Karen Armstrong's Comments on Richard Dawkins

[_Kishkumen]

Huckelberry, can you please scientifically disprove that there is a pink invisible dragon living in my garage.

Has Donald Trump threatened to throw him out of the country?

[_honorentheos]

Found this on some site or another of a Mormon wishing to correlate science and religion. This is an interesting comment from Karen Armstrong concerning the God Dawkins demolishes in his book "The God Delusion."

For Dawkins, religious faith rests on the idea that "there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence, who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it." Having set up this definition of God as Supernatural Designer, Dawkins only has to point out that there is in fact no design in nature in order to demolish it. But he is mistaken to assume that this is "the way people have generally understood the term" God. He is also wrong to claim that God is a scientific hypothesis, that is, a conceptual framework for bringing intelligibility to a series of experiments and observations. It was only in the modern period that theologians started to treat God as a scientific explanation and in the process produced an idolatrous God concept.

Well, she has a point, no? Most people through the ages have not thought God was a human figured man. Perhaps some groups of early Jews and Christians did in the West, but that hardly accounts for the vast array of humans world wide and their beliefs.
I don't think she quite grasps why Dawkins says God is a scientific hypothesis however. The way Christianity claims God works miracles in the empirical world means God is in the scientific arena, and as such, is a testable hypothesis. It is the claim concerning God that Dawkins is saying can and ought to be tested, and I agree with that. True Gould wanted to separate the two "magisteria" and it is the claims of Christianity that refuses to do so.
I think Armstrong isn't quite correct again when she notes it is only in our modern age that God became a scientific explanation. True, back then he was described as a spiritual phenomena, but he was claimed to have been involved in the physical world, therefore that is testable.

Anyway, just using this message board as a personal blog for the time being.

Armstrong has an interesting biography, one that many here might find more closely resembles their own. Having been raised devoutly Catholic, she entered a convent as a young teen with full intention of giving herself to Christ. By turns of fate, luck (both good and bad), and intelligence she was sent to Oxford which ultimately was more than her faith was able to withstand. But beyond the information, she's described life in the convent in terms that rival a military boot camp in the level of punishment. It's complex in a sense but her first autobiographical book ends with her having left the convent a convinced atheist. Her other autobiographical work describes her journey from a position of revulsion towards religion to one of renewed respect for the role of faith and belief in human culture. I think of her more as a kindred spirit to Joseph Campbell than to someone defending religious faith. Her own way of putting it was to compare it to walking up a spiral staircase, coming back full-circle from her anger and distaste for religion but having moved up rather than just returning to the same position. She's not a believer. But she seems to be someone who respects and finds value in belief and the communities that are formed around them.

I say that as prelude because I think her comment regarding Dawkins isn't to say that Dawkins is so much to blame for misrepresenting the human relationship to God as it is to say that the entire enterprise of viewing the world through a lense that could be described as scientific is modern and limiting. So by it's nature it excludes much of the history of the human experience and what it meant or means to have a sense of the divine. It's a bit like saying a person could technically describe a painting using only math, but it would say something about the person's understanding of art that they found the enterprise to be the most appropriate means of doing so. And that does say something about Dawkin's chosen approach, calling it into question not for it's ability to eliminate supernatural explanations but for it's inability to really encompass the questions at the heart of God-belief. If one limits God to simply an explanation for nature, then sure hammer away.

[_Kishkumen]

Burden shifting. It is incumbent upon the Christian to demonstrate zombie Jesus. The Bible is not a primary source, so it doesn't serve as evidence.

Not those Christians who do not believe in a zombie Jesus, no. I get the humor, and, on one level, I think it is very funny. But, literalizing the metaphor of zombie to make fun of the resurrection narrative is really only good for laughter among friends. As a serious approach to Christian theology, it falls completely flat.

The concept of a zombie, as we all know well, is completely different from the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is a matter that is open to a variety of interpretations, most which have absolutely nothing to do with zombies.

