Since I am a professor I know better than most that professors can say stupid things (feel free to interpret that as self-referential paradox). My example du jour is Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado. In a nonsensical Commentary published by the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, he tries to make the case there are almost no genuine atheists. That's why Americans are so intolerant of atheists (I guess in his view it's not really intolerance, because there aren't really any atheists). He specifically mentions polls showing that a lack of religious belief is a disqualification for being elected President (see also our post on this):
Now among liberals, the knee-jerk reaction to such poll data is to condemn the intolerance it represents. Yet I think there are good reasons for refusing to vote for an atheist for president -- subject to the caveat that I also believe genuine atheism, like genuinely orthodox religious belief, is actually quite rare.Of course there are lots of people who claim to be atheists, just as there are lots of people who claim to be orthodox religious believers. But how many people, at least among the social classes that produce presidential candidates, believe in the orthodox doctrines of Christianity with the same degree of confidence that they believe in, say, the existence of Antarctica?
Naturally, it's considered quite rude to press people on such matters, but in my experience, most supposedly orthodox religious belief, on closer examination, melts away into a vague sense of an ultimate moral order, supervised by an even more vaguely conceptualized divinity. Among a lot of liberal Christians, this is asserted openly, to the point where they seem to adhere to a form of Christianity that excludes all specifically Christian beliefs.
Conversely, when one presses a purported atheist, one almost always finds that the person believes in various propositions that simply don't make sense without a belief in some source of an ultimate moral order, i.e., what most people would call "God." For instance, almost everyone who claims to be an atheist still makes lots of "ought" statements, as in "we ought to preserve biological diversity," or what have you. (Scripps Howard Newspapers)
If I think my community "ought" to prepare its public health system for a flu pandemic, does that mean I am not an atheist? For that matter, if I think we "ought not" to make war on each other (because I believe our species is better off), does that denote an allegiance to some ultimate moral order that is equivalent to "God"?
If so, I guess I am only claiming to be an atheist because I think Professor Campos ought not talk bullshit. On the other hand, when I read stuff like the Campos column, I am inspired to use religious language, as in, "God give me strength" (eyes rolled heavenward). So maybe he's right after all.
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I would presume that there would be a spectrum of beliefs among atheists ranging (perhaps) from absolute nonexistence of God (from those who have, in fact, proved the negative) to the vagueness described by Campos. Presumably the atheist community, if we can describe such an animal, is not monolithic with a set of orthodox atheist axioms (with our friends Revere as the atheist Pope :-)) but individuals with both rational ad non-rational characteristics and multiple, overlapping, and sometimes conflicting belief systems.
So, essentially, if you change the defintion of "God" enough, then everyone believes in God!
(If one is without 'oughts' does that make one 'noughty'?)
I think it would be great though to have someone who is a big defender of 'God' put him/her/self and God/Jesus/... on the side of the oughts of social justice, national health insurance, peace over war, etc.
Remarkable. I really can't see anything more in it than the usual "no morality or standards without God" assertion.
OMFSM, I've had things like that said to me! "You may think that you don't believe, but somehow you do". It's probably the ultimate proof of the fundamentalist/totalitarian mindset of the speaker: stating confidently what you believe, even if you openly and knowledgably disagree. Few things annoy me more.
carl: I think most atheists are people for whom "God" doesn't exist in the same way that the tooth fairy or some "pagan" divinity you never heard of doesn't exist for you or the feature that is directly out of your field of vision isn't part of your consciousness at the moment. God just isn't part of our lives, just as, say the P222 crystallographic point group is not part of your life. Except for the purposes of this blog on Sunday I never think about God (except when someone gets in my face about it). Just not on the radar screen. That's different than a positive assertion about the non-existence of a god (or God, as you would have it).
In fact I'd reverse what Campos says and maintain that most religious people are really atheists in the sense that "God" is rarely on their radar screen or awareness except during ritual activities like going to Church. Even then, I'm not sure what they are aware of, but that's their business. Probably some Big Guy in the Sky, if you were to really push them. I'm not saying that's your idea, just my own wry generalization as symmetry to Professor Campos's.
