Atheism, Religion, and Violence

The Chapel Hill Murders Should Be a Wake-Up Call for Atheists; Show Atheism Has Violent Extremists, Too (New Republic):

But this is a persistent problem with the New Atheist movement: Because it is more critical of religion than introspective about its own moral commitments, it assumes there is broad agreement about what constitutes decency, common sense, and reason. Yet in doing so, New Atheism tends to simply baptize the opinions of young, educated white men as the obviously rational approach to complicated socio-political problems. Thus prejudice in its own ranks goes unnoticed.
(...)
And perhaps this is another parallel with the religious attitudes New Atheism takes as its target: Like any number of global faiths, New Atheism presumes its framework and considers its truth-claims to be either self-evident or demonstrable by whatever means it already assumes legitimate. Its id is a product of the cultural and political landscape in which the majority of its congregants find themselves, which is again true of the religions it nonetheless essentializes to particular texts, creeds, and dogmas. And, like any other religion, its adherents can take its reasoning too far, and cross the line into violence. New Atheists like Dawkins will point out that nothing in New Atheism necessitates violence, and that many principles of the movement directly oppose it; they should be used to this kind of statement by now, as it’s precisely the argument they encounter and dismiss time and time again when it issues from religious faiths.

Thoughts?

I'll say at the outset that I think the author goes too far in {a} assuming a causal link between the NC shooter and his "anti-theism;" and {b} in dismissing the quality of the moral assumptions made by Dawkins et al. (The latter point is more evident in portions of the article I did not quote here.)

Nevertheless, I think that she makes an important point about the necessity of introspection concerning the assumed biases of any cultural phenomenon. Moreover, I think that a more promising avenue of inquiry (to which the last sentence in the quoted material above gestures) would be to consider the ways in which violence committed either in the name of religion or against it represents an ideological distortion of the causes it claims to embrace. That is, I think that one could usefully consider religious violence as an abuse of the religion it uses as justification, in part because it treats it as an ideology, rather than as a religious faith; similarly, I think one could treat an "anti-theism" that would justify violence against the religious as one that has stepped away from the simple "atheism" of not believing in God and instead seized upon that atheism as an ideology that can be abused to fulfill the baser, violent passions.

>1 nathanielcampbell: I think one could treat an "anti-theism" that would justify violence against the religious as one that has stepped away from the simple "atheism" of not believing in God and instead seized upon that atheism as an ideology that can be abused to fulfill the baser, violent passions.

One could undertake this questioning as a thought-experiment, as a "what if". The problem with the New Republic article is that it fails to mention any instances (empirical instances) of violent extremism among atheists other than the gun collector in North Carolina. Reference to books by Dawkins et. al and public opinion polling as a sign of extremism is specious. However, the title of the article is good click bait for the New Republic, which has undergone massive upheaval in recent months.

>1 nathanielcampbell: I think that one could usefully consider religious violence as an abuse of the religion it uses as justification, in part because it treats it as an ideology, rather than as a religious faith;

One could consider religious charity the same way; considering one an abuse and the other not is simply stacking the deck.

>3 prosfilaes: One could consider religious charity the same way

Except that Christianity, for example, says "love your enemy" and "love one another", so Nathaniel is correct that violence is an aberration (albeit a widespread one that has often been justified by ideologues) and charity is part of the very nature of Christianity.

>4 John5918:

No, violence isn't an aberration but a transgression of the injunctions you mention.

"Love your enemy" isn't in itself loving your enemy, it's just a precept (or a law, commandment--as you please to understand) to do so.

>5 LolaWalser: I think either "aberration" or "transgression" would work -- it just depends on how you're framing the nature of the Jesus' mandate of love.

"Aberration" would consider violence to be a departure from the "way" or "path" of Christian charity. "Transgression" would consider it the crossing of a boundary, from the side of charity to the side of hatred (or sin, or contempt, or indifference, or whatever term you want to use to characterize the "non-love" side of such a dualism).

>4 John5918: Marx's line in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, "here the content exceeds the phrase," seems to apply to the historical practice of Christianity in relation to the nice words about loving each other and one's enemy. I would say both violence and charity have been equal parts of the very nature of Christianity for much of its history. Physical violence has been largely reined in in the post-Enlightenment era.

>6 nathanielcampbell:

I'm pointing out that John's usage slips in the untested and very likely wrong assumption that all or most Christians actually "love their enemies". Only if all or most Christians actually "loved their enemies" could one call violence (i.e. killing your enemies) an "aberration".

But it is obviously true that killing one's enemies is a transgression against the injunction, regardless of how many people obey it or not.

>8 LolaWalser: Only if all or most Christians actually "loved their enemies" could one call violence (i.e. killing your enemies) an "aberration".

Actually, the aberration is loving one's enemies, not only today but when the words were first uttered or recorded -- "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?"

>4 John5918: Except that he didn't say Christianity; he said religion. Like, e.g., Judaism, wherein it is said that this land is given to the Jews to kill all those who currently live there.

>10 prosfilaes: And John did say, "Christianity, for example..."

>11 nathanielcampbell: And it turns out that cherry-picking examples doesn't prove the general case. Who knew (besides the ancient Greeks and anyone who took a class in philosophy or logic)?

>7 theoria: both violence and charity have been equal parts of the very nature of Christianity for much of its history

Jacques Ellul makes a helpful distinction between Christianity and Christendom, the latter of which is very much, IMO, a betrayal of the former. The history of one is distinct from the history of the other.

As for Christianity, violence is not part of its "very nature", whatever one might want to say about its history.

>12 prosfilaes: it turns out that cherry-picking examples doesn't prove the general case

You mean like "e.g., Judaism, wherein it is said that this land is given to the Jews to kill all those who currently live there"?

>13 jburlinson: "the latter of which is very much, IMO, a betrayal of the former. The history of one is distinct from the history of the other. "

I think that Augustine would rather say that the Heavenly City, while on pilgrimage in the Earthly City, finds itself almost hopelessly entangled within it.

>2 theoria:

The problem with the New Republic article is that it fails to mention any instances (empirical instances) of violent extremism among atheists other than the gun collector in North Carolina.

Are you questioning the fact that other atheists have instigated (empirical instances) of violent extremism by targeting the religious or just that the article failed to mention them?

>16 rrp: I'm asking for empirical instances of violent extremism committed by the atheists the article discusses.

Pol pot? North Korea?

>18 rrp: Are Pol Pot or North Korea mentioned in the article referenced in >1 nathanielcampbell: ? Why not read it.

>13 jburlinson: As for Christianity, violence is not part of its "very nature", whatever one might want to say about its history.

I'd say violence is part of our very nature as human beings, and the ideologies we create are designed to justify either our violence or our resistance to it. To date, religion has been a very good justification for both, and atheism not a notably successful justification of either. Although of course every rule has its exceptions.

But on the whole, I think atheism's pursuit of rational understanding vs (many) religions' reaching for divine revelation are both just different ways of us trying to discover how to act in the world in "the right way."

Obviously I think the former has more going for it than the latter -- or at least might be the better path in an increasingly secular age. But it is interesting how no matter what ideology we subscribe to, we usually end up with "the golden rule" -- an ethical principle that no one religion can claim to have founded:

How secular family values stack up

>19 theoria:

I read it. All the way through. I read this atheism defined as a "contemporary phenomenon of aggressive disbelief coupled with a persistent persecution narrative". That doesn't fit Pol Pot? Or North Korea. Or do you think that it is not appropriate to paint all atheists with the same brush in the same way that the New Atheists paint the religious?

>21 rrp: Pol Pot is dead and North Korea is not the United States. The article in the New Republic is concerned with atheism in contemporary America and violent extremism. It specifically mentions "America's atheists," relies on polling data sampled from a US population (Pew and Gallup). It does cross the pond briefly in order to accuse Mr Dawkins of dishonesty.

I'll make it simple for you. If violent extremism is a real threat from "America's atheists," I would expect the article to be able to point to atheist equivalents of the Weather Underground, KKK, or Operation Rescue. I would expect the article to point to American atheism's Bernardine Dohrn, its Randall Terry, its Eric Rudolph. I would expect the article to mention cases of atheists lynching religious believers against the backdrop of a picnic lunch.

I think these are reasonable expectations for an article with an alarmist title: "Atheism has Violent Extremists, Too." Instead, I find the title is merely click bait, and the content of the article is primarily political innuendo -- from a publication that has taken a lot of criticism in recent months.

In contrast to the article, I've heard "America's atheists" recount the discrimination they suffer as a minority group in relation to persons who have "Christian privilege." They joined together for mutual support. They are not violent at all.

I think the underlying issue that the OP validly raises is whether atheism is to be understood as a culturally-constructed worldview, just as religions are (from a sociological standpoint). That is, should atheists be self-aware of the cultural constraints, inherent biases (including confirmation bias), clustering, in-group/out-group identifiers, etc., that are a part of their atheistic worldview?

Or is atheism somehow magically free from cultural constraint--a singular achievement in the history of human worldviews and identities?

>22 theoria: The article in the New Republic is concerned with atheism in contemporary America and violent extremism.

Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but within the context of the contemporary United States, at least internally, "violent extremism" -- meaning, I guess, killing people over a belief or an idea -- is pretty rare, all things considered. Where it does show up, it seems more "anti-government" than on some kind of religious mission.

>24 nathanielcampbell: is whether atheism is to be understood as a culturally-constructed worldview, just as religions are (from a sociological standpoint).

Atheism is a rejection of a culturally constructed world view, don't you think?

On the other hand, Sam Harris has defended the use of torture and preemptive war (and even the potential use of nuclear weapons) in the "fight" against Islam, so...

>25 southernbooklady: "Atheism is a rejection of a culturally constructed world view, don't you think?"

But the rejection of one culturally-constructed worldview is itself the construction of another. (Atheists don't have a special get-of-cultural-bias-free card, just because they're atheists. Or are you special pleading? Are atheists magically free from cultural bias and construction, a singular achievement, as I said, in the history of humankind?)

This is the problem with claiming that atheism is simply an absence of belief. That absence will be filled, and yet some atheists seem singularly unwilling to acknowledge that fact.

That is, one of the most common atheistic critiques of religion is that there are many religions, each of which claim to be true, but whose truth claims must be mutually exclusive. Yet some atheists seem loathe to recognize that they, too, are making an absolute truth claim that, by their logic, must be mutually exclusive from those truth claims of religion.

Why do atheists get to assume that theirs is the default worldview, from which everybody else deviates? Or rather, shouldn't atheists have the introspective honesty to recognize that when they critique that aspect of religion, they must critique it in their own worldview, too?

I know some atheists around here have gotten quite bothered when I insist that their experiences of the world can be fit into my theistic worldview -- that is, when I describe their own intuitions of love, benevolence, or wonder to my understanding of the roots of such phenomena in God.

So why shouldn't I get bothered when the atheist does the same thing, and insists that my intuitions of God are really just "a funny feeling in my tummy," as one particularly strident atheist on LT is fond of putting it?

It's the refusal of the atheist to recognize that they make the same assumptions and biased constructions of the world that religious believers do that frustrates the most. If you can recognize the culturally-constructed place of religion, then why can't you recognize the cultural construction of your own worldview?

>25 southernbooklady: Where it does show up, it seems more "anti-government" than on some kind of religious mission.

Except, of course, for the anti-choice/anti-women terrorism, which seems to be largely religiously inspired.

And there are Christians who recognize "justified" wars and the need for capital punishment. Are they also violent extremists? Or are we back to the idea that violence is inherent in humanity, in which case what conclusions can we draw from the observation that the more secular we become, the less violent our society seems to become?

>29 southernbooklady: "Or are we back to the idea that violence is inherent in humanity, in which case what conclusions can we draw from the observation that the more secular we become, the less violent our society seems to become?"

I quite agree that the real issue here is that violence is inherent in humanity, as is the culturally contingent nature of worldviews that live within the tension of either resisting or justifying that latent violence. The troubling part seems to be the refusal on the part of some atheists to acknowledge that their worldview is no more free from that culturally-contingent tension than are the worldviews of religious believers.

(And I'd point out that Christianity brought a decrease in certain types of violence to the Roman world, e.g. the practice of infant exposure.)

>27 nathanielcampbell: But the rejection of one culturally-constructed worldview is itself the construction of another.

Well, I've pointed out the atheist world view above, so I don't understand your question. It's a position based on the premise that rationality and the pursuit understanding is a foundation for leading a good life, being a good person, creating a good society. Or, "you don't need god to be good." Nor do you need divine revelation, or grace, or sacrifice, or submission, or obedience.

I'm not sure you'd call that a "singular achievement in the history of human kind -- as I mentioned, the golden rule or the notion of reciprocity is a pretty old one that predates many of the religions that take it up.

>28 AsYouKnow_Bob: Except, of course, for the anti-choice/anti-women terrorism, which seems to be largely religiously inspired.

Gay bashing, too. But I do tend to see those things as a problem of patriarchy as much as a problem of religion. If religion disappeared tomorrow, patriarchy would still be an issue. But if patriarchy disappeared tomorrow, then most religions would just look a little nutty (Adam gave birth to Eve? What?)

>30 nathanielcampbell: The troubling part seems to be the refusal on the part of some atheists to acknowledge that their worldview is no more free from that culturally-contingent tension than are the worldviews of religious believers.

Well, atheists are off the hook in one sense in that they never claim any divine authority. Their perspective tends to be relativistic, not absolutist. It's therefore less of a motivator for extremism.

Atheism is absence of belief in god. That is all that takes to "construct" atheism, and that is all anyone reasonably identified as "atheist" can be expected to share with any other such person. Indulge in tortured mental gymnastics all you want, you'll never find a centre to blame for violence committed by atheists qua atheists. It doesn't exist. There is no holy book of atheism, no pope, no ethical directive, no unified political agenda, no party, no front.

