I tried to load this site and so much of the viewport is covered instantly by interstitial/modal/garbage it barely displays the entire title. It’s like opening a door to find a pile of rocks blocking the entrance behind. Does that type of design actually create desirable outcomes? I have to imagine the bounce rate is through the roof.
"The advice I would give atheists who are interested in this book..." is a good indication of where apologists think that the line is currently drawn. However, the line typically is not "why should folks have faith in certain beliefs?" but "why should folks obey abusive churches?" The only reason that faith and beliefs are examined at all is because folks routinely excuse abuse with professions of faith.
Indeed, my admittedly simplistic argument is: If your faith is the true one out of all others, why does it demand its adherents give it money and power? If it was the true faith wouldn't that be enough to drown out the rest? Doesn't that money and power corrupt the faith rather than enrich it?
Yes, great point. If you're not a Christian, then you're one more data point in my collection that shows that unbelievers understand Christianity better than most people who call themselves a Christian. Biblical Christianity looks very little like the modern religion we know by the same name today.
Have you ever looked at the annual budget of a church? I'm a member of a typical Catholic parish in the U.S., and every year the pastor includes the budget in a letter he sends to every registered parishioner, for transparency.
There are expenses to keep the lights on. A small number of staff receive modest salaries. There's a fund for capital expenses. And if the parish manages to do more than break even, guess where the rest goes? To help the poor and disadvantaged. Parishioners are encouraged to share their money and time to support the poor in other ways, as well. There are regular collections for those causes.
I'm sure there is some level of corruption and embezzlement across the church globally, just as there is in just about any large institution, but I'd say that in terms of bringing in money, the vast majority of parishes and dioceses are just trying to get by, and to serve their communities when they can.
The image of the Catholic Church being some vast, obscenely wealthy, powerful organization is good for the Da Vinci Code but doesn't really jibe with reality. The Vatican, whose annual budget is about five times smaller than that of Cleveland, rarely has revenue that exceeds its operating expenses.
Are these budgets available online, or at least at the ask to the public? Since they're not paying taxes, I think they should be. If not, then who exactly is it transparent to?
The church across the street from my house is large and I'm sure heating and upkeep is no small chunk of change. A good portion of the cars parked in the reserved row (staff) are nicer than mine, so I'm guessing the salary isn't necessarily "modest".
Have you ever looked at the annual expenditures of the entire Church [0]? Most of their income comes from interest on investments, and they manage their money well enough to cover their entire operating expenses and make a tidy profit which stays within the Church.
The story that the Church donates most of its money "to help the poor and disadvantaged" is a reassurance which is meant to paper over the fact that the Church is not a very transparent organization.
In terms of bringing in money, the vast majority of parishes and dioceses are on Church-owned land and have some sort of tax benefit or writeoff. This makes them far more stable than their surrounding community members, and somewhat ruins the image of the humble parish priest simply trying to spread the Good Word; his employer is certainly not humble in wealth.
You are mistaken that the IOR represents the annual expenses/income of the church, or even a large part of it. The IOR is a bank that provides financial services to Catholic institutions, such as religious communities and Vatican offices. When money is held, it's put in very low-risk, liquid investment accounts, such as government bonds. The clients of IOR use it so they can carry out religious and charitable operations worldwide.
I disagree. I simply have a hard time believing there is a bearded man in the sky who cares a whole lot about what porn everyone watches, wants us to not wear multi color clothing, and insists that being gay is bad, but is also all knowing, all powerful, and in charge of the entire universe. To my tiny human brain it seems more likely that these are stories people made up that just haven’t been superseded by new ones, like stories about Zeus or Thor, rather than some divine knowledge that was passed down to us.
Organized religion is, to me, organized control of the masses. But not feeding into that is not the primary reason. It’s that I have a hard time believing that the more we learn about the world the harder it becomes to find any evidence of god’s existence, which would be the exact opposite if he did exist.
> The only reason that faith and beliefs are examined at all is because folks routinely excuse abuse with professions of faith.
That's a great point. I'm a Christian, and I think the reason why you have a lot of intellectual firepower directed against modern "Christianity" (which is an ideology that can't be found in the New Testament) is not simply because atheists think that Christians are wrong. You don't read polemics against Bob down at the insane asylum, arguing that he is not, in fact, a dog, despite his insistence. The difference to an atheist between a lunatic and a Christian is simply this: the lunatic doesn't _vote_ to force his insane views on the world, but a Christian does.
Personally, I don't think voting, or any form of political participation, is consistent with Christ's teachings, specifically when he says "Don't resist evil" in Matthew 5:39. The entire point of the state is to resist evil (Max Weber even defines a "state" as the group that holds the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in a geographic area), and voting is informing the government about how you want them to resist evil for you. And of course the very existence of the modern church depends on using the government to resist evil and get money, so you'll find all sorts of casuistry and rationalizations about how Jesus didn't really mean what he said, but none of them hold water.
Point being, if Christians started following Christ, even a little bit, they'd find that they have a lot fewer "enemies".
If being an atheist required 100% certainty, then only the omniscient could be atheist(and presumably only a deity can be omniscient, making atheism a paradox). In practice, most of us draw the line somewhere around "highly unlikely".
Yes, even Richard Dawkins described himself as being "6 out of 7" sure that God doesn't exist (or something like that), but I think he should still be called an atheist.
Many (most?) Christians are really only about 6 out of 7 sure that they're on the right track, too, and that doesn't seem to make them into something else, either.
The definition of agnostic seems closer to “not knowing and not pretending to know” to me than an atheist.
Although, I guess my personal definition has been that theist assumes a higher being exists, an atheist assumes no higher being exists, and agnostic assumes nothing.
