Category Archives: Atheism

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

If the Christian is to be consistent, he cannot say that freedom is absolute, for the consequences of that are atheism. If the liberal is to be consistent, he must say that mans essence is freedom or else he gives up his position.

Many rich men dabble in philosophy, once their wealth is of the sort that largely takes care of itself. But a few students of philosophy have even become rich, in part thanks to their love of wisdom. Thales of Miletus anticipated a bumper crop of olives when others expected a bad harvest, and so leased the citys presses as a monopolist. Before he broke the Bank of England, George Soros studied under Karl Popper at the London School of Economics. And Peter Thiel has credited the mimetic thought of his teacher Ren Girard with prompting him to place a very profitable bet on Facebook.

Thiel has continued his studies of philosophy, at the University of Chicago, teaching courses at Stanford, and supporting various intellectual programs besides his fellowships for college dropouts. The incisive British essayist Mary Harringtona contributing editor at UnHerd and probably the good feminist to TAC readers andthat transphobe to otherswas recently on faculty with Thiel for a seminar in Palo Alto put on by the Zephyr Institute. She sat down with Thiel for an on-the-record chat. The conversation was wide ranging and reviewed many now classic observations from the Zero to One author. I encourage you to read all of Harringtons suggestive reflections on it, but one dichotomy or theme in particular stood out to me: what, when we consider the question of technology, is the relationship between nature and grace?

After raising the feardistilled in the 1930s and 40s by figures like Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, and Romano Guardinithat technology has and will continue to outstrip nature, in particular human nature, Harrington writes of Thiel:

He seems to view this as a largely academic question, and not really in keeping with his understanding of Christian civilisation as fundamentally oriented toward the future. I think of Christianity as deeply historical. Some sense of a certain type of progress of history is a deep part of Christianity. And from this perspective, the notion that there exists an unchanging human nature doesnt really fit with the Christian outlook, but belongs as he puts it more in the classical than the Christian tradition.

The word nature does not occur once in the Old Testament, he tells me, while the concept of nature as something thats eternal and unchanging isnt a Christian one either. It seems to me that the Christian concepts are more things like grace or original sin. From this perspective, Thiel argues, the problem with transhumanism isnt that it seeks to remake humanity, but that it isnt ambitious enough in this regard: the Christian critique of transhumanism should be that its not radical enough, because its only seeking to transform our bodies and not our souls. It appears, in other words, that while Thiel is unflinchingly realistic about whats immediately achievable, he doesnt see any given or self-evident limits to what we could set our sights on.

The observation that the philosophers account of naturecosmos as an indivisible whole with no starting point or destinationwas not derived from scripture is a provocative, under-discussed one, and obviously correct. Whether as a self-sustaining chain of fixed natures or being in endless flux, nature in this sense of Western reason is an object of human subjectivity opposed to revelation. But there appears to me to be a missing Christian concept here, in addition to grace or original sin, from both the Old and New Testaments, namely that of creation. As Paul writes in Romans, For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. And in this sense of creation much of the Christian skepticism for what is called transhumanism retains all its force, for while recognizing the becoming implied in a linear sense of history, its teleology of beginning and final judgment retains the possibility of essences: acorns becoming oak trees and human beings becoming more fully human in new creation.

Thiel has almost certainly thought through all of this, and I expect it was covered in discussion at the seminar, but in his conversation with Harrington, and in much of his public writing, he brings the conversation away from postmillenial anticipation back down to earth. Indeed, in an oblique response to this line of objection, he told her, And maybe science and technology arent that much, but I would say if we stop believing in the teleology of science and technology its not that we go back to some Thomistic or medieval concept of teleology. We become fully epicurean. In a historical moment past faith in grace perfecting nature, we are perhaps left as a post-Christian culture with a choice between the secularized providence of hard technology and the profound pessimism of eternal passing away.

Up to this conversation, perhaps the most distilled account of Thiels thoughts on our present technological malaise was a 2015 essay by the futurist for First Things, entitled Against Edenism. The problem, as he sees it, in brief: Technology means doing more with less. In the absence of technological progress, we end up with a zero-sum world, in which there must be a loser for every winner. It is not clear whether a capitalistic economic system could function without growth; and it is unlikely that a representative democracy, which requires the give-and-take of win-win compromise, would continue to function. That is to say, we do not live in a time when technological progress as such has overcome the bounds of human control, but rather when the digitalthe transcending of time and space by manipulation and recording of informationhas outstripped all material developments; the world of atoms and physical engineering stalled somewhere in the 1970s. The promise of a post-scarcity world remains unkept.

Subscribe Today Get weekly emails in your inbox

And this is an insight that can be retained with as orthodox a theology of creation as I can claim (whatever that is). For its focus is the act of dominion mandated to humanity after original sin, and the sweat of our brow, far before it questions whether we must indeed unto dust return. In the twentieth-century tradition of political theology, Thiel makes a grace of growth, but surely there is a grace in growth if we understand it to be the human beings capacity to join Goda city-builderas a subcreator, a namer of animals.

Indeed, in our current-day fight between degrowth proponents demanding that Americans, for the sake of nature, learn to live degraded lives and men like Thiel, who remain hopeful that human ingenuity and spirit can construct a better use of the material weve been given, I am reminded of nothing as much as Christs parable of the talents:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lords money. After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, "Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them." His lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord." He also who had received two talents came and said, "Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them." His lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord."

Then he who had received the one talent came and said, "Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours."

But his lord answered and said to him, "You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents."

"For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Visit link:
Between Grace and Nature - The American Conservative

1. In the present systematic review and meta-analysis, high religious and spiritual (RS) practices were negatively associated with the prevalence of symptoms of anxiety and depression.

2. Furthermore, there was a positive association between RS practices and life satisfaction, meaning in life, social relations, and psychological well-being.

Evidence Rating Level: 1 (Excellent)

It is expected that one in five seniors will experience some form of mental illness (e.g. depression, anxiety) late in life. An increasing number of studies support the finding that involvement in RS activities enhance mental health status; however, a specific pooled analysis of reviews on the older population is still needed. As a result, the objective of the present systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies was to investigate the association between RS and the prevalence, severity, and incidence of mental health conditions in older adults.

Of 44 180 identified studies, 62 were included in the final meta-analysis from inception to July 2021. Studies that evaluated the association between RS and mental health in people aged >60 years old were included. Studies were excluded if they compared the prevalence of mental health parameters among different religious affiliations without a comparison to no religious identification or atheism. The risk of bias was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale (NOS). A random effects model and sensitivity analysis was performed.

Results demonstrated that high religious and spiritual (RS) practices were negatively associated with the prevalence of symptoms of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, there was a positive association between RS practices and life satisfaction, meaning in life, social relations, and psychological well-being. However, the present study was limited by the inclusion of mostly cross-sectional studies, thereby limiting inferences of causality. Nonetheles, the studys results provide further support for the utility of RS in enhancing the mental health of older adults.

Click to read the study in Frontiers in Medicine

Image: PD

2022 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved. No works may be reproduced without expressed written consent from 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. Inquire about licensing here. No article should be construed as medical advice and is not intended as such by the authors or by 2 Minute Medicine, Inc.

The rest is here:
Religious and spiritual practices may improve mental health in older adults - 2 Minute Medicine

The Garden of Earthly Delights

AMERICAN NEWSApr 21, 2021 8:47 PM EST

AHA strips Richard Dawkins of Humanist of the Year award after famed author criticizes transgenderism

It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue."

Too late.

American Humanist Association Board Statement Withdrawing Honor from Richard Dawkins

He isalso a bigot.Who would ever suggest such a thing?! (Smug Arrogant Look) Im not going to post his vile, bigoted remarks here. Read them for yourself.