Very frustrating to the religionists and the simple-minded tit-for-tatters! I find attempts like these equal parts obscene and comical.

Also obscene and comical:

I think America is everywhere-else-in-the-world-phobic.

Also in breaking news: Obama is not the antichrist, he's just the herald to the antichrist:

http://myfox8.com/2015/02/15/local-newspapers-correction-catches-attention-of-th...

That's my state!

>31 southernbooklady: "It's a position based on the premise that rationality and the pursuit understanding is a foundation for leading a good life, being a good person, creating a good society. Or, "you don't need god to be good."

I think you've drawn a false dichotomy. To assume that to believe in God is to reject the idea that rationality and the pursuit of understanding is part of leading a good life, being a good person, and creating a good society, is an unfounded (and uncharitable) assumption.

Anselm defined theology as "faith seeking understanding." I'm sorry that you seem to think that such is an unresolvable paradox -- but thanks for imposing your prejudicial worldview upon mine, and insisting that I fit into your box. The implied corollary of "you don't need god to be good," is, "if you have god, you can't be good."

>33 LolaWalser: "There is no holy book of atheism, no pope, no ethical directive, no unified political agenda, no party, no front."

Right, because that's what defines the religious worldview. (Removed, with apologies as per >43 nathanielcampbell:)

ETA: Again, what your comments amounts to is special pleading. Religious people have culturally-constructed biases; but atheists are somehow magically free from bias. Religious people are irrational and violent; but atheists are somehow purely rational beings (the definition of angels in Christian theology).

Edited to remove: The jibe about atheists not having ethical directives. (Though one wonders: just what did Lola mean by saying that "there is no ethical directive" for an atheist?

>35 nathanielcampbell: The implied corollary of "you don't need god to be good," is, "if you have god, you can't be good.".

I think that statement says more about your assumptions than mine, Nathan.

>36 nathanielcampbell: I'm glad you admit that atheists have no ethical directives.

Not at all what Lola said. You are flailing, not arguing.

>36 nathanielcampbell:

(But I'm glad you admit that atheists have no ethical directives.)

HA! NC does his thing! The thing he ALWAYS does! FUCKING LIES!

>37 southernbooklady:

He's gonna retroactively claim "irony" any minute now.

I have other words for it.

>34 southernbooklady: "Obama is not the antichrist, he's just the herald to the antichrist"

He's not even the Anti-Christ.

Thanks Obama.

>39 LolaWalser: Or delete the message as per >23 nathanielcampbell:

>39 LolaWalser: I have other words for it.

It is perhaps inevitable in a clash of basic assumptions and starting points. If your position is that all good comes from god, then a statement like "you don't need god to be good" is nonsensical. Deeply religious people might say that any good I do in the world is evidence of god working through me, even though I remain blind (willfully or otherwise) to that fact. Sure I think that's ridiculous, but it's no skin off my teeth if it helps others sleep at night to think that. (Until, of course, they start insisting that I think the way they think)/

On the other hand, since "good" to me is always relative and always self-defined, the idea that it comes from god -- a reflection of some ultimate good -- is also nonsensical. In that sense the statement "you don't need god to be good" is probably heard as a complete rejection of the believer's world view where god is the ultimate good, reflected in any good that manifests itself in the world. Emotionally the believer has more at stake, I think.

>41 southernbooklady:

Sorry, Nathaniel's jibe was not "inevitable" (unless we're to assume even worse things about his character or intelligence) and I'd rather not build false arguments on the basis of deliberate perversions of meaning.

I apologize for >36 nathanielcampbell:. It was uncharitable, and I retract the jibe.

>43 nathanielcampbell:

Your "charity's" not worth a dog's turd to me. Don't wilfully distort my words and put lies in my mouth, is all I'm asking. Even someone trained as a theologian ought to be able to understand this is not the way to argue.

>37 southernbooklady: "I think that statement says more about your assumptions than mine, Nathan."

But in defining atheism as the premise that, "rationality and the pursuit understanding is a foundation for leading a good life, being a good person, creating a good society," you seem to draw the false dichotomy that suggests that to not be atheist is to not base one's concept of goodness on rationality and the pursuit of understanding.

As a Christian, I understand rationality and the pursuit of understanding to be essential to the "image of God" that I am called to reflect.

Again, I can't help but think that the atheists are engaged in special pleading here. It's the religious who make assumptions and have biases; but atheists are just good, rational, ethical people. There's a baffling refusal to acknowledge that atheism (and especially the "New Atheism" of the OP, which is not simply the lack of belief in God, but the active ideological agenda of tearing down the dangers of institutional religion) is as much a cultural construct as religion is; that it involves the same type of biases.

>41 southernbooklady: comes close to acknowledging this--that atheism is itself a constructed way of interpreting the world; but there is no a priori way of determining which of those two ways of interpreting the world should be the "default," away from which the other is an aberration.

Even someone trained as a theologian should realize the inference of an "implied corollary" here is logically bankrupt:

The implied corollary of "you don't need god to be good," is, "if you have god, you can't be good."

The actually implied corollary is that many people that "have god" are good. (The explicit thesis is that their goodness is not solely dependent on their god-having, since there are godless who are also good.)

>46 paradoxosalpha:

We are all letting NC down by not saying stuff he wants us to say, hence he has to invent so much, logic and mere fact be damned.

But, on the upside, it does give him a lot of opportunity for faux-apologies and exhibitions of "charity".

>45 nathanielcampbell: But in defining atheism as the premise that, "rationality and the pursuit understanding is a foundation for leading a good life, being a good person, creating a good society," you seem to draw the false dichotomy that suggests that to not be atheist is to not base one's concept of goodness on rationality and the pursuit of understanding.

no, only that god is extraneous to a concept of goodness.

As a Christian, I understand rationality and the pursuit of understanding to be essential to the "image of God" that I am called to reflect.

Ah, well here we stand once again looking at each other across the dividing line between what is and isn't acceptable evidence. I understand that your belief in god is rational in that you think it is true, but the things you find rational to believe in, I don't. This is surely not a surprise, nor an impediment towards either of us doing good in the world, so I don't see why you seem to feel affronted. Your belief is rational to you, so my disbelief doesn't touch you.

>48 southernbooklady: Yet you assume that, though my belief is rational to me, it is, in fact, irrational. (And yes, vice-versa: though your unbelief is rational to you, I find it out-of-step with the evidence of human experience.)

You (Nicki) have found a way to navigate the world such that you don't usually get bothered by that tension -- thus, to expand on your last statement, "Each of our views is rational to ourselves, so our belief/disbelief doesn't matter to the other person." (It's one of the things that I struggle to understand about you -- the ease with which you accept that dichotomy. I find it at turns admirable and dangerously relativistic.)

But that's not typical of the New Atheist like Dawkins or Harris. They assume that their point of view is the only rational one, and that any form of religious belief is automatically and inherently inferior and irrational.

Which brings us back to my point in >45 nathanielcampbell: they offer no a priori way of determining which of those two ways of interpreting the world (the atheistic and the religious) should be the "default," away from which the other is an aberration. Their assumption of their own rightness and everybody else's wrongness is no different than the same assumption (which they criticize) made by various religious believers.

>49 nathanielcampbell: Yet you assume that, though my belief is rational to me, it is, in fact, irrational.

In its end goal, perhaps. And I suspect that you assume that the good I do in the world is not done independent of god. But "irrational" here might also be defined as a state "lacking in understanding" -- and that is a state that applied to everyone, all the time.

But that's not typical of the New Atheist like Dawkins or Harris. They assume that their point of view is the only rational one, and that any form of religious belief is automatically and inherently inferior and irrational.

At least, irrational. But I am exactly like Harris and Dawkins in this respect. I do tend to think that "irrationality" is present in all of us, so I don't use the word "inferior" in regards to the person, although of course I regard the religious belief system inferior to my own convictions as a system for understanding what we are and what is. That's why I think what I think, and do not believe what you believe.

I find it at turns admirable and dangerously relativistic.

Whereas I find many things about, say, Christian ethics admirable, but the mindset itself dangerously absolutist.

And you are wrong that I am not bothered by the tension between your worldview and mine. Indeed, my general hostility to organized religion is one manifestation of how it bothers me. My adamant insistence in the separation of church and state -- which I think should be far more separate than many believers, perhaps even you, would like, is another example. I think I have a track record on LT in arguing on that subject.

they offer no a priori way of determining which of those two ways of interpreting the world (the atheistic and the religious) should be the "default," away from which the other is an aberration.

You make this objection a lot. It misses the point from my perspective, though, because I don't live in a world of a priori proofs and Platonic forms. There is no ultimate good, no such thing as an a priori evil. Like the words "fast" and "slow," such terms mean nothing without their referents. You might say that from my point of view, all knowledge comes from experience. Even thoughts are material things -- of this world things -- in that sense, so your a priori truths do not look true to me. They look arbitrary, even fantastical, and these truths you defend do not reflect my experience as a thinking person who wants above all to be free to think. There is no place for revelation in my understanding of the universe. I would say "revelation" is a cop out, a dodge from one's duty to pursue understanding.

What this means in practice, of course, depends on those cultural constructs you keep bringing up. (And I think you may want to reconsider your argument that atheism is a species of social construct like religion-- if so, it if is simply one among many ideologies that include religious ideologies, that is not a convincing argument for the significance and deep truths of your beliefs). Of course in some places...like John's Africa, his religion may be a force for good, whereas in others, like the Middle East, it is hugely destructive, and in still others, like the United States, we're still shouting about it. If you happen to be female, then religion pretty much sucks, since it is designed to keep women from becoming fully human. Most of it is built on misogynistic principles. So...force for good? force for evil? It depends on where your are standing.

But in my world view, there's a place for you to stand where you want, believe what you want...because I think everyone should be free to think what they want. The person who lives in the shadow of the ultimate good does not really have that luxury, since he -- or she -- is required, in accepting existence of "The Good" to acknowledge anything that contradicts their understanding of "The Good" as "Evil."

(edited for typo...I'm terrible about tense and number agreements when I'm typing quickly).

>50 southernbooklady: ".because I think everyone should be free to think what they want. The person who lives in the shadow of the ultimate good does not really have that luxury,"

Is believing something that deviates from the Good really, truly freedom? Or is it the opposite, a bondage to the false shadows and vain hopes of the absence of the Good?

As Plato pointed out, the Good is the ultimate goal of knowledge and source of reality precisely because it is only in light of the good that the very concept of value has meaning. You spoke of fast and slow as meaningless concepts with the frame of reference -- and the Good is the frame of reference that gives knowledge its meaning. Without an intuition of the Good (and thus the True, the Beautiful, the Noble, etc.), we don't even know what knowledge is good or bad, to be valued or not to be valued. And that is not freedom, but exile in the wilderness.

The "luxury" to want to intentionally choose the bad over the good is not one a luxury I find desireable. (But then, I find the concept of "luxury" nigh on illicit -- for it is luxury that shifts our attention away from our moral duty of love of neighbor and towards the corrosive force of self-love. It's much easier to ignore the plight of the poor and hungry when all you know is luxury.)

Plato's authority -- as well as that of Aristotelian Universals (Forms) -- has diminished since the age of Scholasticism. Today, one has to deal with particularity, reality in its unique forms, to begin to address the concrete problem of ethics: the inevitability of incommensurable values, incompatible comprehensive doctrines, or however one wishes to describe the complexity of forms of human life. In the face of this complexity, and lacking convincing a priori foundations, one is left with deliberative models in which agreement on ethical values is the outcome of rational debate.

In short, the Good is variable; the Good of the Middle Ages would be bondage for many today.

>51 nathanielcampbell: Is believing something that deviates from the Good really, truly freedom? Or is it the opposite, a bondage to the false shadows and vain hopes of the absence of the Good?

The atheist might say that "freedom" comes from understanding. If we follow something without understanding, then we are in bondage and not truly free. If we do things motivated by misconceptions or a lack of understanding, then we are indeed in a wilderness of false shadows and vain hopes.

the Good is the frame of reference that gives knowledge its meaning. Without an intuition of the Good (and thus the True, the Beautiful, the Noble, etc.), we don't even know what knowledge is good or bad, to be valued or not to be valued. And that is not freedom, but exile in the wilderness.

I could as easily turn that around: Knowledge is what gives the terms good and bad its meaning. Without knowledge, we don't know that the good is indeed good, or beautiful, or noble. To be valued or not. And that is not freedom, but exile in the wilderness. :-)

The "luxury" to want to intentionally choose the bad over the good is not one a luxury I find desireable.

When we choose the bad over the good, that is not indulging in a luxury, but an example of acting without true understanding. But then, I don't think I introduced luxury into the discussion at all. In the context you use it, "luxury" seems to be an abuse of free will--as if, without the demands of "The Good" in our ears, we will always choose to sit on our asses and eat ice cream (a conclusion that is not borne out by experience, by the way). But I don't see how, if you think something is true, you can't choose not to think it is true. So a conviction of truth carries its own imperative. And if you act "against your conscience" and do bad things, is that not evidence that you don't really believe in those things you are supposed to accept as true? And if you then end up causing suffering, is that not evidence that your actions come from a lack of understanding, because if you truly understood yourself, you wouldn't act against your conscience and do bad things.

It's much easier to ignore the plight of the poor and hungry when all you know is luxury.

It is also easy to dismiss the suffering as deserving of their fate when all you know is what you have decided is "the good." But I have a more optimistic view of people than that, in general.

>20 southernbooklady: I'd say violence is part of our very nature as human beings, and the ideologies we create are designed to justify either our violence or our resistance to it.

