My Answer to Austin Cline

Austin Cline



Somehow I missed this, but back in August of this last year (2008) Austin Cline, well known internet atheist, attacked one of my little blog pieces on "The End of Atheism," or soemthing. His article is called:
Joe Hinman: Atheism is Dead, In Its Last Days" (as dead things usually are). Thursday August 21, 2008. . It refers to my original blog, Last Days of Outmoded Atheism (May 15, 2007). Cline does link to the original. He writes:

Denial seems to be a common reaction to atheism: denial of what atheism is, that atheists exist, and so forth. Some religious theists seem to be simply unable to accept some aspects of reality when reality intrudes on comforting religious assumptions. The consequences of denial are never good because reality doesn't go away simply because you refuse to accept it, and atheism isn't going to go away simply because some theists find it easier to think that it is "dead" and on its way out.

First of all, my constant readers know that I was an atheist. Atheism has been through a transformation since the internet. I was an atheist when it was the province of an intellectual elite that mainly met each other on university campuses and there was no internet. I am well aware that atheism exists, although I'm not so sure the kind of atheism with which I was associated still exists. In my day it was an intellectual position, rather than an excuse to feel superior by venting rage against people on the internet. Instead we felt superior by thinking of ourselves as an intellectual elite. Atheim by the real definition (the one he will push--merely a lack of belief in God) is only 1.6% of the American population. That is according to the most authoritative survey done to date, "US Religious Landscape"the Pew study from last year.

Some figures go as high as 17%. Many atheists quoted Pew to say 17% were atheist. But when we look at the details of the study they break down the figures to show only 1.6% are actually atheists. The rest of them are actually everywhere across the board from "I don't know" to "there's a higher power but I don't like organized religion." The percentage of people who actually fit the definition that organized atheism wants to push (merely an absence of belief in God or gods) only amount to 1.6%, fewer than the percentage of communists in America at the end of the cold war. Cline wants to talk about denying reality, he's pushing the future in the hands of a tiny sliver of the American populace, and in so doing rebelling against our genetic structure (as we see in arguments below). If I were Cline I would be less inclined to push this line about unreality. The data actually indicates that atheism is shrinking, which would be a good support for my initial premise that atheism is on its last legs. Previous figures showed 3%, that does not include the groups eliminated by their actual belief of agnosticism. So Pew to then find 1.6% suggests the category is shrinking. But then Adherents.com shows an even lower figure.


Adherents.com shows Atheists at 0.4% of U.S. Population. (scroll down to the tables).




Atheist 1990 adult pop: 902,000 2004= 1,272,986 Percentrage of Pop = 0.4%

a note on this statistical table says:

2004 total population numbers were calculated by multiplying each group's percent of the total adult 2001 population (207,882,353) by the 2004 total population (using the June 1, 2004 U.S. Census Bureau extrapolated estimate of 293,382,953 total Americans). The U.S. Census Bureau total U.S. population estimate for 2000, based on the actual 2000 Census, was: 281,421,906. The U.S. Census Bureau total U.S. population estimate for July 1, 2001 was: 293,655,404. The adult (ages 18 and over) population estimate for July 1, 2001 was: 220,377,406. The total adult population for 2001 used in the 2001 ARIS study (apparently counting only adults aged 21 and over) was: 207,882,353. For 2001 figures, see: 293655404http://www.census.gov/popest/states/asrh/SC-est2004-01.html. This method of extrapolating the 2004 total population of each religious group from the 2001 adult population of each group does not factor in differences in the average number of children per adult for each religious group.

The point is my surmise that atheism is not the future is based upon some good solid empirical assumptions about the trends in population. It is Cline who does not face reality. Nevertheless I am not actually claiming that people will stop referring to themselves as "atheists." In that way it might continue to grow; it has been galvanized by the net and a larger group have been drawn around it who are made up of what we in my day would have called "agnostics" or "anti-organized religion." So people may go on using the label, but the kind of atheism being touted on the net now as "new atheism" is merely death rattle of an outmoded nineteenth century way of looking at things.


But he goes on to try and grapple with my analysis:

Joe Hinman writes:

Me, quoted by Cline:Atheism is over because it depends upon the assumptions of modernism. Atheists believe in truth. They believe that religion is false because there is no God, and that means it is not true and therefore false. But we are now in the postmodern era where there is no truth. That is both good and bad for Christianity but it si really bad for atheism.

He responds:

If there is no truth, then that really is bad for Christianity too because then it can't be the case that Christianity is "true." Regardless, I'm not convinced that Joe Hinman quite understands what he is talking about. The "postmodern era" isn't one where "there is no truth," but rather when it has become fashionable for some to argue that there is no truth (among other things

First of all, I said this might mean problems for Christianity but we can weather it better than can atheism. Rather than demonstrate to me that you can, you demonstrate that you can't by asserting I can't argue for the truth of my view, implying that you intend to continue the "truth" of your view. Thus you miss the whole issue that it's terribly outmoded and inconsequential to slog through the vineyard of truth finding in this postmodern day and age. Secondly, he doesn't seem to understand what postmodernism is or what it indicates about society. He is still pushing the truth category: he says it's not that there is no more truth but that some people think there's no truth, that indicates he doesn't get the drift. Of course there is still such a thing as true and false. That's a logical category that plays of of the law of non contradiction. Until we scrap that (which would result in total chaos and even Postmodernism have not made that move) there will be a category of "truth--out there--" so to speak. That is not the issue.

The issue is that the simplistic approach to truth finding that expects a clear cut "yes" and clear cut "no," empirical proof, the pretense of objectivity, these things are all too simplistic and too unsophisticated, too Mayberry to look to as options. Postmodernism has left it's mark such that it's much more important to prove relevance than "truth." It's an outmoded stogy mission to argue for absolute objective proofs that dispelled all doubt. Finding that is not even important. The important answers now days are one's which ground us and center us and give us a means of understanding, rather than "objective proof" that conquers all other positions. That models hegemonic at best. In Postmodern parlance, atheism is "totalizing." Now just so we are clear, I say now obviously for all to see, nothing is more totalizing than fundamentalist Christianity. But that's just one option. My point is Christianity is diverse and is better able to adapt to a new era, better able to shed it's colonizing instincts than is atheism, which always insists upon the pretense of objectivity. Christianity would have to change in a Postmodern era, no doubt. The argument is that it could, while the kind of atheism touted by Cline cannot.

The kind of atheism that storms the message boards and blogs, the kind Cline hawks, is just like anti-communism. Anti-communism would have no meaning and no place in the world without communism. These options are book ends. Anti-communism must have communism to survive because its very life depends upon being the other to a movement it is designed to counter. So Atheism is to Christianity, especially fundamentalism. Atheists are in essence fundamentalists. This is why I find that when I oppose atheist arguments with my liberal theology nine times out of ten they go: "tilt--does not compute." They seem only to be able to think of God as a big man in the sky. Why is this? It's because the very movement itself was born to counter the beliefs of people who believe in a big man in the sky. I find that the most common reaction I get to arguing for some liberal view, such as Tillich's existential ontology, is outrage. They feel cheated because to them the whole thing is about fighting the projection of their superegos.

Yes, a departure from the category of "truth" is problematic for both sides, but more so for atheism becasue atheists can't depart from their standard (the pretense) of objective demonstrable scientific evidence. So atheists not only have to have truth, they have to have truth they can prove by science. We do not. As a christian, of course we want truth, God is God of truth, but we can be sophisticated enough to know that there is a distinction between a theoretically embracing truth per se, and claims, to proofs of truth content. Religious belief is about placing confidence in a proposition (ie what used to be called "faith"). Placing confidence in a proposition to such an extent that one that one has no problem deriving transformational power from that confidence. Atheists reduce faith to "believing things without evidence" (which is totally irrelevant to the true nature and definition of the word) and then mock and deride their straw man definition. So it is not so easy to just dismiss Christianity on the premise of truth finding. It's even less so when one realizes that the atheists are just as dependent upon the category of "truth" but they have stuck themselves with the demand of absolute proof. Yes, God is "truth" per se, but that is not the same as saying that propositions of truth claims must be empirically verified before one can place confidence in a proposition.

