This type of posting too easily devolves into bouts of name calling and body counts, which doesn’t profit anyone (although, if you really want to, I have a comparative body count for world history of secular vs. religious wars and democides). So, if I may, I’d like to start the discussion out on an unusual path.

There are two problems in the above discourse that drive me crazy:
1) “Atheism” is assume to be a monolithic, quantifiable social phenomenon, which it is not. Atheism is a feature of a number of worldviews and philosophies, some religious and some irreligious. Likewise, theism of some flavor is a feature of a number of worldviews and philosophies, some religious and some militantly irreligious. Religion, on the other hand, is a definable sociological phenomenon characterized by structured social institutions in its advanced forms – the finer points of the definition may be argued over, but in broad strokes, it’s fairly unmistakable.

2) The critique of religion’s violence by the irreligious critic is not, on the whole, a simplistic complaint about belief in God. Rather, it is (internet party-line hacks aside) an attack upon partisan thinking, acceptance and/or idolization of authority without accountability, doctrinaire epistemology, non-consequentialist moral theory, and non-falsifiable claims about the physical and/or spiritual cosmos. In the simplest form, the critique states that a mindest that accepts these things as philosophically legitimate modes of thought is one that is, ipso facto, vulnerable to totalitarian manipulation. This is hardly a controversial contention. The problem is that while modern thinking religious folks (such as C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, or W.L. Craig) accept that all of the items on the above list are generally bad things, the then go on to make use of special pleading to smuggle their own ideologies into the realm of rationality, since their entire worldview relies upon the uncritical or semi-critical acceptance of ecclesiastical authority.

Let’s also not overlook the more insidious forms of evil and violence wrecked by religions around the world upon the outgroup (whatever that happens to be). The St. Augustine and St. Aquinas that Lint cites in the post both posited highly misogynistic and antisexual theologies that helped create and maintain the system of celibate male-only priesthoods that has resulted in several hundred years of pederasty in the name of God, as well as thousands of years of the systematic legal and theological subjugation and devaluation of women (it’s worth pointing out that both of them practiced what they preached – Augustine, for example, abandoned his common-law wife and child on the grounds that sex corrupted men’s souls and that women were the vector of sin). Both supported the killing and/or torture of unbelievers, heretics, and members of other religions (Augustine implicitly, Aquinas explicitly in Suma Theolgica, 2nd part of 2nd part, Question 11, Article 3). Aquinas explicitly supported slavery, while Augustine again took it as an assumed part of the natural order.

Will getting rid of religious passion make the world a more peaceful place? It’s not really as difficult a question as it seems at first. The places on earth that are most peaceful (both in terms of crime and of war) are always and everywhere characterized by secularization. Many people continue to be religious in a sort of warm and fuzzy way, but they are lukewarm believers in every meaningful sense when compared to the doctrinal and historic dictates of their faiths. Cosmopolitan trading cultures, characterized by curiosity, disdain for authority, and scientific inquiry are (and have been for hundreds of years now) less exploitative of their neighbors, less violent internally, and less likely to engage in democide than their religious counterparts of similar eras.

Does this mean that atheism is the key to world peace? No. Look at the previous paragraph, and back at the second. The key to religion is NOT the question of God’s existence, it’s the issue of authority, epistemology, and the other things I listed in criticism 1. Religious thinking happens as often in politics as it does in church (a distinction that we in the west can now make – much of the world has no such distinction even now), as can be seen in the religious dictatorship under the czars in Russia and perpetuated in structure under the communists even while the brand-name and doctrines changed. It can be seen in the Nazis, in the Spanish fascists, in the Khmer Rouge, in the Great Leap Forward, and in the Japanese Empire. All of these states perpetuated themselves either with the active aid of the local most-powerful religious establishment, or by setting the head of state up as a god or as God’s chosen, or by setting the party up as a messiah.

