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Blog Against Theocracy & Progressive Faith Movement Posted by Oaktown Girl, 16 Apr 2007 08:05 am

Faith Requires Freedom of Belief

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Responses to “Faith Requires Freedom of Belief”

1. on 17 Apr 2007 at 8:07 am 1. JP Stormcrow said …

   Let us work toward a church and a state that eschew all authoritarianism and embrace the challenge of this faith called democracy.

   And challenge it is when you have to overcome voices like the following:

   And remember: Just because this attacker was not Muslim, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of potential and hopeful ones among the thousands Muslim nations are sending here to “study” under Saudi King Abdullah’s scholarships. (from Debbie Schlussel’s webste)

2. on 17 Apr 2007 at 8:07 am 2. Ben Alpers said …

   Faith does not necessarily imply choice or freedom of belief. The Puritans (and other orthodox Calvinists) believed that faith could only come about through the Holy Spirit acting on people. Some people are predestined to receive faith, others not to. But free choice has nothing to do with it (for if it did, it would mess up God’s omniscience). Faith in this view is a one-way gift of God, not a matter of human will or choice.

   Arminians rejected this doctrine, believing that God gave people the free will to choose faith. Orthodox Calvinists considered them heretics, but most American Protestants are now solidly in the Arminian camp.

   Incidentally, some otherwise orthodox Calvinists rejected state imposition of religious orthodoxy (which was the dominant Puritan view). Roger Williams, for example, argued vehemently against state suppression of religious dissent while holding to the non-voluntarist Calvinist view of faith.

   At any rate, faith per se does not necessarily imply free choice, though as Williams pretty persuasively argues, whatever one’s view of faith, it’s hard to square it with state coercion.

3. on 17 Apr 2007 at 10:22 am 3. Brian said …

   I am a scientist by training, a philosopher by nature, and an athiest by choice — and that’s a real choice, as I was raised Methodist. So really, this post probably isn’t aimed at me…

   Still, the whole “secular acolytes” things always chafes me a bit. Perhaps it’s not intended as a subtle dig here, but I have, in the past, always found that it signals a “ha ha, you have metaphysical commitments too - you just won’t admit it!!” kind of taunting.

   So if we are to allow that “faith, faithfully exercised, is generous”, despite the all too common examples of faith that would seem to fall into the “not faithfully exercised” category, then I think that we should perhaps grant a little respect to denizens of the reality-based community by not referring to them in terms that they do not accept.

   Respectfully,

   Brian

4. on 17 Apr 2007 at 11:14 am 4. Zeus said …

   JP Stormcrow,

   I think one of the greatest ways to challenge the perniciousness and psychoticism of the remark you posted is precisely to put forth a powerful, compassionate, and inclusive understanding of faith, not just in a more intellectual theory-oriented way, but as a presence of active conscience working in the world. What is remarkable about the quote you offered is its clear demonstration of fear and insecurity, expressed, as Nietzsche might say, as “resentment” one of the basest of human expressions and providing confirmation, not of power, but of powerlessness– an antipathy toward life that would have us all “hunker down” (and bow to them that would inspire this cynicism about, revulsion towrd, and desire to annihilate others).

   One of the other things that strikes me as anti-creative and anti-life, is the peculiar system of thought that seeks merely to “make everything okay” and ameliorate, appease, or bargain with demonstrated sadists, like the person who came up with that quote. Unfortunately, much religion falls into this domain. In the misguided attempt to “forgive” others, without evoking conscience and responsibility, such religions enable sadism and evil to persist and even prosper.

   So what do we do if we can’t simply annhilate nor appease without making matters worse (oftentimes reflected in conservative and liberal religious ideologies respectively)? This is where one can find fruitful wisdom in the progressive and mystical traditions of various faiths. There is a striking resemblance of character and understanding among and between Christian myticism, Kabbalah (Judaic myticism), Sikhism (Hindu mysticism), Sufism (Muslim mysticism, most notably represented by the poet Rumi), and Zen and Mahayana Buddhist traditions.

   They all have basically the same answer to the problem indicated above: You have put the “world” above and over the “spirit”, the dynamic and “overflowing” (again, Nietzsche) force of creation, that not only generates life but drives it. You have thus lost faith, and attempted to put mere survival and power at the center of existence when these emanate from the spiritual center and are designed to serve it. And yet of course this is all built upon a denial of the inevitability of death (as are comfortable myths of the “afterlife”). Regardless what one believes (”eternal recurrence” aside), whether you believe in St. Peter at heaven’s gate, whether you believe we will be worm food, or whether you believe we will be reincarnated, this is still the only “this life” we shall have, and we ought live it well with the fullest and most inclusive grasp of both the reality of mortality and the infinite creative possibility accorded by our spiritual natures.

   Even the human will and its personified artifact (the ego) can be quite helpful if it serves that spiritual nature. It is only when the ego pronounces itself king and seeks (in the worldly way) to tell the divine what to do, to divide and conquer that we enter into the world of scarcity as necessity, rather than as a prompt to share and to invite ourselves toward the non-scarce sustenance of spirit itself. The “divine” as I express it counters the religious dogmas (worldly authority) passing themselves off as spiritual. For if you look closely at regressive religious practices (anti-empiricism, inquisition, sexism, racism, pedophilia, rapacious capitalism, homophobia), you find a desire to trap and control the spirits, natures, and divine possibilities of the human body, mind, and soul.

5. on 17 Apr 2007 at 11:42 am 5. Zeus said …

   Brian,

   I consciously used the word “acolyte” in a literary sense, both in its denotation as “a devoted attendant or follower” (of reason, of faith, etc.) and its religious connotation as “attendant of a higher church official”.

   What I aimed to do was compare and show how much “secular acolytes” share with “religious devotees” when both are following an ideology, rather than examining and creatively engaging the possibilities of their beliefs. Both “have the answer” and are somewhat sneering and contemptuous of the other. Religious ideologues call atheists like yourself “damned” (even as they damn themselves to bigotry and empirical delusion). But the reverse is also true: Appearing scientific in bent, does not immunize one from unscientific dogmatism in practice, including dismissing faith as a psychological need for mommy and as a crutch for the weak-mindeded, and claiming there can be no God.

   I respect agnosticism and even another’s belief that there is no God. If one honestly doesn’t believe or doesn’t know, one should be encouraged to express that. Faith requires honesty, and to the extent atheists and agnostics acknowledge and open their root beliefs, it is my belief that they are, in fact, closer to God than religious zealots. In fact, in this regard, I recommend, “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis, a committed atheist who became Christian through inquiry, not despite it.