KPFA cancels Richard Dawkins speech because of his tweets about Islam

Well of course he does. Bigots are usually the last people to find out they are bigots.

Ive beensaying this in the last 2 or 3 diaries. I wasexcoriatied and subjected to abusefrom some ignorant individuals,not everyone, just those who believe Dawkins is a legitimate scientist. I get the sense themajority of the commenters here might preferto keep their personal beliefs to themselves, and no wonder, if the vile rancor I was subjected to is any metric, after being beaten down and ridiculed for merely stating an actual fact:Atheism is just another unsubstantiated belief, nothing more, andIm just an agnostic, who wouldnt?

Im no stranger to it.Ive worked with convicted felons, gangbangers and people with severe substance use disorders.I can handleinternet trolls. Idont believe I must condemn all beliefs of others that I dont share, which is apparently what one must do to be a Good Militant Anti-Theist. Again, Im just an agnostic, and I dont know any more than anyone else. Gnosis. Look it up.This is the agnostic position, just like Socrates. Any view you happen to holdis a belief, unless you can back it up with proof.And I really dont care forbelief. It is a very low level of consciousness. You either know something or you dont. I know I dont know about the existence or non-existence of any such spiritual beliefs - and I have never read Dawkins until now, and now that I have, Im shocked how accurate my take on this crackpot was.And of course the bigot never thinks hes a bigot. Dawkins is nothing more than what I said, a bigot and a quack. Pseudoscience and theories that are controversial and border on Junk science for the ignorant public

When giants likeE.O. Wilson and Steven Jay Gould ripyou a new one, stick a fork in yourself, youredone, as far as serious science is concerned. And E.O. Wilson is Serious Evolution Science and natural selection is a very complex operation: Game theory.

Scientists, plural, dont like him, and they just volunteered their opinions, very unusual for scientists and academics. I certainly have no inhibition about ripping Dawkins as a fraud and a crackpot, and bigot, because he is, and I studied Wilson. And there may be one or two things Dawkins gets right, thats not enough. I agree with the T-shirt but thats nothing new. 40 years ago this was obvious as DNA came into its own and Mitochondrial DNA was first as evidence in a trial. EVIDENCE

I realize this might cause all kinds of pearl-clutching and gnashing of the teeth. What a shame, the truth often hurts. John Maynard Smith never heard of Sayres Law. And he was British.Academic politics makes real politics look like a tea party.This is true, and Ive experienced it many times but academics are loathe to allow the public to see this side of it.

Sayres Law: Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.

The late British biologist John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) is famous for applying game theory to the study of natural selection. In 1973 Maynard Smith formalised a central concept in game theory called the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). His ideas, presented in books such as 'Evolution and the Theory of Games', were enormously influential and led to a more rigorous scientific analysis and understanding of interactions between living things.[Listener: Richard Dawkins; date recorded: 1997]TRANSCRIPT: I think that the... the article in the Science of the People... sorry, by the Science for the People, people in, I think, the New York Review of Books, of which I think both [Richard] Lewontin and [Stephen Jay] Gould were signatures of this, was disgraceful, because it didn't... the point is, you can disagree with people, you can disagree with your colleagues as passionately as you like, but you can't go around calling them Fascists and enemies and so on. You have to treat it as an intellectual disagreement. And so I think that the whole of that business, leading up to pouring water over him at the... at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I think all this was... was ridiculous. But it was predictable.

British scientists don't like Richard Dawkins, finds study that didn't even ask questions about Richard Dawkins

Most British scientists cited in study feel Richard Dawkins' work misrepresents science

Although the researchers did not ask questions about Dawkins, 48 scientists mentioned him during in-depth interviews without prompting, and nearly 80 percent of those scientists believe that he misrepresents science and scientists in his books and public engagements. This group included 23 nonreligious scientists and 15 religious scientists.

Elaine Howard Ecklund, the study's principal investigator and the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences at Rice, said that some scientists, independent of their religious beliefs, do not view Dawkins as a good representative because they believe he conveys "the wrong impression about the borders of scientific inquiry."

"Scientists differ in their view of where such borders rest," said David Johnson, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and the paper's lead author. "And they may even view belief in a deity as irrational, but they do not view questions related to the existence of deities or 'the sacred' as within the scope of science."

The investigation into science's public image didn't even ask about the atheist professor, but it got an answer anyway. Very unusual. Academics eschew controversy.

I had never looked into Dawkins before this because I dont do Junk Science.And thats all Dawkins does. Any so called scientist who is that certain of his own bullshit is never right about anything. A charlatan.

Its the publish or die rule, and sometimes all they can publish is bullshit.I never needed him to tell me that Intelligent Design was anything more than what it was:Bullshit. But his response to that Bullshit was more bullshit of his own. And no one cares now anyway.Hitchens was not a clown. His anti-theism was never anything that impressed me, but at least he had an excuse: Hewasan actual journalist, and alcoholic, and a very unhappy man. Punching down is just not something agood person does,and attacking Mother Theresa, what an embarrassment. My opinion of Dawkins was always less than zero. Now Im feeling less kindly about Hitchens, but let the poor man rest in peace. We know hes not in heaven, or hell. The Jews dont even believe in the whackHeaven and Hell the earlyChristian Church sold after Jesus was allegedly crucified.I doubt Jesus did, if he even was a historical person. No one knows. Thats why they call it faith, and belief. You can disagree, youre wrong. So is your God, Dickie Dawkins. Hofstadfter once told the class, when asked about the speed of light: To a photon, space is infinitely thin. Ametaphor, but thats not what Dawkins is doing. Some clowns like the implications but its just a piss poor theory.Gene-centric evolution? Horseshit. Dawkins has no understanding of natural selection, or Darwin.

I expect few here have familiarity with the subject, and sadly, your PhD does not impress. Jordan Petersen has a PhD. So does David Duke. Im just a High School dropout with a GED, likeMike Perry. He did alright for a drop out with a GED. One of the smartest people I know, and I only know smart people, people who can learnand understand the nature of knowledge and understanding.Tolerant people with lots of experience.Lots of experience. Neurodiversity.

The gene-centric view has been opposed by Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, David Sloan Wilson, and philosopher Elliott Sober. An alternative, multilevel selection (MLS), has been advocated by E. O. Wilson, David Sloan Wilson, Sober, Richard E. Michod,[31] and Samir Okasha.[31]

Writing in the New York Review of Books, Gould has characterized the gene-centered perspective as confusing book-keeping with causality. Gould views selection as working on many levels, and has called attention to a hierarchical perspective of selection. Gould also called the claims of Selfish Gene "strict adaptationism", "ultra-Darwinism", and "Darwinian fundamentalism", describing them as excessively "reductionist". He saw the theory as leading to a simplistic "algorithmic" theory of evolution, or even to the re-introduction of a teleological principle.[32] Mayr went so far as to say "Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian."[33]

Gould also addressed the issue of selfish genes in his essay "Caring groups and selfish genes".[34] Gould acknowledged that Dawkins was not imputing conscious action to genes, but simply using a shorthand metaphor commonly found in evolutionary writings. To Gould, the fatal flaw was that "no matter how much power Dawkins wishes to assign to genes, there is one thing that he cannot give them direct visibility to natural selection."[34] Rather, the unit of selection is the phenotype, not the genotype, because it is phenotypes that interact with the environment at the natural-selection interface. So, in Kim Sterelny's summation of Gould's view, "gene differences do not cause evolutionary changes in populations, they register those changes."[35] Richard Dawkins replied to this criticism in a later book, The Extended Phenotype, that Gould confused particulate genetics with particulate embryology, stating that genes do "blend", as far as their effects on developing phenotypes are concerned, but that they do not blend as they replicate and recombine down the generations.[11]

Since Gould's death in 2002, Niles Eldredge has continued with counter-arguments to gene-centered natural selection.[36]Eldredge notes that in Dawkins' book A Devil's Chaplain, which was published just before Eldredge's book, "Richard Dawkins comments on what he sees as the main difference between his position and that of the late Stephen Jay Gould. He concludes that it is his own vision that genes play a causal role in evolution," while Gould (and Eldredge) "sees genes as passive recorders of what worked better than what".[37]

Selecting Richard Dawkins as your personal fountain of truth is a religion with an ideology of intolerance.

