An atheist movie

A conversation on Facebook (of which I'm having quite a few lately) I commented that a new movie with an atheist 'hero'. My comment stated that movies that are sympathetic to the atheist viewpoint are common and none too subtle. When provided with a list it was criticized that most on the list either involve things such as science fiction, fantasy, or otherwise fictitious elements that attempt to distinguish the world of the movie from "real life."

Now I could make some obvious jokes about the relationship between atheism and fantasy. Instead I was puzzled by how high the bar had been set. If the movie in my previous blog post is 'unusually' sympathetic to the atheist viewpoint what would it take to make a truly atheist movie?

I imagine an opening scene with our hero waking up to the sunrise. Our hero engages in a soliloquy about how the sun activates the pleasure centers in his brain. The woman in his bed is the wife of another man. This is good as the husband (an antiquated concept) is a Christian fundamentalist preacher. When he isn't molesting children or beating his wife he preaches about sin and hell. She wakes and realizes she must return home:


Now our hero struggles are internal. He is tempted at times to convert to Christianity. From 'Holy'wood to public television broadcasting our hero is constantly bombarded with Christianist propaganda. His workplace routinely holds morning prayer and is constantly passed over for promotion because of his "outsider" views.

But nevertheless our hero remains resolute to his commitment to nothing. He knows that the truth is that there is no source and summit of life. He is committed to rescuing those such as the woman he sleeps with to freeing them from the chains of purpose and eternal salvation. With a firm purpose he resolves to rescue the world and the only true maxim:

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

It is a stirring tale of struggle and finding the strength to live out one's meaningless life. A tale of courage in the face of relentless oppression of a God of Love. It closes with our hero freeing the woman he sleeps with from the oppressive regime of religion to live out the rest of their life before being buried in the cold ground to rot.

It is highly doubtful that such a script will make it past the clergy that run most major movie studios. It is a shame, because nothing stirs the inner chemical reactions of the brain like the visual effects projected on a screen about the meaninglessness of life.

History VII

Our last outing with history concluded that history holds real value only to those who believe in the concept of transcendent truth. History can only teach us if there is something to be taught that can apply to us in the present time. Yet even if we grant this notion history presents an issue. If we were to look at history on its own merits it is not that obvious that history really has something to teach us.

An honest look at history reveals two problems which will be examined in turn. It is important to understand these issues before any honest assessment of history can be carried out.

The first problem is how one determines what is and what is not important when it comes to details. Given the wealth of data that accompanies historical research how does one come to the conclusion that a given detail, be it cultural, political, social, religious, artistic, or musical, is important enough to warrant our attention?

I will use an example of sorts. There is a version of history popular today about Galileo and the controversy surrounding his interactions with the Catholic Church. In particular, the following narrative is proposed. That Galileo stood for true science and the correct view that the earth revolved around the sun, and defied the religious authorities of the time who believed that the Ptolemaic model was correct that the earth was the center of the universe.

However, like all history, there is far more to the story than meets the eye. For example:

But Kepler was not the only contemporary of Galileo who was developing models to compete with the old Ptolemaic model. There were at least 6 models being proposed. The program[ed. A program that aired on television], like so many other biographies of Galileo, builds a straw man, by suggesting that the choices were between Galileo's Copernican model and an archaic model inherited from Aristotle. Another important scientist of the day, Tycho Brahe, had developed the Tychonic System. The Jesuits mentioned in the program (e.g Scheiner) were not proponents of the old Ptolemaic system but of the newer Tychonic System. The program implies that all of Galileo's opponents were clutching to some ancient scheme. The Tychonic system had been published in 1587, more than 40 years after Copernicus' death. It was based on the best set of celestial data up to that time. The data set was eventually used by Kepler to propose our modern view of planetary motion. Kepler and Tycho Brahe are often ignored in Galilean biographies but they were important. Perhaps the most important work in physics from the seventeenth century was Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica .

Indeed such data would sever the connection between the actual events of the Galileo controversy and the meta-narrative of popular imagination, the notion of continuous war between religion and science.

But this is not to simply throw cold water on the Galileo myth. The point is that one has to consider what data is relevant from history in order to draw meaning from it. And to be sure that we are not ignoring data that is relevant simply because it does not support our wishes.

The second issue stems from the first. History, like all human affairs, is fraught with contradictions. There are no heroes that were not weak in some sense. Nor did there exist so horrible a person that there wasn't some glimmer of that image of God. King David's lust motivated him to kill a man to steal the man's wife. Hitler was a painter. And then there are those such as George Jacques Danton , who worked so hard to hurl France into the nightmare of the Terror only to die in an attempt to undo what he had wrought.

