Is It Possible for a Minister and an Atheist to Have a Polite and Rational Conversation?
Sounds almost like a joke, doesn’t it? And yet, here it is: my favorite polite rational atheist, Sam Harris, in conversation with Dr. R. Scott Colglazier, Senior Minister of First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
Instead of the “Othering” that happens online every day, maybe this approach is better. Just a thought.
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]
It’s almost magical to hear people address one another like this.
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/18/2018 @ 8:56 pmI hope Gryph watches this.
BuDuh (fc15db) — 5/18/2018 @ 9:34 pmi got me many many true blue leftist friends i adore more than pickles
“i’m a man of the left” my friend d says
and I say yes yes i know you are
politics isn’t between people per se
that’s a choice
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/18/2018 @ 10:19 pmIs this really good advice:
http://day1.org/5971-trusting_your_experience
narciso (d1f714) — 5/18/2018 @ 10:28 pmSeriously:
https://sojo.net/articles/christ-and-paris-climate-accord
narciso (d1f714) — 5/18/2018 @ 10:46 pmEventually discussions like this usually boil down to the question of Evolution vs Creationism. And, of course the twain do never meet.
However I’m pleased to confirm the issue has finally been resolved. They’re both right: Man was made in the image of God, and women are descended from monkeys.
ropelight (026cbf) — 5/18/2018 @ 10:49 pmThere is no such thing as a rational atheist.
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 12:26 amDon’t “other” me bro!
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 12:42 amMy mother was a minister, and I am an atheist (not hostile to religion, just don’t believe/practice it), and we did (eventually) have polite and rational conversations.
She found religion quite suddenly around the time I was finishing high school, so it definitely took some years for both of us to accept that we weren’t going to argue or browbeat the other out our respective worldviews.
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 12:50 amAtheism is an unsupportable belief, just as gnosticism is.
The absence of God cannot be shown any more rationally that His existence. The ONLY thing the atheist has going for him is not having to defend some flavor of religion. It is still an assertion based on incomplete data.
Calling it “rational” doesn’t make it so. I might as well talk about “rational [pick a religion]”, which is equally silly. It’s all based on faith and philosophy.
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 12:53 amIs it “unsupportable” not to believe in telepathic 14-legged chartreuse flying elephants because I’ve never seen one?
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 1:01 amIs it “unsupportable” not to believe in telepathic 14-legged chartreuse flying elephants because I’ve never seen one?
And again, you are picking on a (silly) religion and pointing out that it’s silly. Does not mean you are right. If there IS a God, who are you to say It could not manifest that way.
Nearly every atheist I’ve come across* primarily rejects the religion that s/he grew up in. In many cases their rejection of God has the following two characteristics: They cannot believe in the God of their parents, and they cannot get past that concept of God. If there IS a God, it seems, it must be THEIR God. Ironic, actually.
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 1:11 amIs it unsupportable not to believe in a universe that “just happened”?
Why is there?
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 1:12 amAnd soon you realize it’s telepathic 14-legged chartreuse flying elephants all the way down.
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 1:14 amHere’s a simple God:
The universe is alive and aware. It doesn’t play favorites, it just likes to watch. Maybe there’s a heaven, maybe there isn’t.
Disprove rationally.
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 1:16 amIt’s easy to be polite and rational if the appearance of politeness and rationality are all you’re aiming for. Little evidence that either party is doing much other than playing to their audience over talking directly to each other. Neither believes in their position seriously enough to advocate it on either the need to save souls or the need to fight irrationality.
Both atheists and ministers can be equally lukewarm when they don’t especially care.
Tellurian (b07080) — 5/19/2018 @ 1:19 amNot at all. You claimed it was “unsupportable” not to believe in something I have no evidence for; I offered an obvious counter-example. No rational person would believe in what I described without evidence.
You’re moving the goalposts. I don’t need to show that I’m right, I just need to show that’s supportable to believe as I do.
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 2:04 amDave, you use illogic to prove rationality?
Your argument:
A is a silly example of X
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 3:11 amI don’t believe in A
Therefore it is reasonable not to believe in X.