Like Dawkins theory

I see no reason to stop exposing this charlatan, and I dont believe in much. Less than any atheist at least, and Im not hostile to any religions, or other ridiculous beliefs. Buddhism isnt religion. Academics can disagree about a great many things, but definitions are the one thing that must be reached by consensus. Definition of terms and classification ARE how science is done. science. Euglena may not be definable, is it an animal or a vegetable? But the rest of it is pretty well defined, or it aint science. Its religion.

See the original post:
If You Meet Richard Dawkins On The Road... - Daily Kos

Since 2015 I have been traveling America and speaking globally in an attempt to bring people of different faiths closer together. My particular area of focus is explaining the common stereotypes that non-Muslims hold towards Muslims and the religion of Islam. In hundreds of conversations on the topic, I have listened to questions from Christians, atheists, Hindus, Jews, and agnostics. The most apparent conclusion from years of trying to help people understand one another is that the people that most often speak for a religion are not the ones who should be. The result of so many extremists speaking loudly about their religion is that all religions are losing favor.

One of the questions I receive is about the speed ofgrowth of Islam. In response, I discuss the most recentpolling data that shows that by the second half of the 21st century, Islam will become the largest religion. I explain that most religions birth rates primarily account for their size decline. As Judaism in America will soon lose its spot as the largest non-Christian population to Islam, many people ask me what I think of all the pending changes.

I answer by first pointing out thatwhile Islam will soon overcome Christianity as the largest religion in the world, the issue they should focus on is something else. The faith group that is growing at an alarming rate in comparison to Islam or Christianity is the group of people who want nothing to do with faith. I spend my days thinking about why thefaithless are growing so quickly. I come from a long line of New England preachers dating back to the 1800s, and I often talked to my grandfather about this.

Atheism is growing globally for many reasons, some political, some personal, and some we will never know. One thing that people of faith can work to remove from the equation is extremism. When I talk to people who have left religion or never joined one, they often explain that most religions dont seem to be focused on their core goals. They complain most often about the extreme voices inside religions that spend most of their energy condemning others, even killing others, instead of helping others.

You dont have to look very far in the modern world to find extremists in any religion. There are so-called Christians who tout racial supremacy, use violence to gain political power and demand that women be subservient babymakers who stay in the home. There are also Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish sects and persons who do very similar things. At this moment, the Haqqani-Taliban regime has taken control of Afghanistan and instituted the most extreme misogynistic laws in the world. They are killing women who do not follow their rules.

When most religious leaders and laymen are confronted with the issue of extremists in their religion, they quickly try to pivot and point out even worse behavior in other religions or sectsthat is not a solution. Today, twenty million women in Afghanistan are asking the Muslim world to denounce the regime destroying their lives and to stop the injustice. Yet no Muslim leader is stepping forward to stop the insanity. That is just one example of the cowardice that is destroying religion.

Every time religious believers fail to stop and silence the extremists in their religion, atheism grows. It is that simple. Young people dont want to join a religion that claims to stand for forgiveness and justice if all they hear and see are calls for revenge, violence, and injustice. As a religion teacher, I have studied the teachings of many faiths.I know that forgiveness and being helpful to your fellow man are key parts of most religions. The failure of other religious leaders to step up and stamp out violence and hatred in the name of religion might be the worst sin of all.

Right now, I do not see any remedy to this problem on the horizon. Religious groups spend a lot of money holding global interfaith and internal events that condemn violence and hatred. However, they are only being listened to by the other folks at the conferences. Religious leaders can make the most difference at the ground level in churches, mosques, Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, schools, and even living rooms. But no one funds the efforts of people at the grassroots level that are helping people unlearn the hatred they have for other religions.

I wish I could wave a magic wand that would stop the decline of religion and refocus religious groups on helping others and being a force of good that stamps out the evil voices. But no one can do that. This wont resolve itself unless religious people demand that those who are tearing down their religion stop. So please dont ask me what I think about the growing atheism movement or Islamic religion. Do something to improve the religion you are in, instead of demanding other religions straighten themselves out. Do not blame atheism or other religions for the decline in your house of worship; blame yourself.

Jason Criss Howk is an interfaith leader who helps people understand Islam and Muslim cultures. He is a professor of Islamic Studies at the US Air Force Special Operations School and is the author ofThe Quran: A Chronological Modern English Interpretation. His award-winning Quran has been studied by Islamic and Quranic scholars from Duke to Johns Hopkins, and Iran to Indonesia. Jason is a retired US Army officer and spent half of his uniformed service as a South Asia and Arab regional specialist. He holds an MA in South Asia and Middle East studies from NPS and is a Malone Fellow in Arab and Islamic studies.

Image: Reuters.

See more here:
Why the World's Religions Are Dying a Slow Death - The National Interest Online

Fewer than half of the Netherlands now believe in God but for those finding atheism later in life after a strict religious upbringing, it is not an easy path.

I was 21 when I became involved in a struggle with the church authority, Zeelander Inge Bosscha (45) told Dutch News. I was in an abusive relationship and wanted a divorce. They said that God did not allow this.

Unanswered questions

Inge, the eldest of 10 children, was raised within the Reformed Liberated Church at the western end of the Netherlands Bible belt, which stretches from Zeeland to Overijssel. The event, she says, raised old questions that I had never been able to answer satisfactorily. I pushed those thoughts away, she says. I feared that I would not be a good Christian if I doubted so deeply the foundations of the faith.

But when Inge went through with the divorce, she was ostracised by her community and the church refused to let her baptise her baby. Her reconciliation with the congregation a year on could not shake her inner conflict. Something had been set in motion in my mind, she says. Two years later, she left. Today, Inge helps others atheists and agnostics to rebuild their lives after leaving their faith via her support platform dogmavrij.nl.

According to a 2022 report by the SCP, the governments socio-cultural think-tank, Inge is one of around nine million people in the Netherlands, just over half of the population, who now say they are atheist or agnostic. This figure has almost doubled since 1998, making the Netherlands one of the most secular countries in Europe. By contrast, just one in ten Americans describe themselves as atheist or agnostic.

Mourning

Despite the swing away from religion, the choice to live as a non-believer is not always easy here for those raised in a religious community. Inge says she experienced an intense mourning for everything that I once thought was normal and good, but turned out not to be at least, not always and not for me.

Becoming independent was also a challenge. My self-thinking and problem-solving abilities were poorly developed, she explains. [Before], all I had to do before was pray and hope in God.

The crisis had a profound effect on Inges mental and physical health. In the final years of the release process, I started to get more and more ill. I suffered from chronic pain and fatigue I thought I was hypersensitive or maybe crazy, she says.

Since 2015, Inge has been sharing her experiences and has received thousands of reactions from people who recognised themselves in her story. It was a huge relief, but also a shock, to see that there are so many others who have had similar experiences, she says.

Isolation

Maarten Freriks is the director of Secular Underground Network, a project which helps people from all over the world who are isolated or persecuted because of their beliefs. Freedom of thought is very well protected in the Netherlands, he told Dutch News.

For this reason, the extreme loneliness of people whose beliefs force them to flee their community or country, he says, can be hard to understand.

