Anyway, this is a response which an interested party left on Facebook. He's kindly agreed to have it reproduced here:
I take your point, but unfortunately there are things more consequential than hurt feelings involved in the the practice of taking your morality - I won't say ethics because there's no system involved - from an invisible friend who supposedly conveyed guidance/instructions for life based on the experience, interpretation and, perhaps, imagination ... See moreof desert tribesman with none of the tacit or explicit, not-subject-to-post-modern
Idealism is interesting in philosophy/ to philosophers counting angels on pinheads, but irrelevant to why you feel grief, how you come to be in the biological form you are, the reasons why and consequences of the fact that GPS systems work (Quantum effects and Relativity), how the systems of nature function, why disasters occur, the nature of disease, the bonds between beings and countless other elements of how my and your everyday life occur. The bounds of knowledge in many areas thought exclusive to arts, humanities and 'social sciences' are quickly falling to probabilistic description by empirical investigation. More so every day.
The idea that you can take the founding elements of your life and society from texts so openly against critical thinking; against and contrary to inter-subjective, falsifiable scientific knowledge; completely at odds with how we live our lives everyday is abhorrent to a rational mind. This is the reason that fundamentalists are shunned by almost all; this is the reason why the hand-wringing moderate person who cannot bear to give up the invisible friend who monitors, influences and dictates is wrong. The unthinking agnostic provides the excuse for the moderate, who provides the scaffold for the fundamentalist. They are all utterly bankrupt on any measure possible to hold up for scrutiny.
It's not bigotry, but a critical mind that dismisses religion, religious 'convictions' and their influence on society.
Andrew's soapbox - a deeply held, honest account of someone's thought on a subject - is well justified in my opinion.... and for every person who might immediately turn their face from GMS for its airing, there may well be many others who turn towards.
AFAIK - All soapboxes are welcome?
"The bounds of knowledge in many areas thought exclusive to arts, humanities and 'social sciences' are quickly falling to probabilistic description by empirical investigation. More so every day."
ReplyDeleteAre quickly falling, haven't all quite fallen yet. There may, one day, come a utopia where all human knowledge is quantifiable and English literature students will plot Chaucer and TS Eliot on graphs and things, but I don't think we'll be there for a while. Until you've got some instruments for measuring divinity, religion will remain deep in philosophy's territory, and 'natural scientists' will have to brush up on it a bit before wading into the "are religious people idiots" debate.
"The idea that you can take the founding elements of your life and society from texts so openly against critical thinking; against and contrary to inter-subjective, falsifiable scientific knowledge; completely at odds with how we live our lives everyday is abhorrent to a rational mind."
You seem to be confusing "texts" with "receptions of texts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries". I would have thought the Bible, Koran and especially Talmud would have a very hard time being "openly" for or against anything. But if you are that sure whatever texts you mean are like that, book, verse and line please.
"The unthinking agnostic provides the excuse for the moderate, who provides the scaffold for the fundamentalist. They are all utterly bankrupt on any measure possible to hold up for scrutiny."
That's a frighteningly totalitarian attitude to take. Are you really saying that anyone is feeding the worst excesses of religious fanaticism if they don't 100% condemn an idea that, pretty much by definition, can't be proven either way?
"It's not bigotry, but a critical mind that dismisses religion, religious 'convictions' and their influence on society."
It's very often bigotry. A critical mind will look at the (fairly shaky) evidence for God and most likely come to the conclusion that of course there's not one. A bigot wades into the debate waving his conclusions around his head without that much knowledge of theology, explaining to anyone who'll listen exactly what the assortment of straw-faiths in his head believe and why it's so irrational and dangerous for them to be so stupid.
It's sensible not to believe in God, it's alright to think it's quite a stupid idea, and it's understandable to feel a bit dismissive of people that subscribe to it, but if you're going to write off ideas that have shaped almost all of almost all the world's thought ever, then you need to know, and address, those ideas in as much detail as you criticise them.
Making sweeping generalisations about what various religions believe about the infidel, science or critical thinking without providing a few textual references, complete with extensive history of reception, is immensely arrogant. It's also no less stupid than when Creationists explain exactly what darwino-athiests believe about monkeys and sodomy. Though granted it's much less entertaining.