On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:19:18 +0000 Peter Ward <nevadabob at hotmail.co.uk>
writes:
>
> I think we're just about all of us atheists at this point. I've even
> met one or two Chasidic Jews who professed to be. Much of what
> qualifies as "faith" is really habit developed in childhood, and
> I've rarely met anyone who convinced me they believed in God (at
> least as conceived in any meaningful form) in the same manner they
> believe in the existence of China.
I seem to recall that Bertrand Russell once made a similar point, perhaps in his *History of Western Philosophy*. Religious philosophers will often attempt to turn this point around, that it's because God is actually much more real than China or any other contingent entity. On the other hand, the sort of metaphysical God that is entailed by that line of argument seems to have little in common with the God that is embraced by most religious believers.
> In fact, when I've engaged
> theists on this topic I've generally been confronted with the
> "pragmatic argument" (as opposed to the ontological argument or the
> argument from design), that faith is needed to fulfill various
> physiological desires. I think, religion does indeed fulfill these
> desires but it does so poorly and presumably it stops working
> altogether once faith becomes consciously pragmatic--i.e., you can't
> force yourself as a matter of conscious effort to believe or not
> believe in something (try honestly disbelieving the existence of
> China, e.g.) however beneficial belief appears to be.
That has always been one of the chief weaknesses of Pascal's Wager Argument. And the same, I think, applies to William James's defense of the will to believe.
> But for our
> part, I thi!
> nk the mistake atheists make--those who take pride in their
> atheism, i.e.--is in ignoring the needs religion fulfill--these have
> to be fulfilled in some manner and if religion is taken away the
> desire may get satiated through even more harmful means.
>
>
Well as Mark Lindley and I noted in our essay, "Six Prominent American Freethinkers," (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/fl161208.html), Santayana in his book, *Reason in Religion* took issue with ". . .superficial debunkers of religion, who while correctly pointing out its falsehoods failed to appreciate its psychological and social functions in human life. Though himself clearly an atheist, he was reluctant to do anything to actively undermine religion and religious faith."
While I would part company with Santayana over not seeking to undermine religion, I think his points concerning the nature of religion were spot on.
Most sophisticated atheistic thinkers have attempted to take into account the psychological and social functions of religion. Karl Marx, for instance, viewed religion as providing people with succour in an alienated and alienating world. We cannot, therefore, expect to see religion die out, unless oppressive social relations and institutions have been overthrown or radically modified. Among the recent New Atheists, both Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have attempted to draw upon evolutionary psychology and memetics to unveil the psychological bases for religion. I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong such an approach as long as it seen as complementary rather than antagonistic to the sociological approaches that Marx (and Weber and Durkheim) pioneered.
(BTW some of the evolutionary psychologists seem to me to be reinventing the wheel. I once listened to a talk that Steven Pinker gave on that subject at Harvard. Basically, his argument came down to the thesis that religious faith functions as a marker of membership (or non-membership) in social groups. The ability to believe sincerely in apparent nonsense is an indicator of one's identity with the group and so of one'e reliability within that group. It seems to me that Emile Durkheim had much the same argument more than a century ago, without the benefit of evolutionary psychology.)
Jim F. ____________________________________________________________ Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw1mBfvZRkXmnflpPqtCg77ocKNU1VWGn4RvLCSMeZPVd4KkV/