I am an atheist but I do not begrudge people their belief in deity. It is one honest response to the experience of life’s profoundly sacred character. The dedicated effort of honest scientific inquiry is another form of response. That some respond to their experience with a belief in Deity is not the problem.
Intolerance is the problem. The rejection of science as a means of understanding aspects of the world is the problem.
As long as people understand that their way is not the only way and refrain from forcing non-evidence based modes of knowing on others then we have much yet to explore. There is a rich, vital and necessary discussion of Science and Spiritual Endeavor before us. Answering the unanswerable question of Gods’ existence is not a necessary precondition for taking on that necessary challenge.
It’s a question of worldviews. He is an atheist with a natural materialist worldview. If he were honest he would say that his worldview is the truth and that all others are false. Why would one cling to a false worldview after all? And the unspoken suposition is that his worldview is true. Like most atheists his worldview goes unexamined and his presuppositions unquestioned as he most likely assumes that he has no presuppositions.
It’s hard to respond to him because it’s unclear what he means by “their way is not the only way.” Well, in one sense of course that’s true. Only a fool would deny that there are many religious positions.
And its unclear what he means by “forcing”: in the US anyway there’s very little forcing by anyone (in the sense of prison terms or physical threat). Nobody threatens an atheist here with force, and likewise Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and so on aren’t being threatened either.
So maybe what he’s saying is just a general plea for civility and willingness to hear people out and kindness and so on. Who could really disagree with that (except for people who make a living being a shock jock like H. Stern or Rush Limbaugh)?
If that’s all he means, I’m certainly behind him.
If, however, he means that committed Christians should stop attempting to convince people of the truth of the creedal faith (all this talk about God and stuff) then I can’t agree.
One thing I am always baffled by, however, is when people clearly are not in one camp, but insist on co-opting that camp’s language and using it in highly misleading ways. We see this all the time with TEC leaders who recite creeds they no longer believe. And in this case we have a self-professed atheist talking about his deep interest in the Sacred. What on earth could that mean?
Br. Michael: Adam Frank apparently believes that (a) we cannot get unimpeachable answers to fundamental questions (“impossible standard of impossible proof which neither science or religion can provide”). He also apparently believes that (b) rational belief does not require unimpeachable answers to questions.
(a) and (b) may be mistakes. But if Frank holds both beliefs, he is not dishonest in being more charitable to religious folk than are athiests such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. Frank just thinks he is right about how he collects and arranges the evidence for God’s existence, although he cannot prove this to every intelligent religious person.
Most people I’ve read or encountered who hold such beliefs, admit that they have presuppositions. As the argument goes, it’s because many of our presuppositions are not subject to objective, knock-down proofs that (a) and (b) are rational and respectable.
“Intolerance is the problem.” (Implying that “intolerance” is a problem in religion.)
OK, here’s MY problem with a statement like that from someone with the author’s POV. Nature is intolerant. Science is intolerant. Principles of science simply accept that nature is selective, the strongest survive, and anomalies are often problematic. Medical science is ESPECIALLY intolerant — people with various habits and lifestyles are turned down for transplants and other expensive, rare procedures. Clinical trials are very selective in whom they admit — I saw this firsthand.
So, these folks simply accept that science is selective, has biases and norms but they castigate religions and spiritualities for having codes and norms. Strange.
I was fascinated by the meerkats’ show on Animal Planet. I watched it one day out of sheer boredom and was hooked. It was so interesting to view meerkat society. It was/is a society in every sense of the word. I recall one episode in which a female meerkat went off with a meerkat bad boy and was impregnated by him. Mama meerkat cut her off from the family. Later, they did reconcile.
OK, meerkats aren’t humans but my point is that every aspect of nature is selective; we’re finding out more every day about the complex relationships and rules of animal communities. They’re sentient, they bond, they celebrate, they mourn, they’re not entirely “tolerant.” Science isn’t tolerant.
But the science-is-king people can somehow accept intolerance in nature and in scientific applications with no problem at all. They deride people of faith, though, for “intolerance.” In other words, they expect MORE out of people of faith. If there is no God, no real and palpable origin of morality in the world, then why would they expect more from believers who, in their estimation, follow something that doesn’t exist? I don’t get it.
St. Anselm and others have pointed out that only God is necessary. It is everything else that is optional.
I don’t think that’s the question the author is really asking, however. Rather, he is confusing two kinds of pluralism. Societal diversity is the kind of diversity that means Italians make really good pasta, while Thai cuisine is for those who like spicy. If one likes both pasta and spicy food, it is a good thing to live in a world where Italians and Thais co-exist peacefully.
Spiritual or directional diversity is diversity in worldviews. While tolerance of different worldviews might well be preferable to all out war or burning at the stake, no one really believes in directional diversity as a value in itself. The way to recognize that no one can really be committed to directional diversity is to ask if the world would be a better place if no one were to embrace one’s most deeply held convictions. Just as no Christian believes the world would be a better place if there were no Christians, so no honest atheist really believes that the world would be a better place if there were no atheists.
