I’d agree with that assessment, but I’d argue that until it is replicated in a lab, skepticism is the best approach. Someday science may absolutely validate or even replicate spiritual experiences as real. But I know this won’t happen in my lifetime, so I’ve chosen a life of disbelief as a means to navigate the world. I have yet to see a good reason to question this decision.

I see what you’re getting at and I understand why you see it as antithetical and wouldn’t personally want to go that route, but I don’t see them as in conflict. Any groups pushing for change or problem solving have varying degrees of radicalism. Plenty of black activists were frustrated with Dr. King’s direct approach, believing it would do more harm than good. Dr. King himself became frustrated with those activists more radical than he was. There are other examples of this notion of more radical groups pushing things mainstream, even though they aren’t well respected – PETA comes to mind.

Ditto here. There are people who will never agree with the approach of Dawkins, et al, even other atheists. But their bestselling books and Maher’s film have pushed the discussion more mainstream. It forces people to re-evaluate the truly silly things in their beliefs and perhaps, even grudgingly, re-assess things.

One final analogy: Mormons changed their Priesthood ban for a variety of reasons. I would argue that it was in large part due to what you argue for: respecting each other, coming to the table, having a discussion, and gently reasoning. But let’s not discount another part of it: the shaming aspect. Mormons were shamed into abandoning their institutional racism through public pressure, embarrassing statements, etc. We see this replaying now with Prop 8. I’m happy to see the church ridiculed and bloodied and bruised if that gets them to back down while gay rights marches forward. This seems to me a legitimate part of the puzzle, especially when dealing with such important issues.

I am not equating experiences from the visible world with the invisible world. And you are correct that I’ve rather sloppily moved in between two separate issues: visual perception and the fallibility of human memory. My larger point was just that our brains process everything for us. What we see is not merely a view of images that imprint themselves on our retinas. These images go through some kind of interpretation, much of which is not fully understood. This is also true of our other senses, and we have examples of some individuals with remarkable conditions that teach us just how much we rely on our brains to interpret the world for us – from something as benign as color-blindness to those with hallucinations. And then once our brains interpret these external things for us, that same remarkable organ is used to remember what we’ve just seen, felt, heard, or smelled. And just as what we see or hear is an interpretation, so is our memory of that perception. In some ways, our memory is a perception of a perception.

I’m not trying to muddy the waters and argue for no knowable reality or so impugn the mind that we can’t trust anything. I don’t believe that. In the visual, physical world, we have repetition to give us confidence in what we see and experience. We essentially walk through an informal version of the scientific method in our lives. And we often experience the world with other people who confirm what we see and experience. While none of this is infallible, it’s light years away from one random, often inexplicable so-called “spiritual experience” that may hit only rarely in life and may have no clear explanation or meaning. I’m willing to acknowledge that something external may have happened in that moment, but I think it still need be treated with the utmost skepticism. I think your last line, which is basically Occam’s Razor, is absolutely correct.

As far as many critiques made by the athiests go, I’ve already also conceded those in Amos’s and my backs and forths on thin religion. Where have I not “attended to their message?” Also would love a more clear statement on the “veiled paternalism” in my posts.

There is a subtext here, Jonah, of which you seem to be unaware. It is dismissive and unfair. I have only read Amos’ original post and your first comment and I am already turned off.

Every anti-thesit need not be forced into making a Rogerian argument simply for the sake of civility and respect. Dawkins, Hitchens, and even Maher are making legitimate Aristotelean arguments. They are not addressing theists in an attempt to convert or even meet them halfway. They have placed themselves in an adversarial opposition to theists and addressing a third party,the audience, in much the same way the prosecution and defense do not address each other, but rather the judge. This is a perfectly acceptable rhetorical stance. It is honest attempt at openly aggressive persuasion, unlike the veiled paternalism that so often leaks into your comments. My apologies in advance for my open aggression toward you here, but I feel someone has to speak of it. The criticism of method has nothing to do with the substance of the argument these anti-theists are trying to present. It is you and Bob Rees who fail to marshal the evidence you demand of Amos while whinging about the lack of such civilized (and expensively high-maintenance) niceties as respect and tolerance. So what if they are being dicks. Attend to their message, not to their style of delivery.

Amos is simply expressing his disappointment with a respectable thinker like Rees who could fail to take on the anti-thesit ideas in-and-of themselves, settling instead for attacking their use of such rhetorical tools as ridicule, appeal to authority, appeal to emotion, appeal to popularity. Yes, such rhetorical tools are often weak and ineffective with the strong-minded. Some are even fallacious; nevertheless, attacking an opponent’s rhetorical method is a red herring designed to divert the course of the argument from its substance –its core ideas, and it is a petty and unprofitable tactic.

