[Mb-civic] Beyond belief

[Ian]

"As AJ Ayer said, if God has constituted
the world in such a way that he cannot resolve the phenomenon of evil, 
logically it makes no difference whether we are believers or unbelievers."

Well....

Actually, within the "Christian construct," God most certainly HAS a way of 
"resolving" the "phenomenon of evil": however, if one does not believe in 
that construct, then obviously one would not see this, much less understand 
or accept it.  And in the constructs of Judaism and Islam, there is also a 
"mechanism" by which evil is "controlled" (during one's temporal life) and 
"vanquished" (at "the end").  But again, if one does not believe in those 
constructs, then one is not going to see,  understand or accept this.

However, even were this not the case, once one even posits the POSSIBLE idea 
of the existence of God, it is the height of human arrogance to suggest that 
the human mind or spirit would see or understand the "mind of God" vis-a-vis 
how He does or does not, or will or will not, "resolve" the "phenomenon of 
evil."

Either there is no God, or there is a God - in which case we (being simple, 
mortal humans) could not possibly fathom His (or Her) mind, methods, etc. 
with regard to ANY facet of human existence.

Peace.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jef Bek" <jefbek at mindspring.com>
To: "Civic List" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 2:04 AM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Beyond belief


> Commentary
> Beyond belief
>
> Justin Cartwright on religion's vain quest for the meaning of life
>
> Justin Cartwright
> Saturday August 13, 2005
>
> The Guardian
>
> Near the end of his life, Isaiah Berlin wrote these words to a 
> correspondent
> who had asked the great imponderable:
>
> "As for the meaning of life, I do not believe that it has any. I do not at
> all ask what it is, but I suspect that it has none and this is a source of
> great comfort to me. We make of it what we can and that is all there is
> about it. Those who seek for some cosmic all-embracing libretto or God 
> are,
> believe me, pathetically mistaken."
>
> It's time that we acknowledged honestly what most people believe, that
> religion is at bottom nonsense. I do not deny the good work of religious
> people, nor the cultural effects of religion, nor its deep penetration 
> into
> our consciousness, but what I think we should acknowledge is that religion
> contains a massive falsehood, namely that there is a God who determines 
> our
> actions and responds to our plight. As AJ Ayer said, if God has 
> constituted
> the world in such a way that he cannot resolve the phenomenon of evil,
> logically it makes no difference whether we are believers or unbelievers.
> The hypocritical respect now being accorded to Muslim "scholars", people 
> who
> believe that the Qur'an was dictated word for word by God, is just one
> example of the mess we have got ourselves into by pretending to take
> religion seriously. Disagreements about society can only be resolved in 
> the
> here and now on liberal principles of discussion and compromise. You 
> cannot
> have a sensible discussion with fundamentalists, be they Christian, Jewish
> or Muslim, because they start from a different point.
>
> What preoccupied Berlin as a philosopher and historian of ideas was the 
> very
> prevalent belief that somehow life is other than the one we live. "Things
> are what they are," he was fond of saying, paraphrasing Bishop Joseph
> Butler, "why should we wish to deceive ourselves?" He regarded the
> essentially religious belief that we could forgo our freedom now for some
> future society - Marxism was his particular bugbear - as ludicrous and
> against all the tenets of common sense. Freedom was, in his view, the
> freedom to conduct our own lives in our own way with as little 
> interference
> as possible. He had no time at all for the idea that we are living with a
> false consciousness, which needs to be changed either by the religiously 
> or
> the ideologically enlightened. In an age when fascism and communism were
> battling for the soul of Europe, he saw that they were essentially the 
> same
> thing, offering a sort of heaven for those who gave up their personal
> freedom.
>
> He had even less patience with the idea that life is politics. Instead, he
> acknowledged that people could have conflicting aims, and he concluded 
> that
> politics was not the end of life, but the unavoidable activity to resolve
> these aims. This is the liberal way for which Britain has - rightly - been
> highly regarded. It is not some wishy-washy alternative to a more active 
> set
> of beliefs, but the starting point of a liberal and secular society. It
> pre-supposes a rejection of explanations that involve miraculous events, 
> and
> unprovable explanations of existence and death. As a comfort or as a
> delusion or as a moral guide, these views are unexceptionable in a modern
> society, but when they assume a higher authority they have no value at 
> all.
>
> When South Africa was struggling to achieve a resolution after apartheid,
> neither side was, at that stage, truly committed to democracy. The ANC was
> at heart centralist, and the outgoing Nationalists wanted separate
> provisions for whites. In the end, the ANC and the National Party could 
> only
> agree on a liberal democratic constitution; the unassailable logic of a
> liberal democratic constitution had prevailed. It is the very fact that a
> liberal democracy is not prescriptive, but values the processes above the
> ideology, which has stood the test of time.
>
> It follows that I believe we have to acknowledge happily that ethics has 
> no
> rational content, that we behave morally and responsibly not because God
> commands us to do so, but because it is in our nature and because it makes
> profound common sense to do so. I am not in any sense advocating active
> hostility to religion, merely that we should as a nation distance 
> ourselves
> from religious explanations.
>
> There is absolutely no reason for the Church of England to be represented 
> in
> the House of Lords nor for the Queen to be the Defender of Faith, (or -
> fatuously - faiths), nor is there any reason to take the Muslim Parliament
> or the Board of Deputies seriously if they claim to have special 
> knowledge.
> Their role, like every other group's in the country, should be to lobby 
> and
> persuade. We must eliminate any suggestion of a religious agenda: I have 
> no
> doubt that a substantial proportion of Muslims in this country believes 
> that
> western society is anti-Muslim and that the Iraq war was directed against
> their religion. Not so long ago I interviewed the head of Palestinian
> Broadcasting and asked him why his television station glorified suicide
> bombing. His reply was interesting, perhaps even frightening: the TV 
> station
> had to reflect all strands of Palestinian thought. It may be
> incomprehensible to true believers, but a secular state does not pursue
> religious crusades, even if US president George W Bush sometimes appears 
> to
> believe that he has a divine sanction.
>
> So the measures the government is taking against mullahs and against
> religious incitement seem to me to be misguided. By pandering to the
> credulous while cracking down on "extremists", we are trying to maintain 
> the
> fiction that we are semi-religious in a harmless, Hobbity sort of fashion.
> Interestingly, Berlin, while himself absolutely against any "vaporous 
> clouds
> of nonsense" as guiding principles for society, believed that religions 
> lost
> their meaning when they compromised their beliefs. Muslims - and indeed 
> any
> other religious group - should be treated in a secular fashion: if they
> stray into crime, that is what it is, crime, nothing else. We should make 
> it
> absolutely clear that there are no special political or religious crimes,
> and we should make it clear that we do not tacitly promote religion in
> government or in schools. What we have to promote above all else is the
> liberal society, and this is best done by observing scrupulously the
> principles of that society.
>
> And that demands that we acknowledge that religion is, at base, nonsense.
> The sooner we eliminate the idea that life has "some cosmic, all-embracing
> libretto", the better.
>
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