Monday, May 28, 2012

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them


I’m going to comment on a recent screed at Debunking Christianity:


Loftus has semiretired from blogging–or so he says. This post I’m quoting by an anonymous contributor. The blogger says this about himself:

I have been a professor of philosophy and religion for over 14 years, and have taught in some of the best universities in the United States.


So the blogger is a “thinking man’s” atheist. Not only of those village atheist types, but an intellectual. Keep that in mind as we assess the quality of his arguments, which remind me of a quip by George Orwell.

Why I HATE Christianity
By A is for Atheist at 5/25/2012
 
There are many reasons why I hate Christianity--and yes, I do literally hate Christianity. Why?--because of the negative doctrines it promotes, and the resulting "moral laxity"--which the Christian philosopher Pelagius pointed out long ago. Let me explain by offering the following analogy.

Of course, an obvious problem with this allegation is that many atheists espouse moral relativism or moral nihilism. So he should hate atheism.

The following would be a life situation for many, and is analyzed from a Christian perspective:
 
Christians believe they are born bad, and cannot help but to do bad things because they are "born sinners." (Original sin)

From Christian perspective, original sin is counterbalanced by regeneration and sanctification.

Now, a Christian man who says he loves his wife still beats her because she doesn't do as she is told. She forgives him for hurting her every time, because that is what her religion tells her to do. The man beats her because the same religion tells him he has authority over her, and he cannot help but to do bad things, so he does them thinking he can't help himself--but it's ok, because his god will forgive him. Until one fateful day when a beating ends in death, and he kills his wife with his bare hands.

i) I don’t think the Bible teaches unconditional forgiveness.

ii) This isn’t Christian theology or Christian ethics. Rather, this is the antinomian heresy.

iii) The Bible teaches Christian husbands to love their wives.

iv) Conservative Christians generally believe in the right of self-defense, including the right to bear arms. If a battered wife shot her husband dead, and I was on the jury, I’d vote to acquit.

v) From a secular perspective, the wife is just a primate. Male primates naturally dominate female primates. Boys will be boys, and chimps will be chimps.

vi) To my knowledge the rate of domestic violence is far higher among cohabiting couples than married Christians. The live-in boyfriend is far more likely to batter the girlfriend than a husband, much less a professing Christian husband. Yet cohabitation is the secular alternative to the quaint Christian tradition of monogamous marriage.

THIS IS WHY I HATE CHRISTIANITY. I hate the fact that this religion tells people they are EXPECTED to behave badly. I hate the fact that there are NO CONSEQUENCES for their bad behavior in this life or the next for believers as long as they sincerely say "sorry" to Jesus. What about the victims?? What compensation do they get under the Christian system? None. There is no justice for victims of Christian crime--unless it is through secular laws. Therefore, Christianity in and of itself is IMMORAL and UNJUST. This is the biggest reason why I HATE Christianity.
 
If people believed they could do the right thing the first time, and took responsibility for their own actions instead of having "Jesus" do that for them, the world would be a much better place to live in.

If that’s his biggest reason for hating Christianity, then he should redouble his hatred towards atheism. Consider the ethical consequences of atheism. And don’t take my word for it. Here are what a couple of atheists have to say:

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life? Doesn't the appropriate response to 4,000 children dying everyday as a direct result of poor sanitation involve despair at the relentless misery of the world as well as some effort to improve things? Sometimes life is s**t and that’s all there is to it. Not much bright about that fact. Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point.


But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?
 
Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

14 comments:

  1. If I'm not mistaken, this blogger is a woman. She's obsessed and angry, hence the irrationality and hate-filled diatribe.

    She's been all over the Christian blogosphere, most recently at Tom Gilson's blog where she was banned after violating the comment policy. I'd say she's borderline certiable.

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  2. Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them

    However, for the non-Christians out there, this does not mean that Christians are anti-intellectual.

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  3. "To my knowledge the rate of domestic violence is far higher among cohabiting couples than married Christians. The live-in boyfriend is far more likely to batter the girlfriend than a husband, much less a professing Christian husband."

    I am curious as to where you get this statistic. Do you have a source you can provide for reference? I also wonder what correlation you are trying to make here. Is it that live-in boyfriends are not Christian and that is the difference or is it that being married is the difference?

    Thanks

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    1. JC

      "I am curious as to where you get this statistic. Do you have a source you can provide for reference?"

      To take one example:

      http://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/jcpr/workingpapers/wpfiles/kenney_mclanahan.pdf

      "I also wonder what correlation you are trying to make here. Is it that live-in boyfriends are not Christian and that is the difference or is it that being married is the difference?"

      Both.

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  4. steve, you say:

    iv) Conservative Christians generally believe in the right of self-defense, including the right to bear arms. If a battered wife shot her husband dead, and I was on the jury, I’d vote to acquit.

    Hey, there is common ground here- I agree wholeheartedly.

    v) From a secular perspective, the wife is just a primate. Male primates naturally dominate female primates. Boys will be boys, and chimps will be chimps.

    Depends on the primate. Bonobo society is run by females; males don't dominate. You must be thinking of gorillas. But human societies, even secular, can also agree that certain things, say wife-beating, are not good, and can act accordingly. You seem to think that secular=gorilla-emulating. A rather tendentious judgment, steve.

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  5. zilch

    "But human societies, even secular, can also agree that certain things, say wife-beating, are not good."

