An excellent debate featuring Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan, the motion was "Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world", the answer was a resounding "no".
I thought Fry was particularly coherent and fluent, it would be great if he did more of these as he makes a good spokesman for the Secular cause. John Onaiyekan was particularly poor, his argument seemed to almost entirely consist of the thought that the Church must be good and true because HE believed it; an almost comical stereotype of an arrogant clueless clergyman. Hitchens was his usual self, lucid and articulate and took no prisoners whilst Widdecombe was sincere but came across as horribly contradictory in her views and somewhat deluded/brainwashed.
A lot of the debate centred around those for the motion trying to list the good thinks that religious people do with veiled threats of "what would the world be like if we didn't send money to Africa" and the opposition listing the terrible things done over the centuries in the name of the Catholic Church. The only side seemingly able to lift it above a simple tally of good vs bad were the secular side who questioned the morality and purpose of the church when it had clearly gotten so many things wrong and continues to do so; this point was met with a wall of silence which was hard not to read as indifference.
If you are of a religious disposition, you're not going to enjoy this at all.
23 comments:
Sorry Steve, you're confusing the institution of the church with the 'belief' it collectively promotes (as admittedly do most believers and non-believers too).
I also happen to disagree with dogmatic centralised sexist authoritarianism, but that's not the same as what you're saying here.
If you can't distinguish between thoughts and actions then this debate will go round in circles for eternity, because the consequence of not supporting freedom of conscience is to deny free will and freedom of action: if you are not free to be wrong then you will eventually be forced to do wrong.
Would you have that?
I mean - how does anybody learn?
According to wikipedia (well, it's lunchtime, I can't be bothered to try too hard...)700,000 were executed in Stalin's great purge. Mao's cultural revolution - at least a million, maybe 3.
Pol Pot - about 2 million.
When it comes to causing wide-spread death, torture and oppression, religious organisations are mere amateurs.
Atheist ones, on the other hand, are dead good at it.
And although I know you can be an atheist and a good person, I suspect that these regimes' atheism is largely responsible for what happened - ultimate sanction wasn't really removed, just change from God to State. And they did what was "good" for the State not good for the human beings. Ironic really, as by removing Religion they thought they were setting people free.
Could an avowedly atheist state ever avoid this? I don't know, I'm not aware it's ever been tested. But it's why oddly enough we agree that the best state is a secular one - one that privileges neither religion nor atheism.
You didn't go to it, did you? It's from the same place putting on the Nov debate with Richard Dawkins where I will see you. I wish I could have been there to hear the Catholic church destroyed!
G, so what?
If you can show that Stalin eliminated all those people because he was implementing an interpretation of Atheist doctrine then you'd have a point otherwise I don't think your argument has a leg to stand on.
All of these people were also communist dictators who ruthlessly eliminated any competition to their regimes, religious or otherwise, don't you think that's just a little bit relevant, if not their entire motivation?
Hi OP,
I'm pretty sure I can distinguish between thoughts and actions, but I can also learn from past mistakes.
If I see a child putting it's hand in a fire I will stop it; not because I want to deny the child freedom to make it's own mistakes but because I have mountains of data that suggests this is not a good idea.
There is a logical pathway, proven many times in history, from certain types of belief to the dogmatic authoritarianism you disagree with, basing policy on superstitious and faith based thought would be among them, as would personality cults and dictatorships run by atheists or anyone else.
E, no I didn't go unfortunately, it looked like a good old fashioned ding dong and so nice to hear people expressing their views with such honesty and passion, none of this relativist PC crap that you hear so often in the mainstream media.
Steve
I think a fair chunk of Stalin's purging was following an explicitly atheist agenda. All those Russian priests didn't shoot themselves, and it wasn't for disagreeing with redistribution of possesions. It was for believing in and preaching belief in God.
cheers
Gary
Steve,
with the utmost of respect I suggest your logic isn't logically consistent.
Firstly, the 'logical pathway' you describe sounds eerily reminiscent of pre-determination, so it sounds like you're arguing against the premises of specific faith-based institutions, not 'belief' itself.
Secondly, you don't provide examples of your 'historical proof', so it's impossible to escape the impression of selective analysis and pre-concieved conclusions - assertions of historical proof are always dubious in the extreme, as I'm sure anyone who has ever engaged in the debate over evolution will recognise that 'historical truth' is merely a construct of contemporary theories.
