Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Despite the apologists explaining away (or attempting to explain away) any “wars” between science and religion, US film distributors have rejected latest Darwin film as too controversial. The producer, Jeremy Thomas, is quoted as saying:

“The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
“It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There’s still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It’s quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.
“Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn’t saying ‘kill all religion’, he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people.”

Read full article here.
Alex McCullie

Do you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion and death?

Yes, then you hold a belief that is contrary to our scientific understanding of the world and our view of physical death. You believe, presumably, that God can override at will any natural events. This again is contrary to everything that science represents. You seem to hold a very anti-scientific attitude about our world.

No, then you deny the actuality of Jesus’ resurrection. Did he really die or was he really executed at all? If you believe either of these, how did he die for our sins? Or, did the early Christian simply create the resurrection story, not in Mark by the way,  to explain his early death? Where do you take Christian beliefs from here?

Alex McCullie

I was watching a  public Michael Ruse lecture in Australia hosted by Fora TV. It made me think about how Ruse, Francis Collins, and the late Stephen Jay Gould along with many scientists and liberal religious leaders see science and religion as working in separate non-conflicting fields of human knowledge and understanding.

Typically they characterise Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens as fundamental atheists, who are equivalent to religious fundamentalists. Both are seen as fringe groups outside the mainstream and majority thought. So the question that came to mind is how much of a religious fundamentalist do you need to be to see conflict between science and religion and what sort of populations hold conflicting views?

The Pew Forum regularly produce statistics on US religious beliefs – the home country of Michael Ruse and Francis Collins. According for Pew:

63% of the sample population believe that their scriptures are literally the word of God (33%) or non-literally the word of God (30%) in 2007/2008. Roughly 80% of the US population of 307 million (July 2009 estimate) are more than 14 years old. So we have around 81 million people believing that their respective sacred texts are literally the word of God. Sacred texts invariably contain miracles as God’s interruptions of the natural order. For Christians that includes Jesus’ virgin birth, healings and physical resurrection as part of those miracle traditions. It seems that these beliefs in the literal historicity of these miracle stories is in direct conflict with a scientific understanding of the world. So does Ruse classify these 81 million religious people as fundamentalists? Even the other 73 million religious people who see the texts as the non-literal word of God are likely to subscribe the some of the more important miracle traditions, again in conflict with science.

The Religious Tolerance website has polls results on beliefs of the resurrection of Jesus story. It seems that 60-90% of Christian clergy and laity believe in the actuality of Jesus’ resurrection over a 1997 to 2000 period. Again, an extraordinary number of US population who believe prima facie something that is contrary to our scientific view of our world.

Do Ruse and Collins see these people, millions I might say, as religious fundamentalists? And, if so, are they equivalent in numbers to the four outspoken atheists often named?

Alex McCullie

This week I had the pleasure of presenting a public lecture, The Re-Imaging of Christianity - Progressive Christianity to the Atheist Society, Melbourne, Australia. The best part for me was a very stimulating question and answer time after the lecture. It showed the diversity of views and not just a “simple” don’t believe in God.

Alex McCullie

Here is a summary of the presentation:
Atheist Society talk Sep 2009: Progressive Christianity (new web page)

This week I presented a lecture on Progressive Christianity to the local Atheist society in Melbourne, Australia. Progressive Christians have redefined God from an all-powerful being to a pervasive essence; Jesus is now an ancient insightful sage; and the Bible is no longer the word of God but a source of personal inspiration. And they still call themselves Christians!

Atheists should learn from this. Stop being narrowly typecasted into a role of god rejection: join the majority of the population as a Practical Atheist.

For a start a practical atheist is one who lives life with the working assumption of no god. For practical atheists a god plays no role in the way they conduct daily affairs – work, family, local community and broader society. Church attendences are restricted to purely cultural or social activities – weddings, funerals and the like. They are essentially cultural Christians only: God, Jesus and the Bible have no practical meaning in their lives – they are not needed. Ironically their children may even go to a Christian school. But that was an educational decision.

This position could be reflective or unreflective, the latter being the majority I suspect. In fact if asked “are you an atheist?” they would almost certainly say “no” or if asked “do you believe in god?”, they would say “yes” with some hesitation.

But, in practice, their working assumption is that they don’t believe in god. They are practical atheists.

For those who do reflect on beliefs, this will vary considerably:

• Definite rejection of the theist god. Though reasonable from everyday experience, this is philosophically hard to argue. That is why theists love to box us this way.
• Disbelief of the theist god - no convincing reasons to believe. This is an eminently defensible position.
• Disbelief of all supernatural existences – god, ghosts, spirits, souls and anything to do with an after-life. Still a very defensible position.
• Acceptance of a physical world only and with a progressive, humanist view, often referred to as naturalism.  It gets controversal when discussing free-will, consciousness and the universality of morality and mathematical concepts. This is unreservedly my position.

Avoid being boxed, cleverly by Christians apologists, into the rejection motif with the “prove-it” response and  talk about how people really act. We are all practical atheists.

Alex McCullie