   However, I cannot support someone asserting there CAN be no God, for that is foreclosing possibility, arrogantly asserting the unprovable, and seeking to impose an untenable ideology on an “unwilling” world.

   Clearly there are those who don’t need to be dogmatic at all, but see the “proof” of existence in what both science and faith can create in human existence. I am not “enlightened” in any final way. This, I think, has helped me to actually experience science and faith as necessary to each other, even as I understand the productive distinction between state and religion.

6. on 17 Apr 2007 at 1:01 pm 6. Aloysius said …

   Oh dear me, no! Asserting in very strong terms that there is in all likelihood no god and no spirit and that religion does not correspond to any truths about the world other than the workings of human minds is not dogmatic and not authoritarian and not in the least tiniest bit ideological.

   It is a rational conclusion, built upon very sturdy foundations. There are good reasons not to believe religious claims. (This doesn’t mean that you’re a terrible person if you do believe.) You cannot expect to start a dialogue between spiritualists and rationalists without acknowledging this, and it’s been my experience that the failure to do so has been the cause of more bad blood between religious and atheistic progressives than any other factor.

   I’ve always thought this was just…obvious. Am I mistaken?

   Look…

   (Obviously I’m about to generalise here. I don’t deny that there are more sophisticated and nuanced forms of religious belief. I don’t deny that rationalists often believe things they cannot prove. But honest rationalists need a reason before believing anything. There are quite a lot of reasons not to take religious claims at their face value. Are there any good reasons to actively believe any kind of spiritual claim?)

   Religion has been around for a very long time. Most of the religions that have ever existed are now extinct, and very few people nowadays would claim they were true. There seems little reason, based on our understanding of history, to think contemporary religions will in the long run meet any other fate.

   Many religions are mutually exclusive: there cannot be several One True Faiths. There seems to be little evidence to back up any one’s claims over all the others’.

   Many religions hold that, in the past, God or the gods spoke directly to people and passed along some wisdom or instructions. Yet this no longer appears to happen today. We all expect that most if not all contemporary folks who claim to have received communications from a higher power will prove to be sadly mistaken due to some kind of mental illness. The obvious conclusion is that this was most likely the case in the distant past as well.

   Many religions founded in recent times, such as Scientology or Mormonism, have been based on transparently fraudulent claims. Religion has often been appropriated by con men and bastards, and it can be very difficult to tell sincere statements of faith from cynical manipulation.

   Religion is typically based on revealed knowledge, on transcendental experiences that cannot generally be shared or in many ways even described to a skeptic. We do not regard revelation as a reliable source of knowledge in our daily lives, and with good reason.

   We have had over the last few centuries some wonderful successes in explaining physical phenomena in non-theological terms. While one might argue on philosophical grounds that we have no good reason beyond faith to believe this should continue to be the case, we have even less reason to believe it shouldn’t! There does not appear to be any evidence in the physical world for a god or gods, a soul, or an afterlife.

   I could go on.

   In short, the rational case for firm across-the-board Dawkins-on-steroids atheism is this: if you don’t approach religion already predisposed to treat it with a respect and deference we do not show to anything else in our experience, if you approach religion with the same skeptical outlook one should use on any other expansive and world-shaking claims, then religion looks just like belief in UFOs.

   Now I don’t mean to be offensive when I compare theology to UFOs, although I realise it could easily be taken that way. I’m not on a crusade to talk you out of your sincere faith, merely to help you see it from my perspective. I honestly, sincerely, from the very bottom of my heart, with all the good will in the world, don’t see the difference. I would love it if you could help me to see it, because you clearly think there is one.

   I’ve gotten into this same argument I can’t recall how many times now, and it always ends up stalled in the same exact place over this same exact issue in the end. I would love to finally make some progress, and I would particularly love it if anyone could explain to me convincingly why hardcore atheism is supposed to be any more dogmatic and intolerant than a disbelief in alien abductions.

7. on 17 Apr 2007 at 1:07 pm 7. Oaktown Girl said …

   Faith does not necessarily imply choice or freedom of belief.

   Ben, I may be unintentionally muddying the waters here because I’m at work and can’t read everything as carefully as I otherwise might, but I don’t think Zeus meant that faith implies choice. My interpretation of his statement:
   faith requires freedom of belief
   is that “real” (my poor wording) faith comes from an informed position, whereby people have arrived at their faith by examining and exploring many different traditions, and they are not simply following what their family, community, or government tells them is the “true” faith.

   Now of course, the definition of “real” faith is a slippery slope to say the least. Indeed, someone who has only experienced or been exposed to one tradition or practice can have faith as deep and profound as someone who has chosen their path after having been exposed to many. So I don’t mean to say that one sort of faith is more “real” than the other. But I certainly prefer (and think it’s better for society in general) for people to come to all their beliefs (faith and otherwise) having done some exploration on their own, and not just believing what someone else tells them to believe.

8. on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:14 pm 8. James Killus said …

   In what way is asserting a disbelief in God more “arrogant” than asserting belief? I confess to missing the thrust of the argument.

   Penn Jillette has a nice essay (actually an NPR segment) that expresses the counter-argument fairly well:

   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557

   Certainly I’ve known people whose beliefs amounted to scientism. I’m not one, since I think that scientism tends to produce a projection of one’s inner id onto what is then labeled “objective reality” and that can be fairly pernicious. Still, I’m bound to observe that scientism has, to the best of my knowledge, never produced an Inquisition, nor burned witches at the stake, nor produced a religious war. If those who have enlarged a lack of faith into active disbelief must answer for any and all imputed “arrogance,” should not those who are “of faith” also be held to account for those others who have added to human misery in the name of faith? And if there is a difference between your own, benign and loving faith and those other, malign and hating faiths, surely you can explain why those differences occur.

   I do hope that the answer doesn’t become simply a matter of “more faith” because that doesn’t seem to present a way to deal with the Inquisitors, the witch hunters, and the Holy Warriors, except, of course, through blood and iron, which do indeed present possibilities, but the possibilities aren’t “faith-based” are they?

9. on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:16 pm 9. Ben Alpers said …

   Oaktown Girl,

   I think you’re missing my point.

   I was trying to point out that some major religious traditions (the one I referenced was orthodox Calvinism, but my guess is that there are others as well) deny that faith has anything whatsoever to do with human will or choice. Faith, to Calvinists, is simply not a matter of choice at all. It doesn’t matter whether one is exposed to one religion, a hundred religions, or no religions. Either you’re predestined to receive the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit or you are not. End of story. You have no say in the matter.

