atheist christianity

[unkleE]

I seem to be posting a lot on atheism, but I don't have a fixation, just an interest in how christianity is faring in the public mind, and militant atheism seems to be one of the threats right now.

Anyway, I came across this article on another forum, and thought I'd ask for comment.

It is about French atheist Michel Onfray and how his views differ from the more common or garden variety atheist such as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc. The writer says that Onfray doesn't believe in free will or the inherent value of human life, and believes the others still have many ethical and philosophical values that are left over from their christian heritage - hence he calls them atheist christians.

I agree with that assessment. I think the Dawkins variety of atheism is inconsistent on these and other points (primarily because they neglect or perhaps despise or are unaware of much philosophical thought), whereas the Onfray version is consistent, but unlivable (thankfully) and unsellable.

That being so, Onfray could be a useful ally in discussion with the "atheist christians" that we most commonly encounter. What do others think?

[Petersean]

That's an interesting article.

Apparently, Onfray hasn't received the "talking point memo" that the official athiest position is that atheists are inherently as moral as the best theist - where morality is defined as all the bits about compassion and charity and none of the hang-ups over sex.

I helped to sponsor a debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Michael Shermer here in Fresno. D'Souza makes the argument that Neitszche predicted that the demise of a belief in the Christian God would carry with it the demise of the Christiam morality.

Onfray obviously wants to further that wing of atheism.

[elephantchang51]

Hi,
Imust be one of those'christian atheists',I acknowledge my Christian background and try to live by the 'golden rule'.However I am unconviced that something broadly similiar to the prevailing morality in nominally christian countries would not have emerged under secular conditions,or that such morality would not survive the extinction of Christianity.Perhaps I am naive here,but it is a damning indictment of human nature to believe that the only rational basis for moral behaviour is to be found in response to some ultimate authority,the evidence for whose existence is very much inconclusive.
Yours Peter

[bjorn]

Thanks for interesting link!

A nice occasion to do a short blog entry about it at badblog (b-a-d-blog.blogspot.com/2008/06/dragons-can-be-created.html).

It illustrates very well my own impression of Onfray. In interviews in Norway last year he came shockingly close to flirting with the Totalarian Temption to make the world a "better place".

[Anonymous]

>However I am unconviced that something broadly similiar to the prevailing morality in nominally christian countries would not have emerged under secular conditions,or that such morality would not survive the extinction of Christianity.

We of course can't do a counterfactual experiment and tell whether a Christian-like moral ideology would have emerged. What we can say is that what we call "secularism" itself emerged out of a cultural context (18th-century western Europe) that was reacting against problems within its own Christian practice. Before that, it's hard to find a historical culture that could be called "secular" anyway; most cultures that I know of have been embedded quite deeply with some form of reverence to the divine.

>Perhaps I am naive here,but it is a d**ning indictment of human nature to believe that the only rational basis for moral behaviour is to be found in response to some ultimate authority,the evidence for whose existence is very much inconclusive.

Why so? I take it that the unname opposition to your "ultimate authority" is something like "propositions drawn from empirical experience." But most people have adopted most of their practices on the basis of some accepted authority figure's endorsement, whether that authority figure is seen as "ultimate" or not. Most modern secularists today will cite some scientific authority figure or other.

So I guess what I'm saying is, we might benefit from hearing more about what you mean by "ultimate authority" and why you find it damning that humanity has tended to follow one (though such authorities have taken myriad forms i different cultures).

[James Hannam]

I wrote a few months ago on how far 'naturalistic' explanations can get us on morality, based on a Steven Pinker article:

bedejournal.blogspot.com/2008/02/steven-pinker-of-evolution-of-morality.html

I'm not sure that 'secularism' alone is sufficient to develop modern ethics. Besides, as the poster said above secularism is just a uniquely western offshot of early modern Christianity.

As for the d++ning indictment, well yes, that is where a purely naturalistic view of the world can leave you.

Best wishes

James

[unkleE]

"I am unconviced that something broadly similiar to the prevailing morality in nominally christian countries would not have emerged under secular conditions,or that such morality would not survive the extinction of Christianity."

I don't think it matters that much whether christianity led to your morality nor whether our society's ethics (if we can identify such a thing) could survive the demise of christianity. The most important question is, can atheists provide a satisfactory explanation for their beliefs about ethics?

Most atheists say there are no objective ethics, but behave as if there were. For example, they argue against God's existence from the problem of evil, as if the judgment that the world is full of evil was an objectively true one. And most act and argue as if we have true free will to choose ethical behaviour or not, without which ethics have little meaning, even though naturalism cannot allow that "true" free choice is actually real.

