http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2006/01/25/atheists-arguing/

My personal opinion is that the heart of every atheist is filled with
the fear, indeed the deep suspicion, that they are wrong.

...
In my city there is a Baptist Hospital (in which I was born, actually)
and a St. Thomas Hospital, founded and supported by the Roman Catholic
Church. And the Atheist Hospital is where? Right: there ain't one.
...

http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2006/01/25/atheists-arguing/

Atheists arguing
by Donald Sensing

There are countless examples of people of religious faith joining
together and being deeply involved in making better the lives of human
beings around the world. Before atheists scoff at us perhaps they'd
like to ponder and explain why they don't.

My personal opinion is that the heart of every atheist is filled with
the fear, indeed the deep suspicion, that they are wrong.

My personal opinion is that the heart of every atheist is filled with
the fear, indeed the deep suspicion, that they are wrong.

http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2006/01/25/atheists-arguing/


Atheists arguing

by Donald Sensing



Norm Geras has an outstanding blog. An atheist, Marxist professor at
the University of Manchester, he has strongly supported the liberation
of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's regime, usually to the dismay of
his fellow travelers. He also has been profiling bloggers for a few
years and profiled me on Dec. 31, 2004.

Today Norm emailed me to call my attention to an online debate he's
had with his friend an fellow atheist Ophelia (no last name given) in
which they argue about the merits, if any, of religion. Ophelia argues
that whatever good may be exhibited by relious people or institutions
is overwhelmed by the bad.

The reason I... am not much inclined to talk about 'the good in
religion' is because it comes at a price, and the price is too high.
The good is inseparable from that price, you can't get the good
without the price, so if you think the good is not worth the price -
then for you it is not a good. It can't be a good because it's so
tangled up with the price - with the bad.

It's not as if you can make two lists, good, bad, and judge each in
isolation. Because the basic problem with religion, the thing that
makes people like me adopt a fighting stance, is that it's not true.
That's not just some minor or detachable problem that one can
compartmentalize or bracket - it's right smack in the middle.

It's a corruption, a surrender, an abdication, and we don't make it
because - we don't want to endorse a lie. That's why.


But this is a silly proposition as Norm recognizes. Ophelia objects to
religion because - she claims - it's not true. But she simply
makes a propositional claim that amounts to nother but her own opinion
of what is true and what it not. There is no reason whatsoever that I
should accept her standards of truth. She's angry, she admits, that
some people believe things she does not. Well, phhtt to her. So what?
It might profit her to examine just why billions of people have
throughout history affirmed various religious truths, but that would
doubtless force her to admit that therer are smart people who don't
agree with her, which I imagine Ophemlia would find psychologically
untenable.

In response, Norm says,

Here I am, lifelong atheist, going out to bat for religion once again
- actually, not for religion, since I do not think there are valid
grounds for religious belief, but against unbalanced forms of rejection
of all that religion stands for and some of the values it may embody
for its adherents. ...

[Ophelia's] move is artificial and arbitrary. You can't show that
religion is all bad simply by focusing on what is bad about it.

Here is a simple, and for me decisive, example. In Warsaw in 1943, a
Polish Catholic risks her life to save an endangered Jew. She does so
because she has been taught from childhood that all people are the
children of God and it is a sin to take innocent life. How, in the face
of that - which has happened plenty, and in many other historical
variants as well - can one say there has been no good in religion, or
that this good is merely apparent because of what it is mixed together
with? I could give more than this, but it is enough. Just two things:
that religious believers have often been motivated by their beliefs to
act in beneficent, caring, selfless, heroic ways; and that there are
universalist variants of religious belief which, in historical context,
have marked a significant progress for humankind - that is quite
enough empirically, against the notion that the bad in religion undoes
the good.


Now, I agree with Norm's argument, as far as it goes. He claims,
successfully I think, that Ophelia's argument doesn't hold up, that
bad practice of religion overwhelms the good. He continues,

Someone in Ophelia's comments box - Kate - writes in this regard:

[T]he 'good' usually ascribed to religion is readily available
outside of religion, while the 'bad' of religion is something that
can only take place when large numbers of people are convinced that
abandoning reason and abdicating personal responsibility is a virtue.


But this obviously fails.



Yeah, it fails, darn right. It fails not least because it's pure
hogwash. I readily admit that religionists of various tripes have done
an awful lot of bad, some of them Christian and some of them not. But
why do Norm's interlocutors focus so much on the bad and so little on
the good? Maybe it's because atheism has never yielded any good,
certainly not any good comparable to that of religion.

At the bottom of the right-hand column of my site is an ad for United
Methodist Committee on Relief's drive to help the victims of Katrina.
UMCOR did the same for the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami of late
December 2004. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Southern
Baptists, you name it and those religious people pitched in to help.

And the atheists' coordinated effort to help stricken people? Did we
miss it somehow? Nope, there wasn't any.

