The next Luke segment involves history and the complete ahistoricity of the events described in the Christian bible. The Documentary Hypothesis on its origins is pretty convincing.
Did you just listen to this as you edited?
Tonight I went to a monthly Berlin Skeptics In The Pub meeting, and had a lot of fun. I got into a very drunken argument, which I could swear felt like a reasonable discussion until someone pointed out we were all almost shouting, about the topic above. And a whole lot more. You know I said I wanted to write an article or blog post about it, like I did about my opinions on spiritual experiences? I think I have the perfect angle now. I just hope I remember it in the morning!
Wait, am I the only one who was like "OH SNAP" when he read this?
She's a qualified fujoushi, when it comes to sexual objectiffication, she can give as good as she gets.
Depends on whether you interpret it as "in order to watch" or "in order to participate".
I dunno man, where I come from if somebody says "I did your grilfriend" it usually means that somebody is about to throw down. I was hoping for a rap battle at the very least.
Atheists simply don't believe in a magic sky man, because we aren't little children with imaginary friends.
That's pretty condescending and a vast oversimplification. Heisenberg was a Lutheran. Heisenberg was not "a little child with imaginary friends."
That's it! Christianity is both lazy (we don't have to be better, we just have to be sorry) and self-hating (humans suck and we have to be sorry because we are not perfect like God.) This is what bothers me about it. As an atheist, I recognize that I am not perfect, but my redemption should come from my actions toward others, and my kindness in the face of my human frailty.
Yeah, pretty much all of Axel's beliefs are what are slowly driving me away from Catholicism. It's more this sort of token belief for me now, held more in place by filial obligations than anything else. The last service I attended had a passage read in which Moses raises his arms, and the power of God allows the Israelites to slaughter an opposing army. All I could wonder is how the fuck any of this was suppose to teach us to be good human beings. Sure, it gets across the point that if there is a deity, yeah, maybe he's all-powerful. But the other messages included "Killing is okay if it's in his name," and, "Women and children are viable targets in holy wars." God or no god, humanitarianism is the key value we should preach.
I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity. I mean yeah, we've had fuckups. We are probably better than any other species at killing each other. We've also done fucking tremendous things, things which demonstrate a sort of transcendent goodness and capability and drive that overrides my ability to think about "limits" or "inherent evil" when it comes to humanity. We exterminated smallpox. We're pretty close to stomping out polio. We built a fucking WALL you can see from space, before construction machinery existed. We pointed to the moon, and said, "We're going to go there," just to fucking say we did it. We took what we thought was the most basic piece of matter, and then we broke it down just to get electricity from it. We figured out how to make a goddamn glow-in-the-dark bunny rabbit, FOR SCIENCE!
People are so wonderful and fucking fantastic, for the most part, that I can't help but be proud to be a fucking human being.
People are so wonderful and fucking fantastic, for the most part, that I can't help but be proud to be a fucking human being.
Fuckin' humans, fucking with the concept of god and demons.
Having grown up an Evangelical Christian, the thing that turned me away from religion was the inability of fellow Christians to be reasonable people. I must of been seen as a defective "Evangelical" as I once declared to my English teacher "Why the hell does it matter what I believe as long as I act as a decent person." The number of times that the elders of my church when on about Muslims, gays or atheists, just put me off talking with any religious people. The church was dead to me long before I ever considered the non-existence of God.
I grew up going to a church where the pastor was a lesbian retired motorcycle cop and probably the kindest, wisest person I've ever met. Her partner is a long-time friend of the family. Most of the congregation there were really decent, kind, conscientious people, albeit in a hippie manner. Sometimes there were some creepy overly-Heinleinian types around but on the whole it was a really fine community of people. They had Rainbow Gatherings as far back as the 70s and were, and are, basically liberal as fuck.
I still think all their mystical stuff, all their dogma, their continued search for meaning in a bronze-age pastiche of manuscripts, is crapshit. They're well meaning and they're generally good people, but their religion is fucking nonsense.
It's not a coincidence that they look the Bible about as non-literally as it's possible to take it, though. Unity Churches are basically Christianity lite - they're as close as you can get to Unitarian without actually being Unitarian.
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this anecdote. I guess it's relevant in that there was a whole lot of singing and community and all that other stuff that could generate the kinds of peaks that keep people coming back.
The church was dead to me long before I ever considered the non-existence of God.
This is a huge point that I was trying to get some atheist friends to understand last night. They seem to think the most important point is that God doesn't exist, and most if not all of the claims of religion are untrue. It's like Dawkins and the other New Atheists have that fact as the basis of their arguments, and then every other point leads from that somehow.
