If I could be confident that believers of all stripes could never be compelled by their convictions alone to do things like what the 9/11 terrorists did, I’d have very little concern about religion, beyond occasional annoyance at technical inaccuracies. It’s the part where people do not or cannot question that I feel it is my duty to be worried about. I don’t want to force people to think as I do; but I hope I could convince the unquestioning to question, if I had the opportunity. I could be wrong, but to me, based on what I’ve learned, that seems to be a highly moral approach to altering society. I’m not at all confident that other peoples’ belief systems can be spared skeptical scrutiny and criticism merely out of respect. To allow this might be, at the very least, disprepectful to myself. If I’m not allowed to at least suggest that faith has within it the potential for violent fanaticism, how can I protect myself from it?
So you say; however, there are a great many believers who were convinced by evidence. C.S. Lewis, for example, is famous for trying to disprove Christianity, but the historical and philosophical evidence brought him “kicking and screaming” into belief. You have Dr. Simon Greenleaf, one of the greatest legal minds in US history, who came to belief after examining the historical evidence using the standards of legal testimony. Then there’s Sir William Ramsay, one of the greatest archaeologists of all time, who attempted to refute the Luke’s gospel. After years of research, he was forced to conclude that Luke’s accounts were impeccable and that he should be numbered among the very finest of historians.
Others will appeal to miracles that they have encountered in their lives, or other such evidence. Now, many skeptics here would say, “Bah! Miracles don’t happen!” but that is circular reasoning, and the merits of each miracle account should be evaluated on its own merits. (Indeed, several SDMBers have claimed that the incidence of these miracles is perfectly in keeping with random mathematical chance. Since they make this claim, I think it’s fair to ask how they performed this mathematical analysis, especially in light of the great diversity of miracles which have been claimed.)
Now, I know full well that some would disagree with the evidence presented by theists. That’s fine; I myself find that some of the evidence which theists present is unconvincing. However, to baldly insist that “And of course, no such evidence can be presented” is simply ignorant.
I see. So you don’t really believe your statement that “I think it would be a better world if people didn’t ‘believe’ anything”?
Good, 'cuz I don’t believe it either.
This atheist does not agree with the OP.
While I personally have no religious faith, and agree with Loopydude that skeptical rationalism is the optimum viewpoint from which a thinking person should evaluate the world, I think the relationship of civilized societies and the individuals therein to their multifarious faiths is extremely complex.
Part of this is my perception (expressed many times in this forum, in various forms) that rational thought is a thin veneer indeed over our hardwared primate psychologies. I listened recently to an author describing a bias crime here in Washington state in which a group of Caucasians deliberately picked a fight with a smaller group of Asians, and then cried foul when the Asians fought back and killed one of the Caucasians. From the perspective of human idealism it’s almost incomprehensibly irrational that people should be so hateful to one another; from the perspective of baboons on the savannah it’s so routine as to disinvite comment.
And religion’s role in this, it seems to me, is to say, in effect, “We know we have flaws, but we want to be better.” That’s an honorable message, and an honorable goal. And the nature of religion also implicitly concedes that the majority of humans won’t do the right thing for its own sake; we need to have a reason to try to be better. Some of us don’t need those reasons; most of us, apparently, do. (Theists as much as admit this when the old “morality is based in faith” argument makes its regular reappearance. We atheists have no problem behaving morally without a threat of afterlife punishment to deter us, which seems to confuse many theists, who seem to imply that without God’s wrath to frighten them away from bad behavior, they would sin freely. I know it’s not that simple, but that’s the undercurrent of their position.)
Unfortunately, humans being who they are, we find ourselves arguing about the nature of the justification, the letters of the invented law, instead of the reasons therefor. We are unable to look beyond the relative minutiae of our scriptures; we get tangled up in debating whether our various deities really care whether we eat pigs or cover our women or avoid certain activities on certain arbitrarily chosen days. Rather, it seems to me, a healthy society should consider the reason religion was developed in the first place, as a means by which we can overcome our animal instincts, treat each other with respect, and form a prosperous, thriving culture.
