Sam Harris lost me with the "good torture" and "good war" scenario against muslims. I think Harris is a creep with a low tolerance to religions and an even lower tolerance of muslims. He can take his intelligent bigot books and make money off of his followers, but nothing convinces me that this man is the leader of my belief in atheism.

Dominic, Harris's defense of torture was coherent and perfectly well reasoned. I disagree with it, but it doesn't reflect one way or another on other unrelated arguments he has made. What would your response be, by the way, to the hypothetical situations he raises? (See the above link.)

What's bizarre about many fundamentalist so-called red state evangelical "Christians" is that they've forgotten the basic tenets of Christianity and the simple message of Jesus: forgiveness, tolerance, unconditional love (note: no conditions), inclusion, compassion, humility ...

They are therefore Christians in name only. Unless they truly practise those basic precepts every day of their lives, they are not even remotely Christian in their faith.

In fact, moralising, judging, bullying, and hypocrisy were the transgressions of the Pharisees, which Christ spoke about to indicate how our human failings can divert us from the spiritual path.

It's never too late though :) ... they are always welcome back in the fold, just like the prodigal son. Because Christianity is about forgiveness, if they ever choose to get back on the path and admit they have been dreadfully wrong and have caused many people unnecessary suffering they almost certainly will be forgiven their transgressions.

"It's never too late though :) ... they are always welcome back in the fold, just like the prodigal son. Because Christianity is about forgiveness,..."

Hmmm...

Stan,

I think you fell into a well laid intellectual trap. Even those laying the trap didn't realize it.

You see, while many atheists lay a pox on all of our houses, the religion that lots of atheists really resent is Christianity - except in Israel, where they gun for Judaism.

It's the dominant religion that most atheists resent, primarily because of its dominance. A few (I'm sure at least one will pop up to dispute me) actually mean a pox on all your houses - but offering repentance to the "prodigal sons" is exactly what you are "supposed" to say.

SNAP!

Ruvy, there's a difference between Judaism and other religions, which is that Jews (excepting converts) are an ethnic group. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, are not ethnic groups. I can reject the beliefs of the religion I was born into, but I will always be a Jew. Jewish is what I am. Atheism is my understanding of the universe.

It follows that there an be no such thing as a Christian atheist. The Christian values Stan talks about are a) not Christian only, and b) rooted not in religion, but in basic humanity. Jesus' greatness is that he stood, and died, for those values, in the process helping to propagate them.

Wow...I'd better be careful here or this comment will run longer than the article, and I don't what to eclipse Jon's excellent piece.

Firstly Jon, my understanding is that the majority of Jews (but not all) and Arabs are both of the Semitic "race." But Jews and Muslims can be of any race--black, white, Spanish, Indian, Japanese, etc. In fact, there are African (black) Jews who are believed to be descendants of one of the tribes of Israel (maybe Ruvy can confirm this) and there has been a concerted effort to help them gain access to their Israeli "homeland."

What the crux of the matter is, IMO, esp for Jews, is an ethical and philosophical tradition, code of conduct, etc. quite part from the religion (Marx, Freud, Einstein, etc). Converts are ok, but they must be very well versed in Jewish law in order to be allowed to enter the fold. No such thing as a two-minute Baptism and you're in. But even Sammy Davis Jr. and Liz Taylor went through the whole megillah, so it can be done. But most Jews are believed to be "true" Jews, whether they are ethnically Japanese (and there are some), Asian, Indian (I knew one), black, Spanish (or Sephardic), Spanish/black (Moorish Jews), and so on and so on.

Save for the relatively rare convert, you are considered a Jew if your mother is. Thus though my dad was Christian, I am considered a full Jew, rather than half Jewish. Like much of Jewish law, as you touch on, this was also based on practical/legal considerations. You can always tell who the mother is (barring such 21st century exceptions like in vitro, egg donors etc). But the father? Just turn on any episode of Springer and you can see that, esp. prior to DNA testing, paternity could be anyone's guess...Not to be too irreverent, but Mary was the mother of Jesus, but who could prove who the father was anyway? Maybe she just got herself into a bind and claimed that G-d got her pregnant, no? I wasn't there, so I don't know, just as I didn't witness the burning bush or other miracles which are totally a matter of personal belief/faith.

Judaism appeals to me for many reasons, among them: the love od scholarship and learning; the empasis on mitzvahs (good deeds) in this life vs. pie in the sky/hellfire concentration on the next; eschewing converting anyone (unless you're a Jew for Jesus, and frankly that doesn't count in my book), a willingness to help others in need (thus so many Jewish doctors, lawyers, social workers, civil rights activists, professors, scholars, defense lawyers, etc.). Jews understand the plight of the underdog all too well, and are usually adept at using their skills and gifts to help those less fortunate if they choose to pursue this route professionally.

A few probs I have with Christianity: the empasis on the torture and death of Jesus, rather than with his life (with the exception of Easter); the emphasis on original sin (i.e. guilt and a sense of not being worthy from childhood on); confession and "repentance" as instant fix-its, and so on. Plus that edict to convert others, which has led to many acts of torture, brutality and whole scale murder (though Christians are not the only ones who engage in this, of course).

There have been cases where the most vile serial killers have "found religion" in prison, and though some may be sincere, some are doing it for purely cynical, self serving reasons. Again, all you need do is confess your sins (esp in Catholicism) and poof--there's your get out of jail card, and you are free to proceed with a clean slate and rinse and repeat til next Sunday.

But again, along with the bombing of abortion clinics kind of morality you mention in your piece, equally or nearly as offensive to me is the compulsion/obligation to convert. I believe strongly in live and let live. To me, it is presumptuous, condescending, and egotistical to actually try to convert others. It's really all about getting more money into the church coffers, and who benefits from the collection plate? All too often, not the homeless, meek, humble poor whom Jesus said would be blessed. Yes, there are soup kitchens, but not all churches do so, etc etc. The Bowery Mission provides free meals several times a day, but there's literally no free lunch--you must sit through a sermon, complete with hellfire/damnation references, to get your soup and bread.

I'll close with this one vignette:
One morning I was standing in front of my b/f's building in the Bronx, just taking in a little sunshine and serenity. I saw a couple approaching me: one had a sign reading "you can't get to heaven unless you're Roman Catholic." The man had flyers, and when he attempted to give one to me I shook my head and emphatically said no..thank..you.

As he walked by, he called over his shoulder: "You're going to hell!"

I shouted back: "I don't want to go to your heaven!"

I think that just about sums it up for me...again, thanks for a terrific and thought provoking article.

Elvira, that was quite a comment - maybe you do need to write a post. But to respond to a couple of your points:

Yes, Jews are found in different colors and "cultures" and many parts of the world. My comment about Jews being an ethnic group was a very simplified picture, but essentially it's true in the sense that next time some dictator decides to round up the Jews, my profession of atheism won't save me.

I too have always found Judaism's emphasis on this world, rather than on some imaginary other world, to be much more psychologically healthy than the outlooks of some other religions, but I've never seen why we need some sort of tribalism in order to be humanistic in that way.

I share your loathing of proselytizers. But usually (at least as far as Christians go) their intentions are good. Many feel it is a "moral" duty and believe they are doing good in the world. It's hard to condemn them for that, though pushy proselytizers do make me furious. (The so-called "Jews for Jesus" are the epitome of hypocrisy and don't deserve consideration.)

Elvira wrot: "Again, all you need do is confess your sins (esp in Catholicism) and poof--there's your get out of jail card, and you are free to proceed with a clean slate and rinse and repeat til next Sunday."

Lol. I wish it were like that. I think you're missing the point though Elvira. The idea is that we are all human, therefore none of us is able to be perfect (this what many of the evangelical mob forget). Everyone "sins", a million times a day in little ways. It's understanding that and accepting your imperfection which is at the heart of the sacrament of confession. It's not a get out of jail free card.

"The idea is that we are all human, therefore none of us is able to be perfect (this what many of the evangelical mob forget). Everyone "sins", a million times a day in little ways."

Stan, any rabbi worth his salt will tell you this. In fact, it is at the bottom of much Jewish Bible study - all prophets are imperfect, therefore, we plain folks, who aspire to be like assorted prophets, never can achieve perfection either. For this you do not need a confessional or the doctrine of original sin. You just need to teach the essential point that we are all human and therefore none of us can be perfect. Only G-d can be perfect.

