Now available in Polish at Racjonalista. Thanks again to Malgorzata.
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I’ve been stymied over the last few days trying to untangle the issue of true belief. For some time now we have been told that the men who hijacked the planes that brought down the Twin Towers in New York, flew into the Pentagon, or were brought down by some courageous passengers in a Pennsylvania field, are not representative of Islam. People who criticise the new atheists are forever accusing them of misrepresenting true Christianity, which is not, we are to suppose, represented by Christian fundamentalists. Indeed, with some justice, but also with a fair degree of self-serving diversion, Christians who do not want to be identified with American fundamentalists have been saying for some time that modern Christian fundamentalism is really, that is, really and truly, a modern version of Christianity dreamt up fairly recently by Christians who took science as their model of what a real religion looks like. And then it is added, of course, that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Real Christianity, we are to understand, unlike fundamentalism, is quite at home in the modern university, and can pull its own weight in academic discussion, as well as at those places where it interfaces with science. Some Christians, like the people at the Faraday Institute in Cambridge — another “institute” funded by the Templeton Foundation — go so far as to suggest that, not only can Christianity be shown to be consistent with scientific discovery, but that hard science, when examined closely, actually supports specifically Christian beliefs.
It’s that last point that I find truly puzzling. Like people who find embryology in the Qu’ran or nuclear war in the Mahabharata, Christian theologians who actually claim support for Christian beliefs in contemporary science just have to be wrong. And, of course, when you actually look at the theological work that they do it becomes abundantly clear that this is not really what they mean. What they mean is that, if we take the theories of science, we can find some plausible “workaround” that allows the Christian to claim that, when all is said and done, at least science does not make Christian belief impossible. Christians can still hold onto their beliefs, like Linus to his blanket, despite the fact that those who are making these claims indulge in so much special pleading, and continue to make such obvious attempts at diverting attention from the most serious conflicts by keeping up a running patter which at least looks like it is taking science into account, that their unease with science is rather brutally plain to everyone but themselves. And when they start talking about myth, and tell us that of course Christians don’t actually believe — in a strong sense of this word — that Christian doctrines like the virgin birth, the resurrection, or the ascension into heaven actually took place in the strict and literal sense of the word (as, we will see in a moment, Rowan Williams does), but are useful organising principles for the religious communities for whom these narratives form the central justifying story for their belonging, their ritual, and their creeds; no one is meant, we are assured, to think that these things happened in quite the simple way that fundamentalists assume that they did.
I have to admit to finding this — what surely amounts to — prevarication incredibly annoying. It is almost as if religious believers — or should we just take them at their word and call them religious narrators instead? — are attempting to have their cake and eat it too, and they can chop and change from one point of view to the other without apparently recognising that this kind of duplicity is involved. Talk about religious belief, and the theologian turns around and tells us that religion is not about belief; it’s more a matter of practice, of ritual, of community, of somehow “living the myth” in the real world where, of course, they know the difference between believing and — well, what? — what is it that religious people do when they take their religious myths and express them in song, story, and sacred ritual? What is the status of the affirmations made in the Nicene Creed, for example, used in the context of the eucharistic liturgy? When the gathered faithful begin to recite or intone the words “I believe …” or “Credo in unum Deum,” or, as more modern translations of the original creed say, “We believe …,” what is it that they are doing? Are they expressing belief, or solidarity, or their mutual sharing in a tradition which, while it once bore the actual beliefs of the gathered community (the ecclesia), now expresses a sense of traditional belonging to the same, continuing historical community, no matter how changed it has become over the centuries, and no matter how tenuous their relationship to those original and originating beliefs?
I remember, some years ago, a woman telling me that she could no longer say the creed during the liturgy, and, at the time, while I tended to agree with her, and did not myself believe, sensu proprio, the beliefs expressed in it, it was useful, I suggested, as expressing our historical link to the communities that went before us. It connected us with those communities, huddled together, on a cold morning, around the tomb of a martyr, where they gathered to celebrate their oneness in Christ through the sacred mysteries of his body and blood – and, of course, a whole lot of other malarkey. It’s hard to believe now that I said things like that. But the problem that I want to express by telling you this is that some such form of circumlocution is necessary when dealing with religious beliefs in the modern world. Failing that, you end up, and must end up, a fundamentalist of some sort, and then you begin to say things like N. T. Wright (former bishop of Durham in England), when he appeared on Canada’s evangelical TV programme “100 Huntley Street,” not quite suggesting that the church was wrong about hell, but holding that it is important to retain a place for hell in our understanding, whether a place of fire or not. In the gospel of Mark Jesus is made to speak of a place “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” something which seems clear enough in all conscience, and sufficient to ground the common Christian image of a place of eternal fire and suffering. N.T. Wright, however, suggests a more “theological” view. Here is the key :
Notice especially the avuncular, scholarly way that Wright has of speaking; but note also that the inhumanity (implied in the notion of hell) is still there, the cruelty, the lack of human compassion. Perhaps most telling are the words, “I fail to see why we should speculate about that.” Here is a transcription of the words in the clip:
Hell is, if you like, I was going to say it’s where God isn’t. Even that isn’t true, cause ultimately God will be all in all. But it is as though within Gods all in all-ness, there will be an absence, a loss, the possibility of there being creatures who once were human, but now are not. I don’t know what the word ‘where’ would mean at that point. Because I don’t know what location is like at that point. And I fail to see why we should speculate about that. I just think it’s a state of being, of creatures that once were human, once did reflect the image of God, but have chosen to do so no more. And I have to say, people often ask me about this, and I don’t like talking about it, partly because I know a great many people and love a great many people, some of whom, as far as I can see, are saying precisely that to God. And I shudder to think, of those people saying: “I truly don’t want to be human, thank you very much …,” because they are lovely human beings at the moment, and you can see glimmers of God in them. [my italics]
The question is, of course, why Wright thinks it appropriate to speculate about any of this, why he thinks that there is, if not a place, a state of being called hell. Isn’t that just as speculative? He’s not willing to speculate about the location of hell, but he has no hesitation in speculating about the nature of what “being in hell” means. He just thinks of it as a state of being less than human. What does it mean just to think something like that? It is interesting that Mehdi Hasan (a Muslim British journalist who pretends to be a lefty) said something similar about those who are not Muslims, who, he says, live their lives as though they were animals. Just consider the implications of what these men are saying. We are truly human, they say, and you are not. Wright says, of some of the people of whom this is true, that they ”are lovely human beings at the moment.” If they are lovely human beings at the moment then they are lovely human beings. It is offensive to suggest that they will become something else, or, as Hasan claims they are already, more akin to “animals” (in a derogatory sense, for of course we are animals), just because they don’t believe that some people’s religious speculations are true.
