The liberal unbeliever of today imposes upon eself one or more of the following food restrictions: sustainable, fair trade, organic, vegetarian, vegan or raw only. The attendant casuistry (specific good deeds) includes: reducing, reusing, recycling, polluting a strict minimum, favoring renewable energies, fighting deforestation and rampant capitalism. The soteriology is corporate, as either all people or none will be saved in the end, and based on deeds (instead of faith). The hermeneutics is scientific, the unbeliever accepting the (liberal) pronouncements of (in particular climate) scientists as true and binding. The ecclesiology encompasses the entire human race as well as all or most living things on this planet. The eschatology is pessimistic and catastrophic, believing the end times are near, namely that the world and perhaps humanity itself will soon be irremediably destroyed unless almost everyone continuously performs most of the above-mentioned good deeds.
wittgensteinian thoughts on religion
To answer the question: “What is religion?” ask: “What do religious people do?” or should we ask: “What do people do when they practice religion?”
What do religious people do? — They do certain things in a certain way.
What do non-religious people do? — They don’t do certain things. — Or do they do them in a different way?
What sort of things do religious people do?
The religious person points towards the solution, trying in vain to describe it.
When i think about religion, am i being religious? Can you think in religion? Can you do religion?
A: What happens when a christian converts?
B: She sees things differently and she does things differently.
A: Is that how a buddhist converts?
Why do so few people believe in hell? — Because they don’t need to.
Why do so many people believe in heaven? — Because they want to.
wittengsteinian thought on the existence of god
A: God does not exist.
B: Which god?
A: No gods exist.
B: True, God is beyond existence.
A: There are no supernatural beings.
B: Indeed, God is more natural than nature itself.
A: Hrmf.
Jim Wallis on the new christianity
Jim Wallis (wikipedia), a non-right-wing intelligent evangelical christian (no joke), was on the Daily Show (video) talking about how (his) religion needs to refocus on the environment, peace (Darfur) and ethics. Refreshing. From the Friendly Atheist.
jason bourne’s ethics
I just finished re-watching the third and conclusive episode of the Jason Bourne films last night. I was struck at the end by the ethical/religious positions the film takes.
In 2007, in Hollywood, fundamental Christian ethics still rules: Despite what we learn about all the evil that Jason Bourne had done during his career at the C.I.A. and despite the fact that we learn that he knowingly agreed to it, we forgive him because he repented.
It should however be noted that the repentance and forgiveness work very well without either a concept of sin or of god, let alone of someone dying on a cross. In this case a fundamental religious concept is very well translated into secular language. Habermas would be proud.
why religion is indispensable (transforming people)
UPDATE 2008/1/10: Dave rightly points out in the comments that this post was VERY BAD and i apologize for that. I’ve now cut down the argument to what i had unknowingly already pointed to in my note (*), namely that tradition and a community are very good tools to effect radical moral change in a given individual. It is now patently obvious to me that the tradition and community need not be religious. Original, edited post follows.
Only religion can transform a person completely, because to do so requires both thanks to a deep tradition able to inform that transformation and also a strong community to effect and nurture it.
Religious transformation is a reshaping of someone’s moral, psychological and behavioral self that is both complete and permanent. It produces a new person, someone whose identity has been re-established and fundamentally improved.
Of course, there have been many great people who had little if anything to do with religion. But i would argue that though they were perhaps geniuses who contributed greatly to humanity, they had not been themselves transformed. To produce a Mother Theresa*, a Gandhi, or a Jesus and a Gautama Buddha requires religion and a lot of it. Furthermore, to produce those people able to help others strive towards this complete transformation also requires a strong religion tradition and community. The following text, taken from the last paragraph of Thich Nhat Hanh‘s book The Heart Of The Buddha’s Teaching, derives its power precisely because it is so thoroughly informed by a specific religious tradition and because its authors in completely immersed in a buddhist community:
The heart of the Buddha has been touched by our being wonderfully together. Please practice as an individual, a family, a city, a nation, and a worldwide community. Please take good care of the happiness of everyone around you. Enjoy your breathing, your smiling, your shining the light of mindfulness on each thing you do. Please practice transformation at the base through deep looking and deep touching. The teachings of the Buddha on transformation and healing are very deep. They are not theoretical. They can be practiced every day. Please practice them and realize them. Have courage. I am confident that you can do it.
And to successfully put such suggestions into practice also requires immersing oneself in this religious tradition and belonging to its community. Without that your good-will would quickly wane, i should think.
*I know that Mother Theresa didn’t believe in God, but my argument never refers to god, only to tradition and community.
manga bibles!
there are a whole bunch of manga bibles out there! Amazon doesn’t have any “Search Inside” ones, but here is a YouTube ad:
Somehow this seems horribly wrong, but so inevitable. I guess it was predestined to happen…
weird google ad “Wittgenstein explained”
This probably belongs in the Why Oh Why Can’t We Have Better Religions category. My Gmail offered me the following ad just now:
Wittgenstein explained:- Interpretation of Feelings - Scientific Pragmatism
www.hellevig.net
which i naturally clicked on (the AdWords overloard knows me so well). First i wondered why someone would pay google to be able to explain Wittgenstein to me. Then you realize the link has nothing to do with the Austrian philosopher but is actually advertising a free book on philosophy by one Jon Hellevig, lover of Putin.
