I am in sympathy with where you’re coming from. I’m not suggesting that the right words will do much. I’m suggesting the inevitability of our using words and therefore some care about what fiction one adopts. It’s only because I see fictive invention as inevitable that I think there’s some virtue in choosing one’s fictions constructively. But I agree, it hardly gets you through the dense fog of your own ignorance.

I’m thinking of this. When I look at a table or a person, I can think ‘in its most fundamental sense, this table or this person is matter’. Well that’s very nice but it gives me an entirely spurious comfort - an idea that I’ve said something fundamental when I’m really knee deep in fictive invention. You see I’ve said it’s ‘matter’ but I haven’t the slightest idea what matter is.

Agreed, giving an arbitrary name to something is merely a label, containing no additional useful information. This is property of our system of language, not a property of the universe we live in. I could say, “I’m holding a brick” but if you had never seen a brick and had no brick-concept in your mind to relate to, then all I can do is describe it in terms of something else (it’s a bit like a rock, but square on the corners, etc). With an all-inclusive concept such as “the entire material world”, it becomes impossible to describe it in terms of anything else because the concept itself is right at the singular extreme of our mental picture. Theists would say the same thing about God of course, you can’t correctly describe God in terms of related concepts (they usually come up with, “he has a beard, and is a bit like your dad”).

Which gets back to the idea of a testable entity — the best way to test the reality of the material world is direct interaction with that world, don’t sit around with linguistic constructs and word-games, do some real experiments. Science has built up its own language for the specific purpose of describing material interactions. Most people don’t bother to learn this language seeing as the concepts you have to learn along with the language are hard concepts (no point in just learning a bunch of labels, unless you have mental concepts to pin those labels to). Ultimately, it isn’t language that make reality, only reality can make reality, language is merely a mental aid in our understanding of reality. There is no substitute for direct experience.

If you are searching for a linguistic construct that will create enlightenment and understanding where none existed before then don’t bother, such a thing does not exist. The Theists and Atheists are both in the same boat here.

Well I hadn’t thought of it in terms of ‘myths’ because I’m really focusing here on epistemology - not ethics where I guess myths have more importance.

I’m thinking of this. When I look at a table or a person, I can think ‘in its most fundamental sense, this table or this person is matter’. Well that’s very nice but it gives me an entirely spurious comfort - an idea that I’ve said something fundamental when I’m really knee deep in fictive invention. You see I’ve said it’s ‘matter’ but I haven’t the slightest idea what matter is.

I know that there’s this thing in my everyday world which we call matter, and it has certain everyday properties. If I swing my foot into it, my foot comes to a stop and it will often hurt. That’s the main thing about matter. It’s where it is and nothing else can be there. Now we know enough about matter to know that this piece of commonsense is completely wrong. Tables, humans, hamsters are mainly empty space (or that’s the current state of our knowledge). And what is the matter made of. Well atoms, which are made of electrons and protons and neutrons and they’re made of a whole bunch of other things and so it goes.

Now I could say - I think Hegel would say - that the world is made of ’spirit’ and that the tables, humans and hamsters are likewise emanations of spirit. A Christian might say that the world is made of God’s love. Now these are statements that are obviously peculiar to our commonsense idea of what the world is - the same commonsense view which is confounded by what science tells us.

But they’re not saying that the table doesn’t have all the properties that we attribute to it in our commonsensical world. Far from it. I guess some kinds of fundamentalist Christian theologies might say that the table is what it is until and unless God miraculously intervenes, but lots of middle of the road Christians wouldn’t say that. Geraldine Doogue (a strong Catholic I understand) wouldn’t say that (I don’t think anyway).

So as I see it this way of speaking about the (ultimate fictive) ground from which the world is constituted has the advantage of its strangeness to our commonsense. Although we can’t help forget it the moment we reach for the salt or walk to the shop, if we get to thinking it reminds us how strange the world is. And it’s a trivial objection (it seems to me) that the world doesn’t seem to be made of ’spirit’ or of ‘God’s love’. That is to imagine you do metaphysics by commonsense. That is to imagine that we have the slightest idea what matter ‘really is’. We haven’t got a clue.