Cline goes on:

Such ideas have been defended in the past, but it has become a stronger intellectual force in the postmodern era. Hinman, though, seems to be treating it as though there were some fundamental shift in reality from a state in the past where truths really existed to now when truths don't exist, which of course is just nonsense.

It's obvious Cline has not Read Derrida,(see my essay on Derrida part 1, and Part 2) Baudrillard, Foucault, Frederich Jameson, to name a few seminal figures. No it is not that the category of truth magically goes away. But we do not live unmediated in the world of the forms. We live the real world where our perceptions are mediated by cultural constructs, and thus the world in which we live, the "life world" (as the Germans would say) the world of our understanding, is based upon culturally constructed constituent parts. Thus when the ground changes, the paradigm shifts, the world changes. This massive change in many paradigms worked itself from about 1980 to present, culminating briefly in the Golden age of Postmodernism in the 80s and 90s, now in the golden age of genetic determinism. Along the way the rise of the internet and changing of the guard in atheism from Bertrand Russell type of intellectual thinker to the Dawkins type of mocking know nothing.

This whole reality of truth claims and their constructs vs actual truth "out there," is a prime example of why atheism will probably just fade away with he next few paradigm shifts. Actually, the label will probably survive but the content will change to such an extent that what "atheists" of the present argue will be irrelevant. The people supporting it, such as Cline, clearly depend upon concepts bequeathed to modernity form the Christian synthesis of the middle ages. Christianity can transition because it's so diverse. As long as people have personal religious experinces it will go on. While Atheism on the other hand requires nineteenth century categories of thought to persist because that's the century in which the modern atheist mentally is stuck.

Cline confesses his befuddlement:

If Hinman himself really believes that there is no truth, then he renders himself completely unable to argue that it's true that his god exists or that his religion is valid. He can't even argue that it's true that no truths exist. Is that what he really wants?

I don't have to argue for the truth of God: I merely have to argue for the efficacy of belief. All we need is a more sophisticated understanding of what belief is about.
Although, I'm not trying to negate the category of truth. That's a mistake in understanding my point. Societal perceptions of the category of truth, what it means and how it is demonstrated have changed and will continue to change. Atheists are stuck in a nineteenth century paradigm of Newtonian science fighting uneducated fundamentalism over old issues long settled, such as evolution. As social complexity drifts away from this benighted era atheism will be left in the dark. Christianity will be forced to change, no doubt. Fundamentalism may have a tough time, although at the present they are not having a tough time at all.But that's probably because liberal theology was born in the same post enlightenment environment as was modern atheism. But the emotionalism of the fundies allows personal tastes in the private sector to blossom, and to remain wrapped in a cocoon of provincialism, blissfully ignorant of society around them. That's exactly why Christianity will be able to adopt the more complex scene and atheism wont. If atheism loses its' outmoded nineteenth century understanding it basically wont be atheist anymore.

Cline moves on to specific issues:

First up: The "God Pod" (God part of the brain)

Well, I'm not sure what he wants. As confused as the above may seem, it's more clear than most of the rest of what he writes. Joe Hinman proceeds to argue that there are several contradictions at the heart of atheism:

Me (quoted by Cline):(1) The God pod is the result of scientific empirical data. The reason for rejecting evolution as a blind factor in producing the god pod is that it requires innate ideas. Innate ideas are part of the past, they come from a basically spiritual domain. But the atheist has to support innate ideas, which contradict atheism at its core concepts, in order to argue that the God pod is just a blind product of evolution. Thus atheism can't assault one of the major arguments for God nor can it access one of its major weapons without shooting itself in the foot.

Cline's response: God pod? What? I think Joe Hinman is arguing that it's been empirically proven that there is a "god module" in the brain which produces belief in gods and that such a mental capacity would never have been produced without there being some sort of god in the first place. Therefore, materialistic evolution is false and the existence of a god is true — despite the fact that we are in the postmodern era where there are no truths.

Yes, "God pod" is my own cutsie little slang term for the "God module." I probably should abandon it (my poor taste to find it "catchy"). The argument here is that evolution un-aided cannot produce innate ideas. Genes don't think. Instinct is not thought. Innate ideas can only exist in minds, or in Platonic forms. Thus if there is an innate idea (such as "God") then it has to come from a mind or a form, either of which one might argue is a good basis for belief in God. Cline draws the fallacious conclusion that this s an arguemnt against evolution. Of course this is becasue he assumes I must be fundie or I would not have problems with atheism. Then again to "new atheists" there is no distinction between fundies and liberals. All believers are brain dead fools to whom they feel superior and it doesn't matter what the believer actually thinks. Just for the record I am an evolutionist and this has nothing to do with ditching evolution. Presenting reasons why evolution unaided can't produce innate ideas is not the same as saying evolution never happened. Let's move on to Cline's response. But remember, he's missed the point that atheism in failing to grasp the importance of the God "module" sets itself up for failure because it's working agianst the natural order.

There are two errors in such an argument. First, Hinman's claims about a "god module" are far more dramatic than any scientific evidence has established. Insofar as there is any sort of place in the brain, it appears to be involved with religion and religious experience generally, not theism specifically, and it can be activated by mechanical and chemical means — which in effect makes it entirely material in function, not supernatural.

(1) He is unread in the literature. There is an abundance of scientific evidence proving that some from of belief has a genetic basis and almost all scientists believe this now. A vast army of researchers are working on the issues. see Where God and Science Meet vol II, edited by Patrick McNamara. The volume is bursting with support from scientific community.

(2) Cline is right there is a problem with arguing for an actual "God Gene." The genetic basis doesn't have to be an actual gene it can be a side effect of a genetic complex (a "Spandrel is a term used in evolutionary biology describing a phenotypic characteristic that is considered to have developed during evolution as a side-effect of a true adaptation, specifically arising from a correlation of growth, rather than arising from natural selection."). But while that might make the argument harder to pull as a God argument, it does not in anyway indicate an argument against the existence of God. Nor does the idea that religious experince has a genetic basis in any way infringe upon belief. The original point was that religion is not going away because it has a genetic component, that is not disproved by the spandrel idea.

If God creates flesh and blood beings then surely "he" would create a communication system for them to use. If He does this then of course "he" (whatever that is) has to use that same device in communicating with them. Of course I speak metaphorically of "communicating." God need to be a conscious being who "communicates" in the sense that we understand it. In any case nothing in our biology can contradict the existence of God because it s always going to be a prori the way god "does things" (to put it crudely) if there is a God at all. Now it might change our conception of God. But we need not see God as a giant building contractor in the sky.

(3) Now Cline argues that since this genetic function relays experince and not concrete ideas then it's not relating innate ideas. But that argument doesn't wash, however, because the reactions that evoke the genetic structure are found when the subject is exposed to any God talk. Obviously there would have to be some form of innate idea there for the genetic process to recognize. Genes do not think in language. The idea that a genetic structure somehow thinks to respond to a linguistic concept is lunacy. Yet some how it does, meaning there must be an innate idea to which the structure is somehow pre set to respond.


(4) Responding to chemical means has nothing to do with it. First of all that is not not proven. John Hick has a very good chapter dispelling the myth that true religious experince has been evoked by chemical stimulus. Secondly, none of the major researchers of religious experince are worried about this prospect. If God creates a flesh and blood creature and endows that creation with rational understanding, that understanding is communicated through brain chemistry. Thus there has to be a trigger mechanism through which response to the spiritual can be stimulated. In other words we are only looking at how God does communication with humans, not a reason to ditch belief in God.

Second, Hinman's argument reduces to little more than a reworked argument from desire: we only have desires for things which exist in some form (food, air, drink) and no desire for something non-existent would have evolved in us. Since we desire God, then God must exist. This is a poor argument for many reasons: there is no basis for thinking people only desire that which exists, it ignores how ideas like "god" are an abstraction of real things and qualities, and so forth.

Straw man. He's somehow gotten the idea that if he makes a straw man argument then reducing the original argument to a reductio ad absurdum disproves it. No, it doesn't work that way. He's presenting a straw man argument, because I did not argue this. My argument is not an argument from desire. Moreover, it is not a logical requirement of my argument that an argument from desire be formulated out of it. The point that I made is simply that religion is genetically based and it wont go away. Atheists are like the flip side of fundamentalists; they are anti-communists to the fundamentalists version of communists. Just as anti-communism is meaningless without communism to fight, so atheism is meaningless without fundamentalism to fight. Once the complexities of postmodern society catch up with American culture both sides will have to change. Christianity can cope because it's diverse and intellectaul and based upon personal experinces which are genetically based. Atheism is merely a knee jerk reaction to a time and place which are already out of date.

