Sunday, March 10, 2013

Are Atheists Religious?

One question that sometimes crops up in the debate between atheists and theists is whether atheists have their own religion. Should the atheist’s goal be to end all religion or would this amount to ending human nature? There’s much confusion in this sub-debate that goes away with just some rudimentary analysis, so once I clarify the question at issue I’ll address the question itself.

Note the difference between these two questions: “Does the atheist have a religion?” and “Is atheism a religion? Often, it’s the latter question that’s discussed. See, for example, this NY Times debate. The atheist typically answers this latter question by saying that atheism is just the denial that there’s a god or any other supernatural entity, so were that negative position to amount to a religion it would be a pretty paltry one. And the theist then responds by saying that the atheist is committed to more than just that denial, since the denial has positive implications. For example, if God didn’t create the universe and there’s nothing supernatural, the universe must have a natural origin; also, if there are no miracles, everything in the universe must have some mechanistic explanation. So is some religion implicit in the essential atheistic proposition that there’s no God? By this point, the theist has shifted from the latter question to the former one and has conceded that atheism by itself isn’t a religion. If we’re talking about implications of the atheist’s broader worldview, we’re asking whether the atheist is typically committed to some religion in addition to flatly rejecting theism.

What is Religion?

The next area of confusion has to do with the definition of “religion.” If the atheist rejects theism, and all religions are theistic, then of course the atheist can’t consistently have any religion. And indeed, one of the main definitions of the word assumes that a religion requires a set of theistic beliefs, such as the beliefs that a god created the universe and intervenes in that creation. However, this definition should provide little comfort for the atheist who maintains that all religions should be abolished, because there’s a notorious fact about religious studies which is that because religions are so diverse, religion scholars have little consensus about how to define "religion." For example, certain forms of Buddhism are atheistic. Just because a word is popularly defined one way, doesn’t mean experts or laymen interested in getting at the underlying truth have to follow the vulgar way of understanding the matter.

Still, if there’s not much expert agreement about what all religions have in common, perhaps there's little gained from asking whether the atheist is religious. Clearly, the answer depends on your understanding of religions. Mine includes the sociological studies by Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade as well as the work of existential theologian Paul Tillich. For Durkheim and Eliade, the essence of religion isn’t theistic belief, but the social practice of worshipping something held to be sacred. On this view, religion is a means of uniting a group around a common cause. Social unity is needed, of course, because society has many external and internal threats which loners can’t overcome. Genetic lineage provides some biological mechanisms for social unity. For example, parents usually form an emotional bond to ensure that they help to raise their children. But the larger the social group, the less sufficient these biological mechanisms and so social mechanisms develop to overcome the emergent challenges to group cohesion.

One such social mechanism is based on the distinction between the sacred and the profane, which in turn piggybacks on the instinctive disgust response. According to Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” Durkheim realized that the notion of the supernatural depends on the concept of nature and that the Scientific Revolution revolutionized the latter. Durkheim thought of sacred objects, in turn, as hypostatized collective ideals. This is similar to Oswald Spengler’s theory of the cultural style that unites a race of people. Once a group is captivated by something, the group may set that thing apart from ordinary, secular life, treating it as sacred, as transcendently great. To mix the sacred and the profane is to contaminate the former with the latter. This is why the Christian (or Roman) idea of God’s incarnation not just as a human but as a crucified human was so controversial, especially to Jews. At any rate, the religious person is disgusted by the prospect of reducing the sacred to the profane.

You can see, then, why religions are so universal. Religions solve the social problem of unifying ever-larger groups of disparate individuals. But just as a genetic lineage can be hidden, if the parents choose to keep their union a secret or if someone has multiple sexual partners, so too social allegiances can be unclear, given our capacities for deception and double-dealing. Here, the Handicap Principle comes into play: we can signal our true intent by a sort of conspicuous consumption, by ensuring that the signal has a sufficient cost to the signaler. The more extravagant the signal, as in the peacock’s display of its tail feathers, for example, the more trustworthy the display of intention. Thus, the more bizarre the idea of the sacred and the more costly the culture of worshipping the sacred object, the greater the practitioners’ commitment and so the stronger their social bond. A classic example is the Jewish practice of circumcision. But even the elementary notion of a transcendent deity is sufficiently strange to rule out cases of casual deception among followers of a theistic religion. That is, if you’re going to merely pretend to follow such a religion, your lie will be tested since you’ll have to say with a straight face that you believe there’s an invisible person who has magical powers, and so forth.

