The thing that always bothers me about the idea of not challenging people's faith when it conflicts with science, is that by not doing so we demonstrate that we do not have the confidence, knowing that there will be an angry backlash or hurt feelings. And that does them a terrible disservice in my mind.
Many years ago I was having a conversation about the existence of God and the validity of the Bible with my roommate in college, who was studying to be an Episcopal priest, when a, newly "saved," young lady wandered into the room ans sat down to listen.
After about fifteen or twenty minutes she suddenly jumped up and fled the room in tears. I had absolutely NO idea what had happened, but shrugged my shoulders and went back to eviscerating my opponent.
Later I learned that some part of my argument had hit her pretty hard, and she was now questioning that which she had been so certain of before walking into my dorm room. In fact she had gone to this new church of hers and demanded from the pastor that he explain away my argument. Something that he was apparently unable to do to her satisfaction.
My girlfriend, a Catholic, was very angry at me and tried to make me feel bad for scaring her about her new faith.
But I DIDN'T feel bad. I felt that, somewhat accidentally, I had served an important purpose by opening up her eyes and introducing her to critical thinking.
I have no idea what ultimately happened concerning her faith, but I do feel that if she decided to continue attending that church that she did so with a much more critical attitude than she might have if she had walked by my dorm room that day. At least that is what I would like to believe.
See there Gryph, YOU'RE the problem! LOL!
ReplyDeleteThis is why fundies hate college and higher education. It exposes their carefully sheltered and tended darlings to A DIFFERENT OPINION (oh the Horror!)and encourages CRITICAL THINKING (shudder).
No, don't feel guilty. Never. If feelings are hurt when confronted with opposition to their doctrine, then they obviously aren't very secure in their own conviction and belief are they?
This is the exact same attitude I take with fellow biologists when they get their panties in a wad when their assumptions are challenged.
If you think you are right then prove it through reasoned debate, facts and history. If you can't do that without getting red in the face enraged or bursting into tears, then your position is obviously weak and opposition argument wins. Point! Score!
Oh, Hedgewytch, I could not agree more!
DeleteGryphen, if we give others doubts about established, unthinking belief systems, we will have done well.
In my little town in Alaska the fundies send their kids to Christian grade schools and the Christian colleges so they never have to be in the real world. Go figure.
DeleteI so agree w/you IM about religion. I was raised in a Catholic family that practiced the Catholic faith w/two of us questioning it as kids (Catholic education/schooling) and now do not attend any church or participate in any religion. I would say I'm agnostic. The two of us are senior citizens today.
ReplyDeleteThere is no fear for me in saying I am NOT religious. I watch people who do profess being christian and view them living horrible/evil lives. They do not practice one iota of christian beliefs they were taught, or are still being taught.
Sarah Palin is a good example of someone not practicing christian values! She lies, cheats people, is a racist, fraud and horrible wife and mother that also has lied about birthing that last child that supposedly lives in their home!
The USA nation is becoming less and less christian as well as whites becoming more and more the minority race.!
The problem is that you can't square faith and facts.
ReplyDeleteFaith is a suspension of disbelief, giving oneself over to a "higher power."
Facts are what are seen, measured, quantified and repeatable. They are reality.
Faith is a psychological necessity for some people -- the need to have some unseen force directing them, protecting them. And there's the added advantage of being part of a group. Usually very cult-iike.
Scientists and rationalists don't get together once a week to buck each other up. They're not asked to renounce all the hypotheses they experimented with that failed. They don't give up their sense of self to a larger power.
They rejoice in the constant discovery of new vistas. Something that's unknown, or a set of facts that can be replaced by experimentation, doesn't threaten them. There's nothing certain except for a constant quest to find new horizons. There's no "bible" of scientific facts that won't be willingly replaced if and when new facts are discovered. No one clings to one set of permanent beliefs.
With faith, the horizon is set and immovable. The goal is obedience. Curiosity and questions aren't rewarded.
One side will never square with the other. The trouble is that faith-based opinions have nowhere to go when challenged -- "because they told me so" isn't a compelling explanation.
Even a TINY hole in a balloon will rupture it.
DeleteGryphen was able to stick an itty bitty hole in that girl's "faith". If she was able to break free, great! But as he said, even if she didn't break free, she won't be as gullible as she was before.
I wonder if she was ever exposed to the words of the Dali Lama? Just curious.