There’s a lot of pretend thought going on here just to be able to affirm things that are written in ancient holy books which have no real relevance to us today, because there is no basis upon which we can hold their various claims about the supernatural world or our ultimate destiny to be true. And it is simply hopeless for people to claim that the fundamentalists have got it wrong when they read these books literally, for the sophisticated theologians do their level best to interpret the words in ways that they think the original writers would have meant their words if they had been writing now (or some equally questionable principle of interpretation). But they’re not writing now, and pretending that there is a hermeneutical way around the words that makes what they are saying as valid now as when they were first written is a bit of cheap theatrics. It cannot be taken as serious thought. That’s why history has to be written again and again, because the past is another country.
But consider what Christians have to do in order to go on speaking about hell, if they don’t want to speak, as Jesus did, about fires which are never quenched and worms that never die. Whether it is a place of fire or not, there is, we are to suppose, punishment, which is hard to think of non-locally, though it is left deliberately unclear as to in what the punishment consists, and what its effect is on the individual, though it is held to be at the very least dehumanising. But what could it mean to suggest that those who refuse to bow down and worship a god are living like animals, if, in fact, as Wright says, they can be lovely human beings (at the moment)? But a more ridiculous thing is Wright’s idea (available on a separate clip) that there will be a “coming together” of heaven and earth, and a new creation, in which those who have died in the faith of Christ will be resurrected, that is, recreated, to new life. There is simply no reason to believe this sort of stuff, and if it is claimed that this is different than the fundamentalism that so many “sophisticated” believers hold to be beneath their dignity as thinking people, it is hard for me, at least, to see where the difference lies.
Consider a sophisticated theologian, like Rowan Williams, who fudges the issues when questions cut too close to the bone, as he did in this interview with Richard Dawkins.
But fudging the issues like this is not obviously more sophisticated than the fundamentalist who takes the beliefs literally. For, after all, while Williams is being a bit more cagey, he does acknowledge that he believes in the virgin birth, the resurrection and the raising of Lazarus. But when it comes to the things that he fudges, using, as Dawkins says, poetic language, you can’t say that he believes anything obviously ridiculous, because it’s not clear that he believes anything at all relevant to the question that was put to him. He’s simply unwilling to be caught out stating beliefs which are obviously inconsistent with the world of knowledge in which educated people live today, except, of course, if you are an archbishop, and dare not question the basic certainties, for those few central beliefs without which Christianity would be a kind of mythical humanism. But if the chips were down, he’d have to side with the simple believers rather than with those who do not believe, even though he has intellectually more in common with the latter, because he goes on, in a quite unreconstructed way, to speak of the long period of historical preparation for the coming of Jesus. We need to know whether this is a mythical narrative for Williams, or whether he means it, quite simply, as in some sense plainly true of history, that there was a moment when something actually happened which can be reasonably called “nature opening itself up to its own depths” (whatever that means). And if the latter, then he’d have to acknowledge that fundamentalists are saying, possibly in a less refined way, what he is saying.
And this brings us, finally – ”Thank Ceiling Cat!” you are probably thinking if you have reached this point — to the central point of this essay. Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, in a perceptive piece in Pakistan Today (hat tip to Ophelia for linking and discussing it at Butterflies and Wheels — Tacitus in Karachi) points out that the Taliban are not corrupting the message of Islam, they are living it. As he says with exemplary clarity:
It is so painfully amusing to note how the ‘moderates’ and armchair revolutionaries, would sit there with a glass of [w]ine in their hands, uninhibitedly hanging out with the opposite sex, not having offered a prayer or fasted for ages, claiming how the Taliban – who lead their lives strictly according to the Shariah – are infesting their religion of harmony. The poor chaps are only doing what their scriptures – the ones that the pseudo intellectuals extol, or don’t have the cojones to criticize – tell them to do. When you are being taught, through the scriptures that are universally recognized by the followers as ‘authentic’, that all the non-believers or threats to the grandeur of your ideology should be killed, you will kill them, where is the misinterpretation here?
