http://www.politedissent.com/archives/2220
Greg Peterson
February 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Much as I hate to do it, I must join the ranks of the whiney persecuted special interest groups because of this episode: It employed crude, broad, and from everything I’ve seen, utterly wrong stereotypes about atheists. To be as brief as I can, I don’t know any atheists who sit around breathlessly pining for a god. No god who would be at all desirable can be squared with reality as we actually find it in the universe (the “gods of the philosophers”), and the gods on offer from the major revealed religions are universally awful. The only gods that any human could want at all must be purely delusional, because any god that could be inferred from the cosmos would have to be utterly impersonal and profoundly uncaring, and the nomadic tribal gods in the Hebrew Bible and Koran are nasty and unattractive, and while some pretty words were put into Jesus’ mouth, the whole of his teachings is vitiated by the dogma of eternal punishment, and his credulity about the petty Hebrew deity. (If this sounds like I am personally bitter at a god, I assure you, I am not–any more than I’m personally angry at Hannibal Lecter.) To make it seem like atheists are just reacting to injustice and bad fortune and are actually sitting around like abused spouses ready and willing to give god just one more chance, if only he’d find some way to send us a sign…is insulting and absurd. I have the highest regard for the writers on the show. I don’t sit around judging every piece of entertainment through some atheist filter. But if atheism is being addressed directly, as it was in this episode of “House,” I expect a little sophistication and intelligence from this show, of any show. I was really let down. Why couldn’t an atheist be shown who is just, you know–relieved not to have to buy into what House called “religious hokum,” and who had learned to appreciate the hear and now, the graces and challenges of the present, and of human experiences and so forth…without all the pie-eyed contortionist debasement?
John H
February 19th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Well, Greg, I can understand how you feel about people “employ[ing] crude, broad, and … utterly wrong stereotypes about atheists.” It’s similar to the way we Christians feel when people use words like “[not] at all desirable,” “universally awful,” “purely delusional,” “utterly impersonal,” “profoundly uncaring,” “nasty and unattractive,” and “petty” to describe the person we love most in life, and who loved us so much that he sacrificed his only son so that we could all escape that “eternal punishment,” and who allows the natural processes of this world to continue rather than stepping in and stopping all the suffering (which he could do any time he wishes), just so people like you will have every opportunity to accept that free gift before it’s too late.
Greg Peterson
February 20th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Hey, John. Fair points–I could have been more circumspect. But I would like to mention that I had a radical conversion to Christianity in my teens, earned a biblical studies degree at an evangelical college in preparation for ministry (I ultimately did not become ordained), worked for Billy Graham for a few years, and was very involved in church and parachurch ministries and loved my faith, which I honestly believed saved my life, probably more than once. I know from experience that everything you say about your faith feels absolutely true and right to you. It did to me as well, and I loved every moment of it. I never had a bad experience with the church, nor any unusual bad experience with Christians. It is simply mistaken. There is no shame in being mistaken…I am no doubt still mistaken about many things, probably most things. The word that I must, despite its negative connotation, insist on is delusional. I can only hope for you that someday you will be able to look back on what you wrote about how your god can step in and stop the suffering but chooses not to so I can have a chance to avoid eternal suffering as the silly, incoherent nonsense that it is. This is precisely why I am put off by Dr. House making moon-eyes at faith. Why? Why would anyone really wish to have that, to be infected with that sort of delusional thinking? It’s like Cypher in The Matrix who wants to live the lie of a pleasant virtual reality rather than looking reality in the eye and nominating himself to be a real hero in a real universe. Please…grow up. Our planet just cannot afford a great deal more reliance on the primitive ideas of our species’ childhood.
