My Response to an Article in RD Magazine

This is a detour from the intended flow of the blog, but I want to add this. What follows is a respone to an article published in RD Magazine,

Dangerous Religion

. I don't know if they will post my response on their ezine, so I'm posting it here.


A Weak Argument


Your generous handling of Islam and your eagarness to give the benefit of the doubt to Islamic beliefs suggests that you have the kind heart and benevolent soul of a good Christian, but your argument is very weak, and this is true for two principal reasons. Your first problem is the validity of the feigned argument against white protestants you used as a rhetorical device in your essay, and in your conclusion, you gratuitously reject this feigned argument by simply proclaiming it to be invalid. Your second and most important error is you then gratuitously proclaim criticisms of Islamic culture and the Mosque in New York as being equal to your feigned argument against white protestants.


The feigned argument against protestants you employed in your essay is a variation on one regularly used by Atheists. The core of the argument is that Religion is bad because, throughout history, the most heinous acts of mankind were done in the name of God. The validity of this argument is far from settled. In fact, I believe a version of it was used recently in a book by Richard Dawson, “The God Delusion,“ so a gratuitous negation of its validity as a matter of conventional wisdom is unfounded. Although it is the lesser of the two flaws in your argument, I wish to address this point first because I agree with you that it is a logically unsound criticism of religion as a whole, and it merits a logical critique.


First, I think it is important to note that religions are belief systems; they are worldviews. And, as such, they are inanimate; they don’t do things. Religions don’t kill anyone. People do things; people kill people--not religions.


When viewed from the perspective of world history, the sort of heinous acts you listed are usually orchestrated by sociopaths or psychopaths in a position of power that often use religion to bolster support for their agenda and recruit accomplices; Hitler, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Brigham Young (the Mormon militia during his time in Utah was notoriously vicious) and Charles Manson are just a few that come to mind as I write. A common symptom displayed by a person suffering from a form of delusional psychology is a belief that they are divinely chosen or instructed by God to act on behalf of God. But, this is a symptom of madness; it is not the cause of madness, so to argue that Christianity is to blame for the actions of Jim Jones is like arguing that a fever causes the Flu; this argument is not valid because it asserts that a symptom of sociopathic behavior is the cause of sociopathic behavior.


It is neurotic and psychotic people that are the cause of the heinous acts of mankind throughout history. The fact that some of them subscribed to a particular religion is not relevant; it is simply a sympton of their madness. That is why a Godless group such as the Soviets can be equally capable of heinous acts. Stalin (A Godless despot) was just as capable of murderous cruelty as Vlad Tsepish (A crusader for the Catholic Church) because of their maladaptive psychology--not their religious orientation.


So, the universal argument that all religion is bad because atrocities have been commited in the name of God is not a valid argument.


However, a criticism of a particular religious culture based on the neurotic, barbaric or violent behavior of that culture can be a valid argument.


This brings us to the second and most important problem with your argument. That problem is that the sins of the past are only relevant today if they are also the sins of the present. You had to go back into history a considerable distance to site acts of “terrorism” perpetrated by white protestants. And, there was no mention that it was white protestant that led the abolitionist movement. It was mostly white protestants that voted in congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and it was white protestants that today are statistically the most generous when giving donations to the needy and victims of natural disasters.


White protestants are just as human as any other group of people, so they have skeletons in their historical closets, but they have grown and evolved to be included among the kindest, loving and generous people on the planet. And, I believe that it is their worldview that has helped facilitate their evolution. The Christian teachings of love, kindness and generosity that were taught in the Sermon on the Mount, are at the core of Christian beliefs, and most Christians strive to embody these ideals in spite of their human short comings. Do Christians often fall short of their ideals? Yes, because they are human. But, they never stop trying to do better. That is why they have evolved into being among the most benevolent and kind groups on earth today.


