Plato's Playground
Aside from some general reference to Christianity that somehow "justified" the elimination of Jews, WWII wasn't a "religious" war. Neither was Vietnam, Korea, WWI, the Civil War....in fact, I'm hard pressed to think of a "religious" war, in the sense of the Crusades, since, well...the Crusades.
Certainly religion has been used as an excuse, later, to justify aggression or defending the motherland, or what have you. But it was cool reason that developed weaponry beyond the horse and the spear and the sword. Both "R's" can quite reasonably be seen as curses on humanity, as much as benefits.
Depends on how you turn the kaleidoscope, doesn't it?
we threatened war with godless communism for 50 years. jihad may have a religious component. hindus and sikhs and buddhist (BUDDHIST for god's sake!) regularly slaughter each other for religious freedom. recently a US general infamously told a moslem guy "my god is more powerful than your god." religion had a part in "the troubles" in ireland. all europe was at war for a century over the fight between protestants and catholics for power. our president says god wants us to bring democracy to the world and he's using war to do it. how many of our own citizens and those of moslem countries see us as at war with islam?
i'm not defending the godless who wage war, but i think they do it more for power and money and resources than for reason.
science created weapons to be sure. and both religions and the immoral godless used them.
Pirate, I feel that I have come full circle; I'm having to allow once again that much evil has been done in the name of religion or Religion, whichever you choose. The Crusades the Inquisition, witch burnings, take your pick. On the other side, think Hiroshima, think Nagasaki, think napalm, and you can see the evil that can come through science. You can be a good person even though you don't believe in God. You can be a bad person if you do believe in God. Scientists are both good and bad; preachers are both good and bad. So where exactly does this get us? Yes, people not being allowed to have birth control is bad. Is it at all possible for you to contemplate that not all the evil in the world comes from religion? Do you really think that if suddenly every religious person in the world gave up their faith that we would have paradise on earth? If not, then what the hell are we aruging about? And, Pirate, I love ya anyway.
Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Sudanese Civil War, Bosnia, Kosovo, 100 years war, Phillipine insurrection, the current Islamic Jihad and the resulting GWOT, European conquest of the Americas and Africa (justified as bringing Christ to the heathens, although loot was obviously a more important motive the priests were right there with the program), pogroms throughout medieval history (before, during and after the Crusades) -- and I'm sure I could think of more if I wanted to spend the time.
Yeah, people used reason rather than faith to invent weapons. But their faith inspired them to do so, or at least it sure didn't stop them. We can't put the genie of knowledge back in the bottle, or un-eat the apple. So we need to turn reason to the service of the good. I find faith to be of no help -- the pious, as far as I can tell, are more likely to be wicked than the impious.
Just saw JB's post after mine went up. I certainly don't think eliminating religion would eliminate evil or make people better. I don't think it would have any direct effect on how good people are, basically. I would miss it as a cultural phenomenon with interesting stories and music and pageantry and all that. But I do think it would leave us free to contemplate our situation and to take action without certain unhelpful illusions.
That said, people are always going to search for meaning and try to make sense of their inner experience and their deep feelings of connection with each other and nature and they will contemplate mystery and wonder and all of that. I just think we can do it more meaningfully, more productively, and more honestly without dragging God or doctrine into the picture.
Maybe my upcoming post on Buddhism will make y'all feel better about me.
janeboatler--i don't think science is in the same category as religion. scientists do have organizations but they don't have wars as scientists. even the larger category of reason(ists) don't go to war as such. i don't think scientists have the same organizational power or followers to influence as ministers, and science doesn't have a moral pretense. while (d)evil is a religious term i certainly don't think religion is the source of all badness. the fruits of science can be used well or ill, but scientists mostly have little say in that. i'm not trying to expunge religion, as if i could. i see it as ill-used through history. the core of all religions look good to me.
what went wrong?
and how can i blame the core of religion in the presence of such a decent, compassionate human as jane?
