried that on your definition of “God,” it will come out that for me, God = my two children. They have all the attributes you list. yet they exist, and I think God doesn’t. So…not a definition I can go for.
Scott, Maybe that’s it. The god issue is interesting because it’s really about materialism, metaphysics, science, rationality, and other such things, whereas debates about angels, demons, the virginity of Mary, etc., are about…angels, demons, the virginity of Mary, etc.
You ask whether it’s reasonable to be indifferent to religious hypotheses. I don’t think total indifference is reasonable, as if it turns out that orthodox Christianiity is true, for example, then some of us might end up in Hell and this, at a very basic level, seems a matter of concern.
The Scandanavian attitude, as described by Peter Steinfels, sounds fine to me. It is a bit like an extreme form of liberal Anglicanism, which hardly seems distinguishable from humanism and is hence to be welcomed, I think.
I grew up totally non-religious and always regarded religion as a rather curious - and somewhat embarrassing - affection on the few occasions I stumbled upon anyone manifesting symptoms of it. Of course, in most of the UK it was regarded as rather embarrassing to admit to any religious feelings, much like the Scandinavian countries, so I assumed most of my fellow British people felt the same way. It was not until the advent of the internet and coming across more vocal religious Americans that I ever thought it would be necessary to define myself in terms of my lack of religion. It seems now that the British religious seem to be picking up on the more vocal and strident forms of religious zealotry common elsewhere - a great shame I think.
I read that Nicholas Beale and Julian Baggini were going to be debating on something called Premier Radio, so looked it up (but couldn’t find any debate). I was very surprised to find something that looked just like US evangelical radio in the UK, even including American evangelical guests.
I promise to read the rest of these comments when I get the chance, but I wanted to address the central point of the article first: Why should we even care about religion? Why should we take it seriously at all?
I am an agnostic, but I am still obsessed with searching for truth, and it’s because of this that we should take religion seriously. If a god exists, and this god asks certain things from us, then I’d certainly like to know about it. If you can’t be indifferent toward the truth, then you can’t be indifferent toward religion, since all religions make the claim of holding absolute, capital-T truth. If religion is one giant ugly lie, it’s certainly not a waste of time to oppose it. And if one religion is the absolute truth, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to study and follow it.
I find it very hard to be indifferent toward matters concerning my place in this universe, but if the Scandinavians can do this, more power to them, I suppose. I get the feeling that their indifference stems more from laziness or distractedness than dedication to an ideal, but I may just be a cynic. You also made a reference to Jews in America and Israel, and I think that’s the same situation as the Scandinavians in a sense: when religion becomes an integral part of one’s culture, it eventually becomes viewed as merely cultural - but of course this is a fallacy, and it’s due, I would assume, mostly to being too intellectually lazy to differentiate between cultural heritage and deliberately-held personal beliefs. These religious claims place a lot of responsibility on those who accept them, so when one is born into such a culture - with such overwhelming duties and responsibilities, all from day one - isn’t the easiest way of dealing with it all simply to just ignore it? And so I understand why the Jews and the Scandinavians feel this way, but I think it’s not the most intellectually honest way to be.
When you fully grasp all that is involved in religious claims, you can’t help but to be overwhelmed and obsessed with discovering whether such claims are true or not. For me, hell-fire and brimstone are no laughing matter, and nirvana or heaven or paradise are certainly places I’d rather spend eternity than in some other less-pleasant places. Is not the possibility of some sort of existence after death enough to keep one awake at night? How can we just ignore such issues? If we’re wrong about religion, the consequences are far too dire to risk “indifference” or “apathy,” and I can safely say I won’t regret any single second spent on discovering whether the claims of religion are true or not.
All that seems to make sense, but it would be a reason to get involved in angel and demon debates too. The angels could help us, the demons could hurt us, but we dismiss the whole thing as not worth our attention.
By the way-the angel/demon thing is on my mind because I’ve been reading about “the great chain of being.” For hundreds of years, it was thought that visible species are just a fraction of existing species. There are also many species of angels and demons with just as much real-world impact. A reasonable person today doesn’t engage where all that’s concerned, despite the risk of ignoring possible benefits and harms.
Truth is, I don’t think I’ve spent a second in my life worrying about the dangerous demons OR about the afterlife. So for me anyway, there are no reasons of prudence to enter into the god-debate.
