Ep. 70: Grilled Pastor for Two

[Brad]

Hoooo Wheeee, Uncle Jed! There's a lot up above to consider and read about!
Over the course of today and maybe tomorrow, I hope to give it all a careful reading, including links. Also, I still have on my list to find the thread Rian mentioned, where I expect to find some interesting belief discussion.

Meanwhile, Wonders,
Glad to see you back in these parts. I hope things are looking up regarding the job front, and well in all other respects.

Pseudonym,

The experience of something, anything at all, is immaterial, deeply personal, highly subjective and entirely inside the experiencer's own head. But I don't think it's either fair or accurate to call it "simply imaginary".

So is anything imaginary?
If so, on what basis is it appropriate to conclude whether given ideas and thought patterns are more likely imaginary than not?

[Brad]

Pending my more careful study of many remarks above, regarding our discussion about the relationship of religion and god belief to wars and other other large human calamities, I’d like to generally reiterate a few points:

1) We are very much in agreement (I think – and hope) that human behavior is never truly one-dimensional. No single aspect of life or experience is ever the sole determinant of even an individual’s actions, not to mention the action of large groups like religious factions or nations.
But both with individuals and groups, ideas do matter – sometimes only incidentally, but often in major, even fundamentally motivating or grossly inflammatory ways.

2) We agree on the commonplace that correlation is distinct from causation. But where sufficient, not to mention overwhelming, correlation exists, it is reasonable and appropriate, even vital, to shed light on the corollary link.

For example, if I’m not mistaken, cigarette smoking has never been proven to be a cause of lung cancer. Instead, the connection is still simply an overwhelming correlation. There are many other causes, and correlations to, lung cancer.
Smoking is simply the most malign influence on the disease for most people, though that fact was unappreciated for hundreds of years. And of course, not everyone who smokes dies of lung cancer. Some folks, like George Burns, puff happily away, enjoying their smokes, until they're 100 years of age.

(And for several decades, tobacco companies, lobbyists, and executives - and their bought-and-paid for “scientists” - argued publicly just that – the causation had never been proven and that human behavior and biology was just “too complex” to pin the blame on cigarette smoking. Meanwhile, of course, those same people were aiming advertising at children, inserting additives they knew were addictive in their products and so forth. And they knew, too, based on their own studies that what they were saying in public was a lie. To me, the religious analogue of those tobacco executives and lobbyists are called theologians, priests, and sometimes, pastors.)

I say that as smoking is to lung cancer, so is god belief to divisiveness, scapegoating, hatred, and violent conflict.
Yes, there are other factors involved – always. And yes, human beings have psychological, even instinctual, inclinations toward a variety of unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors. But belief in deities and that ancient writings stem from those deities is the best gas on the foul fires of irrationality that mankind has ever known. The correlation is overwhelming, both historically and in every day's edition of major national and world newspapers.

It’s no accident, nor is it superficial, that the battle lines are so often, and have always been, drawn around belief-oriented lines. Protestant vs. Catholic, Sunni vs. Shia, Islam vs. “infidels,” Hindu vs. Muslim, everybody non-Jew you can name vs. Jews.
It was not superficial that at least one of the popes who ginned up the Crusades promised eternity in heaven and the forgiveness of God to all those who would march.
It was not just an incidental aside that Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, gave this line, referring to the two armies killing each other by the tens of thousands most days: Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.
And it was no accident that both the man who shot Lincoln, and the man who shot that man, both invoked God as their motivator, not as a “superficial” factor in their trigger-pulling.

3) Even if it could be shown that god beliefs are not now, and have not always been, a major link to large scale disasters around the world, I am only one of many, many, millions of people who can testify that god beliefs, scripture devotion, and associated behaviors VERY DIRECTLY AND PURPOSELY cause vast amounts of needless suffering and strife and grief around the world at every minute of every day. And that would just be the Christians...

