A Note on Religious Terminology

By Robert Fischer | Published: August 27, 2007

Editor’s Note: The best part of this post is the comments that follow it. Be sure to read them: lots of cool conversation and some juicy links down there.

Started listening to The Infidel Guy Show, which was referred to me as a good “secular humanist” podcast. It really is good, and there was a time in my faith journey when I would have loved it. As is, I’ll continue to listen to it, because it is interesting, even if it is anti-religious.

A few words on the way the conversation is phrased over there:

  • Free Inquiry does not mean atheistic attacks on religion. The impliciation that somehow religious inquiry isn’t “free” is nonsense, as demonstrated by the long and lively theological debate.
  • Biblical morality is not limited to literal interpretations of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Jesus worked on the Sabbath, despite scriptural rules against it, so non-literalism is built ito the very source and fabric of Christianity. I know Jews have long ago moved away from that literalism. I can’t speak to Islam, because I just don’t know.
  • Intellectual honesty is not limited to those who espouse empiricism. There are intellectually honest and rigorous epistemologies which aren’t based on empiricism.

If the show were to take those suggestions, it would greatly widen the audience of the show, and be much more constructive a conversation.

Related posts:

  1. Non-Relativistic Religious Tolerance
  2. Religious Ramblings
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  • Brian

    First note, the simple existance of a lively debate does not necessarily imply a free one. To be blunt about it, a large majority of so-called religous people do not take kindly to having the fundamental assumptions of their religion questioned. Not everyone- for example, I know for a fact you respond well to it. The debate about religion is very much like the debates about communism in Soviet Russia- there are just certain fundamental assumptions you dare not question. As a side note, Communist countries are very religious, it’s just that the religion is Communism, instead of some more normal religion.

    Assumptions that if you do question, then it’s your fault. Read this article, for example, except replace “Atheist” with “Jew”, and see how well the shoe fits on the other foot. Or Muslim. Or Christians in China, for example. Hey Christians in China- just keep your head down, don’t bring up your religion, and don’t rile the natives, and you’ll be fine. How well does that go over?

    Therein lies the rub- because one of the fundamental precepts of religions, all religions, is not only to beleive this long list of statements, but to make other people beleive them (or at least act as if they beleive them) as well. Successfull religions are memetic virii- that’s why they’re successfull. We can’t expect the Christians in China to simply shut up and keep their heads down, because their religion requires them to try and convert others- at which point the Communism religion decides it doesn’t like the competition. Which is no different a problem, I mention, than Chrisitians in Saudi Arabia- or Communists or Muslims here in the US. Guess what- you rile up the nativites, and they’re going to feed you to the lions.

    This is, of course, what is wonderful about government-mandated religion, so long as it’s your religion- you don’t have to deal with those pesky questions, you just feed the questioners to the lions. Of course, if it isn’t your religion, then it’s a terrible crime. Which just goes to show what heathens those barbarians really are.

    As for morality extending beyond Leviticus and Deuteronomy, that’s not a limitation imposed on supposedly religious people by the atheists. That’s a self-imposed limitation. And actually, the limitation is stricter than that- there are a whole bunch of restrictions in those books which are routinely ignored by the “devout”. Morality, in this country, has been reduced down to homophobia and anti-abortion, by the so-called religous people themselves.

    So I’m all for opening up the moral debate. Let’s have a discussion over the morality of denying poor children health care. Heck, let’s have a discussion on the morality of denying health care to over fourty million Americans. I’m pretty sure Jesus has something to say about curing the sick. Let’s have a moral discussion about bombing other countries that we don’t like, and torturing prisoners. I’m pretty sure Jesus has things to say about those issues too.

    The thing is that you don’t need religion to convince me that not curing a sick child we can cure is bad. If I have the least ounce of human empathy, I’m on board. You need religion to convince me otherwise. The greatest crimes throughout all of history have had religion, if not as a motivator, then at least as an excuse. God can not be wrong. God commands this action. There for, this action can not be wrong. Even if we might otherwise think so. God wills it. Allahu Akbar.

    The great danger of religion is it’s ability to override people’s common sense. Which brings me to my last point- empiricism. There are intellectually honest and rigorous epistemologies- I’ll name one, a non-religous one. Mathematics. Mathematics is not empirical, it is not experiment and observation driven. Mathematics can be used to model the real world- but simply by proving a result in mathematics does not tell us anything about the real world, nor does it claim to. It simply says that in all domains where the assumptions hold true, the results also hold true. It does not say that the assumptions hold true.