But, like you ElJoe0, the existence of God was one of the LAST things that I considered. To me it was obvious that he or something existed. Like I said in the podcast, it was years after I left the church, and way after I no longer considered myself Christian, or believed any word of the bible. At that point, God not existing was just a switch in my head, and I remember it clearly.
Leading up to that point were many, many events and observations and ideas and revelations and heartaches and headaches and issues and more. Very little of it had to do with "Truth" or "Reality" and everything to do with subjective and personal experiences.
It's not like that for everyone, Luke. That's why I mentioned the church I was in. For me it was always patently obvious that God was false, and the struggle was in coming to terms with the fact that all these nice, decent people could believe in something so fucking stupid and backwards. That wasn't easy to understand when I was 14, you know?
You make an important point, though, I grant - the "obvious" truths are not a good point of attack.
From what I hear, Rainbow Gathering is a dangerous crazy cult, just not organizedly dangerous like Scientology.
Either you're thinking of a different Rainbow Gathering, or I was seriously mistaken in my understanding of the one at the church, because I was under the impression it was just an LGBT discussion and support group.
Either you're thinking of a different Rainbow Gathering, or I was seriously mistaken in my understanding of the one at the church, because I was under the impression it was just an LGBT discussion and support group.
Rainbow Family - Rainbow Gathering. On the surface, they seems just like a bunch of hippies. Reality is that they are slightly dangerous cultish hippies. One example of things I have heard about them is they will go to hippie-ish events, such a Phish concerts, and aggressively seek out and target people such as runaway teens. Also, plenty of non-science going on in with those types. They're sort of the same as the right wing militias living in the hills, only left wing.
Rainbow Family - Rainbow Gathering. On the surface, they seems just like a bunch of hippies. Reality is that they are slightly dangerous cultish hippies. One example of things I have heard about them is they will go to hippie-ish events, such a Phish concerts, and aggressively seek out and target people such as runaway teens. Also, plenty of non-science going on in with those types. They're sort of the same as the right wing militias living in the hills, only left wing.
Yeah, I've looked it up. Still no notion of whether that's what was going on at my parents' church. It was definitely a hippie church, but it was also very actively gay-friendly. Could've been either but I suppose there's a good chance it was this hippie cult.
Yeah, I've looked it up. Still no notion of whether that's what was going on at my parents' church. It was definitely a hippie church, but it was also very actively gay-friendly. Could've been either but I suppose there's a good chance it was this hippie cult.
Or, alternatively, it could have just been a small group calling themselves the Rainbow Gathering, because of the association of the rainbow symbol with the LGBT movement, and not realised there was a hippie-alike cult with the same name.
While the worse scenario is still quite possible, it might not be the case.
Long time listener here, also long time absent from the forums.
I really liked this episode. It's been quite a while since Scrym went into any depth on such topics as religion and skepticism - topics that really engage me. Luke's point about peak experiences are probably very important, and I think he is correct that the atheists in general are oblivious to it's importance (like me until now). I guess most people who get out of church have never had these strong experiences that tie them to the church and hence the lack of understanding of this point.
Luke, by your reference to the interesting but slightly boring talk by Dawkins you made earlier I understand you went to TAM London again this year. On these events where most people are atheists or agnostics I find it completely natural that there is some group bonding by making sly remarks about religion. But I agree with you that there were too many impolite remarks from the stage last year. I can't remember having any such negative reactions this year. Did you? I have really enjoyed the two TAMs in London, but I'm also slightly disappointed that there's too much preaching to the choir, and too few new topics. I like to be surprised and have my preconceptions shaken a bit more. Comments?
By the way, I'm a bit late to this thread as I have been very busy attending and speaking at the first skeptics' conference here in Norway and am now catching up on the podcasts. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the interview with you Luke!
Also in regards to Luke's comments on peak experiences, perhaps the greatest advantage the religious have over us seculars is the simple fact that religions have been developing routines for peak experience for thousands of years. It's only been in the last twenty years or so that any serious secular work has been done on the topic. For those of us who don't care to access the rituals for peak experiences refined by religions, we have to rely on chance, like Luke's story about the car crash or Scott's tale of RIT hockey. Otherwise we have to create our own methods for constructing such experiences, which is difficult (though not impossible).
By the way, I highly recommend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow if you're interested in the research behind peak experience. Well written and quite entertaining to boot.
