Again with the atheism, Part 2
Melbourne Girl, this one is for you.
After I took a couple of pot shots at way-more-famous-than-I-could-ever-be French philosopher Michael Onfray in a recent post, and in particular suggested that he should be a little more open minded on the life after death issue, MG asked me this:
are you certain of life after death as described in the bible and believed by people who believe in heaven and all that stuff? if you say yes, then just flip it around and see the faith in his words, the certainty. and it's a faith and certainty that has arisen out of the vacuum of hard, scientific evidence, upon which not only the christian faith, but all other monotheistic faiths are built.think about it.
And I promised that, at some point, I would answer that question. So, here goes….
For context, let me start by saying that I objected to Onfray’s comments for two reasons.
Firstly, he made a few completely unequivocal statements about the topic without providing any basis for his statements. Much of what he said seemed to amount to nothing more than an exercise in begging the question, and I expect more than that from anyone who engages in a serious discussion of such a fundamentally important topic. If any of my ramblings on these topics are badly thought out, I fully expect to get called on it, so the same standard should apply to a highly trained philosopher.
Secondly, in view of all that, I deeply object to Michael Onfray calling everyone who sincerely believes in life after death a liar and a fraud.
Your actual question, of course, is whether I am certain in my beliefs about such things. If it is suggested that I can’t criticize Onfray for holding his beliefs firmly in the absence of hard evidence if I am doing the same thing, only with a different conclusion, that would be entirely reasonable.
I think there is a difference between believing something on faith and being absolutely certain about it. At least, that difference exists in my case.
Frederick Buechner is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers. This is his definition of faith:
Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on that a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting. Faith is journeying through space and time.
So if someone (and this frequently happens) were to come up and ask me to talk about my faith, it’s exactly that journey through space and time I’d have to talk about. The ups and downs of the years, the dreams, the odd moment, the intuitions. I’d have to talk about the occasional sense that life isn’t just a series of events causing other events as haphazardly as a break shot in pool causes billiard balls to go off in many directions, but that life has a plot the way a novel has a plot – that events are somehow leading somewhere.
Equally compelling for me is this definition of Christian commitment
If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your beds and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied the daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask if you can believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answers always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and… great laughter.
We can’t know what happens after we die, all we can do is try to work it out as best we can from what we learn in life, from people we trust and from our own experience. I won’t find out for sure until the hopefully far distant day when I leave this life and discover what’s next (unless Michael Onfray is right, in which case there won’t be any discovering to do or anything left of me to do the discovering). I certainly can’t prove that heaven exists, or that God is real, or that any of it is true. But here’s a few reasons why, this week, I continue to believe in God:
1. Watching my two boys giving each other a good morning cuddle and giggling endlessly
2. The article in last Saturday’s Age about mankind’s amazing ability to create systems of artificial intelligence
3. The sunset last Saturday night, even if I was appreciating it from a carpark. It was still utterly awe-inspiring.
I was critical of Onfray’s approach to the question because it’s easy to make simple, absolute, statements, but it’s not helpful. We all need to grapple with this issue, to wrestle with it, to work it through and then make a decision about what to believe. And then we need to look at what that belief we form means and where do we go from here.
It is a very exciting journey.
After I took a couple of pot shots at way-more-famous-than-I-could-ever-be French philosopher Michael Onfray in a recent post, and in particular suggested that he should be a little more open minded on the life after death issue, MG asked me this:
are you certain of life after death as described in the bible and believed by people who believe in heaven and all that stuff? if you say yes, then just flip it around and see the faith in his words, the certainty. and it's a faith and certainty that has arisen out of the vacuum of hard, scientific evidence, upon which not only the christian faith, but all other monotheistic faiths are built.think about it.
And I promised that, at some point, I would answer that question. So, here goes….
For context, let me start by saying that I objected to Onfray’s comments for two reasons.
Firstly, he made a few completely unequivocal statements about the topic without providing any basis for his statements. Much of what he said seemed to amount to nothing more than an exercise in begging the question, and I expect more than that from anyone who engages in a serious discussion of such a fundamentally important topic. If any of my ramblings on these topics are badly thought out, I fully expect to get called on it, so the same standard should apply to a highly trained philosopher.
Secondly, in view of all that, I deeply object to Michael Onfray calling everyone who sincerely believes in life after death a liar and a fraud.
Your actual question, of course, is whether I am certain in my beliefs about such things. If it is suggested that I can’t criticize Onfray for holding his beliefs firmly in the absence of hard evidence if I am doing the same thing, only with a different conclusion, that would be entirely reasonable.
I think there is a difference between believing something on faith and being absolutely certain about it. At least, that difference exists in my case.
Frederick Buechner is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers. This is his definition of faith:
Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on that a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting. Faith is journeying through space and time.
