Not exactly. There are loud ‘evangelical’ atheists (some shout) and there are quiet ones, analogous to Christians and some other faiths as well.
There is nothing in atheism that says to spread the word and convert people to atheism. Do some atheists like to voice their opinions? Yep, they sure do.
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Of course not. Patrick over in PS would be one that I would characterize as ‘evangelistic’, though. It’s just a figure of speech. He (and you?) would be glad to ‘deconvert’ a nominal Christian.
Ron I skipped over this request initially because it opens a huge can of worms which is a conversation in its own right, and one I find not many people want to have. So here is the shortest answer I could come up with along with sources for more information.
The answer to that is tied up with my understanding of Iain McGilchrist’s thinking. He spent ten years writing a book summing up a lifetime of intellectual pursuits in neurological research, psychology, philosophy and the arts titled The Master And His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. My own overly simple summary would be that our minds have two ways of functioning, one intuitive and one rational. The intuitive one is clearly older and, from the viewpoint of dominant rational culture, more primitive. So what I meant when I spoke of dissecting consciousness from the inside to turn it into my possession, was basically reducing the intuitive mind to the kind simplified concepts which the rational mind is so much more comfortable with. If you’re interested there is this person’s attempt to summarize McGilchrist’s ideas which is fleshed out a little more more than mine. Or you can go to the IRS animated video made of his TED talk about his work which gives his own attempt at a short summary which is highly entertaining visually as well.
Ah. Yes. I read McGilchrist’s book several years ago. It’s incredibly fascinating… I’m not at all in any position to evaluate whether or not he’s right, but he sure made… er… intuitive sense to me. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, and it was a library check-out so I don’t have it to hand; but as I recall he makes the argument that culture itself has historically come to reflect left- or right-brain dominance, and that in fact we’re in a left-dominant period now. (Please forgive if I’m butchering his thesis… it was a big book saying big things, and I probably didn’t fully understand it much less remembering it accurately now.) What do you think about that idea?
Have you ever read Julian Jaynes’ controversial work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? He suggests that McGilchrist’s right, intuitive brain was actually perceived as the gods speaking to Bronze Age humans, until the hemispheres became more fully integrated and the “gods” went silent. It’s another bizarre but intriguing idea.
I don’t particularly have a problem thinking that if God exists – if there is a Divine consciousness underlying our universe – it might well be the right brain through which we would perceive him.
Have you read any of Justin L. Barrett’s work?
I think it is spot on. The tendency to scientism reflects this bias. It also shows in the common anti-theist refrain that religion is nothing but medieval superstition and failed science. From the modern perspective, if you can’t reduce it to a concept, you don’t understand something at all, or simply dismiss it as non-existent.
Edited to add that literalism which leads to YEC and ID are two more examples where over-rationalization seems to lead people to conclusions which don’t sit well with the rest of what we know - something our intuitive minds could have noticed.
I tried but found it too simplistic and wildly speculative. But the idea that God belief played some role in modernizing our evolving minds seems likely to me.
What surprises me is how little McGilchrist has to say about religion and Christianity in the book (so far, I’m far from finished) when there seems to me to be so much application. I’ve been told it is being discussed in seminaries and amongst theologians generally but if so I haven’t found a trace.
Nor do I. In fact I lean toward understanding God as a co-product of consciousness. Just as the sense of self emerges so too perhaps an apprehension of God can emerge as a way for the limited portion of which we are conscious to benefit from the insight of the totality of consciousness within.
The next question is usually whether that is the sum total of what I take to be God, to which I would reply that puts God on an equal footing with my “self”. Not exactly a disparaging or dismissive status I don’t think. But by comparison with the miles high pedestal on which Christianity has placed God, it is of course far less. Seems to me that the main thing to remember is that whatever God may be, it is first and foremost mysterious … except to those who have shrunk Him down to a concept of certitude.
