Norman Doering said

“There is some wiggle room but you’ve wiggled yourself out of Christianity once you stop believing Jesus Christ is some kind of miracle performing dude who can save you from death—and saving you from death is the big magic.”

Where does this definition come from?

“If all it takes to be religious is to believe in the meaning of stories than I would be a Odyssian because I find meaning in Kubrick’s and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’d be a Farmian because I find meaning in Animal Farm.”

So you base all your morals around these books?  These books are different from when one reads the Bible.  The Bible is an attempt to make sense of all of life.  Animal Farm is on the Bolshevik uprising in 1917 and I don’t really know 2001: A Space, but these books are a lot more specific.  Calling yourself an Odyssian or a Farmian is also a little ridiculous. 

“Hedges is a Christian if and only if he believes that Jesus Christ was a historical figure and a magic dude who can save him from death. This is the final bit of logic one can only obfuscate around and avoid answering.”

“One is an atheist if and only if one finds the idea of a mentally anthropic God too incredible to credit.”

Can you explain why a Christian is a Christian if and only if he or she believes this?  I can think of many large religious figures who do not believe these things: William Sloane Coffin, Mel White, and of course Chris Hedges.

Here is quote from Hedges book Losing Moses on the Freeway which I think is relevant.  He quotes Augustine. 

“We are joined together, Augustine wrote, as a community by our love of the same object.  Human love, he wrote, is always directed either toward God or the self.  There are no other choices.  The other loves we have in life, the love of status, the love of possessions, the love of power, are always the love of self.  We have, Augustine argued, two choices in life.  We can embrace the City of God, where we struggle to love to the exclusion of the self, a love that forces us to negate ourselves and our security to conserve, preserve and protect others, or we can embrace the City of Man where unbridled self-interest makes us all enemies.  In the City of God, where we make hard and sometimes painful sacrifices for others, we become part of a whole. In the City of Man, where we live only for advancement of the self, we become part of a mob.  The commandments, when followed, keep us in the City of God.  When violated they exile us to the City of Man.”

Hedges explains later in the book that one does not have to be a Christian to follow the same morals as the Commandants, because many other religions or even philosophies have the same principles.  And his interpretation of the Commandments is very interesting.  You should read the book. 

I am having some trouble understanding why you thing Harris makes more sense than Hedges.  Harris supports torture, he supports nuclear war, he supports the war in Iraq, he supports the U.S.’s oppression towards the Middle East and he even supports killing people based on their beliefs.  He believes these terrible things and his reasoning is absolutely absurd.  I find Hedges to be a deeply insightful man, whereas Harris is a dangerous and dark figure. 

In your next response I would appreciate it if you could describe your stance on whether evil will vanish if religion does.  Thanks.

Jim H-
Your posts have helped me to understand why people
like yourself side with Harris and can’t seem to make any
sense out of Hedges.

Thanks for that.

Wish I could have opened your mind to some other kinds of
thinking, but you don’t seem be intertested in that.

Maybe next time.

Doering:

The Bibe has a lot of passages I do not agree with.  And i am not even saying that I am a Christian; so I am arguing in defense of Chris Hedges.  You talk about miracles being stated as magic in the Bible.  The events that are called ‘miracles’ are of course impossible, but remember that these are only stories.  The Native Americans told creation myths, not necassarily to explain how the world was made, but what lessons could be learned from these stories. 

Hedges is most definately a Christian.  He went to Harvard Divinity school and was the son a Presbytirian Minister.  Just because he doesn’t believe all of what the Bible syas, that doesn’t mean he is not a Christian.  He uses judgement to take useful passages from the Bible, and leave hate filled ones.  Martin Luther King, for example, was a Christain who did not take the Bible literally.  He did not recognize every passage of the Bible as being useful and insightful.  He obviously ignored the racist passages in the Bible that called on every slave to obey his master.  But that does not make King an atheist, or anything other than a Christian. 

Harris argues that King was not a Christian.  He says that he was a progressive humanist, because (Harris would say) no religious person could ever achieve what King has achieved.  I find it absurd to try and argue that King was not a Christian.  He was a minister and founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference! 

The differnec between Hedges and Harris is that Harris seperates the worlsd into us and them.  It’s the reasonable vs. the magic believers, which Hedges has been thrown into.  This is always dangerous.  Hedges recognizes the right of all religions and beliefs.  He understands, unlike Harris, that there are plenty of goowill organizations that are motivated by religion: The Salvation Army, B’Tselem, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the list goes on and on. And who cares if they are motivated by religion to do their job?  Don’t shut them down and tell them they are unworthy of credit(I’m talikng in general, not to you specifically). 

I have a lot of problems with Harris in some of his other arguments: he supports torture, he supports nuclear war, he supports the war in Iraq, he supports the U.S.’s opression towards the Middle East and he even supports killing people based on their beliefs.  If you do not think Harris said these things, writeit your response and I will provide a quote for you that proves his position on the matter.  Tenteculata, another blogger quotes from Harris on all these issues.

Jim H - -

I think you’d better check your meds.