By asking if God is “really necessary,” Frank is asking theists to act as if their most deeply held convictions did not matter–something he would not be willing to do himself. He is asking theists to act in public settings as if they were in fact atheists, to assume for the sake of getting along that, for practical purposes, atheism is the one worldview that must not only be tolerated, but adopted as a practical working philosophy. In the (post)modern world, secularism is the one particularist worldview that insists on being treated as if it alone were actually universal and not particular, and not subject to the limitations of particular cultural and historical relativity.
Secularism is the atheist’s version of Anselm’s ontological argument. Belief in nothing more universal than the the freedom of a particular individual to do or believe whatever he or she wishes in a modern pluralist society (and it does not matter what that is, since there are no universal goods beyond the good of choice) is the one value “than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
Except for the author’s declaration of his atheism, this article “reads”
as though it were written by/for the PB. Odd, that.
I ran across this quote the other day:
“The fall, however, has gravely distorted that image. Unbelievers deny
God precisely because they would rather live not-guilty in a world of
nonsense than be guilty in a universe that makes sense”
R.C. Sproul, Jr.
I believe that the author of the subject article is asking us to join him in his world of nonsense. He is guiltless there and wants the same for us. But I would rather live an a world where Truth reigns and reveals a comprehendable creation where I am the problem and Jesus Christ is the solution.
By the way, I have had a difficult few days and found the refreshing answers (posts) to the article’s foolish premise to be encouraging and refreshing. I thank all 6 of you very much.
Oh, and also, Jesus Christ IS the only rational answer when all around me is failing and strength is gone. I know that just now.
Don
3, I think that Frank’s underlying presupposition is that there is no God. The supernatural does not exist. He may waffle a little as say that they can’t be proven, but natural materialism, by definition rules them out. Natural materialism and science, insists on a closed system with no external forces operating on it. Now none of these assumptions can be proven by science one way or the other yet they are at the heart of the scientific method which requires observation and repeatability of experiments.
Thus you can’t have a resurrection of someone from the dead because in a natural materialist universe that can’t happen. Dead tissue simply does not reanimate itself. There simply is no quantum of proof that could be given to a natural materialist to prove such a thing. It goes beyond proof because to admit that something can act outside the natural material universe is to admit that that worldview is false. They cannot rise above their presuppositions to admit such a fact.
They exempt themselves from the criteria that they apply to other worldviews because they assume that their worldview is correct and the others false just as Prof. Witt sets out. However Frank is willing to tolerate others nonsense so long as no one really believes it and will not really challenge the secular worldview as the true norm.
But “forcing” is the problem, and we may see it in the many attempts, some successful, to deny evolution and displace it with “creationism.”
I grant you that his essay is a little simple minded, but it at least avoids the stridency and bigotry or the Hitchins variety. In any case, I think his plea remains sound, however simple minded, that the issue of God’s existence is outside the realm of scientific inquiry and should therefore not be a precondition in any science.
I don’t mean that God’s existence is reduced to a simple matter of mindless faith; clearly it is not. But the best and most compelling arguments can only speak of probabilities., and then only in a general sense, since God, being unique, has not comparables, On must use the best available, most credible analogies and the like. For my part, this is what I have done, and do not doubt the Creator’s existence.
But this shouldn’t interfere with science’s undertakings. Science cannot, after all demonstrate God’s non-existence, but it also true that science should avoid the pretense that it can use it tools to demonstrate that religious practices – like prayer, its causes and effects – can be demonstrated to be false. Recall the silliness when there was a controlled experiment to attempt to show that prayers for the sick, by those who did not know them, were or were not effective.
But it CAN removes some of the sheer brainlessness that clutters up Christianity (and other religions), like the belief that Christ’s physical flesh rose from the dead and is now somewhere, in time and space, eating and drinking and sleeping (among other things) in the physical universe, unchanged from what once it was.
Paul solves this problem for us, to be sure, but there are many who believe that Christ rose quite unchanged, even though this leads to the most absurd consequences. Larry
9. Larry Morse:
Through the most unusual of situations I had a couple of meetings with the lead heart transplant surgeon/teacher at the University of Wisconsin. He is certainly a brilliant, skilled, and well trained man. In the course of conversation I ask him if he knew what a glass of Life would look like; solid, liquid, gas, or what? He readily admitted that he did not know and that all he did was cut-n-paste and the result was up to God. I truly think that some of the “some of the sheer brainlessness that clutters up Christianity” you refer to may well be the only credible solution to some questions. What is brainless to some is the only working argument available; some because of ignorance, some because brilliance and a lifetime of honest searching yields no other answers.
Don