[_Kishkumen]

I say that as prelude because I think her comment regarding Dawkins isn't to say that Dawkins is so much to blame for misrepresenting the human relationship to God as it is to say that the entire enterprise of viewing the world through a lense that could be described as scientific is modern and limiting. So by it's nature it excludes much of the history of the human experience and what it meant or means to have a sense of the divine. It's a bit like saying a person could technically describe a painting using only math, but it would say something about the person's understanding of art that they found the enterprise to be the most appropriate means of doing so. And that does say something about Dawkin's chosen approach, calling it into question not for it's ability to eliminate supernatural explanations but for it's inability to really encompass the questions at the heart of God-belief. If one limits God to simply an explanation for nature, then sure hammer away.

Well put.

[_SteelHead]

Ah come on kish. Resurrected and we symbolically eat his flesh. How about "lich King Jesus"?

The point being is how do we test to disprove that which has not been demonstrated. When Huckleberry designs a test to disprove my pink invisible dragon, we can apply it to resurrected Jesus. Me, I think a single primary source that even supports that there was a Jesus would be a good start. Then we can start on the resurrected bit.

Human experience is an interesting thing. We have created and discarded thousands of dieties. Does that make them real, that at one time they had followers? That we attribute our wonder and awe at experience something beautiful to divinity, does that make divinity real? Or perhaps just demonstrate that we oft give credit where none is warranted and look for external causes for that which is already in us. Is a relationship with divinity any more real than a 5 year old's relationship with an imaginary friend?

[_Kishkumen]

Ah come on kish. Resurrected and we symbolically eat his flesh. How about "lich King Jesus"?

The point being is how do we test to disprove that which has not been demonstrated. When Huckleberry designs a test to disprove my pink invisible dragon, we can apply it to resurrected Jesus. Me, I think a single primary source that even supports that there was a Jesus would be a good start. Then we can start on the resurrected bit.

Human experience is an interesting thing. We have created and discarded thousands of dieties. Does that make them real, that at one time they had followers? That we attribute our wonder and awe at experience something beautiful to divinity, does that make divinity real? Or perhaps just demonstrate that we oft give credit where none is warranted and look for external causes for that which is already in us. Is a relationship with divinity any more real than a 5 year old's relationship with an imaginary friend?

Yeah, yeah. I am sorry to be a party pooper.

Lich King Jesus is just as much of a problem as zombie Jesus. All you are saying is that you take none of it seriously. You do not believe in zombies and lich kings, and you find the resurrection of Jesus just as stupid.

And, I am not hear to tell you that you should take any of that more seriously.

But I will tell you that a primary source and autopsy are not the same thing. You do not lack primary sources. You lack sources that have autopsy. But I doubt you would be any happier if you had a primary source with true autopsy.

Even if you were satisfied that Jesus was a historical figure, you would not necessarily agree that the resurrection occurred. The eyewitness could be wrong, after all. In any case, your understanding of Christianity requires a literal resurrection. Understandably. After all, that is what most mainstream Christians argue. The secularists pick this up as the most obvious weak point in their opposition, and make hay with that. At the same time, there have historically been various strands of Christianity that did not believe the modern, mainstream version of the resurrection.

In any case, all of these jokes about the resurrection are a lampooning of various ideas about the resurrection, and they are funny mostly because they reflect your own idea of how ludicrous these beliefs are. In the details they have nothing to do with the resurrection, of course.

For example, people say that Jesus' resurrection is just the same as Hercules being taken up into heaven, all the while ignoring the centuries of Christian writing and thinking that went into defining the resurrection. The first error is to assume that there is a single view of the apotheosis of Hercules; the next error is to use that misunderstanding of Hercules as a given; then there is the problem of taking a modern view of the resurrection of Jesus as a simple parallel to one's assumptions about the apotheosis of Hercules.

The truth is that these different ideas--the apotheosis of Hercules and the resurrection of Jesus--are part of long discourses that elaborate on human experience and human narratives. For many people, they are ideas that are "good to think with." Often members of the intellectual elite have not taken them literally, but they found them useful all the same. At the same time, they have always been subjected to the polemics and competition that go with the quest for power and legitimacy.