As I said in the essay which Cline quotes:

(2) Atheism as a modern materialistic school was founded upon cause and effect as the means to explain the natural world. God was kicked out of his own creation based upon this concept. Now atheists abandon it in order to escape the Cosmological argument; saying that QM particals prove that the universe doesn't need a cause. Thus they cut the ground out from under themselves.

Cline responds:

This is simply a misrepresentation of atheism, from beginning to end. Atheism isn't a "school" of anything, nor is it a means to try to explain the natural world.

It is a school of thought and its' silly to say it isn't. All of them say the things all the time. Go look at atheist websites. No variation, nothing unique. All say the same thing, all take the same approach, all use the same slogans. The last person to realize that he's an ideologue is an ideologue. As an atheist, Cline is merely the flip side of a fundie. He has "the truth" it's "objective" nothing can change it or disagree with it and it serves as the filtering lens through he he filers all the world.

Here is the atheist ideology in a nutshell:

Religious people are stupid,ancient world people are stupid,religion is superstition.
religion is forces people to do stupid things out of fear of a big man in the sky
Atheism the natural default because we are not born with conscious understanding of religious belief (even though we are born with innate genetic propensity to sense the presence of God)
science is the only true from of knowledge
atheism is more rational because it's based upon taking objective science and cutting off any kind of belief aside from that which can be demonstrated with totally certainty through scientific means.

Of course they will deny this and claim that atheists are all different, and they are on many points, about 98% of the one's you find on the net fit this profile. they use the same slogans, they hold the same opinions, they all that same mocking little tone (your can't prove your big sky pixie) and they all tout empirical scientific evidence until you present some that disproves their views, then they suddenly don't care about science as much. a quick trip through the major atheist websites will confirm this view easily enough.

Atheism is simply the absence of belief in gods and a person who is an atheist may have a variety of reasons for not believing, none of which have anything to do with explanations for the universe.

If that were true atheists would have diverse opinions. I think it was true of the atheist of my day. Now it is not true. The atheists of today have one view point between them. They differed over things but they are minute, such as some are Jesus mythers some accept the historical existence of Jesus. But in terms of metaphysics, they all say the same thing. I never find atheist who follow Sartre for example. I used to. But now they are all science nerds. Most of them read Dawkins and spit back his lies with alarming sameness. Now I expect the atheists who read this to say "yes, well fundies do that too." Yes, that's why I'm not one. There's a major difference in someone basing his atheism on Sartre and existentialism and someone basing his view upon Dawkins outlook. The latter is mainly what I find now and they think they are being diverse when they differ within that camp, but most of them remain in that latitude. I have not yet found, after 10 years of internet apologetic, any atheists who understands Sartre much bases his atheism on Sartre. I have found atheists who have never heard of Bertrand Russell.

The above is also a misrepresentation of science because it isn't simply "atheists" who work on Quantum Mechanics (I have no idea what "QM particals" are supposed to be)

sub atomic particals: quarks, bosons, muons, shleptons and so on. I never said only atheists work on it. He's assuming I'm criticizing QM theory and I never said that.


and, moreover, there

is nothing about Quantum Mechanics which might "cut the ground out from under" atheists or atheism. On the contrary, I often see theists trying to deny the conclusions and implications of quantum physics, not atheists.

Notice that he just ignores the arguemnt,he does not answer it. My argument says that atheism was once predicted upon cause and effect. LaPlace said "we do not need God because we have natural cause and effect."("I have no need fo that hypothesis" ie God). To get away from the cosmological argument modern atheists argue "there is no cause and effect, the universe doesn't' need a cause (except at the Newtonian level but not in terms of origins). That means the reason for excluding God from science is gone. Now we are free to think about God in connection with science again. Now before you atheists out there start spitting milk through your noses at your monitor, I'm sure you are thinking about some big man on a throne with a white bread. But that's the sort of nineteenth century mentality that atheism is stuck with; rebellion against the father. Atheism is really a problem with the super ego. But what about a dialectical view of God, a process view of God, or Tillch's existential ontology. What a view of God that would actually identify God with Quantum theory? Take for example Teilhard de Chardin's notion that God is the strong force. You can't chuck that on the grounds "we don't need because we have naturalistic cause and effect to explain things, because you gave that up. There could be any number of possible arguments, I don't have time to make them here. But the fact of the matter is clear, the old paradigm under which atheism came to be in the modern world, is gone. Atheism has no real raison d'etre in Postmodernity. The situation for atheism could only be made worse arguing that postmoderity is just as bad for Christian belief, because it means that atheist can't understand Christianity well enough to start thinking in Postmodern Christian terms.

After this, well, Joe Hinman's ideas actually get even less coherent so I'm not going bother with addressing anything further. I think that the above is wrong enough to dismiss the entire piece anyway.

Cline doesn't see fit to enlighten us as to what he's talking about. I have a feeling we will never know, I also have a feeling neither does he.

Really good thread on epistemology: science and miracles

I hate to seem lazy, but I am. Still I've tried summarizing whole threads on message boards before it's a ghastly process. So here is a really good thread from my message board: a discussion between several of us but basically me vs Quntum Troll (QT is called "You wish" on carm).

His argument is that individual personal experince of miracles is not scientific and so we can't trust. My argument is there are aspects of reality and forms of truth that are not scientific but still true.

I put this put because it's an excellent discussion and it would be very complex to try and summarize it all here. and it's too long to cut and paste.

Click here


this is a sample and it's also for those who did not get through the whole thread. Tiny Thinker is a professional academic who teaches anthropology at a university. He has a strong science background and was known on the net as a member of the "original gang of four" three atheists and a catholic who went around destorying creationist's arguments. His site is "peaceful Turmoil" and used to have a pro evolution website.

Some things to keep in mind for this thread...
1. There is no such thing as objective knowledge. The video helps explain why by citing some of the same things I and others have mentioned in the past, but leaving out the culturally mediated aspects of the brain's perceptual filters.
2. Facts are socially constructed - what should we measure? In what way? For what reason? Based on what paradigm?
3. Science is an epistemological filter based on assumptions which cannot be proven.
4. Science self-limits its usefulness to a restricted subset of phenomena, suggesting other lenses are needed to have a more complete and accurate view of the world.
5. The use of science is not guided by some impartial, objective agenda. Knowledge originates by anecdote, intuition, and other sources that would make many who wish to consider themselves pure Positivists cringe. This often means that nuance and variation are ground down in the interest of standardization and the cases which still won't fit are relegated to the status of statistical outliers. These are not apolitical moves made by disinterested parties seeking only objective truth - that is simply the proper marketing and propaganda tagline - the story we tell each other to mutually reinforce our credibility. This doesn't mean I or my fellow academics are frauds or liars, but it does mean we are human and we bring those human flaws and agendas into everything we do, including research.
6. Many skeptics are cynics who generalize with a broad brush who set standards that exclude serious consideration of certain phenomena. As a distant example, in some circles if you don't have a correlation were p is at least .95 or .90, then the results are not considered to be significant. As a stats teacher of mine once said, that is just too arbitrary. A p-value of .86 may be telling your something really important if you are willing to pay attention. In the same way, some cynics use such arbitrary lines in the epistemological sand to ignore a whole range of things.
7. In addition, many of these cynics masquerading as skeptics go further and believe that if they can suggest a possible, even though unproven or even unlikely, naturalistic scenario to explain a phenomena then they suggest they have disproven/no longer need to be concerned with that phenomena. Note that this involves naturalism on their terms, which is often very restrictive (see point #6 above).
8. Anecdotes en mass should have the potential to amount to something if we take QT's interpretation correctly, but instead the large numbers are often used as a liability by the accusation on the part of the cynics of the logical fallacy argumentum ad populum. "After all", the accusation goes, "most people once believed the Earth was flat!" Clearly it isn't the large numbers that is a problem, because 1,000 lab studies replicating a result would be considered far more definitive than 10 such lab studies. This brings up one of Metacrock's objections - one set of large numbers is proof and another set is dismissed. One set of experiences is treated with respect and another set is treated with scorn.
9. Given points #3-5, such dismissiveness should be viewed with skepticism! As KR points out, not all truth can be revealed by one lens of knowing (reinforced by point #4).
10. Your bases are belong to me. I pwn you all.

