Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

What can I say…

Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence (website)

Oh, it’s not serious!
Alex McCullie

The newspaper, The Age Online, has an amusing article about Sarah Palin’s future and the word from God.

Defeated Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says she hopes God will “show her the way” before she decides on any future bid for the White House.

…

However the devoutly religious 44-year-old mother-of-five said that if God wanted her to run for the highest office, she hoped to be shown the way.

“You know, I have - faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator’s hands - this is what I always do,” Palin said.

“I’m like, OK God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is,” she added.

“Even if it’s cracked up a little bit, maybe I’ll plough right on through that and maybe prematurely plough through it, but don’t let me miss an open door. (full article 11 Nov 2008)

If you understand this, I’d advise keeping it to yourself and not admitting to the fact.

Alex McCullie

“…Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing…”
(Senator Barack Obama - full speech)

This is reassuring rationality from a 21st century US politician. We are so used to hearing that God gave the President the invasion orders.

Alex McCullie

According to The Age OnLine article the printed word is no longer enough for God’s message.

Why doesn’t He speak directly to us? God is all-powerful, isn’t He?

Alex McCullie

An amusing article appeared in the on-line news website, The Onion, : Evolutionists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain (5-Sep-2008). Now religious apologists will be saying that secularists do believe in a god after all - just the wrong one.

Alex McCullie

Stephen Law, British philosopher, discusses Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion (chapter one) as part of his book club. (read more)

Alex McCullie

Atheists often seek better responses when confronted by believers. Here they are in a straightforward, funny and gentle way. In 50 reasons people give for believing in a god (Prometheus Books, 2008) Guy Harrison works through atheist responses to the 50 most common reasons used for believing in god. All the familiar arguments are here but broken down as discussions for each reason. My god is obvious; atheism is another religion; some very smart people believe in my god; and atheism is a negative and empty philosophy are only some.

50 reasons is highly recommended for that next argument - sorry I meant discussion. I haven’t seen it in Australia yet, but it is available from Amazon.

Highly recommended

Alex McCullie

pdf: Atheism and Agnosticism (right-click to save)

Typically atheism and agnosticism are seen as alternate positions of disbelief in a god. The atheist is perceived as taking the harder line of absolute rejection whereas the agnostic has a more diffident position of uncertainty. Even today agnosticism is probably seen as a more socially acceptable and reflective view.

Amongst atheist communities the meanings of atheism and agnosticism cause considerable debate and angst about which, if any, truly reflect people’s positions. Many dislike the term atheist as a “belief in opposition” and seek alternatives like non-theist, naturalist, physicalist or materialist, free thinker, humanist and non-believer, even though some can have quite different meanings.

Atheism and agnosticism have very different etymologies. Atheism is literally without (“a”) gods (“theos”) from Greek and has a long history of use. Socrates was accused of atheism for not worshipping the gods of Athens. Early Christians were similarly accused by their opponents in Roman Empire. Atheism was usually used as a derogatory term for not believing in the accusers’ gods and not total rejection. Even though agnosticism uses a method of construction - without (“a”) knowledge of the divine (“gnosticism”), it was only coined publicly in1869. Prof Thomas H Huxley, an English biologist, was concerned like many others with the definitive nature of atheism and felt that agnosticism was a more reasoned stance.

Most dictionaries provide two similar but distinct meanings for atheism – a disbelief in god and a denial of the existence of god. For example,
•    Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
(http://www.answers.com/atheism)

Many writers refer to these positions as weak or passive (“disbelief”) and strong or active (“rejection”). Despite seemingly similar these positions are quite different. Imagine arguing either of these stances with a believer. Holding a weak atheist position requires you to refute any arguments seeking to prove the existence of god. This is similar to not believing in any number of ideas like unicorns, ghosts and Iraqi WMD. The believer has the responsibility to convince. The fact that billions of people believe in a god or gods does not constitute a proof.