To Eugene:

I would like to address some of your misconceptions and questions toward my arguments.  First, the Bible may very well be taken conceptually.  In Chris Hedges’ American Fascists, Hedges says in reference to his family, that “We took the Bible seriously, and therefore could not take it literally.” Let me explain.  Take a very simple book, like Animal Farm by George Orwell.  If we, as readers took this book literally, the book would have no meaning.  It would be ridiculous.  It’s about animals.  But if we take it as a concept or a metaphor, then we realize that it is about totalitarian societies, and more specifically, the Bolshevik uprising in 1917.  Therefore the Bible can be taken metaphorically as well.  The story of Job, for example, is used by atheists to prove the absurdity of the Bible.  But the story has a point.  We live in a neutral universe, where good people, such as Job, do not always receive praise and happiness from God.  Life is not always fair.  And theists often fail to see the importance of looking at the Bible through a conceptual lens.
Second, you ask me “Do you actually think the Bible tells why we are here?”(and then follow with a sentence I don’t quite understand).  I think that it explains to us our purpose.  I may not agree fully with the content, but it is nonetheless important to understand that the writers of the Bible a struggling with the same questions any of us struggle with: How do I make sense of my life?  What should be my morals, so that I may live a better life? And so on. 
Third, when the “attempts to give one people a superior edge over others and if for no other reason it should be condemned to be obscene”, it is not religion.  That is the definition of a corrupt institution that uses religion as a false motive.  This is what Hedges articulates in his piece.  While he argues against the new atheist movement, he argues against the Christian Right movement as well.  He has, in fact, spent more time and energy so far arguing against the Christian Right because they are corrupting religion.

P.S.  As a challenge, try and name one war that has truly been fought over religion, and I will explain to you why that war has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

“Your belief in fundamental atheists shows me that you have no comprehension of the mind set of an atheist.”
- Eugen

You have demonstrated exactly the fundamentalist mindset quite well right here:

“You are trying to portray religion as some abstract. The three religions that are killing each other now are all based on the Bible.”

Again, the FUNDAMENTALISTS of three religions...are killing each other based on their narrow, literal-minded interpretation of the Bible. No atheist here has even once demonstrated to me that he or she understands that what we experience as our own awareness is abstract. Consciousness is, in fact, so fundamental and abstract that we can’t define it without circularity based simply on our experience of it. The same is true of time and space.

Notice that I said abstract and fundamental. These concepts are inseparably associated. Abstraction is always more fundamental than its local, specific, concrete manifestations. Our experience of consciousness is highly abstract, yet we clearly experience it in what seems to us individually to be a very palpable way. What atheists seem to miss is that abstraction is precisely what is most stable and fundamental. It transcends the material, and it is what spirituality deals with by its very nature.

Have none of you who are atheists ever noticed that most words associated with the concept of a soul intimately involve the idea of a spiritual consciousness inhabiting a physical body? This is implicit in the etymology of vocabulary in spiritual literature and explicit in much of the conceptual content of its writings. The realm of the spiritual contrasts with the physical precisely in terms of its abstraction! Spirituality and ultimate abstraction are existentially synonymous. You can’t discuss spirituality in an informed manner if you fail to recognize this!

A friend with a PhD in cognitive psychology cited a study that used a huge sample and very solid statistical methods. It revealed something that was completely amazing to me then. I have since come to realize for myself the sad truth of what it uncovered. It showed over 60% of PhDs in the United States had never reached the final stage of Piaget’s mental development model, namely that of abstract reasoning.

For example, a series of large rings of differing sizes were randomly placed on a horizontal bar. The bar had equidistant slots on top into which the rings all snuggly fitted. There was a small light behind the bar that shown through the rings and cast their shadows on the wall. The task was to order the rings so the shadows superimposed and only one shadow remained. Most PhDs in the study used TRIAL AND ERROR to attempt a solution! They failed to make the stupid simple abstraction that the light spread conically outward toward the wall. All they had to do was put the smallest ring in the slot nearest the light and the others in order of size until the largest was at the furthermost point from the light.

I’m not saying that atheists are so addled in their ability to deal with abstraction. However, I most certainly AM saying their fundamental problem is that they don’t deal with it very well. Accusing me of confusing religion with abstraction is a perfect case in point. Spirituality is existentially equivalent to ultimate abstraction, a level of abstraction that comprehends the entire cosmos within its domain.

Abstraction is synonymous with impracticality to most people on the street because they can’t deal with it productively, but all our engineering capabilities and modern technological advances are predicated on it. That doesn’t mean engineers understand abstraction, since they can take the abstractions somebody else figured out and merely make cookbook applications. Monkey see; monkey do! A large collection of facts in the mind does not constitute knowledge. Knowledge includes appreciation of the underlying conceptual unity responsible for its usefulness.

Continuing in answer to Eugen:

All the major religions of the world have members who range from either of these extremes to the other. “Fundamentalists” are actually materialists dressed in spiritual robes. They are stuck on the surface of the superficial, material things and events of life to which they have attempted to assign spiritual reality rather than to the deeper, genuinely spiritual truths to which these things and events point and were originally intended to communicate. These critical differences of perspective are the basis for most of the political infighting within each religion.

The “fundamentalist” attitude is responsible for most if not all of the fighting among the various religions, thereby creating the awful irony of each killing members of the others in the name of God. Sadly reinforcing this irony, the “fundamentalists” of any given tradition tend to remember only the afflictions those of their own religion have suffered at the hands of their own kind, that is, the “fundamentalists” within other religions.