Logic of Co-determinate and Atheist Deniel

The "co-determinate" is a term used in connection with Schleiermacher's notion of the feeling of utter dependence. Roy Williams in his great book Schleiermacher The Theologian, uses this term, which I think is an antiquated term for "correlate." The concept here being that we can't demonstrate God's existence directly because God is not given in sense data. We can point to and discuss the feeling of utter dependence (which is actually a form of mystical experince) of which Schleiermacher spoke. In in this context Williams states that God is the co-determinate of the feeling. What he is saying is that God correlates with the feeling of utter dependence, which in content is actually a feeling of ontologically contingency, or dependence upon God ontologically speaking. This is really a simple concept. It is not wonder, then, that atheists have had a great deal of trouble understanding it. I say that because they always try to approach it as some big hairy radical deal that's a fallacy in an do of itself. I expect the skeptic to question the argument, but to actually question it in a way that implies that there's some big logical problem with correlations is quite amazing. That they try to twist the argument totally out of proportion is just, as Dylan said, "sleepy time down south."

Before going into specifics let me draw a couple of analogies. First the idea of smoking as a cause of cancer. In 1963 (or so) the Surgeon General made the ruling that smoking might be the cause of cancer and thus a warning was printed in cigarette packs. That ruling was made not because they had direct scientific proof. In fact when the tobacco companies responded that science could not find a mechanism in tobacco smoke that causes cancer, they were right about that. They remained right about it until this century. For almost a quarter of a century the whole campaign and war against smoking rested totally upon statistical correlation. I used this fact to indicate that science takes correlational proof seriously as proof. It's not illogical to assume that if a correlation is tight enough causality is a logical inference. The atheist response has been "but the link has been proved." Now that is true, but only within this decade, and quite recently. That is typical. The fact that the link was proved and a mechanism found over 25 years latter doesn't in the least blunt the fact that for a quarter of a century science was willing to assume that is a fact based upon statistical correlation. This is all common knowledge. I remember when the Surgeon General made the announcement, even though I was a small child. I remember when cigarette adds were banned. A multi million dollar industry, probably a billion dollar industry was destroyed and taken down all on the basis of statistical correlation.

Anyone with half a brain should be able to conclude that science respects a good correlation; we may treat correlations as causality if (and only if) the correlation is tight enough. Another analogy, is that of the neutrino. Before I go into that let me point out that I am not arguing from analogy. I understand that the similarity to cases in these analogies is not proof of the existence of God. I am not saying that. The function of an analogy is to illustrate an idea, that exactly what I'm about here, nothing more. My argument does not proceed from arguing from analogy. But the fact is atheists treat the correlation of God to religious experinces as though there is no implication of God's reality in the experiences because, they think, there is no proof of causality in a correlation. But I am here illustrating the fact that their beloved priesthood of knowledge, the scientist, is willing to assume a strong correlation as rational warrant for a causal relationship.

The second example is that of the neutrino.

DONUT homeFermi National Acceleration Laboratory*:
6/29/01

Nutrinos

Neutrinos didn't emerge onto the particle physics scene until 1930, when Wolfgang Pauli invented the neutrino to "save" conservation of energy, which was under threat from observations of beta decay in radioactive materials. Scientists such as Henri Bequerel and Marie and Pierre Curie performed the first studies into radiation starting in 1898. In the years that followed radiation was classified into 3 categories: alpha, beta and gamma. In studying beta radiation, scientists discovered a disturbing phenomenon. It seemed that when a nucleus underwent beta decay, which consisted of the emission by a neutron of an electron to create a proton, conservation of energy was violated. There was a missing amount of energy that could not be accounted for by their measurements or calculations. In 1930 Pauli made his hypothesis....

It was not until 1933 that Pauli admitted the possibility of a zero mass neutrino (the discovery of the neutron in 1932 by James Chadwick forced him to change the hypothesized particle's name to neutrino). Today we know that neutrinos have some unknown mass and that they move close to the speed of light. The first detection of neutrinos occurred in 1956 by Clyde Cowan and Fredrick Reines who found a convenient source of neutrinos--nuclear power plants. Power is created in nuclear plants when atoms undergo nuclear fission, a process of which the neutrino is a byproduct. Cowan and Reines employed a 400-L tank of cadmium chloride as their target. The neutrinos struck a proton inside the target, producing a positron and a neutron. That positron encountered an electron; the two annihilated each other, producing two gamma rays (or photons). The neutron was absorbed by a cadmium chloride atom, producing a photon at a 15-microsecond delay from the emission from the positron. Using this knowledge of the photon emission, Cowan and Reines were able to detect the electron neutrino.

Leon Lederman, Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger followed with the detection of the muon neutrino in 1962. They fired a GeV beam of protons through a target creating pions, which decayed into muons and muon neutrinos. Thick shielding halted the muons but the neutrinos continued until they entered a detector where they produced muons, decaying into electrons and a photon that were observed in the spark chambers.

Pauli descibes his reasoning in asserting an unproven hypotheis (the nutrino)

I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the "exchange theorem" of statistics and the law of conservation of energy. Namely, the possibility that there could exist in the nuclei electrically neutral particles, that I wish to call neutrons, which have spin 1/2 and obey the exclusion principle and which further differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light. The mass of the neutrons should be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any event not larger than 0.01 proton masses. The continuous beta spectrum would then become understandable by the assumption that in beta decay a neutron is emitted in addition to the electron such that the sum of the energies of the neutron and the electron is constant...

Now I'm sure atheists are saying "that's just the way science works. State a hypothesis and test it." Of course it is, and that's fine. But the problem is that's pretty much what has been done in regard to mystical experince. Religious believers have been a mot more definite about their hypothesis than Pauli was about his, but it's the same thing really, and with very similar results. The only real difference is the scientist can eventually get "absolute" proof (in a scientific sense) when the question is a an empirical one, but we can't get this kind of certainty of God. Nevertheless, we can be as certain, thanks to the M scale, as physicists were of Neutrinos at the time that Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger did their works. Of course I'm not advocating understanding religious belief as scientific hypothesis, but the basic logic of the co-determinate is the same. One can clearly see that the logic of the co-determinate of which is speak is not a fallacy, formal or informal, it si not the same saying "I believe it so that proves it." It is not a radical move that I invented. It's the normal way correlations have been used to assume causality since modern science began. It's the use of the term "co-determinate" that gives atheist the idea that this is some new brand of logic I invented. If I called it "the correlate" they would probably not say that, and that's all it is. In that case they would turn around and say "correlations are not proof of causality." No, they are not, but on the hand I did not claim to prove it. I only claimed that it's reasonable to draw a conclusion from the assocaition!


Here's an even more interesting twist: Since the work in 1962 science assumed that Nutrinos were proved, but they didn't have direct proof until much latter:

Fermi lab: Phyiscs at Fermilab

Discoveries at Femrilab: The Tau nutrition
7/09/2000

An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on July 21, 2000 the first direct evidence for the subatomic particle called the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino known to particle physicists. They reported four instances of a neutrino interacting with an atomic nucleus to produce a charged particle called a tau lepton, the signature of a tau neutrino.

The "detection" of muon was in 1962 and yet it says the first direct evdience of the subatomic particles called tau neutrinos wasn't until 2000. I know these are different particles that are coming out of a different stage in the process. But the fact remains,t he original hypothesis was merely an attempt to explain the actions of certain particles in a certain context, theory was manufactured to fit the apparent case. The theory was latter born out with empirical proof.

Much the same thing has happened with respect to the scientific study of religious experience. First people has such experinces for thousands of years. They developed an explanation for them (God, the divine, the supernatural). With that explication there evolved a complicated economics of metaphor that emerged as a means of understanding that which is beyond understanding. Then after all that fuss the hypothesis is partially corroborated with empirical scientific techniques (such as the M scale). What has been corroborated is that the process works as we would expect it to in living up the exceptions derived form our teachings on the divine. Real experinces that are truly effecting the brain, produce real measurable concrete change in life and a valuable way of life that revolutionizes the lives of those having these experinces, and dramatic and positive way. Thus the scientific findings corroborate that the experiences conform to what the divine is suppossed to do. But we should be surprised since that understanding is derived from the experinces themselves, but now that process is proved valid through science.

