ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

ILX= treasure trove for the curious beast that is the psychology of atheism

Of course you can't disprove the existence of an idea, that doesn't even make sense. "The idea of God doesn't exist." Yes that is as stupid as saying "the idea of theism doesn't exist" or "the idea of justice doesn't exist" or "the idea of cheese doesn't exist". And yes, people believe that God is more than just an idea.

I kind of want to cover myself by pointing out that there is a possible conflation above, of 'The idea of God' and God (as idea). The former being 'The idea of the idea of God', if you will. But this is really a generous attempt to give meaning to meaninglessness. God (as idea) is still borderline nonsense and nothing at all like what billions of people throughout the ages believe and have believed in.

Is it an atheist position to reject the concept of God as commonly defined by religion(s) which inevitably will include some kind of moral aspect; whilst accepting the possibility that there may be a higher power which we do not (yet?) understand?

I would read that as an atheist position, yeah. Rejection of the major monotheistic religions isn't exactly the same as saying "all metaphysics is solved forever".

Really? I would totally call that a religious or spiritual position, or agnostic at best. Etymologically maybe 'atheism' refers only to disbelief in a traditional montheistic god, but these days I would assume it's taken to mean wholesale rejection of gods or god-like beings, even vaguely worded 'higher powers'.

You can choose to define it how you like but I think both meanings are perfectly possible. Dawkins doesn't have a monopoly on the word imo.

It depends on how you wanna talk about higher power, obviously. Deism isn't atheism. But I don't think atheism has to mean rejection of all metaphysics.

People of faith don't treat God as a concept tho.

See what I mean about the arrogance of certainty?

Hardcore atheists insisting that they *know* how, exactly, each and every religious or spiritual person on the face of the earth treats their faith or their personal concept or *experience* of god. (usually based on an extremely simple and reductionist reading of one or two specific kinds of monotheistic religions, and only a limited experience at that.)

You simply do not know, and you cannot speak for all those people. You do not have the right to make assertions like that, about the beliefs of other people - especially such blanket statements as this. And when you do make statements like that - especially one directly contradicting the experiences of a person-of-faith like myself, you *do* make yourself look like you simply do not understand, on a very basic and fundamental level, what it is you are claiming to despise.

Rejection of the major monotheistic religions isn't exactly the same as being an atheist, either. There's a whole freaking world of grey out there.

You can choose to define it how you like but I think both meanings are perfectly possible.

Jeez you're almost sounding like an agnostic here! Being a good ol' descriptivist I would take it to mean whatever the majority think it means.

xp, yes i was aware of that danger. but how is your statement "God" "theism" etc. are not objects, they are ideas any less dogmatic? and if you asked people what they really believe, what answers do you honestly think you would get?

xxpost

I'm not claiming to despise anybody, and I'm not even gonna touch the irony of your penultimate sentence in light of the paragraphs that precede it. I think it's hugely disingenuous to argue that because we have to make generalisations when we want to talk about how humans think and behave, that all arguments about how humans think and behave are impossible.

All I was saying, and I still believe this, is that nobody would be taken seriously if they said that people who deny the existence of the Yeti are being "monstrously arrogant". In the same fashion, it isn't monstrously arrogant to flatly deny the existence of God.

My view would be that atheism isn't about the rejection of the possibility of a power as yet unknown; but the rejection of the leap from the possibility of power to some kind of religious belief which affects the way you live your (and perhaps more importantly, other peoples') life.

I think there are an awful lot of strawmen on both sides of the argument.

ledge I don't think descriptivism means that all words have one solitary meaning defined by committee.

No, NV, it's the conflation of something as complex and open to debate and interpretation (not to mention as common and prevalent across the spectrum of all human experience) as "God" with a yeti or the Loch Ness Monster that is completely fucking arrogant. That is unbelievably arrogant. And seriously NAGL.

xp oh dear i think we've derailed into another argument full of badly explained concepts and straw men. I just meant that if I discovered most people would happily call AlanSmithee's position atheist, then I would go with that, even though it doesn't currently fit under my understanding of the term.

if you asked people what they really believe, what answers do you honestly think you would get?

I grew up within a church where those questions were asked on a weekly basis, and I've already described some of the answers above. They covered a wide spectrum of belief and do not tally with your blanket descriptions of "How People Of Faith Think."

ok so a) wide spectrum = there are people who think that god is an 'object' (in the broadest sense) whose existence can be proven, and ii) i just do not accept that your idea of god (regardless of how many people believe it) gives you a magical get-out clause from such notions of proof. maybe you'll say i don't understand your idea and yeah, well, i can see where that ends up.

