I haven’t been here in a while, and don’t intend to stay. But I thought I would stop in and be my usual difficult self:
I know this is some kind of blasphemy, but Imagine is a bad song. I used to like it a lot, but have grown increasingly skeptical of it for years. It ignores the reality of sin – as if just trying harder or dreaming better would make everything okay. What an utterly naive idea. It is simply childish.
Newsflash to dreamers, and those who put their hope that a perfectly rational and peaceful society can be made by the hands of men: the Enlightenment was a failure. The “new atheists” who insist on re-hashing the Enlightenment apparently missed that the “conquest of nature” and the “secularization of rationality” did not make man happier nor human communities more peaceful.
Some time back I finally read an article that voiced my suspicions about Imagine. Here is a selection followed by a link:
“Me: I pay attention to words. That is why I have always thought of it as a sort of anthem to Original Sin: fallen man’s infinite capacity to believe he can create Heaven on earth if he’s just permitted one more chance to get it right. Everything the song advocates and hopes for as a supreme good was the fountainhead of all the horrors of the 20th Century. Imagine there’s no countries? Hitler dreamt of a world without borders. Imagine there’s no heaven? No religion too? Stalin and Mao sought to free us from religion and the burden of hoping for something more than this life. Imagine no possessions? Communism was all about freeing us from possessions (though multi-zillionaire Lennon seems to have honored this dream more in the breach than the observance). Imagine all the people living for today? You got it! A culture of brain-dead MTV-educated “fornicate-today-and-abort-tomorrow” zombies has accomplished the mission.”
http://www.mark-shea.com/imagine.html
There is nothing more crushing to hope than false hope. Imagine is chock full of it.
I agree that the lyrics are naive and simplistic, and I think the video is lame. But I do like to imagine all the people living life in peace. And I think the “secularization of rationality” will get us closer to that goal that adherence to pre-enlightenment reasoning, like:
“The Jews’ guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus consigned them to perpetual servitude, and, like Cain, they are to be wanderers and fugitives. The Jews will not dare to raise their necks, bowed under the yoke of perpetual slavery, against the reverence of the Christian faith.” –Pope Innocent III
Now, what was it you were saying about Hitler?
(This is my naive and simplistic response to your post…)
I am not particularly romantic about the past either. It is not as if the Enlightenment destroyed some perfect age that had preceded it. Every age is marked by biases, assumptions, and faults. So being critical of Enlightenment thought hardly requires that I then be a defender of every pre-Enlightenment thinker, much less every utterance from various philosophers, writers, theologians, or popes (like the nasty bit you dug up from a late 12th century Pope).
I am not much for revolutionary thought. I think there is great wisdom in the tradition, but wisdom that is often sullied by bias, prejudice, and unwarranted assumptions. So I prefer the politics of reformation rather than revolution. And I think, unlike Lennon, that our hopes should be decidedly tempered by the reality of finitude and sin.
Pope Benedict articulated the proper relationship between faith and reason in his address at Westminster. For my part, I can find nothing to disagree with in this statement. Forgive the long excerpt:
“The central question at issue, then, is this: Where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found?
The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.
According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.
This ‘corrective’ role of religion vis-a-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves.
And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process.
Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person.
Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century.
This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.”
I agree with you about reformation. On a personal level, many people who leave religion and no longer believe in god fall into a state of revolution. Suddenly they no longer accept the idea that an all knowing creator is keeping track of their conduct. So they want to do all those things that they formerly believed god would punish them for. For Mormons that usually includes coffee, alcohol, and sex outside of marriage. But with time I think most believers turned atheists realize that all our actions have consequences – even if there is no supernatural accountancy taken. I imagine that something similar happens to atheist who find god. There may be a period of being overly-religious, followed by a more measured approach.
I guess I don’t really understand what Benedict is saying there. What is an example of religion serving as a corrective to reason? And why are sectarianism and fundamentalism distortions of religion? By what standard? Because a sectarian will say, Well read the Bible and then look at the Catholic church. Doesn’t the church seem like a distortion of the original teachings of Jesus? And then a historian will say, Well look at all the examples of virgin births and resurrections in the various mythologies surrounding the writing of the Bible. Isn’t the Bible just a distorted mishmash of local mythologies? Where’s the gold standard to establish which religious teachings are appropriate correctives to secular government and which are distorted?