How, though, do we come to call anything sacred? Here I’d turn to Tillich’s existential idea of the ultimate concern. We all face the threat of anxiety, owing to the existential predicament of just being naturally alive, that is, of being involuntarily incarnated in suffering bodies. We cope by overcoming physical obstacles with practical know-how, which culminates in modern technoscience. But the mental obstacles of doubt, fear, horror, and anxiety can be overcome only with mental tools, as it were. Ultimately, we must choose a satisfying way of life or live with the consequences of failing in that regard. We must take a leap of faith in an ideal with which we resonate, which stirs our emotions like a great artwork. This ideal, which gives direction to our life, will be our ultimate concern, our sacred object or god.

New Atheism, Science, and Religion

So with that definition in mind, I repeat the question: Is the typical atheist religious? What’s interesting to me here is to think what a truly irreligious life would be like. How could you live with no ultimate concern, with no sacred ideals? What would be your mental solution to the universal predicament of existing as a person, accursed by sentience and reason? Even the ultrarationalist Vulcan characters from Star Trek have a spiritual idea of logic and religious, Buddhist-like practices of meditation and of repressing emotion. If you had no ultimate concern in life, what would stop you from killing yourself? In short, once we distinguish religion from theism and think of religion in sociological terms, the idea that atheists have their own religion gains plausibility. As for the content of this atheistic religion, at least in the American-led West, I’d look to the modern philosophy of secular humanism, that is, to the liberal ideals of social progress through (1) rational conquering of nature, ignorance, and fear, (2) the liberation of information to ensure equality of opportunity, and (3) democracy and capitalism to honour our dignity as self-governing, godlike beings. In that part of the world, these tend to be the modern atheistic ideals, or ultimate concerns. As for the religious practices, I’d turn to the rituals of Western consumer culture and to the worship of pop celebrities.

But the matter doesn’t end here, because the atheist typically refuses to concede that she’s in any way religious. So what peculiar sort of religion must be kept secret even from its members? One problem is that the atheist likewise assumes that religions are theistic, so that the notion of atheistic religion strikes her as absurd. The other complication is that if we’re speaking specifically of New Atheists, we must take into consideration the fact that science has replaced philosophy as atheism’s main support for these atheists, and science is historically and popularly opposed to religion. Have a look at this list of old and new famous atheists, excluding deists and agnostics.
17th C: Spinoza (philosopher)

18th C: David Hume (philosopher), Marquis de Sade (aristocrat, philosopher), Denis Diderot (philosopher, art critic), Baron d'Holbach (philosopher)

19th C: Percy Bysshe Shelley (poet), Feuerbach (philosopher, anthropologist), Max Stirner (philosopher), Marx (philosopher, sociologist), Schopenhaurer (philosopher), Nietzsche (philosopher), Freud (psychologist, psychiatrist), Charles Bradlaugh (politician)

20th C: Bertrand Russell (philosopher), H.L. Mencken (satirist, journalist), A.J. Ayer (philosopher), Levi-Strauss (anthropologist), Foucault (philosopher), Madalyn Murray O-hair (activist) 

21st C: Sam Harris (philosopher, neurologist), Dawkins (biologist), Dennett (philosopher), A.C. Grayling (philosopher), Christopher Hitchens (journalist), Victor Stenger (physicist), Lawrence Krauss (physicist), P.J. Myers (biologist), Jerry Coyne (biologist), Bill Maher (comedian), Michael Shermer (science writer, historian), Richard Carrier (historian)
Other names could be added to this list, but the point is that we should expect that the earlier atheists of the modern period tended to be philosophers or at least philosophy-centered in their atheism, if only because the sciences hadn’t yet been professionally severed from philosophy. If we count the current century as the beginning of New Atheism--and in particular Sam Harris’s response to the 911 terrorist attacks--we can see that science has replaced philosophy as the power behind the movement. Science now has much greater impact on Western culture than does philosophy, so atheistic philosophers play second fiddle in the current reincarnation of atheism. The Wikipedia article on New Atheism reinforces this point: “The New Atheists write mainly from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent, or even incapable of dealing with the ‘God’ concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the ‘God Hypothesis’ is a valid scientific hypothesis, having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified.” (Jerry Coyne agrees with Dawkins on this, although P.J. Myers does not.)