Go back far enough in history and one will find that all uneducated and primitive people are barbaric and tend to be violent. Ignorance and the pressure to survive under harsh conditions makes people dangerous. However, what is important in this argument is that certain worldviews facilitate growth and evolution, while some worldviews tend to stifle growth which keeps people trapped in the past--trapped in the dangerous mindset of barbarism.


It has been roughly 5 and a half centuries since Martin Luther started the Protestant Reform movement. In that period of time, protestants have, in general, managed to evolve from their barbaric and violent ways of the Dark Ages to the civilized and benevolent people they are today. It was their collective worldview and efforts to embody the Christians ideals of love and compassion that helped facilitate their evolution. On the other hand, in the 1440 years since the birth of Mohammed, the majority of Islamic cultures have failed to evolve beyond the barbarism of the 8th century, and it is their cultural worldview that has helped facilitate this as well.


When a worldview that hinders social evolution is adopted culturally and socially by a large group of people, then it causes problems. Ignorance is a breeding ground for neurotic thinking. The clarity of thought that comes from a rationally trained and educated mind is the safeguard against socially imprinted superstitious and neurotic behavior. But, couple a barbaric worldview with a large group of uneducated people prone to neurotic behavior who are led by a handful of delusional sociopaths that believe God is on their side, and you have an all too familiar formula for disastrous violence. And, this is where the real issue lies in this discussion of Islam and the Mosque in New York City. Uneducated barbarians led by delusional sociopaths is not merely a condition found in the history of Islam. It is a condition found in Islam today!


So, your arguments that protestants were once barbaric in the past, so we can’t criticize believers of Islam that are barbaric today is mute. It is the condition of things today, in the here and now, that is relevant. It isn’t that all cultures have a dark past that is important. What is important is that some of the cultures on earth have evolved while others have not and are still dangerous in their barbaric and neurotic behavior.


In America, slavery and the persecution of Jews, Chinese, Irish and Amerinds are, culturally speaking, all things of the past. However, the barbaric behavior of Islamic fundamentalists in the present day is exhaustingly and shockingly prolific.

• The assassination of Robert Kennedy by an Islamic fundamentalist
  
• The murder of athletes in Munich Germany in 1972 by Islamic fundamentalists
  
• The storming of the US Embassy in Iran and the ousting of the Shaw in 1979 by Islamic fundamentalists
  
• The kidnapping of US citizens in Lebanon during the 1980’s by Islamic Fundamentalists
  
• The 1983 bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Beirut by Islamic Fundamentalists.
  
• The 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the 70 year old man in a wheelchair thrown overboard by Islamic Fundamentalists
  
• The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic Fundamentalists
  
• The 1997 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by Islamic fundamentalists
  
• The murder of 3000 innocent Americans on September 11, 2001 by Islamic fundamentalists,
  

This is just a small sampling of actions that I could put together on short notice, but all of us can think of many more examples. Put this together with such things as the Palestinians electing 76 members of the terrorist group Hamas to their Parliament in 2006. And, the Iranians electing and re-electing as president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has publicly stated that the Jewish Holocaust never happened, and that he intends to usher in the 7th Imam by driving Israel into the sea.

Add in the fact that various forms of Sharia law are in use by the majority of Islamic countries today including Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Buhrain and Azerbaijan. Sharia law is a system of law that today gives us female circumcision, the beheading of infidels and the stoning to death of immodest women and homosexuals in public squares. (It should be noted that Iraq stopped using Sharia law in 2003 after it had been liberated at a considerable price in life and treasure by military forces comprised primarily of Christians and Jews)

Furthermore, the tacit complicity demonstrated by the vast majority of Islamic leaders and politicians in their refusal to publicly denounce the numerous violent acts of various Islamic groups and their lack of action to eradicate this malignancy from Islamic culture is testament to the extent that this barbaric mindset is systemic and innate in the world of Islam today.