The initial discussion in this thread made me laugh because I've been quite busy, and only got around to listening to this episode this morning. It was great, though.
My parents never made us go to church on a weekly basis, but put us through sunday school. My brother went all the way, but one day they just offered me the option to stop going altogether, at some point around the third grade. Something about the church asking for an awful lot of money, but regardless of the reason I was elated and jumped at the chance.
I never really bring up religion b/c it just seems very silly to me and I don't want to spend my time discussing it. It reared its ugly head this week though. The wife and I are trying to have a kid for the first time, and she brought up the fact that when we do succeed, the child should be baptised at the church down the road from us.
In an ideal world I would prefer to keep my kid away from that place, but is it even right for me to try to convince her otherwise if she feels strongly about it? I'm not even sure what's in the child's best interest. I wonder what the statistics are. Would they be an outcast if they were the kid born an atheist? You'd think that this sort of thing would be common by now, but I'd be willing to bet stacks of cash that when push comes to shove, the vast majority of new parents are putting their kids in some religion or other. At this point I think it's just more practical to put the kid in, but foster an environment where they can discover independent thought and make their own decision to stop going.
I realize I'm talking to a bunch of people in their early 20s with no children, but at least this will be a unique audience.
Firstly, no child is born an atheist, nor are they born a Christian. A child does not have the mental faculties to decide if they believe in a personal god or not.
Secondly a child will not suffer at all if you don't indoctrinate them in some religion or not. I were never baptized, my father said that it were my decision to choose what religion I believed in when I grew up. I were also sent to Catholic schools while growing up so there was a modicum of embarrassment at admitting to my classmates and teachers to being "unclean" and full of "original sin". However that were quite brief. When I finally continued on into public schools the subject never came up.
Personally I think it is unfair for anyone to force a religious belief upon a child. Believing in a god or not should be left to them, as their parent you should just say "this is what I believe, this is what these people over here believe, those people over there don't believe in anything" et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Firstly, no child is born an atheist, nor are they born a Christian. A child does not have the mental faculties to decide if they believe in a personal god or not.
All children are born atheists. It's the default belief, in that it is a lack thereof. All children are born not believing in all of the various sky men. Christianity is a positive and specific belief that must be instilled.
I wonder what the statistics are. Would they be an outcast if they were the kid born an atheist?
No one would know or care. Most people don't have baptismal records, and no one can easily look them up.
is it even right for me to try to convince her otherwise if she feels strongly about it?
It's no more right than acquiescing to her superstition and doing it against your own strong beliefs. You need to have a frank discussion.
I'd be willing to bet stacks of cash that when push comes to shove, the vast majority of new parents are putting their kids in some religion or other.
I honestly do consider that equivalent to lying to a child. But even growing up in the midwest, very few kids went to any sort of religious "education" outside of their public schooling, and other than the crazies in religious clubs, religion never came up in any context. It's a non-issue.
You really need to be open and honest with her. If you back down, it's your decision, but it will just lead to further problems down the road when the kids grows up and asks you why you don't believe in the things mom does.
In that you can teach the concepts and mythos that drives it, yeah. You can't teach the faith and sometimes the lunacy it generates, though.
Even coming from a very strong Catholic background, I'd probably just have them baptized, raise my children as apatheists, and then they can make the final decision as to whether or not they want to be Catholic and be confirmed on their own. I've got very strong beliefs about teaching proper logic and reasoning to children, and I don't doubt that they'll be able to make the decision for themselves.
I never really bring up religion b/c it just seems very silly to me and I don't want to spend my time discussing it. It reared its ugly head this week though. The wife and I are trying to have a kid for the first time, and she brought up the fact that when we do succeed, the child should be baptised at the church down the road from us.
The real puzzler is how you can marry someone not even having a frank discussion about religion with them? If I'm going to devote myself fully to someone and spend the entire rest of my life with someone, there will be nothing about them I do not know, and vice versa. Also, there will definitely not be any sort of conflict of that great a nature. To find out about that kind of belief after marriage, whoah.
I think you guys (Scott, Rym and Luke) missed something important about faith and who remains in it.
A moment of self-exposition first: I'm a pharmaceutical formulations chemist, but I thought I was going to a pastor growing up. I only survived a single semester of seminary because the knowledge of the factual history of the church and the Bible broke that 'debt of cognitive dissonance.' Now to the point...