So the assumption is that New Atheists can’t be religious, because their atheism is mainly scientific and science is opposed to religion. But again, keeping in mind that religion isn’t the same as theism, the notion that science is opposed to religion is demonstrably false. Not only were the great early modern scientists deists, they were also members of secret societies like the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, and the Illuminati, which had all of the religious trappings (minus the theism). Granted, science has had a famous and enormously negative impact on monotheistic religions and on supernatural cults. The successes of Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin have led to the presumption that science and religion are polar opposites, the reason being that anything so destructive to religious interests can’t have anything to do with religion. Indeed, there are memes in the air that science and religion are “at war” and that Reason and Faith are opposites. Again, though, if we confine ourselves to the sociological understanding of religion, there’s no need to accept the presumption that science and religion are like fire and ice.

Still, there’s the New Atheist’s stubborn resistance to the very notion that the way she lives might have a religious aspect. I think this resistance is explained partly by the fact that New Atheism is largely a political movement which therefore has strategic considerations. The purpose of New Atheism is to prevent religions from harming secular societies, and so New Atheists have tended to target the most destructive form of religion, which is so-called fundamentalism, as in American Creationism or terrorism from the Muslim world. Given this political agenda, the New Atheist doesn’t want to blur the lines between the sides of this power struggle. In war, an Us versus Them dynamic emerges: the good must be clearly separated from the bad, and so if religions tend to be theistic, and crazy theism is central to fundamentalism, we shouldn’t treat atheism as guilty by any such association. Note that this exhibits the very tribal dynamic that’s essential to religion in the sociological sense. What’s sacred here is the preservation of liberty in secular society, and when Creationists corrupt American science education or when terrorists destroy symbols of capitalism and democracy, not to mention killing many people who should have enjoyed their human rights, they mix the sacred and the profane and arouse the disgust of liberal atheistic humanists.

Yet another reason why atheists think the question is absurd is because we’ve inherited the distinction between the secular and the religious spheres. Secular life is defined in terms of worldly, profane things which are explicitly opposed to sacred, religious things. And atheists identify with the natural, this-worldly, and otherwise secular way of life. Therefore, most atheists assume, they can’t possibly be religious. The paradox, then, is in the idea that secular life can have a religious aspect, that something worldly and profane can be implicitly or explicitly regarded as sacred, holy, or of ultimate concern. This paradox dissolves once we realize that the division between secular and religious life was drawn from the Christian perspective. Christianity is theistic and so what’s of ultimate concern to the Christian is something supernatural, in which case (fallen) nature is left as the profane world. But that’s just the Christian viewpoint, to which the definition of “religion” needn’t be confined. So of course something which the Christian regards as profane and not central to (Christian) religion can be worshiped as sacred from some non-Christian religious perspective. The Christian doesn’t worship anything that's exclusively natural, but a pagan is free to do so. To take some uncontroversial examples, Wiccans worship nature, as do other pantheists and cultists who worship extraterrestrial aliens. So just because atheists identify with natural life, which is held to be irreligious from the Christian perspective, doesn’t mean that nature can’t be sacred and thus religious from some non-Christian, New Atheistic perspective.

Why it Matters

You might be wondering why the question even matters. Who cares if there’s some sense in which an atheist can be religious? Well, here are two reasons why the question is important. The first is a strategic advantage for atheists. If the atheist wants to put an end to theistic religion by converting theists to an atheistic worldview, exaggerating the differences between the two sides is counterproductive. It’s easier to take a baby step than to leap over a chasm, so if the conflict is between two forms of religion, the theistic and the atheistic kinds, this way of understanding the common ground should help attract theists to atheism. But when the atheist lets her tribal impulses get the better of her, devoting herself to her cause to such an extent that she demonizes the Other as perfectly impure (profane), as having virtually nothing in common with noble atheists, she ensures that the conflict will persist until the end of time. Theists and atheists have much in common: both have ultimate concerns and both hold something sacred apart from the profane; both have religious, roughly tribal ways of unifying their social circles. Of course, there is still a conflict between the two sides, but this is the conflict between two sets of ideas, atheistic naturalism and theistic supernaturalism, and between some of their behavioural consequences. If the theist is faced with the choice of jumping ship for some entirely irreligious shore or of merely jumping from one ship to another, from some monotheistic religion to a naturalistic religion, the theist should be expected to have an easier time doing the latter than the former, and that should please the atheist.

