Religion once offered answers to many questions that have now been ceded to the care of science. Many people have taken inspiration from Blaise Pascal and argue that evidence is beside the point and that religious believers have simply taken the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness, if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined to spend eternity in hell. On this view, atheism is the very picture of reckless stupidity.
While Pascal deserves his reputation as a brilliant mathematician, his gamble was never more than a cute ( and false) analogy. Like many cute ideas in philosophy, it is easily remembered and often repeated. A person can profess any creed he likes, of course, but to really believe it, he must believe that it's true. To believe that there is a God , for instance, is to believe that you are not just fooling yourself, it is to believe that you stand in some relation to God's existence such that, if he didn't exist,you wouldn't believe in him.
Everyone who has eyes to see can see that if the God of Abraham exists, he is an utter psychopath, as the God of nature is too. If you can't see these things just by looking, you have simply closed your eyes to the realities of our world. Your own consciousness is the cause and substance of any experience you might want to deem "spiritual" or "mystical". realising this, what possible need is there to pretend to be certain about ancient miracles, or for wine and virgins in heaven.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
THE PROBLEM WITH MODERATE RELIGION
Whenever nonbelievers like myself criticize Christians for believing in old Biblical miracles or the imminent return of Christ, or Muslims for believing in martyrdom and or other Koranic contradictions, religious moderates declare that I am caricaturing Christianity and Islam, considering "extremists" to be representative of these great religions wrong, or otherwise overlooking an ocean of other nuances. We are invariably reminded and told that a mature understanding of scripture renders faith perfectly compatible with reason, and that our attacks upon religion are, therefore, "simplistic","dogmatic", or even "fundamentalist".
But there are several problems with such a defence of religion. First, many moderates (and even some secularists)assume that religious "extremism" is rare and therefore not all that consequential. But religious extremism is not rare, and is hugely consequential. The United States is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history,and yet 240 million of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.There is no question that most Americans reliably claim to believe the preposterous, and these claims themselves have done genuine harm to our political discourse, to our public policy,foreign policies, and to our reputation in the world.
Half of the one point four billion Muslims at least believe that the jihad and the extremists carrying the godly jihad is compatible with there beliefs and with the holy message of the Qur'an and it's prophet.
Religious moderates also tend to imagine that there is some bright line of separation between extremist and moderate religion. But there isn't. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while he may be many things, the God of the Bibles and of the Qur'an is not a moderate. Reading scripture more closely, one does not find reasons to be a religious moderate; one finds reasons to be a proper religious lunatic--to fear the fires of hell,to despise nonbelievers, to persecute atheists, and condemn homosexuals,etc. Of course anyone can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to love his neighbor and to turn the other cheek. But the more fully a person grants credence to these books, the more he will be convinced that infidels, heretics, and apostates deserve to be smashed to atom in God's loving machinery of justice.
Religious moderates invariably claim to be more "sophisticated" than religious fundamentalists (and atheist). but how does one become a sophisticated believer? by acknowledging just how irrational many of the claims of scripture are,and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerising it if need be, and allowing it's assertions about reality to be continually mixed. There is a pattern here, and it is undeniable. Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit that the Bibles and Qur'an are merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings?.
Compiled by me with special thanks to Sam Harris,salamat.
But there are several problems with such a defence of religion. First, many moderates (and even some secularists)assume that religious "extremism" is rare and therefore not all that consequential. But religious extremism is not rare, and is hugely consequential. The United States is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history,and yet 240 million of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.There is no question that most Americans reliably claim to believe the preposterous, and these claims themselves have done genuine harm to our political discourse, to our public policy,foreign policies, and to our reputation in the world.
Half of the one point four billion Muslims at least believe that the jihad and the extremists carrying the godly jihad is compatible with there beliefs and with the holy message of the Qur'an and it's prophet.
Religious moderates also tend to imagine that there is some bright line of separation between extremist and moderate religion. But there isn't. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while he may be many things, the God of the Bibles and of the Qur'an is not a moderate. Reading scripture more closely, one does not find reasons to be a religious moderate; one finds reasons to be a proper religious lunatic--to fear the fires of hell,to despise nonbelievers, to persecute atheists, and condemn homosexuals,etc. Of course anyone can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to love his neighbor and to turn the other cheek. But the more fully a person grants credence to these books, the more he will be convinced that infidels, heretics, and apostates deserve to be smashed to atom in God's loving machinery of justice.
Religious moderates invariably claim to be more "sophisticated" than religious fundamentalists (and atheist). but how does one become a sophisticated believer? by acknowledging just how irrational many of the claims of scripture are,and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerising it if need be, and allowing it's assertions about reality to be continually mixed. There is a pattern here, and it is undeniable. Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit that the Bibles and Qur'an are merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings?.
Compiled by me with special thanks to Sam Harris,salamat.
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