Jean,
I think, then, you’ve already made up your mind quite sufficiently, and therefore really have no reason for taking religion seriously. I’m not sure whether we are to assume the atheists’ stance from the get-go, or whether you asked the question from an agnostic point of view, because it’s clear to me that only agnostics should really care about religion. If one is fully convinced in one’s own mind, I very much doubt any amount of consideration or debate will be persuasive.
Some of us have not found overwhelming evidence either for or against religion (or naturalism), and so these debates are of utmost importance to us. The claims of both sides are possibly the truth, and, for some odd reason, a good number of us care very much about the truth. (I can’t really seem to think of a philosophical reason at the moment for why we should care about the truth, but maybe that’s part of the answer: the desire for truth itself is perhaps biological or psychological rather than philosophical…)
So my point still stands: if one is concerned about the truth, one is then concerned about religion. Of course, I guess the following question must be: Why should we take truth seriously? I’ll do my best to get back to you on that one after I’ve thought about it a bit more.
Oh, and P.S.: I think your angels and demons theme is very important, and I’m not ignoring it deliberately. I just assumed that, when considering religion(s), one considers only the most pressing issues involved, and in almost every case that starts with the existence of a god. After the god’s/gods’ existence(s) has/have been confirmed or denied should one continue onto the minutiae of the religion.
I suppose if you were think about all the things that are held to be true by all the world’s religions, then you’d have a lot to think about.
I think you can still be agnostic about the origins of the universe while being a complete disbeliever in traditional religions. I suppose that’s where I’d put myself. Can you be ‘a-religious’ without being completely ‘a-theist’?
I find it more frightening to think there’s nothing after all this. Unfortunately it seems so much more plausible as well. I’d sort of like it not to be true, and this is one reason why I believe it’s highly improbable. That is, when I can’t believe something, no matter how good it might make me feel to believe it, I sort of trust the fact it’s not true even more.
You also made a reference to Jews in America and Israel, and I think that’s the same situation as the Scandinavians in a sense: when religion becomes an integral part of one’s culture, it eventually becomes viewed as merely cultural - but of course this is a fallacy, and it’s due, I would assume, mostly to being too intellectually lazy to differentiate between cultural heritage and deliberately-held personal beliefs. These religious claims place a lot of responsibility on those who accept them, so when one is born into such a culture - with such overwhelming duties and responsibilities, all from day one - isn’t the easiest way of dealing with it all simply to just ignore it? And so I understand why the Jews and the Scandinavians feel this way, but I think it’s not the most intellectually honest way to be.
You are ignorant about how Scandinavians believe. A large proportion of them answer polling questions with some variant of “I don’t believe in a personal God as taught by the Church but I do believe in some higher power or life force”. This is very vague, but at least they have given it enough thought to differentiate the teachings of the Church from their personal beliefs.
And what are these “overwhelming duties and responsibilities” you think religiously affiliated Scandinavians have??
Here’s an interesting hypothesis on “fuzzy Christianity” in Europe:
http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/jcn044
Hey, let me tell you a story:
A philospher and his student came to the riverside, and they had such a talk:
Student: Teacher, look at those fish! What a meaningless life they must live!
Philosopher: You are not fish, how can you know the happiness of a fish?!
Question:
1) In this debate, who do you think is the fish, the student and the philosopher?
2) Will you love such a philosopher?
Windy,
The “overwhelming duties and responsibilities” I think anyone affiliated with a religion has are things such as submission to another’s will (the will of God / Allah / etc.), dedication to tenets dictated by others (the Law of Moses / the Five Pillars / the Path to Enlightenment, etc.), and generally a requirement of extreme self-sacrifice and other sentiments that are not normally a human being’s first inclination. These are all very overwhelming in my opinion - very “heavy,” very oppressive. But if you claim to be a part of a religion, you claim to follow all of its tenets and pillars and laws and guidelines and duties, etc., etc…. I can see how being born into a religious society can be exhausting, and why indifference would be the only natural response. But I still feel indifference is not the best response.
The Scandinavians were, long ago, “Christianized” by missionaries, and from that time many centuries ago until recently, I assumed Christian belief was both an understood and a crucial part of the social fabric. I guess I was mistaken.
[...] the turn of the month, I made my rounds to Talking Philosophy, where Jean Kazez had just written (competently, I feel) about the perils of caring too much and the virtue of indifference, especially [...]