They are often really excluded from everyone around them, Freriks explains. Usually, when I start a new case, I say, lets make a map of your network because we have to mobilise everyone around you to help you get a job, get funding, get a place to stay and thats usually very, very limited They dont have their social network any more, they dont have their family any more. The family even sometimes try to kill them.

Asylum

Securing residency rights in the Netherlands for persecuted atheist migrants is often harder than for those who claim asylum on the basis of a religious conversion. Yet for atheist refugees such as Mehrzad (38), who was on his final warning after serving two prison sentences for refusing to follow Islam, relocating to the Netherlands away from all his friends and family in Iran was the difference between life and death.

According to the book of law in Iran, there is only one punishment for atheists and that is execution and Im not sure if European governments know this clearly, he told Dutch News.

Intellectually, he explains, he was unable to accept the scientific errors and outdated claims which cannot be true that he found in religious books. Reflecting freely your own thoughts and ideas, he says, should be a universal right and not limited to the Netherlands or Europe.

As he moved away from religion, Mehrzad, like Inge, noted a difference reflected in my approach towards problems. Instead of relying on God, you have to rely on yourself, he says. And though in the Netherlands he enjoys a level of safety, leaving everything behind was very hard and it still is.

Death threats

Lale Gl (24), who grew up in a strict Sunni Muslim household in Amsterdam which followed the Turkish political and religious Mill Gr movement, was cut off from her family and received multiple death threats after she published her bestselling novel Ik ga leven (Im going to live) in 2021. Based on her own journey from orthodoxy to atheism, the story details the protagonists struggle with her strict upbringing and the painful process of breaking free.

Speaking to NPO Start in March, Gl described how her loss of faith devastated her understanding of the world. Everything that you thought you knew just disappeared, she said. Its not the truth for you any more. And then I had to work out what my truth was, what my norms and values were, and thats hard.

Far from seeking to recruit fellow atheists, Gl speaks openly about the challenges of being part of the slim majority of non-adherents in the Netherlands.

Being an atheist is not attractive, its not something Id recommend, she said. I think its fine that most people in the world are believers. Atheists believe in nothing, they have nothing to look forward to. Youre going to die and thats it. Bad people wont be punished and good people wont be rewarded Its no fairy tale.

The Secular Underground Network is seeking volunteers. Find out more here.

The DutchNews.nl team would like to thank all the generous readers who have made a donation in recent weeks. Your financial support has helped us to expand our coverage of the coronavirus crisis into the evenings and weekends and make sure you are kept up to date with the latest developments.

DutchNews.nl has been free for 14 years, but without the financial backing of our readers, we would not be able to provide you with fair and accurate news and features about all things Dutch. Your contributions make this possible.

If you have not yet made a donation, but would like to, you can do so via Ideal, credit card or Paypal.

Read more:
Atheism still not always easy in the Netherlands - DutchNews.nl - DutchNews.nl

CLINTON Titles dont come any drier would grimmer be more accurate? than Images of Atheism: The Soviet Assault on Religion. Yet the show, which runs through Oct. 2 at the Museum of Russian Icons, is visually lively, even playful. Cuteness-wise, the smiling cosmonaut saluting viewers in Vladimir Menshchikovs 1975 propaganda poster There Is No God verges on Disney-adorable.

Karl Marx famously declared that Religion is the opium of the people. Right there you had the theoretical underpinnings of the Bolsheviks opposition to religion. They were Godless Communists for a reason. Furthermore, the Russian Orthodox Church had been a pillar of the czarist state. Religion posed a political threat as both belief system and institutional force. So it makes sense, however bewildering such a name may sound, that there was a Godless Five-Year Plan to go along with the economic ones. The newly installed rulers of the newly installed Soviet Union considered religion anathema twice over.

What those rulers didnt consider anathema at least not initially was artistic innovation. During the 20s and spilling over somewhat into the 30s, Soviet visual culture witnessed an unrivaled degree of artistic ferment and innovation in film, photography, painting, and applied design.

A revolution in the arts matched the one going on in society, and that cultural revolutions energy and experimentation are very much evident in the anti-religious propaganda from those years. Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykhs Blacksmith, Beat the Bells into Ballbearings, from his Anti-Religious Alphabet (1932), is textbook Constructivism, with its use of photomontage, solid color, creative typography, interplay of angles and curves, and lets not forget that exhortatory title.

The Anti-Religious Alphabet is the shows centerpiece. Designed by Cheremnykh for classroom use, its a set of 27 letter cards (Cyrillic has more letters than Roman does). The cards served the dual purpose of helping young pupils learn their letters and disdain religion. Theyre agit-prop for kids. The titles make the propaganda aspect plain. Fords Factories Are Fascist Forts. Sacred Stories Are So Silly! Vile and Virulent Is the Vipers Venom (the viper in question being Pope Pius XI). The top-hatted capitalist seen in Believing Is Bad for You, Badder than Booze bears an alarming resemblance to Mr. Monopoly.

Most items in the show are from the 20s and 30s, with just a half dozen from the 70s and 80s. The former are far more vivid and imaginative. The Brezhnev era was no less sclerotic artistically than socially. An exception is that cosmonaut poster. The work of an artists collective known as the Fighting Pencil, it was inspired by a remark from cosmonaut Gherman Titov. Sometimes people are saying that God is out there, he remarked of outer space. I saw neither angels nor God. Notice how the steeples at the bottom of the poster include a mosque. The Soviets were ecumenical in their atheism.

In addition to the posters, the show includes such amusing ephemera as playing cards with anti-religious images and an ashtray in the shape of an Orthodox priest. The most striking thing about Images of Atheism isnt anything in the show, per se. Its the juxtaposition with the contents of the other galleries, which are just what one might expect in a museum devoted to, yes, Russian Icons.

IMAGES OF ATHEISM: The Soviet Assault on Religion

Museum of Russian Icons, 263 Union St., Clinton, through Oct. 2. 978-598-5000, http://www.museumofrussianicons.org

Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.

Read this article:
Believing Is Bad for You: At the Museum of Russian Icons, Images of Atheism - The Boston Globe

This Zen kan is attributed to Master Linji Yixuan. It is over 1000 years old. Amonk deep in meditation experienced what he thought was enlightenment the awakening, the Buddha-mind and reported this to his master.

The master explained to the monk that this is nothing special at all, and can even hinder his real progress. The master then instructs: If you see the Buddha, kill him.

Even though you will find Buddhism listed as a religion all over the internet,theinternet is rarely correct or accurate. So we get to the matter of definition andmeaning, and nuance. There are no gods of any type in Buddhism. No beliefs. In a God or a belief that there is no God. Atheism is not scientific. And anti-theism or hostility to all religions is the source and cause of all religious wars: Bigotry. It is the absence of belief in anything other than the truth and living a life without fear of anything like Hell, or Heaven.The Sanskrit term is Dharma. All dharmas are forms of emptiness. Your truth may be No Truth. Or even Many Truths, and thats how Hemingway put it, or rather his editors did, in the posthumously publishedIslands in the Stream. I read it was a compilation of three unpublished texts cobbled together,anexcellent work. All gods are false, even your antigod or null god. Thats the teaching of Buddhism. Atheism itself is based on a belief that no one can prove nor disprove. Period. Its a grift like anything else. And Buddhists are far more serene than any Anti-theist.

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks.

Atheism is faith in the belief that there is no God (or gods). In fact, it is considered one of the fastest-growing religions. No Religion, according to an article in The National Geographic. Atheism is not Anti-theism, a term Chris Hitchens coined and self-identified as, an anti-theist. And probably Richard Dawkins as well is hostile to all religions. That hostility towards religion, or the beliefs of others, is another word for bigotry.