Unfortunately, "atheism" is a broad term which covers both people who do not believe in a higher power, and people who claim that no higher powers exist.
I lack a belief that there is a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson, as that is a ridiculous name and I have no reason to believe that they exist. But I'm not going to claim with certainty that they don't.
I think the word believe is unnecessarily complicating this. As I stated above in another comment, assumption is a better word to use than believe, so substituting that gives:
“I do not assume that there is a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson, as that is a ridiculous name. But I am not going to claim with certainty that they do not exist”.
Which is more concisely re-written as:
“I assume there is a very low probability of the existence of a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson”.
Which going back to the original comment, I see the difference now:
I'm sure I've read this elsewhere and didn't come up with the distinction on my own, but my thoughts on this are:
Theism and atheism refer to a belief or lack of belief in the existence of god(s).
Gnosticism and agnosticism refer to a (claim of) knowledge of the existence of god(s).
I'd consider myself an atheist because I don't personally believe there are gods, but I'm also agnostic regarding the possibility.
I don't have enough info to rule out the possibility of a deity or deities, but I don't have any reason to believe there are any (or at the very least, not any that have a direct and personal interaction with humanity).
That seems like an unnecessary complication of the words “belief” and “knowledge”.
Belief = assumption + ego. I prefer to use the word assumption, it’s much cleaner and means the same thing as belief, without invoking emotions.
Therefore I don’t see any difference in assuming or not assuming the existence of god(s), and knowledge of the existence of god(s), which are still assumptions anyway.
I’m only seeing the utility of defining the following 3 groups:
1) assumes existence of god(s)
2) assumes lack of existence of god(s)
3) assumes nothing regarding the existence of god(s)
An agnostic neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. But atheist affirms with certainty the non-existence of God.
In my estimation, the critique of the book did a good job of showing that Boghossian could do with Boghossian's advice: “You need to become comfortable in not knowing and not pretending to know . . . “
Boghossian hasn't sufficiently proven there is no God...
Some examples, the fine-tuning argument, the origin of everything, the immense order observable in nature and Mathematics. These aren't very easy to explain away as coming from some random chaos.
There is a mythical incident in the Old Testament where worshippers of Apis [0] are slaughtered by their brothers, who had freshly declared allegiance to Jehovah.
In general, the rise of monolatric religions in the Levant and Persia, religions where there are many deities but only one is worshipped, eventually turned to monotheism, where those other deities were derided and ignored. With this change, there were sweeping new priestly laws which insisted that it was blasphemous to worship those other deities.
You might be interested in a critical retelling of the Exodus [1] which puts in an effort to mention and understand the other deities which were worshipped around the time of these events.
> "you have good reasons to think that what you believe is true"
These "good reasons" always seem to be, "I'll feel lost if I don't adhere to and/or profess this superstition."
Atheism has no answer to this psychological vulnerability and feeling of "lostness", except to say "man up, woman up, this is life and these are its bounds."
My objection is not that superstition exists or that it comforts some people. My objection to the practice of superstition is that it misguidedly imposes itself on public policy.
Interesting, i probably wouldn't buy the book for anyone anyway, but still, interesting criticism.
I really like the socratic method, i think everyone should be trained to use it on their own belief/knowledge during highschool, its a good autodefense tool and was usefull to me during the "gay marriage" debacle in France where a no small part of my familly manifested against basically something that had no impact on their lives at all. Loss of time and energy to fight against something that wouldn't change anything outside a couple except tax rate for gay couple, maybe.
Against theism, i only have two thing to say:
- Why should i believe your theism is better than the others (it helps that my mother loosely believe in Vishnu while most of my family is catholic on this side)?
- Would the existence of a god have any impact on how i already live my life? I already have a community (two even, not counting online ones), i'm already doing the most good i can, will my belief in any god change what i'm already doing?
Theism is distinct from a particular form of theism. I know someone created my computer even though I know nothing about the person. Different people may have different theories about the identity of my computer creator, all of which may be false. But it is still a fact that someone created my computer.
> Would the existence of a god have any impact on how i already live my life?
If you instead ask, "How would my acting as a sincere believer in this god effect my life?", that gets to what I think of as the honest evangelical impulse. Because the assumption would be you'd go to their events, form relationships with their community, support their ethical assertions and demands for power, etc.
There's a less honest, or at least more manipulative, reason as well. Many religious cultures encourage naive evangelism, especially among the young, as a way to expose them to outsider ridicule. It strengthens dedication to the flock.
About the only form of religious debate I engage in is gently pointing this out to any young suckers who try to convert me. I don't care what other people believe, but I despise manipulative shitbags. My hope is they'll remember the conversation later when people react predictably and Elder Whoever explains that's because the unclean hate them.
There is also a well motivated reason for evangelism. If it is true there is an eternal life available of absolute wonder, it seems supremely selfish to keep news of this to one's self. So if someone sincerely believes they have the secret to eternal life, it makes sense they might try to tell other people about it. Penn Jillette said that if Christians really believe they can get eternal life through Jesus, then they are cowards of they don't at least attempt to tell others.
1. In the case of Christianity (those theistic beliefs which believe Jesus is God in the flesh), it makes a pretty bold claim (i.e. that a human physically came back from the dead) which, if true, is remarkable regardless of faith tradition. It is more difficult to verify the claim now, but eyewitness accounts still exist and can be cross-examined.
Interestingly, there are accounts of Jesus' miracles from non-believers as well, who generally believed they were Egyptian magic due to Jesus having spent his early years in Egypt, which has long had a reputation as a land of magic. But the point is, Christianity makes certain assertions about things that it claims historically happened which can be verified or falsified, which is pretty great as belief systems go.
I have no particular defense in hand for other theistic beliefs, though.
