Just read an autobiographical piece by A N Wilson on why he de-de-converted. I liked the tone of his narrative. Not all his reasons for coming back to faith convinced me. But one thing that I found very noteworthy is this extract:
When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.
What I learned from this quote is the following. The way to see the problems with atheism does possibly not lie in showing where atheist arguments go wrong. If atheism can be refuted at all, it might rather have to do with showing how the atheist is missing something obvious. He misses the obvious because he doesn’t take up a certain perspective — a perspective from which the reality of God would suddenly seem very plausible. Missing out on this perspective: this might be the problem of atheism. Like someone who doesn’t believe in music because he never opened his ears.
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BTW, won’t be able to engage in discussions in the next two weeks. I’m on vacation — offline vacation to be precise.
I think AN Wilson is wrong in this quote. I’m guessing that the various posters here wouldn’t accept that they are incapable of appreciating art or love. And I know that the deconversion.com community would blow a gasket at such an accusation.
(BTW, how can the final resolution of a fugue be “obvious” – unless it’s a simplistic piece of music, or the listener is a capable composer herself? Personally, if I find that a piece of music is “obvious”, I tend not to enjoy it. [e.g. Green Day's new album on the first few listens; growing on me now though.] I feel he’s even clutching at straws with his metaphors.)
As for wowy’s analysis of Wilson’s point – that may be all very well for “forever” athiests, but for those who have experienced belief and then left it, surely it doesn’t apply?
Enjoy your vacation!
I just read the whole of the Wilson piece. None of it seems to stand up to scrutiny. Maybe that’s just because there wasn’t space for enough background reasoning.
It does contain a few references though, which I really ought to read sometime in the coming decade…
Thanks, BigDan, for your lines!
I would like to comment on two points:
1. You write: “but for those who have experienced belief and then left it, surely it doesn’t apply?”
–> That’s SUCH an interesting remark!
If I already have SEEN the light and already have TASTED the “magic” of a life within the kingdom and already have realized that something really DEEP is going on when I’m praying, but STILL I have left faith, then coming back to faith is much more difficult than it is for someone who has never had access to this kind of life before (say, a narrow-minded, superficial, career-and-money oriented scientist). It’s much more questionable that there is something MORE to faith that I simply have missed up to now, if I already have experienced “the music”. The pond might be fished out for me whereas for a hard-nosed atheist there’s still all kinds of music to discover in the land of faith.
Sometimes Christians think that my faith must have been something very superficial, non-God-oriented, intellectual – why would I have left it otherwise? They reason that if I had heard the resolve the fugue as they did, then it would not be imaginable that I would leave faith. — I don’t want to claim to be SURE that I have really heard the music of faith as they do, but it seems to me often that I have heard the kind of music they do hear. …..and that takes away quite some of my hope of finding something I haven’t found so far.
(I hope that wasn’t too incoherent).
2. You say that Wilson is wrong in this quote. I agree that the wording has the potential to anger people – I understand that. It obviously is provoking. But I suggest that we don’t take it as a reproach (regardless of how it was meant) but rather take from it whatever lesson we can learn. And I really think there IS a valuable lesson in his words.
Some people (and I belonged&belong to these people very often) claim that whether it is the right thing to believe in God depends on a careful weighing of evidence. The idea of these people is that we all (theists and atheists) see roughly the same evidence (nature, human wickedness, incoherence of the bible, miracles, moral law, etc.) and some of us think that the evidence points rather to Christianity and others think that the evidence points rather to atheism.
But there’s something strange about this picture. Even though it seems so natural to judge the truth of christianity by carefully investigating and weighing the evidence, proceeding in such a manner often misses the point. Whether Christianity seems true to us or not RATHER resembles whether we see a duck or a rabbit in those famous duck-rabbit-pictures. To some, it is obvious that the picture is a duck. To others it is obvious that it is a rabbit. Similarly for Christianity: Some – like Wilson – SEE something in Christianity that others don’t see. Their perspective suddenly makes them hear a kind of music that others haven’t noticed or to see a duck where others only see a rabbit.
And I think that’s a forceful point: to claim that being convinced by Christianity or Atheism is not so much about seeing the evidential case as tipping in this or that direction but is rather about perceiving something that others don’t perceive – something that seems obvious when you perceive with a certain perspective.
Hey, welcome back!
(I hope that wasn’t too incoherent).
Took a couple of reads, but I got it!
I don’t want to claim to be SURE that I have really heard the music of faith as they do, but it seems to me often that I have heard the kind of music they do hear.
Yes, I hear many Christians who have fundamental doubts, who feel sometimes their faith is weak, who struggle with prayer, etc etc. Yet still they push on. I feel that they haven’t heard any more of the music than we have.
You say that Wilson is wrong in this quote. I agree that the wording has the potential to anger people – I understand that. It obviously is provoking. But I suggest that we don’t take it as a reproach (regardless of how it was meant) but rather take from it whatever lesson we can learn.
Well said, I stand corrected!
OK, I’ll amend my criticism. If he really means “When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. ” then to me he’s not talking to a fair cross-section of athiests. It’s like me saying “when I think about christian friends, they all seem to be crazy fundamentalists.” Until he gets some better data, to me that’s a fundamental flaw in his argument.
The de-deification of culture is our task for the next 100 years
• down the duck-rabbit hole
The notorious ‘duck-rabbit’ — now a cliche, was employed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his major (never-was-a-coherent) work, Philosophical Investigations.