We can only hope that this comprehensively self-inflicted punishment among “fundamentalists” will ultimately convince them to give up their false spirituality: the materialistic idolatry of superficial things and events that makes them worse than the religious equivalents of the atheists whom they despise. These things and events they propose as fundamentals are at best only temporal manifestations of the eternal spiritual power, truth, and grace mercifully available to all at any time, anywhere, in any form, and within any culture. Many if not most of the very spiritual icons “fundamentalists” of every stripe would worship, if they actually knew how, promoted this same universal truth each in their own places, times, and ways.

Eugen, ich hoffe, das es dir gut geht. I simply said I believe fundamentalism, not religion per se, is the great evil in the world. I will contrast two opposite religious camps for you, one of which you seem to ignore as if it didn’t exist, to clarify the point.

Those who enjoy genuine spiritual development see deeply into the underlying principles and truths embedded metaphorically in the unavoidably provincial surface details of their ancient scriptures. They do not depend on the exterior, material level on the surface of life to provide stability, but find it instead in the inner recognition of that which is changeless, eternal and that creates and underlies change itself.

Their personal spiritual development bears witness to the truths embedded in their scriptures, bringing them to life in their daily activities. They spontaneously focus on commonality rather than differences and so are able to recognize these same principles in the religious traditions of others. They consequently tend toward a comprehensive view, universality, and an inclusiveness that sees the essential unity underlying all the great and enduring spiritual traditions. They find a personal peace in the inner stability of their spiritual comprehension that is conducive to compassion and mutual understanding.

Literal-minded, provincial religious mindsets see ultimate “spiritual” truth in the superficial, ethnocentric aspects of their religion. They have a “God Creates Frog Today!” newspaper copy concept of spiritual truth. Their perspective elevates little “factoids” to the status of first principles and therefore regards them as “fundamental”, hence the misnomer, fundamentalists. Their views tend to focus on differences and tend toward narrowness, exclusivity, and an attitude of superiority over other religions.

This perspective seeks stability in the exterior, surface details of life where it cannot exist, and so clings desperately to them like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood in a violent storm. They tend toward conflict in defense of their views with any forces they perceive as challenging them, including the very nature of life to continually change its face.

Atheists typically fit at least roughly into this category. Their views are superficial, dogmatic, and tend to idolize science the fundamentals of which they fail to deeply understand. They miss the truth concerning the essential structure of that which underlies their own existence as well as that of the very science and mathematics they effectively worship as substitutes for God, not noticing that explanatory power in mathematics and in nature always flows from the changeless stability of general, abstract, unified, omnipresent principle to the changing, specific, concrete, diverse, local instances of its practical manifestation and never the reverse. Positing abstract consciousness as an “epiphenomenon” of complex biological structure vainly and inelegantly attempts to force explanatory power backwards from the specific, concrete, and local to the general, abstract, and global.

Straight_Talk_11, What you are trying to do is eliminate the target. You are trying to portray religion as some abstract. The three religions that are killing each other now are all based on the Bible. For you or Hedges to think that nobody actually buys your non de scriptdefinition of religion or a god as viable then I suggest you ask a Christian, Moslim, or Jew. Hedges defense was cheesy and cowardly. Straight talk 11 are you Hedges? The only sincere thing I heard you say was with regard to fundamental atheists which is something you believe exists. Maybe Hedges should have said I don’t believe in fundamental atheists. Your belief in fundamental atheists shows me that you have no comprehension of the mind set of an atheist. I can speak for all atheists since since by definition we deny the existence of a god. You can’t break up atheists into moderate or fundamentalist. Take your time to think about that. It might take you a while to understand that an atheist is an atheist, no more no less. Straight Talk 11 you join the crowd of nay sayers. Nothing turns me off more in an argument than someone who professes to tell you what can’t be done. Harris has expressed his pessimism with regard to changing peoples beliefs in a god, but he keeps trying. Personally I think the best attack is to destroy any credence people can find in the Bible. Show it to be the piece of self serving trash that it is.  I guess Harris must have been really surprised when Hedges didn’t give him the chance. Hedges just makes up a religion that no one else believes in. So back to the Bible.
Please explain to me what the Bible is, if it isn’t supposed to be taken literally?
The Bible is supposed to be a history of the Jewish people all the way back to Adam. All the major Bible related religions have studied the genealogy and at one point determined when Adam was created. They really believed that stuff but most of them have recanted which brings me to a question. At what point are these stories not to be taken literal? Perhaps Noah’s Ark would be the last thing that wasn’t real or Moses liberating the Jews from Eqgypt. Maybe the the bible is true after the Ten Commandments or after when the Jews committed genocide and wiped out all the tribes that were in Isarael.  If these stories are understood to be not true, what is the point of believing in the god that is in the Bible? Noah is a joke. God is a bigger joke! Come to think of it, ST11, I got a chuckle out of your comments too.

I agree, StraightTalk11 - nicely put.

Jim H - -
I wonder if you realize that you are a fundamentalist yourself?
You never seem to accept that a viewpoint with any variance
to your own ideas could actually hold some validity.

Your messages drip with offensive sarcasm, which seems to
reveal that all you really want to do is use verbal violence
against people whose ideas you aren’t able to understand,
appreciate or allow to be spoken.

Your rhetoric is the voice of AM Hate Radio, as well as
every other kind of intolerance, and it never does any
one any good. It doesn’t do much for your image either.

