Militant atheist Sam Harris has been making quite a stir lately with his best-selling polemics against religion and his in-your-face public appearances:
… [while] debating a former priest before a packed auditorium… he condemns the God of the Old Testament for a host of sins, including support for slavery. He drop-kicks the New Testament, likening the story of Jesus to a fairy tale. He savages the Koran, calling it “a manifesto for religious divisiveness…” [Link]
He goes beyond the usual attacks on fundamentalists to attack moderates for being “enablers” and apologists for more extreme actions:
Religious moderates, Harris says in his patient and imperturbable style, have immunized religion from rational discussion by nurturing the idea that faith is so personal and private that it is beyond criticism, even when horrific crimes are committed in its name. [Link]
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p>He sees all religion as fundamentally dangerous, especially in the post 9/11 world:
… he demonstrates the behavior he believes atheists should adopt when talking with Christians. “Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you,” he writes, addressing his imaginary opponent, “dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well – by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God…” [Link]The worst part, Harris says, is this: Because Christians and Jews cling to their “delusions,” they are in no position to criticize Muslims for theirs. And, as he italicizes it in his new book for maximum effect, ” most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith. ” [Italics his] [Link]
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p>Despite his deep and abiding enmity to all religions, he finds one acceptable:
He endorses Jainism, a religion-philosophy from India that finds God in the unchanging traits of the human soul. But everyone who organizes his or her life around an ancient text that purports to convey the words and sentiments of God — Harris would like you to surrender your prayers, history and traditions. You are welcome to check out Jainism, but Harris recommends that you accept his conclusion, which is that we live in a universe without God. Deal with it. [Link]
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p>Somehow I don’t think that the Jains are going to get an influx of converts. And that’s OK with him:
It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person’s religious beliefs. The problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable, and incompatible with genuine morality. The truth is that the only rational basis for morality is a concern for the happiness and suffering of other conscious beings. [Link]How exactly the faithful will transition to a godless, Good Book-less cosmology is not exactly clear. Harris isn’t sure it will ever happen. But he is heartened by countries such as Sweden, where he claims 80 percent of the populace do not believe in God. [Link]
My very favorite part of this story? The fact that his (un)faith came to him in a vision of secular humanism:
At age 19, he and a college friend tried MDMA, better known as ecstasy, and the experience altered his view of the role that love could play in the world. (“I realized that it was possible to be a human being who wished others well all the time, reflexively.”) He dropped out of Stanford, where he was an English major, in his sophomore year and started to study Buddhism and meditation. He flew around the country and around the world, to places such as India and Nepal, often for silent retreats that went on for months. [Link]
I’m curious as to why Buddhism doesn’t pass muster with him any more. Does he not consider it a religion at all, or does he have a beef with it to?
More on Jainism: Wikipedia, BBC
Update 1: Sam Harris explains why he thinks religion is bad [long clip]:
this is what gets me actually… your consideration of issues in your arguments seems one-sided, i.e. you mention what is ‘relevant’ to you only. it sometimes leaves the big picture incomplete for the reader…
whose perspective should i write from? i don’t care about espressa’s spirituality, that’s her business, i don’t know her. the only way it would be relevant if she wants to talk to me about it, and i don’t see her emailing me privately. for me religion is just another choice someone makes in their life. so long as they don’t try to force my opinions to match theirs i don’t give it much consideration just like i don’t really care that some people are into raw food.
how can you say that science is a “system embedded in a human social enterprise” but then earlier write that science is “value neutral?”
again, back to the knife…couches are made by people and used by people, but that doesn’t mean that the values of people are relevant to couches. science is an instrument that can be used toward whatever values people have, and it can be distorted by the values of the people practicing it. but, it is not the end. religion, going back to the main point, is often presented as an ends, offering ultimate, normative transcendent truths. there is a of transcendence in what science can discern about the universe around us, but anyone who has done science knows that the day to day is generally pretty hum-drum.
as for other ways to discover fact. is meat bad? cook it and eat it. then you’ll know its bad. or, if you want to do it more ‘scientifically’ sent it to the lab and have them quantify the number of bacteria per square inch, and the ecology of the flora.
razib — i too have probably been confused by some of your ideas. might it not be more accurate for you to use “fundamentalism” in place of “religion” in some of your arguments, or perhaps another word that would clearly communicate that you are not talking about religion as a whole?
