I must agree with GabeEisenstein 100%.
It is annoying to keep reading arguments against fundamentalist religion phrased as arguments “against religion”.
I must also note that Gabe did not get any meaningful reply to his point “that orthogonal-to-facts religion can be valuable, and that it is not a modern phenomenon”. He was told to “read all antitheism posts”. Well, how about a link to a specific paragraph in a specific post that addresses the very specific issues he raised?
Namely, why do people keep focussing on debunking fundamentalist religion (reinterpret the fossils, believe in talking snakes, etc.) and then pretend they have debunked “religion” or “theism”, completely ignoring the deep intellectual history within religious thought dealing with exactly these questions?
(“you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, [and].… Wittgenstein’s views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer’s Golden Bough.”)
Where in the “antitheism posts” do I find a treatment of these aspects, and why is everything I come across always tailored to debunking fundamentalism instead of dealing with the questions that will crop up if you ignore the fundamentalists and talk to religionist philosphers who are actually intelligent?
And even apart from points that may be covered in other posts which I have not seen, GabeEisenstein has pointed to a number of glaring flaws or mistakes in the current post standing on its own, which would merit some attention in themselves, first of all the implication that religious ethics has not evolved over the centuries, and that it’ts a choice between the Iron Age and atheism. That’s a false dichotomy if I have ever seen one.
The point is not that there’s a dichotomy between Iron Age beliefs and atheism, but that moderate religious belief has its own issues.
If you allow yourself to identify with particular claims without regard to the actual evidence for them, you’re liable to end up accepting ridiculous claims out of affiliation. Modes of thought are habit forming; if you insist on finding some way to interpret biblical passages that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Christian, for example, you’re liable to also insist on finding ways to interpret data that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, regardless of whether that interpretation is a rational response to the data. This can lead to anything from lost lives due to poorly considered legislation to getting yourself injured practicing bad martial arts techniques.
Moderate theists rarely manage to sacrifice every factual belief attached to their religion required by actual deference to evidence, leading to positions like rejection of cryonics on the basis that it prevents access to the afterlife, or can’t work because it won’t preserve the soul. If they rejected every unsupported empirical claim, they wouldn’t be able to preserve their affiliation.
It’s unclear how much epistemic harm is caused directly by moderate religion, but moderate religion as well as fundamentalism is killed off by the sort of epistemic hygiene necessary to consistently make sound decisions conditioned on evidence.
It is annoying to keep reading arguments against fundamentalist religion phrased as arguments “against religion”.
As it stands, no spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it. But some spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it.
It’s hard to argue against flat-wallpaperism. Point out the ruin of its tenets, and people push the bubble elsewhere, and still claim the name “flat-wallpaperism” as if it were the same as the old belief. There’s nothing wrong with showing the problems in flat-wallpaperism even though some individuals call themselves flat-wallpaperists and make idiosyncratic mistakes about what people believe and believed, starting with how other flat-wallpaperists view and would have viewed (for historical figures and previous generations of believers) their liberal “flat-wallpaperism”.
religionist philosphers who are actually intelligent?
If they weren’t at all intelligent, they wouldn’t be dumber than the fundamentalists. They set their bottom line, confabulate and assault the English language by pretending with labels to a relationship with the past and other religious people they don’t have,
“(Assuming the Bible is a valuable moral book, which upon reading should enhance our precommitment to liberal ideals), why is the Bible so valuable a moral book, despite its words, and how does reading it provide information that reaffirms liberal ideals?” is a question whose answer is poisoned by its false assumption as “(Assuming the Bible is a communication from a deity,) what is God trying to tell us with these words?”
many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a literary background to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account
“Many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a corocodilian wallaby to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account.” There are some problems with the preceding sentence. One is that “corocodilian wallaby”″ is not a good synonym for “literary background”. The words are a lie. The other problem is quite similar, but it applies to the word “religious” as it is used in the crocodilian wallaby sentence and in the quoted sentence.