The only people paying to give out free books are usually religious as far as my experience goes. This guy seems to be advertising a philosophy though. I guess he is investing in possible future fame, whether or not he hopes to become wealthy as a result.
I don’t know about you, but i get the impression that we are in a time of searching for meaning … any meaning.
From the site:
Now I also announce my book (August 2007): All is Art. (inquiries and orders can be placed by clicking here, further information here).
All is Art is a book in two sections: On Social Practices and Interpretation of Feelings, and On Democratic Competition.
The first section of the book launches social practices and individual interpretation of feelings and language in which they are manifested as the new philosophical paradigm, the framework for all cognition. The book is devastatingly critical to the modern conception of science and instead shows how all is art, even science being but a form of art. – The presentation owes a lot to Marcel Proust’s treaties on the human nature telling how philosophy and life itself is a search for lost time, back to the roots of humanity, and that at the end of the search there is time regained, and the future.The second section of the book discusses the essence of democracy from the point of view of this new philosophy of social practices.
more. Somehow this guy reminds me of Gregers Werle in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck.
What is atheism?
I am going to argue that atheism is not a religion but a religious outlook.
Religion is notoriously hard to define and i shall not attempt to here. I will call upon Wittgenstein’s idea of a family resemblance and say that there are many things that make up a religion: a metaphysics, holy books, meeting places, an ethics, rituals, gods, saints, etc. and to call something a religion you need to have a fair number of them.
I have been calling atheism a religion. That was at best misleading. Atheism is no more a religion than theism is. It doesn’t have meeting places, holy books, or rituals. Theism denotes a type of religion. Atheism does too, or at least would, were there any specific instances of a-theist religions with holy books, rituals and meeting places.
(Of course, confucianism is usually pointed out as an atheist religion and there are atheist strands in hinduism and buddhism. Marxism and Maoism had holy books, meeting places, and saints, though perhaps no rituals. We are however here slowly moving towards “things” that do not have quite enough religious characteristics to still call them full-fledged religions.)
The problem with defining atheism, like theism, as simply “a type as opposed to an instance of religion” is twofold:
First, very few people go around calling themselves theists, but more and more people identify themselves as atheists (or agnostics). This might be because atheism as we now know it has seemingly become a rallying banner for all those who are dissatisfied with religion in general. Atheism is for some, and only for some!, more an anti-theism or an a(nti)-religion. One could perhaps call this positive atheism. It is certainly not the only possible type of atheism, but certainly the most vocal one – and the one i dislike. This type of atheism is much more than a simple type of metaphysical belief, let alone a single non-belief. It is a platform, a cri de guerre and a worldview. It is almost a(n anti-) religion.
Many people do not care about god(s), haven’t ever thought about them much, but do not consider themselves atheists. They are just not interested in the question. Those who do insist on calling themselves atheists and who are proud of the label do not simply “not believe in the existence of god(s)”, they have a particular existential interest in being atheist. Which brings me to the second reason why atheism is more than a simple descriptor of a possible metaphysical view.
Atheism is fundamentally the answer to a specifically religious question: “Is there a god?”. Its answer is “No.” It doesn’t ignore the question. But answers it very carefully. This is why i want to call atheism a religious outlook. An atheist is very much concerned with religious questions, though disliking all supernatural and institutionally organized answers. In that sense atheism might not be a religion, though atheists are minimally religious – otherwise they wouldn’t bother calling themselves atheists!
Now i do realize that atheism can also be viewed as an attempt to get rid of all forms of religiosity or supernaturalism. And some might object to my above description on that premise. My caveat to them is: the call to rid the world of religion sounds awfully religious. Beware of ushering in a new religion under the guise of atheism.
Ok, ok: Atheism is NOT (necessarily) a religion
From the comments to a previous post i have learnt two things about (blogosphere) atheists:
First, they do not consider their atheism to be a religion, or even a worldview (which is more or less what i mean by religion). For some, atheism is no more than ONE, NEGATIVE belief: “there (probably) are no gods or such like things”. If such is your atheism, then, i agree, it certainly is no religion. However,
Second, even though most of the commenters are adamant that atheism is as minimal as described above, they strongly identify with the term – enough at least to leave heart-felt comments on a post lambasting atheists.
Thus it would seem that many self-described atheists have a sense of community (“we are atheists”) that is created in opposition to religion (“we are not religious”) but has no content. To this i have no objections – except to say that
i could describe myself as a religious atheist, but would thus be de facto excluded from this community. So i guess my main objection to the atheism i see, hear and read is that it appears to be consistently opposed to religion (admittedly to a religion that is redefined as god-believing, but that does not alter my point). Atheism is ok; but so is religion.