regarding something you wrote earlier — those for whom god is something personal, special and positive take offense when i attack the god of the fundamentalists because of a confusion of names. now, is it up to me to make the distinction between these two gods?
yes!
might it not be more accurate for you to use “fundamentalism” in place of “religion” in some of your arguments, or perhaps another word that would clearly communicate that you are not talking about religion as a whole?
i use the word fundamentalism copiously throughout my comments.
those for whom god is something personal, special and positive take offense when i attack the god of the fundamentalists because of a confusion of names. now, is it up to me to make the distinction between these two gods?
yes!
look, if i attack the god of the fundamentalists you should be quite confident that i’m not talking whatever entity you believe in or intuit. what’s in a name? isn’t your concern the substance?
it is not the end
why, because it is self-correcting? i suppose that would depend on your definition of fact, the thing that science is supposed to be discovering. and if fact changes so readily, then that doesn’t seem to be any more reliable than religious explanation or superstition.
regarding your meat example, getting sick after eating meat does not prove that the meat was bad. if you really wanted to prove the meat was bad, you’d still have to jump through some basic scientific method in order to make your point. still waiting to hear about a different fact-discovering method … one that does not simply involve the elimination of one of the steps of the scientific method.
i suppose that would depend on your definition of fact, the thing that science is supposed to be discovering. and if fact changes so readily, then that doesn’t seem to be any more reliable than religious explanation or superstition.
this is the same argument the creationists use for why evolution isn’t fact because science changes. i do hope you stop teaching science, you have a bad attitude about it. just because newtonian mechanics was superseded by relativity doesn’t mean that relatively doesn’t owe something to mechanics, science’s change of fact tends toward convergence upon increased predictivity and granularity. mendelian genetics overthrew the original darwinian conception of evolution, but in the end mendelian genetics made evolutionary theory more rigorous and precise, with a better description of the facts as they were, a more accurate and precise one in relation to the extant data. but you knew that, anyone who analogizes religious explanation as on the same order of precision or accuracy as scientific modelling isn’t serious. you just want to play word games, and it’s pretty disgusting, but hey, perhaps you’ve found the equivalent for me for religiosity. someone who sits around on a computer typing away as if witch doctors are just as relevant as medical doctors. for your next post please go down to the local magick store and make a comment via a spell.
regarding your meat example, getting sick after eating meat does not prove that the meat was bad.
i said nothing about getting sick. taste it.
but you don’t present your arguments as such, and that’s the problem. you blame religion and god as a whole without distinguishing. you make huge blanket statements quite often. it’s irritating.
What if they suddenly became very effectual and ‘hijacked’ the good name of atheists everywhere, imbuing it with their particular perspectives, would you adopt a new title? Be bullied into adding a qualifier? I hope not.
Yes, I too get annoyed with hypotheticals, so don’t feel compelled to answer.
But its not god who deserves to be attacked — its the man that wields the knife. Don’t let him scapegoat the god of sugar & spice!
brava, espressa!
but you don’t present your arguments as such, and that’s the problem. you blame religion and god as a whole without distinguishing. you make huge blanket statements quite often. it’s irritating.
probably because i don’t make the blanket statements which you would agree with! you know what’s irritating, when someone makes critiques without an identifiable handle.
What if they suddenly became very effectual and ‘hijacked’ the good name of atheists everywhere, imbuing it with their particular perspectives, would you adopt a new title? Be bullied into adding a qualifier? I hope not.
you know you really need to walk in someone’s shoes. i went to high school in a very conservative area. when i told people i was an atheist they would ask me if i was a communist (this was early 90s when communism was still a semi-issue). so yes, i spent a lot of time explaining that i wasn’t a communist. communism did imply atheism so i took no great offense, that’s how it played out at that time and place. atheism was banned in indonesia precisely because of its association with communism.
p.s. and some atheists promoted names like ‘humanist’ in part to disassociate from communists during the cold war. shit happens. it isn’t like we’re religiously attached to the term ‘atheist,’ it’s just a word.
the (highly oversimplified) scientific process to me:
hypothesis based on a rationale (slected pre-existing facts serve as the premise usually) experimental methodology to gather evidence conclusions derived from evidence, sometimes lead to the generation of new facts, sometimes dismiss a pre-existing one (null hypothesis)
science is this process… facts are on either side of it. their balance is dynamic, subject to change based on the experimental evidence acquired and conclusions drawn.