There are three stages of faith (at least that I've experienced so far). You have the authoritative phase, which is where people tell you what to believe and you do. Then you have the experiential phase where these 'spritual experiences' keep you going well after you've decided your own intepretations of the doctrine you've been taught. Once you start having peak experiences outside of the religious environment and you see behind the curtain of authority (the corruption of the church structure, the outright mistakes and errors - not to mention cultural obsolence - of written Scripture, that Christians don't have the corner on "Good," that bad things happen to good people), you have one of two choices. You can leave, which is what Luke did. Or you can run with it anyway.
Someday I'm going to die. We're all going to die. Odds are humanity will probably blow itself to smithereens at some point and even if it doesn't, eventually the universe is likely going to collapse in on itself again. One way or another everything we know and love, everything we've worked for is going to be gone. It won't matter one whit what you did with your life. If you can come to grips with the idea that it's all very meaningless, then congratulations - you're a better man or woman than I. I can't. Sometimes I can live precisely in the moment and ignore it, but not always. I need something eternal, something bigger than me, my problems - even the universe - to give me a purpose. Otherwise, why NOT be a self-centered prick, chasing only your own best interest? Why help people? Why do anything?
I don't have faith because it makes sense. Heck, I've grown to believe that religion and reason have no business together. I don't even have faith because of what I've experienced. All my thoughts and opinions could be completely wrong and that's OK. I have faith because without it I have nothing else.
Still, awesome show. Had I made it through seminary, I would make my confirmation students listen to this.
Comments
Tonight I went to a monthly Berlin Skeptics In The Pub meeting, and had a lot of fun. I got into a very drunken argument, which I could swear felt like a reasonable discussion until someone pointed out we were all almost shouting, about the topic above. And a whole lot more. You know I said I wanted to write an article or blog post about it, like I did about my opinions on spiritual experiences? I think I have the perfect angle now. I just hope I remember it in the morning!
I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity. I mean yeah, we've had fuckups. We are probably better than any other species at killing each other. We've also done fucking tremendous things, things which demonstrate a sort of transcendent goodness and capability and drive that overrides my ability to think about "limits" or "inherent evil" when it comes to humanity. We exterminated smallpox. We're pretty close to stomping out polio. We built a fucking WALL you can see from space, before construction machinery existed. We pointed to the moon, and said, "We're going to go there," just to fucking say we did it. We took what we thought was the most basic piece of matter, and then we broke it down just to get electricity from it. We figured out how to make a goddamn glow-in-the-dark bunny rabbit, FOR SCIENCE!
People are so wonderful and fucking fantastic, for the most part, that I can't help but be proud to be a fucking human being.
Having grown up an Evangelical Christian, the thing that turned me away from religion was the inability of fellow Christians to be reasonable people. I must of been seen as a defective "Evangelical" as I once declared to my English teacher "Why the hell does it matter what I believe as long as I act as a decent person." The number of times that the elders of my church when on about Muslims, gays or atheists, just put me off talking with any religious people. The church was dead to me long before I ever considered the non-existence of God.
I still think all their mystical stuff, all their dogma, their continued search for meaning in a bronze-age pastiche of manuscripts, is crapshit. They're well meaning and they're generally good people, but their religion is fucking nonsense.
It's not a coincidence that they look the Bible about as non-literally as it's possible to take it, though. Unity Churches are basically Christianity lite - they're as close as you can get to Unitarian without actually being Unitarian.
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this anecdote. I guess it's relevant in that there was a whole lot of singing and community and all that other stuff that could generate the kinds of peaks that keep people coming back.
But, like you ElJoe0, the existence of God was one of the LAST things that I considered. To me it was obvious that he or something existed. Like I said in the podcast, it was years after I left the church, and way after I no longer considered myself Christian, or believed any word of the bible. At that point, God not existing was just a switch in my head, and I remember it clearly.
Leading up to that point were many, many events and observations and ideas and revelations and heartaches and headaches and issues and more. Very little of it had to do with "Truth" or "Reality" and everything to do with subjective and personal experiences.
You make an important point, though, I grant - the "obvious" truths are not a good point of attack.
While the worse scenario is still quite possible, it might not be the case.
I really liked this episode. It's been quite a while since Scrym went into any depth on such topics as religion and skepticism - topics that really engage me. Luke's point about peak experiences are probably very important, and I think he is correct that the atheists in general are oblivious to it's importance (like me until now). I guess most people who get out of church have never had these strong experiences that tie them to the church and hence the lack of understanding of this point.
