The “consensus” view among atheists seems to be that atheism is reasonable and that religious beliefs are not.
So why are atheists angry at God?
We can become incensed by objects and creatures both animate and inanimate. We can even, in a limited sense, be bothered by the fanciful characters in books and dreams. But creatures like unicorns that don’t exist ”that we truly believe not to exist” tend not to raise our ire. We certainly don’t blame the one-horned creatures for our problems.
The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at him.
I’m trying to remember the last time I got angry at something which did not exist. It’s been a while since I last played World of Warcraft, but that might be a candidate.
But atheists angry at God? That’s absurd. Assertions that there are empirical studies to that effect? Simply ludicrous. By definition, atheism is a lack of belief in God or gods. It is simply a matter of logical impossibility that atheists should be angry at God.
You must have missed the bit about empirical studies.
You mean Jesus ascended into heaven, then he was resurrected, then he died, then he went about preaching and teaching, then he was baptized, then he was circumcised, then he was born?
But before all that happened Christianity spread throughout the known world.
I never really looked at it from that perspective before. 😉
fifthmonarchyman,
You can still have marriage-as-sacrament and have it mean to you whatever it does in your worldview. That’s not the point, and isn’t anywhere near the point for hundred miles. Here’s the point:
(1) marriage was a legal, political, and economic status for thousands of years before Christianity was even imagined, and in hundreds of cultures completely remote from Christianity;
(2) hence marriage is originally a legal, political, and economic status that became a religious practice;
(3) that marriage as a legal, political, and economic status in a secular society has no religious meaning with regard to that legal, political, and economic status;
(4) hence, barring anyone from entering into that status on religious grounds is precisely what is prohibited in a secular society;
(5) this is precisely what is involved in living in a secular society, which also — just to point this out one more time — protects you and all Christians from being persecuted by Muslims, Hindus, and even atheists.
If your conception of “religious liberty” entails that you don’t think that the legal, political, and economic status of marriage should be extended to a certain group of persons on religious grounds, then your conception of “religious liberty” has no place in a secular society.
In other words, I think that what liberals should say to conservatives here is, “yes, you’re right, we do want to restrict your religious liberty, under the following condition: when the exercise of that religious liberty comes at the expense of other people having the right of access to political, economic, and legal statuses, rights, and protections that they have good reasons for wanting access to”
On these grounds, I think that the kind of religious liberty you want is incompatible with justice. When you say things like that, you are standing up and passionately defending injustice. You need to understand that when you say that redefining marriage is an assault on religious liberty, what you are saying is that you are on the side of injustice. And there is something deeply and fundamentally evil about that kind of religion.
Well at least you didn’t claim I made no defense, because that would have been false.
The claim was made that the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke contradict each other on six points. I showed quite plainly how they do not contradict each other on any of the six points.
So then you decide to move the goalposts and introduce another thing that just because you say so I am required to defend against. The claim that I believe the Bible is the Word God. A post you made well after I created the OP for this thread.
So there’s a small problem there with your claim that I started this thread to avoid defending the bible as the word of God. Maybe I traveled back in time. What’s your theory keiths?
KN, one way to response to your post would be to argue that marriage is a sacrament regardless of culture or religion, because it’s instituted by God. Different cultures may not regard it as a sacrament in the technical Catholic Christian sense, but in their own ways that is how they treat it. Just an idea.
What do you think is useful about this idea of yours?
It’s an interesting move, but it won’t work. The exact same point I made above can be iterated at the meta-level, too: it is a belief internal to the (Catholic?) Christian worldview that marriage is a sacrament in all cultures and at all times.
It’s pretty simple: either you think the state should be neutral with regard to worldviews, or you don’t. If you think the state should be neutral with regard to worldviews, then there is no argument against same-sex marriage. All the arguments against it (which aren’t based on factual errors) are grounded in the conviction that some worldview (“the Judeo-Christian tradition”, an utterly nauseating phrase*) has special legal status. And that in turn is simply not consistent with having a secular state.