Religious faith should be an inspiration, a shining goal and an impetus for self-improvement, and for some of us, it is. At its best, it channels and focuses human energy and drives progress. Similar things could be said about free markets: they’re good for society because they harness the overwhelming power of greed, but left totally unchecked that same greed will destroy us. Some sort of structure, clearly, is required, because we humans are imperfect and flawed. For similar reasons, in my view, religion ends up, on average, as a distraction, instead of serving its intended function.
The irony, of course, is that religion is supposed to be a means by which humans look beyond their flaws and aspire to a higher level of existence, but as a human endeavor it tends to fall victim to and get misused by the very flaws it hopes to correct: the flaws of tribal division, of well-intentioned meddling, of the cycle of revenge, and so on.
The fault lies not in our stars, nor in our books: the fault lies in ourselves.
Religion does not hold the patent on fanaticism. Blaming religion for fanaticism is like blaming violence in schools on rock ‘n’ roll music and video games. It can be a cause, but it’s more likely to be a pre-existing psychological problem on the part of the person acting out that renders them more susceptible to “fanatical” beliefs.
Yes, sometimes these problems are generated by parents who are, in turn, fanatical. Humans will always believe things, though. And some humans will believe things strongly. Some strongly enough to kill.
The Earth Liberation Front is a secular organization - and yet, considered by our government as a terrorist organization. Because they’re willing to hurt people in the pursuit of their beliefs. It is their opinion that animals should be free, etc. They fanatically seek to enforce this upon people who do not share the opinion.
So religion isn’t the problem. Human nature is.
Heck, if you want fanaticism, just look at those regimes which did attempt to “kill of religion,” as the OP put it. How many millions died at their loving hands?
But surely you can tell the difference between religion and politics. 9/11 was a political act. Politicians infest religion just as they do any discipline, including science. Anyone can claim God made me do it, or the devil made me do it, or society made me do it, but a tree is known by its fruit. If you see a tree with apples hanging on its limbs, don’t be fooled just because a sign is nailed to it that says, “Pear Tree”. I agree with Cervaise and CandidGamera, both of whom summed up my position with succinct phrases. “The fault lies not in our stars, nor in our books: the fault lies in ourselves.” And “religion isn’t the problem. Human nature is.”
You’re so fond of those bills with Andy Jackson on them, right!?! 
Well, Poly, I actually like carrying the Indian Hater’s bills in my wallet — because when I sit down, my ass is mashing his face. 
I think you’re trying to paint me into a semantic corner here.
I quite confident in that statement. If there’s compelling evidence to the contrary, I hope my mind could be changed. Hence, I don’t “believe” that statement in a way that I think one could say I had faith in that statement. Just confidence. There is a difference. Confidence can be lost. Faith, I think by definition, can’t. If you lose faith in something, it seems you never had it. If you lose confidence in something, probably you were misinformed, and hence were forced to change your mind.
And I get worried about all those “godless heathens” out there acting immorally because they have no reference to a higher authority. But that doesn’t stop me from beliveing that such a person might be “good.” And expecting them to treat me with the same respect that I give them.
You can’t expect me to believe that atheism, scepticism, or any other -ism you would care to wave the banner for is an instant cure all for the ills of humanity.
I share the same concern, however I feel that the fault lies in those charismatic individuals who distort their particular religous principles in order to teach self-serving messages. I think it is incorrect to look at the religions themselves as the wellspring for such perverted behavior.
I don’t think that any subject should be spared the bright lights of skeptical inquiry and empirical investigation. However I think that dismissing the value of all religious systems based on the actions of perverted minorities is not an appropriate use of scepticism. I think it misses the point, blaming the system instead of the individual. If a fanatic stabs me in the name of his or her God, what good does it do to condemn their God?