I must agree with GabeEisenstein 100%. It is annoying to keep reading arguments against fundamentalist religion phrased as arguments “against religion”.
I must also note that Gabe did not get any meaningful reply to his point “that orthogonal-to-facts religion can be valuable, and that it is not a modern phenomenon”. He was told to “read all antitheism posts”. Well, how about a link to a specific paragraph in a specific post that addresses the very specific issues he raised? Namely, why do people keep focussing on debunking fundamentalist religion (reinterpret the fossils, believe in talking snakes, etc.) and then pretend they have debunked “religion” or “theism”, completely ignoring the deep intellectual history within religious thought dealing with exactly these questions? (“you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, [and].… Wittgenstein’s views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer’s Golden Bough.”) Where in the “antitheism posts” do I find a treatment of these aspects, and why is everything I come across always tailored to debunking fundamentalism instead of dealing with the questions that will crop up if you ignore the fundamentalists and talk to religionist philosphers who are actually intelligent? And even apart from points that may be covered in other posts which I have not seen, GabeEisenstein has pointed to a number of glaring flaws or mistakes in the current post standing on its own, which would merit some attention in themselves, first of all the implication that religious ethics has not evolved over the centuries, and that it’ts a choice between the Iron Age and atheism. That’s a false dichotomy if I have ever seen one.
The point is not that there’s a dichotomy between Iron Age beliefs and atheism, but that moderate religious belief has its own issues.
If you allow yourself to identify with particular claims without regard to the actual evidence for them, you’re liable to end up accepting ridiculous claims out of affiliation. Modes of thought are habit forming; if you insist on finding some way to interpret biblical passages that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Christian, for example, you’re liable to also insist on finding ways to interpret data that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, regardless of whether that interpretation is a rational response to the data. This can lead to anything from lost lives due to poorly considered legislation to getting yourself injured practicing bad martial arts techniques. Moderate theists rarely manage to sacrifice every factual belief attached to their religion required by actual deference to evidence, leading to positions like rejection of cryonics on the basis that it prevents access to the afterlife, or can’t work because it won’t preserve the soul. If they rejected every unsupported empirical claim, they wouldn’t be able to preserve their affiliation.
Further, moderate theists, as much as fundamentalists if not more so, form beliefs which don’t pay rent in anticipated experiences. This leads to fake understanding, and fake understanding cannot inform good decisions.
It’s unclear how much epistemic harm is caused directly by moderate religion, but moderate religion as well as fundamentalism is killed off by the sort of epistemic hygiene necessary to consistently make sound decisions conditioned on evidence.
As it stands, no spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it. But some spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it.
It’s hard to argue against flat-wallpaperism. Point out the ruin of its tenets, and people push the bubble elsewhere, and still claim the name “flat-wallpaperism” as if it were the same as the old belief. There’s nothing wrong with showing the problems in flat-wallpaperism even though some individuals call themselves flat-wallpaperists and make idiosyncratic mistakes about what people believe and believed, starting with how other flat-wallpaperists view and would have viewed (for historical figures and previous generations of believers) their liberal “flat-wallpaperism”.
If they weren’t at all intelligent, they wouldn’t be dumber than the fundamentalists. They set their bottom line, confabulate and assault the English language by pretending with labels to a relationship with the past and other religious people they don’t have,
“(Assuming the Bible is a valuable moral book, which upon reading should enhance our precommitment to liberal ideals), why is the Bible so valuable a moral book, despite its words, and how does reading it provide information that reaffirms liberal ideals?” is a question whose answer is poisoned by its false assumption as “(Assuming the Bible is a communication from a deity,) what is God trying to tell us with these words?”
“Many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a corocodilian wallaby to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account.” There are some problems with the preceding sentence. One is that “corocodilian wallaby”″ is not a good synonym for “literary background”. The words are a lie. The other problem is quite similar, but it applies to the word “religious” as it is used in the crocodilian wallaby sentence and in the quoted sentence.