Sounds to me like Mr. Sobel, the atheist Jew, gets to have his cake - a religiously bound community or family - and eat it too. But what about the rest of humanity that lose more when they turn atheist? I wonder, good sir, what do you make of this, from another Jew, Eric Gans, who I believe is not himself a believer:

"The critical test of the claim that a society can live without religion is not simply, as it has traditionally been understood, whether it can remain free of destructive internal conflict, but whether it can provide some goal beyond individual life that motivates its members to reproduce themselves. This question has been occulted in the past--by no means "arbitrarily"--by the subordination of women who bear and rear the children to men whose free exercise of their faculties has traditionally been little hindered by the existence of offspring. Contrary to the standard narrative of secularization, the evidence suggests that as childrearing in modern societies comes to depend on a positive decision by both parents, the explicit affirmation of spiritual transcendence that religion provides becomes not less but more necessary.

This is not conclusive proof that this expression need take a traditionally religious form. Nonetheless, it strongly corroborates the hypothesis that the archaic "oral" form of the historical narratives and other discourses of traditional religions provides moderns with a necessary link to the traditional, "Maussian" mode of social exchange that has not been abolished so much as submerged by the modern market system. We may not need religion to tell us to respect each other's desires, but without a circumstantial narrative that allows us to trace our heritage back to a model of originary exchange, we may no longer be able to insert these desires, whose biological satisfaction no longer insures reproduction, into the social context of the exchange of gifts between generations.

There is no basis in reason for condemning traditional religion as an irrational need from which Enlightenment will one day free us. On the contrary, if our conception of anthropology is correct, the highest truth is that of the survival of the human community, and it is the duty and destiny of the reason of the philosophers to reformulate itself around this truth. Whether we learn it "maximally" from religion or minimally from GA [Generative Anthropology], genuine wisdom requires us to accept, in the face of metaphysics that too many take as a synonym for science, that language and its associated logics exist in the service of the human and not the other way around."
Anthropoetics

Ruvy: Although I do occasionally go to confession, I usually silently ask for forgiveness because I know through a whole series of tough life lessons that I'm never going to be perfect. I like to include the sins of omission (no crude jokes here BTW, Mr Rose) as well - the things I didn't do rather than just the things I did - which are usually many, I might add. Those sins of omission, for instance, would include the kinds of things that happened in the holocaust, where people knew what was going on but chose to turn a blind eye and ignore it. Or it's a combination of both: where I have 100 bucks in my pocket and see a beggar who I know will ask for change, and then I cross the street; I haven't refused to give money to a beggar who might really need it, but I've put myself deliberately in a position where I won't be asked.

Really, confession (in all its forms) has a lot to with acceptance of yourself as a human being, rather than just an unloading of "guilt". Over a process of time, through constantly asking questions of yourself, it also helps one to ask: "Am I doing the right thing?" It is not about moralising, as I do that well enough when I'm indulging in regular bouts of self-justification.

This is all for me, of course - I don't pretend that I have any right to tell others how they should think. I have been taught that as a practising Christian, I have no right to make judgments of others, believers or non-believers.

This, in my view, is where evangelical Christian faith can fall down - although that's a judgment too.

Why talk about religion its always a problem??.,. :(

Wow...great comments all around!

RE: religion as a necessary component hard-wired into us as part of our social nature:

To me, this is one of the reasons taht AA works for those who "work it." Its twelve steps are steeped in the Christian tradtion of confession and repentance.

And just to be clear--as Stan said, confession can indeed function as an adjunct to those who truly want to live "moral" lives (not the equivalent of telling others how to live theirs', but focusing solely on being able to sleep at night and live with themselves rather than succumbing to our dollar driven culture's edict to accumulate wealth at all costs--and with no guilt over the often heartless, shameless means by which one must pursue and achieve this goal.

Thus, a "regular guy" like Stan using confession in the same therapeutic way as an AA'er might use the step where he does a personal moral inventory is probably a necessary step for those with deep seated addictions and other problems--as well as anyone who wants to live a personally "moral" life--according to their own definition of the term.

The idea is not that drinking itself is a "sin"--it is considered in AA, rightly or wrongly, as a "disease" which can be overcome with the help of a HIgher Power. However, the individual must do the very difficult work of taking inventory and thus breaking through the deep denial that prevents many addicts from owning up to the often horrendous ways they have abused others in pursuit of their fix.

Thus the moral inventory is a kind of confession (to a trusted sponsor or other non-judgmental person) of their "sins" of commission and omission. These might involve DWI's in which they injured or killed others; blackouts where they may have inadvertently killed someone on the road via a hit and run; destroying marriages and damaging children; losing jobs; descending into theft from families, friends, and strangers alike; and so on.

In order for a drunk (or in Christian terms, a sinner) to truly be repentant and make it more than a "get out of jail free card" they must, indeed, be sincerly remorseful for what they have done and do more than lip service to trying to make amends.

Thus the step in AA--making amends wherever possible. This can involve the very painful and humiliating act of going to wives, children, empoloyers, and others they have wronged and admitting what they did, how it affected others, and asking for forgiveness if possible.

This serves to make us more truly human and compassionate once again and recover our humanity--in the drunk's case, through AA; in Stan's case, through the church. Not that I'm comparing Stan to a drunk, but we are all, as Ruvy said, merely humans, mortals who make mistakes. The crux of the matter is whether we keep repeating these mistakes in an often mindless, compulsive manner, or whether we can gain the humility and humanity necessary to at least try harder to make fewer ones and hurt fewer people in future.

So confession in Christianity as well as the inventory/amends step in AA includes a higher power as well as an awareness of personal responsibility and a willingness to change by trying harder next time--or at least to own up to the fact that one is not perfect, and one may sin again. But the difference is that one may choose which sins are personally acceptable and which cross over into "crimes against humanity" or their fellow man.

Thus, to take an extreme example, I daresay it's unlikely Stan will ever murder anyone and wind up on death row. Nor will he probably be in a DWI and kill someone--though of course this happens and is an unintentional consequence, albeit an irresponsible and selfish one.

But some fundamentalist Christians, as Stan and others have said, pay lip service to this in the name of greed; cynically preaching chastity/monogamy, sobriety, the "sin" of homosexuality, etc. But look how many priests, church leaders, etc. have been exposed as worse sinners than most of their congregants put together?

So in my death row example, one murderer may truly be "rehabilitated" by his conversion. Another may use it in the same cynical, self serving manner described above to "get out of jail for free"--literally or figuratively.

So if Stan feels that he must confess and forgive himself for crossing the street in order to avoid giving a homeless man a substantial amount of money (which he would in all likelihood use for drink, drugs, etc although perhaps for food), he is, in fact, more qualified to be a church leader by example than many of the priests/preachers who are blindly revered by others, and become filthy rich in the process.

As a Jew, I don't go in for the "burning eternally in a lake of hellfire" interpretation of the afterlife. I think we create our own heaven and hell here on earth for ourselves and others.

But if there is a metaphysical hell, there is surely a special secret circle of Dante's inferno reserved for priests who molest the young boys in their charge, the preacher who steals from his poor congregants in order to amass enormous wealth, and the closeted gay Christian leader, congressman, etc who publicly denounces homosexuality as a sin that even Jesus might not forgive, while secretly molesting youngsters or other victims who trust in his authority.

Those of us who retain our humanity do not do these kind of enormous sins in part because in doing so we would not be able to sleep at night and live with ourselves. Others, from the President on down, have no trouble in justifying their real "sins" while preaching piety all in the same breath.

And of course, Stan does not presume to tell others how to live a Christian life, for it is as much a matter of individual choice as is an AA's individual way of working his own program.

Again, apologies to Jon for being such a blog hog, but these selfsame questions have been roiling around in my consciousness for some time now. Thanks for giving me a context to let all this out. Again, excellent article, excellent comments. If only more BC articles/comment threads were this significant...present company perhaps not included (lol).

Sounds to me like Mr. Sobel, the atheist Jew, gets to have his cake - a religiously bound community or family - and eat it too.

Not totally true - I don't really have a religiously bound community, it would feel too hypocritical. I do, however, feel an identity as Jewish. In the same way that I feel an identity as an American. Feeling some sense of identity like that does seem to be a built-in desire in our natures.

Ronnie, I have never read Eric Gans, but on a quick reading of the quote you supply, I sense overly twisted reasoning to get to a pre-conceived "conclusion." But I'm going to look at the link more carefully.

Elvira,

Having been involved in a 12-step program once myself, I have a clear understanding of what you are talking about here. According to my oldest son, who has a religious education, the first step in t'shuvá is admitting to a sin and the second step is resolving not to do it again, the third step is attempting to make amends, if it is possible. Wonder where Bob W. got that idea, eh?

Or was it Bill W.? I forget.

Mr. Sobel,

Far be it from me to answer the eternal question, what is a Jew? Yet it seems to me that a Jew without some sense of connection to Biblical stories, to Abraham (and his lesson on the need to move beyond blood sacrifice), to Moses and the Book of Exodus, as remembered at Passover, etc., wouldn't have a very strong connection to Jewishness. A taste for bagels or some simple mark of ethnicity (and there is of course more than one Jewish ethnicity and language) wouldn't take one very far. Yes, one can have a secular interest in, say, Jewish literature; but here we would still find recurring themes, e.g. the Wandering Jew, that take us back to the Bible (Exodus).