   Nor does this account of faith, as Roger Williams pointed out centuries ago, imply coercion. Just as the individual human cannot choose faith, the state cannot impose it. It’s simply out of our control.

   This is not an account of faith (or for that matter the world) that I find at all sympathetic. But it seems to me no more obviously ridiculous than any other theistic belief system.

10. on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:19 pm 10. Ben Alpers said …

    Nor does this account of faith, as Roger Williams pointed out centuries ago, imply coercion. Just as the individual human cannot choose faith, the state cannot impose it. It’s simply out of our control.

    I should have said this more clearly. This account of faith does not imply that human institutions like the state or even the church should coerce faith. It absolutely implies that God coerces faith, as God’s grace, according to Calvinism, is irresistible. We can neither invite it, nor reject it.

11. on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:29 pm 11. Oaktown Girl said …

    Ben - I did get your point, and found it quite informative and interesting. My error was that I interpreted your first sentence to be in direct response to Zeus’ “faith requires freedom of belief” sentence.

    Looking at it again, I can see that is not necessarily what you had intended to do. Hey - I gave the “I’m at work” warning for a good reason (I’m directly across from my the boss’ office).

12. on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:59 pm 12. Jams said …

    This is going to sound weird, but I don’t actually support the separation of church and state. The differences between religions and political parties are no greater than the respective diversity among political parties and religions. I also agree with Ben that not all religions (or political parties for that matter) require or even acknowledge freewill.

    I’m more in favour of the separation of the state and stupidity, of which religious parties have something of a talent for creating.

    When it comes to religion and politics, I’m afraid, one can only pick sides.

13. on 17 Apr 2007 at 3:05 pm 13. Ben Alpers said …

    OG- Oh dear! I hope my response to you didn’t sound accusatory. I just feared that I had been unclear in my first post. And I know how posting from work goes…

    I guess I had been semi-responding to Zeus’s “faith requires freedom of belief” sentence. The Calvinist view of faith is, in effect, freedom-of-belief neutral. I don’t think it recommends trying to restrict belief, but it doesn’t benefit from unrestrained exploration of beliefs.

    (I should add, if it’s not obvious, that my experience with Calvinism is as an absolute outsider. I know it as an American intellectual historian. As for my own religion, I’m a very occasionally practicing and essentially non-believing Jew, FWIW.)

14. on 17 Apr 2007 at 3:29 pm 14. James Killus said …

    I think I’ll also be really mean and observe that while a particular religion may or may not believe it good to coerce others into its ranks, that says nothing about whether or not said religion believes that faith may offer a justification for coercing (or in the extreme, killing) others. Indeed, faith is frequently used to justify coercion within the faith itself.

    I’ll cop to believing pretty stongly that faith should not be used to justify coercing anyone under any circumstances. I can certainly devise reasons for coercion under some circumstances, but the idea of doing it as a matter of faith fills me with particular horror.

15. on 17 Apr 2007 at 4:11 pm 15. Brian said …

    The problem I have with your respect for “agnosticism and even another’s belief that there is no God“ is that with one hand thou givest, and with the other thou takest away.

    I don’t know who you’re referring to that feels immunized from unscientific dogmatism, or who thinks that they „have the answer“ because of their scientific worldview, but usually when I hear of these people, I can’t help thinking they’re made of straw for the express purpose of beating them with a stick.

    Scientism is not a belief that anyone actually ascribes to, but rather a charge made to attack a persons metaphysical commitments (I’m finding I really like that term from Dr. Free-ride’s posts), which, coming from a person of faith, I think is rather disingenuous.

    So while I should probably stop and acknowledge that you were being deliberately rude to a person or persons with a particular attitude towards scientific empiricism and Enlightenment tradition and not just anyone who grooves on those traditions, I would suggest that the people who hold the attitudes you’re thinking of may not be holding them for the reasons you think they are. Ergo, they’re probably going to be annoyed with you, and your ideas about faith.

    And still others of us will probably have to concede that we don’t really think that much of your “the scientismists are just like the religious fundamentalists” stance. While I agree with Dr. Free-ride that everyone has metaphysical commitments, I don’t think all metaphysical commitments are created equal.

16. on 17 Apr 2007 at 4:26 pm 16. Seattle said …

    There’s nothing like religion and politics to get the juices flowing, is there? So I was sitting here at work yesterday listening to a conversation between coworkers. We were all waiting for a meeting to start in which it was to be announced, “gasp” that we were being shuffled off to another manager-commonly known as a ‘reorg’. So coworker A, a strongly Christian gentleman from the great state of Texas, was probing the religious beliefs of coworker B, a local gal. She was diplomatically trying to position herself as agnostic, while he was plowing forward in true believer style; “I KNOW there is a God…” etc. They were both fumbling a bit with the concept of agnosticism as she was feeling a bit pressured, so I turned around and said, “The agnostic reserves judgement.” Period. My Texan coworker quieted down a bit after that-perhaps he perceived in some vague way that he’d overstepped his bounds. I bring this up because I know that for some religious faiths, to not evangelize is the equivalent of letting someone drown without bothering to throw them a rope. All the educated world is familiar with the unfortunate outcomes that have resulted from religious faith taken to extremes (Hark, is that another suicide bomb I hear going off?)but in some ways we focus on those extremes to the detriment of all the people who don’t take it to extremes.

17. on 17 Apr 2007 at 4:42 pm 17. christian h. said …

    Hark, is that another suicide bomb I hear going off?

    Ahem. Suicide bombings are not necessarily religiously motivated, they are simply instruments of violent struggle - a tactic. In fact, the condemnation of suicidal violence as particularly amoral (more so, than, say, aerial bombardment) is, I believe, a Christian thing and not at all universal across cultures.
    Religious violence is more commonly manifested as ruling class oppression, in my opinion (reflecting that organized religion - as opposed to personal spirituality - is a power structure like any other).

18. on 17 Apr 2007 at 4:44 pm 18. Seattle said …

    So let’s get down to it then. Are we complaining about religion in politics, or humans using religion as a control method to manipulate other humans?

19. on 17 Apr 2007 at 4:48 pm 19. christian h. said …

    Can I complain about both? Or do I have to choose?

20. on 17 Apr 2007 at 4:50 pm 20. Seattle said …

    To restate: humans manipulate humans for a variety of reasons and one of the methods used is organized religion. I would posit that we live in an indirect theocracy already-how many of our political leaders belong to an organized religion, pray on a regular basis, listen to sermons of some sort, etc.? And they run…this country.

