Letters to the Editor
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Haught lost me in the first paragraph
"How can a person of faith reconcile the apparently random, meaningless process of evolution with belief in God?"
Random? Meaningless? How about the opposite of both those things? Sheesh!
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As another "stone atheist"...
Contrary to an earlier "stone atheist", and as another long-time atheist, I'm glad Salon prints articles like this. This guy isn't particularly interesting philosophically, in that none of what he says is new, or even that smart. But he's very interesting socially, as a representative of a viewpoint I don't hear much of from other media.
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Excuse me...
PAULSON lost me...
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As V. for Vendetta made clear...
Any professional biologist or competant physician will tell you there is no sense of pleasure or pain without brain cell activity. All of that ceases once you die and the bacteria are invited for lunch. No brain cells, no sense of pleasure or pain. Heaven and Hell, thus, the epitomies of pleasure and pain, are quite impossible other than in one's compromised imagination. In printing this man's delusions and active deceptions, Salon gives air time to nonsense, the endless repitions of fact-contradicting theology and ideology being the basis of America's current brainwashed acclimation to its fundamentalist controllers. Dr. Peter Calabria
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What shabby thinking
So the author admits that we need religion for therapeutic reasons:
But we need a worldview that is capable of justifying the confidence that we place in our minds, in truth, in goodness, in beauty. I argue that an atheistic worldview is not capable of justifying that confidence.
First, as an atheist, I have hope and it is in humankind. That hope is often smashed in the teeth, but at least I know why (media, money, power, tyranny, weakness, etc.). It would be a whole lot more depressing if I thought there were forces out there that approved of human mishap, in the guise of some larger plan that I just have to take on faith (though I guess the myth that some all powerful guy cares about my soul might be like Prozac, allowing me to care a little less about this world's problems).
Sure, there are Christians, Jews and Muslims who believe in science and whose religion is just one step shy of new age spiritualism (they believe in science, evolution, etc.). My question to them: why believe in any particular religion at all? If you are picking and choosing what parts are real and which aren't (there is a God, but he's not really the guy in the Bible, exactly), how can you claim your religion isn't anything more than a psychological/social security blanket?
I could see someone saying they think there's more out there than we know -- and I don't think that in any way conflicts with science. But to call yourself Christian or Judaic is clearly a social choice, not a logical one or even one taken on faith.
Of course, the argument could be made that humans, as a species (not select individuals) are incapable of moral behavior without religion -- they can't see the value of Jesus without Jesus also being a superhero. This raises a tougher question: do you foster formal/sectarian religion to spread moral viewpoints even when you know it's hokum? I can't come to that conclusion because it necessarily creates inequity between those who follow and those who lead (and probably know better -- see Dick Cheney and Mustafa Mond). And given that organized religion is easily corrupted thanks to its lack of grounding in the real world, it generally does more to coerce and mislead than anything else. I'd say if religion is necessary for weaker minds, it's better to let people develop their own personal religion.
Designations like "Christian" are certainly worth abandoning -- and perhaps deriding, as the "new atheists" are doing. Either you believe it all, and are a nut, or you don't believe it, but need to call yourself Christian so that you can stay in your clan's club, however defined.
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Same old, same old
Haught thinks that belief in a providential presence is logical. So what's new with the faithful? After four pages of intellectualizing, all of his high-brow mumbo-jumbo still
boils down simply to: we can't explain it, so it must be god. And by the way, he loves you.
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The Big What If
The author begins from the premise of the Big What If. What If there is a God? What if this God could not be discerned by Science? What if this God was approachable only on some "deeper" level of the cosmos? What if?
He says that it is not inevitable that God disobeys the laws of Nature. Of course not! When you ask the question, "What If God does not obey the laws of Nature" than your answer can be whatever you want.
The anthropogenic nature of God is of course ignored. Consciousness is relegated to humans and humans alone, disregarding the lives and sentience of other animals, yet clearly animals have consciousness, they have language, they inhabit this world as we do, but do they have religion, and if they do, is their God a personal God?
He posits a Creator (What If There Was a Creator), overlooking the obvious follow-up question; Did the Creator Have a Creator, and if not, why not? All of this gets you nowhere. Theology is a castle made of sand.
If Atheism does not solve the problems of mankind by replacing one morality with another, I would like to apologize for Atheism, but it doesn't promise that. It simply states that there is no God. And What If There Is No God? What are you going to do now? Be naughty just because? Yes, drop God like Santa Claus. Drop the old man in the white beard who knows all about you and everything you do and rewards you if you're good and punishes you if you're bad. Just be good for goodness sake!
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2 more cents
Some impressions~
I get the feeling reading the responses here than many if not most people did not read the entire article. In general Haught came off pretty good.
I agree with many here that one does not require a religion to have hope. I do not believe in a personal god, an anthropomorphic deity in general or life after death- I regard today as sufficient and will continue to wake up doing so until I fail to wake up, knowing that life goes on with or without me. I know this and have it already- who could hope for more?
I have also always thought de Chardin had it right. And the progressive theology cited in both the article and in some of the responses is probably a good thing as well.
That being said, these voices seem to be drowned out these days by the fundamentalist/literalist pinheads who have grabbed the public mic and pander to the average person's apparent need for easy and definitive answers to what are essentially unanswerable questions. Hutchins and Dawkins can be better understood in that light. Yeah- they might not be as deep as Sartre etc,. but they- we- have seen the recent meteoric rise of 12th century fundamentalism to a big place at the policy table, and they are quite justifiably scared and angry. And the more progressive religious elements are partially to blame here because they have tolerated these demagogues rather than taking them on and down in public.
I have always thought Christianity, and by extension the other Abrahamic religions, should not feel threatened by science in general and evolution in particular. A metaphorical reading of the Old Testament supports evolution in my opinion- or at least doesn't deny it. But evolution does threaten it in that it posits a universe that is still being created- as pointed out elsewhere here- and that god's mind is not made up. This seems to disenfranchise the god who knows everything and has already written the script. Free will freely operates here, and a person can make moral choices- something the fundies assure me is not the case.
And finally, science too is a faith in that it operates under the assumption that the cosmos is orderly, and that its order can be perceived and even understood. In this sense it is the spiritual quest of the secular west. Gould's argument that it and those old time religions are different magesteria is correct in that order and purpose are indeed two different things, and cosmologically speaking it does not look like the twain shall ever meet. The only purpose in the religious sense science can currently offer is the fulfillment of cause and effect. Those who need more will have to look elsewhere.