So, Pirate, we can agree that stamping out religion won't solve all our problems? What went wrong? People made choices that, whether well-intentioned or ill-intentioned resulted in evil deeds being done. These are deep questions, but I don't think demonizing religion serves much purpose. The Bible says the love of money, i.e. greed, is the root of all evil. I think that is much closer to the truth. Or the lust for power? It's not simple.
Believe me, the fundies give me the willies too. The Roman Catholic Church, when it speaks on abortion, has little moral authority, because it forbids birth control.
But for me anyway, I've had enough of this discussion. I'm with Speechless; who will take out the trash?
Pirate, I thought you first comment here was very well done. You stated your position clearly and even included definition of terms. And you did so without sharp points or edges, the essence of scholarly debate. Would that I could write as well.
I think janeboatler makes a good point and it is something along what Cervantes mention about defining terms. I suspect that non of us here have any problem with the religion as expressed by janeboatler or speechless. We may not agree with their belief but we have no problem with it as we consider them to be good people. So the problem must lie somewhere else. So let me set forth a couple of problem areas I find with religion. But first let me note that the only religion have any real knowledge on is Christianity. And even here I don’t know all that much as Mr. Jeffers has made me painfully aware.
The first problem area I have is with large bureaucratic religious institutions. These seem to require an abundance of dogma to such an extent that
These seem to require an abundance of dogma to such an extent that it has and does lead to strife between them even to the point of bloodshed. And the bureaucracy seems to justify their position with some degree of being more holy than others or perhaps having God’s ear. And they also require expanding the ranks of the followers and this does not in all cases preclude putting a sword to a throat and offering a choice of converting or dying. To borrow from Adventus; they seek worldly power and want very much to wield it. In my view therein lies the problem.
The second problem I have is what in a technological would be called a tight feedback loop. Here I think of the likes of Dobson, Falwell, and Billy Graham. They tend to speak to audiences who feed their righteousness back to them much like a microphone coming to close to a speaker. This caused their self righteousness to build to a deafening screech. If their self righteousness were physical there would not be a building constructed
If their self righteousness were physical there would not be a building constructed by man in which they could enter.
I think Cervantes is correct. We do need to clarify just what it is about religion that we have problems with. There are my points so am I just a kooky old koot or is this where in fact our problem with religion lies. Those of us that have a problem that is.
Gary, Pirate, Cervantes, is it really religion that is the problem, or is it the actions of certain religious people that give you problems?
Janeboatler. I am not all that good at this writing thing so I probably didn’t express myself very well above. I have a very sincere respect for what I will say as generic religion by which I mean a belief in a omnipotent being commonly referred to as god. And I feel that way about the religious belief that you and speechless have. I have no problem whatever here. Let me stumble around and try another approach.
Just as science can gain knowledge that mankind can choose to use for what we would call good or for evil I see religion as something that mankind can choose to use for good or evil. Some individuals who in my opinion preach to the choir so much that their self righteousness rises to the level of obscenity is a area where I have a problem. And that very often does involve an individual. But I also have a problem with religious institutions. I see these as dogmatic and to inclined to the worldly concepts of seeking and wielding of power by people who view themselves as holier th
I see these as dogmatic and too inclined to the worldly concepts of seeking and wielding of power by people who view themselves as holier than others.
dpr...I agree with you about 'Religion'. I tend to think Religion was conceived to divide and control and has little to do with having a relationship with God, a higher power or whatever it was that moved you deeply when experiencing the oneness of existance. Then I also suspect experiencing that oneness is experiencing what some folks call God. It can also be explained by quantum physics. I think science is a roundabout way to find God. I think science and religion are the same. They can be used and misused but they are both seeking the oneness of existance either to prove it or worship it. The problem lies within humans. We are making weapons. Science is our method. We are going around the world suggesting Christianity is The Way for everyone everywhere. I've never been comfortable with the word God being used to more or less describe an entity. I see it more as energy that is intelligent and feels like LOVE. I believe when we die we merge back into this energy. We
become the oneness of existence. And yes I'm toasted and lost half of what I had written here. I must surely have said enough.
Good night.