Not yet. @Randy thinks highly of him and has pointed me to some videos I watched. He struck me as having great intellectual integrity. But the one recommended book I checked out didn’t engage me I’m afraid.
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May I jump in and ask a basic relating question that may have been discussed already. But who/what do you believe/think Jesus was?
I don’t know what to think about Jesus. From the parables attributed to him he seems like a very good person and one with deep insight into people and wisdom about human values and meaning. I can appreciate why such a one would be greatly esteemed.
I know what he means to Christianity but I’m not a Christian. Without meaning to nettle anyone, I doubt the resurrection and an afterlife of any sort just as I doubt the existence of any being who created the cosmos. But I don’t think the Bible is filled with lies. I think its filled with stories. Wisdom stories and stories which provide a common cultural touch stone to knit together a society, but stories nonetheless. I don’t think that makes them false but I do feel free as a non-Christian to take what makes sense to me and leave the rest.
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I disagree. I meet to tons of self professed atheists as a byproduct of really being into evolutionary ecology and hiking and getting pictures. I’m constantly stopped by people asking me what I am working on and what did I find and ect… the majority of them are atheists. Just like most self professed Christians who don’t actually know the Bible , most atheists seem to not know any of the science. 99/100 times I know significantly more about ecology and evolution than the atheists I’ve met.
The majority of these atheists don’t disbelieve in God because they don’t see evidence for him, but instead they had a bad experience. They never read even 800 pages on evolution, but share dozens of memes and quotes. They act just like religious people who don’t study the Bible.
Atheism is denying God. Agnostic is being open, but not certain, there is a God.
I’m pretty sure this is addressed to @T_aquaticus and not me. But I find the way you phrase it a little awkward. Besides, do I decide who is or isn’t a Christian, or do Christians decide that? I think it is best to ask what a person means by whatever they call themselves.
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It’s not about if they are or are not. I mentioned that most self professed Christians and atheists that I meet in my life are people who don’t study it out. Most atheists I meet don’t know anything about evolution and most people I run into who say they are Christians don’t actually study the Bible. I mean if most of us walked out into the streets and questioned people who self professed those things to a deep level the majority will show to not have taken their path because of studying something out. Obviously , you’re more likely to meet people in this forum who studies those things out more or are on the path of it.
I thought so as well. But I’ve got a pretty strong bias towards religious thinking, and it’s good to get a take from someone of a different persuasion.
I agree. It may seem counterintuitive to people unfamiliar with it, but modern Christian fundamentalist thinking is very much a legitimate descendant of Rationalism. It’s extremely literal, and everything must be connected to everything else, with no room for ambiguity, nuance, or uncertainty. It’s the whole… er… genesis of YECism in the early 20th century. I’ve already quoted from “The Maniac”, chapter ii of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, but he draws as clear a picture of this mindset as any I’ve ever read. As he says, “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
So I got hold of an ebook of The Master and His Emissary. In the conclusion, I found this:
I have tried to convey in this book that we need metaphor or mythos in order to understand the world. Such myths or metaphors are not dispensable luxuries, or ‘optional extras’, still less the means of obfuscation: they are fundamental and essential to the process. We are not given the option not to choose one, and the myth we choose is important: in the absence of anything better, we revert to the metaphor or myth of the machine. But we cannot, I believe, get far in understanding the world, or in deriving values that will help us live well in it, by likening it to the bike in the garage. The 2,000-year old Western tradition, that of Christianity, provides, whether one believes in it or not, an exceptionally rich mythos – a term I use in its technical sense, making no judgment here of its truth or otherwise – for understanding the world and our relationship with it. It conceives a divine Other that is not indifferent or alien – like James Joyce’s God, refined out of existence and ‘paring his fingernails’ – but on the contrary engaged, vulnerable because of that engagement, and like the right hemisphere rather than the left, not resentful (as the Old Testament Yahweh often seemed) about the Faustian fallings away of its creation, but suffering alongside it. At the centre of this mythos are the images of incarnation, the coming together of matter and spirit, and of resurrection, the redemption of that relationship, as well as of a God that submits to suffer for that process. But any mythos that allows us to approach a spiritual Other, and gives us something other than material values to live by, is more valuable than one that dismisses the possibility of its existence.