21. on 17 Apr 2007 at 5:00 pm 21. christian h. said …

    See, I would turn this on its head and claim that organized religion is employed as (not the right word - as it implies a conscious agent “employing” - maybe “serves as” is more accurate?) a means of social control in order to advance material interests of the ruling classes.

22. on 17 Apr 2007 at 5:33 pm 22. Oaktown Girl said …

    [Officially on break]

    Ben - thanks for the kind follow-up. Check back in later tonight or tomorrow. When I get off work, I have another “faith” related scenario just for you!

    And you were very clear, which is why the Minister of Justice eagerly awaits your first post. And I can say the same for a whole lot of you folks out there. Don’t get stuck in the “But I’m not a writer” or “I’m not a blogger” rut.

    James said:
    I can certainly devise reasons for coercion under some circumstances, but the idea of doing it as a matter of faith fills me with particular horror.

    James - what’s your problem? You’re usually such a reasonable fellow. You make it sound like, “Because my God told me to” is somehow an unsatisfactory answer.

    Seattle - nicely handled in the workplace with your “The agnostic reserves judgement.” And very good point about, “to not evangelize is the equivalent of letting someone drown without bothering to throw them a rope”. Yeah, I understand it. But that doesn’t make me any more comfortable about it!

    Suicide bombings are not necessarily religiously motivated, they are simply instruments of violent struggle - a tactic.
    Agreed, christian. It’s all too easy and common to point the finger at suicide bombings without pointing a finger at what’s happening on the other side of that. (Not that Seattle meant to point fingers).

23. on 17 Apr 2007 at 7:33 pm 23. Zeus said …

    Great comments. I think I will start with the last comment and work my way backward. First a distinction: There is an infinite difference between religion (which is worldly and insitutional in nature) and faith (which is, in my understanding, an active and interactive engagement with the spiritual). There is much that is ineffable and mysterious about the “spiritual”, but there is also much that is observable.

    1) Religion largely HAS served as a means of social control to advance the interests of ruling classes, as it has been an “opiate of the masses.” What better evidence than income-poor fundamentalist Christians voting for GW Bush, and his cynical band of ex-Marxist neo-conservatives (many of whom openly have contempt for anything other than the manipulation potential of religion), to screw them economically and socially (in terms of cut services). Spiritual engagement, seen notably in the Black churches in the civil rights movement, on the other hand has shown itself to be dedicated to human liberation, not manipulation and oppression. Marching non-violently into firehouses, police dogs, and lynchings is not a rationalist exercise, but a faith exercise, and one that had dramatic, empirical effects on practical justice and changes in the driving moral principles of this nation. So let us at least accord some worldly significance to spiritual courage and commitment.

    2) “Rationalists believe things they cannot prove” and spiritualists believe things that cannot be disproven. Again my argument about arrogance is not about “what” one believes, but how one exercises belief in the presence of others.

    Scientism (scientific method is objective and only “true” means of assessing truth), overreaching atheism (God is impossible, and anyone who believes otherwise is an idiot), and religionism (Convert or be damned) all share far more than that which disunites them– and overweening certitude and a desire to force this certitude not only on others but on a changing world which laughs at their pretension. Even if one says, “There is in all likelihood no God” that is still an admission of some possibility of God, and that is all that I ask for as a fellow citizen.

    Nor do I need to simply take it on faith that there is a God. I don’t see God as a supernatural entity. My own belief in God grew on an Ohio organic farm, in the form of a kind of naturalistic theism, where I met God in my experiences, learning, wisdom, and design of nature. I was never “churched” until I chose to attend church (first Unitarian and now progressive Protestant). My belief comes from interactive observation and experience with spiritual forces neither benign, benevolent, nor malevolent, but rather wise and creative. Can I “transfer” this engagement and experience to someone else? Is spirit “reproducible”. No but it is, in my experience, communicable, and therefore not merely personal and transcendental.

    3) Should this “communicability” take on the form of “evangelism” which means attempts to “convert” others. In my experience, evangelism of this sort is a great way to prevent the spiritual from entering into the lives of beings. Faith is displaced by a sell-job. One has to choose to open, and be influenced by a larger wisdom, and not simply be spoon fed salvation. Evangelism in my sense, and the sense communicated in the New Testament means sharing the “good news” the Gospel, which some take to mean John 3:16 (”I am the way and the light”), but to me is far more simple: “The basic ground of human existence is joy and abundance, creativity, and peace.” This is the result of a kind of grace that allows all things to be possible.

    Again, this can be tested and shown. Joy can exist in even very trialsome times and depends not on naivete about the bad but on its opposite, awareness of the good, the power of love that has shown itself over time to progressively overcome prejudice and hatred. There is still much to do and Black churches must now deal with a strong current of homophobia. But I challenge anyone, with all the barriers certain religion have erected to this moral and spiritual progress: Has this resistance to love been successful in an ultimate way?

    4) For me God is not a supernatural entity. Nor is spiritual knowledge mainly, for me, of a purely personal, revealed, nor even transcendental nature. My experience of faith and spirit is just that, experienced, embodied, and deepening. My greatest spiritual insights have come from descent into the core of injustice, grief, and the possibilities of love, not ascent. One does not have to bandy about supposed examples of people accurately describing their “death scene” from an out-of-body experience to confirm spiritual experience empirically. Simply witness a former slave trader who “saw the light”, composed “Amazing Grace”, and became a devotee of God and just living. So “there are good reasons to actively believe any kind of spiritual claim.” Spirit infuses and interacts with the world. It is not simply a belief.

    5) What must one believe to be Christian, religious, spiritual, etc.? I’m not sure there is any single thing one can insist someone believe. Some insist you must believe, for instance, (incredible to the rationalist) that Christ was physically resurrected from the dead. I (unlike the rationalist) believe it is possible, but I also (unlike the conventional Christian) don’t need to believe it. My belief is in spiritual resurrection, something which I have experienced in my own life. In fact, it would seem that both religionists and rationalist cling to the physical in the form of “miracles” or “discovery/testing” as the only “proof” of truth. I believe that their are other dimensions of reality that can inform truth.

    6) Again conversion and coercion have no place in my understanding of faith. Virtue cannot be imposed (but certain vices may be prevented by certain kinds of imposition), any more than democracy can be imposed by the point of gun. Virtue and democracy emanate from the hearts and minds of people “inspired and enlightened” enough to realize a vision, to draw out their own courage to follow conviction into the world. This “following into the world” can be distorted and zealous or it can be honoring.