At this point I can appreciate how the beliefs or faiths or whatever term is appropriate to describe the religions of folk like Pseudonym and StillSearching are relatively innocuous and benign and no doubt even conducive to their personal happiness.
But I’d be surprised if any argument, including whatever I learn from studying the posts above, will persuade me that the sort of god belief that is far, far more common around the world, and has been so for many centuries, is not a vicious and malignant cancer on humanity as a whole.

[Rian]

Hoooo Wheeee, Uncle Jed! There's a lot up above to consider and read about!
Over the course of today and maybe tomorrow, I hope to give it all a careful reading, including links. Also, I still have on my list to find the thread Rian mentioned, where I expect to find some interesting belief discussion.

The search function is fixed now, so give "Homer" a try (and I'm not talking about

[wondersforoyarsa]

Brad, all I can say is that your hatred is blinding you to a fuller understanding of what motivates the vast majority of human beings in this world. You might say my love is blinding me - for I see Christianity in my experience as primarily the wellspring of human sympathy, of people moving outside of selfishness into concern for the other, of highmindedness and intentional living, of aspirations toward truth, goodness, and beauty, and of deep honesty toward one's self and one's neighbor and the natural world. But you aren't going to accept that, because it doesn't go hand in hand with your experience.

Let's take a case study - I'll let you pick one. Try to stay clear of the largest extremes so that we can keep emotions down - no crusades on the one hand or killing fields on the other. Pick a conflict, and we can examine just what role religion played. And I think we will find, almost across the board, that religion plays a part, in that human beings are generally religious people, but that the core of the faith is almost always quite secondary to the real issues of the conflict.

[KomradRed]

Oh please pick the Crusades, the Crusades are so interesting.

[Brad]

Rian,
You mean there's another Homer?

Pseudonym,
Oh, that Stanley Milgram! I'm quite familiar with Milgram's famous experiment. I'd just misplaced his name in my brain. I'm not at all sure that the experiment necessarily voids the Weinberg quote - apples and oranges again. I'll try to explain more completely what I mean later.
Nevertheless, I should say that usually when I've mentioned that Weinberg statement somewhere, I've been careful to add my own alterations to it, because while I think it's generally true, I'd agree with you that it's not always and universally true. In my post above, I neglected to make and explain my usual modification of adding "almost always" before "takes religion" because I was in a hurry - not that that's a good excuse.

Wonders,
At least twice now you've characterized not only my statements, but me, as being full of hatred. I think you are mistaken. I speak what I understand to be true directly and without the delicacy to which your ears are apparently accustomed. That is not hatred.
I suppose I do hate something - unnecessary suffering, conflict, and well, actual hatred and meanness, which contrary to what you assert, is extremely common among self-professed Christians. Of course, like all the other believers here, you claim that that sort of thing has nothing to do with you, your fellow travelers, and your exact beliefs, which of course you understand to be "right" or the "best," otherwise you wouldn't hold or profess them.
To be blunt once again, I have the feeling that I've seen a lot more of Christianity than you have, and that you've lived a lot of your young life in something of a bubble within your particular faith community.
You also characterize yourself as being a wellspring of "love." In an effort to be kind and diplomatic, I'll just say that might be open to question, given quite a few of your comments on this forum and some bits of your podcast discussions, too.
In short, you might consider whether your characterizations of me as being "blinded by hatred," and of yourself as being only possibly "blinded by love," reflect a wee bit of self-serving bias and saccharine distortion on your part.
Meanwhile, I continue to wish the best for you in your job search and all related matters that occur in day-to-day life.

[Brad]

Rian,
Have to run now, but I think I found the thread in question - this one, no?

Also, apparently a similar thread started by Wonders here.

Hope to read everything in this thread above plus these two threads later in the day.

[Brad]

Wonders,
I've gone back and read your posts and quoted excerpts on the previous page of this thread.
I agree with Pseudonym that they are excellent!
While I would differ with aspects of their overall conclusions, which I think fairly evidently arise because the authors you quoted are/were deity believers or Christians while I am neither, there is much there that we can all agree upon.

I'm going to prepare some further explanation of what I'm referring to here, which will probably be addressed in a reply to some of Pseudonym's comments.

