Jennings said:
"I would encourage you to seek a way to also empathize with Christians as to why they would believe in God. A quick look at society shows that there are many intellectual and extremely smart people who believe in God. These people have reached this world view not through blind faith but have spent years in doubt and discussion and then concluded to follow Christ."
I can empathize with them, remember my deconversion was a long slow process. I know exactly what is going on in their heads, it's simply ignoring cognitive dissonance. This isn't a logical pathway, its simply compartmentalization of belief, and we do it all the time. Let me give you an example. I can tell you "I am holding a green box." I can also tell you "I am holding a red box." Neither of these mental images are difficult for you to hold on to, but you must do so separately; one is an image with me with a red box in my hands, the second one of me with a green one. But you can't picture me only 1 box that is both solid red and solid green, so you ignore that one. This is the process that many scientists use to reconcile the understanding that we CAN'T know the things that religion says it does know and still let them function as good scientists. And I daresay that when functioning as good scientists they do it with a purely atheistic world view, or they wouldn't be good scientists.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Ethics
You sort of went back and forth during that post, let me see if I can summarize what I got:
Point 1: It takes time for ethics to develop.
Point 2: It is impossible to develop ethics in a single lifetime.
Point 3: We should base our ethics off what people did before, somewhat insinuating the bible here.
Ok, to address these, Point 1, I agree. Ethics are a human concern and something that adjusts with the changing zeitgeist (German for spirit of the times, great word for this type of discussion). We learn from the mistakes that came before and we derive our ethics and morality in the hopes of making the world better.
Point 2: Erm? I'm going to come back to the changing zeitgeist here. We do form our morality and ethics within our lives, we kind of have to. Will these be the ethics of societys forever? I certainly hope not, we punish non-violent offenders, oppress minoritys (both racial and financial) and execute our criminals. Our prison system is a nightmare. I could go on for a while, but you get my point; our system leaves much to be desired. This doesn't mean we're not ethical, it means that (hopefully) we're trying to find a better system of rules. This brings me to...
Point 3: No. Ish. We base our ethics on things that came before, but we do it by 1. going with our evolved sense of empathy and 2. by learning from example and experience. We most certainly do not take our ethics from the bible. Now I'm trying to avoid strawmaning you here, so feel free to correct me if that last sentence is not what you were trying to say.
I agree with your last statement "Our generation feeds off the previous generations and pours into the next generation" fully. That is exactly what we do, and exactly why the ethics of the bible no longer apply. The we learn and we get better. The spread of information technology has done amazing things for the acceleration of this process, and acting like some teaching from 2000 years ago where a guy repeated some wisdom that had already been long formulated (I can't remember if I've mentioned Jainism to you before, but...check it out, they scooped most of Jesus' moral teachings by a few thousand years) is still groundbreakingly relevant today is...shortsighted to say the least.
A discussion of ethics begins with considering who benefits. I believe that it must be grounded in the desire to increase the sum total of human happiness (I'm not a strict utilitarian, but they got some stuff right). I know that if it is set up to "honor god" or to "do what god wants us to" that it is a system ripe for exploitation by someone who will tell you they know the mind of something that is unknowable. If religion is not evil for anything else, it is for setting up this doorway to the exploitation of it's adherents.
It's late so I'll stop here and let you reply. I'll probably put something up to briefly address your other post as well.
Point 1: It takes time for ethics to develop.
Point 2: It is impossible to develop ethics in a single lifetime.
Point 3: We should base our ethics off what people did before, somewhat insinuating the bible here.
Ok, to address these, Point 1, I agree. Ethics are a human concern and something that adjusts with the changing zeitgeist (German for spirit of the times, great word for this type of discussion). We learn from the mistakes that came before and we derive our ethics and morality in the hopes of making the world better.