The alternative religion advanced by Lint in the post is an attempt to re-characterize religious mysticism as religion itself – but of course this doesn’t fly. Mysticism, is certainly the core of spiritual experience, but it’s certainly not the defining criterion for what makes a religion. Indeed, the way Lint’s characterizes this experience as the encounter with a “Person” – i.e. God – in a search for truth is uniquely bounded by a Buddhist/Christian hybrid cosmogeny. It smacks of Tillich and Watts – ironically, it is a theology that the very theologians which he (I’m assuming Lint is a “he”) lauds in this post would happily have seen him burned at the stake for. Christianity has always strictly controlled its mystics for the very reason that mysticism places individual experience in authority over ecclesiastical doctrine.

Of course, mysticism is also reflexively anti-rational, which is another interesting wrinkle of self-contradiction in Lint’s plea for a search for truth. If the past four hundred years of rationalist inquiry has demonstrated anything, it’s that rationalism reveals testable truths that result in tangible, measurable improvements in human flourishing. The 5600 years of recorded history previous to the mainstreaming of rationalism have far less to show for themselves than do the previous 400. While the ancients – particularly the innovative and exciting early civilizations of Asia Minor, North Africa, Britain, and East Asia – accomplished a staggering amount, the flourishing of rationalism was always brief and often followed by the resurgance of mysticism and religion as the civilizations declined. I humbly submit that Lint’s central thesis is both self-contradictory and self-defeating.

At the end of this all, I must wonder – is it too much to ask that the discussion move beyond the tired and inaccurate “Atheists kill more people” canard?

-Dan Sawyer
Author of the Antithesis Series and Sculpting God
Both available at http://www.jdsawyer.net

Dan – Yeah I want to avoid name calling and body counts. I think we can agree that mankind has racked up enough bodies both in the name of religious and secular motivations.

I don’t want to speak for Lint, but the way his post reads to me is that Ms. Sherine’s statement evokes the idea that religion=bad and atheism=good. She is the one doing the lumping right out of the box. Granted I wish Lint hadn’t brought up the “atheistic regimes” since those regimes weren’t necessarily militantly atheistic (well okay China and Russia were, or perhaps they’re more anti-theism?). In any event I think that derailed his argument a bit. But like I said, I post these as-is.

Religious people are certainly, by virtue of their beliefs, subject to manipulation. I won’t argue that that’s not the case. Of course I have yet to meet the person who isn’t subject to manipulation. Most folks accept the authority above them without criticism or “semi-critically”. There are exceptions naturally. There are plenty of people I know who are critical of the church. We’d still be Catholic if that weren’t true.

I won’t argue (and I don’t think Lint is either) that Augustine, Luther, Lewis or any other Christian thinker is perfect or that their logic or worldview is without flaw. I would argue that they do try and follow a logical thought process to try and work through their beliefs, just as non-theists do. Their logic simply leads them to different conclusions.

I think one problem I have is with what you are proposing is your definition of religion. It may be a sound definition, but it is inclusive of things I would not consider a religion. So if you define religion as you have, of course a reduction in religious fervor would lead to increased piece. For many, mysticism is religion. If to you religion is a sort of organized or controlled mysticism, that seems like a sound way to begin, but I think you believe it is more than that?

You have pitted rationalism against mysticism and I guess I’m not real clear on what you mean by either term. So, I’d like a clearer definition of terms. Sorry if I’m missing the obvious.

Hey Scott -

Some points of clarification:

On the definition of religion, the demarcation that I’m drawing is pretty standard in sociological studies. The difference between mysticism and religion is social – the mystical experience is private, by definition, while religion is the social authority structure that gives shape and definition to the mystical experience. The other classical division is between religion and folk religion or superstition – the former being a more codified and fully realized form of the latter.

On the point of mysticism vs. rationalism and my definitions for each:

1) Mysticism is private spiritual experience. Epiphany, out of body experience, commune with the divine, ecstacy, some sorts of eudaimonia (I know I’m spelling that wrong). It’s the sense of the lowering of the barriers of self and the merging of self with other described in meditation literature. It’s a fabulous experience, it’s very important to a lot of artists. It’s the experience of what the catholics call “mystery.” The experience comes through meditation, drugs, flow states, and/or deep contemplation.

2) Rationalism is the epistemology of inquiry that prizes logic proceeding from observation. It begins with the data that we receive through our senses and proceeds to interrogate it using inductive and deductive reasoning to produce syllogisms and falsifiable predictions.