What we see with certain fundamentalist secularists of our era is their attempt to win that rhetorical war through clever redefinitions and ridicule. I don't say this to discount their position or to delegitimize their efforts. They believe that religion is a problem, and they believe that science has better answers. This is the dichotomy they have created because it works for them. They understand that simple binaries are more likely to catch the imagination of humbler minds. At the same time, we do not have to be fooled into buying the rhetoric, even if we happen to agree with their goals.

For me, I disagree with their goals and their rhetoric, but I think I understand what they are doing.

[_Kishkumen]

I love the theory that pseudo-Dionysius, the late-antique Christian theologian, was actually a student of Proclus who was attempting to transmit Proclus' Neoplatonic teachings in the guise of Christian theology. Wonderful!

[_SteelHead]

Well Kish, you got me. I lampoon religion as I see a colossal waste of human effort directed into meaningless disputes.

If someone asks that we create a test to validate the resurrected Jesus, it is wholly legitimate to ask to produce said Jesus that he may be tested.

In a discussion about spirituality, it is legitimate to first ask does spirit even exist, else wise we are letting millennia of language/tradition prejudice a discussion about what is likely a wholly natural phenomena.

How does one misrepresent the human relationship with god? Which god? When no god can be demonstrated/has been demonstrated. Define god. Define the relationship between man and god. Evidence that the relationship is more than the relationship between man and imagination then we can discuss whether the relationship has been misrepresented. Else said relationship is nebulous enough to be represented any which way. Which is why we have people like NL.......

[_Kishkumen]

Well Kish, you got me. I lampoon religion as I see a colossal waste of human effort directed into meaningless disputes.

Well, yes, meaningless to you. And I respect the fact that you find it meaningless.

If someone asks that we create a test to validate the resurrected Jesus, it is wholly legitimate to ask to produce said Jesus that he may be tested.

I would be tempted to say I am simply not interested. Of course, I am somewhat interested, but really I am more interested in the misguided application of history and science to come up with the idea of validating the resurrection of Jesus. It is simply absurd (in my view).

In a discussion about spirituality, it is legitimate to first ask does spirit even exist, else wise we are letting millennia of language/tradition prejudice a discussion about what is likely a wholly natural phenomena.

Would I be right in supposing that you take the position that nothing exists outside of natural phenomena, and so there is no question of the spiritual at all? Many convert atheists take the position that their former experiences of the divine, which they once interpreted as spiritual, are now just emotional, vel sim. Sounds fine to me. It is a pointless conversation, for the most part, but I don't begrudge you the attempt to convert more believers in the supernatural to your point of view.

How does one misrepresent the human relationship with god? Which god? When no god can be demonstrated/has been demonstrated. Define god. Define the relationship between man and god. Evidence that the relationship is more than the relationship between man and imagination then we can discuss whether the relationship has been misrepresented. Else said relationship is nebulous enough to be represented any which way. Which is why we have people like NL.......

Yes, that seems to be one way about going about the conversation. Even though people have experienced things they define as gods, or spirits, or elves, or what have you, you and others require that they prove them to you or you won't talk about them (respectfully). Hopefully this can be tactfully handled so that you don't have to bother to enter into such a pointless conversation and offend wrong-thinking people.

I think it is possible that people have experiences that are meaningful to them, and they can be rejected by their former religionists who once saw things the same way but were converted to a new perspective. What I hope is that converts can find a way of being converted without thinking it necessary to lampoon the beliefs of others. It's tough to do. I am sympathetic because very often I find myself doing the same. But, it does provoke thought and reflection when I see others doing what I often do.

[_SteelHead]

You are nicer than me. I lampoon because I view this preoccupation with religion as wasteful. Though someone may find it meaningful and ascribe to it sacredness does not mean that in the marketplace of ideas, these religious beliefs have value. Questioning these ideas, criticizing the ideas, I think is fine as it hopefully will have some impact on the direction we collectively take. I do not view my criticism as pointless as it may impact someone to the point of questioning their base.

As to scientifically testing the resurrection of Jesus, yes it is an absurd idea. But no more absurd than any sacred mythology.