I thought about posting this in the Faith III Complexity thread, but it seemed like creating a new thread was the lesser evil in this case.

http://yes.kitoba.com/2013/06/statement ... ellectual/

The background here is that it seems like the intellectual and faith communities are quite hostile to each other. The church went through a long period of anti-intellectualism that, thankfully, I think is coming to a close. On the other side, it seems like intellectuals are becoming increasingly derisive towards religion. The result is that people at the intersection of the Venn diagram are becoming ever more invisible and inaudible.

In that context, I thought it was important for me to make a public statement as someone who values both my faith and the life of the mind. Hopefully it will spark some conversations. It was also valuable for me in terms of parsing out where I do and don't align with traditional orthodox Christianity. I tried to largely keep it in the realm of overall belief rather than in terms of individual personal positions on social and political issues.

I'd be interested to hear the statements of faith or non-faith of some of the other people here. I know there's a range of belief here, although it can often be invisible except in this particular forum.

I don't believe in God myself, but I've always liked the idea of organized religion since most of them boil down to "be a good person and good things will happen to you" (or at least it appears so to myself as someone who looks upon it from the outside). My belief in the whole ordeal is let the scientists have their science, let the religious have their religion, let anyone who so chooses to mix and match between the two as they see fit, and to all naysayers shut the hell up.

I don't think science and God are mutually exclusive. I see scientific advancement as proof to how complex the thought had to be to go into the creation of the universe. Every time we find small particles that make up the universe, it seems years later something smaller is found. It's mind boggling. We keep discovering more and more as a species. The more we learn the more we realize we don't know.

I don't think that faith and science are incompatible and they can certainly have them co-exist in the same person. I think where it breaks down is when people use God to explain things. God does not have explanatory power in the scientific sense, because God as an explanation does not have any predictive power.

If the answer offered to the question "Why is the world the way it is?" is "God did it," even if that's true* in the metaphysical sense, it sidesteps the biggest question science has to offer humanity, which is "How?" How do clouds form? How do the planets revolve around the sun? How does a supernova work? How did life start on Earth? If you don't need to ask how, and accept that the answer is "miracles", then you don't need to know anything because miracles are by definition a black box. And you only need miracles if you believe that being able to explain how something works takes the Divine out of it. Which is a very common belief, but one which I feel is completely unnecessary.

*For a given value of true

Generally seems ok. I can agree with most of it though wouldn't apply any reference of divinity to my own life but a few points stick. This statement seems quite dangerous to me as I could quite easily see it as justification of a suicide bomber. Ok extreme example but you get my intent right?Which, from your point of view renders my frame of morals null and void? If that's really what you are saying, that is quite insulting.I believe there is a two way street. The beginning of morals and ethics being applied to science has really been applied mostly in the prevention of cruelty to animals. When it was believed that all animals were unintelligent beasts placed on earth for our benefit, no one cared. And so we apply morals to science but as science teaches us more we need to examine our moral code.

This is one of those things that can't be judged independent of whether you think God actually exists and whether or not people are actually in relationship with God. If people actually do have a relationship with God, then it pretty clearly overrules everything else. If it's just all about people's false beliefs or false claims of relationship with God, then it's incredibly destructive.

Imagine a fantasy novel set in a world where everyone nominally owes allegiance to a High King. If someone appears, claiming to be conducting business on behalf of the High King, it's your duty to obey their authority --but only if you judge them to be really acting on behalf of the High King, and only if you think the High King actually exists.


I see morals alienated from God as cut flowers in a vase. Depending on the flower, they can keep their color and fragrance for quite a long while, but they aren't going to keep on growing, and eventually they will die.

I'd see that as a long-term process though --longer than a generation, so it wouldn't be a criticism of any given person's morality within the timeframe of an individual life.

Here's a side question for you, however --what makes the statement, even in its least charitable interpretation, insulting? If I say my morals are based on God, and you say God does not exist, would that be equally insulting?

There is one issue you do not address as far as i see and that is the issue of reverence towards religions and it's symbols. That is one issue, where i have a different view then most religious people.