2. Yes, because "good" is subjective, and the context of our understanding is limited. Someone might believe it is generally good to be tolerant. Others might believe it is good to be intolerant of things which bring about long-term (usually spiritual) harm even if they seem immediately harmless. Supposing we grant that an omniscient benevolent creator god exists and that this god has told us how to live, it stands to reason that those instructions would be of more value than trying to figure things out for ourselves, because we're not omniscient.
> it makes a pretty bold claim (i.e. that a human physically came back from the dead) which, if true, is remarkable regardless of faith tradition
It is not terribly uncommon for humans who were thought to be dead to later exhibit signs of life. This occasionally happens even today. In the 19th century some people were so afraid of being buried alive that they had alarm systems installed in their tombs. Two thousand years ago when medical knowledge was much less advanced such events were probably even more common.
> Interestingly, there are accounts of Jesus' miracles from non-believers as well, who generally believed they were Egyptian magic due to Jesus having spent his early years in Egypt, which has long had a reputation as a land of magic.
To what accounts are you referring ? To my knowledge the only approximately contemporary mention of Jesus in a non-christian text is a passage from Josephus, the authenticity of which is highly contested among historians. That passage notes that Jesus performed "surprising deeds" but makes no mention of Egyptian magic. I would also note that there are numerous claims throughout history of miracle workers from many different religious traditions.
> It is not terribly uncommon for humans who were thought to be dead to later exhibit signs of life.
That's true, though the separation of "blood and water" when Jesus' side was pierced is usually used as evidence he was really dead.
> To what accounts are you referring ?
I misremembered. The specific account I was thinking of was Celsus, as preserved in Origen's "Against Celsus", but the account was 2nd century.
As for the Egyptian magic bit, Celsus said Jesus "...was brought up in secret and hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and after having tried his hand at certain magical powers he returned from there, and on account of those powers gave himself the title of God."
The idea of a dying and rising god is very common for the line of near eastern religions christianity emerged from. This also means that the scholars whose texts we now have as sources were most probably accustomed to the idea. Them reiterating christian assertions thus is mostly just proof that they were accustomed to the then-prevalent belief systems.
Other traits of christian beliefs also mirror other near eastern religions. Have a look at e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism - Zoroaster is the prophet receiving commandments directly from the good god, you also have a bad god seducing people, you have heaven and hell, and where one lands after death is a result of listening to the commandments or giving in to the seductions.
> It is more difficult to verify the claim now, but eyewitness accounts still exist
No, they don't. “Writings which were once widely considered to be eyewitness accounts but are today, even by most Christians, considered to be at best written multiple generations removed from the time at which any eyewitnesses lived and to have evolved from earlier accounts” exist.
> and can be cross-examined
No, neither they eyewitnesses (if any) nor the actual authors of the accounts (who, at least, clearly exist) can be cross-examined.
> Interestingly, there are accounts of Jesus' miracles from non-believers as well
The surviving accounts also aren't even purportedly first hand, a s often are much later writings based on lost originals that also couldn't be first hand accounts, and, yeah, we Christians aren't the only ones in history who have adapted and incorporated someone else’s mythology.
>pretty bold claim (i.e. that a human physically came back from the dead)
I was brought up Christian and put that in the no evidence either way category. But then it turned out that
>Horus, like Jesus -- or Jesus, like Horus -- was born of a virgin, had twelve disciples, walked on water, delivered a 'sermon on the mount', performed mircles, was executed beside two thieves, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
Horus being a popular belief centuries earlier. And so now I think they probably plagiarized the story rather.
>All a lack of consensus proves is that some people make faulty inferences based on faith, no that we shouldn’t have faith in either religious testimony or religious experiences.
How do we tell correct inferences based on faith from faulty ones? Without that it's mainly just a lottery as to what faith your parents happened to have.
I concur with his contention that "pretending" to know what you don't know is not correct for faith. I just think people with faith are completely oblivious to the fact that their reasons are not what they think they are. After all they're only human and it's probably true for most of us.
I've become convinced that people generally don't choose a faith, they choose a community and set of religious practices. Usually that's the one most familiar or accessible to them, and this draw towards community is a powerful instinct. How many of us are capable of making rational decisions that would lead us to be ostracised by our community and the people we love?
Boghossian does sound like a bit of an arse though.
> people generally don't choose a faith, they choose a community and set of religious practices
People generally don't choose a set of religious practices either. They are either born in that community or "convinced" to belong to it. People don't often have a choice between one or other "community and set of religious practices".
"How do we tell correct inferences based on faith from faulty ones?"
The Catholic Church claims teaching authority based on the argument that Jesus gave Peter, the mantle of the rock he will build his church. The Church argues it knows what Jesus meant, even though it is the first to admit it has often erred and has a history of ancient corruption and new corruption. The Church further argues that God cannot be in error, but our understanding of God is often in error.
As a Catholic, the arguments of the church are summarized in the Catechism which is available on the vatican.va website. The best apologetics I have ever read are those of Pope Emeritus Benedict and those of Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher.
As for philosophical arguments, the teachings of the church are summarized by two arguments. a) We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, deserving of equal dignity and respect, and literally made in the image of God. b) We should reject evil even if it brings about good. This is a direct rejection of utilitarianism, the argument that the ends justify the means, and it is why the Church argues against eugenics, abortion, and capital punishment.
As for historical arguments, the Catholic narrative is like this. God intervened directly throughout mankind's history and has slowly revealed himself. First, to Abraham, then to Moses, and lastly through his divine Son. The world of ancient Europe during Jesus' time was dominated or some might argue enslaved by Rome. Through a divine miracle, the faith of impoverished uneducated Jewish fishermen became the official religion of the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Well, St. Augustine said "On this rock, therefore, He said, which thou hast confessed. I will build my Church. For the Rock (petra) is Christ; and on this foundation was Peter himself built."