    7) I am not a great defender of institutionalized religion, even as I recognize the crucial importance of a community of shared worship (the “sangha” as one might say in Buddhism). Observation shows that when push comes to shove institutionalized religion will choose secular power over spiritual power. Many have indeed formed as cults of personality, including Mormonism (if one is to believe Krakauer’s book “Under the Banner of Heaven”) and Scientology (if one is to believe Wikipedia under “L. Ron Hubbard”/”Scientology”). It is curious to me though, that the conceits of religious expression (or manipulation) are emphasized and used to invalidate its demonstrated and unique power for justice, morality, and creativity.

    Citizen Zeus

24. on 17 Apr 2007 at 8:20 pm 24. christian h. said …

    Rereading what I wrote, it’s simplistic. Of course, there are also numerous examples of religious organization as expression of unity of the oppressed. A current example would be (certain forms of) “radical Islam.”

25. on 17 Apr 2007 at 8:57 pm 25. Brian said …

    Well Citizen Zeus, you certainly have an interesting conception of faith — one that I confess I have not come across before (don’t know that many people from Ohio, for one). But whatever the particulars, and despite likely disagreements on the nature of rationality, doubt, and uncertainty, I think we can agree that coersion is not a good thing.

26. on 17 Apr 2007 at 10:50 pm 26. James Killus said …

    Well, to paraphrase an old argument, I can see that there are many gods in which you do not believe; I only disbelieve in one more than you do.

27. on 17 Apr 2007 at 11:10 pm 27. Zeus said …

    Oh, and yes scientism has directly inspired atrocities. It was scientismic eugenics (as bad as the actual science itself was), the perverse use of an “objective” scientific method (esp. in the U.S. and Britain) that stoked and supported Nazi ideology.

28. on 17 Apr 2007 at 11:50 pm 28. Oaktown Girl said …

    Ben -
    On a more lighthearted note, here’s the “faith” bit I promised you (above in #22):

    For those of you who don’t know, when the A’s beat the (much hated) Yankees on Sunday (taking the series 2 out of 3, thank you very much), the winning walk off home run by Marco Scutaro came with the A’s down by 2, 2 on base, 2 out, and an 0-2 count. I was still swooning about this discussing this at work today (it’s still Tues. here at MOJ HQ) with a sister A’s fan who was at the game. The situation certainly looked dire for sure, especially with sensation Mariano Rivera on the mound to close it out. But my co-woker said that she had “faith” in Marco to get the job done. And so it was.

    I just thought that was amusing considering the subject of Zeus’ post today. And for those of you who missed it, here’s the YouTube link - a “home” video (slightly shakey camera work but very well edited) since any real MLB footage is going to get removed by YouTube. Jump to 00:37 to get right to the winning home run - which hit the foul pole, no less.

    Ben, this year’s team is gonna give me a heart attack before May if this continues.

29. on 18 Apr 2007 at 12:06 am 29. JP Stormcrow said …

    (above in #22):

    Hmmm, There must be a “catch” in there somewhere with all of those 2’s.

30. on 18 Apr 2007 at 5:50 am 30. Jams said …

    […] demonstrated and unique power for justice, morality, and creativity. - Citizen Zeus

    Balderdash. There is nothing uniquely just or moral about any religion. It’s outrageous romanticism to even suggest it.

    It was scientismic eugenics (as bad as the actual science itself was), the perverse use of an “objective” scientific method (esp. in the U.S. and Britain) that stoked and supported Nazi ideology. - Citizen Zeus

    Nazi ideology was stoked and supported by a thousand years of Christians persecuting Jews. If you’re going to blame secondary supports, you might as well blame computers, food, machines, gunpowder, and laterhosen; all of which aided Nazi survival (ok, I’m reaching with the laterhosen).

    But, eugenics is an interesting example of bad science. It’s interesting to note that eugenics (very popular in the early 19th century) is far less popular today than the notion that Jews killed Jesus, or even the very silly story that Jews dine on the blood of virgin babies, or more importantly, it’s far less popular than the idea that one’s “people” are especially important because of the high regard a mythological being holds them in.

    But, I’m not here to defend science. I don’t have to defend science.

31. on 18 Apr 2007 at 10:21 am 31. James Killus said …

    At the risk of continuing an example of Godwin’s Law, I’ll note that the Nazi/scientism argument fails any examination of the actual relationship between science and Nazism. The Nazi’s regularly referred to “Aryan science” and “Jewish science” which clearly places science as subservient to some higher authority. One might just as well blame scientism for “creation science.”

    Nevertheless, eugenics itself is a good example of what I was referring to earlier when I noted that scientism makes it easy for the psychological projection of inner needs onto “objective reality.” On reflection, I’ll amend my earlier comment however, to suggest that the psychological projection includes not just id components, but also superego components, especially those that are authoritarian in nature. Hence, one can blame such things as the Tuskegee Experiment on that aspect of scientism. The workers at Tuskegee suffered real anguish at the immorality of what they were doing, and would never have performed those actions had they not been operating under the “authority of science.”

    I’ve just posted another example of such behavior here:

    http://unintentional-irony.blogspot.com/2007/04/crime-of-thomas-jefferson.html

    Nevertheless, if one is attribing evil behaviors to the philosophical excuses that are used to justify those behaviors, even in the worst cases, scientism is so far behind religion that it is doubtful that it will ever catch up. There are a few religions that might escape this judgment (Jainism comes to mind), but generally speaking, if a religion has sufficient authority to modify human behavior and prescribe an ethical and moral code, then that religion has been abused by those who use authority to further their own ends, frequently by immoral means. And ultimately, faith, by its very nature, provides no defense against such authoritarianism. Indeed, an examination of the evidence suggests that the reverse it true.

32. on 18 Apr 2007 at 12:36 pm 32. spyder said …

    Working my way through the 31 comments for the first time, i noticed a couple of things. First no one, including Zeus, mentioned that faith, as used by those who study religions, requires an object as a predicate word: I have faith… in ???…something (including a pitcher for the A’s evidently).

    Second, Zeus seems to let his semiotics as regards faith wander about too much for my tastes. At times he substitutes it for “grace,” at other times “credo,” and again further as “belief.” The word faith is too often used to symbolize and/or represent a single religious tradition or sect, and this further adds to the confusion. For example it is not uncommon to hear, or read, something like: he is of the Buddhist faith. No, Buddhists don’t really have faith in the same sense that others of different religions would have. Rather, it would be proper to say: “she is a Buddhist.

