Semi-Coherent thoughts

I find it both curi­ous and amaz­ing that for many, belief — such a fun­da­men­tal and basic thing — is so frag­ile. It only takes one idea: a ques­tion, an objec­tion or an appeal to the emo­tions, and the seed of doubt has been planted, and a con­fused and fren­zied descent has begun. It is as if ques­tion­ing were the antithe­sis to belief, and I sus­pect for uncrit­i­cal peo­ple (which are many in this ‘day and age’)  it is. An appeal to the emo­tions, the “pas­sions” — this seems to me the most likely cause of peo­ples lack or rejec­tion of faith, rather than argu­ments. Many of us hide behind cal­cu­lated thoughts — logic and “ratio­nal think­ing” — but we only point out with logic what the emo­tions which to express. Emo­tions can­not han­dle the idea of an eter­nal hell, or pun­ish­ment from a “lov­ing” and “just” God any­more than they can han­dle the thought of infants being damned, or a “lov­ing” God allow­ing sick­ness, dis­ease, death. That is why the emo­tional “prob­lem of evil” is far more damn­ing than the log­i­cal “prob­lem of evil” could ever be — we aren’t machines, that is why even a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of “God” and “evil” still offends us. So offended, that we would rather just not believe. Logic is aca­d­e­mic, the pas­sions are the lan­guage of every day life. I might acknowl­edge — if I believed the sup­port was there — that God is fully within His “rights” to arbi­trar­ily choose who to save and to damn, but the whole idea is so repul­sive that I just know it isn’t true. If it were true and I main­tained my belief, it would be only a resigned belief. Lack­ing pas­sion, and hopeless.

Some­one once said of propaganda:

The whole art [of pro­pa­ganda] con­sists in doing this [call­ing the masses atten­tion to cer­tain facts] so skill fully that every­one will be con­vinced that the fact is real, the process nec­es­sary, the neces­sity cor­rect, etc. But since pro­pa­ganda is not and can­not be the neces­sity in itself, since its func­tion, like the poster, con­sists in attract­ing the atten­tion of the crowd, and not in edu­cat­ing those who are already edu­cated or who are striv­ing after edu­ca­tion and knowl­edge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emo­tions and only to a very lim­ited degree the so-called intel­lect. ¹

But what of mix­ing logic and emo­tion? Of using argu­ment as a pre­tense for emo­tional appeals? Imag­ine, with Dawkins, if there were no religion:

…no sui­cide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Cru­sades, no witch-hunts, no Gun­pow­der Plot, no Indian par­ti­tion, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim mas­sacres, no per­se­cu­tion of Jews as ‘Christ-killers,’ no North­ern Ire­land ‘trou­bles,’ no ‘hon­our killings,’ no shiny-suited bouffant-haired tel­e­van­ge­lists fleec­ing gullible peo­ple of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts.’)²

I won­der, if some­one claims to be fol­low­ing God in such an action, does it mean they actu­ally are? Does it have an impact on whether or not there is a God? Not that God is morally upright, Dawkins continues:

“The God of the Old Tes­ta­ment is arguably the most unpleas­ant char­ac­ter in all fic­tion: jeal­ous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unfor­giv­ing control-freak; a vin­dic­tive, blood­thirsty eth­nic cleanser; a misog­y­nis­tic, homo­pho­bic, racist, infan­ti­ci­dal, geno­ci­dal, fil­i­ci­dal, pesti­len­tial, mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal, sado­masochis­tic, capri­ciously malev­o­lent bully.” ³

Polem­i­cal, for sure. Emo­tional, absolutely. A worth-while argu­ment? It doesn’t need to be, it’s not aimed at “those who are already edu­cated”. It is aimed at those who aren’t. That is why con­nect­ing Hitler to Dar­win is so effec­tive, as it is for con­nect­ing the Church to the Third Reich: “The con­nec­tion of the church to fas­cism and Nazism actu­ally out­lasted the Third Reich itself“⁴. The church, act­ing upon the bible — or so it claims — what a nasty thing, that bible. Accord­ing to Hitchens:

The Bible may, indeed does, con­tain a war­rant for traf­fick­ing in humans, for eth­nic cleans­ing, for slav­ery, for bride-price, and for indis­crim­i­nate mas­sacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncul­tured human mam­mals.⁵

Per­haps these authors believe the­ism is so out­ra­geous that it deserves a polem­i­cal approach (reproach?). But while they believe this, I see no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in their argu­ments. Cen­turies of seri­ous argu­men­ta­tion, tens of thou­sands of pages writ­ten on both sides, and in one fell swoop in the first decade of the “new” mil­len­nium, the­ism has been sup­pos­edly defeated, in 500 pages or less — 20 pagers per topic — by argu­ments which are nei­ther new, sur­pris­ing or effec­tive (at least, they shouldn’t be). To be sure, the church is in part respon­si­ble for the “shock” Chris­tians expe­ri­ence when they start “think­ing” on their own, try­ing to fig­ure out what they believe and why. Dis­en­gage­ment from cul­ture, a lack of seri­ous teach­ing from the pul­pit, par­ents who don’t keep up with the argu­ments and issues their chil­dren will face at school.  What does it mat­ter if it’s true, so long as it seems true?

But any­way, where am I going with this? Ah yes, appar­ently I started off by “accus­ing” the work of the “New Athe­ists” as being noth­ing more than polem­i­cal, or at worst a mass appeal to the emo­tions, lack­ing any sub­stance. Yet it would seem that most peo­ple are greatly affected by emo­tion­al­ism, so per­haps there meth­ods aren’t so far off for the gen­eral pub­lic. Even if their argu­ments hold lit­tle water, their style does. And it would seem that it’s all in the pre­sen­ta­tion, rather than the substance.

Related posts:

1. Fur­ther Thoughts on Anselm