Religion: Ad Hominem
In this post: I rant for 5 minutes about religion and atheism, God and infallibility, moderates and terrorists, apologists and fundamentalists. But now with VIDEO!
If you have comments (or arguments) feel free to reply below.
Related posts:
6 Responses to “Religion: Ad Hominem”
Leave a Reply
The Author:
Damien Laliberte lives his life between the lines. A photographer, writer, guitarist, popper, and a boorish opiner; He keeps eccentric hours and is oft seen scurrying off to bed immediately after daybreak, periodically stopping to scan the horizon for any sign of Dom DeLuise (To make sure he hasn't accidentally been transported back in time to the 1970's).
That’s a tricky question. Everyone seems to have their own definition of those terms.
Personally, I call myself an atheist, because I view agnostics as people who either don’t care enough to have an opinion, or don’t know enough yet to have an opinion. While that might not be the dictionary definition, that’s how the term “agnostic” seems to be used in my community. But being an atheist does not mean I am 100% certain that there is no God – rather, I am an atheist in the same manner as Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, or Carl Sagan. I put God in the same group as fairies and bigfoot and unicorns – I can’t prove they exist or don’t exist, but I really, really don’t think they do.
Also, I realized after posting my “chipping away” comment that it kind of sounds like I’m complaining that there aren’t enough atheists in religious communities. Ha!
Nice video and comments, Damien, and I was very intrigued at your idea of the chipping away at society/bible. Although i find yourself quite ambiguous in your stance, I know you do not discredit the religion itself, but rather, the nature of infallibility and all of religion’s perpetuated claim to it. Are you then an unknowing Agnostic, or a “certain” Atheist?
I apologize in advance if my reply offends you, I do tend to get overly involved in discussion of things like this. That said:
That’s not exactly what I meant to say. While I DO think that the fallibility of scripture infers human authorship, and I find that to point to the Christian God having no more merit than any of the other gods, my point is that since the Bible can be read many different ways (as we both agree), the belief that it is infallible is not healthy.
All the major religions make a claim to divine inspiration (I suppose that is sort of necessary to the narrative, eh?), and that claim is where the danger lies. Because (also as we both agree, I think) the Bible was written by men. Fallible men who make mistakes, include or omit things as they see fit, who change it and translate it and write for specific cultures and environments. But when you make the claim to divinity, you openly nurture the people who believe that the Bible is infallible, and that we are wrong. (Not the other way around)
And believing this message to come from God, they are mandated to follow it, fight for it, kill for it, and die for it.
I get into little arguments over the definition of “faith” all the time. To me, faith is when someone holds a belief despite the lack of evidence to support it, or in spite of the evidence against it. If there were evidence supporting it, it would be knowledge. People have faith that God exists, they don’t know that He exists.
Now I won’t get into the whole “Science Vs. Religion” because aside from being a dead horse, you’re typing this on a computer. You’ve probably ridden in an airplane before, and although you’ve never been to the moon, I doubt you think it’s made of cheese. Science is not a faith. Science is based on experimentation, and empirical evidence. The only way you can claim otherwise is to philosophically argue away your powers of perception, which is not an argument in favor of anything, it’s just a mind-numbing attempt to drag everything else down to the level of religion so that you can claim they have equal merit.
To put it simply: Yes, I have “faith”, but only if you want to call my belief in the authenticity of my ability to perceive the world around me and to interact with it “faith”. I see a discernible difference in that I can see the world around me, and interact with it. I can touch my desk. If you can see and touch God, then I think there might be something more than philosophically wrong with you.
That speaks exactly to my point about infallibility. Religion needs to admit that it might be wrong, or at least that it has the capacity to change and adapt. It doesn’t admit that as long as it has any claim to a concept of divinity which is held to be infallible, as the Abrahamic God is.
It is a compelling argument to you. But not to a suicide bomber. And realize also, that if they are right and they do NOT carry out their suicide mission, they will be punished by God.
You are taking a book that is obviously ill-fitted to our society, and using your brain to fill in the gaps to make it fit. Many more people do the opposite, they take the society and chip away at it, until it fits the book.