Now, if I’ve got the foregoing right, you should now be thinking how like N.T. Wright the Taliban are. Wright should be uncomfortable saying that those who do not worship his god are really only animals who look like humans, even lovely human beings at the moment, for, just like the Taliban, you know that the next logical step is genocide. For what is the point of saying, of some people that you know, that they are lovely human beings at the moment, if you do not mean that they are not really human beings at all, that their being lovely human beings is mere appearance, because they have chosen not to reflect the image of God, because they happen not to share your particular religious convictions? It is not only offensive, it is dangerous to use language like this, and this is something Shahid sees so clearly. He can see the danger, but we cannot — we, who live a comfortable distance from places like Pakistan. He lives with the danger all around him. Indeed, it takes considerable courage to write and publish what he wrote in the place where he lives and works. Wright can pretend to be thoughtful, even scholarly, but he is using the same dehumanising language that the Taliban use, the kind of language that lets you kill little girls for wanting to learn, because wanting to learn leads you away from the strict teachings of holy writ, leads you, in Wright’s words, to choose not to reflect God’s image. And when people’s beliefs force them to speak of other people as in the process of dehumanising themselves, because refusing to bow down and worship their God, they are speaking of them as less than human already, even if only in anticipation, and then you can see the flash of the sword beneath the apparently benign words of religious conviction.
“For some time now we have been told that the men who hijacked the planes that brought down the Twin Towers in New York, flew into the Pentagon, or were brought down by some courageous passengers in a Pennsylvania field, are not representative of Islam.”
I don’t wish to derail your excellent post, Eric, but I just wanted to raise the question: what if this was not the truth? If in fact, the narrative we’re told about 9/11 was in fact a lie, wouldn’t that change everything? Especially considering that new atheism is very much a product or reaction to 9/11.
I find it hard to disagree with anything you have said here, Eric. There does seem to be an inherent human motivation to dehumanise the other tribes or identifiably different people.
Religion used to be a great enabler for this dehumanisation (and still is in some parts of the world) but is rapidly sliding towards the ‘All things bright and beautiful’ model, which is at odds with the founding concepts (a jealous God with lots of smiting, because he is Our God).
Perhaps we need to take extra care as atheist/non believing/humanistic/agnostic (your choice may vary) god free people not to dehumanise the religious – for they know not what they do.
I don’t quite follow, Egbert. In what respect a lie? But, second, no it wouldn’t. There is enough that is representative of Islam (or Christianity) to suggest that the point that I am making is still a valid one to make.
Egbert, you aren’t turning “truther” on us, are you?
The thing that religions seem to zero in on is human consciousness as the separator of humans from animals. I don’t think this is really a stark division, but if one does think so, how does one account for humans who never gain consciousness or lose consciousness? Of course, one can speak of potentialities, but evolution could potentially bestow consciousness on an ant.
Depends on whether you have the need to not believe what was told about 9/11, and whether you feel the need to buy into the conspiracy theories that abound about that event. To me the Truthers are the same as believers: no evidence will convince them that their particular pet theory is incorrect, because they have invested so much into believing that their interpretation is correct, damn the facts.
I went to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master’
It’s about the nascent days of a Scientology type cult. Some characters in the organization ‘The Cause’ would smirk and take the money but most were true believers. Philip Seymour Hoffmann played the leader brilliantly. As the credits were rolling, I still couldn’t tell if he actually believed the allegory soup that he was cooking.
Watch Amy Adams. She has such a sweet face and she usually plays characters to match but in this one she does creepy really well.
Egbert: If you think that a group of Muslim terrorists did not hijack several jets on 9/11 and fly them into carefully selected targets on behalf of their god…then you are so full of shit your eyes are brown.
I was there. So don’t tell me what you “think” is real or what some armchair engineer says.
The truth is that it happened just the way it happened. We lost family and friends because 19 guys took over planes and had just enough flight training to find their targets…with the exception of the plane where the passengers resisted that ended up being flown into the ground in Pennsylvania.
Not another word about “truth”. You have the truth. It’s always been there. There’s zero — and I mean zero — need to revisit it.
Sorry Eric, I did not mean to derail your thread. I was simply raising the question, and I think anyone who labels themselves a skeptic, ought to do the same.
Great non-answer Egbert – please try to take responsibility for you comments. You certainly are not skeptical about whether new atheists are wrong.
Once you grant permission to yourself to believe stuff merely because it’s written in a book, you no longer have any authority to prevent other people from doing the same thing. This is why most moderate theists are so tepid about criticising extremists: they are uncomfortably aware that any criticism undermines their own faith.
Everyone ought to be reasonably sceptical, Egbert, but the emphasis must be placed on reasonably. If there were any good reason to doubt the account given of the 9/11 attacks, then it would be encumbent upon the reasonable person to examine the evidence before making any definitive pronouncement upon whether or not it happened in the way claimed by the official report, and why this conclusion is reasonable. But in the absence of any good reason for making a special study of the evidence, it is reasonable to accept the account given. This is especially true because of several other factors. There is, first, al Quaeda’s claim of responsibility for the attacks, and the names and identities of the hijackers, and their “flight” training in the United States. These seem to be good prima facie reasons to believe what might be called the “received” account. Further to this is the fact that the Taliban government did not deny al Quaeda’s complicity; it refused to turn over the conspirators to the Americans to be tried in their courts for their crimes. It would be helpful, I think, if the Americans had ratified the treaty giving existence to the International Court at the Hague, but, that said, you can scarcely fault them for asking for those responsible for the attacks on their country. Failing that, NATO forces attacked Afghanistan. I assume that NATO allies did not do this on no basis at all, despite the fact that the Americans and the British, for reasons that seem to me past understanding, attacked Iraq on spurious grounds, and did so, it seems, knowingly, but significantly, NATO did not join in those operations. There is no question that al Quaeda claimed responsibility; the identity of the terrorists is fairly well established; and Osama bin Laden made a statement giving the supposed reasons for the attack. The contrary evidence would have to be outstandingly strong to convince a reasonable person to address it with any confidence, if it could convince them to do it at all, and I know of no such evidence. You really do owe it to us to explain your original remark. Not only did it derail the conversation, but it did so for apparently frivolous reasons. Sceptics are not sceptical when scepticism is not reasonably called for, otherwise we should not believe anything. Such Pyrrhonian scepticism would be completely stultifying to any effort to achieve knowledge, and there are good philosophical reasons for rejecting it, clearly indicated by Carneades’ statement that “Nothing can be known, not even this.”