Campos says, Christians are not really Christians, therefore Atheists are not really Atheists. Did you check, Revere, that Campos is really a law professor? ... Nevermind, I did just now check. He even has tenure.
His second argument seems to be, the only reason anyone "ought" do anything is for fear that some big bully might beat them up. We.. some of us, have known better than that for at least 2500 years. And the altruism imbedded in our genes testifies that, if we didn't exactly know it, we have acted like we know it for millennia or megannia.
I wondered, Revere, if you had inadvertently missed his better arguments. So I read the article. You have been extremely kind to disregard his last.
Campos is a cranky moron who's been yammering about the supposed exaggeration of overweight- and obesity-related health data for a long time. He'll say whatever he needs to if it endears him a group that perceives itself as marginalized or renders him sufficiently renegade to garner him notice, so I'm not surprised he's now dabbling in the religious culture wars as well.
Meir Stampfer, Walter Willett and the other folks at HSPH have certainly heard of him -- Campos is to that crowd as Phil Johnson is to biologists. He's also complained about the "scientific orthodoxy" of evolutionists (the nerve of them!).
If you're interested in what I've written about his ideas, see here, here and here.
There is a category of people who won't respond to any form of 'morality' other than the fear that a 'bigger bully' will get them.
That category is the group we now call 'sociopaths'.
Could it be that religion is a social adaptation to keeping sociopaths in check? Without religion, might sociopaths have over-run the rest of humanity, or conversely, might they, with nothing to restrain their excesses, have become more obvious to the rest of us and have been weeded out of the gene pool by now?
Thanks, Kev. Didn't know about him before. Lucky me.
Could it be that religion is a social adaptation to keeping sociopaths in check? Without religion, might sociopaths have over-run the rest of humanity, or conversely, might they, with nothing to restrain their excesses, have become more obvious to the rest of us and have been weeded out of the gene pool by now?
I'd challenge the assumption that religion restrains their excesses. Seems to me that it mostly just gives them a pulpit from which to attract followers.
Ernest Becker wrote a book called the Denial of Death - while it has to much pschiatric mumbo jumbo for my taste I think he gets to the core of the issue. It is not our mothers or god or perhaps even the lack of meaning that we fear. We fear dying. We are probably the only creature that KNOWS we will die and it scares the bejesus out of us. Atheists therefore also scare the bejesus out of believers. Atheists can function in a world without ultimate MEANING, atheists can have MORALS without God's say so. I can't exactly put in words why that scares believers but I believe it does. Whether through belief in an afterlife or some esoteric "God gives my life meaning" thinking, envisioning a God helps them banish the inevitability of their return to dust, to nothingness, to (in my mind) peaceful oblivion. I'm not sure that all makes sense - its sort of something I intuit so I would be interested as to what others think.
K's comment has resonance with me. Raised without religion (or an ethical framework for living save the utter honesty of my parents), I had a go at it, with my mother's blessings, in my teens. Nothing stuck except a vague feeling that I would now call the odor of hypocrisy. Later, when I was 23, I went into labor with my son (way before epidurals, folks), and vividly remember thinking "This can't be happening to me!"
From the time I began thinking seriously about these things, I have believed that all this god business is really the collusion of tribalism and hierarchically enforced ignorance with the egocentric belief that "This can't happen to me! I am too important! I don't wanna die!"
And there's this: once you have crossed the threshold into reasoned atheism, there is no going back. Anyone who does go back hasn't really thought it through, hasn't strode through the doorway. It's like a one way valve: once you've stepped through to the thinking place that says the supernatural is neither necessary nor sufficient to account for the universe, ain't no goin' back.
Hypatia,
Not true. I'm a former atheist who is now an Episcopalian theologian.
There are very famous conversion stories, for example, Thomas Merton. C.S. Lewis is another, as is G.K. Chesterton.
