nameandnature | (no subject)

Stuff I found on the web, probably on

andrewducker's del.icio.us feed or something.

Psychology Today on ex-Christian ex-ministers and on magical thinking

Psychology Today has a couple of interesting articles, one on ministers who lose their faith, and another on magical thinking. Quoteable quote:

"We tend to ignore how much cognitive effort is required to maintain extreme religious beliefs, which have no supporting evidence whatsoever," says the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. He likens the process to a cell trying to maintain its osmotic pressure. "You're trying to pump out the mainstream influences all the time. You're trying to maintain this wall, and keep your beliefs inside, and all these other beliefs outside. That's hard work." In some ways, then, at least for fundamentalists, "growing out of it is the easiest thing in the world."

That sounds sort of familiar. I'm not sure I'd consider myself an ex-fundamentalist, but I did find that giving up removed the constant pressure to keep baling.

The stuff about moral contagion in the magical thinking article reminded me of Haggai 2:10-14, where it's clear that cleanness (in the Bible's sense of moral and ceremonial acceptability, rather then lack of dirt) is less contagious than uncleanness. There's possibly a link here to the tendency of some religions to sharply divide the world into non-believers and believers, and to be careful about how much you expose yourself to the non-believing world (q.v. the unequally yoked teaching you get in the more extreme variants of a lot of religions).

Old interview with Philip Pullman

Third Way interviewed Pullman years ago. It's the origin of one of his statements on whether he's an agnostic or an atheist, which I rather like:

Can I elucidate my own position as far as atheism is concerned? I don’t know whether I’m an atheist or an agnostic. I’m both, depending on where the standpoint is.

The totality of what I know is no more than the tiniest pinprick of light in an enormous encircling darkness of all the things I don’t know – which includes the number of atoms in the Atlantic Ocean, the thoughts going through the mind of my next-door neighbour at this moment and what is happening two miles above the surface of the planet Mars. In this illimitable darkness there may be God and I don’t know, because I don’t know.

But if we look at this pinprick of light and come closer to it, like a camera zooming in, so that it gradually expands until here we are, sitting in this room, surrounded by all the things we do know – such as what the time is and how to drive to London and all the other things that we know, what we’ve read about history and what we can find out about science – nowhere in this knowledge that’s available to me do I see the slightest evidence for God.

So, within this tiny circle of light I’m a convinced atheist; but when I step back I can see that the totality of what I know is very small compared to the totality of what I don’t know. So, that’s my position.

This isn't really a surprising statement, but, like Ruth Gledhill's discovery that Richard Dawkins is a liberal Anglican, some people seem surprised that atheists aren't ruling out things which some people would regard as gods. The point is that there's no decent evidence that anyone has met one. Deism is a respectable position, I think (although I'm not sure why you'd bother with it), but religions which claim God has spoken to them are implausible because of God's inability to keep his story straight.

The walls have Google

The thing about blogging is that you never know who's reading. Someone called Voyou makes a post ending with an aside which is critical of A.C. Grayling's response to Terry Eagleton's review of The God Delusion. Grayling turns up in the comments to argue with them.

(I keep turning up more conversations about the Eagleton review: see my bookmarks for the best of them).

"Compact of hypocrisy and secret vice"

Yellow wonders whether or not he should sign the UCCF doctrinal basis in this post and the followup. Signs point to "not". Si Hollett reminds me of myself in my foolish youth.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(continued)

Wrong calculations are wrong even if you don't know your bridge is going to fall down; but someone who cares about the people on the bridge, and knows that the calculations are wrong and can point that out, would surely do so to prevent the bridge from falling down. Similarly, if some decision of mine is going to land me in hell then someone who cares about my welfare might be expected to make sure I know before I have to make the decision; not to make me culpable or make me not culpable, but to make me less likely to land in hell.)
So the issue is why God doesn't make all this stuff absolutely clear to everyone given that (presumably) he doesn't want everyone to go to hell. I think he did quite a lot to get people to know, it's not like he stood by on the sidelines doing nothing. We wouldn't even be having this conversation if it was like that. He sent his son in to the world to warn people, the son who we killed. The cost for saving us was enormous. Could he have done more? Should there be trumpets? I'd like there to be more trumpets, but I think the reasons there aren't so many are complex. The complexities unlock other questions for which there seem to be no answers (e.g. it's clear the world is not as God wants, and that there are demons as there are angels, and the demons are opposed to and work against God's plans, how can this be if God is omnipotent?). I don't have all the answers - I don't think God has provided all the answers to these questions. I think he has provided enough answers that we can be sure he is exists, is loving, and is worthy of our worship. In other words I'm never going to understand it all, but I understand enough that I'm very confident that it's right.

