Bama, the classic response would be that we do in fact have observable traits of an all-powerful God. For instance, that we are not a simple substance, we are an aggregate of some simpler substance, that we can not will our existence and are thus not subsistent, etc.
Again, this line of argument quickly drifts away from common definitions of God. I don't think many Christians would appreciate being told they believe in some form of cosmic glue.
Well that's why i prefer existential christianity. (It's a thing, and it's quite popular. I had to read Dynamics of Faith, by paul tillich, in both High School and College.) You basically start out in a first naïveté, where you just accept religion's explanations. Then you develop logical and reasonable faculties, and the explanations of religion seem to be at odds with science. However, if existentialist christians will argue that if you are able to cultivate a truly introspective and speculative faculty, you can find that your original belief had some merit. (It's a double motion of Hegel's aufhebung (synthesis, sublimation, negation of negation) and Heideggerian existential resolution.) So you say "ok, the bible might be largely metaphorical, but I believe that it expresses an essential truth and I will resolve to keep that conviction" So you believe the scientific answers and the faculty of reason, but you also think that there is something essential about religious truths, and that they are not necessarily at odds.
I am not overly familiar with the works of Paul Tillich (having only had some readings from his works as an undergrad student), but my understanding was that he was critical of and rejected the idea of a theistic God, which seems to be the sort being discussed here.
He was a Protestant Minister, so I doubt that he rejected the notion of a personal, theistic God. But I could be wrong.
Sure they can. "Q: How can something come from nothing A: There is an unmoved mover" is a rational answer. It might not be the most well-founded or preferable answer, but it is certainly a rational answer nevertheless. Your belief in extraterrestrial life is not irrational, either. They both have explanatory and predicative power with are not contradictory with other beliefs and have a (albeit) slight chance for success.
"Unmoved mover" is not irrational because it's such an abstract thing that it can be anything. "God, who sent his son Jesus Christ down to Earth to absolve us all of our sins" is highly irrational because it starts to define so many aspects into that thing without basing it into anything.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
Sure they can. "Q: How can something come from nothing A: There is an unmoved mover" is a rational answer. It might not be the most well-founded or preferable answer, but it is certainly a rational answer nevertheless. Your belief in extraterrestrial life is not irrational, either. They both have explanatory and predicative power with are not contradictory with other beliefs and have a (albeit) slight chance for success.
"Unmoved mover" is not irrational because it's such an abstract thing that it can be anything. "God, who sent his son Jesus Christ down to earth to absolve us all of our sins" is highly irrational because it starts to define so many aspects into that thing without basing it into anything.
Yes, that's a pretty irrational belief. That's why, I think, you have to go through a period of skepticism. Of course it doesn't make sense. However, because of the speculative faculty that was developed, it becomes a quasi-fact. Maybe it's not even historical. I don't really know, because I don't devote a lot of thinking to theology.
Bama, the classic response would be that we do in fact have observable traits of an all-powerful God. For instance, that we are not a simple substance, we are an aggregate of some simpler substance, that we can not will our existence and are thus not subsistent, etc.
Again, this line of argument quickly drifts away from common definitions of God. I don't think many Christians would appreciate being told they believe in some form of cosmic glue.
Well that's why i prefer existential christianity. (It's a thing, and it's quite popular. I had to read Dynamics of Faith, by paul tillich, in both High School and College.) You basically start out in a first naïveté, where you just accept religion's explanations. Then you develop logical and reasonable faculties, and the explanations of religion seem to be at odds with science. However, if existentialist christians will argue that if you are able to cultivate a truly introspective and speculative faculty, you can find that your original belief had some merit. (It's a double motion of Hegel's aufhebung (synthesis, sublimation, negation of negation) and Heideggerian existential resolution.) So you say "ok, the bible might be largely metaphorical, but I believe that it expresses an essential truth and I will resolve to keep that conviction" So you believe the scientific answers and the faculty of reason, but you also think that there is something essential about religious truths, and that they are not necessarily at odds.
I am not overly familiar with the works of Paul Tillich (having only had some readings from his works as an undergrad student), but my understanding was that he was critical of and rejected the idea of a theistic God, which seems to be the sort being discussed here.
He was a Protestant Minister, so I doubt that he rejected the notion of a personal, theistic God. But I could be wrong.
