Witchcraft as a metaphor for religion

[Bill Haywood]

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Bill Haywood is most assuredly wrong about my motive/intention for stating so?

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You also asked:

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is such respect deserved? To me it's the epitome of irony that a Christian can laugh at an astrologist with a straight face.

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Are you saying that you do not see religion as primitive and backward and a subject for derision? And are drawing merely a technical connection between Methodists and witchcraft? If so, I stand corrected.

vhawk wrote:

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Surely Stalinism and Nazism and these other 'atheist' groups are FAR more similar to a religion

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I hear this a lot, and I consider it a definitions game. When materialists do good works, it is defined as rational and super. When materialists do bad works, it is redefined as actually being religious.

Well, when you define the terms that way, you can't lose the argument. It's like religionists saying that if priests molest children, it is not the fault of the church culture, its the influence of the devil. It's a cop out. This approach makes one group (materialists) superior by definition, rather than by what they do. I could just as easily say that when materialists use science for bad, they are following materialism, but when they do good, they've subconsciously listened to an angel.

When you look at materialism and religion as social discourses, produced by living communities, the separation falls apart. 60 years ago, mainstream scientists, following standards of the day, were certain of the superiority of the white race and used all kinds of flawed evidence to prove it. This field of scientific racism was quite important in enabling the Holocaust. Sure, you can say that when Nazi scientists did this, they were acting as religionists, not materialists. But that lets them off the hook for what they did. As a community participating in a discourse, materialists have done all sorts of rotten things. As a community, I do not see them as more moral and less prone to nationalist excess than theistic communities.

My fundamental point is that materialists are so easily prone to mob mentalities and atrocities (the Neocons come to mind) that any alleged social superiority over theists is obviated.

And to the person who said Mother Teresa was really a biitch, I agree -- she was a hasty example. How about Florence Nightingale?

[vhawk01]

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Intersting posts by yourself and niffe, but I'm obviously missing something.

What's any of this got to do with religion being like any other superstition, folk lore, or wive's tale, and that Bill Haywood is most assuredly wrong about my motive/intention for stating so?

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My points had nothing to do with the OP, and only a little to do with the post I was responding to, Bill Haywood's. It was just something thats been bothering me for a while and his post reminded me of it.

[tpir]

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When someone calls religion superstition, it's a sure sign that they have an arrogant belief in the moral superiority of rationalism.

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What is this based on? I go with rationalism because it appears to work better than the alternatives. If it stopped working or supernatural stuff started going down, people would adapt or just throw in the towel.

The big problem in these types of discussions is the word "religion" being used to mean a bunch of different things. My feelings towards life/existence would be considered very religIOUS even though I think religION is absurd. There is a big difference. Let's not equivocate!

[Bill Haywood]

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When someone calls religion superstition, it's a sure sign that they have an arrogant belief in the moral superiority of rationalism.

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What is this based on? I go with rationalism because it appears to work better than the alternatives.

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I'm not arguing that science does not "work better" at describing reality. I'm saying that the moral choices materialists and theists make are not better or worse.

As clear thinking, and gaining the most accurate picture of physical reality as possible, yes, materialism is still superior. That's why I'm a materialist. But I see no reason to think atheist-materialists are kinder, or less prone to national chauvinism. Certainly not in practice (Pol Pot), and even in theory, I don't see why materialists would be more humane.

Who would you rather have decide whether to give you the death penalty, someone with no discernible spiritual beliefs like Henry Kissinger, or Father Berrigan? Or to take an example of a kind atheist and a vicious theist, Carl Sagan or Pat Robertson? The spiritual beliefs of these individuals is pretty irrelevant to whether you get the chair or not.

If it helps any, my skepticism of the superior humanity of materialist intellectuals is influenced most by Chomsky and Foucault. They show very well the extent to which scientific rationalism can be used for cruel ends, and the extent to which ideas serve power rather than truth.

[niffe9]

There can be a case made that materialism is better positioned for better morals than theists. This comes in the form of positing more of a free market for morality. I come from the school that altruism is in our genes(by being nice to others you can give yourself membership into mutually beneficial groups). By pragmatism and common sense, man has come to certain morals like slavery is bad (if you do not believe this was a pragmatic change in morals than my point is moot). Religion did not give us this moral. It slowly came to be as people realized that slaves are essentially the same as their masters and humans want to promote a society where a human does not have to be a slave(a choice with ultimately selfish interests). It can be argued that theism hampered this moral change because it articulates morals as something divined from god in sacred books (immutable).

