[Continued interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3]
BRET: Would you say you were a Christian if you would be killed otherwise?
DAN: Depends on the circumstances. If there were a way I could code my ideas into acceptable symbolic language and influence people better than by being dead, then there might be something to it.
BRET: Gun to your head right now. And you know the answer they’re looking for.
DAN: You say what gunmen want you to say, unless there are awful consequences. If the guns are not in the room, if there are just death threats, then you don’t say anything they want.
BRET: Is there any circumstance where you would die specifically for atheism?
DAN: Sure.
BRET: Really?
DAN: Yes. If it meant defending the right to free speech, the right to blaspheme, etc. Then it would be necessary to fight that kind of authoritarianism. So if they said, “Stop blogging or we’ll kill you,” I’d keep blogging.
BRET: But is being put to death fighting it?
DAN: Now, if they show up and are in the room with me, I’ll say whatever they want to stay alive! But if I ever get back to my blog... I’m just being honest here.
BRET: I wouldn’t even take a paper cut for atheism.
DAN: Speech acts with potential murderers are not under the same rules. But what you say to the world matters. The right to freedom of conscience is one of the few things worth dying for.
BRET: Does it?
DAN: Yes, it does.
BRET: I think it’s worth fighting for, but not really dying for.
DAN: Nietzsche has a wonderful line that I’ll paraphrase, “Die for our opinions? No, we do not hold them that strongly. Die for our right to them? Perhaps...” I think that’s the best combination of principle and honesty. It’s not atheism itself that’s worth dying for. It’s the right to freedom of conscience.
BRET: Right, but I think you’re analyzing an additional situations I wasn’t thinking about.
DAN: But “dying for” is different than “dying on account of.”
BRET: I wouldn’t just be a martyr for something, but I would fight with a chance of dying. But I see those as very different.
DAN: If I were in an oppressive country where they’d kill me for saying I was an atheist, I wouldn’t just futilely get myself killed.
BRET: I imagine not.
DAN: But I’d fight with the risk of death or speak out in ways that could be effectual in changing things, even if it meant possible death. In other words, there’s no point in dying just for the principle, there is a point in dying in a way that has hope of changing things.
BRET: I sometimes wonder if atheism needs a Jesus, someone they can point to as a paragon of self-sacrifice and principle.
DAN: We have one, it’s Socrates.
BRET: Psssh.
DAN: He predates Jesus even.
BRET: I don’t have a daemon inside me, so I can’t relate.
DAN: Philosophers for centuries have appealed to his model. It’s no small thing that he died for iconoclastic, dialectical, gadfly truth-telling, and except for the dialectical part, atheists are part of this tradition.
BRET: He didn’t even die for a noble principle, he died because he decided to adhere to the social contract.
DAN: Well, he was sentenced on principle. He antagonized the jury and refused to pander, even after being sentenced.
BRET: Right, but there were means of him escaping such injustice.
DAN: Yes, that was just the icing on top. Not only would he stand up in public for what was right, he would adhere to it privately to his own disadvantage. It solidified his unwavering commitment to principle. At least as he is heroized for us.
BRET: I dunno... I always took away from my reading of the Apology (assuming those are not just Plato’s ascribed words and ideas) that Socrates ultimately was adhering to the idea that he was a member of society and must abide by society’s laws. I see no such merit in just obeying. Sure, his words were those of a rebel, but he acted as a pawn.
DAN: Well, it’s the principle we cannot simply pick and choose which laws to follow.
BRET: We can though. We most certainly can, and people do. And some people are better for it.
DAN: Yes, it’s a problem with deontological thinking, but I wouldn’t accuse the deontologists for pawns.
BRET: By Socrates’ logic, Rosa Parks is a malcontent. I’ll side with Parks.
DAN: No, she’s a gadfly. The whole point of civil disobedience was to be willing to accept jail to break the laws, but not break the social order. The genius is that it showed the violence of the law, these peaceful people doing peaceful things being beaten and jailed---it made vivid the insane injustice of how the law was already treating them with its constraints on peaceful activities based on their color. The law was already beating them up and jailing them just without it looking like that, so they forced the law to do it explicitly and people came to realize those laws were unjust.
Also remember Martin Luther King Jr. was following a deontological view of Aquinas and Augustine that an unjust law was not a law. They could disobey an unjust law because it wasn’t really a law. But then they also accepted the penalties of the existing law. So they lived in the middle. They acted in accord with real law. But they accepted the punishments of the claimed law. It was a triumph of philosophy. It exposed the dissonance between real law and perverse law in a world-altering way. It’s moral genius.
BRET: These actions don’t exist in a vacuum, though. You need other factors at play.
DAN: Sure.
BRET: Like a way to disseminate information.
DAN: You need TV.
BRET: Right. If you don’t have a group behind you to publicize you, then any sacrifice you make is just... like a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it.
DAN: Right, there would be no sound.
BRET: Oh there would be. Physics assures us.
DAN: There would be sound waves.
BRET: But we wouldn’t know, yeah.
DAN: No noises.
BRET: Who would win in a fight, Jesus or Mohammed, assuming they’re both human and the same age?
DAN: Mohammed. No context [typo on “contest,” but left due to serendipity].
BRET: Why’s that?
DAN: Because he was a conquering type, whereas Jesus only got rough with accountants.
BRET: True. We also would have accepted, “Because I don’t want death threats.”
DAN: (laughs) On second thought, Jesus.
BRET: Judges? We’ll accept it.
Would you rather heaven or hell be real? Only get to choose one. But not everyone goes there.
DAN: Heaven. Where does everyone else go?
BRET: Everyone else just disappears.
DAN: Heaven.
BRET: Aww. So no justice for Hitler.
DAN: There wouldn’t be justice in either case.
BRET: No?
DAN: Hell is disproportionate punishment even for Hitler. It’s insanity. Oblivion is just fine for him.
BRET: If you say so... I think it can’t be worse than private schools. I bet you get used to it after a while. Like a hot tub.
DAN: Then it wouldn’t be hell, conceptually speaking.
BRET: I thought hell was just the absence of God? That just means hell is like my normal life.
DAN: So how is that justice for Hitler?
BRET: Well he was really religious. He would probably hate that. Plus we’ll put him in next to a few Jews.
DAN: (laughs) Next question!
BRET: If the world were proven to be ending in 2012 (let’s say a star was on a collision course and would eradicate everything), what would you do this year? We’ll say it happens in late December. So you have all year basically, though nothing you do will really matter...
DAN: I would do everything I already do. I’d just spend some more time with friends, but I’d still blog, I’d still teach.
BRET: Maybe cash-out your retirement?
DAN: My what?
BRET: Hehehe. Oh you poor educators.
DAN: I’d spend the last month with my parents
BRET: For the free food and laundry?
DAN: (laughs) Yes, for the free food and laundry.
BRET: Which would make a better series of movies, the Bible or the works of Homer? Obviously the Bible would be much longer, but still.
DAN: Having never read Homer it’s hard to say.
BRET: Okay scratch that then. What other mythology have you read?
DAN: Not much, just a few Greek myths. They are way better than anything in the Bible.
BRET: You’re breakin’ my balls. Okay then, New or Old Testament?
DAN: Morally, New. For the stories, Old.
BRET: You know I think Peter Jackson is directing a Noah movie. After the Hobbit, I believe.
DAN: Wasn’t Steve Carell in that?
BRET: Ha
DAN: After I saw that movie I woke up with this thought in my head that there must be a movie made called “There Will Be Flood.” Seriously I was certain of this for a few minutes.
BRET: Pick any person, living or dead, to be God.
DAN: Stephen Colbert.
BRET: The real Stephen or TV Stephen?
DAN: The real one.
BRET: Risky move... I don’t even know what he’s like.
DAN: He would be a benevolent, rational, and mischievous ruler
BRET: Would you rather choose someone you loved to live forever, or someone you hate to die?
DAN: Someone I loved to live forever. I’m not a hater.
BRET: Yeah, but what if living forever is horrible. And this would be a great way to finally just get rid of someone like Cheney. He’s so close anyway.
DAN: Then make someone I hate live forever.
BRET: Ha, perfect. Just be sure when you make the wish to claim you love that person. Or it might not work.
DAN: I’ll have my lawyer work out the details before I sign anything
BRET: Which religion currently being practiced do you think will disappear first?
DAN: It’s probably one none of us have ever heard of. Those we know are sticking around a while.
BRET: Well you have to pick one you have heard of. And Scientology is too easy.
DAN: Yeah. I think the Amish may not be able to hang on forever.
BRET: So true.
DAN: Sorry for your kids.
BRET: Do you think Amish people will be using iPads in 200 years? And sagging their pants? Or will they always be trapped in 1800?
DAN: They’ll just be integrated with everyone else. I don’t know, I have a gut feeling in the future it will be impossible to be trapped in 1800. I think technology is going to change life in ways we can’t yet cognize.
BRET: I dunno, I can imagine being a ball of energy.
DAN: But I don’t know what that means.
BRET: It’s like being a teen all over again.
DAN: Besides that, no one will be Amish anymore.
BRET: Last question, why do cartoon characters who never wear pants put on swimming trunks at the beach?
DAN: The same reason people who do wear pants put on swimming trunks instead at the beach. Why do normal people who wear shorts wear swimming suits instead? Whatever that answer is, is the answer.
BRET: Because they won’t let us swim naked?
DAN: And the same goes for cartoon characters.
BRET: Well the real reason we have to wear swimsuits is the netting. So our pubes don’t fill the pool. But cartoon characters are often covered in hair... and are at a beach, not a pool.
DAN: So all the MORE reason to wear swimming suits! Okay, my Chinese food is here.
BRET: Nice talking to you.
DAN: You too, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for indulging me all afternoon.
BRET: Enjoy your Chinese.
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 3
[Continued interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers from Part 1 and part 1 and Part 2]
BRET: I sometimes wonder if atheism should go corporate and adopt an iPad strategy. Basically, atheists should not let new atheists join for a while, make it exclusive, because what makes religion appealing to people is that they see it as cool, quite often. It’s still too easy for people to claim they’re an atheist.
DAN: I think natural selection has made it that way already.
BRET: There’s still too many atheists embarrassing the rest of us.
DAN: I don’t think you’re making any sense. It’s pretty hard to identify as an atheist and no one thinks religion is cool.
BRET: Not really.
DAN: Not even religious people. Religion is clearly the anti-cool. And it reaches its height of anti-cool when it tries to be cool.
BRET: No, no, no... okay I see the problem. You’re listening to religion like they aren’t lying. Religion is the cool thing, everywhere, especially for young kids. The kids who feel left out in high school aren’t Christians who all hang out at church together.
DAN: Maybe it’s popular but that’s different than cool!
BRET: It’s the one Jewish kid and the handful of Catholic kids and the vaguely eastern kid who are left out and feel uncool.
DAN: Well that’s a different thing than cool.
BRET: I dunno... if religion isn’t cool, then Tim Tebow should be a loser.
DAN: That’s a matter of in-group and out-group.
BRET: But the in-group is always cool, the out-group is always not.
DAN: Cool is too much about an understated, defiant independence.
BRET: Maybe in the 1950s.
DAN: Cool people wouldn’t be caught dead being religious.
BRET: Are you kidding? Religious people smoke cigarettes and ride motorcycles, too. The guys on the football team are not a bunch of atheists. The cheerleaders aren’t atheists.
DAN: Yeah and then they start talking Jesus and become completely uncool.
BRET: Well, I’m not saying you be Ned Flanders religious.
DAN: So there is conformity cool.
BRET: But there’s that cool level of religious. Right.
DAN: And there’s non-conformity cool. I only see non-conformity cool as really cool. Conformity cool is simply popularity. But that’s semantics.
BRET: You don’t see any value in popularity?
DAN: Popularity because you’re non-conforming cool is awesome.
BRET: Sometimes...
DAN: Popularity because you’re conforming cool is corrupt.
BRET: It may be corrupt, but the world is run by popular, corrupt people.
DAN: Right. That doesn’t make it good.
BRET: I guess it depends what you rebel against.
DAN: Yes, we should conform to true virtues and to many normal social standards that have good reasoning behind them. If you want to call that “conformity,” okay. But we shouldn’t conform as conformists.
BRET: Right, you’re a philosopher, you care about what’s good or right. I’m more of a pragmatist.
DAN: We should conform as cool people who know why the right is right and who don’t conform otherwise.
BRET: But most people are too dumb for that... I’m talking about manufactured scarcity which increases demand. Like a club that only lets in a few people, and pretty soon it’s the coolest place to be.
DAN: Right.
BRET: I know it’s impractical and impossible. But I like the idea.
DAN: Yes, I am not interested in atheism becoming popular at all costs.
BRET: Not popular, per se... maybe just 51% of the population.
DAN: Either it’s because people are developing rationalistic virtues or other virtues, or it’s not making anything better that they’re atheists.
BRET: True, there’s nothing inherently better about being atheist.
DAN: Not at all.
BRET: That’s sort of the rub.
DAN: Yeah.
BRET: But if there are going to be dumb people in the world, I still would like them on my side. You know, to send out in the front line.
DAN: (laughs) But the problem is that being an atheist does not mean they will be on your side on much else. There are some anti-social atheists like Ayn Rand.
BRET: Only some?
DAN: Right.
BRET: I’ll add Hitchens to that, since he thinks nothing of going to war, so long as we are only slaughtering Muslims.
DAN: I prefer a pro-social theist who refrains from chatting me up about Jesus to an anti-social atheist who won’t shut up about how selfish he’s entitled to be. Hitchens is a tough case. He helped me go full lion as an atheist. It’s hard for me to accept his hyena tendencies.
BRET: I know atheists have a boner for him, but that one issue is a huge turn off for me.
DAN: Yes, I understand.
BRET: I have the same feelings on Carlin.
DAN: I’ve never much liked Carlin. Back to my religious days when I thought he was an acerbic jerk. Now I see him as too cynical.
BRET: He’s the source of my least favorite atheist meme, that religion starts all wars.
DAN: He says some profound stuff and a lot of cynical, cry baby, anti-pragmatic, misanthropic stuff. I really hate misanthropes. In fact, I almost wrote about this but shelved the post. When you wrote that post attacking me over interfering with your “rowdy kids” table.
BRET: (laughs)
DAN: With all my “don’t call religious people stupid” stuff.
BRET: I wrote about rowdy kids tables and not calling religious people stupid? On your blog or mine?
DAN: Something like that. Hold on.
BRET: I can see not calling religious people stupid... but a religious person I might call stupid.
DAN: Link
BRET: “Religious people are stupid.” Verbatim. Right in the middle of the post.
DAN: So you were explaining why it was fine for me to be all philosophical but I shouldn’t pick on people like you who had a place by picking food fights or something. Apparently you didn’t use that phrase.
BRET: I did a find for “food.” Okay, I found it now.
DAN: You wrote, “But maybe you, and all other atheists who deign to bless the atheist blogosphere with your intelligent discourse, may come to see those of us eating at the rowdy table as valuable allies, every bit as important as you are. Not more, not less, just equally important for the role we play, for we have different skills, and we apply them in ways I doubt you could even stomach.”
BRET: I’m sure that week I was sick of atheists acting high and mighty.
DAN: I was the atheist in question! But it’s alright because I absolutely loved the post because throughout it, you assiduously called me Dr. Fincke.
BRET: My wife would kill me if I didn’t [she has a PhD].
DAN: You probably wrote that as much as anyone has in the first year and a half since I got the degree. And people calling me Mr. Fincke had me all pouty just weeks before. And so you proved my point. People will be much more open to criticism if you pay them that respect.
BRET: My wife would be like, “He didn’t finish his PhD for you to insult him and not call him doctor.”
DAN: You know, when you said your wife had a PhD I realized that might have been the root of your respect.
BRET: I interviewed a guy who wanted me to call him “Your Lordship The Gun-Toting Atheist,” and I was happy to do it. So I’m fine with titles.
DAN: (laughs) One time I started a criticism of a religious friend by saying, “Look, man, you’re a savvy guy…
BRET: But...
DAN: …in fact, I bet if both of us were buying cars, you’d be far shrewder and more skeptical and do a better job of not getting ripped off…
BRET: But...
DAN: …so why don’t you see what I’m saying about taking that shrewdness to all your beliefs.” And that conversation went a long way from there. He was more than willing to play.
BRET: Hehehe. People are so easily flattered.
DAN: They are! And they like you when you do it, as long as you don’t make it too obvious.
BRET: When I hear flattery, I hold my wallet tightly.
DAN: But we’re talking about dissuading the credulous, not the cynical. So, why not appeal to the religious’ virtues and their highest conception of themselves? And if you find contradictions in that, you threaten their vanity in a far deeper way than telling them what they already know---that their beliefs sound silly to outsiders.
BRET: I think they relish in that. Both the silliness and the criticism.
DAN: Sometimes. Any defense mechanism in a storm.
BRET: They see it as “their cross.”
DAN: Right. I’m not saying to be disingenuous, mind you, but look on the bright side of the person you’re engaging.
BRET: I think the best way to engage a religious person is to quote their holy book. They eat that shit up.
DAN: I think you need to actually be more dialectical than that. Just ask questions; why this? Why that? What does that mean? Oh I see, but then wouldn’t that mean this?
Internal contradictions are much harder to just dismiss, and it is a good strategy to focus first on non-controversial stuff, like skepticism in general and interesting philosophical questions, before applying skepticism and hard philosophy to the beliefs they have irrational, religious attachments to.
BRET: You would probably know more than I, since I don’t think anyone became an atheist because of me since high school. But man, I cleaned up back then. I got the guy who walked me down the aisle as my sponsor for Confirmation.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: I just peaked early.
DAN: Well I have no idea if anyone’s become an atheist through my influence. I take that back, I’ve gotten a couple e-mails, but really it’s hard to know what to take credit for.
BRET: Jealousy becomes me...
DAN: And frankly, I wouldn’t want to take credit for things like that.
BRET: Take credit for all of it, who cares. You’re too kind, sir.
DAN: I’m all for taking credit for things, but not for how someone thinks. That’s creepy. I just want to know I helped someone think. I don’t want to think I made them think anything, if that makes sense.
BRET: Can someone make someone think something? I get what you’re saying, though. I just question if it’s possible.
DAN: Sure it is.
BRET: If you open a door and they walk through, then... you didn’t make then enter.
DAN: Right, that’s what I want to do.
BRET: But if the door was locked before, you can take credit for letting them in.
DAN: I want people to see me as an awesome door opener to ideas, but that the ideas convince them.
BRET: I suppose.
DAN: I guess I don’t like when people change their mind because of the personality of their conveyor.
BRET: You have to invite atheism into your heart, right? Only you can do so...
DAN: Ugh. (laughs)
BRET: Hehehe. Is it just me, or do charismatic Christian leaders have more success than charismatic atheists?