In other words, we might conclude, when dwelling on the importance of exodus to our secular Jewish identity, that the "secular" Jew is just another form or historical stage of the "sacred" Jew. The distinction between secular and sacred might exist from various religious perspectives, where the ordained or the Book decree what is truly sacred, and what is not. But from the anthropological perspective of the secular Jew, what is "secular" may be just as powerfully sacred as what is officially "sacred". Thus millions of men have fought and died for America, perhaps as many as for the Biblical Israel in covenant with God.

Still, despite the American sacrifices, I cannot help but feel that the secular Jew has a firmer hold of an identity with religious or sacred foundations than does the secular (post-Christian) American, many of whom today seem rather lost in terms of understanding what should be sacred in their lives. And the comparison would be a lot stronger if we substituted just about any other nation for America, a nation obviously in decline today, say, e.g., Spain or Sweden - judging by demographic and cultural trends.) The Jewish nation, being founded in the first national covenant with "God" has a religious quality or force that is emulated by the nations that follow, but never, it seems, with quite the same bonding power.

Nonetheless, I may be wrong about that. (Lots of secular Jews in Anerica marry out and so Jewish identity may be disappearing too.) What it seems to me the comments here are suggesting is that the difference between a religious faith and those who know the anthropological wisdom of emulating a religion in order to, say, get people off alcohol, may be vanishingly small, notwithstanding the rhetorical efforts of those who would distance themselves from religion. In other words, distinguishing between those who believe in God and those who don't doesn't get us very far unless you can show that the atheist can truly live without a secular (i.e. new "sacred") understanding of "God", i.e. some sense of a subsistent Being which seemingly guarantees the significance of the words and things we share, which guarantees the power of the sacred around which people are organized, be the sacred a cross, a flag, a Nike swoosh, a Marilyn poster, etc. etc.

I don't think the atheist can live without a secular "god" or without the forms of the sacred this "god" guarantees. Even if one day we are all "atheists" we will still have to deny our belief in "God". In other words, the concept will still way heavy on our consciousness. This is because it is inherent to the way our language works. The idea or name of God was the first word ever spoken. That is the crux of Eric Gans' anthropological hypothesis; he is a brilliant man, not easily and honestly dismissed, whatever the limits of his writing style. He argues that once all the excess baggage is stripped off our anthropologies, what is ultimately at stake between a religious anthropology and a secular one is quite small. The difference between the faith that God created man or the belief that man created God is hard to grasp if we hypothesize that the first word was the name of "God" (as was intuited in the opening of the Gospel of John) and that this name/word could only have come into existence as an act of faith, whether this was simply a human act of faith - as the only way a group of protohumans could have solved an internal conflict and moved beyond the animal pecking order and into a new kind of linguistically/religiously-mediated community - or whether it was an act of faith in which God himself had a hand through some form of revelation. We cannot really know. But what we can know is that the human begins with an act of faith in that which seems to guarantee what the new human community must form itself around: the sacred (the worldly incarnation of divine Being), whether represented by a primal gesture, the cross, Nike swoosh, or Marilyn.

Ronnie, thank you for that very thought-provoking comment. I believe I agree with much of what you say. Where I disagree may be more a matter of terminology than concept. But I think you go out on a limb when you say this:

Even if one day we are all "atheists" we will still have to deny our belief in "God". In other words, the concept will still weigh heavy on our consciousness.

I suspect if you presented this argument in one of the post-religious societies of Western Europe, you'd get some pretty strong disagreement.

In my case, I believe that to the extent the concept of God weighs heavily on me, it's because it weighs so heavily in the extremely religious country in which I live (the US).

Essentially, I think your argument - and what I'm gathering from my quick look at Gans's generative anthropology - is a pretty pessimistic one. It seems to assume that we can't progress beyond the strictures of our evolution. That may very well be so, but our advanced science and philosophy, and the existence of some largely peaceful, non-repressive atheistic countries, offers some contrary evidence.

I also think that talking of "God" being the "first word" is speculative. I think it's much more likely to have been "Mommy." In fact the concept of God can be understood as a rather simple substitution for the authority and security of caregivers (parents) who stop fulfilling that role after we grow up, yet leave behind in us a desire for comfort and care that we never shake.

I do not believe we necessarily need faith, or belief in the kinds of stories that Sam Harris harshly but accurately calls "preposterous," to fulfill these needs. Even if we did, that would only reflect on the imperfections and weaknesses of our own natures, which all of us, religious and non-religious alike, seem to agree upon.

What bothers me are fundy atheists.
They are turning an idea into an organized religion similar in the vain of judaism and christinity.

People like Sam Harris undoubtedly carry a racist tone in their works that can be found in every religion today. There is even a self-professed atheist messiah by the name of David Bedford organizing around the world. Even Richard Dawkins teachings (his onset to "de-religionalize" the world) is very reminiscent of religion organizations that have appeared through history (like the crusades and the muslim conquest of the Byzantine Empire).
I'd like to make up my own sect of atheism right here, it is the "Independent-self atheist" group. We don't belong to any clubs or atheist supported organizations, we don't even meet or talk about our atheism. If anyone wants to join, just type here you are an "Independent-self atheist" and leave other people alone with their religions (be it muslim, christian, atheist, jewish, buddhist, etc...).

Heh. I sympathize, Dominic. That's why I've had trouble getting behind organizations like the Brights. Never been a joiner. I enjoy the Harris-Dawkins-Dennett-Churchland-etc. sort of discussion because it's science-based. (Well, not Harris so much.) It's more a community of people discussing an important issue than a movement per se.

Jon I used to believe that... "It's more a community of people discussing an important issue than a movement per se"

But if you look through history that is how religion started. People would seek fellowship, and then before you know it we got a group of folks knocking another group down (saying they are stupid)etc..

Jon, thanks for your response. Allow me a couple more comments in turn. You wrote:

"I suspect if you presented this argument in one of the post-religious societies of Western Europe, you'd get some pretty strong disagreement....
our advanced science and philosophy, and the existence of some largely peaceful, non-repressive atheistic countries, offers some contrary evidence."

-but you can't point to one post-religious society that has yet proven capable of reproducing itself without mass immigration. Increasingly in Europe, Allah is coming to town and the scene threatens to become much less peaceful, whether the believers or atheists or both will be to blame. In turn, more and more put faith in the EU, but its increasingly totalitarian forms of bureaucratic rule are a poor substitute for humble faith in God and suggest that the atheists need to construct their own religion of liberal guilt when they give up Christianity. In all of this conceptions of "God", or men playing God, still abound. Nowhere is this more evident than in the environmentalists' religion where human responsibility for global warming is beyond doubt. We no longer believe in God but WE are now omnipotent.

"I also think that talking of "God" being the "first word" is speculative. I think it's much more likely to have been "Mommy." In fact the concept of God can be understood as a rather simple substitution for the authority and security of caregivers (parents) who stop fulfilling that role after we grow up, yet leave behind in us a desire for comfort and care that we never shake."

The argument is that the "name of God", not the verbalization G-o-d, is the first "word". I should have said the first sign, not word, for the first sign, the first arbitrarily chosen form of symbolic (not indexical) representation, may just as well have been a non-verbal gesture as a verbal one. By saying the first sign is the "name of God", we argue that the first sign, whatever its shape or sound, implicitly invokes or assumes the power of a Being who seems to guarantee the presence of the sacred scene on which the sign is shared.

We all know "ma" or something like it is the easiest sound for infants to make and so it is the sign for mother in many languages. But if you want to propose that language first emerges in conversation between mother and child, you need some way of explaining why the two would have need of a human kind of conversation, before other proto-humans also acquired it, and how something that emerges in such an intimate setting can then become the basis for a shared communal, public, sign, keeping in mind that the given nature of our signs is arbitrary - why do we say t-r-ee for a tree? and not "googer"? - and thus the question of how they are remembered, repeated, and shared is key.

Here we need to dwell on the public qualities of language and hypothesize a relationship between the emergence of language and shared communal events of such importance that the memory of the arbitrary signifier that someone first performed, and its relation to a significant, memorable event and a sacred thing that centered the event, is known to all who shared in witnessing the event and/or in the specific linguistic community where this memorable sign still has meaning.