this model of scientific process is employed because it is socially accepted… it has ‘neutral’ value bc it is ‘supposed to’ be objective.
i didnt get the couch and meat analogies… i’m out for the night!
hey razib,
i do hope you stop teaching science, you have a bad attitude about it.
um, yes … i kind of already know this, hence the re-evaluation of career choice. but thank you ever so much for your career advice??
i’m a little surprised by the tone of your response. i’m sorry if i offended you, that really was never my intent. i didn’t realize that i was making you so upset, nor was i trying to play games, as you suggest.
anyway, let us suppose for a moment that i am a disgusting person who did believe in witch doctors and post comments via spells. is it really necessary to be so rude? i was never trying to make you feel stupid or personally attack you as you were apparently intent on doing to me.
well, off to the magick store …
That’s a good point. Honestly, I did not think about the historic perspective when I made that statement. Nowadays Occam’s razor is often called upon by scientists to say that the idea of God is unnecessary, I was refering to that.
In fact, it seems that belief in God was magnified,instead of diminished, by an interest in science during that period, and heretic thoughts were pretty much the domain of philosophers. This seems to have been the case at least till the theory of evolution, which seems to have been the first great science vs religion face-off. I quite simply do not have an explanation for this, except that this run-in with the Bible forced scientists to think of science as a universally applicable and valid route to discover knowledge for the first time. Newton, for example, dabbled in astrology and alchemy, which does suggest that he did not think of the scientific method as we do, or that it applied to everything. I have to go now, but I’d be glad to hear if someone has more perspective to offer on this.
Nowadays Occam’s razor is often called upon by scientists to say that the idea of God is unnecessary, I was refering to that.
but remember that occam was a cleric. he was an opponent of thomistic rationalism, but his basic aim was to protect and insulate religious faith being mixed with philosophy. but look where it got him!
Newton, for example, dabbled in astrology and alchemy, which does suggest that he did not think of the scientific method as we do, or that it applied to everything.
keynes termed newton ‘the last of the sumerians.’
i tend to think that the dominance of irreligiosity in modern science is in part a function of the culture of science as it evolved, so to speak….
Yes, also science seem to be clashing with religion as it grows, specially as it seeks to explain what used to be the domain of religion. My feeling is that many scientists now feel that they have to choose, specially with the growth of the Intelligent Design movement, etc.
Yes, also science seem to be clashing with religion as it grows, specially as it seeks to explain what used to be the domain of religion.
actually, i tend to be skeptical that the domain of religion really encapsulated much of what science does today. i think that some philosophical theists, especially in clerical professions, might conceive of religion in a systematic manner as a way to model the world around us. e.g., the integration of ptolemaic astronomy into early christian thought, or the 4-fold division of elements in western religious thought (christianity, judaism and islam inclusive), but the vast majority of religionists aren’t concerned with such issues. but, someone who becomes a ph.d. scientist might very well be the type who would have fused religion and world modelling in such a way in the past. i tend to believe that creationism or ‘vedic science’ proponents are actually modern developments of particular religious cults who want to accrue some of the prestige of science.
p.s. scientific daoism was a lot like science actually in that it attempted empirically to discover exilers which would attain immortality…but i don’t know if you could consider this a religion in a sense we understand it….
I am inclined to agree, but there is a clash in a more indirect way. Organized religion has traditionally benefited greatly from the sense of mystery that a lack of understanding the world around us creates. This is both in terms of claims to be able to do miracles, and also the standard God of the gaps argument. So even though it was not important that religion could not satisfactorily model the world, the fact that no one could, was important. With technical and scientific advancement, both of these claims are disappearing.
Organized religion has traditionally benefited greatly from the sense of mystery that a lack of understanding the world around us creates. This is both in terms of claims to be able to do miracles, and also the standard God of the gaps argument.
ah, here you have hit upon a major intellectual issue: to what extent did ‘white magic’ play a role in the spread of ‘higher religions.’ contra your assertion some scholars would assert that the rise of ethical religions after 600 BCE was actually a step away from shamanism and the magical tendency in religion. even today the catholic church in europe has waged a campaign against belief in astrology and other superstitions precisely because they attack magic. the “bundle of goods” which higher religions provide are often distinctly un-magical and so otherworldly that they are outside of the domain of science. for example, higher religions provide salvation, but this is not verifiable. higher religions emphasize ethics and rituals as opposed to naked propitiation or purchase of charms and spells. in contrast, “non-high” religions provide magic and shamans often perform the role that therapists and doctors do in our modern societies. i believe that the god of the gaps argument is appealing again to intellectuals. i simply an skeptical that the vast majority of humans are particular concerned about deep existential questions to the point of elucidating them verbally in a systematic manner.
