Earnest atheists look for God

[rug]

By James Carroll
Globe Columnist
September 16, 2013

IN MASSACHUSETTS, an atheist challenge to the “under God” phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance is winding its way through the courts, to be decided in coming months by the Supreme Judicial Court. Deja vu all over again? Haven’t we seen this passion play before? For a generation or more, the battle lines have been hardening — between nonbelievers who see religious expression in public life as presumptuous and believers who see the restrictions on such expression as a dismissal of its value. But in an era when religion has become so heavily armed, we need a more reasoned discussion of what God, and the belief in God, brings to the world.

And if a self-described secular thinker like Ronald Dworkin could be open to such a discussion, so should the rest of us.

Dworkin died earlier this year at 81. He was a prominent philosopher of law, a professor at New York University, famous as an advocate of a “moral reading” of the US Constitution. And in a just-published book, he shines a brighter light on the true meaning of religion than anything produced lately by defenders of the faith. By his own account, he was a religious man, but also an atheist. That paradox leads him both to a deeper sense of faith and to a fuller appreciation of what it means to disavow the divine. Dworkin’s book is suggestively titled, “Religion Without God.”

“The theme of this book is that religion is deeper than God,” he wrote. “Religion is a deep, distinct, and comprehensive worldview: It holds that inherent, objective value permeates everything, that the universe and its creatures are awe-inspiring, that human life has purpose and the universe order. A belief in a god is only one possible manifestation or consequence of that worldview.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2013/09/15/religion-without-god-author-ronald-dworkin-offers-path-beyond-shopworn-disputes/2gDiyg1lA5ZVjCufzaTaVM/story.html



HARDCOVER
$17.95 • £13.95 • €16.50
ISBN 9780674726826
Publication: October 2013
192 pages

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674726826

[HeiressofBickworth]

1. I know its playing with semantics

but to say one "disavows the divine" starts from the premise that there is a divine which can be disavowed. In this atheist's opinion, there is no divine to be disavowed, therefore, I am not doing so. I start with the belief there is no god so I never say, "I don't believe in god" but I simply say there is no god. On a daily basis, I rarely think of the concept just as, on a daily basis, I am appalled at the heartless acts of people who proclaim the existence of god, allah, jehova, whatever.

[rug]

3. Hitchens touched on this four years ago when he referred to “the numinous”.

I don’t want you to go away with the impression that I’m just a vulgar materialist. I do know that humans are also, to quote Pascal again, “so made,” even though we are an evolved species whose closest cousins are chimpanzees. I know it’s not enough for us to eat and so forth. We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we’re going to die, which gives us a lot to think about. We have a need for what I would call “the transcendent” or “the numinous” or even “the ecstatic,” which comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/news-and-profiles/people-and-profiles/articles/religion-god-0110/1

[xfundy]

2. Interesting outlook.

Especially as displayed by today's brand of "Christian Love,™" which does the exact opposite of what jesus supposedly said.

[cbayer]

4. Can you define "Christian Love? And who has trademarked it?

Is that the love that all christians feel or is it just some?

[skepticscott]

5. He lost it with

"nonbelievers who see religious expression in public life as presumptuous"

That's not what the case he's referring to is about at all. It's about non-believers who see government endorsement of religious belief as illegal.

And Dworkin doesn't do much better...just a lot of popish declarations that try to substitute his beliefs for facts.

[rug]

6. Are you saying the New College of the Humanities employed somene prone to "popish declarations"?

[okasha]

8. If there are "Popish" atheists,

are there also "Calvinist" atheists who decry their alleged "Popishness?"

That would explain a lot, actually.

[Jim__]

7. Dworkin did have a talent for clarifying the issue.

... “Religion is a deep, distinct, and comprehensive worldview: It holds that inherent, objective value permeates everything, that the universe and its creatures are awe-inspiring, that human life has purpose and the universe order. ...

Einstein wasn't bad either:

... In his book, Dworkin cites his fellow atheist, Albert Einstein: “To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”