2. Let me be real clear about this. I consider accusations of having supported Hillary to be slanderous. I tend to lose my patience. Now you know why.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/19/2018 @ 5:04 amI think a better question would be: Is it possible for Trump supporters and Trump critics to have a polite and rational conversation? Given what I’ve seen of how Patterico is treated here, I think the chances of that happening are pretty slim.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/19/2018 @ 5:19 amLike Gryph, I think this post is about how do we have polite, rational conversations. It doesn’t seem like something we can do anymore.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/19/2018 @ 6:50 am#20, given your penchant for insulting name calling, I think the chances of having a polite and rational conversation with you are pretty slim.
ropelight (140cff) — 5/19/2018 @ 6:51 am22. I’m not interested in polite and rational conversations with just anyone, dope-on-a-rope. That’s why you’re on my block list.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/19/2018 @ 6:55 amI have a technical question, Gryph. How do you see comments from people you have blocked?
BuDuh (fc15db) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:11 amit’s so easy to have the polite conversations but lol
polite’s just another way of saying hey you need to not say certain stuff
this is how zuckertwat wants us to talk (certain special way)
this is how douchebag jack dorsey wants us to talk (certain special way)
this is how lean in and look at my cleavage sheryl sandberg wants us to talk (certain special way but with bonus cleavage)
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:16 amWe can have serious, meaningful conversations without leaving out anything, hf. Of course, we do have to leave out snide comments, insults and vulgarities, but why do we need them?
DRJ (15874d) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:33 amwe need em hello America have you never read literature
literature isn’t just prose it’s lots of other stuff too
it’s tone and it’s nuance and it’s color and it captures a scene or a moment or a milieu using a lot of stuff what’s designed to express what’s unique and special and memorable
and we live in a time where we have trash like pedophile mitt romney and coward-pig john mccain arrogantly showing us their ass all the time
when people look back on these times how will they know we *knew* how repugnant and loathsome these people were if we don’t say so
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:38 amUgh so the good reverend thinks only prof sentiment should guide us, not scripture heaven forfend,
narciso (b3d356) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:40 amOf course, we do have to leave out snide comments, insults and vulgarities, but why do we need them?
Ask Beldar.
random viking (6a54c2) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:41 amCongregationalists are barely Christians to begin with. They reject the apostolic tradition and their Christian doctrine is what the membership of each particular church votes it is. Their founders also burned witches and Catholics but that was in another country.
nk (dbc370) — 5/19/2018 @ 7:58 amWell they did say in 2 timothy about false teachers, oh and I’m not a fan of Joel ‘sanka’ Osteen either.
narciso (b3d356) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:05 amI aspire to be like these two guys. I’m going to work on doing that sort of thing here.
That doesn’t mean it’s worth trying with everyone. I’ve heard Harris talk to Ezra Klein — and, as I said, it was a waste of Harris’s time. Klein was smug, tried to control the conversation, and wasted all his time with accusations and ad hominems. Harris kept coming back with reason, but no conversation was happening.
There are, increasingly I think, people here with whom you can have a conversation, DRJ. There’s even a fella who seemed Trump-friendly named Stephen J. who seemed like a model of rational conversation.
You have to choose your setting and partners. You *could* go to 4chan and attempt to have, say, a rational conversation about Trump. But I’m not sure why anyone thinks that would be a good idea, or that it would accomplish anything besides making the person who tried it their object of ridicule for the day.
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:36 amI don’t really know anything about Congregationalists but I like this guy and his attitude. I notice in his bio that he was at University Christian Church in Fort Worth for a while. That was near Trinity Episcopal, where my family went.
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:38 amYeah, we should be able to disagree without being disagreeable. More points go to the people who genuinely listen…maybe even acknowledging points of agreement…and don’t immediately attack motive or conclusions. People have been at this God thing for awhile….there is no definitive proof for or against the proposition. It is as much about philosophy and how we deal with the unknown as it is about who is conclusively right or wrong. Both religion and atheism require a certain measure of faith. People of religion find comfort in knowing what comes after this life and what are the immutable rules for a “good life”. Atheists find comfort in rationally determining what is a “good life” and what morals make sense for us as social animals…and they have their Sundays free. We should respect that there is good and bad that can come from both….and that extremism is usually the greatest enemy.