I really don’t disagree with much of what you say (and actually liked some of your analogies and examples). As I hammer in my responses to Amos, the main question for me is one of effectiveness if atheists or secular humanists ever want to be heard at a discussion table aimed at making real progress on planetary issues. No matter if they are responding in kind to how “religious” people treat those they disagree with, Maher and his cohorts will never be invited (just as the extreme religious rhetoricians won’t be invited either) to these kinds of meetings where real work can get done. To get things accomplished, those who disagree must be willing to treat their opponents respectfully. I know and love many people who believe in a literal worldwide flood or think there’s a possibility that how the fossil record is interpreted is wrong in terms of indicating the passage of millions of years. I think they are completely wrong in these cases, but I know they have good hearts and basic smarts–and this makes them worthy of my respect. (Heck, I was in my twenties before I ever really thought through such questions, and I had the chance to go to college, etc., where I chose to take the evidences seriously. Not everyone has those opportunities nor chooses, for a wide variety of possible reasons, to be open to shifting their position. And maybe they still will. We got to have our own journeys, why don’t we give them the chance to keep living and see what life might throw their way that will cause a shift?) But even if I think these people are way off in their thinking (and even hurtful in what they say or do or how their votes affect others negatively), I’ll never get anywhere with them in terms of actually persuading them to see things my way if I ridicule them.

I don’t really understand what you are really saying in your paragraph where you said that I “seem to be projecting [my] own views of religion and spirituality onto Maher and the rest of us and expecting some kind of agreement” and that you “would disagree that science ‘can’t touch’ our inner experiences as human beings. That it may not do so right now doesn’t mean it won’t some day, and even if it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t mean religious belief, especially in its current popular forms, is the right way to go. Those are your beliefs, not mine and not Maher’s. And I think we have a legitimate claim to them.” Can you clarify?

If I were to restate where you seem to be jumping off of in my post about this, I would state that science can only measure things that can be noted or charted externally (for example, it can point out that the brain is in a state of stimulation). It cannot get at, and I don’t see how it could ever get at, whether the origin of that stimulation is external or internal to the person. If, as I argue (based on my reading in quantum theory), our brains (like the rest of everything that exists) are swimming in a huge field of energy with very fuzzy boundaries between where “we” begin and end in this field, how could science ever get at that question? (An analogy that I borrow from physicist David Bohm is that people—along with everything else!—are patterns of energy that are much like whirlpools or eddies in a flowing river. These, too, are patterns of energy but with very unclear boundaries between it and the rest of the river.)

I don’t think I ever said that “religious belief, especially in its current popular forms, is the right way to do” nor do I think I have tried to project that on you. For me, I simply try to be alive to mystery and possibilities of our getting/intuiting some really cool stuff out of this cosmic soup we’re swimming in (or web of interconnection we are tied into, or whatever metaphor you like best for this sort of thing), and I keep pressing you and my other friends who lean toward totally secular ways of seeing to reconsider keeping that possibility open too. I know you guys like science and math and want your worldviews grounded in empirical data, so I simply keep reminding that there are some things that at least many scientists and mathmeticians are drawn to that I think you are not stopping to at least consider. I don’t think what I’m saying is what you mean by “religious believe in its current popular forms,” so I can’t see where I am challenged by your critique here (but, again, as I said above, I would love clarification, as I very well may be missing your point).

My other comments here would be just quibbles with the “God/Santa” equation and how you see Rees going after the New Athiests when I read him as doing a film review. If you want me to address those, I will (let me know), otherwise this has been a long enough response for the moment.

However inadequate our physical senses may be in relating to us the nature of the visible world, there is still little doubt that the visible world exists. The same cannot be said of the invisible world (and I am not referring to the EM wavelengths beyond human vision).

I would also bring up another important point of which I suspect you ate already aware. The problems of human memory are not the problems of human perception. I can make the perfectly valid claim of having had a non-ordinary experience (what The religious would call a “spiritual” experience) even though I may not remember some details or even misremember others. in this not remembering and misremembering, I create one set of problems, but the do not necessarily disprove the occurrence if a significantly non-ordinary experience. And I create another set of problems when I fail to perceive accurately what I have never before perceived. (how in my lack of relevant experience could I not help but See things incorrectly?) But these problems also fail to dissuade one from believing the reality of the experience.

The key to all this is in the interpretation of the experience. The liberal-minded thinker will always acknowledge the potential for error in any interpretation of a “spiritual” experience, but he will not deny it’s reality. Instead he will look for the simplest explanation as the most reasonable, and that will likely do away with necessity of a spiritual realm existing above or outside of the physical realm.

I have no quibble with much of what you’ve said and your overall approach. It’s why I really do see this as an issue of perspective and approach than an issue of a right and wrong way to tackle this topic. It’s why I consistently argue for legitimacy for the New Atheists. I see them as an important bunch who are pushing a lot of the right buttons to really challenge the assumptions we make about the privileged status we give religion in our culture. I like that there’s someone there to say, “Hey, some of us see religion as pure silliness. And we have a legitimate, valid point of view.”

