My plan is to post something of interest every Monday morning. These posts will include excerpts from my books, submitted essays, posts made here in the past, and new ones. Enjoy.
The Trickster’s Apprentice
By David Eller
At the end of the first part of Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche has Zarathustra withdraw into his solitude, asking, “what matter all believers? You have not yet sought yourselves: and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little.” In a previous essay, I introduced the figure of the trickster, the mischievous, unrestrained, shape-shifting boundary-crosser to whom many pundits have likened Trump. I realize now that that essay was the first of a two-part musing on faith and following, inspired by this cross-cultural fact: people don’t usually follow tricksters. They may laugh at him (since, as I pointed out previously, a trickster is almost always a male, at least at first), they may be aghast at his disrespect of morals and traditions, they may dread his baleful influence. A trickster is always a destroyer, usually a creator, sometimes a buffoon or cautionary tale, but virtually never a leader. Who would choose the trickster’s world of chimeras, deceptions, and insatiable appetites?
I had said I would post on Mondays. I will do so! The posts just won't always be excerpts, past postings, or submitted essays. But for now, go ahead and share the most important reason you believe, or disbelieve. Go!
Every Monday morning I'm posting submitted essays, excerpts from my books, and some of the best posts of the past. This post today is one of the first ones I made to this blog back in 2006. Enjoy!
Many Christians will claim that atheists simply do not have an ultimate motivation for being good. What motivates an atheist to be a good and kind person? Why should we act morally? J.P. Moreland believes atheists can and in fact do good moral deeds, “But what I’m arguing,” he says, “is, What would be the point? Why should I do these things if they are not satisfying to me or if they are not in my interests? [Does God Exist: The Great Debate (Thomas Nelson, 1990), pp. 118].
C. Stephen Layman argues in a similar fashion. He points out that the main difference between secular and religious moral views are that “the only goods available from a secular perspective are earthly goods,” whereas a religious perspective “recognizes these earthly goods as good, but it insists that there are non-earthly or transcendent goods.” Secular ethics, he says, must pay for the individual here on earth. “By way of contrast with the secular view, it is not difficult to see how morality might pay if there is a God of the Christian type.” [The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundations of Ethics (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1991)].
My plan is to post excerpts from my books on Mondays. This will include excerpts from all of the authors too. I must resist the urge to revise most everything I wrote! Okay now, OPEN THREAD!
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I am a follower of John Smith at Facebook, who writes some very good provocative stuff. This FB post of his to the left provokes some thought too. He suggests a few works he considers to be the best defenses of atheism. They are all sophisticated philosophical treatises. So here is my response:
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Whenever I'm asked what is my favorite color, or food, or the best exercise, or the best sport, or best rock band, I always say that it depends. One must state the criteria first.
Perhaps I can state Mr. Smith's criteria for the best atheist books. It is "the most sophisticated philosophical defenses that only other philosophical intellectuals can understand."
Am I wrong?
The criteria certainly isn't "that which has done the most to change the minds of the most believers." Here's my take on it all. Please discuss!
I'd love to find a planet where people agree on facts! As evidence that Earth is not that planet, a recent poll found that 63% of Republican Party members in the USA continue to believe Trump's Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. There's a phenomenon in psychology called denialism, a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. There is also disinformation propagated by various individuals and organized groups with the aim of confusing people about the facts. For example, the disinformation campaign funded by fossil fuel companies and conservative think tanks has sown profound confusion about the facts of climate science, much as the Tobacco Institute earlier pioneered the same FLICC model to dupe people into doubting the health hazards of tobacco use. (FLICC: fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible / inconsistent expectations (demanding an impossible standard of proof from the other side while requiring little or no standard from one's own side), cherry picking, conspiracy ideation. I'd like to squeeze in a letter T for tribalism / team loyalty, but that would wreck the acronym.)