The God of the theological theism is being besides others and as such a part of the whole reality. He is certainly considered its most important part, but as a part and therefore as subjected to the structure of the whole. He is supposed to be beyond the ontological elements and categories which constitute reality. But every statement subjects him to them. He is seen as a self which has a world, as an ego which relates to a thought, as a cause which is separated from its effect, as having a definite space and endless time. He is a being, not being-itself.
Here, Tillich seems to be expressing the idea that the theistic, personal God is a being, as opposed to the Ground of Being that Tillich defines as God. I'm not really sure that an individual being a Lutheran minister necessarily implies an acceptance of a theistic, personal definition of God, since there are certainly a number of ministers and theologians (many, like yourself, Existentialist Christians) from various denominations who also explicitly reject the idea.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
Bama, the classic response would be that we do in fact have observable traits of an all-powerful God. For instance, that we are not a simple substance, we are an aggregate of some simpler substance, that we can not will our existence and are thus not subsistent, etc.
Again, this line of argument quickly drifts away from common definitions of God. I don't think many Christians would appreciate being told they believe in some form of cosmic glue.
Well that's why i prefer existential christianity. (It's a thing, and it's quite popular. I had to read Dynamics of Faith, by paul tillich, in both High School and College.) You basically start out in a first naïveté, where you just accept religion's explanations. Then you develop logical and reasonable faculties, and the explanations of religion seem to be at odds with science. However, if existentialist christians will argue that if you are able to cultivate a truly introspective and speculative faculty, you can find that your original belief had some merit. (It's a double motion of Hegel's aufhebung (synthesis, sublimation, negation of negation) and Heideggerian existential resolution.) So you say "ok, the bible might be largely metaphorical, but I believe that it expresses an essential truth and I will resolve to keep that conviction" So you believe the scientific answers and the faculty of reason, but you also think that there is something essential about religious truths, and that they are not necessarily at odds.
I am not overly familiar with the works of Paul Tillich (having only had some readings from his works as an undergrad student), but my understanding was that he was critical of and rejected the idea of a theistic God, which seems to be the sort being discussed here.
He was a Protestant Minister, so I doubt that he rejected the notion of a personal, theistic God. But I could be wrong.
The God of the theological theism is being besides others and as such a part of the whole reality. He is certainly considered its most important part, but as a part and therefore as subjected to the structure of the whole. He is supposed to be beyond the ontological elements and categories which constitute reality. But every statement subjects him to them. He is seen as a self which has a world, as an ego which relates to a thought, as a cause which is separated from its effect, as having a definite space and endless time. He is a being, not being-itself.
Here, Tillich seems to be expressing the idea that the theistic, personal God is a being, as opposed to the Ground of Being that Tillich defines as God. I'm not really sure that an individual being a Lutheran minister necessarily implies an acceptance of a theistic, personal definition of God, since there are certainly a number of ministers and theologians (many, like yourself, Existentialist Christians) from various denominations who also explicitly reject the idea.
I believe that would be Tillich's explanation of the trinity, no? That Jesus is God-as-individual, as a truly relatable being, since God-as-father is Being, which is not a being itself?
I believe that would be Tillich's explanation of the trinity, no? That Jesus is God-as-individual, as a truly relatable being, since God-as-father is Being, which is not a being itself?
I believe that would be Tillich's explanation of the trinity, no? That Jesus is God-as-individual, as a truly relatable being, since God-as-father is Being, which is not a being itself?
It's very simple;
The capitalized Being is the nature of a being in its Being.
I believe that would be Tillich's explanation of the trinity, no? That Jesus is God-as-individual, as a truly relatable being, since God-as-father is Being, which is not a being itself?
It's very simple;
The capitalized Being is the nature of a being in its Being.
I believe that would be Tillich's explanation of the trinity, no? That Jesus is God-as-individual, as a truly relatable being, since God-as-father is Being, which is not a being itself?
It's very simple;
The capitalized Being is the nature of a being in its Being.
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Man I wish Carl Sagan was still alive, he could passionately defend atheism with a smile and not come off to anyone as a douchebag.
Hitchens' heart is in the right place in this debate, and he's clearly on stronger ground than the other guy by not contradicting himself repeatedly and using arguments that have entirely flawed premises, but he still comes off as a dick somehow.