The topic in question they are discussing is the status of Christ. So in this interpretation ‘This Rock’ refers to the statement Peter made about Christ in the previous passage. It’s simply Jesus asserting that this statement of Peter’s is true and the foundation of the Christian faith.
How are we to determine which interpretation is correct? It’s just a matter of opinion. There is no test we can apply to settle the matter. Therefore I think people fall back on other motivations to come to a conclusion - quite reasonably because I think they have no choice. They have to decide one way or the other somehow.
I was raised by a strict materialist. Then, after 40 years of atheism, I realized that some people have a natural instinct to believe. And, that I was one of them.
Ignoring and not satisfying that instinct was creating anxiety for me. I found universalism and UUs, and have thoroughly enjoyed having faith. It’s been the ultimate existential brain hack. Now that I believe that I have this ultimately powerful best friend who just wants me to be me, it’s made decision making so much easier. YMMV
How did you switch from not believing to believing? That's something I find really interesting.
I feel like I would require such an enormously convincing proof that there is some sort of higher power, that I can't ever see it happening, unless God himself appears on Earth in front of millions. And then there are people who say to me "oh, I just close my eyes and feel His presence", and it's just mindblowing to me that they take something so clearly subjective as proof.
There's another way to go about it, and that is to realize that everything is purely subjective. It is no more "likely" that reality is what you think it is than that it is a simulation, dream, etc. That doesn't necessarily lead you to decide on God as the answer, but it becomes no more difficult to believe than anything else. I've written more about this here (though it does lead the reader to a particular conclusion): https://www.lifeismiraculous.org/
Honestly, I had to read the New Testament (David Bentley Hart translation) a couple of times to come up with a cosmic scenario in which my beliefs made logical sense to me. And, what I did come up with did make sense, but it is complicated to explain.
How did you get around the minor calendrical errors (e.g. Quirinius being appointed before Herod's death) and the idea that the Gospels are secondhand? These were showstoppers for my belief as a teenager, and they're still showstoppers today in my adult life.
To be fair, it requires a lot of mental and spiritual creativity to jump from non-belief to belief. And, one probably needs to have an instinct for it (like, I probably would have been a tribal shaman, had I lived 50,000 years ago) and some motivation to go in deep just for the experience.
Interesting to read a summary of what are essentially Socratic rhetorical techniques. To me the question is, why bother, and what is the conclusion of choosing an atheistic belief? I was a fan of Hitchens, and I took his atheism the same way I take an actor's belief in astrology, in that it is a part of who they are, but not what I find interesting about them.
There is a western tradition wherein atheists are considered untrustworthy men, as no matter how different or foreign someone is to you, if you can agree there exists a god (by whatever name) who rewards good and punishes evil, and that some intentions of this being have been revealed, this belief is a foundation for a basic level of trust that transcends language.
The whole atheist enterprise is premised on an "anti-" identity, where the "-ist" person evaluates their own identity against a perceived reflection of this divine straw-man. A recent pope described "hell" as being "the absence of God," I suspect atheist hell is the absence of someone to hector with tedious hypothetical arguments. The anti- identity is what we used to call being a punk, or someone who identifies as exempt from the scale of "good," because they perceive themselves as having been victimized by the bearers of that standard, and they look for others to seduce with a misery-loves-company sympathy. They're people you tolerate and have compassion for, but don't take as much risk to invest in. Whether or not one agrees with the morality of that, it's a summary of the very roots of what we call western civilization.
It is worth remembering that this same "Western tradition" that you mention also did not consider Jews or Muslims trustworthy, and eventually broke into several factions which mutually distrusted each other. Today, as a Pastafarian, I am routinely lumped in with atheists, Satanists, or pagans, despite not being any of those.
Perhaps the "Western tradition" is European Christianity?
It's not at all. Post enlightenment, Muslims, Jews, Lutherans, and even Catholics could find a basis to get along. The U.S. founding documents are based on those same principles of universalism, but a universalism based on there being a god.
Don't you want to live in a world where people make decisions based on observable things, rather than blind faith in arbitrary nonsense?
You can't reason with a religious person. Their axioms can be completely incompatible if, for example, they believe the afterlife is more important than actual life.
> To me the question is, why bother, and what is the conclusion of choosing an atheistic belief?
For me I was a kid and approaching confirmation in the Catholic Church and realized I didn't believe in any of it. The conclusion was that I don't think there is any reason to believe in the existence of a god or gods so I don't spend my time worrying about them.
The rest of your rant is getting confused between anti- and a-. There is nothing negative or combative implied by a-theist that there is with anti-theist.
Yea, this is an important distinction. The overwhelming silent majority of Atheists simply don't believe because they have no reason to, and they generally try to avoid the topic because it is unimportant to them and just causes conflicts(due to the prejudices deeply ingrained in euro-christian society...no we're not immoral). ANTItheists are essentially evangelical atheists. That's exhausting, and as atheism isn't inherently evangelical, these folks are mostly self motivated by the belief that organized religion has such a negative effect on society that it's worth devoting significant personal effort to combating it. They're lightning rods for attention, but far from the norm.
I think it's worthwhile making a distinction between being anti-theist in terms of being very vocally against the idea of there being a god or gods and being an atheist but also anti-organized religion or against specific organizations.
It's pretty clear that the cultural position of religious organizations in many places has lead to enormous and enduring harm. Which is particularly galling given their claims around morality. Whilst this is true for non-religious organizations as well I won't give religious organizations a free pass because it opens up a claim of being anti-theist or an uppity atheist.
