Demanding Evidence

[Leela]

Pragmatists recommend that religious belief, like any other belief, is best thought of as a habit of action. If we think of belief in this way, then we drop the notion that beliefs exist within an “in here” realm of ideas that needs to correctly correspond with an “out there” realm of phenomena. Habits of action are always already part of reality rather than a mirror of reality or a representation of reality. Then we never even think to ask about beliefs such questions as, is this habit of action in the correct relationship to The-Way-Things-Really-Are. Instead, the question that we ask about a belief is, does this belief lead to more or less successful action–to gratification of our desires–with the understanding that our desires are many and varied and that different beliefs serve different purposes. So the atheist subscribing to pragmatism doesn’t want to argue that the problem with theists is that their beliefs don’t correctly map to reality, since she has already dropped the notion of “proper mapping to reality” as a useful test for truth or as the goal for holding beliefs. From an evolutionary perspective, the point of holding beliefs is instead to gratify particular desires. Beliefs are thought of as tools for helping us get what we want. Since truths are pursued in support of particular human interests, before we can even talk about the truth of a belief, we need to sort out what sort of desire we hope this or that belief will satisfy.

So if pragmatists don’t hold “getting things right” as their ultimate concern, what sorts of criticism of religious belief, if any, can a nonbelieving pragmatist level against theists? The pragmatist atheist’s only concern for religion is, as Richard Rorty put it, the “extent to which the actions of religious believers frustrate the needs of other human beings…” While some atheists (often those who refer to themselves as Rationalists) see the appeals to faith rather than to evidence in relation to religious beliefs as the shirking of the believer’s responsibility to have true beliefs or at least to base their beliefs on evidence, pragmatists don’ think that we have a duty to Truth anymore than atheists think that we have a duty to God. Pragmatists who are also atheists don’t think we have a duty to any such nonhuman powers as God, Truth, Reason, or Divine Will, Reality, or The Moral Law.

Instead of conceiving of evidence as something which “floats free of human projects” and demands our respect, Rorty says that the demand for evidence is “simply a demand from other human beings for cooperation on such projects.” Our duty is not to “evidence” but only to ourselves and to our fellow human beings. We want our beliefs to cohere with our other beliefs, and to the extent that we want to participate in common projects with other people, we need to try to get our beliefs to cohere with their beliefs, but only to that extent. So the demand for evidence to justify our beliefs only needs to come up when we are engaged in a common project.

Consider the parallel to this way of thinking in Classical Liberalism. The project of having good beliefs is part of the broad endeavor of our pursuit of happiness where there is a defined right to privacy. People are said to have the right to pursue their own conception of the good so long as that pursuit doesn’t get in the way of other people’s right to pursue their own conception of the good. A bald belief in God (just like a simple lack of belief in God) does not necessarily cash out as a habit of action that frustrates anyone else’s pursuit of happiness, so we don’t have the right to demand that theists supply evidence in support of their beliefs until such beliefs are made public as specific actions or the intention to act in such a way as to interfere with other people’s desires.

When does the intellectual responsibility of having evidence to support our beliefs arise? And what do we mean by evidence, anyway? Having dropped the notion of objectivity as being in accordence with reality and having replaced it with objectivity as the ability to get consensus among informed inquirers, evidence is then whatever may help us get consensus about a belief. Evidence is only of issue when there is some need to get consensus. The demand for evidence and the duty to supply it should only come up surrounding some common project in which two parties with differring beliefs have agreed to participate, and there is no outside authority to which we can appeal about what ought to be counted as evidence beyond what authority has been agreed upon between the parties that seek to have one another’s backing for their public projects.

When theists not only hold a belief in God but also believe that they know what God wills for others, theist should be made to feel the pressure of the demand for evidence, and if that believer seeks to have her knowledge of God’s Will enforced–to gain cooperation in such a public project–she is obliged to provide evidence that what she says about God’s Will is true. For example, If someone not only makes the personal choice not to engage in homosexual activity but also insists that others may not do so either by seeking to prevent gay marriage, that believer is obliged to provide evidence on demand that homosexuality is indeed immoral.

continued…

 

[Leela]

In addition to her moral projects to get people to adhere to her ethics, another area where a believer may face a justified demand for evidence is if she makes any scientific or historical claims. Rorty wrote that “On a pragmatist account, scientific inquiry is best viewed as the attempt to find a single, unified, coherent description of the world–the description that makes it easiest to predict the consequences of events and actions…” This attempt is the attempt to gratify particular desires–the desire to predict and control. If a belief is not held with the desireto predict and control then we need not worry about whether it agrees with science, but if a believer asserts that, say, prayer is efficacious in curing diseases, then she is partcipating in the public project called science and will face the demand for evidence inherent in such an enterprise concerned with getting consensus on a description of reality. Likewise, claims about virgin birth, raising the dead, the Biblical account of the origin of the universe, and the effectiveness of various sacraments are the sorts of assertions that, if taken to be historically and scientifically true, need to face up to the demands for evidence and the standards for what counts as evidence that apply to the public projects of doing history and doing science.