* why is it nauseating? Firstly, the prefix is a bit of appropriation — there’s nothing specifically Jewish about what people mean when they talk about “the Judeo-Christian tradition”. I suspect that the phrase came into popularity because the Holocaust made it unseemly to be as openly anti-Semitic as it used to be. Secondly, because the phrase “Judeo-Christian” was coined by a members of a sect within Nazism who wanted to purge Nazism (and Germany) of all Christian influences — return to a pagan past that never was — and in doing so, tried to turn traditional German anti-Semitism into anti-Christianism.
KN
Thank you for your response.
If you are merely suggesting that what you mean by marriage is not what I mean by marriage and you just want to extend your concept of marriage to the sexual relationship that is popular right now then I can understand that.
The problem with that argument is that you are excluding lots of other kinds of sexual relationships that have just as much claim to KN’s concept of marriage. It is unjust and inconsistent to exclude them.
If you don’t think it is unjust and inconsistent to exclude all the other committed sexual relationships from KN’s marriage you need to explain why that is.
On the other hand if you are actually claiming that I have no right to believe that the Christian concept of marriage is the correct one then that is a different matter entirely. It is a direct attack on my religious liberty to follow my own conscience.
which is it?
peace
Garbage again. No one is attacking your “right to believe”. The only thing anyone is attacking is your non-existent right to impose your beliefs onto the historical usage of marriage – which as KN points out, far predates christianity or organized religion of any sort – and the legal social contract to which that word “marriage” applies.
Just as we must provide police and fire services without regard to your beliefs as to who has sinned and who has not, we also must provide the service of secular marriage licenses without regard to your beliefs as to who is entering in the proper spirit (of two becoming one, in reflection of the church) or who is not.
You have a perfectly valid sacrament which for two thousand years has been named “holy matrimony”. Quit trying to impose your beliefs on outsiders and be happy to believe, whatever it is that you do believe, in the sanctuary of your home and church.
You can follow your own conscience up to the point where it interferes with my physical reality. That’s always been true, and it’s still true. Just as I can follow my own conscience up to the point where it interferes with your physical reality. My conscience based on my true religion tells me that every adult must be vaccinated to prevent transmission of fatal whooping cough to innocent newborns. Is it a direct attack on my religious liberty if you tell me that I can’t inject you with a dose of vaccine without your specific consent? Of course not! Your conscience based on one interpretation of your incoherent religion tells you that adults must not be allowed to call themselves “married” unless they meet your specific definition (one flesh, blah blah blah). Is it a direct attack on your religious liberty when I tell you that you don’t get to legally interfere with two adult partners who consent to marry each other? Of course not!
Grow up. Religious liberty doesn’t mean that you get to force all the laws and all the terms society uses to match your special snowflake set of beliefs.
And if that’s what religious liberty did mean, you would be in a world of hurt, because there’s always someone with a bigger army and a meaner god who would force the laws to match their special set of beliefs. Of course, then you really would be able to complain about anti-christian persecution, so I guess you might call it a win even while ISIS teen-soldiers were hacking you up.
We choose to live a better way, a way that is fair to everyone and harms no one.
Believe what you want. Feel free to believe, against all reason and evidence, that your kind is being picked on merely because you don’t get to force other people in a secular society to obey the particular brand of “god law” that you happen to feel is the right one. Feel free to complain as much as you wish. Just don’t expect anyone who is not already biased as you are to take your complaint seriously.
Well, anyone except perhaps KN, because he is a legitimate saint and takes everyone seriously no matter how unattractive their whining is.
against by better judgement I read your post.
I’m not trying to force my views on anybody. I’m trying to get government out of the marriage business so that nobodies “snowflake set of beliefs” is forced on anybody.
I object to KN’s concept of marriage being granted to only two kinds of sexual relationship while all the rest are excluded. That is unjust and inconsistent.
How you can twist my concern for equality into an attempt to force my beliefs on others is puzzling to me
It’s your side that is trying to change what others believe
quote:
end quote:
peace
Governments didn’t hijack marriage. Christianity hijacked a secular (or at least pagan) institution. Just as it hijacked Saturnalia.
Good, you should always read my comments because I always have interesting and relevant things to say. Keep it up and you’ll surely learn more.