DAN: There are charismatic atheists?
BRET: I hear Hitchens was one.
DAN: That’s one, you used the plural.
BRET: Maybe Dawkins or Harris or one of the others I don’t know about. Honestly, I don’t know many, because I don’t read their stuff, so I wouldn’t know if they’re “charismatic.” But they have a larger than average following.
DAN: Seriously, it’s apples and oranges.
BRET: Okay, so why do Christians corner the market on apples when some people clearly don’t like oranges? Why isn’t there a red-faced, screaming atheist?
DAN: I think Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers have an understanding of how to “activate” atheists. It’s like the atheists have all the pieces in their minds already. Or a certain kind of person that could be an atheist. And there is just something in the way they put it together that just flips the switch and suddenly they have a consciousness of the evils of religions. They just get it.
Nietzsche flipped that switch for me, or he flipped a different switch that made me an atheist. Then Harris and Hitchens flipped another switch that made me a New Atheist. It’s hard to spell this out in my case, because I was already the guy fighting with everyone about religion but I felt no support and had no atheist community and was probably more philosophical and more willing to be deferent to religious people in certain ways. I knew cognitively I was right but still felt the need to justify to Christians why I had foresaken the faith.
That’s the thing the New Atheists crushed in me. They crushed that last emotional delusion.
BRET: Do I want to know what “New Atheism” is? I have heard of it obviously but...
DAN: That’s a word coined in a 2006 article (I think in Wired) to describe the brand of atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett when they all came out with hit books on atheism in a short span of time. It’s expanded to be a word for atheists who have no intellectual tolerance for religiously derived ideas.
BRET: I know it’s associated with at least the first three of those names. Is it like grunge, where there’s no real cohesion, just an accident of timing?
DAN: It was a ground up movement, I think. But it’s gaining coherence.
BRET: I don’t read much atheist stuff because it drains me. I come away from a lot of atheist blogs wondering if I want to be an atheist, whereas when I read anything religion related, I come away very much confident of atheism. I used to wonder if I was just contrary, but I find pro-atheist snippets here or there that make me think, “Damn, that is brilliant.”
DAN: I know my temperament is always to look for a better question so I can make a new distinction. When I’m reading atheists, it’s their stuff that I want to add qualifications to.
BRET: Because we make so many damn errors...
DAN: It’s not about being contrarian for the sake of contrarianism. Not for me. But it’s about being persistently dialectical. Everyone — whether atheist, theist, or whoever else - is always too simple. There’s always another dialectical move to make. The best thinkers don’t let us stop thinking, they just move the ball so that our own thinking can pick up further down the field.
But it’s up to us no matter what we read to then figure out its antithesis and go there and then to find the synthesis and then the next antithesis. This is how we think best, both on our own and in community. So when I’m immersed in atheist blogs and atheist comments on my site, I start fighting with atheists. It’s healthy. And I can be a good atheist blogger because I love atheists and want atheism to succeed.
BRET: Hmm... it’s almost Godlike. You love them, so you must smite them. Or parentlike.
DAN: Not at all. I’m one of them. I just mean that no matter how critical I might be towards things atheists do I am delighted to be on their team.
BRET: Ugh, but I don’t want to imagine being on the same team as these people.
DAN: It’s a central identity thing for me. I mean, like I said, a given atheist could be as off putting as anyone else. And I prefer a theist who is a good person to an atheist who is a bad person. But in general, my group affiliations are with fellow atheists. I feel a kinship. And so if it’s an awful theist and an awful atheist, I’ll like the awful atheist a little more.
BRET: Fair enough. I somehow managed to be an atheist for about 15 years now without ever feeling like part of a group.
DAN: Yes. That’s very normal.
BRET: So the idea of atheism as a cohesive unit both excites and terrifies me. On one hand, WOO, on the other hand, MAO.
DAN: I never knew it was possible either until the internet. In fact, I was using the internet a long time before it ever dawned on me to find other atheists. Only when I decided to start a blog and finally dispel all the ignorance in the world did I discover that there was already this whole community on the case. It was like, “Oh.”
BRET: Hehehe
DAN: That was as recent as June 2009! My prior blogging was much less ambitious and much less frequent. In 2009 I decided I wanted to write a widely read blog and get serious about doing that.
BRET: I think I started then too... unless you count 7 posts from July of 2007 through December. I feel like blogging was on the decline by then. [Note: my actual first full year: 2008, not 2009]
DAN: Depends on how epic those posts were.
BRET: Not very. Some goodbye to Carlin and then probably half of the rest was fiction, since I used to write fiction.
DAN: Yeah, Class of ‘09. It’s a good class. Jen McCreight started that year, too. A lot of blogs seem to have started then. Any given year I guess most blogs will seem to have come from the last couple years since few people really stick with it.
[Part 4]
BRET: I sometimes wonder if atheism should go corporate and adopt an iPad strategy. Basically, atheists should not let new atheists join for a while, make it exclusive, because what makes religion appealing to people is that they see it as cool, quite often. It’s still too easy for people to claim they’re an atheist.
DAN: I think natural selection has made it that way already.
BRET: There’s still too many atheists embarrassing the rest of us.
DAN: I don’t think you’re making any sense. It’s pretty hard to identify as an atheist and no one thinks religion is cool.
BRET: Not really.
DAN: Not even religious people. Religion is clearly the anti-cool. And it reaches its height of anti-cool when it tries to be cool.
BRET: No, no, no... okay I see the problem. You’re listening to religion like they aren’t lying. Religion is the cool thing, everywhere, especially for young kids. The kids who feel left out in high school aren’t Christians who all hang out at church together.
DAN: Maybe it’s popular but that’s different than cool!
BRET: It’s the one Jewish kid and the handful of Catholic kids and the vaguely eastern kid who are left out and feel uncool.
DAN: Well that’s a different thing than cool.
BRET: I dunno... if religion isn’t cool, then Tim Tebow should be a loser.
DAN: That’s a matter of in-group and out-group.
BRET: But the in-group is always cool, the out-group is always not.
DAN: Cool is too much about an understated, defiant independence.
BRET: Maybe in the 1950s.
DAN: Cool people wouldn’t be caught dead being religious.
BRET: Are you kidding? Religious people smoke cigarettes and ride motorcycles, too. The guys on the football team are not a bunch of atheists. The cheerleaders aren’t atheists.
DAN: Yeah and then they start talking Jesus and become completely uncool.
BRET: Well, I’m not saying you be Ned Flanders religious.
DAN: So there is conformity cool.
BRET: But there’s that cool level of religious. Right.
DAN: And there’s non-conformity cool. I only see non-conformity cool as really cool. Conformity cool is simply popularity. But that’s semantics.
BRET: You don’t see any value in popularity?
DAN: Popularity because you’re non-conforming cool is awesome.
BRET: Sometimes...
DAN: Popularity because you’re conforming cool is corrupt.
BRET: It may be corrupt, but the world is run by popular, corrupt people.
DAN: Right. That doesn’t make it good.
BRET: I guess it depends what you rebel against.
DAN: Yes, we should conform to true virtues and to many normal social standards that have good reasoning behind them. If you want to call that “conformity,” okay. But we shouldn’t conform as conformists.
BRET: Right, you’re a philosopher, you care about what’s good or right. I’m more of a pragmatist.
DAN: We should conform as cool people who know why the right is right and who don’t conform otherwise.
BRET: But most people are too dumb for that... I’m talking about manufactured scarcity which increases demand. Like a club that only lets in a few people, and pretty soon it’s the coolest place to be.
DAN: Right.
BRET: I know it’s impractical and impossible. But I like the idea.
DAN: Yes, I am not interested in atheism becoming popular at all costs.
BRET: Not popular, per se... maybe just 51% of the population.
DAN: Either it’s because people are developing rationalistic virtues or other virtues, or it’s not making anything better that they’re atheists.
BRET: True, there’s nothing inherently better about being atheist.
DAN: Not at all.
BRET: That’s sort of the rub.
DAN: Yeah.
BRET: But if there are going to be dumb people in the world, I still would like them on my side. You know, to send out in the front line.
DAN: (laughs) But the problem is that being an atheist does not mean they will be on your side on much else. There are some anti-social atheists like Ayn Rand.
BRET: Only some?
DAN: Right.
BRET: I’ll add Hitchens to that, since he thinks nothing of going to war, so long as we are only slaughtering Muslims.
DAN: I prefer a pro-social theist who refrains from chatting me up about Jesus to an anti-social atheist who won’t shut up about how selfish he’s entitled to be. Hitchens is a tough case. He helped me go full lion as an atheist. It’s hard for me to accept his hyena tendencies.
BRET: I know atheists have a boner for him, but that one issue is a huge turn off for me.
DAN: Yes, I understand.
BRET: I have the same feelings on Carlin.
DAN: I’ve never much liked Carlin. Back to my religious days when I thought he was an acerbic jerk. Now I see him as too cynical.
BRET: He’s the source of my least favorite atheist meme, that religion starts all wars.
DAN: He says some profound stuff and a lot of cynical, cry baby, anti-pragmatic, misanthropic stuff. I really hate misanthropes. In fact, I almost wrote about this but shelved the post. When you wrote that post attacking me over interfering with your “rowdy kids” table.
BRET: (laughs)
DAN: With all my “don’t call religious people stupid” stuff.
BRET: I wrote about rowdy kids tables and not calling religious people stupid? On your blog or mine?
DAN: Something like that. Hold on.
BRET: I can see not calling religious people stupid... but a religious person I might call stupid.
DAN: Link
BRET: “Religious people are stupid.” Verbatim. Right in the middle of the post.
DAN: So you were explaining why it was fine for me to be all philosophical but I shouldn’t pick on people like you who had a place by picking food fights or something. Apparently you didn’t use that phrase.
BRET: I did a find for “food.” Okay, I found it now.
DAN: You wrote, “But maybe you, and all other atheists who deign to bless the atheist blogosphere with your intelligent discourse, may come to see those of us eating at the rowdy table as valuable allies, every bit as important as you are. Not more, not less, just equally important for the role we play, for we have different skills, and we apply them in ways I doubt you could even stomach.”
BRET: I’m sure that week I was sick of atheists acting high and mighty.
DAN: I was the atheist in question! But it’s alright because I absolutely loved the post because throughout it, you assiduously called me Dr. Fincke.
BRET: My wife would kill me if I didn’t [she has a PhD].
DAN: You probably wrote that as much as anyone has in the first year and a half since I got the degree. And people calling me Mr. Fincke had me all pouty just weeks before. And so you proved my point. People will be much more open to criticism if you pay them that respect.
BRET: My wife would be like, “He didn’t finish his PhD for you to insult him and not call him doctor.”
DAN: You know, when you said your wife had a PhD I realized that might have been the root of your respect.
BRET: I interviewed a guy who wanted me to call him “Your Lordship The Gun-Toting Atheist,” and I was happy to do it. So I’m fine with titles.
DAN: (laughs) One time I started a criticism of a religious friend by saying, “Look, man, you’re a savvy guy…
BRET: But...
DAN: …in fact, I bet if both of us were buying cars, you’d be far shrewder and more skeptical and do a better job of not getting ripped off…
BRET: But...
DAN: …so why don’t you see what I’m saying about taking that shrewdness to all your beliefs.” And that conversation went a long way from there. He was more than willing to play.
BRET: Hehehe. People are so easily flattered.
DAN: They are! And they like you when you do it, as long as you don’t make it too obvious.
BRET: When I hear flattery, I hold my wallet tightly.
DAN: But we’re talking about dissuading the credulous, not the cynical. So, why not appeal to the religious’ virtues and their highest conception of themselves? And if you find contradictions in that, you threaten their vanity in a far deeper way than telling them what they already know---that their beliefs sound silly to outsiders.
BRET: I think they relish in that. Both the silliness and the criticism.
DAN: Sometimes. Any defense mechanism in a storm.
BRET: They see it as “their cross.”
DAN: Right. I’m not saying to be disingenuous, mind you, but look on the bright side of the person you’re engaging.
BRET: I think the best way to engage a religious person is to quote their holy book. They eat that shit up.
DAN: I think you need to actually be more dialectical than that. Just ask questions; why this? Why that? What does that mean? Oh I see, but then wouldn’t that mean this?
Internal contradictions are much harder to just dismiss, and it is a good strategy to focus first on non-controversial stuff, like skepticism in general and interesting philosophical questions, before applying skepticism and hard philosophy to the beliefs they have irrational, religious attachments to.
BRET: You would probably know more than I, since I don’t think anyone became an atheist because of me since high school. But man, I cleaned up back then. I got the guy who walked me down the aisle as my sponsor for Confirmation.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: I just peaked early.
DAN: Well I have no idea if anyone’s become an atheist through my influence. I take that back, I’ve gotten a couple e-mails, but really it’s hard to know what to take credit for.
BRET: Jealousy becomes me...
DAN: And frankly, I wouldn’t want to take credit for things like that.
BRET: Take credit for all of it, who cares. You’re too kind, sir.
DAN: I’m all for taking credit for things, but not for how someone thinks. That’s creepy. I just want to know I helped someone think. I don’t want to think I made them think anything, if that makes sense.
BRET: Can someone make someone think something? I get what you’re saying, though. I just question if it’s possible.
DAN: Sure it is.
BRET: If you open a door and they walk through, then... you didn’t make then enter.
DAN: Right, that’s what I want to do.
BRET: But if the door was locked before, you can take credit for letting them in.
DAN: I want people to see me as an awesome door opener to ideas, but that the ideas convince them.
BRET: I suppose.
DAN: I guess I don’t like when people change their mind because of the personality of their conveyor.
BRET: You have to invite atheism into your heart, right? Only you can do so...
DAN: Ugh. (laughs)
BRET: Hehehe. Is it just me, or do charismatic Christian leaders have more success than charismatic atheists?
DAN: There are charismatic atheists?
BRET: I hear Hitchens was one.
DAN: That’s one, you used the plural.
BRET: Maybe Dawkins or Harris or one of the others I don’t know about. Honestly, I don’t know many, because I don’t read their stuff, so I wouldn’t know if they’re “charismatic.” But they have a larger than average following.
DAN: Seriously, it’s apples and oranges.
BRET: Okay, so why do Christians corner the market on apples when some people clearly don’t like oranges? Why isn’t there a red-faced, screaming atheist?
DAN: I think Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers have an understanding of how to “activate” atheists. It’s like the atheists have all the pieces in their minds already. Or a certain kind of person that could be an atheist. And there is just something in the way they put it together that just flips the switch and suddenly they have a consciousness of the evils of religions. They just get it.
Nietzsche flipped that switch for me, or he flipped a different switch that made me an atheist. Then Harris and Hitchens flipped another switch that made me a New Atheist. It’s hard to spell this out in my case, because I was already the guy fighting with everyone about religion but I felt no support and had no atheist community and was probably more philosophical and more willing to be deferent to religious people in certain ways. I knew cognitively I was right but still felt the need to justify to Christians why I had foresaken the faith.
That’s the thing the New Atheists crushed in me. They crushed that last emotional delusion.
BRET: Do I want to know what “New Atheism” is? I have heard of it obviously but...
DAN: That’s a word coined in a 2006 article (I think in Wired) to describe the brand of atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett when they all came out with hit books on atheism in a short span of time. It’s expanded to be a word for atheists who have no intellectual tolerance for religiously derived ideas.
BRET: I know it’s associated with at least the first three of those names. Is it like grunge, where there’s no real cohesion, just an accident of timing?
DAN: It was a ground up movement, I think. But it’s gaining coherence.
BRET: I don’t read much atheist stuff because it drains me. I come away from a lot of atheist blogs wondering if I want to be an atheist, whereas when I read anything religion related, I come away very much confident of atheism. I used to wonder if I was just contrary, but I find pro-atheist snippets here or there that make me think, “Damn, that is brilliant.”
DAN: I know my temperament is always to look for a better question so I can make a new distinction. When I’m reading atheists, it’s their stuff that I want to add qualifications to.
BRET: Because we make so many damn errors...
DAN: It’s not about being contrarian for the sake of contrarianism. Not for me. But it’s about being persistently dialectical. Everyone — whether atheist, theist, or whoever else - is always too simple. There’s always another dialectical move to make. The best thinkers don’t let us stop thinking, they just move the ball so that our own thinking can pick up further down the field.
But it’s up to us no matter what we read to then figure out its antithesis and go there and then to find the synthesis and then the next antithesis. This is how we think best, both on our own and in community. So when I’m immersed in atheist blogs and atheist comments on my site, I start fighting with atheists. It’s healthy. And I can be a good atheist blogger because I love atheists and want atheism to succeed.
BRET: Hmm... it’s almost Godlike. You love them, so you must smite them. Or parentlike.
DAN: Not at all. I’m one of them. I just mean that no matter how critical I might be towards things atheists do I am delighted to be on their team.
BRET: Ugh, but I don’t want to imagine being on the same team as these people.
DAN: It’s a central identity thing for me. I mean, like I said, a given atheist could be as off putting as anyone else. And I prefer a theist who is a good person to an atheist who is a bad person. But in general, my group affiliations are with fellow atheists. I feel a kinship. And so if it’s an awful theist and an awful atheist, I’ll like the awful atheist a little more.
BRET: Fair enough. I somehow managed to be an atheist for about 15 years now without ever feeling like part of a group.
DAN: Yes. That’s very normal.
BRET: So the idea of atheism as a cohesive unit both excites and terrifies me. On one hand, WOO, on the other hand, MAO.
DAN: I never knew it was possible either until the internet. In fact, I was using the internet a long time before it ever dawned on me to find other atheists. Only when I decided to start a blog and finally dispel all the ignorance in the world did I discover that there was already this whole community on the case. It was like, “Oh.”
BRET: Hehehe
DAN: That was as recent as June 2009! My prior blogging was much less ambitious and much less frequent. In 2009 I decided I wanted to write a widely read blog and get serious about doing that.
BRET: I think I started then too... unless you count 7 posts from July of 2007 through December. I feel like blogging was on the decline by then. [Note: my actual first full year: 2008, not 2009]
DAN: Depends on how epic those posts were.
BRET: Not very. Some goodbye to Carlin and then probably half of the rest was fiction, since I used to write fiction.
DAN: Yeah, Class of ‘09. It’s a good class. Jen McCreight started that year, too. A lot of blogs seem to have started then. Any given year I guess most blogs will seem to have come from the last couple years since few people really stick with it.
[Part 4]
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 2
[Continued interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers from Part 1]
BRET: I remember you did a post a while ago asking if atheists “worshiped” truth, at least as much as you can worship such a thing. Did you come away agreeing with that?
DAN: No, Eric Steinhart wrote that post.
BRET: I am horrible at checking by-lines.
