As best I can remember, I first heard from Jamie Bonnett back in April 2007, randomly, as he looked up the Friel-Tabash debate and found my email as a result. He works for everynation.org as a campus minister at UNCG -- I don't know anything about the ministry, but I read an interesting critique of the organization by Richard Bartholomew at talk2action in which it was compared to Maranatha Campus Ministries. He first wrote me in a somewhat-confrontational manner, challenging me to present arguments for God's nonexistence; but from there, our e-dialog took on a more friendly and conversational tone.
The very first thing that he wrote me, that I can tell, was:
Could you please share with me your argument/s for disproving God and Religion, as well as why your position is right. Thank you.That really reminds me of this video. One of the other first things he asked me in our email dialog last spring was where I "place my hope":
What is it that you actually put you hope in? Is it people, science, knowledge? Has it ever failed?This is a very common mode of thought towards atheism, and it's something I've tried to address recently in talking about the failings of atheism to address some of the real things upon which religions are based: transcendent human experiences, generosity, community...&c. I said:
...one of the things I liked the most with this new article was the focus on the issue of morality and its relationship to empiricism/scientism/science. The question of the evolutionary history and evolutionary purposes of morality are certainly fair game for science. However, jettisoning ethical philosophy because it is non-empirical or pretending that science is sufficient to deal with morality (scientism) are just plain irrational. A few good points were made that help to temper the red-hot passion for the elimination of religion; as Edward Slingerland said:I think this dovetails beautifully with Jamie's questions then as now. What I responded to a few days back was Jamie's email inquiry:
Irrespective of the difficulty in approaching morality from a scientific viewpoint, we have no choice but to analyze morality with the tools of reason and logic available to us. If we can find some way to explain morality as a "bet fit model" that simply shows us a way to live that ends up benefiting all of us to the greatest extent possible, then that's fine for me. It doesn't have to be metaphysically ultimate, as I used to wish. If ethics can just be objectively good, I'll be happy.
- Religion is not going away anytime soon (or maybe ever)
- Humans' rights & morality are just as unscientific in nature as God: I've written reams (much of it rambling and repetitive, I'm sure, of what others have already said on the topic) on trying to get my head around morality, and I don't know if I've succeeded or not. Judge for yourself: 1, 2
Lots of scientists are apparently starting to realize this second point by Slingerland, and embrace some forms of "spirituality" in order to explain issues like human meaning & morality given the vacuum left in those areas by science. As to the first point, it seems that Dawkins and all these other guys are still dreaming: religion will be with us as long as art and poetry and beauty will be -- a way to capture the human forms of transcendence and abstractions/ideals we're capable of seeing, but rarely attaining. Religion is beautiful when it's like that, like the dream we don't want to wake up from.
Hey man, I just responded to your response to my post and it got me thinking. The other day I stumbled upon a Christian/Atheist debate on youtube and I had some questions. I immediately thought of emailing you to get your point of view.Here is my response, some of which I lifted from a dialog with Dan Marvin I had a few months back on facebook:
There was talk of the resurrection being myth, Jesus never really existing, science disproving God, etc. but it failed to answer two questions that I always end up having. 1. If there is no God, no creator, just a "blind watchmaker," what do you (or what is the popular atheistic answer you have heard) think the purpose of life is? I have heard Richard Dawkins answer on it and to be honest with you, it was rather depressing and hopeless. What is comforting about a belief in God is that scripture says He made us with a purpose, we are made to do something. Not to mention the fact that after we die it is not the "end." I value your point of view on things and was wondering your thoughts on this one.
Also, what about morality. Now I have heard so many people ask atheists "if there is no God than where do morals come from?" If they are just instinctual, why, if we just came about blindly? Again I have heard answers but nothing that struck me as possible.
Jamie,Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the real reason people hold on to religion and shun atheism isn't because they really believe a lot of the old myths and superstition, but because they fear they won't know how to live. Morality and meaning, value and virtue -- these are the substance and impetus of our lives. When those things seem so inextricable from religion (although they're not), it serves as a real impediment to ever waking up from the delusions and fairy tales of religion.
Those are rather long and complicated questions that are better sorted out conversationally, but here's a snippet:
ON LIFE'S VALUE/PURPOSE:
I think that for a long while there, especially when I was writing regularly at Debunking Christianity and arguing incessantly with people like Triablogue and (please forive me) CalvinDude, I was really struggling with my own set of beliefs. I knew I had lost faith in the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God, but I wasn't sure what that meant, or how I was going to set about replacing my old beliefs with new ones, or what those new ones were.