In which case, you’re arguing based on erroneous concepts of “faith” and “belief.”
Faith CAN be lost. There is absolutely nothing in the definition of faith which makes it permanent. Heck, various SDMBers have talked about losing faith (in both religious and non-religious senses) at various points in their lives.
Moreover, it makes no sense to say that you’re confident in a statement without actually believing it. If you’re confident that the statement is true, then you believe it to be true. Sure, that belief might not be 100% rock solid, but it’s there. Heck, I believe that magnetic monopoles exist, even though my confidence in that statements falls considerably short of 100%.
So yeah, I think your claim about how it’s wrong to “believe” something is flawed (indeed, self-refuting) from the get-go.
It does no good, and that’s not what I’m suggesting scepticism is about. I do blame the system, and the system is faith. It is precisely that system that concerns me. The gods realy seem to have nothing to do with it. Who knows what God wants? It’s the people who have faith that they do who frighten me, in some circumstances. Of course, if people have faith that God wants them to never kill, and to hug a tree, etc., it’s hard to feel threatened. But if one can believe in that, there’s no reason that one cannot also believe God wants them to do something ghastly. All evidence seems to indicate that’s what the 9/11 hijacker’s thought. To address Liberal’s objections, it certainly seems the hijacker’s politics were laden with theology, however perverse, and this theology convinced them it was O.K. to target civilians for massacre. Could they have been stopped by evidence their actions were wrong? In any case, it’s politics gone horribly awry, and I can only characterize it as something akin to unquestioning faith in a political belief system, which is a pseudoreligion like Maoism, as far as I’m concerned. Whatever the particulars, this sort of belief, by definition, requires no evidence to back it up. It is impervious to data. People who hold such beliefs cannot be reasoned with, because faith is impervious to doubt.
That’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about God. I’m talking about people, and what their faith, be it in a god, or a state, or a man (which all take on the character of an object of faithful devotion in a purely faith-based system) gives them license to do, with no recourse to reason.
Just to cover my semantic bases, there appear to be two definitions of faith that are relevant here:
- Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
- Belief not based on logical proof or material evidence.
Though #1 can be problematic, #2 is the form of faith I’m referring to in this discussion. I think #1 is somewhat tautological, in that it seems to be little more than a synonymn for “confidence”, which is contained in the definition.
Though I’m sure it’s not your intent, this statement could be taken to suggest that a pissy Galileo had it coming. He didn’t. He was a pugnacious individual at times, to be sure, but the fact that anybody could be condemned the way Galileo was for the mere act of vocal disagreement is evidence enough that the Pope’s authority was used unjustly; and what gave him this authority was faith in his infallibility, which has been shown many times in history to be a very dangerous power to bestow on anyone.
I’m not sure how anyone would draw the conclusion that Galileo deserved what he got. I was pretty clear that he was the subject of abuse.
However, you continue to get your details wrong. Papal infallibility was never an issue (the personal pride of Pope Urban VIII was) as infallibility was not even associated with individual popes for a few hundred years following the Galileo trial.
To the extent that faith or religious belief even entered into the matter of Galileo, he was the one who interjected it. Bellarmine had told him that he could publish his work as a working hypothesis, but that he ought not to deny Scriptural understanding until he had proof. (The proofs Galileo offered were in error.) When Caccini tried to get him silenced in 1616, the Holy Office looked over the charges and decided that there was no merit to them. As a result of that investigation, Galileo either was or was not charged not to make specific declarations about the motion of the planets. When he got himself in hot water in 1633 by putting theological declarations into his satirical attack on the pope, a letter ordering his silence was discovered in the trial folder from 1616. Galileo protested that he had never seen that letter–and no public or private reference was made to that letter from 1616 until 1633. (There are a number of people who hold that it was a forgery inserted into his file explicitly to get a conviction on a trumped up charge.) However, it was his disobedience in regard to the mysterious letter in his file on which he was convicted in 1633, not his actual scientific publications. The church did go on to put his books on the Index for a period of time, but never prohibited anyone else from continuing his research and actually removed his works from the Index before his theories (minus his errors) were proven.