Meanwhile, please consider what I wrote to you in the previous post above.

[wondersforoyarsa]

At least twice now you've characterized not only my statements, but me, as being full of hatred. I think you are mistaken. I speak what I understand to be true directly and without the delicacy to which your ears are apparently accustomed. That is not hatred.

I never said you were "full of hatred". You just hate Christianity. I happen to love it. When we hate things, we look at them differently than when we love them. I'm presuming nothing at all about you, other than that your experience and observations have led you to hate what my experience and observations have led me to love. That's all I said.

To be blunt once again, I have the feeling that I've seen a lot more of Christianity than you have, and that you've lived a lot of your young life in something of a bubble within your particular faith community.

To be blunt, you are presuming a character defect is behind a difference of opinion. That sort of thing is rather unhelpful in any sort of debate, not least an internet one where we already know a great deal less about each other than we might otherwise. I may have "feelings" that I am a far more mature and well-researched person than someone else. But I can't expect them to agree with me on that by asserting it, no?

You also characterize yourself as being a wellspring of "love." In an effort to be kind and diplomatic, I'll just say that might be open to question, given quite a few of your comments on this forum and some bits of your podcast discussions, too.

Brad, just stop. Say "Wonders, you're a mean-spirited jerk" - it is actually far less insulting than saying "Wonders, I would call you a mean-spirited jerk, but that might hurt your feelings, so to show what a nice person I am, I will suggest you see a professional psychologist about anger issues." Now, I happen to agree that some of my posts are angry and mean-spirited. And I happen to disagree that I am a "wellspring of love" - rather strongly in fact. You probably heard me say that my faith was a wellspring of love to me - in that in my experience, it pushes me in the direction of love when my own self-serving inertia squelches it. Imagine if I blew my lid everytime an atheist said "in my case, leaving my faith was a journey toward honesty", and interpret him as saying "I am a more honest person than all you Christian liars and hypocrites."

In short, you might consider whether your characterizations of me as being "blinded by hatred," and of yourself as being only possibly "blinded by love," reflect a wee bit of self-serving bias and saccharine distortion on your part.

Brad, you hate Christianity. I love it. Perhaps I hate anchovies and you love them, I don't know. The question isn't whether you are a bad person for "hating" something, but rather why has our experiences led us to disdain what the other adores. You're reacting as if I'm judging your character, when I am very much not.

[Brad]

Well, Wonders, we have had a misunderstanding, and this is an unwieldy setting to resolve such a thing, especially given that we've never met outside of cyberspace.
I'd say that our best plan is to return to the substance of the forum and the thread, and let the rest go as grist off the side of the mill and into the stream, so to speak.

I will indulge in one last statement, however, something I'd really like to get across. It is a great distortion, no, it's just flat wrong, to say that I "hate" Christianity!
I have come to have the conviction that supernatural and other grandiose non-evidence based beliefs, whether in the Christian or Hebrew God or the Muslim God or the Hindu God or Scientology's or the Raelian's aliens, or what have you, are mistaken and are the source of lots of harm, especially when combined with the more noxious ideas that are either explicit or subject to being extracted implicitly from the Bible. Those things I think are worth my time in protesting vehemently, but still I don't "hate" them.

And I'm always ready to recognize that a lot of good, too, is done by individual Christians and at the congregation level. If I thought those "goods" comprised the vast majority of the effects of Christianity and other similar dogmas and god beliefs, I'd be watching the baseball game and having a beer right now instead of writing this. In fact, I would never have written anything here at all.

Also,
1) Having grown up in a Christian social setting, I appreciate many of the communitarian and some of the more useful rituals that are common within Christian congregations,
2) I appreciate as wise and broadly beneficial several teachings ascribed to Jesus, some of the beautiful language, images, and even ideas in the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
3) Some of my dearest friends are devout Christians, and I can't "hate" something that means so much to them.

