I thought for my first Comment article of this term I would tackle the always controversial and touchy subject of religion, my view is one borne of experience and reading on religion, science and history so I hope it will be convincing. The religion I will specifically discuss is Christianity but my argument isn’t restricted to one religion; I will set out this article as my response to reasons/arguments used in favour of religion and against atheism/agnosticism.
“Evolution is just a theory, if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys, you can’t prove God didn’t have a hand in evolution, Creation as prescribed in the Bible literally/figuratively is the origin of Man, etc”
Well firstly, Evolution is indeed a theory: a theory created by scientists much smarter than I am and despite what some Christian Scientists may argue, they are in the minority. On that note gravity is also a theory but I don’t suggest you jump out of your university room window on the top floor to test it out. I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I know that evolution means humans and monkeys as we know them today, evolved from a common ancestor, not some sort of Pokemon-style evolution from monkey to Human. This process took flipping ages (millions of years) and so is understandably hard for our limited human brains used to 365 day years to comprehend. I can kind of understand if you take the Garden of Eden story as a ‘metaphor’ but if you take it literally I don’t really know how to respond to that. Noah’s ark if it existed would have had to have been monumental in size and to round up that many different species without them killing each other doesn’t make sense.
“Faith requires that leap into the dark, it’s just my faith etc”
I respect people that have faith in God, I really do, it’s just not something I can buy into. It’s the reason I would define myself as an Agnostic Atheist: I’m 95 percent sure there’s no God (or Thor, Ra etc) but I’m willing to accept humanity does not have all the answers yet, Science still doesn’t fully explain how the brain works for example. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time. The lack of full knowledge should not push us back into earth-centred theories of the solar system or conceptions of God favouring one society/people over another.
“Without religion how could we have morals, society would descend into anarchy/amorality and have orgies on the streets etc”
This is a personal favourite of mine and quite an insulting thing for someone to say to another human being. Anyone who reads history will know that churches of all denominations have had pretty shady concepts of morality (and still do). The Catholic Church tends to get picked on in this light, recent and historical sexual abuse, worrying responses to the Nazis and inquisition being three examples. But extreme variations of morality can be seen within Protestantism as well, especially on the issue of gay rights in both America and the UK; Northern Ireland still does not legally recognize gay marriage for instance. I’m not going to pick on the extreme example (Westboro Baptist) because they are a small minority.
On the issue of morals, do we really need to be told by the Ten Commandments to not kill others, or to respect our neighbours? I get the impression that some religious people think if they lost faith in God they’d automatically head out on a killing spree, which is quite worrying. As much as I enjoyed reciting hymns in primary school assembly, I derived my morals not from God but from my parents. You do not need the fear of Hell/angering God to be a good person and it is fundamentally worrying for our conceptions of humanity if people believe feel they do.
This is the first part of a debate series I hope will be countered by a religious commenter. To avoid protracted comment wars, the author will not directly respond to comments below, instead answering them in the next installment of the debate series.
This article is offensive and ignorant. You claim to come at this from experience, which is exactly the kind of arrogant comment that undergraduate students take. With all the philosophy out there, how can a 20 year old make claim to understand the complex debates of religion, science or history. Yes, history is your degree, but those are on one subject, for one essay. Your knowledge is not what you claim it to be.
With this, you have gone for the line of attack of making arguments based on belittling the opponent with a bad use of satire- Noahs ark would have been monumental. The points your making are an area of controversy of how Christians are meant to read the bible, within that of then how the bible is an object, was it “given” by god, if so then is this a god in time and space otherwise how does he interact, if he chose to in this instance why doesn’t he in others etc. There are clearly criticisms to be made. But this is such a long debate that it is insulting to people to do this in so many words. I understand the constraints of word space, but that question should have been given an entire article then. Also, you are being so hugely prejudiced. There are christians who gain their faith by being aware of the complexities of the universe and feel there must be a designer- William Paley and the analogy of the watch. Also, in relation to gravity being a theory, the science and the explanation behind it is a theory yes, but we are aware of it through our own experiences, making it a rational belief. Whereas, people are or cannot grasp the big bang theory because it is so much out of sphere of knowledge. It doesn’t make them stupid, it is a difficult thing to imagine from our own perspective. Gravity we learn from a child or essentially we learn if we jump from things and fall it will hurt because we will hit the floor. You speak of it like you grasp the complexities of the science behind it which you clearly don’t.
