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from the Fee-Fie-Fou-Fhum-Fideism-Falafel dept.
Commentary at Salon!
Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists. As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.
[...] Now nothing definitely follows about the truth of a belief from what the majority of philosophers or scientists think. But such facts might cause believers discomfort. There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?
[...] First, if you defend such beliefs by claiming that you have a right to your opinion, however unsupported by evidence it might be, you are referring to a political or legal right, not an epistemic one. You may have a legal right to say whatever you want, but you have epistemic justification only if there are good reasons and evidence to support your claim. If someone makes a claim without concern for reasons and evidence, we should conclude that they simply don't care about what's true. We shouldn't conclude that their beliefs are true because they are fervently held.
Another problem is that fideism—basing one's beliefs exclusively on faith—makes belief arbitrary, leaving no way to distinguish one religious belief from another. Fideism allows no reason to favor your preferred beliefs or superstitions over others. If I must accept your beliefs without evidence, then you must accept mine, no matter what absurdity I believe in. But is belief without reason and evidence worthy of rational beings? Doesn't it perpetuate the cycle of superstition and ignorance that has historically enslaved us? I agree with W.K. Clifford. "It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Why? Because your beliefs affect other people, and your false beliefs may harm them.
I am checking to see what the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster has to say about all this.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday January 21 2019, @02:18AM (4 children)
I was raised southern baptist. When I was 10-11 I started asking questions. The answers I got were all variations of "ya gotta have faith". If I had faith would I be asking these questions? Killer was the pastor did an entire sermon on the Beatles Revolution song. I'd heard the song and all I could think was "you've never heard this song, have you? You read this shit somewhere and you're parroting it". I'd be about 11 at the time.
What sparked my skepticism? A toy I got in a cereal box. Spiral thingie you held in one hand, propeller in the other. Raise your hand quickly and the propeller went flying. I lost my propeller, while searching for it I was "please god, where is my propeller". Never found it, and never got any solace in any kind of religion after than. In fact, I was the opposite of solace. It was more "show me the money" than thinking "prayer is the answer".
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday January 21 2019, @03:40AM (1 child)
Typically a prayer is said to St. Anthony of Padua [thoughtco.com] when asking for help finding a lost item.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @10:41PM
St. Anthony? Yeah, that bastard has almost half of all my socks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 21 2019, @04:08AM
You know what sparked my skepticism? I read the Bible. All of it. When I was 11-12 years old.
I maintain that the quickest route to make someone doubt Christian religion is to hand them a Bible and tell them to read the whole thing cover to cover when they're still young enough not to have been completely indoctrinated. Anyone with any rational sense will walk away with a huge amount of "WTF?" moments and a boatload of theological questions. I went through confirmation soon after and because my church didn't have a lot of young people my age, I had a lot of one-on-one conversations with the minister, where it became clear that I could do Bible trivia as well as he could, and that he didn't have any good answers to my theological questions.
To this day, I can debate theology and spout Bible trivia better than most Christian ministers/priests -- I now just find the whole thing a bit amusing. I actually do respect the value of ritual in human culture, and that's basically what I see in religion (if anything). I don't buy the whole "it gives us morality" argument (for reasons that have already been debated in this thread), though I don't think religion is as bad and nefarious as many atheistic zealots I've met over the years.
Though I can understand why many atheists can be such jerks -- there is a lot that's preposterous about the rituals of religion (but there's a lot that's preposterous about the rituals of human societies outside religion too), and I also think many atheists don't take the time to realize there are more varieties of religious people in the world besides ignorant crazy Christian fundamentalists. I've known a lot of serious theologians over the years, and I look at them in sort of the same way I view philosophers with odd ideas, mathematicians who study truly strange varieties of math, or perhaps string theorists in physics. It's just a logical system with some assumptions... religious folks just have some weirder ones.
But seriously -- you want to make people question faith? Get them to read the Bible. All of it. It's a truly crazy book, and if most conservative Christian fundamentalists realized what was in it, they'd likely have it banned a lot quicker than the other books they've fought to keep out of libraries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @03:49PM
You do gotta have faith. "those who are perishing because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie, that all may be condemned who disbelieved and delighted in wickedness."
Energeian Planes.
Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse [wa.hle.rs]
It has blood on it! [wa.hle.rs]
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander [archive.org]