The simple answer is that, if one is convinced that religions are not real (not even necessarily an atheist, a deist can believe this as well) seeing their loved ones "wasting" (again, according to them) their lives on things that do not exist kicks in an instinct to "protect" these people.
This is the simplest explanation of why people try to convert others to atheism. I'm not making a judgement call, I'm just explaining why people do that. As an atheist (well, I identify as an ignostic [1] which I view it so be a subcategory of atheism) I don't go convince people to be atheist. This is partially because all my close friends are already irreligious; and partially because religion is inflammatory so the cost/benefit trade-off isn't in my favor. However, if I had a very close friend, say my wife, who believed in God and spent a good amount of time and energy I would consider talking about these issues with them. This certainly doesn't sound crazy to me, as long as you're being civil, polite, considerate etc all that jazz.
What is the basis of atheism? Is it evidence based? Is is gut feeling based? What the general or most commonly cited bases of the validity of atheism by atheists?
The way I've always seen it is that lack of belief in something doesn't really demand evidence. How would one prove that they don't believe in something?
At least from my (personal) perspective, the lack of belief in gods stems from not having found or experienced sufficient reason to think there likely are gods. It's not that I'm claiming to know or believe that there are certainly not any gods out there in the universe. I just can't find anything to back up the claim that there are.
It's probably a matter of semantics, but in my experience and usage, "theism" is belief in a deity/deities. "a- theism" is lack of belief in such, much in the way asexual reproduction is reproduction without the use of sex rather than "at odds with" the use of sex.
Gnosticism and agnosticism refer to knowledge or lack thereof. If I cared to use labels, I'd classify myself as an agnostic atheist. I don't claim the certainty of knowledge that there couldn't be deities, but I don't personally believe there are any (at least not in the sense of ultra-powerful entities that have/had some sort of interaction with the doings of humanity).
This is a good point. I went from cultural religious - agnostic - atheist - religious in my life. The thing I realized is it takes the same part of my inner being to believe the claims of Jesus Christ as it did to believe the claims of theorists make about things such as the origin of the universe, the GUT, macroevolution, the origin of consciousness, and so many other models of physics and evolutionary biology. It all requires faith in a certain viewpoint and model of the world from our standpoint.
You have it all wrong. Atheists don't have to provide evidence for anything. It's the religion that should offer proof supporting the existence of the absolute.
1) Either faith can be used in an argument, or it can't
2) If it cannot, then it cannot.
3) If it can, then I have faith that it cannot.
4) 3 contradicts itself so we are left with its alternative 2.
I think Trent Horn is not the target audience of the book “A Manual for Creating Atheists”. Trent Horn’s expertise and level of knowledge both religion and specifically the debate about the existence of a monotheistic deity are clearly very advanced. The purpose of the book he is reviewing is to introduce new atheists, and help others introduce new atheists, to a survey of ideas and positions that the average person has not been introduced to.
Very often this review attacks the author for not including an argument, or including an incomplete argument. That is an editorial decision based on the target audience. Even if Trent Horn was more well read and articulate then Peter Boghossian, that itself is no proof that Trent Horn’s view is correct. Smart people hold incorrect beliefs, opinions and conclusions often.
You can easily demolish the entire "atheism is rational" argument very quickly:
An atheist claims "there is no God" or that eg "there is no Christian God".
But the atheist made a fatal mistake here: he mistook absence of evidence with evidence of absence.
This is such a grade school mistake that it kinda makes every atheist look stupid.
If anything religion is more rational than atheism because a relgious persons "belives" and a belief has a less severe requirement to be logicaly sound than atheism (since a belief is subjective).
That is because if you claim "there is no God" the burden of proof is on you to present the evidence, and yet no atheist has any evidence for that.
So in the end neither theists nor atheists have any solid proof for or against it.
But since belief is subjective it has less epistemological requirements than an atheist claiming "there is no God".
Nobody can prove existence or non-existence of a god (except a god if a god would exist).
It is usually just a statement about likelihoods. Absence of evidence for existence of god(s) makes it seem very unlikely god(s) exist. Especially after millennia of people looking for evidence.
Not all beliefs are equal. You personally probably wouldn't put the likelihood of the existence of the great spaghetti monster in the sky to the same level as your belief in your personal god.
Usually when an atheist says "there is no god" what they mean is "there is no reason to take seriously the claim that there is a god, because there is too little evidence". And by "too little" they mean the same amount as there is for the core of the moon being cheese, or something, i.e. essentially zero.
So I don't think they're really making the assertion, or the mistake, that you think they are.
Theists are the ones claiming an explanation for the nature of existence - the burden of proof is on them. “Belief” is not a valid argument when putting forward a theory. I might “believe” we are living in a simulation, but it doesn’t make it any more true than a belief in a magical all knowing space unicorn that rockets through the universe propelled by rainbows while it creates life or any other as of yet non provable nonsense
> For example, we have “faith” that the laws of nature are uniform across time and space even though we don’t have nearly enough evidence to confirm that belief (see the problem of induction).
I stopped reading there because he doesn't understand that of which he speaks. This is actually a hotly debated topic among scientists in many fields, and it is definitely _not_ taken on faith.
These sort of arguments from the faithful really annoy me. It feels like they're protesting too much by insisting that I'm making the same mistake that deep down they know they're making.
Yeah, I think the crux is the conflation of "assumption" with "faith". We assume the speed of light in a vacuum is uniform across all of space and that is how we can estimate how far away stars are in "light-years". But that doesn't make it faith; nobody is opposed to revising that assumption when better evidence comes in.
Biblical faith is specifically "the evidence of things not seen", so it's fundamentally different than an assumption.
"evidence of things not seen" is just poetic language for "faith is the thing that bridges the gap between what you are sure of and what you aren't".