We all know that the name of God and the Bible have
been used as reasons for atrocities, and no one here
seriously supports that those claims are valid in any way. 

We’re trying to move beyond that kind of thing and get
to some more interesting ideas, but you keep returning
to those old arguements as a way of attacking the people
who disagree with you rather than their ideas. How old
are you, anyway?  Please grow up and join us in a rational
discourse.

You keep saying that “all belief” is a “cancer of the brain.”
Isn’t atheism a belief?  Is it the belief in not having a belief
in any religious deity as defined by any religion? Please define
your belief in a more positive form, or no one will want to
listen to you.

Like you, I tend to not accept anyone’s beliefs or answers as
the final and complete truth. I am, however, greatly interested
in listening to people who are able to ask deep questions that
stir my entire consciousnes toward a greater awareness. 
People like that seem to respect the need of each person to
find their own answers for themseleves. 

For that reason, Hedges DOES make sense to many of us. 
Accept that, please, and let us pursue truth in our own way.

For the same reason, Harris, in my opinion, pretzels the
facts to fit his own preconceived ideas, which do not
necessarily reflect the truth as I see it. Please accept that, too.
I will accept that he makes a great deal of sense to other
people, even though I find his work to be weak-minded.

Lastly, get yourself a dictionary and drive to the beach
sometime.  It might be good for you to discover some new
words and to wade into the vastness of something bigger
than your own narrowly focused mind.

Congratulations, Cat and Mike G. for your excellent points and your civil and rational approaches to this discussion. Discussion of some of your points follows the comments on the quote immediately below.

“Ummm… If religion isn’t superstition and a belief in magic and the childish notion of an anthropomorphic God that is characteristic of the tribe, than what is it?”
- normdoering

This is an extremely superficial, narrow, naive view of what religion is. If you think everyone who believes in God falls under your definition of religion, you are vastly mistaken. When debating any issue, it might not be such a bad idea to learn something significant about who is debating the other side of the issue.

With regard to people accepting all religions:

“That can only happen when you drain them of all conflict, and that only happens when you drain them of all meaning.”
- Norman Doering

This misses the very good points Cat made before Doering’s comment above, namely:

“I believe you have missed the point of Chris Hedges.  He says, and very clearly, that the Bible should not be taken literally...”
- Cat
(Still missing that point, which of course is predictable in any fundamentalist mindset, whether religious or atheistic.)

“Atheists and dominionist christians do not accept differences in beliefs.”
- Cat

These two excerpts from Cat’s comments sum up nicely two major traits of so-called fundamentalism, which I have posited a number of times as THE great evil in today’s world. Fundamentalism can’t see anything deeply. It is literal-minded and sees a black and white world. It is an “us and them” mentality lacking in compassion and comprehension of any universality underlying superficial differences.

The true meaning of scripture does not reside in its superficial detail. I’m going to use a grossly exaggerated example to illustrate principle. The purpose of the exaggeration is to ensure that no literal-minded atheists miss the point. Too subtle an example would miss anyone who says God doesn’t exist because they’ve never personally seen Him anywhere as if He were an old man with a beard. So, if I say something like this:

Her face blossomed into a radiant smile and captured the hearts of all around her.

An extreme fundamentalist might interpret that as meaning that electroluminescent flowers burst out of her face, curled out, and penetrated everyone’s anatomy to wrap themselves around each person’s heart and hold it physically captive.

The allegories and metaphors in the scriptures of any tradition are much subtler, of course, but no different in principle from this example. Much is unavoidably couched in detail that reflects some unfortunate aspects of the cultural environment surrounding their ancient sources. This does not invalidate their deeper significance.

Doering’s comment that conflict disappears from religious scripture only “when you drain them of all meaning” simply reflects his missing completely their real significance because his understanding is stuck strictly at the level of their superficial cultural trappings.

Harris is for the the Iraq war just like Bush because they’re both fundamentalists. Of course, so are the suicide bombers. They all deserve each other. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer the consequences with them.

Cat, Do you actually think the Bible tells why we are here? If it did it would have been written 500 million years ago and homo sapiens would have showed up then not a hundred thousand years ago. The Bible attempts to give one people a superior edge over others and if for no other reason it should be condemned to be obscene. How others have managed to glom onto this book is amazing to me but, a guy named Paul is probably the person to blame. The book is fiction. Any gods associated with it are fiction. The reason why this atheist is speaking up is because religions based on the Bible are killing people today. We are only one of 30 million or so species on this planet. Look around, other animals do just fine without a god. You have to pretty arrogant to think that we have a soul and all the other animals are just props in some silly life play. Maybe that chicken you are having for supper has a soul too. Any time someone claims miracle he is trying to validate a god. Thousands die in an earth quake and after three days the pull out a living infant and claim “It’s a miracle!” How stupid is that? One of the things that really ticks me off about the Bible is that it is about monarchs and judges and how did their god punish them, by killing a whole bunch of innocent people. I hate using the expression “common people” because we are all special, not common, but in the Bible the common people are just throw aways. They don’t count. According to the Bible your name has to be Moses, Abraham, Noah, David or you just don’t count. Here is an example - try this on President Bush is superior to you . I actually can not say that without laughing. He’s a guy in touch with his god like a bunch of senators running for the presidency. What a joke. What a terrible joke.