In my city there is a Baptist Hospital (in which I was born, actually)
and a St. Thomas Hospital, founded and supported by the Roman Catholic
Church. And the Atheist Hospital is where? Right: there ain't one.

There are countless examples of people of religious faith joining
together and being deeply involved in making better the lives of human
beings around the world. Before atheists scoff at us perhaps they'd
like to ponder and explain why they don't.

My personal opinion is that the heart of every atheist is filled with
the fear, indeed the deep suspicion, that they are wrong.

http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2006/01/25/atheists-arguing/


Atheists arguing

by Donald Sensing



Norm Geras has an outstanding blog. An atheist, Marxist professor at
the University of Manchester, he has strongly supported the liberation
of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's regime, usually to the dismay of
his fellow travelers. He also has been profiling bloggers for a few
years and profiled me on Dec. 31, 2004.

Today Norm emailed me to call my attention to an online debate he's
had with his friend an fellow atheist Ophelia (no last name given) in
which they argue about the merits, if any, of religion. Ophelia argues
that whatever good may be exhibited by relious people or institutions
is overwhelmed by the bad.

The reason I... am not much inclined to talk about 'the good in
religion' is because it comes at a price, and the price is too high.
The good is inseparable from that price, you can't get the good
without the price, so if you think the good is not worth the price -
then for you it is not a good. It can't be a good because it's so
tangled up with the price - with the bad.

It's not as if you can make two lists, good, bad, and judge each in
isolation. Because the basic problem with religion, the thing that
makes people like me adopt a fighting stance, is that it's not true.
That's not just some minor or detachable problem that one can
compartmentalize or bracket - it's right smack in the middle.

It's a corruption, a surrender, an abdication, and we don't make it
because - we don't want to endorse a lie. That's why.


But this is a silly proposition as Norm recognizes. Ophelia objects to
religion because - she claims - it's not true. But she simply
makes a propositional claim that amounts to nother but her own opinion
of what is true and what it not. There is no reason whatsoever that I
should accept her standards of truth. She's angry, she admits, that
some people believe things she does not. Well, phhtt to her. So what?
It might profit her to examine just why billions of people have
throughout history affirmed various religious truths, but that would
doubtless force her to admit that therer are smart people who don't
agree with her, which I imagine Ophemlia would find psychologically
untenable.

In response, Norm says,

Here I am, lifelong atheist, going out to bat for religion once again
- actually, not for religion, since I do not think there are valid
grounds for religious belief, but against unbalanced forms of rejection
of all that religion stands for and some of the values it may embody
for its adherents. ...

[Ophelia's] move is artificial and arbitrary. You can't show that
religion is all bad simply by focusing on what is bad about it.

Here is a simple, and for me decisive, example. In Warsaw in 1943, a
Polish Catholic risks her life to save an endangered Jew. She does so
because she has been taught from childhood that all people are the
children of God and it is a sin to take innocent life. How, in the face
of that - which has happened plenty, and in many other historical
variants as well - can one say there has been no good in religion, or
that this good is merely apparent because of what it is mixed together
with? I could give more than this, but it is enough. Just two things:
that religious believers have often been motivated by their beliefs to
act in beneficent, caring, selfless, heroic ways; and that there are
universalist variants of religious belief which, in historical context,
have marked a significant progress for humankind - that is quite
enough empirically, against the notion that the bad in religion undoes
the good.


Now, I agree with Norm's argument, as far as it goes. He claims,
successfully I think, that Ophelia's argument doesn't hold up, that
bad practice of religion overwhelms the good. He continues,

Someone in Ophelia's comments box - Kate - writes in this regard:

[T]he 'good' usually ascribed to religion is readily available
outside of religion, while the 'bad' of religion is something that
can only take place when large numbers of people are convinced that
abandoning reason and abdicating personal responsibility is a virtue.


But this obviously fails.



Yeah, it fails, darn right. It fails not least because it's pure
hogwash. I readily admit that religionists of various tripes have done
an awful lot of bad, some of them Christian and some of them not. But
why do Norm's interlocutors focus so much on the bad and so little on
the good? Maybe it's because atheism has never yielded any good,
certainly not any good comparable to that of religion.

At the bottom of the right-hand column of my site is an ad for United
Methodist Committee on Relief's drive to help the victims of Katrina.
UMCOR did the same for the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami of late
December 2004. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Southern
Baptists, you name it and those religious people pitched in to help.

And the atheists' coordinated effort to help stricken people? Did we
miss it somehow? Nope, there wasn't any.

In my city there is a Baptist Hospital (in which I was born, actually)
and a St. Thomas Hospital, founded and supported by the Roman Catholic
Church. And the Atheist Hospital is where? Right: there ain't one.

There are countless examples of people of religious faith joining
together and being deeply involved in making better the lives of human
beings around the world. Before atheists scoff at us perhaps they'd
like to ponder and explain why they don't.

My personal opinion is that the heart of every atheist is filled with
the fear, indeed the deep suspicion, that they are wrong.