DAN: I think the question should be framed differently than he did to get atheists not to reflexively reject the proposition without thinking. I think the real question is this:
If empirically it were demonstrable that certain falsehoods are necessary for certain people and the societies in which they live to optimally function, would we accept that those falsehoods were for the best for those people?
Or do we prioritize truth as such an intrinsic good that we’d rather let the world burn or the alcoholic who’s got an iron grip on his higher power die than let him have his fiction undisturbed?
And if we do hold truth to be valuable even where it hurts human happiness or (worse, to me) human flourishing, then it seems like we are treating it as more sacred and more valuable than is rationally warranted and you know what the word for THAT is...
BRET: Oh, right, religion. Almost missed my cue.
DAN: And a related question is whether atheists have faith in truthfulness, (do we have more belief than evidence warrants?) that truthfulness is itself a greater good than other competing values in every sphere of life.
Obviously it’s better in science and so creationists need to be fought. I think I have good reasons it is better philosophically. And we Identity-Atheists tend to be bound up with valuing truth passionately and feeling it to be the highest moral priority in all personal and philosophical matters.
So, is that tantamount to having faith in it, to holding it sacred, to being irrationally hostile to other virtues when they rival it and closed minded to any empirical facts that might threaten our belief in its wonder working powers?
Those are hard questions. I think those were what Eric was asking. It’s what Nietzsche asks a lot.
BRET: It seems short sighted to focus only on truth, especially when a lie may help the truth. And I don’t mean lying to appear correct when you know you’re right, or telling your wife she doesn’t look fat. I mean, maybe religion is a good thing for a discipline like science.
It gives people a place to go to be religious; could you imagine if religion just disappeared? Science would be overrun by dogmatic fools. Religion can almost serve as an adult day-care.
DAN: (laughs) Your ideas always surprise me, Bret.
BRET: Religion keeps those who might ruin science out.
DAN: Or it makes capable minds scientifically illiterate.
BRET: No doubt, but it also gives us a sort of Plato’s cave for the best and brightest to escape.
DAN: That’s true, and I wouldn’t be who I am without first escaping a cave. Nietzsche himself muses in an unpublished note that it might be best to give kids a religious training when they’re young because the rigor is good and the process of apostasy would be good for them. I’m not sure what in that is Nietzsche and what is just my interpretation, but that’s close.
BRET: And that’s why I’m raising my kids Amish.
DAN: Let’s look at three hypothetical people:
Let’s say that each has an equally full life of pleasure and personal flourishing in all the ‘secular” areas of life. Family, money, power, respect, physical and intellectual accomplishments, friends, etc.
So you have these three equally pleased and flourishing people.
BRET: Do they have to be pleased, or can they be equally depressed?
DAN: All that matters is their pleasure total is the same, whether low or high.
BRET: Okay.
DAN: Now let’s say that one of these three people has a practically delusional, ecstatic religious life that does not interfere with his pleasure and flourishing in any of the other areas. He is as ethical, as humane, as shrewd in business, as creative in artistic endeavors, as great a friend and family member, etc. as the other two. He just has this sphere of his life where he gets a surge of extra pleasure from his delusions.
BRET: Are they all equally pleasant to be around?
DAN: Yes
BRET: Okay.
DAN: So, the same way someone can keep their escapes into movies and novels and other fantasies totally separate from interfering with life functioning, let’s say this person keeps their religious delusions and superstitions equally tidily contained. All they lack is truth in one area of life. In the rest of life, they have as much truth as anyone and the net gain is immense pleasure and sense of identity, etc. Now, let’s say there is an atheist who has everything the same but instead of faith-based delusions some truthful endeavor (or fictions known to be fictions) fill the same role the religious delusions play for the religious person. In those two cases, I think the atheist wins because the pleasures are equal AND the bonus is truth.
BRET: This third person better be a heroin addict or something.
But, yeah, let’s take an atheist who is flourishing and pleased in all those areas but the pain of seeing the truth makes that side of him miserable and so even though he’s as pleased as the others in all these other areas of his life, there’s also this dragging net loss that could only be more pleasant if he could only believe.
Now, assuming a lot---that the delusional beliefs don’t have a net negative beyond himself---is he better off than our ecstatically delusional, but utterly functional believer?
BRET: Does a person’s happiness matter?
DAN: That’s the question. Can happiness trump truth in our values ever? For me, I believe that we should aim towards maximal human flourishing, not maximal human pleasure. I’m willing to bite the bullet and say we should all prefer truth even with less pleasure. That’s a really high priority for either truth or, in my case, human perfection.
That came out wrong, I didn’t mean to suggest in my case that I’m perfect! I meant I prioritize total human power as the highest good, not any specific virtue. So for me enough other virtues taken together might make one person without the truth a better person than another who has less virtues.
If someone found the immersion in the delusion made it all the more effective at enhancing his life without detracting from real world functionality, is that for him a fantastic accomplishment of self-hypnotism and balancing competing goods and getting the most out of them?
It’s like taking a drug if it does not damage your overall functioning, it’s just a pleasure boost. Drugs are lies. Our pleasures should track goods.
BRET: Drugs aren’t lies...
DAN: The drug tells you you’re ecstatic when there’s no good reason to be ecstatic. So it makes you ecstatic in a way that does not help you navigate truth.
BRET: There’s a damn good reason you’re ecstatic---you took a drug. That’s classic cause and effect.
DAN: Right, but our brains are set up to reward us for success. If we can short circuit that and just feel good by manipulating our brain chemistry, we cheat.
BRET: Drugs don’t enter the body and whisper, “Hey, you got a promotion, feel good.”
DAN: But if it does not hurt overall functioning or make us less inclined to pursue worthier pleasures from worthier accomplishments then why not add the extra pleasure? So what happens if you swap out “drug” for “god”?
BRET: Opiate of the masses, eh?
DAN: Sure. Sports, too. My ecstasies over some baseball games are comparable to religious ecstasies.
BRET: You know... every mean thing they say about religion you can apply to sports.
DAN: Exactly.
BRET: And in many cases sports are worse. I never heard of a Baptist hooligan riot.
DAN: (laughs) It’s vicarious. You feel like you’ve won something great when you’ve done nothing but sit on the couch getting fat.
BRET: Or lost. I don’t know which is harder on a city, to win or lose.
DAN: So there are pleasures which distract us from developing our virtues or which reward us when we didn’t do anything that merited reward.
BRET: But why even value truth in that way? Truth doesn’t need us, truth exists whether we even exist or not.
DAN: Right. That’s the question. Why value truth more than it is actually conducive to our pleasure and/or flourishing?
BRET: Well, I wouldn’t make that comparison. I don’t think truth is what makes people sad, or happy.
DAN: Why treat it as a good in itself when it might mean rebuking yourself for taking baseball games seriously or being fooled by movies emotionally or by drugs, etc.? The idea is that if you take “Truthfulness” to an extreme it does interfere with other things in life. That’s Nietzsche’s point. There’s a bit of “falsity” in everything. How fanatical must we be in rooting it out?
BRET: I think the missing link is Justice. The emphasis is being put on truth, but truth is only valuable as it pertains to fairness.
DAN: Well we can talk about the justice of pleasures, no?
BRET: I suppose, but I don’t know anything about the justice of pleasure. I know about the pleasure of justice... but not the other way around.
DAN: I mean pleasures should justly track merit and displeasure demerit. If we’re being formal and anal. I do something great and you do something lousy, but you take a drug and we both feel great tonight. How’s that fair?
BRET: Hey, did you see the guy I had to go to in order to get that drug? Serious risk involved.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: Plus, most drug addicts I have met are shamelessly harmless. They weren’t out robbing people, they just never left their couch.
DAN: Then they’re unjust to themselves! They fail themselves.
BRET: What if them leaving the house had resulted in them hurting people? If you’re a danger to others, then please... sit at home stoned all day long, I beg of you. And maybe the guy who got a promotion and achieved so much isn’t really doing the world any favors.
Suppose he makes boxes, which people need, right? And he increases his profits by convincing people they need another box inside the outer box, doubling his sales. He succeeded, right? Until one day he drives by a landfill and he realizes it’s filled with all his boxes.
And he kills himself.
DAN: I had not considered the possible tragic consequences of what I was saying.
BRET: So few do...
DAN: (laughs) So none of this is to advocate against truthfulness. I only think atheists need to be scrupulous about not letting their truthfulness on this point--one on which the majority are such astonishing self-deceivers--lead them to thinking this makes them by default, generally more virtuous or even generally more honest people.
Things are more complicated than that and the temptation towards self-flattery is great in all of us. And I will say this too and this is an important qualification: often sometimes people want to attack atheists for being too interested in truthfulness in areas that themselves require truthfulness. And that’s unfair. In the public discussion of ideas to attack one side for caring too much about truth is perverse.
BRET: I fear the emphasis on truth and logic in atheism makes atheists more blind than some theists, because at least many theists acknowledge a difference between knowledge and faith. For atheists, they see themselves literally aligned with truth. As if it is a companion who follows them everywhere.
DAN: Yes, at least the religious admit that some of what they say is bullshit. And because they’re comfortable with faith (though they shouldn’t be) some of them are more comfortable with degrees of belief and degrees of uncertainty also in cases where that’s a good thing. It’s not as all or nothing. Fundamentalists on both sides risk being absolutist.
Atheists need to embrace what Nietzsche described as perspectivism, the constant shifting of perspectives for the sake of new truths. One has to not only consider more evidence but consider it with different feelings and from different social and political dispositions.
BRET: Feelings? Atheists don’t have those...
DAN: (laughs) Right, it’s that conception of perfectly detached truthfulness that Nietzsche thinks is self-deluded. Yes, science is about detachment. But most of our thinking does not involve double blind tests or quantitative analysis.
A lot of it--and especially when discussing philosophy and religion and ethics and practical choices--involves emotions and social and political dispositions. And there is no way to think void of emotions and in Nietzsche’s view to successfully do so would actually be to neuter reason. Our emotions make our reasoning about some things potentially more virile, as long as we feel things from multiple perspectives rather than with one prejudicial feeling and learn the most honest ways to rank the importance of what we learn from each feeling perspective we take on.
This perspectivist approach to knowledge is what led to recent shifts in my thinking and blogging. I was writing totally in lion mode at first. Then one day I decided to adopt the perspective of those who talk about “True Religion” about religions they don’t believe in. Like George W. Bush saying there is a “True Islam”. What could that POSSIBLY mean? I got into his possible perspective and feelings and it illuminated a range of truths for me that I couldn’t see when my only way of feeling religion was as an apostate atheist obsessed with the virtue of truth. I convinced myself of some of the merits of moderate religion in a way that its advocates never could for me.
I did that in the midst of writing a blog post that was an open ended exercise in perspective taking.
BRET: I’m not sure I could ever see things from W’s perspective. I don’t think there’s room up his ass for both of our heads.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: Feelings are sort of an atheist corollary to the devil. The greatest trick your feelings ever pulled was to get you to deny you have them. The atheists who pretend they have no emotions... boy do they get emotional. Usually anger, but also sometimes pride.
DAN: Right, whenever anyone is viscerally committed to denying they do some particular thing, watch out because the dangers of projection and hypocrisy and self-deception go way up.
BRET: So, you’re saying don’t bend over in front of Rick Santorum.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: What is that about? How did atheists get religious hypocrisy? We supposedly don’t have a book which instills us with views counter to reality...
DAN: Most religions don’t. Part of our problem is we keep saying “religion” as though it means only “Abrahamic monotheism.”
BRET: You don’t think it’s a little hypocritical that Buddhists claim to want to destroy the self, and yet they meditate alone in their own thoughts for hours?
DAN: Never thought of that.
BRET: I criticize all religions, I even got material on Jains. Like, should a Jain even floss? They’re killing millions of bacteria.
DAN: I think the issue is that religion is any interconnected set of ways of believing, valuing, ordering one’s life, ordering communities, developing rituals and celebrations, and forming identities, in which each of these things is mutually determinative of the others. That’s what it is. It’s not any one set of beliefs.
BRET: I was always taught in philosophy that religion is ritual.
DAN: Well you can have ritual without religion but ritual is often a key component in making other things become religious. Ritual helps make the religious link between things you can have apart from religion.
BRET: Well, right, you can have ritual without religoin, but you can’t have religion without ritual. Which is why atheism can’t be a religion. It may have charismatic leaders, it may cut family ties, it may take donations... but that’s a cult, not a religion.
DAN: I don’t think you can boil anything down to one secret ingredient like that.
BRET: I’m sure not.
DAN: Or even say any human community is devoid of rituals. Sure, disconnected atheists with nothing in common and no organized groups would have few if any rituals.
BRET: Of course not, but what makes a ritual religious is the reasoning behind it, not the act of ritual.
DAN: But the more we interconnect with each other and form a shared identity, it naturally starts to happen. Like listening to the way some atheists say “atheism is not a belief, it’s a lack of belief just as bald is not a hair color” it starts to sound like a recitation of a creed. A really ironic recitation of a creed. And it’s not that what they’re saying is false. It comes off sounding like the brain has been stimulated to recite the right response.
BRET: Too true. But they don’t say that because they think it pleases Atheismo, the great and powerful.
DAN: No, but you can argue that neither is that what makes religious people recite their creeds. They recite creeds as affirmations of group membership—to view it from an external, sociological point of view, irrespective of what they consciously are thinking and saying.
BRET: Are creeds even part of religion though? I see politics and religion as being hard to separate, but that might be the line. If you do something to be part of a group, it’s political.
DAN: Sure, the Apostle’s Creed, for example.
BRET: Oh no, I know of creeds. I was raised Catholic for Christ’s sake.
DAN: This is something Eric Steinhart and I have talked a lot about. When we are dealing with our students and talking to them about God and trying to get them to open up the question as simply a philosophical issue and they say, “Well, I believe because I’m a Catholic.” They have not given a reason they’re making an identity statement.
BRET: Sure they did.
DAN: Right.
BRET: Because they popped out of a Catholic vagina. What more could you want?
DAN: But they are not even cognizing seriously that this is a question of truths about the world. Or if they are, what’s driving what they say is identity, not philosophy. So when atheists attack people’s religious ideas, so many people think we’re attacking their identities. Implicitly, that’s what they hear. And in part, we are, and we need to figure out what to do about that.
BRET: Especially when they get specific, like “white Christian males.”
DAN: Because their identities are intertwined with very false ideas and irrationalistic habits of thought. To address this we need to take seriously how religions function on the non-cognitive level. We can’t just say, “Oh it’s a set of propositions. Look, they’re false! Now you can stop being religious. You’re welcome.”
This works only on those capable of thinking like a rationalist or a scientist or a philosopher. The rest look at us like we have three heads and no idea of what religion is. This is not to say that they don’t have beliefs. Especially the Abrahamic faiths have beliefs. And they take them very seriously.
But the key is to understand that they take them religiously seriously and this is a distinct way of thinking things, or a range of distinct ways of thinking things. But where were we? What was the question?
BRET: There was a question?
DAN: Did I answer it?
BRET: Who cares, this sounds good to me.
DAN: Okay. Me too.
BRET: Staying on topic is for suckers.
[Part 3, Part 4]
BRET: I remember you did a post a while ago asking if atheists “worshiped” truth, at least as much as you can worship such a thing. Did you come away agreeing with that?
DAN: No, Eric Steinhart wrote that post.
BRET: I am horrible at checking by-lines.
DAN: I think the question should be framed differently than he did to get atheists not to reflexively reject the proposition without thinking. I think the real question is this:
If empirically it were demonstrable that certain falsehoods are necessary for certain people and the societies in which they live to optimally function, would we accept that those falsehoods were for the best for those people?
Or do we prioritize truth as such an intrinsic good that we’d rather let the world burn or the alcoholic who’s got an iron grip on his higher power die than let him have his fiction undisturbed?
And if we do hold truth to be valuable even where it hurts human happiness or (worse, to me) human flourishing, then it seems like we are treating it as more sacred and more valuable than is rationally warranted and you know what the word for THAT is...
BRET: Oh, right, religion. Almost missed my cue.
DAN: And a related question is whether atheists have faith in truthfulness, (do we have more belief than evidence warrants?) that truthfulness is itself a greater good than other competing values in every sphere of life.
Obviously it’s better in science and so creationists need to be fought. I think I have good reasons it is better philosophically. And we Identity-Atheists tend to be bound up with valuing truth passionately and feeling it to be the highest moral priority in all personal and philosophical matters.
So, is that tantamount to having faith in it, to holding it sacred, to being irrationally hostile to other virtues when they rival it and closed minded to any empirical facts that might threaten our belief in its wonder working powers?
Those are hard questions. I think those were what Eric was asking. It’s what Nietzsche asks a lot.
BRET: It seems short sighted to focus only on truth, especially when a lie may help the truth. And I don’t mean lying to appear correct when you know you’re right, or telling your wife she doesn’t look fat. I mean, maybe religion is a good thing for a discipline like science.
It gives people a place to go to be religious; could you imagine if religion just disappeared? Science would be overrun by dogmatic fools. Religion can almost serve as an adult day-care.
DAN: (laughs) Your ideas always surprise me, Bret.
BRET: Religion keeps those who might ruin science out.
DAN: Or it makes capable minds scientifically illiterate.
BRET: No doubt, but it also gives us a sort of Plato’s cave for the best and brightest to escape.
DAN: That’s true, and I wouldn’t be who I am without first escaping a cave. Nietzsche himself muses in an unpublished note that it might be best to give kids a religious training when they’re young because the rigor is good and the process of apostasy would be good for them. I’m not sure what in that is Nietzsche and what is just my interpretation, but that’s close.
BRET: And that’s why I’m raising my kids Amish.
DAN: Let’s look at three hypothetical people:
Let’s say that each has an equally full life of pleasure and personal flourishing in all the ‘secular” areas of life. Family, money, power, respect, physical and intellectual accomplishments, friends, etc.
So you have these three equally pleased and flourishing people.
BRET: Do they have to be pleased, or can they be equally depressed?
DAN: All that matters is their pleasure total is the same, whether low or high.
BRET: Okay.
DAN: Now let’s say that one of these three people has a practically delusional, ecstatic religious life that does not interfere with his pleasure and flourishing in any of the other areas. He is as ethical, as humane, as shrewd in business, as creative in artistic endeavors, as great a friend and family member, etc. as the other two. He just has this sphere of his life where he gets a surge of extra pleasure from his delusions.
BRET: Are they all equally pleasant to be around?
DAN: Yes
BRET: Okay.
DAN: So, the same way someone can keep their escapes into movies and novels and other fantasies totally separate from interfering with life functioning, let’s say this person keeps their religious delusions and superstitions equally tidily contained. All they lack is truth in one area of life. In the rest of life, they have as much truth as anyone and the net gain is immense pleasure and sense of identity, etc. Now, let’s say there is an atheist who has everything the same but instead of faith-based delusions some truthful endeavor (or fictions known to be fictions) fill the same role the religious delusions play for the religious person. In those two cases, I think the atheist wins because the pleasures are equal AND the bonus is truth.