I'd have to agree about violence being part of our nature. That being the case, the obvious question is "why should we take the trouble to resist it?" Presumably, it's part of our nature because it's been helpful to us as a species in our careers as predators and, possibly, in our struggle for personal reproductive success. If those explanations are anywhere near the mark, why should we want to restrain ourselves?

One answer might be that many (most?) of us aren't very good at it -- or at least that all of us, at one time or another, are not going to be as good at it as other people: when we're too old (or too young) for example, or when we're sick or injured. So, over time, we came to the realization that there's strength in numbers, so we agree to direct our collective strength outward against the "others" and restrain ourselves from exercising strength against each other, at least up to a point (the point of being so violent against each other that we threaten the very survival of the collective in which we find our optimum strength).

So I'd suggest considering amending your comment to say "the ideologies we create are designed to both justify our violence and our resistance to it", since a good ideology will give us the opportunity to both justify and resist, depending upon circumstances and our resultant calculations based on self interest.

There are some human beings who commit crimes. Atheists are human beings. Therefore, some atheists will commit crimes. I really don't see any link other than that.

Aggression is part of our nature as human beings. Violence is one means of expressing that aggression. As social animals, groups have various strategies to channel that aggression so that stable groups can exist. Religion is one of those means by which we channel aggression in a group so that the group thrives. One of those channels is committing violence against those not of the group. Another religious channel is to focus that aggression into other activities (building monuments, planning and enjoying celebrations, etc.) that form group identity without direct violence. This is now considered more socially acceptable.

>55 BruceCoulson: groups have various strategies to channel that aggression so that stable groups can exist. Religion is one of those means by which we channel aggression in a group so that the group thrives. One of those channels is committing violence against those not of the group.

That implies the more formalized and distinct the group, the more likely it is to channel aggression (aka "justify violence") against others "not of the group"

>55 BruceCoulson: So you would say that atheism is not a group identifier? Atheism does not form a part of a person's identity, so it can't be used to make in-group/out-group identifications?

>53 southernbooklady: "Knowledge is what gives the terms good and bad its meaning."

Traditionally, that particular kind of knowledge is called "conscience." (One of those pesky problems caused by the mixture of Germanic and Romantic roots is that English doesn't preserve the useful etymological link between scientia {"knowledge"} and conscientia.)

>58 nathanielcampbell: Traditionally, that particular kind of knowledge is called "conscience."

True. Conscience -- the faculty for determining right and wrong -- is something we develop, something that matures, based on experience.

>20 southernbooklady: >54 jburlinson: etc.

Professor Gwen Adshead lectured earlier this month at Gresham College on "The Nature of Human Violence". I found it best to download the slides to view locally while playing the audio version of the lecture.

In this lecture I explore current conceptualisations of violence, using criminological, penal and psychological perspectives. I discuss why rates of violence appear to be falling, and whether all forms of violence are the same. I explore the relationship between mental disorder and violence, and the concept of 'normal' violence in liberal democracies. I suggest that it may be fruitful to understand violence as a multiply determined act which has communicative meaning for the perpetrator.

>57 nathanielcampbell:

Most atheists, in my experience, don't make their lack of belief a central part of their existence. Whereas many of those who espouse faith DO consider that faith a major part of who they are.

As "group identifiers" go, atheism is a very poor one. Not only is there no social structure to it, but atheists will not necessarily even answer the question "does God exist?" the same way -- some will say "no" and some "no reason to think so" and some "probably not." To date they have not felt called to go to war over these differences, something that cannot be said for people among the various sects of the faithful.

I'd say that "atheism" and "anti-theism" are two different things, with differing motivations. The first is a philosophical position, the second a response to the social manifestations of religion.

This was likely asked above, but:

Category A:
Is there an atheist catechism?
Is there something like an atheist conversion ritual?
Is there an atheist baptism?
Is there an atheist confirmation?
Is there an atheist bible?
Is there an atheist synod?
Do atheists carry identification cards?

Category B:
If the "hard" identifiers in category A aren't appropriate, perhaps atheists are more like a "subculture"; similar to goths or hipsters, do atheists have an identifiable appearance (vampirish for goths; artistic tattoos, robust beards, and knit caps worn in any weather for hipsters) or lifestyle (The Cure on CDs for goths; Carsick Cars on vinyl for hipsters)? Do atheists follow particular bands? Is there an atheist fashionable "look" ("nogodcore" or "reasoncore")? Do atheists tend to live in urban areas or are they "back to the land" folk? Do atheists tend to shop at Whole Foods or Kroger?

Category C:
Perhaps atheism is closer to a "preference," one in a series of likes and dislikes an individual might hold (e.g., "I like unfiltered Camels and microbrews"; "I dislike modern dance and action films").

If an atheist "group" can't be defined by the "hard" identifiers from category A or the progressively more "soft" identifiers from categories B and C, what exactly is the sociological basis for the "groupness" of atheists?

NB. This is leaving aside the the questionable validity of the unsupported premise in the OP that such atheists, however defined, have a propensity for violent extremism.

I remain bemused by the inability to acknowledge that atheism would be as much a constructed worldview as theism -- that is, if one considers theism to be a constructed worldview, then so must atheism be. For some reason, there's a resistance to being conscious of one's own constructedness, whilst simultaneously being aware of the constructedness of others' worldviews. (After all, one common argument against religious "truth" is its cultural malleability -- so to be aware of religion's cultural malleability would imply the necessity of being aware of the cultural malleability of being irreligious.)

I'd also note that, taken as such, "atheism" is no more broad or narrow an identifier as "theism" -- that is, the broad diversity that supposedly disqualifies atheism from being considered a constructed worldview is also to be found among the vast array of those who would be grouped under the term, "theist."

>64 nathanielcampbell: I remain bemused by the inability to acknowledge that atheism would be as much a constructed worldview as theism

It seems to me that most theists are quite specific as to which God or Gods they construct into their worldview -- this God (or these Gods) as opposed to that God (or those Gods). So, as a theist, I'm inclined to be quite atheistic about any other sort of God than my God. Of course, this isn't to say that most or even many theists are actively hostile to those who worship different Gods, although obviously some are. Many are quite willing to say, "you have the right to your God, it's just that you're wrong".

That's not too far from many atheists, who seem to willing to say the very same thing. The primary difference is that the atheist doesn't posit his or her own god as a contrast to the wrong god. All of them are wrong.

Perhaps the theist is an atheist with a slightly larger margin for error.

>64 nathanielcampbell:

And I'm amused that you're not addressing the points in >63 theoria:, (for the second time, counting the similar argument I made) preferring to keep vaguely gesturing about "constructedness" of atheism without a faintest trace of meaning.

>65 jburlinson:

Speaking for one atheist only, myself, the idea of god and/or gods is Not Even Wrong. There's nothing to posit against unscientific hypotheses and non sequiturs.

I agree with the point you make in the first paragraph, about the specificity of faith--exactly what NC is avoiding by muttering about "theism" instead, as if this vagueness and non-specificity were enough to guarantee a parallel to atheism.

>66 LolaWalser: "exactly what NC is avoiding by muttering about "theism" instead, as if this vagueness and non-specificity were enough to guarantee a parallel to atheism."

Does this mean that there is no specificity in atheism? Does that mean that the atheism of Nietzsche, Dawkins, and one of my students is all homogenous? No distinctions to be made between them?

This is what I mean about cultural constructedness: Nietzsche's atheism is embedded within the currents of late 19th-century philosophy; Dawkins' is embedded within 20th-century evolutionary biology combined with a particular set of Anglo-American culture wars; and my student's is simply the result of not being raised religious, more a default than a deliberate choice. There are definite differences between those three types of atheism, and those differences arise in large part because of the cultural milieu of the three atheists.

I can't fathom why this point is controversial -- it seems quite mundane to me.

>66 LolaWalser: the idea of god and/or gods is Not Even Wrong. There's nothing to posit against unscientific hypotheses and non sequiturs.

Excuse me for being dense, but if the idea of god is "unscientific hypotheses and non sequiturs", isn't it wrong? Or is the idea of god so contemptible that it doesn't even rise to the merit of being wrong?

>66 LolaWalser: "vaguely gesturing about "constructedness" of atheism without a faintest trace of meaning."

Because he's unable or unwilling to leave the text (or the field of texts as per >67 nathanielcampbell:) and engage the practical life of people called atheists. Bourdieu describes this intellectual habitus variously, as scholasticism (which is meant pejoratively) and epistemocentrism; such a habitus makes the error of confusing the "things of logic" with the "logic of things" (paraphrasing from Pascalian Meditations).

>68 jburlinson: if the idea of god is "unscientific hypotheses and non sequiturs", isn't it wrong?

Hypotheses are considered to be right or wrong based on the evidence that confirms or disproves them. If evidence is impossible, then the hypothesis is unscientific, and thus neither right or wrong, but absurd. This would be Bertrand Russell's teapot, I think.

>69 theoria: Bourdieu describes this intellectual habitus variously, as scholasticism (which is meant pejoratively) and epistemocentrism; such a habitus makes the error of confusing the "things of logic" with the "logic of things" (paraphrasing from Pascalian Meditations).

In considering the writings of Pierre Bourdieu it's important to measure his statements against one of his fundamental insights: "Only the illusion of the omnipotence of thought could lead one to believe that the most radical doubt is capable of suspending the presuppositions, linked to our various affiliations, memberships, implications, that we engage in our thoughts".

>70 southernbooklady: ...the evidence that confirms or disproves them.

Again, it seems to be all about what one is willing to admit as evidence.

If evidence is impossible, then the hypothesis is unscientific, and thus neither right or wrong, but absurd.

Unscientific=absurd?

>71 jburlinson: And his prophylactic against the "illusion of the omnipotence of thought" is an engagement with practice (as per >63 theoria:). At the level of theory construction, to avoid epistemocentrism he prescribes "participant objectivation," a case study of which is his own Sketch for a Self-Analysis.

>72 jburlinson: it seems to be all about what one is willing to admit as evidence.

Of course. An empirical approach is very clear on what constitutes admissible evidence.

Unscientific=absurd?

It's absurd as science.

>65 jburlinson: most theists are quite specific as to which God or Gods they construct into their worldview -- this God (or these Gods) as opposed to that God (or those Gods). So, as a theist, I'm inclined to be quite atheistic about any other sort of God than my God

I think I get what you are trying to say (and something similar has been said often by some atheists on LT who have claimed that they are just atheistic about one more god than we are), but I don't think all religious people would take that position. It's not so much about my God being right and yours wrong, rather it is about different attempts in human history and culture to understand and relate to a God who is ultimately greater than we can completely know. Thus most are right to some extent, all are almost certainly wrong to some extent, and perhaps some are closer to the truth than others. The fact that I naturally enough follow the one which I think is closer to the truth (in your words, I construct it into my worldview) does not necessarily mean I think all the others are wrong.

>75 John5918: The fact that I naturally enough follow the one which I think is closer to the truth (in your words, I construct it into my worldview) does not necessarily mean I think all the others are wrong.

If so, then it wouldn't matter what religion anyone followed, and no one would need to go to war over whether Jesus or Muhammed was the better route to truth.

But clearly that's not the case. Many people seem to feel that their religion is both important enough to die for, and important enough to kill for.

Which, to bring this back to Nathan's attempt to establish the equivalency of atheism and religious belief as social constructs, is not something atheists are really known for doing.

>67 nathanielcampbell:

That post is the first time you offered THIS argument:

This is what I mean about cultural constructedness: Nietzsche's atheism is embedded within the currents of late 19th-century philosophy; Dawkins' is embedded within 20th-century evolutionary biology combined with a particular set of Anglo-American culture wars; and my student's is simply the result of not being raised religious, more a default than a deliberate choice. There are definite differences between those three types of atheism, and those differences arise in large part because of the cultural milieu of the three atheists.

so this remark:

I can't fathom why this point is controversial -- it seems quite mundane to me.

is false--there hasn't been any "controversy" about something you never said before--and disingenuous--because you know as much yourself, and because you are pretending you're offering an "old" argument whereas you've changed not just the approach but the subject, to incorporate somewhat objections others have raised (about atheism's "decentralised" nature and the diversity of atheists). And like a cherry on top, the implication that others are fools who are raising a "controversy" over a "mundane" matter.

Well, the argument you made in >67 nathanielcampbell: really is mundane and non-controversial: everyone is "embedded" within the currents of their own times and culture. It's actually so trivial (everyone exists when and where they exist), it obviously isn't the reason you started the thread.

You began the thread trying to find a way to blame atheism in general and atheists collectively for the murderous actions of one.

What do Nietzsche, Dawkins and your students have to do with Hicks?

>76 southernbooklady: Many people seem to feel that their religion is both important enough to die for, and important enough to kill for.

Of course. Many people do. But many don't. I think it just illustrates how difficult it is to make generalisations about either religion or atheism.

>77 LolaWalser: "You began the thread trying to find a way to blame atheism in general and atheists collectively for the murderous actions of one."

Except that I explicitly didn't (in your parlance, you're lying about me). Here's what I wrote in >1 nathanielcampbell: "I'll say at the outset that I think the author goes too far in {a} assuming a causal link between the NC shooter and his "anti-theism;" and {b} in dismissing the quality of the moral assumptions made by Dawkins et al. (The latter point is more evident in portions of the article I did not quote here.)"

I explicitly and specifically disavowed the notion that "atheism in general and atheists collectively" are responsible for the actions of the guy in North Carolina.

Instead, I went on to write:

I think that one could usefully consider religious violence as an abuse of the religion it uses as justification, in part because it treats it as an ideology, rather than as a religious faith; similarly, I think one could treat an "anti-theism" that would justify violence against the religious as one that has stepped away from the simple "atheism" of not believing in God and instead seized upon that atheism as an ideology that can be abused to fulfill the baser, violent passions.