Your critique is seriously sophmoric.
Simply declaring sin to be a reality doesn’t make it so. If you mean that there will always be a certain amount of violence, unkindness, jealousy, greed in humanity, then yeah, I agree, but to label that sin is silly. It’s simply a result of our nature as animals who are slaves to our brain chemistry and who have warring impulses inside us to deal with. We’re as a species both inherently generous and greedy, narcissistic altrusitic.
Saying Lennon is ignoring the “reality” of sin suggests that you’ve some sort of proof of the existence of cosmic rules of behaviour and punishments for transgressing them. Which if course you don’t, because the whole concept of sin is absurd.
Communism is so much wider and larger than just Lenin, Stalin or Mao (and wider even than Marx). They former all represent one very narrow type of communism. While true that it was/is the most widespread, and turned out to be pretty freaking nasty, it is hardly the only type of communism, or socialism for that matter. Being freed from religion too need not be in a forceful, authoritarian, violent way in the way it was in USSR and in China. Just one example is Scandanavia. They’re extremely atheistic, happy, educated, healthy, and socialist.
Lack of belief in god and a desire to be rid of class distinction, the inequality of wealth, and evils of patriotism and nationalism in no way inherently lead to mass-murder, ethnic cleansing, or the collapse of civilisation as you seem to suggest.
Living for today refers not to mindless entertainment, or ignoring the consequences of our actions, but enjoying what we have RIGHT NOW and living in the moment. I’m seriously confused by your argument that the only way to be productive and happy and civilised apparently involves belief in a post-mortem reward/punishment system. The whole “humans only function if they believe in and are motivated by gods/heavens/hells” is so ridiculously disproven and obviously absurd I can’t believe you’re actually using it.
“There is nothing more crushing to hope than false hope.”
Oh, the irony. So hoping for a less violent, less hateful, less divisive, less religious society is false hope, but believing in a god who punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous (as long as they’re monogamous, straight, white, Western, Christian) is totally realistic. Riiiiight.
@Kleiner
Your argument is essentially:
If no political borders then Hitler
If no possessions then authoritarian communism
If no religion than murderous, power-hungry dictators
If no belief in the supernatural then no real joy, art, culture, or hope.
Thanks, Craig, for your posts. Your treatment of my post was a helpful reminder for why I stopped participating on this blog. Unsolicited advice: Try to find someone other than PZ Myers to imitate in your tone, people will take you much more seriously.
Thanks, Steve, for your thoughtful remarks. Sorry to mostly sidestep your good questions here. My quick answer: the mutual back-and-forth between reason and faith / philosophy and theology can help us discern which religious voices are making sensible contributions (and where reduced rationality can become dangerous). I don’t think this is a simple task, but is an ongoing dialogue. I tend to not trust religion that has not been somewhat hellenized (a problem with some sects of modern islam). And I don’t trust scientific reason (because it is not capable) when it comes to making moral discernments. I think insights from various religious traditions can help reason from falling into a pit of itself (Benedict’s example is when reason is applied in “a partial [reduced] way” – think vulgar utilitarianism). Despite the obvious failings of her members, it is worth pointing out that no one brings the dignity of human persons to the table of political and moral discussion more than the Catholic Church. Mechanistic scientific (“technological”) reason is, I think, utterly incapable of such an insight.
I recognize that is too quick of an answer, and probably not satisfactory. But thanks to Craig’s useful reminder, I’ll be dropping off this blog again.
Cheers!
I admit I was slightly dramatic with my synopsis of your argument, but only slightly. That’s basically the treatment you gave the song – and then used it to bash every world-view or political ideology at odds with yours and paint them with as broad and unsophisticated a brush as possible.
I didn’t treat religion in an infantile matter; in fact, if you’ll notice, I didn’t treat religion at all. So please don’t blame me for driving you away from this blog when all I did was call you on your bullshit.