Religionists and denialists use similar methods, and are sometimes the same people. I suspect Trump's appeal to America's Christians is due to the preparatory work most of them received via religious indoctrination. They acquired the habit of trusting the verbal pronouncements of their team's authorities without evidence or fact-checking. All Trump had to do was move into the cognitive house already built.
As an example, suppose a street vendor offers to sell me a Rolex watch for $50. A check online shows Rolex watches selling for $12,000 and up (way up). By coincidence, the street vendor's "Rolex" comes with no kind of certification. Instead the street vendor says "Trust me." The vendor provides no other evidence of authenticity. I would have to take the vendor on faith, since I have no evidence that the "Rolex" is real.
A watch whose authenticity I must take on faith is less perfect than a watch whose authenticity carries a bit more heft, such as appraisals by multiple independent experts (who don't stand to benefit from the sale, and who stand to lose if they can be shown to be wrong), along with a certificate of authenticity from a credible organization that has an incentive to be honest (such as being sued for damages if it issues false certificates). In the event of a dispute, I could probably get a court of law to rule on the authenticity of an expensive watch.
While I would never actually buy a Rolex when a $20 digital watch keeps time well enough, this example shows how something I can verify as genuine to a high probability beats something I have to take entirely on faith.
You can see where I'm going with this. A God whose only evidence is the preacher's command to "trust me" is less perfect than any God (or, perhaps, any thing) that doesn't require faith. Especially when the preacher or vendor who says "trust me" stands to gain if I do.
Thus if I imagine a perfect God, in line with the Ontological Argument, I imagine a God who doesn't require me to rely on faith.
In the first 2-3 centuries of the Christian religion, we observe astonishing creative diversity. As this essay reveals, this diversity characterized the movement(s) from the beginning, even in the the initial decades of Christian story-telling. When we read Papias (preserved in fragmentary form in Eusebius, EH 3.39), we find a messy description of earliest cultic "gospel" traditions. Circa 100 C.E., he composed a (since lost) five-book work titled Guide to the Master’s Sayings. Assuming his achieved prominence within nascent Christian communities even to undertake such a project and have it survive and quoted for centuries, we may surmise that Papias’s proximal acquaintance with these early story-telling communities began quite a bit prior to his published work, that is, in the late first century.
Not that any thread left to itself doesn't end up discussing anything and everything! ;-)
I'm busy right now so don't send any comments for me to respond to.
Get ready, get set, GO!
David Geisler: So John why did you say to me that it could be that God does exist?
Me: Because nonsense might turn out to be right even though it's nonsense.
John, I’m really disappointed. Your answers to me are so much nonsense.
Me: Sorry. You don't know what I know. What I know can be found in my books.
John, yes I read a few. You say something can come from nothing. That’s so irrational and stupid.
Me: What I don't say is that a fully existing triune God has forever existed with three eternal persons, which are inexplicable individually and corporately.
John, it’s illogical to conclude that quantum fields are the cause of everything, and say they do not have intentionality nor morality nor intelligence. Something or someone had to create us because we couldn’t just come from nothing! Now, if something can not come from nothing then the only conclusion you or anyone can come to is that something must’ve necessarily always existed. What’s illogical about this conclusion?
Me: My position is we don't know yet. That's a good enough answer at this point. When we don't know, we shouldn't prematurely jump to any conclusions.
Me: But we can, however, eliminate some answers, complex ones per Ockham's Razor. As I have said, your complex sectarian God-answer is one of the least acceptable answers because of the complex nature of a trinity--with the deified human side of Jesus joined forever at the hip to the 2nd person of the trinity. Your god looks exactly like the invention of ancient superstitious people, who required his people do barbaric deeds like child sacrifice, reigned like an ancient uncaring despot who showed no concern for his subjects as we see in the book of Job, who doesn't show any awareness of any medicinal knowledge prior to us discovering vaccines, pain killers, or antibiotics.
Me: You presuppose your concept of god with everything you write. That is illogical!
Me: Just stop your evangelizing. You are uniformed, illogical, and delusional, no different from other religionists like the Mormons.
