Today’s Message from Ted Haggard, NAE president
The president of the National Association of Evangelicals has responded to an allegation that he had paid for man-to-man sex by resigning. The Rev. Ted Haggard, a vocal opponent of marriage rights for gay people, seems to have an odd sense of how to defend himself from allegations of gross hypocrisy.
After reading the news, I visited the Wikipedia entry on Haggard and found this excerpt of Richard Dawkins’s video essay on Haggard on YouTube. That especially piqued my curiosity because I’m currently reading The God Delusion by Dawkins, which is energetic and interesting, although it frequently goes for the cheap shot when a somewhat higher tone would have done the job. Still, I’m happy to find a book whose author is at least honest about his views and who doesn’t shy from saying he’s an atheist, something that most people have been convinced is somehow rude. (On the other hand, I found odd his mockery of the attempt to test whether prayer has any influence over the chances of patients to recover from illnesses. Yes, I find rather amusing the idea that “God” could assign the prayers to the right recipients, but a double-blind test seems a worthwhile thing to do. That it showed no difference between those who were prayed for and those who were not is no surprise, but the showing that those who knew they were being prayed for did worse than those who did not was mildly interesting. One would think that a scientist would welcome such scientific experiments.)
Being an atheist IS rude. But no more rude than being a Christian (which entails damning [even good] atheists to hell, just as being an atheist theoretically damns Christians [and everyone else] to the abyss).
I find either Deism or agnosticism to be the more polite position.
I have to say I disagree with you, Ryan. I think that disagreements can still be polite, even if they involve fairly radical differences, as is the case with “hard” atheism.
I’ve found that in arguing with socialists and welfare-staters (which I do a lot more than arguing with theists), the calm, well-reasoned, polite, but very firm disagreement is the most influential, even if it is the most difficult. I think the same applies here.
My belief in God, in itself, does not damn the atheist to Hell. If He exists, then God does it. Contrawise, my nonbelief in God does nothing in particular to the Christian when he expires. Natural forces take their course and that’s that. What we think about it is perfectly indifferent.
Simply put, believing someone is headed for Hell is not the same as wishing he would go to Hell.
Jason,
“I think that disagreements can still be polite, even if they involve fairly radical differences, as is the case with “hard” atheism.”
I think that people can disagree with civility. But that’s not really what I was trying to get at.
I was merely holding that atheism as a theological position is not a polite view to hold (and neither is Christianity).
Simply put, believing someone is headed for Hell is not the same as wishing he would go to Hell.
All religion is a matter of will, so just believing that a person is going to hell is personally willing them to hell. It may not be his intentional desire for that to happen, but that’s what (s)he wills.
Oops… forgot to put quotation marks around “Simply put, believing someone is headed for Hell is not the same as wishing he would go to Hell.”
An atheist is merely one who lacks a belief in a god. He may or may not assert that god is not possible. But anyone who does not hold a positive belief in a deity is technically an atheist and that includes agnostics even if they wish to pretend they are in some middle ground.
I have read Dawkins book and watched his BBC series today as well. In general I find him interesting. As for the prayer/healing experiment it was conducted by Christian doctors who expected to show a correlation and they failed. They were unhappy that people being prayed for, who knew it did worse. But this is sort of a reverse placebo effect. It is postulated that by telling people that they were being prayed for gave them the feeling that things were “really worse” than the doctor admitted. And that would have a negative impact on healing.
godlesszone,
Just as “theism” means the belief that there is a God, “atheism” means the belief that there is no God.
On the other hand, again taking the roots into consideration, “agnosticism” means the belief that there can be no knowledge of God, or a personal claim to no knowledge of God.
“‘atheism’ means the belief that there is no God”
False, but it’s a common mistake. Atheism is non-belief in God, not belief in no-God.
As for the other theme in the blog post, gay people have precisely the same marriage rights as straight people: a gay man can marry a woman and a gay woman can marry a man, just the same as with straight men and women.
By the way, Dr. Palmer, what’s your view on polygamy?
I enjoyed both the content and tone of Dawkins’s book very much. However, if you’d like a “higher tone” covering similar material (but different enough to remain interesting), check out Dan Dennett’s most recent book “Breaking the Spell.”
Random Rightie,
You may be right… but not according to dictionary.com…
“1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.”
“1a. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
1b. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
2. Godlessness; immorality.”
“1: the doctrine or belief that there is no God”
Although at the very bottom I now see… “2: a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods”
So 6 to 1 in favor of my definition. There you go.
A-theist means without a belief in god. You defintion is turns Dawkins into a theist, George Smith (author Atheism: The Case Agaisnt God) and others into secret theists against their will.