BRET: This third person better be a heroin addict or something.
But, yeah, let’s take an atheist who is flourishing and pleased in all those areas but the pain of seeing the truth makes that side of him miserable and so even though he’s as pleased as the others in all these other areas of his life, there’s also this dragging net loss that could only be more pleasant if he could only believe.
Now, assuming a lot---that the delusional beliefs don’t have a net negative beyond himself---is he better off than our ecstatically delusional, but utterly functional believer?
BRET: Does a person’s happiness matter?
DAN: That’s the question. Can happiness trump truth in our values ever? For me, I believe that we should aim towards maximal human flourishing, not maximal human pleasure. I’m willing to bite the bullet and say we should all prefer truth even with less pleasure. That’s a really high priority for either truth or, in my case, human perfection.
That came out wrong, I didn’t mean to suggest in my case that I’m perfect! I meant I prioritize total human power as the highest good, not any specific virtue. So for me enough other virtues taken together might make one person without the truth a better person than another who has less virtues.
If someone found the immersion in the delusion made it all the more effective at enhancing his life without detracting from real world functionality, is that for him a fantastic accomplishment of self-hypnotism and balancing competing goods and getting the most out of them?
It’s like taking a drug if it does not damage your overall functioning, it’s just a pleasure boost. Drugs are lies. Our pleasures should track goods.
BRET: Drugs aren’t lies...
DAN: The drug tells you you’re ecstatic when there’s no good reason to be ecstatic. So it makes you ecstatic in a way that does not help you navigate truth.
BRET: There’s a damn good reason you’re ecstatic---you took a drug. That’s classic cause and effect.
DAN: Right, but our brains are set up to reward us for success. If we can short circuit that and just feel good by manipulating our brain chemistry, we cheat.
BRET: Drugs don’t enter the body and whisper, “Hey, you got a promotion, feel good.”
DAN: But if it does not hurt overall functioning or make us less inclined to pursue worthier pleasures from worthier accomplishments then why not add the extra pleasure? So what happens if you swap out “drug” for “god”?
BRET: Opiate of the masses, eh?
DAN: Sure. Sports, too. My ecstasies over some baseball games are comparable to religious ecstasies.
BRET: You know... every mean thing they say about religion you can apply to sports.
DAN: Exactly.
BRET: And in many cases sports are worse. I never heard of a Baptist hooligan riot.
DAN: (laughs) It’s vicarious. You feel like you’ve won something great when you’ve done nothing but sit on the couch getting fat.
BRET: Or lost. I don’t know which is harder on a city, to win or lose.
DAN: So there are pleasures which distract us from developing our virtues or which reward us when we didn’t do anything that merited reward.
BRET: But why even value truth in that way? Truth doesn’t need us, truth exists whether we even exist or not.
DAN: Right. That’s the question. Why value truth more than it is actually conducive to our pleasure and/or flourishing?
BRET: Well, I wouldn’t make that comparison. I don’t think truth is what makes people sad, or happy.
DAN: Why treat it as a good in itself when it might mean rebuking yourself for taking baseball games seriously or being fooled by movies emotionally or by drugs, etc.? The idea is that if you take “Truthfulness” to an extreme it does interfere with other things in life. That’s Nietzsche’s point. There’s a bit of “falsity” in everything. How fanatical must we be in rooting it out?
BRET: I think the missing link is Justice. The emphasis is being put on truth, but truth is only valuable as it pertains to fairness.
DAN: Well we can talk about the justice of pleasures, no?
BRET: I suppose, but I don’t know anything about the justice of pleasure. I know about the pleasure of justice... but not the other way around.
DAN: I mean pleasures should justly track merit and displeasure demerit. If we’re being formal and anal. I do something great and you do something lousy, but you take a drug and we both feel great tonight. How’s that fair?
BRET: Hey, did you see the guy I had to go to in order to get that drug? Serious risk involved.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: Plus, most drug addicts I have met are shamelessly harmless. They weren’t out robbing people, they just never left their couch.
DAN: Then they’re unjust to themselves! They fail themselves.
BRET: What if them leaving the house had resulted in them hurting people? If you’re a danger to others, then please... sit at home stoned all day long, I beg of you. And maybe the guy who got a promotion and achieved so much isn’t really doing the world any favors.
Suppose he makes boxes, which people need, right? And he increases his profits by convincing people they need another box inside the outer box, doubling his sales. He succeeded, right? Until one day he drives by a landfill and he realizes it’s filled with all his boxes.
And he kills himself.
DAN: I had not considered the possible tragic consequences of what I was saying.
BRET: So few do...
DAN: (laughs) So none of this is to advocate against truthfulness. I only think atheists need to be scrupulous about not letting their truthfulness on this point--one on which the majority are such astonishing self-deceivers--lead them to thinking this makes them by default, generally more virtuous or even generally more honest people.
Things are more complicated than that and the temptation towards self-flattery is great in all of us. And I will say this too and this is an important qualification: often sometimes people want to attack atheists for being too interested in truthfulness in areas that themselves require truthfulness. And that’s unfair. In the public discussion of ideas to attack one side for caring too much about truth is perverse.
BRET: I fear the emphasis on truth and logic in atheism makes atheists more blind than some theists, because at least many theists acknowledge a difference between knowledge and faith. For atheists, they see themselves literally aligned with truth. As if it is a companion who follows them everywhere.
DAN: Yes, at least the religious admit that some of what they say is bullshit. And because they’re comfortable with faith (though they shouldn’t be) some of them are more comfortable with degrees of belief and degrees of uncertainty also in cases where that’s a good thing. It’s not as all or nothing. Fundamentalists on both sides risk being absolutist.
Atheists need to embrace what Nietzsche described as perspectivism, the constant shifting of perspectives for the sake of new truths. One has to not only consider more evidence but consider it with different feelings and from different social and political dispositions.
BRET: Feelings? Atheists don’t have those...
DAN: (laughs) Right, it’s that conception of perfectly detached truthfulness that Nietzsche thinks is self-deluded. Yes, science is about detachment. But most of our thinking does not involve double blind tests or quantitative analysis.
A lot of it--and especially when discussing philosophy and religion and ethics and practical choices--involves emotions and social and political dispositions. And there is no way to think void of emotions and in Nietzsche’s view to successfully do so would actually be to neuter reason. Our emotions make our reasoning about some things potentially more virile, as long as we feel things from multiple perspectives rather than with one prejudicial feeling and learn the most honest ways to rank the importance of what we learn from each feeling perspective we take on.
This perspectivist approach to knowledge is what led to recent shifts in my thinking and blogging. I was writing totally in lion mode at first. Then one day I decided to adopt the perspective of those who talk about “True Religion” about religions they don’t believe in. Like George W. Bush saying there is a “True Islam”. What could that POSSIBLY mean? I got into his possible perspective and feelings and it illuminated a range of truths for me that I couldn’t see when my only way of feeling religion was as an apostate atheist obsessed with the virtue of truth. I convinced myself of some of the merits of moderate religion in a way that its advocates never could for me.
I did that in the midst of writing a blog post that was an open ended exercise in perspective taking.
BRET: I’m not sure I could ever see things from W’s perspective. I don’t think there’s room up his ass for both of our heads.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: Feelings are sort of an atheist corollary to the devil. The greatest trick your feelings ever pulled was to get you to deny you have them. The atheists who pretend they have no emotions... boy do they get emotional. Usually anger, but also sometimes pride.
DAN: Right, whenever anyone is viscerally committed to denying they do some particular thing, watch out because the dangers of projection and hypocrisy and self-deception go way up.
BRET: So, you’re saying don’t bend over in front of Rick Santorum.
DAN: (laughs)
BRET: What is that about? How did atheists get religious hypocrisy? We supposedly don’t have a book which instills us with views counter to reality...
DAN: Most religions don’t. Part of our problem is we keep saying “religion” as though it means only “Abrahamic monotheism.”
BRET: You don’t think it’s a little hypocritical that Buddhists claim to want to destroy the self, and yet they meditate alone in their own thoughts for hours?
DAN: Never thought of that.
BRET: I criticize all religions, I even got material on Jains. Like, should a Jain even floss? They’re killing millions of bacteria.
DAN: I think the issue is that religion is any interconnected set of ways of believing, valuing, ordering one’s life, ordering communities, developing rituals and celebrations, and forming identities, in which each of these things is mutually determinative of the others. That’s what it is. It’s not any one set of beliefs.
BRET: I was always taught in philosophy that religion is ritual.
DAN: Well you can have ritual without religion but ritual is often a key component in making other things become religious. Ritual helps make the religious link between things you can have apart from religion.
BRET: Well, right, you can have ritual without religoin, but you can’t have religion without ritual. Which is why atheism can’t be a religion. It may have charismatic leaders, it may cut family ties, it may take donations... but that’s a cult, not a religion.
DAN: I don’t think you can boil anything down to one secret ingredient like that.
BRET: I’m sure not.
DAN: Or even say any human community is devoid of rituals. Sure, disconnected atheists with nothing in common and no organized groups would have few if any rituals.
BRET: Of course not, but what makes a ritual religious is the reasoning behind it, not the act of ritual.
DAN: But the more we interconnect with each other and form a shared identity, it naturally starts to happen. Like listening to the way some atheists say “atheism is not a belief, it’s a lack of belief just as bald is not a hair color” it starts to sound like a recitation of a creed. A really ironic recitation of a creed. And it’s not that what they’re saying is false. It comes off sounding like the brain has been stimulated to recite the right response.
BRET: Too true. But they don’t say that because they think it pleases Atheismo, the great and powerful.
DAN: No, but you can argue that neither is that what makes religious people recite their creeds. They recite creeds as affirmations of group membership—to view it from an external, sociological point of view, irrespective of what they consciously are thinking and saying.
BRET: Are creeds even part of religion though? I see politics and religion as being hard to separate, but that might be the line. If you do something to be part of a group, it’s political.
DAN: Sure, the Apostle’s Creed, for example.
BRET: Oh no, I know of creeds. I was raised Catholic for Christ’s sake.
DAN: This is something Eric Steinhart and I have talked a lot about. When we are dealing with our students and talking to them about God and trying to get them to open up the question as simply a philosophical issue and they say, “Well, I believe because I’m a Catholic.” They have not given a reason they’re making an identity statement.
BRET: Sure they did.
DAN: Right.
BRET: Because they popped out of a Catholic vagina. What more could you want?
DAN: But they are not even cognizing seriously that this is a question of truths about the world. Or if they are, what’s driving what they say is identity, not philosophy. So when atheists attack people’s religious ideas, so many people think we’re attacking their identities. Implicitly, that’s what they hear. And in part, we are, and we need to figure out what to do about that.
BRET: Especially when they get specific, like “white Christian males.”
DAN: Because their identities are intertwined with very false ideas and irrationalistic habits of thought. To address this we need to take seriously how religions function on the non-cognitive level. We can’t just say, “Oh it’s a set of propositions. Look, they’re false! Now you can stop being religious. You’re welcome.”
This works only on those capable of thinking like a rationalist or a scientist or a philosopher. The rest look at us like we have three heads and no idea of what religion is. This is not to say that they don’t have beliefs. Especially the Abrahamic faiths have beliefs. And they take them very seriously.
But the key is to understand that they take them religiously seriously and this is a distinct way of thinking things, or a range of distinct ways of thinking things. But where were we? What was the question?
BRET: There was a question?
DAN: Did I answer it?
BRET: Who cares, this sounds good to me.
DAN: Okay. Me too.
BRET: Staying on topic is for suckers.
[Part 3, Part 4]
Monday, January 16, 2012
Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 1
BRET: I’m here today with Dr. Daniel Fincke from the blog Camels With Hammers. So, I have to ask, why do you hate being called “Dr. Dan?”
DAN: It’s trivializing. Except in contexts where people would normally be formal, I don’t expect to be called Dr. But in those cases, it rankles a bit to be called Mr. and in cases where people should just call me Dan, “Dr. Dan” feels like they’re teasing. Also it sounds gimmicky. One of those “I’m a Dr. but approachable” things. I feel like that condescends to insecurities that are ridiculous. So treat me like an equal and call me Dan or if you feel like showing special respect, call me Dr. Fincke.
BRET: So you don’t harbor a deep-seated hatred for alliteration?
DAN: Okay that made me laugh out loud. No, but now that you mention it, that probably only increases the flippancy of it in my mind. When I was a kid my older cousins (whom I loved) would say in a sing-songy voice “Dan Dan The Ice Cream Man”. I loved that when I was six. Dr. Dan sounds like that to me when I’m 33. It’s not the same.
BRET: Who is your favorite philosopher?
DAN: Friedrich Nietzsche
BRET: Hmm... is it because of his stance on animal rights?
DAN: Ha! No, not quite. I got into Nietzsche when a close friend of mine in college went through a severe crisis of faith based on reading Nietzsche. We were both devout evangelical Christians at a religiously and politically hard right wing college and at the end of freshman year Nietzsche got under his skin when we both took Ethics together. Nietzsche loomed over our discussions for the next couple years as my friend’s doubts became stronger and stronger and as he flirted with full out philosophical skepticism and an almost suicidal nihilism.
Eventually it was an existential urgency that I fully encounter Nietzsche for myself so I read the entire Portable Nietzsche in 10 days and it knocked the spiritual wind out of me. After that I struggled for 5 months before abandoning the faith.
BRET: I’ve noticed there’s two sort of paths to atheism, one where the faith pushes you out, and another where atheism draws you in. For example, I became an atheist by reading the Bible, whereas you became an atheist from reading the thoughts of someone criticizing religion. Do you think there’s something to that?
DAN: Sure. There are a few more ways to break it up. But I loved being a Christian and never thought of things like hypocrisies or the strangeness and immorality of the Bible being a threat to my faith. For me it was just a long journey of trying to defend against external philosophical attacks, from when I was 14-21.
Where Nietzsche really got under my skin was where he shifted the ground to the ethical. Believing became a moral matter and Nietzsche’s power was not in making philosophical arguments against the faith. I could develop those on my own and already had through years of studying philosophy. But what he did was present this defiantly alternative perspective on the world. It was really like visiting a whole other universe reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra and it profoundly messed with my mind in ways that could not be articulated.
It was like I had spent all these years building these elaborate apologetic routines and then encountered this literary masterwork that just ignored all that and moved on completely from my clever little excuses and assailed the very ethos of my beliefs and painted this picture of a whole different world with a whole different, rival, coherent ethos.
It’s very hard to explain how it worked, but it was like basically like being beaten by someone so far out of your league you have no idea what hit you. And so I spent the next 10 years trying to figure out what exactly had happened.
BRET: What rival ethos does Nietzsche present?
DAN: Well, I’m thinking specifically of the Nietzsche one finds in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so I’ll say it’s “Zarathustra’s” ethos. Not the historical Zarathustra, of course, but Nietzsche’s.
Zarathustra has this sort of high minded seer demeanor about him. He is this character who just has contempt for all pettiness, for all backwardness, for all weakness, for all hatred of the body and the world. And this desire to affirm nature and the body and to look at the future as a place of open-ended transformation of values. There is this overwhelming feeling like we can do so much better as human beings if only we took the dare to radically question our values and overcome everything weak in our humanity. Zarathustra is all about air that is both rarefied and fresh.
He’s incredibly inspiring. It’s by far Nietzsche’s most visionary and positive and inspiring work. But at first it was devastatingly challenging. It was a world that I didn’t fit into, and which had utter contempt for me, and which landed so many blows to my faith indirectly. Again, it’s really hard to describe the effect. It was emotional and “spiritual”.
BRET: Do you find that odd, that something spiritual led you to atheism?
DAN: In a way it makes perfect sense because a religion gives someone a Gestalt that integrates one’s “spiritual” feelings with one’s metaphysics and values and identity and community. It’s a whole way of thinking, feeling, and practicing. When someone says it’s false, well it sure does not feel false. It seems to be ordering your life wonderfully---if you’re one of those people it works for.
And so it makes sense that it was a powerful alternative ordering of things that hooked my emotions and challenged my identity directly. It took superior intellectual content which also had a mesmerizing charismatic appeal that invited my religious mind into a full perspective that it could try on and feel overwhelmed by and eventually have a Gestalt shift within---and then have a wholesale change of feelings right along with it. So, I became a zealous Nietzschean. Until I could finally separate myself from him and move on. But that took a while.
BRET: So you aren’t one of the mechanical atheists who pretend they are logic machines with no emotions?
DAN: Not at all. I am flabbergasted when Christians who know me disingenuously try to pull that card on me. They know I wear my heart on my sleeve and they can see that I’m brimming with passion for philosophy and for atheism. They just take my words insisting that we be very rational and apportion our beliefs to evidence and say that must be a cold way of life. But they must see in front of them an atheist who is decidedly living hotly.
BRET: Do you read many Christian blogs?
DAN: Only Andrew Sullivan and I’ll read some things he links to.
BRET: Do you read many atheist blogs?
DAN: Yes, I read nearly all of Freethought Blogs and a couple times a week I check out Planet Atheism. I stack my Google Reader with every promising atheism blog I come across so that someday I may stumble on something great.
BRET: For atheist bloggers and Christian commenters you may see on those blogs, what would you say would be your biggest criticism of each, in general? And feel free to name names or mention more than one criticism.
DAN: Well this is my specialty as my most popular posts are the ones with tips for believers reaching out to atheists and atheists reaching out to believers, so there’s a lot I could say. I would say as a general rule my frustration with Christian commenters is that they are utterly clueless about atheists. Most of them are, anyway.
BRET: You don’t eat baby?
DAN: They have no idea how much their block texts of bible verses make atheists’ eyes glaze over. Like no idea how completely ineffective Bible verses are on us. They don’t grasp that any bit of Christianese starts sounding like Chinese to us. They don’t get that we have no interest in their salvation--like, this is just not a problem for us!
BRET: Atheists don’t die?
DAN: Well, we don’t need to be saved from sins. And we don’t see any connection between the fact that we die and that we’re sinners.
BRET: Depends on the sin and cause of death, I suppose. If you have sex with cows and you die in a stampede...
DAN: (laughs) That’s true. Maybe those are the sins the Bible has in mind.
On the other end of the spectrum are Christians who know better and will engage philosophically. And I get along with some of them very well. I have a few Christian friends who are politically very progressive and they love my blog. I cannot get a bead on their theology since they’re constantly agreeing with me even when I’m trashing their fellow believers and they’re very slippery when put direct questions.
Then there are the educated Christians who are more combative, or who have an edge to them even when not directly being combative. What bothers me most about them is that even when they are ostensibly just engaged in the truth of the particular issue, you can feel their sense that they are in hostile territory.