Today I happened to read some in a thread you started a year or so ago (one of the ones linked above in a post to Rian) in which you proposed to describe your beliefs, or something to that effect. I noted there that someone else had observed that you have an unfortunate tendency to mis-perceive and then exaggerate malice or hatred against Christians or Christianity. I'll bet you've picked that up along the Christian path, so to speak, because I've seen this "woe is me" Christian victim stance several times before. (On the social level, this reached a zenith of absurdity with the notion of a "War on Christmas" a couple of years ago. )

In any event, how about this? What if we just drop the words hate and hatred altogether and focus on substance?

By the way, I made a note of Ramachandra's book and also again to find Qutb's "Milestones." The former looks like worthwhile reading and I'd intended to read the latter for some time. Thanks for the tip and reminder!

[Brad]

At least give me some credit for not pretending that "atheism causes atrocities".

Done and gladly!

Indeed, a lot of my thinking was prompted by the writings of Christians from the more conservative end of the spectrum.

I have to say it looks to me like you’ve learned to interpret history from some of those same sources, too, thereby minimizing, if not ignoring altogether, the role that god-beliefs play in lots of conflicts.

Propositions are certainly acquired by religions as they get older, but I don't agree that this is their primary purpose, or their real advantage.

(There I go, channeling Karen Armstrong again...)

I’ll probably read Ms. Armstrong’s latest when it comes out in paperback, but what would you say is the primary purpose and real advantage of religion(s) young or old?
I might agree with you on that purpose, but as you know my view is that the downside of god belief (a vital component of almost all “religion”) outweighs the positive elements on any broad social scale.

Brad wrote:Ninety-nine percent of the tragedy caused by religious belief (as commonly defined) never makes the papers, but takes place in private homes and in what doesn’t happen in schools, and in many other relatively ordinary places and situations. Do I really need to explain further?

I've heard some horrific reports of abuse in military schools and prison-like "behaviour-modification" schools which are easily as bad as anything you've heard from a religious establishment. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about?

No, what I was referring to was more along the lines of the negative preparation for living that a very large proportion of believing parents impart to their children such as unnecessary fears of both supernatural deities and of human beings who don’t harbor those same fears, and such as divisive, scapegoating, and magical styles of thinking – often under the diversionary and false banner of “love,” distorted apprehensions and beliefs about gender, suspicion of science and all forms of higher learning, and a few other such minor indoctrinated impairments.
When I said “what doesn’t happen in schools,” what I was thinking of primarily at that moment was the fact that the Texas state Board of Education now has the primary influence over the textbooks that most public school students in the entire U.S. will study in the coming few years. And the majority of that BoE has quite a fundamentalist leaning. Guess what sort of things are going to left out? When those young Americans are grown, their ignorance will have unfortunate, but yet unimagined, consequences all over the world.

Pseudonym wrote:it remains a fact that religion seems to work and that science hasn't yet come up with something that does the job.

Brad wrote:What job, exactly?

One obvious example is that religion does a remarkable job of inspiring people to get engaged in community-building and charitable activities with people that they have little in common with (apart from, obviously, a shared religion). Science doesn't do this, because that's not its job, just like how explaining where the universe came from is not religion's job.

Brad wrote:Are you sure that you’re not setting up a false dichotomy between religion and science?

I'm certain that I'm not. I think that religion and science are fundamentally incomparable.

Of course it’s not the job of science to engage the public in social activities, so why write that, “it remains a fact that religion seems to work and that science hasn't yet come up with something that does the job” if what you were talking about as “the job” has to do with social/charitable activities? That’s why I asked if you might be setting up a false dichotomy. It looks to me like that was the case.
And religion is by no means the only motivator for people to help others. In fact, were it not for the divisive and paranoid aspects of religious dogmas and god beliefs, I think that it would be far easier for humanitarian and communitarian work to get done, and far easier to persuade larger numbers of people of the great benefits of such work for both individual service providers and the receivers of help.

Brad wrote:Religion "works" – sometimes to the good, but far more often than religious people want to acknowledge, very much to the detriment of humanity.

Right. It's the same with politics, democracy and any other principle which can be used to organise people. A powerful tool can be used for great good or great evil. The challenge is how to ensure that a tool is used properly.