I think if you explore this question, you will find that the Gansian arguments for language and religion being coeval, and for the two first emerging among groups of adult males in conflict and in need of some new way of deferring their conflict and ordering themselves (at a time when an animal pecking order is breaking down) is the more convincing argument since there is, to my knowledge, yet no serious hypothesis of how specifically human symbolic language could have first emerged between mother and child and then be shared with others. Human language must first be communal and public before it shapes a private, intimate, imagination, precisely because our language always takes the basic form of a symbolic representation of a sacred center, attempting to focus the attention of a profane, human, periphery. Once language has emerged, then mothers take on the job of initiating their children into the community of language.

FYI, here is Gil Bailie's Catholic take on the Gans article quoted above.

Jon,

Just a quick couple of comments here. And please do not take offense from any of them. In fact, try to remember that as a child, I was an atheist.

You and I and all other Jews and Children of Israel are part of a nation - not some damned ethnic group - a nation. But that national identity is based on - well it is based on the "brit" (covenant) stamped into our flesh.

That, IMHO, is the problem. If G-d weighs heavily on you, it means that in your soul, you are struggling with issues of faith. That is what Children of Israel do. We struggle with faith - we wrestle with G-d. It has nothing to do with all the Christians around you, though rejecting their religion may seem like atheism to you. Actually, if that is the case, it is a healthy sign that you realize that you are from a people set apart from mankind.

Here is where facts and evidence enter into it all. No matter how hard Jews try, there are very few places on the planet where they are accepted with total equanimity by the majority population. One of those few places has been India. But in spite of the lack of persecution and anti-Semitism in India, the vast majority of Indian Jews have come home to Israel or have emigrated to Great Britain or Australia where there is anti-Semitism (sorry Stan, no slams intended here).

So, no matter where Jews live, they wind up set apart form the general run of the population. This feeling of set-apartness could be called alienation. That is the easy way out. But, to the degree that Jews care that they are Jewish, and you appear to agree with me that being Jewish is what you are and that you can't run away from it, so therefore you appear to care, we are set apart from the general run of the population.

This set-apartness can be good - as in Jews being outstanding in fields of law, art, culture, finance, far out of proportion to our percentage of the population - or it can be bad, as is in being restricted to ghettos and told we can only enter certain trades and that we must suffer humiliation from generation to generation. BOTH CONDITIONS STILL EXIST. But both are signs of set-apartness. Given that these are facts of Jewish life, we need to draw a conclusion from them. The logical conclusion is that we are a people, a nation, set apart from mankind.

This is not based on belief - it is an objective statement of the facts. Considerations of G-d do not enter into this basic fact that we cannot get away from.

So, it is worth asking the question - at least for those of us who still care. Does that "brit milá" have anything to do with this set-apartness? Our Torah says that we are to be a nation set apart. And we are, whether we want to be (and believe me, all those secular Israelis DON'T want to be) or not.

One cannot prove G-d with arguments. One can create a paradigm of the physical universe that permits the possibility of the existence of a Creator. But it takes faith to prove that Creator's existence. Science and logic will only get you so far. They will not get you far enough, though.

I suggest that you take a look, not at the arguments for or against G-d, but rather at the nature of the wisdom of our own scholars and how it was obtained. Frankly, when I began to understand that, I began to understand that A) there is a G-d, and B) one can deduce the nature of what He wants from learning about nature and the universe - His creation has His Fingerprints all over it.

You may not come to those conclusions. But you may see That there is more to the physical world than meets even the aided eye.

I guess these comments weren't so quick, eh?

Ronnie says (#16): "The idea or name of God was the first word ever spoken."

Nah. The first word ever spoken was, "Run!", uttered under extreme duress by Og (circa 30,000 BC), after finding that he and his clan had disturbed a group of prehistoric bears (Arctodus), who then proceeded to eat the slower runners.

You don't think Og and company actually sat around thinking and talking about metaphysics, do you?

And comments like that by duane really make atheists on a whole look stupid!

I don't get it.

Ronnie, I can't pretend to discuss Gans with you, I've barely scratched the surface of those ideas, but I will say this: a theory of language and religion being coeval can only be a theory. (I'm not sure coeval is the best word - it means contemporaneous, but not necessarily related, no?) My flippant remark that the first word was probably "Mommy" wasn't meant to imply that language evolved out of mother-child communication - in fact it seems much more sensible to me to theorize that it evolved out of social interactions. In any case, there are plenty of other reasonable theories as to the origin of language besides the one you espouse. I'm not expert in any of them, but this article touches on some of them.

What strikes me as odd is your mixing of scientific thinking and what I can only perceive as mushy religious thinking. You talk of "the emergence of language and shared communal events of such importance that the memory of the arbitrary signifier that someone first performed, and its relation to a significant, memorable event and a sacred thing that centered the event, is known to all..." But it's a pretty big assumption to imagine that this hypothetical event was considered "sacred." Whatever it may have been, assuming it existed, is eternally lost in the mists of time.

Ruvy, I'm interested in your conversion away from atheism and back into relgious belief. Most people I know who have crossed that line have crossed it the other way. My earlier comment wasn't meant to imply that God weighs heavily on me in some experiential way, but that it's hard not to be thinking about religion in a society where religion is so dominant. I don't like what religion does to people, even my own people - look at what's happened between Israel and the Palestinians, look what happens in insular Hasidic communities in the US - and I hate what it does to societies and how it distorts and too often corrupts our essential humanity.

I agree with you about our set-apartness. But I believe this set-apartness was created over time by historical and intellectual events: how we were treated over centuries and millennia; by certain ideas related to the founding of the religion and the development of rabbinical thinking; shared culture, persecution and identity, and values like the importance of education and study. Not by any inherent worthiness, or uniqueness of origin.

Duane: "Nah. The first word ever spoken was, "Run!", uttered under extreme duress by Og (circa 30,000 BC), after finding that he and his clan had disturbed a group of prehistoric bears (Arctodus), who then proceeded to eat the slower runners.

You don't think Og and company actually sat around thinking and talking about metaphysics, do you?"

- No, not at all. I merely imply that the first sign would have had the sacred charge of an invocation of something/someone/some Being that Og and the boys could have had no idea how to discuss or conceive. The "psychological", because communal, force of the discovery of language/the name of God would have been immense, but the understanding would have been non-existent. Religion/language truly begins with an inability on man's part to reason through what it is all about. It would take millennia for people to figure out how to sit around talking metaphysics. But the lesson never ends...

As for your hypothesis about "run!", surely the first humans, in their pre-existing apeness, already had a way of signalling an immediate danger to each other. Many animals can do this. What makes humans and our symbolic language different is that we can say "run!" when there is no external danger about, and yet we know what is meant without the context of bears, or whatever. The only context we need is the human community itself, for it is here that we find a kind of danger from each other and fear of disorder among ourselves. In the human context, "run!" can mean "tasty morsel/don't touch that tasty morsel", or "beautiful woman/danger", or run away because if you don't there will be a storm of violence as every man tries to grab a piece of what we all desire. To avoid our own violence we say "run!" or "desirable but don't touch" or "sacred!" And then, when everyone makes the sacred sign, showing equal ownership in the sign that re-presents the thing, a priest or holy man can enter the scene and divide up the morsel on the model of our equalitarian sharing in the sign, or perform a marriage according to the shared law, etc.

Jon,

Sure, there are many theories of language origin, and we can never go back and observe the first emergence of language. So, how do we judge among them? Well, a new theory of language origin should be able to expand our human self-understanding. It should teach us something about ourselves that first makes sense and then serves as a paradigm for further developments in human sciences, empirical and theoretical. And, to the extent that more than one theory serves these ends, we need to invoke Ockham's razor: which theory tells us the most with the least metaphysical embroidery or fewest unprovable assumptions? What minimal hypothesis of language origin can be developed into a basis for a powerful new account of our historical or cultural evolution? If you study Eric Gans, you will see he scores very well in these respects.

And yes, if you follow his logical arguments it should encourage in you a renewed respect for religious language. Sure, a lot of religion talk in the world is "mushy" mumbo jumbo. But even the mushy can be pragmatically useful to its users and hence in some sense "true". On the other hand, some forms of religious thought are profound revelations in human anthropology, revelations whose pragmatic usefulness is not immediately apparent. There is indeed more anthropological understanding distilled in the Bible than in your average university department of anthropology.

Again, a good part of our religious understandings are more pragmatic or paradoxically mysterious than anything else, and they require further experience or explication to make the pragmatic knowledge apparent in more concrete or universal terms. But whatever the mumbo jumbo, if a religion is serving the pragmatic need of keeping people from killing each other, it is in some sense true to humanity at a certain point in history, however unreasonable it may seem from someone who takes its surface claims too literally or critically.

The sciences of human self-understanding cannot be pursued on the models of the natural sciences, for we are not simply observers/scientists but players in a game that, if we are to do well, requires of us certain acts of shared faith. The greatest human science cannot disprove the need for religion. As the present Pope likes to say, we need to renew our understanding of how reason and faith can only grow together.