The only Christians you can truly engage with online are those with an agenda-free interest in the truth of the issue at hand. The ones who care about the philosophical issues for their own sake and without constantly worrying about how this will defend or threaten their faith. They exist and they and the non-combative progressives are delights to have around.
They are the people who in real life too you can have mutually edifying friendships with. Anyone who is screening everything you say and sending it back to the mothership in their mind for approval or disapproval is usually a lost cause. With those people you should probably avoid discussing religion and instead just discuss psychology in a non-threatening way, and plant ideas that way.
BRET: That mothership bit almost sounds like Scientology.
DAN: (laughs) Scientology, Christianity....
As for atheists online it’s really really nice to be part of a community of atheists, first and foremost.
BRET: Ha, but...
DAN: I’ll admit I can tolerate an over the top atheist way more easily than an over the top Christian. Because there is that feeling that at least they’re on my side.
BRET: Is that because of the absence of death threats and promises of eternal damnation?
DAN: Well not just that but I sympathize with their anger a great deal even when I think they express it wrongly. Let’s distinguish several kinds of atheists (and how everyone should be my kind).
BRET: Sounds glorious.
DAN: First you have your ashamed atheist who feels terrible that she just can’t bring herself to believe. And think it’s nothing but wonderful that others “have something to believe in” and feels almost a moral or psychological failure for not believing. My heart breaks for those atheists.
BRET: I thought those people became Buddhists.
DAN: No, Buddhists are people who just think Buddhism seems like a better religion or of some practical use. Buddhists have strength of non-conformity if they’re Western and come from an Abrahamic background. They’re not apologizing for not being able to believe.
BRET: Right, but an atheist yearning for something will often eventually find it. Even if it’s not where they first looked.
DAN: Yeah, but I don’t think it’s bad if they adopt an atheistic religion and don’t exhibit any of the negatives we often associate with religious excess (authoritarianism, exclusiveness, faith, irrationalism, superstition, pseudoscience, cultishness, patriarchy, misogyny, etc.).
BRET: By atheistic religion, do you mean religion based on atheism, or an atheist religion, like Buddhism?
DAN: I mean a religion that has no theistic beliefs.
BRET: Pre-existing, then?
DAN: Or new.
BRET: Okay.
DAN: You can’t make atheism itself a religion, it’s just a philosophical position (whether positively affirmed or by default). But atheists could have religions (and do).
Then you have apatheists, who I don’t identify with. I’m a passionate person. I feel like the apatheists are just proudly irresponsible for not caring about whether their culture has good values and true beliefs.
Then there are those atheists who care about values and beliefs but only when they have a negative political impact or threaten separation of church and state. Those sorts of atheists often become accommodationists. “Just leave religion out of science and politics” And that irritates me because I’m a philosopher. Faith-based religions don’t deserve to be ceded all the important philosophical questions about ethics and fundamental conceptions of the self, etc.
And so those accommodationist atheists, again like the apatheists, also have too much of a path of least resistance willingness to concede the stuff of most important cultural, psychological, and ethical value to wholly illegitimate institutions.
And when they defer to faith-based religions as no big deal for those who believe, they take no interest in whether or not those people would be better served by truth and they seem callous to the fact that many people are in those religions unwillingly and are hurt by them. (Most obviously countless conflicted children.)
Then come the identity-atheists, those atheists for whom it is a big deal to be an atheist. And there are several of us. Some of us are just “out of the closet” and angry and pushing back.
BRET: Right, all us flaming atheists.
DAN: And I totally get that.
This is what I call the “lion” stage, following Zarathustra’s “Three Transformations of the Soul”. It’s a stage Nietzsche describes in which you’re just saying “No” to received “Thou Shalt Nots,” and I’ve seen it start with a couple of atheists who I’ve helped “activate” who had been either a doubting Christian or something between an apatheist or an accommodationist.
And when the light switch goes on, when the consciousness is raised, they get really angry and start saying they’re “Anything But Theist.”
BRET: ...and start a blog. Ho ho ho!
DAN: So, yeah. I get the fury. And when dealing with the first three kinds of atheists I want to make them into lions.
BRET: The “Anything But Theist” blog name was only chosen on the basis of availability and high ranking in alphabetical order. My wife beat me though with “Abandoning Eden.” Hard to top “Ab.”
DAN: Should have gone with Aardvark Atheist.
BRET: Well it had to make sense...
DAN: Blog names have to make sense? Boy did I screw up!
BRET: But yours sounds mysterious, like a Led Zeppelin lyric. Aardvaark Atheist is just... Weird Al or something.
DAN: This is a bad thing?
BRET: My whole blog is a joke, at least the title should make sense. I owe people that much.
DAN: (laughs) So anyway, I want to light the fire under the groveling ashamed atheists, the apatheists, and the accommodationists. And I’m encouraging to the lions. But then there’s a choice that the lions have.
Either they move on to the next stage Nietzsche describes, which is “The Child”, or they become something Nietzsche did not describe which I like to call “The Asshole.”
BRET: Oooh, can it be the Hyena?
DAN: Might work.
BRET: You know, since they just sit around laughing and stealing the lion’s kills.
DAN: Yes! That really does work!
BRET: I was born to make animal metaphors.
DAN: And that’s it, it’s just feeding on the carcasses. And laughing their heads off.
BRET: Oh God... I’m a hyena... I have failed you.
DAN: It’s not building anything new and constructive. The child can just say yes. Nietzsche calls the child a “self-propelled wheel.” The child builds new values without obsessing over saying No anymore. The Child no longer lives in the shadow of the Dead God but creates that new world which is not defined by the negative, by the opposition to something else.
Now, not to make this all so much more confusing I started as a Camel. The camel is the absolutely obedient moral and truthful creature whose morality and truth lead him to realize the limits of absolutism, and out of commitment to truth and morality themselves comes to criticize received truth and received morality. To do that requires becoming the lion though, since the Camel is just obedient.
So I see Nietzsche’s writings as constant shifting. Sometimes he’s the Camel, sometimes the Lion, and sometimes the Child. And that’s how I like to write: sometimes as the obediently detached and disciplined truth-seeking academic, sometimes as the no-saying lion railing against the abuses and falsehoods of bad religions, and sometimes as the child who moves beyond opposing theism to reopening the questions of values and seeing how even the things the lion said no to (like religion and morality) might be salvaged in post-theist ways.
But the children get attacked by hyenas because the hyenas confuse them for accommodationists, when we’re not. Some us are willing to be lions when necessary.
BRET: We need some lion skins to hide the babies in.
[Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]
DAN: It’s trivializing. Except in contexts where people would normally be formal, I don’t expect to be called Dr. But in those cases, it rankles a bit to be called Mr. and in cases where people should just call me Dan, “Dr. Dan” feels like they’re teasing. Also it sounds gimmicky. One of those “I’m a Dr. but approachable” things. I feel like that condescends to insecurities that are ridiculous. So treat me like an equal and call me Dan or if you feel like showing special respect, call me Dr. Fincke.
BRET: So you don’t harbor a deep-seated hatred for alliteration?
DAN: Okay that made me laugh out loud. No, but now that you mention it, that probably only increases the flippancy of it in my mind. When I was a kid my older cousins (whom I loved) would say in a sing-songy voice “Dan Dan The Ice Cream Man”. I loved that when I was six. Dr. Dan sounds like that to me when I’m 33. It’s not the same.
BRET: Who is your favorite philosopher?
DAN: Friedrich Nietzsche
BRET: Hmm... is it because of his stance on animal rights?
DAN: Ha! No, not quite. I got into Nietzsche when a close friend of mine in college went through a severe crisis of faith based on reading Nietzsche. We were both devout evangelical Christians at a religiously and politically hard right wing college and at the end of freshman year Nietzsche got under his skin when we both took Ethics together. Nietzsche loomed over our discussions for the next couple years as my friend’s doubts became stronger and stronger and as he flirted with full out philosophical skepticism and an almost suicidal nihilism.
Eventually it was an existential urgency that I fully encounter Nietzsche for myself so I read the entire Portable Nietzsche in 10 days and it knocked the spiritual wind out of me. After that I struggled for 5 months before abandoning the faith.
BRET: I’ve noticed there’s two sort of paths to atheism, one where the faith pushes you out, and another where atheism draws you in. For example, I became an atheist by reading the Bible, whereas you became an atheist from reading the thoughts of someone criticizing religion. Do you think there’s something to that?
DAN: Sure. There are a few more ways to break it up. But I loved being a Christian and never thought of things like hypocrisies or the strangeness and immorality of the Bible being a threat to my faith. For me it was just a long journey of trying to defend against external philosophical attacks, from when I was 14-21.
Where Nietzsche really got under my skin was where he shifted the ground to the ethical. Believing became a moral matter and Nietzsche’s power was not in making philosophical arguments against the faith. I could develop those on my own and already had through years of studying philosophy. But what he did was present this defiantly alternative perspective on the world. It was really like visiting a whole other universe reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra and it profoundly messed with my mind in ways that could not be articulated.
It was like I had spent all these years building these elaborate apologetic routines and then encountered this literary masterwork that just ignored all that and moved on completely from my clever little excuses and assailed the very ethos of my beliefs and painted this picture of a whole different world with a whole different, rival, coherent ethos.
It’s very hard to explain how it worked, but it was like basically like being beaten by someone so far out of your league you have no idea what hit you. And so I spent the next 10 years trying to figure out what exactly had happened.
BRET: What rival ethos does Nietzsche present?
DAN: Well, I’m thinking specifically of the Nietzsche one finds in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so I’ll say it’s “Zarathustra’s” ethos. Not the historical Zarathustra, of course, but Nietzsche’s.
Zarathustra has this sort of high minded seer demeanor about him. He is this character who just has contempt for all pettiness, for all backwardness, for all weakness, for all hatred of the body and the world. And this desire to affirm nature and the body and to look at the future as a place of open-ended transformation of values. There is this overwhelming feeling like we can do so much better as human beings if only we took the dare to radically question our values and overcome everything weak in our humanity. Zarathustra is all about air that is both rarefied and fresh.
He’s incredibly inspiring. It’s by far Nietzsche’s most visionary and positive and inspiring work. But at first it was devastatingly challenging. It was a world that I didn’t fit into, and which had utter contempt for me, and which landed so many blows to my faith indirectly. Again, it’s really hard to describe the effect. It was emotional and “spiritual”.
BRET: Do you find that odd, that something spiritual led you to atheism?
DAN: In a way it makes perfect sense because a religion gives someone a Gestalt that integrates one’s “spiritual” feelings with one’s metaphysics and values and identity and community. It’s a whole way of thinking, feeling, and practicing. When someone says it’s false, well it sure does not feel false. It seems to be ordering your life wonderfully---if you’re one of those people it works for.
And so it makes sense that it was a powerful alternative ordering of things that hooked my emotions and challenged my identity directly. It took superior intellectual content which also had a mesmerizing charismatic appeal that invited my religious mind into a full perspective that it could try on and feel overwhelmed by and eventually have a Gestalt shift within---and then have a wholesale change of feelings right along with it. So, I became a zealous Nietzschean. Until I could finally separate myself from him and move on. But that took a while.
BRET: So you aren’t one of the mechanical atheists who pretend they are logic machines with no emotions?
DAN: Not at all. I am flabbergasted when Christians who know me disingenuously try to pull that card on me. They know I wear my heart on my sleeve and they can see that I’m brimming with passion for philosophy and for atheism. They just take my words insisting that we be very rational and apportion our beliefs to evidence and say that must be a cold way of life. But they must see in front of them an atheist who is decidedly living hotly.
BRET: Do you read many Christian blogs?
DAN: Only Andrew Sullivan and I’ll read some things he links to.
BRET: Do you read many atheist blogs?
DAN: Yes, I read nearly all of Freethought Blogs and a couple times a week I check out Planet Atheism. I stack my Google Reader with every promising atheism blog I come across so that someday I may stumble on something great.
BRET: For atheist bloggers and Christian commenters you may see on those blogs, what would you say would be your biggest criticism of each, in general? And feel free to name names or mention more than one criticism.
DAN: Well this is my specialty as my most popular posts are the ones with tips for believers reaching out to atheists and atheists reaching out to believers, so there’s a lot I could say. I would say as a general rule my frustration with Christian commenters is that they are utterly clueless about atheists. Most of them are, anyway.
BRET: You don’t eat baby?
DAN: They have no idea how much their block texts of bible verses make atheists’ eyes glaze over. Like no idea how completely ineffective Bible verses are on us. They don’t grasp that any bit of Christianese starts sounding like Chinese to us. They don’t get that we have no interest in their salvation--like, this is just not a problem for us!
BRET: Atheists don’t die?
DAN: Well, we don’t need to be saved from sins. And we don’t see any connection between the fact that we die and that we’re sinners.
BRET: Depends on the sin and cause of death, I suppose. If you have sex with cows and you die in a stampede...
DAN: (laughs) That’s true. Maybe those are the sins the Bible has in mind.
On the other end of the spectrum are Christians who know better and will engage philosophically. And I get along with some of them very well. I have a few Christian friends who are politically very progressive and they love my blog. I cannot get a bead on their theology since they’re constantly agreeing with me even when I’m trashing their fellow believers and they’re very slippery when put direct questions.
Then there are the educated Christians who are more combative, or who have an edge to them even when not directly being combative. What bothers me most about them is that even when they are ostensibly just engaged in the truth of the particular issue, you can feel their sense that they are in hostile territory.
The only Christians you can truly engage with online are those with an agenda-free interest in the truth of the issue at hand. The ones who care about the philosophical issues for their own sake and without constantly worrying about how this will defend or threaten their faith. They exist and they and the non-combative progressives are delights to have around.
They are the people who in real life too you can have mutually edifying friendships with. Anyone who is screening everything you say and sending it back to the mothership in their mind for approval or disapproval is usually a lost cause. With those people you should probably avoid discussing religion and instead just discuss psychology in a non-threatening way, and plant ideas that way.
BRET: That mothership bit almost sounds like Scientology.
DAN: (laughs) Scientology, Christianity....
As for atheists online it’s really really nice to be part of a community of atheists, first and foremost.
BRET: Ha, but...
DAN: I’ll admit I can tolerate an over the top atheist way more easily than an over the top Christian. Because there is that feeling that at least they’re on my side.
BRET: Is that because of the absence of death threats and promises of eternal damnation?
DAN: Well not just that but I sympathize with their anger a great deal even when I think they express it wrongly. Let’s distinguish several kinds of atheists (and how everyone should be my kind).
BRET: Sounds glorious.
DAN: First you have your ashamed atheist who feels terrible that she just can’t bring herself to believe. And think it’s nothing but wonderful that others “have something to believe in” and feels almost a moral or psychological failure for not believing. My heart breaks for those atheists.
BRET: I thought those people became Buddhists.
DAN: No, Buddhists are people who just think Buddhism seems like a better religion or of some practical use. Buddhists have strength of non-conformity if they’re Western and come from an Abrahamic background. They’re not apologizing for not being able to believe.
BRET: Right, but an atheist yearning for something will often eventually find it. Even if it’s not where they first looked.
DAN: Yeah, but I don’t think it’s bad if they adopt an atheistic religion and don’t exhibit any of the negatives we often associate with religious excess (authoritarianism, exclusiveness, faith, irrationalism, superstition, pseudoscience, cultishness, patriarchy, misogyny, etc.).
BRET: By atheistic religion, do you mean religion based on atheism, or an atheist religion, like Buddhism?
DAN: I mean a religion that has no theistic beliefs.
BRET: Pre-existing, then?
DAN: Or new.
BRET: Okay.
DAN: You can’t make atheism itself a religion, it’s just a philosophical position (whether positively affirmed or by default). But atheists could have religions (and do).
Then you have apatheists, who I don’t identify with. I’m a passionate person. I feel like the apatheists are just proudly irresponsible for not caring about whether their culture has good values and true beliefs.
Then there are those atheists who care about values and beliefs but only when they have a negative political impact or threaten separation of church and state. Those sorts of atheists often become accommodationists. “Just leave religion out of science and politics” And that irritates me because I’m a philosopher. Faith-based religions don’t deserve to be ceded all the important philosophical questions about ethics and fundamental conceptions of the self, etc.
And so those accommodationist atheists, again like the apatheists, also have too much of a path of least resistance willingness to concede the stuff of most important cultural, psychological, and ethical value to wholly illegitimate institutions.
And when they defer to faith-based religions as no big deal for those who believe, they take no interest in whether or not those people would be better served by truth and they seem callous to the fact that many people are in those religions unwillingly and are hurt by them. (Most obviously countless conflicted children.)
Then come the identity-atheists, those atheists for whom it is a big deal to be an atheist. And there are several of us. Some of us are just “out of the closet” and angry and pushing back.
BRET: Right, all us flaming atheists.
DAN: And I totally get that.
This is what I call the “lion” stage, following Zarathustra’s “Three Transformations of the Soul”. It’s a stage Nietzsche describes in which you’re just saying “No” to received “Thou Shalt Nots,” and I’ve seen it start with a couple of atheists who I’ve helped “activate” who had been either a doubting Christian or something between an apatheist or an accommodationist.
And when the light switch goes on, when the consciousness is raised, they get really angry and start saying they’re “Anything But Theist.”
BRET: ...and start a blog. Ho ho ho!
DAN: So, yeah. I get the fury. And when dealing with the first three kinds of atheists I want to make them into lions.
BRET: The “Anything But Theist” blog name was only chosen on the basis of availability and high ranking in alphabetical order. My wife beat me though with “Abandoning Eden.” Hard to top “Ab.”
DAN: Should have gone with Aardvark Atheist.
BRET: Well it had to make sense...
DAN: Blog names have to make sense? Boy did I screw up!
BRET: But yours sounds mysterious, like a Led Zeppelin lyric. Aardvaark Atheist is just... Weird Al or something.
DAN: This is a bad thing?
BRET: My whole blog is a joke, at least the title should make sense. I owe people that much.
DAN: (laughs) So anyway, I want to light the fire under the groveling ashamed atheists, the apatheists, and the accommodationists. And I’m encouraging to the lions. But then there’s a choice that the lions have.
Either they move on to the next stage Nietzsche describes, which is “The Child”, or they become something Nietzsche did not describe which I like to call “The Asshole.”
BRET: Oooh, can it be the Hyena?
DAN: Might work.
BRET: You know, since they just sit around laughing and stealing the lion’s kills.
DAN: Yes! That really does work!
BRET: I was born to make animal metaphors.
DAN: And that’s it, it’s just feeding on the carcasses. And laughing their heads off.
BRET: Oh God... I’m a hyena... I have failed you.
DAN: It’s not building anything new and constructive. The child can just say yes. Nietzsche calls the child a “self-propelled wheel.” The child builds new values without obsessing over saying No anymore. The Child no longer lives in the shadow of the Dead God but creates that new world which is not defined by the negative, by the opposition to something else.
