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RE: Agnosticism and Religion

Comment a comment by scottb, published on 10 March 2009
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Atheists demand unflinching loyalty to their version of rationality as much as the religious seem to demand unflinching loyalty to their chosen God(s).

And I call bullshit, here, too.

What’s the atheist equivalent of this? “Those who do not accept Jesus’ death on the cross as substitution for one’s own punishment for sin is to be condemned to spend all eternity in torment in a lake of fire.”

Nor is there such a thing as the “atheist version of rationality”. Rationality is rationality. There’s nobody arguing that theists have a “different” rationality — by their own admission, they reject rationality outright. If their beliefs were rational, there would be no need for faith.

The reality, here, is that you’re trying to artificially “level” the argument by simply declaring — without justification — that atheists are “just as bad as theists”. Prove it. Where are our demands for slavish adherence to dogma? Where are our victims?

Last week, a fourteen year old girl in Brazil had an abortion. The twins she was carrying were believed to have been the result of rape by her step-father. Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but judges can grant exceptions if the mother’s life is at risk. The doctors insisted that the 80-pound girl couldn’t carry one fetus, much less, two, and so they got permission to carry out the abortion.

The Catholic Church in Brazil objected, calling it murder and insisting that the girl should have carried the fetuses to term and had a cesarean section. They excommunicated the girl’s family and the doctors who performed the abortion.

It’s an anecdote, yes. But there’s an underlying point — if this had come up the week before last, I’d have had no trouble finding a different anecdote to make the point. This kind of crap goes on all the time, all over the world, in the name of theistic belief. But, somehow, those of us who call it crap are “just as bad”.

I see the victims and the demands for slavish obedience from the theists, but where’s this “balance” you pretend exists? Where are such outrages committed in the name of non-belief?

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RE: Agnosticism and Religion by NomadSoul :: NR5

So, because the Catholic church does something stupid means that the writer of this poll or some of the commentors in the ensuing discussion deserve to have that thrown in their face? I didn’t see anyone excommunicating or damning anyone here.

Nor is there such a thing as the “atheist version of rationality”. Rationality is rationality.

Then define what you mean by rationality. I guarantee you that there are other definitions. If rationality means a strictly materialist worldview, then I disagree that this is the only definition of rationality. If it means a logically consistent worldview, then I would argue that such a worldview is always a fiction—a platonic ideal—because human experience is frequently paradoxical and inconsistent. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be arguing right now.

Sure, the material world may be governed by consistent rules, but such rules are too complex to allow an ordinary person to use them to predict what his day will be like or whether his wife will leave him—which makes them largely useless for formulating a worldview that guides you through a human life. That kind of worldview always comes from someplace else.

If by rationality you mean the possession of reason, or a quality of reasonableness (which is what the dictionary says), then what is a definition of reason or reasonableness that isn’t open to qualitative judgement?

Karl Popper said that rationality as a personal attitude doesn’t really exist, or if it does, then it is the willingness to revise one’s own beliefs. Now I will grant you that there are plenty of fundamentalists of various stripes who are patently unwilling to revise their beliefs, but plenty of religious people do revise their beliefs all the time. Case in point, people are leaving Christianity, because they find the stated beliefs to be inconsistent with practices like the ones you mentioned. See here / here, and here

There’s nobody arguing that theists have a “different” rationality — by their own admission, they reject rationality outright. If their beliefs were rational, there would be no need for faith.

This is one of those places where my arguments diverge quite sharply from the standard arguments. Based on this, obviously atheists and the religious do agree on something because according to you they are agreeing on their definition of rationality.

What I am arguing is that they in fact have entirely different standards of rationality; or at least, are working from very different initial premises.

Posted 11 March 2009, Hide, Parent, Reply

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