Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me. I value the fact that you choose to share your thoughts with me, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to attempt to clarify my own thoughts- both for you, and for myself.
You brought up many many points, and I can’t address them all in this first writing- it’s already been over 3 hours and I’ve hardly made a dent. But I hope that with this, I can at least further the conversation. It occurs to me that it might be helpful for us to clarify the question more…
It is true that there is no ‘book’ of atheism. However, it is also true that the vast majority of religious people pick and choose from their books which parts they elect to be ‘instructed’ by and which parts to ignore. According to the bible, Sam should have killed me for not believing in God. Millions of American Christians choose to ignore the whole “no premarital sex” and the whole “no adultery” things- I guess the bible doesn’t say anything specific about child molestation, so I don’t know which ‘sin’ the priests committed, but I’m pretty sure there is one. All this to say I’m not at all convinced that having something that INSTRUCTS us how to be moral in society necessarily leads to moral behavior. And it seems to me that being in a position of having to choose which elements of a given book to adopt as one’s personal morality is really no better than having to choose from those elements without the book. In either case, people CHOOSE- whether they do it with awareness or not. The only thing that the religious have over atheists is the sense of possible eternal punishment when (not if) they fail to live up to their own choices of morality. (Because I believe that many convince themselves that God will be ok with their own personal transgression. E.g. I don’t think Bristol Palin really believes she will be going to Hell when she dies.)
Atheists, purported to be the intelligent part of our people, lead us nowhere but to stand over an abyss. Plunge into the depths, Richard Dawkins demands. This man, for all his intelligence, cannot see the road he wishes to lead us down. Neither does PZ, or the people at Pharyngula. Nor, do you. Nobody seems to. Because nobody's done the work that is necessary to lead.
Again, you have to convince me that it is somebody’s “job” to lead. I think it would be (and in the case of organized religions, is) incredibly arrogant to assume that anyone knows what the ‘right’ way to live is- and especially to force those mores on others. I think it is incumbent upon each individual, each family, each community, each society. And even if you don’t find that convincing, I still fail to understand how it is that the chance of torture, in flames, in perpetuity, with flesh falling off your bones (if not for you, then for your brother, your buddy, your mother, your uncle) is somehow less of an ‘abyss’ for people to be led to stare into than that proffered by Dawkins and his ilk. Religion is ‘comforting’ only if you CHOOSE to ignore some key aspects of it. Which people seem quite capable of doing.
The argument is simple: if science is corrosive to religion, and if Dawkins wants us to stand up against religion and for science, then he wants religion to go away ("if i was a person who were interested in preserving religious faith..."). Without any practical means for disseminating information, without any people to interpret and filter, and without any guidelines on how to live, then he is asking, whether he realizes it or not, each and every person to do that themselves. To make choices without knowing which books to turn to, which people to turn to, which ideas to turn to.
I actually don’t believe this is the case, because I don’t believe that this is what he’s asking, at this point. I believe that right NOW he is asking that the many many people who are already atheists simply ‘come out’. Atheism is hidden. Many people who have ceased to believe in God don’t tell their friends, family, co-workers, employers. Just as with being gay 20 years ago, this results in people believing that they don’t personally know any atheists. They are unknown, therefore frightening, therefore bad. Whereas if you give people the opportunity to know that, hey, the guy who runs the deli is an atheist, and he’s awfully nice, and the friendly couple down the street is atheist, and we always enjoy their barbeques… then the visibility of atheists 1) normalizes it and 2) makes being an atheist a conceivable option.
More importantly, perhaps, for the purposes of our discussion, is the fact which I alluded to above: RIGHT NOW people of all kinds, religious and atheists alike, are daily making choices about how to live their lives. Some Catholics believe in evolution, some do not. Some believe the rapture is coming, some do not. Some believe Obama is the antichrist, some do not. Some engage in premarital sex, get divorced, support gay rights, heck, are gay themselves- contrary to the beliefs of some other Catholics. My point being that you are upset that Dawkins is asking these people to choose their own morality, yet they are already doing it. Religion is not a monolithic thing: people become Muslim, or convert to Judaism. And even within the Catholic church, there are many different sects, each with their own set of ‘rules’… and people choose which sect to belong to.