The churches of past took what was spoken by Saints and manipulated, for their own benefit, what the message was intended to be. They took the word man out of God, making JC a God, where in truth he was a Godman.
Religions are being exposed for what they did, and that was mislead the human race.
If atheism makes someone feel comfortable then embrace it by all means, extract what you need, live it, breath it, be it.
K: Too bad you can't have peaceful oblivion in the hear and now but I understand because self-identity has become such a challenging mystery to the individual and society in general, causing so much insurmountable emotional and mental upheaval that few know the true self or life's purpose. After all, what kind of a God would let us suffer like we do?
K is correct. Fear of dying is what keeps religion going. Greek and Roman religion only offered a minimal existence underground after death (as depicted in the Odyssey) so they were easily supplanted by Christian fantasy. Modern science can only offer painless nonexistence after death, so it cannot compete. Furthermore it tells us that were the human race to survive long enough, it would have to deal with an expanded dying sun, a crush of galaxies and a cold empty universe (or one going back into a crunch), in that order. Not a pretty picture, so no wonder most people prefer religion.
Did you know that god is just dog spelt backwards?
Did you know that god is just dog spelt backwards?
Our cats would disagree vigorously, or at least they would do so if correcting the errors of a mere monkey were not far beneath their station.
With regard to Campos -- what is it with nitwitted law professors these days? The rest of us have had to suffer through the pontificatings of Glenn Reynolds, Philip Johnson, Ann Althouse and now this guy.
reuqraM,
I t'nod wonk fi uoy era gnikoj htiw em ro gnitlusni em?
Hypathia - you captured it - "And there's this: once you have crossed the threshold into reasoned atheism, there is no going back." I had many years as a dedicated Christian - but I wanted God to be good. Reason and experience finally won - a God with any power (what other kind would matter) cannot be good - so even if Buddah, Jesus Christ, Allah, Jehovah etc revealed themselves to me in such a way that I could not deny their existence I would not run to them as Gods, because they would be Devils not Gods - all the fine and fancy theology (including the best of liberal theology) in the world cannot erase the evil that continues in the world and no good god steps forward to do so. I suspect there is a difference between people who are atheists by birth family and become Christians and people who have been Christians (especially serious Christians) who take the long hard look and reject the concept of God.
Lea I do in fact get a number of hours of peaceful oblivion every night as I sleep easily and long. Its just fine and waking often seems such a chore. So I do not dread being dead - after all I have been not alive throughout most of the billions of years of history and don't mind missing most of it. Unfortunately the body and mind fears the process of dying - they are so programed that it is often a painful process. I suspect the moth that comes of of its cocoon without mouth parts to breed, lay its eggs and die does not have a program for painful dying.
The P222 crystallographic point group is a part of my life. I believe in the P222 point group. I've seen the P222 point group.
Someone should inform Prof. Campos about Plato's Euthyphro dialogue.
Mustafa: I guess that's the difference between the P222 point group and God. There is a P222 point group.
K: Hi. The reason you have the peaceful oblivion every night as you sleep is because you put the mind to rest. We have to deal with the mind's incessant noise all day long and it's a relief when it shuts up.
Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
~~~ Hans Margolius
Lea - I think of it more as virtual death - its a way of preparing the mind for actual death. I suppose I think about death more than most but I did 10 years as a Hospice volunteer. I saw death the deliverer many times while most see death as the depriver.
My life is good, but for majority of the humans in the world it is an endless struggle - Porgy sang "tired of living and scared of dying, that old man river he just keeps rolling along". But even in the USA I don't see folks around me being very happy with all their stuff.
I am enjoying my waking moments, but I like sleep too, and endless oblivion will be no different from sleep oblivion - only longer.
K: It's a sorrowful world of our own making. It too breaks my heart even though I come off as hard-core I'm not. I've just developed the detachment level within.
revere: Please explain in laymen terms, sweet and simple, what the P222 crystallographic point group is. (If my unscientific mind can understand it). Thank you.