The infantile remark about religion I had in mind here, Craig, was this: “believing in a god who punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous (as long as they’re monogamous, straight, white, Western, Christian) is totally realistic. Riiiiight.”
This sort of broadside is habitual for people of a certain ilk, it is almost like a mental tic. Some apparently cannot prevent themselves from going to their new atheist talking points and repeating utterly stupid canards. I am never quite sure if such remarks stem from anger or ignorance or some incredibly unhealthy mix of the two. But why bother engaging with people who engage in discussions in this way? Take Kuri, whose remark demonstrates an total lack of knowledge about Catholic social philosophy. Not that a google search proves much, but for fun I googled “dignity of the human person” and 8 of the top 10 hits had something to do with Catholic social teaching. You won’t find any utilitarians (something of the default moral view of most atheists) talking about the dignity of the human person.
Anyway, Craig essentially ceded my point about the song. Don’t call it sin if you don’t want to, I am not nearly so hung up on that word as you are. Call it “finitude” or, your apparent preference, animalistic brain wiring. The point remains the same. What Lennon asks us to “imagine” are concrete impossibilities that then drive imprudent politics of revolution. That is why I called the song naive.
I am not blaming you for “driving me away” from the blog, Craig. I simply prefer to engage in other forums, and our brief engagement here reminded me why. I see almost no value in engaging with the most bitter, angry, militant, and not coincidentally uninformed sects of new atheism. They are amongst the nastiest and, ironically, most dogmatic bunch of people I have ever met.
Godspeed.
I did not mean to throw the entire SHAFT blog under the bus in my last comment. I have great respect for many members of the USU SHAFT community, and I genuinely believe that this blog manages to be among the more sensible atheist blogs.
As it turns out, I just have very little patience when it comes to dealing with infantile treatments of religion. Sadly, such treatments are epidemic on atheist blogs and sometimes even rear their head here. But my failure to engage constructively in dialogue with Craig and people like him is, I am sure, in large part a failure of patience and charity on my part. This is particularly so when dealing with people who are obviously wounded from their own experience with religion. I was simply raised an atheist, I have never had a hurtful experience with religion.
Craig, I genuinely hope that you someday can find peace of mind and heart and some healing from the pain and wounds you suffered with your experience with Mormonism.
Your diatribe is timely. My son was just asking me what the word bigotry means and I was looking for a good example. In fact, you could replace ‘RCC’ in your statement with any other group and it would be just as bigoted: Americans, Muslims, Blacks, Jews, etc. Nice.
The weird thing about a blog is that it is difficult to judge the tone in which people say things. Your comment could be interpreted as expressing deep contempt, or it could be a lighthearted jab in an ongoing exchange. It doesn’t matter to me; I just think it is an interesting aspect of the medium. Whatever.
Speaking of the Catholic church, I really like this conversation between Father George Coyne and Richard Dawkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0ZMfkSNxc
As an atheist I am more convinced by Dawkins, but Coyne is fascinating.
Your diatribe is timely. My son was just asking me what the word bigotry means and I was looking for a good example. In fact, you could replace ‘RCC’ in your statement with any other group and it would be just as bigoted: Americans, Muslims, Blacks, Jews, etc. Nice.
The weird thing about a blog is that it is difficult to judge the tone in which people say things. Your comment could be interpreted as expressing deep contempt, or it could be a lighthearted jab in an ongoing exchange. It doesn’t matter to me; I just think it is an interesting aspect of the medium. Whatever.
Speaking of the Catholic church, I really like this conversation between Father George Coyne and Richard Dawkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0ZMfkSNxc
As an atheist I am more convinced by Dawkins, but Coyne is fascinating.
Come on. That’s not a fair to Kleiner. Like you said, it’s hard to read tone on a blog. And yes, Kleiner can be snarky ha ha. But I happen to know and respect the guy, and he’s not the bigoted diatribey type.
