While the majority (most?) of religious people can be considered theists in some form, the terms are not equivalent. There are non-theist religions and even in religions which appear exclusively theistic like Christianity, non-theistic traditions can be found. This I believe is what Mike Killingworth is talking about in the second paragraph of post #29 and some of the bits of his post #9.

Is that a large enough target?

I am an old atheist. I am generally quite about it, unlike the new atheists that Bunting et al seem to detest. They detest it is because it contests their reason. Which in their happy clappy post modernist world is an insult to their sense of self.

They think they can think whatever nonsense they like – and more worryingly propogate it – without it being challenged.

Bunting made an idiot of herself a long time ago, when she asked what the Enlightenment ever did for us. Kamm is just a spooky guy that thinks Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justifiable, or more to the point, excuses for the present use of nuclear weapons. Might is right or somesuch drivel. Why either of them should be considered worth listening to is beyond me.

I have never encountered Chris Dillow before now. Personally I think he is playing a game with us, where he writes the rules.

“No, no! It is down the ladders and up the snakes”

“Honest Injun!”

In lecturing to popular audiences I have repeatedly found it almost impossible to make them understand that I recommended Christianity because I thought its affirmations objectively true. They are simply not interested in the question of truth or falsehood. They only want to know if it will be comforting, or “inspiring”, or socially useful (In English we have a peculiar difficulty here because in popular speech “believe in” has two meanings, (a) To accept as true, (b) To approve of – e.g. “I believe in free trade.” Hence when an Englishman says he “believes in” or “does not believe in” Christianity, he may not be thinking about truth at all. Very often he is only telling us whether he approves or disapproves of the Church as a social institution.)

You can respect someone who propagates something because it’s true even if you don’t believe it’s true yourself. But what respect should you give someone to “follow these practices it will do you good” as if a religion was like going to the gym? It reminds me of an interview that I saw with some young trainee suicide bombers, and they really did believe as a fact they would get the 72 virgins after blasting themselves to pieces. Rather than pointing out the social uselessness of such a belief it seemed better to say, no, that won’t happen. It’s against all sense and observation.

Most of these confusions rest on the polysemy of certain words: ‘faith’, ‘belief’, etc. mean very different things here and the comparisons rest on little more than puns.

True, and the same goes for “rational”. I think arguing with Bunting is a waste of time, since she is slippery, or ignorant, about what such terms mean. Agreeing with her or finding anything of merit in what she says is an even greater waste of time.

Comment 35:- Being an atheist is useful? I think most atheists would be insulted by that. Atheists are atheists because they don’t believe there are such things as supernatural beings. They see no evidence for it.

So what if cyanide is poisonous?

[34] Ignoring the polemic (we all cherry-pick, for one thing) you make a very good point in relation to pre-Christian survivals. (Indeed, I gave an address on the very subject once…) What they show, of course, is that people practice religion pragmatically – as William James noticed, the “true is the useful”. And I have little doubt that they practice atheism for the same reason…

So, what you seem to be saying is that you have no interest in a greater understanding of the functioning of the human brain in relation to music? And that such an understanding is not “of use” ? (nations being gay or otherwise is entirely their own affair – I’m very socially libertarian)

That’s a pity, because it’s an extremely fascinating topic – some nonsense (I should know, I wrote it) on music & brain-related topics can be found here, for anyone interested (or insomnia-ridden).

If you don’t see the conflict between a cherry-picking theist such as Bunting, and an (at the very least) empiricist agnostic such as (the mighty) Hume, then the only explanations I can come up with at this late hour are either a) your critical faculties are deficient, b) you haven’t read Hume’s ‘dialogues concerning natural religion’ or c) you’re being wilfully irrational in support of your own, personal belief system.
If there’s a rational, evidence-based reason, then please, I’m all ears…

Oh, and some of your history is mightily suspect, too. This for instance –
“Note, by the way, that many cultures which did not develop iron working such as those indigenous to Australia retained magical practices – because at that level of technological development they are effective”

So, how come “magical practices” (‘effective’ – good luck in proving that one – or otherwise) as part of everyday life persevered in places like, oh, I don’t know, all of ‘christian’ Europe well into the middle-Middle Ages (and, arguably, beyond)?

For example, quite apart from all the “Green Men” and suchlike you can find carved all over cathedrals, etc, here’s just one little illustration of the Icelandic church & magic in action:

“In 1554 a priest in Eyjafjörður was charged with raping his sister-in-law, a minor, with the aid of grimoires found in his possession. He was outlawed from the region and sentenced to lose one arm and both ears, and to pay his father-in-law vast sums in compensation. The authorities later allowed him to keep his arm and ears, and he then became a parish priest in the Strandir region. ” (from http://www.vestfirdir.is/galdrasyning/early-court.php)

Now I’m not going to go on to claim that the abundance of C17th witch trials proved anything, but then I’m not the one making the sweeping generalisations to prop up his personal fairy stories…

“An apophatic God is the ultimate Mystery which by definition human beings cannot comprehend. It (and it is an It, not a He) is not so much believed in as accepted as a given.”

Oh, come on, that’s an appallingly weak justification for the existence of a “god” – oh, we poor, weak little mortals can’t possibly measure/test/understand the invisible deity, and *never* will have that capability, so somehow, therefore it must be taken to exist…?

Mmm. I think I begin to understand why you like Bunting…

If you extend the term ‘religion’ to encompass beliefs with no supernatural elements it loses all meaning.