    It’s not that other intellectually honest and rigorous epistemologies don’t exist, it’s just that they are held to the same standard mathematics is- in that the predicitions they make about the real world must be verified empricially, by observation and experiment. A good book to read demonstrating this, taking physicists to task for dropping empricism, is “Not Even Wrong” by Peter Woit.

    If you’re going to talk about reality, it’s only fair to give reality the right to rebut. That’s just common sense. Forget that, and you’ve wandered into the realm of flat earths, young earths, and pi = 3.

    Note that everything of importance, however, ends up talking about reality. Especially politics. Which is where the real attraction to simply nailing the opposition to a tree, or feeding them to the lions, comes from. Unfortunately, that is where it is most important to resist the siren call of irrationalism.

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertfischer Robert Fischer

    See, you’re falling into the same trap as the Infidel Guy — confusing Pat Robertson with religious people in general. Hell, it’s even an exaggeration of Pat Robertson (although less of one than I wish it was).

    The problem is that kind of conversation doesn’t work. The people who already subscribe to those positions are lost — you aren’t going to get them back. Worse, by attacking them on theology/philosophy, you’re missing the point.

    Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson aren’t winning because they have a better theology. They aren’t recruiting their supporters because they’ve reasoned them into their positions, or because they’ve laid out and negotiated a social contract which their followers consider favorable. They have these people because they’re giving these people something they deeply want. If they’re really a threat and need to be combated, then that’s where you have to hit them. Talking theology or philosophy simply won’t work, because that’s not their motivation. And stating your philosophy and how stupid theirs is simply intellectual masturbation. It’s childish.

    If, on the other hand, you’re actually interested in engaging in conversation with philosophy/theology for self-improvement, then you need to find other people who are on the same path. And there are people on that path who happen to be religious. And these people may already having a meaning for “Biblical morality” (or, rather struggling with one), and you’re simply shutting down the conversation if you accuse them of intellectual dishonesty or being opposed to free inquiry. Engage with C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright and Ben Witherington and the rampaging contradictions and arguments and paradoxes that formed the modern Christian faith. There’s been a lot of free inquiry in the history, and even now the faith is being reformed over and over and over again — Hell, the Presbyterians even add new confessions.

    And, hey, if you don’t like Christianity, that’s fine — there’s still a lot of other viewpoints to be considering and looking into.

    But writing them all off as stupid — as piles of people who are cowering from the piercing sunlight of knowledge — is just wrong.

  • Brian

    There’s an old joke that goes that it’s too bad that 90% of lawyers give the other 10% a bad name.

    For example, I know that not all Catholics are bad people- in fact, the vast bulk aren’t. My parents, for example, are still practicing Catholics, and consider themselves devout. But when you start talking about the morals and politics of Catholicism, the discussion begins and ends with Pope Benedict XVI. Falwell and the various megachurchs also have huge followings. You cannot simply ignore the influence these people have.

    And from the outside, they’re the problems. I don’t have a problem with the Methodists or Presbyterians Unitarians or Lutherans, who may have deep spirtual lives I never see. That’s OK. Because they’re not trying to force their religion on me. They may welcome enquiries and new members, but they’re not out there trying to mandate their religion into law, for example.

    Also, I didn’t call them stupid. I called them irrational. If your religion requires you to beleive that pi is 3, or that the earth is 6,000 years old, and you really beleive this, then you are irrational. You are not dealing with reality. There are more subtle forms of irrationality as well- for example, beleiving a single celled organism should be given the same rights as a full-fledged human being, for example. Or beleiving that an action causes damage simply because it violates your religion. Gay marriage, for example. These are more subtle forms of irrationality, but they’re still irrational.

    Not all religion is evil, or irrational. A signifigant fraction of it is, however. And that fraction is the part that is most visible to those of us on the outside- because they’re the ones causing problems, the onces trying to enforce their religion.

  • Brian

    Of, and for the record, I don’t think 90% of religious people are irrational and causing problems. Probably it’s more like 30%. Rereading what I wrote, I realized I had accidentally implied that with the lawyer joke.