Man I wish Carl Sagan was still alive, he could passionately defend atheism with a smile and not come off to anyone as a douchebag.
Hitchens' heart is in the right place in this debate, and he's clearly on stronger ground than the other guy by not contradicting himself repeatedly and using arguments that have entirely flawed premises, but he still comes off as a dick somehow.
I think it's the Irish accent.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
I agree. I don't see how people can be religious without following it through to it's obvious conclusion (e.g. I'm right, I base all my moral guidelines off this one source, everyone who doesn't agree with me is totally wrong and I should convert or destroy them to save them). That's probably why I really don't understand why you'd be religious.
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
The difference between an Iranian Basiji throwing rocks at a woman who's committed adultery and a christian are that one of them follows their holy book more closely?
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
The difference between an Iranian Basiji throwing rocks at a woman who's committed adultery and a Christian from Wisconsin are that one of them follows their holy book more closely?
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
The difference between an Iranian Basiji throwing rocks at a woman who's committed adultery and a christian are that one of them follows their holy book more closely?
Probably, yeah.
Now, the big three holy books are contradictory enough within their own texts to allow for people to follow certain parts and ignore others, so I'm sure some selective interpretation occurs fairly often. But one can hardly call themselves a true believer of the source material if they aren't up for the occasional infanticide or rape.
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
You make a good point.
Still... I cannot help but feel that people who believe the world is deeply, intensely magical cannot be considered totally sane. We're talking about people who trust faith healing over medicine or people who pray to God to fix their leaky faucet instead of calling a plumber and that sort of thing.
If reality constantly slaps you in the face with how very mistaken your worldview is on a personal, practical level and yet you remain utterly convinced that your worldview is the correct one I cannot help but think that your mental state is not entirely sane.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
If reality constantly slaps you in the face with how very mistaken your worldview is on a personal, practical level and yet you remain utterly convinced that your worldview is the correct one I cannot help but think that your mental state is not entirely sane.
That's the thing, though. Religion has the horrible built-in mechanism of Divine Will, so any questions you might have can always be answered by, "Because God said so."
As well, many denominations view logical assaults on God as subversive attempts by Satan to undermine your faith.
Fear and ignorance are the tools of fundamentalism.
I've always wondered why people don't really like Hitchens. Is it just because he isn't polite when pointing out bullshit? Or do people perceive him as being smarmy, to which I have to wonder, how do you NOT be smarmy when some guy is making totally bullshit arguments that take only an instant's thought to demolish? Especially in D'Souza's case, where he repeatedly makes arguments that have already been repeatedly demolished.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I've always wondered why people don't really like Hitchens. Is it just because he isn't polite when pointing out bullshit? Or do people perceive him as being smarmy, to which I have to wonder, how do you NOT be smarmy when some guy is making totally bullshit arguments that take only an instant's thought to demolish? Especially in D'Souza's case, where he repeatedly makes arguments that have already been repeatedly demolished.
"Smug" seems to be the number one verbal attack levied at atheists. My theory as to why stems from the utter lack of anything else resembling an honest retort from the opposition.
Like, did you ever think your parents were jerks because they wouldn't let you play with matches near gasoline? It's something like that.
I've always wondered why people don't really like Hitchens. Is it just because he isn't polite when pointing out bullshit? Or do people perceive him as being smarmy, to which I have to wonder, how do you NOT be smarmy when some guy is making totally bullshit arguments that take only an instant's thought to demolish? Especially in D'Souza's case, where he repeatedly makes arguments that have already been repeatedly demolished.
Well, I think Hitchens is a pompous contrarian who deserves scorn for his continued support of the Iraq War as part of his whole post-9/11 freakout about Islam.
Plus, his thesis that religion is the root of all evil only holds up if you pretty much ignore most of 20th Century history.
I'm sure there's some value for atheist propaganda that features as much subtlety as the lyrics to a Venom song, but then again I'm a bit past the whole "everyone who's not an atheist is a moron" thing.
This has probably already been covered but god damn it dark matter is nothing like God of the Gaps.
One is "matter that doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force" and the other is "omnipotent meta-logical being who may or may not be but probably is a mesopotamian sky god as described in a 2,600 year old bronze age nomadic text but we don't know for sure which is why we need faith"
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
I LOVE HITCHENS.