My problem with the people who chip away at society is obvious, but my problem with people who mentally fill in the gaps is harder to broach. It’s just not as visible, because the extremists are busy blowing things up and waging wars, while the moderates are (mostly) just every day people such as yourself. Sometimes they’re even positive, respectable, and intelligent people, who truly take something as (in my opinion) morally bankrupt as the Bible and bring nothing but kindness out of it.
But whether religion as a whole is beneficial (as I assume you would say it is) or detrimental (as I would claim), I think that it’s made up of people who chip away at society, people who mentally fill in the gaps, and what it’s lacking is people who chip away at the book.
It could be, but aren’t you glad that it’s probably not? You’re a Christian, so out of (conservatively) thousands of human religions, the odds that you picked the right one are slim to none. Especially since by your own admission, there is no evidence or logic behind your choice, just faith that the Christian God is the right one, not Ahura Mazda, or Brahman, or Xenu, or any of the many thousands more that have been worshipped.
Also, I wasn’t trying to nail down religion to one institution. While I do argue against specific churches and denominations quite often (I went to a Catholic school as a child, how can I not?), that wasn’t the goal of my video. And truth be told, if religion was entirely philosophical or personal, I doubt I would have much of a problem with it. I don’t really say anything bad about Deists. Theists are where I draw the “Troublemaker” line.
How do you account for morality existing in isolated cultures with no form of religion, or a religion that is completely unconnected with morality, or among people who have no language? Or morality among animals? Altruism among animals? Monogamy among animals, but adultery in humans?
If religion invented morality, then which religion invented it? Why does religion preach morals that are murky at best, and horrendous at worst? If God’s “love” is the antithesis to the atrocities he commits (which I won’t get into naming because I’m sure you know them just as well as I do, the Bible makes no attempt to hide or misinterpret them, in fact it proudly proclaims them as evidence of God’s power)… And the reason why God’s “reign” is not a totalitarian dictatorship is because of his compassion for us… Then how is he different from Kim Jong Il, or Saddam Hussien, or Chairman Mao? Our glorious leader, praise be to he, who watches over us and provides for us. We worship him, he does horrible things but he loves us. Do not question his actions, merely have faith that he can do no wrong and his actions make sense in much grander way than you can understand. It does seem a bit familiar, doesn’t it?
Also, I put forth that Biblical morality is tied to God’s infallibility just like everything else is, because the only moral way to account for God not being a horrendous and torturous demon is the say that his acts of genocide were necessary and morally correct. How do most people do that? Well, anyone that God kills is “punished”, not murdered. That is a slippery slope.
Hitler ‘punished’ Jews, and had he gone on to win the war, and (theoretically, in my over-reaching metaphor) to be held as a messiah, then 2000 years later perhaps teachers would be telling children in school not to worry, because Hitler loves you and wouldn’t murder you like he did the Jews, because you’re not a wicked sinner.
I doubt the firstborn of Egypt, the Canaanites, or anyone that didn’t have a rowboat during the flood would paint as pretty a picture of God. And who’s to say they weren’t just made out to be corrupt and worthy of horrific deaths to fill in the moral dilemma of the Bible and it’s claims? A book written in hundreds of languages by a thousand different authors, over many thousands of years. And why should we trust a word that it says? Because God guided his texts, and he is infallible.
If morality came from religion, I dare say it would be far less moral than we’d like.
Howdy Damien,
Yeah, Christ definitely does NOT advocate throwing out the Old Testament. That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We can see though (from Christ and from Paul) that the law of Abraham no longer holds. Hence Christians need not be circumcized, keep kosher, etc. The reason behind this was that no one could live by the law so all were destined for hell. A new system was needed (ie the sacrifice of Christ). There is certainly no line-by-line list of what goes and what stays (the 10 commandments are definitely in, right?) and there are 2 views on what to keep. 1 is to follow Christ when he speaks and everything else when he doesn’t. The other is that the Church figures this stuff out. A better way to say it is that Christ FULFILLS the law so that we are no longer damned by it.