Yes, it’s clear you truly cannot believe that NOBODY’s beliefs are being forced on anyone else when we, as a society, agree to provide marriage licenses to any adult couples regardless of race, gender, nationality, or religious status. But, you are truly wrong. Literally NO ONE is required to believe anything whatsoever about marriage to make that work. The individuals getting married to each other can believe whatever they want, the witnesses can believe whatever they want, and you personally can also believe whatever you want about it. I’d call that a win-win-win; unfortunately you obviously don’t, because you continue to post these comments about how it’s not right that some people get to have their marriages recognized by the state. Funny you never used to object to state-recognized marriages until they were allowed for the gay couples. Hmm.
Funny also that you are willing to cause your fellow christians so much hardship by insisting their state-recognized marriages shouldn’t exist. Funny how you want every couple, no matter how poor or badly educated, to have to pay for lawyers and write contracts to decide whch is the “real” parent of their children, contracts to decide who can visit in hospital, contracts to decide who gets their household goods when they die … all of those already-determined legal rights which come with state-recognized marriage. You want to take that away from happily-married christian heterosex couples just to keep it out of the hands of loving stable gay couples. That’s mean. That’s downright wicked. You should be ashamed.
No, it’s not unjust nor inconsistent.
We discussed this at length before – you were a participant – in the US Supreme Court/same-sex marriage thread that went on for weeks.
If you didn’t comprehend it then, you certainly won’t comprehend it now. But you are in fact wrong with your peculiar insistence that anyone who accepts same sex marriage between two consenting adult partners must automatically accept incest, or polygamy, or marrying your robot, or whatever. It’s quite irrational of you to deny that people do have a real capability to recognize the differences between those various situations. IF they can’t be “holy matrimony” (which they can’t, by church decree, of course) then you may truly believe that they are all one consistent mess of goo, but you’re wrong about that.
Yes, do tell us again about your concern that the incestuous father is not being given “equality” when we don’t expand marriage to include him and his chosen child partner/victim. I think you have a truly perverted definition of “equality” in your worldview.
No surprise you can’t or won’t read for comprehension. KN means that you already have your sacrament and for two thousand years the name of your sacrament has been “holy matrimony”, not “marriage”.
Don’t be so goddamn greedy; quit trying to steal the concept of “marriage” which doesn’t belong to you and never has. Stop trying to turn “marriage”, the human political legal status, into a sacrament, which it is not and which it never was. Be happy with what god gave you and leave the rest of us to be as happy as we poor miserable sinners can be without your special church-sacrament.
Mung.
What are you talking about? From August 10th, long before your OP:
You are attempting to move the goalposts, but I certainly haven’t.
I expressed it already:
No time travel required.
You believe that the Bible is the word of God, yet you can’t defend that claim, and neither can fifthmonarchyman.
Hence my call to other Christians reading this thread: Can any of you — at least those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God — do a better job than Mung and fifth of defending that claim?
You disgust me. You represent the most base, self-centered core of humanity that can exist. All in the name of “religious freedom”.
Your simplistic view of the world is , well, simplistic.
These “private hospitals” may be they *only* hospital available! What good are the courts if life is ebbing away by the second?
http://researchmedicalcenter.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/gay-man-arrested-missouri-hospital_n_3060488.html
You seem to be implying that non-theists don’t run charities. It seems that you simply don’t understand much about the real world, that’s some bubble you must be living in.
Again, you disgust me. Presumably you would also be happy for a hospital to deny service to non-whites or mixed-race babies? If they had a religious reason then no doubt you would much rather let a Private Hospital set it’s own rules and deal with objections in the courts on a case by case bases.
I’m sure Jesus would agree with you that denying a dying person their last moments with their spouse is the righteous and holy thing to do.
I applaud the spark of curiosity that I have apparently lit, regardless of context. Be warned however, down the end of that road lies dancing and other things your 2000 year old herder morality may find unwelcome.
Actually I have had problems with KN’s marriage ever since the rise of no-fault divorce. That is pretty much all my life. I haven’t been very vocal about it in public because I’m not all that political and I thought the solution was too separate Christian marriage from KN marriage by advocating covenant marriage as an alternative for Christians.
