Answer the question which applies to you:
If you're an atheist: In what ways, if any, would you change your moral behavior if it were proved that God exists?
If you're a theist: In what ways, if any, would you change your moral behavior if it were proved that God does not exist?
Give me all the filthy details :)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Memo from the Grand Atheist Conspiracy Council
While we call ourselves “disevangelists” we are not completely synoptic. An example is Scriptulicious’s post on January the 30th. In it, he quotes Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias’s claim that atheists have “no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life, and no hope beyond the grave.” Scriptulicious’s bone of contention with Zacharias is the implicit claim that Zacharias, as a biblical theist, does have reason for being, morality, meaning, and hope; Scriptulicious’s counterclaim is that there is no biblical basis for Zacharias to think this way.
I don’t disagree with this argument, but while considering what to write as a comment to the post, I realized that my own thoughts were distinct enough to merit their own post. Where Scriptulicious’s concern was the accuracy of the statement, I would question why Zacharias would make such a statement to begin with.
As to Christians having a hope an afterlife, Scriptulicious makes the very valid criticism to this belief by saying “the Bible does not give a uniform voice about life beyond the grave”. But what of the accuracy of Zacharias’s claim that atheists have no hope beyond the grave? Well... duh! This is almost a tautology; if any atheist did believe in life after death, I would question if she were truly atheist.
So, why does Zacharias even bother pointing it out? Does he think atheists don’t realize this? Of course, Zacharias knows fully well that atheists don’t hope for a life beyond the grave; so, it seems unlikely that he is writing to convert atheists. I suspect that he is preaching to the choir who already hangs their collective hats on the belief that this life’s meaning is derived from a hope of an afterlife.
Bearing in mind that, for Zacharias’s intended readers, life’s meaning is derived from the afterlife, consider the claim that atheists have no reason for being (and I would equate this to the claim that atheists have no meaning to life, unless someone can show me how the two ideas are anything more than semantically different). On the one hand, we could question the accuracy of the statement. I feel, as an atheist, that with only one life to live, I appreciate life a little more and try to make this one life of mine count for something. But, again, I am more interested in why Zacharias claims that atheists have no reason for being.
Zacharias, who had attempted suicide at age 17, must have felt what it’s like to live a purposeless life (though it should be noted that he was Hindu at the time, not atheist). Shortly after the suicide attempt, he converted to Christianity. Could it be that Zacharias is so filled with love of his fellow man, a love instilled in him by the God of the Bible (of all things!), that he wants to save us from the purposelessness that he himself felt and then share with us the uplifting meaning he gleans from the Bible?
Good on him, if that’s his motive. But, as I mentioned before, it doesn’t seem like atheists are his intended audience. The criticisms I’ve read of Zacharias’s book (such as the reader reviews on Amazon.com) indicate that he doesn’t so much as try to understand or accurately reflect the atheistic viewpoint, even going so far as to distort it. I’ve even found similar criticisms of him by other religions.
So, if these criticisms are true, and Zacharias deliberately distorts atheistic viewpoints (dare I say, lies about them?), we should now consider his last remaining point: that atheists espouse no morality. Once again, the accuracy of this statement could be questioned when we see how secular values (human rights, for example) have been adopted (sometimes begrudgingly) by Christian sects, or even completely ignored (as seems often the case with Islam). So, why would Zacharias say this?
Call me cynical, but when I hear a theist say that “if there were no God, then men would have license to commit whatever heinous atrocities he desired”, what I interpret that to mean is “if there were no God, the theist himself would feel he had license to commit whatever heinous atrocities he desired.” In other words, the only thing holding Zacharias back from rape, pillage, and murder is his belief in God.
Never mind that Zacharias’s viewpoints are an appeal to emotion, and don’t actually prove that God exists; never mind that doing the right thing only upon fear of punishment is not exactly what we’d call moral behavior; never mind that Zacharias might, in actuality, be moral, even if his God didn't exist (which, by the way, He doesn't). Consider only this: if the people who read and listen to evangelists and apologists like Zacharias -- a people who, if not for a belief in the reward of an afterlife, would find no meaning in this life -- if those people actually believe that atheists espouse no morality, what a monstrous gang of demons we must seem to them.