Maybe you could consider the 'Great Man Theory' of history and the discourse which surrounds it. Wasn't Churchill's fortitude of spirit what is considered to be decisive in seeing the country through the 'darkest days' of 1940?
I'd also say it seems a bit odd to compare perfectly normal adults to children - that is, unless you are putting yourself in that bracket, in which case you are arguing yourself down by making a self-denying claim to be able to judge others and make the statement in the first place. Stock reponse: 'Who made you God?'
Religion vs atheism simply isn't an intelligent discussion - it is polemic dressed up as debate. An old-fashioned ding-dong indeed!
Does anyone wonder why most people get frustrated by public decisions when that is how public conversations are conducted?
I think this is what we need to get away from - I don't think sincerely-held and pasionately-argued beliefs amount to anything near honesty at all and I'm shocked at the disservice to reputable science such a statement makes.
You might be entertained by seeing your own prejudices confirmed in the eyes of others, but the effect is only to lull you into a state of complacency with the result that you accept what you originally opposed.
I actually question the underlying motivations of people who subscribe in any seriousness to such a form of discourse and I certainly look sceptically on the capacity of those who do.
G, but that's the problem with this line of argument, what exactly is an "atheist agenda", even if Stalin wanted everyone to believe the same that he did then it still isn't an "atheist agenda" it's just a despotic agenda.
Stalin certainly had a communist/Stalinist agenda which meant squashing all opposition - I've never seen any evidence that that episode of history was otherwise, however I'm not a historian so if you have any references I'd be interested in reading about it.
OP, You may well be right about my logic, I'm not claiming to be infallible like the Pope; but you haven't exactly delivered any knock-out logic yourself here in my opinion.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding these objections but I really think your apologetic tendencies are clouding your objectivity.
As I have said many times, I'm arguing that "faith" is not a valid way of "knowing" something, if you wish to argue that theocracy is superior to secular democracy then I would love to hear the "logic" because I believe the evidence would be on my side. I have no objection to people believing whatever they like in private but when they use their authority, political power and tradition to affect policy or make promises in the real world (like preaching against the use of condoms in Africa or promising salvation in exchange for submission for example) then I think those things are wrong; what's more I feel perfectly justified in criticising them. Please explain why it would be "polemic" to feel this way and voice these views?
I have a hypothesis, I think you dislike this debate because I suspect you have a soft spot for a religious and spiritual view of life, a belief in faith perhaps. I would even be so bold as to suggest that you probably wish it all to be true, why do I think this? Because you appear to be doing what all apologists do, you're not addressing the specific criticisms but you are dancing around them. Trying to discredit the debate itself (calling it stupid) or attacking me by taking things out of context or questioning my motivation; all classic diversionary tactics. Why don't you address the criticisms directly? surely if they are so obviously ill-founded then you should find it trivial to do so?
As for the child thing, humm, this is a device known as an analogy, not all facets of an analogy have to hold true in order for the analogy to hold true, otherwise it would not be an analogy.
As for public discussions, why so uncomfortable about this one in particular? Again, you make a sweeping criticism but don't back it up with anything concrete; as for motivation, can you point to any of the criticisms contained in the opposer's arguments that were disingenuous, false or exaggerated?
Hi Steve
Again, picking mostly from Wikipedia for the historical side (mostly me for the philosophical it at the start).
"Religion is the opiate of the people". Essentially a neutral view in some respects - the assumption is that human beings adopt religion as a pie-in-the-sky compensation for their present sufferings (and clearly that can be true).
In effect that's no argument against God - any more than evolution is. It's presupposing the non-existence of God and then coming up with an explanation of why people might believe.
But the expectation of Marxism, given the bountiful benefits of Communism, was that with the masses no longer oppressed, in a world of human logic and natural goodness and equality, with a benevolent government, religion would surely wither away. So the loss of religion was a KPI for Marxism.
In order to ensure that happened, from the outset the Russian communists persecuted the church. 3,000 clergymen in 1918 (not even under Stalin - under Lenin), executed in various brutal ways. 1922 - 95,000 people executed. In 1929, in a real racheting up of the pressure, the Government instituted official lectures on the benefits of atheism. I bet some of the torture must have been more endurable.
