I’m going to comment on a few lines from a recent letter by Christopher Hitchens:
It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.
i) While it’s good to be emancipated from serving a lesser being, what’s wrong with serving a greater being?
ii) How does atheism emancipate human beings from the manacles of servility? If atheism is true, then everything Hitchens thinks, feels, says, and does is the combined effect of social conditioning, evolutionary programming, genetics, and other natural factors. Nothing could be more servile than his enslavement to forces beyond his ken or his control. He’s just a billiard ball on the pool table of antecedent natural and historical causes. He goes wherever the cosmic cue stick sends him, whenever the cosmic cue stick ends him there.
An ant with delusions of grandeur. Standing on a pebble, the ant “towers” above the lowly grubs and earthworms.
That essential sense of decency is outraged every day. Our theocratic enemy is in plain view. Protean in form, it extends from the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs to the insidious campaigns to have stultifying pseudo-science taught in American schools.
But I thought he just assured us that our “innate solidarity” would emancipate us from “servility and superstition.” Doesn’t seem that our “innate solidarity” is up to the task, given the “daily outrages” of the “theocratic enemy.”
Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice…
i) While it’s good to be emancipated from serving a lesser being, what’s wrong with serving a greater being?
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong, from that greater being's perspective, of course. However, I am unsure how you define "greater" here in your own mind. Multiple qualifications come to mind.
Is this being (assuming the Christian God, and that He exists) greater in terms of power? Most certainly. In terms of the very definition of the Christian God in orthodoxy we have a being which possesses attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. I do not understand all of the philosophical justifications for the following idea, but I agree with it that there can only be one such being in existence, if in fact any such being exists at all. If it is not the only being in existence, then all other beings are inferior in terms of authority, power, and mobility, rendering an absolute state of servitude (or at least dependency) upon the ultimate God-being as certain. I can certainly go along with that.
Is this being greater in morality? Let's take specifically the Calvinist God of Christianity for the sake of discussion. That is a more difficult question to answer in the affirmative I think. This being exists eternally outside of time (or at least, independent of its limitations) and possesses all the other attributes that I mentioned (and more, I'm sure).
Theologically, this being creates and predestines an elect group of humanity and them alone to salvation, while predestining the rest of humanity as a group to be non-elect and therefore to perish in judgment. The selection criteria is hidden and unknown to us, and appears arbitrary to me and others, whether it is or not in actual fact. This God also serves as the root first cause for all evil and suffering, even if His ultimate plan is for good to prevail. The problem is here, that the only standard of goodness that can exist must be revealed by this being and it would be necessarily dependent upon His nature rather than a limitation of His nature or else He is no longer omnipotent, I think. The first four words of Genesis express the root of this theology, "In the beginning God..."
I simply cannot accept the sovereignty of such a being. God becomes the ultimate answer and final reference point for all questions, praise, criticism, and even understanding. This is simply unacceptable to me. I agree with the apostle Paul that God has a right to do as He pleases. But I cannot worship a being who pleases to allow thousands to die in tsunamis, children to starve to death, diseases to ravage the planet, makes impossible demands and then regenerates only His elect to enable them to respond affirmatively to such demands, claims all glory for Himself from every created being, demands worship, punishes unbelief, and eternally torments those He has predestined to judgment. But, God has also predestined me to feel this way. So, He is a morally greater being because by definition His morality is axiomatic and supersedes mine by infinite orders of magnitude. The logical conclusion is that any rebellion on my part is both ultimately "futile" and "immoral" against such a being, and that He predestined it to exist in the first place (presumably to glorify Himself in His judgment of a vessel of destruction and wrath I take it).
ii) How does atheism emancipate human beings from the manacles of servility? If atheism is true, then everything Hitchens thinks, feels, says, and does is the combined effect of social conditioning, evolutionary programming, genetics, and other natural factors. Nothing could be more servile than his enslavement to forces beyond his ken or his control. He’s just a billiard ball on the pool table of antecedent natural and historical causes. He goes wherever the cosmic cue sends him, whenever the cosmic cue sends him there.
ReplyDeleteAtheism frees one from the servility of imaginary religion (though, any true religion would not fall into this category of course). Naturalistic determinism notwithstanding, bondage to untruth in the forms of false religion or other untrue social constructs would necessarily limit a person from his or her ideal. Personal or impersonal determinism is not the real issue I think. The real issue is the freedom and optimization of the mind. If Christianity is true, then the mind reaches its ideal in freedom and optimization under the religion of Christianity, and nothing else. If it is false, however, then it is a form of servility and bondage which should be properly understood and carefully forsaken.
BYRON SAID:
ReplyDelete“I am unsure how you define ‘greater’ here in your own mind.”
Something along the lines of “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.”
“But I cannot worship a being who pleases to allow thousands to die in tsunamis, children to starve to death, diseases to ravage the planet, makes impossible demands and then regenerates only His elect to enable them to respond affirmatively to such demands, claims all glory for Himself from every created being, demands worship, punishes unbelief, and eternally torments those He has predestined to judgment.”
That’s a litany of complaints. You have yet to articulate an argument.