It is possible to imagine a theist whose beliefs about God are “sufficiently privatized” such that they do not serve the scientific purposes of predicting and controlling the world or influencing the moral choices of others. Such beliefs would not conflict with science and would not need to face any demands for evidence. Richard Rorty has recommended such “public versus private” considerations to help us untangle beliefs as part of his version of pragmatism. Someone who holds to a privatized version of religion may view “the supposed tension between science and religion as the illusion of opposition between copperative endeavors and private projects.”

On the other hand, if these claims are intended as some other sorts of assertions–if they are asserted as true in some other way than as participation in the public project of finding a unified coherent description of the world that best enables us to predict and control–then these assertions need not face such demands for evidence on historical-scientific terms. If people making such assertions do indeed intend something clearly different in purpose from historical and scientific inquiry and can articulate in what other ways, if not scientifically and historically, these claims may be regarded as true, then perhaps it can indeed be made coherent to say as is so often claimed by theists that there is indeed no conflict between science and religion. Such does not seem possible for theists of the Fundamentalist or Orthodox Catholic variety, but perhaps it is possible for more liberal theists.

What do you think?

Best,
Leela

 

[Betterave]

Generally pragmatists aren’t too concerned about begging the question or being hypocritical (although they still tend to protest when others do likewise), but if we’re going to pretend we don’t accept question-begging arguments, isn’t Rorty begging a few questions here? (See if you can spot them yourself.):

"Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot.”

Rorty writes:
“It seems to me that the regulative idea that we heirs of the Enlightenment, we Socratists, most frequently use to criticize the conduct of various conversational partners is that of ‘needing education in order to outgrow their primitive fear, hatreds, and superstitions’ … It is a concept which I, like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities, invoke when we try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own … The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment’ is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students … When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures. Instead, we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank… You have to be educated in order to be … a participant in our conversation … So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours … I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [domination free] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents … I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause.”

Now arguably a good and intelligent person wouldn’t try to make the sincere views of others “seem silly rather than discussable” - he would discuss the ‘silly’ views in question in order to explain their silliness (a fortiori for a so-called ‘contextualist’). A ‘good’ fascist like Rorty, however, prefers not to do that. He prefers to insulate his views by refusing to open himself up to the claims of the other, indeed, by claiming the right to dismiss the views of those outside his circle as silly such that he is always justified in just changing the subject back to his oh-so-interesting oh-so-provincial views. Why should we take him seriously as a thinker? - as a fascist it’s obvious why we might have reason to take him seriously, because fascists, even (or especially) self-righteous ones, tend to be dangerous. Or because he’s ‘interesting’? To some people maybe, but perhaps we should want to know why someone would find Rorty intrinsically interesting, and many more or less interesting reasons will no doubt begin to appear.

If we get on board with Rorty, we can indeed forget about justifying our views and “getting it right” - we can rely on power to impose our viewpoints. Catholics can’t really do that, so we have to rely on negotiating some kind of agreement between science and religion. (And most of us don’t have any grave difficulty in doing so!)

 

[davidv]

{snip}

What do you think?

Best,
Leela

I think you are proposing a world view in which you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, without any complaints from anyone else.

In this world nearly no one gets their desires satisfied. In this world there is very little “right” and alot “wrong”. I don’t want to live in a world like that.

 

[Leela]

I think you are proposing a world view in which you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, without any complaints from anyone else.

Not at all. This has nothing to do with me not wanting to hear complaints. I’m not the one who has religious beliefs.

What I am trying to do in the OP is to carve out a space within which demands for evidence for religious beliefs are out of line. I would have though that a believer would appreciate the effort, and I would have expected any objections to rather come from the atheist side.

Best,
Leela

 

[davidv]

Not at all. This has nothing to do with me not wanting to hear complaints. I’m not the one who has religious beliefs.