I am the opinion, that the best method to check if something has some actual value, and is not a fad, that is cool for a time but ultimatly unimportant, is to make fun of it, associate it with villiany in stories and generally drag it through dirt. If it still has value afterwards, it's good. I might not want to do it all the time, with everything i hold dear all the time and sometimes i enjoy following an ultimatly worthless fad, and if i see it that way from the start, i don't see the point of the exercise. But i see that as the litmus test of the value of things or ideas.

Yet many religious people tend to insist that their religion (or religions in general) should always be treated with reverence, which to me looks like they don't trust the value of their religion themselfs but want to keep the illusion going for a while longer.

Re god as source of morality and other things:

I have met believers, who are the opinion that at least some atheists or other heathens are actually in communication with god, but for some reason, thoose people do not percieve god as god. How do you stand toward that idea?

My view on morals based on god is roughly the inverse notion BTW. The believer incorrectly attributes some products of his mind to an external entity. But the results can nevertheless be good, after all humans often can do things that they don't really understand.

I don't know Steaves position, but i would say it is less insulting to say, that you are in error about the source of your morals, then that your morals are automatically defective, since you don't base them on the right philosophical idea.

The idea that believers are just shoring up a weak belief is probably true for some people. But there are two other contexts within which respect for religion makes sense.

1) Suppose someone asked you for a picture of your (beloved) grandmother. Then he stomped on it, spat on it, dragged it through the dust, etc. When you complained, his answer was "if it's really valuable, then all that abuse should only make it worth more to you." I don't think you'd be inclined to see it that way.

2) Sometimes my young children are disrespectful to me, their parent. That upsets me, not so much because of the disrespect itself, but because I worry that it will be a barrier in the way of them learning important things from me. The disrespect is more harmful to them than me, although they are unable to see it that way from their perspective.



I'd be personally in sympathy with that idea. I think God is broadcasting on all frequencies at all times.

EDIT: I thought more about your first statement. By your own standard, shouldn't the fact that religion has persisted over such a long period of time, often in the face of great opposition, attest to its worth? In the world of today, Christianity is ubiquitous, but it started as a tiny, fiercely persecuted and often villified group of believers. And it persists today in many places where it is opposed, for instance, Communist China. Similarly, there are still faithful Jews even post-Holocaust. Doesn't that mean that religion passes your test?

re Grandmother pictures: Assuming there is no other factor riding in it, such as the picture not being replaceable and the damage being actual physical damage, rather then rherorical abuse, or that the situation is such that the other person borrows my property under the pretense, that it will be given back and then destroys it, in the long and middle and long run it's no big deal. I still keep the photo, what it's worth to me keeps in tact, because what my grandmother means to me does not change due to any sort of abuse towards her pictures. There also might be context issues, such as if the picture abuser went out of his way to be impolite to me and my family, or if he took the least impolite occasion. It also depends on what reason he has to dislike my grandmother. But overall i am the opinion, that people who for some reason hate my grandmother, should have a time and a place to express that.

On the short run, i might not stay that level headed. I am no saint after all. But i am confident that before i start any action involving complex planning (such as forumalting and promoting the grandmotherly equivalent of blasphemy laws) i will cool down.

I apply similiar context issues to critizism of religions and similiar. For instance something like picketing a religious service should be reserved for extreme cases, such as if that specific congregation pretty directly does some specific harm. Even if your disagreement with their worldview is only minor. If you make your own show elsewhere you are free to express radical disagreement however. I also don't think less of religious people, if they somewhat overreact if they encounter a totally unexpected blasphemy. And shouting blasphemy in their church is impolite behaviour for a guest. But they can't expect that all people always and everywhere refrain from blasphemy and they never hear any blasphemy at all.

re children and parents: I consider it an important part of growing up, that the respect that children have for their parents, because they are their parents, is replaced by respect for them, because of the fellow humans they are. That process can meander around a bit, is often not exactly pretty and can drive all involved parties nuts. But in essence it is children learning what about their parents is actually worthy of respect, and like many learning processes it involves trial and error. As much as it's unpeasureable for the parent, attempting to prevent that, would be an attempt to prevent the full development of the child.

