Atheism and the Evolution of Religious Faith

[sayak83]

I do not deny that, and I have felt quite in the dark many times because of it.

Yes I learned of it.

It has been blantant, yes.

Well that is good to know.

If you know all this, I am confused why you made the earlier comments.Could you explain?

 

[Brickjectivity]

Wow! To me this can be true only if a religion has a bullet-proof scripture, and I know of no such examples?!

Instead, I'd argue that healthy individuals have good morality innately.

Not, not bullet proof scripture. Just religious training, and I'll accept the writings Sayak has mentioned as better training than innate humanity. I am waiting to hear your argument that individuals have good morality innately. Go for it if you like and if Windwalker doesn't object to a tiny detour.

If you know all this, I am confused why you made the earlier comments.Could you explain?

In my comment to Windwalker's OP I said that people, atheist or not, have to make a covenant of peace; because people are innately violent. People suspect the worst of each other. They are afraid when fear is irrational. They go over and above with vengeance and are easily unsettled. As you pointed out to me, good training is important. As you know atheism is not training, but I point out it has been sometimes substituted for religion, leaving a gap where there used to be some training. You then replied to me that I was kept in the dark about humanist writings, which was true. If I had no religious training but I had humanist training that would be something, whereas if I only had atheism that would leave a gap.

 

[icehorse]

Not, not bullet proof scripture. Just religious training, and I'll accept the writings Sayak has mentioned as better training than innate humanity. I am waiting to hear your argument that individuals have good morality innately. Go for it if you like and if Windwalker doesn't object to a tiny detour.

Well my first - admittedly "go-to" - argument is this:

By what means do the religious know which parts of their scriptures to cherry-pick? I would say they use their internal moral compasses to perform the necessary cherry-picking.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Well my first - admittedly "go-to" - argument is this:

By what means do the religious know which parts of their scriptures to cherry-pick? I would say they use their internal moral compasses to perform the necessary cherry-picking.

This does not demonstrate innate goodness. You are the one who is cherry picking this time. By what means do street gangs know to pressure people into cooperating in their crimes? By what means do pimps know how to subjugate women? Is it by means of an innate goodness?

 

[sayak83]

Not, not bullet proof scripture. Just religious training, and I'll accept the writings Sayak has mentioned as better training than innate humanity. I am waiting to hear your argument that individuals have good morality innately. Go for it if you like and if Windwalker doesn't object to a tiny detour.


In my comment to Windwalker's OP I said that people, atheist or not, have to make a covenant of peace; because people are innately violent. People suspect the worst of each other. They are afraid when fear is irrational. They go over and above with vengeance and are easily unsettled. As you pointed out to me, good training is important. As you know atheism is not training, but I point out it has been sometimes substituted for religion, leaving a gap where there used to be some training. You then replied to me that I was kept in the dark about humanist writings, which was true. If I had no religious training but I had humanist training that would be something, whereas if I only had atheism that would leave a gap.

Ah, cool yes. As far as I understand that's what humanist and atheist groups are trying to foster.

The Quintessential Book of Advice for Atheist Parents Just Got Bigger and Better

Also support for young adults
Humanist Chaplaincies

As well as higher education on humanism
About Us | The Humanist Institute

So I personally am not concerned with growing nones and atheists in the West. The institutions that support them are rapidly forming and the philosophical foundations are already there.

 

[icehorse]

This does not demonstrate innate goodness. You are the one who is cherry picking this time. By what means do street gangs know to pressure people into cooperating in their crimes? By what means do pimps know how to subjugate women? Is it by means of an innate goodness?

Remember, I started off by saying that "healthy" individuals have innate goodness. Gang members and pimps are not healthy.

 

[Windwalker]

The problem is that if you clean your house to the point where the atheist has nothing more to object, you have no house anymore.

Ciao

- viole

Or you address the issues sufficiently until the next tension arises and the next stage of growth and understanding emerges.

 

[Windwalker]

In my comment to Windwalker's OP I said that people, atheist or not, have to make a covenant of peace; because people are innately violent.

Sadly I don't have the time right now to respond as I wish to everyone's great points in this thread. I just wanted to key in on this. I have to disagree strongly with this sentiment that people are innately violent. They are not. This sounds like a hangover from Christian theology of Augustine which says we are inherently sinners. We are not. If we were, we would have wiped ourselves out so long ago we would not have evolved to the point we could be having this discussion on the Internet. None of this would exist, we would not exist if we did not value cooperation and peace far over war and violence. Just some food for thought to digest here while I manage to come back to the discussion.