[Bill Haywood]

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There can be a case made that materialism is better positioned for better morals than theists.... By pragmatism and common sense, man has come to certain morals like slavery is bad.... people realized that slaves are essentially the same as their masters

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That's an interesting attempt, but it does not jibe with what I know about abolition in the US. Abolitionists were usually very religious (John Brown). Both slave holders and abolitionists based their arguments on scripture. The Civil War itself was more about imperial power than sympathy for slaves.

Further, the most elaborate scientific attempts to prove Africans were not "essentially the same" came after slavery was over. There's not much of a correlation between the end of slavery and a decline of racism. In fact, it is a negative correlation in the scientific field.

Like religion, rationalism can easily be used for different ends. If your goal is superiority of yourself and subjugation of others, then slavery can be a rational choice. And slavery based on race is a very pragmatic way of organizing and protecting the institution.

I'd like to believe that materialism makes us atheists more more humane, but I haven't seen anything persuasive.

[niffe9]

We both agree that we can use whatever belief system we have to justify our actions, good or bad (with respect to the sense of pragmatic, common sense morals discussed earlier). Again I would like to point how I think materialists might be better suited to form a free market of beliefs where morality can flourish. Theists may be more likely to bully and use cult-like tactics to spread morality (follow these ten commandements or else, many religions like scientology spread their ideas in cult-like ways). Materialists by nature are more prone to criticize and form morals in a more objective manner. They are perhaps less likely to submit to the morals of others or some higher power and more likely to decide for themselves what they think is moral. In my opinion, morality is almost organic and can change at any time. The materialist is more likely to constantly reevaluate their morals to align with what they want in life.
I'm willing to admit that the two ideas may be only slightly tangentially correlated.

[Bill Haywood]

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They are perhaps less likely to submit to the morals of others or some higher power and more likely to decide for themselves what they think is moral.

[/ QUOTE ] and paraphrasing, presumably act more humanely through rationalism.

That's interesting conjecture, but how are you going to demonstrate it empirically? I see mountains of good and evil committed on all sides. How could one demonstrate that down through history, from a Phoenician child smacking his sister, to Pol Pot's rampage, that materialists have been 59% good, but theists only 54%? That strikes me as a completely unmanageable mass of data. Even if you arrive at a measure -- 41 million corpses killed by materialists, 46 million by theists -- is that really very enlightening?

I stick with the more modest conclusion: neither theists nor materialists have been shown to act more humanely, each are easily capable of the full range of behaviors, good and bad.

And guys like Dawkins are going to base a humanitarian transformation of the world based on unmeasurably narrow differences between philosophies? I don't think the limited differences in them can have that much impact on the material world. Any regional conflict is so complex and embedded in deep history that no lectures from British scholars are going to revolutionize them. Dawkins needs to go back to the materialism of Marx, who understood that ideologies cannot be changed presto, because they are embedded in material and economic realities, and serve them. Even Gramsci, who afforded much more latitude to the importance of beliefs, still situated ideology in a class context.

Neither theism nor atheism provide appreciably better guides to political action -- so the marketplace of ideas will be unable to choose. Both brands will remain, and continue to be used for all purposes.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">I'd like to believe that materialism makes us atheists more more humane, but I haven't seen anything persuasive. </font>

I have to agree with this (that there is no real discernable differece in morality between atheists and theists). But isn't this evidence that morality is subjective and doesn't eminate from some central source or divine entity?

[luckyme]

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<font color="blue">I'd like to believe that materialism makes us atheists more more humane, but I haven't seen anything persuasive. </font>

I have to agree with this (that there is no real discernable differece in morality between atheists and theists). But isn't this evidence that morality is subjective and doesn't eminate from some central source or divine entity?

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The big difference is that theists tend work at the level of 'rules' and atheists tend to work at the level of 'principles'. This traps theists into digging up a rule and applying it to situations that aren't the same as the one the rule may be meant to cover, it just has similarities.

Theists can reach so horribly wrong moral places and not have a way out because of that 'moral by rules' weakness.

On a day-to-day basis, no, you couldn't tell a random theist from a random atheists by their moral choices. But at certain crunch times, you'll be able to.

luckyme