What I am trying to do in the OP is to carve out a space within which demands for evidence for religious beliefs are out of line. I would have though that a believer would appreciate the effort, and I would have expected any objections to rather come from the atheist side.

Best,
Leela

Well, that is what I thought of what your wrote.

I don’t think I should be exempt from providing evidence for what I believe. That the recipient of said evidence summarily dismisses it, is what is highly objectionable.

 

[Leela]

Hi Davidv,

Well, that is what I thought of what your wrote.

I don’t think I should be exempt from providing evidence for what I believe. That the recipient of said evidence summarily dismisses it, is what is highly objectionable.

Your frustration with “the recipient of said evidence summarily dismiss[ing] it” relates to the issue I raised in the OP concerning norms for what should count as evidence. I noted that evidence is only of issue when there is some need to get consensus, and I offered a broad description of evidence as “whatever may help us get consensus about a belief.” Such norms depend upon the sorts of desires a belief is intended to satisfy, and such norms do not come up at all if the desire in question is only a private matter where one does not seek the cooperation of others toward the satisfaction of that desire.

Part of what I am trying to make sense of in this thread is why what one person may offer as evidence gets summarily rejected by another person. One answer is that the two people in question may be viewing an assertion from the perspective of applying it to different purposes. What may count as evidence in support of a belief that is meant to help us satisfy a certain desire may be completely irrelevent to the satisfaction of a sompletely different desire. If the two conversants have different desires in mind but have not made their desires clear, it is easy to then see how one person’s evidence may be summarily dismissed by another. While said evidence may get dismissed, the assertion it is meant to support may not need to be rejected as false so much as just not relevent to certain concerns that one person has and the other may not have.

You said:

“I don’t think I should be exempt from providing evidence for what I believe.”

The public-private distinction that I’ve been arguing for makes it possible to distinguish between what needs to be justified to other human beings and what does not. I hope to convince you that you do not have any obligation to supply evidence for certain sorts of beliefs, but that you do have such a duty to others with regards to other sorts of beliefs. An example of this distinction from Rorty is this: “A business proposal, for example needs such justification, but a mariage proposal (in our romantic and democratic culture) does not.”

I don’t think you bear any intellectual responsiblity to provide evidence to me or anyone else (except maybe your wife) if you want to assert that your wife is the right person for you. Likewise, I see no obligation to respond to demands for evidence if you want to assert that “God is love.” It is only when you start making assertions intended to be part of a universal description for predicting and controlling the environment, such as telling us about the power of prayer or insisting that God demands our sexual purity, where the demand for evidence becomes justified.

Can you think of other sorts of beliefs, desires, hopes, or intentions that do not need to submit to demands for evidence?

Best,
Leela

 

[davidv]

Hi Davidv,
Your frustration with “the recipient of said evidence summarily dismiss[ing] it” relates to the issue I raised in the OP concerning norms for what should count as evidence. I noted that evidence is only of issue when there is some need to get consensus, and I offered a broad description of evidence as “whatever may help us get consensus about a belief.” Such norms depend upon the sorts of desires a belief is intended to satisfy, and such norms do not come up at all if the desire in question is only a private matter where one does not seek the cooperation of others toward the satisfaction of that desire.

It would be great if most of the conversations were seeking consensus, however as evidenced by many posts on this forum, many are not seeking consensus, much less understanding.

Part of what I am trying to make sense of in this thread is why what one person may offer as evidence gets summarily rejected by another person. One answer is that the two people in question may be viewing an assertion from the perspective of applying it to different purposes. What may count as evidence in support of a belief that is meant to help us satisfy a certain desire may be completely irrelevent to the satisfaction of a sompletely different desire. If the two conversants have different desires in mind but have not made their desires clear, it is easy to then see how one person’s evidence may be summarily dismissed by another. While said evidence may get dismissed, the assertion it is meant to support may not need to be rejected as false so much as just not relevent to certain concerns that one person has and the other may not have.

As per above, it appears that one or both parties have an agenda that does not include a rational exchange of ideas.

You said:

“I don’t think I should be exempt from providing evidence for what I believe.”

The public-private distinction that I’ve been arguing for makes it possible to distinguish between what needs to be justified to other human beings and what does not. I hope to convince you that you do not have any obligation to supply evidence for certain sorts of beliefs, but that you do have such a duty to others with regards to other sorts of beliefs.

However, once expressed on a forum or in a public document, such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it no longer is a private matter.