When it comes to the two being in conflict, this happens primarily in the area of epistemology. An epiphany or insight or awareness gained through mystical experience might feel profound, it may (and often does) deeply enrich the experience of life, but unless a mystical insight is subjected to rational inquiry it has very little truth value.

The mystical/romantic view of the world values mystical insights highly, and exalts religious/mystical experience over the “merely” material. This way of thinking is the default mode of operation for humanity, and the last 400 years have proved it vastly inferior in terms of human flourishing compared to rationalism in every sense (poverty reduction, famine reduction, disease reduction, alleviation of existential suffering, human liberty, etc. etc. etc.).

-Dan Sawyer
Author of the Antithesis Series and Sculpting God
Both available at http://www.jdsawyer.net

Well, I feel as though Dan Sawyer has tried to draw our attention from the big burning bonfire here by lighting lots of little fires in the hope that the reader will run around stomping them out.

The situation is this: an atheist promoting a “try atheism” ad campaign has said the world would be a safer place if there was less religious passion. That is the context. That is why my response is framed as atheism versus religion – and why I hope it will not be taken as name calling.

Also, “religion” in this case isn’t a word that is difficult to define. We’re talking about an ad campaign. “Religion” refers to belief in God expressed by the man on the street and by the gathering of these people in some institutional sense. I don’t see why it is necessary to separate mysticism from institutionalism, etc. if we are talking about a simple ad campaign statement. The average Joe isn’t sitting there wondering “Well, gee, does Sherine mean mysticism or what?”

Also, given the atheism/religion contrast originally put forward, it is not dirty pool on my part to bring up troubles in the world which drew their strength from atheistic philosophies. It is merely by way of saying that atheism is not without its own perilous passions.

My main point is the contention that religion is not inherently irrational. It is not a state of mind like a psychosis of some sort. It is reasonable to see design in the cosmos. It is not irrational. Therefore, religious fervor can exist as a love for truth and is not merely a sort of mindless mob mentality.

To suggest the world would be a safer place if there were less religious passion ignores the existence of religious passion as love for truth. But it is in the atheist’s interest to remove love for truth from any association with religion.

Finally, the complaints against Aquinas and Augustine (which, I suppose, are intended to remove them from the discussion) are a little like saying, “Thomas Jefferson had slaves, therefore we can learn nothing from the Declaration of Independence. It has no value.” Each generation seems to have had its blind spots, some of which were quite severe. Still, I am not familiar with pro-slavery passages in Aquinas, for example, and if Mr. Sawyer would point me in the direction of supporting materials I would be grateful.