No, I meant Kuri. I just hit the wrong ‘reply’ button (there, now I fixed it). To dismiss the Catholic church wholesale from the moral discussion like that seemed like one of those sweeping over-generalizations that can appropriately be defined as bigotry. I don’t take issue with anything said – it was just an academic observation. Maybe bigotry is too strong. Prejudice?
Steve – Thanks for the link to the Dawkins – Fr. Coyne interview, which I had not previously seen. I am not all the way through the 7 parts yet, but it is a great conversation and a real model of how we should engage in this conversation. Dawkins is here both a demanding questioner but also an eager listener, which makes for an excellent interview. I have some reservations about some things Coyne says (and he goes out of his way to say he is not speaking for the RCC here), but it really is an interesting discussion.
I was especially fascinated by part 5. It is probably the best explanation of religious faith that I have ever heard. He says that he did not reason his way to God, he did not earn the faith he has. But he says, “God gave himself to me.” And that “God is not a god of explanation primarily. He’s a god of love.” Perhaps this is what people mean when they say that God came into their heart, or that faith is a gift from god.
I’ve never felt God’s love, and I haven’t been given the gift of faith. So I don’t share these beliefs. But this explanation helps me respect them.
Steve,
If I dismissed Roman Catholics, that would certainly be bigotry. But I don’t. Individual Roman Catholics, presumably, are as moral as anyone else. What I dismiss as a moral authority is the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. After a church has engaged in decades of child abuse and cover ups, the idea that anyone would consider it some sort of moral exemplar is simply astonishing. It’s ludicrous. It’s like citing the Westboro Baptist Church as an authority on the brotherhood of humanity.
That makes sense. I would hope that most Catholics don’t just accept the official position of their church on any issue just because it is the official position of their church. I think blindly getting your morals from any institution is dangerous. In Utah you hear a lot of “the prophet said it therefore it is true, end of discussion.” That kind of thinking scares me.
Thank you so much for posting that. It was a peaceful 4 min., and I have played it forward!
I haven’t been here in a while, and don’t intend to stay. But I thought I would stop in and be my usual difficult self:
I know this is some kind of blasphemy, but Imagine is a bad song. I used to like it a lot, but have grown increasingly skeptical of it for years. It ignores the reality of sin – as if just trying harder or dreaming better would make everything okay. What an utterly naive idea. It is simply childish.
Newsflash to dreamers, and those who put their hope that a perfectly rational and peaceful society can be made by the hands of men: the Enlightenment was a failure. The “new atheists” who insist on re-hashing the Enlightenment apparently missed that the “conquest of nature” and the “secularization of rationality” did not make man happier nor human communities more peaceful.
Some time back I finally read an article that voiced my suspicions about Imagine. Here is a selection followed by a link:
“Me: I pay attention to words. That is why I have always thought of it as a sort of anthem to Original Sin: fallen man’s infinite capacity to believe he can create Heaven on earth if he’s just permitted one more chance to get it right. Everything the song advocates and hopes for as a supreme good was the fountainhead of all the horrors of the 20th Century. Imagine there’s no countries? Hitler dreamt of a world without borders. Imagine there’s no heaven? No religion too? Stalin and Mao sought to free us from religion and the burden of hoping for something more than this life. Imagine no possessions? Communism was all about freeing us from possessions (though multi-zillionaire Lennon seems to have honored this dream more in the breach than the observance). Imagine all the people living for today? You got it! A culture of brain-dead MTV-educated “fornicate-today-and-abort-tomorrow” zombies has accomplished the mission.”
http://www.mark-shea.com/imagine.html
There is nothing more crushing to hope than false hope. Imagine is chock full of it.
I agree that the lyrics are naive and simplistic, and I think the video is lame. But I do like to imagine all the people living life in peace. And I think the “secularization of rationality” will get us closer to that goal that adherence to pre-enlightenment reasoning, like:
“The Jews’ guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus consigned them to perpetual servitude, and, like Cain, they are to be wanderers and fugitives. The Jews will not dare to raise their necks, bowed under the yoke of perpetual slavery, against the reverence of the Christian faith.” –Pope Innocent III
Now, what was it you were saying about Hitler?