Now, not to make this all so much more confusing I started as a Camel. The camel is the absolutely obedient moral and truthful creature whose morality and truth lead him to realize the limits of absolutism, and out of commitment to truth and morality themselves comes to criticize received truth and received morality. To do that requires becoming the lion though, since the Camel is just obedient.
So I see Nietzsche’s writings as constant shifting. Sometimes he’s the Camel, sometimes the Lion, and sometimes the Child. And that’s how I like to write: sometimes as the obediently detached and disciplined truth-seeking academic, sometimes as the no-saying lion railing against the abuses and falsehoods of bad religions, and sometimes as the child who moves beyond opposing theism to reopening the questions of values and seeing how even the things the lion said no to (like religion and morality) might be salvaged in post-theist ways.
But the children get attacked by hyenas because the hyenas confuse them for accommodationists, when we’re not. Some us are willing to be lions when necessary.
BRET: We need some lion skins to hide the babies in.
[Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]
Friday, November 18, 2011
Conversation with Andrea, Part 2
[The long anticipated, and long, continuation of my conversation with Andrea]
Bret: You mentioned your husband is not a believer. That is similar to my parents; my mother was religious, my father wasn’t. Why do you think there are so many more religious women than men?
Andrea: I’ve been thinking about your question for several hours and although I have some ideas about it, I’m not researched and ready to formulate a more complex answer that is true and concise. So for now, I will say the short answer is that women are more sensitive to spiritual matters. For example, who did the serpent approach first?
Bret: My wife thinks it’s because women are sheltered more, and end up more dependent and uneducated. I personally have no idea why, because the opposite view has been a topic of major discussion among atheists. There are just not many atheist women out there, and I’m not willing to accept most of the vaguely misogynistic views I have seen presented. I do think there is some truth in what my wife thinks on the matter.
As for why the serpent approached Eve... I’m not sure how disobeying God means one is more sensitive to spiritual matters. If I looked at the real world, I would see that most criminals are men, that women tend to follow the rules more than men, and I would question then what the true message of the Garden story might be. I think it’s important that woman is approached first, because man is assumed to hold a position of authority, and if Adam had led Eve into sin, Eve might be seen to have just been doing her duty by obeying her man.
This is why I am inclined to agree with my wife, though I think it’s rather condescending (even for me) to assume every woman who is religious is a victim of her circumstances. Though in that respect, do you ever wonder what would happen if you were born in another place or time?
Andrea: Your wife’s theory is interesting. If women are sheltered, wouldn’t they follow their husbands??
As for your question: I believe I would still come to the same conclusion no matter what era I was born into.
Bret: Well, she views it through a Jewish lens. This is particularly true in Judaism, where a child born to a Jewish woman is “considered Jewish.”
Andrea: I didn’t know that. So it doesn’t matter what religion the father is, the child follows the mother?
Bret: According to Jewish tradition, yes. It “matters,” in that some respectable Jews won’t marry you unless your mother was Jewish, and you are officially considered Jewish if your mother is of Jewish descent.
Andrea: That’s part of religion that I would balk at, no doubt, you do too.
Bret: And since women do most of the child raising in traditional homes, religion for the mother does tend to transmit more often across the board.
Andrea: In your post about Outrage, which pastor are you talking about and what was he saying?
Bret: I’ll find the link...
Andrea: Yes, I would agree with your last statement. My son attends church with me. I know that I have a short amount of time to engage him in church otherwise he might decide that he doesn’t have to go if his father doesn’t.
Bret: Apparently he removed his blog from public view, but the contents of the post (or maybe just part of it) can be found here: http://atheism.about.com/b/2011/09/10/pastor-mike-stahl-wants-a-national-atheist-registry.htm I think the whole thing is nonsense. I wish atheists would chill out.
Andrea: Is that really for real? He embarrasses Christians. I’ve never heard of him - not surprising because that kind of drivel is terrible and does nothing to bridge the gap.
Bret: No he doesn’t. He doesn’t embarrass Christians anymore than Hitler does, or anymore than Stalin or Mao embarrasses atheists. I’m more worried about what the average person does, because there’s billions of average people, and only a handful of extremists.
Andrea: Have you ever heard of Hugh Ross? He’s a Christian scientist, he runs/is part of an organization called Reasons to Believe, http://www.reasons.org/. He makes a practice of having debates with atheists. I went to a seminar with him and it was the first time I was in a room full of atheists - to be honest, I’ve never had a real conversation with an atheist because really, where would I meet one? At church? Not likely. Anyway, it was a fascinating day - my husband came with me because he had some questions about evolution vs. creation.
I wish I could recount some of the day but honestly, I walked away thinking my God is even bigger than I had thought to that point. He had very scientific sounding evidence, or at least, he poked large holes in an evolutionist theory that maybe didn’t answer all the questions but at least it offered the possibility for something more.
Anyway, just wondering if you’ve heard of him?
No, I was also going to say, that I think the Atheists in the audience acted poorly. They were disrespectful and didn’t allow Hugh to make a point without snickering and loud sighs. I don’t care if you are right in the argument, disrespecting an opposing person is low character.
Bret: I have not [heard of him].
Andrea: I’m not suggesting that I think you are showing low character. I am quite enjoying our conversation and I think you are very respectful, as you promised to be.
Bret: I try to be, but honestly... I have little control over whether a person gets offended by me or what I do. Standards are not very... standardized. I’m sure suggesting there are other gods would be considered offensive to some Christians.
Andrea: I’m not offended by the fact that there are other gods (small g) that are worshiped, but I have a relationship with the El Elyon, Most High God - the one over everything. It’s very American to suggest that there isn’t a spiritual realm outside of the one true God. Which is why America (and I include Canada in this) is so easily deceived. In many other nations, animism is predominant, which enables them to understand the spiritual warfare that we are involved in. Americans are ignorant about this - as a whole.
Bret: What is it like being married to a non-believer?
Andrea: First off, my husband is awesome; much better and more supportive than other women I know who have Christian husbands. It does drain my faith quite a bit, at time. He doesn’t have a faith grid so his solutions are limited to what he can imagine. And I can’t express my deepest desires with him.
Bret: Why are you married to an unbeliever? Is it to recruit him?
Andrea: When I married, I was a small ‘c’ Christian. My husband is a good man. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Although it was terrible for my parents, especially since we were married in Vegas. Very sinful.
My husband and I went through a traumatic period - it accounts for my ‘desert experience’ - in our second year of marriage. I was certain that we would not make it to our 3rd anniversary. This was my prayer, Lord, change my husband but leave me alone. God did the opposite of what I asked. He changed me - completely and totally. I was totally sold out for God. I was not only a capital C Christian, I was a CHRISTIAN*. It was during that period that I began to learn who God was. It’s taken me 13 years (I’ve been married for 15.5 years now) to learn about the relationship but it’s not religious (rules).
As for my husband, he hasn’t made a decision but he acknowledges that God makes an impact in our life. When we are blessed in a surprising way, he asks if I prayed for it. He seems to take for granted that I hear from God and although he doesn’t have a relationship himself (yet), he trusts my judgments and decisions because my faith is very strong.
*One time, I was riding the elevator of our apartment building, and I was heading to Bible study. I had my large teal Bible with me and another fellow got on the elevator the next floor down from mine. In the short ride down, I had a lot of thoughts run through my head. First, I was embarrassed that I was carrying a Bible and I wondered if the fellow knew if it was a Bible. But then I was ashamed that I was ashamed and by the time I reached the bottom (of 9 floors), I vowed that I would never be ashamed of the gospel again. And I haven’t. I’ve been bold. I speak about my faith - not in a terrible, condescending way, at least I hope not, but it’s part of who I am. I can no more not have a conversation about my faith as I can about not speaking about my husband or child.
Bret: Do you think morality plays any part in your relationship with God?
Andrea: How do you mean?
Bret: I am not sure how to make it any more clear... I guess I could ask a hypothetical. What’s keeping you from murdering random bystanders? Since, if you ask forgiveness, you still get to go to heaven and all.
Andrea: Yes, I can commit sin and still go to heaven but as Paul writes, do we sin so grace can abound more and more. The answer is no. I pursue holiness because that is what pleases the Father and I want to please him because we are in a relationship. I find out what the Father is pleased with and I do it.
I choose to exhibit loving-kindness to others because as I learn to see them as the Father sees them, I will love like he does. It’s about learning his perspective, not about rules that govern only my exterior behaviour.
Bret: I get the feeling you firmly believe you have an internal compass, and you call that God. Am I way off or is there something to that?
Andrea: My internal compass is not God, but a relationship with God changes my internal compass. Much like my relationship with my husband changes my internal compass towards infidelity. When I was single, I was free to date whom I chose. But now that I’m married, it wouldn’t please my husband (even though he may chose to forgive an affair, or not), so I don’t do it.
Bret: And here I was, assuming you just had a better internal compass. So you do stop yourself from doing certain things?
Andrea: Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t have free will. A relationship HAS to be based on free will, otherwise it stops be a true and healthy relationship. If God demanded a relationship because I have no choice, then wouldn’t it become like those stories where the abductee begins to fall in love with their captor?? That isn’t real love.
You are using your free will to not have a relationship, and I am choosing to have a relationship.
And throughout my relationship, there are countless times when I haven’t wanted to listen to God any longer, because he directed me to a different course of action that I didn’t want to take. I can do what I want but in EVERY situation, I’ve learned that what I wanted wasn’t actually what I wanted.
I can also decide to think about myself first in my relationship with my husband, but if I continue to do that then we will have friction in the relationship and I don’t want that, so we learn to work together.
Bret: There actually are those who see religion as being a complex case of Stockholm Syndrome, where a person comes to identify with the religious community which has essentially abducted them. And I think it is fair to say that some people, like prisoners, become institutionalized to the point where they can’t function without their religion. But that wasn’t really what I meant.
What I mean is... hmm, how to phrase it... do you know much of anything about Freud’s idea of the id, ego and super-ego?
Andrea: Sorry, I can’t even pretend to know even a little bit about that.
Bret: Just as well. I think people think and operate on different levels, and I don’t even agree with Freud anyway. I think everyone has impulses and instincts which we tend to think of a “lower level” thought, in that we don’t even really consciously think about them. Then you have things like dreams and desires, which you may or may not have control over.
But, as some people imagine being “above” those, you have something else, and I find this differs between people a lot. For me, it’s ethics, and for some religious people, it’s their direct relationship with God, while for other religious people, it’s the moral code of their religion.
So basically, you have these animal drives, these human drives, and something greater than ourselves which is hopefully keeping those others in check.
Andrea: Yes, I would agree with you.
Bret: I find it... I don’t want to say odd, but I guess it is, that you get your cues from God. It’s odd to me since I don’t know who it is you’re talking to. Most atheists would say you’re talking to yourself, but I’m willing to accept that you’re talking to something external if you truly believe you are. My question is just: how do you know you’re talking to God? Do you ever worry it’s a demon or maybe even just an angel? Or maybe even a different God than the one in the Bible?
Andrea: Hmm, I was thinking the same thing. I can appreciate that you have a difference of opinion but I can’t even remotely fathom how you could come to the conclusion you have. I would sooner choose a different faith religion than nothing.
The closer the relationship, the tighter you are and the better you know the being you are in a relationship with. Hearing from God is what I call prophetic (different than prophet - title or calling). Everyone is, or can be prophetic, it takes practice though; like in the example I shared with you with the fellow from Ontario. I got a few details wrong but more or less I knew things about him that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
There are several ways to judge a prophetic word: it MUST be congruent with Scripture, it should “sit” well within your spirit (no alarm or warning bells), it will always produce fruit that leads you or the person you’re hearing the word for closer to God, often there is a consensus among leadership that the word is from the Lord too. That’s how I know it’s from the Lord. I recognize his voice, as I recognize the voice of the devil (or demons) as well. Quite simply, if the exchange doesn’t cause the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control then it’s probably not from God.
Bret: I find that kind of disconcerting, if only because there is so much in the Bible I would not find to be very healthy to hear (especially the Old Testament). I mean, I am infinitely glad you choose to aim for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control (and I guess faithfulness in some ways is even good to an atheist). Those are all important goals, but sometimes it seems like religion takes an indirect path towards those things, and the result is that some believers act very “un-Christian” in your view, or immoral in mine.
You don’t worry at all that you may be misled? You must have seen Christians (or “Christians”) doing things in the name of faith that you find to be appalling.
Andrea: Of course I’ve seen Christians who are misled. There are countless examples that the public love to make fun of. I’ve made errors myself but I don’t ‘throw out the baby with bathwater’ so to speak. Science makes mistakes too and they have to backtrack at times. Those are ways we learn, right?
I am intent on being as close to God in my relationship as I can be so that I am always hearing correctly and so I can accurately determine the Lord’s voice from my own (or the devil). One of Jesus’ most oft repeated phrases is, “He who has ears, let him hear.”
You mention that there are things in the Bible that you wouldn’t want to hear, and I can only assume you are speaking about the violence in the OT. We are a NT church and under a new covenant - one under grace and not law, so we can usually assume that if the word doesn’t bring the fruit of the Spirit (which I mentioned above) then I’d go back to the Lord and ask for confirmation.
Bret: I would hope one would not even seek confirmation for some things, like slaughtering children or raping the women of a captured city. And yet, those are things that are explicitly commanded (I assume by God) in the Old Testament. I can’t personally picture you being in such a situation where that would come up, but for most atheists, it’s just the very fact that the door is left open to that sort of behavior.
Here in the US especially, religion has sort of weaseled its way into our politics, and yet I question if it’s really “Christian.” Just our foreign policy alone makes me wonder if every American Christian skipped over the “turn the other cheek” part of the Sermon on the Mount and instead prefer to take their cues from the Old Testament.
How do you reconcile certain aspects of the New Testament, like Matthew 10:34, where Jesus says he comes to bring not peace, but a sword, or Luke 22:36, where Jesus recommends selling your cloak to buy a sword?
Andrea: Ah yes, the sword. The passage you quote in Luke 22:36, MUST have a different meaning than literally buying a sword because in the hours that pass later, Jesus is arrested in the garden and Peter, taking Jesus’ words literally (not for the first time), cuts off the ear of one of the soldiers. Jesus heals the ear; obviously Jesus didn’t mean a literal sword, otherwise it would have been a blood bath, under the approving eye of Jesus. Jesus spoke in parables and used poetic language and metaphors.
The sword is mentioned several other places: Ephesians 6:17, says the Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Hebrews 4:12, For the word of God is sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul & spirit, joints & marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from his sight.
Revelation 1:26, gives a description of Jesus in heaven: and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword.
Revelation 2:12, these are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.
From these passages, we can understand that Jesus was not speaking about a literal sword but by words, because our enemy is not flesh and blood but by rulers, authorities and powers of the world and against spiritual forces of evil in the spiritual realms. (Eph 6:12, paraphrased)
If God spoke the world into existence and we say his is omnipotent (including his words), then our words are potent because we are created in his image. Words carry enormous authority. Jesus said that if you say to this mountain, move – it will move. He calmed the storm by speaking to it. See how that is different than OT? I’ve spoken quite a bit about the heart issue, the Bible also says from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34). And, life and death is in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).
Bret: One of the things that makes the Bible such a dangerous document in the minds of some atheists is more or less akin to the comment made by most Christians, in that the Bible is “poetry,” which implies it is open to interpretation. I tend to agree, which is why I interpret all the food analogies to mean God is going to eat believers, which I think is in keeping with the idea that no one really understands God’s motives.
But beyond my silly theories, the fact that there is so much violent imagery in the Bible, even the New Testament, means that it doesn’t take a leap of faith to use Christianity to justify atrocities. I tend to agree with your interpretation, but I think this comes down to an issue of verification.
Basically, if people are listening to voices in their head and the only document they have to verify the voices with includes calls for murder and violence... do you kind of see where I’m going with this? Assuming God is all-knowing, why did He leave the door wide open for such a grossly destructive interpretation?
Granted, there will always be people doing bad things, there are actually plenty of religions where there is no violent imagery present and the followers of those religions tend to be far more peaceful than Christians (Jainism and Buddhism come to mind, but even among Christian sects, one might point to the Amish and Quakers, or even Mennonites, as a group that has adopted Christianity in a uniformly peaceful and docile interpretation in stark comparison to the overwhelming majority).
Andrea: Those are good questions but it goes back to the relationship; without the relationship it’s so easy to stumble upon the interpretation.
Think about your relationship with a spouse or close friend/family member - there are special nuances and common phrases that identify that person to you. When you first begin to know someone, when you talk on the telephone, you have to first identify yourself but as time goes on, you can jump into the conversation by saying, ‘hey, it’s me’, or not even have to introduce yourself at all. I’m fairly certain the misguided Christians intent on destroying the world do not have an intimate relationship because their actions don’t line up with Scripture.
I once read, Jesus is perfect theology. I believe that is true. He came so that we can identify with God as a person, so that we could have a relationship with him.
Bret: You said earlier you would rather join another religion than have no religion at all. If you had to pick any other religion to join, which would it be?
Andrea: Can I pick agnostic? I would believe in something but perhaps not be able to define it because other religions are exactly that - a set of rules based on fear of punishment, rather than a relationship. I identify with the God of Israel, so perhaps I’d pick that, if push came to shove.
A few years ago, I was a guest lecturer in a world religion [online] class for an East Coast University. As preparation, I read the text book and the other required reading; I was also carefully reading the class exchanges to understand where the students were coming from. I learned quite a bit about different religions at that point.
Then I took a class myself, called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, in a field trip for that class we visited a Buddhist temple, a Sheik temple, a Hindu temple and a Mosque. For each location, we had a holy man guide us and answer questions. I was extremely grateful for the experience but in EVERY circumstance they worship at the temple and must give a tithe - those 2 things were the first items mentioned when asked what is the most important tenets of their faith.
Bret: Well, most religions tend to consider communal worship and charity to be important, so those two aspects tend to materialize in the form of worship in a sacred location and donations. Do you not value community and charity, or do you just go about it differently?
Andrea: Yes, I value them but if someone asked me to describe Christianity, I would not cite rules. It’s a relationship and from the relationship flows the desire to please the one you are in relationship with.
As far as fellowship [with others], it’s important to keep one another encouraged and to share life in community. Again, as part of the relationship, I like to gather with others that have the same interests. At the base of all relationship is a common thread.
Bret: Getting back to just the relationship itself, I find your position to be very perilous. Have you read the entire Bible?
Andrea: Yes.
Bret: Is there anything in there that you disagree with?
Andrea: There are things I don’t understand, but I hold to the base truth that God is good and that he wants a relationship with me. So the things I don’t understand, I ask questions to the Lord - some I understand but others I don’t yet, and that’s okay. God is infinite so there is no end to knowing him. As our relationship deepens, I understand his heart more and more.