Point 2: Erm? I'm going to come back to the changing zeitgeist here. We do form our morality and ethics within our lives, we kind of have to. Will these be the ethics of societys forever? I certainly hope not, we punish non-violent offenders, oppress minoritys (both racial and financial) and execute our criminals. Our prison system is a nightmare. I could go on for a while, but you get my point; our system leaves much to be desired. This doesn't mean we're not ethical, it means that (hopefully) we're trying to find a better system of rules. This brings me to...
Point 3: No. Ish. We base our ethics on things that came before, but we do it by 1. going with our evolved sense of empathy and 2. by learning from example and experience. We most certainly do not take our ethics from the bible. Now I'm trying to avoid strawmaning you here, so feel free to correct me if that last sentence is not what you were trying to say.
I agree with your last statement "Our generation feeds off the previous generations and pours into the next generation" fully. That is exactly what we do, and exactly why the ethics of the bible no longer apply. The we learn and we get better. The spread of information technology has done amazing things for the acceleration of this process, and acting like some teaching from 2000 years ago where a guy repeated some wisdom that had already been long formulated (I can't remember if I've mentioned Jainism to you before, but...check it out, they scooped most of Jesus' moral teachings by a few thousand years) is still groundbreakingly relevant today is...shortsighted to say the least.
A discussion of ethics begins with considering who benefits. I believe that it must be grounded in the desire to increase the sum total of human happiness (I'm not a strict utilitarian, but they got some stuff right). I know that if it is set up to "honor god" or to "do what god wants us to" that it is a system ripe for exploitation by someone who will tell you they know the mind of something that is unknowable. If religion is not evil for anything else, it is for setting up this doorway to the exploitation of it's adherents.
It's late so I'll stop here and let you reply. I'll probably put something up to briefly address your other post as well.
Goal of our On Going Long Term Discussions
I thought it might be good here to talk about the goal of all of this Hot Air or Hot Circuit Boards we are having between each other.
I think the goal of our discussions on Atheism and Christianity/religions should push us to a greater understanding of the other's point of view as opposed to a dividing to the extremes of our own camps of thought. I think at the end we should be closer through understanding and empathy of the others points and world view, than completely dogmatic in our own belief system that we can't even talk anymore.
Timothy Keller talks about the goal of a relationship between Skeptics and Believers in his book The Reason for God. In the introduction he talks about the goal of both. Here is an excerpt...
"At the end of the process(discussing doubts to faith and such), even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility. Then there will be an understanding, sympathy, and respect for the other side that did not exist before. Believers and nonbelievers will rise to the level of disagreement rather than denouncing one another. This happens when each side has learned to represent the other's argument in its strongest and most positive form. Only then is it safe and fair to disagree with it. That achieves civility in a pluralistic society, which is no small thing."
My hope Joe is that you and I can reason through this cloud of doubt together and really get at what the other is believing and after. I don't want this discussion to sink to the level of bickering or bashing the other persons point of view just because you have a different point of view. We will always have pluralistic societies and the only way for us to find peace is when we can get away from ignorance of other belief systems and people groups. When we really study and learn about someone's contradictory point of view our hate and rejection for them decreases greatly and at the end of the day we are friends. I would love to see this happen in our discussions.
That being said, I know that I have a lot more homework and learning to do on your world view than you do on Christianity. Thank you for the books you have loaned me and I will work on trying to get through those and give you questions I have from them. I think here and now it would be helpful if you let me ask a lot of questions so as to understand your perspective on things. I would encourage you to seek a way to also empathize with Christians as to why they would believe in God. A quick look at society shows that there are many intellectual and extremely smart people who believe in God. These people have reached this world view not through blind faith but have spent years in doubt and discussion and then concluded to follow Christ. I hope you will apply your empathy to these people and understand why and how they could believe in God. There are many who have gone before us who have struggled with these concepts and my prayer for us is that we too can struggle with these concepts in a smarter way instead of the dismissive way the extremist in each of our camps of skepticism and religion usually handle this discussion. I think we must listen completely and fully to the others perspective and not fight for own position in fear that our own position will loose. I think both Christians and Atheist should not react out of fear that their camp will some how be defeated but we should act with civility in conversation where when we disagree with each other we are still at peace.