All of this, and much more, is empirical evidence of the condition of Islamic society and culture today in the 21st century. It demonstrates that there has been little evolution in Islamic culture since the 8th century because these events aren’t ancient history--they are the reality of today. We don’t have to contrive some tortured argument by reaching back 100 years or more to find evidence of their barbaric nature.

So, the heinous acts of Islamic fundamentalists today are relevant to a discussion of Islam today. Your list of crimes committed by white protestants in the past is not relevant to protestants today because they don’t accurately describe the culture of protestants today. Therefore, your gratuitous assertion that any criticisms of Islam is as equally flawed as your feigned criticism of white Protestants is not true. Only one of the arguments is flawed--the one against protestants. A criticism of Islamic culture such as the one I have presented here is a valid argument. But, it is a criticism of the behavior of Islamists. The worldview of Islam is in itself an inanimate object and therefore incapable of action. I do believe that the Islamic worldview helps perpetuate the problems found in their culture today, but it is the cultural and governmental actions of the people who share the Islamic faith that merit crticism.

All of this demonstrates the fallacies of your argument, and justifies the suspicions that reasonable Christians have of Islamic culture. For the sake of brevaty, I will stop here.

On a Life of Faith, Truth, Neurosis and Secularism

As established in the first essay, “On Faith,” faith is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge is that which can be objectively demonstrated to be a fact, and faith is a belief. Theists insist that faith is something more than a mere superstitious notion, so faith must be something other than an irrational belief which is the definition of a superstition. By default and necessity then, faith must be a rational belief. One would be engaging in folly if one were to argue that faith can be an irrational belief but not a superstition.

With this understanding of faith, it is clear that, if one desires to live a life of faith, then one must strive to purge one’s self of irrational thoughts and constantly pursue beliefs that are rational. This means that a life of faith is a philosophical life. It is a life in which one strives to find the truth about God, man, nature and the relationship between them. And, where the truth is uncertain, the faithful must adopt beliefs that are the most probable and consistent with what we currently know to be true. In short, the life of faith is a life in quest of the truth. But, if one is to live a life in pursuit of the truth, then one must be able to recognize the truth when they see it.

For the faithful, there are three qualities of the truth that are listed as follows:

• The truth is the reality of what “is.”
  
• The truth is absolute and unchanging.
  
• The truth is not contingent on man’s understanding for its existence
  

The truth is the reality of what “is.” Philosophy (Philo Sophia: the brotherly love of wisdom), is principally concerned with the truth about what is real; it derives from natural philosophy which focused itself on the reality of God, man and nature. There are other sorts of truths that don't necessarily relate to reality. For example, there are theoretical forms of geometry and mathematics (i.e. non-Euclidian geometry) that are based on axiomatic assumptions that may not actually exist in nature. They are just worlds that exist in the imagination of some very creative persons. And, many of their geometric and mathematical truths may not exist in nature. But, the life of faith is only concerned with what we can know to be real.

The truth is absolute and unchanging. For example, 1 + 1 always equals 2. It will never equal 3 or some other number.

The truth is not contingent on man’s understanding for its existence For example, until recent history, the fossilized bones found around the world were not known to from dinosaurs. The Chinese made soup from them thinking they were the bones of dragons. The ancient Greeks found fossilized bones which resulted in legends of ogres and griffins. It wasn't until 1824 when William Buckland described the bones of the Megalosaurs was the first dinosaur identified. This was even before the word "dinosaur" had been coined by Sir Richard Owen in 1841. The existence of dinosaurs in our ancient history would still be true even if man had never discovered them. Dinosaurs didn't magically come into existence at the moment of discovery. So, the truth about the existence of dinosaurs didn't rely on man's understanding. They existed in the past even when we had no knowedlge of them. Science is always refining our understanding of nature, so man’s understanding of nature changes and evolves, but the truth about nature never changes. Only our understanding of nature changes.