I guess I'd call myself atheist because God is simply not a category of thought for me. I can read and value all the wonderful mystical texts and theological thinkers I want, but whatever it is they're exciting in me doesn't feel religious. It does kinda make me feel like I'm missing something by not having a shred of 'belief' in me, but because I have this distinct sense that it's this whole other kind of experience that I just don't have, it's all v compelling and fascinating.

Sorry LJ, been away all day. I know your second point was agreeing with that, I guess I just read 'we are smart and open minded lefties' as a communal pat on the back for all the ilxors to smart to be sucked in by the magic pixie dust. It is possible to be smart, open-minded (to a degree) and leftist/liberal *and* believe in a force beyond the random. It is a view mostly met with derision on ILx - not by you, and I'm sorry if my post read like I was accusing you of intolerance.

Don't really know what I'm getting at any more tbh but I think the extreme Conservative religious intolerance of anything Other we see in much of the American media is mirrored by the leftist secular intolerance to religion, particularly Christianity, exhibited on ILX. I understand why it happens - if I was faced with these wingnuts every day I'd be reactive, but in my life every remotely religious person I know is really really nice and I very rarely see the homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. in my day to day life other than from Daily Mail readers at work who only go to church for weddings.

*'too smart', not 'to smart' - perfect point to fuck up my spelling :(

onimo otm

the worst behaviour by most religious people in Scotland is generally over football.

(note: im not saying all religious people do that)

hardcore atheists are every bit as annoying as bible thumpers in my experience. Most people keep their beliefs to themselves, i wish others didn't feel the need to project their own beliefs on to everyone.

I think you're confusing religious with sectarian there, pfunkboy. Football-related violence attributed to religion is mostly fuelled by irrational dislike of other religions and supposed signifiers thereof.

This is mostly springboarding off what ledge said above, but it's gone beyond being a reply at this point and become much more general response to the thread.

1) there is a wide spectrum of belief. I know that within that spectrum, there is a *group* of people who believe that god is a literal object or person, but that small group is nowhere near representative of the entire spectrum of belief. I understand that, again and again, hardcore atheists like to take this small group, disprove their beliefs and announce that they have debunked religion as a whole.

This is akin to saying "We have disproved Indigo! There is no such colour! Indigo is an optical illusion, produced by the blending of blue and violet, and it only became part of the rainbow because of an inherited tradition of the West being fond of the number 7. There's no Indigo means there is no spectrum, the entire discipline of Optics falls apart, and anyone who has ever seen a rainbow is clearly lying or delusional, like people who think they have seen yeti or the Loch Ness monster. Also, you should not wear bluejeans, ever, because indigo is a myth kthxbye." The truth is - when you disprove one particularly literal interpretation of religion, you have disproved Indigo. You have not disproved yellow, orange, red, green, etc. and you have not disproved the human tendency to perceive this wide set of colours. And the existence of people who have never experienced spirituality does not disprove spirituality, any more than the fact of my father being colour blind disproves the colour green.

2) With regards to "proof" - this is again where Spirituality is like Justice, and not like Geology. How do you *prove* Justice? People have so many different conceptions of what Justice is, for example:
a) there is no such thing as Justice, it's the Law of the Jungle, dog eat dog
b) an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
c) there is a social contract where we agree to give up certain rights in exchange for freedoms
d) there is a strict code as handed down by an Authority like God or Hammurabi or the Highway Code
e) it is what is decided by the consensus of the majority of one's culture and established by precedent
f) we hold these truths to be self evident, that man has certain in alienable rights blah blah blah
g) it is to be decided on an individual case by case basis and must be tempered with Mercy

^^^^^ how would you go about establishing *proof* for any of these views? And even if you could, with all of these conflicting views, how *could* proof or disproof of one affect any of the others?

It's like asking someone to *prove* music. It's a meaningless question. And not even the right question to be asking.

I think this also brings up an interesting point - those surveys or whatever that say 70% of British people are vaguely Christian or whatever. 70% of people are not obsessed with music, either, they are quite happy to listen to whatever is on the radio and have no strong opinions - like most people are probably happy to say that they conform to the dominant cultural expression of their own society and have no strong opinions about religion either way. When you're on ILM, you are talking to the 30% minority of people who *have* strong enough feelings to want to debate it. Within that minority, hardline opinions, whether they are those held by Geir or held by the Lex, are much more prevalent and much more strongly weighted than they would be within a less self selected group.

So on ILX, on a thread about religion, you are clearly dealing with a self selected group who have strong opinions, not the 70% who don't give a shit.

To me, personally, this poll shows that it's a shame that the debate about spirituality on ILX has been so dominated by the spiritual equivalent of people who are amusical or even tone deaf, and cannot conceive of why anyone would want to listen to or talk about music in the first place, let alone debate the merits of UK funky vs Garage or hard rock vs hair metal. But that's my personal opinion about what I find interesting.