While atheists reading this are trowing things at the screen and shouting "It doesn't prove the origin of it!" Remember, I never claimed "proof!" But why is it not reasonable to assume that the origin is the divine, since it conforms to our ideas of what it suppossed to be? After all that is literally exactly what the supernatural actually was in its original conception. Thus it is a reasonable construel. I never said it was "proof" (except in the practical sense, close enough to proof to place confidence in the hypothesis). In response to this some atheists have lunched an old familiar tactic from message boards, ridicule of a hypothesis by use of reduction to absurdity. So they will say there's a high correlation between global warming and pirates, therefore, global warming causes piracy. This is suppossed to prove the fallacy and stupidity of asserting a "co-determinate." Reductio Ad Absurdum is not necessarily the the best advised course for an argument. It is totally fallacious to think that just becasue one can construct a false assocaition based upon absurdities doesn't mean a logically valid assocaition is illogical. The logic of the argument within the argument is what must determine weather or not an association is logical. This relates back to the soundness of an argument. All they are saying at this point is "that's not sound," but their only reason for thinking so is that they don't like the conclusion I'm drawing. They cannot tell me why the argument is unsound without jacking my claims to the level of proof. But I don't claim proof.





Here's how the exchange recently went on my message boards, discussin the argument with several atheist friend's whose imput I value highly: Qunatum Troll, Fleet Mouse and La Canuck, this is La Canuck.

Re: argument from sign

Post by Metacrock on Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:21 pm

LACanuck wrote:

Metacrock wrote:that feeling and its association is the reason why we have religion, that's the basis for belief that's been around for 65,000 years. Its' always been taken so, it's the basis of what we talk about religion at all. it's the underlying bottom reason for belief.

there's absolutely not reason to construe it as God given its history and associations.


La Canuck:Do you have a citation for the 65,000 year claim? More out of interest than anything nefarious. :)



Metacrock:yes, several. but i have to get into my book file to see it. QT could probably get up faster. He has copies my ms.**

(note: here I will give some sources below)**


La CanuckBut having a sense of something bigger than we are causing us to feel warm and fuzzy can be explained using evolutionary arguments.



Metacrock: no so far


La Canuck: And the conversion of 'something bigger' to religion and god is not a challenging path to walk either. So making a claim that the 'something bigger' has no other reasonable explanation that the existance of god does not stand up to detailed examination.




Metacrock: No that's fares. All you are doing is applying standard reductionism to lose the phenomena. O this is important to me, so I'll just pretend it's not there and then make the argument based upon reducing what really happens to soemthing I want to deal with. That's the basis of the strategy you are using.

that's one of the things that makes me so angry. the dishonest nature of atheism, you can't accept that other people have their own experiences. you are trying to control what other people feel and to expalin it away so that what is important to them becomes just bull shit only what's important to you can remain as "fact."

I get more and more angry ever time I think about it.

Metacrock wrote:It has always been sufficient since long before the bible. it's the basis of why religion exists. its' is the supernatural. this is litterateur what the supernatural originally was.

the correlation is 350 studies. it's as strong as smoking and cancer.



La Canuck: How many of the 350 studies consider the possibility that a high concentration of seratonin receptors is strongly correlated to a high score on the M-scale? I've asked this question in the past and haven't seen an answer. Unless the studies do account for this, the conclusions of the studies are put into question.




Metacrock: serotonin argument is crap. I know you are proud because it's your baby, but I have disprove it several times. you did not answer any of the 5 tie breakers I argued. you totally sloughed the very concept without answering any of them.

Griphiths who did the study you first first sited, is a friend of Hood's. He accept mystical experince, he is not one of these reductionists who reduces everything to chemicals. Hood reacts to that argument with a yawn. No offense.

On the one hand I do admire your brightness for spotting that. It may not be a bad argument it may be something to follow up. But it hardly some big deal breaker. no not in any way. you have to at least comment on the tie breakers before I will even consider it has having deal breaking potential.



La Canuck: So no, the correlation is not nearly as strong as smoking and cancer.



Metacrock:you don't know what a correlation is then. Because that has nothing to do with disproving the causality. The correlation is as tight because it's there. you want to interject an unproved counter causality that's nothing unique and is taken out by my previous responses other arguments about chemical determinism.

(addendum:I also want to point out--this was not part of that post--why does it have to be as strong as cancer and smoking to be a valid hypothesis in which to place confidence? The correlation of smoking and cancer is extremely tight).

but no! you have the magic bean. you have the big deal atheist excuse not to believe just like with all God argument, any possibility however remote and ridiculous becomes an iron clad disproof because it is remotely possible!

The cigarettes in the rat studies had cork in the tabaco, so I could make the American Spirit argument and say the corrolation on smoking and cancer is gone. Because it' could be that natural tabaco doesn't cause cancer.


Metacrock continues:It' the notion that we cant' make a logical construable whereas you make them all the time. the discussion you had on evolution the other day, here in the other thread, thats' all you did was construe. but when you guys do it it's science and that's ok.

when we do it its some little made up fallacy like "reason for belief" "fallacy of believing in something."




La Canuck:Actually, the problem I've always had is that you move from one correlation (thinking of god = warm and fuzzy) to another (thinking of god = god exists) as if they were one and the same. As I said, there are other explanations for the first correlation besides the conclusion that you draw.




Metacrock: this is another thing that makes me angry. you are a smart guy, but in God argument you just throw that away and say a lot things that are just not smart. like this. I have never said. I said it's a rational construe. get it?

rational construe that means it's rational to construe that way. I did not say it proves it i said it's rational to construe that way. now may times/

The source used on the fermilab website:

*An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on July 21, 2000 the first direct evidence for the subatomic particle called the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino known to particle physicists. They reported four instances of a neutrino interacting with an atomic nucleus to* produce a charged particle called a tau lepton, the signature of a tau neutrino.

**sources on religious experience among neanderthals scroll toward bottom of that page. More and better sources will be in my book.

fifty years with the cult site at Rosaring

British Archaeology: When Burial begins. The issue with burial is that sites such as that of Shandadar show early burial with medicinal herbs and mushrooms. Where there are mushrooms among ancient man (or prehistorical pre homo spieans) we can be sure there was mystical experience. The healing powers of mushroom are not that obvious. they have always been used for the effects of the sylosycibin. These are gestures toward the afterlife, and belief in afterlife marks religious experince.

Gods of pre historic man

The Wages of One Dimensinoalism

This is another piece not original, not by me, but in this case posted on my boards by Tiny Thinker, and quoting a columnists from a Catholic magazine. I think it's really good and the article is worth reading.

by tinythinker on Sun Jan 18, 2009 2:44 pm
Excerpt from "Beads, bells and belief" by columnist Jamie L. Manson of the New Catholic Reporter.I think it speaks to Christianity as a whole even though it is directed toward Roman Catholicism...

Columnist:
Jamie L. Manson
Column title:
Young Voices
Publication date:
January 15, 2009

The church faces a particular challenge with young adults. Many of us are unchurched, because our parents chose not to raise us in the church of their childhood. But for those of us who were raised in the tradition, we grew up in a church that did not have the formative power that it has had throughout history. We were not forced, through fear and guilt, into believing that beads, statues, prayers and rituals held the power to decide the states of our souls and our fates in the afterlife. Yet, this lack of formation also presents a real opportunity for the church. My generation would be the first to willing choose church, to choose to live in an intentional Christian community out of a genuine desire.

What church authorities still refuse to recognize is that they cannot rely on the medieval tactics of spiritual coercion and shame to bring us into the pews. Instead, young adults have to be met where they are, to be engaged in a dialogue about the larger questions of their lives. We have to be addressed as mature, thinking adults, because we simply do not feel compelled to go to church in the way that previous generations do.