I’m familiar with the similar Qur’anic rule (that is decidedly more systematic) where the later verse always “wins” so to speak.
I am not entirely sure that the falability of scripture entails that it is an invention of humanity. That sort of depends on how much you believe in divine inspiration. It seems coherent to say “God inspired Paul to write the scripture but Paul has free will so he got something wrong.” The hope is that by working as a community we can see what is inconsistent with the other beliefs and “throw out” the mistakes. It’s not a perfect system (Aristotle might like it though).
And so we come to the ultimate point, it takes a measure of faith. There is no denying it. The truths of any religious system contain a logical leap that must be taken by faith. Does this necessarily entail their falsehood? No. I would subsequently challenge anyone to find a system NOT based on faith. I think Hume showed it’s impossible. We could be nihilists but that’s not so good. We could be subjectivists but that’s not too practical when making laws.
So what does that mean? It means that all of us (religious or not) have to acknowledge that we might be wrong. I think that’s something of what you’re after but maybe not the whole of it. So I would say to a suicide bomber “What if you’re wrong?” Well, if they’re wrong they’re going to hell. If they’re right and do nothing? Well, not everyone in heaven is a suicide bomber so they can still get there. Seems like a compelling argument to me.
The funny thing is religion could be right. I don’t think your argument really nails down religion as an institution. It does nail down untempered belief. Irrational action based on religion. You could argue that Christianity as a religion is inconsistent but then we’d just have to come up with some BS way of explaining away the inconsistency and we’re fine. You might see that as cheating but we physicists do it all the time (the glories of Quantum Mechanics). Also, the inconsistencies might be of human origin (there’s that free will again). SO any way you slice it you can’t really pin down religion or God as the problem.
Obviously, you and I disagree about morality. I am a Deontologist so I don’t think morality changes with time. But that seems like too broad a topic for any of us.
Kevin
@ Kevin: Thanks for watching, and for your comment.
About Christ fulfilling the laws of Abraham, and negating the nasty bits of the Old Testament, such as Leviticus (which mandates murder as punishment for homosexuality, among other things we wouldn’t necessarily find to be criminal offenses in our society now): Christ may be the central figure of Christianity but he does not advocate throwing out the Old Testament.
In fact he supports it on many occasions, and (in true Biblical fashion) supports general and unspecific parts of it.
It might interest you to note that the Qu’ran of Islam also has a similar feature. In the Qu’ran, there are contradictory statements as well, and they handle it in much the same way. You favor the new stuff over the old stuff as a rule, but of course interpretations vary. Just like horoscopes.
You said: “Because human knowledge is bounded you MUST be correct in saying that we’ll get some things wrong. It is an inevitability. If there were some other system where this was not true then I’d say let’s adopt that system. But, it simply does not exist.”
That’s my point exactly. Humans WILL mess things up, and that’s why we need to admit that the Bible, the Qu’ran, the Torah, and every other piece of scripture about is an invention of humanity. We need to stop people from claiming that religion is something that it isn’t: Infallible.
“God” is what turns a person with off-kilter ideas into a suicide bomber, or a group of philosophically like minded people into a holy crusade.
Actually I should correct myself there, it’s not God so much as the belief in “infallibility”. More than belief in God, it’s the belief that there is something that is absolute, infallible, incapable of being wrong, and MUST be abided by. If that something is God, then you get the crusades, or jihads. If that something is a person, you get Hitler, Stalin, or Kim Jong Il.
You said: “Another point, I don’t know if religious passages were intentionally vague and open to interpretation; … Some passages are definitely NOT vague.”
Indeed. My point is that the Bible as a whole is vague. Some parts of it speak quite pointedly to the horrendous nature of biblical “morality”, in which murder is a common punishment for many things that wouldn’t even get you jail time in modern western culture. Other parts of the same Bible disagree with the punishment, or even the crimes.
Morality has evolved over time, and since morality does not come from religion (And thank heaven it doesn’t! I would have been stoned to death many times over if it had), it is religion that bends to fit the changing morality of society, and not vice versa.