Except his really weird support of the Iraq war, which was always going to be a deranged mismanaged mess. But in principle his support wasn't too weird, providing you aren't a pacifist (which largely I am, so we still diverged there).
D'Souza's saying that the universe being nothing and then something was a religious claim (made by the Hebrews) that was in fact verified by science
but it seems like he's concluding that if you make a guess and it turns out to be correct that makes guessing a reasonable process to rely on
and... that's stupid
Couple of things.
First of all, the Hebrew Bible does not make the claim of creation ex nihilo, actually. Genesis 1 is entirely consistent with other Mesopotamian creation stories, where "creation" is understood not as magically popping everything into existence, but rather as the molding/shaping of a pre-existent material. Much like how sculptors "create" statues by shaping clay that already exists (rather than popping the clay into existence.) Read Genesis 1; Elohim doesn't create the formless waters—they're already there. The structure of the text begins the exact same way as other myths, "When the heavens and the earth were not named / being created, etc."
Creation ex-nihilo is a Greek/Christian thing.
SECONDLY, the universe did NOT pop into existence out of nothing; that is NOT what the big bang says; creation ex nihilo does NOT actually desribe scientific reality. As Stephen Hawking argues, it makes much more sense to simply say the universe has always existed—because the universe contains all of space time, so how could anything exist "before" the universe?
In fact, the standard creation story of "forming" creation that already exists turns out to be more correct than creation ex nihilo. The Big Bang isn't popping into existence out of nothing, it's giving form and structure to a formless mass that already exists!
So, D'Souza actually turns out to be correct that the Hebrews had the right idea, but wrong about what that idea was, and it's silly anyway since every ancient culture thought of creation that way, not just the Hebrews.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I've always wondered why people don't really like Hitchens. Is it just because he isn't polite when pointing out bullshit? Or do people perceive him as being smarmy, to which I have to wonder, how do you NOT be smarmy when some guy is making totally bullshit arguments that take only an instant's thought to demolish? Especially in D'Souza's case, where he repeatedly makes arguments that have already been repeatedly demolished.
Well, I think Hitchens is a pompous contrarian who deserves scorn for his continued support of the Iraq War as part of his whole post-9/11 freakout about Islam.
Plus, his thesis that religion is the root of all evil only holds up if you pretty much ignore most of 20th Century history.
I'm sure there's some value for atheist propaganda that features as much subtlety as the lyrics to a Venom song, but then again I'm a bit past the whole "everyone who's not an atheist is a moron" thing.
Really? Most of 20th century history is not very kind to religion. But religion as the root of all evil is the Dawkins slogan, which I might add, was foisted on him against his will.
Hitchens' slogan is religion poisons everything. Which isn't exactly difficult to agree with.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
I love that "sophisticated defenses of theism" never are. They're just the same stupid defenses but wrapped in vaguer terms.
Something I've noticed in this thread, and in general, is that people understand the terms "religion" and "God" very non-specifically.
Religion is "any metaphysical claim."
God is "any all-powerful being or force whether personal or impersonal."
If this is how you want to understand these words, fine, whatever. Just keep in mind that for the vast majority of "religious" people, these words have extremely specific connotations.
For example, God is, specifically, Yahweh, a divine tripartite being who had a son who is himself that he sacrificed, to himself, to save humanity from his own need to punish us for disobeying the set of bronze-age rules he gave to a desert tribe thousands of years ago, which we are incapable of following in the first place because our ancestor ate a magic fruit at the behest of a talking snake. Religion is the set of specific stories, rules and theological claims that serves as scaffolding for this fundamental view of the nature of reality.
This is why I think it's important to narrow down our definitions of God and Religion when we are discussing whether or not they are valid. Because you can define anything so vaguely that it becomes impossible to disprove.
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
It's still a sliding scale, though. (Most*) Christian fundamentalists are more like this than moderate Christians, but they're still pretty squishy about things like "should slavery be legal" and "is the sky a solid dome that holds up an ocean," despite the Bible clearly saying yes to both.
*the exceptions here are the theonomists/dominionists who are really quite delightful.
I've always wondered why people don't really like Hitchens. Is it just because he isn't polite when pointing out bullshit? Or do people perceive him as being smarmy, to which I have to wonder, how do you NOT be smarmy when some guy is making totally bullshit arguments that take only an instant's thought to demolish? Especially in D'Souza's case, where he repeatedly makes arguments that have already been repeatedly demolished.
