Thoughts and questions from God Delusion

[jacklegger]

I apologise in advance for not having the concentration span right now to read through your entire post, though I did give it as full a consideration as I'm able. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that leaped out at me.

No apology necessary! I appreciate your time and consideration.

First, while I do happen to have what you generously term a dynamic vocabulary, I would never insist that others treat my words as anything other than what they're worth or that I am smarter than you merely on that basis. If the atheists you describe represent the totality of your experience, you're about to get a pretty comprehensive education here I suspect.

As sometimes happens when we open our (virtual) mouths in public discourse, my sentiments probably didn't come out as intended. In hindsight I probably should have omitted my comments about past experiences with atheists. I know better than to generalize about people and those experiences are pretty much irrelevant. So I apologize to any atheists I may have offended. The sentiment I had was that I really hope to find a civil and even kindhearted (which doesn't need to exclude direct, strong passionate, etc.) discussion forum, and that so far people have treated me very well here. I don't know the stories of others here yet, but it is humbling for me to admit that after 25 years of living and thinking and believing as a Christian, I'm seriously contemplating whether I was a fool. The quote from St. Paul (or the Apostle Paul, for my Protestant brethren) comes to mind, "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we (Christians) are of all people most to be pitied." If there is no God, then much of my life has been a waste of time at best, and I recoil to think what it may be at worst. So my mental state is a bit raw, and if I were to run into unthinking ad hominem attack and clever name-calling as a would-be response to serious questions, I would be very disappointed. Not because I don't like being called names. I'm a college professor for goodness sake, I'm almost immune to it. Sometimes it's hilarious and I laugh right along. But I would have to turn away from here and look elsewhere for help in this journey, and though it seems weak to admit it, I think I could use some help.

Can't we all though? Roight, so I will leave that at that.

Second, I would love to see how you can justify this without tying yourself in knots:

[quote]For example, if one's experience of elves is limited to reading Tolkien and imagining them - which I love to do - I would posit that this is a less reasonable basis for believing they exist in our universe than say, praying to God for healing from uterine cancer and having an apple-sized tumor "spontaneously disappear" overnight, confirmed by medical imaging by a non-religious physician (which happened to my mother, FWIW) is a basis for believing in God.

At the risk of over-egging this particular pudding, how do you determine that belief in a god and its alleged actions is more reasonable than belief in elves and other weird and wonderful Tolkien inventions?

Good question and a fair challenge. I'm not aware of any universally accepted standards of reasonableness, so at best I could appeal to common sense, though that ultimately leads to the same problem. Whose common sense?

I said the above in the context of pointing out that faith in general, and belief in god specifically, is subjective. I can elaborate now and say that in my experience (as a pastor especially) most people who believe in God do so because of their experience, not because of any philosophical or theological argument. In fact, many Christians don't even know a philosophical or theological argument for the existence of God, and don't feel the slightest need to learn one. For many, proving God exists is like proving they love their spouse/child/father/parent etc. There's no need to do so, and it would probably be impossible anyway. They know they love their loved ones because they experience it. They know God exists because they experience it/him. They may be wrong to make such an analogy - maybe love can be reduced to physics and objectively identified, whereas God cannot - but right or wrong this is what a lot of people do. Furthermore, in my brief study of epistemology (one class in college), I learned enough to be dangerous. If we want to pick nits, it seems that one could challenge that anyone knows anything. "S knows that P if..." There are many ways to finish that sentence, and again we are back to the problem of not having an agreed upon standard, in this case for even what it means to know something.

But bottom line: you're right, there's really no way (that I know of) to determine reasonableness when it comes to elves and gods.

Finally, re: Dawkins saying that "raising children in a religion is tantamount to child abuse and possibly worse than sexual abuse." Let's be clear on what he actually said on this point, lest we tilt at men of straw. Let's look at what the Professor actually wrote:

I love that turn of phrase, "lest we tilt at men of straw". Is that Shakespeare? Google failed me so I must reveal my ignorance. (But I can integrate the snot out of functions. Does that count? Count - get it? Hee hee.) ((There needs to be a "Danger, lame teacher jokes ahead!" emoticon... ))

Ok, back to the matter at hand. Here's the particular quote I was thinking of when I wrote the above: (my bold added)

"Once, in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

In every instance where he makes the direct comparison - both of them, you'll note - he is referring to the psychological damage of conditioning a child that its only worth is to burn in hellfire forever... Even then, Prof Dawkins uses the conditional "arguably".

Maybe I misunderstood him, but I didn't think he was limiting his criticism to teaching children that "their only worth" is to burn in hell forever. I understood him to mean the problem is "bringing the child up Catholic in the first place", which is to say teaching them about hell yes, but also about forgiveness and redemption and salvation and heaven and God's love and loving and being loved by other people and many other not so nasty things as well. I agree that he does talk several times about teaching children about hell, and how this is a great evil. If that's all he meant by "bringing the Child up Catholic" then I misunderstood and I think he could have done a better job at being explicit. For what it's worth, I don't know of any religion - maybe one exists - that teaches that the only worth of children or anyone else is to burn in hell. The Catholic Church certainly doesn't teach that. No doubt some Catholics could be rustled up who think that, but you can find crazies of any stripe, including atheists. It's harder to say what Protestants teach, since for the most part they believe in private interpretation of the Bible, which for the most part they take as their sole rule of faith and morals. Which as a former Protestant convert to Catholicism, I feel justified in saying, as my wife and I often do to each other, that that is just "making shit up", if you'll excuse my salty language. The teachings of the Catholic Church are easy to find for anyone who's interested (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church), and I assure you you will not find such a vile, evil teaching anywhere among them. To say that hell exists, and that people under certain circumstances may end up there, is very different from saying that people's "worth" is to go there, as in they are worth no more, and will certainly end up there, deservedly so. The Catholic Church actually teaches quite the opposite. Unlike some of the fundamentalist Protestant groups who believe in "the total depravity of man" (basically there is nothing good in a human and we are all deserving of hell from our mother's wombs), the Catholic Church is very big on the dignity of people. John Paul II was a champion of human dignity, as was Mother Theresa. BTW I'm still trying to get my head around why some atheists vilify these two, especially Mother Theresa. She loved and comforted the unloved and outcast of society. She wasn't out to convert Hindus or anyone else to her religion. In most cases she didn't talk to people about religion, especially dying people for whom she was caring. She even got flak from fellow Catholics about this and some wanted her censored because she wasn't forthright about being Catholic. She wasn't worried about Hindus or anyone else going to hell because they weren't Catholic or Christian, she was worried about their suffering in this life, and more than anything else, their dignity. Her mission was to give people dignity, especially the lowest of the low in a society that robbed them of it.