Lint Hatcher
excuse me, ghidorah podcast
htttp://linthatcher.podbean.com

That’s hardly fair play to accuse me of diversionary tactics right off the bat – forgive me if I start off by calling well-poisoning.
As to the issue of context – I’m familiar with the situation, and I dealt with the question “Would the world be a less violent place with less religious passion in it?” quite explicitly. You and I obviously disagree on this point – what else is the point of a discussion? – but since I did spend quite a bit of time composing a carefully worded and nuanced response to your essay, I do think I’ve earned a presumption of good faith. I’m not arguing with you to slag you off, nor to defend a position I’m secretly afraid may not stand up. I’m arguing with you because I think you’re wrong, and that what little evidence you cite does not support your position. I chose to take a different tack than arguing body counts laboriously because that’s an argument we’ve all heard a million times, and it usually ends with an argument about arithmetic. I thought perhaps we could do something more productive.
On the topic of name-calling, I did not accuse you of name calling and didn’t construe your initial post of doing so. I said that the following discussion could too easily devolve into name-calling, and that was an eventuality which I wished to avoid. My apologies that the remark came off as inflammatory.
On to your points:
Why is it necessary to separate mysticism from institutionalism? It should be sufficient that they are distinct phenomenon, and that the confusion between them is the basis for much moving-of-the-goalposts in discussions such as these. But I’ll give you another one: there is a large contingent of believers in the west who characterize themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” and who talk about “different ways of knowing.” Invariably, if you press a “believer in exile” on what s/he believes and why, you’ll get (on one hand) an equivalent to the recitation of something approximating an ancient creed, and on the other hand you’ll hear a claim that “I know because of personal religious experience.” This answer is (unconsciously) a dishonest attempt to conform to hard-to-swallow traditional doctrines while slipping out of the obligations of defending them intellectually.
By invoking mysticism as the core of the search for truth, you tread into these muddy waters. You contended explicitly that personal religious experience is a valid way of knowing things – particularly, that religious passion is 1) best manifested as a desire for truth, and 2) that the pursuit of that passion reveals the truth about humanity and God. In order to counter the problems with these assertions, I had to point out the epistemological ground upon which you stand in some detail.
When you said in your article “Religious passion is fueled by the sense of wonder and by the love of truth” you made a statement that, at best, has no relevancy (even if true). A love of truth that rests upon unquestionable authority (say, the authority of a church or a book) has no dependable relation to truth. Since you accept a church’s authority as true, this may seem counterintuitive or insulting – but take a moment and look at Mormonism, or Confucianism, or Islam. People will do amazing, sometimes frightening things for what they sincerely believe is true. Good intentions do not make for good actions – which, of course, is the point of the contention that “less religious passion will make the world more peaceful.”
The alternative to mystical revelation or to accepting authority is rational inquiry, and it can and does erode religious authority and doctrine. Retreating as you do in your post into mysticism may ultimately protect you, but it will protect you at the expense of your rationality, because the rational epistemology and the mystical epistemology are fundamentally opposed.
I agree with you that religion is not a psychosis. Most people in the world are religious, but are not otherwise out of touch with reality. It seems much more likely to me that at least most religious people (since, after all, only one religion can be true) are honestly mistaken. There’s nothing wrong with that – in a world so complex and diverse, it stands to reason that everyone is mistaken about something.
However, psychosis isn’t the same as irrationality. It is irrational to accept things on authority that contradicts the evidence of one’s senses. That doesn’t mean that the authority is incorrect – it merely means that the failure to rationally examine the claims in a rigorous fashion is, by definition, irrational. But then, we’re animals – we are inherently irrational to some extent.
Regarding your slander when you equate my examination of Aquinas and Augustine with an attack on the Declaration of Independence by saying Jefferson owned slaves, I must call shame on you for an ad hominem attack. Here is why your analogy is spurious.
Saying that since Jefferson owned slaves, the Declaration of Independence has no value is a dishonest attack. It does not deal with the ideas or ideals Jefferson expressed and espoused, it merely assumes that they’re invalid because he was a hypocrite and (by our standards) an unsavory character. This is an ad hominem attack: an attack on the man rather than on his ideas, when it is his ideas which are in question.
On the other hand, you held up Aquinas and Augustine as high models of rationality and truth-seeking. I consequentially attacked the ideas of both men as being neither particularly rational nor particularly true. Note that I attacked the *ideas* of these men, and I ONLY mentioned their conduct to point out that they believed what they preached enough to put it into practice in their own lives, and that the consequences of their ideas and their poor reasoning were very negative. Notice the difference: I’m attacking their ideas and their rationality – the very things about them you held up as laudable.
By the way, on the Aquinas/Augustine slavery question, I mixed up my As. Augustine explicitly endorsed slavery at length in City of God. Aquinas dealt only cursorily with slavery in Vol 2,pt 2, section 2, quest 57, article 3 of the Summa, deferring to Aristotle (who was pro-slavery) on the subject:
“Considered absolutely, the fact that this particular man should be a slave rather than another man, is based, not on natural reason, but on some resultant utility, in that it is useful to this man to be ruled by a wiser man, and to the latter to be helped by the former, as the Philosopher states. Wherefore slavery which belongs to the right of nations is natural in the second way, but not in the first.”
-Dan Sawyer
Author of the Antithesis Series and Sculpting God
Both available at http://www.jdsawyer.net

