[5/6]
The thing is: there are commonalities to religious beliefs, regardless of which God. From an atheist perspective, it is not really necessary to disprove the Lutheran God, then the Baptist God, then the New Age Prosperity Jesus, then Jehovah of the Witnesses, then the Anglican God, then the Presbyterian God, and so on. The relevant arguments tend to apply to all versions of Christianity, and beyond.
Besides, these days a lot of theists don't even identify with a traditional denomination. They make up their own brand of Christianity (or whatever) as they go along, cherry picking the parts they like from one strand or another.
Perhaps I have been too subtle. Or you're glossing, again.
To be particular—
From an atheist perspective, it is not really necessary to disprove the Lutheran God, then the Baptist God, then the New Age Prosperity Jesus, then Jehovah of the Witnesses, then the Anglican God, then the Presbyterian God, and so on. The relevant arguments tend to apply to all versions of Christianity, and beyond.
—you are aware there is more to discuss than disproving God?
Besides, these days a lot of theists don't even identify with a traditional denomination. They make up their own brand of Christianity (or whatever) as they go along, cherry picking the parts they like from one strand or another.
In such circumstances, I can only further stress the importance of having a clue what one is on about.
Now you're arguing that I'm too smart to be arguing with some of our strident theists here?
No, that's not quite it.
I ought to be above interacting with them? Sounds a bit elitist and patronising, if you ask me.
You ought to be above childish and truculent fallacy. You have, after all, described yourself as an educator.
James, look at the people who have you so wound up. Jan Ardena? SetiAlpha6? Bowser? Vociferous? To reiterate: You're so anxious to be led around by bullshit in order to complain about "theists", you'll let anybody pretending a halfassed whiff of religion say whatever the fuck they want.
It's great that you're stepping up to defend them, Tiassa ...
At some point you really ought to be able to do better than blithering ignorance. I mean, really, after all these years, and you still can't figure it out. Right? That is, you're not just playing for the fourth wall, right?
... but don't you think that religious people can answer for themselves? If their God is incapable of definition, they can say so. One then wonders what they mean when they talk about God, though.
Stop hiding behind religious people, James; that's cowardly.
There is, James, something often referred to as the historical record. Perhaps you haven't noticed. One wonders what people mean when they talk about God? Well, there's a large body of literature in the historical record. To wit, in the question of what people know about what they criticize, you might be,
"something of an expert on atheist critiques of religion, having 'read up' on them extensively in the past"↗, but if you read up some on the record itself, instead of just the political argument against what you don't like, you will find value.
It's actually one of the things I use. In the notes to these posts, for instance, I cite Davidson (1967), which is well enough, but to what degree would it be more useful if I went out of my way to cite Barrett (1801) and Mathers (1888)? Well, not insofar as the Davidson note on [3/6] above is concerned, but now we have a more direct reason to consider Francis Barrett.
The Magus is what it is, a poorly-sourced compendium and calculation of magickal superstition from preceding centuries, but it is also part of the historical record, and within its context rather striking. In Book II, on page fifty-six, one of the lists of angels you would find if trying to figure out what Davidson drew from various sources is footnoted, "Tritemius on Spirits", which refers to
Steganographia, by Johannes Trithemius. And while there is much that could go here°, Trithemius, as an abbot, was much influenced by Nicholas of Cusa, and therein you will find the joke about square circles, Augustine, and learned ignorance.
And if history is a lie agreed upon°°, then what, really, do we do with those portions of the historical record that do not necessarily purport to be true? To wit, the literary record, and if
Alex Carp's↱ 2018 review of Lepore's,
These Truths, is a bit heavy for our moment as it piles up, we might consider that it was Lepore's
novel drawing calls from the Oxford English Dictionary. More to the point—
Why, at a time when facts are more accessible than at any other point in human history, have they failed to provide us with a more broadly shared sense of objective truth?
Part of the reason, Lepore has surmised, is that too much historical writing—and perhaps too much nonfiction in general—proceeds without many of the qualities that readers recognize as essential to experience: "humor, and art, and passion, and love, and tenderness, and sex… and fear, and terror, and the sublime, and cruelty." Things that she calls "organic to the period, and yet lost to us." Lepore's training as a historian, she's said, tried to teach her that these things did not contain worthy explanations. In graduate school her interest in them "looked like a liability, and I took note."
—there is value in the literary, artistic, and cultural record.
Joyce Carol Oates↱, in discussing
Moby Dick, considered, "what Lawrence called the 'scrimmage of things' which prose fiction can provide--the fascinating, dense specifics of life". And if I joke that life provides examples,
Barbara Regenspan's↱ article for
The Forward, responding to a dispute about a television series depicting Orthodox Jews, arrived even since I wrote the bit about Rav Kahana. And where you might front pretenses of caring about the harms religious beliefs and behaviors might inflict upon believers and other people, it is the insight of art and culture that tells us so much we cannot necessarily find in other aspects of the source record.
Elaine Pagels writes, of her own experience:
Many of us, of course, have left religious institutions behind, and prefer to identify as "spiritual, not religious". I've done both—had faith, and lost it; joined groups, and left them. To my own surprise, I then went back, seeking to understand what happened, and to explore how the stories, poetry, music, and art that make up religious traditions have grown out of specific communities and institutions, yet sometimes still resonate.
What matters to me more than whether we participate in instiutions or leave them is how we engage the imagination—in dreams, art, poetry, music—since what each of us needs, and what we can engage, obviously differs and changes throughout our lifetime. What fascinates me most are the experiences that shape, shatter, and transform those who initiate or engage them—experiences that precipitate us into new relationships with ourselves and with others.
(xiv)
Meanwhile, your formulation presumes religious people require some manner of defense, and while any given day will include many, many religious folk who do, in fact, need some manner of defense, that's not actually what you're referring to. Another version, perhaps more direct, was
last year↗, when you postured, "You're telling me you think it's unreasonable to ask theists what their God does in the world?" And if that's what you were doing, sure, whatever. But it wasn't. And, similarly, it's not, now.
The literary record burgeons with discussion of what God is and does, and what people believe. Asking is one thing, but what you get is one person's opinion, and then another, and so on. The answers don't necessarily translate to theists, or theism, in general, and inasmuch as you might wonder of theists at Sciforums, well, look at the field you've cultivated. Asking people you think are wrong to jump through hoops so you can tell them they are wrong just isn't constructive; nor do such endeavors utterly fail to be indecent. And, face it, even in this field, cultivated to your need, you found yourself in over your head, and
sought to further constrain the question↗. If you really were about care for harm, and such, you wouldn't be doing it this way.
You're focused on the God
you need, not what believers experience. And it's why people like Jan Ardena or Vociferous can get to you like they do. It's why Bowser is so confusing you need to
hide behind me↗. It's why you're so anxious to be led around by nose that anybody pretending any halfassed whiff of religion can tell you whatever they want.
____________________
Notes:
° Including considerations of mythography↗; additionally, it is easy to forget Cardinal Cusanus also treads into pandeism, was suspected of pantheism, and has useful credit in the history of medicine—the taking of the pulse rate. Trithemius, meanwhile, was not entirely off the mark; the real value of his work turned out to be cryptography. To the other, the occult context influenced later superstition, including Dee, and thereby even affected the reign of Elizabeth I.
°° Attributed to Napoleon.