Cat -
I have to agree with you. Well said.

Hedges made sense and tried to reach beyond the limits
of language to touch on larger ideas.

Harris stuck to simplistic arguments based on closed-loop
logic which fell apart upon contact with bigger ideas.

Bob Scheer did a great job of moderating the discussion
because he did his best to let the featured speakers do all the
talking. Those who were at the debate were able to see how
he kept things flowing through eye contact with the speakers
in a way that allowed each thought to be expressed clearly
and then responded to by the other side.  His silent
participation in the debate provided the rhythm and
continuity between the two speakers.

While Hedges tried to open up new ideas and deeper feelings
about these issues, Harris kept trying to redefine things in
his own terms, and stooped to unfair reductionism of the
opposing arguments or feigned outrage when realized he
was losing a point.  He lacked the insight to join Hedges
at a higher ground for a shared exploration of some very
challenging concepts.

Jim H: stop shouting - it’s rude.

Norman: the difference between magic and a miracle is that
magic is an illusion which is temoporatily unexplainable, and
miracle is the awakeing of meaningful consciousness within
oneself to larger patterns that transcend our own intelligence
or understanding. No deity required.

If you have other concepts about these things, please share
them with us, but please be nice about it.

Chris Hedges gave concrete and stable answers while Sam Harris failed to stay coherent and reasonable; Harris, for example, argued that Martin Luther King was not a Christian.  King was not only a Baptist Minister, but he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  His claim that King was a progressive humanist instead of a Christian goes too far. 

In addition, Harris was extremely naïve.  First, he was bold enough to say that he knew more about the Middle East than did Chris Hedges.  Harris claimed that because he had read a poll that interviewed a few thousand Islamic families, he understood the Middle East more so than Hedges.  In the debate he even asked Hedges “How many people did you interview?” Hedges knows a lot more than Harris about the Arab world.  Chris Hedges spent several years in Arab countries as a war correspondent for the New York Times.  Robert Scheer even threw his hands up in shock when Harris said this. 

Second, Harris’ argument that religion is the source of evil is clichéd and grossly over-simplified.  Religion is not the cause of evil.  It is that innate capacity for evil that we all possess as human beings.  If religion was abolished institutions would turn to Political ideology (Soviet Union, Red Scare, Cambodian Genocide), science such as eugenics (Slavery in early U.S., Hitler’s Nazi regime) and so on.

In conclusion, Harris is a dangerous figure.  He supports the war in Iraq because of its attack on the Muslim religion and he supports torture.  He denounces anyone who does not think like him as being the enemy, which Hedges certainly does not do.  (Hedges argues for a society that can accept all faiths through an open society).  Hedges understands that the Christian Right is a dangerous force in the U.S., that they are an authoritarian corrupt institution that separates the world into us and them.  But he also understands that Harris’ attack on religion is futile, and not a useful conclusion.  He realizes that atheism separates the world into us and them as well, because the world is divided into those who use science and logic, and those who have faith.  South Park had a two-part episode that talks about atheism and its useless efforts.  In the episode, Richard Dawkins, along with Mrs. Garrison, starts an immense movement to eradicate religion.  In the future, his movement succeeds in riding the world of religion; but this only results in wars that use science and logic as excuses.  It is true that the future atheist nations fight over the name of their organizations in the episode, but this is also a more serious message to the audience: that no matter what ideologies are eradicated (religious, political, scientific, etc.), there will always be conflict and evil in human society.

The first point you make is valid. I may not have said what I meant correctly.  What I meant to say was that the writings of the Bible were not to explain physical aspects of the world.  The Bible is an attempt, by man, to understand the world conceptually.  Even then some of the writing is unacceptable such as the defending of slavery.  But this does not discredit its value.  Ezra Pound was fascist but that did not ruin his poetry itself.  Richard Wagner supported the Nazis but his music was still brilliant.  The Bible expresses rage and violence but all together holds valuable efforts to make sense of the world.  It serves as a guide for people to understand human love and compassion, courage, suffering, agony, violence and so on. 

Your second point has left out the sentence that follows the one you quoted: “Love, and even waking up in the morning, these things are miracles.” He clearly attacks the Christian right for believing in magic and witchcraft. Hedges knows that Genesis is not an attempt to explain how the world was made (that would be ridiculous), but why it was made.  If you included those three sentences it would not have been a contradiction.  Please read carefully. 

The third point you make is not very fair to Chris Hedges.  You say “Chris Hedges wants a world without arguments where everyone believes what he believes.” This is precisely the opposite of what he wants.  Hitchens, Harris, Dobson and Robertson want this.  Hedges wants a world where people can believe freely, and truly. The Atheist leaders along with the Christian right discredit anyone who is not like them. Just as a side note, Harris argues that Martin Luther King was not a Christian.  He says that he changed into an extreme humanist, which I find to be a little absurd. King was without a doubt a Christian. Harris wants to prove to the world that everyone who is good, is not affiliated in any way with religion. His attempt to bring King in as a non-religious person goes too far. 

Religion is not the problem.  We, as human beings, carry the capacity to be evil.  If religion did not exist, totalitarian forces would use political idealogy.  This, in fact, has already happen.  Look at the Cold War, the Cambodian genocide, the internment of the Japanese during World War Two.  These events were not linked to corrupt religion.  It is rather naïve to believe that by eliminating religion we can eliminate human evil and corruption.  Evil is hardwired into human society.  It is part of our nature.  We cannot find ways to rid society of this evil, but instead we can try and contain it.