Second, when we appreciate the religious side of atheistic culture, we can more easily evaluate which atheistic religion is best, whereas when we deny that the question of atheistic religion makes even the least bit of sense, we foreclose that evaluation and instead open up the possibility that many atheists settle for an inferior religion. Indeed, I think there are at least two contemporary atheistic myths, what I call Scientism (liberal secular humanism) and existential cosmicism. Scientific atheism is philosophically inferior to the darker, existential atheism, in the old Socratic sense: the scientific atheist doesn’t know herself that well; in particular, she pretends she’s opposed to all forms of religion and faith, and that’s manifestly not so. She’s likely, or at least possibly, religious in the above, sociological sense. As for irrational faith, she likely has a sex life which she keeps secret because its nitty-gritties have no rational justification and are in fact as embarrassing as theism should be to the theist. Moreover, our reasons always run out when we face the question of how to defend our ultimate concerns. At the very least, scientific atheists have philosophical assumptions, which will be less rationally justified than her scientific knowledge. Philosophy is continuous with science but also--on the opposite side of the continuum--with art and aesthetic taste. The ideals of liberal secular humanism aren’t purely rational, if only because they’re prescriptive; moreover, these ideals are especially hard to rationally justify now, because for thousands of years they’ve been framed within theistic worldviews which the atheist rejects.

So notwithstanding the atheist’s conceit of being ultrarational, atheism, whether old or new, has an irrational side. The question is whether the atheist’s philosophical and religious ideals should be inspired by (1) the technoscientific taming of nature, the shams of democratic and capitalistic freedoms, and the childish narcissism of Western ego-worship or by (2) an existential recognition of atheism’s dark, cosmicist implications and an aesthetic and virtuous preference for those stories/myths that help us cope with the harsh facts of natural life. For strategic reasons, the New Atheist likes to pretend that atheism is logically demonstrable and scientifically supportable, whereas theism is a tissue of irrational, made-up stories. To a great extent, this is indeed so, but this isn’t the whole story. All philosophies and religions are, at some level, irrational and made-up, which is to say that they’re chosen because they feel right, according to something like a taste in art. Stories are artworks made up of ideas and words, and worldviews are partly made up of such stories. We don’t logically prove that our ultimate concerns are best nor do we conduct an experiment to falsify alternative ideals; instead, we tell or presuppose metanarratives/myths to feel better about our choice of a life direction, and when our actions are in line with that choice, we’re practicing our religion. Contrary to many postmodernists, though, I don’t think all ultimate concerns are equally valuable, so the aesthetic, philosophical, and religious question arises as to which ultimate concerns and myths are best. Atheists need to face that question and the first step towards doing so is to understand the sense in which atheists can be religious.

32 comments:

  1. Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. (from "Catechism of the Catholic Church" / here you can find many other things, you once knew, which were somehow forgotten)

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    1. But this can also be given a nontheistic, biological interpretation. We tend to be religious, because we're animals that leap beyond reason to satisfy our curiosity and to irrationally project ourselves onto the unknown and the unknowable. By nature, we're vain and anthropocentric. You can think of this in the Christian terms of original sin or in the nontheistic terms of evolution and existentialism.

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    2. Yes this apllies also to a nontheistic interpretastion. I don't agree with you when you say that "we leap beyond reason... ", I think that it is reason together with the awkwardness of our own limitations (as humans) that lead us to seek for the supernatural (maybe looking for us, in some sense) or some abstract notion of the natural (in the nontheist people. I don't think it is possible for us to be not anthropocentric, How could we? Maybe we are vain, but we try not to be (we do our best to avoid vanity).

      (in my view the original sin is more related to the will to usurpate God's nature to ourselves).

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    3. The impulse to religion, comes, in a larger sense, from two things that we are aware: one is our hown perception of the nature (which is clealy ours as individuals) and our own existence that as isolated individuals is meaningful (and absurd). Religion brings some sense to this duality, connecting us and conforting us.

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  2. Very interesting post. I will have to read it twice. A few things I would point out though. I am not sure if I agree that capitalism is part of the atheist dogma. I am from South America, back in the late 70’s and early 80’s we had dictators such as Videla, Galtieri, Martinez de Hoz who were appointed with a capitalist agenda. They killed tens of thousands of civilians in the name of capitalist economic reform. What I remember clearly was the boogie man of the godless communist. The secularism of communist ideology was often utilized to frighten off the catholic majority away from left economic ideology. In a way religion was very much as Marx would have it “opiate of the masses”
    However, I could not agree more with the separation of religion and theism. They are not the same thing.
    I think the defining feature of the new atheist is the glee which with they celebrate the death of god. I see god’s death as a tragedy, leading to a Kafkian world; they see it as something to be celebrated. What infuriates me about the new atheist is the complete lack of compassion and understanding towards those who mourn the passing of god.