I wonder if that makes my point any clearer or adds anything?

I can easily see, however, why confusion or even irritation might arise. Without upfront, explicit acknowledgement of the roles of reason and our growing scientific knowledge, this sort of discussion (like some of my comments earlier) can all too easily slip out of context and be seen as irrelevant waffle. Not only irrelevant, but perhaps even harmful since it can appear to give aid and comfort to all manner of dubious beliefs. When one’s intent is to encourage metaphysical openness (which I see as a willingness to live with what is in all likelihood permanent uncertainty), it seems vital to be very clear and careful. Unless, of course, one is just out to have a nice little intellectual rumble. I may be wrong but I didn’t think that was your intent this time.
 
If by fictiveness you mean something akin to the creation and development of myths, then describing religion in this way seems reasonable. I’m less comfortable with applying the word to commonsense matters. You’re right, of course, that various metaphors for the workings of the universe have been tried out through the ages but for the last 4-5 centuries at least, the remorseless debunking machinery of science has been there to chew them up and generate new replacements. Which will, in many cases, be mostly discarded in their turn. Still, the result of all this ferment is a constantly expanding and relatively secure foundation. I don’t feel the apparent concern you do with the Comtes of the world and their passing intellectual fancies. About the only thing that does worry me at times are ideologues and utopians, be they religious or secular.
 

Granted, but what is it “bound to mislead” about? Only those things it doesn’t adequately explain.

The fictiveness of religion need not, but invariably does, lead to misleading understandings of broad-reaching real world phenomena. To the invention of answers to questions nobody need have asked.

For Comte to live his life on the strength of his “commonsense” fiction took no skin off anyone’s nose. Wilful fiction has caused much trouble.

Comte in the 19th century - the positivists positivist - was pretty confident that it would all turn out to be billiard balls. He wasn’t very metaphysically astute. (Of course he could have been right, but he wasn’t. He was trying to reduce the essence of the universe down to things he could wrap his little mind around. Fair enough try I guess, but it was wrong.) And we know enough now to be suspicious that this will ever work. Perhaps it will one day, but we’re no closer to figuring out what ‘matter’ is than Comte was. And one might speculate - for speculation is all that’s available to us - that the very method of science is bound to leave us in this position in which one thing is made of something else and then we ask ‘what is it made of’ ad infinitum.

I think of religion (in this context which is an epistemological one) as a kind of wilful fictiveness. And that’s what I like about it (which is not to say I’m a believer). Because the alternative is not an absence of fictiveness but an impoverished ‘commonsensical’ fictiveness which is bound to mislead - as it did Comte.

I hope this leads you to conclude that I’m not engaged in ‘rhetorical overreach’ Ingolf. Just trying to get my meaning out as clearly as possible, but I’d be interested in and grateful for any further thoughts you have in response.

At the risk of entirely misrepresenting Nicholas (who I trust will forgive me for making a few comments in his absence and notionally on his behalf), I fear he may have been tempted into a bit of rhetorical overreach in his challenge to DD. Or at least into some imprecision. Like you, I think we’re doing a pretty impressive job of steadily refining our understanding of the universe and there are no grounds for postulating uncertainties that don’t exist. There seem to be (and I mean here only of the scientific kind) quite enough that do.

I’d guess Nicholas was speaking purely in a metaphysical sense when he threw out his challenge, much as I might say that questions about the ultimate origins of the universe don’t make a lot of sense in any meaningful frame of reference. Some entirely different way of thinking (if that’s an appropriate word to use in this sort of context) is needed and our intellectual history, glorious though it often is, hasn’t so far given even a hint of where we might find it. In any practical terms, of course, this is pure abstract blather but I’m not sure that makes it any less true. Quite apart from personal biases, it is this apparently ineradicable wall of unknowing that long ago persuaded me to abandon my fling with atheism. As Manolis rather nicely put it, “Atheism seems, well, too religious to me.” By which he meant, I assume, too absolute in its conclusions.