“It is irrational to accept things on authority that contradicts the evidence of one’s senses.”
True. I don’t think I’ve done that.
“Invariably, if you press a “believer in exile” on what s/he believes and why, you’ll get (on one hand) an equivalent to the recitation of something approximating an ancient creed, and on the other hand you’ll hear a claim that “I know because of personal religious experience.” This answer is (unconsciously) a dishonest attempt to conform to hard-to-swallow traditional doctrines while slipping out of the obligations of defending them intellectually.”
That seems to take a pretty dim view of those people.
I think that rather than saying that “less religious fervor equals more piece” you are saying “more rationalism equals more peace”.
You say:
“Rationalism is the epistemology of inquiry that prizes logic proceeding from observation. It begins with the data that we receive through our senses and proceeds to interrogate it using inductive and deductive reasoning to produce syllogisms and falsifiable predictions.”
And I would tell you that most people are rational by this definition. I say there is a God and I’m guessing you would say that I need to have proven that to myself at least via some extension of rationalism. I tell you that no one can prove the existence of God using their senses. God is supernatural and can’t be detected using our senses. Personally I don’t put as much weight on what my senses tell me as some do since I know that our senses are easily fooled but it’s what we have and I use it as such. Rationalism is thus a tool for me, but not the only one in my box.
“Mysticism is private spiritual experience. Epiphany, out of body experience, commune with the divine, ecstacy, some sorts of eudaimonia (I know I’m spelling that wrong). It’s the sense of the lowering of the barriers of self and the merging of self with other described in meditation literature. ”
I guess I’m not a mystic. I have had mystical experiences. I’ve also seen a UFO and I’m convinced that I saw Big Foot as a youth. I don’t really trust any of those experiences to the point that I’d use any of them to support my belief in God, ET, or the Yeti.
I know what I know about humanity through interaction with my fellow humans. We are all flawed creatures living in a flawed world. That is consistent with what the Bible teaches (and many other belief systems I’m certain). I perceive the unfathomable complexity of the world, unfathomable to me as an individual, and believe in faith that there is a creator behind that. That is also consistent with what the Bible teaches. Everything that I believe about the universe and our place in it matches up with what Christianity says about the same. That’s why I believe it is true.
So in some ways I think I either fall outside of both rationalism and mysticism or exist in some shadowland in between.
None of that is exactly on topic, but I want to save what I believe on topic for my turn at bat.

I have finally written and submitted my thoughts on this subject so I could read this discussion. And what a discussion it has been! Thanks for getting us started, Lint Hatcher.
I’m quite impressed with J. Daniel Sawyer’s response. Unfortunately, I must admit that I’m less impressed with Lint Hatcher’s original post – not because I disagree, but because I think he (assuming male) didn’t address the question. Instead he chose to address the inspiration behind the question.
The question that Scott was interested in didn’t even involve atheism, only religious passion and it’s relation to peace. Part of his answer consisted of “passionate atheists cause problems too!” That may be the case, but that in no way addresses the question. The question wasn’t whether atheist or religious passions cause more strife, but whether religious passions contribute to strife. It leaves the possibility open that passion in general is the problem and not the object of that passion. My post will delve deeper into this.
Lint Hatcher did discuss benign religious passions such as mysticism, but as is evidenced by religiously motivated suicide attacks, there are malignant religious passions as well. His post presented the benign passions as the only kind and ignores these other passions.
One last note, I like Lint Hatcher’s description of the safe kind of religious passion: “Religious passion is fueled by the sense of wonder and by the love of truth. Both create a kind of passion which propels the seeker toward deeper understanding.” I’ve heard passionate scientists describe their work in almost the exact same terms. This shows that religion is not necessary for the passionate love of truth and sense of wonder you value.

