---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : I still think you're painting with too broad a brush when you use the term "society." Some elements of society take the position you describe, but others do not.
C: Seems like a reasonable objection. J: And the negative reaction to criticism from atheists has a great deal to do with its hostility quotient. Simple disagreement doesn't tend to provoke the same response as "And you're stupid to believe this." C: Since Madalyn O'hair for whom this was true, I haven't seen this argument from any of the modern atheists. Which books have you read from them? I have seen them say that certain ideas like a 5,000 year old earth are stupid, but that is only because it really is. Given the barrage of death threats and ad hominem attacks that vocal atheist face, I think you might be holding them to a higher standard than you are the religious side. Check out some of the debates with religious people with Sam Harris. You will see much of his time spent deflecting personal attacks during a supposed discussion of ideas. I think you are putting the blame for this on the atheist as if they somehow deserve this abuse. I have seen numerous debates where this is not the case that the atheist started the personal attacks. I have even experienced it here on FFL in discussions. Who fires the first shot is perhaps a debatable point but in any case being stupid is not an atheist talking point about a god belief. It is that it is an idea with poor reasons supporting it. Personally I don't believe people who believe in some god are stupid since I have met people I consider smarter than I am who do. But whenever I have had a discussion with them about it I have found their acknowledgement that they have chosen to take a leap of faith and acknowledge that this choice is beyond reason. I respect that. I do not respect people who deny evolutionary science or try to get theological perspectives on creation into science curriculums in schools. J:Plus which, some of the most vocal atheists these days are also often quite ignorant about what religious belief entails. Not making the effort to acquaint oneself with what one is criticizing is perceived to be a function of intolerance, and rightly so, IMHO. Rather than facilitating "full open discussion," it tends to slam the door on it. Those who most prominently speak for atheism need to get their act together, as far as I'm concerned (and speaking as a nonreligionist). C: One of the problems I learned from our Feser discussions is that atheists don't care about obscure ontological arguments about a god since it is the epistemological jumps that cause all the problems. As I pointed out, it is rare to find someone who does not include Aquinas in their classical version of god and this brings in the aspect of agency and interaction of god with the world and particularity with specific communications with mankind through certain books. That is the issue that concerns atheists. And once that jump has been made, the epistemological difference between an abstract spirit god who can still guide the hand of the writers (and translators) of the Bible and a fully decked out white bearded dude are insignificant. I know religious people make a big fuss about these distinctions and it rankles them to see what they think of as a more sophisticated version lumped in with versions they feel above intellectually. But once communication with a being with a personal agenda and ability to communicate that agenda to mankind specifically is claimed, these cherished distinctions are all a moot point. The bone of contention for atheists revolves around how we could be confident that this human claim is true or not. What is the claim based on. Not the imagined details of the being itself or himself or herself. The burden of proof is all on the man making the claim. Those other detail are all distractions to the epistemological issues. None of them improve or even hurt those knowledge issues. They are simply irrelevant to the real problem. No atheist I have read would have a problem with the kind of god that has zero interaction with humanity. That is just a speculation with zero consequences to the issues that concern atheists about the influence of the different god beliefs in societies around the world. Curtis, you way overstate the case. In this country, at least, there's oodles of criticism of biblical ideas, including ideas at the heart of Christian belief. Ever heard of the Jesus Seminar? And a currently popular book, "How Jesus Became God," maintains that the idea of Jesus as God developed very much after the fact, that it was never anything Jesus said about himself. Those are just two examples of many. And I doubt you're going to find a whole lot of people who advocate slavery because the Bible does. Sure, there's always pushback, but to suggest that it's enough to suppress all criticism and challenge is just not supported by the facts. C: Your POV seems just as valid. It also marks out the difference in a society between our liberal democracy with the dominant religion being a more modern reformed one compared to Islamic dominant societies. So point taken. There is plenty of direct criticism about things in the Bible in our country. But this is not the point of critique Harris is launching. Religious ideas and scripture are still held as a special class of human knowledge no matter where you fall on the spectrum between your point and mine. In no other area is the idea of a hands off criticizing the ideas directly tied to a concept of religious tolerance. Lets take racism directly. If you say anything racist , even if you tie it to the Bible you get condemned by the majority of society. But if you attack the Bible as being a man made piece of literature full of outdated nonsense the same society will attack you for being intolerant of religion and a bigot. Watching how society has reacted to atheists through time illustrates my point. So these ideas are still held in a protected class of ideas where full open discussion is not only discouraged, it is shamed as being similar to racism. (It happens to atheists all the time.) Now we may not find a lot of people who advocate slavery because the Bible does but how many people want to deny gay rights because of the Bible? So I am not disagreeing with your objection as wrong, It is just not how I am seeing it as we both value the propositions of truth as we see it in each others statements. The other thing religion adds to the human tendency to power grab is to deflect criticism about the ideas they are spreading because it is shielded by the "don't criticize religious ideas directly" ban. Harris agrees with your analysis of the extremists but he places the blame on the moderates for shielding them behind the odd way we treat religious ideas. If they came out and said that this part of the Koran is wrong, or if Christians did this with the Bible we could have a discussion of ideas like we do with everything else in human knowledge. But both of these books are shielded from direct criticism by the idea that they are different from all other human produced literature containing ideas. There are scripture and God's hand was in their production. And the weird thing is that each religion only accepts their own god book as authoritative, not the other guy's. But they still protect the other guy's divine right of non criticism so that people wont challenge the absurd claim they are making about their own god book. Harris is against this collusion of ignorance. If you take out a section of the Bible that advocates slavery and say, this is stupid and wrong you will be accused of being religiously intolerant rather than just pointing out a stupid and wrong idea some man wrote. This is the battle Harris is picking, not the ultimate cynicism about the leader's motivations.