No one is immune from behaving in abigoted manner.Bigotry is the cause of all religious wars. End of story. I have respect for Hitchens, in spite of his peculiar idiosyncrasies, or maybe even because of them. Dawkins is allegedly a scientist, so he should know better. Hitch was just a journalist, much like Hemingway. I would have been interested in discussing Marx with Hitchens. He retained his identification as a Marxist, but largely realized as he got older that this meme explains the difference between the genius of Marx and Historical Materialism vs. the complete imbecility of Marxism as an ideology. And for many reasons not even related to the banning of free thought and/orbelief.

To paraphrase Dr. Victoria Harrison from the University of Glasgow in her 2006 paperThe Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-Cultural World, she states that as Theravada Buddhism is atheistic, it would otherwise have to be classified as non-religious. This fact alone puts Atheism in the category of a religion. But dont despair, even some Christians claim Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship with God. A parallax view.

12 Step Programs, like the prototype, Alcoholics Anonymous, are often considered nondenominational religion, because of the faith in a Higher Powerfor your salvation. In the study of addiction, we know that AA is not evidenced based. It cant be evidence-based and still remainanonymous. I doubt the majority of the public realizes this simple fact. It was never useful to me, but I would recommend it to clients. We all did itout of desperation because we still rely on outmoded models of addictionthat make the notion of a cure quaint. Originally, it was the moral failing model. You are weak and amoral. This led to AA. We have slowly moved to the medical or disease model of addiction. This is because we as a society are still ignorant, and by we, I mean science.Some have found help in AAand there are a number of reasons for this unrelated to its efficacy which can never be testedbased on actual evidence which can never be collected. Anecdotally, we use it out of desperation.In the field, you will even find 12 Step Groups for people who are addicted to 12 Step Groups. Or Porn, Sex, Drugs, even shopping, (or what we call retail therapy),but never addictions to money, or greed. Food, Power, however

If I refer to the 7 Heavenly Virtues or the 7 Deadly Sins, it does not make me a Christian or even a Catholic. The Catholics even still include Liberality as one of the Heavenly Virtues. Many others have substituted Charity for Liberality. They are not the same thing. And I often suspect thats intentional. See? Even the Catholics arent all bad. But that depends on how you define bad. This is the original Padre with a machine gun:Father Camilo Torres Restrepo. MaybeThomas Merton is more your style, no machine gun. Both are often considered bad Catholics by the Church.

I cant really say the same about Scientologists. All bad. And a joke only a few people get.

Bigotry is defined as an obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction; in particular, prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group. As with most words we use each day, relatively few of us really have a clear and present definition of the terms we toss around. It is always easier to recognize the bigotry ofothers than our own, especially when you are the target of that bigotry.

For myself, I have always preferred Ambrose Bierces definition of a bigot.

One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

At the root of every conflict, you will find bigotry. Think about it. In fact, truly religious wars are very rare. About 7 %, but 10% are the deadliest. In military science, this is known as a force multiplier. Twitter and Facebook are force multipliers, all so-called social networking platforms are, for disinformation and propaganda. Holy Wars are a morale multiplier also. Zealotry. The desire to eliminate all false beliefs but your own limited understanding of your own personal false beliefs is differentfrom this lunatic how? Please tell me, I want to know.And the Romans tried this. Look around, there are millions of them now so it was as effective as Feynmans Cargo Cult Science.Its not even scientific.

Psychological scientists are exploring the causes and effects of atheismand finding that believers and nonbelievers may have more in common than they realize

Wars, and conflicts, are still caused by the same thing they have always been caused by, as Marx understood: Class Conflict, but whip up any zealots or fanatics and there are your front line Storm Troopers, like the SA, the forerunners to the SS.

According to scholars such as Jeffrey Burton Russell, conflicts may not be rooted strictly in religion and instead may be a cover for the underlying secular power, ethnic, social, political, and economic reasons for conflict.[1] Other scholars have argued that what is termed "religious wars" is a largely "Western dichotomy" and a modern invention from the past few centuries, arguing that all wars that are classed as "religious" have secular (economic or political) ramifications.[2][3][4] In several conflicts including the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the Syrian civil war, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, religious elements are overtly present, but variously described as fundamentalism or religious extremismdepending upon the observer's sympathies. However, studies on these cases often conclude that ethnic animosities drive much of the conflicts.[5]

According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, out of all 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 121, or 6.87%, had religion as their primary cause.[6] Matthew White's The Great Big Book of Horrible Things gives religion as the primary cause of 11 of the world's 100 deadliest atrocities.[7][8]

And The founder of American Atheists started out with a noble endeavor that quickly became a grift. And she toyed with holocaust deniers. Another belief she couldnt abide. So considering the way she lived her life, and how she died, Id be hesitant to adopt her as anything more than another crackpot.

Atheists are not the ones youd expect to be engaged in wars about something they claim does not exist. None of the beliefs in our heads exist.

See the original post:
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road... Kill Him. - Daily Kos

Tradition and Apocalypse:An Essay on the Future of Christian Beliefby david bentley hartbaker academic, 208 pages, $24.99

David Bentley Hart was once the darling of postliberal theologians for his brilliant books on divine beauty and the illogic of atheism. But in his new book, Tradition and Apocalypse, he argues that the Christian tradition is bankrupt.UsingNewmansEssay on Development of Doctrineas a foil, he insists that the rational unity of the Christian tradition cannot be known with any certitude, and what we take to be apostolic is little more than the result of political compromise, rhetorical evasion, and institutional expediency. Put simply, creedal Christianity radically contradicts Jesus and the apostles, whoaccording to Harttaught anarchist communism, pacifism, and the rejection of all political authority.

The Churchs institutional form through history, Hart insists, has been often almost comically corrupt and divisive.It would cause Hart not a moments distress to walk away from . . . Christian beliefs and institutions if he were to find them false or incoherent, and he is more than willing to conclude that Christian traditions intrinsic unity . . . is an illusionor even perhaps a lie.Against traditional accounts, he sees Christianity as containing an inner force of dissolution that incubates movements of unbelief and nihilism, but tends to begin again in the formless realm of spirit rather than flesh, spirit not letter.Small wonder that Hart praises the Churchs early gnostic enemies and complains that they were misunderstood.

Christians must beware of thinking they see any rational unity to Christian tradition, for the living tradition is essentially apocalyptic: an originating disruption of the historical past remembered in light of God's final disruption of the historical (and cosmic) future.The past is ever dissolving, by Harts account, and the future apocalypse will surprise us with an altered theological understanding that is both radical and irrevocable.

As part of his polemic against creedal Christianity, Hart argues that Arius, the fourth-century heretic, was a much more faithful representative of the oldest and most respectable school of Trinitarian speculation than were the partisans of the eventual Nicene settlement. The Arian claim that the Son was a creature was not especially exotic.Nicaeas settlement onhomoousioslacked biblical attestation, and the Arians were very plausibly . . . more faithful to scripture than their Nicene opponents. In the end, Nicene Christology was only one among many possible conceptions of the meaning of the Gospel.

Along the same revisionist lines, Hart insists that the apostle Paul's account of salvation is closer to the gnostic Valentinus's understanding of salvation than to much of the Thomist tradition or to Calvins doctrine of substitutionary atonement.Marcion, who repudiated the Old Testament, practiced a faith more consistent with Pauls beliefs than did Luther.

Hart repeatedly denounces the doctrine of eternal damnation of those condemned to hell.Those who accept itwhich means the vast majority of Christians who have ever livedinvite psychosis and the destruction of their moral intelligence.Their misunderstanding of eschatology matches their nave assumptions about the rational coherence in Christian tradition, which it is the gravamen of Tradition and Apocalypse to show is an illusion.