note: to anticipate objections, of course the distinction i make is artificial insofar as the high religions have their own magics. my main contention is events like exorcisms are exceptional, not typical, and there is a reason that local priests who operate as shamans and witch-doctors are often considered a ‘debased’ form of the religion (insofar as they have assimilated back toward local religiosity).
I really have to go now, but some quick points. I haven’t heard of these scholars(my understanding of Abrahamic religions is somewhat limited). My personal belief has been that the rise of centralized ‘higher’ religions had more to do with the rise of centralized states. Local cults tended to flourish long after the ‘higher’ religions became established, but they were always suppressed by the court, because they provided centres for dissent. I am not sure how far these new religions did away with the idea of miracles. Both Moses and Jesus’ claim to divinity rests to quite an extent on their ability to do miracles, and one had to be able to do miracles to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic church. Also many Briton were convinced a pox would visit their land when Henry VIII was excommunicated, contrary to being worried about the afterlife. If the Pope does a miracle tomorrow, I am sure it will not be downplayed by the Vatican 🙂 . I’d love to hear what you have to say on this.
Razib, I don’t have any proof for this, but it is very likely that most of the scientists that you mentioned and others could be closeted atheists or agnostics. Church had lot of power then and prosecuted even priests for minor or major hereseis. Peter Abelard comes to mind for one. Agreed that he was not a scientist but was at the cutting edge of reason during his life time.
I have a question which I had been asking myself (and reading stuff) but don’t know the answer. You (I too) divided the believers as imposers and non-imposers and stated that your problem is mainly with imposers and non-imposers are irrelevant to the argument here. Since non-imposers constitute a large segment of society, wouldn’t it be better to attack the imposers in such a was as not to offend the non-imposers? I am not saying that your (and Sam Harris’s and Dawkin’s) method if incorrect but that another method might be more effective.
As the people that are trying to change the current status-quo isn’t it in our interest to make this distinction and address the problematic one first?
Oh yes there are — many, in fact. An easy, and very clear, example: I will quote the beginning of the very first page of the Guru Granth Sahib:
“There is only one God; his name is Truth. He is the Creator, Without fear, without hate, A being beyond time/immortal, Unborn/outside the cycle of birth & death, Self-existent”
This is termed the Mool Mantar and is the absolute core of what Sikhism defines as the nature of God, although this is not meant to be an exhaustive desciption. It was written by Guru Nanak based on his own direct experience of God, and was supported by the subsequent Gurus, including Guru Gobind Singh who also described his own interaction with God immediately prior to his last human birth.
Other desciptions of God were also mentioned, including one stating that God “holds us close to him like a parent hugs his child”, all of which have significant ramifications. Note that these are stated as facts — not “maybe” or “perhaps God is like such and such”.
I think that it may be worthwhile clarifying what the Guru Granth Sahib consists of, for the benefit of those here who have either not read the holy book or are not familiar with the details of the Sikh religion. There are certain “metaphysical” elements involving the nature of God, the universe, various other issues such as reincarnation etc, but the bulk of Sikhism discusses moral/ethical human conduct as this is regarded as having a direct impact on our souls and therefore our actions (and, consequently, our fates, both short-term and long-term). Wider concepts are present as already mentioned, but these are kept to a minimum, certainly compared with many other “organised” major religions and their respective holy books. The same applies to descriptions of various alleged historical events. Therefore, there is generally little incompatibility between Sikh teachings and ongoing scientific developments (besides scientifically untestable notions such as God and the soul, neither of which can be “analysed under a microscope” according to Sikhism but can only be experienced directly), and in fact there are even matters such as Guru Gobind Singh’s description of the universe as being “egg-shaped”, 300 years before modern-day scientists recently postulated that this may indeed be the case.