Alternatively, supporting strong atheism requires that you refute proofs of god’s existence and, more importantly, prove that god doesn’t exist. Unfortunately as no definitive proof exists one way or the other, this strong position seems ultimately impossible to support. There is a slight wrinkle here, though. A strong atheist could reasonably ask “what do you mean by god?” There are many arguments around the apparent contradictory nature of some conceptions of god, such as the presence of an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god with the freewill and existence of evil.

Many of today’s strong atheists prefer to talk about probability rather than certainty of the non-existence of god. Richard Dawkins makes this point in “God Delusion” by describing god’s existence as highly improbable.

Instead of separating atheism and agnosticism I prefer to talk about the belief in existence of god (metaphysics) and claimed knowledge available (epistemology). So a strong atheist would have no belief in god and would also believe that we have certain knowledge of that. The weak atheist would have the same belief but make no claims about knowledge. The typical non-believing agnostic would also not believe in god but have doubts about whether or not it is ultimately unknowable.

References

Craig, E. 2005, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge, London.

Flynn, T. 2007, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Prometheus Books, New York

Martin, M. 2007, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Benedict, G. 2008, The Watkins Dictionary of Religions and Secular Faiths, Watkins Publishing, London

© 2008 Alex McCullie

pdf: Epicurus - an early Greek humanist (right-click to save)

Epicurus was a humanist and freethinker in the Hellenic period of Greece after the Alexander’s death. Many of his messages for the ancient Greeks are also relevant today – seeing the world as a physical occurrence; developing close friendships; dismissing beliefs in and fears of gods as irrational; and reducing unnecessary consumerism.

Born in Samos, an Athenian colony, in 341BCE, Epicurus formed one of the major philosophical movements of the Hellenic period of ancient Greece. In 307BCE Epicurus moved to Athens and bought a property close to Plato’s academy – Garden of Epicurus – ‘the Garden’. Unlike most Athenians he welcomed all comers including women and slaves equally. Something we also didn’t see with Christians many years later.

His name is still with us today as epicurean typically defined as “Devoted to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, especially to the enjoyment of good food and comfort.” (http://answers.com) Similarly, The Age newspaper in Melbourne offers an Epicure supplement (http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/epicure/) promoting fine dining and eating. Seeking 21st Century-style pleasure wrongly characterises Epicurus. He promoted the pursuit of pleasure through static pleasure – reduction of physical and psychological pain, freedom from disturbance - rather than kinetic pleasure, short-term physical pursuits. Epicurus went as far as avoiding civic participation as he saw it as a cause of distress.

Metaphysically Epicurus saw gods as tranquil and remote beings from human affairs. More importantly he believed they had no involvement in the natural world and in fact neither created the universe nor involved with it. So for all practical purposes Epicurus saw reality like today’s atheists. The gods played role models for humans only. Epicurus was an atomist - belief started by Democritus some 80 years previously - and as such believed the universe has always existed and matter is formed randomly by the combining and dissolving of indivisibly small particles, atoms.

Epicurus taught four principles to reduce mental distress, tetrapharmakon:

• Do not fear gods – as gods have no involvement in human affairs so there is no benefit to supplication or fear
• Do not fear death – there is no possibility of everlasting pleasure or pain after death based on the whims of gods. As existence ends with death, there is no distress after death similar to there is none before birth.
• Good is easy to obtain.
• Learning to enduring unavoidable pain – something that cannot be avoided any way.

Epicurus also promoted improving health by developing and maintaining close friendships. Epicureanism is often referred to as the ‘cult of friendship’.

Epicurus died in 270BCE a painful death that he appears to have faced gracefully.

References

Craig, E. 2005, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge, London.

Flynn, T. 2007, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Prometheus Books, New York.

Meyer, S. 2008, Ancient Ethics: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, London

Baltzly, D 2005, ‘Epicurus’, in P. F. O’Grady (ed), Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece, Ashgate, Hampshire, England, pp. 167-169.