Like many here, I find religious belief systems literally incredible. While I can relate to some as extended and widely shared myths (attempts, if you like, to explain the inexplicable) and indeed at times feel very moved by them, that’s as far as I can go. In a nice turn of phrase, James Farrell (in the original Eagleton thread cited by Jacques) called my position nebulous agnosticism. I happily agreed, with the small caveat that I did have an emotional (or, if I really want to push the boat out), spiritual bias.

Anyway, beyond trying to head off any misunderstandings, that’s all by the by. The point I wanted to make is that discussions of this kind often seem to bog down because many who take exception to the Dawkinses of the world (whether on stylistic or more substantial grounds) end up in the heat of argument either overstating the radical uncertainty position or defending aspects of religion with which they probably don’t have much sympathy. For my part, other than subjective, metaphorical perspectives, I know all I can really say is “I don’t know.”

DD, what is ‘matter’? Please let me know, and no untestable entities.

If you don’t believe in matter than I’m looking forward to your traveling stage show, where you walk through a brick wall, live, with audience on all sides. Come and see the man who does not believe in matter, for him the wall simply does not exist. Be ready to be astounded. I’d buy tickets.

Sounds like a fully testable entity.

Space, time, matter - all notions that we can’t actually pin down.

I dunno what economists do, but over in the physical sciences a lot of effort goes into pinning these notions down pretty darn tight. Probably tighter than any other notion you care to name, certainly tighter than concepts of money, interest rates and GDP. And I’ll also point out that in the physical sciences they take a bit of trouble to estimate their error margin which you don’t see happening much in theology.

I can measure a hole, pick up a telephone and order the object of suitable size and shape to fill that hole, have it delivered by post and be confident that it will fill the hole. This implies a belief in material dimensions that are invariant over distance, time and all forms of translation, rotation, acceleration and velocity, plus an abstract symbolic system of representation that remains standard over the entire globe.

However, there is plenty of common ground for all sides to argue over human behaviour, which ultimately is what really matters in these discussions. If we put aside the abstract philosophy and look only at the concrete behaviour of religious (and non-religious) people, then the militant Athiests do have some reasonable points to make.

DD, what is ‘matter’? Please let me know, and no untestable entities.

Well yes I pull people up when they argue that science is a just a process. It does have its own metaphysical presuppositions, like everything that happens is caused; the universe operates according to its own fixed rules; and our scientific methodologies allow us to discover these rules. This assumptions are considered “commmon sense” and barely worth stating today but they were revolutionary for our pre Age of Reason ancestors.

Kant’s line was not “well we’ll never know everything about the how things are ordered, so why not just believe in an abstract god who orders things?”, which is the line I think you’re pushing. Kant said rather “things are not ordered in thenmselves so we impose our own order, precisely to help us get through the day and pass the salt”. That human-created ordering is not a truth in the way a deist believes god is true. When we don’t know something we oughtn’t to paint over our ignorance by multiplying untestable entities; certainly my understanding of Kant is that he concluded that our structuring of experience from raw sensory impression could not ever be an argument for a god (after all he was celebrated for asserting that there was no rational proof of god).

But Amanda’s right - in the real world people quickly slide from this sort of abstract, almost meaningless, stuff straight to “why not just believe our abstract principle has a personality?” (which personality in many religions is that of a capricious murderer who enjoys grovelling submission not merely to him, but to his self-proclaimed representatives on earth). Then of course it’s quickly on to “why not just believe that Mohammed moved a mountain?” or “why not believe in the virgin birth?”. The word games of learned theologians do not change this fact of life one bit, especially as the great majority of theologians have proved all too ready to make the slide themselves.

The reason people do that sort of slide is because it saves them from having to test how far we can discern a testable order - or perhaps rather how far we can test our discernment of order. We crave the comfort of certainty, and it certainly makes life simpler not to question authority.