Following in that modern tradition of scholars who imagine that they have discovered the true meaning of the Bible for the first time, Hart tells us that Christians have failed to see that the original tale of thenarrative of Eden has nothing to do with a fall, original sin, or diabolical interference.It was originally the story of a chief god Yahweh who lied to his two pitiable serfs to keep them ignorant of better things.The high god tried (maladroitly) to make the serpent a helpmeet to these serfs.The serpent truthfully told these peasants that Yahweh was exploiting them.They discovered after eating from the tree that the serpent was right, so Yahweh fled in panic to the council of lesser gods to warn them that Adam and Eve might now eat from the tree of life and displace them by also becoming immortal.This was why they had to be expelled from the garden.

A reader can only chuckle over this fanciful reading. Harts rendition of Genesis 3 betrays a surprising inability to distinguish between background Near Eastern myths and their subtle refutations by the biblical author. He frequently invokes reason, the historical-critical method, and historical scholarship for warrants. Again the informed reader smiles, knowing that historical scholarship changes from generation to generation, often producing wildly contradictory judgments, but always put forward with great confidence that the scholar-genius has finally settled the matter and put to rest the notions of the benighted fools who came before him.

Hart pursues other tendentious readings of Scripture that pretend to be informed by historical reasoning, often to support his claims that true Christianity is anarchic, socialist, and pacifist. Yet the role of the modern German theology professor is not enough for Hart.He makes a metaphysical leap to philosophical perennialism not unlike that of the American transcendentalists in the nineteenth century. Emerson, for example,posited an inner unity to all world religions and a final metaphysical oneness opposed to all dualism. Hart does the same. The distinction between God and the creation is illusory.Christians should learn this monism, Hart avers, from Hindu thinkers like Shankara, developer of Advaita Vedanta.Or we should go to Islamic Sufism, which sees the truth of metaphysical monism with unparalleled brilliance.

Why did Solomon turn to idolatry after God used him to lead Israel and after he had written some of the most profound parts of Scripture?Why did Gideon make a golden ephod that became an idolatrous snare to himself and all Israel after Yahweh had used him to deliver Israel? We will never have a definitive answer to these questions.But we can see a similar turn in an erstwhile orthodox theologian who now embraces a gnostic reading of Genesis and heterodox views of Christology, creation, and salvation.

Perhaps Harts turn toward heterodoxy goes back to his embrace of universal salvation. Not all universalists have come to heretical conclusions about other Christian dogmas.But in his magisterial analysis of the history of universalism (TheDevils Redemption), Michael McClymond shows that universalism begins with the ancient gnostics, and once embraced by Christians, tends to unravel every major Christian dogma.This powerful tendency helps us understandif not explainHarts fall into Hindu metaphysics and gnostic theology.

Gerald McDermott recently retired from Beeson Divinity School.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectlyquoted the phrase narrative of Eden as true Eden story. We regret the error.

First Thingsdepends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.

Clickhereto make a donation.

Clickhereto subscribe toFirst Things.

See more here:
Hart's Turn To Heterodoxy | Gerald McDermott - First Things

The first thing I learned about natural theology was that it was wrong. The idea that Gods existence could be proven by simply observing life on Earth that divine presence could be found in human eyes, the wings of bees, the order of orchids or the movements of the planets seemed archaic in a secular world where science reigned. And by the late 20th century, even those who rejected this secular world had started to turn away from natural theology: in the United States, evangelical Christians and other groups looked to the Bible, not nature, to justify their values. The very grounds of natural theology became something worthy of parody. I remember the British author Douglas Adamss depiction of the Babel fish in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (1979). This improbable living creature could provide instant universal translation to anyone who placed it inside their ear canal. For Adams, its existence served as the definitive disproof of a deity:

Adamss fantastical parody of the design argument came at a time when natural theology was increasingly regarded as both obsolete and absurd. Just under a decade later, Richard Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker (1986), which also took aim at arguments that God was revealed through the natural world. Dawkins wrote that there was compelling evidence and logic behind the natural theology arguments of previous centuries particularly those made popular by the British clergyman and philosopher William Paley in 1802 but that these arguments had been rendered obsolete by Charles Darwins accounts of living creatures that were not designed. Instead, they had evolved by chance. By the early 1990s, even antievolutionists were latching on to a version of this argument. These groups, including evangelical Christians in the US, claimed that the fault was not in natural theologys inherent logic, but in the out-of-date scientific examples that informed its argument. All of this came to a head in 2005, during the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District court case in the US, which determined whether intelligent design could be taught in a Pennsylvania schools biology classes. The opposing sides in the courtroom could agree on only one thing. The central question of natural theology, they affirmed, was this: Can a God, creator, or Intelligence be proven to exist? This is the version of natural theology we inherit today. The problem is, reducing natural theology to a question of proof loses much of what it stood for. If the first thing you learned about natural theology was that it was wrong, the second should be that you didnt really learn about natural theology you learned a truncated version rooted in historical misunderstanding.

During the past millennium, the arguments for natural theology were about much more than proving Gods existence. Natural theology advocates were not writing to merely dissuade atheists; their foils were other religious believers whose doctrinal or denominational differences might be arbitrated by the public evidence of empirical science. Natural theology was never about proof as we have come to understand it. We see this in the writings of the Italian friar Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century; in the works of the English naturalist John Ray and the clergyman Paley in the 17th and 18th centuries; and among myriad other texts, including the eight Bridgewater Treatises, commissioned in 19th-century England to document the goodness of God as manifested in Creation. For natural theologians, the specific line of reasoning used to arrive at a proof of God determined the kind of answers one could reach about moral and political questions, about the nature of salvation, the toleration of other faiths, and the validity and interpretation of scripture. Natural theology was never exclusively about proving Gods existence through the complexity of the natural world. And yet, our contemporary rejections of natural theology have focused almost exclusively on this argument. Natural theologians and philosophers were instead motivated by a search for answers to the pressing moral and political questions of their day, and their arguments were as much about considering the epistemological grounds of proof, as they were about finding God in nature.

To understand how the natural theologians made their arguments requires us to understand the purpose of proof differently. Many of the arguments put forward by Aquinas, Ray, Paley and others follow specific rules of reasoning. They also follow commonly accepted rules of logical inference and conventions of citing publicly observable matters of fact. And yet, the demonstrations of proof made by these writers that is, descriptions of the natural world also served as a literary genre through which rhetorical and emotional appeals could be made that go beyond logic. At the time when they were published, these appeals to rhetoric and emotion would not just have been seen as displays of wit or cleverness. They also showed an understanding of how humans think: an expression of how nature and divinity can open ones mind and spirit to be moved and persuaded. Perhaps anticipating what scholars of psychology and communication would only conclude centuries later, natural theologians knew that people are rarely persuaded by reason alone.

Although Paley is less well known than the two other scholars he is most often contrasted with, David Hume and Darwin, his examples of natural theology remain ubiquitous today and, for that reason, also distorted. Paleys book Natural Theology: Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802) begins with perhaps the most misinterpreted discussion in the entire history of theology: the analogy of the watch. Should a person happen to come across a stone, Paley argued, one would not draw grand conclusions from it. But upon stumbling across a watch, a reasonable observer would quickly grasp that its many parts had been assembled for a purpose. There must be, he wrote, a kind of watchmaker. Paley later shows that the interpretation of the watch as something that has a purpose logically parallels how we might interpret various animal organs (eyes, ears, wings and more) and other natural systems as demonstrating purpose, too.

This watchmaker argument is commonly described as an argument about origins and complexity. In calling his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins argued that both watches and complex living things could have, in the terms of the Babel fish argument, evolved by chance. By this logic, if things such as body parts and living systems didnt require an interventionist creator, then Paleys argument crumbles. No creator? No purpose.

Except that Paley wasnt writing in total ignorance of the theological arguments that had come before him.