(This is my naive and simplistic response to your post…)
I am not particularly romantic about the past either. It is not as if the Enlightenment destroyed some perfect age that had preceded it. Every age is marked by biases, assumptions, and faults. So being critical of Enlightenment thought hardly requires that I then be a defender of every pre-Enlightenment thinker, much less every utterance from various philosophers, writers, theologians, or popes (like the nasty bit you dug up from a late 12th century Pope).
I am not much for revolutionary thought. I think there is great wisdom in the tradition, but wisdom that is often sullied by bias, prejudice, and unwarranted assumptions. So I prefer the politics of reformation rather than revolution. And I think, unlike Lennon, that our hopes should be decidedly tempered by the reality of finitude and sin.
Pope Benedict articulated the proper relationship between faith and reason in his address at Westminster. For my part, I can find nothing to disagree with in this statement. Forgive the long excerpt:
“The central question at issue, then, is this: Where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found?
The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.
According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.
This ‘corrective’ role of religion vis-a-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves.
And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process.
Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person.
Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century.
This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.”
I agree with you about reformation. On a personal level, many people who leave religion and no longer believe in god fall into a state of revolution. Suddenly they no longer accept the idea that an all knowing creator is keeping track of their conduct. So they want to do all those things that they formerly believed god would punish them for. For Mormons that usually includes coffee, alcohol, and sex outside of marriage. But with time I think most believers turned atheists realize that all our actions have consequences – even if there is no supernatural accountancy taken. I imagine that something similar happens to atheist who find god. There may be a period of being overly-religious, followed by a more measured approach.
I guess I don’t really understand what Benedict is saying there. What is an example of religion serving as a corrective to reason? And why are sectarianism and fundamentalism distortions of religion? By what standard? Because a sectarian will say, Well read the Bible and then look at the Catholic church. Doesn’t the church seem like a distortion of the original teachings of Jesus? And then a historian will say, Well look at all the examples of virgin births and resurrections in the various mythologies surrounding the writing of the Bible. Isn’t the Bible just a distorted mishmash of local mythologies? Where’s the gold standard to establish which religious teachings are appropriate correctives to secular government and which are distorted?
Your critique is seriously sophmoric.
Simply declaring sin to be a reality doesn’t make it so. If you mean that there will always be a certain amount of violence, unkindness, jealousy, greed in humanity, then yeah, I agree, but to label that sin is silly. It’s simply a result of our nature as animals who are slaves to our brain chemistry and who have warring impulses inside us to deal with. We’re as a species both inherently generous and greedy, narcissistic altrusitic.
Saying Lennon is ignoring the “reality” of sin suggests that you’ve some sort of proof of the existence of cosmic rules of behaviour and punishments for transgressing them. Which if course you don’t, because the whole concept of sin is absurd.
Communism is so much wider and larger than just Lenin, Stalin or Mao (and wider even than Marx). They former all represent one very narrow type of communism. While true that it was/is the most widespread, and turned out to be pretty freaking nasty, it is hardly the only type of communism, or socialism for that matter. Being freed from religion too need not be in a forceful, authoritarian, violent way in the way it was in USSR and in China. Just one example is Scandanavia. They’re extremely atheistic, happy, educated, healthy, and socialist.
Lack of belief in god and a desire to be rid of class distinction, the inequality of wealth, and evils of patriotism and nationalism in no way inherently lead to mass-murder, ethnic cleansing, or the collapse of civilisation as you seem to suggest.
Living for today refers not to mindless entertainment, or ignoring the consequences of our actions, but enjoying what we have RIGHT NOW and living in the moment. I’m seriously confused by your argument that the only way to be productive and happy and civilised apparently involves belief in a post-mortem reward/punishment system. The whole “humans only function if they believe in and are motivated by gods/heavens/hells” is so ridiculously disproven and obviously absurd I can’t believe you’re actually using it.
“There is nothing more crushing to hope than false hope.”
Oh, the irony. So hoping for a less violent, less hateful, less divisive, less religious society is false hope, but believing in a god who punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous (as long as they’re monogamous, straight, white, Western, Christian) is totally realistic. Riiiiight.