So I believe there is a basic inconsistency there. Most behave ethically, and advocate ethical behaviour; only a few like Onfray are brave (inhuman?) enough to argue it's all a sham.

My question would be, how would you explain ethics and freewill consistently from an atheist perspective?

[elephantchang51]

Dear unklee,
I can give you my take on ethics and freewill.
Arguing from personal incredulity there is no problem of evil.Also how can anyone act and argue as if they do not have free will,however illusory?I also think subjectivity clouds all thought and debate including the ethical,we can only strive for objectivity.Lastly I think it's only fair to say that referring to some atheist's beliefs as a sham,and thus a pretence, is akin to saying theist's belifs are a delusion,however I can tell from the tone of your posts this is unintentional.
Yours Peter.

[unkleE]

Thanks for response. Yes, you are correct, I was not intentionally calling any atheist's beliefs a sham. What I was saying there was that most atheists do not say ethics and freewill are a sham (i.e. illusory), whereas Onfray does say that. I was not judging anyone's beliefs, merely trying to summarise two different positions among atheists.

But I do want to pursue further your statement that "Also how can anyone act and argue as if they do not have free will,however illusory?".

Let us assume for the moment that atheism is true - there is no supreme being, no supernatural world, this natural universe is all there is. (That is my understanding of your position, please correct me if I am wrong.) My question then is, how, from that view, can one believe in human freewill?

As I see it, after reading quite a number of books on neuroscience (but not having any expert knowledge of my own!), on those assumptions, our brain is "us", our mind and consciousness are not anything separate from the functionings of our brains, but emergent properties of our brains. Our thoughts and our choices are made by the electro-chemical processes of our brain. There is nothing "outside" those processes to control them, except the external world and the rest of our bodies, which provide input, but which we do not control.

Thus our choices are not free, but inevitable outcomes of the input to our brains and the structure and processes of our brains. We would be as predictable as a computer program if only we could know all the information. This argument seems to me to be unassailable.

There are three basic responses and atheist can make here.

1. One can just admit it and get on with life. Thus William Provine, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University: "Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."

2. One can try to make up some illusion of freewill, as Daniel Dennett does (if I have understood two of his books correctly). He agrees with the above assessment more or less, but defines "freewill" as not being under external compulsion, such as a gun at one's head. But he ignores that the chain of cause and effect goes back before our birth, so if naturalism is true, we are all under external compulsion in an ultimate sense.

3. Most atheists I have read and discussed with just ignore the problem. (Even the neuroscientists whose science tells them our thinking is all determined tend to use language that ignores this.) I believe this amounts to an act of faith, just as much as any christian believes in God, but without any evidence to support the atheist act of faith in freewill.

Of course theists can find a way out of the impasse, and say there is something beyond the natural world. Thus a theist can easily be a dualist about the mind-brain "problem", although some scientific theists don't like dualism, and thus theists can much more easily believe in human freewill.

So my challenge to you is, where do you sit? I would find it impossible to have what seems to me to be a gaping inconsistency in such a fundamental matter. One of the major supports to my theism is that I cannot see how I can live as a human without believing in genuine freewill, and I cannot see how atheism can be compatible with that. All the arguments against theism count for nothing until one can explain how I can freely choose to believe any of them.

I will defer discussion of ethics for now, as this matter is more fundamental. Thanks, and best wishes.

[humphreyclarke]

Thanks Unklee, that was a very good summery of the 'free will' problem. I am a concious being with free will. If a naturalistic interpretation of the universe suggests that this is an illusion and my 'self' doesn't in fact exist in any meaningful sense then why should I trust what it has to say about the existence or non existence of god?.

[elephantchang51]

Hi again,
Category 1.,describes me pretty well.I never said I believe in freewill,only that we cannot avoid giving the impression we have it when we act or argue.
I do think it is utterly irrelevant to the truth of any proposition that you me or anyone cannot see how we can live as humans without believing...[insert whatever]
Equally I can argue all the arguments for theism count for nothing....
Finally H. The answer is IMHO,because you have no choice!

[humphreyclarke]

Excellent, as long as adopting a naturalistic world view means embracing the unholy trinity of the god delusion, the humanity delusion and the Humphrey delusion then I think I can safely say that there is no way I will ever return to atheism, not because it is unpleasant but because it is even sillier than Scientology.

[unkleE]

Peter, thanks again for reply.

Category 1.,describes me pretty well.I never said I believe in freewill,only that we cannot avoid giving the impression we have it when we act or argue.