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    1. I agree on both points. I focus on Western, meaning US-centered atheism, but you're quite right that communism is another expression of atheism. The religious aspect of that expression wouldn't be hard to find (worship of the state, the collective, progress through self-sacrifice).

      Ours is the Nietzschean view of atheism's dark implications, and I think it's largely because New Atheism is a political movement whose members have strategic goals, that this darkness has to be played down. If you're selling something, you want to keep things upbeat for the potential customer. It's interesting to think that the New Atheist might suffer from the same degree of cognitive dissonance as the average theist.

      You might be interested in my article, "Should Atheists Mourn the Death of God?"

      http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2012/05/should-atheists-mourn-death-of-god.html

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    2. In the line above about democracy and capitalism, I've added a reference to "the American-led West" to make the context clearer.

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    3. Heh, this reminds me of Cornelius Castoriades, who refered to Communism as "Messianic Totalitarian Capitalism"

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  3. Hey, Benjamin. Just dipped my toes into Paul Tillich. Interesting stuff, even at the Wikipedia Excerpts level!

    Tillich argues that the God of theological theism is at the root of much revolt against theism and religious faith in the modern period. Tillich states, sympathetically, that the God of theological theism

    deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing. I revolt and make him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate. God appears as the invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity. He is equated with the recent tyrants who with the help of terror try to transform everything into a mere object, a thing among things, a cog in a machine they control. He becomes the model of everything against which Existentialism revolted. This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications.[38]

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    1. Yes, I think this is very interesting. It's exactly the point I make in numerous writings here, such as "From Theism to Cosmicism," about the difference between the mystical and esoteric understanding of God, on the one hand, and the literalistic, anthropomorphic, and exoteric conception, on the other. Tillich's saying that the latter, "theological" as opposed to "ontological" conception makes God out to be a tyrant, which morally justifies atheism. This is consistent with Mainlander's theology and with Gnosticism. Likewise, Plato distinguishes between the transcendent Good and the lesser god, or demiurge that created the universe.

      Another interesting point is that when New Atheists like Jerry Coyne here the so-called "sophisticated theological" talk about God as the ontological Ground of Being, they throw their hands up and say the talk is pompous, empty, and out-of-touch with mainstream theism. See for example:

      http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/huffpo-ted-nonsense/

      Coyne says here, quoting from a Huffington Post article about theodicy, ' "Power of being.” “Ground of being.” Those are the weasel words of theologians who don’t know what they’re saying, and so emit fancy phrases to cover their ignorance like a blanket of snow. What, exactly, is a “power of being”? Is it benevolent and omnipotent?'

      These scientific atheists are clueless and their reaction is purely a tribal reflex caused by their limited familiarity with philosophical matters. Likewise, those who haven't steeped themselves in biology or physics texts often won't have the foggiest notion what those scientists are talking about. More importantly, when we reject the mystical idea of something transcendent that we can't possibly understand, we imply that everything is potentially understandable by us. Is that supposed to be self-evident? What justifies the mere atheist's faith in that potential omniscience of human nature, given that the atheistic naturalist must regard us as mere accidental mammals? Why should we trust that everything there could be possibly be is comprehensible by such clever critters? No, the core of mysticism (i.e. cosmicism) is actually quite consistent with atheism.

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  4. I might be more sympathetic to Mr. Coyne. The terms in question ARE vague and confusing and perhaps not even that useful in the real world in which religious leaders are demanding death to apostates or in which woo-masters are writing vague books and earning millions for their nostrums. It's not just tribalism, there IS a lot of nonsense in the name of "philsophy" and "sophisticated theology".

    On the other hand, I agree with you that the assumption that human understanding can encompass everything is presumptious. Heck, do physicists really "understand" in any real sense some of the mathematical models they are playing with today?