Homosexual marriage was not on my radar twenty years ago and when it started to gain traction some of it’s biggest detractors were gays themselves. I really had no idea that gays in general were interested in claiming the institution till about 8 years ago that was about the time the US president got on board.
Since then I have become aware that there are lots of other sexual groupings that apparently would like to get in on the fun. I say have at it. The government should not be in the business of picking and choosing approved sex partners.
peace
There is a huge gap between allowing hospitals to set their own rules and advocating denying visits to anyone.
Personally I would boycott any hospital that denied visits to anyone for any reason other than the health of the patient.
I’m unaware of any that do.
I would think that a hospital that was interested in the exact nature of the sexual relationship between me and my chosen visitors has lost focus on my health and would not be the best choice anyway
peace
No, there is not! You are taking the easy way out.
You say that you want hospitals to set their own rules, and given some of those rules will be that they don’t recognise homosexuals as married therefore they don’t have to grant visitation you are also approving of that!
It’s simply a cop out to say that you support them setting their own rules and leaving it at that.
Round of applause for you, how big of you. Yet you’d still advocate for the ability of hospitals to set their own rules that can include denying visitation to spouses of the same sex!
I suggest you click on the link I provided. It’s just one example. There are plenty more:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2014/04/15/88015/hospital-visitation-and-medical-decision-making-for-same-sex-couples/
Need more?
And what if you have no choice? If all the local hospitals are run by the religious, what actual choice do you have?
And it’s not even about that. It’s about if a hospital can decide who is and who is not married and assign rights accordingly. The obsession about “sexual relationships” says more about you then the issue. It’s not about that, it’s about rights being suspended because of someone else’s religion. And you seem perfectly ok with that!
Do you also support the “right” of pharmacists to withhold contraception as they have a religious objection to such devices?
No. The empirical studies that you cite note that
Exline’s studies show that anger is predictive of a reduction in belief; that is, theists who are soon-to-be-atheist-or-agnostic express more anger at God than theists who retain their faith. Neither surprising nor inconsistent.
Perhaps you are smart enough to notice that Joe “Institute on Religion and Public Life” Carter’s paraphrase (beginning “In other words”) represents an over-conclusion. Or not.
So people who have had a tragic event in their lives and are angry at god can lose faith, and if they continue to be angry, their loss of faith may be permanent. This phenomenon is consistent with Darwin’s account of the loss of a daughter.
But it says nothing about people who simply never had faith or who lose faith because it doesn’t make sense.
I think nonbelief is the default for people who are not raised with strong pressure to declare faith. I know there are famous exceptions, but I don’t know those people. I only know the people I know, and among bright people who have not been hounded by family, nonbelief is the norm.
That doesn’t mean they are Dawkinses or Coynes or PZ Myers. In fact I don’t know anybody who refuses to attend a religious wedding or funeral. One of my daughter’s best friends gave up a good job as a programmer to become an Episcopal priest. All his non churchgoing friends (myself included) attended his ordination. No one mocks him or avoids him.
The people I know are not militant or anti-religion. They simply don’t believe that revealed religion is true. I suspect most people wonder why there is something rather than nothing, but it seems childish to me to think that bronze age goat herders were actually visited by gods and demigods.
The summary for the study should be” Level of anger at God in the past is correlated with some undergraduate student’s decision to become atheists”, that does not seem to empirically support the conclusion that atheists are ( present time) angry with God.
No atheist is angry at god, as if they are they are no longer an atheist.
Sophisticated stuff, Mung!
I have trouble understanding what it would even be like to be angry at God. Then again, my conception of God is radically anti-anthropomorphic.
Based on what you wrote in the Noah thread, I take your “conception of God” as being radically anti-anthropomorphic only in the sense of it being, literally, of nothing at all.
No, my conception of God is quite definite! It’s just not “answerable to the world” in the sense that my conceptions of coffee-mugs, dinosaurs, and electrons are answerable to the world.