John H
February 20th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Greg – well, I have to admit I was more than a little surprised to hear your life history, and now have a lot more respect for you than after I read your first post. You obviously are much more educated than I am in theology (in the literal sense – the scientific study of religion), so I wouldn’t dare to debate theology with you. However, I think I can now say a couple of things that I wouldn’t have bothered to before, because I wouldn’t have expected you to understand…
Firstly, I’m sure you understand that Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus, not a religion. Yeah, there’s a lot of religious stuff that gets attached to it (especially by the Roman Catholic Church), but the essence of it is coming to know Jesus in a personal way. Although I don’t know the details of your “radical conversion”, it seems to me that someone who has truly “met” Jesus (and I’m sure you know that that’s a spiritual “meeting,” not a physical one), could never subsequently deny His existence, any more than I could claim that one of my high school teachers that I spent years with in the classroom is merely a fictional character. So I would question whether your experience as a teenager was the real thing. In fact, from your subsequent comments, I expect that you would agree it probably wasn’t.
And secondly, if in fact you’ve never been a Christian, in spite of your spending several years participating in organized religion, how can you say it’s all a delusion? One of the most basic tenets of science is “you can’t prove a negative.” Just because I’ve never met you in person, is that proof that you don’t exist, and somebody else must be authoring these posts and signing your name to them just to try to deceive me? What’s inconsistent about the position that Jesus really does exist, and you just haven’t met Him yet?
And thirdly, since this is a blog about House, let me say that I don’t particularly want him to “find religion” either, and I don’t think the writers would do that in a million years, anyhow. Unlike God, House IS a fictional character, the purpose of which is to symbolize a particular set of characteristics or points of view. This is why some people have (rightly) complained that it would basically destroy the show if House “finds religion.” I think it’s much more effective and interesting for House to remain basically who he is, and have the POTWs and other characters contrast with him, so that the audience comes away thinking. I think that’s why this show is so good, it doesn’t just tell you in your face how to think, it shows you both sides of the issue and leaves it to you to do the thinking.
Greg Peterson
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 am
John H, all I can really say in response to what you’ve written is that if my self of about fifteen years ago had read what I wrote, I would have responded exactly as you have. Exactly. And with absolute, utter sincerity, confidence, and authority.
So let me suggest to you if you harbor suspicions about my Christian experience, then to be fair you must acknowledge that it is at least possible that, despite all subjective evidence to the contrary, you might find yourself admitting some day as I do now that everything I thought I knew, everything that I fervently believed, was mistaken. Or, to give your response the respect it deserves, at least not likely to be based on demonstrable facts. On the one hand you have the subjective experience of the supernatural, which is common to nearly all religions (which cannot all be right but can all be mistaken); and on the other hand you have beliefs based on…and I’m struggling for the right word here. I don’t wish to be intentionally inflammatory. How about UNRELIABLE information? Evolution, for example, is simply a fact about life on earth. And that fact seems to game the whole “original sin” hypothesis, which makes the need for a savior appear highly doubtful. And the record about Jesus, while not filled with the large number of irreconcilable contradictions that some atheists with no religious background suppose, still has significant problems (just try to get the Easter story to work out using all four Gospels), shows all the hallmarks of mythology, and contains a fair number of other issues I don’t have time to go into. Perhaps the biggest problem for the Gospel record is that nothing attested to in it is corroborated by any secular source (and the ones ginned up from Josephus and the like are rather obvious frauds).
A guy named William Clifford wrote something excellent called “The Ethics of Belief” in which he says, “This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and hold good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that I have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves but in the name of Man and his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of delivering a plague upon his family and his neighbors?”
I would say that whatever sense of personal relationship with Jesus you have (and I really understand what an amazing feeling that is), whatever existential answers you feel that Christianity has provided you…are in the sense Clifford writes about stolen, because they are taken on insufficient evidence. Grossly insufficient evidence. And even evidence that points in the opposite direction.
John H
February 27th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Greg – well, this is certainly getting way beyond the medical aspects of the TV show, but I’m glad Scott has allowed this thread to stay. It’s apparent that we’re going to have to “agree to disagree” here, but let me just say one thing about your last post.
I’ve always felt that there are two ways of coming to accept something as true – scientific proof and faith. The two are mutually exclusive in the sense that if you can prove something scientifically, no faith is required. And I think that works the other way too – if you can accept something by faith, no scientific proof is required.