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    1. I agree there's a lot of nonsense in theology, but the point is that Tillich's distinction was well-motivated. Mystics have always recognized the problem with using language to talk about something that might pass beyond the limits of our understanding. This led to the so-called philosopher's god, to what Tillich calls ontological theism, which is tantamount to atheism. The problem with Coyne's dismissal is that it's a blanket one. He doesn't understand the important distinctions at issue, and he goes after the easy target of fundamentalism, for the political reason I discuss above. That's fine as far as it goes.

      But Coyne goes further by reading the sophisticated theologians, and yet he doesn't read them all with an open mind. Now, I think our minds should be closed to some of these sophisticated theologians, like Alvin Plantinga or William Lane Craig. We've got to distinguish between theistic philosophers who use philosophy quite cynically to buttress the exoteric, literalistic notion of God, like the one in the Christian creed, and mystics who use philosophy to explore the mystical, esoteric, cosmicist idea that everything we can understand comes somehow from something we can't understand. The former is odious whereas the latter is ultimately just an expression of humility.

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  5. Humility is appropriate.

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2013/03/brought-to-you-by-the-21st-century/

    This, for example, is an example of the opposite. I found this annoying as hell, for some reason. I have no love for the Catholic Church or its recent run of reactionary obscurantists and politicians, but babbling about technology as if it somehow the opposite of said church? The same technology they worship also created the nuclear bomb, and, ultimately, global climate change. :)

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    1. Mind you, the word is that Pope Francis will take on at least a greater style of humility, because he's interested in helping the poor and he must be ashamed of the Catholic Church's riches and so forth. That's why he chose the name Francis, why he chose not to be driven around in limos, and so on. I saw an interview with Cardinal Dolan about this, and Dolan said explicitly that the pope won't modernize Church doctrines, but he will likely change the way they're presented. This is similar to the Republicans who say that there's nothing with their message or their principles, but only with their public relations, with the tricks they use to sell them.

      As for religion and technology, Erik Davis's book Techgnosis and David Noble's The Religion of Technology show in great detail how technology isn't the opposite of religion. Because we're all religious in the sociological sense, our ultimate concerns inform everything we do, including the design and use of machines.

      As for Catholicism, I'm on record as saying that Christianity is--aesthetically speaking--the worst religion in the world.

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  6. Here is an even more appalling antithesis to humility, the epitome of totalism. This religion (Islam) is terrifying in its totalitarian nature:

    Maududi saw Muslims not who followed the religion of Islam, but as everything: "Everything in the universe is 'Muslim' for it obeys God by submission to His laws." The only exception to this universe of Muslims were human beings who failed to follow Islam. In regard to the non-Muslim:

    “His very tongue which, on account of his ignorance advocates the denial of God or professes multiple deities, is in its very nature 'Muslim' ... The man who denies God is called Kafir (concealer) because he conceals by his disbelief what is inherent in his nature and embalmed in his own soul. His whole body functions in obedience to that instinct… Reality becomes estranged from him and he in the dark".[11]

    Maududi believed that Islam was a "religion" in a broader sense of the term. He stated: "Islam is not a ‘religion’ in the sense this term is commonly understood. It is a system encompassing all fields of living. Islam means politics, economics, legisla­tion, science, humanism, health, psychology and sociol­ogy. It is a system which makes no discrimination on the basis of race, color, language or other external categories. Its appeal is to all mankind. It wants to reach the heart of every human being."[12]-Wikipedia

    How can one even argue with this kind of thinking? It is chilling.

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    1. Well, this looks like a point about consistency. Of course, if there were an all-powerful God, nothing could go against his will, including so-called free creatures. This is just the old paradox of omnipotence: Could God create a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it? A free being that could truly violate God's plan would be as impossible as that rock. Mind you, as your quotation of Tillich points out, such a tyrannical God for whom everything is a perfectly-controlled object, would be a hideous monster, and to the extent that we could at least fake a rebellion against that deity, we'd have moral and aesthetic obligations to do so.

      I talk about this systematic aspect of Islam in the last section of my article, "Islam and the Secret of Monotheism."

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  7. “As for Catholicism, I'm on record as saying that Christianity is--aesthetically speaking--the worst religion in the world.”

    Yes, but it also has the best music and architecture. If one thing I have to give credit to Catholicism is their sense of style.

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    1. Maybe, but is their art inspired by Christian ideas or did great artists who happened to live in a Christian empire have to pick Christian themes to find any kind of success? Now that the Catholic Church no longer has much political power, is its current art so great? I think, rather, that modern and postmodern artists have gone elsewhere for their inspiration.