@Kleiner
Your argument is essentially:
If no political borders then Hitler
If no possessions then authoritarian communism
If no religion than murderous, power-hungry dictators
If no belief in the supernatural then no real joy, art, culture, or hope.
Thanks, Craig, for your posts. Your treatment of my post was a helpful reminder for why I stopped participating on this blog. Unsolicited advice: Try to find someone other than PZ Myers to imitate in your tone, people will take you much more seriously.
Thanks, Steve, for your thoughtful remarks. Sorry to mostly sidestep your good questions here. My quick answer: the mutual back-and-forth between reason and faith / philosophy and theology can help us discern which religious voices are making sensible contributions (and where reduced rationality can become dangerous). I don’t think this is a simple task, but is an ongoing dialogue. I tend to not trust religion that has not been somewhat hellenized (a problem with some sects of modern islam). And I don’t trust scientific reason (because it is not capable) when it comes to making moral discernments. I think insights from various religious traditions can help reason from falling into a pit of itself (Benedict’s example is when reason is applied in “a partial [reduced] way” – think vulgar utilitarianism). Despite the obvious failings of her members, it is worth pointing out that no one brings the dignity of human persons to the table of political and moral discussion more than the Catholic Church. Mechanistic scientific (“technological”) reason is, I think, utterly incapable of such an insight.
I recognize that is too quick of an answer, and probably not satisfactory. But thanks to Craig’s useful reminder, I’ll be dropping off this blog again.
Cheers!
I admit I was slightly dramatic with my synopsis of your argument, but only slightly. That’s basically the treatment you gave the song – and then used it to bash every world-view or political ideology at odds with yours and paint them with as broad and unsophisticated a brush as possible.
I didn’t treat religion in an infantile matter; in fact, if you’ll notice, I didn’t treat religion at all. So please don’t blame me for driving you away from this blog when all I did was call you on your bullshit.
The infantile remark about religion I had in mind here, Craig, was this: “believing in a god who punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous (as long as they’re monogamous, straight, white, Western, Christian) is totally realistic. Riiiiight.”
This sort of broadside is habitual for people of a certain ilk, it is almost like a mental tic. Some apparently cannot prevent themselves from going to their new atheist talking points and repeating utterly stupid canards. I am never quite sure if such remarks stem from anger or ignorance or some incredibly unhealthy mix of the two. But why bother engaging with people who engage in discussions in this way? Take Kuri, whose remark demonstrates an total lack of knowledge about Catholic social philosophy. Not that a google search proves much, but for fun I googled “dignity of the human person” and 8 of the top 10 hits had something to do with Catholic social teaching. You won’t find any utilitarians (something of the default moral view of most atheists) talking about the dignity of the human person.
Anyway, Craig essentially ceded my point about the song. Don’t call it sin if you don’t want to, I am not nearly so hung up on that word as you are. Call it “finitude” or, your apparent preference, animalistic brain wiring. The point remains the same. What Lennon asks us to “imagine” are concrete impossibilities that then drive imprudent politics of revolution. That is why I called the song naive.
I am not blaming you for “driving me away” from the blog, Craig. I simply prefer to engage in other forums, and our brief engagement here reminded me why. I see almost no value in engaging with the most bitter, angry, militant, and not coincidentally uninformed sects of new atheism. They are amongst the nastiest and, ironically, most dogmatic bunch of people I have ever met.
Godspeed.
I did not mean to throw the entire SHAFT blog under the bus in my last comment. I have great respect for many members of the USU SHAFT community, and I genuinely believe that this blog manages to be among the more sensible atheist blogs.
As it turns out, I just have very little patience when it comes to dealing with infantile treatments of religion. Sadly, such treatments are epidemic on atheist blogs and sometimes even rear their head here. But my failure to engage constructively in dialogue with Craig and people like him is, I am sure, in large part a failure of patience and charity on my part. This is particularly so when dealing with people who are obviously wounded from their own experience with religion. I was simply raised an atheist, I have never had a hurtful experience with religion.