"The real question, however, is how societies can retain their coherence and unity when they are caught between the reassuring certainties of fundamentalism and the exhilarating disorientation of modernity."
ReplyDeleteAndrew Sullivan does believe in God; he is also rational and willing to engage in debate. His latest thoughts, here:
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/07/09/a-redder-and-bluer-world/
Aurora
"...proving the ineptness of theocracy, exposing the fallacies of the fundamentalist psyche, while treasuring varieties of religious experience that include within them a toleration of the conscience of others, is surely the only way forward. It will not be easy getting to a more purple world. But if it is not possible, then we face a century of warfare and social dysfunction. The unanswered question, to my mind, is whether this dynamic has so purged religious institutions of free thinkers and writers and theologians and saints that it has sealed its own – and everyone else’s – demise. As a Christian I refuse to believe that. But as a writer and observer of the world, it becomes harder each day."
DeleteGryph, I think it good both to express your belief and to challenge others, as you apparently did before this young lady, who might have benefitted as a result. What you do that I, a liberal atheist, find so objectionable is to mock people who do not believe as you do, and to point to the worst examples, paint them as typical, and use them as an excuse to mock entire groups of people and to rile up hatred and prejudice against them.
ReplyDeleteBut I think I will cease discussing this with you as of this comment. Generally speaking, no activity in this world is more futile than religious argument. You can be as insufferable, self-righteous and close-minded in your "atheist faith" as the most maddening, insufferable, bigoted, religious hypocrite is in his, but that is who you are and there is nothing I can do about that.
That will be my final comment on the subject.
Aside from this and your unhealthy obsession with Sarah Palin (you brought her into your report on the Soldotna plane crash!), you work hard and you post many good clips and pieces of information I might otherwise miss, so I will continue to visit your site and appreciate you for that, but will no longer engage you in futile comment.
well anonymous, you are really pissing in the wind aren't ya? you don't identify yourself and then you play 'takeaway' after admonishing Gryphen for YOUR skewed perception of what you THINK he does. Why I say YOUR perception is because I have no experience whatsoever like what you describe when I come to Gryphen's blog.
DeleteSo you take no stand, remain anonymous and you could be one of millions of visitors to this blog. Then you throw shit at Gryphen from your safe, unknown perch. You are no better than Sarah with her shit flinging. If you're gonna take a stand, take one, you pussy.
Further, Gryphen is mocking religions because they SHOULD BE mocked. It's that goddamn religion that is damaging this country (and many other countries) by the twisted interpretations that are being used to demean and handicap women, to justify hate and attacks on gay people, to justify carrying around a deadly weapon, you name it and those goddamned bible thumpers will find a way to cherry pick some biblical phrase to fit their fucked up agenda. Damn straight he mocks those pseudo Christians, in particular.
Those 'worst examples' are becoming more 'typical' every single day and they now live in the halls of congress and across the country in statehouses run by the GOP. Those are not an exaggeration, not at all. The clamping down on women's rights in particular is rampant. Do you not SEE THAT? Why do you think Gryphen brings attention to this creeping cancer of theocracy in our laws?
Gryphen is not 'obsessed' with Sarah, he is DILIGENT in making sure that she is smacked down anywhere she pops up and exposed any time she spouts off more of her lies, her rants, her tirades and more lies. And I for one am DEEPLY grateful for it. There is no where else on the web to go that consistently covers her antics with an insight and experience of her that can cut right through to the heart of it and even put a funny, snarky approach to it.
So I would just say that your post was pure mental masturbation for you to dump your bullshit on Gryphen, when it has nothing to do with him at all. Go jack-off someplace else. You're an emotional coward.
Anonymous 1:57 PM wrote: That will be my final comment on the subject.
DeleteSince none of us will be able to tell whether you live up to that (and neither will Gryphen, if you have access to more than one IP address), this—and much of the rest of your comment—is just pointless posturing.
I'm with Anonymous 3:44 PM—I just didn't have the energy to say it at that length.
DeleteBTW, some people have good reason to post anonymously, and for some of those the reason may be so strong that they don't even dare use a consistent handle, lest someone piece together separate comments to build a picture of their identity.
Others might be comfortable enough with a handle that's unrelated to their real name, but don't realize how little effort there is to doing that, and just accept the name "Anonymous".
Either way, unless your writing style is so distinctive as to link your comments together implicitly, please realize that statements like, "As I've said here before…" or "…will no longer engage you in futile comment" are themselves pretty futile.
