Atheism is semantically erroneous

By Reuben.

Now that this post’s title has gathered your attention, let me draw your attention to a rather excellent quote:

I’m a polyatheist – there are many gods I don’t believe in.

- Dan Fouts

There is a subtle logic here; most believers (of a theistic or deistic bent) believe in one God – usually one ‘true’ God who has much political clout when it comes to dicatating matter. But they therefore must exclude all other Gods mustn’t they? A Christian does not call their God ‘Allah’ while most Jews do not follow the Scientology God known as Theta (or something like that…it’s hard to comprehend most of what Scientology says anyway). Nobody actually believes in every single conceivable God. It’s logically and morally inconsistent to believe in the God of the old testament whilst supposing that – at the same time – Thetans exist inside us (to borrow the Scientology example again). Jews are not also Muslims, Catholics and those who follow the Bahai Faith. That would certainly render the entire purpose of religion in politics (that is, to divide people based on a set of irrational superstitions) completely and utterly useless for starters…never mind the theological side.

Monotheism thrives wholly on the principle of exclusivity even though you can blatently see that, for example, Jews and Muslims worship the same theistic tyrant (who has given false impetus for both people to engage in bloodshed). You’d be hard pressed to find a Muslim, Christian or Jew who’d freely admit their God is the same as another monotheistic religion. Intelligent believers do concede that the Koran, the Bible and the Torah have many traces and evolved from a common source…but they stop short of saying that, name notwithstanding, their God is the same as each others. For the atheist, this is plain to see. Since it’s obviously inconceivable that all three Gods exist as per their relative religious texts’ instructions side-by-side (thus forfeiting their own ‘all powerful’ identity), monotheism has more than enough to answer for…

Pantheism is more curious. Spinoza espoused his own version of this and touched on the idea that perhaps pantheism is a precursor for atheism. Dawkins takes this one step further and I quote:

“Deism is watered down theism. Pantheism is sexed up atheism”

- Richard Dawkins

It would appear that if we were to truly follow pantheism, the whole concept of a powerful being is void. You might as well, Dawkin argues, call the theory of gravity the ‘God of Gravity’ and Einstein’s relativity theory the ‘God of relativity’. We have effectively supplanted the word ‘God’ with various undisputed observations about the natural world. Scientists may have already found something that links every known bit of scientific truth together. We could call this ‘one rule for all’ as some sort of God – but this might be too ironic, since a scientific explanation does not postulate what we expect to see – rather it explains it. A belief in God explains nothing.

Offensiveness

Offensiveness, as defined by dictionary.com (the best source of information bar Wikipedia), is: causing resentful displeasure; highly irritating, angering, or annoying.
I’ve always supposed that, being a political atheist (or ’secular humanist’…as a more accurate term in the context of politics), I would end up raising the ire of certain groups – particularly ones  such as the Catholic Church, Family First party and SaltShakers all of which I have absolutely no patience or sympathy for. Politically, these groups and I are diametrically opposed on most issues. All three, in my view, are bigoted, anti-science, sexist, homophobic and dogmatic. I’ll discuss the finer details of that later, but for now, I’m talking about offensiveness.

What constitutes offensiveness in this context? If I say “I hate religion”, most people won’t take offense to it because I’m not attacking a particular religion. But because religions vary in their dogmaticness, vitriol and rationality, it would simply be too simplistic to say that all religions are bad, or all are good or all are mediocre. They are all relative; I for one would argue that, compared to the three main Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity), Sikhism is fairly mild. I also find Mormonism to be particularly bad a religion if not for their door-to-door marketing techniques and the clear absurdity of believing Utah to be some kind of holy site (whereas no other monotheistic religion says so). Utah isn’t Jerusalem. But is this targeting of certain religions fair?

I very much doubt that this poster would be socially acceptable in Australia, given our huge Christian population...

Freedom to insult religion is a fundamental human right, I believe. If the insult isn’t justified, then the argument can be taken down in true argumentative style (complete with jibes at the opposition’s facial hair). If I declare that Judaism is evil because of events in Israel/Palestine and that the conflict there is because Judaism is an evil religion, it can be safely concluded that what I’m saying is abjectly specious. But people should have that right to think that. It might be terribly and deliberately offensive, but it’s no more irrational than Creationism. I’m opposed to any attempt to remove free speech. In that example, I’m fairly sure most Jews would be offended if I called their religion evil. I’m maliciously targeting them. But how is this different to liberals calling conservatives ‘evil’? If someone holds that value (be it religion or politics) close to heart, then it can be very offensive. But what if that value of theirs offends you?