Which is why I still argue that these guys are not someone required to see religion as more than cryptozoology or other fringe absurdity. Why must they be? And if they don’t, why does that undermine them or me? Sure, there’s a whole history behind religious belief. There’s people who have written at great length about it and sometimes in very deep, thoughtful ways. It of course doesn’t make it true. It simply means it’s been around for a while and important enough to peoples’ lives that it’s garnered this kind of response. None of that precludes someone saying, “Belief in god strikes me as the equivalent of belief in Santa Claus.” Of course, religious people always cringe at the Santa analogy. But they never say why beyond, again, playing the Unfair Card. Why is Maher’s belief that God=Santa wrong for him? It doesn’t mean everyone must feel that way, but it strikes me as a legitimate point of view, in spite of the history and “magisteria” surrounding religion.

Let’s take my familiarity with Mormonism. While I don’t have the same interest in the theology that you do, I’m still largely familiar with it. I’m very familiar with Mormonism’s history. I’ve decided, as I’m so fond of saying, that there’s no there there. I know how easily humans find meaning where there is none. Many authors or filmmakers report hearing from fans who find meaning in their work they never intended and isn’t really there. I know how easily humans convince themselves of their own correctness, how they minimize the “misses” and enlarge the “hits.” Mormonism has a very deep, rich history, with very deep, thoughtful theology. But it doesn’t stop me from concluding that despite all of that, and it’s most important place in American history, that it is entirely the invention of a creative man. In that sense, I see it as no different than Star Trek; it’s just older and is taken more seriously by more people. This expectation of respect and seriousness towards all religion seems unfair to me.

Furthermore, you seem to be projecting your own views of religion and spirituality onto Maher and the rest of us and expecting some kind of agreement. I would disagree that science “can’t touch” our inner experiences as human beings. That it may not do so right now doesn’t mean it won’t some day, and even if it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t mean religious belief, especially in its current popular forms, is the right way to go. Those are your beliefs, not mine and not Maher’s. And I think we have a legitimate claim to them.

You acknowledge “thin” religion and deplore what it does. But you go to a common dichotomy of “is it religion or is it human nature?” I think it’s more complex than that. Certainly human nature can lead to some of these things, but I think religion exacerbates that nature in ways other things can’t. Would Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson have gotten away with much of the appalling things they’ve said over the years if they didn’t have the title of “Reverend” in front of their name? (And again, I’m going to reiterate, these people have–had, in Falwell’s case–MILLIONS of followers. Thin religion is much more widespread than thick religion.) If they had been politicians, they would have been forced out of office long ago. Witness Trent Lott’s fall from grace after even indirectly endorsing racism by endorsing a Strom Thurmond presidency. Wrap something in religion and it gets away, sometimes literally, with murder. Or witness the New Atheists calling for the arrest of the Pope. People roll their eyes at such an outlandish notion. But can you name me a single other organization whose leader could cover up child sexual abuse and not be held accountable? Any CEO, politician, community leader, educator, etc., would have their head called for on a pike. Only because it’s a religion do people see the idea of arresting the Pope as absurd.

The New Atheists challenge this kind of thinking, force it into the public sphere, and I think that’s very important. That said, of course there’s room, even the essential need for thoughtful religious believers who also challenge this kind of nonsense from within. People to set good examples and gently reason with others. Thats’ why I’m always a bit perplexed by someone like Rees going after the New Atheists. My response would be to “get your own house in order” first. If you’re a religious person, I’d say you have a responsibility and work to do in your community (and I know Rees does that) to try and work for change away from “thin” religion. So why bother with the New Atheists? I’d argue someone like Rees has more in common with Richard Dawkins than he does Jerry Falwell.

Finally, I will concede one point. I do think Maher’s rhetoric in his film does become overly simplistic. I think you are correct that this film is a bad example of the kind of approach the New Atheists have. I do think it’s very funny and it’s a good film to laugh in, but your points have convinced me that it’s a poor way to think about religion. At the risk of relying on appeal to my own authority, I would defend Maher on other points, especially as being similar to Sarah Palin. I watch Maher’s show faithfully, I’ve read his books, and he’s an intelligent guy who does know his stuff and who does follow the news and who is capable of nuance in politics. Yes, like I pointed out, he’s a comedian and he will sacrifice nuance or subtlety for a joke plenty, but there’s a brighter bulb there than Sarah Palin. And at the risk of sounding both arrogant and oversimplified, as one who gets his news from plenty of sources and who evaluates it frequently, I know that Maher is…well…right. Palin isn’t. Maher may go for the easy rhetoric or the quick joke as a comedian, but he’s on the right side of most of these political issues. That’s why I jumped to the “factually correct” statement. Both Bill Maher and Sarah Palin may hit the rhetoric on “death panels” for healthcare reform, for example, but one of them is right and one of them is wrong. The facts make that clear.