No, you don’t have to consider the planet as a deity to want to protect it. Maybe she’s wrong about how harmful these things will be, but that means nothing on a metaphysical level.

Most of these confusions rest on the polysemy of certain words: ‘faith’, ‘belief’, etc. mean very different things here and the comparisons rest on little more than puns.

Arguments against traditional Christian doctrine (e.g. concerning the existence and nature of life after death) are just that – arguments against traditional Christian doctrine. They are not arguments against (or even about) religion as such. Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was much surprised when he encountered a Buddhist monk who told him that he (the monk) didn’t believe in god. Wilson, a son of the manse, had a view of religious matters that was so exclusively Christian that he had great difficulty in accepting that anyone could both be a monk and say they didn’t believe in God. To equate religious with Christian practice is culturally particularist, to put it no more strongly.

Spiritual and/or religious practice (there is an interesting debate to be had as to the relationship between the two, but we’ll leave that for next Easter!) is necessarily culturally specific. The world’s great religions were all started (except Islam) as a response to the development of Iron Age technology, when for the first time the offence had the upper hand over the defence. This also meant a considerable increase in the amount of trade, such that the previous hegemonic form of religion (worship of localised gods) collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, and spirituality as we have had it for the last two millenia was invented. (Note, by the way, that many cultures which did not develop iron working such as those indigenous to Australia retained magical practices – because at that level of technological development they are effective.)

The utilitarian defence of religion is at least as old as the Enlightenment and is the only one that makes any sense. And the Enlightenment itself – in whose terms we are all debating this matter – itself represents a bouleversement as great as that of the Iron Age. Mainstream religion, like the majority of humankind, operates in pre-Enlightenment terms. To children of the Enlightenment, it presents an easy target. (And this itself makes it more precious to those who see the Enlightenment as a form of cultural imperialism, which arguably the majority of human beings actually do.)

One final thought. Atheism is not as simple a concept as it may appear. Consider the “deep green” who claims to be an atheist but who nonetheless goes to a great deal of risk and trouble to oppose developments and other actions which she holds harmful to the planet. Hasn’t her atheism in practice slid into pantheism, a worshipful attitude towards Planet Earth? And if the next woman on the protest line is an avowed worshipper of an Earth Goddess (Gaia, perhaps), wouldn’t we say that – at least in terms of how beliefs influence actions – any theological debate between them would indeed be two bald women arguing over a comb?

“All I’m saying here is that the statement “religion is irrational” is unhelpful. It’s true, but irrelevant. “
“
Well, no. There have been religious intellectuals at least in Christianity have said that “religion is rational”. There’s Pascal’s wager isn’t there? If you believe in hell for unbelievers, it was rational to save yourself from it. A lot of religion has been based on fear of definite and concrete and painful circumstances for the unbeliever and the sinner. Fear of hell made a great part of the Christian religion. Read the sermon in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for instance.

So fear of hell is part of one religion at least. Let’s recast that sentence.

“All I’m saying here is that the statement “fear of hell is irrational” is unhelpful. It’s true but irrelevant.”

I would say that the truth of that statement was of overwhelming importance and relevance. For nineteenth century free thinkers reading Strauss’s Life of Jesus the idea that the scriptures could be re-examined as part truth and part fable came as a revelation and a liberating one at that.

I’ve heard Bunting in action before, with her slippery use of definitions. Her finest moment for me was when she was explaining about faith and how we need it. After all, we have faith that a taxi we call will turn up, don’t we? We have faith in our spouses and friends? So why shouldn’t we have faith in God?

I think you may have mistaken this site for the Brussels Journal or some such hell hole.

Possibly. there is constant debate and tension amongst Hindus as to whether the Mahabharata and Ramayana actually took place. Both are interesting stories, which are meant to convey different facets to ordinary Hindus. they grew out of a time when most people were illiterate and hence stories were told in order to spread the values of the religion. Many of the stories in Christianity and Islam served the same purpose I reckon.

The monarchy may enrich and beautify your life, but they don’t enrich or beautify mine.

Rationality is something you strive for in understanding and it is through rational enquiry that we have proven how irrational we are. That’s the difference between science and religion: it’s open to challenge.

And I agree with you Sunny, that some faiths depend more on values and practices than fairy stories. I think we can all respect positive VALUES, but we don’t have to regard the stories through which those values are transmitted as anything more literally TRUE than, say, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, which has a much more complex and relevant moral universe than any of the Abrahamic religions.

No problems, apart from the fact that the taxpayer has to support them, and that they’re delaying the inevitable day we have a proper constitution… so citizens can have better rights.

If Christianity was simply a set of values such as ‘Love thy Neighbour as Thyself’ then you could compare it with Humanism, but as it stands it also involves a lot of twaddle about all-powerful deities, angels, virgin births, resurrection, etc. which conflicts with science and history.

shatterface – not all religions do. Eastern religions like Sikhism and Buddhism don’t (though they do feature re-incarnation, which you may put in the same category).

My feeling from growing up in a religious household is that there is a tremendous amount of good philosophy and debates about morality and ethics in religions that atheists dismiss far too easily. Plus, the fact that religions provide a deep sense of personal security to many people.

I’m not a fan of institutionalised religion – and so I think there is a space for non-institutionalised and non-sectarian religion to grow, while secularists (like myself) can criticise the institutional bits that people try and impose on society.