"I'm interested in your conversion away from atheism and back into religious belief.

Jon,

I started writing a comment in answer, but after several paragraphs, I realized that it was a separate article in itself - a journey to faith. Like Elvira, I do not really wish to be a blog-hog. Besides, there are a whole bunch of us Jews on blog Critics whom I hope to reach (and a few who will shun what I write as non-sense).

Ronnie, from a practical standpoint, I would agree with this statement:

if a religion is serving the pragmatic need of keeping people from killing each other, it is in some sense true to humanity at a certain point in history, however unreasonable it may seem from someone who takes its surface claims too literally or critically.

The only problem is, can you name a religion that, on balance, serves that need? Maybe Buddhism. Given the usual state of things on Earth, you can hardly seriously think that Islam, Christianity or Hinduism keep people from killing each other. Quite the opposite.

imo religions have done reasonably well within their own groups...not so well with inter-group killing based on fear/mistrust of the 'other'

Ronnie - superstitious behavior (religious ceremony/obsessive compulsive repetition) can appear to be pragmatically useful and even necessary to the practitioner...in what sense does that make the dogma/neurosis on which it is based true - ?

ok..read the entire thread...

and i will have to refute things like..."The sciences of human self-understanding cannot be pursued on the models of the natural sciences,"

since the empirical data clearly shows that MORE understanding of the human condition has come from science than any religion

things like.."for we are not simply observers/scientists but players in a game that, if we are to do well, requires of us certain acts of shared faith."

this idea of "shared faith" is completely fallacious, as various cultures in human history have shown

now, can such a "shared faith" be used to unify a "tribe"...of course it can...as did fascism or Stalinist communism...doesn't make them the best answer for all...even tho in the case of fascism it produced a high degree of efficiency and devotion

unfortunately, those who chose to "believe" in whatever, cannot be Reasoned with...due to their "faith"..and so this conversation is about worthless

the Tao of D'oh.

unfortunately, those who chose to "believe" in whatever, cannot be Reasoned with...due to their "faith"..and so this conversation is about worthless

Right, jaz, except for the part about the conversation being worthless. It's our curse and our paradox that we must (for moral reasons) persist in reasoning with people who "believe" in things without evidence. The human brain is capable of believing nonsense one minute and thinking rationally the next. And we're all human, even those of us who consciously reject the former path.

i understand Jon, and believe me..i've been through this conversation too many times to think about here on BC

the "worthless" only refers to my own feeling on the matter

inevitable youtube link

The reason brain-using folks like jaz no longer have the heart to engage is clear to anyone who's read these threads, and indeed this one. A paranoid superstitious egomaniac like Ruvy writes long insane rants full of portentious verbiage like "a people, a nation, set apart from mankind." (Mankind!) No doubt Ruvy's divined all this from his secret Torah codes.

And instead of people laughing at this mumbo-jumbo designed to ensnare those few lapsed Jews who are self-centered and stupid enough to think this ancient supernatural zoning-board fantasy is real and pointing out how hysterically oh, exclusionist, and ridiculous this worldview is, or, perhaps, somebody point out how convenient it is that God has promised Ruvy the actual plot of land where he happens to be living right now , we have people chiming in with "Hmm... fascinating perspective."

I agree with Jon that for moral reasons, we must point out religious lunacy for what it is. And even though it's frustrating to receive flamey responses ( I certainly will be told I'm just as bad as Ruvy because my religion is atheism, for instance), I always try to remember that many other people read who do not comment.

Well Les,

At least, if we know nothing else, we know what you think of me.

I didn't push my beliefs here at all. I simply pointed put to a fellow Jew a fact that he agrees with - though he does not agree with its cause. And, in the interest of not trying to hog the comment thread, among other things, I've abstained from arguing with him.

If you have trouble with what you think are my beliefs, that is your problem, not mine. I'm not interested in convincing you of anything.

i will say, tho Ruvy and i have had many disagreements on the Topic..

i'll take a million of his approach to a single "crusader" who screams "convert or die"

and as always , i remain....apostate and heretic

Jon: "can you name a religion that, on balance, serves that need? Maybe Buddhism. Given the usual state of things on Earth, you can hardly seriously think that Islam, Christianity or Hinduism keep people from killing each other. Quite the opposite."

It's like troll said, all religions bond their members, more or less successfully (there is a Darwinian fitness test of religions ongoing in history, which is why few people any more practice, say, human sacrifice, and why not all religions are able to produce similarly complex or free societies). This bonding is certainly not without failures or violence (scapegoating, etc). But if violence were more the rule than the exception we would not have survived this long in history with such a complex society. And one of the primary ways religions bond their members is by opposing them to an Other. This realization doesn't make me a relativizing pacifist, or a full-time Buddhist, but that's a topic for another day....

The larger point is that all culture acts to defer violence, not simply religion. Our cultural history is a process of ongoing differentiations of consciousness in which we have, first of all, separated language and ritual, and eventually separated art from religion, then also philosophy, national cultures, and science. All these developments are generally positive though they too can be corrupted to violent ends. Again, if violence were more the exception than the rule with philosophy or science, say, then we would not have survived so long. Anyway, the question is why, after all these differentiations, is there still some role left for religion to play? Your answer seems to be: because a lot of people are stupider or more unreasonable than me. This strikes me as a rather unsophisticated answer. Again, I return to my first question: how come only religious societies today seem capable of committing themselves to reproduce themselves at mere replacement levels?

A society that is capable of first figuring out how to build a nuclear bomb is also a society that is capable of organizing millions of people in a collective endeavor that requires a lot of discipline, focus and thought. Thus the paradox is evident: those who are capable of killing millions are also capable of organizing millions in productive, non-violent, tasks, building nuclear power plants to light homes, factories, etc. Maybe history will eventually come to an end when we bomb each other into oblivion; so far it hasn't and life is much easier and richer for those with the culture that can make a bomb for the first time...

troll: "Ronnie - superstitious behavior (religious ceremony/obsessive compulsive repetition) can appear to be pragmatically useful and even necessary to the practitioner...in what sense does that make the dogma/neurosis on which it is based true - ?"

-well, first of all, it only becomes labeled as dogma or neurosis when it is no longer as necessary as it once was when it was vital religion. All things that work are eventually eroded and have to be renewed by new practices or understandings. Human society is like a marketplace where the value of all useful knowledge or practice is eventually discounted when everyone knows it.

As for truth, I don't think any of us can know the whole truth of humanity in history. We can only hope to know a little more of it than those who came before. With each new kind of historical experience we gain further insights into the manifold possibilities inherent in our origins. Having said this, there are basically two kinds of truth: the pragmatic truth that bonds people without explaining why or how they are bonded, and the fundamental truth that, once revealed, destroys the mystery or paradox that is essential to the pragmatic bonding by throwing light on how it works. Again, it is like a market: to create a market and the uncertainty about value which is necessary to get people trading and to win or lose accordingly, you need to be in touch with what is pragmatic, like a guy who is able to turn a mob's resentment away from himself as their potential victim and onto another guy. But if you discover some fundamental knowledge that shows the market how it operates - e.g. you are able to analyze scapegoating and reveal it like Jesus did - then you destroy the uncertainty on which the market operates; you kill one market and people have to start a new one with more advanced forms of pragmatic paradox creating the uncertainty on which people trade. Compassionate Conservatism, anyone?

Thus there is the "truth" that the rich man claims is revealed by his success; and there is the "truth" of he who chases the market out of the temple.

jaz: "since the empirical data clearly shows that MORE understanding of the human condition has come from science than any religion"

-With respect, I think that's BS. I went to university, took various degrees, and studied social sciences for many years and learned relatively little about the human condition in any fundamental sense (the pragmatic use of social sciences is, again, another matter). I have since learned much more from a kind of Girardian-Gansian anthropological science that is not traditional social science and that is sympathetic to religion as an anthropology in its own right. Read Gans' analysis (in his book Science and Faith) of the Christian Trinity as an anthropology of representation, for example. It will teach you more about representation than any traditional social science.

jon: "It's our curse and our paradox that we must (for moral reasons) persist in reasoning with people who "believe" in things without evidence. The human brain is capable of believing nonsense one minute and thinking rationally the next. And we're all human, even those of us who consciously reject the former path."