“You really do owe it to us to explain your original remark.”
Okay, do you or does anyone else here know what the melting point of steel is? Next, at what temperature does jet fuel burn at? Do these numbers add up at all?
Egbert, did you personally see the melted steel or are you taking someone else’s word on that?
The steel did not melt, it buckled under the load it was carrying. Metals lose their tensile and compressive strength as temperature increases. As the fuel burned, the structure of the buildings was heated above 1000 degrees, and the steel could no longer carry the load because its strength had diminished. That is why the second building collapsed first because the plane had struck lower, thus there was a greater load on the now damaged and hot building. As an aerospace engineer at a major aerospace company, I deal with these facts everyday.
I’ve often thought of you as being awfully trollish in these threads, Egbert. However, giving you the benefit of a doubt, your comments have generally seemed just this side of completely ridiculous, as possibly springing from mere misunderstanding or misconstrual (even though some misunderstandings have seemed a bit more willful than others). Your benefit of a doubt has just run out.
9-11 Trutherism is like astrology: Once you have publicly demonstrated an inclination to take it seriously, you can no longer be taken seriously.
Also, surely, Egbert, 9/11 was more catalyst than cause with respect to the new atheism (though I’m not sure when the first new atheist books started to come out). The dissatisfaction expressed in Dawkins’ book comes principally from his bering a biologist who has grown fed up with the nonsense of the creationists and alarmed by the power of fundamentalism, particularly in the US and among Muslim communities in Britain. The same is largely true, it seems to me, of Dennett’s book (though he is not a scientist). I think these books would have been published in more or less the same form whether 9/11 had happened or not.
Are you sure the city of Montreal really exists? I am simply raising the question, and I think anyone who labels themselves a skeptic ought to do the same.
More seriously, this issue of “true belief” is a very important one, and in at least two ways. The first one is the one you raised here. I recently waded into a discussion over at a blog frequented by left-leaning scholars of the humanities where a post started with a review of Spufford’s latest book and the claim that we need more input from theologians into economic policy. While a handful of other outspoken atheists contributed their own perspectives, I concentrated mostly on the question what would actually qualify theologians to pronounce on, well, anything whatsoever, and specifically economics.
Anyway, the thing is that the fuzzy defenders of other ways of knowing quickly came out in full force (although they were not all comfortable with the term “other ways”), and their most important lines of argument were these: (1) We can’t really know anything for sure, belief “works” for some people, how do you justify your trust in science, stop with your scientism already, and stop being so insulting to the poor believers as to say that they are mistaken; and (2) all your criticism is misguided because “real” religion is just about community and feelings. Those who actually have factual beliefs are doing it wrong.
Confronting them with the existence of the billions of believers who would chase them out of the door if they actually told them that the Koran was not literally in dictated by Allah or that Jesus was not literally resurrected resulted in the delivery of anecdotes about some liberal believers they happened to know. So I think it is really important to drive home the point that yes, it matters what liberal believers teach their children because, as you have repeatedly stressed here, the books that they consider crucially important if not holy still contain the nasty parts, and someday somebody will take them literally.
But there is another, more “meta” way to look at the issue of true belief, and that is explored in one of the contributions to 50 Voices of Disbelief, although I don’t currently remember the name of the author. They argue that, judging from people’s behaviour, hardly anybody really and seriously believes in their religious claims, otherwise they would kill their own children while they are still innocent (to spare them going to hell) and take huge risks (in the hope of, even if suicide is forbidden, dying early themselves before they have the chance to commit a grave sin). With some relevance for this post here, the essay also makes the observation that suicide bombers are about the only people who demonstrate convincingly that they actually believe what others only pretend to. I am not sure if I am entirely in agreement with this essay, however.
Egbert, the in-your-face facts seem to be: a) Large aircraft crashed in to the WTC, causing at least some structural damage; b) Fires resulted, fed by the kerosene fuel and probably flammable materials such as plastics and the like; c) Hot steel structures tend to warp.
Are you saying that the above had nothing to do with the collapse? What else do you rationally propose as the likely cause?
Tim Harris,
Here is the TED talk back in February 2002, by Richard Dawkins, titled ‘Militant Atheism’ which could be considered the turning point towards new atheism.
http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html
This was the beginning of a systematic plan by Dawkins (and friends) to change minds politically, six months after 9/11. The Brights movement began about a year later.
Most of the talk hardly makes any mention of Islam, and is framed as a war against American creationists. However, right at the very end (28:45) Dawkins admits his true motivation for his speech, and that is the profound change in him since 9/11.
“Are you saying that the above had nothing to do with the collapse? What else do you rationally propose as the likely cause?”
Here is a brilliant article explaining why the idea that a building collapses due to jet fuel just doesn’t make any sense:
http://911review.com/articles/jm/mslp_1.htm
Eric asked me if I had reason to doubt the ‘official’ story, and I think the idea that a building made of steel and concrete collapses due to a fire, is one very good reason (is it not?). It should be understood that 7 WTC, another building which was not hit by a plane (or at least not directly), also collapsed several hours later, presumably the fires in that building were not based on jet fuel.