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertfischer Robert Fischer

    You’re totally right: extremists of any variety, and in particular totalitarian extremists , need to be dealt with.

    The fundamental problem I’m seeing in the self-styled “freethinking” crowd is conflating goals, and thereby applying an inappropriate solution.

    Consider this parable: There once was a man who lived in the suburbs, and he needed to get from his house to the grocery store. When he went to start his car, though, his car wouldn’t start. So he popped the hood and started fiddling with the things inside. Nothing worked to get his car started. He became hungrier and hungrier, and so he worked harder trying to fix his car. Eventually, he began to starve, so he took extreme measures, ripping apart his lawn mower, sink, and refrigerator, cannibalizing them for parts for his car. He simply could not get his car to start, and ended up starving to death with his hand on a ratchet.

    The same kind of thing is happening with these atheists. They have two explicit goals: 1) opposing the hyper-conservative intolerance of many religious people (a stance which I agree with them on), and 2) expanding personal understanding through a critical analysis of religious and spiritual ideas (another point I agree with them on). The problem is that they conflate these goals, assuming that the hyper-conservative intolerant people are the ones they should engage to expand their personal understanding. That’s simply not right.

    If you want to engage in a theological conversation, and seek deeper personal understanding, than you have to engage with those who are interested in that kind of conversation. That’s not going to be the pseudo-literalist bigots: they’ve long ago left the realm of that analysis, and they’re not coming back. If they want that deeper personal understanding, they need to engage with the scholarly wing of the church and the long tradition of self-criticism and apologetics in the Christian church.

    On the same token, if you want to oppose the psuedo-literalist bigots, then you have to engage them on the points that draw them into that faith. I’m not entirely sure what that is, because I’ve never understood that viewpoint, but it is abundantly clear that it is not theology. And therefore, attacking their theology isn’t going to be useful. We need to find a different tact.

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  • http://billmill.org Bill Mill

    #31161 is better than the post it is attached to.

    I would like to note that, in my life, I interact with exactly a single non-atheist who can reasonably discuss philosophical positions: yourself. I don’t know where the rest of them are, but they’re nowhere that I go, that’s for sure.

    (And I don’t mean that sarcastically, to imply that they don’t exist. Truly, I don’t know where they are or what I’m doing to avoid them, or if I’m unable to interact with people at some level to make conversations like this happen, because I find them intensely fascinating. Perhaps so intensely fascinating that I kill the conversation before it gets started.)

  • http://www.smokejumperit.com Robert Fischer

    Yeah, this post is one of those where the ensuing conversation far exceeds the post itself. I’ve noted that as an editor’s note at the head of the post.

    On the same token, I know of very few atheists who can have a reasoned conversation on religious issues: I can count them on one hand (Bill, you’re thumb — Brian, you’re pointer). The most common issue is that people need to catch up on my Applied Epistemology post.

    The in-depth Christian conversations are happening mainly in academic settings and some adult education groups, and there’s not a lot of outreach to the broader community. In my more cynical moments, I have to admit Brian’s critique is fair when he compared it to 90% of lawyers making a bad name for the other 10% — that’s part of the reason that I may be in Divinity School, but I’ll never be a pastor. I’m not sure where that stems from, but I suspect a big part of it is a dumbed down Christianity in children’s Sunday school which isn’t addressed in a lackluster confirmation class, and assuming they even still come to church, they’re met by pastors who have more relevant and immediate issues to handle than correcting the congregation’s Christological misconceptions. At that point, you have the blind leading the blind, and so it’s no surprise that religious understanding and traditional conventions are conflated.

    The fact of the matter is that an adult understanding of Christianity really needs to be taught to adults, and we’re by and large not getting that adult conversation in the churches. There result is that we’re seeing things like the “Jesus followers” of the Emerging church, New Monasticism, and other re-inventions of Christian social structures: these people are literally breaking with tradition and trying to reform the church again. Now, I’ve got some criticisms of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, too, so don’t construe this as advocacy.

    Anyway, if you are looking for interesting religious conversations, check out Speaking of Faith, Geroge Ellis, Ben Witherington (his blog is very hit-or-miss, but his books are excellent), Beliefnet.com blogs (if you can take the liberal political slant), NT Wright‘s books (I don’t agree with him all the itme, but he’s at least interesting), Jim Wallis (of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It fame), and certainly North Carolina’s own Bart Ehrman (one of the best scholars in Christianity, and ironically not even a Christian).