I’m not sure, but is it “The Golden Bough” by Frazer?
I’m not sure how I did. Having recently read “Galileo’s Daughter”, I think I’m fairly up to speed on the details of what led to his censure and house-arrest. Galileo was first denounced by Padre Tomassino, and summoned to Rome. The Papal Comission denounced Copernican theory, and ordered Galileo to cease all discussion of the theory of Heliocentricity. Of course, the Dialog is what really got him into trouble, but what is remarkable is the man was made to fear so for his life that he publically renounced his theories, once the inquisitors were done with him.
If Pope Urban’s ego was in the mix, I can only imagine that ego was amply bolstered by being under the impression that he was God’s instrument on Earth, and hence infallible. I never said that was the crux of the debate, only that it was the source of his power. My statement suggests nothing more. At any rate, if Galileo satirized or otherwise made protest, he was put in the position of waging an intellectual defense because his theories were deemed incompatible with theology, which he rightly felt was absurd. Certainly the Church continued to investigate the matter, but that’s really beside the point, since they forbade him from doing so. Galileo’s scientific mistakes are also completely beside the point, and I’m not sure why you keep bringing them up. So what if he got some details of the motion of the planets wrong? What he got right is nothing short of a monumental achievement. It realy doesn’t matter for this discussion, either way. Galileo wasn’t condemned for his scientific chops, he was condemned because he questioned authority (and quibbling over the details of how he went about that strikes me as the disingenuousness of an apologist).
Again, he was brought to the debate because he was essentially ordered to stay silent about his discoveries relating to the motions of the heavenly bodies. He was ordered to stay silent because what he reported was deemed by some to be potentially or actually blasphemous. In essence, he was ordered to deny evidence because the evidence denied faith. Further, he was denied the opportunity to even interpret this evidence on theological grounds, because he had no vested authority. Why not? What was his crime? Dissention, as far as I can tell.
Galileo considered himself a devout Christian, and was deeply spiritual. His assertion at the time was that any reading of the Scriptures should not require denying the information provided by one’s senses. For this he was censured, his life was threatened, and ultimately he was forcibly confined to his home for the remainder of his days. He was most certainly abused, and his abuse was thoroughly unjust. This is no mitigating the crimes inflicted on him in the name of faith.
I have not read Sobel’s book, so I do not know whether she missed some of the history or you missed it in her work. However, when Tomaso Caccini and Niccolo Lorini each denounced Galileo in 1616, the church did not run out and haul him in to trial. Instead, it took three tries by Galileo’s opponents combined with Galileo’s own combativeness, to get the Inquisition to even consider examining him. On the first two occasions, despite doctored evidence by his accusers, the Holy Office dismissed the charges. Only on the third attempt, after Galileo had written a direct challenge to Scripture and had come to Rome on his own initiative, did the Holy Office actually summon him for examination.
At that time, Galileo was told to put up or shut up: either prove that his views of the Copernican Theory were indisputably true, or stop proclaiming that they were. (He was actually given the opportunity, by Cardinal Bellarmine, to publish his works as a working hypothesis without any interference by the church, but Galileo refused to do so.) The importance of his errors is that they discredited his claim. His “proofs” of the Copernican theory were based on the idea that the tides were caused by the motions of the planet, which was an error, and he declared during his proofs that the planets orbited the sun in perfect circles–a point that his contemporary astronomers knew to be false. These were not minor errors. Based on the understanding of the universe at the time, there were several correctives to the Ptolemaic system that explained all the discrepancies without changing the system to heliocentric. Given Galileo’s insistence on circular orbits, his own calculations were actually less accurate than those of Tycho Brahe whose hybrid cosmology left the Earth at the center while sending the other planets around the sun.