Egbert, I think there is no doubt that 9/11 was the proximate cause of Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith, and what became known as the new atheists, took off from the convenient success of that book which was published in 2004, The God Delusion following in 2006. There is no doubt that 9/11 was the catalyst for the new atheism, and it’s much more “in your face” type of unbelief.
Alex, I could scarcely expect you to agree wholeheartedly to everything I say in this essay. I’m not sure — I blow hot and cold — that I accept it entirely myself. However, I thought it worthwhile putting the point in fairly bold terms. My point is simply this. So-called “sophisticated” believers escape the worst traps of the fundamentalists, but is it right that they are enabled to do so by fudging the real issues involved. Religious belief or practice or involvement — whatever word we want to use — takes its departure from certain narratives and the beliefs which flow from them. Ever since biblical criticism has got under way, since Spinoza at the latest (though Grotius may have made an earlier contribution), the religious have been on their guard regarding the status of their claims, but no one, to my knowledge, has really clarified the question satisfactorily. As a priest I was used to making “sophisticated” arguments which let go of practically everything, and yet at the same time I held onto the community, the liturgy and all the assumptions that go along with those. Now I tend to feel that perhaps the conservatives were right, and I was really temporising all along, pretending to “believe” (whatever ‘belief’ means in religious contexts), and not really facing some of the more difficult questions that a reasonable person would put to me, and that I would have put to myself if I had been more reasonable. Actually, towards the end of my time in the parish I was finding it incredibly difficult to say anything positive either about the biblical narrative or about the beliefs which flowed from it. I “sat loose” to belief in a way that is not altogether faithful to what most Christians believe, even those who are not fundamentalists. When Elizabeth died, and I was on TV quite a bit, one of my theological mentors wrote to me and suggested that my response was one of faith, when I thought it was being precisely the reverse. So, the question that I am asking in this post is a pressing personal one, and should be a personal one for those who still count themselves believers. If there is nothing, in the end, that can lead you out of faith, because you can continue to slip under the wire — a bit squeakily — and make all sorts of qualified claims which permit you still to utter the words of the Nicene Creed (say) without flinching, then what is it that distinguished a person of faith from an unbeliever?
I know from people who used to visit other churches during their summer holiday, that when they came back to their home parish where I was the Rector, that they would say they hadn’t come across my particular brand of Christianity anywhere. Elizabeth used to say that’s because we are Anglican, and she preferred to think of ourselves as not really Christian, if other Christians were the measure of Christianity, for they held beliefs which she deplored (and I did too). I used to say, “If anything would convince me not to be a Christian it is what most other Christians seem to believe.” Looking back, I see that as a sign that I was already an unbeliever, but that, given the way of “liberal” belief, I could still at least pretend to be a believer; and I wonder if that sense cannot be generalised, and that liberal “believers” really are fooling themselves in order to defend an institution, a way of life, even their jobs, but that they are not really believers at all, when you look more closely at the specifics of belief as taught by the traditional formularies.
That is what I was exploring here, and it seemed to me that Shahid is right. Given those formularies, and what they mean in their original sense, liberals are trying to keep alive something that is already dead for them, and the only thing that keeps them from not noticing it is the fact that there are hundreds if not thousands of books trying to deny it. John Spong, for instance, has abandoned practicaly every tenet of the Christian creed, and yet uses the word ‘bishop’ as a talisman to sell books. But a bishop is a steward of the tradition. Being boldly unconventional makes sense insofar as one can no longer believe in the traditional sense, but does it make sense of one’s office? I’m not sure it does. Spong eviscerates the Bible and continues to speak of the Bible as somehow of special significance. I think we are fooling ourselves, and we will pay for it in the end, because the plain meaning of the text can be taken and used for evil purposes. It is the power of these texts that should concern us, for they contain clear instructions for carrying out the most horrible of deeds and finding them holy. One of the things that concerned me was that women were entering the priesthood in quite large numbers and then carrying on with their evangelical faith as though this did not matter, but it was the plain (evangelical) meaning of the texts that had excluded women from the start. Why should they then adopt a gospel message that could be used to subordinate them? It didn’t make sense.
Everyone says, as though it were obvious, that there Christianity, Islam and other faiths are broad churches that can accommodate a whole spectrum of beliefs, and no doubt this is true. But no one should be surprised when some people take the beliefs with deadly seriousness and with deadly effect. Just saying there are moderate Muslims does not pull the sting of Islam, just as it is becoming clear that Roman Catholic liberalism did not pull the sting of Christianity, which is now being pushed by the Vatican in terms of its most literal meaning. Religions are dangerous because they all contain with them a conservative core in terms of which nonbelievers are excluded and may be so violently, and this violent core will be adopted by some believers, and always has a claim on the loyalty of all believers, as we can see from Rowan Williams, who explored fairly liberal ideals when he was a professor of theology, but as soon as he became archbishop became dogmatic and regressive.
Regarding the twin towers, there is a good debunking site that is worthwhile taking a look at, if it seems important to you:
http://www.debunking911.com/quick.htm
This link will take you to the quick answers. There are answers in detail as well. Like global warming (sorry Corio) the denialists are holding the losing hand.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2012/10/17/ebay/
Eric, I apologize for being a pain in the arse (English spelling) and you have been nothing but a gentleman in putting up with me. I’m glad you agree that 9/11 was the defining point of new atheism. As for Corio, I disagree with many things Corio goes on about, but I respect his scepticism and agree with him in regards to the climate change fraud.
Egbert: A skeptic is one who keeps an open mind about a subject — but not so far open so their brain falls out.