 

[Windwalker]

@Windwalker Interesting OP. People must nevertheless be in a covenant of peace whether in religion or not. I think atheism is a freedom that should not come without religious responsibility and some kind of training that makes each person aware that their actions are observed.

This doesn't necessarily need to come through religions, but simply through socialization, through family and culture. Cooperation is what serves us best as a species, and we learn that both through direct experience, and our culture, reinforced through its stories, it's myths, and its religions. Religions are not the source of it, but simply an arm of that source which is inherited in us as an evolved species, tribal memory and such.

I think those with religious training are a degree better, so one problem with atheism is it is sometimes gets used to replace religion. It cannot do that.

Actually, as difficult as it is for many to process this, atheism is a sort of idealism that traditional religion falls short of. It casts off the outdated dogmas of antiquated beliefs and demands, and through a humanistic philosophy, one which attempts to try to meet people where they are today in this day and age, elevate them beyond the narratives which condemn us as worthless sinners who are here, by only the grace of God who chooses not to burn us alive where we stand. I find the dignity they bestow upon us far more inspiring the Augustine's anal retentive theologies placed into the mouth of God.

It cannot replace anything except mental laziness.

That does not accurately represent modern atheism, let along old-school atheism.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I have to disagree strongly with this sentiment that people are innately violent. They are not. This sounds like a hangover from Christian theology of Augustine which says we are inherently sinners. We are not.

I've no interest in propping up Augustine or 'Original sin', and I've no problem with you being thankful for atheism. The only reason I brought up innate evil was in relation to the OP not in relation to any such notion. Tangentially are you denying that people enjoy violence? Each person seems to have this potential which is easily realized.

If we were, we would have wiped ourselves out so long ago we would not have evolved to the point we could be having this discussion on the Internet. None of this would exist, we would not exist if we did not value cooperation and peace far over war and violence.

I'm trying to make sure I get what you are saying. Our history is littered with murder victims, and the people alive today are the survivors of wars. We have destroyed ourselves many times over, but up until now enough have survived mainly because ancestors have capitulated to the whims of victors. This is evidence to you that we value cooperation and peace over war and violence?

 

[sayak83]

I've no interest in propping up Augustine or 'Original sin', and I've no problem with you being thankful for atheism. The only reason I brought up innate evil was in relation to the OP not in relation to any such notion. Tangentially are you denying that people enjoy violence? Each person seems to have this potential which is easily realized.

I'm trying to make sure I get what you are saying. Our history is littered with murder victims, and the people alive today are the survivors of wars. We have destroyed ourselves many times over, but up until now enough have survived mainly because ancestors have capitulated to the whims of victors. This is evidence to you that we value cooperation and peace over war and violence?

What % of total people who lived say between 500 BCE to 2000 CE have been killed in war do you think?
Actually I now have the figure for the last century.
Total 5.5 billion people died in the 20th century.
Out of this wars killed 131 million, a mere 2.5% of the total deaths.
Road traffic killed 300 million in comparison.

Here is a nice estimate

Bigger figure below
20th Century Death — Information is Beautiful

We are psychologically attuned to wars as it affects the fortunes of our group. So war gets a lot of human focus, but wars have not been a significant source of human deaths, even in the so called bloodiest century.

Also could you point me to any study showing the %of soldiers who enjoyed killing in wars? I am sure if people loved violence then the fraction would be very high. Link me the numbers. I find it strange that I only hear reports of traumatized veterans when we should see so many happy and contented soldiers who were able to fulfill their innate violent drives. Their mental states would be healthier than us poor civilians who have to repress our natural tendencies throughout our lives? No?

 

[LukeS]

Wow! To me this can be true only if a religion has a bullet-proof scripture, and I know of no such examples?!

Instead, I'd argue that healthy individuals have good morality innately.

No, morality is a cultural and personal set of behavioural adaptations too. The folds of the brain develop in the womb, but leaning takes place afterwards. If morality = healthy in any way, its pretty plain to me that in order to be healthy in a complex social and matarial environment, innate factors are not enough. Otherwise, why would evolution bother with giving us the power to learn?

 

[Windwalker]

Tangentially are you denying that people enjoy violence? Each person seems to have this potential which is easily realized.

Aside from those with psychological problems, I would deny that most people enjoy violence, yes. That we are capable of violence is not at issue. What I was addressing was the view you cited that people are inherently evil. I deny that. I believe for the most part it's the other way around. If our main propensity were towards violence why would we create systems that seek to censor violent behaviors? We wouldn't.

I'm trying to make sure I get what you are saying. Our history is littered with murder victims, and the people alive today are the survivors of wars. We have destroyed ourselves many times over, but up until now enough have survived mainly because ancestors have capitulated to the whims of victors. This is evidence to you that we value cooperation and peace over war and violence?