For those who missed that the first time: violence committed in the name of atheism steps away from the simple atheism of not believing in God and instead seizes upon that atheism as an ideology that can be abused to fulfill the baser, violent passions.

Is it your contention, Lola, that atheism cannot be so abused? That no violence can ever be committed in the name of atheism?

>76 southernbooklady: "Which, to bring this back to Nathan's attempt to establish the equivalency of atheism and religious belief as social constructs, is not something atheists are really known for doing."

Yeah, because Marxists have been such a peace-loving band of ideologues over the last century!

>80 nathanielcampbell: Yeah, because Marxists have been such a peace-loving band of ideologues over the last century!

Marxist movements have, in general, been conducted under the banner of social and economic justice. I think if their primary motivation was "to spread atheism" they wouldn't have got very far. So as far as excuses for going to war, atheism still lags far, far behind religion in both motivating force and usefulness as a justification.

If you are looking for equivalencies, then nationalism or patriotism is the only thing I can think of that rates with religion in terms of a good justification for the violence a society commits.

>81 southernbooklady: If you are looking for equivalencies, then nationalism or patriotism is the only thing I can think of that rates with religion in terms of a good justification for the violence a society commits.

Another way of looking at it -- nationalism, patriotism and religion are not justifications in the sense of being the driving motive of collective violence. They are merely convenient endorsements of action that is undertaken to satisfy more basic appetites: power, greed, etc. For example, Peter the Hermit's peasant army started looting and pillaging before they even got out of the Christian territories of Eastern Europe. Somehow, it hasn't occurred to many people to use atheism as a handy pennant to carry into battle, although I can't explain why not. In some ways, it would seem quite reasonable to say that, since there is no god, I'm going to take your lands and wealth and murder your first born. Maybe it's just a matter of time.

More recently, another rationale seems to have gained some traction: the altruistic desire to bring democracy to the oppressed.

>82 jburlinson:

======
The "altruistic desire to bring democracy to the oppressed " seems strongest when the oppressed have something we want.

>79 nathanielcampbell:

No, you explicitly ARE trying to find grounds for collective blame--in this thread and Muslim Diversity thread, where you even backtracked and apologised for doing it--and you are repeating it in that post.

I think one could treat an "anti-theism" that would justify violence against the religious as one that has stepped away from the simple "atheism" of not believing in God and instead seized upon that atheism as an ideology that can be abused to fulfill the baser, violent passions.

What anti-theism justifies violence against the religious? Where's this atheistic "kill the believers" manifesto, where the organization, where justifications, where the link to individuals like Hicks? Theoria laid out the question nicely in >63 theoria:, but you keep ignoring it.

Is it your contention, Lola, that atheism cannot be so abused? That no violence can ever be committed in the name of atheism?

Violence can be committed "in the name" of everything and anything at all. It does not follow that everything and anything at all are therefore ideological sources of violence and programmes for committing it. Hannibal Lecter ate a mediocre flautist in the name of art. Some Halloween I might pick a hefty head of cabbage and use it to conk someone out, in the name of the Great Pumpkin, who is not feared enough in the land.

What you apparently just can't get through your skull--or, at least, adamantly refuse to accept--is that "atheism" doesn't have a system of ethics, or a universal ideology, or a political programme of any kind. Apart from the necessary condition of absence of belief in god, atheism's got NOTHING. Whether an atheist chooses to give away his earthly possessions and live a life of selfless sacrifice for the good of others, or gets a gun and kills people, reflects only on his individual make-up, psychology, philosophy, state of mind, personal history.

And if some group of atheists organised WITH a manifesto, programme, etc. and started killing "in the name" of atheism, that would reflect on their worldview, morals, philosophy, but it would be THEIR product, no more or less inherent in the atheism's only and sufficient base--the absence of belief in god--than any number of other worldviews, philosophies, morals etc.

Was Hicks connected to some group like that? Did he elaborate somewhere a private approach, a terrorist ideology dedicated to the systematic extermination of the religious? Was he getting orders from Dawkins or inspiration from Nietzsche? Just how does what Hicks did implicate every atheist ever, from Lucretius to your students?

And if it doesn't--it's not even clear his main motive WAS "atheism"--what's your point?

>82 jburlinson: nationalism, patriotism and religion are not justifications in the sense of being the driving motive of collective violence. They are merely convenient endorsements of action that is undertaken to satisfy more basic appetites: power, greed, etc.

Or something more territorial and tribal. Which seems to underscore the idea that the more rigidly and specifically you define "the group" the more energy you have to spend in maintaining the integrity of its borders, and the more aggressive you have to be against anything that challenges those borders.

>84 LolaWalser: You're having reading comprehension issues, aren't you? What I wrote specifically says that violence committed in the name of atheism would be an abuse of atheism to justify the baser passions.

Or, as >82 jburlinson: aptly put it: "convenient endorsements of action that is undertaken to satisfy more basic appetites: power, greed, etc.," with >85 southernbooklady:'s addendum on tribal group identity.

Could atheism be a part of a tribal group identity? Could some in the tribe then use that part of their collective cultural identity as a justification / endorsement for committing violence against the non-atheist?

Nowhere have I suggested that atheists as a collective bear responsibility for the violence in North Carolina. (Though the idea that religious believers bear collective responsibility for religious violence is frequently insinuated by some atheists.) If you think that I have done so, then you're reading your own biases into my statements, and doing so in a way that does violence (no pun intended) to their intended meaning. You are misrepresenting what I'm saying, and doing so in a way that might be construed as malicious. (ETA: Aren't you the one who insists that your critiques of religion are not to be imputed to every religious believer? So why wouldn't you have the goodwill to allow that critiques of atheism are not to be imputed to every atheist?)

Rather, what I have suggested is that, if religion can be used as a "convenient endorsement" (to use >82 jburlinson:'s phrase) for violence, then conceptually speaking, so could atheism, insofar as both act to construct group identity and thus create in-group/out-group boundaries. The puzzling thing to me is that, for some reason, the atheists here don't want to admit that atheism could play such a role, thus making it utterly unlike any other notion of human identity ever invented. What makes atheism so special, that uniquely among human ideas about themselves, it does not suffer itself to be exploited in the pursuit of power?

>63 theoria: Category A: Is there an atheist catechism?...

Well, there's Catechism for Atheists by Phillip Adams

Does that qualify?

As for creeds, how about Atheist Alliance International's Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life

You've got to give atheism a little time. After all, Christianity didn't acquire much of its ideological paraphernalia for a few hundred years. If atheism has legs, you've got to have a little faith.

And let's not forget atheist churches!

(See the following threads for a refresher: https://www.librarything.com/topic/149450 and https://www.librarything.com/topic/163967 )

ETA: The BBC article that opens the first thread mentions that the audience at these Sunday congregations of atheists was "overwhelmingly young, white and middle class...excited to be part of something new," and spoke "of the void they felt on a Sunday morning when they decided to abandon their Christian faith."

In other words: you've got a culturally homogenous group (young, white, middle class) seeking to create new forms of group bonding around their shared atheism.

But of course, this type of group bonding and identity formation could never be abused to foment violence, now could it?! Because clearly, atheism is a unique human social construct, magically free from the abuses to which all other human social constructs are liable!

>86 nathanielcampbell: "Rather, what I have suggested is that, if religion can be used as a "convenient endorsement" (to use >82 jburlinson: jburlinson:'s phrase) for violence, then conceptually speaking, so could atheism, insofar as both act to construct group identity and thus create in-group/out-group boundaries. The puzzling thing to me is that, for some reason, the atheists here don't want to admit that atheism could play such a role, thus making it utterly unlike any other notion of human identity ever invented.."

Unfortunately, your suggestion/argument commits the logical fallacy of "begging the question." (Not to mention the suggestion that in-group/out-group boundaries necessarily generate the endorsement of violence: this is facially false).

What matters is whether the "convenient endorsement" for violence is likely, and whether it is happening in the USA right now, among atheists. Any reasonable person would find that it is not likely and that it is not happening.

>89 theoria: "Not to mention the suggestion that in-group/out-group boundaries necessarily generate the endorsement of violence: this is facially false"

You're the one who added the word necessarily. I've only suggested the possibility, following in the footsteps of >85 southernbooklady: "Which seems to underscore the idea that the more rigidly and specifically you define "the group" the more energy you have to spend in maintaining the integrity of its borders, and the more aggressive you have to be against anything that challenges those borders."

>86 nathanielcampbell: Could atheism be a part of a tribal group identity?

Group identities are usually forged around a common, uh, identification with something, not a common absence of identification with something. As Lola has said (multiple times), there is no sociological system associated with atheism - nothing to hang an identity on. Nothing to build a political program on. It's merely the answer "no" to the question of the existence of god. (And not even much commonality in the way that is answered.) It's like saying you can build a society based on the not drinking of orange juice.

So for you to carry your argument that atheism and religious belief are equivalent "group identifiers" you'll have to show that atheism can actually serve as a basis for creating a group in the way that religious denominations or political nationalities have done.

There might be something in Spinoza's concept of ethics, (reality is activity and thoughts are acts of understanding) -- indeed, it's the argument made in Stewart's Nature's God, that the American Revolution was Spinoza's ethics brought to life, so to speak. But then, whether or not you'd call Spinoza, or any of the early American Revolutionaries "atheists" depends very much on where you are standing.

>86 nathanielcampbell:

Nowhere have I suggested that atheists as a collective bear responsibility for the violence in North Carolina. (Though the idea that religious believers bear collective responsibility for religious violence is frequently insinuated by some atheists.)

Religious believers adhere to (this is getting SUPER boring) a set of rules of conduct, ethical precepts, holy book--whatever and etc. When a religious person (i.e. a person by definition observant of a religion--or they wouldn't be considered a "religious person") commits a violent act, that act is obviously going to be considered in the light of their religion and its ethical precepts. If they claim they did it "in the name" of that religion, that may reasonably reflect on the perception of that religion--mainly depending on how often it happens that violent acts are committed in the name of that religion.

(Religions that are based on holy books glorifying violent acts as acts of worship, of course, have an awesome head start in the race to get dubbed "most violent religion ever".)

Atheism doesn't have a good conduct rulebook. Atheists can come in all colour, shape and form of monsters and saints and everything in between without any implication on atheism in general. Because atheism in general is simply ABSENCE OF A BELIEF IN GOD.

Super-turbo-ultra boring...

What I wrote specifically says that violence committed in the name of atheism would be an abuse of atheism to justify the baser passions.

Yeah, took some damned wrangling to get you there too.

what I have suggested is that, if religion can be used as a "convenient endorsement" (to use >82 jburlinson: jburlinson:'s phrase) for violence, then conceptually speaking, so could atheism, insofar as both act to construct group identity and thus create in-group/out-group boundaries.

"Conceptually." Whatever. The point is, HAS THIS HAPPENED? Eh--I'll just copy what I asked you above (for the second or third time), cynically, because obviously you'll ignore IT and >63 theoria: (ding dong, fourth or fifth mention--let's see if we can get to a baker's dozen!):

>84 LolaWalser:

LW: What anti-theism justifies violence against the religious? Where's this atheistic "kill the believers" manifesto, where the organization, where justifications, where the link to individuals like Hicks? {...} Was Hicks connected to some group like that? Did he elaborate somewhere a private approach, a terrorist ideology dedicated to the systematic extermination of the religious? Was he getting orders from Dawkins or inspiration from Nietzsche? Just how does what Hicks did implicate every atheist ever, from Lucretius to your students?

Well?

Hey--why don't YOU conceptually and materially "construct" an atheist terrorist group, just to prove to us it can be done?

The puzzling thing to me is that, for some reason, the atheists here don't want to admit that atheism could play such a role, thus making it utterly unlike any other notion of human identity ever invented.

Could, shmould. SHOW me the thing!

Remember, I COULD use a cabbage as a deadly weapon! It would puzzle me endlessly if you denied a cabbage could play such a role, thus making it utterly unlike any other object of similar size, heft and density!

What makes atheism so special, that uniquely among human ideas about themselves, it does not suffer itself to be exploited in the pursuit of power?

Well, gee, this is a wild thought, but... maybe it's got something to do with what sort of people tend to embrace atheism? Maybe they just aren't, overall, given to harbouring murderous terrorist hankerings? Maybe they don't, in general, waste precious life-time bothering fellow human beings with threats of perdition and hellfire, or persecution and ostracism based on 5000-old crap concocted by sunstroke bait in Mesopotamia?

Maybe a cabbage just ISN'T an obvious weapon of choice to cabbage-lovers?!?!?

>91 southernbooklady:

As Lola has said (multiple times),

*weeping hot tears of gratitude*

Someone NOTICED!

I didn't see your post when I posted #92, and it's very much a x-post.

>79 nathanielcampbell: violence committed in the name of atheism steps away from the simple atheism of not believing in God and instead seizes upon that atheism as an ideology that can be abused to fulfill the baser, violent passions.

Is it your contention, Lola, that atheism cannot be so abused?

It certainly is mine. I would dismiss that just like I would dismiss a mathematician's complaint that physicists or engineers were abusing math by seizing upon it to fulfill their materialistic, non-abstract passions. The idea that "there is no gods" is just that; it is a simple contention that remains no matter what is stacked on top of it.

>91 southernbooklady: Group identities are usually forged around a common, uh, identification with something, not a common absence of identification with something

One of the problems which is currently contributing to internal conflict in South Sudan is that the people never had a common identification with something. They had a common absence of identification with something else - not Arab, not Muslim, not jalaba (a mildly pejorative term used for northern Sudanese). But it was a strong enough identification to drive two civil wars over the space of fifty years and to lead to the independence of South Sudan from Sudan.

>81 southernbooklady: Marxist movements have, in general, been conducted under the banner of social and economic justice.