How does one make sense of the morass of history? How does one obtain truth from the data that seems to contradict itself at every turn? Indeed with such data it would seem that those who argue against transcendent truth have the upper hand. If there is such a narrative to be had from history, it is the most contradictory and muddled story ever written.

But there is one nagging question. Why do we keep coming back to it? Why do we continue to say that history is important? Why is there a drive, even a need within us for those ties to the past? This we will examine next.

The "Aha" moment

A common occurrence in arguments with atheists is discussing the notion of "proof." One of the common arguments that atheists assert is that "there is no proof" that God exists. While some of the more thoughtful atheists realize that their current assumptions do not allow for such proof to exist, there is another difficulty with this argument. That there is such a thing as a proof or argument that on its own is decisive.

To take an example that material atheists should be familiar with, consider how science establishes a "law." Now a scientific law, at least in the traditional understanding, is a proposition that is consistent across all physical data available that is relevant to the proposition. That is, that each and every experiment performed in relation to the law is consistent with the law. There is no data that contradicts it.

While some may argue with my definition (and they are welcome to) the core concept in the definition is the notion of a multitude of data to confirm the theory, and thus establish a law. Scientists do not perform one experiment and that is the final word. Such experiments are repeated to generate data that is consistent. After such theory is postulated, others will verify, confirming or contesting the data.

The point of this discussion is that in science it is the case that vast amounts of data are accumulated in order to establish a proposed law or truth about the physical world. While one may point to a particular person as the discovery point, vast amounts of data are used to confirm the theory.

All those who believe in Divine Providence, almost to a man, would argue the same (and often do) regarding their own beliefs. That their lives are a testimony to the notion that there is a Divine Will acting in their lives. Much like scientific inquiry, those who believe often do so because they have accumulated data to confirm to themselves that there is a thing called "God."

In my own life for example I see the hand of God in my life. Reflecting on where I have come from I can see work in my life leading me to the concept of God. Some are more significant than others, but all have a story to tell and a conclusion to reach.

But the main point is that neither in faith nor in science do we radically alter our beliefs and assumptions based on a single idea, argument, or event. St. Paul was already a devoted servant of God before God threw him off the horse. He simply needed correction. Indeed I would be very afraid of a person who's entire worldview revolved around a single experience. This to me is why God works slowly, to give us time to adjust and understand.

Thus for those who are asked what proof one should provide for one's faith remember that it took a lifetime to accumulate. And that if the one asking is looking for a single decisive argument he is looking for a phantom that doesn't exist in his own view. And if it does, it is most probably wrong.

History VI

When we last left the subject of history I mentioned that the modern mind is preoccupied more with accumulating facts rather than interpreting them. To our modern mind it is more important to know "when" and "what" happened rather than "why". More important to know what the Magna Carta was rather than what it meant. With few exceptions (like the Galileo controversy) facts are far more important than the meaning behind them.

The most obvious example of this current state is the event known as "9/11." Even the name itself gives the game away. Only the raw data can be captured by the modern mind. The attack on the U.S.A. and the hurt inflicted is our preoccupation. Lost in the shuffle is the heroism of those rescuers who risked their lives to save others. How ordinary men became heroes in a time of trial is lost due to our inability to look higher than the rubble of buildings. Even when we attempt to look up we bring ourselves down.

This state of affairs is due to the modern mind's rejection of the concept of "universal truth." Truth that transcends both culture and time. The notion that all things in the created order abide by truths that are constant. We lack the ability to see meaning behind the events in our own lives because we have rejected the notion that there is such a thing.

By extension then it should not surprise us that we fail to grasp the meaning behind events in the past. By rejecting the truth in our own lives we thus obliterate any meaning of the lives of our ancestors. History is thus reduced to trivia, no more necessary than the latest knowledge of celebrity gossip or sports statistics.

But there are still remnants of this notion that learning history is important. We pay lip service to the notion that "history repeats itself" and "those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it." Yet both sayings imply that there is a transcendent truth imbedded in history. Truths that can be learned that apply outside of both culture and time.

It is this contradiction that we present to our children. We claim that history has something to teach us yet we do not live our lives as if truth exists. They see our hypocrisy and reject our knowledge. After all, if our beliefs are transitory and malleable, why shouldn't their beliefs be? And that includes our quaint notions that history is important.

But for those who believe that there is such a thing as universal truth history poses a problem as well. And that we will discuss next.

On Legislating Morality Part II

A conversation on Facebook reminded me of my previous post on legislating morality. It is important to understand the relationship between morality and law. One of the causes of much confusion in modern political discussions is that this relationship is often misunderstood.