Now I know right now you’re thinking, well, if I’m going to accept something as true without any scientific proof, it could just as well be the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the God of the Bible. And in one sense that’s true. People make up religions all the time. That in itself is not proof that all religions are made up, but I certainly wouldn’t disagree that most of them are. And a made-up religion (as the FSM people demonstrate so well) can be made to look just like truth.
But truth is what it is, not what we make up. If you jump off a tall building, you will die no matter now strongly you disbelieve the law of gravity. That’s kind of a weak analogy because it’s pretty easy to scientifically prove the law of gravity, and thus no faith is required. But my point is that God either exists or he doesn’t, quite independently of what you or I or anyone else believes, and also in spite of the fact that there is insufficient scientific evidence to prove either way. The lack of evidence does not change reality, and the strength or weakness of anyone’s faith does not change reality.
So I see our task in life simply as trying to determine what this absolute truth is, as accurately as possible, given the tools we have available (science and faith), and given that both of those tools have their limitations. It is not unreasonable for two intelligent people (and I’m unabashedly including you and me in that group) to come to two different conclusions, and it’s also not unreasonable for a person to change their conclusion over time (as you have) based on either new input or a reinterpretation of existing input. But the fact remains that truth is absolute, so we can’t both be right. It can’t be that “God exists for me but not for you.” One of us is wrong, and it looks like we’ll just have to leave it at that, at least for now.
To end this post on a lighter note (and I hope this doesn’t come across as trite), I’m reminded of the reply a friend of mine from high school always gave to people with whom he had this kind of discussion: “Look me up in 100 years and we’ll talk about it.” ;-)
D-r Bulgaria
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 am
Unfortunately in 100 years will be a bit late for both of us no matter who is right or wrong. For men of science is harder however to agree to disagree – after all we have proof instead of faith so to admit otherwise is difficult if not impossible. And to revert to you example with gravity – even Jesus refused to test gravity when tempted. After all why – it was a choice to believe in gravity or God and he chose gravity? I shiver in terror here…. In high school one of our teachers was very religeous so we used to jerk him around with questions like – so we do not believe what will happen to us after death – hell? He said no – you will die for good while who believes will resurrect like Jesus. At this point I said – way to scare me into believing dude – it’s pretty much what I expect to happen anyway. Do you see me tremble in fear? But I got sidetracked again. My point is that while it is true that personal beliefs are something you shouldn’t mess with and we have to learn to agree to disagree it is impossible for people who know to simply be silent around people who just want it to be. It is the same with heroin or any other abused drug – it gives you fake happiness but it is a slow poison. It poisons your mind it poisons your body. And that is why I/we/Greg/all will not be silent. And House will not be silent as well for that matter :)
John H
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 am
With all due respect, D-r Bulgaria, you’ve missed the point. There is insufficient scientific evidence to prove that God exists, and there is insufficient scientific evidence to prove that He doesn’t. The best a pure scientist could say would be, “I have no idea whether God exists or not.” To take either position requires faith. The theists look at the available data and conclude there is a God; the atheists look at the same data and conclude that there is not.
The difference is that once one accepts the existence of God through faith, something unexpected happens. We discover that something comes alive in us that wasn’t there before. The best way I’ve heard it described (although even this is not really very good) is to say that our lives take on a spiritual aspect, whereas previously we had been purely physical beings. Hence the term “born again,” which people who’ve never experienced it like to make so much fun of.
Now it makes perfect sense to me (because I’ve been there) why someone who has never experienced this “spiritual birth” might think that the physical universe is all there is, that anything more is just fantasy or wishful thinking. And since science is the study of the physical universe, such a person might logically conclude that anything that can’t be proven by science must not exist. Trust me, I understand that point of view because I used to hold it myself. But like so many things in life, it’s turned out to be woefully insufficient.