AJ_Liberty (165d19) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:39 am24. Blocking is done with a script that must be run each time a page is reloaded. When I block someone, I can see that they posted and when. I just can’t read what they write — until I click it, should I so choose.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:41 amThanks, Gryph. So do you start reading down a freshly reload page until you see a name that is on your blocking script and then run the script, or do you run the script immediately and then take a peak at a blocked person’s comment?
I am curious. This isn’t a trap or mean spirited. I really don’t understand.
BuDuh (fc15db) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:52 am36. It’s situational. Depends on the topic of the thread and how dense the posts are from certain people (I mean how many times in a row they post).
Gryph (08c844) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:53 amI’m sorry, Patterico. I suppose I could have found a nicer way to tell narciso that Congregationalists are independent assemblies, without a central doctrine or hierarchy like the churches we are familiar with. As I understand it, some can be very strait-laced and some very liberal.
nk (dbc370) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:55 amI see.
BuDuh (fc15db) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:56 amYou can easily separate the people who watched the video from those who haven’t. Just 2 minutes and 26 seconds into the video, Harris describes his relationship to the word “atheist.”
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/19/2018 @ 9:14 amBuDuh, I have no script on my phone and often read comments on my phone, so I see comments from people I have blocked. It’s not ideal. But if I have a long thread and the topic is some fever swamp thing having to do with Trump, I can separate the wheat from a lot of highly annoying chaff by employing the script and skipping over the nonsense.
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/19/2018 @ 9:18 amAnd yes, you can easily peek at a comment from a blocked commenter without having to reload the page and unblock everyone. Just left click in the area of the comment itself and you can toggle back and forth between revealing the comment and making it disappear.
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/19/2018 @ 9:19 amAs for these two gentlemen conversing politely but nonetheless neither convincing the other, that is the nature of Belief. It can be tolerant of people who hold other beliefs, but it must be intolerant and exclusive of their beliefs otherwise it’s not much of a belief. People can abandon their beliefs and adopt new ones, but it is a momentous event when that happens, like a war within the soul.
nk (dbc370) — 5/19/2018 @ 9:37 amNo, you mischaracterize my argument.
My argument:
There is no evidence for A and it is rational not to believe in A on that basis.
There is no evidence for X, therefore it is arguably rational (“supportable”) not to believe in X on the same basis.
I could go a bit further. The issue is not just believing in telepathic 14-legged chartreuse flying elephants, but venerating them as the creators and omnipotent rulers of the cosmos. Thus:
There is no evidence for A, and it is rational not to venerate A as the creators and omnipotent rulers of the cosmos on that basis.
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 9:39 amThere is no evidence for X, therefore it is arguably rational (“supportable”) not to venerate X as the creator and omnipotent ruler of the cosmos on the same basis.
What is the substance of this belief, its plain vanilla, communists and islamiat in their own way believe they are even willing to kill for it, what do we?
Tacitus and josephus even pliny testify to the faith ofcthe Christians, and the first two to the existence of same.
narciso (d1f714) — 5/19/2018 @ 10:17 amThen Dave, since you claim that your flying elephants have NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER to your argument, I can only conclude you keep bringing them up as an attempt to inject froth. Which again isn’t a rational argument.
I’ll diagram your latest:
A is a silly example of something that lacks evidence.
Therefore it is rational to disbelieve in other things that lack evidence.
What evidence do you propose shows that the universe “just happened”? Since you only believe in things with evidence.
Kevin M (752a26) — 5/19/2018 @ 10:51 amSince we are here, I would say there is evidence for an extant universe (i.e. the universe did happen).
Scientists, if they are careful and honest, do not take a position on how the universe began. They may *speculate* about it, as method for finding ways to formulate and test hypotheses, and they may describe possibilities that are consistent with things we are quite sure about.
Today we can study in the laboratory conditions similar to those perhaps one picosecond (trillionth of a second) after the Big Bang. The experiment that I work on does exactly that. And we seem to understand most of the fundamental physical laws back to around that early. (The effective laws of physics actually change, in some sense, as the universe evolves – and this is experimentally well-verified). There is apparently no need to invoke supernatural/unphysical agency after the first trillionth of a second or so.
But a lot of crazy sh*t had to happen before that for the universe to turn out how we see it today. We’re trying to figure it out; obviously what we already know constrains and limits the possibilities of the remaining things we don’t. Telepathic elephants are not looking good.