If I had to say what God is (to me), I am inclined to say that God is the tendency of the universe towards increasingly complex self-organizing structures. It’s what Peirce called “evolutionary love” and Stuart Kauffman calls “the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics”. My spiritual attitude and practice turns on the thought that the universe yearns to understand itself, and that human consciousness is a part of that process. But I don’t think that as a scientific or empirical truth; it’s how I express my awe, wonder, and gratitude. That’s why it is not an assertion in the space of reasons.
KN, I’d call that an assertion. A semi-scientific one at that.
Kantian Naturalist,
All that stuff is cognitive, not non-cognitive. As I said, you want to have your cake but insist you’re a non-sugar eater.
KN, your religion seems to me vague and mushy, like your Marxism.
It’s cognitive in the sense of having conceptual content, but I don’t see how it pragmatically functions as assertoric discourse; put otherwise, the space of discourse is larger than the space of reasons.
I take it that if it were functioning as a piece of assertoric discourse, then I would want anyone to take it seriously, to evaluate it on its merits, to inquire into whether I had sufficient evidence to warrant the assertion, and that I would not be kindly disposed towards those who rejected it out of hand. I do take those epistemic attitudes when it comes to claims about climate change and dinosaurs, but not when it comes to my expression of my religious sensibilities.
I can see how there is going to be a similarity, when someone is simply reading the words on a screen, between my assertions and my expressions. They both take the form of English sentences, after all! The difference lies in the different roles that they play in how I live my life, and that’s not something that is easily communicated to others, especially in on-line communications. Perhaps if I were a better writer it would be easier to do.
Ooh, lovely!
The extent to which one wants one’s statements to be taken seriously or be subjected to criticism seems to me an entirely psychological matter. No doubt there are economists, archologists, and even physicists who feel the same way about their assertions. Such attitudes cannot make assertions non-cognitive.
I can’t believe you would insult my Marxism like that. And after all I’ve done for you . . .
Seriously, though, my commitment to Marxism is much closer to the epistemic side of things than my spirituality. I hesitate to say that Marxism is true, because I don’t think that Marxism is a theory. But I’ve read a lot by and about Marx, and quite a few philosophers in the Western Marxist tradition (Lukacs, Bloch, the Frankfurters, Debord), and that has certainly shaped my political sensibilities. That’s why I think that capitalism is intrinsically immoral.
If I’m talking with someone who has read some Marx and has criticisms of it, I would take her seriously; perhaps I’d soften or abandon my views, perhaps I’d find a way to respond to the criticisms. If I’m talking with someone who dismisses Marx — or for that matter any philosopher! — without having read him or her, that certainly lowers my estimation of their intellectual integrity.
But I don’t hold my spiritual expressions to the same dialogical standard; if I’m talking with someone who dismisses them out of hand, that might be a barrier to how much I’m going to let him into my personal life but it doesn’t affect my estimation of his intellectual integrity.
I didn’t mean to be insulting. I do think, however, that there’s a certain safety in mushiness that appeals to you a bit.
Re Marx, I think the theory of surplus value is confused (and a bit mystical) as Russell and others have shown. I actually think his philosophy took too much from Locke, just as libertarian views have.
In my geezerhood, I’ve come to think Locke’s effect on a bunch of areas in philosophy was largely deleterious.
I was teasing you about having been insulted — I really wasn’t. I hope you understand that.
Well, if I want to be a bit “mushy” (I would have said Romantic), then what’s the harm?
I don’t know Russell’s criticism of Marx. I tend to read Marx as giving us an immanent critique of political economy, but if his view depends on taking too much from Locke as to what political economy is, that might be a problem. But I read Locke, through a Marxian lens, as the apologist of bourgeois capitalism.
I would definitely agree with that — as much in his epistemology as in his political theory, if not more so.
Kantian Naturalist,
Kantian Naturalist,
KN, one thing you’re neither vague nor mushy about is your decency. You’re a very nice man. A mensch.
Your sick perversion of the concept of marriage into merely a procurement for sex partners is really unseemly. I wonder how many other christians would be willing to admit that the only reason they wanted a marriage license is because it’s a license to fuck.