Heya Scott -
Regarding the “Believers in Exile” phenomenon, yes, it does take a pretty dim view of the majority of people who hang out in the shadowlands. To be honest, I’ve got a pretty dim view of the majority of people in this sense: most people don’t care that much about issues like this. Most people really are just trying to get along, and who can blame them? The religion we grow up with feels axiomatically right – if parts of it seem not to work, we tend to internally edit when we say a creed or pray a prayer, remaking the religion on-the-fly into something we can cope with. Actually walking through the harrowing of doubt, whether to emerge as a tentative and mature believer or a thoughtful skeptic, is a rare thing. For most people, it’s simply not worth the effort.
Unfortunately, this is the internet, the land where people fending off doubts can vent their angst as aggression, and that tends to happen a lot on just about every topic.
On the topic of the existence of God, I agree that such existence seems intuitively sensible, and that it’s not inherently irrational to go with what is intuitively sensible unless and until faced with contrary evidence. I personally came face to face with too much contrary evidence for any recognizable notion of God to survive the vetting process, so for me, (to steal two classical catchphrases) God is truly dead and I have no more need of that hypothesis. Other folks run into the same thing and manage to find a version of God that they can find plausible. I suspect we won’t know who’s right or not until we die, and then we’ll only find out if one of the afterlifes actually exists.
But to circle back around to what you said about me recasting the syllogism, I think that an increase in rationalism is one way that religious fervor and certainty can decrease, so to that extent I’m highly in favor of it as lessoning the violence and ugliness in the world. There is perhaps a more dependable way to decrease religious passion and the destruction that accompanies it, which is economic uplift. Compared with their forbearers in the faith (whatever faith that is), people who are well-fed, materially content, and in constant contact with others who believe differently than they are far, far less likely to consider people of different religions part of the outgroup – and they are far less likely to take the evangelistic impulse seriously enough to be willing to kill, hurt, exploit, rape, blackmail, or coerce in the name of advancing or maintaining a church or a doctrine.
-Dan Sawyer
Author of the Antithesis Series and Sculpting God
Both available at http://www.jdsawyer.net

I disagree with what Shareen (sp?) seems to be arguing: that a world less passionate about religion is a more amenable one. I’m willing to accept that perhaps she simply meant hateful fervor or religious extremism, but I think everyone can agree that extremism of any sort is not the best course of action and often leads to the aforementioned body count. Personally, I would hope that there is never less passion for anything. To me this is one of the great motivating forces in existence; passion makes belief and ideas actionable. Without it, i see the world as being a reflection of the children’s book How To Be a Perfect Person in Just 10 Days, where we’d all be sitting around with brussel sprouts around our neck, drinking weak tea.

Dan – “I personally came face to face with too much contrary evidence for any recognizable notion of God to survive the vetting process, so for me, (to steal two classical catchphrases) God is truly dead and I have no more need of that hypothesis.”

Contrary evidence? Like what?

NB – Welcome to my place! I think you’ll agree with some posts coming up later in the week. And your last sentence sounds like a miserable existence.

I apologize to Dan Sawyer for suggesting he had lit several small fires to draw attention from the main point/big fire, etc. That was uncalled for. It may simply be that his mind is quicker than mine and I was having a hard time keeping track of his various points. Which is hardly evidence of diversionary tactics on his part!

I feel as though my main point has been utterly lost in the discussion. An atheist suggested (by way of promoting atheism as an alternative to religion) that less religious passion equals less trouble in the world. My point: it is unfair to focus on religious passion only in terms of fiery eyed zealots brandishing weapons. There is such a thing as love of truth, such a thing as wonder which are part of religious passion.

Lint Hatcher
excuse me, ghidorah podcast
http://linthatcher.podbean.com

Hello Lint Hatcher,

It may be unfair (I don’t think so), but it was the subject of the question Scott chose to have guest writers answer. Perhaps Scott can follow this up with “Does less atheist passion equal more peace?” Then we can unfairly focus on atheist passion in terms of fiery eyed zealots brandishing weapons. There is such a thing as love of truth, such a thing as wonder which are a part of secular passion.

I wonder, however, how a passionate love of truth avoids also being a passionate hate for what your religion calls false and often evil as well.

If it’s any consolation, my post will discuss different kinds of passion and which ones I think are more likely to lead to less peace.

Lint – thank you for the gracious apology. Sorry for getting my hackles up so high.
Scott – on the issue of contrary evidence, that’s a long conversation. Hit me on IM or twitter sometime — if you think it’s interesting enough for here, then we can go into it here, but I don’t want to be spamming your blog with reasons to NOT believe when its focus isn’t apologetics.
-Dan