“Naturalistic determinism notwithstanding, bondage to untruth in the forms of false religion or other untrue social constructs would necessarily limit a person from his or her ideal.”
i) You have yet to explain why truth should be an ideal in a godless universe.
ii) According to evolutionary psychology, natural selection fosters false beliefs. For instance, belief in right and wrong (e.g. altruistic duties) is an illusion cultivated by natural selection to deceive us into sacrificing person self-interest for the common good of our species (e.g. the survival of reproductive populations).
Byron said:
ReplyDelete---
Naturalistic determinism notwithstanding, bondage to untruth in the forms of false religion or other untrue social constructs would necessarily limit a person from his or her ideal.
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What is this "ideal" you speak of?
OK, so basically God is the superlative personification of good and power in a religious framework.
ReplyDeleteAnd granted, none of those are explicitly arguments per se. However, implicitly most of them are facets of theodicy, which is itself an acceptable argument against Christianity, even if most theists do not find it persuasive by itself I take it. The system of Calvinism as I understood and as I interpret (correctly, I hope) you to mean in your statements is the highest expression of the ultimate logical conclusion of "might makes right." And I suppose that's acceptable, since in that system of belief, my rebellion is doomed to futility, my denial will ultimately itself be denied, and God will overwhelm my complaint by vindicating Himself by justifying His own attributes to an infinite degree (or at least enough to answer and defeat any of my objections).
My question then becomes why does God ordain my misunderstanding, hatred and rebellion of what I find revealed in the Christian scriptures? And I suppose I already know the answer, which is expressed in Romans 9 (again, might makes right). And I find that answer both unacceptable and morally reprehensible. But that is OK, because God predestined that and will deal with it in His own way and in His own time.
About truth, the ideal is always a relative. I cannot even begin to approach an absolute truth the way that you would probably insist it be defined, but I can appeal to the Universe itself and the evolution of the human genome (though I lack the scientific understanding to actually pursue that argument). Right and wrong also cease to be illusions when an absolute moral truth standard is no longer insisted (I mean "absolute" in a religious sense, not a natural, scientific one). I guess I would have no problems with drawing any idea of absolutes from (what I believe to be) the deterministic nature of the universe itself. I think it's possible that the Universe exists without a god of any kind, though I honestly do not know for sure.
And to Peter Pike, the ideal I speak of is a personal and subjective ideal, according to the person's understanding and capability to achieve.
BTW, Byron, what's atheism's response to the problem of evil? It's not as if atheists have a pass with dealing with these issues. Given the confluence of metaphysical naturalism and the fact that human beings are the product of a macroevolutionary process driven by natural selection, is there anything objectively immoral or unethical about "evils" in this world?
ReplyDeleteIf not, then (1) are atheists justified in condemning evil in this world in the first place? And (2) are anti-theists justified in condemning "God" for allegedly "allowing" evil?
In other words, you assert God does not exist. But (based on the current as well as past interactions with you) you're obviously very angry with God for not existing and for allowing so many things in your life which you don't like. But how can you be angry with someone who, in your view, doesn't even exist? By your own lights, it's not rational.
BYRON SAID:
ReplyDelete“And granted, none of those are explicitly arguments per se.”
Not implicit arguments, either. All you’ve done is to rattle off some things you disapprove of without giving us a reason to share your disapproval.
I’d also add that this is just a repetition of what you’ve said before. So you’re doing noting to advance the ball.
“However, implicitly most of them are facets of theodicy, which is itself an acceptable argument against Christianity, even if most theists do not find it persuasive by itself I take it.”
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Theodicy is not an argument against Christianity. Just the opposite: theodicy is an argument for Christianity; a counterargument to the argument from evil.
“The system of Calvinism as I understood and as I interpret (correctly, I hope) you to mean in your statements is the highest expression of the ultimate logical conclusion of ‘might makes right.’”
Let’s see. I define God as “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth,” and you act as if that’s synonymous with “might makes right.”
Perhaps you’d care to explain how your reductionistic equation follows from my definition. Did my definition prioritize the divine attributes? No. Did my definition derive all other divine attributes from one underlying attribute? No.
Each attribute is characterized by every other attributes. Omnipotence doesn’t outrank the other attributes in my definition (which reproduces a famous definition from the WSC).
“My question then becomes why does God ordain my misunderstanding, hatred and rebellion of what I find revealed in the Christian scriptures? And I suppose I already know the answer, which is expressed in Romans 9 (again, might makes right).”
How is Rom 9 reducible to “might makes right”? Certainly it brings divine omnipotence to bear, but it also brings divine justice and mercy to bear. And other passages bring divine wisdom to bear.
“About truth, the ideal is always a relative. I cannot even begin to approach an absolute truth the way that you would probably insist it be defined, but I can appeal to the Universe itself and the evolution of the human genome (though I lack the scientific understanding to actually pursue that argument).”
You’re not engaging my argument. Go back and deal with my argument. This is what I said:
“According to evolutionary psychology, natural selection fosters false beliefs…”
That was in response to your claim that atheism emancipates you from falsehood.
“Right and wrong also cease to be illusions when an absolute moral truth standard is no longer insisted.”
So when you say you find Calvinism “morally reprehensible,” your reprehension has no objective merit.