    By the same token, secular societies can agree that wife-beating is good. Given secularism, it's not agreed to be bad because it is bad; rather, it's bad because it's agreed to be bad.

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  6. Given secularism, it's not agreed to be bad because it is bad; rather, it's bad because it's agreed to be bad.

    Given theism, the same is true. The only difference is that theists claim that God is behind what they've agreed to be bad.

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  7. zilch

    "Given theism, the same is true."

    i) Even if that were true, your attempted parallel concedes the arbitrariness of secular ethics.

    ii) However, you're wrong about Christian ethics. Christian ethics isn't voluntaristic, as I've demonstrated on more than one occasion.

    "The only difference is that theists claim that God is behind what they've agreed to be bad."

    No, we don't begin by agreeing about what is wrong, then cite God to retroactively validate our prior agreement. Christians often accept things that rub them the wrong way.

    You're never going to win a theological argument with me, so why do you even try? It's a waste of time for both of us. You will never have an objection that I don't have an answer to.

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  8. i) Even if that were true, your attempted parallel concedes the arbitrariness of secular ethics.

    So if all ethics, secular and religious as well, are "arbitrary", what does that say about your definition of "arbitrary", steve?

    No, we don't begin by agreeing about what is wrong, then cite God to retroactively validate our prior agreement. Christians often accept things that rub them the wrong way.

    I beg to differ. We begin, before we are even human, in developing simple culture, the beginnings of the concepts of right and wrong, long before there are any thoughts of God. God is a concept that comes later to reinforce particular beliefs about right and wrong with carrots and sticks. And non-Christians who want to participate in society must also often accept things that rub them the wrong way. That's why it's hard to build societies- there's always conflict between the desires of individuals and the needs of society.

    You're never going to win a theological argument with me, so why do you even try? It's a waste of time for both of us. You will never have an objection that I don't have an answer to.

    I'm not trying to "win" a theological argument with you, steve. I'm just curious why you believe as you do.

    Truth- I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. Are you saying that steve or I are guilty of ad hominem, or suggesting it as a tactic?

    cheers from twilit Vienna, zilch

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  9. zilch

    "So if all ethics, secular and religious as well, are 'arbitrary', what does that say about your definition of 'arbitrary', steve?"

    i) I didn't concede that religious ethics is arbitrary. You were the one who attempted the parallel, not me.

    ii) And it's your definition that's operative. I said: "Given secularism, it's not agreed to be bad because it is bad; rather, it's bad because it's agreed to be bad."

    You responded: "Given theism, the same is true."

    So you granted my characterization of secular ethics, then attempted amoral equivalence. So on your own concessive definition, secular ethics is arbitrary. What's right or wrong is a matter of what secular societies agree to, rather than what's objectively right or wrong, apart from their agreement (or disagreement). Wife-beating has no independent moral status one way or the other. That's a matter of social convention.

    "We begin, before we are even human, in developing simple culture, the beginnings of the concepts of right and wrong."

    Concepts which don't correspond to moral facts. In some cultures, the husband has the right to beat his wife. On your view, right and wrong don't correspond to truth and falsehood.

    "God is a concept that comes later to reinforce particular beliefs about right and wrong with carrots and sticks."

    That's your preconceived theory, but if religious ethics already matched our moral concepts, we wouldn't need the carrots and sticks to reinforce our moral concepts. The concepts would function as incentives or disincentives.

    "I'm just curious why you believe as you do."

    I'm not here to satisfy your idle curiosity. This isn't a talk show.

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  10. steve- the problem with your argument is that you assume, with no proof, that objective morals exist, and also assume, also with no proof, than any morals other than objective morals are not morals at all, or are on a slippery slope to wife beating and worse. I realize that you believe the existence of and necessity for objective morals are proven; but they both depend on believing in God, or at least in some sort of authority beyond human formulations.

    I said:

    God is a concept that comes later to reinforce particular beliefs about right and wrong with carrots and sticks.

    You replied:

    That's your preconceived theory, but if religious ethics already matched our moral concepts, we wouldn't need the carrots and sticks to reinforce our moral concepts. The concepts would function as incentives or disincentives.

    Theoretically, that sounds good: people should be able to understand the necessity behind moral concepts- to build society, individuals must sacrifice some autonomy. But it doesn't seem to be workable in real life, at least not without reinforcement. Carrots and sticks in some form seem to be necessary, and that's where religions come in with a punishing and/or rewarding God or gods, and secular governments come in with various worldly rewards and punishments, to try to further society. It's always a balancing act.

    And steve, yes, I know you're not here to satisfy my (actually not idle) curiosity. You're of course free to ignore me, tell me to go away, or ban me, as you please.

    cheers from sunny Vienna, zilch

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    1. zilch

      "steve- the problem with your argument is that you assume, with no proof, that objective morals exist...I realize that you believe the existence of and necessity for objective morals are proven; but they both depend on believing in God..."

      In which case evidence for God is ipso facto evidence for objective morals.

      "...and also assume, also with no proof, than any morals other than objective morals are not morals at all, or are on a slippery slope to wife beating and worse."

      Non-objective morals are, by definition, arbitrary.

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    2. steve:

      In which case evidence for God is ipso facto evidence for objective morals.

      Sure. But evidence for morals is not evidence for objective morals, and is thus not evidence for God.

      Non-objective morals are, by definition, arbitrary.

      By your definition, perhaps.

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