The number of orthodox churches in Russia fell from tens of thousands to a few hundred. And it wasn't because everyone suddenly got enlightened. There were 100,000 martyrs in the 1930s. This was all explicitly an atheist agenda - I don't see what else you can call it. The aim was to remove belief from Russia. The thing that prevented it continuing was ultimately the 2nd world war.
So there you go - Marxism is an avowedly atheist philosophy, and in pursuing Marxism the worst atrocities that were ever commited on this planet took place - many of them against Christians (some against Muslims and a lot against Jews). They also liquidated plenty of homosexuals and the disabled, but that was on scientific rather than atheist grounds.
Of course, a modern Western atheist wouldn't want any of this. And of course lack of belief in God doesn't automatically lead to this behaviour. But it was still an atheist society, and an atheistic ruling class, attempting to achieve atheist ends - just in an extreme way. And they had no ultimate sanction to stop them. Until Hitler turned up...
Catholicism? It's just a baby by comparison.
Steve, you don't know who your friends are, really.
I'm saying your mischaracterisation of your opponents position is leaving you open to a parry and counterstrike.
Faith is not and never has been a means of attaining certainty, it is a means of dealing with uncertainty. So you aren't even aiming at the right target to start with!
What do you depend upon when you discover there is something you don't know? You depend on your faith in science to give you the means to find out.
I shall remind you of Seneca, and warn you not to misinterpret him.
As far as I'm concerned, whether faith is true or not is neither here or there, what is important is understanding how it is a tool which will be used and that this requires any serious person to ensure it isn't put to bad purpose by putting it to good purpose.
Tools are never left in the toolbox for long and it is foolish to think cobwebs make them invisible.
Frankly your castigations of your opponents will only encourage them because it abdicates any responsibility you could take for preventing the harm that the aforesaid dogmatic authoritarians do whenever they get the chance.
And in your haste you assume all the characteristics of those who you choose to castigate; in hating you become the thing you hate.
You seem to think insults will get you further than engagement.
I could remind you of Aesop's fable of the wind and the sun, but that would surely be beneath you.
G,
Thanks for your thoughts,
I think you are re-interpreting history here though; BTW if you read the full quote from Marx and not just the bit that people remember you will discover that his meaning is not as simple as that which you attribute to him. Marx was actually expressing sympathy towards religion. Clearly he was an Atheist but it's hard to find anything by him that advocates anything other than indifference to religion, certainly nothing approaching persecution.
Stalin was a despot, a totalitarian, a sociopath, maybe even insane, I'm not arguing that he didn't persecute religious people, of course he did. He maintained an iron grip on just about everyone. For example, he had dozens of astronomers executed for failing to predict the weather accurately, should we consider his regime "Aastronomic"?
You choose to pick out one characteristic, i.e. Atheism because it suits your position, but this is cherry picking IMO, what about all the other people he persecuted why don't you attribute his agenda to those groups as well.
Aintellectualist
Atheist
Acosmologist
Apeasantist
etc...
When you compare the number of people he killed to suppress the peasant uprising in the 30s and the subsequent famine, with the number of priests he had killed 3,000 fades into insignificance. Take a look at the numbers, if what you say is true then the majority of deaths would have been of clergy, this isn't even close to the case.
I don't think Stalin gave a stuff about the existence of God (at least I can't find any record that he did), he even trained as a priest as a young man. He wanted absolute power for himself and his ideology, that seems clear, the Church also strives for worldly power and wealth and control; clearly an unsustainable combination.
OP,
I fear you've built your house of straw! You assert that my characterisation of religion is false and yet you ignore the very real evidence that I post day after day after day that supports my perspective of it and contradicts yours?
Do I include all religions and every religious person in this discourse, of course not, that's an embellishment in your head, not mine and if you cast your gaze around you will see that I do respectfully engage with religious people, all the time, even in this very thread?
Religion is a spell, but when you are under a spell you see no need to break it, that's kind of the point of spells. You make it perfectly clear that you see no need to break the spell either, you are (astonishingly) advocating that we stand by, silent and respectful, while lives are ruined, opposer's threatened and innocents abused, look the other way seems to be your recommendation, perhaps if we smile at the nasty man he will go away.
Clearly I am naive, stupid, unrealistic, overly optimistic and certainly not the political animal that you are advocating being; but I really think you are missing a vital point about this tactic, the element of conciousness raising. I am letting people know that they are under a spell, they may violently disagree but even if they think about it for a second and a scintilla of doubt is introduced then I feel my work is done.