If it is Truth we both seek I believe that and I think you also believe that we will find it. Let me quote one more thing of ancient wisdom from my own tradition by the Jewish leader and teacher of Paul, Gamaliel talking about how to handle the new Christians...
"Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."
If you believe that Truth will be discovered then let us journey together to find that Truth by taking a honest look into each others world views and let us both strive to believe that if a man truly pursues Truth is attainable. At the end of all this I would like to see us reach peace even if we reach disagreement.
I think the goal of our discussions on Atheism and Christianity/religions should push us to a greater understanding of the other's point of view as opposed to a dividing to the extremes of our own camps of thought. I think at the end we should be closer through understanding and empathy of the others points and world view, than completely dogmatic in our own belief system that we can't even talk anymore.
Timothy Keller talks about the goal of a relationship between Skeptics and Believers in his book The Reason for God. In the introduction he talks about the goal of both. Here is an excerpt...
"At the end of the process(discussing doubts to faith and such), even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility. Then there will be an understanding, sympathy, and respect for the other side that did not exist before. Believers and nonbelievers will rise to the level of disagreement rather than denouncing one another. This happens when each side has learned to represent the other's argument in its strongest and most positive form. Only then is it safe and fair to disagree with it. That achieves civility in a pluralistic society, which is no small thing."
My hope Joe is that you and I can reason through this cloud of doubt together and really get at what the other is believing and after. I don't want this discussion to sink to the level of bickering or bashing the other persons point of view just because you have a different point of view. We will always have pluralistic societies and the only way for us to find peace is when we can get away from ignorance of other belief systems and people groups. When we really study and learn about someone's contradictory point of view our hate and rejection for them decreases greatly and at the end of the day we are friends. I would love to see this happen in our discussions.
That being said, I know that I have a lot more homework and learning to do on your world view than you do on Christianity. Thank you for the books you have loaned me and I will work on trying to get through those and give you questions I have from them. I think here and now it would be helpful if you let me ask a lot of questions so as to understand your perspective on things. I would encourage you to seek a way to also empathize with Christians as to why they would believe in God. A quick look at society shows that there are many intellectual and extremely smart people who believe in God. These people have reached this world view not through blind faith but have spent years in doubt and discussion and then concluded to follow Christ. I hope you will apply your empathy to these people and understand why and how they could believe in God. There are many who have gone before us who have struggled with these concepts and my prayer for us is that we too can struggle with these concepts in a smarter way instead of the dismissive way the extremist in each of our camps of skepticism and religion usually handle this discussion. I think we must listen completely and fully to the others perspective and not fight for own position in fear that our own position will loose. I think both Christians and Atheist should not react out of fear that their camp will some how be defeated but we should act with civility in conversation where when we disagree with each other we are still at peace.
If it is Truth we both seek I believe that and I think you also believe that we will find it. Let me quote one more thing of ancient wisdom from my own tradition by the Jewish leader and teacher of Paul, Gamaliel talking about how to handle the new Christians...
"Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."
If you believe that Truth will be discovered then let us journey together to find that Truth by taking a honest look into each others world views and let us both strive to believe that if a man truly pursues Truth is attainable. At the end of all this I would like to see us reach peace even if we reach disagreement.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
From Happiness to Ethics
Why can't you find ethics from an ancient world? It seems to me the development of Ethics and morality would take more than one life time to Debate, Talk about, Get Confused, Debate some more, Write some books, get the books read by the world, then have the world accept said beliefs, and then Ethics would be transmitted to all cultures and people groups. For this to happen in one life time would be impossible. Also those having the time to debate the ethics and morality that the rest of the population should adhere to would have a lot of control over the population in their one generation. It seems you have to base as I do your ethics and morality on a people that have come before, at least as a jumping point as to what should be discussed. Our generation feeds off the previous generations and pours into the next generation. What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