Re persistence of religion: I think some aspects of religions are valuable, but i don't think they are rooted in their philosphical groundwork. It is in general a progress for society, if some aspect is seperated from the religious context, as it happened before in the past (not always completly), with medicine, charity, councelling ect.

The biblical point of view renders anyone's frame of morals null and void yes. God sets the morality. Which is why by that stricture we are all condemned.

Of course that's the biblical view of how perfect morality should be defined. A person would have to be pretty ignorant, though, to think that nobody ends up with morals at all except throguh accepting the bible; the world is full of examples to show how wrong that is.

Likewise, kitoba, you've argued that even parts of mathematics are something divinely set up for earthly creatures to find, so I'd have been surprised if you didn't think morality had something of the same origin. What you wrote here, though, sounds like saying people who don't consciously accept that divinity can't find it; at best they might lose religious morality slowly, like dying flowers. That notion is insulting, much more than disagreeing about its source, and I think would be at complete odds with aiming for a truthful and accurate understanding of the world, where non-religious people and societies alike commonly show no sign of such decay compared to religious ones.

@arcosh - My metaphors were meant only to show there are legitimate reasons why the religious feel religion deserves respect. But even religion needs its iconoclasts.

Personally I've been distressed recently by how common and accepted cheap jokes at religion's expense have become in popular culture. But if anything, I think the ultimate blame for that lies in the superficiality and hypocrisy of mainstream American Christianity.



I definitely think morals are in an advanced state of decay in the modern world, although I'll risk undercutting my own point by noting that they've decayed even faster in the church. That said, I'd guess there are any number of churches that don't have much connection with God either.

It's worth noting that my perspective is a little different from Jorodryn's. When I say God is the source and foundation of all morality, I primarily mean metaphysically, in a Platonic sense, and not in the legalistic sense that God makes the rules and we either follow them or depart from them. As I mentioned before, I'm sympathetic to the notion that people can be connected to God without a conscious awareness of that fact --given that I don't believe anyone is ever entirely alienated from God.

It's easy to notice things that touch on you. For myself, while some of the jokes are genuinely cruel, I do notice a lot have a sort of deeper appreciation; Ned Flanders is nerdy and over-devoted, and comical for it, but at the end of the day he's always undoubtedly better than his neighbors. That doesn't show up when say Time magazine takes a cheap-shot against secular humanists, which is the sort of thing it's easier for me to notice.


......morals in general, compared to what and when? Because even with the church, with everything I can think of you might possibly count as a modern failing, I am not sure when it was much better except maybe its first few possibly-idealized centuries. I have a tough time making sense of this unless maybe you're defining morality in a way much more akin to Jorodryn than I expected, and all but leaving out anything I'd recognize under the term, Platonic or not.

I have a theory that this is the cause of a lot of the perceived intellectual/christian divide in Internet culture. There are groups of people who call themselves Christians - and then ignore the central parts of the message (the whole 'love and tolerance' part) and insist on shouting about the most ridiculous things that they can construe from biblical verses (creationism and anti-gay). People who see these groups (and the 'creationism' group in particular is very vocal) then associate what they say with all Christianity - which is false, but a lot of people aren't going to make the effort to differentiate between two groups who claim to work from the same book.

This gives confirmatory evidence to the hypothesis that Christians are anti-intellectual; thereby broadening the perceived divide, and worsening the whole situation.

I don't want to ramble too much so I'll just touch on a couple of points.

Kitoba, I recommend you read the book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Persecution of early Christians did happen, but nowhere near the extent commonly believed. (admittedly I have not read the book but did listen to an interview with the author who made a very convincing, well researched argument)

As for the perceived decline in morality, I stress the word perceived. The problem is we live in the information age and are now aware of all the things that were always there but out of sight. Rapes have always occurred but it wasn't reported. Drugs have always been abused, just the chemicals of choice have changed. Young people have always had sex, but before when a girl got pregnant, she would shipped out of town then had her child raised as a sibling. I could go on and on about the "good old days". Even surprisingly according to statistics, we are living in the most peaceful time in modern (all of?) history when you look at the percentage of all people affected by war/violent crime. Only from the point of view of religious doctrine are we heading down since society as a whole is becoming more tolerant of things conservative religion teaches is wrong like women's rights, acceptance of gays, ect.