Eh? “His apologists” have him consigning people to heaven and hell, intervening in the world, creating stuff, directing history and the sporting results, making rain and not making rain, counting sperm and hair, dimembering siblings, resurrecting people, they way, the truth, the light, and on ad infinitum.

The problem with your definition of god/s is is that it is a god which no one on earth in the history of the human race has ever actually worshipped. This stuff exists as rhetoric only.

First up, I’m agnostic. Atheism seems, well, too religious to me.

I just finished The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse, which I discuss on my blog here. Carse defines religion as the endless pursuit of the fundamental questions without having answers, whereas belief is the thing that is idolatrous and “finite”, as “finite” is defined in Carse’s other book, Finite and Infinite Games.
I think I get where Nicholas Gruen is coming from in comment #12 above.

Did you read the thread you mention that Nicholas started? Or the later one that took up the same issues?

Anyway, just for amusement’s sake, I’ll see your provocation and raise you one

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/15/society

P.S. I agree . . . Eagleton’s review did nothing for me either.

P.P.S. Nicholas, I think you’ll find Gray echoes many of the points you made in your comment. If you haven’t already read it, I think you’ll find find it most enjoyable. I debated a post linking to the article when I first read it but then thought: “Hmmmm . . . do we all really want to go there again?”

Well, I’m not sure what “God’s” claims are - but his apologists don’t have him ‘claiming’ to be an explanation of anything. They have him as the ground of being - in the way that the militant atheists generally - and often only implicitly - have ‘matter’ being the ground of being.

As far as I can see the analogy I’ve drawn in my earlier comment holds. Scientists hold that the universe is its own explanation - that’s their metaphysic and their faith. It is of course a perfectly appropriate operating procedure for a scientist. I’m not a believer - in God that is - but a believer will, I think, hold something like the same view of God. That God is the ground of being - not really an ‘explanation’.

But I can’t help thinking that this is a misunderstanding. The militant atheists keep thinking that God is a hypothesis. Well in some sense it is, but then it’s also the same kind of hypothesis as ‘that the universe exists’. It’s a foundational statement against which things are then interpreted. A way of constructing the world.

The militant atheists object that this is pure fiction. But we build the world with fictions - the kind that Kant explained we add to the world to make sense of it. Space, time, matter - all notions that we can’t actually pin down. All things that are not really hypotheses for us, but we take to be part of the ground of being - raw constituents of the universe (though we haven’t the foggiest, we just know that they’re hard wired, and they help us get through the day and pass the salt).

We’re talking metaphysics here, or to use R.G. Collingwood’s definition of metaphysics, ultimate presuppositions, and the critique of the militant atheists is almost invariably simply glides past this point - and if it’s noticed at all it’s regarded as just so much obfuscation. Militant atheism proceeds as if one can get somewhere without metaphysical presuppositions.

And that’s as I see it in large measure Eagleton’s point. Dawkins thinks this is so much hot air and obfuscation, and I’m sure many people reading what I’ve just written will think the same of it. Others will ‘get it’ - or at least they’ll think so, and as I’m tapping away, I’m not feeling that I’ll just squirt a little more squid ink behind me - fog things up a little to throw people off the track. I’m doing my level best to explain where I’m coming from.

Is religion worth studying? Yes, perhaps as a branch of psychology. But it is hardly necessary to know the big names who publish in the theology journals in order to argue that God is bollocks.

And as for “being disrespectful to people’s sincere grappling with a deeper meaning to their lives is just rude”, set this against the enduring image of an infirm Gallileo, commanded to Rome, threatened with the rack and bullied into silence and his grave by a scheming Pope who feared any challenge to the authority of dogma. And never forget, Gallileo was right. Silenced by those who know truth through faith. I would not go out of my way to upset people, simply because it is not persuasive, but there is no special reason to avoid offending the religious, any more than others you may disagree with.