The symbols of the church do not speak to my generation the way it speaks to the generations that preceded us. Rosaries, statues of Mary and images of the saints, are subject to much ridicule, and crosses have become more recognizable as a fashion statement than as a reminder of the living, bleeding God who was killed in an effort in reach out to us. But perhaps this is more a result of church's unwillingness to risk breathing new, creative life into these sacramentals. What really is the difference between grasping at rosaries versus Buddhist prayer beads? Aren't both of these actions, at their heart, the movements of vulnerable human beings seeking some sense of peace, some discipline of prayer, some tangible feeling of comfort amid so much of life's chaos, sadness and uncertainty?

The Christian mystical tradition and the Catholic notion of sacrament could offer so much to quell the longings of young adults. But, sadly, the only identification that they make with Christianity today is with biblical fundamentalism and a strange caricature of Jesus. They identify Catholicism with moralistic repression, and a group of disconnected men who are uninterested in listening to the experiences or questions of the laity, most especially its female, LGBT, and divorced members...

The people in my generation have been abandoned during a time unprecedented spiritual hunger, having grown up in a period when the rate of divorce skyrocketed, the effects of technology separated us from family and neighbors, and a frenetic busyness took control of our day to day activities. The young people who seek out spiritual materials like those sold at East West are already participating in sacramental life and are not even aware of it. They are reaching out to the tangible things of nature in a poignant struggle to find grace. How much fuller would our experience be if the church ceased to focus strictly on the ways in which we ought to order our existence, and instead guided us in finding the innumerable ways in which God breaks through to us in our ordinary lives.

I agree, basically, with this statement from Mason's article. The problem is it's only from a Catholic perspective. I say "only" meaning it doesn't take into account the role Protestant fundamentalism and Evangelicalism has played in this process. Perhaps this Catholic author feels that it would not serve the interests of Christianity to lay the blame on the Protestants, but I think a good portion of it lies there. A long time ago I came to the realization that there was a reality which the Reagan era should have taught us, but so few were interested. That reality is this: trying to turn back the clock speeds it up. Reagan tired to turn back the clock in returning us to a former time of more simple minded conservationism, a fictional golden age that never really existed. While the Reaganites were trying to force everyone back into the right wing mold, the problems of modernity ran on head and those who had no connection with the past just ignored it.

In a broader track of time the nation has been separated from its heritage in Western thought. This was always true, there never was a time in America when people were taught to understand the Western tradition or see themselves as part of it. Americans were taught only to think in practical terms. We don't care why some want to build the bridge, we think only about how to build it. We have always spawned a level of literacy (I don't mean dysfunctional readers, but lack of any real connection with the world of books).

The New atheism and the hatred of God and of church that we see in young people, especially on the internet, is merely the result of this one-dimensional nature of American life. Life in this country has always been reduced to consuming and producing. Now we are reaping the consequences. Europe has been made cynical by the two world wars fought on its soil, and we have the cultural connections to continue the tradition; thus the tradition of Western thought is over. We are in the end game of civilization, playing nursery school to the new age of barbarism.

Society Needs God

What follows is an article that is no longer on the net except at my site where I copied it. The former address is listed below. The original was up in 2001. This is a summary of several studies that show the essential nature of religion to social well being.




http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/coh_spr.htm

Cities on a Hill News Letter Spring 1999

This pubication may no longer be found on that URL. References to it can still be found Here

(adobie Acrobat Reader)

Social Scientists Agree: Religious Belief Reduces Crime Summary of the First Panel DiscussionPanelists for this important discussion included social scientists Dr. John DiIulio, professor of politics and urban affairs at Princeton University; David Larson, M.D., President of the National Institute for Healthcare Research; Dr. Byron Johnson, Director of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy at Vanderbilt University; and Gary Walker, President of Public/Private Ventures.* The panel focused on new research, confirming the positive effects that religiosity has on turning around the lives of youth at risk. From left to right: Midge Decter, John DiIulio, David Larson, Byron Johnson and Gary Walker.

Dr. Larson laid the foundation for the discussion by summarizing the findings of 400 studies on juvenile delinquency, conducted during the past two decades.* He believes that although more research is needed, we can say without a doubt that religion makes a positive contribution.* His conclusion: “The better we study religion, the more we find it makes a difference.”Previewing his own impressive research, Dr. Johnson agreed.* He has concluded that church attendance reduces delinquency among boys even when controlling for a number of other factors including age, family structure, family size, and welfare status.* His findings held equally valid for young men of all races and ethnicities. Gary Walker has spent 25 years designing, developing and evaluating many of the nation’s largest public and philanthropic initiatives for at-risk youth.* His experience tells him that faith-based programs are vitally important for two reasons.* First, government programs seldom have any lasting positive effect.* While the government might be able to design programs that occupy time, these programs, in the long-term, rarely succeed in bringing about the behaviorial changes needed to turn kids away from crime.Second, faith-based programs are rooted in building strong adult-youth relationships; and less concerned with training, schooling, and providing services, which don’t have the same direct impact on individual behavior.* Successful mentoring, Walker added, requires a real commitment from the adults involved – and a willingess to be blunt.* The message of effective mentors is simple.* “You need to change your life, I’m here to help you do it, or you need to be put away, away from the community.”* Government, and even secular philanthropic programs, can’t impart this kind of straight talk.Walker is working on a pilot project with Dr. DiIulio and Rev. Eugene Rivers to implement a faith-based mentoring system in 10 cities around the country.* But the project faces some daunting challenges, as Mr. Walker sees it.* Can faith-based mentoring, which usually works on a small-scale, informal basis, be successfully bureaucratized, even by private organizations?* And can faith-based mentoring overcome resistance from government and philanthropic funders in order to grow and thrive?

People smart in different ways

http://www.mindpub.com/art162.htm

Rail
http://www.inviteafriend.org/research.htm

Attending services is the most significant factor in predicting charitable giving. Robert Wunthnow, Acts of Compassion, Princeton University Press, 1991.
*
[] Attending services is the most significant factor in predicting volunteer activity. Ibid.

* [] Sixth through twelfth graders who attend religious services once a month or more are half as likely to engage in at-risk behaviors such as substance abuse, sexual excess, truancy, vandalism, drunk driving and other trouble with police. Search Institute, "The Faith Factor," Source, Vol. 3, Feb. 1992, p.1.

* [] Churchgoers are more likely to aid their neighbors in need than are non-attendees. George Barna, What Americans Believe, Regal Books, 1991, p. 226.

* [] Three out of four Americans say that religious practice has strengthened family relationships. George Gallup, Jr. "Religion in America: Will the Vitality of Churches Be the Surprise of the Next Century," The Public Perspective, The Roper Center, Oct./Nov. 1995.

* [] Church attendance lessens the probabilities of homicide and incarceration. Nadia M. Parson and James K. Mikawa: "Incarceration of African-American Men Raised in Black Christian Churches." The Journal of Psychology, Vol. 125, 1990, pp.163-173.

* [] Religious practice lowers the rate of suicide. Joubert, Charles E., "Religious Nonaffiliation in Relation to Suicide, Murder, Rape and Illegitimacy," Psychological Reports 75:1 part 1 (1994): 10 Jon W. Hoelter: "Religiosity, Fear of Death and Suicide Acceptibility." Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Vol. 9, 1979, pp.163-172.

*The presence of active churches, synagogues, or mosques reduces violent crime in neighborhoods. John J. Dilulio, Jr., "Building Spiritual Capital: How Religious Congregations Cut Crime and Enhance Community Well-Being," RIAL Update, Spring 1996.

* [] People with religious faith are less likely to be school drop-outs, single parents, divorced, drug or alcohol abusers. Ronald J. Sider and Heidi Roland, "Correcting the Welfare Tragedy," The Center for Public Justice, 1994.

* [] Church involvement is the single most important factor in enabling inner-city black males to escape the destructive cycle of the ghetto. Richard B. Freeman and Harry J. Holzer, eds., The Black Youth Employment Crisis, University of Chicago Press, 1986, p.354.

* [] Attending services at a church or other house of worship once a month or more makes a person more than twice as likely to stay married than a person who attends once a year or less. David B. Larson and Susan S. Larson, "Is Divorce Hazardous to Your Health?" Physician, June 1990. Improving Personal Well-Being

[] Most happy people are also religious people.