So, instead of accepting the Church’s offer to publish his theories as theories until proofs could be provided, he insisted that the Church declare itself in error based on his disproven claims.
The original examiners, in 1616 did declare that his theory was heretical–but the higher church authorities actually deleted that statement, noting that there was no actual heresy in the theory.
One of Galileo’s defenders in 1616 was his personal friend, Cardinal Barberini. When Barberini became pope, Galileo figured that he had an opportunity to get his theory published, again. He kept badgering the pope (who, not being an astronomer or very interested in astronomy) considered the whole thing too trivial to bother with. When Galileo could not get Pope Urban to openly take his side, he wrote the Dialogue in which Pope Urban was quite openly portrayed as the fool in the story.
This gave Galileo’s opponents the opportunity to bring up the old charges from 17 years earlier, and, stung by the book, Pope Urban did nothing to quash the charges or defend Galileo. The substance of the second trial did not even focus on the Copernican Theory. Once the letter (real or forged) was found in the older trial folder, the issue became one of determining whether Galileo had violated the order from the previous examination. The judges again put the word “heresy” into the judgment, (although the church had never declared a “truth” regarding the subject matter, so it was not truly heresy), and Galileo no longer had any powerful friends to correct that statement, although several of the judges refused to concur with the judgment.
It was a pretty shameful episode for the church, but it had rather little to do with attempting to suppress science.
Again, infallibility was not an issue at any level.
Galileo was never prohibited from studying the issue; he was prohibited from publicly publishing his arguments. Nothing was done to stop him from recording his own observations, privately.
(And at no time in either of his trials was his life threatened. Such opponents of the church as Thomas Huxley and Giorgio de Santillana have noted that the Holy Office treated Galileo with the utmost respect and even had the better arguments for most of their charges, given his errors and the presence of what appeared to be a direct order that had been disobeyed.)
If Galileo had not attempted to compel the church to declare as true something that he could not prove, he would never have found himself in either trial.
Snip
I must admit, this account of the history puts the Church in a much more sympathetic light than other accounts that I have read, and actually includes details I did not know of. I will read up. Colore me wrong, if so! 
Anyone that has read Joseph Campbell knows that he would have much to say in this thread. First he would say that all religions have certain aspects in common; such as resurrection, atonement, etc. He probably would not argue with the idea that it is somehow related to chemical reaction in the brain. He would tell you that the first religion started with the hunter’s and gatherers, who worshiped the animals that they relied on for existence. They were afraid that if they didn’t show proper respect that the animals might not return the next year. Then came agriculture and the fertility rites; the harlots in the temple; and the rain dance. Then man looked up to the sky and with a few exceptions saw that there was order. That is the type of religion that is used by today’s dominant religions.
Mr. Campbell was raised a Catholic, which may explain why is he is most critical of the Judeo Christian religion. IMHO he is most friendly to the Buddists, but that’s all another story.
One of his main contentions is that religion is built on man’s world view. Until very recently this was influenced when man climbed a hill and looked outward. He was then the center of his universe. This has been represented by such things as Christ on the Cross and Buddha sitting under the tree but also in other ways in other religions. What Mr. Campbell sees as so important about this is that those events happened 2000 and 2500 years ago. Man’s world view has changed dramatically since then, especially when the astronauts stood on the moon and looked at the earth floating in space.
So the religions of today are not only outdated but do not meet the religious needs of people living in the twenty-first century. Some people are turning to fundamentalism in an attempt to bring life back into religion; some are turning to religions of the east; some are turning to spirituality and some are just dropping out. What Joseph Campbell says is needed is a completely new religion that is universal and all-inclusive. This will take a long time to develop and isn’t anything that can be predicted or designed by a committee.
[sup]Everything above came from memory and I don’t claim not to have made some mistakes. I hope I’ve gotten the general idea across. I know Polycarp knows more than I do about Joseph Campbell so maybe he’ll step in and correct my errors.[/sup]