Bakalis, N. 2005, Handbook of Greek Philosophy, Trafford Publishing, Canada

© 2008 Alex McCullie

This question was posed by Philosophy Today magazine. Here is my answer…

It’s not necessary.

This deceptively simple question has such profound implications for our sense of independence. I take a bottom-up approach to understanding reality. We have developed coherent and comprehensive physical explanations for our world. Using empirically-based sciences, we continue to build an understanding of the living and non-living aspects as it is now and has been over its 4.5 billion year history of Earth. There are still gaps in our knowledge and will also be so. Either way the growth of awareness of the physical reality over the last 500 years has been extraordinary by any measure.

However there still seems to be a significant ontological gap between the third-person physical explanations of the world and our rich first-person experiences. But is there?

Consider the following. Imagine all humans suddenly dying or consider the Earth some 750,000 years ago. Either way there would be no self-reflecting living things with personal experiences or imaging’s that concerns us today. The physical explanations of reality would be fully satisfactory, if somewhat incomplete. So the need for this gap does seem to depend on having animals like us with the ability for self-reflection. To put this timeframe into perspective we evolved to our present form some 100 000 years ago about 0.002% of the history of Earth.

We have a couple of ways of dealing with this gap. Firstly, we could infer an ontologically separate non-physical reality (NPR) – many people do. This reality could be as large as a parallel version to our total physical reality. Many see this type of NPR being filled with an all-powerful being as well as being a repository for the non-physical aspects of dead human beings – their ‘souls’. Or, for many, the NPR could be as limited as a repository for our first-person conscious processes – the “mind” – residing somewhere in the brain. This very limited form of NPR would disappear with the death of the host.

All versions of NPR seem to solve the dilemma of the gap between physical existence and your personal experiences until you delve into the detail. Immediately you notice two things. There is no physical evidence that these NPRs exist. That may seem self-evident as they are “non-physical” realities. Also there seems to be no satisfactory explanation of how these NPRs interact with the everyday physical world. For me, explanations around miracles, magic and supervenience do not “cut the mustard”. They are non-explanations and shouldn’t be considered enough to be convincing.

Given the main question let us concentrate on the universal NPR with an all-powerful being. The first difficulty is which one? The obvious sources of information, other than personal wishes or desires, are the many human religions. Given the age and obscurity of their sacred texts, most believers rely on interpretations from the religious leaders for their understanding about NPR. Even then the variations and contradictions of teachings within each religion and across different religions are staggering especially when presented with such certainty. Given the variations of theory and teaching surely a person’s belief must be an accident of birth both time and place.

From my limited observations there seems to be only a few common factors amongst the religions. There is a certainty that their version of NPR exists (often with an all-powerful being); that the universe has an underlying purpose; and that knowledge of this will give you an insight to the meaning in life. Many use the promise and threat of life after death to control people’s behaviour. No evidence other than personal revelations and testimonies are offered to support these beliefs. Even here the religious theories are malleable with regular adjustments to confirm to society expectations. Their “absolutes” is more “relative” than they wish to admit.

“The Vatican has overhauled its list of mortal sins, adding several more to cope with the age of globalisation.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/list-of-mortal-sins-gets-longer/2008/03/10/1205125804885.html

Alternatively, we could work with a physical view only. It is reasonable to expect that science will provide better explanations as to how the brain processes perceptions, feelings and cognition to manage our body’s interrelationships with the external physical world, including social relationships. Newer theories arising from neuroscience, linguistics and philosophy are proposing ways of understanding the human condition such as morality, aesthetic appreciation and socialisation. Theories like “embodied realism” provide satisfying explanations for human cognition within an embodied relationship with our environments.

Moreover there may always be a separation between third-person knowledge and first-person experience. And is that really a problem? You can still enjoy music, films, plays and art without participating in a romantic fantasy that will never fulfil its promises.

© 2008 Alex McCullie