96% of people who say they are generally happy agree that "My religious faith is the most important influence in my life." George Gallup, Jr. "Religion in America: Will the Vitality of Churches Be the Surprise of the Next Century?", The Public Perspective, The Roper Center, Oct./Nov. 1995.

[] Most people who find their work exciting and fulfilling are religious people.

<65% of people who say their occupation is exciting and fulfilling say that they find "comfort and support from my religious beliefs." Ibid.

[] Most people who are excited about the future are religious people.

>80% of those who say they are "excited about the future" agree that they find "comfort and support from my religious beliefs." Ibid.

[] Most people who feel close to their families are religious people.

94% of people who "feel very close" to their families agree that "my religious faith is the most important influence in my life." Ibid.

[] Eight in ten Americans say religious beliefs help them respect themselves. Ibid.

[] More than eight in ten say that their religious beliefs lead them to respect people of other religions. Ibid.

*Improving Health

[] Regular church attendance lessens the possibility of cardiovascular diseases, cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema and arteriosclerosis. George W. Comstock amd Kay B. Patridge:* "Church attendance and health."* Journal of Chronic Disease, Vol. 25, 1972, pp. 665-672.

*[] Regular church attendance significantly reduces the probablility of high blood pressure.* David B. Larson, H. G. Koenig, B. H. Kaplan, R. S. Greenberg, E. Logue and H. A. Tyroler:* " The Impact of religion on men's blood pressure."* Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 28, 1989, pp.265-278.* W.T. Maramot:* "Diet, Hypertension and Stroke." in* M. R. Turner (ed.) Nutrition and Health, Alan R. Liss, New York, 1982, p. 243.

*[] People who attend services at least once a week are much less likely to have high blood levels of interlukin-6, an immune system protein associated with many age-related diseases.* Harold Koenig and Harvey Cohen, The International Journal of Psychiatry and Medicine, October 1997.

*[] Regular practice of religion lessens depression and enhances self esteem. *Peter L. Bensen and Barnard P. Spilka:* "God-Image as a function of self-esteem and locus of control" in H. N. Maloney (ed.) Current Perspectives in the Psychology of Religion, Eedermans, Grand Rapids, 1977, pp. 209-224.* Carl Jung: "Psychotherapies on the Clergy" in Collected Works Vol. 2, 1969, pp.327-347.

*[] About half of religious people "have a lot of stress" in their lives, but only half of these "often get depressed." George Gallup, Jr. "Religion in America: Will the Vitality of Churches Be the Surprise of the Next Century?" The Public Perspective, The Roper Center, Oct./Nov. 1995.

*[] Church attendance is a primary factor in preventing substance abuse and repairing damage caused by substance abuse.* Edward M. Adalf and Reginald G. Smart:* "Drug Use and Religious Affiliation, Feelings and Behavior." * British Journal of Addiction, Vol. 80, 1985, pp.163-171.* Jerald G. Bachman, Lloyd D. Johnson, and Patrick M. O'Malley:* "Explaining* the Recent Decline in Cocaine Use Among Young Adults:* Further Evidence That Perceived Risks and Disapproval Lead to Reduced Drug Use."* Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 31,* 1990, pp. 173-184.* Deborah Hasin, Jean Endicott, * and Collins Lewis:* "Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Patients With Affective Syndromes."* Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 26, 1985, pp. 283-295. * The findings of this NIMH-supported study were repilcated in the Bachmen et. al. study above.

* This data is reprinted from RIAL Update which is edited by Robert B. Lennick and published twice a year by Religion In American Life.* Reprinting of any material in this copyright publication requires written permission from the editor.

http://www.bangor.ac.uk/rs/ms/monitoring.html

W.K. Kay and L.J. Francis Drift from the Churches: attitudes towards Christianity during childhood and adolescence, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1996, pp x + 266Key words: attitudes - Christianity - children - adolescents - empiricalMedium: authored bookSummary:

How and why do some young people become religious?* Are religious people happier than others?* Do church schools help pupils to develop a positive attitude toward Christianity?* What part does personal religious experience play in shaping religious attitudes?*

Twenty-five years of empirical psychological and sociological research on young people in relation to Christianity is presented here in a set of interrelated studies which show how attitude toward Christianity in young people is linked with schooling, cognitive development, masculinity and femininity, church attendance, religious experience, science, well-being, mental health and the Eysenckian model of personality.

On Atheistwatch:Zuckerman 4

It's pretty obvious that Zuckerman argues that the society absent of religion is a better society (more progressive, better educated, more socially conscious concerning its needy) than are societies in which people are religious. We can knit pick over weather he used the phrase "atheist nation" or not, but the fact of the matter is the subtitle of his books is "what the least religious states tell us about contentment." (see his new book Society Without God: What the least religous states can tell us about contentment. That makes it pretty what he is arguing. But my argument, my major argument is basically that this is clearly wrong since none of the states he talks about God the way they are by being without God. Most of them had and still have strong religious populations, the European states emerge out of a context of Christianized society. Many people feel that Sweden is the least religious state. This is actually false, the part of the German republic that was the East German side has the most hard core atheists. That is according to the study on Religious Demand that I link to in part 2. Nevertheless,Sweden is a good test case. Let us examine the situation with Sweden.





Atheist Watch The new installment of my Zuckerman critique.

See Atheistwatch for my answer to Lee Randolph's lattest

Randolph is part of that DC crowd. he's the one who recently had that gimmickie approach to the Bible apply computer data business approaches to understanding a 4000 year old texst. He came back against an Evangelical so I've answered that article on Atheistwatch

part 3 of Zuckerman on Atheist Watch: Religion in Japan

On Atheistwatch I have put up part 3 of the criticisms of Zuckerman: He argues that Japan is an "atheist" nation. I demonstrate the folly of his idea.

To complement that post I present a discussion I had an atheist at one point, as a compliment to the post on the other blog







Andy Wright makes comments in response to "More on Extraordinary claims," I will answer his comments here because they are typical of certain atheist misconceptions that I have been trying to correct since I started on internet apologetics boards. The average atheist on the net seems to believe that religion is for feeble minded dullards who can't think, that's its effects are clearly proven to be very bad for both the individual and society, and that belief is receding into he mists of history. Not only are these ideas totally wrong, but they are the exact opposite of truth. Not only so, but that these things are totally false is clearly demonstrably provable with the best scientific evidence. Religion is actually very good for you, religious people are much better adjusted, by and large, than most atheists. Religious people are happier, they are less likely to commit crimes, if you except fundamentalists their marriages are better.

Wright was reacting to my statement that religion is normative for human experince, and the point of saying that was to show that belief is not an extraordinary claim. So let us keep that in mind, because most of Wrights arguments lose sight of this poin.

Andy Wright:

you say "religious belief is normative for human behavior. It is not merely "normal" but "normative" meaning it sets the standard. Belief is basic to human psyche, to our understanding of the good, of meaning in life, the ultimate limits of reality, the grounding of nature and being itself,"
this is not true. there have been and continue to be successful human societies where religion is not part of the society, where simply not knowing was acceptable.

This is clearly disproved by history. There has never been a single non religious society anyone where on earth. There have only been a handful of attempts to make societies that were non religious, and in not only did those cases fail, but they were the imposition of an ideology by an elite who imposed its will upon the masses.There has never been a single organic culture where the masses were just naturally not religious. Even in the Soviet union and china, where the only attempts to destroy the faith of the masses was imposed, it failed miserably. At the height of the cultural revolution in China when the government was the most anti-religious, the people were still 51% religious and Christianity made up a huge portion.

Wright again:

you seem to define religion as belief in a single higher power, yet among the societies that have religion, there have been as many societies that beleived in multiple spirits in a range from every single thing having a spirit to there being many extra powerful beings that you would call gods.

This is my true definition of religion, I've given it hundreds of times on message board all over the net and it is on my website in my credo where I clearly go over the all the beliefs I hold. I got this definition from Dr. Neil McFarlane in his lecture notes in his class on "religion in a Global perspective" at Perkins School of Theology (SMU). I think it was influenced by Dr Fredrick Strung ("string").