That’s pretty much how I feel about Christianity my own self. Is it true? Well, I don’t know how I’d really know that. However, as a toolkit for understanding my world, I’ve found it to be both indispensible and beautiful. And it really only works when you take it to be true.
I’ve not run across theologians talking about McGilchrist either. But I’ll keep a look out now…
I’d agree with that as well. Christians especially should keep in mind that on the few occasions God reveals himself to people in the Bible, their reaction is almost always something to the effect of “OMG! I’M GONNA DIE!!!” The Divine is a bit much, to say the least. A lesser god would hardly be worth the time.
Barrett has pretty good creds, from what I can tell. I read Why Would Anyone Believe in God? and Born Believers: The Science of Childhood Religion back in 2014. I found it pretty interesting, especially for countering the oft-encountered claim that humans are all atheists by default and have to be indoctrinated into belief in God. On the contrary, I think the evidence suggests that evolution selected for religious belief. Maybe we can successfully escape it… But in the meantime I don’t think one could be considered irrational for continuing to play along. 
Ah, but those are the best parts! They’re the central blazing mysteries that power the whole rest of it! GKC again:
The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say “if you please” to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.
As an atheist I will happily admit that atheists are just as prone to ignorance as any other group.
I always find it interesting when theists find it necessary to make atheists look like theists.
Atheism is a-without and theism-belief in god. Together, it is without a belief in god. Atheism is also about being open to the idea that there are gods.
Agnosticism is a-without and gnosticism-knowledge (of god). Together, it is a lack of knowledge of gods.
So they are really two related but different things. One is about belief and one is about knowledge. Do I believe in gods, and can I know if gods exist.
Nice to get this distinction between the mystic and the madman. I think @Realspiritik might appreciate seeing this too.
I think I read that recently and liked it, probably here on the Chesterton thread. Reason is a glorious thing but it isn’t the only glorious thing and it is no where near enough devoid of everything else.
Thank you very much for this:
I’ve searched through the index numerous times in search of any reference to Christianity. This is about what I would have expected him to say and I agree with him whole heartedly. I don’t think religious belief is foolish -well, except perhaps those hampered by literalism. And I agree with you that “mythos” isn’t a synonym for “falsehood”.
I wonder what you thought of that quote I shared early on by from the early American psychologist William James? Seems to me that he gave a pretty ringing endorsement of religion as well, and one that shows some insight into the nature of those benefits. Notice too the use of the word “gift” as you noted earlier is so common to such descriptions. I’ll copy it here since I’m not technologically clever enough to merely link it.
We shall see how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. This enchantment, coming as a gift when it does come—a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a gift of God’s grace, the theologians say —is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste.