If religion was simply a tool, that would be one thing. Even so, better tools are available - education and reason, primarily. But as tools go, religion is more like a stick of dynamite than a shovel or a hammer. In any event, as metaphors go, I think the disease model I used in a post above is far more apt than a toolbox to describe the effects of religious dogma and belief.

Brad wrote:

Pseudonym wrote:Given that, I think it makes sense for (many? most?) people to keep doing religion, so long as they do it right.

Right according to whom?

According to what produces the desirable results. If it encourages people to do good things and not to do bad things, then it's being done "right".

Problem: The Bible.
Another problem: The Koran.
As long as people believe that some sort of supernatural, or unseen, or immaterial, or mystical, being both exists and “inspired” or dictated those texts (and others), religion is not going to be done “right” by your definition by the majority of believers. That is because there is simply too much primitive and mean-spirited ancient tribal nonsense that appears to be “the Will of God” in those texts.
The notion that there is some sort of progress toward understanding what the posited deity “really” wants that is brought about through advancing interpretation/”hermeneutics” is, aside from defying the whole idea of an unchanging deity who provides “absolute” morality, belied by any reasonable interpretation of way too much of those texts. In any event, the world doesn’t have time to wait hundreds or thousands more years for that process to reach a safe sane conclusion, if indeed it ever would.

Brad wrote:Similarly, as we'd briefly discussed in the thread about Karen Armstrong, are you saying that when religion isn't about "propositions" it's more deeply about "practices?"

Practices, shared experience and a host of other things. It is true that religion acquires propositions, especially if it is a religion that becomes institutionalised, but I disagree that this is the point of religion.

Most believers would strongly disagree that their religion - the one that exists in our time - is not about propositions – ones that make all the difference, indeed actually define the purpose of the world, in their eyes.
Also, practices and shared experiences – ones that are truly beneficial – have no need of religion or religiosity whatsoever.

What more do you need?

I’m still trying to figure out to what degree and some sort of god or God or “divine presence” outside of your own consciousness is included in what you consider to be your religion.
In a past thread you allowed something to the effect that you considered your beliefs to be consistent with evidence and rationality, but you’ve never directly addressed exactly what sort of belief you were talking about nor how that belief might accord with the commonly accepted definition of the word “evidence.”
Apparently StillSearching considers his views to be essentially the same as yours, and he’s working on some sort of explanation. I’m guessing this is a rather difficult project to put into writing in a way that makes sense even to yourselves. Maybe that’s why you haven’t directly addressed that question?

Also and along the same line, I hope you might address the question I raised following this last quote from you:

Pseudonym wrote: The experience of something, anything at all, is immaterial, deeply personal, highly subjective and entirely inside the experiencer's own head. But I don't think it's either fair or accurate to call it "simply imaginary".

So is anything imaginary?
If so, on what basis is it appropriate to conclude whether given ideas and thought patterns are more likely imaginary than not?

Finally, in the context of this reply I’d intended to make a couple of comments about the very excellent text excerpts posted by Wonders above, but those will have to wait until next time.

[StillSearching]

Apparently StillSearching considers his views to be essentially the same as yours, and he’s working on some sort of explanation. I’m guessing this is a rather difficult project to put into writing in a way that makes sense even to yourselves.

Please be careful to not put words in my mouth. I believe that I said that Pseudo and I have similar views, not "essentially the same."

And I'm beginning to wonder if my explanation is a waste of time...

[Pseudonym]

I have to say it looks to me like you’ve learned to interpret history from some of those same sources, too, thereby minimizing, if not ignoring altogether, the role that god-beliefs play in lots of conflicts.

It's not true. I don't think I've ever read a history book written by a recent conservative Christian. Especially an emerger, who tend not to write non-church history books.

I’ll probably read Ms. Armstrong’s latest when it comes out in paperback, but what would you say is the primary purpose and real advantage of religion(s) young or old?

I've never been asked to give the number one purpose and advantage for religion before, so I know I'm going to fluff this one, especially as I'm pressed for time. I think that religion has a combination of effects which work in unison. Still, here goes...