No, religion is like a virus or a cancer.
Not having unprotected sex with someone with hiv reduces the chances that you'll catch it, as not somking vastly reduces the chances of getting lung cancer.
But while each of these diseases are the cause of death and suffering and best avoided neither will be eliminated from existence just because nobody gets them.
It is a fundamental flaw to argue binary axial concepts of right/wrong good/bad if you want to eliminate an intellectual conceptualisation of existence - because you have legitimised the very beliefs you oppose by saying they exist.
You say religion is an apparition or delusion, well I can walk down the road and see plenty of churches.
In contrast I am arguing a metaphysical line and agreeing that although it is an artificial human creation it is no less powerful for all that, and in fact by accepting this it will enable us to understand the means by which any negative consequences can be neutralised.
On the other hand you seem to be more interested in throwing insults at others and stroking your own ego.
By confusing premise and method you consistently miss targets you aim at in your daily posts, and it is often embarassing to read you fail to live up to your own scientific standards.
Fun, true, but harmless and ineffectual.
I'm questioning how seriously you take your 'atheism' - or do you just want to suck Chris Hitchen's knob?
So, Steve, do you think religion is a force for evil in the world, or is just something like capitalism, socialism, and pretty much any other belief system you could name, which can go either way depending on how it's operated?
Because if you believe the former, then to be consistent you've got to start advocating restrictions on religion, or to follow it through 100%, a total ban. How would that work?
Are there deluded and dangerous religious people because there are deluded and dangerous human beings and some of them happen to be religious, or is delusion and danger something unavoidable in people who believe in God? Or is the problem with institutions, rather than with religions - that any institution which concentrates power and influence will naturally skew towards abusing that power and influence, whether a church, a government, an army or a corporation?
There's a bit of Haye vs Valuev going on here. Religion is a big, ugly, lumbering target, but you claim atheism doesn't have an agenda, or a programme, or official institutions (unless you count all those Marxists), so it can dodge all the punches. It's pretty easy being the opposition, and even easier if you don't have to come up with a policy programme of your own. The whole argument is set up to be one-sided.
Btw, I have no problem with religions need to be critiqued and held up for scrutiny and challenged. But I'd be interested to know if you just think we need our wings clipping, or whether we need to be shot out of the sky.
Hi dmk,
Certainly not de-facto evil, I do think it's unavoidable that religion will always eventually be used for evil by some people; I think this because it is founded on something unfalsifiable, which is the root of the trouble.
I would support an more of an evolution of the central themes of religion and it's purpose, rather than banning it, I agree, that would be a stupid thing to do.
I actually think there are solid evolutionary reasons why some aspects of religion are essential to our development as competent humans, along the same lines as the saying that "it takes a whole village to raise a child". For example, the community aspects, the altruistic outlook, the rituals, the shared humanity etc. All these things are really important IMO. I simply see no need to cling to the superstition parts, which I think are the bits that cause all the problems anyway.
You are spot on when you accuse Atheists of not having an "alternative" to religion, we seem to be destined to be eternal critics, the boring farts that spend all their time bursting people's bubbles. It's the whole science-art thing really, this analogy is quite a good one I feel, the beauty of (most) art is self-evident and hence compelling, science is also beautiful but it takes more work to appreciate it.
In many ways Atheism feels to me like simply a "reaction" to (bad) religion, rather that a distinct movement in it's own right, you tend not to find Atheists who are looking to convert people etc. (although I do love a good debate which is perhaps a kind of conversion process?)
I agree with you that people are people, good, bad, ugly etc. so any institution made of people will have these problems, I suppose my beef is more with the idea that "faith" is a valid way of knowing something, rather than religion per se. I see "faith" as the root cause of the bad stuff, of course it's also the root of the good stuff so therein lies the challenge.
OP,
Firstly, if you think pointing out stupidity is stupid then fine, lets agree to disagree and you go stick your head in the sand, then you won't have to read about it...?
If I was making this stuff up you'd have a point, but I'm not am I, so...
Why don't you want to address the points made in the debate? You seem intent on attacking me personally, which is all very flattering and all, but not in the slightest bit enlightening regarding your thoughts on this subject.
So, clear this up for me, I post a link on my blog to a story about some religious nut job blowing himself up and that's me insulting people and stroking my ego, you post a story about some politician fiddling his expenses and that's what exactly?, investigative journalism?