Luke, by your reference to the interesting but slightly boring talk by Dawkins you made earlier I understand you went to TAM London again this year. On these events where most people are atheists or agnostics I find it completely natural that there is some group bonding by making sly remarks about religion. But I agree with you that there were too many impolite remarks from the stage last year. I can't remember having any such negative reactions this year. Did you? I have really enjoyed the two TAMs in London, but I'm also slightly disappointed that there's too much preaching to the choir, and too few new topics. I like to be surprised and have my preconceptions shaken a bit more. Comments?
By the way, I'm a bit late to this thread as I have been very busy attending and speaking at the first skeptics' conference here in Norway and am now catching up on the podcasts. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the interview with you Luke!
By the way, I highly recommend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow if you're interested in the research behind peak experience. Well written and quite entertaining to boot.
Can't wait to hear more from Luke!
My parents never made us go to church on a weekly basis, but put us through sunday school. My brother went all the way, but one day they just offered me the option to stop going altogether, at some point around the third grade. Something about the church asking for an awful lot of money, but regardless of the reason I was elated and jumped at the chance.
I never really bring up religion b/c it just seems very silly to me and I don't want to spend my time discussing it.
It reared its ugly head this week though. The wife and I are trying to have a kid for the first time, and she brought up the fact that when we do succeed, the child should be baptised at the church down the road from us.
In an ideal world I would prefer to keep my kid away from that place, but is it even right for me to try to convince her otherwise if she feels strongly about it? I'm not even sure what's in the child's best interest. I wonder what the statistics are. Would they be an outcast if they were the kid born an atheist? You'd think that this sort of thing would be common by now, but I'd be willing to bet stacks of cash that when push comes to shove, the vast majority of new parents are putting their kids in some religion or other. At this point I think it's just more practical to put the kid in, but foster an environment where they can discover independent thought and make their own decision to stop going.
I realize I'm talking to a bunch of people in their early 20s with no children, but at least this will be a unique audience.
Secondly a child will not suffer at all if you don't indoctrinate them in some religion or not. I were never baptized, my father said that it were my decision to choose what religion I believed in when I grew up. I were also sent to Catholic schools while growing up so there was a modicum of embarrassment at admitting to my classmates and teachers to being "unclean" and full of "original sin". However that were quite brief. When I finally continued on into public schools the subject never came up.
Personally I think it is unfair for anyone to force a religious belief upon a child. Believing in a god or not should be left to them, as their parent you should just say "this is what I believe, this is what these people over here believe, those people over there don't believe in anything" et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
You really need to be open and honest with her. If you back down, it's your decision, but it will just lead to further problems down the road when the kids grows up and asks you why you don't believe in the things mom does.
Even coming from a very strong Catholic background, I'd probably just have them baptized, raise my children as apatheists, and then they can make the final decision as to whether or not they want to be Catholic and be confirmed on their own. I've got very strong beliefs about teaching proper logic and reasoning to children, and I don't doubt that they'll be able to make the decision for themselves.
A moment of self-exposition first: I'm a pharmaceutical formulations chemist, but I thought I was going to a pastor growing up. I only survived a single semester of seminary because the knowledge of the factual history of the church and the Bible broke that 'debt of cognitive dissonance.' Now to the point...
There are three stages of faith (at least that I've experienced so far). You have the authoritative phase, which is where people tell you what to believe and you do. Then you have the experiential phase where these 'spritual experiences' keep you going well after you've decided your own intepretations of the doctrine you've been taught. Once you start having peak experiences outside of the religious environment and you see behind the curtain of authority (the corruption of the church structure, the outright mistakes and errors - not to mention cultural obsolence - of written Scripture, that Christians don't have the corner on "Good," that bad things happen to good people), you have one of two choices. You can leave, which is what Luke did. Or you can run with it anyway.
Someday I'm going to die. We're all going to die. Odds are humanity will probably blow itself to smithereens at some point and even if it doesn't, eventually the universe is likely going to collapse in on itself again. One way or another everything we know and love, everything we've worked for is going to be gone. It won't matter one whit what you did with your life. If you can come to grips with the idea that it's all very meaningless, then congratulations - you're a better man or woman than I. I can't. Sometimes I can live precisely in the moment and ignore it, but not always. I need something eternal, something bigger than me, my problems - even the universe - to give me a purpose. Otherwise, why NOT be a self-centered prick, chasing only your own best interest? Why help people? Why do anything?
I don't have faith because it makes sense. Heck, I've grown to believe that religion and reason have no business together. I don't even have faith because of what I've experienced. All my thoughts and opinions could be completely wrong and that's OK. I have faith because without it I have nothing else.
Still, awesome show. Had I made it through seminary, I would make my confirmation students listen to this.