    It almost goes without saying, but the Dali Llama is fascinating, too, and has actively engaged scientific inquiry: I just finished reading his The Universe in a Single Atom. Krista Tippet (of Speaking of Faith) refers to Buddhists as having “profound spiritual technologies”, and I’m really starting to grok what she means by that.

    A while back, I posted about NT Wright and Bart Ehrman having it out re: the problem of Evil. Unfortunately, that “blogalogue” turned into two battleships passing in the night: although the individual arguments put forward were very interesting, neither engaged the other very well. Worth a read, but probably best to just read all of Tom’s stuff and then read all of Bart’s stuff.

    There are other blogs that have interesting conversations out there, too, although I’ve stopped reading blogs by and large (except for my 30Threads.com gig). Two that I remember (for better or for worse) are Thinklings.org and Boar’s Head Tavern. Again, don’t construe that for advocacy of any particular idea, belief, etc., but just two places where there are interesting conversations. Both are very Christian-centric, though, so I’m not sure they’re appropriate venues for conversing the atheist/Christian line.

  • http://raynelsonrealtor.wordpress.com Ray Nelson

    I’ve noticed I get more reasoned conversation out of the unreasonable people when I approach a subject without predisposition. For a somewhat off topic example, we were discussing politics a few months back and my father in law made a blanket statement about activist judges. Since he is an avid Fox News viewer, I knew he had been spoon fed the terminology and thought maybe a little light on how the government is supposed to work might be in order. I advised my wife that the government had been designed as a series of checks and balances, and that the justices are doing their jobs when they strike down or uphold a law. My father in law didn’t have an answer to that, so he shut up.
    I don’t know that I changed his mind, but I did at least give him pause. I think presentation makes a big difference in how people react. I’ve read a number of religious and atheistic blogs, and everyone who writes has a different definition of religion. Honestly, that’s as it should be, because to my mind religion is an intensely personal thing, and my relationship with my gods is unique and different. Keeping that in mind, the best tack I have found is a simple questioning approach. It is difficult to argue for or against something unless you first know who you are debating and what they believe.
    There does seem to be a great deal of confusion on all sides regarding “religion.” I have never been a fan of organized religion, but I am not really a fan of organized anything. One look in my office will show you that! I find that when I take the preconception out of the word, I realize that religion doesn’t just apply to fundamentalist christians or catholics, but also to buddhists and hindus. We have a tendency here in the U.S. to be self centered, which is less and less rational as the world shrinks. I find that narrow view more common among religious folks than atheists, but there are still plenty of atheists with blinders on.
    I guess my main point is that tolerance and patience may get you the reasoned debate you desire. I keep getting distracted by the phone ringing, so I guess the universe is telling me to get back to work!

  • http://billmill.org Bill Mill

    > On the same token, I know of very few atheists who can have a reasoned conversation on religious issues

    Perhaps the issue is just that it’s a very small percentage of people who can do this at all, full stop. I just know many more atheists than Christians, and selection bias takes over from there.

    Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out. There was a “philosophy bites” podcast recently that I think you might like; Don Cupitt on non-realism about god: http://nigelwarburton.typepad.com/philosophy_bites/2008/11/don-cupitt-on-nonrealism-about-god.html . I didn’t know anything about him going in, you might though.

  • Brian Hurt

    For the record, I’m not an atheist. It’d probably be most correct to call me a deist, like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, although not exactly. Mainly I think that organized religion is an oxymoron, like military intelligence or Microsoft Works. For example, I believe that the universe was engineered by something we would consider intelligent and purpose-driven. I believe in the persistence of identity after death. I have had a number of religious experiences, just never in church.

    The existence of evil problem stems, I think, from a lack of scope. Start with the question of what do you mean by “evil”? Drill down far enough, and it ends up what you’re really asking is “why must the innocent child die?” That’s the bitter heart of the dilemma. The innocent child must die because that’s the mechanism that drives evolution- both bad luck and not being sufficiently fit are death sentences, for humans as well as animals. And if you think the hand you got dealt sucks, go cry to the Dinosaurs, or the trilobites, or the dodos, or any of the millions of species that went entirely extinct, guilty, innocent, and all. Evil, in the sense of the innocent child dying, is what turned single celled organisms into modern humans- and thus really isn’t evil on a global scale, no matter how regrettable it might be on a local scale to the participants.