-look, there is perhaps an important distinction to make between religion and faith. Ritualistic dogma is not for everyone. But, in contrast, the person of faith takes things on faith - s/he doesn't pretend to know of the existence of, say, God with any certainty, but s/he knows it changes life for the better when one acts on faith, instead of out of a too-smart-for-your-own-good "faith" that reason is all we need to show us how to be good persons committed to a larger community and family across the generations. If you think you act for moral reasons, can you really make a convincing case for understanding where our morality (or reason) comes from? If you rely on evolutionary psychology, or the like, I think you can't (another topic for another day). I believe you have to relate ethics/morality to the specific event of the origin of language and its continuing evolution through unfolding historical events. In other words, morality can only be understood through some kind of "faith" commitment to studying and understanding the human historical process, but without the hubris that this process can be understood, controlled, and mastered, like nature. Unlike nature, I can learn your historical game and fight back, changing the game and creating conditions in which we would both benefit from some shared faith instead of all-out conflict or totalitarian mastery by one system of "reason" and not another. History never comes to an end. Its truth is open-ended and we better open ourselves to grasp its unfolding truths through some kind of faith in the future. And so, if religion or faith continues to play a role in this human historical process, there may be a reason for this that you can't yet grasp.

"...there is perhaps an important distinction to make between religion and faith. Ritualistic dogma is not for everyone. But, in contrast, the person of faith takes things on faith - s/he doesn't pretend to know of the existence of, say, God with any certainty, but s/he knows it changes life for the better when one acts on faith, instead of out of a too-smart-for-your-own-good 'faith' that reason is all we need to show us how to be good persons committed to a larger community and family across the generations."

Ronnie, you described my wife to a "t". She always believed in G-d, that G-d covered her like a warm blanket that she could feel. In her family, there was an antipathy to religious instruction, particularly of Judaism. While over the nineteen years of our marriage, I have attempted to teach her about laws, rituals and concepts of Judaism, I've done so very slowly and carefully, so as not to in any way damage her powerful faith. She taught me about the reality of G-d. Everything I attempt to write here is a puerile attempt to explain what my wife taught me. A puerile attempt to put into words what cannot be described with words - the innate assurance that G-d watches over us, the trust that He is there for us, and the understanding that no matter how painful and wrong things seem, His will is being done.

Gonzo Jaz, thank you for the kind words.
Civil discourse is far better than anger, discord, viciousness and name-calling.

All righty, let's get into it then! :-)

Ronnie:
Yes, religion bonds people, of course. So do family, tribe, geography, language, and many other commonalities. Of these, religion is the only important one that's fundamentally based on fiction.

Now, fiction has its value. It's a product of imagination, which is an essential part of our being. I argue that as a society we need to cast off these fictions, which served us well in the past, and adopt a worldview based on science and reason. Why? Because the divisions caused by religion - which you admit work partly by pitting an Us against an Other - are now capable of killing millions of us at a time and even destroying civilization, rather than merely sacking a village or running some thousands of Jews out of your country.

You're absolutely right that "those who are capable of killing millions are also capable of organizing millions in productive, non-violent, tasks, building nuclear power plants to light homes, factories, etc." But what enabled those technologies? Science and reason. If we still lived in theocracies, we wouldn't have those things. All you seem to be saying is that our quality of life has benefited from science and technology.

I certainly agree that cultural and intellectual developments - "ongoing differentiations of consciousness" in your phrase - can be put to both positive and negative use. Yet that seems to contradict your statement that "all culture acts to defer violence." Do you mean absolutely, or on balance? Either way, the evidence of my eyes says it ain't necessarily so.

You ask why "only religious societies today seem capable of committing themselves to reproduce themselves at mere replacement levels?" That's a very interesting point. Those societies that are more or less post-religious are definitely reproducing less than others. But you seem to imply that there are obvious moral values to one or the other. I don't think there are. If a culture dies out because it isn't having enough babies, so be it. A culture with unchecked reproduction gets into a whole different set of problems. Is one better than the other? How to strike a happy, self-sustaining medium might be a very important question, but one to be decided by rational thought, not value judgments.

I think overall your thinking has been rather narrowed by the Gansian theories. You say, "With each new kind of historical experience we gain further insights into the manifold possibilities inherent in our origins." Why our origins? Why must these possibilities all somehow inhere in our origins? Why always go back to origins? Certainly there is a lot that science and philosophy have yet to uncover about our nature and composition. But if we have to relate everything back to origins, we risk becoming like an adherent of evolutionary psychology who automatically assumes every human behavior can be easily traced to some evolutionary need.

You say: "morality can only be understood through some kind of 'faith' commitment to studying and understanding the human historical process, but without the hubris that this process can be understood, controlled, and mastered, like nature." I don't understand why if you take away hubris you have to fill it with "faith" (belief without evidence). That seems like a pretty sour view of human possibility - that if we outgrow ancient fictions we must create new ones on which to rely. Morality can be studied many different ways. I wouldn't venture to say there's only one way, or to try to say what that is.

Ronnie sez - "Read Gans' analysis (in his book Science and Faith) of the Christian Trinity as an anthropology of representation, for example. It will teach you more about representation than any traditional social science."

you do NOT want to go into the "Trinity" bit in this topic, but even there, your Analogy falls short, imo

Symbolic logic...even basic algebra go much further in exemplifying any representational model than the pretzel thinking involved in attempting to rationalize the "Trinity" as a single "god"

the real problem i have with some of what Ronnie is postulating is the fallacious axiom (so it appears by reading) that somehow religion is "the origin of language"

shaving with Ockham's razor, we get back to Og and his buddies...where a solid case can be made that the origin of language was created from the need to be able to hunt together and defend the Tribe

it's not until later that the Tribe can support it's Elders, and some of those crafty bastards create Religion as the first "science" to both try and explain the world around them and to keep control of the younger men via superstition and the "god said so" injunction.

Faith is definitely demonstrable, and usually a positive force in a human Life, but Faith cannot defy physics. Religion, on the other hand, has historically been demonstrated to be a Force for unity of purpose under the control of the priest class for nothing more than temporal gain in both the financial and political realms.

the Tao of D'oh.

This is what happens we get into a religious debate and now atheism becomes a religion... Damn this is fucking ridiculous! Our imaginations created religions, just as many people are using their imagination of atheism to knock other people's beliefs down. This is not what atheism is. IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE, THEN STOP TELLING PEOPLE THEY ARE IGNORANT FOR BELIEVING. I am an atheist, I ignore religion and rleigion conversations. Because if I start saying that religion is fiction, I'm no better than the damn crusaders or the islamist extremist you try to convert others.

"Independent-Self Atheist", thats what I am and there is no need to discuss religion at all.

shaving with Ockham's razor, we get back to Og and his buddies...where a solid case can be made that the origin of language was created from the need to be able to hunt together and defend the Tribe

it's not until later that the Tribe can support it's Elders, and some of those crafty bastards create Religion as the first "science" to both try and explain the world around them and to keep control of the younger men via superstition and the "god said so" injunction.

This is not a valid case to debunk religion [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]. It makes atheism on a whole look stupid. Stop falling into these traps of religion conversations. An atheist does not believe in religion, therefore an atheist should not speak of it!

dominic - calling me names and feebly attempting to cast aspersions due to your own projections is not conducive to you being taken the least bit seriously

try reading comprehension instead of whining [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]

i was speaking about the Origin of Language, now wasn't I

[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]

or put otherwise:

check yourself Dom...you're confusing 'religion' with 'religious tenets'

religions exists - no 'trap' in discussing them and their influences...it's god whose existence is questionable

God does not exist you fucking idiots! What type of atheists are you to try and push your shit on others who believe. Atehism is a personal choice, when you start making rash stories about "Og" and crap like that you look idiotic! Don't push atheism down anyone's throat, when you do that it becomes a movement... a religion!

Read between the fucking lines, atheism is a personal choice, we have no say or history on the beginning of mankinds first words. [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]

All of you with supernatural believes (ghosts, God, lochness monster, etc) are "weak" atheists or agnostics. A true atheist does not recognize comments about God or religion, that is the only way to get pass the idiom of society and its religious doctrine fused within society and culture.

again, reading comprehension is something you should look into Dominic

scroll up...have i anywhere at any time ever said i was any kind of "ist" or "ism"?

that would be no...

use of Og or whatever to provide an example in allegory for making a point is a pretty well accepted means of discussion amongst rational human beings...you might want to think about joining up

and YOU do NOT get to say anything is "the only way"...that would be a religious dogma, by definition, with you taking the place of some pseudo prophet

ironic, isn't it?

jaz whatever... [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] A person who makes atheism look dogmatic. Your far fetching and feeble attempt to make a conversation (much less a point) with Og is ridiculous. Who really knows what the first word spoken was? I mean really, cmon! Do you really believe it was "run". What about "blah"?

[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]

Atheism is a choice, I'm not making rules about atheism. All I am saying is that the word atheism is the lack of belief! If you are an atheist like me, you would understand that... I suppose you must be some agnostic asshole trying to make the grade to atheist. Whatever your belief is, keep it to yourself and don't speak on my behalf of my thoughts on atheism.

have i anywhere at any time ever said i was any kind of "ist" or "ism"?