Yours apparently has spilled all over the floor.
It’s settled science, settled engineering, settled history. Your skepticism is exactly akin to HIV denialism or the loony tunes who think that the US faked the moon landings. It’s as wrong-headed as the creationist who insists that he’s “skeptical” about transitional fossils.
You should be embarrassed. Seriously. Shame-faced at being so mindlessly stupid.
I’ve avoided addressing your comments before because frankly, you’re not that bright and I don’t suffer fools gladly — but not about this. I lost friends and neighbors. I watched the towers come down. Your baseless assertions that some other factor might have been involved other than a group of Muslim terrorists is false. Wrong. Moronic. Idiotic. Stupid. Intellectually indefensible.
Please stop.
“Like global warming (sorry Corio) the denialists are holding the losing hand.”
Well, Eric, Arctic sea ice levels are back to exactly what they were this time last year — so no tipping point — Antarctic sea ice is still at record levels, support for the Gillard Labor government in Australia has dropped to record lows, the UK government is in chaos over its energy policy, and the only time Romney makes any headway against Obama is when he mentions the mess that is US environmental policies. The UK Daily Mail has actually pointed out in public that there has been no warming for sixteen years, and the green-leaning Ontario parliament has just been prorogued. We’ll soon see who holds the losing hand.
But let me add in passing that ‘denialist’ is almost as offensive as ‘denier’. You don’t call theists ‘faithheads’; why do you feel obliged to be offensive towards AGW sceptics?
Corio, you are just making stuff up now. Citing the Daily Mail, really? Are you that desperate? Sea ice is at record lows – even the website you linked before makes that claim.
Just because extractive industries with deep pockets are making a push back against reality doesn’t change the reality.
I have looked at Dawkins’s TED talk, and, Egbert, I am sorry to say this, but it is nonsense to assert that he admits that the ‘true motivation’ for his speech was 9/11. What he says at the end, after spending ninety-nine percent of the talk criticising well-funded fundamentalist attempts to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools, etc (do you think Dawkins is wrong to do this?), was that the lesson that 9/11 taught him was that people who are not religious should stop being so ‘damned respectful’ about religion. That is all. You are misinterpreting him.
As for the ‘brights’ business, what struck me about that ill-advised little project and Dawkins’s subsequent defence of it on Jerry Coyne’s blog (‘if gays can take over the word “gay”, why can’t we, etc….?’) was what seemed to me his extraordinary tone-deafness where the word was concerned, and his ignorance of, and insensitivity to, the history of words. There are aspects of Dawkins I am not fond of (Richard Fortey has complained about his ‘macho’ tendencies), and I think, like many academic intellectuals, he underestimates the recalcitrance of reality and tends to assume that everything is a matter of anyone anywhere, however raised and educated, just listening to the voice of reason and changing their mind, but he has in the main been a great force for good, and if you disagree with what was said in that talk or with his reasons for attacking creationism, then you really should address these issues, and not suggest that they all flow from some dubious motivation and are therefore dubious in themselves.
Also, Egbert: ‘climate change fraud’ – I am perfectly willing to entertain the idea that people may be mistaken about climate change, but ‘fraud’? Who is engineering this fraudulent enterprise to pretend that climate change is happening, and why are they doing it?
Michael, you really need to improve your reading skills. ARCTIC sea ice is down, but climbing rapidly. ANTARCTIC sea ice is at record high levels — but of course, since our records only extend back about thirty years, that doesn’t mean very much, and for all we know both poles are simply behaving in accordance with long-term normality. But since Arctic ice is back to where it was this time last year, and no disaster occurred then, we can assume that no disaster will occur this time round either.
As for the Daily Mail, their figures come from the UK Meteorological Office. You know, those guys who were your friends when they predicted scorching summers and an end to snow? Too bad they’ve fallen victim to science, and let the facts get in the way of supporting The Team.
Any comment on the deep and growing political unpopularity of Green movements the world over? Can you even begin to imagine why this might be happening?
Corio:
OK, let’s bite a little bit:
Arctic sea ice is indeed back to where it was last year around this time – in surface area; bit still significantly below the 1979-2000 average (see NSIDC). Also, don’t forget that the new ice isn’t as thick anymore as the older sheets that we saw in the past – it melts more easily in the next summer, decreasing the total volume of sea ice (see this report from the Polar Science Center).
In my book still no long-term normality, unless it grows back to the quantities we saw 20-30 years ago.
And yes, the Antarctic sea ice still is a mystery – not to you perhaps, but it is to people who study it. Who said that we already know all there is to know? Keep in mind that the ‘record high levels’ of the Antarctic sea ice are just slight increases. The Arctic meltdown is going much faster than the growth of the Antarctic sea ice. What with the significance of the Arctic ice for the climate on the Northern hemisphere, I don’t see much reason to sit back and forget about the whole issue.
For an explanation of the differences in behaviour between the Arctic and the Antarctic sea ice, see also this NYT article.
Argumentum ad populum?
Tim, you’re free to disagree with me about Dawkins’ true motivations (no one knows for sure), however I was attempting to explain the connection between 9/11 and new atheism to Eric, and he has since agreed with me. Dawkins says in his speech how 9/11 changed him, and it changed many of us, that’s not a misinterpretation but a fundamental paradigm shift that we all had, and I stand by that.
Tim, I’m not suggesting that Dawkins’ motivations are dubious, I’m trying to explain historically how 9/11 changed us, and how that was the motivational force behind New Atheism.
Personally, I still admire Dawkins in many ways, but I no longer believe that new atheism is a force for good.
why?