Thus, I do believe people are equipped to, and do, make their own choices, with, without or even in the face of their books. Perhaps more educated people make more educated choices, but an education is not a requirement for decision-making.
I think you are right about many atheists not being fully aware of the magnitude of change that they are asking for, yet I do not see how this negates the value of asking for it. Yes, atheists want to ‘eradicate the ignorance that allows religion to persist’, just as some time ago humans came to ‘eradicate the ignorance that allowed virgin offerings to exist’. This happened without any fundamental change in the intelligence of the population at large. I don’t think it’s that humanity has gotten ‘smarter’ since then. Ignorance – especially about the ‘big’ questions about the meaning of life, etc.- still abounds. BUT- your average, ignorant person now knows more, or knows that somebody knows more, about the world, the planets, disease, weather patterns, animals in Africa, anatomy, conception, physics, geography (and the list goes on), than any human being alive knew in Greece at the time of Socrates. Which means that the culture matters. And as you rightly point out, religion is inimical to the spreading of scientific knowledge, because it rightly perceives understanding as a threat. And it needn’t be the kind of understanding that you and I are seeking about the brain. Most people don’t understand how a car works. But nobody (in this country, as far as I know) is running around saying it is a miracle and clearly the work of god that cars do indeed work. Because even without actually understanding the specifics of the workings, the knowledge that the workings are understandable means that they require no oooga-booga. Similarly, at some point people really, truly did not understand how a baby was born from a woman. It truly seemed inexplicable- and the spermist’s homunculus was not the only failed attempt to understand. Yet once scientists did understand, the ‘miracle’ part was given a smaller and smaller role: while many modern-day Catholics still call birth “a miracle” it is done with some vague knowledge of sperm and egg and genes. God no longer is required to explain conception, so they push back his role: yes conception occurs thus, and it is by the grace of god!
So I ask, what are our requirements of people? What requirements of ignorance and gullibility do we put on them? Is it unlawful to be intelligent? If so, then the religious are not just asking for "equal rights". They are asking for a fundamental change in the world--the eradication of the intelligence that allows science to persist. The religious are asking for the eradication of "freedom of thought".
Yes, that’s a reworking of something you said. But I think it’s important.
"Individual rights" is a simple way to feel right and to avoid talking about the REAL issues. The issues that of all people, atheists should understand. The need to live together. The need for harmony. The need to be social.
See, I feel that religion had its day as a ‘uniter’ in the past. But in this global age, it is a divider. So I feel our ‘need to live together’ our ‘need for harmony’, our ‘need to be social’ are all FAR better served by a shared enterprise in acknowledging reality and attempting to undertake a ‘good life’ than they are by a combative clinging to opposing viewpoints based in NOTHING but ‘he said’ convictions.
I agree that we are selfish. AND I believe we want to maintain a self image. Which is why I believe people cut in line in traffic, but would never do so in a supermarket. Only in the latter situation are they forced to view themselves through the eyes of others. So…. How do we promote that? Given that the best of ‘us’ seems to come out in community (whether secular or religious), how do we cultivate communities in this age?
That, I think, is the important question. Because with time, the ‘truth’ will out, and the current religions will meet the same fate as all of the past ones- and perhaps new ones will rise in their stead (Mormonism, anyone?). But will we be any better off? There have always been atheists, whether or not they called themselves by that name.
Here I will show that, because this lack of written thought and resources, because of the unconsidered ramblings of atheists, the path currently being opened is one with extraordinary demands on individual people, complete lack of regard for what it is to be human, and pompous intellectual elitism at it's core. It's embarrassing to be passed as "thought", it's dangerous, and ultimately humiliating and disgusting.
I don’t know if you showed this. I agree it places extraordinary demands on the individual…although, church every Sunday, baptism, confirmation, matrimony, lent, confession, saying the rosary… it doesn’t seem like atheism is alone in placing requirements on people. The dangerous, humiliating and disgusting I just don’t get from what you wrote.
Sorry this isn’t more complete, but I have to draw the line….
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