My definition of religion:

In my view Religion is an attept to identify a human problemic, that is the basic problematic nature at the heart of being human. Having identified it, reilgious traditions seek to resolve the problematic nature of human life by offering a transformative experince which allows one to transcend the difficulty and to be fulfilled or feel more human or be "saved." Religious traditions also usually seek to mediate this transformation through cerimony or some sort of theological orientation. These three things make up the nature of religion:

(a) identification of the problematic

(b) Transformative power to overcome the nature of the problematic

(c) a means of mediating this transformative power.

All religions offer these things, weather the problematic be seen as separation from nature, or imbalance with cosmic forces, re-birth through desire which leads to suffering, or moral sin in rebellion against God.

Transformations come in all sorts of packages too, they can be the big experince of born again Christianity (mediated through the "sinners prayer") or they can be the mystical experince, mediated through the mass, or enlightenment, mediated through mediation, mandala, mantra and other mediation aids, or what have you.

The reason for identifying with a particular religious tradition is because one feels that this particular tradition identifies the problematic better than others, and offers mediation in a more sure or certain or compelte way. One must go with the tradition with which one feels the strongest connection.


For me that is the Christian Tradition, primarily because I feel that the historical connection to Jesus of Nazareth, and the unique concept of Grace mark the Christian tradition as the best mediation of the Ultimate Transformative Experience. But more on that latter.

So your statement is quite false. I do not limit by view of religion to belief in a single "powerful being." In fact that view of what I believe is so far off, you clearly know nothing about my views. Obviously you are merely reacting to the label "Christian" and have not bothered to find out that Christianity is very diverse. I do not believe that God is a single powerful being! I do not believe that God is "A being." I believe that God is "being itself." That means God is the basis of what being is, the foundation of all being, not a being, but the basic ground of all being. I further believe that differing religions and concepts of God and gods are merely sign posts that point to this foundation of being. The are metaphors and analogies that point to something beyond themselves, something beyond our ability to understand. I have written many pages on this on my website. The major such pages can be found here: The Ground of Being

Wright goes on:

the range and differences among them are so great as to make lumping them all under 'religion' is almost ridiculous.

That is indicative misunderstanding the nature of religion is. Religion is so much bigger, better, and more important than you are willing to accept, or even than you suspect.

there have been many societies around the world where a human was thought of as the current incarnation of god. this differs so much from Christianity as to again, be almost impossible to be considered the same thing.

That's a misconception. It doesn't really matter, it's a meaningless point anyway, because I'm sure I know much more about world religion than you do. Remember the class I mention, above, "religion in a global perspective?" Neil McFarland who taught that class lived in Japan for 30 years. He was the leading expert on the New Religions of Japan (his book was Rush House of the Gods--I love that title!). He was very sympathetic to Eastern religions and he studied them with major Shinto and Buddhists priests in Japan. That class focussed on religions of Asia, especially Japan. There are not other societies or religions which have exactly the same understanding of deity as Christianity. There are none where a human being was thought of as God in the way that Christian theology came to regard Christ after the second century or so. But to say that these religions can't be regarded as the same thing is just poppy cock. They all fit with the definition given above and they all fit with the concept of mystical union which I have clearly espoused for years.

Wright:

and in all of those societies, there were a wide range of level of belief in the locally accepted 'religion'. some were vigorous hyper believers and most belived some of it but had doubts about a little of it and some believed very little or none at all of it. societies varied a great deal in how much they tolerated the non-beleivers, from none at all to total tolerance, and still, even when there was no tolerance, there were non-beleivers who kept silent about it. your claim that religion is 'normative' lacks anthropological basis for societies and is lacking even more when applied to individuals.

Notice that you don't give a single example. Prior to the eighteenth century true atheists who really believed there was no God at all of any kind were very rare, and mostly they were uneducated. They had no scientific basis for their claims, merely anger toward religious people and institutions.No actually your misconceptions lack anthropological backing. I am quoting anthropologists. I'm quoting major social scientists such as Abraham Maslow who did studies on the nature of religious experience and found that its one of the greatest things or people. Maslow's book was Peak Experience and there is a copy online. A vast body of social sciences data shows that religion is far better for you than unbelief.


Wright:

Atheists today have all that stuff you claim belief is basic to and they have it without . . . guess what . . . belief in any god or religion. you might not want to admit there are well adjusted atheists making positive contributions to the world, and i am not sure why you are so intolerant of atheism or why it threatens you so, but you claim about belief being essential to a person or a society is . . . bogus.

Saying that religion is normative is not at all the same as saying that there are no well adjusted atheists. That's not the issue at all. In fact the data does show that believers are much better "adjusted" and less mental illness and less depression than unbelievers.

again from my website:


Religioius belief indicative of good mental health

a)Religous Pepole are More Self Actualized

Dr. Michale Nielson,Ph.D. Psychology and religion.
"http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/ukraine/index.htm"

Quote:

"What makes someone psychologically healthy? This was the question that guided Maslow's work. He saw too much emphasis in psychology on negative behavior and thought, and wanted to supplant it with a psychology of mental health. To this end, he developed a hierarchy of needs, ranging from lower level physiological needs, through love and belonging, to self- actualization. Self-actualized people are those who have reached their potential for self-development. Maslow claimed that mystics are more likely to be self-actualized than are other people. Mystics also are more likely to have had "peak experiences," experiences in which the person feels a sense of ecstasy and oneness with the universe. Although his hierarchy of needs sounds appealing, researchers have had difficulty finding support for his theory."

Gagenback

Quote:

In terms of psychological correlates, well-being and happiness has been associated with mystical experiences,(Mathes, Zevon, Roter, Joerger, 1982; Hay & Morisy, 1978; Greeley, 1975; Alexander, Boyer, & Alexander, 1987) as well as self-actualization (Hood, 1977; Alexander, 1992). Regarding the latter, the developer of self-actualization believed that even one spontaneous peak or transcendental experience could promote self-actualization. Correlational research has supported this relationship. In a recent statistical meta-analysis of causal designs with Transcendental Meditation (TM) controlling for length of treatment and strength of study design, it was found that: TM enhances self-actualization on standard inventories significantly more than recent clinically devised relaxation/meditation procedures not explicitly directed toward transcendence [mystical experience] (p. 1; Alexander, 1992)

b) Christian Repentence Promotes Healthy Mindedness

william James
Gilford lectures

Quote:

"Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the critical religious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such healthy-minded Christians means getting away from the sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthy-mindedness on top. By it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. Any Catholicwill tell us how clean and fresh and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and be repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due in the main to the largeness of his conception of God. -..."

e. Recent Empirical Studies Prove Religious Believers have less depression, mental illness lower Divorce rate, ect.

J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090

Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]


This part is very important becasue it speaks diretly to what you said about atheists being well adjusted.


2) Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.
Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

I know you are going to get angry about that because people usually do. but this is a scientific fact. It comes from many studies that compare those who have reilgious experiences to those who do not. They find constantly that those who are are better ad musted, less depression and mental illness. It's not just anyone says "I am a Christian" but those who have religious experinces.


b. psychotherapeutic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Atenção e interpretação (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]



c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

3) Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support — a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."


see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.

Nielsen again:

In the days before research boards reviewed research proposals before the studies were conducted, Pahnke devised an experiment to induce people to have a religious experience. On a Good Friday, when they were to meditate in a chapel for 2.5 hours, twenty theology students were given either psilocybin or a placebo. The students who were given the psilocybin reported intense religious experiences, as you might imagine. Their levels of happiness also were significantly greater than the control group reported. But what is especially interesting is that these effects remained 6 months after the experiment, as the psilocybin group reported more "persistent and positive changes" in their attitudes to life than did the placebo group.



Pahnke, W. H. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-314.


Now finally let's not forget the context of the original issue. I was showing that belief in God cannot be an "extraordinary claim" because it's normative for human experince. That means it sets the standard. I have proven that it does. This has nothing to do with proving that it's true, it is merely a matter of proving that it is standard for human experince. The vast majority of all humans who have ever lived have believed in some form of God, we are fit to be religious, it's better for our minds and our bodies. We were religious 65,000 years ago, our distant ancestors, our cousins the Neanderthals, were religious. Humanity has been religious longer than it has been human! Obviously then it is normative. IT doesn't matter that there are few exceptions, that's not the point. It doesn't make you a bad person, to not be religious. Nor does it make you abnormal or somehow lacking. But is the standard human experience to be religious. that is simply a fact.