Think of the argument about the initial creation of the observable world: the argument of the first cause. This is sometimes posed as a question, Why is there something rather than nothing?, which has taken on various forms since it was included in Aquinass Summa Theologica (written c1265-73). Hume, writing about a quarter-century before Paley, offered an incisive criticism of the first-cause argument, claiming that it was an error to presume that a deity or creative designer would have purposes akin to human ones, or that the analogy between human intentions and nonhuman ones could be justified through anything other than circular arguments.

Paley would have been familiar with these ideas, and his Natural Theology is partially an attempt to offer answers to the logical criticisms that Hume raised decades earlier. Paleys opening comparison of the stone with the watch is one such answer a response to Humes argument about first causes. By rejecting the idea that the stone provides useful evidence of a creator, Paley avoids the oversimplified argument that the existence of anything proves Gods existence. But the watch provides something different: evidence of purpose. Thats not the same thing as evidence of a creator. In a later chapter of the book, Paley considers the possibility of a mechanical watch-like object that creates a replica of itself. Logically, these self-replicating watches were directly created by their predecessors, and the watch could have been the most recent generation of an infinite cycle of reproducing watches that exist eternally. Paley avoids discussion of first causes to sidestep, rather than refute, Humes criticism, and focus his logic instead on the question of purpose.

For Hume, purpose could not be proven without presupposing that God had an anthropomorphic nature, with desires, goals and plans like our own. We cant assume, he argued, that a God has the same purposes as human artisans. Paleys argument took a different direction. His view that nature has purposes is based on observations that objects seem adapted to make use of natural laws even when those laws did not play a direct role in fabricating them. A watch uses its springs, chains and other mechanical laws in a way that coincides with astronomical laws that define the day. Observing this, we may infer that there is a purpose found in the ability of the material world to make use of natural laws. Paley is suggesting that Humes argument can be cleaved in two: whether purposes can be revealed by objects in nature is a separate question to understanding exactly what those purposes are. For Paley, we observe this through the parts of the eye that seem arranged to make use of the laws of optics, or through birds wings that make use of aerodynamics, or through an ears expression of acoustic principles. We can observe this adaptation even if we dont understand sight or flight.

This argument was intended as a logical response to Hume. But, more importantly, it unveils an expanded view of Paleys beliefs. This version of natural theology reveals a deity who is known not by the instances where science fails, but at the moments when it most elegantly works. The reductive argument from design so often faulted by atheists and praised by antievolutionists suggests God is the best explanation remaining whenever we cant account for why things came to be as they are. Its based on a thin process of elimination with a vision of a creator that the Scottish theologian Henry Drummond derided as the God of the Gaps and it can testify to nothing other than mere existence. By contrast, and design, Paleys arguments are focused on getting beyond existence to questions of the attributes of the designer. In his view, because natural laws are found universally on Earth and beyond, then surely the author of those laws is both singular and omnipresent. More debatably, Paleys writing indicates that the world seems to minimise purposeless suffering and permits creatures to experience pleasure without any apparent ulterior purpose a suggestion that there is goodness in the governance of the world.

To understand Paleys argument, readers had to exist in a society that built, sold, regulated and consumed watches

This latter point gets at the heart of ethics and politics in Paleys day. In The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), Paley responds to the question of whether (and by what means) a well-ordered society would prove naturally beneficial to its inhabitants. The reason for his affirmative answer was the chaos and suffering caused by the French Revolution, which he abhorred. He cautioned against the possibility of a similar uprising in Britain. Paleys views were in conversation with those of the English economist Thomas Malthus, whose primary aim in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was not simply to demonstrate that societies naturally and inevitably outgrow their resources, but that the suffering caused by population growth was neither inherently the result of failed governance nor incompatible with the moral edicts prescribed by a good and caring God.

Paleys awareness of and conversation with the political and economic order of the day plays a key role in his arguments for natural theology, in particular his example of the watch. In his day, the people who fabricated individual parts of timepieces chains, gears, dials and faces were not considered watchmakers (nor were those who assembled those pieces). That title was accorded only to those who supervised and managed such people. When Paleys Natural Theology was published in 1802, he understood that English watchmaking was a geographically and financially complex industry that had as many moving parts as individual watches themselves. This context changes the nature of the watchmaker argument considerably. To fully understand Paleys argument, readers of his Natural Theology had to exist in a society that built, sold, regulated and consumed watches, a society in which timepieces had become objects of form and fashion. To even consider the arguments merits, one must already be part of a complex human mechanism that relied on the adaptation of human parts to a unified purpose. In this way, the argument is self-confirming in a more convincing way than any argument that God exists because existence is a necessary attribute of God the ontological argument for a God of the Gaps.

In October 1802, weeks after Natural Theology was published, Paley received a letter from Bishop John Law, his close friend, former schoolmate and intellectual confidant. Paley had dedicated his first major work, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, to Laws father, who was the Bishop of Carlisle and a patron and supporter of Paley. Having just read Natural Theology, Law told Paley that his arguments for the divine goodness are so strong, that not only our reason is convinced, but as Barrow would say, we even touch and feel it with our senses.

Law quotes from a published sermon by the 17th-century English mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow, perhaps best known as Isaac Newtons mathematics teacher at Cambridge. Barrow draws from both the Book of Psalms and from the evidence of nature to explain the Goodness of God:

For Barrow, the goodness of God, which is attested to throughout the Psalms, is also demonstrated to us by the sensual ways in which it is experienced:

Barrows sermon remained topical enough 125 years after his death that Law would quote it in a personal letter to his old friend. This says much about the long tradition of natural theology as an engagement of embodiment and emotion, through touching, feeling and sensing in ways that are separate from, though perhaps complementary to, our faculties of logic and reason.

That history extends from Barrow through other natural theologians such as John Ray, whose book The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691) provides an account of awe-inspiring contrivances of nature, and suggests that humanity was created with both the mental and physical abilities to perceive Gods wisdom. This synthesis of knowledge as both thinking and sensing was key to the emergence of empiricism, as exemplified by Barrow and Rays contemporary John Locke, and was deeply influential on both the theological and political thought of Edmund Law and Paley. Both believed that religious truths could be accessed through universally available human experience, making them staunch defenders of religious toleration. Unlike private revelation or doctrinally demanded interpretations of scripture, the evidence of religious empiricism sensing and feeling God could arbitrate the long history of religious disputes in England. For Law, Paley and others, religious toleration took the form of rejecting the mandatory oath-taking required in England to hold office or access society. They argued that the moral harm from swearing false oaths caused greater spiritual damage than believing in the wrong doctrine.

Paleys appeal to readers sensations as a form of argument is a practical application of his view of how the mind processes the emotions that come from sensory experience. He discusses this early in The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, which leads him to navigate a morally conservative tightrope, insisting that experiences of pleasure and happiness were necessary to understanding God, but also that overindulgence in pleasurable experience for its own sake makes divine knowledge harder to grasp. Paley notes that over time and through repetition the emotional force of a sensation becomes blunted. Paley suggests that this blunting of the emotional response to certain sensations comes from the strengthening or relaxation of the fibres of the nervous system. Much later in his same work, he suggests that the biblical injunction against taking the name of God in vain may be understood as a caution against that familiar levity with which some learn to speak of the Deity a deity who should evoke feelings of awe and reverence. This injunction, which is at the heart of Paleys concern about false oaths, is not merely about moral harm; its also about ones easily blunted ability to grasp an embodied knowledge of God.

And yet, upon opening Natural Theology in 1802, Paleys first readers did not engage with his new book with all their senses directly. The texture of cut quarto pages, the smell of leather binding and the visual contrast of ink on paper are not what revealed God to them. Rather it was a remembered sensory experience, built upon Paleys expectation that his readers have been in the world, observed birds in flight and caught the scent of flowers in bloom. Theyve looked at the lights in the night-time skies and theyve heard the ticking of their watches. Paley relies upon that shared context of observing, sensing and knowing. His words contrive to evoke memories of moments of awe, experiences of beauty and wonder. However, this was often done with such skill that Paley was later dismissed as a populariser or educator rather than a theologian engaged in original argument and analysis.