As usual, atheists and non-believers are more moral and less perverted than you. We’re not Peeping Toms. We don’t care whose innie or outie matches with whose innie or outie because we know what two consenting adults do (or don’t do) with their sex organs in the privacy of their own home is none of our goddamned business. We don’t immorally, selfishly, wish to restrict the benefits and responsibilities of legal marriage to only those who are sleeping (in either sense of the word) with people we approve of, because whom they are sleeping with is none of our goddamned business.
It’s none of your goddamned business, and it’s none of the goddamned government’s business, either. Which is precisely why the government is NOT in the business “of picking and choosing approved sex partners”.
If you can’t have “marriage” defined in your wretched dominionist style, then you don’t want anyone to have it at all. If it can’t legally be restricted to approved religious couples — and if your fellow christians are crass enough to see benefits in no-fault divorce — you’ll have a tantrum on the floor. Or you’ll turn up here with your perverse arguments about “approved sex partners”, which amounts to nothing more than an irrational tantrum.
God forbid anyone else should be both happy, regardless of sex, and legally married. In your world.
Preach, hotshoe!
I’m angry at God for not existing. The bastard.
hotshoe_,
LOL.
Yes, the religious right do come across as obsessed with sex.
They come across as obsessed with sex, and as obsessed with morality, but I do not think they truly care about either: they are obsessed with defending patriarchy, and they talk about sex and about morality in that context. And their conception of God is a God (or at least a Jesus) who is white, male, and straight who created white, straight men as being just a little bit closer to His image than all the rest of us.
Perhaps what we need is something like a new version of Christianity: in order to be fully human, God becomes every kind of human: Jesus as gay, Jesus as transgendered, Jesus as Black, Jesus as Puerto Rican, Jesus as a butch dyke, and so on. When you don’t recognize that you are God, and you don’t recognize that the one you are hurting or being hurt by you is also God, we have a world in pain because everywhere God’s inability to recognize Itself. We forget that we are God, and we forget that the Other is also God, and we are so determined to hate what is different that we don’t see the possibility of love.
I trust you are now all frankly nauseated that I could ever be so sentimental and New Age-y.
On a different topic . .
John Corvino has a really excellent, very long paper dissecting everything that is wrong with “The PIB Argument” against same-sex marriage.
PIB stands for “polygamy, incest, and bestiality”, and it basically goes like this: “once we open the door to same-sex marriages, what’s to stop the slippery slope towards granting legal status of marriage to polygamous, incestuous, and bestial relationships?”
Corvino’s response is lengthy and comprehensive, but the gist of it is that the PIB argument simply misunderstands what sex is good for, and why sexual intimacy in the context of a loving relationship is intrinsically valuable for human beings. (To use a bit of faux Greek, these relationships are the fusion or integration of eros and agape.)
Sexual intimacy of that sort isn’t possible in bestial relationships, because nonhuman animals lack the capacity to fully give of themselves in the eros-agape fusion. Likewise in polygamous relationships the agape and erotic love is diffused across multiple partners, not concentrated in a single eros-agape relationship. (I personally have nothing against open marriage, but I don’t think it’s important whether the openness of the marriage is legally recognized.) And incest is slightly more complicated, except to point out that parent-child incest is rarely consensual — it’s more often abusive, whether overtly or covertly. But, let it be pointed out that there are states in the US where first cousins can legally marry — as long as they are of different genders.
In other words, PIB sexuality lacks the dimension of agape, or what Buber calls “the I-You encounter”, that same-sex relationships clearly have (and don’t have) to the exact same degree that heterosexual relationships do (or don’t). So the relevant line to be drawn here isn’t between heterosexual relationships and everything else, but between I-You erotic/agapic relationships and everything else.
If practitioners of PIB sex want to make the case for themselves and persuade the community that what they have counts as I-Thou erotic+agapic intimacy, or persuade us that that’s the wrong criterion, they are of course welcome to try. The LGBT community has been making that case at least since Stonewall; they won the argument (for the time being), and in my view, deserved to win.
The “non-assertoric religion” discussion seems to have moved to this thread, so I’ll respond to KN’s comment here.
KN:
How does it differ from other cases of shifting from third person to first?
“I backed the car out of the driveway”, spoken by me, carries the same meaning as “Keith backed the car out of the driveway.”