While it seems clear to me that God is a human invention and that no such entity exists in reality, I too am not particularly concerned by people who, for whatever reason, have some personal belief in some version of God. I do think that ultimately, humanity must be, and will be liberated from that particular delusion, but I wouldn't invest much of my time debating people about their personal feelings or philosophy, except . . . What concerns me is the disturbing and growing power of religious doctrine and of demonstrably irrational beliefs in our culture and politics. Given the profound crisis we face as a species, this troubles me a lot.
Had we but world enough and time...I'm sure we could get to the bottom of all this stuff. But as it is, we're all mostly muddling along as well as we can.
There are so many versions of the Big R religious experience. I sincerely believe that some people have religious experience and that informs the order of their lives, while other people create orders and rules and form Religions as a way to give themselves meaning and power.
And you know what's particularly interesting. Those of us who have the everyday garden variety religious experiences, ineffable sense of the sacred present in every day life, are mostly women. Those who are codifiying the rules and working on excluding people are mostly men. Go figure. (And mind you I'm saying generally)
There was a time when this sort of dichotomy drove me nuts. I think if people in this dialogue would stop using the word religion and start talking honestly about their ultimate concerns, what they love with all their heart and
what they love with all their heart and all their mind and all their soul, (as well as the uses and abuses of power), we might hear some really interesting things.
Speechless, those are wise words.
Wise words indeed Speechless.
Last night a neutrino had one of those rare interactions with a neuron in what serves as my brain and I had an idea that may help to give focus to this dialog. My idea is the case od Terry Schiavo in Florida. Her case seems to me to bring together all the elements of this debate and provides us something on which to focus this dialog.
Here science has given us the knowledge that allows us to keep human flesh “alive” indefinitely. We have some dogmatic elements of religion telling us that God demands that we do so in reverence for “live”. Some people of reason feel that if the neural activity which defined the person who inhabited that flesh is no longer preset then keeping flesh alive serves no useful purpose. Others are concerned for moralistic reasons fearing that we may start down a path towards a time when people might be euthanized for reasons of expediency if they should become a “problem”
This might get us around the problem of railing at an ill
This might get us around the problem of railing at an ill defined fog bank labeled religion.
Hey Gary S., gotta blogwhore, I posted on Terry Schiavo a while back:
Not stayin' Alive .
I have another post called "The A Word" where I give my take on where the moral status of a human being does and does not apply. I think this is easier and hopefully, a bit less immodest than repeating everything here.
Oh sorry:
The A Word
Speechless---when i used the term big R Religion i intended it to refer to organized church hierarchies, not the faith of any individual. i agree with you about mostly men making the rules. how about that rule that women can't be priests?
gary--thank you. i have a good editor. i think you express yourself quite well.
jsk--i will politely demur on science and religion being the same. otherwise--right on sister.
all of you---thanks for engaging.
DPR, I heard you refering to big R Religion that way alright, and I'm with you: it's ridiculous, and obviously looking at the sex abuse scandals of recent years (which are of course the tip of a far larger and more ancient iceberg) it's clear the church needs women to be priests. It's a huge topic that deserves longer consideration. (If I don't comment myself out of foothold on this blog, I may try addressing the question in a post still to come.)
By the way, just for the sake of loving poetry, I wrote one that again tries to get at some of my feeling on how we are resonders not makes of the rules of physics etc. You can click on my homepage below if you care to read it.
Check it out
Interview with Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith."
I'm coming to this late, but I'd just like to reiterate that I see a disconnect in a lot of thinking about this stuff, between science as a field, and Science as some Platonic ideal. I think a lot of us have a tendency to think about what incorruptible, perfect, abstract Science is, and to ignore what all-too-corruptible human science does.
My personal view - and you can view this as hysteria, but at least you'll know where I'm coming from - is that we're killing ourselves and our planet with science, while daydreaming about how Science will save us. I think it's irrational.
Yo, Phila.
Cervantes, you and Sam Harris can long for the "end of faith", but that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Because I am a person of faith, that does not mean that I am anti-reason. Can't believers and unbelievers find common ground to try to solve problems?