So have many religious movements, especially in more recent history. Liberation theology and Catholic Social Thought are good examples. The role of religions and religious people in things like the South African anti-apartheid struggle, the more general anti-colonial movement in Africa, the US civil rights movement, and their massive commitment to charitable aid and development across the world, were and are all about social and economic justice.

>95 John5918: One of the problems which is currently contributing to internal conflict in South Sudan is that the people never had a common identification with something.

I might be misunderstanding you here, but what you describe sounds like a dissolution of identity, a power vacuum, not a coalescing of identity or a unification of purpose.

>96 John5918: So have many religious movements, especially in more recent history.

No one has suggested otherwise.

The real problem here between Nathan and I is that he is arguing as if atheism and religion are the same kind of construct -- it's the old "atheism is a kind of religion" complaint made by many religious people who can't seem to imagine an existence where one's understanding or belief in god and one's moral philosophy are two entirely separate and distinct things.

But atheism is not "a kind of religion" and no amount of insisting that it is will make it so. So Nathan accuses me of special pleading for my version of religion, and I keep telling him that my moral and social philosophy is not dependent on the fact I don't drink orange juice.

>97 southernbooklady: a dissolution of identity, a power vacuum, not a coalescing of identity or a unification of purpose

No, actually there was a real coalescing around this negative identity, a real unification of purpose, enough to fight two civil wars and gain independence. But it wasn't a positive identity and it didn't survive into building a new nation. That's when the splintering happened

atheism is not "a kind of religion"

I have no quarrel with you there. But would you accept that atheism is your worldview, part of the way in which you interpret reality, just as religion is part of the way in which I interpret reality? Isn't it thus in a sense a construct, as I think Nathaniel has also tried to say? If we leave aside the word "religion" and replace it with narrative, construct, worldview, could you identify with any of those words?

>98 John5918: But it wasn't a positive identity and it didn't survive into building a new nation.

Meaning, you can't really build an identity as "not something" -- because it requires the existence of that something you are not to persist. That's why there is a difference between atheism and anti-theism. The former is a philosophical position, the latter requires the existence of religion in order to exist itself.

But would you accept that atheism is your worldview, part of the way in which you interpret reality, just as religion is part of the way in which I interpret reality?

Atheism is a fact of my existence, just as being female is a fact of my existence. But neither is a moral philosophy of how to exist. Can you same the same for your religion?

>99 southernbooklady: I can't speak for Nathaniel, but I'm not trying to say that atheism is the same as religion, merely that it is a worldview, a narrative, a construct. Everybody has them, I would suggest. Religion is just one amongst many, as is culture. And as far as I can tell from your postings here, you do have a moral philosophy of how to exist. So do I.

I'm curious how you see my atheism as a social construct, I suppose.

>101 southernbooklady: Isn't the way we see and interpret reality usually a social construct?

>102 John5918: Do you think rationalism or science are social constructs?

>103 theoria: Rationalism, yes; science, probably.

But I don't think it's very important what we call them. I just think that people who don't accept that they have a narrative are often blind to the biases of that narrative. None of us are completely "neutral" or "objective" or whatever the correct word would be, standing outside and/or above everybody else's narratives or worldviews or social constructs. If we are aware of our own social constructs then we at least stand a chance of being a little less blind.

>104 John5918: "Rationalism, yes; science, probably.

But I don't think it's very important what we call them."

Fair enough. But if this is true, I'm not seeing why it's important to describe atheism as a "social construct." I could imagine that one could be led to non-belief in the existence of deities if one has a rationalist or scientific outlook.

"None of us are completely "neutral" or "objective" or whatever the correct word would be, standing outside and/or above everybody else's narratives or worldviews or social constructs."

Doesn't that imply value relativism?

>105 theoria: Doesn't that imply value relativism?

Not sure. Doesn't it simply imply that we are all the product of our upbringing, our life experience, our education, the narratives in which we find ourselves, and that's how we interpret reality?

>106 John5918: "Doesn't it simply imply that we are all the product of our upbringing, our life experience, our education, the narratives in which we find ourselves, and that's how we interpret reality?"

Not if one adopts a scientific or social scientific outlook, which assumes some purchase can be gained on an objective reality that exists outside one's own limited personal (subjective) experience, first, by recognizing the existence of an objective reality that is independent of our subjective experience and, second, by implementing procedures to grasp this objective reality objectively.

One can, of course, treat science as just another social construct (as do Ian Hacking or Bruno Latour), but you have demurred on this point (>104 John5918:).

>104 John5918: I'm not sure I've demurred - I did say "probably". And I'm not saying that there is no objective reality, simply that we are all products of our social constructs and these can bias us against recognising it (or at least getting closer to it) unless we are consciously aware of our biases.

>101 southernbooklady: Isn't the way we see and interpret reality usually a social construct?.

The question asked in this thread is whether atheism -- as a "social construct" (meaning, I guess, the living of one's life without a belief in god) has any propensity towards violence in the way that religion is accused of having. Basically, Nathan has asked if we can't assume that violence is the result of any idea taken to an extreme -- an abuse of the idea, be it belief in god or or non-belief in god.

The answers have been fairly consistent, I think: that violence is inherent in human beings, so that their ideas are often used to justify their violent actions. But all ideas are not the same, and as a rule it is that class of ideas that we call moral philosophy that seem to fuel violence as often as they mitigate it. The problem is that you can't extract the moral philosophy from many religions -- religions are "made manifest," so to speak, as moral philosophy. But atheism is absent any moral philosophy. Whatever moral system non-believers follow, it has nothing to do with faith or the lack thereof. (and I'll say here that it is possible to conceive of a person who believes in god, but has no moral philosophy associated with that belief -- but that's not the kind of religious belief we run into very often. And it certainly isn't the kind of belief likely to start a war)

So the persistent attempt to draw equivalency between meets resistance. It would be better to ask about the equivalence between religion and secularism, since secularism does have a moral system underpinning it, which presumably is something it would defend against challenges.

>109 southernbooklady: Fair enough. I was just speculating generally, not specifically about the violence inherent in the system (cue Month Python's bolshie peasant!) Even when I read every post in a thread like this I still often find it difficult to fathom what people are actually arguing about, but I think that's often because each one is naturally enough speaking from their own worldview, experience, narrative or whatever.

>110 John5918: I still often find it difficult to fathom what people are actually arguing about

Plus, you know, philosophical discussions do tend to get a bit rarefied and theoretical. :)

>111 southernbooklady: Yes, I think I'm more of a pragmatist than a theoretician!

You probably do more good in the world that way! :)

>98 John5918: If we leave aside the word "religion" and replace it with narrative, construct, worldview, could you identify with any of those words?

Maybe construct, but it doesn't tell a story, or cover the world.

>91 southernbooklady: for you to carry your argument that atheism and religious belief are equivalent "group identifiers" you'll have to show that atheism can actually serve as a basis for creating a group in the way that religious denominations or political nationalities have done.

>92 LolaWalser: Atheism doesn't have a good conduct rulebook.

Consider one of the articles of the "Copenhagen Declaration" referenced earlier:

"We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs."

First, is this a fair statement of conviction that would apply to most, perhaps all, atheists?

If so, doesn't it prescribe an educational system that (a) teaches critical thinking and then (b) uses critical thinking to distinguish between faith and reason? What would critical thinking have to say about "faith"? Anything good? What would critical thinking think about "reason"? Anything bad?

Once critical thinking has taught us the error of faith, what would "the diversity of religious beliefs" be other than an ocean of fallaciousness?

If our educational system works as envisioned in the Declaration, wouldn't the inevitable result be the creation of a "group" of like-minded people? How could a person pass her/his A-levels in critical thinking if she/he admits belief in The Prophet?

I'm not trying to say that atheism is the same as religion, merely that it is a worldview, a narrative, a construct.

I'd say that atheism is only a part, one ingredient, in a worldview or philosophy. It can't be itself a worldview (or it would be a bizarrely poor one. The last thing in minimalism.), and it is not in itself a philosophy. Atheism (basically and sufficiently to be called atheism) is saying "no/ don't think so/ don't believe that myself" to a series of religious propositions--it doesn't make any positive propositions.

Narrative? Narrative is a story. What would be atheism's story? It is commonly done, but it would be a mistake to invoke here a rational, scientific worldview, to assume THAT is the content of atheism. It isn't. No doubt a lot of atheists, perhaps even a majority, subscribe to such a worldview, but there are irrational and unscientific atheists, and religious people (and perhaps whole religions), with rational, scientific worldviews.

A construct? This notion has been so muddled I hardly know what to say. Explaining what he meant by it, NC made an argument--which he called "mundane" and I agreed--about different atheists existing in their given, diverse contexts. A version of "everyone is a product of their times/environment". Yes, fine--and so what? That's obviously true about ANY opinion on any subject these people may hold. It is a trivial observation, so what's the point of making it? Logically what would follow seems to be an exploration of "individual atheisms"--meaning individual atheistic philosophies--but that approach goes against the grain of NC's intention to show that there is a "collective" atheism, complete with some kind of centre and "violent extremists".

>115 jburlinson:

First, is this a fair statement of conviction that would apply to most, perhaps all, atheists?

Haven't got a clue.

>116 LolaWalser: Haven't got a clue.

How about you? Would you agree with it?

ETA: One clue might be that the statement was endorsed by AAI and the Danish Atheist Society at the World Atheist Conference and then published by those groups, along with Atheist Ireland and others.

>117 jburlinson:

"We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs."

Yes, I would agree to this.

>116 LolaWalser:.

OK. Couldn't this assertion, if implemented in any given society, lead to the the creation of "a group in the way that religious denominations or political nationalities have done", to use >91 southernbooklady: 's phrase?

>119 jburlinson: but there's nothing atheistic in the proposition.

>119 jburlinson:

What >120 southernbooklady: said. I have religious friends who subscribe to the same view of education.

>109 southernbooklady: "It would be better to ask about the equivalence between religion and secularism, since secularism does have a moral system underpinning it, which presumably is something it would defend against challenges."

I would have headed in this direction yesterday, but was way-laid from returning until now.

Indeed -- I think I have been negligent here in specifying that the particular "brand" of atheism that seems particularly equivalent as a constructed worldview is New Atheism. That is, the New Atheists (e.g. Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris) are not simply people who don't believe in a divine; they are people who have made it their mission to combat a belief in the divine. Their atheism is a defining feature of how they interact with the rest of the world--their self-identities are as warriors in the the cultural battle to bring an end to invidiousness of religion. It's not just an absence of belief; it's the positive imposition of unbelief upon society, precisely because they understand themselves to have a moral obligation to eradicate the immorality of religion.

If atheism weren't an important part of their identities, why do they spend so much time writing Letters to a Christian Nation and about The God Delusion?

If atheism weren't an important part of their identities, why do they spend so much time writing Letters to a Christian Nation and about The God Delusion?

One answer to that would be "constant provocation by religious believers." -- at least that's the feeling I get. Harris's book was written as a response to the people who responded to his first book. The God Delusion reads as a fairly coherent rational argument that is being constantly interrupted by his own frustrations with the way religion manifests itself. But in both cases their focus is on the failings of religion as moral philosophy. They do not seem -- at least Dawkins doesn't, I'm not so sure about Harris -- to present their own atheistic moral philosophy. In fact they both seem to have a moral system based on the loose proposition that "suffering is bad" and the Golden Rule, which is fine as far as it goes, but not atheistic.

>120 southernbooklady: but there's nothing atheistic in the proposition.

I wonder. The atheist asserts "the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge." If one is trained in "critical thinking" and then asked to determine whether faith or reason is the best guide to knowledge, what would be the probability that the critical thinker would choose faith? Would it even be possible for a critical thinker to choose faith? Is using faith as a "guide to knowledge" at all compatible with critical thinking?

>121 LolaWalser: I have religious friends who subscribe to the same view of education.

Do your religious friends apply their critical thinking skills and then choose faith as a reliable guide to knowledge?

>124 jburlinson: " If one is trained in "critical thinking" and then asked to determine whether faith or reason is the best guide to knowledge, what would be the probability that the critical thinker would choose faith?

You are ignoring the fact that the person of faith claims a kind of knowledge not accessible to reason -- revelation. But it would be perfectly reasonable for such a person to exclude knowledge from revelation from, say, a school's curriculum, because it can't be rationally taught anyway. Nor is this proof in the believer's mind that he/she is being irrational, since they have very good reasons for trusting knowledge via revelation.

>126 southernbooklady: Nor is this proof in the believer's mind that he/she is being irrational, since they have very good reasons for trusting knowledge via revelation.

How can these very good reasons survive the test of critical thinking? Do you believe one can be thinking very critically if one allows oneself to trust in revelation?

I can't help but think that the successful critical thinkers in the educational system would be in a perfect position to point out to the believer that he/she is being irrational. I believe it's even happened within these LT forums. In fact, it would be the critical thinker's duty to do so, because to allow the believer to persevere in their error would be to undermine the efficacy of the educational system itself.

As I mentioned earlier, the proposition in question consists of two parts -- the first being the mastery of critical thinking. Only then is a person ready to make "the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge." How could a rational person select unreason as a guide?

>127 jburlinson: How can these very good reasons survive the test of critical thinking? Do you believe one can be thinking very critically if one allows oneself to trust in revelation?

Well I don't, but I also don't think there are two classes of knowledge in the universe -- the natural and the supernatural. I think what there is, is what there is. (How does Lucretius put it? "Nothing comes from nothing"?) But if you ascribe to the supernatural, because of revelation, then indeed something can come from nothing and you've got a whole other order of knowledge to which "critical thinking" would not apply.

>128 southernbooklady:. if you ascribe to the supernatural, because of revelation, then indeed something can come from nothing and you've got a whole other order of knowledge to which "critical thinking" would not apply.

So there is something atheistic in the proposition.