“I believe taxes are due on the 15th” carries the same meaning as “Keith believes taxes are due on the 15th.”
“I believe capital punishment is wrong” conveys the same meaning as “Keith believes capital punishment is wrong.”
“Fifth believes that Jesus is the Son of God” carries the same meaning as “I believe Jesus is the Son of God”, when the latter is spoken by fifth.
Where did you get the idea that changing the subject from third person to first causes a magical shift in the meaning of the predicate?
In some cases, it does.
“I promise to come over at noon” is my making the promise, and it obligates me to come over at noon (unless something else happens). I commit myself by using that bit of language. By contrast, “KN promises to come over at noon” is someone else reporting on my promise; it doesn’t obligate me, unless I have somehow delegated that person to make a promise on my behalf. No one can make my commitments for me, unless somehow authorized by me to do so. If I don’t come over at noon (assuming here that I’m culpable — say, I forgot or got distracted), the person who reported that I would has made a false prediction, but it is I who violated the commitment that I made. I’ve broken my promise; the person who reported what my promise was hasn’t broken it.
In other words, promises, obligations, and commitments of various kinds do have this asymmetry between the first-personal and third-personal voices.
This would be irrelevant if the language of religious devotion weren’t at all like the language of commitments. But that’s precisely the issue!
I think that Keiths is absolutely right that “belief” is, generally, symmetrical between the third-person and first-person voices: “I believe that the earth revolves around the sun” means “KN believes that the earth goes around the sun” — the latter is true in all cases where the former is true, and conversely. (If I were better at this stuff, I’d make clear the difference between de re and de dicto ascriptions.)
In light of that point — Keiths is right about the pragmatics of “belief” — and in light of my interest in capturing a kind of asymmetry that plays an important role in liberal religion, I’m trying to avoid using the word “belief”.
KN,
That’s quite ironic, given your criticism of Dawkins:
It turns out that Dawkins did his homework, but you didn’t. You are the one who has assumed — without evidence — that he knows what believers actually think.
Sure you are. You wrote:
It isn’t a secret that many (if not most) of the faithful actually do believe what they say they believe. And it isn’t just fundamentalists, either. 83% of Americans believe that God answers prayers, for example.
I know you’re eager to shield your religious beliefs from criticism, KN, but it seems to have cost you your ability to think objectively about the topic.
I think I have a glimmer of KN’s position. I experience awe and wonder. This could be described as a religious experience, but it makes no declarations about the nature of god or existence. Nor is it simply a sensory or aesthetic experience. It has no referent.
It has long seemed to me that they use talk of sex to induce a feeling of guilt, and then use that as a way to control people.
That’s about what I see in some of the liberal Christian blogs that I follow, including “Slacktivist” (Fred Clark), “Exploring our Matrix” (James McGrath), “Why I still talk to Jesus” (Frank Schaeffer), “Formerly Fundie” (Benjamin Corey).
KN,
That’s an additional meaning, not an altered meaning.
Both utterances still convey the information “KN promises to come over at noon”. Your statement is assertoric. Your audience has learned something new by hearing it.
Also, note that the additional meaning is quite separable from the factual meaning. If you were to say “I never keep my promises. I promise to be there at noon,” then it would be clear that you weren’t committing to anything.
petrushka,
But KN goes on to describe it as an experience of a divine presence.
I don’t think many atheists would dispute that people have such experiences, though we doubt their veridicality. But KN is denying that his statement is in any way assertoric, which makes no sense to me.
As I pointed out earlier:
KN seems to be hoping that if he can classify his religious statements as non-assertoric, then they will be immune from criticism.
He also says things like this:
Anyone who says “I believe the Messiah will come” when he actually doesn’t believe the Messiah will come is at best guilty of poor communication, and at worst of dishonesty.
It’s easy enough to be straightforward and honest about these things. One can say things like:
Or:
The problem is that KN might not find such qualified language to be satisfactory. I think he wants to be able to assert his religious beliefs, but then pull out the “oh, I wasn’t asserting anything” card the moment they are challenged.
If it’s a religious covenant, then don’t you agree that the state should have no say in determining who can and who cannot participate?
I believe I’ll have another drink.