A Life With Religion, and Without

Here is a letter to the editor as published in today's New York Times.

Related

Op-Ed Columnist: Defecting to Faith (May 2, 2009)

I am grateful for Charles M. Blow’s summary of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey on religious affiliation (“Defecting to Faith,” column, May 2). But I was surprised when he claimed that “science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious.”

As one raised by atheist parents with college and graduate study in physics, plus a doctorate in the philosophy of religion from Columbia, I believe I know a thing or two about these items.

First, if you follow John Dewey in his assertion that “whatever introduces genuine perspective is religious,” then there is no such animal as the nonreligious. Furthermore, historians of science now know that biblical religion was a major factor in the rise of the empirical side of modern science.

Finally, since following Dewey and many others, if everyone has a worldview, whether implicit or explicit, and none can be proved to anyone else who does not share it, then we all “walk by faith, and not by sight,” as Paul put it.

Owen C. Thomas
Berkeley, Calif., May 2, 2009

The writer is professor emeritus of theology at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.

Does God Exist?

A debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dr. William Lane Craig.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Critique

Some interesting posts on Andrew Sullivan's blog on the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory.


A reader writes:

I'm an avid reader who's never written you before, but as a philosophy major and not much else, this is probably the first time I've felt (vaguely) qualified. And the sudden phenomenon of assertive atheism has me concerned too. What the defenders of the Flying Spaghetti Monster thesis'commensurability with actual theism fail to recognize is that belief in God generally doesn't have anything so "concrete" as its substance. It's not the particulars of God -- the "invisible man in the sky" imagery andsuch -- that matter. In some sense these particulars aren't the content of theist belief at all; it's the "consequences" of God -- moral compunction, cultural taboo, social phenomena that amount to a de facto eschatology, etc. -- that actually constitute theism. And when measured by adherence to behaviors consistent with this belief, atheism suddenly appears much rarer. Nietzsche recognized this; it's the reason why an insistence on overcoming Judeo-Christian ethics comes right alongside his proclamation of the death of God.

Another reader writes:

Your philosophy student reader's email did a wonderful job of finding three ways to say the same simple point: Christianity is more than an infatuation with God as Deity. I think most atheists understand and accept this and a moment's time exploring the writings of even the spittle-flecked atheist agitators shows that they understand that life still presents significant questions, both moral and existential, that religions claim to answer. Your previous reader's letter raised a similar point concerning the seeming lack of positive propositions from atheist thinkers, but the philosophy student goes a step further and insinuates that perhaps "real atheism"is close to impossible unless one can otherwise justify all of one's existential beliefs without God. Both of these readers, I think, conflate atheism with too much else. Atheism is a simple proposition: Sufficient, convincing evidence for existence of the Supreme Being(s) is lacking and claims that rely onthe existence of God for their validity are therefore false. Atheism is not the idea that morality does not and cannot exist, it is simply the idea that God does not exist. To use your previous reader's metaphor: Atheists claim we all actually live in the same country, but that our country is not God's country even though most people believe that's where they live.