An assumption is an act of faith. Its a decision to accept something that you don't have proof of. The dictionary lists belief as a synonym for assumption.
I think the mistake many people make, including Christians, is in believing that faith is something other than choosing to accept as true what you can't prove. There isn't anything particularly mystical about faith conceptually. Its just that in religious circles faith is a much discussed component.
EDIT: There are too many places where "I think" should be placed in the following paragraphs, so just insert it wherever I make an assertion. I am exploring these things as well and I don't want to make it seem like I think I have all the answers. As it says, "we know in part, and we prophesy in part." I am a Christian and I'd love to talk about this stuff with you so I hope it reads friendly.
Yes, I meant to confine my usage to biblical usage of the words specifically, and there are a host of assertions made about faith in the Bible that don't apply to everyday usage of the word "faith". For example, according to Romans, biblical faith "comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God", so the faith I'm referring to is belief in the word of God; by this definition, one can't have biblical faith in whatever one pleases. The word is not used in the more general sense of "assumption" in the New Testament (that I know of). (So when you read "Ye of little faith" or whatever, it's specifically talking about people who don't believe the word of God/Jesus, not just people who are not in the habit of making assumptions in general.) And I meant to use the word "believer" to refer to "one who has faith [in the biblical sense mentioned]".
So what I meant to say earlier is that when the Bible says that a believer should have "faith" in something, the believer can be confident that there will either be no visible evidence for that thing, or that there will be evidence to the contrary. Take Peter, for example, whom Jesus bade to come to him out on the water by faith. At that point, Peter was not only ignorant of whether the water would support him, but rather knew for sure that it wouldn't; and he walked anyway. Abraham is another example, to whom God promised that he would have a son after both he and his wife were past childbearing age (not simply when they didn't have a child yet). And again Abraham, when God told him to offer his son as a sacrifice, reasoned that since God said his lineage would be through Isaac, but Isaac hadn't had children yet, God would simply raise him from the dead, which was impossible by normal human means, needless to say.
More importantly, take the idea that believers are not only made righteous, but are made righteous by faith: since it is by faith, one should not be surprised to see evidence contrary to this claim, namely that one still sins. Paul wrote both "we wait for the hope of righteousness through faith" and "For we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope, for why would a man hope for that which he sees?"
All that is to say that in biblical vernacular, I think that faith differs from an assumption simply in that a believer is not looking for confirmation, and is perhaps even looking for dis-confirmation of the thing which he believes, whereas an assumption is open to revision upon the discovery of proof or disproof. In other words, the goal of a believer is to persist in blind faith until death, but the goal of an assumer is for his/her assumption to be made obsolete by fact as soon as possible.
> There isn't anything particularly mystical about faith conceptually.
Agreed. But in Christian circles, I think it needs to be made clear that the bible makes a lot of assertions about faith that don't apply to the dictionary definition of the word.
I am a Christian also and I'm happy to discuss! :) Hopefully, we'll both walk away with a deeper understanding.
It seems to me that the way you're trying to distinguish between "faith" and "belief" and "assumption" has more to do with what a person is "assuming", "believing" or putting their "faith" in, and not the meaning of those words in and of themselves.
The example of Jesus and Peter is a good one. Peter needed to have faith. The reason for the need for faith was because the thing Jesus was asking of him wasn't normal and Peter didn't have explicit evidence of it. But Peter did have evidence that when it came to Jesus, physics weren't normal, and Jesus himself was walking on the water proving that Jesus had command of that ability. Peter wasn't blind at that moment, but he did have to assume (or believe) that if Jesus said he could walk on water, then Peter could walk on water also. There was extrapolation from evidence and relationship, but not full knowledge yet. And if Peter had sunk, his faith in Jesus would have suffered, and rightfully so if Jesus had let him down. But Jesus didn't let him down, and his faith in Jesus was shown to be justified.
When the bible says that we are saved "by faith" it is describing the mechanical process in simple terms. We know that the person who does the saving is God the Father. We know that the reason the Father is justified in saving us is because of Jesus sacrifice. But salvation doesn't occur until we enter into the agreement the Father has offered mankind for salvation, and to do that we have to "believe" in the fundamentals of the agreement. You won't enter into a contract if you don't believe the contract exists, if you don't believe the one offering the contract exists, if you don't believe that the contract is possible, and so on. When you choose to accept God's offer of salvation you have to do so by faith, because there is not 100% definitive proof of all that before hand. You are, in other words, choosing to accept as true something you can't prove with 100% certainty. And though the degree of faith being exercised is different, that is exactly the same thing that happens in empirical science, where nothing is proved 100% but things are shown to be true to some degree of probability (usually very high, but never 100%).
> In other words, the goal of a believer is to persist in blind faith until death, but the goal of an assumer is for his/her assumption to be made obsolete by fact as soon as possible.
In this I think we disagree. My faith in scripture isn't blind, nor do I believe that the Bible is teaching us to continue in spite of evidence to the contrary. I believe because I find the Bible, to the extent that I can verify it, to be true, and I continue to believe because nothing has shown it to be false. Nothing explains the world as accurately as scripture does, and all of my life has born out the truths of scripture. The bible presents a theory of the world that I find to be more compelling than any other theory of the world. And all the evidence that I have seen continues to support that theory in my view. So I continue to believe.
But if the Bible is shown to be false, then it is folly to persist in its teachings. Even Paul said, "...if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." (1 Cor 15:32). His point (if you look at the bigger context) is that if what Jesus is teaching isn't true, then we should take as much joy and pleasure in this life as we can, for there is little point in all the suffering Jesus calls us to otherwise.
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The thing I was trying to convey in my first post (perhaps a bit to abruptly) is that the idea that faith in scripture is somehow more than the simple definition leads to a misunderstanding of what God is trying to tell us in the Bible. When we inject more "meaning" than is there it complicates things that were meant to be simple.