There is a constant balance of individual rights vs. the welfare of a society. When a law is passed, say for example a certain activity is banned, there several moral judgements involved, noted by these criteria:

1. That the activity in question is not beneficial to society. This is a moral judgement.
2. It is proper that the state is involved in enforcing that said activity does not occur. This is also a moral judgement.
3. It is reasonable that state coercion will deter said activity from occurring (i.e. such laws are enforceable). This is a prudential judgement.
4. The law in question does not unreasonably interfere with individual rights of the citizenry. This is a prudential judgement.

I'm not under any illusion that these are always taken into account. Indeed most of the laws passed in our society these days lack sufficient reflection on such criteria. However it is the case that when we are passing laws for "the good of society" this is essentially the criteria that we are abiding by, even if we don't follow through and think clearly on the law with regard to the criteria.

Any time a law is passed it is always first and foremost preceded by a moral judgement of how human beings interact with each other. As I stated before, morality at its heart contain the rules of conduct that human beings abide by, both as individuals and as groups (family, community, etc). The state is essentially the expression of that moral viewpoint at the macro level. Thus for one to say "One cannot legislate morality" is to say "One cannot legislate."

We have a consensus!

An interesting side effect of the gay "marriage" debates is that it reveals a principle that we all agree on regardless of one's viewpoint. It is both shocking and yet so simple. That consensus is that there is such a thing as objective morality.

Now one may object to this idea. Indeed it is a fact that those who advocate for same-sex "marriage" is that marriage is a fluid concept. It is defined and redefined throughout the centuries by various societies. Indeed the whole argument for same-sex "marriage" is based on the proposition that marriage can be redefined by society at will.

Yet a curious thing happens next. The same-sex marriage advocate goes on to argue that not legally recognizing same-sex "marriage" in law is "wrong." It is unfair, says the advocate, that gays are excluded from the benefits that opposite-sex pairings of people possess under the law. It is only right and just that gays be allowed to "marry."

Right and wrong, just and unjust. These words are very odd indeed. By definition they imply that there is such a thing as "objective." In order to be "right" there must be a truth that is true regardless of one's opinion. In order to be "wrong" one must be incorrect about said objective truth.

If then it is the case that marriage is subject to the whims and fancies of the populace, then any definition of marriage is acceptable. There can be no right or wrong because marriage is whatever we want it to be. Man and woman? Man and Man? Man and boy of 11 years? Man and girl of 11 years? Man and Plant? You get the idea. A definition of marriage detached from any objective meaning is simply the flavor of the month. It is certainly not worth the huge amount of resources devoted to the project.

In short a person who argues for same-sex "marriage" already acknowledges that there is such a thing as the objective definition of marriage. He has to. Otherwise arguing about marriage would be like arguing which alcoholic beverage is "the best." If any definition will suffice, why is the current one so bad?

So we should rejoice that both sides have some common ground to work from. The whole basis for an argument about the "right" definition of marriage by definition implies an objective definition of marriage. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Atheism is morally superior

For those who study the New Atheist movement I often find the following claims presented by such:

1. Religion poisons everything.
2. Atheists can be just as good as religious people.

While I contend the first premise I'm more than happy to acknowledge the second. There are plenty of wonderful people who for one reason or another do not believe in God, the Christian definition or otherwise.

There is a disturbing trend though to attempt to have it both ways among among the New Atheists. One the one hand we are told that atheists can be just as good as their religious counterparts. On the other hand we are told that 'traditional religious based morality' is outdated. The New Atheists typically set up a new set of rules for morality.

For example, there is a new movie out in select theaters where an atheist is the hero of the story. The synopsis basically is that the hero atheist has a love affair with a Christian wife, whose husband then, in a battle of wills, encourages the hero to commit suicide.

My first thought on the film was that it should be no wonder why those of religious belief find atheism to be morally subversive to say the least. To the movie creators the adulterer who seduces the wife of another man is assigned the role of 'hero.' This is enough for those who hold themselves to a moral higher standard to put their teeth on edge and rightly point out that this is simply subversive. It is easy to be 'moral' if morality is whatever one wants.

To me this is essentially to change the rules of the game. If I were to redefine morality to whatever I want and thus be able to redefine my 'vices' as 'virtues' then I would be the most moral person I know. No one else could match my moral stature, because it was crafted entirely for my benefit.

It is important then to realize that New Atheist claims to the moral high ground are rooted not in any sense of morality as understood by the traditional term. Redefine the term enough and Adolf Hitler can be the epitome of 'moral virtue.' Given where such high ground is located I'm perfectly content to let others occupy that swamp.