The book "all atheists really should read"

[Shake]

So, after going through the article as well as a counter article, I don't recall what even led me to the first link in the first place. I was intrigued by the idea that perhaps there was something we atheists were missing. For those who've not clicked either link yet, the text in question is from David Bentley Hart, entitled The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Hart claims we have not been properly arguing against the idea of god. To me, the latter article, which claims this book most certainly is not a "must-read" for atheists, gets it quite right. I don't know how Hart can claim to be any specific sort of theist when he's arguing for such a watered-down type of god. It's almost as if he's offering up the idea of a hands-off, Deistic-style creator god, but who is still omnipresent. As the latter article points out, Hart's redefinition of 'god' allows for valid interpretations by different people which are contradictory. Without having actually read his book, this reminds me of some theological battles I've waged on another forum with a theist who framed his arguments in beautiful wording — I believe he actually is an author of some sort — but dressing up a shitty argument doesn't make the argument any more valid or sound. It would usually take me a couple of readings to uncover his garbage arguments from the flowery wording, and that's what it seems like this might be.

Thoughts?

 

[Underseer]

The first sentence of that opinion piece is pure horseshit.

One reason that modern-day debates between atheists and religious believers are so bad-tempered, tedious and infuriating is that neither side invests much effort in figuring out what the other actually means when they use the word 'God'.

Whoever wrote that does not seem to be aware that the vast majority of atheists are ex-theists. Most atheists know damn well what theists mean when they use the word "god."

To even make that argument is incredibly disingenuous.

I had to stop reading after the first sentence. Sorry.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I managed to find a download of this book. DBH is simply one of those irritating theists who abandons the usual God of the Bible and hypothesizes a rather abstract species of God. From this position he makes all sorts of unsupported assertions. If "God is the ground of our being" turns you on, you will like DBH.

‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!
Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

It is a collection of Jabberwocky propositions.

 

[phands]

Dipped in...it's garbage. Just the introduction is turgid twaddle.

Shock report: unsound, unbalanced theist finds even more nonsense to spew in favour of his version of non-existent sky-fairy!

 

[Underseer]

I managed to find a download of this book. DBH is simply one of those irritating theists who abandons the usual God of the Bible and hypothesizes a rather abstract species of God. From this position he makes all sorts of unsupported assertions. If "God is the ground of our being" turns you on, you will like DBH.

‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!
Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

It is a collection of Jabberwocky propositions.

I define God to be my shoelaces.

*looks down*

Ah ha! I just proved that God is real! Atheism is therefore definitely false! Suck that, atheists! I proved all of you wrong!
[/Christian]

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Is God made of ectoplasm?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I have been reading more of Hunt's book "that all atheists should read". It is an unpleasant read. Lots of the same old anti-atheist polemics we have all heard for years now. Lots of the usual strawmen, ill considered attacks. It seems that now, attacks on "The New Atheists" is a cottage industry. Alister McGrath, Ed Feser, Alvin Plantinga and many others write these sort of polemical books.

Hunt's book is simply a Gish gallop. Larded up with a lot of ignorant attacks.

...
In a sense, the triviality of the movement is its
chief virtue. It is a diverting alternative to thinking deeply. It is a
narcotic. In our time, to strike a lapidary phrase, irreligion is the
opiate of the bourgeoisie, the sigh of the oppressed ego, the heart
of a world filled with tantalizing toys.
...

No deep understanding here.

 

[DrZoidberg]

So, after going through the article as well as a counter article, I don't recall what even led me to the first link in the first place. I was intrigued by the idea that perhaps there was something we atheists were missing. For those who've not clicked either link yet, the text in question is from David Bentley Hart, entitled The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Hart claims we have not been properly arguing against the idea of god. To me, the latter article, which claims this book most certainly is not a "must-read" for atheists, gets it quite right. I don't know how Hart can claim to be any specific sort of theist when he's arguing for such a watered-down type of god. It's almost as if he's offering up the idea of a hands-off, Deistic-style creator god, but who is still omnipresent. As the latter article points out, Hart's redefinition of 'god' allows for valid interpretations by different people which are contradictory. Without having actually read his book, this reminds me of some theological battles I've waged on another forum with a theist who framed his arguments in beautiful wording — I believe he actually is an author of some sort — but dressing up a shitty argument doesn't make the argument any more valid or sound. It would usually take me a couple of readings to uncover his garbage arguments from the flowery wording, and that's what it seems like this might be.

Thoughts?