In my opinion, the most interesting question is: “why is there something instead of nothing?”.
Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time asked the same question more eloquently:
I doubt science will answer my question or his, especially not in my lifetime. But we will probably learn about a lot of other interesting things in process of trying.
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 11:30 amYou (meaning: a person interested in challenging my argument) might claim there are some things one could not rationally disbelieve despite a lack of evidence (because they are sufficiently similar to other things for which there is evidence). The outlandishness of the elephants is a hedge against such an attack.
For example, I have no evidence for the existence of an albino midget named Donald J. Trump, but you might argue that it is not rational to disbelieve in the existence of such a person simply because one has never met him. There are albinos, there midgets and there are people named Donald J. Trump in the world, after all, and there is no reason, a priori that a person couldn’t share all three characteristics.
The weird elephants (and god) however, are so different from anything we have evidence for that it *is* rational to justify disbelief on the basis of lack of evidence.
Dave (445e97) — 5/19/2018 @ 12:18 pmDoes religion and God only exist to fill in the gaps in our physical understanding of the world? Bad harvest, we must appease the god of soil fertility! Can life self organize from chemical compounds? Can mutations lead to more cognitively complex organisms and ultimately consciousness? Does our understanding of the probability of all of this still leave open the possibility of supernatural oversight, leaving fingerprints on the improbable? Still, both sides must grapple with the big “why’s”. Why does God require so much faith? Why does God need/want adoration? If evolution can lead to us, why can’t it lead to an even more intelligent entity that could manipulate natural forces like evolution itself? In the beginning there was nothing, then it exploded….for some reason. Is our need for God just a product of our physiology dealing with fear (ok, -5 for not being in the form of a why-question).
Harris provides any interesting thought at the end of the conversation….essentially marveling at Christians’ ability to have debunked all of the holy texts and supernatural stories from every other religion…and then remarks that atheists just differ in that they can go one religion further. I wonder if any butts were squirming in the pews on that one….or how many people were busy surfing on their phones.
AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 5/19/2018 @ 12:37 pmCongregationalists are Christians? They’re in a race with Unitarians to be the first atheist-Christian church.
And Sam Harris is not an “atheist”. He’s a self-described “Jewish-Atheist” who celebrates all the Jewish Holidays – including Hanukkah. And despite not believing in Jehovah – believes Jews all over the world have a special bond.
rcocean (1a839e) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:19 pmWhy is anyone surprised a Mainline church minister could have a “civilized” discussion with an atheists?
Hell, the Church of England doesn’t even require you believe in God to be a minister – just believe in diversity.
rcocean (1a839e) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:23 pmIf you want a thorough and impartial debunked take tom Holland he takes issue with all three religions, only his take on Islam caused a grand Mal eruption.
narciso (d1f714) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:24 pmCongregationalists are Christians? They’re in a race with Unitarians to be the first atheist-Christian church.
They’re very nice people in Solomon Kane.
nk (dbc370) — 5/19/2018 @ 8:26 pmWhat is faith?
Is it trust or confidence in God? Is it believing in things which science has discredited? I lean toward the former while realizing that the scientist can also get it wrong.
God is truth. We should never be afraid of seeking it. Even when religion denies it for a period of time.
noel (b4d580) — 5/20/2018 @ 6:38 amDebating an atheist? Atheists are often very bright people. If you lack their intellect, your only weapon may be a pure heart.
noel (b4d580) — 5/20/2018 @ 6:43 amI think Harris is not threatened by colgleazers faith, I put Harris in another category than many others who sneer.
narciso (d1f714) — 5/20/2018 @ 6:50 am“There’s even a fella who seemed Trump-friendly named Stephen J. who seemed like a model of rational conversation.”
Full disclosure requires me to admit that as a Canadian, there’s less at stake for me being Trump-friendly, or -unfriendly, than for others for whom it may be more integral or personal, and consequently a much more naturally passionate matter. Put simply, I can afford to be wrong because it affects me much less either way.
It also requires me to admit (and I’d like to blame this on being Canadian but I suspect I’d be this way wherever I grew up) that a good deal of said preference for calm discussion is due to lacking the stomach for a more adversarial style, at least once it gets heated. I could never be an effective criminal lawyer myself.
Stephen J. (308ea7) — 5/22/2018 @ 9:04 am