I think your blog is superb but all we both do is point out things occurring in the real world and comment on them, isn't it?
Suck up the Catholic dogma all you like, abstinence is certainly a way to avoid catching HIV, abstaining from looking at reality is a great way to avoid breaking the spell of religion too, as you say, you think the "truth" is harmless and ineffectual, I'm not sure many would agree with that.
I feel the need to come back and point out how passionately and sincerely held arguments aren't always conducive to reaching a harmonious agreement since they do become personal.
Take my earlier comment as a case in point. I'm sorry if I got a bit vocal there, but maybe you can see how we do things shapes how we feel about them.
I'd like to ask: what is the problem with things that are unfalsifiable?
Foundational concepts are necessary for a grasp of reality - which is both a consequence of, and reason for universal theories.
Quantum mechanics is one such example.
The only difference between something which is unfalsifiable and something which is proven is what we have yet to discover - it is the difference between theory and practice.
I'm sure David is better versed in how religion provides philosophical arguments proving existence, but I mean, critiquing a priori arguments requires further questions to be asked about the nature of truth and the nature of proof: is proof of existence required for existence? are/aren't we limited by our the requirement to discover proofs?
"You choose to pick out one characteristic, i.e. Atheism because it suits your position, but this is cherry picking IMO, what about all the other people he persecuted why don't you attribute his agenda to those groups as well. " - but you asked me to cite his *atheist* agenda, as opposed to his totalitarian lunatic one, so I did.
I guess he was just one bad atheist apple?
OP, I apologise if my comments were out of order.
I do respect your viewpoint as it is quite different from mine and I can learn much from that. Sometimes we come at things from very different perspectives which causes frustration even when we're agreeing!
G, argh... well done you skewered me with my own sword! :)
The only thing you said that caused me to "double-take" was the line "Stalin was following an explicitly atheist agenda" - using that logic would mean I could legitimately say George Bush had an explicitly Christian agenda in killing half a million Iraqis, simply because he is a Christian. Clearly an over simplification of the true situation since critically he is also a Republican, shareholder in oil related companies, an idiot etc. etc.
OP,
The problem with unfalsifiable thinking is that it cannot (sensibly) be argued against or reasoned with.
Everything else in our human discourse can be, for example if you propose a political stance on something, like a two state solution to the Arab-Israeli problem then we can debate all day long about it, citing past evidence, historical opinion, experience, heuristics, testament, economics etc.
All this debate however is of no consequence whatsoever to a fundamentalist Jewish settler who simply says, "God gave this land to Jews" and the debate is over.
This is why I believe problems like this are so intractable i.e. it's what inevitably happens when you include unfalsifiable thinking in any debate.
Quantum mechanics is not an example of an unfalsifiable theory simply because we do not fully understand it. In actual fact we understand it very well, and more importantly can think of tests that would prove it wrong. A lot of people don't realise that we can and do test our understanding of QM with experiments, and those experiments provide answers that are more accurate than any other branch of science. There are also many practical applications, if our theory was wrong then SatNav systems would not work for example (and they clearly do!).
Unfalsifiable means that you can never know something because it's not testable, this is not the same as unknown. Evolution is falsifiable, Evolution was falsifiable before Darwin discovered it; we can conceive of a test that would prove it wrong. However, there remain many things about Evolution which we do not know. "Intelligent design" in contrast is unfalsifiable because whatever tests are done the proponents of it can simply say "The designer intended it to be that way", the whole thing is plastic, limited only by imagination and not reality.
This "plastic" property which characterises thoughts like this are based on human imagination and are of no use (and are positively dangerous) in any process of science or governance IMO. If people choose to use them for comfort in their private lives then that's fine by me!
So when a Catholic MP votes against stem cell research he or she is essentially saying "Souls exist" (unfalsifiable), "God owns souls" (unfalsifiable), "God forbids humans to create life" (unfalsifiable) that person is using unfalsifiable thinking upon which to base an objection. This is entirely different from basing the objection on the fact that we don't yet understand all the practical implications of the science, one objection is fixed and the other is fixable.
I'm not talking about "absolute proof" which we all already know is not possible, falsifiability is not about that, the simple proposal is that we subject every policy decision to the question, "can we think of a test that would show this thought to be wrong" - in many scenarios the test may well be too onerous to actually do, this is not important though.
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