Well, I think Hitchens is a pompous contrarian who deserves scorn for his continued support of the Iraq War as part of his whole post-9/11 freakout about Islam.
Plus, his thesis that religion is the root of all evil only holds up if you pretty much ignore most of 20th Century history.
I'm sure there's some value for atheist propaganda that features as much subtlety as the lyrics to a Venom song, but then again I'm a bit past the whole "everyone who's not an atheist is a moron" thing.
Really? Most of 20th century history is not very kind to religion. But religion as the root of all evil is the Dawkins slogan, which I might add, was foisted on him against his will.
Hitchens' slogan is religion poisons everything. Which isn't exactly difficult to agree with.
Most of 20th Century history is not very kind to "reason", which is what (and correct me if I'm wrong here) both Dawkins and Hitchens claim should supplant religion.
Hitchens is also more than willing to No True Scotsman his way out of any examples of how religion inspires positive change, such Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights movement.
Most of 20th Century history is not very kind to "reason", which is what (and correct me if I'm wrong here) both Dawkins and Hitchens claim should supplant religion.
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He was a Protestant Minister, so I doubt that he rejected the notion of a personal, theistic God. But I could be wrong.
"Unmoved mover" is not irrational because it's such an abstract thing that it can be anything. "God, who sent his son Jesus Christ down to Earth to absolve us all of our sins" is highly irrational because it starts to define so many aspects into that thing without basing it into anything.
Yes, that's a pretty irrational belief. That's why, I think, you have to go through a period of skepticism. Of course it doesn't make sense. However, because of the speculative faculty that was developed, it becomes a quasi-fact. Maybe it's not even historical. I don't really know, because I don't devote a lot of thinking to theology.
Here, Tillich seems to be expressing the idea that the theistic, personal God is a being, as opposed to the Ground of Being that Tillich defines as God. I'm not really sure that an individual being a Lutheran minister necessarily implies an acceptance of a theistic, personal definition of God, since there are certainly a number of ministers and theologians (many, like yourself, Existentialist Christians) from various denominations who also explicitly reject the idea.
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I believe that would be Tillich's explanation of the trinity, no? That Jesus is God-as-individual, as a truly relatable being, since God-as-father is Being, which is not a being itself?
But in this particular case, I was talking about fundamentalists.
And fundamentalists are batshit insane.
The capitalized Being is the nature of a being in its Being.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Beavis & Butthead are underutilized as references.
Yeah.
When Being and being are used four words apart and mean totally different things my brain tends to go ahead and throw the sentence out.
Hitchens' heart is in the right place in this debate, and he's clearly on stronger ground than the other guy by not contradicting himself repeatedly and using arguments that have entirely flawed premises, but he still comes off as a dick somehow.
I think it's the Irish accent.
I very much disagree.
Fundamentalists, of any religion, typically embody the most logical endpoint of a person utterly convinced in the righteousness of their faith.
Their viewpoints may be functionally and pragmatically insane, but they typically stick to the rule set given to them. It's complete sanity, only based in an insane understanding of the world.
I agree. I don't see how people can be religious without following it through to it's obvious conclusion (e.g. I'm right, I base all my moral guidelines off this one source, everyone who doesn't agree with me is totally wrong and I should convert or destroy them to save them). That's probably why I really don't understand why you'd be religious.
The difference between an Iranian Basiji throwing rocks at a woman who's committed adultery and a christian are that one of them follows their holy book more closely?
The difference between an Iranian Basiji throwing rocks at a woman who's committed adultery and a Christian from Wisconsin are that one of them follows their holy book more closely?
Probably, yeah.
Now, the big three holy books are contradictory enough within their own texts to allow for people to follow certain parts and ignore others, so I'm sure some selective interpretation occurs fairly often. But one can hardly call themselves a true believer of the source material if they aren't up for the occasional infanticide or rape.
Still... I cannot help but feel that people who believe the world is deeply, intensely magical cannot be considered totally sane. We're talking about people who trust faith healing over medicine or people who pray to God to fix their leaky faucet instead of calling a plumber and that sort of thing.