Also, for the record, the Sikh Gurus promoted all of their teachings, including the contents of the Guru Granth Sahib, as being inalienable fact and the truth from start to finish. Now, there is no obligation for anyone else to believe what they preached, and blind faith is actively discouraged; there is also no “punishment of death” for “disbelievers” or any punishment lined up for such people in the afterlife. However, it must be stressed that the Gurus said that their teachings were “true” in the literal sense of the word and not theoretical speculation or mere philosophising; indeed, they explicitly spoke out against what they regarded as “idle metaphysical hypothesising”, as they deemed such activities to be time-wasting “mental gymnastics” with relatively little spiritual benefit.
This isn’t a competition between Sikh religious music and the above. Also, whether the above actually “do things for the soul” is a matter of opinion and is also going to be very dependent on the specific individual and their motivations for listening to the music (or singing it). It’s also going to depend on the specific song. The degree to which it supposedly benefits the soul isn’t necessarily going to be the same each time.
From a Sikh perspective, all this means is that your grandmother’s soul was becoming closer to God and therefore her clarity — mental, emotional, and ultimately spiritual — was increasing to the level of allowing her to realise these “truths”. The Sikh Gurus never claimed to have a monopoly on truth. However, the extent to which each human being gains this level of awareness will depend on the extent to which they practice the matters I mentioned in the second paragraph of post #118.
Which again leads me to an important point. Practising these recommendations and/or listening to Sikh kirtan isn’t about reaching some kind of whipped-up “religious frenzy” — it’s about gaining a sufficient level of inner calm and clarity to enable the mind, heart and soul to become completely synchronised. Ideally all the time. Which is the whole aim. Sikhism isn’t about blindly believing what the scriptures may teach and then “hoping for the best” regarding our fates in the afterlife; it’s about tangibly facilitating a direct connection with God and an awareness of the divine essence of the entire universe, during this lifetime, so that the individuals concerned can gain an awareness of the truth themselves, with no “middle-man” between them and God and with no need to blindly believe anything any religious book or associated priest/prophet/guru/messiah/saint/etc tells them. You learn everything first-hand.
In short, it’s about gaining real knowledge and real awareness of the divine, not just “believing” something based on assumptions or taking someone else’s word for it. I cannot emphasise this enough, because it’s critical to the ongoing discussion regarding the difference between mere “faith” and genuine spirituality.
Excellent discussion between Razib, Sakshi & Co, by the way. I’m quietly observing it 🙂
Great stuff.
Right, it cannot be as long as a human being is behind it their passions and preferences are behind it too. On a related note, Newton was in fact not doing science. He was trying to discover God’s universe and was doing theology as far as he was concerned. He was a deeply religious man and in fact there are a couple of books out on how it was christianiy that gave birth to science because all the intelligent, curious minds of the day were busy trying to figure out God’s universe and God’s will etc. etc. So, if there’s one good thing that’s come out of Christianity, it is that it actually gave birth to the modern sciences. But it also led to a 1000 years of dark ages and that is the problem with religion – it’s controlling, intolerant nature. And since someone raised this point, this is true mainly of the JC religions and not the others since other religious did not act in the name of god.
and in fact there are even matters such as Guru Gobind Singh’s description of the universe as being “egg-shaped”, 300 years before modern-day scientists recently postulated that this may indeed be the case.
How did he find out?
“Abrahamic” may be a better term, since it includes some interpretations of orthodox Islam too.
The problem is the idea of a “chosen people” (ie. one group of believers are “God’s people” above all others) and the implication of only one religion being “directly from God”, with all others being dead-ends in terms of reaching the divine either in this lifetime or the next.
Hence many of the conflicts (yes I know, that’s probably the understatement of the century).
AlMfD,
Being totally aware of God in the tangible sense reveals such things to you, apparently.
Also bear in mind that he had already “achieved liberation” in a previous human lifetime and was already in “heaven” (for want of a better word) before his re-birth 300 years ago upon God’s request*, but I don’t know if he became aware of the true shape of the universe during his previous lifetime or if it was something he found out in the afterlife. He just had a supernatural awareness of a lot of things; all the Sikh Gurus did, although they didn’t like excessively advertising the fact and they taught that people shouldn’t be too preoccupied with matters such as miracles, prophecies and so on.
*God needed to persuade him a bit, it seems — not really surprising, as I can imagine that having to come back to the “tamasha”/hassle that is human life on Earth would be a pretty unpleasent experience if one had already reached Paradise !
My personal belief has been that the rise of centralized ‘higher’ religions had more to do with the rise of centralized states.
yes, this was a necessary precondition.