I had to smile at your statement, “…it is impossible for people who know to simply be silent around people who just want it to be,” because that’s exactly how I feel, too! If you’ll indulge me for a moment, it’s rather like, if one could somehow communicate with a fetus who had not yet been physically born, trying to describe the beauty of nature. You could go on and on about the majestic trees and the snow-capped mountains and the colorful sunsets, and they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, because having not yet been born, they would have no experience of the physical universe upon which to draw for understanding. It’s very similar when someone who has been “born again” tries to describe the spiritual realm to someone who hasn’t. It makes no sense because there’s no common experience there to draw on. The best I can do is to tell you that I know it’s real because I’ve experienced it every day since Nov. 10, 1978, that I totally understand why you don’t understand, and that I pray that someday God will open your eyes so that you can experience it, too.
D-r Bulgaria
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
At this moment John H I feel pretty much like the protagonist from my favorite book “The Gadfly”. I’m ready to weep on your shoulder and I feel almost compelled to embrace you. You won me over with your christian patience and humility. Besides you make a very good point – there is insufficient proof for both. However the proof against “God(s)” is significantly more than the proof “for”. Before I continue I have to say that I actually am a believer – I believe there are things we don’t know and understand at the moment but they too will find their logical explanation in due time. There is a truth beyond the material – we’ll find it and study it when we have the tools for that. Quantum physics for example is a very good scientific explanation about the stuff we usually label “God”. It has just started – like so many sciences that have evolved over the years and even become obsolete because the human mind knows no boundaries and never gives up. We’ll have the “truth at the end – probably not in the next 10 000 years but who knows? Like most of the people who are here John, you seem educated, you try to prove your point with something more than “Because God said so!” and I respect you for that. And I am so tired of arguing with fanatics, people who know nothing about the meaning of the words “faith” and “science” but shout when you try to teach them anything beyond their narrow little view. As a man of some intellect that you certainly look like, you must know the basics of the scientific method – observation of repeating events, artificially creating the conditions for these events, successfully recreating them thus proving their validity etc. You should also be familiar with the stuff called “logic” – inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The first gives us ideas – the second helps us prove and extrapolate from existing truths. My point is that we do not have enough proof that God exists ACCORDING TO THE BASIC KNOWLEDGE WE POSSESS SO FAR. Also WE CAN PROVE THAT HE DOESN’T EXIST, AGAIN BASED ON THE EXISTING KNOWLEDGE. There may be stuff that science does not know about that can disprove that thesis but the human knowledge so far disproves the existence of god. Until new knowledge is found we have to assume that God doesn’t exist. Are you following me so far? I know it sounds confusing. The main prove that I can point out is LOGIC itself – God defies logic so he cannot be real. Until we prove that logic itself is faulty we have to assume that it isn’t. Here’s my boss’s funniest logical proof that God cannot exist:
1. If God truly exists the way it is described in the Bible(you can place any holy books name here I don’t mind)than he is all-powerful, all-mighty and all-knowing. There is nothing he cannot do – he can do everything
2. From 1. – God can create a rock so big and heavy that no one should be able to lift it – no one in the whole universe in the very existence.
3. Since no one can lift the said-so rock that means that God himself will not be able to lift it.
4. Since God can not lift this rock that means that he is not all-powerful, all-mighty and all-knowing.
5. We arrive at a contradiction witch means that the basic assumption is faulty. Ergo God does not exist.
We really, really left the original subject of this whole discussion here and I wouldn’t be surprised if D-r Scott decides to erase the whole thing that I wrote (that we religion freaks all wrote for that matter). That would be my final post on the subject and I thank everybody for the patience.
P.S. Galina I noticed very well the mention of Einstein in the episode, however I respect this guy way too much to dip his brilliance into the whole religious ranting. Besides we couldn’t know for sure but I think we can bravely assume he was talking about the unknown in general, the “truth” the “problem(s)” that he wouldn’t solve because he lacked time/equipment/knowledge/resources. And I seriously doubt he would have searched the answers any other way than scientifically. His reflections are proof of him being open minded, not religious.
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