A life of faith requires courage and a commitment to intellectual honesty. All of us have been born into a culture or cultures that teach us certain assumptions about God, man and nature. This conventional wisdom can be very difficult and frightening to abandon when one finds elements of it are irrational. For example, a theist living a life of faith may find that certain beliefs they thought were essential for their immortality and salvation are irrational; if this happens, then they find themselves faced with the frightening dilemma of choosing between the comfort and emotional security of keeping a long-held but irrational belief that they are convinced, by habit of thought and social reinforcement, is valuable, or discarding the irrational belief as the useless superstition that it is. They may be faced with abandoning a belief that others around them assert is essential to their Salvation. One’s friends and neighbors may even claim that to abandon such a belief could result in eternal damnation in a fiery pit in hell.

But, the truly faithful must have the courage of conviction to abandon all irrational beliefs or they will fall into a life of neurosis (more on neurosis is forthcoming).

When faced with this dilemma, I would suggest that the theist consider the following: Protestants subscribe to St. Mathew’s assertion that Salvation is a gift from God--that God grants Grace to those that live a life of faith. Who do you suppose has the stronger faith? One who only believes the dogmatic ideas that his church members and other people around them will validate? Or, one who boldly embraces reason with the firm conviction that God knows their choice to embrace reason is grounded in a conviction and courage that He knows their heart and intentions are good and pure and trusts in that belief regardless of what those around them say? If St. Mathew is correct, then who do you suppose will be first in line for their gift of Grace?

It should be noted that I am not an apologist for protestant beliefs. I offer this only for rhetorical purposes. And, for my Mormon friends and family members who, at this point, invariable jump up and shout, “Faith without works is dead!,” I would like to point out that the reverse (works without faith) is a pointless waste of time (I choose not to elaborate further on works with or without faith. It is directed only toward Mormons, and any true Mormon understands my point).

This is a work in progress. Final draft will be completed this weekend. Check back please.

On Faith

What is faith? It seems like such a simple question. However, the answer is more tricky than one might first think. And, the answer has some very profound implications. Is faith merely a belief of any sort? Is, “Step on a crack; break your mother’s back,” what the prophets and sages of the Bible had in mind when they spoke of faith? I don’t think so.

The religious faithful are regularly criticized by skeptics as being superstitious simpletons. And, there are times when the skeptics are correct about the beliefs of contemporary Theists. Is God an old man with a long white beard sitting on a throne up in the sky somewhere? Did he create the universe in just six days with the first couple of days taking place before day and night had even been created? Then, exhausted from 6 days of uttering words that made all things magically appear from nothing, the poor old fellow was so tired He had to lay down and rest on the seventh day. And, because he didn’t want to look like the only cosmic “slacker,” he commanded the rest of us to take a break on the same day. It is almost comical to think that these ideas are known as Intelligent Design! Are these notions examples of faith? Skeptics call these kind of beliefs superstitions. Is there a difference between faith and superstition? The natural response is that faith is something very different from superstition.

Faith and superstition are both opinions, and neither of them are something that would be considered an empirically demonstrable fact. We don’t say that we have faith in 1 + 1 = 2. This is an example of a fact (a piece of knowledge) and not an example of faith or superstition. This basic mathematical sum is objectively demonstrable and is, therefore, considered a fact. We don’t have faith that it is true; we know it is true. If we jump out of an airplane from 10,000 feet without a parachute we will probably die when we hit the ground. This is considered an objective fact. I don’t know anyone who would volunteer as a test subject to empirically demonstrate this, but it is safe to say it is a fact--not a belief.

We can now move closer to an understanding of what faith is by further establishing what it is not. Namely, faith is not a superstition.

Superstitions are simple to find; they abound in everyday life. Break a mirror and have seven years bad luck. Don’t walk under a ladder. Don’t let a black cat cross your trail. The ghostly hitchhiker of lake (fill in the blank with your local lake). What exactly distinguishes these ideas as superstitions? It is simple. Superstitions are beliefs that are not rational. Superstitions are beliefs that do not stand up to intellectual scrutiny. Any empirical test developed to independently prove that all persons who break mirrors will have seven years bad luck will only demonstrate that there is no logical reason for believing this. So, a superstition can be defined as a belief that is not consistent with what we know to be true; a superstition is an irrational belief.