Notice how you referred to the many victims of war? If we were inherently evil and violent as our basic natures, there would be no victims. There would be nothing but war as a way of life, for the sake of violence alone and we would be happy with it as we fulfilled our basic nature through it. But instead what you see are certain individuals who exploit others for self gain, against the wishes and desires of the majority.

I think you might find a lot of surprising insights regarding all this in this Ted Talk The surprising decline in violence

Now to the point of all this, I don't believe being an atheist in way shape or form means you have no reason to not be amoral. In fact, I would argue that given that atheists don't have some superimposed threat from the sky above against them in their imaginations, that when they choose to be and do good, it is coming from a far more genuine place within themselves. They love for the sake of love, not because they're "supposed to" in order to be accepted by God. They are potentially on the path to realizing their true nature much faster, I believe, because they removed the variable of externalizing these values, and have internalized them instead. They choose to be good, not they'd better be good or else.

Again, there is much religion can learn and understand by actually looking at atheism and understanding things such as this.

 

[Windwalker]

I think Ken Wilbur would give a 'Like' to the OP.

I think he would put it this way (and these are not his exact words):

'Narrow science' trumps 'narrow religion'. 'Broad religion/science' trumps both of those.

A Ken Wilber fan? Which of his books have you read?

But anyway, I see the progress of western humanity's leading edge thinking going from Christianity and the Bible, followed by the Renaissance and the 'age of enlightenment' producing a period where science led the cutting edge of thinking, now in this New Age dawning a more broad religious and post-materialist scientific thinking is the cutting edge of understanding. The current cutting edge is interested in consciousness and the nature of reality.

As a point of clarification, I wouldn't use the term "New Age" to describe any of this, let alone Wilber's work or Integral philosophy. The New Age movement is very much not this. While New Age is a form of progressive religion, it operates solidly in the magic and mythic stages; red and amber to use the spiral colors. I like to understand New Age as a form of "experimental Christianity", where instead of crosses and steeples you have crystals and pyramids. The basic approach and the way they are viewed and held are at the same level. That is definitely not in any way reflective of an Integral philosophy.

I do agree though that Integral does bring the left and right hand paths together, the interior and the exteriors. It's not just an understanding about consciousness, but a first hand direct knowledge of it interiorly. When you ground that in a sensible knowledge of the external natural world, which includes things like understanding our brains, our social systems, our psychologies, and so forth, the view of reality held taking all these into conscious awareness radically changes how we hold and value all of these things. Hence, why as the OP gets at, "Thank God for Atheism". It is part of the whole picture.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Just sharing some thoughts here about the supernatural in this context. If you think about what the supernatural represents in our imaginations, it points to the Transcendent. The way we historically have dressed that up is with prescientific, or prerational languages. Mythic imagery takes the Transcendent and tries to give it some form in the natural world to look at it, or to take the mind "above" in its reach for Reality at a deep existential level. "When you look at the rainbow in the sky, think of God's covenant with the earth", and that sort of thing. The goal is to make you mindful of higher Reality than just the goings on down here on earth.

So once science comes along and points out why there actually are rainbows and it's perfectly natural phenomena, those that are unable to decouple the meaning of the symbol from the symbol itself, become anti-science. This of course doesn't work if you embrace science and reason and rationality as the main mode of thought. So to the rainbow-believers, for example, the supernatural explanation is their linkage to the Divine itself, or that Transcendent Reality. If you remove the supernatural, you deny God to them.

But in growth, those structures need to grow in what they can hold, such as scientific realities to the rational mind. Yet, the Transcendent still exists in a spiritual context, an 'intuition' you could call it existing within us. You have "spiritual atheists" for example that acknowledge that 'sense', yet cannot be talked about to themselves, or others as magical or supernatural in the sense of fitting mythic descriptions or symbols. It's "something else", yet scientific language doesn't capture or fit that reality.

This is where it starts to get interesting. The supernatural is still there, in the sense of pointing to that 'something more' 'larger than our mundane reality', yet it's not magical, in the sense that it defies the nature or violates it. It in fact is quite, very immanent within the natural. The real stumbling block is not "explanations" for it, but rather one's ability to transcend the symbols into the meaning of the symbol within what our rational minds can hold comfortable. It's not that we "explain" it, but that we can embrace it without violating reason. It's like love in this way. Love transcends the object of love, and "God" transcends this world, yet is known in all objects. In other words, God is not an object, but the Subject of all our Being.

We'll see if this makes any sense typing it out.