The duck-rabbit is of course an oddly shaped 2-D black ink blob. Someone with a proper conceptual background can interpret it either as a not very convincing representation of a duck’s head and beak or as a not very convincing representation of a rabbit’s ears and face. Wittgenstein called the duck-rabbit “an ambiguous figure.”
Wittgenstein assimilates perception of an ambiguous figure to a notion he calls “seeing-as”. Now I see the blob as a duck (part); now I see the blob as a rabbit (part). He also uses the phrase “dawning of an aspect” — we might call it an ah-ha moment. It dawns on me that I can now see the ink blot as a duck. The new perception just clicked into place — “I once was blind (to the aspect) but now I can see (a duck).”
• knowledge doesn’t arise from psycho-drama
There’s nothing new about metaphorically assimilating everyday language of visual perception to what is claimed to be intellectual apprehension. (I suppose that chimpanzees overvalue vision and devalue hearing, taste, and smell. Humans do.)
Anyway, ah-ha moments are the stuff of B-movie depictions of “arriving at the truth.” There is melodrama here — the flash of insight — truth brought to light — or truth revealing itself. To use Jung’s phrase the “feeling tone” is too pronounced.
Subjective assurance amounts to a belief strongly held, not knowledge. Even if I have an “insight” I still must ask the question is what I was thinking true or not? What means or methods would I use to determine its truth? Was I simply gullible? Were my wits clear? Did I just enthuse too much?
• “Reason is the Devil’s whore.” — Luther
You cannot respond *rationally* to critics by saying that only those who see as I do can understand me. It is a form of begging the question — presupposing without proof the very point at issue.
But, one pays dearly when immunizing a belief from criticism. It cuts off rational communication.
There must be some starting point in a discourse common to believer and to critic. Otherwise, there’s nothing that could be talked about.
The immunizer gives up the right to be classed as a “reasonable person” by any logical or semantic criterion.
Now you know why the xian “conversion” process has to begin with “absurd” or “paradoxical” claims to induce belief. You must abase yourself to get past the paradox. And to a rational Greek nothing was more conceptually contradictory or vile than a “god on a cross.”
Xianity thus presented cannot be refuted. But it can be dismissed.
anti-supernaturalist
Not exactly relevant to this discussion, but I thought you might like to read this tale of deconversion (admittedly from a fairly weak starting point) in another national paper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/19/religion-catholic-agnostic
Plenty of interesting discussion in the comments.
Thanks for that, BigDan!
(well, it’s quite a while ago since you posted it…)
I don’t know…. he talks a lot about the bad things going on in churches and sects. I couldn’t agree more. But then: I personally really don’t have too much trouble to think that the “kingdom of God” is non-congruent with the church. I really don’t blame God for all that the church does. I find it commonsensical to think that IF there should be a God, THEN bad human beings would use the church (an institution set up to organize the community of some of those who follow him) to promote their selfish ends; and we should also expect pious human beings would exist outside the walls of the church. That’s not a cheap excuse for God. Why should we judge him by the church??? Humans pervert the church all the time.
I do agree that there is SOME connection between God and the church, of course. I have met some lovely people, some people with a glow in their eyes and a warmth in their heart and a sense of purpose in their life WITHIN the church (and, tentatively, I’d even say I’ve met a larger proportion of such people WITHIN the church than OUTSIDE of the church). And, because I’ve met them in a church setting, I assumed their positive aspects might have something to do with God.
Is that biased and inconsistent? Do I credit God for the good aspects of churchy people but I don’t blame him for the bad aspects of churchy people?
Hm…. I don’t think it’s biased and inconsistent …. but right at the moment I don’t know why don’t think so…..
Good points! Do you also credit God for the good aspects of the non-churchy people? I expect that God (IHE) is working through some people outside of the church as well as inside.
Personally, I think that the “glow in their eyes and a warmth in their heart and a sense of purpose in their life” (which are very real) are more to do with the human community of a church family than to God working through them.
The article to which I linked (which on re-reading isn’t really all that good; sorry) mentions the vast differences in beliefs, not just between faiths, but between denominations of one faith. This bothers me – if the Holy Spirit is really living in at least some members of each of those demoninations, wouldn’t you think he’d give some slightly consistent revelation to each of them?
@supernaturalist:
I can’t really see why “ah-ha moments, the flash of insight, the “feeling tone” of realizing something shouldn’t be an important indication of truth?
Why do you believe that 2+2=4? Why do you believe that there’s a table before you if you open your eyes and it SEEMS to you that there’s a table before you? In both cases, it just has THE RING OF TRUTH. So, at the very basis of our belief system we must trust that what SEEMS to us to have this “feeling tone” of being true has some correlation with what is actually the case…
You say ” You cannot respond *rationally* to critics by saying that only those who see as I do can understand me. It is a form of begging the question — presupposing without proof the very point at issue.”
In some sense you’re right and in some sense I think you miss the point. TRUTH does not care about whether it can be proved in discussion among opponents. Statements might be true which cannot be given reasons for and people might have insights which they cannot convey to others.
Of course, in that case, rational discussion is not possible and convincing others without begging the question is impossible. This is so, indeed. But: this does not show the claims in question to be false.
@BigDan:
Yes! I think if God is credited for the good ways of some churchy people but not blamed for the bad ways of some churchy people, then – - YES – - I would definitely credit God for the good ways of non-churchy people.
A friend of mine does research on Christianity and other religions. And he once showed me how many people there are in the Bible who are neither Jews nor Christian but who still are portrayed as being in contact with God.
And I couldn’t agree more with you w.r.t. to the Holy Spirit. That bothers me so badly, too.