What about meaning and value? What about morality and virtue? I would sometimes stare out of my window and feel the urge to finish my graduate degree completely gone. I began to think about things from a cosmic perspective -- how damned insignificant our dreams and hopes are, in the scheme of things. I flirted with existentialism and tried to find meaning in a godless universe:
My own burden at the moment is in maintaining rationalism -- a commitment to reason, and optimism -- a commitment not to only see things as better, but to be better and in so doing, this purpose makes "all well".I soon realized I was depressed...
In "coming down" and finding a bit of rational and emotional equilibrium, I think I've realized that there is definitely a real cost to atheism -- when you can no longer believe in cosmic significance, you lose a bit of your natural desire to see yourself as cosmically valuable: see here.
I don't know if ex-believers ever really come to peace with the "great schism" any more than devout believers do. The ones I envy are those people in the middle; the people whose apathy and lack of curiosity and intellectual drive confers upon them a sort of "ignorant bliss" from which they can merrily go about life either believing or disbelieving but not spending a great deal of emotional/mental capital on either one. I always try to be honest, and in doing so, I must point out that we've waded out here into two areas that are very difficult to talk about "scientifically": 1) qualia, 2) the fact-value distinction.
1) The relationship of qualia to physicalism is vexing and takes up more pages of philosophy than I care to even begin to read, much the less explain here. Whether or not our perceptions and experiences relate to fixed brain states is not likely to ever be proven one way or another scientifically. Long story short, our first-person experiences probably don't reduce very well to reductionist explanations, but there is absolutely no explanatory value to saying, "therefore, a magical, invisible soul explains all this!"
2) The feelings that I feel when I look at my wife are indeed the end result of a cascade of neurological, physical, biological responses that were *caused* by the input of her image into my visual cortex. What you seem to dislike about that is that you feel it cheapens the experiences or value of marriage.
When we say something like, "that's all they are," we're making a value judgment. It's akin to you denying that a bullet through the gut is sufficient to explain your pain by saying, "it's just a tiny piece of lead, but I feel far too much for that to account for it."
Your pain is "more" than *just* bullet and its physical consequences, because your conscious experience of it leads to you assign it a great deal of (negative) value. In just the same way, my feelings for my wife are "more" than *just* a bunch of neurotransmitters, but only in VALUE. That doesn't mean that these physical things are not the *causes* and physical basis of what we come to assign *value* to. You admit yourself that you must wade off into mystical thinking ("...I don't have any empirical evidence here...") in order to ask me the question you asked.
ON MORALITY:
Irrespective of the difficulty in approaching morality from a scientific viewpoint, we have no choice but to analyze morality with the tools of reason and logic available to us. If we can find some way to explain morality as a "bet fit model" that simply shows us a way to live that ends up benefiting all of us to the greatest extent possible, then that's fine for me. It doesn't have to be metaphysically ultimate, as I used to wish. If ethics can just be objectively good, I'll be happy.
1) Even if it's true that science doesn't supply any "oughts," that doesn't mean that we can invent them from religious mythology. The Euthyphro Dilemma shows the problem with trying to tie moral properties to God's commands.
I think enough philosophers have spilled enough ink already to see the major problem -- either morality transcends the question of God's own existence (and thus God's nature as well, and whatever would dictate said nature), or it doesn't and it is contingent upon some aspect of God's existence. This latter clause is the horn Divine Command Theorists are impaled on, and the former clause destroys the argument that God is necessary for, or ontologically serves as, the "foundation" of morality. It's pretty simple to me -- either / or.
2) Science and common sense/logic supply analytical tools to evaluate what is the best thing to do in most situations -- that which serves "the greatest good for the greatest number" is always an easy benchmark. Infidelity and lying are examples of how we have to act at times against our baser instincts (of harm avoidance/self-preservation that make us want to lie, and impulse fulfillment that makes us want to be sexually promiscuous) in order to preserve important higher-order social structures that benefit us all in the long run. Ditto with crime: committing murder or theft leads to rips in the fabric of society; society supplies us with more "high end" goods than it is worth trading for "low end" momentary impulse satisfaction. So in a way, there need not be anything more to morality than that it just so happens that what is "best" = what we "ought" to do and therefore utilitarian ethics is self-contained and very consonant with science and logical analysis.
Here's my simple rationale: If you can justify acting morally using nothing but some pretty safe assumptions and solid logical relations, then you're fine. If not, then maybe you ought to abandon whatever aspect of morality you can't justify (I think of lots of religion-related "moral oughts" -- like sex before marriage, etc.).
I've tried to "argue" about this stuff by writing on my site before, largely in response to another Christian's dialog online.
Also check out this article by Pinker in the NYT Magazine, and some other recent articles along the same vein. Also, Marc Hauser was on POI about this very topic on 4/4/08 (.mp3).
That's all for now!