To normdoering:

I believe you have missed the point of Chris Hedges.  He says, and very clearly, that the Bible should not be taken literally. Passages in the Bible show Gods’ hate and promote slavery, but this is not the purpose of the Bible. As Hedges understands, it is rather a text that expresses the moral questions that we all face: “Why are we here”. (Not “how did we get here?”, since genesis is not physically possible.) Hedges does not believe in witch craft, magic or anything of this sort. He believes, for example, that miracles are everywhere. Love, and even waking up in the morning, these things are miracles.

Hedges believes in a world, not where people would worship christianity, but would accept all religions. Atheists and dominionist christians do not accept differences in beliefs.

Evolution is a recursive process all the way from the Big Bang. It is scientifically clear that all physical restructuring of anything results from the transfer of energy. The manner and direction in which energy is transferred determines the precise nature of this restructuring. Taking the cosmos as a whole, the totality of natural law is operating together with cosmic structure to determine energy flow and the consequent nature and sequence of structural modification. Modified structure implies modification of energy flow, resulting in continuous, recursive shifts, as well as punctuated ones such as supernova explosions at some points, in the nature of the modifications. This process does not have to assume classical universal time in opposition to General Relativity. This is clearly a fully recursive process that progressively and ultimately expresses concretely the abstract nature and structure of the entire set of laws governing it.

The holographic idea from theoretical physics that subcomponents of the ultimately comprehensive system we call the cosmos reflect the nature of the whole at multiple levels within its hierarchical structure a la fractal mathematics clicks wonderfully well into place within a recursive process such as evolution, whether stellar or biological. Macroscopic holographic structure also potentially serves as a fascinating precursor in abstract natural law to a concrete, microscopic physical analog in genetic reproduction, where the structure of the whole organism is implicit in the DNA of each of its cells.

All this seems to imply that natural law is so structured that it holistically, recursively modulates energy flow within the cosmos with the intelligence implicit in its elegant, abstract structure to progressively communicate that intelligence to more localized subcomponents of itself. The evolutionary process is unarguably recursive, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human beings.

This ultimately means, without any reasonable alternative, that the abstract, cosmically global (or holistic if you prefer) nature of the laws governing evolutionary process ultimately manifest in ways that progressively and concretely reflect locally the global nature of those laws. I take both consciousness and intelligence as fundamental, axiomatic attributes of existence itself. I take them as implicit in the elegant, global, omnipresent structure of the natural laws operative in the cosmos. This frees me from the inelegant and theoretically very uneconomical assumption that these attributes magically appear at some point as “epiphenomena” of physical structure. That is just locality looking at the global and cosmic and projecting its local nature onto that which is global. I do not find that to be either logically or intuitively convincing.

I see the physical world as hierarchically structured, as does all of our current scientific understanding. I see no compelling reason to assume that intelligence and self-awareness are not also hierarchical any more than that they are confined to me. I take my expressions of intelligence and self-awareness to be local, concrete reflections of axiomatic, cosmic attributes that have fostered your evolution and mine starting with the Big Bang. I take the elegant structure of natural law as evidence of a Supreme Intelligence that is conscious and self-aware to a degree well beyond what we local reflections of it can possibly appreciate with our pitiful projections based on locally confined perception.

“1. I agree with you that the problem is God is not a scientific problem.  But it is a problem of evidence.  My view is that there is no evidence that God exists, any more than there is evidence that Zeus, vampires, unicorns, elves, Sherlock Holmes, and the like exist.  If you agree that one can claim with “100% certainty” that these do not exist, then I claim that the same can be said about God.”
- Mark Colby

There is no proof, Mark, in the sense of “OK, folks, here He is, God himself” (wild applause). However, to say there is no EVIDENCE is hugely different and a huge stretch to say the least. I return to my analogy with consciousness:

You cannot prove that your aware. You may be just a biological machine with such sophisticated artificial intelligence that it simulates awareness well enough to fool everyone. However, I experience my own consciousness, so I know I’m aware. You behave in fundamental ways that emulate my general capabilities well enough to convince me that you, too, are aware. And you conclude the same about me.

We just drew conclusions that neither one of us can prove, since there is no way to show each other our awareness directly as is if to say, “OK folks, here is my awareness. See it? It’s obvious to me? Why can’t you see it?”

The evidence for God is everywhere all around you in the intelligent organization of individual organisms, their relationships (symbiotic and otherwise) the ecosystems that collectively harbor and nurture their living inhabitants, etc. Evolutionary theory, even at its current level of development, can explain significant parts of this evidence, but that just begs the question. What about the laws that govern evolution?
Why is their structure so elegantly and intelligently ordered? What is behind them? How did they come to be? Most importantly, what are they aspects of; what does their existence imply, and what are they evidence for? Why must we stop short? Why this kind of short-circuited thinking?

Evolutionary theory used to consider the origin of life an incredibly unlikely event that happens so rarely as to perhaps exist only here on this planet. Now NASA is looking for it elsewhere with great interest. The general paradigm has shifted from extremely unlikely to likely practically anywhere conditions are favorable.

