Posted on 03/01/2002 3:00:41 PM PST by f.Christian
False man made religion(atheism/darwinism/evolution) based on denial of reality/God(creator/creation)...
is the 'universal obsessional neurosis of humanity'---
and it(false science) is destined to disappear when human beings learn to face reality as it is(positive science)...
resisting the tendency to edit it to suit our fancies(normative science)."
He adds that if a belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our body and spread to the rest of the town. [2]
To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.[3]
(It is not hard to detect, in these quotations, the "tone of robustious pathos" with which James credits Clifford.) On this view theists without evidence-my sainted grandmother, for example-are flouting their epistemic duties and deserve our disapprobation and disapproval. Mother Teresa, for example, if she has not arguments for her belief in God, then stands revealed as a sort of intellectual libertine-someone who has gone contrary to her intellectual obligations and is deserving of reproof and perhaps even disciplinary action.
In any event, I think the evidentialist objector can take a more promising line. He can hold, not that the theist without evidence has violated some epistemic duty-after all, perhaps he can't help himself- but that he is somehow intellectually flawed or disfigured. Consider someone who believes that Venus is smaller than Mercury-not because he has evidence, but because he read it in a comic book and always believes whatever he reads in comic books-or consider someone who holds that belief on the basis of an outrageously bad argument. Perhaps there is no obligation he has failed to meet; nevertheless his intellectual condition is defective in some way. He displays a sort of deficiency, a flaw, an intellectual dysfunction of some sort. Perhaps he is like someone who has an astigmatism, or is unduly clumsy, or suffers from arthritis. And perhaps the evidentialist objection is to be construed, not as the claim that the theist without evidence has violated some intellectual obligations, but that he suffers from a certain sort of intellectual deficiency. The theist without evidence, we might say, is an intellectual gimp.
Alternatively but similarly, the idea might be that the theist without evidence is under a sort of illusion, a kind of pervasive illusion afflicting the great bulk of mankind over the great bulk of the time thus far allotted to it. Thus Freud saw religious belief as "illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most insistent wishes of mankind."[4 ]He sees theistic belief as a matter of wish-fulfillment. Men are paralyzed by and appalled at the spectacle of the overwhelming, impersonal forces that control our destiny, but mindlessly take no notice, no account of us and our needs and desires; they therefore invent a heavenly father of cosmic proportions, who exceeds our earthly fathers in goodness and love as much as in power. Religion, says Freud, is the "universal obsessional neurosis of humanity", and it is destined to disappear when human beings learn to face reality as it is, resisting the tendency to edit it to suit our fancies.
"Were it not for the existence of sin in the world, says Calvin, human beings would believe in God to the same degree and with the same natural spontaneity displayed in our belief in the existence of other persons, or an external world, or the past. This is the natural human condition; it is because of our presently unnatural sinful condition that many of us find belief in God difficult or absurd. The fact is, Calvin thinks, one who does not believe in God is in an epistemically defective position-rather like someone who does not believe that his wife exists, or thinks that she is a cleverly constructed robot that has no thoughts, feelings, or consciousness. Thus the believer reverses Freud and Marx, claiming that what they see as sickness is really health and what they see as health is really sickness."
...it is because of our presently... unnatural sinful condition---that many (of us) find belief in God difficult or absurd.
"Religion . . . is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the man who has either not yet found himself, or else (having found himself) has lost himself once more. But man is not an abstract being . . . Man is the world of men, the State, society. This State, this society, produce religion, produce a perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted world . . . Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people."
"It---(communism-socialism-atheism-darwin-evolution)---is the opium of the people."
Compact but strangely silent on the only information of relevance -- the history of religion and the pantheon of gods in which men have invested belief through the centuries. It is not merely a question of the absence of evidence but also a question of evidence of absence. Plantinga casts the argument between the believer in god and the atheist. He ignores the arguments against his particular god by those that believe in another. Theists collectively refute one another with greater zeal and effectiveness than the most ardent atheistic evidentialist and they do this by historical reference to the proofs of error with which all religions are necessarily imbued.
Additionally, Planting offers an argument to the effect that intellectual malfunction cannot be objectively defined with respect to belief in a god. He does not ask how the believer acquired his belief or if it matters at all what is believed as long as something is believed. If and when he treads down that path he will likely become an atheist himself.
Are there any polytheistic philosophers of note? Monotheism, pantheism, and atheism apppear to be the only abiding religious structures that philosophers can produce. Polytheism is too indifferent.
Additionally, Planting offers an argument to the effect that intellectual malfunction cannot be objectively defined with respect to belief in a god.
Not quite sure what you mean, here.
He does not ask how the believer acquired his belief or if it matters at all what is believed as long as something is believed.
But he is arguing for the truth of monotheism; it certainly matters. Do you think he's pushing indifferentism? Why?
If and when he treads down that path he will likely become an atheist himself.
But does atheistic belief really have any additional explanatory power that monotheistic belief lacks? How do his critiques of the evidentialist position and/or the geneticist position fail? Or does he miss something else?
"Even we godless antimetaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith thousands of years old, the Christian faith, which was also the faith of Plato: that God is the truth, that truth is divine."
