Ups and downs 2

It depends what you mean by "faith" and "position". In the Christian Union we used to say "Christiantiy is not a religion."
 

Why?
 

Why did we say Christianity is not a religion? Because religions are about ceremonies, rituals and rules whereas Christianity is about having a personal relationship with the living God.
 

It also depends, come to think of it, on what you mean by "atheist". And "is".
 

ooo dear

threadkilller


sorry
 

On my list of things to do this weekend, drawn up on Friday; buy christmas presents, sort out postage for a parcel, cook beef stew, clear up leaves, make appointment for cat inoculations, write cheque for Son's ice skating trip, sort out washing, watch Robin Hood, explain in words of at least one syllable why atheism is undeniably and absolutely a faith position. I'm about 75% of the way through so far.

Been stuck in hotel in London all week. Way behind on everything. Tomorrow, I promise you, thread will be unmiraculously resurrected.
 

Or even NOT a faith position. Obviously.
 

I think I can help. The words atheism and faith postion can be defined such that atheism is a faith position, this weeks episode was the first since part one that didn't make me want to throw things at the TV, they can also be defined such that atheism is not a faith position, I honestly didn't see the ending coming or spot the significance of the title, for tactical reasons, Christians prefer the first type of definition and atheists prefer the second, there weren't even any glaring anachronisms, I hope it is still possible to have a civilised discussion about this kind of thing, come to think of it the hero freaks out when he confronts an ememy he fought in the big war is very like "Dalek", I am afraid I can't help you with the beef stew.
 

She was one of the slaves imported to break the miner's strike.

And it is I suspect primarily due to the fact that the series had previously got precisely one female character. Friar Tuck wasn't going to help with that one. If you are going to introduce a completely non-canon character you might as well make it an ethnically diverse one as not.
 

I think that "There is a Saracen in the Merry Band" is now canon, in so far as it has been used in two previous version. My fear is that Jack will turn out to be gay, so that we cover all the minorities at once. (If she isn't then "maid" Marion is.)

Given the really, really crass gulf war sub-text, there is no way that you could have had "Friar Tuck" as a character. It wouldn't work for the Merry Man to be all intolerant about Turks and for Robin Liberal to say that Jews and Muslims and Christians are all very nice in their own way if you had a clergyman in the band. (Are we really supposed to believe that Robin has read the Koran? When was the first Latin translation made? Has Robin been represented as a scholar anywhere else in the story? Are they making it up as they go along.) But I did think that last night's worked as a story.
 

Here's some random warblings. Haven't seem RH yet- it's repeated in about 40 minutes time so will have soon.

I’m sure that there are definition of “faith” and “atheist” that will lead to alternative conclusions, but those definitions don’t come out of nowhere. What is interesting is how different definitions need to be in order to result in diametrically opposed conclusions.

The way I see it…

There are three ways in which we end up believing in things. The first is evidence based, the second based on authority and the third on “faith” or some sort of personal conviction. Obviously they overlap a lot.

So someone who lived in Old England might have acquired his faith primarily based on authority- the society in which he was brought up had Christianity as an automatic assumption, yet he could still have had acquired faith by personal conviction as well.

Or a belief that comes primarily from authority could be backed up by some limited (but not necessarily convincing on its own) evidence, like believing that democracy is the most desirable political system or that Tom Cruise is particularly attractive.

The other important premises are firstly that a belief can still be primarily evidence based if some of that evidence is the testimony of reliable witnesses, provided that I have made an evidence-based assessment of their reliability and am satisfied that their testimony is itself evidence based. So if I state that I believe that Newton invented the calculus before Leibniz then that is an evidence-based belief even thought I have seen limited primary evidence to that effect and that has been selected for me by the various historians seeking to make a case. My evidence is partly based on the testimony of historians that I have concluded are likely to be reliable.

On the other hand if I believe that the Knights Templar protected Jesus’ bloodline for a couple of thousand years, based on the fact that somebody that I know nothing about wrote a book saying so, I’d be straying into the authority based justification.

Secondly, evidence-based belief is not the same thing as scientific proof. So I can believe things based on the balance of probabilities without having to be absolutely certain.