Bret: It’s not necessarily about understanding. I mean... say you were asked to do something you didn’t want to do, or something you believed was wrong, but then say you happened to find that exact thing in the Bible, prescribed by God. Do you just do it or do you consider seconding-guessing what you heard?
Andrea: It’s not blind faith; that’s part of the relationship - being able to converse back and forth. If God is asking me to do something that doesn’t jive with other ways to interpret his word.
Speaking of word, there are two Greek words that describe our one word for ‘word’. Rhema is the utterance of God - meaning a fresh word, Logos is the written word. So, before I act on a directive, I have to be sure it’s God’s rhema for me and it MUST be in line with the Logos as well. Does that make sense?
Bret: Yeah, but most people would point out that the Bible is a virtual literary ink blotch. You can see anything you want to see in it. I think what you have done is adopted a virtue based faith.
Andrea: I disagree. You could misunderstand my husband when he speaks too, because you don’t have a relationship with him. I know him intimately, so I will understand when he is serious, joking or indifferent. But somehow the line of questioning seems to have changed - what are you asking? I also don’t understand what you mean by virtue-based faith.
Bret: Well, most people think of morality in terms of rules. You take the affirmative and seek virtues like goodness, kindness, peace, etc.
I guess what I was asking about was that it seems plausible that just about anything can be justified in the Bible. Maybe not all things. I doubt you can justify premarital sex, for instance, and I’m not even sure that is an important rule. But you can justify things like murder, genocide, rape, spousal abuse, slavery... the list is pretty long and the things the Bible have been used to justify have been pretty bad.
So I guess my question is... how did you come to a good conclusion, given how awful the track record is for the Bible? What did you do differently?
Andrea: As far as the violence in the OT, the best I can wrap my head around it (I don’t understand it, either) is that when you live by the law, you die by the law. It was religion and rules.
Also, the Bible records some of the events, because they happened, it doesn’t always offer a commentary on whether it was correct or not. For example, in Ezra 10, after hearing the Torah again, the people repented and rejected their foreign wives and children. I really don’t understand that because God honours covenant, so why would he allow those women & children to be loosed? The Scripture doesn’t give commentary on whether that was the correct course of action, just that it was the action they took.
However, because of Jesus, we have a new covenant (NT) and the game changes - so to speak. Our enemy is not flesh & blood but it’s about the spiritual realm and Jesus directs us to re-form our heart. In fact, Ezekial says that we will have a new heart and a new spirit. Jeremiah says that the new covenant will be written on our hearts (internal compass) and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us to put on the mind of Christ. He also says that we are a new creation - the old is gone.
Paul even goes so far as to say in Galatians that we died with Christ and no longer live, but the life I live, is Christ living in me.
Romans chapters 5-7 describe the death, we are a dead man but chapter 8 describes the new life in Jesus. Jesus is perfect theology.
Bret: I don’t know if I would trust anything Paul said. Honestly, you know Jesus as well as Paul did, as far as I’m concerned. The very presence of Paul in the New Testament is very unsettling to me. If there is any one person who says some dumb stuff in the New Testament, it was Paul.
Have you ever read any non-canonical gospels or writings from that era? Like, any of the gnostic gospels or anything that was considered but was rejected?
Andrea: I have the gospel of Judas but can’t say I’m familiar with it.
Bret: Do you know the surprise twist in the Gospel of Judas?
Andrea: Enlighten me.
Bret: Well, Judas was ordered by Jesus to turn him in, in order to facilitate the resurrection. And some people argue that Judas was the most favored apostle, and it’s even stated in the Bible many times. He was also trusted with the money. So I’m thinking the other apostles didn’t like him, so they framed him in their retellings.
Andrea: That could be true, but it doesn’t change the outcome.
Bret: No, of course not, it’s just an interesting twist. A bit of Biblical politics.
Andrea: I’m sure there were plenty. John continually refers to himself as the one Jesus loved; even James & John’s mother got involved, like a typical Jewish mom.
Bret: Which James?
Andrea: The sons of Zebbedee.
Bret: There was an early James who was supposedly related to Jesus.
Andrea: Yes, that’s true too. James, the brother of Jesus supposedly wrote the book of James.
Bret: And he supposedly ran his own church, which was overtaken at some point.
Andrea: If you had scientific evidence that God existed, would that change your views?
Bret: Like if I looked into a telescope and saw a bearded guy in the sky?
Andrea: I don’t know about that - could be true. I’m not disputing. Sure, if that’s how you want to perceive it.
Bret: Well, I’ll simplify what you said, because I wouldn’t use “science” to prove God. I would say, if there was a verifiable way of knowing there is a God, then yes, I would obviously believe in God like I believe in the Sun.
Andrea: You don’t have to include that question in the interview. I find that most people have a predisposition to think one way and will not change their mind. For example, I used to drink only Coke, even though in a taste test, I thought Pepsi tasted better.
Bret: I don’t believe in “science,” so I sort of saved you there. I wouldn’t have any reason to deny something that is plainly there. I think it would raise questions, though, like “Which god is there?” I have nothing to gain or lose in my position. Remember, it would be better for me if there was a God. There just doesn’t happen to be one, so I’m disappointed.
Andrea: Some would argue that you have eternity to gain or lose.
Bret: Well I mean, from my perspective as an atheist. If I give up atheism, I’m not losing out on atheist heaven. There’s nothing keeping me attached to atheism, I just linger there. Mostly because I’ve been down every path I have seen, and it’s pretty bleak.
Andrea: Maybe you could try relationship because from what I can tell, you don’t have one.
Bret: I have a relationship with all the voices in my head. I just don’t consult the Bible or call them gods. Well, I do consult the Bible, but as a literary work. Like I would consult the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad. I don’t begrudge people for their religion, but I don’t find what people call religion to be all that mystical.
Andrea: At least you are not lonely. :)
No, it’s not mystical.
Bret: Is that what the relationship is all about? Not being alone? How can you ever be lonely when the mind just keeps going deeper and deeper, no matter how deep you look?
Andrea: Perhaps. We benefit from the relationship but we were created for relationship with God. Genesis 2:18 is the first time that God said something wasn’t good - it’s not good for man to be alone. Without relationships, people don’t function optimally.
Bret: I’m surprised God wasn’t a bit perturbed that He wasn’t enough for Adam. God is awfully jealous in the Bible, which I find very unbecoming of a god.
Andrea: Much of what was created in Genesis was for a system that wasn’t necessary at the time of creation. Such as livestock - ever wonder why livestock was created if Adam didn’t need to toil with the ground? Livestock were used for sacrifices, which wasn’t necessary, and they didn’t need clothing or food.
God’s desire is to be in relationship with us, and he can sustain us but perhaps he created human relationships because he knew we’d need each other once sin entered the world.
Bret: Right, because you can’t have livestock after creation if He didn’t create them to begin with. That wouldn’t make sense.
Andrea: Are you mocking me?
Bret: No. Unless you wrote Genesis. If you did, I apologize. I still appreciate the bulk of your work. It doesn’t make sense though to take Genesis literally. Even religious people tend to look at it as metaphor. Like, the sun was created on day four. Day four... what defined the other days?
Andrea: Okay, then I think you misunderstood.
I tend to look at creation as literal but I’m open to other ideas. Good question about day 4, and the answer is, I don’t know. I took a class once on the first 3 verses of Genesis. It was over 12 hours of teaching - on 3 verses!! I didn’t understand quite a lot but I did walk away thinking, God is even bigger than I imagined.
What I meant about livestock is the language used to describe it. On day 6, God made wild beasts and livestock - why differentiate if there wasn’t a purpose intended for the livestock even before there was sin.
I understand this to mean that because God desired a relationship with us and he knew that sin would separate us from him so he created a system that would allow us to continue in a relationship.
Bret: Well, you know who supposedly wrote Genesis?
Andrea: Most scholars agree that Moses wrote the Torah, but there might be evidence to suggest that the Torah (including some of Genesis) was written by 4 or 5 writers.
Bret: Right, and do you think Moses wrote “beasts and livestock?”
Andrea: I don’t know. I have no reason to believe otherwise but if it wasn’t him, it was another dude. Some people are interested in that sort of thing, I’m not one of them.
Bret: I bet he wrote in terms of food that was kosher to eat and food that was trafe. I could be wrong, but I bet it was to denote animals that were edible and animals that weren’t. Adam still ate meat, right?
Andrea: I don’t believe that Adam ate meat. I think meat was introduced into the diet only after Noah, when the length of life was limited to 120 years. But your point is still the same as mine - there was a system in place before it was necessary.
Bret: True, if they didn’t eat meat. I’m rereading it and it appears God told Adam to eat plant life. Well, I have to use that in another way now.
Andrea: I’m not saying you are wrong but there is no “evidence” to suggest that they ate meat. God gave them every plant to eat and it wasn’t until Noah that God offered them to eat meat.
Bret: I’ll have to ask my wife when she gets home to check the beast/cattle thing later, but you’re definitely right about Adam being a vegan. It’s pretty clear. Even the animals are supposed to eat the herbs of the earth.
I’m imagining a grazing lion... I bet the lion was glad Adam sinned. That seems like a miserable existence for a lion. I’m surprised it wasn’t the lion who tricked Eve.
Andrea: One theory I’ve heard about that is because they had such long lives - a prolonged diet with meat leaves such amounts of proteins and hormones (naturally occuring, of course) would harm them but when the life span was only 120 years, then they couldn’t eat enough to do damage in such a short period of time.
Don’t you think it’s curious also that the serpent spoke with Eve and she didn’t freak out? I wonder if it was an everyday occurrence for them then.
Bret: It’s a garden with a forbidden tree, of course the animals talk. Maybe the animals talk now, we’re just not listening. My dog is always like, “Pet me, pet me!”
Andrea: A possibility.
Bret: I’m not saying they have anything to say worth listening to.
Andrea: God spoke through an ass, perhaps he’s still speaking through an ass.
Bret: I get the feeling a lot of asses think God is speaking through them. Present company excluded.
Andrea: Oh, of course, I wasn’t referring to you. ;)
[To be continued…]
Bret: You mentioned your husband is not a believer. That is similar to my parents; my mother was religious, my father wasn’t. Why do you think there are so many more religious women than men?
Andrea: I’ve been thinking about your question for several hours and although I have some ideas about it, I’m not researched and ready to formulate a more complex answer that is true and concise. So for now, I will say the short answer is that women are more sensitive to spiritual matters. For example, who did the serpent approach first?
Bret: My wife thinks it’s because women are sheltered more, and end up more dependent and uneducated. I personally have no idea why, because the opposite view has been a topic of major discussion among atheists. There are just not many atheist women out there, and I’m not willing to accept most of the vaguely misogynistic views I have seen presented. I do think there is some truth in what my wife thinks on the matter.
As for why the serpent approached Eve... I’m not sure how disobeying God means one is more sensitive to spiritual matters. If I looked at the real world, I would see that most criminals are men, that women tend to follow the rules more than men, and I would question then what the true message of the Garden story might be. I think it’s important that woman is approached first, because man is assumed to hold a position of authority, and if Adam had led Eve into sin, Eve might be seen to have just been doing her duty by obeying her man.
This is why I am inclined to agree with my wife, though I think it’s rather condescending (even for me) to assume every woman who is religious is a victim of her circumstances. Though in that respect, do you ever wonder what would happen if you were born in another place or time?
Andrea: Your wife’s theory is interesting. If women are sheltered, wouldn’t they follow their husbands??
As for your question: I believe I would still come to the same conclusion no matter what era I was born into.
Bret: Well, she views it through a Jewish lens. This is particularly true in Judaism, where a child born to a Jewish woman is “considered Jewish.”
Andrea: I didn’t know that. So it doesn’t matter what religion the father is, the child follows the mother?
Bret: According to Jewish tradition, yes. It “matters,” in that some respectable Jews won’t marry you unless your mother was Jewish, and you are officially considered Jewish if your mother is of Jewish descent.
Andrea: That’s part of religion that I would balk at, no doubt, you do too.
Bret: And since women do most of the child raising in traditional homes, religion for the mother does tend to transmit more often across the board.
Andrea: In your post about Outrage, which pastor are you talking about and what was he saying?
Bret: I’ll find the link...
Andrea: Yes, I would agree with your last statement. My son attends church with me. I know that I have a short amount of time to engage him in church otherwise he might decide that he doesn’t have to go if his father doesn’t.
Bret: Apparently he removed his blog from public view, but the contents of the post (or maybe just part of it) can be found here: http://atheism.about.com/b/2011/09/10/pastor-mike-stahl-wants-a-national-atheist-registry.htm I think the whole thing is nonsense. I wish atheists would chill out.
Andrea: Is that really for real? He embarrasses Christians. I’ve never heard of him - not surprising because that kind of drivel is terrible and does nothing to bridge the gap.
Bret: No he doesn’t. He doesn’t embarrass Christians anymore than Hitler does, or anymore than Stalin or Mao embarrasses atheists. I’m more worried about what the average person does, because there’s billions of average people, and only a handful of extremists.
Andrea: Have you ever heard of Hugh Ross? He’s a Christian scientist, he runs/is part of an organization called Reasons to Believe, http://www.reasons.org/. He makes a practice of having debates with atheists. I went to a seminar with him and it was the first time I was in a room full of atheists - to be honest, I’ve never had a real conversation with an atheist because really, where would I meet one? At church? Not likely. Anyway, it was a fascinating day - my husband came with me because he had some questions about evolution vs. creation.
I wish I could recount some of the day but honestly, I walked away thinking my God is even bigger than I had thought to that point. He had very scientific sounding evidence, or at least, he poked large holes in an evolutionist theory that maybe didn’t answer all the questions but at least it offered the possibility for something more.
Anyway, just wondering if you’ve heard of him?
No, I was also going to say, that I think the Atheists in the audience acted poorly. They were disrespectful and didn’t allow Hugh to make a point without snickering and loud sighs. I don’t care if you are right in the argument, disrespecting an opposing person is low character.
Bret: I have not [heard of him].
Andrea: I’m not suggesting that I think you are showing low character. I am quite enjoying our conversation and I think you are very respectful, as you promised to be.
Bret: I try to be, but honestly... I have little control over whether a person gets offended by me or what I do. Standards are not very... standardized. I’m sure suggesting there are other gods would be considered offensive to some Christians.
Andrea: I’m not offended by the fact that there are other gods (small g) that are worshiped, but I have a relationship with the El Elyon, Most High God - the one over everything. It’s very American to suggest that there isn’t a spiritual realm outside of the one true God. Which is why America (and I include Canada in this) is so easily deceived. In many other nations, animism is predominant, which enables them to understand the spiritual warfare that we are involved in. Americans are ignorant about this - as a whole.
Bret: What is it like being married to a non-believer?
Andrea: First off, my husband is awesome; much better and more supportive than other women I know who have Christian husbands. It does drain my faith quite a bit, at time. He doesn’t have a faith grid so his solutions are limited to what he can imagine. And I can’t express my deepest desires with him.
Bret: Why are you married to an unbeliever? Is it to recruit him?
Andrea: When I married, I was a small ‘c’ Christian. My husband is a good man. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Although it was terrible for my parents, especially since we were married in Vegas. Very sinful.
My husband and I went through a traumatic period - it accounts for my ‘desert experience’ - in our second year of marriage. I was certain that we would not make it to our 3rd anniversary. This was my prayer, Lord, change my husband but leave me alone. God did the opposite of what I asked. He changed me - completely and totally. I was totally sold out for God. I was not only a capital C Christian, I was a CHRISTIAN*. It was during that period that I began to learn who God was. It’s taken me 13 years (I’ve been married for 15.5 years now) to learn about the relationship but it’s not religious (rules).
As for my husband, he hasn’t made a decision but he acknowledges that God makes an impact in our life. When we are blessed in a surprising way, he asks if I prayed for it. He seems to take for granted that I hear from God and although he doesn’t have a relationship himself (yet), he trusts my judgments and decisions because my faith is very strong.
*One time, I was riding the elevator of our apartment building, and I was heading to Bible study. I had my large teal Bible with me and another fellow got on the elevator the next floor down from mine. In the short ride down, I had a lot of thoughts run through my head. First, I was embarrassed that I was carrying a Bible and I wondered if the fellow knew if it was a Bible. But then I was ashamed that I was ashamed and by the time I reached the bottom (of 9 floors), I vowed that I would never be ashamed of the gospel again. And I haven’t. I’ve been bold. I speak about my faith - not in a terrible, condescending way, at least I hope not, but it’s part of who I am. I can no more not have a conversation about my faith as I can about not speaking about my husband or child.
Bret: Do you think morality plays any part in your relationship with God?
Andrea: How do you mean?
Bret: I am not sure how to make it any more clear... I guess I could ask a hypothetical. What’s keeping you from murdering random bystanders? Since, if you ask forgiveness, you still get to go to heaven and all.
Andrea: Yes, I can commit sin and still go to heaven but as Paul writes, do we sin so grace can abound more and more. The answer is no. I pursue holiness because that is what pleases the Father and I want to please him because we are in a relationship. I find out what the Father is pleased with and I do it.
I choose to exhibit loving-kindness to others because as I learn to see them as the Father sees them, I will love like he does. It’s about learning his perspective, not about rules that govern only my exterior behaviour.
Bret: I get the feeling you firmly believe you have an internal compass, and you call that God. Am I way off or is there something to that?
Andrea: My internal compass is not God, but a relationship with God changes my internal compass. Much like my relationship with my husband changes my internal compass towards infidelity. When I was single, I was free to date whom I chose. But now that I’m married, it wouldn’t please my husband (even though he may chose to forgive an affair, or not), so I don’t do it.
Bret: And here I was, assuming you just had a better internal compass. So you do stop yourself from doing certain things?
Andrea: Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t have free will. A relationship HAS to be based on free will, otherwise it stops be a true and healthy relationship. If God demanded a relationship because I have no choice, then wouldn’t it become like those stories where the abductee begins to fall in love with their captor?? That isn’t real love.
You are using your free will to not have a relationship, and I am choosing to have a relationship.
And throughout my relationship, there are countless times when I haven’t wanted to listen to God any longer, because he directed me to a different course of action that I didn’t want to take. I can do what I want but in EVERY situation, I’ve learned that what I wanted wasn’t actually what I wanted.
I can also decide to think about myself first in my relationship with my husband, but if I continue to do that then we will have friction in the relationship and I don’t want that, so we learn to work together.
Bret: There actually are those who see religion as being a complex case of Stockholm Syndrome, where a person comes to identify with the religious community which has essentially abducted them. And I think it is fair to say that some people, like prisoners, become institutionalized to the point where they can’t function without their religion. But that wasn’t really what I meant.
What I mean is... hmm, how to phrase it... do you know much of anything about Freud’s idea of the id, ego and super-ego?
Andrea: Sorry, I can’t even pretend to know even a little bit about that.