Good post. It's not just on ILX, to be fair. I've got two particular hates:

1. categorical assertions that the UK is no longer a christian country. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be instead - it seems to me to be the same vaguely christian country (though see below) it's always been, where basically you'll be left alone. When I see people going out of their way to make this point, it's very offputting.

2. conflating secularism with atheism. It's perfectly possible for a religious person to be 100% in favour of secularism. People aren't secular, public life is. That this is is a mostly secular public society isn't a victory for atheism, it's a victory for secularism.

1) there is a wide spectrum of belief. I know that within that spectrum, there is a *group* of people who believe that god is a literal object or person, but that small group is nowhere near representative of the entire spectrum of belief. I understand that, again and again, hardcore atheists like to take this small group, disprove their beliefs and announce that they have debunked religion as a whole.

1. "Small group" is doing the heavy lifting of Atlas with the Earth on his shoulders in that first sentence, and needs something beyond assertion. Because in my experience as an American who has, over the course of 40 years, traveled in the circles of vaguely "Christian" believers, fundamentalist Christians, Episcopalians, secular Jews, Orthodox Jews, Wiccans and others, that "small group" comprises about 90% of the religious people I've ever met.

2. I don't know any atheists who believe that disproving monotheism "disproves religion" in any significant way, as opposed to trying to pave the way for an understanding of human interaction, ethics and development in Western culture that doesn't rely on religious tradition. That religious tradition relies heavily on monotheism, so for practical purposes they can be treated the same.

If anything, I think studies over the past years showing that religious experience can be artificially induced by electromagnetically stimulating parts of the brain has gone farther towards "disproving religion," or at least strongly suggesting that it doesn't refer to anything external but is a function, or a secondary function, of something in the brain. (I realize there's an opening to suggest that there's a brain function designed -- for lack of a better word -- for apprehending God, but I'll just leave it lying there.)

To me, personally, this poll shows that it's a shame that the debate about spirituality on ILX has been so dominated by the spiritual equivalent of people who are amusical or even tone deaf, and cannot conceive of why anyone would want to listen to or talk about music in the first place,

I'm suddenly reminded of Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor saying that atheists are "Not fully human".

It could just be that we have thought about it and concluded that supernatural bollocks is, well, bollocks. This doesn't mean that we can't see the appeal. I can see why it would be nice to think that bad people would eventually receive punishment, or that I'll see my dead relatives again. But I'd also like to think that chocolate makes me thin and red wine makes me attractive. That doesn't mean there's any truth in either.

In the absence of any evidence for religions, I'd rather people would just grow up and not cling to wish-fulfilment fantasies.

Good point about secularism. I am 90% in favour of secularism within public life. (The 10% hesitation is discomfort with taking secularism so far that it extends to precluding *any* display of personal belief, such as bans on wearing religious jewelry or the veil etc.) I'm much more OK with secularism than I am with atheism.

that "small group" comprises about 90% of the religious people I've ever met.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on that, because my huge and equally varied experience has clearly been very different and lead me to different conclusions.

Sure, religious experience can be artificially induced by stimulating parts of the brain. And also by certain drugs. You can probably do the same for ANY human emotion. The existence and effects of the common drug ecstasy is proof that lots of what we think of as love - both the eros and the agape - is just a chemical reaction in the brain.

Does that really mean that you want to throw out the intense experiences of love, of bonding, of community, of romantic and sexual love with your partner, of familial love of your children, the love and companionship of your close friends - and the huge amounts of the human experience that goes with it - because *love* can be replicated in a laboratory?

if you want to throw out "the spiritual experience" based on the fact that it's just a brain reaction, you better be prepared to throw out a huge amount of what it means to be human with it. And I'm just not prepared to throw out love, music, art, literature, philosophy etc. just yet. Sorry. I don't want to live in that world.

I'm suddenly reminded of Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor saying that atheists are "Not fully human".

Now who's projecting? That is not what I said. Please stop directing your jibes at the straw man standing behind my right shoulder.

I've never had the emotional experience of being romantically loved by someone who loved me. That might make me an atheist of love. I admit that it's an emotional experience I haven't had, and have no knowledge of.

But what it *doesn't* mean is that I go around calling people who have had that experience deluded fools, or dismissing the meaningful experiences of their lives as "supernatural bollocks" because I've never had this love-experience. To do so would be arrogant, patronising and downright insulting, and that's not the kind of person I want to be - nor congratulate myself for being.

Does that really mean that you want to throw out the intense experiences of love, of bonding, of community, of romantic and sexual love with your partner, of familial love of your children, the love and companionship of your close friends - and the huge amounts of the human experience that goes with it - because *love* can be replicated in a laboratory?