Not at all. Religious people can can think critically about things subject to critical thinking. It has nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of god.

>130 southernbooklady: Religious people can can think critically about things subject to critical thinking. It has nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of god.

So there are things that are not subject to critical thinking? Things like faith and revelation? And are religious people correct in not thinking critically about such things? Would a non-religious person be correct in not thinking critically about these things as well?

Could a critical thinker take such things seriously at all?

What I'm trying to understand is how we can "assert the need for education in critical thinking" and then let a bunch of religious types get away with dispensing with critical thinking and accepting faith as a guide to knowledge? Aren't we simply abandoning the assertion of a need for education in critical thinking if we allow such a thing to happen?

Take a specific case: Suppose we teach students how to think critically and then one of them says, "OK, I know how to think critically now, but I still believe God created woman from the first man's rib". Wouldn't we say, "come, come, now, you aren't really thinking critically because you couldn't possibly believe such a thing if you were"?

>131 jburlinson: "What I'm trying to understand is how we can "assert the need for education in critical thinking" and then let a bunch of religious types get away with dispensing with critical thinking and accepting faith as a guide to knowledge?"

My answer would be that one can let "religious types get away with dispensing with critical thinking" as long as these religious types do not try to reimpose "faith" as the ground of moral integration of society and as the criteria for knowledge. But the condition for this situation is that "faith" remains a private matter.

If we leave the level of the individual for that of society, one can see how modernity has erected rational structures that enable the moral and cognitive integration of disparate individuals without having to rely on the orientation of every individual to critical thinking rather than faith.

Habermas calls this historical development the "linguistification of the sacred." (The Theory of Communicative Action)

"... I shall be guided by the hypothesis that the socially integrative and expressive functions that were at first fulfilled by ritual practice pass over to communicative action; the authority of the holy is gradually replaced by the authority of an achieved consensus. This means a freeing of communicative action from sacrally protected
normative contexts. The disenchantment and disempowering of the domain of the sacred takes place by way of a linguistification of the ritually secured, basic normative agreement; going along with this is a release of
the rationality potential in communicative action. The aura of rapture and terror that emanates from the sacred, the spellbinding power of the holy, is sublimated into the binding/bonding force of criticizable validity
claims and at the same time turned into an everyday occurrence."

...

"In differentiated societies, collective consciousness is embodied in the state. The latter must itself provide for the legitimacy of the force over which it has a monopoly. "To sum up, we can therefore say that the state
is a special organ whose responsibility it is to work out certain representations which hold good for the collectivity. These representations are distinguished from the other collective representations by their high degree of consciousness and reflection."

...

"It is characteristic of the development of modern states that they change over from the sacred foundation of legitimation to foundation on a common will, communicatively shaped and discursively clarified in the political public sphere.

Against the background of this conversion of the state over to a secular basis of legitimation, the development of the contract from a ritual formalism into the most important instrument of bourgeois private law suggests the idea of a "linguistification" of a basic religious consensus that has been set communicatively aflow. In archaic societies the ceremonial declarations of the parties to a contract are scarcely distinguishable from
ritual actions; through the words of the participants it is the consensus-forming power of the sacred itself that speaks: "The wills can effect the bond only on condition of declaring themselves. This declaration is made
by words. There is something in words that is real, natural and living and they can be endowed with a sacred force, thanks to which they compel and bind those who pronounce them. It is enough for them to be pronounced in ritual form and in ritual conditions. They take on a sacred quality by that very act. One means of giving them the sacred character is the oath, or invocation of a divine being. Through this invocation, the
divine being becomes the guarantor of the promise exchanged. Thereby the promise, as soon as exchanged in this way ... becomes compulsive, under threat of sacred penalties of known gravity"

In modern law, by contrast, the private contract draws its binding power from its legality; but the law that gives it this legality owes its obligatory character, demanding recognition, to a legal system legitimated in the end by political will-formation. It is the achievement of mutual understanding by a communication community of citizens, their own words, that brings about the binding consensus."

>132 theoria: one can let "religious types get away with dispensing with critical thinking" as long as these religious types do not try to reimpose "faith" as the ground of moral integration of society and as the criteria for knowledge. But the condition for this situation is that "faith" remains a private matter.

So it's OK if religious types keep their notions of faith and revelation to themselves, but they'd be well advised not to pollute the public arena with their tomfoolery.

Or, if they do choose to utter their absurdities out loud, the special organ of the state should evaluate these pronouncements as to whether or not they qualify as "representations which hold good for the collectivity." Since it will be demonstrable that such representations are distinguished from the other collective representations by their low degree of consciousness and reflection, what should be the fate of those who presume to utter such representations?

Back to the catacombs?

>131 jburlinson: What I'm trying to understand is how we can "assert the need for education in critical thinking" and then let a bunch of religious types get away with dispensing with critical thinking and accepting faith as a guide to knowledge?

Compartmentalization. Everybody does it to some degree, even you and me.

Suppose we teach students how to think critically and then one of them says, "OK, I know how to think critically now, but I still believe God created woman from the first man's rib".

I think that is a very shallow (and therefore uncritical!) assessment of how a religious person approaches their faith. Faith is about meaning, after all. I expect that, when thinking about the story of Adam and Eve, the person of faith would ask themselves "In what way is this story true?" Even a very devout person can understand a metaphor.

In any case, I don't see how the ability to think critically has got anything to do with belief or non-belief. It's not like atheism is a prerequisite to critical thought. It may be the conclusion one arrives at in the process of thinking, but it may not.

>133 jburlinson: So it's OK if religious types keep their notions of faith and revelation to themselves, but they'd be well advised not to pollute the public arena with their tomfoolery.

Most religious people see the value in the principle of the separation of church and state. Actually, most people in general see the value in that.

>134 southernbooklady: Most religious people see the value in the principle of the separation of church and state. Actually, most people in general see the value in that.

"Separation of church and state" does not mean that religion must withdraw from the public sphere, just that it should neither be an expression of nor the basis for civil government. You can't very well have freedom of expression and then require people to stay mum about ideas that they believe are essential to individual, social, and cultural well-being.

>135 paradoxosalpha: Separation of church and state" does not mean that religion must withdraw from the public sphere, just that it should neither be an expression of nor the basis for civil government.

Well, I guess then it depends on what jburlinson means by "the public arena." I thought we were talking about education, and assumed we were talking about public schools (ei schools run by "the state") but perhaps that assumption is unfounded.

>136 southernbooklady: "Well, I guess then it depends on what jburlinson means by "the public arena."

I believe he was responding to >132 theoria: "But the condition for this situation is that "faith" remains a private matter."

Which sounds good in a theory, but seems useless in practice. I oppose the use of torture because of my faith -- oops, my faith is no longer a private matter. Now what do I do?!

>137 nathanielcampbell: I oppose the use of torture because of my faith -- oops, my faith is no longer a private matter. Now what do I do?!

I think that's a dilemma of your own devising.

One could express one's opposition to torture and its religious basis in public discussions. However, in authoring legislation that would criminalize torture, one would have to find secular substitutes for religious reasons, for example, by referring to the constitution or SCOTUS rulings that justify its public, legal proscription.

>134 southernbooklady: I think that is a very shallow (and therefore uncritical!) assessment of how a religious person approaches their faith. Faith is about meaning, after all. I expect that, when thinking about the story of Adam and Eve, the person of faith would ask themselves "In what way is this story true?" Even a very devout person can understand a metaphor.

Perhaps it is shallow, and I daresay 9/10's of the religious people who regularly participate in these Let's Talk Religion discussions do not approach their faith in these terms. But I hardly need to tell you that many people do. There used to be a pretty sizeable contingent of folks who expressed this POV, but I almost never see any of them contribute to the discussion any longer. (Our loss, in my opinion.) Yes, very devout people can understand a metaphor, but there are many devout people who do not believe that their holy texts express metaphors. No doubt, "critical thinking" would tend to disabuse them of these beliefs, at least that's what I assume the proponents of critical thinking would expect.

In fact, critical thinking would demand that people abandon these beliefs. No teacher of critical thinking would allow students flagrantly to flout their instruction and choose faith as a reliable guide to knowledge. It would be oil and water. The proposition that the society must "assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge" is tantamount to denying that "faith" is a guide to knowledge.

Critical thinking is all well and good. I, for one, have no problem with it or with teaching it. But then to move on in the educational process and demand that critical thinkers must judge between faith and reason as guides to knowledge paints the believer into a corner from which there is no escape, unless that person is willing to take an "F" in critical thinking.

the person of faith would ask themselves "In what way is this story true?" Even a very devout person can understand a metaphor.

Wouldn't the critical thinker ask the devout person why he or she should feel the need to try to understand the truth of a ancient metaphor? Wouldn't a critical thinker have to admit that their sacred text is nothing but a fairy tale about an imaginary companion before he or she could proceed on to trying to "understand" the fairy tale? Wouldn't Ockham say, "why bother"?

>140 jburlinson: Wouldn't the critical thinker ask the devout person why he or she should feel the need to try to understand the truth of a ancient metaphor? Wouldn't a critical thinker have to admit that their sacred text is nothing but a fairy tale about an imaginary companion before he or she could proceed on to trying to "understand" the fairy tale? Wouldn't Ockham say, "why bother"?

Are you suggesting that fiction is pointless?

>138 southernbooklady: Except I don't consider it a dilemma. Do you?

Then why did you ask "Now what do I do?"?

>141 southernbooklady: Are you suggesting that fiction is pointless?

By no means. But are you suggesting that fiction is a reliable "guide to knowledge"?

Hmmm. I question your use of the word "reliable" there. But Give the drive we have to write it, read it, learn about it and study it, I'd say fiction is hardly frivolous.

OK. Is it any kind of guide to knowledge?

It can be unfrivolous and still get us nowhere in our search for knowledge.

FWIW, here's an interesting article by Daniel T. Willingham called

Why It's So Hard To Teach Critical Thinking.

These ideas are expanded in his book Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How The Mind Works And What It Means For The Classroom

We seem to have strayed very far from the notion that critical thinking requires an atheistic mindset.

>148 southernbooklady: We seem to have strayed very far from the notion that critical thinking requires an atheistic mindset.

You are right as to seeming to have strayed. But perhaps we haven't gotten quite so far from the point as it may seem.

For the record, I didn't say that critical thinking requires an atheistic mindset. In responding to >120 southernbooklady: 's "there's nothing atheistic in the proposition", I was trying to point out that if we "assert the need for education in critical thinking" and then instruct on "the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge", the inevitable consequence will be the undermining of any valid rationale for faith. If one teaches the distinction between faith and reason, what chance does faith have of being reasonable?

The student, or the teacher, doesn't necessarily have to have an atheistic mindset at the outset of the educational process, but the 2-part procedure asserted in the proposition will lead to an atheistic outcome, it would seem to me.

What would the teacher say to the student who has mastered critical thinking, and is now being asked to exercise her critical thinking skills, about the adequacy of faith as a guide to knowledge?

>143 southernbooklady: Because I was told that my faith must remain a private matter.

>149 jburlinson: For the record, I didn't say that critical thinking requires an atheistic mindset.

No, what you did was offer the statement "We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs.""

as an example of how atheism can serve as a group identifier, in the same way religion has done. And I repeat that you still have not shown how anything in that statement is "atheistic." Critical thinking is a method that can be employed by believer and nonbeliever alike. Some will do it well, some will do it badly. I obviously use it to test my own atheism, but atheism is hardly a forgone conclusion of the process of critical thinking. Much depends on the nature of the evidence you use in constructing your arguments, of course.

>150 nathanielcampbell: Because I was told that my faith must remain a private matter.

Eh, I think you're manufacturing the dilemma and the attendant feelings of offense. Everyone's motivations are private. I could be driven by an intense desire to oust all men from positions of power for all you know. But we act in public in accordance with the rules, precepts and laws of the society we wish to be a part of. If I want to disallow all men from holding elected office, I have to come up with a reason that makes sense under the Constitution, regardless of how justified my feminist rationales feel to me. And if you want to live in a society that works on the principle of the separation of church and state, you work with the guidelines it allows. In the USA that means you vote your conscience, but you justify whatever legislation you want passed on secular and Constitutional arguments.

Of course, if you don't value the separation of church and state, and want to do away with the principle that keeps us from making any particular religion the official state religion, or resort to extra-legal methods to undermine the principle of the separation of church and state, we have a problem.

>151 southernbooklady: To my mind, the artificial distinction is that which thinks that the dignity of the human person must have "secular" rather than "religious" rationales. It's a distinction that doesn't make sense to me -- human dignity is a self-evident principle, being neither specifically secular nor specifically religious, but generally human.

This cleavage between the secular and the sacred is, for me, schizophrenic.

That may be, Nathan -- there are plenty of "schizophrenic" aspects to our culture that I object to as a woman. But what it "self-evident*" to you or to me still needs to work in cooperation with other people, who may find completely different things "self-evident."

*I'm a bit fascinated by this term, because it suggests a purely rational approach to understanding -- that there is "evidence" that convinces the self of its truth. It's an appeal to reason, not an appeal to revelation.

>127 jburlinson: Do you believe one can be thinking very critically if one allows oneself to trust in revelation?

I have to call out this remark. I'm fairly certain that a large portion of all the accomplishments we cherish in the West, theoretical, practical and aesthetic, is the result of revelation. Only a fool ignores or dismisses revelation when it comes.

>151 southernbooklady: Critical thinking is a method that can be employed by believer and nonbeliever alike. Some will do it well, some will do it badly.

My guess would be that believers probably do it badly.

I would still like for someone to describe how a critical thinker (doing critical thinking well) could explain how faith is a guide to knowledge.