    Not really having the full head of time here to justly serve this great thread, i will suggest that we all need to be careful about how we use terms such as these. As mentioned, metaphysics is one of the normative areas of study in which one can discuss faith as an expression of human behavior, usually exemplified by verbalization. We can ask people about their faith, their religious creeds and expressions of their spiritual (construct) relations with ???? . We can discuss the theological and ontological considerations of that person’s faith, and eventually examine the religious behaviors associated with the particular sect as well as how those behaviors become manifest in the political and social realms outside of the religion.

    There are also descriptive studies (disciplines) that can examine faith for its characteristics and exemplars. Psychologists and sociologists have spent years working on that study, and there are now many engaged in the scientific study of consciousness who would say that faith is part of their field of research. Likewise art historians and literary critics can examine artifacts and documents that were created to express faith in this or that religious tradition/culture. Dr. FreeRide’s efforts are much along these lines; examining descriptively “metaphysical commitments” before delving normatively into the metaphysics themselves.

    The small problem in all of this derives from my making a statement such as: “I have faith in my ability to drive safely on a crowded freeway in LA travelling at 50 mph.” As i mentioned in another post, we cannot rationally assume that we can drive safely in those conditions, as our physical beings are not capable of processing all of the information necessary to make the experience logically safe. Thus we take our ability on faith; or put our faith in the associations and assumptions of which we cannot really know, but without which we cannot (more likely would not) make the drive. Certainly Zeus would not concur that this example of faith does not represent his initial constructed exposition.

    again, must run, and this was hurried, apologize for typos and poor syllogism.

    though sometime attributed through expressions of others observations (i could tell X had a deep faith in Siva, because X did a,b,c, etc.).

33. on 18 Apr 2007 at 2:50 pm 33. Zeus said …

    Two fairly quick clarifications:

    Faith, in the way I am using it, is “exercised” and refers to an open-minded and open-hearted step, as an active capacity, into uncertainty (including the unknown), possibility, creativity, and ultimately love. “Faith” in my ability to drive and arrive safely at my destination is more about “confidence” in my ability to drive and “optimism” at arriving safely. Both are meanings associated with faith but neither is what I am trying to describe.

    Words like “love” and “faith” can mean many (even opposite) things. Paternalistic love, for instance, is anathema to what I conceive of as beneficial love, and even prevents the requirements (i.e. agency, reciprocity, honoring, learning) that I consider central to love. I am most interested in either faith or love being exercised in a way that can be discussed and engaged in a novel way. Hence, I attempted to start a discussion not around all the ways “faith” can be defined, used, and abused, for there are many understandings but a particular, often underserved, notion of faith, which far from providing certainty, provides capacity to productively engage (note: not resolve) uncertainty. The former tries to annihilate uncertainty, the second honors it. These are opposite concepts but the same words.

    It is almost certainly true that given the full sweep of history that religionism has created more montrosity than scientism. But scientism is a fairly recent historical phenomenon, and appears to want to catch up. Is there something INNATELY associated with scientism that makes it more benign or redemptive. Yes and no. Recognition of the empirical as central to its operation, makes science less likely to ignore, global warming, for instance, and less likely to want to hasten Armaggedon (which some in the religious Right actually seem to think desirable according to their “faith”). It would be hard to find a scientific tenet that would lend itself to overtly hastening planetary destruction, but there are, in fact, certain (even populous) necrophilic religious sects who believe it is desirable.

    On the “no” side there is notion that faith and religion have helped to challenge the “Frankenstein syndrome” of scientistic excess. It is morality, faith, etc. that call out the Tuskagee experiment or the “prison experiment” or the Milgram “shock” experiments or the second dropping of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. There is a certain “objective” distancing in the conduct of science that can lead to “we build the bombs; we don’t drop them” which can be countered by the intimacy and recognition of humanity required by what I might term “healthy” faith. Jesus’ “love thy enemy” may be one of the most radical and broad-ranging examples. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not demanded by science. Even if religion often does the opposite it is INNATE to certain religious traditions (in texts and history) to be able to challenge abuse and propound a reakening to the radical tenets of love and humanity.

34. on 18 Apr 2007 at 3:45 pm 34. James Killus said …

    Zeus,

    I could follow your arguments until this last post, but I simply have no idea what you are talking about when you link “scientism” to Nagasaki. You seem to be conflating science, technology, and scientism, just as you also speak of “morality, faith, etc.” These are not fair linkages.

    Morality does not require faith, but it does require subjective judgment. Are you, in some fashion, confusing “faith” with an individual’s viewpoint and experience? If so, that would explain a lot of why I find your arguments so confused/confusing.

    As for “scientism…appears to want to catch up” I’m really going to need some better examples than you’ve given, because I simply don’t consider those to be scientism. And as I’ve noted, I’m no fan of scientism.

35. on 18 Apr 2007 at 9:41 pm 35. Zeus said …

    James,

    Nagasaki is the quintessential “repeatable test,” something quite institutional to good science, yet perverted in amoral scientism. When one has a new invention or phenomenon, it is important to collect corroborating data with repeated tests. Science cannot by its own tenets of operation necessarily distinguish nor oppose a repeatable test which destroys thousands of humans, because these humans are phenomena and data like anything else. Why was it necessary to drop a second atomic bomb? It wasn’t. Purely military or functionalist explanations does not pass the smell test. The second bomb was a monstrous and unnecessary destruction of human life.

    The application of scientific tenets to effect ideoology (and montrosity) is what I would call scientism. The application of religious tenets to effect ideology (and monstrosity) is what I call religionism. Again there is a difference between embracing (describing, exploring, engaging, etc. conducted in science or religion) and imposing (destroying, controlling, etc., the “ism” turn). The latter reposits the ongoing creative and analytic processes and humilities of a tradition into a largely static and personified idol (a “false god” if you will) which then exerts its own reality without restraint or acknowledgement, with a kind of hubris that usually has harmful, oppressive, and propagandizing effects.

    What is subjective judgement based upon if not a kind of faith (unless one wants to reduce this to yet another “ism”– psychologism)? Reason may give us ways to adjudicate different claims, but it cannot capture the ground of the claims themselves. Reason cannot provide life, or hope, or justice, or dignity, nor tell us where gravity comes from or even what “it” is. Nor do ordinary persons give to each other because they have some rational utilitarian calculation about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This is where reason and faith come together, faith alone cannot answer how one might most effectively prevent injustice. Analysis helps significantly to delineate effective from ineffective response.
    Yet science does not yield the compelling force of conscience that might help us both know and feel deeply that killing people is bad, that loving your neighbor is good.