Given my particular starting points as above, what is atheism? There could certainly be elements of authority-based belief in there, for instance if you are brought up in China. But for the majority of atheists in the Western world, atheism is an evidence based position. It is a rejection of the faith based position, and of the authority based position regarding the existence of God, and a conclusion, based on the evidence (which includes lack of evidence, which is exactly the same in nature as evidence) that God does not exist.

The argument that only agnosticism is an evidence based position comes from confusion between evidence and scientific proof. It isn’t necessary to be absolutely certain that God does not exist and that no evidence will prove otherwise to come to the conclusion that one is an atheist. All that is necessary is to weigh up the evidence and decide that no God is significantly more likely than God. It may be that one concludes that God is extremely unlikely, to the extent where one can effectively disregard the possibility that one is wrong, just as it is possible to come to the same conclusion about HIV causing AIDs or the evolution of man. But the argument that if you aren’t 100% certain then you are an agnostic and that it is impossible to be 100% certain based on the evidence available doesn’t work.

Having reached an atheistic position, it is of course possible to argue it with extreme vehemence and intolerance, of a sort more usually found in certain holders of faith based positions. But the belief is nonetheless evidence based; the fact that some people devote their lives to arguing it in a way that others find rather off-putting doesn’t change the nature of the belief.
 

I disagree with very little of the above.

"Faith" is a loaded word, because Christians have given it a specific meaning.

Paul thinks that the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is an example of Faith: Abraham's trust in God was so absolute that he thought that He (God) would bring his (Abraham's) son back to life after he (Abraham) had killed him. Interestingly, the Chief Rabbi, who knows a thing or two about the Old Testement, didn't even mention the word "faith" when discussing the story with John Humphries. To him (the Rabbi) it was about God saying to Abraham "I'm not LIKE those other gods who demand children's blood!"

So to use the word "Faith" as a synonym for "religion" (Faith Position, Faith Community, Faith School, Faith Brown, etc) is a to move the discussion unfairly onto Christian grounds.

I think that when people say "Atheism is a faith position" they actually mean "A position with respect to faith" where "faith" means "religion". I think that they mean that everyone accepts a sort of meta-position which says "Within reason, accomodation should be made for people's 'faiths', and they shouldn't be offended gratuitiously." You Mr. Christian, should accept that Mr. Hindu's "faith" in Krishna is just as fervant and deeply held as your faith in Jesus, and we should all do our very best not to tread on each other's toes. Fine. Then someone pointed out that some people don't have any religion at all, and that they have just as much right to have their feelings respected; maybe even to have their own schools, seats in the House of Lords, and 5 minutes slots on the Today programme. Saying "Not having a religion is a religion" would obviously sound silly, so they said "Not having a religion is a position with respect to faith" or in short "Atheism is a faith position."

Problematically, certain nutters, including some who are inexplicably backed by the Prime Minister, have used the term "Faith Position" tactically to justify a complicated blurring of the boundaries between "religion" and "science". (Sadly they have maneuvered a rather innocent scientist named Dawkins into becoming complicit in this.) They claim that certain mythological passages in the Bible which deal primarily with moral categories and the Problem of Evil, are in fact in competition with biology to explain the development of species on earth. (I wouldn't want to dignify this position with the name Creationism.) They use a spurious argument that since Christianity and Atheism are both faith positions (positions which people take with respect to faith) it therefore follows that whatever fruitcake theory about the origins of life on earth they happen to have come up with this week deserves equal time in biology lessons alongside well established scientific models. To which the answer is "No, you silly people: when people say "Atheism is a faith position" that was not what they meant." "

I think that most grown up Christians would be happy to call Christianity "faith based" rather than "evidence based" in the sense that you define. There are, of course, problems with what one means by evidence and what evidence one is prepared to accept: an evangelical says "I was addicted to heroin and beat my wife; I turned to Jesus, and I am clean and have a decent job -- how much more evidence do you want." A skeptic says "How do we set up a double-blind test to prove it was the turning to Jesus and not something else which cleaned you out?"