>140 jburlinson: Wouldn't the critical thinker ask the devout person why he or she should feel the need to try to understand the truth of a ancient metaphor? Wouldn't a critical thinker have to admit that their sacred text is nothing but a fairy tale about an imaginary companion before he or she could proceed on to trying to "understand" the fairy tale?

Forgive me, but this is twaddle — as though all human experience is expressible in expository prose.

>155 jburlinson: My guess would be that believers probably do it badly.

Richard Dawkins would agree with you.

>154 librorumamans: I'm fairly certain that a large portion of all the accomplishments we cherish in the West, theoretical, practical and aesthetic, is the result of revelation. Only a fool ignores or dismisses revelation when it comes.

"Revelation" as I understand it, is god speaking to the person directly, it is truth that comes direct from god, not arrived at by reason. In fact, it has to come from god, because it is inaccessible to reason.

So no, I don't think a large portion of all the accomplishments we cherish is the result of revelation. I think it's the result of our ever-increasing sum of understanding, a rational process.

>156 librorumamans: "Forgive me, but this is twaddle — as though all human experience is expressible in expository prose.

Which is, I think, part of jburlinson's point, stretching back to his first introduction in >115 jburlinson: of the Cophenhagen Declaration's (atheist) enunciation of the following principle: "We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs."

He's been pushing against this idea that "critical thinking" is the summation of all good thinking, in contrast to the (implied) lack of critical thinking in faith and religion.

>152 nathanielcampbell: "*I'm a bit fascinated by this term, because it suggests a purely rational approach to understanding -- that there is "evidence" that convinces the self of its truth. It's an appeal to reason, not an appeal to revelation."

Again, the problem is the assumption that a rational approach is divisible from a holistic approach, as if the rational were some special category of truth, set apart from all else. (For Christians, the holistic rationality of all experience and existence is an implication of a creation enacted by the Logos, the Word of God.)

Thus, Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."

>159 nathanielcampbell: the problem is the assumption that a rational approach is divisible from a holistic approach

Actually, the problem is that in my approach, the rational is "holistic" and it is the person of faith who claims a special category for their truth, apart from all else. Hence the insoluble problem of what constitutes evidence -- your "Logos" is an unfounded and unnecessary addition to the question of existence.

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."

Very pretty. But essentially a god-of-the-gaps take on existence, since once we understand something, once we "see" it, faith must retreat.

>157 southernbooklady:(b) I made my earlier call-out just to challenge this narrow and, I believe, circular definition of 'revelation'.

You do not need to be Saint Theresa in her cell to experience a revelation; you could be, but you don't need to be.

You need an obstacle, a mystery if you will, a significant problem, a challenge. Commonly you also need background and preparation, which may be in the form of training and technique. Most of all you need to be open.

These are pretty much the prerequisites for anything new. Where the new comes from I don't think anyone understands. It's not rational and definitely not the result of purely critical thinking. Excluding all but critical thinking and instrumental reason leads, if anywhere, to grotesque errors.

To someone who has this experience, there is a sense that something has been added to one's awareness and understanding that was not there before. It seems to have been inserted or implanted.

This sense of 'revelation' is broader than its use by jburlinson, which as I said earlier strikes me as tautological. And it's not a neologism — it's been around since the fifteenth century.

Please don't think that I'm arguing that revelation is an argument for the existence of God, the capitalized personage. I'm not. But revelation is so mysterious that I can easily grasp how one might feel that it's divine in some sense. I don't think it's a trope that Homer invokes the goddess in the opening lines of the Iliad. Even if he wasn't creating the poem anew with each performance, even if Homer sat at a desk stylus in hand, he still needed the inspiration, the breathing into his mind from somewhere, to create a work of genius that had never been heard or seen in just that form before.

>161 librorumamans: A revelation is something that has been revealed, which implies a revealer. This post feels like word games to get around the normal English meanings of revelation, which certainly do imply God or at least some sort of supernatural force.

Where the new comes from I don't think anyone understands.

Bah. Lots of authors and inventors know where the new came from, where their creative ideas come form. Let's not obscure that so you can shove God in.

>161 librorumamans: I made my earlier call-out just to challenge this narrow and, I believe, circular definition of 'revelation'.

Tell it to the OED.

If you are talking about revelation as in an ah ha! eureka! moment, well I agree with @profilaes that such moments are not mysterious, they are a coalescing and focus of understanding. But in a conversation that is about the validity and variety of knowledge between the believer and unbeliever, I think we are safe is defining revelation theologically: "God's disclosure of Himself and His will to His creatures."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/revelation

>162 prosfilaes: A revelation is something that has been revealed, which implies a revealer Nonsense due to presupposition.

This post feels like word games to get around the normal English meanings of revelation, which certainly do imply God or at least some sort of supernatural force. I pointed out that the broader use of 'revelation' has been around since the fifteenth century.

Let's not obscure that so you can shove God in. I specifically said that I wasn't 'shoving God in'.

Lots of authors and inventors know where the new came from, where their creative ideas come form. Also nonsense if its 'lots of' is meant to imply 'most'; lots don't — which a careful read will show was my point.

>160 southernbooklady: "Actually, the problem is that in my approach, the rational is "holistic" and it is the person of faith who claims a special category for their truth, apart from all else. Hence the insoluble problem of what constitutes evidence"

So we each take our own perspectives as the axiomatic default, and proclaim the "other" as the special pleading. Insoluble, indeed...

(I believe that in standard Internet usage, this is the appropriate time to deploy the winking smiley emoticon: ;-) , or perhaps even: ;-P .)

>125 jburlinson:

Do your religious friends apply their critical thinking skills and then choose faith as a reliable guide to knowledge?

They don't think of faith as a guide to knowledge. For that they turn to science.

>165 nathanielcampbell: So we each take our own perspectives as the axiomatic default

Right, it's a question of starting positions. I have good reasons for the starting position I take, and I'm sure you have good reasons for the starting position you take -- but your reasoning is "not good" in my perspective, just as mine is "not good" in yours.

I do take the trouble to try to understand what the faithful understand though -- what revelation means, what a relationship with god means, what it is to be made in the image of god and/or what the objective ultimate good means. So I don't think I'm uninformed on your position, just unconvinced.

>167 HGKeller:, 168, etc.

You should check out LibraryThing's terms of use, and in particular it's advice for authors on the site:

http://www.librarything.com/about_authors.php

It will save you from inadvertently creating ill will among other LT members.

Atheism is coming from the assumption that a "God" does not exist and to believe there is a "God", one needs to be shown proof. Theists come from the assumption there is a "God" and for them to be convinced there isn't a "God" there is a need to be shown that life on earth started by itself and shown proof that a "God" doesn't exist. Atheists do have their "Gods." Mostly they worship themselves and pay lip service to how benevolent they are to allow everyone else to exist in "their" world. I've know some atheists in my life and they all have the same self attitude.

>169 southernbooklady: "So I don't think I'm uninformed on your position, just unconvinced."

You are, indeed, one of the most sympathetic hearers among the unconvinced -- it's why you're among my favorite interlocutors here!

>174 HGKeller: "I've know some atheists in my life and they all have the same self attitude."

I've known some atheists in my life who take that imperious attitude, as well; but I've also known some who are genuinely humble and humane, benevolent and good-hearted. I suggest you poke around a bit in the various threads in this and related groups, and get to know the contributions of southernbooklady in particular -- she will shatter your stereotype of the arrogant atheist, and show you that atheists can be just as thoughtful and kind as the best of religious believers. Indeed, in Nicki's case, she's far more patient than I, the theologian, am.

Jesuits are experts at critical thinking. One wrote:

"The more true opinion is, that all inanimate and irrational things may be legitimately worshipped," says Father Gabriel Vasquez, treating of Idolatry. "If the doctrine which we have established be rightly understood, not only may a painted image and every holy thing, set forth by public authority for the worship of God, be properly adored with God as the image of Himself, but also any other thing of this world, whether it be inanimate and irrational, or in its nature rational."

"Why may we not adore and worship with God, apart from danger, anything whatsoever of this world; for God is in it according to His essence and preserves it continually by His power; and when we bow down ourselves before it and impress it with a kiss, we present ourselves before God, the author of it, with the whole soul, as unto the prototype of the image (follow instances of relics, etc.) .... To this we may add that, since everything of this world is the work of God, and God is always abiding and working in it, we may more readily conceive Him to be in it than a saint in the vesture which belonged to him. And, therefore, without regarding in any way the dignity of the thing created, to direct our thoughts to God, while we give to the creature the sign and mark of submission; by a kiss or prostration, is neither vain nor superstitious, but an act of the purest religion."

De Cultu Adorationis Libri Tres.," Lib. iii, Disp. i, c. 2.

>157 southernbooklady: Richard Dawkins would agree with you.

Wouldn't you agree with Richard Dawkins? Wouldn't any teacher of critical thinking?

I ask again, how could any person retain a conviction that faith is a guide to knowledge after the person has passed through an educational system that teaches critical thinking and then requires the person to distinguish between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge.

>166 LolaWalser: They don't think of faith as a guide to knowledge. For that they turn to science.

Exactly.

The proposition as expressed in the Copenhagen Declaration promulgated at the World Atheist Conference will inevitably lead to an atheistic outcome as regards the search for knowledge.

>178 jburlinson: Wouldn't you agree with Richard Dawkins? Wouldn't any teacher of critical thinking?

Of course, Dawkins himself is not always a shining example of critical thinking, so it would have to be a qualified agreement.

I ask again, how could any person retain a conviction that faith is a guide to knowledge after the person has passed through an educational system that teaches critical thinking and then requires the person to distinguish between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge.

You can't, if you begin from my position which posits that all knowledge is..., well, "knowable." Or as some philosopher put it, "the universe always explains itself." But you can, if you begin from a position that not all knowledge is inherently knowable -- discoverable by reason. Which is, I think, a person who is the recipient of revelation must feel.

Now, I would say revelation is not an example of supernatural, inaccessible knowledge, it is an example of an unexamined life -- whatever is revealed is not truly "known" because it is received, not a product of reason. Just like someone who simply follows the directions in their phone's GPS to get to their destination does not really know where they are going, they are only following orders and trusting not to be led astray (a trust often misplaced, according to my mother's assessment of her Google Maps app.) But a person who takes the time to determine the best route to their destination may well indeed be said to understand where they are going, because they have reasoned it out. They have applied those critical thinking skills to the question of optimal routes.

But trust me, even the person who believes they have received a direct communication from god is not incapable of critical thinking. I'm quite sure they are up to the task of balancing their checkbooks, reading and enjoying a novel, and deciding what to have for dinner and who to vote for in the next election.

That's where Dawkins and I tend to part company, in the end. He seems to regard uncritical or irrational thinking as a net negative, a flaw in the human being. Whereas it seems to me that "irrationality" is just one of any number of traits that produce an effect on our genome. We all have a tendency to rationality and irrationality to some degree, and there is no....uh...reason to think that irrationality can't sometimes have a net-positive effect (I almost said "a purpose" but that implies intention) on the genes, the individual, even the species. I suspect that when it comes to making it to the next generation, there are times when embracing an irrational faith is a perfectly rational choice.

>178 jburlinson:

It's an "atheistic outcome" in exactly the same way as a blueberry pie made by an atheist is an "atheistic outcome".

>180 LolaWalser: Dammit, I am now craving blueberry pie. Proving that when it comes to pie, I am completely uncritical.

>181 southernbooklady:

Have faith. Somewhere in your neighbourhood there's blueberry pie, ready for revelation.

>181 southernbooklady: Wouldn't you rather say that when it comes to pi, it is, indeed, completely irrational?

>180 LolaWalser: It's an "atheistic outcome" in exactly the same way as a blueberry pie made by an atheist is an "atheistic outcome".

It's more like taking a newcomer to pie, teaching her how to bake a pie while giving her only the ingredients for blueberry pie and then asking her which she likes better, blueberry pie or boysenberry pie.

>184 jburlinson:

No, it isn't. The recipe is one. The path to scientific knowledge is one, the same for atheists and believers.

>185 LolaWalser: The path to scientific knowledge is one, the same for atheists and believers.

But the proposition does not ask the critical thinker to distinguish between faith and reason as a guide to "scientific knowledge", but to "knowledge". Are you willing to accept that there is another kind of knowledge than scientific knowledge?

I'm guessing that the authors of the proposition are not willing to accept that. If they would, I'll eat my hat (as long as it's made of blueberry pie).

>179 southernbooklady: ...all knowledge is..., well, "knowable." Or as some philosopher put it, "the universe always explains itself."

All human knowledge is knowable by humans, I'll go along with you there. But that's not the same thing as saying that human knowledge=all knowledge. I'll even go along with the philosopher that the universe explains itself; but it obliges its audience by giving the explanation in a language that is comprehensible to that particular audience. Unfortunately, something is always lost in translation.

But you can, if you begin from a position that not all knowledge is inherently knowable -- discoverable by reason. Which is, I think, a person who is the recipient of revelation must feel.

Not only believers in revelation. In the book Rationality and Logic by Robert Hanna, intuition is described as both noninferential and cognitively indispensable.

>186 jburlinson: Are you willing to accept that there is another kind of knowledge than scientific knowledge?

The point is, the believer thinks there is.

At the risk of driving a metaphor into the realm of the silly, the problem isn't blueberry vs. boisenberry, it's that one person follows a recipe and makes the pie at home, whereas another insists that all pies come from the bakery. The first person knows how to make a pie. The second person doesn't know anything about how to make a pie, but still gets to eat it. Probably has all sorts of good reasons for why he gets pie from that bakery. And the kicker is, the first person could actually have made the pie the second one picked up in the bakery, but his friend will never know, because he's applying his critical thinking skills to the question of the best bakeries, not how to make pies.

>187 jburlinson: intuition is described as both noninferential and cognitively indispensable

What does that mean, that intuition is "noninferential?"