So if someone (and this frequently happens) were to come up and ask me to talk about my faith, it’s exactly that journey through space and time I’d have to talk about. The ups and downs of the years, the dreams, the odd moment, the intuitions. I’d have to talk about the occasional sense that life isn’t just a series of events causing other events as haphazardly as a break shot in pool causes billiard balls to go off in many directions, but that life has a plot the way a novel has a plot – that events are somehow leading somewhere.
Equally compelling for me is this definition of Christian commitment
If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your beds and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied the daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask if you can believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answers always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and… great laughter.
We can’t know what happens after we die, all we can do is try to work it out as best we can from what we learn in life, from people we trust and from our own experience. I won’t find out for sure until the hopefully far distant day when I leave this life and discover what’s next (unless Michael Onfray is right, in which case there won’t be any discovering to do or anything left of me to do the discovering). I certainly can’t prove that heaven exists, or that God is real, or that any of it is true. But here’s a few reasons why, this week, I continue to believe in God:
1. Watching my two boys giving each other a good morning cuddle and giggling endlessly
2. The article in last Saturday’s Age about mankind’s amazing ability to create systems of artificial intelligence
3. The sunset last Saturday night, even if I was appreciating it from a carpark. It was still utterly awe-inspiring.
I was critical of Onfray’s approach to the question because it’s easy to make simple, absolute, statements, but it’s not helpful. We all need to grapple with this issue, to wrestle with it, to work it through and then make a decision about what to believe. And then we need to look at what that belief we form means and where do we go from here.
It is a very exciting journey.
posted by I'm not Craig at 8:53 PM
11 Comments:
INCraig,
Thanks for the post. Realise I'm not Melbournegirl, but *am* very opinionated and can't shut up about this stuff.
I am intrigued by this quote, which goes to the heart of my "beef" with many practitioners of Christianity (and other religions, but in my "space", Christianity) as they represent themselves.
If your answers always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means
This is one of my major problems with many proponents of religion these days. There doesn't seem to be room to question faith.
Similarly, if my answer (most) days to the question "Do I/Can I believe in a higher power?" is 'No', then I'd expect to have that this is a position which would be respected also, whether or not you choose to agree with it.
Does this mean that I don't accept the basis of Jesus Christ's entreaty that others should treat their fellow humans with respect, dignity and compassion? No, it doesn't.
But it *does* mean that I accept his entreaties as some one who knew what he was talking about on some of these issues, as I also accept the word of Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Paul Kelly, John Lennon and frankly, sometimes Paul Keating. All of these people were flawed. All of these people have other views I do not share.
My faith and frustration in human nature is a many and varied thing. I don't believe myself to be unspiritual, just non-religious.
I also think that one of Michael Onfray's important roles IS begging the question. But as I've mentioned before, I can be very argumentative.
GW :)
I really am not opinionated in this area, and I actually dropped by because I had a thought, INC - if you only bought one series of the west wing make certain to purchase the next season at least a week before Honey Bear gets to episode 20.. ;) Because most of the season endings you want to watch the last one/two and then the first one/two of the next season in close proximity to each other. ;) They're still cheap to the 8th of June so maybe another visit to JB Hifi is in order.. ;)
Giggles
Glad you enjoyed the post. There is always room to question faith/everything, and it's vital that we do so. Frequently.
This habit does tend to annoy several of my Christian friends, but they are generally a pretty forgiving bunch so it all worked out reasonably well.
It follows that I think it's important for Michael Onfray, and everyone else, to ask the questions. I object when he goes from asking the question to "begging the question", in the sense that the latter involves the sort of circular reasoning that Richard Dawkins did a spectacular job of demonstrating in his recent documentary.
If I start on analysing that Dawkins documentary, this comment will break records for length, so I should stop now, although I should conclude by thanking you again for another very interesting and thought provoking comment.
Snoskred
Fortunately, my wife has already bought the second series, so the only question now id whether to buy every episode ever made before the price goes back up.
It may mean a few hours of busking but I'm sure it will be worth the effort in the long run.
hello here i am. just saw this but have no time now to read and comment properly. just want you to know i've seen it and i'll return. thanks for remembering and writing more.
later.
[nose wrinkle]
xxx
MG
Glad you saw it. Knowing how busy you have been lately I thought I might not hear from you for a while, but, as ever, I'll look forward to your comments.
I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
hey there
i'm back. i've been very quiet blogwise for the last little while, and it's funny, i'm not feeling the addiction for it that i used to. have i gone off it? i'm not sure, i'll keep going with '80s posts but i'm not feeling the need to keep up with everything that i used to.
but that's neither here nor there.
i should say i'm not wanting to "take you on" re all this religious stuff. i admire your commitment to thinking about all the issues, and to writing about them, and you're far more eloquent and well-read than me on the subject. i guess we just have to agree to disagree. just as you believe, i don't believe. and that's ok. both is ok, as long as we aren't trying to force or even persuade or even try to win an argument. an argument about what? life is what it is. with god. without god.