Second point, who is saying that a ‘lack of knowledge’ will ‘push us back’. How does a belief in God or religion cause that? How does taking a leap of faith and believing in the after life cause earth centred theories. An example I like to use is that we still say sunrise, as though the sun is moving, when it is in fact us. This common phrase is a common phrase because it holds with us as that’s the way it feels, that’s how we perceive it and have done. These earth centred theories you refer to are also works of genius as well, look at Ptolemy and the intelligence behind that. Your line of argument is just poor here, how does an argument about the leap of faith equate to it shouldn’t push us back. What you should be arguing is that the issue with the leap of faith argument is that it feels like a way of not having to explain the key issues, however, I am saying this as someone who has issues with believing in God and thus, you’re right in a way. I will never understand their thinking behind the problem of evil, or the afterlife, but our minds are working in a different way. Why is it that that makes anyone a better or worse person? This should have no link to intelligence.
Also in reference to morality and what the churches have done, this is more of what PEOPLE do to PEOPLE, regardless of who or what they are. If I said, well you know let’s just look at world war two and the reality is, Germans in general just have been terrible. I just wouldn’t want to be German because they’ve done some bad things. This would be an incredibly weak and stupid argument, religion isn’t the cause, it’s bad people who happen to have faith, but people without faith can still be bad people. People are terrible and kill other people. Whilst, there are instances of it and the sex abuse scandals and the way religion has manifested itself in places like Ireland and issues with abortion etc. are terrible. We cannot simply write off something for that sake and say how bad it’s morals are. We laugh when people say well GTA causes people to go out and want to kill people because it’s not GTA it’s that some people are prone to things more than others. Whilst, I accept the argument that it could be an instigator and perhaps cause this flick to switch, it just needs a lot more work than these blanket statements. People who have faith deserve a lot more respect than these blanket comments.
In reference to the 10 commandments and your last paragraph, you are seriously misguided. You’re arguing that you grew morals not through a fear of God but through your parents, do you realistically think that this stemmed from a very similar argument of fearing about upsetting your parents and not wanting disapproval. This is just a weak argument, ultimately you’re proving that children just don’t want disapproval whether that be from God or from their parents. Also, Christians aren’t just good because of a fear of God. Some of them aren’t good at all even because people vary. This is the type of ignorant attitude that causes so many problems in the world. We can’t treat people and their beliefs as though they are some breed that we can categorically define.
I’m not religious, I’m just upset with what I’ve read, people act as though not believing gives them a right to belittle faith. It doesn’t.
I understand that a lot of my arguments will need refining and may not make a lot of sense and they too will have holes in them.
I hope that for your next part you really try and show more respect and perspective, and realise how little we understand about this all, given our age, lack of experience etc.
As someone who is Christian (as yet undecided between Catholicism and Anglicanism) I greatly appreciate this response you have made, to read that you are also not religious extremely refreshing. I was expecting a lot more when I first read the title of this article, only to find myself rolling my eyes at the first quote chosen because I could see, unfortunately, where it was going.
Your comment, thankfully, has saved me the time it would take for me to write out those exact words.
The only thing I would add is that even people within the same denomination of Christianity have varying beliefs about God, morality, the bible and how to practice their religion. Most people choose a particular denomination because they feel like they belong to that community and they are comfortable there, it’s basically an extended family. Then, within that, things are not as black and white as Christian or non-Christian. There are some people who are not Christian, however in their minds they are very close to conversion and do believe in the Christian God, but are not yet ready to label themselves yet. Like-wise there are Christians who not Christian or even atheist, but they are not ready to not be called Christian yet. So these people that Stranney is calling Christian, atheist and non-Christian, doing bad and good things, are not falling into those categories as neatly as maybe you imagine. This is probably just an extension on what has been said in the previous comment about what people to do people (with or without faith), but I thought it was worth mentioning.