An example of this distinction from Rorty is this: “A business proposal, for example needs such justification, but a mariage proposal (in our romantic and democratic culture) does not.”

How does faith compare to a proposal? It seems to me that they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Belief being the response to a proposal.

I don’t think you bear any intellectual responsiblity to provide evidence to me or anyone else (except maybe your wife) if you want to assert that your wife is the right person for you. Likewise, I see no obligation to respond to demands for evidence if you want to assert that “God is love.” It is only when you start making assertions intended to be part of a universal description for predicting and controlling the environment, such as telling us about the power of prayer or insisting that God demands our sexual purity, where the demand for evidence becomes justified.

Given the distinction between belief and proposal, this doesn’t seem to be a valid analogy.

Can you think of other sorts of beliefs, desires, hopes, or intentions that do not need to submit to demands for evidence?

Best,
Leela

Any that the holder determines they do not care to defend.

 

[Leela]

Well, that is what I thought of what your wrote.

I don’t think I should be exempt from providing evidence for what I believe. That the recipient of said evidence summarily dismisses it, is what is highly objectionable.

Hi Davidv,

I should have asked you before if you would mind giving examples of the sorts of evidence that you find gets summarily dismissed by nonbelievers.

Thanks,
Leela

 

[davidv]

Hi Davidv,

I should have asked you before if you would mind giving examples of the sorts of evidence that you find gets summarily dismissed by nonbelievers.

Thanks,
Leela

Jesus as real person, for instance.

 

[Leela]

It would be great if most of the conversations were seeking consensus, however as evidenced by many posts on this forum, many are not seeking consensus, much less understanding.

I don’t think that is true. People want to convince others of their views which is one way of working toward achieving consensus.

However, once expressed on a forum or in a public document, such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it no longer is a private matter

I think it depends on what is asserted and what desires the asserted belief is supposed to satisfy.

How does faith compare to a proposal? It seems to me that they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Belief being the response to a proposal.

Okay, but do you agree that there are some things that need to be justified and others that do not?

[Any that the holder determines they do not care to defend.

I’m confused. I had taken you to be objecting to the notion that there are beliefs that do not require justification to others. Now you seem to be saying that no one has any duty to justify any beliefs. Can you clarify what your position is?

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Generally pragmatists aren’t too concerned about begging the question or being hypocritical (although they still tend to protest when others do likewise), but if we’re going to pretend we don’t accept question-begging arguments, isn’t Rorty begging a few questions here? (See if you can spot them yourself.):

Can you point them out for me?

"Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot.”

Are you disagreeing with this quote? It sounds right to me.

If we get on board with Rorty, we can indeed forget about justifying our views and “getting it right” - we can rely on power to impose our viewpoints. Catholics can’t really do that, so we have to rely on negotiating some kind of agreement between science and religion. (And most of us don’t have any grave difficulty in doing so!)

Rorty of course thinks justifying our views actually is important which is why he wrote the essay you are quoting from.

You don’t seem to be addressing my thesis in the OP but rather just expressing irritation with my citing Rorty to help explain it. Do you have any thoughts regarding demands for evidence and the nature of evidence? I thought this topic would be interesting to people since there is so much disagreement here about what shoudl count as evidence.

Best,
Leela

 

[Betterave]

Can you point them out for me?

I’m no expert on Rorty, but it seems to me that for Rorty, people who don’t buy into his view of the world are ‘uneducated’ simply because they do not belong in his circle of discourse; he is effectively a clever bigot who hypocritically criticizes the bigotry of others, while being oblivious to his own condition.

I quote:
“By separating the Enlightenment ideals and liberal habits from their foundations in Enlightenment rationality, and by directing his hermeneutic attention only upon philosophical foundations, Rorty blocks a critique of the effective reality of these ideals and habits, i.e., how they have worked historically as a liberating or oppressive force in actual social conditions. In this way, Rorty’s own bourgeois self-image, formed in abstraction out of these ideals and habits, is installed by sleight of hand as a foundational truth. Furthermore, it is a truth open neither to foundationalist criticism, since foundationalism has been debunked, nor to deconstruction, since that is directed to foundational claims, which Rorty demurs. …in bashing all mirrors, Rorty leaves one particular image, i.e., the prevailing bourgeois orthodoxy, as authoritative.”
(Burch, Robert. “Conloquium Interruptum: Stopping to Think,” in Anti-Foundationalism and Practical Reasoning: Conversations between Hermeneutics and Analysis.)

"Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot.”