> It seems to me that the way you're trying to distinguish between "faith" and "belief" and "assumption" has more to do with what a person is "assuming", "believing" or putting their "faith" in
Absolutely, when we are using the words casually, we can use the dictionary definition. But when we're discussing spiritual ideas, I think that we need to take into account all the stuff the bible says about faith, so that we don't say something that's inconsistent with the scripture, as I'll explain below.
I would almost say that faith is a subset of assumptions (i.e. all faith is assumption, but not all assumptions are faith), except that assumptions are usually about things that are unknown but possible, whereas faith can also be about something that is impossible by natural means.
> But Peter did have evidence that when it came to Jesus, physics weren't normal, and Jesus himself was walking on the water proving that Jesus had command of that ability. Peter wasn't blind at that moment, but he did have to assume (or believe) that if Jesus said he could walk on water, then Peter could walk on water also. There was extrapolation from evidence and relationship, but not full knowledge yet.
Agreed, but I think we both agree that there are different levels of faith. And I think the level of faith one has in a particular word from God is inversely proportional to the evidence we have supporting that thing, and directly proportional to the evidence we have against it. To the extent Peter had evidence, he did not have faith, and he had faith to the extent he had to defy his senses and trust Christ. Jesus said to Thomas, for example, "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Unfortunately for Thomas, he did not have much room for faith (though he did have a little, since he could have chosen to believe that this Jesus was an illusion or a demon or something, as some others did). In another place, Paul said, "We walk by faith and not by sight" (emph. added), which implies that faith and sight are mutually exclusive, that one can't walk by faith _and_ sight simultaneously. (Tangentially, I think that the man who brought his son to be healed by Jesus, and cried, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief" represents us all, and we simply differ in the 'ratio' or 'proportion' of "I believe" to "help thou my unbelief" we each have. It's greatly comforting to me that even though that guy said, "help thou my unbelief," it must have been good enough for Jesus, because he subsequently healed his son. Also, in this way of thinking, it follows that the "greater" the sinner, the greater the faith, because the more visible evidence he has against his own righteousness.)
> When the bible says that we are saved "by faith" it is describing the mechanical process in simple terms. [...] You won't enter into a contract if you don't believe the contract exists, if you don't believe the one offering the contract exists, if you don't believe that the contract is possible, and so on. When you choose to accept God's offer of salvation you have to do so by faith, because there is not 100% definitive proof of all that before hand. You are, in other words, choosing to accept as true something you can't prove with 100% certainty. And though the degree of faith being exercised is different, that is exactly the same thing that happens in empirical science, where nothing is proved 100% but things are shown to be true to some degree of probability (usually very high, but never 100%).
The problem that I see with this approach is that it doesn't exclude what the scripture excludes. The way you have described it, any covenant with God would require faith, because e.g. we would have to assume that the person with whom we are speaking is actually God and not Satan disguised as God, etc. etc. In particular, the Law of works, which is simply the agreement that we will do certain things and abstain from others and thereby earn righteousness, seems to fit your criteria for faith. However, the scripture rules this out when it says "The law [of works] is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, 'The person who does these things will live by them'". The "law of faith", on the other hand, is not only believing God in general, but specifically believing the idea that God justifies the ungodly, and all the things that follow from that.
> But if the Bible is shown to be false, then it is folly to persist in its teachings.
Funny you should say that, because if the Bible is true, then it is also folly to persist in its teachings, so it's folly either way! As it says, "The cross is foolishness to them that perish", "It pleased God that by the foolishness of preaching men might be saved", "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise" (mark, the foolish things _of the world_), etc. So, I think we should expect the Gospel to be foolish to the world and to our natural selves. In fact, Jesus at one point said, "I thank you God that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes." (And of course I think the "wise and prudent" are not a group of specific people, but rather an _approach_ to knowing God that will not work; the way God allows himself to be known is rejected by people who desire wisdom (i.e. "The Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom", etc.).)
And I guess my point is that whether the Bible is shown to be false or not is relative to the person judging the evidence. If I am stupid, then someone might show me a bad, invalid argument and convince me that God doesn't exist. But you and I won't always be able to distinguish between valid and invalid arguments; we're all stupid at some point. Can only the people smart enough to defend against invalid arguments be saved? As we said, the gospel was designed for the simple and the foolish. So, in my opinion, to rely on sight "backing up" your faith is setting yourself up to be knocked down by anyone who can weave an argument better than you can untangle. Instead, I think we have to own our position of foolishness and believe rather than see, and that way we are invincible :) In this way of viewing things, we would call it faith when you are presented with an argument that appears valid to you that goes against the word of God, and yet you believe God anyway.
> Even Paul said, "...if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." (1 Cor 15:32).
If you read verse 12 in that chapter, it says, "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" So I don't think it was about whether the teachings in general are false (and certainly not whether they are verifiably true), nor about whether there were people saying that Christianity is a lie (there were many of those), but rather that some people _within the church_ were teaching or promoting the idea that there is no resurrection of the dead (and maybe they were inspired by the Sadducees, a sect of Jews who didn't believe in the resurrection either). That is to say, Paul wasn't surprised that there are some people who don't believe the gospel, but rather that some people who said they did believe the gospel were preaching that there is no resurrection.