I support this. I have no problem with Christianity. It's theism, I have a problem with. Secular Christians with a metaphorical God is a good thing. I aprove

 

[Shake]

Well, as any good debater knows, to have any sort of meaningful discussion means you have to agree on the terms. This is an area where the arm-chair theists (at the very least) will dive in without bothering to do this and shift definitions multiple times within the same discussion, and often even within the same sentence. I think it may have been in an Aron Ra video where I heard the claim that many theists can't even give you a good description of the god they worship, so if even they can't pin down exactly what their god is supposed to be, then how are we supposed to believe in it? I like to try to be open-minded, but again, it seems like DBH has, like some apologists, defined his term so broadly as to lose nearly all meaning, which doesn't really help his side at all. If you search for reviews of this book, you'll come across flowing praise from theistic-biased reviewers, as one would expect. I'd love to find some theist actually call it out for the watering-down that it is. Such a theist would have earned some respect from me.

 

[Jobar]

 Satcitananda or satchitananda, being-consciousness-bliss, is a term from Hindu theology- the Upanishads. It isn't really compatible with any monotheistic conception of God, IMO.

 

[Treedbear]

...
I support this. I have no problem with Christianity. It's theism, I have a problem with. Secular Christians with a metaphorical God is a good thing. I aprove

I have no problem with people dressing up and playing Harry Potter games either. Or Dundeons and Dragons craze from back in the day. It brings people together and it incentivizes the young to read. It's just the zealots and their magical thinking that I worry about. And religions are essentially cults with sometimes abusive authoitarian hierarchies.

 

[Jobar]

I will say that Hindu concepts of god(s) are more interesting than Western/Abrahamic ones, and so I do recommend reading about them. Hinduism is the oldest religious faith on the planet, and there are even recognized sects which are explicitly atheistic. And those sects aren't just 'cultural' Hindus, I would say.

I do wonder how many atheists have some familiarity with non-Abrahamic ideas about god(s), percentage-wise. I have little doubt we are considerably more likely to have some knowledge of Eastern religions than are followers of Moses, Jesus, or Mohammad.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I will say that Hindu concepts of god(s) are more interesting than Western/Abrahamic ones, and so I do recommend reading about them. Hinduism is the oldest religious faith on the planet, and there are even recognized sects which are explicitly atheistic. And those sects aren't just 'cultural' Hindus, I would say.

I do wonder how many atheists have some familiarity with non-Abrahamic ideas about god(s), percentage-wise. I have little doubt we are considerably more likely to have some knowledge of Eastern religions than are followers of Moses, Jesus, or Mohammad.

There are ancient temples in Turkey built to completely unknown dieties. In fact, the oldest man made structure ever found is such a building. When I was in Hampi (the mythical birthplace of Hinduism) we visited a temple dedicated to an even older religion lost in history.

Also... something being old doesn't make it more likely to be a good thing. The scientific method is only 300 years old, and that beats all religions as a tool for finding truth

 

[braces_for_impact]

I call this the "foot in the door" offense. It seeks to squeak the initial concept of god by you, so you can then continue to try and shoehorn in the real god they believe in. Ironically, I never see a general Theist of such a god use this technique, it's always a believer in a very specific type of god. Hart is no exception, as according to Wikipedia he's an Orthodox Christian. This is similar to William Lane Craig, in that it merely serves to make people that already believe feel justified that they believe for good reasons, you never really meet anyone that gives those reasons for being a Theist, much less a specific type of one.

Once again, it's a failure of reasoning. I see this technique all the time though. An apologist writes a long exhausting argument, trying to make a mental leap, when even if it were successful, only means their are many, many more mental leaps to make of a much greater distance.

I liken it to a man on a pogo stick, pounding up and down furiously, convinced that he is going to make a single jump across the Grand Canyon, when in actuality, in order to be actually successful, he's going to have to make several more jumps, each one of greater and greater distance, ultimately ending up in the Andromeda galaxy somewhere. But if he can just convince you he can make that first jump, everything is going to be OK.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

David Bentley Hart

The path to true wisdom, then, is a path of return, by which
we might find our way back to the knowledge of God in our first
apprehension of the inseparable mysteries of being, consciousness,
and bliss. Our return to that primordial astonishment, moreover,
must be one in which we bring along all we learned in departing
from it, including the conceptual language needed to translate won-
der into knowledge.
....
For all we know, the tribal shaman who seeks visions of the Dream-
time or of the realm of the Six Grandfathers is, in certain crucial
respects, immeasurably more sophisticated than the credulous
modern Westerner who imagines that technology is wisdom, or
that a compendium of physical facts is the equivalent of a key to
reality in its every dimension.
....

