A long time ago I told PatrikP I’d get back to his very long comment to a blog post of mine in a new blog post. Since then I’ve barely been blogging at all but now that I’m making some sort of effort at getting back into it, I’m going to make true my promise.

The patronizing attitude that just about always accompany the “enlightened” atheists’ description of believing persons (after all “even nice, intelligent christians are still, well, christians”) is both sad and not very constructive.

As an “activist atheist”, you quickly get used to the claim that atheists are arrogant. This claim comes from people who purport to know that there exists a being for which no evidence can be produced, who is all-knowing, all-powerful and who loves everyone equally and yet - depending on who you ask - is fairly likely to let me suffer in hell for all eternity, simply for being true to myself following the evidence instead of trusting in Invisible Sky-Daddy. And I’m the arrogant one?

This is (or was) a blog primarily written for humanists and atheists, so if the occasional sentence sounds patronising (matronising?) to someone who doesn’t agree with me, that’s really the way it has to be. I experience the same thing whenever talking to or reading a blog written by those who don’t share my views (and even fairly often when talking to those who do, simply because I’m young and female). In short? Suck it up, Patrik, and don’t take it personally.

Isn’t your question to Sandlund reversible? Isn’t it just as reasonable to ask a dedicated, utterly and completely convinced atheist (as yourself) the same question? How do you know that you really happen to believe in the right version of description of reality, when there are so many of them? Isn’t it problematic that you – and others who share your rigid opinions about the god-question – beyond any doubt whatsoever believe that your version of the construction and description of reality is by “empirical” definition the only corrrect one?

You assume way too much about how convinced I am that god doesn’t exist. My non-belief in god is about as strong as your non-belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn. There might be a god, but there’s no evidence for that hypothesis, and hence I will consider it false until otherwise proven. Otherwise I’d have to believe in the existence of everything my mind could possibly come up with, since it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something.

Besides, my question to her was more specific, it was about how she knows that her version of christianity is correct. That is, I wasn’t asking her to compare her worldview’s strengths and weaknesses to everyone else’s - just the people who supposedly share the core tenets of her own, since they all use the same label.

Isn’t it also a bit arrogant to claim – or actually demand – the falsification of someone else’s conviction about the constitution of reality and at the same time deny any posibility that your own specific conviction is in any way near even the possibility of falsification – as is usually the case when the topic God is touched upon by Dawkins/Hitchens/Sturmark disciples? (Is a mind that excludes any possibilty of the falsification of its own presuppositions even close to the ideal of a humans being’s open mind being the main and most important tool for reasons’s search of a deeper and more truthful understanding of reality?)

If atheism could be falsified that would be lovely. If you think it’s arrogant to demand evidence for a positive belief, that’s really your problem, you know? I can’t help the way reality is constructed.

ETA: I’m an idiot. Of course atheism can be falsified. If god provided some nice evidence of its existance, atheism would be as falsified as they come. So far, this hasn’t happened, except according to the bible - and the Koran, and numerous other books and oral story traditions. Oddly enough, no miracles seem to happen in this modern era of communication, when it would be so easy for god to show vast numbers of primates that it really does exist… Ok now I’m rambling. The point is that the way many christians have “constructed” god, it’s impossible to falsify. It’s always one step away, hiding behind the next corner, and can never be studied in any meaningful fashion. And no, personal revelation is not meaningful, because it would rip holes in reality if everyone’s ideas about the world actually affected it…

Can one really claim intellectual consistency and honesty when one subject others’ understandings of the construction and understanding of reality to scrutinizing questioning (mainly directed at a christian perspective that there is a God who relates to people and humanity) and at the same time rebuke that the same questions can and should be asked about one’s own understandings, convictions and presuppositions? This usually seems to be the case when Dawkins/Hitchens/Sturmark disciples argue that their “empirically” defined reality is untouchably correct and all other by the same definition is false.