But people, while accepting the change, continue to pretend that everything is the same. They re-interpret the same Bible over and over, every time it stops fitting the world around it, instead of admitting that it is just philosophy, and not the literal words of an omnipotent and infallible God.
That is what I have a problem with.
Howdy, I watched your video and I wanted to respond with a few comments.
I am a devout Catholic and I found your video very intriguing. I think it’s a very well-considered set of ideas and arguments.
When we consider the situation of “You’re not a Christian, you’re doin it wrong,” there seems to be 2 sets of arguments. One type is about a particular religion and a particular inference from it. The other a more general question of religion.
If I were to look at the Catholic Bible and then conclude “One ought to kill all young girls at the age of 7,” I would be hard-pressed to defend that claim. So, some interpretations are obviously wrong, out-of-hand.
In the case of something like the Crusades (an act perpetrated by the Church) it’s trickier. I can’t say I know the Biblical justification for the Crusades but I can say that the teachings of Christ seem to be pretty clearly set against them. To use one of you examples, killing homosexuals, I am aware of several Biblical passages that decry homosexuality and one that (in most translations) advocates killing of homosexuals. It is somewhere in Leviticus. In that same book are the rules about keeping kosher. For Christians, when Christ comes to the world he fulfills the Law of Abraham (that set down in Leviticus and earlier books) and so as Christians we needn’t worry about those passages. They have been overthrown as it were by the law of Christ (in whose case we could accrue BUCKETS of verses that condemn killing anyone, homosexuals or otherwise).
Also, don’t forget, if I wanted to I could just “bite the bullet” and say that “Yes, God says kill homosexuals therefore we should.” That seems like a valid option (even if its one I’m not fond of because it is inconsistent with Christ). That idea of God is probably very BAD for you and it’s bad for me but its a possibility.
The second set of arguments is a more general and philosophical one. In a religion, who says who’s doing it rite and who’s doing it wrong? In many faiths the final arbiter is the individual. I’m not so keen on that idea. For Catholics, the Church is the one who makes that distinction. Does the Church still get it wrong every now and then? The Crusades would say yes but much less often than any single individual. Because human knowledge is bounded you MUST be correct in saying that we’ll get some things wrong. It is an inevitability. If there were some other system where this was not true then I’d say let’s adopt that system. But, it simply does not exist. It is more a fact about human knowledge (and free will) than about religion. It would be a DISASTER for the Christian faith if we couldn’t get it wrong. Why? Then we would have no free will.
All in all I think your argument here is a good one and one we all need to think about. Not one of us has a direct link to God 24/7. Catholics believe (and this applies to a later comment you made) that God gave us reason for precisely this purpose. I hate it when people say that there is no place for reason in religion. On the contrary, religion MUST be compatible with our reason (see St. Thomas Aquinas for an extensive discussion). Religion provides the outside normative values (what is right and wrong) but we need some way to access that knowledge and reason is it (faith is in there too but reason seemed to be the idea in question).
Another point, I don’t know if religious passages were intentionally vague and open to interpretation; however, ALL people suffer from confirmation bias regardless of the source so again I’m not sure that’s a knock on religion. Some passages are definitely NOT vague.
I cannot defend the idea that Christ was the son of GOd and so derives his infaliability from that nature. It is just a doctrine of faith.
Id also like to add that a Muslim might say, “Clearly terrorists are not Muslims because their action although seemingly in keeping with one literal interpretation of the Qur’an and obviously in opposition to another part.” That is that if someone is truly Muslim then they must believe that the Qur’an contains no contradictions. They have to provide some explanation as to how what they are doing does NOT imply a contradiction. Many times this can only be done if we argue that the actions of the terrorist is not the true teaching of the passage in question.
I appreciate you taking the time to read and I hope you find my arguments cogent. Also, please be aware that I think about these things all the time. There are those of us who refuse to blindly follow a religion, even one we believe in. Please feel free to contact me at the provided e-mail address.
Kevin