    In my belief, that conscience has a spiritual origin. The possible nature of the origin and its attributes is a topic for a longer conversation. Analysis, on the other hand, is of “what happened” informing us as to what may happen (and how to perhaps respond). Yet what gave rise to the happening in the first place?

    We can trace causes all the way to a Big Bang and say that the universe sprang from an infinitely small point in space, but why, and how did that point exist in the first place is nearly impossible to explain. Observables and are the objective currency of science. Imponderables are the intimate currency of faith (which operates even in science). What is the difference between “a priori” or “sui generis” and “deus ex machina”? In fact it is when we have broadened our perception through the invention of instruments and the shifting of conceptual paradigms (”inspirations” if you will) that we discover a wider universe that “wasn’t” (observed) there before. Often the steps along the way to significant scientific discovery, by scientists own admission (Einstein notably) are acts and leaps of faith.

    Citizen Zeus

36. on 19 Apr 2007 at 10:26 am 36. James Killus said …

    Zeus,

    With all due respect, this:

    Nagasaki is the quintessential “repeatable test,” something quite institutional to good science, yet perverted in amoral scientism. When one has a new invention or phenomenon, it is important to collect corroborating data with repeated tests. Science cannot by its own tenets of operation necessarily distinguish nor oppose a repeatable test which destroys thousands of humans, because these humans are phenomena and data like anything else. Why was it necessary to drop a second atomic bomb? It wasn’t. Purely military or functionalist explanations does not pass the smell test. The second bomb was a monstrous and unnecessary destruction of human life.

    is pure crap. I have no idea how you came up with this. I have never seen a single line of text in any history of the Manhattan Project that suggest that anyone ever suggested that the Nagasaki bombing was done for “scientific” reasons. I have, however, read of an incident where one of the Los Alamos scientists responded to an anti-nuclear placard reading “A Bomb Didn’t End the War,” with the response, “That’s right. It took two.”

    If you do not understand the emotional difference between a single occurrance, which may be shrugged off as being all that was available, and a second occurrance, which implies that more may be on the way, I suggest you consider what our country could be like now if there were another attack of similar magnitude and carnage to 9/11. In fact, I’ll even suggest that the anthrax scare immediately after 9/11 served a similar role in stampeding the nation into insanity, despite the fact that the Islamic connection part of it was an obvious hoax.

    In any case, your claim tht the idea of military or functional reasons “not passing the smell test” is as arrogant as anything I’ve ever seen. You are arguing not only that every military decision maker at that time was acting in bad faith, but you are also arguing that many religious individuals were closet adherents to scientism.

    As for What is subjective judgement based upon if not a kind of faith[?], I’ll note that even physics accepts the idea of relative viewpoint being an acceptible concept, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone get away with the claim that my own personal subjective experience hinges on no more than someone else’s belief that I’m going to hell when I die.

37. on 19 Apr 2007 at 11:17 am 37. Aloysius said …

    Faith…You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    As the old saying goes.

38. on 19 Apr 2007 at 12:24 pm 38. Zeus said …

    Who am I to question that we had to “destroy Vietnam in order to save it.” I’m sure ultimately the wise experts who ran the war were saving countless future lives by strafing villages.

    I reject this reasoning, the same reasoning militant Islamic radicals could use to justify another 9/11. I have seen no convincingly legitimate empirical, rational, or moral explanation for the second bomb. All of them I have viewed have been speculative and tainted by a background assumption as to the virtue of totalizing domination in martial conduct (no matter what that takes), a desire to crush the soul of a civilization and force its people into abject humiliation, grief, and ultimately surrender. It certainly isn’t empathy or love.

    There are plenty of fantasies about some future good which justifies these kinds of atrocities. I find them utterly repugnant, and they exemplify exactly what I mean by “Frankenstein syndrome”, a twisted desire to control life and death. Sure, that’s one way to win a war, but it is grotesque and abominable morally as it is unnecessary rationally. This is only confirmed by the rationally and empirically disastrous effects of “shock and awe” in Iraq. The bombing of the infrastructure made Iraq riper for terrorists, not more protected. Force was used as a first resort and now we are paying the price, our country’s soul and reputation here, and the lives of largely poorer and minority American soldiers abroad..

    It is within the culture of science to be fascinated by death (military industry, bio-weapons, etc.), and an opposing ethic toward understanding and promoting life (stem cell, Union of Concerned Scientists, global warming opposition), as it is within human culture. I do not believe for a minute that science is simply immoral nor pure and unstained. Science cannot be separated from its culture. Before Barbara McClintock, Lynn Margulis and other women scientists (not to mention the development of Lorenzo’s Oil to accomodate viruses that ate away the myelin sheath of nerves by a pair of non-scientists), science was dominated by so-called “masculine” metaphors of war in immunology, competition in evolutionary biology (Darwinism which easily translated into the scientism of Social Darwinism), and so forth. Those metaphors and that culture is important, and scientists should accept responsibility not only in how these metaphors and resulting technology might be used and distorted to serve other purposes (military, social, moral, etc.) but recognize how these metaphors may limit and distort the usefulness and expansion of scientific horizons.

    So you are in favor of the scientist who implicated himself by saying, “it took two” to end the war. Well I don’t have an argument there. You’ve definitely left me speechless. Do you support this? Apparently you do and you think it is arrogant for me to suggest otherwise. I’m not aware of any religions that supported the second bombing in Nagasaki at the time (though you are likely to find some now among the Armageddon crowd), but here is a scientist who clearly did. You do not have to act in “bad faith” to do the morally wrong thing. You can train your own mind to believe you are achieving a moral good by exterminating others, which is exactly what happens in wars and holocausts with words like “gook” and comparisons of Jews with rats.

    I found the next paragraph you wrote exceedingly disturbing: “If you do not understand the emotional difference between a single occurrance, which may be shrugged off as being all that was available, and a second occurrance, which implies that more may be on the way, I suggest you consider what our country could be like now if there were another attack of similar magnitude and carnage to 9/11.”

    Are you suggesting that the second bomb was necessary because the Japanese might have shrugged off the instantaneous killing of 65,000+ people with one bomb as ‘all we have available’? That defies even rudimentary logic much less moral sensibility.

    The second part of the statement is even more confusing. I do consider what our country would be like now with a second 9/11, a lot worse off: more paranoia, more stress, more vulnerability, more uncertainty and depression, more angst and humiliation… THAT’S WHY I AM ARGUING AGAINST a second bomb in Nagasaki, because I realize its extraordinary human costs not only in terms of dying but living, if it happened in our society. The analogy you provide supports my reasoning.