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  8. We are not all "sociologically religious." That's like arguing that we are all "non-transcendentally transcendental." It reads real clever, but you negate meaning when you suggest that everyone - especially people you have not and will never meet - exactly fulfills your narrow expectations, because your expectations are scribbled in gibberish.

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    1. Psychologically I don't see much of a difference between a religious mind and a non religious one. We are all conditioned.Our thoughts are fragmented. Our knowledge is limited and we are all in the dark as far as truth goes. Man will always experience the world through symbols. To not be religious or to be an atheist,what does that mean? That the atheist is enlightened? That somehow being atheist is some kind of mental state were the mind is completely free? No way. As long as we think ourselves as independent from the rest we have already failed. Us humans have not figured it out and we are certainly not free from delusion.

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    2. I really think this just depends on your definitions. Those who react with hostility to the notion that atheists are religious probably associate all religions with theism or with some bit of unforgivable irrationality. But with a sociological and existential understanding of what's going on with religions, you see theistic faith as merely floating on the surface.

      What's important is that we settle for some myth, some nonscientific narrative that makes us feel better about our choice of ultimate concerns. And if you don't think secular folks have any myths, what's up with the huge industry of fictional story-telling, with the novels, movies, plays, operas, or even the rumours, ghost stories, and jokes we like to make up and tell each other? Those stories that mean the most to us, emotionally speaking, live as our myths. The narrative we're constantly telling ourselves with our inner voice is part rationalization and confabulation, and so the story of our life, told from our private perspective, would be more like a myth than an coldly rational record of our deeds, thoughts, and experiences.

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  9. Back in the day I believed atheists were more rational. Being a believer was some kind of character fault. Atheists were blessed with some kind of rational mind that made them immune to nonsense. Of course, I was an atheist myself; still I am, in most days. Then I was introduced to the works of Ayn Rand.
    It was impossible for me to not see her works as a religion. Her ideology was full of the same irrational ideas one would find with the snake handlers. It was a shock to me that an actual atheist could cook up such a pile of useless rubbish. How was her nonsense any different than any other religious nonsense? It wasn’t. But it hurt because she was part of my tribe. So I started having doubts. How do I know that I am not vulnerable to some other nonsense? Well, I am not. Atheists have no monopoly of rationality. Usually religion is what you do when you think you are doing something else.
    Religion is not about what you believe, but how you believe.

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    1. Thanks for your interesting comment. I think Rand's libertarianism is bastardized Nietzsche. And indeed, there was a full-fledged cult around Rand. For that matter, all dictators thrive on cults of personality (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-un). These are tribal phenomena and they're the social roots of religion.

      I agree that atheists aren't perfectly rational, but I'd expect that atheists would tend to be better educated than at least the exoteric, literalistic theists. It's interesting that you say religion is what you do when you think you're doing something else. I think that's especially true for nontheistic religious people, like Rand, who want to think they're ultrarational machines. But I wonder whether theists can be more upfront about their religions, at least in places where theism is politically correct.

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    2. Is there a place where theism is politically correct?

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    3. I'd say many parts of the US and much of South America. Also, Alberta, Canada and most of India and Africa. Obviously, the Muslim world. Moreover, even in functionally secular places like New York City or LA, it's still much more taboo to speak explicitly of atheism than of Jesus or of God. Sure, secularists will be annoyed when they're pestered by religious folks who try to convert them when they're uninvited. But you'll still see "God" more in the Western mainstream media than "atheism." And of course, any US politician who says the word "atheism," let alone admits to being one can expect to be voted out of office forthwith.

      By contrast, the places where I think the use of "atheism" isn't just tolerated but publicly welcomed are in parts of Europe, China, and Japan. I stand to be corrected, though.

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  10. It seems to me you have an optimist view of the world. I realize that I can’t say I know very well the particular situation in every continent, but in respect to the political correctness of theism (or religion in general which seems to me to be similar) I would like to stress a few things:

    First is the definition of political correctness. This is a term produced by western culture and it appears to me that bears little or no meaning out of context. I prefer to identify this concept to a so called sense of an orthodox decency (which is supposed to be the “correct way of educated people” opposing thus to the “ways of uneducated people”), however I do not think it may apply to countries or regions with limited freedom (political or religious).
    In this sense we can speak of a western culture, which includes most of the American continent, Europe, and Oceania (Australia and New Zeeland), and eventually particular regions of Asia and Africa. In most of these places we can find people that we can identify with this “western culture”.