-Freddy Nietzsche, The Gay Science
It might help if Calvinists would decided which side of these issues they are on. In the first place they claim we are born with a "sinful nature" which would make our sinful condition an natural one, but when discussing the inability to believe in God our sinful state is suddenly our "unnatural sinful condition."
Hank
Actually I wasn't making a reference to polytheism. Sadly, even the present day monotheists form a polytheistic collective. Claiming that there is only one god isn't convincing when the version each sect adores bears little resemblance to and is perpetually at odds with the adherents of the competing monotheistic cults.
"Not quite sure what you mean, here." -- Dumb Ox
I was referring to Plantinga's remarks to the effect that the intellectual capacity of believers is inherently deficient in the opinion of the atheological evidentialists. Plantinga objects to this characterization of the believer but offers only the weakest refutation possible -- the believer's world view and his beliefs are not inconsistent -- some nonsense about wants and attainments.
"But he is arguing for the truth of monotheism; it certainly matters. Do you think he's pushing indifferentism? Why?" -- Dumb Ox
He makes no case for the truth of monotheism in this article. He is practicing apologetics. Monotheism itself is trivial and largely meaningless without a detailed description of the deity. When believers attempt to describe their particular god they make innumerable mistakes and are justly ridiculed for holding faith in contradiction of knowledge and logic. Plantinga thinks this is permissible as long as the believers are consistent. He is wrong of course for no other reason than this -- being consistent and being wrong are not mutually exclusive.
"But does atheistic belief really have any additional explanatory power that monotheistic belief lacks? How do his critiques of the evidentialist position and/or the geneticist position fail? Or does he miss something else?" -- Dumb Ox
Atheism as generally expressed is not a belief. It is more often the simple knowledge that all known religions are patently false in their primary assertions about the nature of reality. True atheism, of the sort that states emphatically that there is no god, is rare because it is meaningless and has a simple detestable (to most "atheists") quality -- it is always and only a belief.
"...that God is the truth, that truth is divine." -- Nietzsche
If only people honored the truth itself instead of "truths." The tendency to adopt false beliefs would be tempered by the desire to avoid the risk of violating the standard of truth.
Actually I wasn't making a reference to polytheism. Sadly, even the present day monotheists form a polytheistic collective. Claiming that there is only one god isn't convincing when the version each sect adores bears little resemblance to and is perpetually at odds with the adherents of the competing monotheistic cults.
"Not quite sure what you mean, here." -- Dumb Ox
I was referring to Plantinga's remarks to the effect that the intellectual capacity of believers is inherently deficient in the opinion of the atheological evidentialists. Plantinga objects to this characterization of the believer but offers only the weakest refutation possible -- the believer's world view and his beliefs are not inconsistent -- some nonsense about wants and attainments.
"But he is arguing for the truth of monotheism; it certainly matters. Do you think he's pushing indifferentism? Why?" -- Dumb Ox
He makes no case for the truth of monotheism in this article. He is practicing apologetics. Monotheism itself is trivial and largely meaningless without a detailed description of the deity. When believers attempt to describe their particular god they make innumerable mistakes and are justly ridiculed for holding faith in contradiction of knowledge and logic. Plantinga thinks this is permissible as long as the believers are consistent. He is wrong of course for no other reason than this -- being consistent and being wrong are not mutually exclusive.
"But does atheistic belief really have any additional explanatory power that monotheistic belief lacks? How do his critiques of the evidentialist position and/or the geneticist position fail? Or does he miss something else?" -- Dumb Ox
Atheism as generally expressed is not a belief. It is more often the simple knowledge that all known religions are patently false in their primary assertions about the nature of reality. True atheism, of the sort that states emphatically that there is no god, is rare because it is meaningless and has a simple detestable (to most "atheists") quality -- it is always and only a belief.
"...that God is the truth, that truth is divine." -- Nietzsche
If only people honored the truth itself instead of "truths." The tendency to adopt false beliefs would be tempered by the desire to avoid the risk of violating the standard of truth.
Apologetics, of course, is the defense of a thing, as in Plato's Apology. Being defensible is the very nature of Apologetics.
Monotheism itself is trivial and largely meaningless without a detailed description of the deity.
I wouldn't say meaningless, since a true description is hardly meaningless, though I think I agree with your basic sentiment here.
When believers attempt to describe their particular god they make innumerable mistakes and are justly ridiculed for holding faith in contradiction of knowledge and logic.
As when certain atheists try to explain away religious belief.
Plantinga thinks this is permissible as long as the believers are consistent.
Plantinga, being a good Augustinian, holds the truths of faith to be the standard by which knowledge is to be judged. I don't care much for this approach myself, but I don't see why it is plainly false.
Atheism as generally expressed is not a belief. It is more often the simple knowledge that all known religions are patently false in their primary assertions about the nature of reality.
If it is knowledge, then it should be provable. Again, what proofs are there besides the apparently flawed evidentialist and geneticist rejections of theism?
Funny...an agnostic(honest atheist) could join the Unitarian religion---where can an atheist(hostile militant anti-nostic) go?
Talk about inconsistency--you want it both ways!
unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
- ag·nos·ti·cism /-t&-"si-z&m/ noun
Philosophical geniuses...agnostic-atheist are not synonyms!
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