As an atheist, should I have the socially-permissable right to insult the hell out of Christianity – seeing as Christianity as a concept and a religion, offends me? Actually it doesn’t really…but I’m reacting to Christians who are offended by atheists. In an ideal world, nobody would be offended by diverse views on the world – but let’s assume they do. Well..the thing here is that saying Jews are evil (to re use that same example) is deliberate and calculated. Me saying that Christianity is throughly annoying is not deliberately offensive. I don’t go out of my way to insult Christians. I might vote against them or rally against attempts by Family First to destroy secular education…but that’s about it.

Should I make myself feel offended by these people? In reality, I condescendingly cast a weary eye over them and wish they'd just sod off...

People can choose to be offended by someone’s actions, assuming their actions were deliberately offensive. I could choose to be offended by anti-abortion protesters (whose inability to recognise the difference between a bunch of totipotent stem cells is second only to their inability to understand women’s rights), but I’m not. I would understand, however, if a woman who’d recently had an abortion would be offended – particularly if the anti-abortionists were religious ones (the ones who say you’re going to hell if you do X, Y and Z). The midway point between being insulting to someone and unintentionally being rude about their belief system is insensitivity. Most people suffer from this. It’s not deliberate. The problem that lies herein is determining whether something said or done was deliberate or not. It’s no easy feat.

How Fundamentalists ‘think’

By Reuben

Across the Internet, there is much discussion and discourse on how exactly the Bible, Koran etc pines against homosexuality, abortion etc. As discussed here, some have a more liberal interpretation of such texts. But what makes a fundamentalist determine what’s heretical/bad/liberal/logical from what’s conservative/backwards/myopic/traditional? How do they ‘think’ (and note that I use the term ‘think’ with a certain amount of irony here) or infer biblical, non-biblical or anti-biblical themes from seemingly unconnected policy areas?

The way in which I’ve been thinking about this is their reactions to certain movies – even movies that aren’t overtly on religion. One such movie is V for Vendetta – a fabulous movie in my opinion -  and it has been slammed by many Christian religious groups. I have no clue why; V for Vendetta talks about the tyranny of the British government in the near future when the country becomes a fascist state. It explores the process of change in government through its protagonist – a shadowy character called ‘V’. The main themes in V for Vendetta are:

• Freedom and civil liberties (how the people are being oppressed)
• Estranged Romance (the two main characters develop a bond).
• The believability of deceit and lies (how the fascist state came to be established).
• The limitations of technology (as V says: “ideas are bulletproof“).
• The potentials of anarchy (the fascist reign is toppled).

Naturally, the next question we should be asking ourselves is ‘where does V for Vendetta discuss religion?’ It doesn’t. The only reference I can think of is that the main antagonist – Chancellor Sutler – who masterminded the fascist state is a “deeply religious man“. But, like Hitler, he is clearly motivated by evil – not religion. His character would be just as effective if he were an Atheist.
When his henchman proclaim “strength through unity, unity through faith” the context is not biblical in nature at all, even if the characters themselves are actually religious. If the fascist state was theocratic, logically it would be hunting out atheists as well – yet it’s made very clear that queers, refugees and the mentally unwell are the main targets. Atheism is not painted in a good light or a bad light; it’s not even mentioned.

Chancellor Sutler: a religious man, but places evil in a higher regard

There is no religious undertone whatsoever in the script, but that doesn’t stop our fundamentalists from seeing a pernicious agenda designed to topple their core beliefs, dogmas and superstitions. If Chancellor Sutler was an atheist, would they back down their criticism?

According to ‘Christian Spotlight’, V for Vendetta’s moral ranking is “offensive“. For the most part, their criticism is a reverse ad hominem claim – ‘the evil guys are Christians…why are you making Christians evil?‘. Yes, supposedly Christianity is the antithesis of evil. Here these reviewers roar:

The movie is preachy to say the least, and harps on three major themes and one minor one: 1) the evil of America; 2) the government control of media; 3) the evil of Christianity; and 4) the innocence of Islam.