If reality constantly slaps you in the face with how very mistaken your worldview is on a personal, practical level and yet you remain utterly convinced that your worldview is the correct one I cannot help but think that your mental state is not entirely sane.
That's the thing, though. Religion has the horrible built-in mechanism of Divine Will, so any questions you might have can always be answered by, "Because God said so."
As well, many denominations view logical assaults on God as subversive attempts by Satan to undermine your faith.
Fear and ignorance are the tools of fundamentalism.
He hasn't deployed [strike]being[/strike] or [strike]Being[/strike] yet.
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"Smug" seems to be the number one verbal attack levied at atheists. My theory as to why stems from the utter lack of anything else resembling an honest retort from the opposition.
Like, did you ever think your parents were jerks because they wouldn't let you play with matches near gasoline? It's something like that.
Well, I think Hitchens is a pompous contrarian who deserves scorn for his continued support of the Iraq War as part of his whole post-9/11 freakout about Islam.
Plus, his thesis that religion is the root of all evil only holds up if you pretty much ignore most of 20th Century history.
I'm sure there's some value for atheist propaganda that features as much subtlety as the lyrics to a Venom song, but then again I'm a bit past the whole "everyone who's not an atheist is a moron" thing.
One is "matter that doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force" and the other is "omnipotent meta-logical being who may or may not be but probably is a mesopotamian sky god as described in a 2,600 year old bronze age nomadic text but we don't know for sure which is why we need faith"
Except his really weird support of the Iraq war, which was always going to be a deranged mismanaged mess. But in principle his support wasn't too weird, providing you aren't a pacifist (which largely I am, so we still diverged there).
First of all, the Hebrew Bible does not make the claim of creation ex nihilo, actually. Genesis 1 is entirely consistent with other Mesopotamian creation stories, where "creation" is understood not as magically popping everything into existence, but rather as the molding/shaping of a pre-existent material. Much like how sculptors "create" statues by shaping clay that already exists (rather than popping the clay into existence.) Read Genesis 1; Elohim doesn't create the formless waters—they're already there. The structure of the text begins the exact same way as other myths, "When the heavens and the earth were not named / being created, etc."
Creation ex-nihilo is a Greek/Christian thing.
SECONDLY, the universe did NOT pop into existence out of nothing; that is NOT what the big bang says; creation ex nihilo does NOT actually desribe scientific reality. As Stephen Hawking argues, it makes much more sense to simply say the universe has always existed—because the universe contains all of space time, so how could anything exist "before" the universe?
In fact, the standard creation story of "forming" creation that already exists turns out to be more correct than creation ex nihilo. The Big Bang isn't popping into existence out of nothing, it's giving form and structure to a formless mass that already exists!
So, D'Souza actually turns out to be correct that the Hebrews had the right idea, but wrong about what that idea was, and it's silly anyway since every ancient culture thought of creation that way, not just the Hebrews.
Really? Most of 20th century history is not very kind to religion. But religion as the root of all evil is the Dawkins slogan, which I might add, was foisted on him against his will.
Hitchens' slogan is religion poisons everything. Which isn't exactly difficult to agree with.
Religion is "any metaphysical claim."
God is "any all-powerful being or force whether personal or impersonal."
If this is how you want to understand these words, fine, whatever. Just keep in mind that for the vast majority of "religious" people, these words have extremely specific connotations.
For example, God is, specifically, Yahweh, a divine tripartite being who had a son who is himself that he sacrificed, to himself, to save humanity from his own need to punish us for disobeying the set of bronze-age rules he gave to a desert tribe thousands of years ago, which we are incapable of following in the first place because our ancestor ate a magic fruit at the behest of a talking snake. Religion is the set of specific stories, rules and theological claims that serves as scaffolding for this fundamental view of the nature of reality.
This is why I think it's important to narrow down our definitions of God and Religion when we are discussing whether or not they are valid. Because you can define anything so vaguely that it becomes impossible to disprove.
*the exceptions here are the theonomists/dominionists who are really quite delightful.
Most of 20th Century history is not very kind to "reason", which is what (and correct me if I'm wrong here) both Dawkins and Hitchens claim should supplant religion.
Hitchens is also more than willing to No True Scotsman his way out of any examples of how religion inspires positive change, such Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights movement.
Simulation argument!
Simulation argument!
W... What?