Stuff it, sanctimonious hypocrite @ 1:57. It isn't an "atheist faith." More correctly, it is called secular humanism. Nothing of "faith" about it. I can see humans, there are many artifacts of humans. Show me one artifact of god(s) without a fairytle involved.
DeleteSo, Freepers are the rightest of the Right. This is posted on their front page:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3040900/posts
I wonder if the reason that Sarah Palin has pretty much ignored Bill Maher's reported comments on Trig, is that she really fears what would happen if the media FINALLY paid attention to the whole Wild Ride, miracle pregnancy, 'I Chose Life' piffle that we all witnessed with jaws agape?
It would be so ironic, if her fanatics caused her final fall...please, please, please...every morning I log onto IM, HOPING it will be the day of the Big Fall...that she and her 'ilk' will be gone from the public square at last...is that bad?
To Anonymous 1:57 PM
ReplyDeleteYou say you are a "liberal atheist" yet in your next paragraph you say "atheist faith".
I'm not sure you understand Atheism, so maybe you have nothing to add to the conversation?
Good catch. I found the rant pointless too. And the atheist faith crap was the tell all. WTF? It is sort of like when you see people refer to scientists as having “faith" in science rather than understanding scientists believe in the results of the scientific method.
Delete"And it is He Who spread out the earth, and set thereon mountains standing firm, and (flowing) rivers: and fruit of every kind He made in pairs, two and two: He draweth the Night as a veil o'er the Day. Behold, verily in these things there are Signs for those who consider!
ReplyDeleteAnd in the earth are tracts (diverse though) neighbouring, and gardens of vines and fields sown with corn, and palm trees, growing out of single roots or otherwise: watered with the same water, yet some of them We make more excellent than others to eat. Behold, verily in these things there are Signs for those who understand!
He sends down water from the skies, and the channels flow, each according to its measure: but the torrent bears away the foam that mounts up to the surface. Even so, from that (ore) which they heat in the fire, to make ornaments or utensils therewith there is a scum likewise. Thus doth God (by parables) show forth Truth and Vanity: For the scum disappears like froth cast out; while that which is for the good of mankind remains on the earth. Thus doth God set forth parables.
Seest thou not how God coineth a similitude: A goodly saying, as a goodly tree, its root set firm, its branches reaching into heaven
Giving its fruit at every season by permission of its Lord? God coineth the similitudes for mankind in order that they may reflect."
On the flipside to your assertion, there are reasons why scholars of religion think atheists are the ignorant ones.
And it is He Who spread out the earth, and set thereon mountains standing firm, and (flowing) rivers: and fruit of every kind He made in pairs, two and two: He draweth the Night as a veil o'er the Day. Behold, verily in these things there are Signs for those who consider!
DeleteGravity. Plate tectonics. Gravity. Agriculture, a human invention. The Earth is not flat, so from time to time parts of it face away from the Sun.
Some do consider these Signs; others say Goddidit, and stop there.
BTW: Some people have "beliefs" but, to paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, in science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
"On the flipside to your assertion, there are reasons why scholars of religion think atheists are the ignorant ones."
DeleteYes, we know these "scholars" as morons.
Here, watch some of this guy's videos (link below). He basically destroys a series of "creation science" videos. I think they are hilarious and might open your eyes to a few things concerning Christians' desperate need to compete with science and the disingenuous and hypocritical methods they use to deceive themselves and others.
Gryph, you should check out this guy's Youtube series also, I suspect you might get as big a kick out of them as I did. This guy is oerforming a great service and deserves some recognition.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSr63zLFV8-G41HEg-H11bMqat5_Mca1i
danish philosopher Soren Kierekegaard said it best. when on has knowledge, faith becomes impossible. Most believers are unable to accept that. it is an admission that their faith is irrational, or at least not rationally defensible. But they can't have it both ways (think about this one.)
ReplyDeleteYes, one is welcome to one's irrational beliefs. But one has to admit that willingness that the belief has no rational grounds, there IS no argument for it. There would be a lot fewer butts in pews if we pushed on it more. Get going!
Y'know, Gryph, if you could reconstruct what it was you said in the presence of that young lady, and package it in an aerosol can. you could make a fortune marketing "Fundie B-Gone."
ReplyDeleteTom, in FL
Where can I get a case wholesale? Oh wait, bet they won't ship to AK because of Homeland Security.....
Delete