Off the top of my head, there are two varieties of advantage: internal and external. The internal advantages are that they provide a framework through which religious experience can be explored. The main external advantage is the ability to build a cohesive community for people who otherwise would have nothing in common.

(Deletia; still pressed for time. Dammit, these were some good points that deserve a good response.)

When I said “what doesn’t happen in schools,” what I was thinking of primarily at that moment was the fact that the Texas state Board of Education now has the primary influence over the textbooks that most public school students in the entire U.S. will study in the coming few years.

This is actually a problem with the education system of the United States, that it is run by people with no expertise in education. You wouldn't elect people off the street to be on the medical board or the bar association, so I don't know why you do it with school boards.

Of course it’s not the job of science to engage the public in social activities, so why write that, “it remains a fact that religion seems to work and that science hasn't yet come up with something that does the job” if what you were talking about as “the job” has to do with social/charitable activities? That’s why I asked if you might be setting up a false dichotomy. It looks to me like that was the case.

OK, in retrospect, I can see how you might think that. Actually, I intended to argue the exact opposite: those who do set up a false dichotomy between science and religion are missing the point.

And religion is by no means the only motivator for people to help others.

Of course. Still, if you take most measures (e.g. money given to charity by religious people versus that given by non-religious people, per capita), religious people invariably outperform non-religious people by a wide margin.

Most believers would strongly disagree that their religion - the one that exists in our time - is not about propositions – ones that make all the difference, indeed actually define the purpose of the world, in their eyes.

I think you'd be the first to agree with me that most people in the world Just Don't Get It.

Skipping through to the end...

So is anything imaginary?

Any square root of -1, obviously.

I think that we might be using different definitions of "imaginary". I think you mean "fanciful", but there's also a real sense in which human perception is based on imagination. When we look at a chair, we only see two views it (assuming both of our eyes work). But in our perception, we see the whole chair in glorious 3D. Most of what we perceive is reconstructed from the little that we actually see, and in a sense, this is "imagination".

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a whole book on this, which I've only ever skimmed. In his sense, all of human experience, all of human perception and all of our unrealised potential is deeply grounded in the imagination. This, according to Sartre, is a good thing.

[Brad]

Apparently StillSearching considers his views to be essentially the same as yours, and he’s working on some sort of explanation. I’m guessing this is a rather difficult project to put into writing in a way that makes sense even to yourselves.

Please be careful to not put words in my mouth. I believe that I said that Pseudo and I have similar views, not "essentially the same."

And I'm beginning to wonder if my explanation is a waste of time...

SS, I didn't intend to misrepresent your views or understanding - please excuse. Yes, no doubt "similar" is more accurate than "essentially the same."

As for whether these forum discussions are a waste of time in general, that's clearly an open and somewhat active subject from both sides of the fence, so to speak. Apparently lots of folk become discouraged, because we do talk past each other a lot. Why that might be is another subject for other posts.

As to whether describing for me in particular what your religious convictions are would be a waste of time for you, you'll have to decide that for yourself. I'll be the first to say that the probability that I might read what you have to say and immediately shout "Hallelujah" and begin singing "I Saw the Light" is quite low. And the probability that I might question your views and suppositions further is quite high.
Are those disturbing or frightening prospects for you?
Beyond that, I'd like to know what now, versus a few days ago, causes you to think delineating your religious understanding for me or anyone else might be a waste of time. Please feel free to pm if you'd rather.
What were your expectations and goals?

[Brad]

Pseudo,
I appreciate that you take my responses and points with serious consideration, and appreciate, too, your efforts to respond though pressed for time.

As for electing the Texas BofE, or any similar school board (such as the one that recently received its just comeuppance in Dover, PA - stellar examples of liars for Jesus), you may rest assured that I never voted for any of them!
However, as a Texas property owner, I am compelled to pay part of their salaries and support their piss-poor educational goals and practices.
(Public education, as you may know, is funded in the U.S. primarily through property taxes - and even more pathetic, the net of lottery proceeds. Don't get me started... )