Questions apparently(?) begged:

1. The essence of truth is exhausted by its finite expression in sentences.
2. Truth is not found in the mind of God.
3. The human mind bears no essential relation to the mind of God.
4. The only (the proper?) way to arrive at truth is by the pragmatic negotiation involved in “describing activities” (and Rorty obviously means this in a narrow, not a liberal sense - although his grounds for this narrowness are purely a matter of his regarding himself as “more educated” than those he disagrees with).

Are you disagreeing with this quote? It sounds right to me.

I think the quote expresses some important ideas that are important in certain contexts, but I think that coming from Rorty they have distinctly fascist tendencies (which descriptions? whose describing activities? - Rorty the Benevolent will decide that!), and that Rorty is unwilling/unable (because of his own intellectual position) to expose the alleged benevolence of his own fascism to criticism.

Rorty of course thinks justifying our views actually is important which is why he wrote the essay you are quoting from.

‘Thinks’ as in ‘claims.’ But we see what he means by that by looking at his practice.

You don’t seem to be addressing my thesis in the OP but rather just expressing irritation with my citing Rorty to help explain it. Do you have any thoughts regarding demands for evidence and the nature of evidence? I thought this topic would be interesting to people since there is so much disagreement here about what shoudl count as evidence.

You’re right to some extent, but I’m still trying to address your thesis at least elliptically.
You wrote:
“If people making such assertions do indeed intend something clearly different in purpose from historical and scientific inquiry and can articulate in what other ways, if not scientifically and historically, these claims may be regarded as true, then perhaps it can indeed be made coherent to say as is so often claimed by theists that there is indeed no conflict between science and religion.”

I think you may sneak in bad assumptions about the nature of the autonomy of historical and scientific inquiry here, and about the necessary divide between realms of discourse. Moral discourse, for example, involves giving reasons, part of which is producing evidence (like science), but part of which is a matter of personal engagement with what is understood to be the totality of meaning of the world. There is no way to insulate the pursuit of raw power found in ‘scientific’ enterprises from this broader context of meaningfulness. The scientific will-to-power has to be incorporated into our reflections on the meaningfulness of the world, and not simply presumed to be an autonomous and unquestionable domain. I suspect your formulation of the situation tends to obscure this requirement.

 

[Lapin_Lascif]

Jesus as real person, for instance.

This seems to be an appropriate place to insert a quote from Sam (peace be on His Ben Stiller resembling head) regarding Jesus, the person.

Samuel, take it away…

"II1. Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.

1. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.
2. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos.
3. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.
4. In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency."

I don’t know about you, but this seems totally reasonable to me.

Lapin

 

[Betterave]

This seems to be an appropriate place to insert a quote from Sam (peace be on His Ben Stiller resembling head) regarding Jesus, the person.

Samuel, take it away…

"II1. Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.

1. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.
2. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos.
3. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.
4. In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency."

I don’t know about you, but this seems totally reasonable to me.

Lapin

Wow, thanks for the intelligent contribution - er… intelligent comment - er… comment.

 

[Touchstone]

Jesus as real person, for instance.

I don’t find this to be something that is “summarily” dismissed by unbelievers, do you? Jesus as a human being – a Jew named Yeshua living in first century Palestine – does not seem at all incredible, or even a little remarkable as such. Jews were know to populate the region at that time. Even Jesus as “man who was crucified” by the Romans is not problematic, something to resist historically; it happened, and such an account is all too plausible, given everything else we know that period.

It’s only when things get crazy in terms of supernatural attachments to the story that reasonable folk look askance. Born of a virgin seems highly implausible, any way you look at it, as does resurrection after three days being dead and decomposing. “Summary dismissal” seems quite a reasonable response to those parts of the story, at least barring some battery of compelling evidences that make that narrative more likely (or even close) than the idea that this is legend, fantasy and/or imagination. That is, until such time as this kind of evidence becomes available, summary dismissal appears to be the only reasonably response available.

I also note that atheist who do adopt the view that Jesus was wholly fictional – not a real person who had fabulous stories and miraculous accounts attributed to him – typically are at pains to show why that is their conclusion. Why? Because the idea of a Jew named Yeshua being executed as a political victim of the Roman Empire is manifestly plausible, and given what we know, we’d actually require some argumentation for why even that should be disbelieved.

The case for a historical, perfectly natural and non-miraculous/non-supernatural Jesus seems plenty plausible to me, but for example, Richard Carrier goes to great lengths to articulate a rather convoluted case for the wholly fictional status of Jesus, that Jesus never existed even as a normal man.