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Again thanks so much for taking the time to converse, I'm interested in hearing your perspective. I think it does both of us good to see where our ideas are clear and unclear, and how we can best explain them. There is a quote that I love which says, "Writing is nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is", and I definitely feel that in my writing here :)
You're familiar with Hume's Problem of Induction? I like how Stephen Law puts it here:
> It’s a good test of whether someone has actually understood Hume’s argument that they acknowledge its conclusion is fantastic (many students new to philosophy misinterpret Hume: they think his conclusion is merely that we cannot be certain what will happen tomorrow.) ... [But] if Hume is right, the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is as unjustified as the belief that a million mile wide bowl of tulips will appear over the horizon instead. We suppose the second belief is insane. But if Hume is correct, the first belief is actually no more rational. ... [T]he onus is on these defenders of “common sense” to show precisely what is wrong with Hume's argument. No one has yet succeeded in doing this (or at least no one has succeeded in convincing a majority of philosophers that they have done so).
Contrary to the other response to your comment, no amount of evidence should ever increase one's confidence, in a strictly rational sense. It is, in that sense, a matter of faith. Similarly, Sean Carroll on radical skepticism:
> There is no way to distinguish between [metaphysical] scenarios by collecting new data.
> What we’re left with is our choice of prior credences. We’re allowed to pick priors however we want—and every possibility should get some nonzero number. But it’s okay to set our prior credence in radically skeptical scenarios at very low values, and attach higher prior credence to the straightforwardly realistic possibilities.
> Radical skepticism is less useful to us; it gives us no way to go through life. All of our purported knowledge [...] might very well be tricks being played on us. But what then? We cannot actually act on such a belief [...]. Whereas, if we take the world roughly at face value, we have a way of moving forward. There are things we want to do, questions we want to answer, and strategies for making them happen. We have every right to give high credence to views of the world that are productive and fruitful, in preference to those that would leave us paralyzed with ennui.
I think this is a different line of reasoning from the one everyone else is on. Hume seems to be saying that there's no such thing as evidence at all, there's just a sequence of unrelated events. But faith (in the Christian sense, at least) is believing something apart from, or in spite of, evidence, whereas reason is believing something because of evidence. Point being, both of them require that the concept of evidence has some value. So saying that there is no evidence for _anything_ does not support faith (again, in the Christian sense); it undermines them both.
It's like that quote from the movie The Incredibles: "When everyone's super, no one will be."
My personal definition of faith is believing something in the absence of evidence and it is the sort of faith I strive to practice. However I know others who definitely practice their faith in spite of evidence. It is this latter that I regard as dangerous. But if one want's to make any sort of progress in the world the former definition is, I would argue, a necessity.
I don't think it's hotly debated. It's frivolously debated. Occasionally someone acknowledges that certain formulae or constants might actually be variable, but ultimately move on to assume they are fixed. But even in those hypothetical scenarios it's assumed that the laws of nature would evolve by some meta-laws. I've never seen it considered that there are no laws at all, despite the fact that this seems to me the most likely case. The existence of laws is supposed as a prerequisite for the method of science. I think calling it faith is apt because the idea that the universe works by "laws" is, at its inception, a religious idea! Newton after all saw science as a religious endeavor.
We don't assume that there are consistent principles that lead to reliable results at all, rather we theorise that there might be and then test to see if this supposition can be demonstrated practically. So far this has turned out pretty well for us, to put it mildly. We don't need to base that on faith, because as I'm sure you are aware so far it has turned out to be consistently true in practice. That's what testability is all about, the elimination of the need for faith.
If things that at first seem static turn out to change in the universe under changing conditions, that simply isn't a problem for science. Just look at the theory of relativity which superseded Newton's 'static' laws of motion and gravitation.
As for laws of nature originating with religion, the concept was first explicitly articulated in Europe in pagan Rome, but not in any religious context. It certainly didn't come from Christianity with it's volatile, opinionated and highly active and interventionist deity.
Between 'pray for the pedophile priests' (catholic) and 'trump is our savior' (evangelicals) is seems the church is doing a better job of making athiests than anyone else could.
I was going to say exactly that. In Poland the biggest enemy of the church is the church. Bishops and common priests are above the law and can get away with rapes and financial crime (and they do a lot), the church is heavily subsidised by the state (when people are financially struggling), the public education system ignores science and drifts towards religious dogmas instead, priests making it almost impossible to conduct apostasy. They also introduced abortion ban recently even though overwhelming part of Polish society being against it. The examples are just too many and the level of conceit from the church officials is just mind-boggling.
All this happening with strong opposition from the common people and directly against their will. It's just a matter of time when catholic church disintegrates.
> Boghossian says that if a street epistemologist doesn’t convince someone to give up his faith, then the person is either secretly giving up his faith while trying to “save face” or the person is literally brain damaged (chapter 3). In a chapter called “Containment Protocols,” Boghossian says we should stigmatize religious claims like racist claims, treat faith like a kind of contagious mental illness that should be recognized by medical professionals, read apologist’s books but buy them used so they don’t make a profit (“Enjoy a McDonald’s ice cream courtesy of the royalty from my purchase of your book, Pete!”), and promote children’s television shows where “Epistemic Knights” do battle against “Faith Monsters.”
One person saying, "I am an unbiased, logical arbiter of reason and facts" and "I think all religious people are mentally ill, but I'm going to dedicate time and energy just to spiting them" is weirdly ironic. Blind hate based off of stereotypes and exaggeration is inherently illogical.
The article's invocation of trust is pretty interesting. 'Trust' is a word with positive vibes; life is clearly better in a high-trust society than a low-trust one. Extending trust to someone builds relations with them; visibly distrusting them does the opposite. So characterizing faith as about trust goes together with thinking of religion as about community.
The article uses these positive vibes rhetorically without ever really contesting, it seems to me, the "[Boghossian says] faith is belief without sufficient evidence". Its supporting link about faith-as-trust goes to the Catholic catechism saying "Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said [...] because he is truth itself."
I'm reminded of "trusted computing" -- a positive framing of something you want to minimize your reliance on.
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