Craig, I genuinely hope that you someday can find peace of mind and heart and some healing from the pain and wounds you suffered with your experience with Mormonism.
With that, adieu.
“…no one brings the dignity of human persons to the table of political and moral discussion more than the Catholic Church.”
Ha-ha-ha, good one! No wait — you’re serious?! O.M.F.G. You think the RCC has any place left in “moral discussions”?! Ha-ha-ha, that’s even better!
Your diatribe is timely. My son was just asking me what the word bigotry means and I was looking for a good example. In fact, you could replace ‘RCC’ in your statement with any other group and it would be just as bigoted: Americans, Muslims, Blacks, Jews, etc. Nice.
The weird thing about a blog is that it is difficult to judge the tone in which people say things. Your comment could be interpreted as expressing deep contempt, or it could be a lighthearted jab in an ongoing exchange. It doesn’t matter to me; I just think it is an interesting aspect of the medium. Whatever.
Speaking of the Catholic church, I really like this conversation between Father George Coyne and Richard Dawkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0ZMfkSNxc
As an atheist I am more convinced by Dawkins, but Coyne is fascinating.
Your diatribe is timely. My son was just asking me what the word bigotry means and I was looking for a good example. In fact, you could replace ‘RCC’ in your statement with any other group and it would be just as bigoted: Americans, Muslims, Blacks, Jews, etc. Nice.
The weird thing about a blog is that it is difficult to judge the tone in which people say things. Your comment could be interpreted as expressing deep contempt, or it could be a lighthearted jab in an ongoing exchange. It doesn’t matter to me; I just think it is an interesting aspect of the medium. Whatever.
Speaking of the Catholic church, I really like this conversation between Father George Coyne and Richard Dawkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0ZMfkSNxc
As an atheist I am more convinced by Dawkins, but Coyne is fascinating.
Kleiner’s comments–a bigoted diatribe?
Come on. That’s not a fair to Kleiner. Like you said, it’s hard to read tone on a blog. And yes, Kleiner can be snarky ha ha. But I happen to know and respect the guy, and he’s not the bigoted diatribey type.
No, I meant Kuri. I just hit the wrong ‘reply’ button (there, now I fixed it). To dismiss the Catholic church wholesale from the moral discussion like that seemed like one of those sweeping over-generalizations that can appropriately be defined as bigotry. I don’t take issue with anything said – it was just an academic observation. Maybe bigotry is too strong. Prejudice?
Steve – Thanks for the link to the Dawkins – Fr. Coyne interview, which I had not previously seen. I am not all the way through the 7 parts yet, but it is a great conversation and a real model of how we should engage in this conversation. Dawkins is here both a demanding questioner but also an eager listener, which makes for an excellent interview. I have some reservations about some things Coyne says (and he goes out of his way to say he is not speaking for the RCC here), but it really is an interesting discussion.
I was especially fascinated by part 5. It is probably the best explanation of religious faith that I have ever heard. He says that he did not reason his way to God, he did not earn the faith he has. But he says, “God gave himself to me.” And that “God is not a god of explanation primarily. He’s a god of love.” Perhaps this is what people mean when they say that God came into their heart, or that faith is a gift from god.
I’ve never felt God’s love, and I haven’t been given the gift of faith. So I don’t share these beliefs. But this explanation helps me respect them.
Steve,
If I dismissed Roman Catholics, that would certainly be bigotry. But I don’t. Individual Roman Catholics, presumably, are as moral as anyone else. What I dismiss as a moral authority is the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. After a church has engaged in decades of child abuse and cover ups, the idea that anyone would consider it some sort of moral exemplar is simply astonishing. It’s ludicrous. It’s like citing the Westboro Baptist Church as an authority on the brotherhood of humanity.
That makes sense. I would hope that most Catholics don’t just accept the official position of their church on any issue just because it is the official position of their church. I think blindly getting your morals from any institution is dangerous. In Utah you hear a lot of “the prophet said it therefore it is true, end of discussion.” That kind of thinking scares me.