Of course not, but I also don't form churches to worship it, or write rule books sanctioning the only way in which it is to be correctly experienced, nor suggest that those who experience it otherwise will meet with some sort of punishment, nor attempt to force my culture to operate in accordance with my experience of it. Or kill people over it.

if you want to throw out "the spiritual experience" based on the fact that it's just a brain reaction, you better be prepared to throw out a huge amount of what it means to be human with it. And I'm just not prepared to throw out love, music, art, literature, philosophy etc. just yet.

I smell a category error here, but I'm not prepared to argue with you about it and be met with another barrage of strawmen and leading questions.

or dismissing the meaningful experiences of their lives as "supernatural bollocks" because I've never had this love-experience.

If "religious experience" is, indeed, something that occurs in the brain and is not a reference to or apprehension of anything external, than attributing a supernatural origin or meaning to it is, in fact, bollocks. As much so as suggesting that my experience of "love" with my wife is a result of being shot by Cupid's arrow.

Anyway, I refuse to waste my Saturday on this.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Saturday, September 18, 2010 12:22 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

Good idea! These pointless conflicts about religion or politics only end in frustration for everyone.

If "religious experience" is, indeed, something that occurs in the brain and is not a reference to or apprehension of anything external, than attributing a supernatural origin or meaning to it is, in fact, bollocks

No, because granting the legitimacy of the experiments connecting "religious experience" with human-induced stimuli (and such work deserves skepticism), it doesn't follow that this experience doesn't have a supernatural origin as well. Religious believers, from saints to shamans, have maintained for ages that we can instigate conditions which promote such experiences.

No, because granting the legitimacy of the experiments connecting "religious experience" with human-induced stimuli (and such work deserves skepticism), it doesn't follow that this experience doesn't have a supernatural origin as well.

I'll stick with Occam's Razor on this one.

Good idea! These pointless conflicts about religion or politics only end in frustration for everyone.

Pointless conflicts don't always end in frustration, but the slow descent into ad hominem bullshit does.

You all have the right to your beliefs, I have the right to mine. I can explain rationally and politely until I'm blue in the face, you can counter until you are blue in the face, but as many straw men and category errors and leading questions and incorrect assumptions as you see in my beliefs, I see in your assumptions. We're going round in circles and that only leads people to be more hostile to one another, no matter what their actual set of beliefs are.

Really really wish there could be a "no atheists allowed in the room" style thread, though, where people who did want to discuss this stuff without the "supernatural bollocks" style name-calling could do so in peace.

Know it ain't gonna happen on this board, though, with stats like those at the top of the thread, but those stats are actually an explanation of why it doesn't work.

There's a whole board tbf. I'm sure on the mods of The Church wd be happy to enforce a thread like that? I get yr frustration and I hope I haven't been needlessly inflammatory but I think you shd see if the thread you propose is doable rather than being pessimistic before the fact. Mean that sincerely.

"on the mods" = "one of the mods of"

No area of human endeavor or belief is safe from materialism.

Really warming up to this Banaka fellow :)

ILE needed its own Geir.

Atheists are humorless bastards who believe in a soulless, black and white, mechanistic universe = they like the simple black text on white background layout of ILX.

ILX has been so dominated by ... people who are amusical or even tone deaf

So true about ILM, but I don't quite see what it has to do with religion.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

What I find most personally concerning about these results is the high degree of *certainty* that people seem to express. ... The arrogance doesn't come from the belief, it comes from the certainty that one believes one's own belief is the only *possible* one.

I'm honestly surprised that there were not more *agnostics* because that, to me, is the most intellectually *defensible* position, but the way the poll is phrased makes it difficult to pick out tolerant agnostics on the borderline cases.

I don't think this conflict you're talking about between atheism and agnosticism really exists. I'm certain there is no god. But at the same time I think a real answer is probably fundamentally unknowable. There could be a race of invisible gnomes that live in a dimension that humans can't perceive. But probably not. So I'm going to carry on under the assumption that they don't exist.

I agree with Karen that these aren't very good poll options.

imo the best part of atheism is that you don't have to even address the god question, not going around asserting that there's a definite answer.

imo the best part of athiesm is listening to rock music, having a same-sex partner, and redistributing wealth.

OK, this is where the terminology really gets in the way because I tend to think of "not even addressing the god question" is on the agnostic spectrum, rather than being strict atheism. Atheism = "there is definitely no god at all" while Agnosticism = "I don't know if there is a god" or "This is an unanswerable question" or "This is not something that humans are even capable of finding out the answer to."

A theism = etymologically "without god"
A gnosis = etymologically "without knowledge"

When I get back from holiday, I am definitely going to do a different poll with less slanted questions that clearly define what is meant without the emotive and/or confusing terminology.