Yes, I agree, this is the logical outcome of naturalism, and when the options are put forward, this is really the only choice. But this has some implications .....

• The concept of ethics must be re-defined. Ethics was once a set of behaviours that we "should" choose because they are "right", but on your view we cannot "choose" and, if we followed the logic through, there is no objective "right". Ethics must be re-defined as the way a society, or the majority, or the influential people have evolved by natural selection to think it is right to behave. Abortion used to be "wrong" but now it is "right". Hitler was "right" from his viewpoint (except that he lost), but "wrong" from our viewpoint. We can say that, but very few actually live that way, and public opinion makes it untenable for society as a whole.
  
  
• Likewise we have to reconsider rationality. It is no longer a faculty that leads to truth, but is a faculty that has evolved to lead to survival. Of course survival requires some level of reality, but it can be argued that abstract reasoning gets in the way of survival (absent minded professors are less likely to notice the lion in the undergrowth!). And as I've said before, if we tough it out and argue that our rationality has evolved so that the consensus of abstract reasoning leads to truth, we must face the fact that the consensus concerning God worldwide is about 90% in favour of his existence.
  
  
• Finally, we must reconsider the value of humanity, which has no spirituality, freewill or objective ethics, and truncated rationality. As discussed earlier, atheists like Michel Onfray who follow the line you are taking, are also forced to end up denying any particular value for human life. And it is no coincidence to me that the worst examples of mass murder in the history of the world have occurred in the atheistic regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, nor, as Alister McGrath has pointed out, that objective scientists were very complicit in some of their excesses.

It is no wonder then, and in a sense to their credit, that, in my experience, most atheists choose the less logical but more humane option 3, to believe in humanity, freewill, ethics & rationality despite the logic of their atheism!

Let me hasten to add that I do not believe that atheists, including you, are actually immoral or inhumane, any more than we all may have propensity for evil in the "right" circumstances. I just believe that you all, even Michel Onfray, live "higher" than the logic of your beliefs. Humans cannot easily forget to be human, and find it easy to believe in humanity, freewill, ethics & rationality - and I think we can even see in your posts here that you don't really live according to the option you have chosen. For example:

• "Do atheists have as much right to attempt to save theists from their delusions as theists have to prosletyse their beliefs?" What are rights, but obligations imposed on others to treat people fairly? But if no objective ethics and no freewill, there can be no rights and no choice to respect them.
  
  
• "I also think subjectivity clouds all thought and debate including the ethical,we can only strive for objectivity." What is strive? If no freewill, we can only paraphrase Yoda: "There is no strive" (that implies will).
  
  
• "However I am unconviced that something broadly similiar to the prevailing morality in nominally christian countries would not have emerged under secular conditions" At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, what is "convinced", but someone assessing rational evidence and "choosing" to make a judgment?

There are many more such expressions in your posts, but I don't need to labour the point. Yours, and everybody's language and thought are shot through with the implicit assumption that we have freewill and the rest. We can't escape it.

The only defence left is the one you have adopted:

"The answer is IMHO,because you have no choice!"

In other words, all this discussion, all this reasoning, is totally pointless, because we are programmed to do what we do. Your discussion belies that belief, but it is the only real option available to you, I think.

This leaves us nowhere to go. You are reduced to:

"I do think it is utterly irrelevant to the truth of any proposition that you me or anyone cannot see how we can live as humans without believing...[insert whatever]"

and

"Equally I can argue all the arguments for theism count for nothing...."

Yes, you can think that about theism, and say that, and the same could be said for atheism. We can know nothing to be true and conclude nothing. So why aren't you an agnostic (about everything)? And why discuss truth at all?

I have to say, I can't help feeling it is a miserable belief, unworthy of you, and you must be desperate to disbelieve in God to allow yourself to come to that. I am truly sorry.

I think we have probably gone as far as we can with this discussion. I never thought my (or your) viewpoint could be proven or disproven, I just felt it worthwhile examining the consequences of naturalism, which we have done. Your final "get-out clause" ("The answer is IMHO,because you have no choice!") can be applied forever, and is a discussion killer.

I will conclude by thanking you for the discussion. I hope I haven't been too tough in this final comment, but the nature of the matters under discussion lead inevitably to these conclusions. I apologise if I have been rude or insensitive. Nothing I have written is directed against you in any personal sense - you have shown yourself to be thoughtful and polite, and I appreciate that, and hope I have done the same.

Thank you and best wishes. We may meet on other topics! : )