I am not sure how far these new religions did away with the idea of miracles. Both Moses and Jesus’ claim to divinity rests to quite an extent on their ability to do miracles, and one had to be able to do miracles to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic church. Also many Briton were convinced a pox would visit their land when Henry VIII was excommunicated, contrary to being worried about the afterlife.
i am not claiming these religions did away with magic & miracles, but they constrained their impact so that religous professionals didn’t have to put up.” the power of local shamans and wizards if often predicated on their magical abilities, and so it is uncertain (their ‘magic’ obviously rests on the belief of the believers and their own psychological charisma). in contrast, a priest of the catholic church performs services which are not as easily testable. consider the ‘miracle’ of transubstantiation, a lot of greek philosophy goes into ‘proving’ that you can’t really empirically figure out that the bread & wine are actually flesh and blood! similarly, christians are often saying ‘the age of miracles is over!’ in islam muhammad didn’t really perform his miracles, the muslim testament of his connection with the divine is the koran, whose poetic beauty and elegance emergent from the mouth of an illiterate is said to be proof enough. now, you are correct that even ‘higher religions’ have magical tendencies. these are often situational though. when christianity spread into northern europe after the fall of the roman empire christian priests would bring ‘white magic’ to battle local pagan magics. they would sanctify holy wells and what not. but, after this initial period magic tended to slow disappear as it wasn’t a core aspect of the religion, which was focused on sacraments whose magical aspect was more spiritual and less physical.
for references, i would suggest a theory of religion by rodney stark (who uses rational choice to analyze religion as competing firms), while james c. russells the germanization of early medieval christianity for an analysis of how magic was used in early christianity to combat paganism in newly converted areas.
I don’t have any proof for this, but it is very likely that most of the scientists that you mentioned and others could be closeted atheists or agnostics.
this might be so, but in the absence of proof what is the most parsimonious position? in any case, we do know some scientists like newton were religious (even if they were heretics), because their private papers were littered with their beliefs.
As the people that are trying to change the current status-quo isn’t it in our interest to make this distinction and address the problematic one first?
i don’t think there is one strategy. i think harris and dawkins are essential for the ecology of the debate. that way, other atheists can say, “we’re the good atheists, trust us, we aren’t like harris and dawkins who are intolerant,” before starting their argument. additionally, not all religions are the same. there was widespread support in the muslim world for the death sentence handed to abdul rahman’s conversion to christianity. in the UK being non-religious and from a muslim background is tolerated, but there has been vandalism and attacks on individuals/families who convert to christianity. this attitude needs to be changed, and we can’t allow ‘cultural evolution’ to take care of it, people’s lives are being effected.
Sam Harris is not an atheist as that term is popularly understtod. He overwhelmingly preferences Buddhism and “Eastern” spiritual paths. Religion to him is ideally the search for what Otto calls the “mysterium tremendum.” The journey – to him – is both “rational” and “verifiable.” Read the final chapter of his book “The End of Faith” and especially the footnotes therein, where he praises Mahayana Buddhism (and also Advaita Vedanta) and declares that the West has not produced a philospher as great as Nagarjuna.
What he’s really after is the Abrahamic God.
atheism and religion are not disjoint sets. one can be religious and an atheist, and one can be non-religious but a theist.
I have been observing this thread but will have to add some point. The defination of religion/God has been used in a very Islam/christianity/judaism fashion. These defination does not fit in well with philosophical and social structures of other societies. Chinese did study buddhist scriptures… But there wasnt a conversion per say. Also I am not a big fan of “higher religion” label particularly when Islam is in the higher sect and other traditions like dharma or miri-piri or continuation of tribal practices as lower religion. Many tribal practices are done as tradition as folk song, meeting rituals, food appriciation rather than regurgitating ‘complete all knowing knowledge about a creator’. A tribal practice from tarai region while urinating and deficating is to say in nearly intact prakrit “I ate and i expunged, I am the same as other creatures” IMNHO that is a better and saner practice than asking for protection fron Jinns. These cultures had no problem discussing and adopting facts, knowledge and appriciating other cultures rather than a philosophy which was based on separting groups into darul islam darul harb(islam/war)
In other words you are not a deep enough thinker to grasp metaphysics/spirituality. That is the crux of your problem.
Anyone who thinks nordic paganism makes more sense than Mahayana Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Sufi Pantheism etc, is clearly a mediocre intellect.