Phila--i agree wholeheartedly with you on the bad use of science. monsanto makes "roundup ready" soybean seed, meaning it survives spraying with roundup, the infamous defoliant. and now they are working at inserting a "terminator gene" onto various seeds, making them produce plants with sterile seeds so that farmers can't save seed for next years crop. they assure us it won't cross over into the wild. maybe we'll terminate all the flora on the planet. we'll be the monkey that killed everything.
Pirate, despite all the assurances to the contrary, the bioenginered crops scare the hell out of me. What about the corn that kills the butterflies? I don't believe anything that is being said about how benign this stuff is. We won't know the consequences until the seeds are widely used, and then it will be too late.
"Can't believers and unbelievers find common ground to try to solve problems?"
janeboatler----that's why i'm doing this blog. i think we are working toward that goal. i'm hoping its two steps forward and one back and not the other way around.
phila---i think the unwillingness to confront the problems of overpopulation may be a fatal human flaw, tho science (sterilize us or kill us with explosion or radiation) or biology (disease, broadly speaking) could step in and reduce the population.
JB -- Sam Harris doesn't like faith, but he does like spirituality. It's an important distinction to me as well. I'm not here to destroy anybody's faith, but like DPR and Sam Harris, I am concerned that faith leads some people to dangerously irrational beliefs, which have given us Preznit Chimpoleon, among other bad outcomes. I have to tell you where I'm coming from, in the interest of full disclosure and an honest discussion, but I'm not expecting to convert you. That's not the point. I respect your beliefs and what religion means to you, I want to assure you of that.
Cervantes, muchas gracias! I needed to hear that. I respect you too, and I am not trying to convert you either. On most issues facing us now, you and I would probably agree.
I just think we can do it more meaningfully, more productively, and more honestly without dragging God or doctrine into the picture.
Where Cervantes and I agree - and I think RMJ agrees with this, too - is that in practical terms, solving our problems is up to us. No one here, I'm sure, believes that if the ozone layer vanishes, God's going to weave us a new one out of angel hair. RMJ argued a while back that religion is responsibility. I'm in favor of responsibility, and I'm in favor of anything that inspires people to accept it and live up to it. In that sense, I disagree with Cervantes' assertion that religion is necessarily less meaningful or productive than other approaches. But I do agree that a lot of religious conceptions encourage disengagement from or trivializing of the world's problems.
jb--i read the sam harris interview. i think you would like it. i certainly did. thank you cervantes.
Pirate, I read it and did not like it. He seems like quite an intolerant man. We could not have a conversation. He would not talk to me unless I was open to convert to his view, but he would not be open to convert to my view. We could not speak as equals, because he has all the answers. He is a zealot; I am not. Although I do not know much about Eastern mysticism, I would think there is much good to be found there. Actions and behavior are what I judge, not personal beliefs. The more I think about it the more repulsive his zealotry seems. He reminds me in some ways of the fundies. What he is saying is that if a believer is not open to change, then he should be shunned.
sorry jb. i should have considered it from your view before i said anything.
Harris is very definite about his own views, I don't necessarily read him as condemning or shunning believers, however. I understand that his book is very tough on Islam, but kinder about Christianity.
Cervantes, this is hopefully a topic we can get into later...but today, I'm reading about geologists falsfiying documents to promote the Yucca Mountain waste repository. I really think it'd be interesting to stop worrying about God for a while, and start worrying about whether science truly plays the role we want it to in our lives, and whether it's realistic to believe that it ever will. Because I'm coming more and more to the point of view that we're falling prey to the usual error of blaming powerless people for being irrational, while ignoring just how often systematic and conscious fraud masquerades as science.
Not saying everyone has to drop everything and discuss this, but I do think people ought to give it some thought.
Phila,
God? What are you speaking of? There is no such word. Did you mean Poseidon?
Phila---i'm with you on that. but is it real science if they are faking data? real science is bad enough used poorly. it should be easier to attack actual falsification of data than misuse of gene splicing that works but has negative real world effects.
DPR,
is it real science if they are faking data?