Roight. Had to get that off my chest. Anyway, I agree again, if anyone teaches children that they are only good for the fires of hell, that is awful and should not be tolerated in a civil society. But I don't know anyone who does that and can barely imagine it.

Then you immediately follow up with the remark that he is a civil and charitable man, thus such shocking opinions are granted a free pass. This is, I have to say, an unwarranted and unfair dismissal, akin to saying "oh, don't pay him any attention; he's old and set in his ways".

I think you may have misunderstood me. I did say he was civil and charitable, but I did not say therefore we can dismiss his shocking opinions. I said I was surprised to find the holder of such shocking opinions to be civil and even charitable in some cases. This is because I usually find that people who hold shocking (to me) opinions, like "Mother Theresa was a hypocritical and evil whore who deserves more than anyone to burn in hell, if such a place exists" (to paraphrase and amalgamate some comments I've read), are also rather mean and uncivil in general. I think Dawkins' comment about "bringing up a child Catholic" (or any religion) as being psychologically worse than sexual abuse (even with the conditional "arguably" or "possibly") is pretty extreme - not hateful by nature, as the comments about Mother Theresa are - but in terms of the objective content, on par with the sentiment that Mother Theresa was evil and deserved to go to hell. So it was uncommon and surprising for me to find that someone who holds that opinion is able to discuss it rationally and civilly, even acknowledging and to a large degree understanding the opposing point of view. That was quite refreshing, as I said before.

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[quote='jacklegger' pid='332115' dateline='1346793794']
praying to God for healing from uterine cancer and having an apple-sized tumor "spontaneously disappear" overnight, confirmed by medical imaging by a non-religious physician (which happened to my mother, FWIW) is a basis for believing in God.

It's amazing how god never ever is recorded history managed to grow arms and legs of people that prayed for it, but can switch your body to eliminate a foreign substance, as it's supposed to do. Our bodies kill defective cells every day, they just become out of hand when we lose that ability or the defect masks itself very well... Doctors don't understand well all the nuances in cancer... they just know statistics and try to group cancers in a way they can categorize them... but there's still so much to learn.
That's where the famous "god of the gaps" steps in. Doctors, the scientific experts in the field, are incapable of treating, but the problem gets fixed, hence god.

On the other hand, taking it from stimbo, why "hence god"?, why not "hence Gandalf"? or "hence allah", or "hence galadriel"?

Sorry, didn't read anything past this sentence...
[/quote]

No worries. One sentence is enough for a good exchange. In reverse order, why not "hence Galadriel"? (my favorite of the bunch - she's hotter and scarier in the book than Gwyneth Paltrow is on screen...)

The answer is simple. My mom didn't pray to Galadriel, she prayed to Christ. She asked God (Jesus Christ) to heal her and he did - at least that's her interpretation of her experience. My point was and is that this subjective experience is (part of) the subjective basis for her belief in God, and that furthermore, most people who believe in God do so on the basis of subjective experience.

As for the reasonableness of her conclusion, and other possible explanations for the regression of her tumor, I agree with what you say about cancer. I'm not a physician or a biologist, but I know that the body heals itself. My wife is a student of naturopathy and has a mentor who has "cured" cancer patents with herbs and other natural remedies. Many of them were sent home to die by their medical doctors, who could do nothing more for them. My wife and her colleagues would argue that the herbs cured the patients, and that the odds of these patients spontaneously getting better instead of dying like almost all of the other people sent home to die who do not receive such treatments, argue overwhelmingly for the efficacy of herbs. To them it is self-evident that the herbs worked. Medical doctors on the other hand, often dismiss the treatment and the regression as a coincidence, statistically inevitable in a large enough sample. Either could be right. One argument is probably stronger than the other, and it probably varies case-by-case.

Also, I mentioned the Spontaneous Remission Wikipedia page in an earlier reply in order to point out that this kind of thing is recognized by mainstream science to occur. It's not considered proof of anything in particular and is probably being studied by people in controlled experiments as we speak. Fine and good.

It seems that people who don't believe that God would act in this way (either because he doesn't exist, or doesn't do miracles, or whatever) sometimes feel threatened by the unknown, and think that if they admit that such a thing happens - not that it could happen, but that it did (so we're not talking about probability anymore) and does on a more or less regular basis - that somehow that will force them to admit that God does exist and is the explanation for this phenomena. But I'm not arguing that and I don't think it's a compelling argument in any case. What I've said several times is that it is compelling to the individual who has that experience. It's tantamount to a positive response to the common retort, "if God comes down here and does some miracle or gives me a sign, then I'll believe in him, otherwise, not".

Bottom line: miracles are never a good or philosophically sound argument for the existence of God, IMO. There is almost always another explanation for the phenomenon, and even if there isn't, a good scientist would just say, "well I don't know that yet; maybe it's a good area for someone to research".