    Abstract reasoning should not displace lived consequences or care, for it may be your or my family that gets bombed tomorrow to serve someone else’s speculation and ideology. The courage to create a world is which care and love will predominate over war and domination, all evidence to the contrary, is the very substance and sustenance of my faith life and it is the very thing that moves justice forward.

    Citizen Zeus

39. on 19 Apr 2007 at 1:56 pm 39. Aloysius said …

    “The courage to create a world is which care and love will predominate over war and domination, all evidence to the contrary, is the very substance and sustenance of my faith life and it is the very thing that moves justice forward.”

    Well that’s very nice, but what does that have to do with rationalism or some mythical “scientism” and why, if you’re just interested in discussing your faith, do you find it necessary to bring in all these tangential issues? This discussion has become deeply muddied, and at this point I’m not even sure what we’re aiming for.

40. on 19 Apr 2007 at 7:00 pm 40. Zeus said …

    From Wikipedia: “Scientism is a term often used today as a pejorative[1][2][3] to describe someone of holding the view that science has primacy over all other interpretations of life such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations. It has also been applied to the view that natural sciences have primacy over other fields of inquiry such as social sciences…. The Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer, for example, self-identifies as scientistic and defines scientism as “a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science.”[6]”

    There you have it, scientism (or religionism) believes in its own supremacy, believes it has primacy in all matters of reality and interpretation, and, frankly, refuses to acknowledge its limitations. There have been plenty of critiques of my expression of the nature of faith, which critiques both scientism and religionism, but, as yet, not one commentor has admitted the limitations of science and scientism. As I have tried to reveal these limitations, I’ve had some pretty dramatic responses, but none granting the partiality of a natural science worldview as a comprehensive metaphysics nor of the dangers and hubris of doing so. So I have identified that partiality and danger in both scientism and religionism, and I’ve gotten outrage, not engagement.

    One particularly nifty line, “I don’t think faith means what you think it means” sums up the presumption of persons who reject faith, spirituality, and religion to define faith for people of faith. It mirrors the presumption of “intelligent design” advocates to define “creation science” as science. Is there anyone in this conversation who actually believes an active, experiential faith is possible, is anything other than a delusion, or a plague, or a body of arbitrary personal belief, or institutional dogma mainly used to oppress, manipulate, and exploit others. Is there anyone willing to be open minded, not preemptively dismissing it because it does not fit with the precepts of natural science? That is scientism in action.

    Rational analysis is indispensable. It is necessary, but not sufficient. That is the claim I make about faith as well. Rationality provides a check and reference to individual opinion, but does not provide a sufficient, nor ultimately superior, ground for existence or experience. Rationalism can and has been used to undermine humane and decent presence in the world, or deny joy and love, as has religion. It, nor religionism, is wholly virtuous.

    Faith, in my understanding, is a verb. It is experiential, not a merely a concept or a tool. From your responses you do get this sense, a sense you would have to experience for yourselves in order to get it. You’ve described it pejoratively as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, an attribute. Faith cannot simply be contained by the rational so you dismiss it. That’s rationalism. Yet faith exists and extends beyond the rational into the non-rational. It may even contain the rational. The non-rational is not a void, or disorder, or mayhem. There are ways to understand, know, and experience the non-rational (even described by the very rational practice of Buddhism, that “get beyond concepts” toward “nothingness”, toward “beingness” and “interbeing”). But these are unavailable to those who will not explore, who deny the possibility. There is nothing more to be said.

    Even the agnostic artist may know something of God in the non-rational act of creativity (which is also made possible and enhanced by mindful and rational skills like understanding composition, space, proportion). But I cannot rationally convince anyone it is possible until they decide to open up and enter there into that supposed nothingness that is guarded and barred only by contempt or insistence on impossibility.

    Citizen Zeus

41. on 20 Apr 2007 at 8:37 am 41. Aloysius said …

    “Is there anyone in this conversation who actually believes an active, experiential faith is possible, is anything other than a delusion, or a plague, or a body of arbitrary personal belief, or institutional dogma mainly used to oppress, manipulate, and exploit others. Is there anyone willing to be open minded, not preemptively dismissing it because it does not fit with the precepts of natural science?”

    I’ll be open to the possibilities of faith when you supply me with one convincing reason to be.

42. on 20 Apr 2007 at 12:14 pm 42. James Killus said …

    The firebombing of Tokyo took place on February 23-24, 1945. It killed over 70,000 people, more than the number who died in Nagasaki. It was the most successful firebombing raid of WWII, probably killing twice as many people as the earlier raid of Dresden. The reason why Tokyo was not targeted for nuclear attack was because there was basically nothing left for a further firestorm to burn.

    Firestorms are not trivial to create, if one uses only conventional incendaries, and other attempts (excepting Dresden) were less successful. Nuclear weapons, however, do the trick every time.

    Since everyone likes to quote the Wikipedia, apparently:

    Former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoe’s statement that, fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s, lends support to this view. More recently, historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argued in Racing the Enemy (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005) that the principal factor for Japan’s decision to surrender was not the atomic bombs and the fire-bombings of Japanese cities, but the Soviet renunciation of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and declaration of war on Japan.

    So Hasegaway believes that Japan feared the Soviet Union more than it feared continuing nuclear attack. Well, that’s convenient. I guess old belt-and-suspenders Truman was taking no chances when he arranged for both.

    I recognize my mother’s face by a process that I cannot rationally describe, but I do not argue that I take that recognition on faith. I do need my own two eyes to see her, my own two ears to hear her voice. Similarly, I recognize such things as will, character, cussedness, good will, beligerance, kindness, and beauty, but I take none of these things on faith, or at least, not on what I call faith.

    If someone wants to claim that the taste of an orange, or the beauty of a child, or the pleasure of an evening spent with friends are all examples of faith, then that is, I suppose, their right. But I do believe that words are meant to illuminate and describe, and language is ill-served when words are used willy-nilly to fit whatever argument a speaker or writer is making at the time. I also have trouble with specialized jargon that makes commonly used words carry weight that they do not usually carry.

    If “faith” means “everything that is not science” or even “everything that is not the direct product of reason,” then the word ceases to mean what it usually means. Where I came from, I got a lot of, “the only source of ethics and morals is faith in God,” and I recognized it for a con job. That recognition was not something I considered a matter of faith; I saw it with my own two eyes.

43. on 03 May 2007 at 11:50 am 43. The Constructivist said …

    Going back to my “cruise missile left” crack, Russell Arben Fox does his usual and much appreciated thoughtful response to both sides of the debate. Just for those (like me) who thought nothing good could come of that particular blogspat.