When we talk about what "real" science is, we're talking about an idealized abstraction. We're not talking about what happens in the real world, where compromise and corruption are inevitable.
You can ask the same question about religion: Is it real religion if they're denying people human rights? I don't think so. But what I expect from the theory of science and religion, and what I get from it in practice, are very different things. If science is supposed to lead us out of the darkness - per Cervantes et al - we better start figuring out how to lead it out of the darkness. Because as I said before, it's killing us.
phila--i intended my comment to agree with you about corruption. perhaps i should have said dishonest science. and of course the yucca mountain false documents do have the potential for tremendous real world negative effects. point well taken about what happens in the real world. i'll work on sharpening up my thoughts and discourse.
i'll work on sharpening up my thoughts and discourse.
They're both dangerously sharp as it is!
Maybe I'm taking it too seriously...I don't know. Like I said, this is just stuff that's agitating my noggin lately, so I can't help going on about it.
I actually wrote my master's thesis in large part on what you might call the bias of science. Incidents such as this one, where scientists commit fraud for political, financial or professional gain, are not a big problem. They almost always get caught because, in the end, The Truth is Out There.
However, there are subtler issues of what questions get priority, or even asked; how questions are framed; whether we look at a problem holistically or reductionalistically; how data are interpreted with respect to causal models, and which piece of a complex causal story gets emphasized. Also, many problems which have a strictly factual component get tangled up in politics and values and the parts don't get clearly separated in the discussion. Journal articles are often rewarding targets for deconstruction.
Also Phila, I would not agree that science is what's killing us. Humans were quite capable of destructive folly long before they developed modern technological capacities. Just look at the extinct megafauna of North America if you doubt it. In any case, the genie is out of the bottle. Read Ted Kaczynski, whose tract yearning for an imagined pre-technological past is unmistakably the work of a post-enlightenment thinker, who returned to nature by living in a plywood house and hunting rabbits with a rifle. We can't go back. Only way out is through. Scientific discovery and technological development will continue. We need to develop the ethical culture and social structures that can shape change to the common good, but we'll need to see clearly in order to do that.
Incidents such as this one, where scientists commit fraud for political, financial or professional gain, are not a big problem. They almost always get caught because, in the end, The Truth is Out There.
You seem to have a rosier picture of it all than I do when it comes to this sort of fraud Cervantes. Vioxx, Anti Depressants & suicidal kids, Yucca Mountain...it seems to me people use science to play God, and we are left to cope with the consequences.
I actually wrote my master's thesis in large part on what you might call the bias of science. Incidents such as this one, where scientists commit fraud for political, financial or professional gain, are not a big problem. They almost always get caught because, in the end, The Truth is Out There.
I'd like to believe that. But to me, saying that is like saying that everything'll turn out OK politically because America is a democracy, and we're governed by law, and leaders are accountable to the people. I see a big disconnect between how the system's supposed to work, and how it actually does work. And as science relies more on government and private industry for funding, the problems accelerate. At some point, honest scientists could find themselves in the same position as honest bloggers...railing against a power-oriented orthodoxy with the power to legitimize itself and tune out dissent.
Also Phila, I would not agree that science is what's killing us. Humans were quite capable of destructive folly long before they developed modern technological capacities.
Yeah, but at this point it's like we're playing Russian Roulette with all but one chamber loaded. I agree; we need ethical structures, and we need to see things clearly. What I don't understand is how this will happen. Obviously, wishing won't make it so.
I'm not just being snotty here, either. I'd love to hear some concrete ideas that would make me feel better about this stuff!
The problems with Vioxx and anti-depressants didn't happen because of scientific fraud, they happened because of unethical uses of perfectly good science -- including the suppression of scientific results -- by business executives. Actually, I think those cases prove my point -- the truth is out there, and in science at least, it prevails in the end. It's not debatable whether Vioxx raises the risk of heart disease, but it is nonetheless debatble whether it should remain on the market. Different kinds of questions there. See my blog.
Am I going crazy or did you get cut off in your prime? You don't seem to have a whole post any more.
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