Yes…that’s right. It’s all against America. To borrow Christian Spotlight’s own ad hominem-styled arguments, V for Vendetta portrays America in a good light…because the fascists are against what they call ‘Arse-erica’. Clearly freedom of speech (which is what V for Vendetta is considerably about) is not in any way, shape or form ‘American’. The irony continues unabated:

The second fiction of the movie is that of a government-controlled (or supported) media which brainwashes its populace. In reality, this is true only of oppressive regimes and socialist societies like England where the media is, in fact, already Leftist. In the United States, we have a freedom of speech that is so wide-ranging in its liberties that it permits our media to print blatant forgeries libeling our President.

Yes, the BBC is obviously less objective than Christian news channels. But this point is irrelevant to the script anyway; the media outlets depicted in V for Vendetta were very much censored. How is this disputing the freedom of America’s press?
Finally the truth is revealed:

The only totalitarianisms we have known in the modern era are either secular or Islamic, precisely the ones that the United States is trying to protect the world from.

Watch out Christians, when the new atheist/Islamic/British order takes hold, you won’t be spared. And here’s the icing on the cake:

And when movies persistently portray our country and our faith as evil, even skeptical believers who think that Hollywood is too shallow or too objective (!) to make anti-Christian movies should sit up and take notice.

Got that Hollywood? You’ve got an agenda to uphold.

Finally, here’s a trailer of V for Vendetta:

Also published on YAS.

A challenge to the scientific method

By Reuben.

From a random discussion on Facebook comes a rather interesting comment:

I’m not arguing against science or the scientific method at all. In fact, I wasn’t even espousing a particular worldview or religious dogma. My point was simply that Scientism as a worldview is incoherent. This is because Scientism maintains that the ONLY knowledge which is valid comes from the scientific method. But how do they arrive at that conclusion? Using the scientific method? The scientific method cannot be its own justification. Proponents of Scientism are making a metaphysical and epistemological declaration which cannot be arrived at empirically. That was my only point. The same problem holds for Logical Positivism which states that the only meaningful statements are those which are scientific in nature. But that is not itself a scientific statement, but one of abstract reason.

Discuss.

Bertrand’s teapot

Personally, I'm inclined to think a teapot God would be accompanied by an unusual capsicum halve...

Agnostics and believers alike tend to argue that there’s no way of proving god’s existence or lack of existence. That’s true enough, in the absence of deductive reasoning that would argue against their being a god. But why can’t we use reason to argue against this celestial dictator called God? I’ll save that discussion for later, but right now I’d like to bring to your attention, Russell Bertrand’s teapot analogy where he compares the notion of the existence of god to a harmless teapot. He wrote (back in the early 20th century):

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Logically, I think this analogy works. Dawkins agrees:

The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don’t exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don’t stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don’t warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don’t kneecap those who put the tea in first.

What do you think? Is the celestial teapot analogy a good one?

The analogous relationship of politics and religion

I’ve consistently said that religion and politics are perfectly analogous. Nat and Kath disagree. I’m not sure about Oskar…though I’m sure he’d disagree with me just for the fun of it.

But what of this analogy? Well, according to Nat (who believes in Determinism…which states that our ideas and opinions are dependent on our environment and our experiences – so therefore we can’t be blamed for our values), this is all a bunch of bollocks. And besides, religion doesn’t cause externalities so we shouldn’t bother with ‘em. Leave those bible bashers in peace! But I beg to differ.

Firstly, let’s put aside the determinist ideas espoused by Nat (and Kath…but purely for convenience sake I suspect). It’s a grey area that’s undergoing immense debate (and will be posted on shortly, we hope). Here are the strong similarities of religion and politics:

• Religion and politics both form a basis for one’s own opinions on any variety of subjects. Euthanasia – for example – is a topic that usually results in some sort of moral high ground being claimed. In such a debate, someone else’s politics and religious identity becomes quite clear. Religion is often intertwined with other issues. To say there are no externalities that exist with personal faith is either blissfully ignorant or disingenuous.
• Politics and religion both dictate our way of life. Religion is more direct, with commandments such as “you mustn’t eat pork” whilst politics is more indirect…but still plays a major role. Vegetarianism – more often than not – is a political statement as one example.
• There are many political parties based on religion. The Christian Democrat Party and Family First are two examples I can think of off the top of my head. There are also plenty of theocracies in the world – I’m thinking Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel (though Israel is certainly the most democratic of all the theocracies) and the Vatican.
• Religion is often associated with conflict. Think of the Israeli/Palestinian Crisis, the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and the Indian/Pakistani animosity as classic examples. Obviously religion isn’t the sole factor in such bloodshed, but I think you’ll find it plays a significant role. The Hamas dogma explicitly calls for the destruction of all Jews. Within Israel, the most critical factor in the segregationist social paradigm is religion – except in Haifa, a city in Northern Israel. Does anyone seriously think these conflicts would be just as intense if we removed religion as a factor?
• Atheism, as an ideology, is antagonistic to the Abrahamic religions in close similarity to the way The Greens are antagonistic to the Liberal party. Their ideologies have very few, if any, similarities. Atheism states ‘there is almost certainly no god and religion is stupid dogma’ whereas the Abrahamic religions state ‘there is a divine tyrant in the cosmos that will wreak vengeance against sinners’. The Liberal party would demand that we ‘lower taxes for corporations and free up land in the outer suburbs for urban sprawl’, whereas The Greens would want to ‘curb urban sprawl and place greater taxes on housing to account for other costs’. The interplay betwen these various ideas is quite parallel and analogous.
  

  To say their dress code isn't due to a pious belief is inaccurate...

Tenuous Justification

By Reuben.

Kath says:

He [Jesus] challenged the hard and fast religious rules of the Pharisees, the leaders of the predominant religion (Judaism) of the time. He showed that the interpretation of God’s words could indeed be subjective.

Let’s skip over the irony of having a subjective book (the bible) preaching the subjective messages of an invisible dictator (‘God’), for an audience whose subjective views espoused off the subjective book are so incredibly diverse, it makes the book seem almost useless as a guide to one’s life.
Nay…that was a cheap shot; the operative term of the above quote is “challenged”. Yes…a tasty word, ‘challenged’. Other great words are ‘test’, ‘counter-intuitive’ and ‘doubt’ – and what does this all add up to?

The erosion of faith.

“But no!” shriek religious people, “I constantly test my faith” and “Faith unquestioned, is dogma, it is not real.” Good. I’m glad that believers challenge their faith. But how do they do this? In the face of tangible evidence – or no evidence – ‘faith’ is immediately dissolved. Theologians never tire of pointing out that the whole point of ‘faith’ is to ignore rationality and evidence for a bit whilst we get out our biblical texts and start praying. But then how do they question this faith if not through evidence or rationality?

Enter argumentum ad ignorantiam, guns blazing. If you repeat an idea (e.g. resurrection is possible) long enough to an audience (particularly a susceptible one, like children), they will – in all possibly – believe it. Unfortunately, argumentum ad ignorantiam is a logic fallacy and so, in the eyes of religion, to be shunned. Fortunately, most people re-energise their logic and rationality outside religious settings – possibly why the argumentum ad ignorantiam is employed so readily by the Department of Transport (the DOT). The DOT claim that our rail lines are at capacity, yet when one manages – somehow – to unearth the 1960’s engineering reports regarding the City Loop that show that they’re only a bit more than 50% at capacity with the current timetable, you know the government’s claims are fallacious to the extreme (extreme in the sense that the government – both federal and state – are ready to spend big on a project based on a so-called analysis that excludes the said reports). Shout, inculcate and bombard someone with an idea for long enough and eventually people just accept it. Fortunately in the last example I gave, we have people like Paul Mees reminding us of erroneous government claims; that’s to be expected in politics. The same can’t be said of religion.

The Doctor shouts at a Dalek in the vain hope that it'll just bugger off back to Skaro and leave his precious London alone.

So, now that I’ve gotten that idea out of the way, I pose this question to religious people: What epistemological reasoning do you employ to justify your faith?

Discuss.

Guess the word

Trawling through the older blog posts over at GrodsCorp, I stumbled upon this quote by a certain conservative (and racist) commentator:

The problem is, all ##### are supporters of Saddam and love terrorism, and hate the Jews, who are the moist wonderful people in this, our earth.

Can you guess the missing word?

PS: Happy New ‘Ear. All the best from us here at Non-Linear Thinking.