Apologist is a bit of a misnomer because the word connotes that Zacharias is defending his faith. Quite the inverse of the NFL, where the best offense is a good defense, apologetic rhetoric like his appears to me to be a rallying cry: A) to instill an “us vs. them” mentality among the faithful, B) to instill a fear of the demonic “them” in the faithful, and C) to exhort the fearful faithful into taking the offensive. Now, being a peaceful man I wonder: what is the objective of this offensive?
I don’t disagree with this argument, but while considering what to write as a comment to the post, I realized that my own thoughts were distinct enough to merit their own post. Where Scriptulicious’s concern was the accuracy of the statement, I would question why Zacharias would make such a statement to begin with.
As to Christians having a hope an afterlife, Scriptulicious makes the very valid criticism to this belief by saying “the Bible does not give a uniform voice about life beyond the grave”. But what of the accuracy of Zacharias’s claim that atheists have no hope beyond the grave? Well... duh! This is almost a tautology; if any atheist did believe in life after death, I would question if she were truly atheist.
So, why does Zacharias even bother pointing it out? Does he think atheists don’t realize this? Of course, Zacharias knows fully well that atheists don’t hope for a life beyond the grave; so, it seems unlikely that he is writing to convert atheists. I suspect that he is preaching to the choir who already hangs their collective hats on the belief that this life’s meaning is derived from a hope of an afterlife.
Bearing in mind that, for Zacharias’s intended readers, life’s meaning is derived from the afterlife, consider the claim that atheists have no reason for being (and I would equate this to the claim that atheists have no meaning to life, unless someone can show me how the two ideas are anything more than semantically different). On the one hand, we could question the accuracy of the statement. I feel, as an atheist, that with only one life to live, I appreciate life a little more and try to make this one life of mine count for something. But, again, I am more interested in why Zacharias claims that atheists have no reason for being.
Zacharias, who had attempted suicide at age 17, must have felt what it’s like to live a purposeless life (though it should be noted that he was Hindu at the time, not atheist). Shortly after the suicide attempt, he converted to Christianity. Could it be that Zacharias is so filled with love of his fellow man, a love instilled in him by the God of the Bible (of all things!), that he wants to save us from the purposelessness that he himself felt and then share with us the uplifting meaning he gleans from the Bible?
Good on him, if that’s his motive. But, as I mentioned before, it doesn’t seem like atheists are his intended audience. The criticisms I’ve read of Zacharias’s book (such as the reader reviews on Amazon.com) indicate that he doesn’t so much as try to understand or accurately reflect the atheistic viewpoint, even going so far as to distort it. I’ve even found similar criticisms of him by other religions.
So, if these criticisms are true, and Zacharias deliberately distorts atheistic viewpoints (dare I say, lies about them?), we should now consider his last remaining point: that atheists espouse no morality. Once again, the accuracy of this statement could be questioned when we see how secular values (human rights, for example) have been adopted (sometimes begrudgingly) by Christian sects, or even completely ignored (as seems often the case with Islam). So, why would Zacharias say this?
Call me cynical, but when I hear a theist say that “if there were no God, then men would have license to commit whatever heinous atrocities he desired”, what I interpret that to mean is “if there were no God, the theist himself would feel he had license to commit whatever heinous atrocities he desired.” In other words, the only thing holding Zacharias back from rape, pillage, and murder is his belief in God.
Never mind that Zacharias’s viewpoints are an appeal to emotion, and don’t actually prove that God exists; never mind that doing the right thing only upon fear of punishment is not exactly what we’d call moral behavior; never mind that Zacharias might, in actuality, be moral, even if his God didn't exist (which, by the way, He doesn't). Consider only this: if the people who read and listen to evangelists and apologists like Zacharias -- a people who, if not for a belief in the reward of an afterlife, would find no meaning in this life -- if those people actually believe that atheists espouse no morality, what a monstrous gang of demons we must seem to them.