I don't regard the supernatural in the popular context it's givin, however I do contemplate Carl Sagon's, Pale Blue Dot by which our insignificance is notably contrasted with a reality that's far more vast and pervasive than any connotations brought about through our imaginations and fantasies born of the mind.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I think you might find a lot of surprising insights regarding all this in this Ted Talk The surprising decline in violence

Thank you for that video which is thought provoking and brain food. I note that the stability following WWII he attributes to a human tendency towards less violence, though this peace is enforced worldwide by countries with nuclear weapons and US empiricism. To show a decrease in violence on a larger scale he begins with a description of a punishment in the Bible, then skips three thousand years to the Middle Ages. In doing so he completely avoids the historical fact of violence decreasing then increasing as Rome begins to fall into decline. He seems to want to portray violence as decreasing, but he has not demonstrated it. He's only demonstrated that there can be periods in which it decreases temporarily. We can hope to prolong the periods, but this is different from declaring humanity to be innately good.

Now to the point of all this, I don't believe being an atheist in way shape or form means you have no reason to not be amoral. In fact, I would argue that given that atheists don't have some superimposed threat from the sky above against them in their imaginations, that when they choose to be and do good, it is coming from a far more genuine place within themselves. They love for the sake of love, not because they're "supposed to" in order to be accepted by God. They are potentially on the path to realizing their true nature much faster, I believe, because they removed the variable of externalizing these values, and have internalized them instead. They choose to be good, not they'd better be good or else.

What history shows me is that choosing to be good is a privilege that is not often afforded to the young. We are embedded into an environment, and it tells us how good or bad we are allowed to be and what is reasonable. From that we range very little. Usually its only as we age that real choice comes into it. This seems a good explanation for why violence increases or decreases in trends rather than in leaps. As a society we can get more or less violent, and sometimes we do get less violent but sometimes more violent. Its a very far distance from your position that people are innately good.

Notice how you referred to the many victims of war? If we were inherently evil and violent as our basic natures, there would be no victims. There would be nothing but war as a way of life, for the sake of violence alone and we would be happy with it as we fulfilled our basic nature through it. But instead what you see are certain individuals who exploit others for self gain, against the wishes and desires of the majority.

That seems like shifting goal posts. I posit that violence is pleasure for people. That's why people like violent video games and other violent entertainments. If we weren't violent we would not enjoy them. I do not posit that we've no capacity for empathy or that we do not also empathize with suffering. That is, still, not inherent goodness. We also get violently jealous, vengeful, bitter when we do not get what we want. No one has to throw a punch or even offend us. This is countered by personal dedication, maturity, knowledge, training, fear of reprisal, cleverness, love, happiness, laziness and sometimes (but rarely) by pride. Notice that each of these characteristics may also drive us towards violence instead of away from it.

 

[sayak83]

Oh yes I anticipated you would go to video games. It seems we enjoy watching talking mouse, cats and ducks as well. But I am sure people will freak out if a mouse started talking. Indians enjoy watching movies with lots of song and dance sequences, so we go dancing around in the streets. Then there's all the Marvel movies...
Anyways, the sheer number of astounding and failed hypothesis about how our imaginations connect with our reality from Freud onwards should give anyone pause on playing that card...

 

[George-ananda]

As a point of clarification, I wouldn't use the term "New Age" to describe any of this, let alone Wilber's work or Integral philosophy. The New Age movement is very much not this. While New Age is a form of progressive religion, it operates solidly in the magic and mythic stages; red and amber to use the spiral colors. I like to understand New Age as a form of "experimental Christianity", where instead of crosses and steeples you have crystals and pyramids. The basic approach and the way they are viewed and held are at the same level. That is definitely not in any way reflective of an Integral philosophy.

I think you are giving the term 'New Age' a narrower meaning than me. I see the term referring to a vast array of eastern and non-Abrahamic spiritual things that got some traction in our recent era. This usually involves a more pantheistic understanding of the universe and consciousness and discusses energy and things not part of traditional western culture.

 

[viole]

Or you address the issues sufficiently until the next tension arises and the next stage of growth and understanding emerges.

Yes, and that will eventually converge towards the no house scenario. Believe me.

Ciao

- viole

 

[outlawState]

As another saying goes, "No one is so stupid as to be wrong 100% of the time".

That's a silly saying. There are plenty of people who are wrong 100% of the time in respect of any particularly and strictly delimited subject, just because they have no conceptual grasp of the subject and exercise their prejudices over right judgement.

The function of the atheist is to serve the heavenly purposes of God, but not promote the kingdom of God on earth. It is a lowly task indeed, for he serves that which he does not know, and reaps what he does not anticipate. His life is one of perpetual ignorance as to why he had been born, and as Jesus said, It would be better for the one that causes others to sin if he had never been born.