    Does this mean we’re stuck with evil forever? No. I think that the problem of evil is a solvable one. We’re already overriding the mechanistic evolutionary process in a number of ways. If required to hunt and/or forage on the Serengeti for his survival, Stephen Hawking would be toast. In the most absolute of Darwinist terms, he’s not fit, and shouldn’t survive. And yet, I don’t think that either you or I are as valuable to humanity as he is. The more people we’re able to save that otherwise would have died, the more opportunity for “not fit” (in the Serengeti sense) people to survive and thrive, the less applicable true mechanistic evolution is to humanity- and the less evil there is. In the extreme, we may be able to solve the whole death problem at it’s root- I recommend “Down and out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow as an example of how this might work.

    But this is a pretty scary concept, when you think about it. When the asteroid hit the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, it may have sucked for the dinosaurs- but it wasn’t their fault, there was nothing they could do about it. Well, there is an increasing number of things we humans can do something about- increasingly, if humanity is wiped out, if the innocent child dies, it’s our fault. With the advent of genetic engineering, even the very definition of humanity is in our hands. We’re no longer at the mercy of chance and death to guide our development. We will decide what genes our future generations carry.

    I can see why people might not be comfortable with that. Or why it scares the bejezes out of people. I just think that the alternative is, by definition, evil.

  • http://www.smokejumperit.com Robert Fischer

    Argh. My bad. Didn’t mean to call you an atheist — used far too strong a language there.

  • Brian Hurt

    Oh, I wasn’t insulted. Just wanted to clarify.

  • Brian Hurt

    So if my religion is based on following the will of ceiling cat and denying the temptations of basement cat, does that qualify as being nom-deneominational?

  • http://www.smokejumperit.com Robert Fischer

    BTW, this:

    Evil, in the sense of the innocent child dying, is what turned single celled organisms into modern humans- and thus really isn’t evil on a global scale, no matter how regrettable it might be on a local scale to the participants.

    …was invented long ago by Christian theologians as an out.

    Theodicy | As a necessity for greater purpose
    Theodicy | Defining evil

    Problem is that it works great in the large, but shitty in the small: really, that young child had to be killed by the ricochet because otherwise evolution would be thrown off-course or free will wouldn’t have been respected or God’s greater plan would be wrecked or whatever? It was really so horrid an interference that God had to refrain from intervening? The universe had to work that way for this situation? It’s pretty hard to buy that every apparently random, happenstance tragedy is netting out to some greater good.

    And you can run the God-as-clockmaker playbook (the god of “I believe that the universe was engineered by something we would consider intelligent and purpose-driven”, with the additional assertion that the god then stepped out), but then you’ve got one of two options: either that creator has created the best of all possible universes, or the creator is not omnibenevolent. If the creator created the best of all possible universes then any apparent evil has and deserves justification in the scope of a greater good[1]. However, if the creator did not create the best of all possible universes and is not omnibenevolent, then that creator should not be worshiped, but (in fact) hated for having the cruelty to create such a menagerie.

    [1] That fool’s errand is the kind of effort that prompted Voltaire’s Candide, and Pangloss’s efforts of justifications are one of the reasons I find that book endlessly amusing.

  • Brian

    Which is worse, a deity who never intervenes, or a deity who intervenes (supposedly even a lot) and still lets the child die? This is an argument to disbelieve in a deity altogether.

    You also run smack dab into the logical problem that if you think God makes specific calls on who lives and who dies, then does intervening to change the outcome (say, by administering life-saving medical treatments) thwart the will of God? After all, if God wanted the child to live, the child would have lived. The more divine intervention you have, the bigger the problem of evil is, and the less perfect the world is (if it ain’t broke, why is God having to duct tape repair stuff all the time?).

    I will comment that I believe that the universe exists for a purpose, not just to be perfect (for human definitions of perfect). Existing for a purpose does not require perfection, indeed may require imperfection. And no, I don’t know what the purpose is- but I will comment that pretty much everything we have figured out about how the universe works has been profitable, in that it has improved our lives somehow. So I’m pretty sure that’s the next step: figure out as much about the universe as is possible.

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