Apologist is a bit of a misnomer because the word connotes that Zacharias is defending his faith. Quite the inverse of the NFL, where the best offense is a good defense, apologetic rhetoric like his appears to me to be a rallying cry: A) to instill an “us vs. them” mentality among the faithful, B) to instill a fear of the demonic “them” in the faithful, and C) to exhort the fearful faithful into taking the offensive. Now, being a peaceful man I wonder: what is the objective of this offensive?
~Philosobot
Sound Off 01-31-09
Yesterday's question related to the presence of life on other planets. It was left to the reader to consider whether such life would be intelligent or self-aware. Consider now the specific affects that the discovery of intelligent extra-terrestrial life would have on traditional religions. For example, how would the Christian doctrines of the Fall, Original Sin, and the Vicarious Atonement be affected? Likewise, how would the Muslim idea of the ceremonial centrality of Mecca be affected?
Today's question: How would the discovery of intelligent extra terrestrials affect traditional religions?
Today's question: How would the discovery of intelligent extra terrestrials affect traditional religions?
Seasoned Pathways
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein (Jeremiah 6:16).
It is September, 2003. "This is really interesting," I think out loud, "I can't wait to tell Dad." The thought of sharing with Dad while reclined on the back porch in the warmth of a late summer evening sunset lingers for a moment. Suddenly my mental pathway comes to an abrupt end. I remember that Dad died a week ago.
Thoughts of this nature were common in the months following my Father's death. An idea or a thought salient to Dad or to our relationship would rush into my awareness. I would emotively embrace the thought with the warmly comforting image of having a moment to share it with him. Then, I would suddenly recall that Dad was dead, and the stark reality that I would not be able to share another moment with him would coldly overtake me. Though this was a common occurrence in the immediate aftermath of Dad's death. I found that my well-worn mental pathways were slowly being replaced. Months later the pathways, still present and well-worn, was replaced by similar, more mentally satisfying routes, pathways with destinations. Five years later I have all but replaced these pathways; however, I have experienced the loss of two additional pathways.
Mom died January 15, 2009. I am not surprised this time around; I expected my mind to default to its seasoned pathways. This time around I have less dead-ended pathways, but they occur every day. I thought on Tuesday evening this week that I should call Mom to visit with her. The mental pathway came to a dead end. Sometimes my mind lingers on the old path despite the dead end, and I find these thoughts peaceful; however, life goes on and so must I.
I was raised in a Christian household with close connections to my family's church community. For much of my life I was surrounded by people of faith. The models in my life exhibited faith behaviors which were reinforced either by the community or by the internal satisfaction of the performer. These pathways were blazed early for me, and when I decided to wholly "commit my life to Christ" just after 7th grade, I widened and branched the pathways into all areas of my mental life—intellectual and emotional. Few areas of my thinking were not traversed by a God-faith pathway. God and faith became my identity as I broached adolescence, and I became a compulsive God-faith addict.
Leaving belief in God was not an overnight decision for me. The last five years have been formative for my atheism; it was a gradual process. Through my ongoing critical studies of the Bible, biblical languages, science, and comparative religions, I became increasingly aware of how fragile my faith system was. I won't detail the path of my discoveries here at the moment, but I gradually found the foundations of faith crumbling. On occasion I would admit to myself that I was a closet atheist, but I would maintain outward faith. Episodes of disbelief would often be met with episodes of even stronger commitment to irrational beliefs—with ongoing and increasing emphasis on the virtue of belief in the irrational. This process of learning how to not believe was critical for me. Without it, I would not have been able to openly acknowledge my disbelief.