I have no problem with saying that Christians believe that there is a God because they have a sense that there is a God rather than because of any more concrete evidence. "Faith" is as good a word as any for that feeling. I do sometimes ask myself whether atheists believe that there is no God because they have a sense that there is no God -- I put it that way round, rather than "lack a sense that that there is a God" althoug that may be true as well. It may be that when some people say "Atheism is a much a matter of Faith as Christianity is", that's all they mean -- "It's a starting point, not a finishing point; if you believe it, it's obvious to you; and you can't argue rationally about it, because it wasn't arrived at rationally." (People who have a sense that there is no God will, of course, see no evidence of God when they look for it; people who has a sense that there is a God will see it everywhere.)

Interestingly it seemed fairly clear from those interviews that John Humphries is one of those who does have a sense of God's existence, but is having problems thinking through it's implications . What he wanted was academic theology, not the vague platitudes that all three Grand High Poobahs came up with. I really wished that one of them had said "Yes: that wish to believe that you are experiencing is exactly what we call 'faith'." Peace child: you would not be seeking me if you had not already found me.

Hmm...apologies for using your blog as a place to write first drafts of articles for mine, perhaps some of the above may even make some kind of sense. It is amzing how fluently I can write about other things when there is a course work module that I am supposed to be working on...
 

I blame the secular humanists.

I don't think anyone would really think that atheists had any place on Thought for the Day; what are they going to say, except maybe to point out that everyone on that slot before them was working on false assumptions? Atheism is a purely negative statement. I wouldn't say that it was associated with any particular feelings either; just an absence of them.

Jonathan Miller commented that the idea of being an atheist was a very odd one; defining oneself by an absence of belief.

The secular humanists on the other hand have positive beliefs, about the nature of right and wrong, the value of human life etc. It is quite possible to be an atheist and a nihilist but most of us turn out to be secular humanists pretty much by default. And they have something meaningful to say on Thought for the Day, they have something that can be taught in schools, that can form the basis for weddings and funeral ceremonies and could probably get them a place in the House of Lords if they tried hard enough.

Humanism might well be a faith position, of a sort, even though it is claimed to be based on rational argument. Anything that starts putting value judgements in is probably partly personal conviction. As my philospohy professor used to say regularly, you can't get from is to ought by argument.

I think you probably can argue about atheism in a way that you can't about faith. Because atheists say "There is no, or not sufficient, evidence" you can examine the proposed evidence and discuss its validity. But when the Christian says that he has faith there's nowhere really to go with that; you can find out what he means by it and whether it is internally consistent but you can't argue it into or out of existence.

So the belief that there is no God, as compared to, for instance, the belief that morality is derived from human values and actions, really doesn't come into the faith category and in my view shouldn't be treated as such. Voices need to be heard, just because people need to be confronted with the fact that there are rational non-believers and that this is an acceptable position to reach. But not in an equal slots, equal schools, equal school assembly time sort of way.

Maybe it's like living somewhere where everyone seems to be obsessed with the local football team. You might want to let people know that it's all right not to like football much, but you don't do it by running an Anti-Football-Team with its own flags and car stickers and demand equal space in the back of the local paper. Instead you might (and this is probably the controversial bit) push the local paper into covering other sports, or even news for a change. It seems far more sensible for atheists to push for a reduction in the number of Thoughts for the Day, Daily Services and Church schools than it does to try to join the gang.

Possibly atheism is a viewpoint that people are more desperate to make available to everyone else than many religions are. It would seem odd to me to send Son to an atheist school to "protect" him from religion. I am quite content to know that he gets enough rationality at home to keep him going. But I do feel strongly that children sent to a church school by believing, or even agnostic, parents aren't getting that dose of rationality that they need to form an evidence-based belief. I don't particularly want my child to go to an atheist school but I'm rather keen that everyone else's children should, or at least go to a thoroughly secular one, which is sort of the opposite of most faith school parents.

RH was considerably better. I KNEW those lines were significant; I've been patiently waiting for the pay off since ep 1. Bit of trouble working out what the political satire was though, unless, heaven forbid, they just decided to do some real plot instead.