What is that quote about consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds?
Ok it was “foolish consistency” …but… why do I suspect that the bigger the mind the more of the obsessions with consistency look foolish? It is because of what I see in physics where inconsistency between the idea of the basic constituents of the universe being particles or being waves look pretty sharp and un-bridgeable. If science didn’t force this on us, who would accept such a preposterous notion? …of course the point here is that God has the biggest mind of all… LOL
So… what makes you so sure that everything has to be consistent? For me this is directly tied to the question of whether reality is exclusively objective (for which we have no objective evidence). For if there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to reality and thus a good portion of reality is simply not the same for everyone then expecting consistency with regards to such things between different people would be unreasonable.
Please take note that this does not change in the slightest my three part definition of rationality…
logical coherence is a requirement for things to be meaningful.
consistency with the objective (scientific) evidence is a requirement for things to be reasonable.
agreement with the standards of a free society (like tolerance) is required for things to be moral (at least in the world/society that I want to be a part of and am willing to peaceably accept).
This only requires logical coherence in the assertions of a single person for those assertions to be meaningful. It doesn’t require logical coherence between the worldviews of different people or that reality of different people must be totally the same. And of course consistency with the objective evidence doesn’t even come close to requiring a consistency between worldviews generally.
“Invariably”? You’d have to show some empirical figures to convince me of this in context. “Questioning” ones preconceived materialist notions is indeed what has led to many people embracing the faith, after all.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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There have never been so many ‘nones’ in the US, in number and proportion.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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One night at Forest Home, he walked out into the woods and set his Bible on a stump – more an altar than a pulpit – and he cried out: “O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck and others are raising.”
And then, my grandfather fell to his knees and the Holy Spirit moved in him as he said, “Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word!”*
From my experience this is how Evangelicals deal with doubt. Billy Graham was not an exception.
Now, religion has one thing going for it, and that is the concept of morality. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with the Bible morality, but the idea that there’s an “objective “ morality has strong appeal. Also, SJW crowd has, in my opinion, hijacked secularism to where if you don’t accept trans as normal (and I don’t) something is wrong with you. This is where Jordan Peterson has an appeal to even atheists, in my opinion. Personally I like him as well. His views on the Bible are very unorthodox but he has an appeal from the POV of morality. I think I’m rambling a bit here but hopefully you get the point.
Various seasons of life will probably make different things rise up into the foreground of our immediate attentions, imposing themselves as our driving necessities of the moment. Even the most ardent rationalist cannot (I suppose) always keep their radical concern for rational consistency as the uppermost consideration of their every waking thought. There will be times when life intervenes and the rationalist, the scientist, the pietist, the social justice warrior, the tribal politicist, etc. are each in turn obliged to set aside something they would have, in more calculated moments, maintained as a center of their attention and homage. The desperate man may, in his moment of desperation set a considerable number of important things aside, in order to take hold of one thing he perceives of lasting importance … “Lord - I can’t see how this works now - but I recognize my need to just trust you through this, and that my understanding can come along later.” Such a season of life shouldn’t be seen as precluding the necessity of at least some growth of understanding later - or the responsibility to seek understanding without permanent deferral.
And then I could offer the testimony of C. S. Lewis, C.E.M. Joad, Frank Morison, or plenty of others, who were reasoned into their faith, and who got there by doubting their former materialism. And i doubt they would view themselves as “exceptions” either.
But it sounds like what you’re getting at more is why we maintain belief even in the face of doubts, and why we do not pursue with greatest passion any and every possible course of doubt… I would commend Lewis’s article “On Obstinacy in Belief”, where he addresses that very topic:
We have been told that the scientist thinks it his duty to proportion the strength of his belief exactly to the evidence; to believe less as there is less evidence and to withdraw belief altogether when reliable adverse evidence turns up. We have been told that, on the contrary, the Christian regards it as positively praiseworthy to believe without evidence, or in excess of the evidence, or to maintain his belief unmodified in the teeth of steadily increasing evidence against it. Thus a ‘faith that has stood firm’, which appears to mean a belief immune from all the assaults of reality, is commended.
There is so much in the article it is hard to summarize, but i appreciate and resonate with this line from his conclusion:
Our opponents, then, have a perfect right to dispute with us about the grounds of our original assent. But they must not accuse us of sheer insanity if, after the assent has been given, our adherence to it is no longer proportioned to every fluctuation of the apparent evidence.
Withdraw belief? What? Turn off our brains and believe nothing? Is this the naturalist version of the old religious mantra of “it is mystery, so STOP ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT!” LOL
The absurdity of this is only exceeded by the dishonesty of the other bit of rhetoric which says “my answers are the default answers which you should believe unless you can prove something else.”
The simple fact of the matter is that life doesn’t wait for proof and faith is a necessity not only for life but for all knowledge. Yes that includes scientific knowledge (scientist speaking here). We have faith that the methods of science reveal the truth about some things. We have faith that there are no demons (malign invisible forces) arranging the evidence out there to deceive us.