>186 jburlinson:

I don't think the point is to distinguish between kinds of knowledge, but to establish that there is a difference between a critical approach to gaining knowledge, and taking things on faith. And as I said, in that regard the proposition is unexceptional and in practice widely agreed to by believers and non-believers.

All this pie talk is seriously dangerous. I'm supposed to meet someone in one hour and damn if I won't buy a pie on my way.

Or maybe write a nursery rhyme while I'm at it. Buy-pie-way-but why?

>189 southernbooklady: What does that mean, that intuition is "noninferential?"

Hanna uses the word to mean that "whenever a subject intuits that S and is therefore fully convinced that necessarily S, then her belief that necessarily S is based not on any reasons or premises, but instead only on the intuitional episode itself."

>188 southernbooklady: But the person who bakes their pies at home also knows that one can buy pies from the bakery, and might do so in a pinch when they don't have time. By analogy, the religious believer knows by the natural sciences (baking at home, I presume?) but also knows from faith (the bakery?).

>193 jburlinson: then her belief that necessarily S is based not on any reasons or premises, but instead only on the intuitional episode itself

But why is intuition not considered "reason"? Given our propensity as a species for making and understanding patterns and using them as predictive tools, isn't it likely that "intuition" is really the brain grasping the pattern more quickly than we can describe it? Does that make intuition irrational? Or rationality at light speed*?

*actually, I'm not sure "rational" is the word I'm looking for. "Empirical processes", maybe, which by definition are part of the knowable aspect of the universe, right?

But the person who bakes their pies at home also knows that one can buy pies from the bakery

Well I did acknowledge the analogy was a little silly. But the person who thinks pies come from bakeries would have to demonstrate they understood that pies ultimately come from people who bake them, or they'd be treating pie as a baked-goods revelation, instead of a process of natural forces. But in any case, I don't think this argument will be resolved in a discussion about who makes the best pies. I mean, we haven't even mentioned ice cream! And we were talking about blueberry pie!

>195 southernbooklady: There seems to be a thicket of terms here that is likely to lead to talking at cross-purposes (or, given the frequent tenor of this group, cross purposes).

But why is intuition not considered "reason"?

Well, there's the OED: 5 a) "Mod. Philos. The immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process; a particular act of such apprehension.
         b) Immediate apprehension by the intellect alone; a particular act of such apprehension."

I imagine a Venn diagram sort of thing. Most pattern recognition/pattern matching is not what I would call rational — the visual and auditory cortexes, e.g. Some pattern recognition obviously is, however.

And I don't think I would say that intuition is irrational but, rather and usually, non-rational; it's useful, I think, to maintain a distinction between the two. The irrational seems to transgress rules that simply don't apply to the non-rational. Hasty illustrations: it's irrational to bet on a lame horse, while it's non-rational to see or not see the arrow in the FedEx logo without someone's help.

(It's way late; that's the best I can do.)

>196 librorumamans: the frequent tenor of this group

I'm not cross; things are rosy.

>196 librorumamans: I don't think I would say that intuition is irrational but, rather and usually, non-rational; it's useful, I think, to maintain a distinction between the two.

Okay, I can get behind that. But in that case I don't think intuition is an equivalent of revelation. Revelation imparts knowledge that could otherwise not be known. You can't say the same thing about intuition, since whatever it is, it seems to be a kind of conclusion built upon evidence already extant.

>198 southernbooklady: But in that case I don't think intuition is an equivalent of revelation. Revelation imparts knowledge that could otherwise not be known.

I'm not sure that I make categorical distinctions among 'intuition', 'revelation', and 'insight' (and I'm not trying to go all Lonergan on you there). I say that as a committed church-goer who most days doesn't think there's anything more than thee and me and all this stuff we bump into and stumble over (and that I blame on the damned Higgs boson).

>195 southernbooklady: Given our propensity as a species for making and understanding patterns and using them as predictive tools, isn't it likely that "intuition" is really the brain grasping the pattern more quickly than we can describe it? Does that make intuition irrational? Or rationality at light speed*? *actually, I'm not sure "rational" is the word I'm looking for. "Empirical processes", maybe, which by definition are part of the knowable aspect of the universe, right?

Why wouldn't the same be true of revelation? It would seem to me that the primary difference between intuition and revelation is that intuition does not necessarily require identifying the source or the cause of the intuitional episode, whereas revelation is accompanied by a sense of the knowledge coming from "outside" the subject in some way, specifically from a source that possesses or represents something inaccessible or transcendent.

In this way, a figure like Deborah, for example, could use her "empirical processes" operating at light speed to intuit that the time and circumstances were right to free her people from the oppression of the Canaanite King Jabin of Hazor. Doubtless there were myriad bits of data that she had perceived, perhaps unconsciously, that contributed to her intuition. Given her cultural milieu, it's not surprising that such an intuition might be attributed by her to an external source that she would have had no trouble identifying as the God of Israel. As a subjective experience, it might well have manifested to her consciousness as a revelation from a transcendent source. That interpretation of her intuition on her part would also be, of course, part of an empirical process: a process which neither she nor we, at this moment in time, could adequately describe.

If we were to consider intuition (or revelation) as "rationality at light speed", wouldn't we be imposing potentially damaging constraints on such a process by insisting on subjecting it to the disciplined and systematic methodology that would be taught in critical thinking school?

This Pew poll is a bit dated but it may add to the discussion of critical thinking.

"People who express consistently conservative political attitudes across a range of issues are more likely than other ideological groups to rate teaching religious faith as especially important – and the least likely to say the same about teaching tolerance.

By contrast, people with consistent liberal opinions stand out for the high priority they give to teaching tolerance – and the low priority they attach to teaching religious faith and obedience." http://www.people-press.org/2014/09/18/teaching-the-children-sharp-ideological-d...

>202 theoria: Interesting summary from a book on People and Their Opinions

Thinking Critically About People’s Opinions

One of the points made: "Virtually every significant behavior, or its results (including expressed opinions), has many determinants, and any single-factor explanation is inevitably an oversimplification."

>202 theoria: They give high priority to teaching tolerance, yet are intolerant of religious faith and obedience? The paradox of this thing called "tolerance"...

>198 southernbooklady: "Revelation imparts knowledge that could otherwise not be known."

Isn't that also true of empirical processes? (Though I suppose God could have revealed the existence of the Higgs boson to us quite independently of our empirical search for it...)

>204 nathanielcampbell: Here's the sentence from the Pew article: "By contrast, people with consistent liberal opinions stand out for the high priority they give to teaching tolerance – and the low priority they attach to teaching religious faith and obedience."

Then you write >204 nathanielcampbell: "They give high priority to teaching tolerance, yet are intolerant of religious faith and obedience?"

Why did you translate "low priority" into "intolerant of religious faith"? That's the real paradox.

>201 jburlinson:If we were to consider intuition (or revelation) as "rationality at light speed", wouldn't we be imposing potentially damaging constraints on such a process by insisting on subjecting it to the disciplined and systematic methodology that would be taught in critical thinking school?

I'm having a little trouble understanding how you equate revelation and intuition, but one thing I'll say about "constraints" and intuition is that when we see it in action, we tend to ascribe it to a burst of "creative insight" on the part of the one who has the intuition. We say things like "they really think outside the box."

What that really means is that they have shown us the flaws and limitations of our own understanding. They have in effect, redefined the box for us.

But if you think that nothing can come from nothing (or conversely, that something always comes from something) then they haven't rewritten the laws of the universe with their intuition, just extended our comprehension of the nature of existence a little further. That is still a natural, of-this-world process though, don't you think?

>205 nathanielcampbell: Isn't that also true of empirical processes?

Truth from a supernatural source is by definition not accessible or discoverable to an investigation via natural processes, isn't it? It comes from a source external and outside what might be called "the natural universe."

>202 theoria: Way upthread, I linked to this:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-2015...

>201 jburlinson:

I wonder if it is intuition that determines the color of this dress.

>207 southernbooklady: I'm having a little trouble understanding how you equate revelation and intuition

As I mentioned in >201 jburlinson: , it appears to me that revelation could be a kind of intuition in which the intuitor (is that a word? the LT spell-checker says yes) assigns a source (typically external) to the intuition.

For example, I might have an intuition that the stranger I'm talking to is untrustworthy. This could likely be the result of lightning-quick perceptions on my part of various verbal and visual cues that I'm getting from the stranger. Another person, one who has grown up in a sheltered Mormon community, let us say, might have the same intuition, but might freight that intuition with the notion that God is revealing the stranger's untrustworthiness. It's the same intuition, likely sparked by the same, or similar, empirical processes, it's just that the second person has construed the source of the intuition in a way in which I didn't.

I used the example of Deborah from the Bible before, but the same kind of explanation could be used for other sorts of revelation. To quote Edison: "The first step is an intuition and it comes with a burst". Edison could just as easily attributed this burst to God, and it wouldn't have changed the nature of the intuition or the quality of his successes after he added the 99% perspiration.

It's all a question of construal, which itself might be considered a kind of intuition.

>209 southernbooklady: Maybe so. But, frankly, I have to take it on faith that some people see this as white and gold. I'm with Taylor Swift. (It's really blue and a kind of golden-black).

Whatever it is, it's evidence that we (human beings) should be very leery of the empirical processes we engage in, like rationality, etc.

>210 jburlinson: could be a kind of intuition in which the intuitor (is that a word? the LT spell-checker says yes) assigns a source (typically external) to the intuition.

Atheists tend to use this explanation of revelation to show that people who believe in revelation are really just lacking in understanding. It's a kind of fallback position that will evaporate as understanding increases.

ETA
>211 jburlinson: what are you blind? that dress is absolutely white and gold! :)

##195 - 205 passim

At what point do we bring instinct into the conversation and where do we place it in relation to revelation, insight, and intuition?

>212 southernbooklady: Atheists tend to use this explanation of revelation to show that people who believe in revelation are really just lacking in understanding.

Could it be that atheists might be wrong?

Revelation (to the one who receives the revelation) could just be an intuition about an intuition. Intuition isn't always right.

To a third party, there could be an additional intuition. Third party A might have an intuition that the revelator is a truth-teller and inspired by God. Third party B might have an intuition that the revelator might have had a good intuition, but is not inspired by God. Third party C might have an intuition that the revelator is mentally ill. Third party D might have an intuition that the revelator is an out-and-out charlatan. Third party E might have an intuition that the revelator is just lacking in understanding.

Which of these third parties would be engaging in critical thinking?

>213 librorumamans: At what point do we bring instinct into the conversation and where do we place it in relation to revelation, insight, and intuition?

Instinct is where the pitcher throws a beanball at my head and I hit the dirt.
Intuition is where, after the pitcher has pitched me 3 successive curveballs out of the strike zone, I guess that the next pitch will be a fast ball over the plate.
Insight is where I come to understand that the pitcher can't throw a curveball for a strike.
Revelation is where I point to the right field wall and then hit a home run.

>215 jburlinson: Revelation is where I point to the right field wall and then hit a home run.

That's an idiosyncratic use of "revelation."

>209 southernbooklady:
=====
I read somewhere that the ancient Greeks couldn't see blue. Is this related?

>209 southernbooklady:

=====
Why did Homer speak of a "wine dark sea"?

>218 quicksiva: They watered down their wine. :)

>217 quicksiva: from Thesaurus Linguae Graecae:

κύᾰνος ῠ, ὁ (later ἡ, v. infr. I.3, 7), dark-blue enamel, esp. used to adorn armour, δέκα οἶμοι μέλανος κυάνοιο Il.11.24, cf. 35; πτύχες κυάνου Hes.Sc.143; also θριγκὸς κυάνοιο, of a cornice, Od.7.87; so perh. in IG12.367.7, 42(1).102.244 (Epid.). 2. lapis lazuli, κ. αὐτοφυής (opp. σκευαστός) Thphr.Lap.39, al., Dsc.5.91, etc. (perh. also in Pl.Phd.113c); κ. ἄρρην, θῆλυς, Thphr.Lap.31: also an imitation made in Egypt, ib.55. 3. blue copper carbonate, Hp.Cord.2, Gal.12.233 (ὁ and ἡ), Luc.Lex.22; βαπτὴ κ. AP6.229 (Crin.). 4. blue cornflower, Plin.HN21.68. 5. a bird, perh. blue thrush, Turdus cyanus, Arist.HA617a23, Ael.NA4.59. 6. sea-water, Hsch. 7. fem., the colour blue, Alex.Aphr.in Mete.162.4.

Anybody who's ever actually looked at ocean waters multiple times knows that they come in all kinds of colors besides "blue." The purplish-grey of "wine-dark" is actually fairly common, especially under cloudy skies.

Here on the Carolina coast the ocean often looks grey-green, even on sunny days.

I think the viral dress today is actually an interesting case to illustrate some of what we're talking about here. The article that appeared most often in my Facebook feed is this one from Wired: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

It goes on and on about how their tech geeks fiddled around with the photo of the dress in Photoshop, trying to determine the proper color breakdown of the picture and thus the color of the dress.

My first thought on seeing the whole hullabaloo was not, however, to analyze the photograph. It was to send someone to look at the physical dress.

>202 theoria: I think this is more about conservative-liberal contrasts than religious-atheist. "Liberal" religious people are more likely to proritise tolerance and less likely to prioritise religious teaching and obedience than conservative religious people. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to demonstrate in the context of this conversation.

>217 quicksiva: The claim appears to have first been made by William Gladstone concerning the Homeric epics; it has since been taken up by others. A run-down is available in the RadioLab episode on "Colors": http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/ With another summary recently surfacing on MSN because of the dress: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/no-one-could-see-the-color-blue-until-m...

But, as >220 librorumamans: points out, there are so many holes in the claim that it's pretty risible.