So, by a process of elimination, we can now state a definition of faith. Faith is not a known fact, and it is not an irrational belief. Faith is any belief that holds up to intellectual scrutiny and is consistent with what we know to be true. In other words, faith is a belief that is rational and sensible based on our current body of objective knowledge; Faith is a rational belief; faith is a belief that describes what is probable but not proven.

It seems so simple doesn’t it? It seems so rational and right. But, there are some profound implications in this understanding of faith. This understanding requires that any worldview based on a Faith in God and man’s spiritual relationship with God must be intelligent and rational, or it must be rejected as a useless superstition. If one’s spiritual beliefs do not hold up to intellectual and rational scrutiny, then by definition it is not a valid faith but rather a silly useless superstition.

This has implications for the Theist that believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. If the story of Intelligent Design as described in Genesis does not hold up to skeptical scrutiny, then it must be abandoned as a superstition as well as any other myth or fable.

But, this is a double edged sword that cuts both ways. Any worldview that is based on the belief that there is no God, and that there can be no spiritual relationship with such a non-entity, must also hold up to intellectual scrutiny, or it too must be rejected as a useless and silly superstition.

As will be shown in subsequent essays, Atheistic Naturalism is a belief based worldview with many of its beliefs being mere superstitions. It will be demonstrated that Atheistic Naturalism is a post-modern religion that arose from the narcissistic tendency to substitute a Faith in God with a Faith in Ego (ego in the Freudian sense).

I believe it was William James that said something to the effect, God is that in which one places their faith (unable to find source). In other words, if money is what you believe and trust in, then money is your god. Likewise, if your belief and trust are in your own gratuitous perceptions and opinions about God and nature (these assertions being the products of Ego), then you are your own god; you, and your opinions, are what you place your faith in; This results in the birth of a demiurge. Atheistic Naturalism is a post-modern religion that holds the perceptions and opinions of a demiurge or a pantheon of demiurges as the focal point of belief and trust.

The good news is that faith (rational beliefs) is nothing for the Theist, Atheist or Agnostic to fear. An honest and careful study of what we know, through the study of science, will reveal a process that will help those who intuitively sense the Spiritual aspects of the human experience. And, it will help them develop a more mature and immediate understanding of God and God’s relationship to man, and provide the Theist with a far more powerful relationship with God than the relationship that comes from “the little old man on a throne in the sky” kinds of beliefs. Reason will provide the Theist with a way to overcome the fears that prevent them from developing intellectually and spiritually, and give them a way to grow out of a superstitious belief system. A belief system that is little more than self-serving “divine ass-kissing” designed to keep God happy with you for the purpose of getting goodies in life from Him; and, keeping you out of hell; and, insuring that when you die, you will hit the Eternal Lotto by getting a big mansion on a street paved with gold where you will sit around on clouds playing harps while you groom your perfect white angel wings.

Furthermore, reason will provide the Atheist with an intelligent and rational basis to pursue a far more dynamic and personally fulfilling belief system than the shallow and neurotic life of Ego worship. And, reason will allow the atheist to investigate his spiritual nature without compromising his intellectual standards.

Finally, Reason will give the Agnostic the means to finally make a decision about God. It will give you the means to finally come down off the fence. It has been said that walking both sides of the fence can bruise your crotch. Unless we are talking about a very short fence, no one knows this better than an Agnostic.

In short, reason can help everyone develop a faith and worldview that is meaningful, fulfilling and promotes personal growth and evolution. It can unify people in a worldview that facilitates our spiritual needs without offending our intellectual sensibilities. Living a life of faith (actively pursuing rational beliefs and rejecting superstitions) can lead one to a new worldview that is more appropriate for the 21st century--a worldview I call Theistic Naturalism.

Love,
Socrates