There is something wierd happening in the realtionship between God and the various mad old books. It looks at first as though Deism is harmless and it is the mad old books that stir up trouble in the real world. A second look reveals a strange one-way linkage.
People believe in God and a particular mad old book. Problems with the book do not discredit their belief in God, he is above the details, and yet somehow belief in God works as a powerful endorsement of the the chosen mad old book.
“Belief in God” is a social word game. The way it goes is
this: A young man grows up in a faith community and starts
to doubt. The elders crystalise his discontent around the issue
of “belief in God”. They do this because they know they can
win. They win by watering down the concept of God to an
unmoved prime mover who takes credit for the good things in
life and blames others for the bad. The young man cannot
explain the origin of the universe and does not wish to deny
the good things in life, so he caves.
Then he rejoins his faith community, accepting all the
particular details of his religion, even though they were
never justified. He has been distracted from the crappy,
disorganised, distinctively man-made nature of religion, and
worn down in a labyrinth of abtruse philosohpical
speculation.
The choice is not believe versus disbelieve. It is play or
don’t play.
Well, maybe. The point to which I keep returning is that intellectually it is easy to see that the vague generic God of philosophical debates about the existence of God has no creed, no book, no prophet. If one concedes His existence because of upbringing and social pressure, then that concession is, in theory, a very small one.
How large can the gap between theory and practise be? Huge! For a great many persons God and the Bible or God and the Koran are a package deal. It doesn’t make sense logically, but the emotional ties that bind up the package are strong.
What would it be like to drive a wedge into the crack between God and the mad old books? That is: what kind of rhetoric would help persons feel that the vague God of philosophy endorses no mad old book. Thinking it without feeling it doesn’t seem to give humans any protection against social pressures.
In my efforts to follow through on this idea I wrote a very strange web page. What though is so strange about it? I think that most of the weirdness lies in the total rejection of the link between God and mad old books, and I think this is telling us something about the distorting lenses through which we all see the world. We live immersed in the linkage between Gods and mad old books. There is a huge gap between the vague God of philosphy and the mad old books, but no-one, theist or atheist sees it.
Look at what we do to protect our biology books from certain Christians and protect our towers from certain Muslims. It is not our A-mad-old-book-ism that is aroused, but our A-theism. Why? It was not Deism that caused the trouble. It is specific to the mad old books. If they went, the sanity water level would be high enough to float all boats and God would be no more troubling than the SCA.
How have we been seduced into accepting the God/mad-old-book link as unbreakable and forced into fighting the vague God of philosophy when all we want of others is that they stop taking mad old books so seriously that they lose their reason?
Beautifully put. On more than one occasion I have wondered why people who have crises of religious faith, and then fall on the side of theism again, seem to fall on the side of whatever sort of theism they are already used to, instead of suddenly endorsing an obscure African tribal religion or affiliating with a Spinoza-esque idea of God or something else.
This isn’t so strange—there are ‘secular churches’ popping up, where all of christianity is taken symbolically, and you’ll actually hear the preachers say things like “Well of course I don’t mean anything supernatural happened”. Climbing the same hill from the opposite side.
There is a huge gap between the vague God of philosphy and the mad old books, but no-one, theist or atheist sees it.
Saying no-one sees it is a bit of a leap. It’s an argument I’ve often made when people resort to the god of the gaps type arguments—the god they’re describing is not the god of their professed religion. I’ve seen the argument in other places as well—theists often claim Einstein as supporting their position which is a gross misrepresentation since what Einstein meant by ‘god’ was nothing like the god of any major religion. A number of prominent atheists have pointed that out.
There is something wierd happening in the realtionship between God and the various mad old books. It looks at first as though Deism is harmless and it is the mad old books that stir up trouble in the real world. A second look reveals a strange one-way linkage.
People believe in God and a particular mad old book. Problems with the book do not discredit their belief in God, he is above the details, and yet somehow belief in God works as a powerful endorsement of the the chosen mad old book.
I’ve written elsewhere that
Well, maybe. The point to which I keep returning is that intellectually it is easy to see that the vague generic God of philosophical debates about the existence of God has no creed, no book, no prophet. If one concedes His existence because of upbringing and social pressure, then that concession is, in theory, a very small one.
How large can the gap between theory and practise be? Huge! For a great many persons God and the Bible or God and the Koran are a package deal. It doesn’t make sense logically, but the emotional ties that bind up the package are strong.
What would it be like to drive a wedge into the crack between God and the mad old books? That is: what kind of rhetoric would help persons feel that the vague God of philosophy endorses no mad old book. Thinking it without feeling it doesn’t seem to give humans any protection against social pressures.
In my efforts to follow through on this idea I wrote a very strange web page. What though is so strange about it? I think that most of the weirdness lies in the total rejection of the link between God and mad old books, and I think this is telling us something about the distorting lenses through which we all see the world. We live immersed in the linkage between Gods and mad old books. There is a huge gap between the vague God of philosphy and the mad old books, but no-one, theist or atheist sees it.
Look at what we do to protect our biology books from certain Christians and protect our towers from certain Muslims. It is not our A-mad-old-book-ism that is aroused, but our A-theism. Why? It was not Deism that caused the trouble. It is specific to the mad old books. If they went, the sanity water level would be high enough to float all boats and God would be no more troubling than the SCA.
How have we been seduced into accepting the God/mad-old-book link as unbreakable and forced into fighting the vague God of philosophy when all we want of others is that they stop taking mad old books so seriously that they lose their reason?
Beautifully put. On more than one occasion I have wondered why people who have crises of religious faith, and then fall on the side of theism again, seem to fall on the side of whatever sort of theism they are already used to, instead of suddenly endorsing an obscure African tribal religion or affiliating with a Spinoza-esque idea of God or something else.
This isn’t so strange—there are ‘secular churches’ popping up, where all of christianity is taken symbolically, and you’ll actually hear the preachers say things like “Well of course I don’t mean anything supernatural happened”. Climbing the same hill from the opposite side.
Saying no-one sees it is a bit of a leap. It’s an argument I’ve often made when people resort to the god of the gaps type arguments—the god they’re describing is not the god of their professed religion. I’ve seen the argument in other places as well—theists often claim Einstein as supporting their position which is a gross misrepresentation since what Einstein meant by ‘god’ was nothing like the god of any major religion. A number of prominent atheists have pointed that out.
Otherwise I agree with everything you say.
I love your very strange web page. I wish the internet had a wikipedia-style “what links here” button to see what connections exist to it.