i think one thing, though, that you didn't mention explicitly, or i didn't pick up on it, is the idea of doubt. as gigglewick said, the questioning of faith. even jesus doubted it all. and sometimes i wonder whether there is a heaven, whether there is some sort of existence after death. but it doesn't make me want to be religious. i'm perfectly happy to be proved "wrong" at the point of death. does that make religious people shitty? the idea that non-believers might swap sides right at the eleventh hour? i wonder.
also there was a letter in the paper yesterday i think, from a nurse saying every single non-religious person she has attended at their death has "changed sides" so to speak. this is very interesting to me. i'm open to it, to their being something else. but to me it's maybe more ghosts and spirits etc, not god. and i do think the wonder of life is just life itself. nature. humans. animals. plants. sunsets. rain. all these gorgeous things, attendant with misery and blackness as well as the good, make up life. that's it.
that's it from me. sorry it's so badly written and badly structured. i just can't give it that much close attention at the moment. i'm now thinking about packig for overseas.
xxx
MG
I do not accept for a second that I am more eloquent or well read than you on any subject at all (except perhaps constitutional law and/or the history of Justin Timberlake)
Like you, I have no interest in arguing over this topic, but I want to thank you and everyone who has engaged with the discussion. I feel like I'm learning a lot from it, and I've been asked some excellent questions which have been very helpful in re-examining and testing my own thinking about all this stuff.
As for the question of doubt, the short answer is 'yes, absolutely'. I included the quotes from Frederick Buechner because I can relate to the idea of getting up each morning and questioning whether I can believe it all again for that day. I don't actually do that every morning (it sounds exhausting) but I do believe it's vital to constantly question and test what I believe to see if it stands up to scrutiny. It's impossible to do that honestly and not go through periods of doubt.
As for the idea of changing your mind at the last minute, all the 'believers' I know would be eight kinds of thrilled at the idea of an atheist 'swapping sides' at the eleventh hour. I won't try to cover life after death in one little comment, except to say that any Christian who believes in heaven wants to arrive there and find everyone they care about waiting for them, and none of the Christians I know would be upset even for a split second that someone had 'got in at the last minute'.
Thanks again for the comment, and for all you have written on this topic. I hope you have a fabulous time overseas, but don;t forget to spend most of it in an internet cafe telling us all about your travels.
Just kidding, but I will miss your very fine writings whilst you are away and your return will be awaited eagerly.
thanks inc. not quite gone os yet, though. leaving early sept. i'm just panicking over how much we have to do, ie pack up entire household and move out sort of thing. fun.
and thanks for responding to my comment-ette. (-ette indicates sketchiness and smallness of aforesaid comment.)
oh, hey, guess what. i'm doing jury duty coming up in a couple of weeks. do you ever hang round the pool, intimidating potential jurors? if you wear a carnation i will say hello.
x
MG
Jury duty? Sounds like fun. Unfortunately, they don't let lawyers do that stuff.
If I'm hanging around whichever Court you are in, I will certainly wear some kind of flower.
"I think there is a difference between believing something on faith and being absolutely certain about it."
Dude, that's the point we are making as atheists.
The Bible is not a science book. It, like Onfray, has given us nothing to support its stance on anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. It has no objective merit aside from literary merit. It's a cracking read, you bet. And we can take things from it - lessons, thoughts. But we can't take any tangible or realistic knowledge. It's myth. That's all it is. Mythological tales, just like the Greek tales. Great tales! Granted. But tales.
So you take the Bible away and what's left? Faith. Standing on its lonesome.
It's ludicrous. Christianity has no more or less intrinsic value and worth than Islam, Buddhism, Tarot, Wicca or Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
I ask you what I asked Pepsi... on your argument, I can equally, with as much intellectual backup as you have, say that when we die we all go to Jellyworld - a place where everyone wears purple pyjamas.
Do you believe we go to Jellyworld?
I'm assuming 'no'. So how would you like it if I then questioned you on this... and demanded to know how you can rule it out. And would you not think I am somehow bereft of marbles by insisting there is a Jellyworld?
How about I insist, like you do, that we 'ask questions' about Jellyworld? How about I insist that it's 'important' to think about Jellyworld?
If you have any inkling about what it would be like to wake up to a society that embraces Jellyworld when you know there is no Jellyworld, then welcome to the life of an atheist.
Look, I know no-one will read this, but Perseus, let me just say "Dude. Seriously. Get over the jelly thing."
Whether its heaven, Jellyworld, reincarnation, oblivion, hell or frisbeeterianism, the point is that something may come next after we're done with this life.
Since we are all going to die at some point, it is important to think about it (and stunningly shortsighted not to).
Frankly, if there's lots of jelly, well, things could be worse, although we'll need more than a few flavours if we're there for eternity.
You equate atheism to knowing there is no jellyworld. Are you saying that you KNOW there is nothing after death?
How can you possibly know that?
When you, or Onfray, or anyone else can answer that question in any sort of positive manner, just let me know.
Until then, you can quit complaining about religious types who make assertions with no evidence to support them.
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