The cost was enormous, eh? Seems to me that the cost God allegedly paid was considerably less -- infinitely less, indeed -- than the cost every single non-saved human being is going to be paying, and God (more or less by definition) is much better able to pay that cost. However, never mind that; I don't think anything much depends on how much it "cost" God to do whatever he did; actions don't become more meritorious just because you make them needlessly painful.

Once again, it appears that standing up to scrutiny means avoiding the difficult questions. Billions of people are suffering eternal torment. It seems that God could avoid this, at least for most of them, by providing better information more clearly. So why doesn't he? Oh, um, well, I don't know, it's all a mystery, but that's OK because there are also *other* problematic questions with similarly unknown answers, like "why does God leave his world in such a mess even though he supposedly cares for its inhabitants and can do anything he wants?". (Obviously a belief is better supported when it has two fatal objections than when it has only one.)

But, apparently, God has "provided enough answers that we can be sure he exists, is loving, and is worthy of our worship". That seems to me rather like saying "I know my spouse is openly sleeping with a dozen other people, insults me in front of my friends, and only talks to me once a year. But I've got ample reasons for believing that s/he loves me beyond description and is perfectly faithful to me." Or "I know my new theory of physics appears to predict that the planets will fall into the sun instead of orbiting it, and that protons decay with a half-life of one nanosecond, and that there's no such thing as light. But it gives enough good answers that I'm sure it's correct."

Could you provide at least a brief sketch of what these answers are that God has provided and how they outweigh the obvious facts of (e.g.) living in a world full of evil and, according to you, billions of people suffering eternal torment?

Seems to me that the cost God allegedly paid was considerably less -- infinitely less, indeed -- than the cost every single non-saved human being is going to be paying
I don't know why you think that.

and God (more or less by definition) is much better able to pay that cost
I don't think it's like being fined where people who have lots of money are less affected by the fine, I think it's more like enduring pain or torture or something where there is little or no variation in how reduced the effect is. Given that the separation from God the father on the cross was total (the why have you forsaken me stuff) I'm inclined to conclude that it was less costly for God.

However, never mind that; I don't think anything much depends on how much it "cost" God to do whatever he did; actions don't become more meritorious just because you make them needlessly painful.
I don't think God did make it 'needlessly painful'. I don't understand the mechanics of it all (I admitted that a while ago), but my lack of understanding of things as complex and external to my everyday experience is something I just wouldn't expect to understand.

I think we're going in circles here. You seem to think God is obligated to save people, and if he doesn't he is bad, whereas I think we are rightly judged for our actions and if God chooses to save any of us that's an amazing thing. I'm not sure this bit of the thread is really going anywhere.

"I know my spouse is openly sleeping with a dozen other people, insults me in front of my friends, and only talks to me once a year. But I've got ample reasons for believing that s/he loves me beyond description and is perfectly faithful to me."
It's not like that because I don't consider God's actions to be immoral. I don't think there is good contradictory information as you are suggesting here.

Could you provide at least a brief sketch of what these answers are that God has provided and how they outweigh the obvious facts of (e.g.) living in a world full of evil and, according to you, billions of people suffering eternal torment?
I can give it a go, and will do in the coming weeks on my blog.

I agree that discussion of who got hurt more is neither central nor very productive, so let's drop that.

Please imagine that the person talking about his/her spouse adds "I'm sure there's a good reason why it's right for her/him to be sleeping with all those other people and so on; I'm sure it's the best thing for me somehow". I'm sure *you* don't consider the things you predicate of God to be immoral. Fair enough; I neither can nor wish to tell you what moral values you have to have. All I'm saying is that the way you say God behaves seems to me to be monstrously immoral, and that my understanding of the values most deeply embedded in Christianity (which may differ from yours, and may be wrong) has them condemning the behaviour you ascribe to God too.