They saw evolution not as a logical disproof of God, but as a tangible demonstration of divine power

In truth, natural theologians such as Paley and his successors were often doing both, and finding success in doing so for a variety of reasons. Their writing was not just a pragmatic marriage of natural philosophy and religious pluralism; nor was it a simple rejection of either the a priori rationalism that so often characterised continental European philosophy or the mystical-revelatory religious knowledge that took hold in some evangelical Christian movements in the 19th century. The English-language religious tradition of that period did not reject Darwins theory of evolution as incompatible with a Genesis account of creation or as a rejection of theism. This was not merely an attempt to broker a ceasefire between the opposing forces of science and religion. And it was not simply a compromise of compatibility. Rather, it was born out of a strong sense that the natural world revealed divine knowledge in a way that could be expressed logically and appeal extra-logically to emotion and sentiment. Many readers of Natural Theology have understood that a deity must be known not only through reason, but also sensed and felt.

This commitment to logic and feeling remained, even as new scientific discoveries compelled revisions to some of the naturalistic explanations that prior natural theologians had pointed to. By the 1830s, some editions of Paleys Natural Theology contained a footnote stating that it was now possible to explain not just the watch but also how the stone came to be. Paleys own writing, which Law had praised for its ability to evoke sensory memory, helped natural theology inspire a subgenre that gradually became what we call popular science or nature writing.

The union of logic and feeling reveals itself through theologian-scholars such as the US botanist Asa Gray and the English historian Charles Kingsley, who embraced Darwins theory of evolution in the 1860s. These same scholars also embraced the idea of a deity who could have enabled the living world to evolve into complex life, which they saw as testament to the wisdom, power and benevolence of a creator (one who hadnt simply created each species on an ad hoc basis). They saw evolution not as a logical disproof of God, but as an evocative and tangible demonstration of divine power, one that was felt every day in their own bodies.

However, efforts to promote more secular versions of science and less politically pluralistic interpretations of Christianity eventually came to dominate not just the debate over evolution, but the broader discussion of science and religion. To some concerned Christians, natural theology became associated with efforts to analyse the Bible through scientific tools and was subsequently derided as anti-Biblical. For them, biblical authority, not natural theology, was at the root of science-religion conflicts in the early 1900s. After the Second World War, English-language scientists tried to distinguish themselves from the militant atheism of their Soviet rivals, while also distancing themselves from caricatures of creationist fundamentalism. The compatibility of science and religion took hold as a logical possibility: one could now be both scientist and Christian. And so, over time, the work of Paley, Ray, William Buckland and many others was thinned out, and relegated to a mere God-proof that could, at best, be mounted as a defence against scientific debunking.

By the mid-20th century, natural theology was dying of the slow strangulation of faint praise. It was nothing more than a misguided if clever and well-intended attempt to prove that God exists without any recourse to scripture or revelation. The US scholar Ian Barbour, widely recognised as one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of science and religion, rejected the fundamental premise of natural theology when he wrote in 1966 that theology should not be based primarily on nature. Instead, Barbour suggested doing theology of nature something that was not natural theology. The primary difference seemed to be that one would do theology of nature from within a religious tradition, that is, after one was already convinced (by other means than nature) that there was a God worth doing theology about.

By the end of the century, this caricature of natural theology as a vaguely Christian effort to use nature to prove that God is real had taken root among both outspoken atheists and antievolutionists who had been compelled by American court rulings to demonstrate that they had an alternative to natural selection that was scientific. This version of natural theologys aims and origins became a rare point of consensus between those who wanted to prove that God didnt exist (thanks to Darwin) and those who wanted to prove that something exists (even if they couldnt say exactly what). It was further abetted by acolytes of Barbour and those of the science-religion dialogue whose positions rarely moved beyond statements that science and religion were logically or technically compatible. Mere existence, therefore, became the minimal and ultimate stakes for the argument from design a profoundly reductive vision of natural theology.

Intelligent Design and New Atheism converge on questions about the ethical and political nature of science

The erasure of the psychological and rhetorical complexity of natural theology that is, its recourse to embodied knowledge has had a damaging effect on religious philosophy in recent decades. Its contributed to the persistence of a so-called Intelligent Design movement, which, for years, has focused on trying to prove the existence of an intelligent agent without fully acknowledging or seeming to care that specific approaches to such proofs have implications for theology, politics or ethics. At the same time, the reduction of natural theology into a kind of logical proposition has allowed those who reject its repackaged proposition such as the New Atheists to assert that the disproofs of God and the secular science that they claim to be doing are value-neutral, apolitical and objective.

On the surface, it appears that Intelligent Design and New Atheism fundamentally disagree about the nature of biological evolution. However, the erasure of their shared intellectual history has allowed both movements to converge on more fundamental questions about the ethical and political nature of science. And often, theyve done this without acknowledging either their own biases or the ways that these arguments are inseparable from the cultural uses to which they are put. To get past the senseless duality that these two movements offer us, we may have to follow Law and Barrow, recalling that, in the synthesis of religion and science, we even touch and feel it with our senses.

The rest is here:
For natural theologians, proving God was beside the point - Aeon

Patrick Berg, MD will speak about the Origin of Life Wednesday evening at Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church in Kelly Hall as part of this years Los Alamos Faith & Science Forum series. Free dinner is offered at 6 p.m. and the talk begins at 6:30 p.m. Kelly Hall is located at 3900 . Trinity Drive. The Zoom link for the talk is: https://tinyurl.com/GodCosmos. For more information on upcoming lectures go to: losalamosfaithandscienceforum.org Courtesy photo

BY PATRICK BERG, M.D. MAJ, USAF

In 1802, William Paley published his famous watch analogy in Natural Theology. He asserted that if a watch is found in an open field, the inference we think is inevitable, (is) that the watch must have had a maker- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other an artificer who formed it. He reviewed the complexity of human anatomy, as well as animals and plants, based on scientific understanding at the time. Seeing complexity far beyond a watch in plants, animals, and human anatomy, he concluded that there is a Creator.

William Paleys idea was not new. From the Greek philosophers to the Bible and the Quran, the existence of God was asserted to be self-evident on the basis of the wonder of the world we live in.However, after the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, scientifically minded individuals increasingly associated the theory of natural selection with the driving force that created the watch. This rigid association fueled an uptick in atheism.

However, natural selection as the mechanism of creation falls apart when we get down to the ground level. When we look at the mechanics of what is actually happening in all living organisms (which is biochemistry), the contribution of the theory of natural selection is placed in its proper perspective. It becomes evident that a completely naturalistic view of creation is actually a belief, which doesnt come anywhere close to meeting a burden of proof and isnt destined to at any point in the near future. In fact, while sometimes the devil is in the details, this presentation might demonstrate God is also in the details. When the details are examined, the wonder of life is affirmed as well today as when William Paley first published Natural Theology.

A cell is the basic unit of all life; therefore, the natural starting point for exploring whether natural processes explain how life came to be is to explore the development of the first cell. This presentation will briefly explain the primary mechanisms inside all cells, and then review the current degree to which a naturalistic explanation for them seems plausible, based on the current scientific research.

Patrick Berg, MD, Maj, USAFCritical Care Surgeon, 60th Medical Group, SGCS/SGCQClinical Assistant Professor of Surgery, Department of General Surgery, Division of Acute Care Surgery UC Davis Health

Like Loading...

Related

See the article here:
Patrick Berg, MD To Speak On The Origin Of Life At Los Alamos Faith & Science Forum Wednesday - Los Alamos Reporter