I’m sorry but it’s just not possible to ask the same questions about the non-existence of something as there is about the existence of something. Please tell me how we are to disprove the existence of the IPU. I’ve never heard either of the three you mention argue that our view of the world is “untouchably” correct - in fact it’s constantly revised, because, y’know, that’s what science is for. Creating a better and better model of the universe. This might mean that I have to seriously revise my understanding of reality if I happen to live in the time of a paradigm shift. Now, the only difference, I assume, between us and you, is that we’re materialists. We don’t believe anything exists outside or apart from the empirical world. This is, again, simply because we’ve seen no evidence to the contrary. Are you seriously proposing that we believe in everything we haven’t seen any evidence for?

It is a problem for the discussion that on the atheist’s side of the Swedish debate-arena today there seems to be a limited interest for important questions that connect to the way humans write, speak and relate to their inviroment and to reality. (Besides the physiological/neurological functions that cause or are caused by the human’s interaction with the enviroment that is.)

Usually there is little, if any, attention payed to for instance the understanding of human language and its functions in speech and writing, or to philosophical definitions of the realms of thinking, or to the fact that a theological question like that of theodicy cannot even be discussed outside of a theologically defined realm of thought, or to the fact that theological claims rarely claim what the regular secular Swedish atheist claim them to claim, or to the fact that there are massive amounts of thoughts by people like Kant, Kierkegaard, Sjestov, Dostojevski, Nietzsche and others that actually go into the depths of the questions concerning the constitution of human thinking about the human existential situation.

These are only a few of the questions that the average Swedish atheist of today usually don’t want to relate to, which causes a mindset about the world’s constitution that is constituated by the delusion that it isn’t a mindset but truth itself and that the own mindset is in no need of distinction or correction. The consequence usually being a complete lack on humbleness in relationship to other human beings’ understandings of reality, if their understandings are other than the atheists’ own. This in turn causes the less constructive patronizing attitude. The patronizing school of thought is quite apparent in the writings and speeches of Dawkins, Hitchens, Sturmark and their followers. It is not constructive, sad and at the same time baffling since the apparent lack of understanding of differing descriptions of reality usually comes from the ones that claim to understand the most.

Maybe it’s because I just got up but I’m afraid I simply don’t follow. All I can say is that different people come from different backgrounds and have different areas of interest and expertise. I’m just a biologist. I really don’t have time for Kant, Kierkegaard etcetera, because right now I have to give my all to resilience, and toucans.

I would like to suggest a reading of for instance Nietzsche, that deconstructed not only religion’s claims on absolute truth but also science’s absurd claims to constituate absolute truth (a short synopsis of one of his texts that relates to this topic is available in Swedish here: http://teologiforum.blogspot.com/2008/03/nietzsches-vad-betyder-asketiska-ideal.html).

Ok, I keep hearing that science has claims to absolute truth. When did “science” claim this? Seriously, Patrik, please provide me with sourced quotes.

There is no absolute truth. There’s only models of reality. Scientists who think they’re dealing with absolute truth are either religious in some way, megalomaniacs or simply poorly educated.

A more humble and less patronizing attitude toward eachother would help us all to make the world both better and more intelligble.

I’m sorry but I think your reply was every bit as arrogant as my post. And you know what? I really don’t care. We can still debate. Sure, in social interactions with people whom I know or suspect do not share my views, I’ll be a little more careful with my words, simply because I’m a tribal ape who don’t want to piss off the people I depend on. But in debates where we both know that the other thinks they’re right about something we strongly disagree with … it’s impossible not to come across to the other as arrogant, without mincing your words to such an extent that your own side will start seeing you as an appeaser.

So to those of you who think I’m too arrogant on my own blog, please grow a thicker skin or simply sod off. You could be doing something much more productive with your time than reading this god-forsaken mess! Why are you still here? Go out and enjoy the world!

And to those of you who reminded me to respond to Patrik, I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with something more profound than this. I really shouldn’t blog in the morning.

religion, science, christianity, atheism, humanism, arrogance

My previous blog design was starting to really get on my nerves, for some reason. So until I’ve made a new one, this one will have to do (it’s one of the themes that come with blogsome). Sorry about the lack of greenery and bees; I’m sure they’ll show up in the new design in some form or another.