Page upon page of this crap. When one has no evidence, no proof, one indulges in emotionally loaded purple prose and empty rhetoric.

 

[Keith&Co.]

the credulous modern Westerner who imagines that technology is wisdom,

Technology may not be wisdom, but I've yet to see prayer cure diabetes. Or reattach a retina. Or clear a cataract.

I have seen people use wisdom, such as not firing a small arm in a crisis, without an appeal to a skybeast, too.

So, ultimately, not sure what belief in a skybeast grants me that I can't get elsewhere.

 

[Jobar]

I will say that Hindu concepts of god(s) are more interesting than Western/Abrahamic ones, and so I do recommend reading about them. Hinduism is the oldest religious faith on the planet, and there are even recognized sects which are explicitly atheistic. And those sects aren't just 'cultural' Hindus, I would say.

I do wonder how many atheists have some familiarity with non-Abrahamic ideas about god(s), percentage-wise. I have little doubt we are considerably more likely to have some knowledge of Eastern religions than are followers of Moses, Jesus, or Mohammad.

There are ancient temples in Turkey built to completely unknown dieties. In fact, the oldest man made structure ever found is such a building. When I was in Hampi (the mythical birthplace of Hinduism) we visited a temple dedicated to an even older religion lost in history.

Also... something being old doesn't make it more likely to be a good thing. The scientific method is only 300 years old, and that beats all religions as a tool for finding truth

All true. I should have phrased that 'the oldest religion still practiced'.

 

[Jobar]

 Atheism in Hinduism

I wish that Aupmanyav was still posting. I'd be interested to hear his take on this.

 

[DBT]

The first sentence of that opinion piece is pure horseshit.

One reason that modern-day debates between atheists and religious believers are so bad-tempered, tedious and infuriating is that neither side invests much effort in figuring out what the other actually means when they use the word 'God'.

Whoever wrote that does not seem to be aware that the vast majority of atheists are ex-theists. Most atheists know damn well what theists mean when they use the word "god."

To even make that argument is incredibly disingenuous.

I had to stop reading after the first sentence. Sorry.

I doubt that theists themselves know what they mean when they use the word 'God'' - other than what it says in the holy books and some sort of imagery formed from that tradition.

 

[Shake]

I call this the "foot in the door" offense. It seeks to squeak the initial concept of god by you, so you can then continue to try and shoehorn in the real god they believe in. Ironically, I never see a general Theist of such a god use this technique, it's always a believer in a very specific type of god. Hart is no exception, as according to Wikipedia he's an Orthodox Christian. This is similar to William Lane Craig, in that it merely serves to make people that already believe feel justified that they believe for good reasons, you never really meet anyone that gives those reasons for being a Theist, much less a specific type of one.

Once again, it's a failure of reasoning. I see this technique all the time though. An apologist writes a long exhausting argument, trying to make a mental leap, when even if it were successful, only means their are many, many more mental leaps to make of a much greater distance.

I liken it to a man on a pogo stick, pounding up and down furiously, convinced that he is going to make a single jump across the Grand Canyon, when in actuality, in order to be actually successful, he's going to have to make several more jumps, each one of greater and greater distance, ultimately ending up in the Andromeda galaxy somewhere. But if he can just convince you he can make that first jump, everything is going to be OK.

Perhaps the best response I've seen to Craig's ramblings was by the late Christopher Hitchens, who said that even if he conceded all of Craig's philosophical arguments (the Kalam, ontological, etc.), that only would "prove" a generic deistic, creator god. He'd continue to say that this still leaves all the work cut out for Craig, et al, to show that this god is the one of the Bible. And of course, Hitch was most definitely not about to concede to Craig (or any other apologist) their flawed arguments for the existence of god(s).

- - - Updated - - -

The first sentence of that opinion piece is pure horseshit.

One reason that modern-day debates between atheists and religious believers are so bad-tempered, tedious and infuriating is that neither side invests much effort in figuring out what the other actually means when they use the word 'God'.

Whoever wrote that does not seem to be aware that the vast majority of atheists are ex-theists. Most atheists know damn well what theists mean when they use the word "god."

To even make that argument is incredibly disingenuous.

I had to stop reading after the first sentence. Sorry.

I doubt that theists themselves know what they mean when they use the word 'God'' - other than what it says in the holy books and some sort of imagery formed from that tradition.

I'd bet if you asked a dozen random theists, you'd have a dozen different ideas of what 'God' is.