The defination of religion/God has been used in a very Islam/christianity/judaism fashion.
65% of the world’s population. also, if you look at the places like singapore and south korea with large christian and buddhist populations the buddhists (e.g., won) are starting to imitate christian tendencies to compete. one might say the same in india, some assert that ‘hindutva’ is a reaction and emulation of islamic and christian ways of looking at the world.
i also disagree with the idea that chinese did not ‘convert’ to buddhism per se. if you look at the polemics against buddhists by daoists and especially confucian mandarins you see that it was viewed as an alien intrusion which destabilized life (the withdrawl from the world).
Anyone who thinks nordic paganism makes more sense than Mahayana Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Sufi Pantheism etc, is clearly a mediocre intellect.
classy.
Its as stupid to attack the concept of God on the basis of evil abominations done using his name by a fraction of ignorant theists as it is to attack the concept of Science on the basis of the even greater evil abominations committed by votaries of science such as the nazis and communists of recent memory.
The error of the atheists lies in throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Razib,
followed by:
As you can see, possessing theoretical knowledge of complex metaphysics doesn’t necessarily confer compassion and decency on the religious disciple either.
Which, ironically, is one of the integral teachings of Sikhism and one of the major points I’ve been making here all along 😉
And remember my previous comments about “pointless mental gymnastics and metaphysical speculation”.
But we sure can imagine the horrible genocides perpetrated under the influence of “scientific” racism. How conveniently you forget this recent history.
But we sure can imagine the horrible genocides perpetrated under the influence of “scientific” racism. How conveniently you forget this recent history.
again, to repeat (speaking of mediocre intellects), horror was done with science, not in the name of science. communists killed to usher a protelarian utopia. the nazis killed for the sake of the volk. neither of these were scientific concepts (the nazis banned books published by physical anthropologists which suggested that only 5% of germans were pure aryans).
some assert that ‘hindutva’ is a reaction and emulation of islamic and christian ways of looking at the world.
I fully agree. There is nothing wrong with Christian and Islamic way but couching Dharmic religions in those terms is totally false strictly from a purist viewpoint. They (Hinduvtas) do have the freedom to define that way, though.
With due respect, Jai Singh is doing same to his own religion – presenting it as homogenized, monolith with strict (or a bandwidth of) boundary conditions (using a scientific term here). From a faith viewpoint, he has every right but from an academic viwpoint, that is very contrary to way things grow in Indian subcontinent over the centuries. For that matter, even Paganism in Middle East, Judiaism, Chistrianity have strong common thread via Old Testament and New Testament, and keeps evolving. Even the epiphany of gurus/ son of Gods is within the context of the culture at that time, and not an isolated strain. For that matter, Chrisitanity in South America, and Africa is very different from Middle East and Europe.
Two last points:
1) Science is anything but objective or deviod of religion – read Galileo, Age of Earth controversary, Hutton’s ideas and their clash with the clergy, Lord Kelvin, Plate Tectonics, Darwin, Gregor Mendel (a monk himself), DNA structure and its politics. Modern Science as of today has a strong imprint of Judeo-Christian faith, and has centuries of love-hate relationship. The only thing it has going for is that it is self-corrective in long run but does not hold truth, only best possible explanations at that time. Please do read Age of Earth controversary.
2) Regarding God as a cosmic one force is a very old concept and is very different from the Abrahamic God – Read some texts from Bhagavad Gita and its evolution
Hogwash. The weeping Madonnas, Lourdes, stigmata, the requirement of evidence of miracles to qualify for catholic sainthood, the weekly “miracle” of wafers and wine transubstantiating into the actual flesh and blood of the sacrificed god-man Christ, the “miraculous” healings every Sunday in Pentecostal Churches (the fastest growing christian denomination),etc etc, make a lie out of that statement.
Its as stupid to attack the concept of God on the basis of evil abominations done using his name by a fraction of ignorant theists as it is to attack the concept of Science on the basis of the even greater evil abominations committed by votaries of science such as the nazis and communists of recent memory.
But which God? While it has become commonplace to refer to the Abrahamic God in the singular, the Abrahamic Gods all have very different personalities, as any careful reading of the literature whence they emerge will reveal. Jehova has a family resemblance to Allah, but he’s clearly a different character. The New Testament “Father” is almost a blank, sublimated by the “Holy Spirit” and the “Son.” The “Son” himself is depicted differently by different writers. These figures are Harris’ targets.