    The western culture is characterized by people who share a multitude of religious cultural backgrounds (in a vast majority of Christian origin). However in these days these societies are secularized and any reference to religious beliefs (including atheism) is not welcome, the religious symbology is something that has being increasingly suppressed.

    It seems to me that values such as tolerance that highly valued in our societies, where replaced by a cultivation of polite indiference, which oposes to religious beliefs in general.

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    1. Political correctness may work differently in the West than elsewhere, but I think it's pretty universal since it's tied up with primitive taboos. I wrote an article on political correctness here:

      http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2011/09/political-correctness-spellbinding.html

      I agree that in the US, it's politically incorrect to try to impose one religion on everyone else, and so a bland civic religion becomes politically correct. Thus, there's a perceived war on Christmas, because Christians aren't allowed to speak specifically about their religion on public grounds (separation of Church and state). But even though the US is secular with regard to Americans' actual behaviour (few people care enough about their religion to practice it with much seriousness), the convention in the US is to protect that bland, civic religion, not atheism or agnosticism. That's why even a liberal president like Obama must still say things like "God bless America."

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    2. I am skeptical about the degree of "suppression" going on...except that Orthodox (fundamentalist) Christians have such a sense of entitlement and privelege that when there is any pushback at all against proselytizing, they define that as "suppression". It isn't.

      I agree with Benjamin vis a vis bland civic religion. Given that their own Holy Book warns against lukewarm religion, why is protecting this rather tepid "religion" so important?

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    3. We can go further with the point about suppression. Many Christians (especially Catholics) have a persecution complex, as seen with the War On Christian fiasco in the US, which Jon Stewart likes to ridicule on the Daily Show. The complex works like this: Christians sold their souls centuries ago for earthly power, contrary to the ideals of their supposed founder. From that point on, most Christians had no business pretending that they followed Jesus in giving up the natural way of life (competing for earthly power and pleasures, etc). But Christians (especially Catholics) can't just come out and admit the obvious, so they take every chance they get to pretend that they're persecuted since then they can appear to be walking in Jesus's footsteps.

      Speaking of this, I think I'm going to have to write something soon on whether Pope Francis is humble, because the recent coverage is really starting to annoy me. My answer is that a pope can afford to be only superficially humble (and thus christlike).

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  11. I read your article on polical correctness and I felt a little lost in the references you made concerning the US politics and philosophies, which have a lot of particularities that are not clear to an european. Anyway it was not exactly what I expected, but it is interesting, I will have to see better some references you mentioned.

    It appears to me that the philosophical and religious debates are more alive in the US than in Europe (even in the southern countries, where there is a strong religious tradition). But, in general I would say that Europe is more secularized (or profane).

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  12. You ask how one could live with no ultimate concern or sacred ideals and then ask what would the mental solution to the universal predicament of existing as a person, accursed by sentience and reason would be. Interesting questions.

    There are people, maybe a whole lot of them and I personally know a few, who have no overt ultimate concern or sacred ideals as far as I can tell. They live their lives and are happy for the most part. Their kids are normal and happy, not perverted mutants of any type I can recognize. These people don't seem to need any solution to any universal predicament. The ones I know who are like this are mostly pretty decent, reasonable and fit smoothly into society. Maybe it is possible to live with no ultimate concern or sacred ideal, or if it is there, it doesn't raise to the level of anything obvious or overt. Maybe, for some people, there is no predicament of existing as a sentient person.

    Is this possible for at least some people? Seems like it.

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    1. Well, whether someone has sacred ideals is a psychological question, since as you suggest, these ideals can be presupposed or secret rather than overt. I'd like to ask a person who's said not to have any such deep philosophical convictions why she's "pretty decent." Why not cheat and steal if you get the chance? I can understand that some people are constitutionally better at unfairly exploiting situations than others. But I'd suspect that if you talked to a supposedly nonreligious person long enough, especially in the Socratic manner, you'd pull out some philosophical and even religious presuppositions. Just because someone isn't interested in philosophy or religion doesn't mean she has no ultimate concerns.

      So have you tested whether those people you know have no interest in the existential predicament? No fear of death or bitterness because of the lack of perfect justice in nature? No anxiety about the ultimate futility of all our endeavours, given that in time we'll all be gone and forgotten? Have you had those philosophical conversations with them and received only a response of "Who cares?"

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