As I said, he’s not that bright.
Corio, all you are doing is cherry-picking any climate-change “skeptic” you can find. The UK is not the earth – one cool summer is meaningless. You simply will not address the issues involved.
Here is what I said before:
” the green-leaning Ontario parliament has just been prorogued. We’ll soon see who holds the losing hand”
Tell me, do you know what prorogue means? Don’t feel bad, no one else does either. It is just some kind of abbreviation for ‘advancing toward totalitarian government’ in my opinion. It was the Canadian Parliament that was prorogued, in a highly questionable, and undemocratic move by Canada’s radical “Conservative” Prime Minister Harper. Yes I am Canadian. Harper is lucky the Liberal party shot themselves in the foot over and over these past decades…
Corio, people feel the need to insult AGW deniers (not skeptics at all – a skeptic should take account of the bulk of the evidence by any measure, not become obsessed with tiny variances at the margins of knowledge) because of silly arguments like yours. Do you argue with the Royal Society, or the National Academy of Scientists, about issues other than AGW? Or are you really just an “expert” when it comes to GW issues? I am not saying everything these groups say has to be correct, but to claim they are part of some large fraud is to incite demands for evidence. Where is our evidence for this fraud?
New Atheism not a force for good? You don’t have to believe everything they say, but how could it be a bad thing that unbelievers are banding together to assert their rights. And despite the squealing from all the detractors of the New Atheism, I don’t see too many arguments that can even get under the basic message of Hitchens, for one: Theological arguments are simply invalid. Made up arguments that do not correlate to reality. They squeal because they sense the danger that this wholesale dismissal of an invented branch of logic presents. You don’t have to answer the religious in their own terms anymore, a game that they have been exceedingly good at, ever since the Jesuits harnessed Reasoning to the purpose. (actually that is why I wince when I hear people refer to non-theism as rationalism or just being reasonable: logic and reason require axioms from which to work: crazy foundation = crazy logic)
“New Atheism not a force for good? You don’t have to believe everything they say, but how could it be a bad thing that unbelievers are banding together to assert their rights.”
Remember, I was part of this ‘movement’ before I started to get censored and banned for warning others about group thought and growing dogmaticism, and for standing up for things like free speech and secularism. I realized something very odd was going on long before elevatorgate and the atheism plus nonsense, but because the ‘movement’ is organized in a top-down fashion, by academics, bloggers, political activists, no one is actually interested in what some anonymous person says. Most atheists are not positively motivated for the good, but are bitter, angry, resentful (and now hateful) and jump on anyone with a different opinion, using insults and bullying tactics (see this thread for example) which is unacceptable to me.
The idea that atheists are by default, rational, moral, politically wise and knowledgeable is a fiction. What does history say about atheists who organize mass movements? See the French revolution or state communism for your answers.
No one was interested in the moral and philosophical foundations of this ‘movement’ it just began straight after 9/11 based on prejudice and war against the religious.
Egbert, I am sorry to say this, but grow up.
I find the uses of scepticism exhibited in this comment stream to be a bit strange. Scepticism by all means, but not by all means scepticism. In science it is inference to the best explanation that largely determines what is thought to be true. But of course, as Hume pointed out, induction is always more or less insecure due to the open texture (the contingency) of reality. So the best we can do is follow the line of inference to the best explanation. Accepting a one-off outré explanation for something, that does not take the complexity of the issues into consideration, is scarcely the way that these things are settled. For example, suggesting that you have a good reason for believing that steel doesn’t melt at the temperatures at which jet fuel burns is to take only one factor into consideration, when considering the collapse of the twin towers. Was it the melting of metal structures that was responsible for the destruction of the twin towers? I don’t know, and I bet the guy who wrote the analysis doesn’t know either. But what we did see was too large airliners full of people being flown into the structures. And then the buildings collapsed. Without further information to go on, the best explanation is the obvious one. The shock of the airliners flying into the building, plus the fire caused by full fuel tanks, is the most likely reason for the buildings collapsing. Saying that it couldn’t be the airliners flying into the building that caused the collapse is ignoring the most salient information that we have. Supposing that it must have been thermite or thermate means that we need to find how it was placed, and where it was placed, and when, without anyone noticing. This is a tall order. And supposing that it was a government plot of some kind is too ridiculous even to consider.
The same goes for global warming. Is it caused by human activity? No say the deniers — not meant as an insult by the way. Why? Because Antarctic sea ice is increasing while the arctic is melting? (And Corio you haven’t responded to an earlier point that land ice in the Antarctic is diminishing.) But that,/i> would suggest that it is anthropogenic, since most heavy use of fossil fuels and industry is in the northern hemisphere. Nor do local anomalies count. The only way to resolve these issues is by taking all the evidence into account at the same time, and infer from that to the best explanation. The likelihood that climate scientists — who have access to all the data — are getting it right is far higher than individuals working at cross purposes with them. Just as in the case of evolution. Creationists point out odd things, and think that isolated anomalies (if that is what they are) will carry the day, but they don’t bother with all the minutiae that go to make up the explanatory model as a whole.
My concern here is that a number of people seem not to understand what scepticism really is. Scepticism is not simply questioning everything. It is questioning things rationally, with due weight being given to the known evidence. One of the things that makes this difficult is the fact that the issues involved are so very complex that it is hard to have access to all the information that is necessary in order to provide a rational response to the questions we want to put to the evidence. This, of course, makes it easier to put something over on us, but in order for that to be true, we’d have to assume that all the experts who look at these things are in a conspiracy to dupe the rest of us, and this is simply unbelievable for the simple reason that there are so many of them, and they are so independent of each other. Cooking up a conspiracy in these situations would be next to impossible.