Disbelief is like the loss of a parent for me; it is not easy. My mental pathways default to the reassurance of providence or to the efficacy of prayer as I sometimes find myself conducting an internal God dialogue with myself. My God-faith pathways are still present, and as far as I understand brain physiology, neurotransmitters that fall into disuse eventually loose myelin and become less functional. As mentioned, the process of recognizing the absence of God (or the nonexistence of God) was gradual, and so it made the process easier, but it is not easy.
One may ask, "If disbelief is difficult, then why not just believe?" Before I answer this question let me explain that the difficulty of disbelief is not intellectual, it is purely emotive. I do not intellectually pretend that I am convinced there is no God. Second, I choose to disbelieve because it is hard. Yes, I disbelieve because it is the more difficult option for my emotive pathways; it is the option that challenges me and propels my mind into higher levels of understanding, awareness, and transcendence. In fact, I find the implied answer to this question to be an unjustified plea for ignorance. It is akin to the student asking her teacher, "This stuff is hard, why do I have to learn it?" I learn because it is hard. I press forward because the alternative is ignorance and superstition. I am done with the old, dead-end paths.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Darwin Day Celebration Announcement
When: February 12th, 2009 (time to be announced)
What: DDC -- Darwin Day Celebration
Where: Residence of Scriptulicious (email me for details)
What: DDC -- Darwin Day Celebration
Where: Residence of Scriptulicious (email me for details)
More details to follow. Readings from Origins of Species. Games. Primordial Soup. and More. Please RSVP via blogger comments. This not a joke.
Zacharias on Atheist Morality
Prominent Evangelical apologist Ravi Zacharias recently posited:
Having killed God, the atheist is left with no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life, and no hope beyond the grave (p. 98).
I unfortunately did not receive this memo from the grand atheist conspiracy council. Is it possible that Zacharias is mistaken?
By making this statement, Zacharias is making the implicit claim that he, as a biblical theist, has a reason for being, a morality to espouse, a meaning for life, and hope beyond the grave. Despite the dogmatism of his claims, the Bible does not present a unified voice on the reason for human existence, ethics, and life beyond the grave.
The Bible presents neither exhaustive nor explicative ethics—it is not an ethical workbook. Whatever ethics are packaged in the Bible are buried in arcane case law, outmoded social conditions, and innumerable translational and exegetical obstacles. The reader must construct ethical meaning from the Bible. That is, she must interface with the biblical texts, a process that is fraught with human subjectivity, in order to translate the arcane to the present.
The ethical worldview of Zacharias, or any Bible believer, is merely a selective and fragile psycho-social application of the Bible. I doubt, for example, that his Christian ethical construct allows room for slavery, selling off of daughters, charging usury selectively to non-Jews, the application of theocratic sabbatical and jubilee conventions, the donning of head coverings by women, or the disapproval of women teaching men. All of these milestones are ethical exemplars in the Bible, but his psycho-social interpretive matrices gloss over their relevance to his ethical construct. He is little different than the atheist in his culturally-contingent meaning construction despite his claims to a Bible-God grounding.
Morality does not require a God or a scripture. Morality is the result of natural selection operating in social organisms. Behaviors such as reciprocity, altruism, and contingency are exhibited in social primates. They do not arise from the instruction of a god—they are the result of evolutionarily selective pressures on the phenotypic (or memetic) behaviors of social organisms. Zacharias makes a foolish straw man to posit that humanity requires the instruction of God in order to exhibit ethics.
The Bible does not give a uniform voice about life beyond the grave. There are multiple passages that deny any life or consciousness beyond the grave. There are others that present humans as departed spirits, detached from the body. How Zacharias determines which personal eschatology in the Bible to espouse is purely a result the stream of cultural evolution to which he is attached. In the future I hope to develop some of the biblical exegetical exemplars of the divergent post-mortem paradigms in the Bible. However, for now, let me note, that the Bible believer is no more solidly grounded on a divine revelation to deny conscious existence after death than to accept the idea of disembodied spirit existence.
Zacharias, R. (2004) The real face of atheism. Grand Rapids: Baker House
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