I'm proud to be an atheist! You can hide behind whatever you are, but I am proud to be one and I will say the word that identifies me.
Stop masking your fear behind a nameless belief, step up and call yourself what you are.

well well...it appears you cannot even state your positions properly, and instead turn to the childish habit of attempting to insult [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]

atheism is indeed a choice, and just as much a lie to oneself as a religion's dogma

the only honest Answer is.."we don't know"

but you don't appear to care about honesty, or even rational discourse

oh yes, [deleted by Comments Editor]

now, shall we return to the Topic...or did you need to display your own ignorance and poor manners a bit more?

Finally [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] speaks the truth the only honest Answer is.."we don't know"

Thats what you should have said in the fucking first place [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]! You don't know the first word, and your stupid arguments makes atheists look stupid!

And saying FUCK is not a violation!

jaz said it right here atheism is indeed a choice, and just as much a lie to oneself as a religion's dogma

So can you not see that you are turning atheism into a religious dogma with your unfounded bullshit about Og and the first word... next say you don't know.

you can say fuck all you fucking like... i'm content to await Christopher and his judgement on your spewings...

as for the veracity of my Arguments, i'll gladly let them stand on their own

here's one for you...

PROVE there is no "god", please...

show your evidence, state your hypothesis and show your proof

that being said, you may want to go back to the WoW forums to learn a bit more about trolling, you're not very good at this, possibly due to having the attention span of a psychotic tse tse fly on crack...

but i digress...

my Apologies, Jon, for fucking up your thread arguing with this individual...but those who display idiocy need to be schooled occasionally...otherwise they continue unabated

oh yes, the bit about Og was stated as an hypothesis, utilizing an allegory to make the point..i explained it previously...but you still don't appear to have grasped the simple concept yet

Prove a negative!

No one can judge me jaz, you can get as many censors you want! But I live in America where I have the freedom of speech and to call out [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] you who fuck about the ideas what atheism used to stand for. All your hypothetical bullshit about Og makes you look so fucking dumb that its sickening! If you were a muslim, or a christian and jew I would not have cared. But your fucking dialogue suggests that you are an atheist but you are just a weak ass atheist turning an idea into a religion! People like you and Richard Bice who try to create a movement with atheism is just hurting the idea!

well well, down to the monosyllabic?

it does not need to be stated in a negative, you could easily phrase the Question in the form of a positive statement...but the point is made

for all your attempts to state atheism is merely non-belief, you prove that you require just as much Faith in the unprovable as any religionist

i put it to you, that it is you, yourself , who makes your chose philosophy looks poorly due to your own lack of being able to coherently frame thoughts in a communicative manner

here's a nice article on proving a negative for you

hopefully you can read it all the way through without moving your lips...don't worry...we don't care, really...just try reading and thinking a bit

your Freedom of speech is not being contested, but here..on a private forum, there are Rules set down by the owners of the website...and you, as a user of the site are obligated to follow said rules or the owners have every Right to delete, edit or ban

your mistake thinking i was any kind of -ist- or -ism-, you keep projecting your own inadequacies into the discussion, rather than actually reading what has been typed

typical of an irrational faithist whose sacred cow has been milked

[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] That link went no where and you must be some religious nut who is a schizophrenic. Atheism... no judaism. Atheism... no islam.

Come off it man! Your links don't work your hypothesis is weak! Go home and rest your sorry ass!

This forum... if censored will only prove how blind we are to only allow truths from certain folks. Not rational at all right!

You called yourself a rationalist jizz, so don't use the " I didn't use 'ist' or 'ism' comments"

Your link went no where, much like your point and religious slant on atheism.

is the full link, my apologies if it did not work previously...it's on my screen in another tab

again, you offer NOTHING to either refute my positions, nor to advance your own...your debating style isn't even good enough for a game forum

so allow me to express the sentiment in language you understand...

you've been WTFpwnt nublet, diaf, kk?, tnx...bye

now..if you would care to address the actual topic, and discuss your position...i'm more than happy to

but each time you type, it makes the baby Darwin cry...

my "religious slant on atheism" is only as it pertains to you in this case...

since you cannot explain your position, but instead make a blind statement of pure belief and faith in said position, then you fall into the same category as any other simpleton who claims absolute Knowledge of the unKnowable

Q.E.D.

Where the hell you come off man... really you make no sense whatsoever.

Though your link is an interesting read, you prove to me that God exists?

C'mon jaz, you talk about faith... prove to me it does exist. Atheism is the lack of belief, I do not believe (plain and simple).

Jaz... you are the one trying to convert others to your train of thought. Your belief in an "Og" and his first words is part of your own religion.

As an atheist (based on Richard Dawkins teachings), it is best to refraim from religious dialogue. The word God is culturally implanted in our psyche at a young age. Your attempts to discredit or credit God goes against the idea behind atheism. Your turning it into a religion when you push for historical atheist figures like Og. There is no Atheist Bible, so cut the bullshit!

Your link is now working fine jaz, don't understand what the problem was but I fixed it!

Dominic, STOP it with the namebaiting or I'll have to end this potentially interesting convo by banning your IP...

thanks for the fix, Christopher.

dominic...never did i attempt to prove anything either way...you yourself quoted me saying "the only Honest answer is "we don't know"

you should at least try and keep your own shit straight rather than shifting and making things up as you go along...it makes it so much easier to trip you up...especially since Logic is obviously not something you possess in quantity

if you honestly follow the tenet "it is best to refraim from religious dialogue.", then why are you yammering on so?

as for Og, he is allegorical, not historical..and fuck if i know whether he was an Atheist or the first Follower of JuJu the elephant god...

that is a red herring, which you continuously have tried to lay out there, but have failed abysmally...as i stated previously Og was an example about Language NOT "faith"

and you keep demonstrating the same blind Faith in your dogma as any other Faithist...you might want to take lessons from an honest Atheist like Christopher

[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]

dreck missed closing a tag

and it seems the comments policy enforcement has shifted...in my bits i was very careful to allude to opinions or behavior, rather than any kind of direct attack..a fine line, i know...but one i have walked since arriving on BC

thank you for the update that such is no longer acceptable, Christopher...i'll not waste any more of your time...my mistake in commenting again

Well, this is all opening one big can of worms and i haven't time for endless fishing... bless those who do...

I'll try to hit on the points I find most interesting

jon: "religion is the only important one that's fundamentally based on fiction."

-it would be more accurate I think to say that religions are based on real events and what they do with these events is a mix of mythology, fiction, anthropology, politics, bad cosmology, etc. Does anyone doubt that the main figures of the Bible lived? I don't think you should. In any case, someone somehow must have had the revelations the Bible records. But does the Bible get their story right? Who knows? what does it mean to get any story right? That question is in some ways always beyond answer. What makes Shakespeare great? No one can pin down why his stories are right or perfect, or whatever, and countless people have been trying for centuries.

In other words, the processes by which the real life experiences of real people in history are transformed into stories that transcend those events is always somewhat mysterious - it involves faith as anyone who suffers writer's block knows - but this is no reason to deny the events ever happened. We can explain them so far, but not completely. The test of any specific religion is how far can we go with it? how much about ourselves do they help us explain? how open are they do solving new problems with new freedoms while keeping us on the rails with old wisdom and rules? how much do they guide us in life's decisions - should I get married, have another child, send my parents to the old age home? - that cannot simply be made according to a "reason" divorced from a system of shared faith, and models for living.

Anyway, don't forget that a fiction is itself a kind of hypothesis that gets tested in the laboratory of readers and may or not be proven true. We often lift concepts or characters out of fictive works and use them to define the meaning of our lives as truthfully as we are able.

jon: "I argue that as a society we need to cast off these fictions, which served us well in the past, and adopt a worldview based on science and reason. Why? Because the divisions caused by religion - which you admit work partly by pitting an Us against an Other - are now capable of killing millions of us at a time and even destroying civilization, rather than merely sacking a village or running some thousands of Jews out of your country."

-But it is utopian, indeed religious, to think we can live in a world without conflict; and it becomes dangerous to divorce yourself from reality. There will always be conflict between an us and a them. We have to learn how to mediate this successfully and not get lost in myths that there is some escape from conflict because this will only postpone and make more difficult the eventual resolution of the inevitable conflict. A worldview based on science and reason is always but one world view and whatever its tendencies to totalitarian control fantasies, others will arise to oppose it because people will always fall into conflict over objects or status that cannot be simply and peacefully divided. But to the degree we can make the world more productive, conflicts will be easier to solve, with more goods to divide. This is where questions of faith come into play. Like it or not, today in America, Mormons, e.g., are more productive in many ways than atheists. Also, a people of strong faith who will defend themselves are less likely to be attacked or taken advantage of in ways that will make greater conflicts more likely.