In any case, that’s a very long route to such a conclusion, not a summary dismissal.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

This seems to be an appropriate place to insert a quote from Sam (peace be on His Ben Stiller resembling head) regarding Jesus, the person.

Samuel, take it away…

"II1. Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.

1. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.
2. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos.
3. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.
4. In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency."

I don’t know about you, but this seems totally reasonable to me.

Lapin

If this quote is your notion of a reasoned philosophical argument and you cannot produce any ideas of your own your opinion is worthless…

 

[davidv]

I don’t think that is true. People want to convince others of their views which is one way of working toward achieving consensus.

I think it depends on what is asserted and what desires the asserted belief is supposed to satisfy.

Okay, but do you agree that there are some things that need to be justified and others that do not?

I’m confused. I had taken you to be objecting to the notion that there are beliefs that do not require justification to others. Now you seem to be saying that no one has any duty to justify any beliefs. Can you clarify what your position is?

Best,
Leela

My position is that I ought to be able explain why I believe what I do. Since, in the Catholic context, at least as Pope Benedict sees it, belief is the response to a proposal (1). The evidence for the validity of this proposal is available for display and explanation. If I cannot justify my belief, than I am a pretty poor disciple of Jesus, and even poorer at the command to “teach all nations”.

(1) This one the main premises in his book, Introduction to Christianity.

 

[tonyrey]

It’s only when things get crazy in terms of supernatural attachments to the story that reasonable folk look askance. Born of a virgin seems highly implausible, any way you look at it, as does resurrection after three days being dead and decomposing. “Summary dismissal” seems quite a reasonable response to those parts of the story, at least barring some battery of compelling evidences that make that narrative more likely (or even close) than the idea that this is legend, fantasy and/or imagination. That is, until such time as this kind of evidence becomes available, summary dismissal appears to be the only reasonably response available.

The teaching of Jesus, regardless of its historical context, is sufficient evidence of the authenticity of His claims but you obviously dismiss it as unreasonable because everything naturally seems crazy for some one who rejects the reality of truth, good, evil, freedom, justice and love…

The case for a historical, perfectly natural and non-miraculous/non-supernatural Jesus seems plenty plausible to me, but for example, Richard Carrier goes to great lengths to articulate a rather convoluted case for the wholly fictional status of Jesus, that Jesus never existed even as a normal man.

It seems plausible to you because it fits in with your atheism//materialism. It is not plausible when taken in the context of His teaching and the history of Judaism/Christianity. As I have already pointed out, theism has endured precisely because it is the most cogent explanation of the order and beauty of the universe, the existence of persons, rationality, consciousness, free will, purpose, love, inspiration, mysticism, miracles, the power of prayer, the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, the immense value of life and the nobility of the human spirit. All this is the evidence that really counts towards an adequate, comprehensive explanation rather than crude, simplistic materialism in which evidence itself is reduced to purposeless permutations of matter. No matter how hard you try you cannot evade the fact that you reduce persons to impersonal objects and reasoning to brain processes…

 

[Hubriss]

That was a great original post. I may see some kind of problem with it though. However I’m not too familiar with the pragmatist lifestyle.

A pragmatist has a goal to make the society he is in more prosperous, because a prosperous society is beneficial to him because on average people fair better in a more prosperous society than in one that is less prosperous, which he can show will likely benefit himself the pragmatist. He can show that critical thinking skills are necessarily required of citizens to create a more prosperous society because it better allows them to determine truths of their world. He can show that the correct knowledge of truths in the world held by citizens benefits the society overall. He can also show that critical thinking skills help in finding out these truths of the world, and therefore developing critical thinking skills in himself and others would enhance the knowledge of truths and benefit society which would then benefit him as well as others. He can show that all beliefs, especially large and unjustified ones that have big effects on how people personally live their lives, are useful for their potential to be scrutinized in developing critical thinking, and are also in themselves beneficial to be scrutinized because it helps better focus time and resources of the population.

If he can provide evidence for or reach a consensus with an individual on all of this, would he be justified in challenging any religious belief of the other person, even if that person is not using his belief as a reason to act specifically on any public project?

I am tired at the moment. The above may be unclear and there are likely gaps in my scenario, but I think readers can probably fill them in themselves. Long story short, it is beneficial to challenge religious beliefs, and there is evidence for the reasoning why, therefore anyone is justified in challenging other peoples’ beliefs.