We see evidence for radically expanding our definition for favorable conditions right here on earth. We have recently discovered terrestrial life forms existing under conditions we previously thought would not allow life to even survive, let alone evolve.

So now instead of saying that life originated by astronomically remote chance, the atheist term now employed by some is that by a “fortuitous accident” of natural law, this or that process occurs that leads toward the origin of life. So we have a cosmic chain of “fortuitous accidents” of law that have to occur from the Big Bang to supernova explosions that create heavy elements, then to second-generation stars around which the heavy matter can eventually form into planets and their moons, and finally all the way to human level intelligence. So my question is simply this:

How long a cosmic chain of “fortuitous accidents” of law do we have to take into account before we quit calling them “fortuitous accidents”?

Remember, we’re no longer talking about chance events, but “fortuitous accidents” of natural law, a cosmically long chain of which have to be in place or life never happens. I simply propose that there is intelligence implicit in the organization of natural law. I am not a creationist who believes that an anthropomorphic god created the world in six days and rested on the seventh roughly seven thousand years ago. I follow evolutionary theory and cosmology with great interest.

Dear Ted Swart

Sorry for the delay in responding to your post, but I am delighted to notice that there are many points that we have in common and could agree upon

I noticed also that you are interested into taking the dialogue a step further as you said in response to one of my points (“ 4) Explaining the purpose of existence.”)
you said “Now that is THE question.  Want to talk about it? “

Now, I would love to talk about it of course, but we will be entering the field of philosophy and we’ll be tapping very much on the personal and subjective, which in turn might aggravate some people who cannot tolerate a view that differs from their own.

But, then again, this is a space where one can exercise his/ her freedom of expression, hence, I would be obliged to ask people who disagree with my view to tolerate me, and I would whole heatedly urge them to give us both the space in their hearts that allow us to share and discuss our views on this little forum.

As for the purpose of existence, and as you rightly said: that is THE question.

I had this question nagging in my head as far back as I remember, from very early childhood, as a little girl living in a tiny Palestinian village north west of Jerusalem. And as any other child questions such as: who am I? How come I exist? How and why I can comprehend that I exist? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my existence?… etc.

As you might guess dear Ted, all these turbulent questions does not get easy answers from people around you as a child, further, as I grew older, and contemplated more, I realized that the answers we are looking for cannot be found in a text book, I realized that one has to take a journey, an inner journey, to go on the quest for answers.

On that journey there are many signs on the way, and many tools that one could use.
Tools include our ability to reason and to comprehend, our ability to experience with our senses, and to feel with our emotions.

The signs are scattered all around us, and within us… from the atom to the cosmos; from the tiniest drop of water, a grain of sand, an autumn leaf, a flower, a tree, a bird, a butterfly, a mountain… a planet, a galaxy, a universe, including our own physical being.

No one can make the journey on behalf of someone else.
Besides one need all his/her equipments which includes mind and logic but also embraces heart and feelings, as at certain point the logic cease to be able to proceed, for the infinite cannot be known or experienced by the finite.

Only through the heart and feelings that one could experience something as immense and infinite such as love, hence, heart and feelings are indispensable in that journey.

My personal experiences, my logic and my feelings lead me to conclude that if everything came from nothing, if there was no purpose in the existence of the universe, if there is no purpose in the existence of life; then, it’s more reasonable to think that there is no purpose in a life full of agony such as mine, there is no point in living on to suffer more. I.e. there is no purpose in my own life. period.

I could never reconcile my agonized painful existence with futility and lack of purpose.

The only thing that could ever console and comfort this troubled soul of mine was my faith, this insight and intuition that this can’t all be in vain. This inner contentment and trust as a child whose been held in her mother’s arms.
Hence, my journey began… and it is still going on

ktfalvey,

I’m sorry if you found my dismissal of your dogmatic appeal to the authority of Wittgenstein to be so threatening that you lapsed into the very behavior you alleged of me.  Your repeated insults and hostility to criticism are very unbecoming.

If you step back from your anger, you might realize that I stated my credentials as evidence that my claim about religion is not based on a mere layman’s understanding and that it never deserved your insulting, condescending description as “childish.” And since you specifically appealed to Wittgenstein’s authority, my credentials on Wittgenstein are highly relevant as well.  In other words, I know what his views are, and I reject them as unpersuasive.

Philosophy is not a cult.  I suggest you try thinking like a true philosopher, not a Wittgenstein acolyte.  He was certainly a genius and had many illuminating insights, but it doesn’t follow that he was right about religious belief.  There are many critiques of Wittgenstein, especially on his views of religion, that you should consult when you’re ready to think critically.

Your other points are just worthless, unbecoming personal rants against me and reveal your ignorance of the profession.  For example, did you know that 48% of all college instructors in this country are part-time because higher education has become the intellectual equivalent of a sweat shop?  Do you think this means that none of them are qualified for full-time employment?  Ever hear of downsizing, outsourcing, cost-cutting, and, heaven forbid, exploitation?  Your presumptuousness is quite astounding.  By the way, I’m full-time.