Also Sufism does not equal Vedanta which does not equal Mahayana. That is a perrenialist reading – a late western interpretation of mysticism. Eg, in Sufi schools, I believe, nonduality can only be epistemological, Allah’s singularity is not finally transcended; in Advaita it is ontological; in Mahayana it is epistemological as well – there are no claims – at least in Madhyamaka, about “ultimate reality,” instead we are confronted with the silent gaze of the Buddha…
Science is anything but objective or deviod of religion – read Galileo, Age of Earth controversary, Hutton’s ideas and their clash with the clergy, Lord Kelvin, Plate Tectonics, Darwin, Gregor Mendel (a monk himself), DNA structure and its politics. Modern Science as of today has a strong imprint of Judeo-Christian faith, and has centuries of love-hate relationship.
Scientific breakthroughs don’t necessarily occur because of rational thinking. They are often insights that relocate the bounds of what is considered rational. E.g., Ptolemy’s model of the universe is perfectly rational, which is why it took thousands of years to be decentered.
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The reason for that should be obvious to anyone who has opened a book on european history. Until the 18th century Enlightenment snatched that power away from them, christians had the nasty habit of burning alive anyone who dared to disagree with the Church’s dogma. The scientists Giordano Bruno and Severetus were burned at the stake for professing the anathemas of pantheism and unitarianism respectively. The first was killed by catholics the second by Calvinist protestants. In such a deadly environment any profession of belief in christianity by scientists and philosophers has to taken with a grain of salt. Especially when you consider that once the christians couldnt kill them for disagreeing with Church dogma, the number of disbelievers shot up dramatically.
And BTW, Newton was most certainly not a “conventional believer”. He did not believe in the christian Trinity, which was/is the core belief of both catholics and protestants.
You are playing dishonest word games. The christians and muslims murdered under the influence of their twisted theistic beliefs, while the nazis committed genocide under the influence of their twisted scientific belief in the innate inferiority of the non-nordic races. To condemn all theism or all science based on the abominable behaviour of some of their votaries is equally foolish.
To condemn all theism or all science based on the abominable behaviour of some of their votaries is equally foolish.
I DID NOT CONDEMN ALL THEISM!!!!!!!!!!!!
this made me happy.
That is asking non-imposers (or the majority of the world population) to distinguish between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ atheists. Harris and Dawkins are the ones that get the media attention (both because non-imposers respond only to them and their admirable willingness to put out their views very vocally) and so it is very difficult to disassociate yourself from Harris and Dawkins when you claim to be an atheist or even agnostic. As you said there are 33mil^33mil gods but only few of them are venerated by the imposers and I don’t have any problem with the remaining gods/religions. I believe in most forms the religion/belief is a soothing effect for people in a rough world. But in the current environment of shrill debate it is tough to avoid the labels of ‘atheist’, ‘theist’, ‘fundamentalist’ to get that point across when discussing effects of religion.
I think we are conflating reason with science in this discussion. Science makes an explicit commitment to trust no tool except reason, and anything which does not stand to reason should ideally be rejected. But science is not reason itself. Scientists do screw up, but that is because rationality is hard, really hard for humans. Scientists do get swayed by emotion/faith/belief, and can move away from their commitment to rationality. However, since science derives its cachet from its claim to be consistently rational, there is very little incentive for scientists to do so, and so screw-ups are relatively rare.
Religion, on the other hand, demands complete amnesty from reason, and that is what makes it so different from science. Of course, people are free to hold any irrational beliefs, so long as they do not act on these beliefs, in ways that harm others. But this is a thin line to walk.
Ok, maybe I get your point now. You mean that the church/ulema deliberately converted the faith ‘business’ from free-market may-the-cleverest-shaman-win to a bureaucratic setup, where anyone who knew the rules could hold the fort? Or do you think there was something more profound going on, where human consciousness moved away from flashier religious experiences to something more spiritual and profound?
I don’t have an opinion on this, except that it is a very interesting idea. The reason why religious consolidation occurred in some parts of the world, and did not occur in others has been a mystery to me. For example, most of the Arab world has accepted Islamic monotheism, except for Egypt where fertility cults still survive and flourish. India is of course another example. Overall I have not discerned any strict preference for monotheism in the laity(for want of a better word), or for a more complex religious experience, though of course this seems to correlate with education.
Thanks. You made my day! 🙂