As for Egbert’s continual sniping at the ‘new atheism’ (which he is most welcome to do), and especially this:
– let me add these few comments in reply. What this describes is not anything odd or nonsensical, but the free and open forum of the internet, where anyone may comment and soapbox who wants to. As we ought to know by now the internet is a place where people can comment anonymously (for the most part), if they wish, and so they do not need to take responsibility for their comments. The likelihood of this producing things that are pretty naff should go without saying, so trying to think of the new atheism as a coherent movement is fraught with diifficulty. Even more than the religions, who keep telling us that there is no way of speaking about, say, Islam in general, since there are so many disagreements and divisions and diversity of thought amongst Muslims, the new atheism has no structure, no prescribed texts, no clear definition, or anything other than a number of disparate individuals who conceive of themselves as talking on roughly the same wavelength. And while I have noticed something of the nature of group thought amongst some people who call themselves new atheists, it scarcely amounts to a dogmatism. Nor, in many respects, can it be thought to be a top-down organisation, for there is none, really, unless I am simply so far out here in the Atlantic that the ties that bind don’t reach that far. What we have, and should expect to have, is a fairly rough-hewn group of people who share some things in common, but differ on some points. The greater number are not participants in the “movement” except insofar as they attend conferences, and comment on a number of blogs, some well-known ones being the core of whatever “movement” there is. But if you look at those blogs, you will find a diversity of opinion which is fairly scattered, but situtated roughly on a trajectory which runs from questioning believers to confirmed and outspoken atheists. In that number there are a number of people whose attitudes are (to my mind) quite frankly crude and misogynistic, but that is scarcely surprising. And it also runs to a number of people who find the new atheism a bit repetitious, and so they suggest, as I have done from time to time, trying to find substitutes for religious community, or the engagement of atheists in social justice issues, etc. So far as being interested or not in what some anonymous person says, I think it goes without saying that most people are, certainly if it seems reasonable and well thought through, but as in any group of people, those who are most creative and expressive will be likely to have the greater influence. One of my caveats about the new atheism is that it is largely driven by scientists, and this could be a turnoff for some people, since science today is so highly technical and specialised that it is difficult for a lay individual to make even intelligent noises about science. Nonetheless, it is important for science to find a place in the culture where, if it is not leading the discussion of socially important questions, it at least has a voice there, and that has not been the case for a long time. One of the things that I regret is that many of the scientists involved are not accustomed to thinking philosophically, and that has had a negative impact on what some of them say, on at least some occasions, quite pontifically, where a bit of sceptical reservation would be in order. That aside, I do not understand your criticism Egbert. Atheism + seemed to me a good suggestion, broadening the scope of interest of the freethought community in a humanist direction. Indeed, it seems to me we could all do with an intro to secular humanism, and to its history, so that we know what we are talking about when we venture away from the narrower task of criticising religions and their misdoings.
I intend to publish this comment as a post in a few moments, likely with a few embelishments here and there.
No doubt the average person thought it equally ridiculous that Jimmy Saville was a notorious pedophile (or worse, the rest of the truth is yet to come out). His victims were ignored, ridiculed and injustice prevailed because the testimony of victims such as children against the image and authority of Jimmy Saville as superhero celebrity and charity worker, connected with the very top of the establishment could not possibly be true.
That is a perfect example of the blindness of authority, popularity and denial.
At the beginning of the modern sceptical movement started up by Paul Kurtz, who also began the secular humanism movement, the little known co-founder of the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, Marcello Truzzi, began to dissociate himself from this movement, coining the phrase ‘pseudosceptics’ to describe others in the movement, as being close-minded to new ideas (or new perspectives).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism
One of my heros (or anti-heros) is Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the slim book Letters to a Young Contrarian which while it is not his best work, does provide the essence of what it means to fight against authoritarianism, even among your friends and peers.
If we want a sensible and reasonable world (or even a group) where we embrace reasonable criticism, then we’re going to have to put up with contrarians, dissenters, and yes ‘sceptics’. If instead, you want to create a tribe of us vs. them, where disagreement and criticism is suppressed by those at the top and their minions, then that isn’t the world for me.
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That’s a ridiculous claim. The “movement” isn’t all that organized, and it’s even less so “in a top-down fashion.” What do you think happens? Academics and bloggers and activists all gather in a room to organize the movement? Please.
And where do you think bloggers and activists come from in the first place? We start out as anonymous persons ourselves – we use our real names, but we’re still unknown quantities.
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http://my.telegraph.co.uk/kkshahid/kkshahid/15/dont-blame-the-taliban-ii/
Things we know:
Two planes crashed into the twin towers and they subsequently collapsed.
I see that you could be sceptical about the cause of the subsequent collapse being due to the melting of steel girders if jet fuel does not burn heavy enough. Fine. But what evidence is there to say they did melt? or did they bend or sheer or lose structural integrity due to impact/heat or a combination of these factors? Even if they did melt, what evidence is there thermite was responsible? If thermite was responsible, who is to say who put it there?
Even if scepticism is about questioning EVERYTHING, this in does not naturally lead to random conspiracy theories/paranoia. This is because these conspiracy theories should be as subject to the same scepticism as “mainstream” ideas. The ONLY way we have to sort the truth from fiction is evidence. We have to look at all the evidence we can and make the most reasonable, logical conclusion on the basis of this evidence. Sometimes we will get it wrong – and we will only realise when new evidence comes to light – and then we should change our conclusions accordingly.