You also seem quite oblivious to the fact that this website is not a philosophical forum.  I respected its limitations by not giving substantial arguments for my views.  And I notice that you didn’t either--you made a mere assertion and appealed to Wittgenstein’s authority for support.  I will condescend to give you a hint, though, of an argument as to why Wittgenstein is wrong, and you can fill in the blanks if you have the ability: religious attitudes are not merely non-cognitive expressions.  Every real religion in the world--not Wittgenstein’s hypothetical examples and tribes--involves beliefs about reality (ontological “doctrine") which determine the appropriate attitudes for the follower to adopt toward reality and his own life (moral “doctrine").  A “religion” with no beliefs about reality whatsoever--what you and Wittgenstein apparently think is possible, though neither he nor you have said why it should be called a religion--could not provide any guidance about what to hope for, how to act, when to forgive, what is praiseworthy or blameworthy, etc.  It could not provide redemption, salvation, or even plain, ordinary comfort.  As for “how religious people view it,” why should their first-person epistemic commitments be considered normative?  As for Hedges, his views are quite confused, as others have pointed out here; I would call them philosophically naive.

Whether Nahida is a “decent person” is irrelevant.  He or she made various claims which I took seriously, and I paid this person the courtesy of responding to them, and I was thanked for my politeness.  My claim about the power of psychological forces in affecting people’s beliefs is empirically accurate.

I invite you to attend my lectures on Wittgenstein in the fall at Rutgers University, but only on the condition that you behave in a civilized manner.

Jim H. hath said:
Dictionary
the·ol·o·gy
The study of the nature of God and RELIGIOUS truth;
A system or school of opinions concerning ‘God and religious’ questions:
Protestant theology; Jewish theology.
A course of specialized religious study

And I reply:

I prefer Stephen Jay Gould’s description: A subject without a subject matter

Agki

Re: 73177
To Mark ("I have two doctorates!") Colby:

No wonder your conception of religion is childish.  So is your behavior when criticized.

I wish you luck in academia if your standard mode of argument is to launch into a tantrum and point to your degrees.

Luck is something you obviously need, since all your degrees have thus far not succeeded in garnering you a tenure-track job anywhere. The profession does seem to have rendered its judgment upon your ability, Mark.

In truth, those of us who hire and fire people like you don’t care how many degrees a guy has if he doesn’t know his stuff.  You demonstrated conclusively in your #72374 an utter inability to comprehend the idea that religious faith can take the form of an attitude toward life and the world, not belief in a body of “docrine.” It is a simple fact that this is how many religious people view it. Hedges articulated such a view quite well, but you simply cannot comprehend it.  As such, you have no more business teaching philosophy of religion than someone ignorant of the basic concepts of set theory has teaching philosophy of mathematics.

Your pretentious, patrontizing and pedantic response to nahida’s simple expressions of faith are just embarrassing to those of us who regard philosophical discussion as something more than a sophomoric debating game.  Your chillingly dehumanized description (#73673) of this obviously decent person as “at the mercy of powerful psychological forces” is just despicable.

Reason is not a stick you use to beat things you cannot comprehend, Mark. You are the kind of person who gives academic philosophy a bad name Do the profession a favor and find another line of work.

I guess Chris Hedges has not read this - really he does not have a leg to stand on.
Revelations chapter 1 verse 20 says; The Seven Stars of “Orion” (in the constellation of Orion) are the Angels of The Seven Churches.
Revelations chapter 1 verse 11 says; The Seven churches are; Ephesus, and Smyrna the First, and Pergamus, and Thyatira, and Sardis, and Philadelphia, and Ladocea.
Revelations chapter 22 verse 16 says; I Jesus have sent my angel to testify unto you these things, in The Churches; I am the root of David, the bright ”The Morning Star.”(it is visible on the Horizon Summer & Fall - a few minutes before sunrise)
(catch 22) The Morning Star is not Jesus and it is not a star at all – it is the Planet “Venus.”
Isaiah chapter 44 verse 10 says; Who? Hath formed a God, or molten a graven image (of a God) that is profitable for nothing?

In Search of Truth

On the question; Have I ever read an entire book cover to cover, that opposes my personal views?
By the time I was twelve – I had been thoroughly indoctrinated, I was a Catholic. In the Catholic doctrine we were taught that one should never question the existence of God and we should never read The Holy Bible, especially the book of Revelations. (the intention is clear)
When I was thirteen I was converted and my mother purchased and gave me a beautiful King James, leather bound bible with a biblical concordance.
I read searched and analyzed every conceivable topic, only to discover that the Holy Bible was jammed packed with concoctions and inconceivable fabrications – Lies. Yes – the book was my Holy Bible.
I nearly cried with amazement in realizing that I must be an Atheist!
If any one is interested in truth, you will find it in the book of Revelations etc. All about the Jewish God “Yahweh-God-Jehovah” and that Abraham designed “God” from the single word “YAHWEH.” (from nothing) At that time, Abraham was one of the richest men on Earth !
In reading the bible you will find that religious theories derive from Nimrod Baal the sun god and Christianity derives from Astronomy and Astrology. From the “Seven Stars of Orion” and the “Seven Churches of Christ” of which “Smyrna” in Turkey was the First. Such as all Churches named “The First” and all Banks named “The First.” Churches and Banks are about accumulation of Money, property and Political Power) Large church congregations, operate Credit Unions !
Yes – the book that I read, that opposes my views, was/is my treasured “Holy Bible.”
It is not my business to indoctrinate any one into disbelief.
If you want to keep your “Faith” don’t read the Bible and avoid the book of Revelations. (For there you will see the fallacy of it all)
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