To be sure there are lots of questions where we can live without an answer to, and maybe even a few where the risk of a wrong answer exceeds any benefit we might get from a correct answer. But for most question there remains the questions of priorities and where we are going to devote our time, especially when these are things which large numbers of people devote considerable time to.
Seems to a little more to it with Lewis anyway. it may be said reason brought him to theism, but regarding his faith, he states in Surprised by Joy,
“I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Like evolution. [Sorry, mustn’t do one liners must I? Morality is hard wired by evolution in to our brains and the concept of it is not unique to religion. We have six moral taste receptors starting with the universal do no harm and be fair, which liberals have a positive imbalance of. They can’t help it.]
Well, of course there’s more to it, with Lewis and anyone else… anyone who merely reasoned their way to an intellectual belief, and no more, would essentially be in Satan’s position… “believing in one God”… but who ought be trembling.
But point remains… for all these people, and plenty more, doubting materialsm was a major step in their path to faith.
I think I get the point, but if I do, I’m not sure your difficulty with theism in general.
Firstly, I assume you mean an objective and/or absolute morality… one that exists above, outside, and apart from human development, opinions, cultures, or experiences. i.e., one that is transcendent. An absolute and overarching morality that would not permit Nazis to simply claim their morality was different but just as legitimate as any other cultures… but rather, an eternal and objective morality that could in fact judge some systems of morality to be superior to others, or some to be faulty in certain ways, or the like?
Secondly, if I tracked you so far, i observe that morality like this, independent of humanity, would have to reside within a mind. protons and neutrons don’t care what people do, there are no moral laws written into any fundamental particulars nor into any physical laws. there is nothing written into quarks that say that, if they arrange themselves into certain patterns that allow for thought, that certain behaviors and choices are right and others wrong. only a mind - a person - would or could care what humans ought and ought not be doing regarding other humans.
And thirdly, i don’t see what at core distinguishes the above recognitions from religion in general. this vague theism may not be equated with any particular religion, granted, but this is yet inherently religious, and theistic, unless i is something?
If i’ve missed something, or misunderstood, please correct me.
That is debatable. If there is an advantage for morality in religion, then I think it is a subtle one that comes from belief in an afterlife rather than belief in a deity. In fact, as many atheists have frequently pointed out and demonstrated, belief in a deity can be a rather scary detriment to morality. But I do think the context of an afterlife can add some strength and support to morality.
I did just fine with morality without religion and the same is true of many other people. The most you can say is that this has been the focus of religion for a lot longer and thus it has a head start on the promotion of morality. But all that is going to get you is the response that, not only do we not need it any more for that purpose, but that considering the history of religion, we can do better.
Well sure… but I don’t think religion provides morality that is either absolute or objective. Morality from religion/deity remains relative to that religion/deity and is certainly no less subjective than ones belief in the things of religion. If you want absolute morality then you need good logical reasons why some things are better than other things and if want it to be objective then you need demonstrable evidence to back up those reasons.
You are right there. I was paraphrasing the religious concept of morality that you have summarized above. I disagree that there exists such objective morality, as even Christian apologists, like Dr. Craig have to use double speak to justify OT God’s orders to kill women and children on the one hand, even as they argue that humans have a moral compass whereby killing women and children is objectively morally wrong.
This is what I meant when I said that religion has some things going for it.
Thinking this over and hearing theists talk recently I have to take this back. The belief in a deity can also help with morality in a subtle way. Sometimes it helps simply to know/believe that someone is watching, especially someone who cares.
So perhaps the right way to say this, is that in both cases, belief in deity and belief in an afterlife, there are subtle ways in which they can help even if this does not necessarily follow. It is not guaranteed, for these beliefs can be misused to the detriment of morality. This explains why atheists often have moral reasons for discarding the belief in a deity and/or belief in an afterlife. But at the same time I have often heard atheists express the sentiment that religion does benefit morality and perhaps this is not totally just about religion having a head start on its promotion.
I would like to get the thoughts of @MarkD on this for this seems right up his alley.
I’d agree with that. My exposure was of a pretty feral sort. My naive take was that being God was an extremely lonely thing so I wanted to be worthy. I figured taking note of how others were doing and putting out there what one would want to find in the world would help me to develop a moral center that would achieve that end better than being a rule follower. Not that there were so many rules I wouldn’t agree with. It was more a matter of how to become better company for the ancient one. For that you had to feel it and be ready to own and learn from your choices. My only concept of Jesus was that he was morally the best.
I think that served to make me a better person than I might have been otherwise. But who knows? Everything other than my own experience is hypothetical. That’s why you can’t be too quick to judge others.
My fantasy was that in the afterlife you’d get feedback on how you’d done. So the afterlife was part of the limited understanding I had of Christianity, but when I started to doubt it all that wasn’t what was hard to give up; it just seemed the way it is. No sense howling for the moon. It was the relationship I was loath to give up, but I never completely disbelieved in that. The only question was how that was possible but it still seemed to be there if only in my imagination. Eventually I was able to put it on better grounding than that.
But I agree with you that equating ones salvation with an afterlife is -or can be- counter productive. If that is your central concern that will influence who you are in the wrong way, IMO of course.