Jon: "I certainly agree that cultural and intellectual developments - "ongoing differentiations of consciousness" in your phrase - can be put to both positive and negative use. Yet that seems to contradict your statement that "all culture acts to defer violence." Do you mean absolutely, or on balance? Either way, the evidence of my eyes says it ain't necessarily so."

-Culture acts to defer violence, for a time, not to end it forever. Even if all we have to offer in the cultural arena is a slur of invective against our opponent, this may just as soon postpone as actualize a physical fight. Why did we swear at him instead of just punching him in the nose? Because we have a desire for representation of our conflict, and the act of representation always entails some deferral of reality. Of course we have wars, but we also have a great desire to build cultures to represent a status quo. Again, if violent resentment were the greatest force moving human beings, how could we have ever built such a complex society?

Jon: "Those societies that are more or less post-religious are definitely reproducing less than others. But you seem to imply that there are obvious moral values to one or the other. I don't think there are. If a culture dies out because it isn't having enough babies, so be it. A culture with unchecked reproduction gets into a whole different set of problems. Is one better than the other? How to strike a happy, self-sustaining medium might be a very important question, but one to be decided by rational thought, not value judgments."

- it is rational to make value judgments, or else what can possibly guide the exercise of our reason? Can reason define its own reason for being, its purpose, its ends? To some degree, but by no means entirely. We need a little faith and deference to tradition. I'm a Westerner and I value the freedoms, sciences, etc., that have been realized in Western society. If it dies out, the more fertile society that replaces it may likely not have a clue how to feed anywhere near six billion people. I don't want to go before the committee that decides whether my people live or die. I'd rather make the value judgment of fighting for a global order that can feed all the people. A global system bound by Sharia law, for example, could not do the job.

If our population were expanding exponentially, that would be a problem we would have to tackle with an appropriate mix of reason and faith. But today, it's not the problem in the West and many other places.

jon: "if we have to relate everything back to origins, we risk becoming like an adherent of evolutionary psychology who automatically assumes every human behavior can be easily traced to some evolutionary need."

-the usefulness of having a minimal (shaved by Ockham) hypothesis of what must have been involved in the emergence of human culture out of an animal past is that it refines our appreciation of what is same and different in human history and culture. We gain a clearer sense of the unity from which all diversity flows. And we avoid unnecessary metaphysical constructions in attempts to define the human, where simpler arrays of concepts could do the job. We save intellectual time and engery. Basically, we gain a clearer understanding of what culture and history is for and so we talk about it more intelligently, not that we ever have the final word.

jaz: "you do NOT want to go into the "Trinity" bit in this topic, but even there, your Analogy falls short, imo"

-sounds like an apotropaic gesture, i.e. a religious theme brings out a religious gesture in you.

jaz: "Symbolic logic...even basic algebra go much further in exemplifying any representational model than the pretzel thinking involved in attempting to rationalize the "Trinity" as a single "god"

-well the point of referring you to the book was so that you could appreciate Gans' use of "symbolic logic" in giving us not a religious justification for faith in the trinity (not that he denies the possibility of, or need for, religious faith) but that he shows that this religious idea rests, among other things, on a profound anthropological insight about how human representation, or language, works. He argues the three figures of the trinity symbolize the three basic modes in which our consciousness or experience of language operates. Whatever else it is, some religion is also good anthropology.

jaz: "the real problem i have with some of what Ronnie is postulating is the fallacious axiom (so it appears by reading) that somehow religion is "the origin of language"

-no, I am saying that religion and language first emerge at the same time. The first linguistic sign is also the first religious gesture; but almost immediately there begins to evolve a separation between the ritualistic or sacred repetition of the orignary sign, and its profane use and development in everyday language.

jaz: "shaving with Ockham's razor, we get back to Og and his buddies...where a solid case can be made that the origin of language was created from the need to be able to hunt together and defend the Tribe"

-there is nothing Ockhamite about this. Consider that you are applying your rationalization of the usefulness of language to those who first used it. Are you somehow implying that Og and the boys, before inventing language, were somehow able to sit down and reason through what would happen if they were to invent language? But how could they have reason before inventing language? No, language must first emerge as an act of faith whose reason or usefulness is only later appreciated. But what would prompt such an act of faith? The whims of nature in providing more or less game? Surely not, for no proto-human animal could have conceived of "whims of nature". It must have been a pressing necessity that demanded, on fear of imminent death, that someone take that first barely conscious step of freedom, making a gesture that the others somehow "got" because they all saw it, in a first glimmer of self/divine-recognition, or even reason, as the solution to their problem.

We thus hypothesize some kind of conflict that was eroding an animal pecking order, where no alpha animal could keep order against the desires of the rest; and the solution to the conflict was, temporarily, to renounce that thing over which the conflict was focussed. Instead of everyone grabbing at, say, a piece of meat, someone made a sign instead of a grab, in order to re-present the meat and indicate his abortion of the attempt to grab it. Everyone else in turn somehow recognized that the conflict would only be solved if they too made the sign. They made the sign, they felt at peace, they used the shared sign as a new logic for sharing the meat. The egalitarian nature of primitive human societies, in contrast to the hierarchies of the animal world, is thus explained, hypothetically.

it would be more accurate I think to say that religions are based on real events and what they do with these events is a mix of mythology, fiction, anthropology, politics, bad cosmology, etc.

Agreed. Maybe even more accurate to say that religions grow out of real events embellished with fiction.

Does anyone doubt that the main figures of the Bible lived?

Depends which figures you mean. Jesus existed. Moses, Abraham? Maybe. Adam and Eve? Let's not get carried away.

In other words, the processes by which the real life experiences of real people in history are transformed into stories that transcend those events is always somewhat mysterious - it involves faith as anyone who suffers writer's block knows - but this is no reason to deny the events ever happened. We can explain them so far, but not completely.

I think you confuse mystery with simple lack of knowledge. The fact that we don't know exactly what happened after Jesus was crucified, or what caused some people to claim he rose from the dead, doesn't call for faith, it just means there's an incomplete historical record.

should I get married, have another child, send my parents to the old age home? - that cannot simply be made according to a "reason" divorced from a system of shared faith, and models for living.

No, no, a thousand times no. Your appeal to a system of shared faith is your choice. Many people don't share it, including me. If you mean "shared cultural values," that's one thing. But that's not what you're saying. You simply cannot say "cannot" in this context.

if violent resentment were the greatest force moving human beings, how could we have ever built such a complex society?

I'm not arguing that violent resentment is the greatest force, but that religions tend to foster it. It's long been noted that democracies don't go to war against each other, and you can't have a democracy without religious freedom. Post-religious Western European nations may not be making enough babies, but they also haven't attacked each other in well over half a century. The only advanced democracy starting wars these days is the US, which, not coincidentally, is also the one whose democratic institutions are the most shaky at present.

it is rational to make value judgments, or else what can possibly guide the exercise of our reason?

Agreed.

Can reason define its own reason for being, its purpose, its ends? To some degree, but by no means entirely. We need a little faith and deference to tradition.

Again with the faith. How do you start with the obvious fact that humans are limited creatures, and get from there to falling back on ancient crutches? Again, I think our fundamental disagreement is a restrictive vs. an expansionist conception of human potential.

Ronnie, you say that with "a minimal hypothesis of what must have been involved in the emergence of human culture out of an animal past" we can "gain a clearer sense of the unity from which all diversity flows. And we avoid unnecessary metaphysical constructions in attempts to define the human." That assumes that all diversity flows from a unity. That sounds like an article of faith to me. So you're relying on faith to explain your faith, which is circular - might as well not think at all. It's also backward. You're deciding on your conclusion and then selecting the hypothesis that points to the conclusion you picked. That doesn't make sense. A hypothesis is something you create to try to explain the facts - you test your hypothesis and refine or replace it to fit the facts better. But I'm sure I don't need to lecture you on the scientific method. You seem to be rejecting it when it comes to the study of ourselves. I can't see why.

The theories of the development of language, culture and religion that you are describing are very interesting and I look forward to reading more about them. But I won't be doing so if it turns out that Gans throws up his hands and starts appealing to faith at every other turn, as you seem to be doing.

jon,

I don't want to keep going at it point for point. I agree with some of what you say. Let me just try to clarify the more essential things.

We may be working with a different understanding of "faith". I think it is something we all rely on, however much we value it differently. Do you put your money in the bank, make investments, make promises to others, plan your career on the assumption that you can do or study something now that will pay off years down the road? All these ordinary activities are acts of faith, which is not to say divorced from reason. The point of my discou