Philosopher Antony Flew wrote: “hereas nowadays the usual meaning of ‘atheist’ in English is ‘someone who asserts there is no such being as God,’ I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively. I want the originally Greek prefix ‘a’ to be read in the same way in ‘atheist’ as it customarily is read in such other Greco-English words as ‘amoral,’ ‘atypical,’ and ‘asymmetrical’. In this interpretation an atheist becomes: someone who is simply not a theist.”
In Losing Faith in Faith the author wrote: “Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god–both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter…”
Philosopher Michael Martin in Atheism: A Philosophical Justification wrote: “If you look up ‘atheism’ in the dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one considers it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek ‘a’ means ‘without’ or ‘not’ and ‘theos’ means ‘god.’ From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God.”
Gordon Stein in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism wrote: “The average theologian (there are exceptions, of course) uses ‘atheist’ to mean a person who denies the existence of a God. Even an atheist would agree that some atheists (a small minority) would fit this definition. However, most atheists would stongly dispute the adequacy of this definition. Rather, they would hold that an atheist is a person without a belief in God. The distiniction is small but important. Denying something means that you have knowledge of what it is that you are being asked to affirm, but that you have rejected that particular concept. To be without a belief in God merely means that yhe term ‘god’ has no importance or possibly no meaning to you. Belief in God is not a factor in your life. Surely this is quite different from denying the existence of God. Atheism is not a belief as such. It is the lack of belief.
When we examine the components of the word ‘atheism,’ we can see this distinction more clearly. The word is made up of ‘a-‘ and ‘-theism.’ Theism, we will all agree, is a belief in a God or gods. The prefix ‘a-‘ can mean ‘not’ (or ‘no’) or ‘without.’ If it means ‘not,’ then we have as an atheist someone who is not a theist (i.e., someone who does not have a belief in a God or gods). If it means ‘without,’ then an atheist is someone without theism, or without a belief in God.”
A person who is without a belief in God is a soft agnostic… So there is already a word for that concept. There also needs to be a word for the concept of a person who has the positive belief that there is no God; hence “atheism”.
My definition wouldn’t turn them into theists; it would “turn” them into agnostics, which, if your account is correct, they really are.
A person who is without a belief in God is a soft agnostic… So there is already a word for that concept. There also needs to be a word for the concept of a person who has the positive belief that there is no God; hence “atheism”.
My definition wouldn’t turn them into theists; it would “turn” them into agnostics, which, if your account is correct, they really are.
Ryan: a theist is one who believes in God. An atheist is one without such belief. An agnostic is one who believes it isn’t possible to be sure whether or not God exists — an agnostic may be a theist or an atheist. (Every Christian with whom I’ve ever discussed the existence of God in depth has proved to be an agnostic — they have no proof, and hence take it on faith.)
To qualify as an atheist, one simply need not have belief in God. But some of us — me for a=example — additionally have a belief that the concept of “God” is self-contradictory, and hence there’s no such animal as God. Penn Jillette explains nicely why this isn’t rude, but rather beautifuland life-affirming: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557]
“An atheist is one without such belief [in God].”
That clearly is one of the definitions… but not an all-encompassing definition (and according to dictionary.com not even the PRIMARY definition). (Don’t forget that meaning is usage, and is not solely determined by the roots of the word.)
“An agnostic is one who believes it isn’t possible to be sure whether or not God exists”
From my understanding, that is the definition of a “hard” or “strong” agnostic. Whereas “soft” or “weak” agnosticism is the claim to no personal knowledge of God, as mentioned at least once above.
“(Every Christian with whom I’ve ever discussed the existence of God in depth has proved to be an agnostic — they have no proof, and hence take it on faith.)”
That’s interesting. I never thought about those cases before counting as agnostic, although I see how they would.
P.S. – I don’t have a fast enough computer/connection at home to play the Penn clip.
Ryan — you won’t need to play the clip; the link includes the text of Penn’s commentary. After looking at your website, I suspect you’ll appreciate it.
As for dictionary definitions — I think relying on the dictionary isn’t useful when what we’re discussing is concepts, rather than the definition of words. (I’ve never seen a dictionary definition of capitalism that properly captureed the idea.) If we start calling Dawkins, or George Smith, or me, agnostics, I think we essentially define away the position that says “‘God’ is an incoherent concept that makes no sense.” This is quite different a different position from agnosticism, which says that the existence of God is unkonown and perhaps unprovable.
Dr. Steele,
I should have checked out that link rather than assuming that, because it’s hosted by NPR, it would be streaming audio. I’m glad that Penn finds joy in his theological beliefs, but I can’t claim his views as my own (I’m a Taoist and a Deist, although for me God is the cause of life rather than the “cause of the universe”).
I guess we’ll just have to accept our different conceptions of the concept of “atheism”. Thanks for opening me up a little bit, though.