I understand. I’m a bit of a skeptical person by nature and think there’s a lot of incorrect information out there on every topic. I’ve tried to be as objective as possible when determining if faith is realistic and reasonable. For me it became more functional reasoning through what we know and don’t know similar to a detective. Too much to include here so I’m just hitting the tops of the waves so to speak. Some will disagree but from a practical stand point Jesus said he was God and accepted worship. A good person would not say or do such if he knew it wasn’t the case. So he’s either as CS Lewis said a liar, lunatic or lord. But he can’t be just a good person. Then my objection was the bible is not trustworthy and simply made up or exaggerated stories. But that didn’t work well either because the stories wouldn’t include so much failure and counter cultural missteps. The focus of the stories wouldn’t include women stating they saw Jesus tomb empty because their statements would have no value in that historical period. Less than slaves statements. The “hero” of the stories was meek and cried and was fearful and certainly didn’t beat his enemies. Same with his non heroic followers who deserted him and feared for their lives after while hiding. Those and many others would never been chosen or considered for the stories in order to gain followers and popularity of a movement because it would not have worked. The movement would have instantly evaporated with those details included. No historical event is proven scientifically but by the accuracy and amount written about it. Josh McDowell has extensive research on this aspect. Then I was left with the after effect on the world. Certainly Christianity has its enormous failings which I thought was the Achilles heel. But when Jesus overall effect on the entire worlds course since his life was objectively viewed it unbelievable. Almost all of our unnoticeable foundational assumed everyday principles can trace their beginnings back to him. Valuing the weak, serving, humility, equality, forgiveness… did not exist with any significance before his life. Because they were viewed as weaknesses. Again just hitting the tops. Soon it required more faith for me not believe he was who he said he was than not. If he was not then I have to believe those “weak” counter cultural aspects that changed the entire worlds view of how to live life and what’s ultimately important came about from a liar or someone not in their right mind. Long story to say I think faith is reasonable and not how faith is typically stated or understood.
Sorry, I did intend to reply to that. It’s quite poetic, and I like what he says… I’ve never read James, but have thought for some time that I should probably read The Varieties of Religious Experience, if for no other reason than how influential it turned out to be. I have some leanings towards pragmatism, I suppose. In that quote, James seems to take for granted that there are some people for whom the religious impulse just isn’t there. As a Christian, I certainly wonder about that sort of thing, and it’s one of the aspects of my experience which is more difficult to square with the rest of my beliefs. However, I believe in divine mercy and grace, so… who knows?
I went hunting (as is my wont) for overlaps with Chesterton. Henry James apparently ran in circles that crossed GKC’s at times, and the Autobiography briefly references a scene in which Henry and William together called on Chesterton. (The chapter is mostly about GKC’s friends – also generally sparring partners – and you can read the whole thing online.) I haven’t found anything of length on what GKC thought of William James, although GKC wrote a piece on him after he died (also in 1910, curiously enough). The NYT hoards it behind a paywall. Meanies.
I do think that there was rather a generous number of high quality of skeptics in GKC’s day. Shaw, Wells, James, Russell, Twain… I should like to bid their sort return, along with some Chestertons to drink and argue with them.
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I’m going to take that as general reconciliation regarding my not sharing your religion, and thank you for it. I hope you realize I am entirely content that you and everybody for whom Christianity serves as rudder in this world go on doing what is working for you. If you can reach a point where you can say the same to me, well that would just about make us good neighbors. But could you say more about what part you understand?
Did you read the quotes Ron_anon shared from G K Chesterton about the madman? He thinks an over reliance on reason and rationality to the exclusion of all else is the trademark of the madman, not the absence of reason. So do be careful not to put all your eggs into just that one basket. Be sure to wait and reflect to see if anything else may come to you from within. A conversation is improved more by a good listener than a good speaker. Christianity prides itself on humility but I find many Christians who seem to feel the need to project more confidence on God’s behalf than they really feel. Be patient with yourself.
I quite agree and acknowledge my reliance on faith as well. It isn’t f Christian faith but it is still about trust and hope in things I can’t make an air tight case for. Fortunately I’m under no mandate to spread my brand of faith to anyone so that takes a lot of pressure off. As long as people feel connected to something deeper than the day to day surface of modern life, I can be happy for them whatever shape that connection may take.
Honestly I wasn’t quite sure what to respond to in your post so if you would like to point me to what I missed, I may be able to do better. Anyhow I hope you find whatever you’re looking for here. I’ve learned a lot here already and there are some really good communicators here.
Oh, check this out. From William James, Lecture 1: The Present Dilemma in Philosophy:
In the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called ‘Heretics,’ Mr. Chesterton writes these words: “There are some people - and I am one of them -who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the- universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.”
I think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same of me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the audacity of the enterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
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