Bret: Just as well. I think people think and operate on different levels, and I don’t even agree with Freud anyway. I think everyone has impulses and instincts which we tend to think of a “lower level” thought, in that we don’t even really consciously think about them. Then you have things like dreams and desires, which you may or may not have control over.
But, as some people imagine being “above” those, you have something else, and I find this differs between people a lot. For me, it’s ethics, and for some religious people, it’s their direct relationship with God, while for other religious people, it’s the moral code of their religion.
So basically, you have these animal drives, these human drives, and something greater than ourselves which is hopefully keeping those others in check.
Andrea: Yes, I would agree with you.
Bret: I find it... I don’t want to say odd, but I guess it is, that you get your cues from God. It’s odd to me since I don’t know who it is you’re talking to. Most atheists would say you’re talking to yourself, but I’m willing to accept that you’re talking to something external if you truly believe you are. My question is just: how do you know you’re talking to God? Do you ever worry it’s a demon or maybe even just an angel? Or maybe even a different God than the one in the Bible?
Andrea: Hmm, I was thinking the same thing. I can appreciate that you have a difference of opinion but I can’t even remotely fathom how you could come to the conclusion you have. I would sooner choose a different faith religion than nothing.
The closer the relationship, the tighter you are and the better you know the being you are in a relationship with. Hearing from God is what I call prophetic (different than prophet - title or calling). Everyone is, or can be prophetic, it takes practice though; like in the example I shared with you with the fellow from Ontario. I got a few details wrong but more or less I knew things about him that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
There are several ways to judge a prophetic word: it MUST be congruent with Scripture, it should “sit” well within your spirit (no alarm or warning bells), it will always produce fruit that leads you or the person you’re hearing the word for closer to God, often there is a consensus among leadership that the word is from the Lord too. That’s how I know it’s from the Lord. I recognize his voice, as I recognize the voice of the devil (or demons) as well. Quite simply, if the exchange doesn’t cause the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control then it’s probably not from God.
Bret: I find that kind of disconcerting, if only because there is so much in the Bible I would not find to be very healthy to hear (especially the Old Testament). I mean, I am infinitely glad you choose to aim for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control (and I guess faithfulness in some ways is even good to an atheist). Those are all important goals, but sometimes it seems like religion takes an indirect path towards those things, and the result is that some believers act very “un-Christian” in your view, or immoral in mine.
You don’t worry at all that you may be misled? You must have seen Christians (or “Christians”) doing things in the name of faith that you find to be appalling.
Andrea: Of course I’ve seen Christians who are misled. There are countless examples that the public love to make fun of. I’ve made errors myself but I don’t ‘throw out the baby with bathwater’ so to speak. Science makes mistakes too and they have to backtrack at times. Those are ways we learn, right?
I am intent on being as close to God in my relationship as I can be so that I am always hearing correctly and so I can accurately determine the Lord’s voice from my own (or the devil). One of Jesus’ most oft repeated phrases is, “He who has ears, let him hear.”
You mention that there are things in the Bible that you wouldn’t want to hear, and I can only assume you are speaking about the violence in the OT. We are a NT church and under a new covenant - one under grace and not law, so we can usually assume that if the word doesn’t bring the fruit of the Spirit (which I mentioned above) then I’d go back to the Lord and ask for confirmation.
Bret: I would hope one would not even seek confirmation for some things, like slaughtering children or raping the women of a captured city. And yet, those are things that are explicitly commanded (I assume by God) in the Old Testament. I can’t personally picture you being in such a situation where that would come up, but for most atheists, it’s just the very fact that the door is left open to that sort of behavior.
Here in the US especially, religion has sort of weaseled its way into our politics, and yet I question if it’s really “Christian.” Just our foreign policy alone makes me wonder if every American Christian skipped over the “turn the other cheek” part of the Sermon on the Mount and instead prefer to take their cues from the Old Testament.
How do you reconcile certain aspects of the New Testament, like Matthew 10:34, where Jesus says he comes to bring not peace, but a sword, or Luke 22:36, where Jesus recommends selling your cloak to buy a sword?
Andrea: Ah yes, the sword. The passage you quote in Luke 22:36, MUST have a different meaning than literally buying a sword because in the hours that pass later, Jesus is arrested in the garden and Peter, taking Jesus’ words literally (not for the first time), cuts off the ear of one of the soldiers. Jesus heals the ear; obviously Jesus didn’t mean a literal sword, otherwise it would have been a blood bath, under the approving eye of Jesus. Jesus spoke in parables and used poetic language and metaphors.
The sword is mentioned several other places: Ephesians 6:17, says the Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Hebrews 4:12, For the word of God is sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul & spirit, joints & marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from his sight.
Revelation 1:26, gives a description of Jesus in heaven: and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword.
Revelation 2:12, these are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.
From these passages, we can understand that Jesus was not speaking about a literal sword but by words, because our enemy is not flesh and blood but by rulers, authorities and powers of the world and against spiritual forces of evil in the spiritual realms. (Eph 6:12, paraphrased)
If God spoke the world into existence and we say his is omnipotent (including his words), then our words are potent because we are created in his image. Words carry enormous authority. Jesus said that if you say to this mountain, move – it will move. He calmed the storm by speaking to it. See how that is different than OT? I’ve spoken quite a bit about the heart issue, the Bible also says from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34). And, life and death is in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).
Bret: One of the things that makes the Bible such a dangerous document in the minds of some atheists is more or less akin to the comment made by most Christians, in that the Bible is “poetry,” which implies it is open to interpretation. I tend to agree, which is why I interpret all the food analogies to mean God is going to eat believers, which I think is in keeping with the idea that no one really understands God’s motives.
But beyond my silly theories, the fact that there is so much violent imagery in the Bible, even the New Testament, means that it doesn’t take a leap of faith to use Christianity to justify atrocities. I tend to agree with your interpretation, but I think this comes down to an issue of verification.
Basically, if people are listening to voices in their head and the only document they have to verify the voices with includes calls for murder and violence... do you kind of see where I’m going with this? Assuming God is all-knowing, why did He leave the door wide open for such a grossly destructive interpretation?
Granted, there will always be people doing bad things, there are actually plenty of religions where there is no violent imagery present and the followers of those religions tend to be far more peaceful than Christians (Jainism and Buddhism come to mind, but even among Christian sects, one might point to the Amish and Quakers, or even Mennonites, as a group that has adopted Christianity in a uniformly peaceful and docile interpretation in stark comparison to the overwhelming majority).
Andrea: Those are good questions but it goes back to the relationship; without the relationship it’s so easy to stumble upon the interpretation.
Think about your relationship with a spouse or close friend/family member - there are special nuances and common phrases that identify that person to you. When you first begin to know someone, when you talk on the telephone, you have to first identify yourself but as time goes on, you can jump into the conversation by saying, ‘hey, it’s me’, or not even have to introduce yourself at all. I’m fairly certain the misguided Christians intent on destroying the world do not have an intimate relationship because their actions don’t line up with Scripture.
I once read, Jesus is perfect theology. I believe that is true. He came so that we can identify with God as a person, so that we could have a relationship with him.
Bret: You said earlier you would rather join another religion than have no religion at all. If you had to pick any other religion to join, which would it be?
Andrea: Can I pick agnostic? I would believe in something but perhaps not be able to define it because other religions are exactly that - a set of rules based on fear of punishment, rather than a relationship. I identify with the God of Israel, so perhaps I’d pick that, if push came to shove.
A few years ago, I was a guest lecturer in a world religion [online] class for an East Coast University. As preparation, I read the text book and the other required reading; I was also carefully reading the class exchanges to understand where the students were coming from. I learned quite a bit about different religions at that point.
Then I took a class myself, called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, in a field trip for that class we visited a Buddhist temple, a Sheik temple, a Hindu temple and a Mosque. For each location, we had a holy man guide us and answer questions. I was extremely grateful for the experience but in EVERY circumstance they worship at the temple and must give a tithe - those 2 things were the first items mentioned when asked what is the most important tenets of their faith.
Bret: Well, most religions tend to consider communal worship and charity to be important, so those two aspects tend to materialize in the form of worship in a sacred location and donations. Do you not value community and charity, or do you just go about it differently?
Andrea: Yes, I value them but if someone asked me to describe Christianity, I would not cite rules. It’s a relationship and from the relationship flows the desire to please the one you are in relationship with.
As far as fellowship [with others], it’s important to keep one another encouraged and to share life in community. Again, as part of the relationship, I like to gather with others that have the same interests. At the base of all relationship is a common thread.
Bret: Getting back to just the relationship itself, I find your position to be very perilous. Have you read the entire Bible?
Andrea: Yes.
Bret: Is there anything in there that you disagree with?
Andrea: There are things I don’t understand, but I hold to the base truth that God is good and that he wants a relationship with me. So the things I don’t understand, I ask questions to the Lord - some I understand but others I don’t yet, and that’s okay. God is infinite so there is no end to knowing him. As our relationship deepens, I understand his heart more and more.
Bret: It’s not necessarily about understanding. I mean... say you were asked to do something you didn’t want to do, or something you believed was wrong, but then say you happened to find that exact thing in the Bible, prescribed by God. Do you just do it or do you consider seconding-guessing what you heard?
Andrea: It’s not blind faith; that’s part of the relationship - being able to converse back and forth. If God is asking me to do something that doesn’t jive with other ways to interpret his word.
Speaking of word, there are two Greek words that describe our one word for ‘word’. Rhema is the utterance of God - meaning a fresh word, Logos is the written word. So, before I act on a directive, I have to be sure it’s God’s rhema for me and it MUST be in line with the Logos as well. Does that make sense?
Bret: Yeah, but most people would point out that the Bible is a virtual literary ink blotch. You can see anything you want to see in it. I think what you have done is adopted a virtue based faith.
Andrea: I disagree. You could misunderstand my husband when he speaks too, because you don’t have a relationship with him. I know him intimately, so I will understand when he is serious, joking or indifferent. But somehow the line of questioning seems to have changed - what are you asking? I also don’t understand what you mean by virtue-based faith.
Bret: Well, most people think of morality in terms of rules. You take the affirmative and seek virtues like goodness, kindness, peace, etc.
I guess what I was asking about was that it seems plausible that just about anything can be justified in the Bible. Maybe not all things. I doubt you can justify premarital sex, for instance, and I’m not even sure that is an important rule. But you can justify things like murder, genocide, rape, spousal abuse, slavery... the list is pretty long and the things the Bible have been used to justify have been pretty bad.
So I guess my question is... how did you come to a good conclusion, given how awful the track record is for the Bible? What did you do differently?
Andrea: As far as the violence in the OT, the best I can wrap my head around it (I don’t understand it, either) is that when you live by the law, you die by the law. It was religion and rules.
Also, the Bible records some of the events, because they happened, it doesn’t always offer a commentary on whether it was correct or not. For example, in Ezra 10, after hearing the Torah again, the people repented and rejected their foreign wives and children. I really don’t understand that because God honours covenant, so why would he allow those women & children to be loosed? The Scripture doesn’t give commentary on whether that was the correct course of action, just that it was the action they took.
However, because of Jesus, we have a new covenant (NT) and the game changes - so to speak. Our enemy is not flesh & blood but it’s about the spiritual realm and Jesus directs us to re-form our heart. In fact, Ezekial says that we will have a new heart and a new spirit. Jeremiah says that the new covenant will be written on our hearts (internal compass) and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us to put on the mind of Christ. He also says that we are a new creation - the old is gone.
Paul even goes so far as to say in Galatians that we died with Christ and no longer live, but the life I live, is Christ living in me.
Romans chapters 5-7 describe the death, we are a dead man but chapter 8 describes the new life in Jesus. Jesus is perfect theology.
Bret: I don’t know if I would trust anything Paul said. Honestly, you know Jesus as well as Paul did, as far as I’m concerned. The very presence of Paul in the New Testament is very unsettling to me. If there is any one person who says some dumb stuff in the New Testament, it was Paul.
Have you ever read any non-canonical gospels or writings from that era? Like, any of the gnostic gospels or anything that was considered but was rejected?
Andrea: I have the gospel of Judas but can’t say I’m familiar with it.
Bret: Do you know the surprise twist in the Gospel of Judas?
Andrea: Enlighten me.
Bret: Well, Judas was ordered by Jesus to turn him in, in order to facilitate the resurrection. And some people argue that Judas was the most favored apostle, and it’s even stated in the Bible many times. He was also trusted with the money. So I’m thinking the other apostles didn’t like him, so they framed him in their retellings.
Andrea: That could be true, but it doesn’t change the outcome.
Bret: No, of course not, it’s just an interesting twist. A bit of Biblical politics.
Andrea: I’m sure there were plenty. John continually refers to himself as the one Jesus loved; even James & John’s mother got involved, like a typical Jewish mom.
Bret: Which James?
Andrea: The sons of Zebbedee.
Bret: There was an early James who was supposedly related to Jesus.
Andrea: Yes, that’s true too. James, the brother of Jesus supposedly wrote the book of James.
Bret: And he supposedly ran his own church, which was overtaken at some point.
Andrea: If you had scientific evidence that God existed, would that change your views?
Bret: Like if I looked into a telescope and saw a bearded guy in the sky?
Andrea: I don’t know about that - could be true. I’m not disputing. Sure, if that’s how you want to perceive it.
Bret: Well, I’ll simplify what you said, because I wouldn’t use “science” to prove God. I would say, if there was a verifiable way of knowing there is a God, then yes, I would obviously believe in God like I believe in the Sun.
Andrea: You don’t have to include that question in the interview. I find that most people have a predisposition to think one way and will not change their mind. For example, I used to drink only Coke, even though in a taste test, I thought Pepsi tasted better.
Bret: I don’t believe in “science,” so I sort of saved you there. I wouldn’t have any reason to deny something that is plainly there. I think it would raise questions, though, like “Which god is there?” I have nothing to gain or lose in my position. Remember, it would be better for me if there was a God. There just doesn’t happen to be one, so I’m disappointed.
Andrea: Some would argue that you have eternity to gain or lose.
Bret: Well I mean, from my perspective as an atheist. If I give up atheism, I’m not losing out on atheist heaven. There’s nothing keeping me attached to atheism, I just linger there. Mostly because I’ve been down every path I have seen, and it’s pretty bleak.
Andrea: Maybe you could try relationship because from what I can tell, you don’t have one.
Bret: I have a relationship with all the voices in my head. I just don’t consult the Bible or call them gods. Well, I do consult the Bible, but as a literary work. Like I would consult the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad. I don’t begrudge people for their religion, but I don’t find what people call religion to be all that mystical.
Andrea: At least you are not lonely. :)
No, it’s not mystical.
Bret: Is that what the relationship is all about? Not being alone? How can you ever be lonely when the mind just keeps going deeper and deeper, no matter how deep you look?
Andrea: Perhaps. We benefit from the relationship but we were created for relationship with God. Genesis 2:18 is the first time that God said something wasn’t good - it’s not good for man to be alone. Without relationships, people don’t function optimally.
Bret: I’m surprised God wasn’t a bit perturbed that He wasn’t enough for Adam. God is awfully jealous in the Bible, which I find very unbecoming of a god.
Andrea: Much of what was created in Genesis was for a system that wasn’t necessary at the time of creation. Such as livestock - ever wonder why livestock was created if Adam didn’t need to toil with the ground? Livestock were used for sacrifices, which wasn’t necessary, and they didn’t need clothing or food.
God’s desire is to be in relationship with us, and he can sustain us but perhaps he created human relationships because he knew we’d need each other once sin entered the world.
Bret: Right, because you can’t have livestock after creation if He didn’t create them to begin with. That wouldn’t make sense.
Andrea: Are you mocking me?
Bret: No. Unless you wrote Genesis. If you did, I apologize. I still appreciate the bulk of your work. It doesn’t make sense though to take Genesis literally. Even religious people tend to look at it as metaphor. Like, the sun was created on day four. Day four... what defined the other days?
Andrea: Okay, then I think you misunderstood.
I tend to look at creation as literal but I’m open to other ideas. Good question about day 4, and the answer is, I don’t know. I took a class once on the first 3 verses of Genesis. It was over 12 hours of teaching - on 3 verses!! I didn’t understand quite a lot but I did walk away thinking, God is even bigger than I imagined.
What I meant about livestock is the language used to describe it. On day 6, God made wild beasts and livestock - why differentiate if there wasn’t a purpose intended for the livestock even before there was sin.
I understand this to mean that because God desired a relationship with us and he knew that sin would separate us from him so he created a system that would allow us to continue in a relationship.
Bret: Well, you know who supposedly wrote Genesis?
Andrea: Most scholars agree that Moses wrote the Torah, but there might be evidence to suggest that the Torah (including some of Genesis) was written by 4 or 5 writers.
Bret: Right, and do you think Moses wrote “beasts and livestock?”
Andrea: I don’t know. I have no reason to believe otherwise but if it wasn’t him, it was another dude. Some people are interested in that sort of thing, I’m not one of them.
Bret: I bet he wrote in terms of food that was kosher to eat and food that was trafe. I could be wrong, but I bet it was to denote animals that were edible and animals that weren’t. Adam still ate meat, right?
Andrea: I don’t believe that Adam ate meat. I think meat was introduced into the diet only after Noah, when the length of life was limited to 120 years. But your point is still the same as mine - there was a system in place before it was necessary.
Bret: True, if they didn’t eat meat. I’m rereading it and it appears God told Adam to eat plant life. Well, I have to use that in another way now.
Andrea: I’m not saying you are wrong but there is no “evidence” to suggest that they ate meat. God gave them every plant to eat and it wasn’t until Noah that God offered them to eat meat.
Bret: I’ll have to ask my wife when she gets home to check the beast/cattle thing later, but you’re definitely right about Adam being a vegan. It’s pretty clear. Even the animals are supposed to eat the herbs of the earth.
I’m imagining a grazing lion... I bet the lion was glad Adam sinned. That seems like a miserable existence for a lion. I’m surprised it wasn’t the lion who tricked Eve.
Andrea: One theory I’ve heard about that is because they had such long lives - a prolonged diet with meat leaves such amounts of proteins and hormones (naturally occuring, of course) would harm them but when the life span was only 120 years, then they couldn’t eat enough to do damage in such a short period of time.
Don’t you think it’s curious also that the serpent spoke with Eve and she didn’t freak out? I wonder if it was an everyday occurrence for them then.
Bret: It’s a garden with a forbidden tree, of course the animals talk. Maybe the animals talk now, we’re just not listening. My dog is always like, “Pet me, pet me!”
Andrea: A possibility.
Bret: I’m not saying they have anything to say worth listening to.
Andrea: God spoke through an ass, perhaps he’s still speaking through an ass.
Bret: I get the feeling a lot of asses think God is speaking through them. Present company excluded.
Andrea: Oh, of course, I wasn’t referring to you. ;)
[To be continued…]
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