I despair
This is the kind of support that Gift of Life has. It frightens me when I think that ordinary, rational and reasonable people are up against individuals like this, who are convinced that because (they think) God is on their side they can ignore the fundamental rights of human beings. When I read the comments of people like this Miriam Maria Micallef, who is confusing divorce, abortion and euthanasia beneath every news story about Gift of Life on www.timesofmalta.com, I have a very good idea of what it must have been like for those who lived in 17th-century Salem, when people like Ms Micallef took over control of society.
Miriam Maria Micallef (6 hours, 57 minutes ago)
No Divorce and No abortion. We shall see. All you men, calling for abortion. How shameful. How typical. Thank God you will never see this happen in Malta. A baby may be unwnated for you men but the baby is always wanted by someoen else. A baby is a baby not because it is wanted by the father. Pressure to have women abort is not liberal or modern. It is disgusting. No argument can change the fact that unless we have the right to life from conception, all of us will be in trouble. Euthanasia will be next. It all begins with Divorce. Of course this makes the secularists and liberals uncomfortable in this space. It is too close to home for them and ruins their grand plans for divorce. They know that this would be the begining of the end and our politicians should be very, very careful what side they will take on these issues of deep moral implications. I am In favour of life and agianst divorce and abortion and proud of it!
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OK fine. She’s had a good life and she’s happy about it. I wish I’d been aborted.
I have playing the devil’s advocate (unless the devil happen to be played by Al Pacino, in which case it would have been an honour, despite the disastrous script), but this argument that divorce leads to euthanasia which leads to abortion, which leads to you-name-it, is not completely inaccurate. Liberal thinking do lean towards acceptance of some these concepts. Saying that, it is still a massive non sequitur to use as an argument.
On a side-note, dos people here learn about logical fallacies at all in school? From their form of “debate” it seems like the whole concept is miles over their heads and you won’t have to read more than a few comments on the Times to find one.
[Daphne – No. To meet logic at school, you have to take advanced level philosophy at sixth form college. Maybe O-level philosophy is now taught at secondary school, but it wasn’t in my time or in my sons’ time, and they only left a few years ago.]
Pat: The oddest thing about that comment Miriam Maria Micallef’s claim that “it all begins with Divorce”. She doesn’t say why or how, but maybe that’s because she doesn’t know divorce – as opposed to Divorce – is a latter day invention. Abortion has probably existed as long as human beings were aware of how babies were made.
I don’t know why people are against euthanasia. Maybe they have never seen a person die gradually of cancer. Not even having the strength to cry out in pain. I saw my sister dying in that way. When she finally passed away, I thanked God for at last giving her peace. If, when my time comes I’m in the same situation I would want someone to have pity on me.
When it comes to divorce, although I will not consider divorce for myself (maybe because we don’t need it). I don’t see a reason to stop others from having it.
Abortion is a different kettle of fish, I still think that the child has a right to live, but then when does the embryo become a child, certainly not the morning after. So if abortion is introduced I would only consider voting in favour, only if there was a stipulated time during the pregnancy when it can be done.
A word of advice to these anti abortion groups. Please stop being sensational about what happens to the embryo during an abortion, and how painful it is for the embryo. Some 14 years ago I had a miscarriage (which is a natural abortion), the most depressing thing was remembering a lecture I attended previously against abortion, and thinking how my baby was suffering and I couldn’t console it.
It is people with that mentality that hold malta back and do not let it grow with the times. Being homosexual was wrong till some time ago, today it is accepted ( in malta to a certain degree – I still believe there is room for improvement)
And please do not even get me started on euthanasia. But that time will come too.
Why do people find it so hard not to impose their ideas/religion/guilt on other people?
ps. there is no such thing as O level philo but if you take Intermediate level at JC you get some kind of logic…
I’m surprised, logical fallacies should not be limited to the realm of philosophy. Debate techniques are normally taught even within linguistic classes, in fact my first encounter with logical fallacies was in an English class (our teacher in Swedish was a genuine relic, who is probably guilty of making me feel more comfortable writing in English than Swedish – embarrasing but true). I’d reckon even within theology they should be useful, even though the subject itself is a bit overrated, imho.
Corinne:
I reckon both concepts being fairly old, although you are probably right in abortion being the older one. There is also the fact that some animals actually kill off their own offspring for various reasons.
It’s all an attack on liberal values. The argument is that if we allow one liberal action to be allowed, we will open the floodgates for others, but as I said before, it’s a non sequitur. You can turn it around and say that if we limit it on religious grounds, we might as well instigate the inquisition again. It’s a bad argument no matter which side of the debate it arises from.
Well, this pathetic Miriam Maria Micallef has every right to think it that way. If she has been doctrinated to perceive it like that then let it be. However, she shall never try to impose her stupidity on others.
“God you will never see this happen in Malta” – Who the heck is she to state such a thing? I really pity these people, as they apparently cannot see that everyone should live life without anyone intruding in it. People like this Maria are really a shame. They just want to impose on others. If she doesn’t want to abort, then she may not resort to it. (If she still is in time to get pregnant, something I highly doubt.) But let others do it, if they think they need it.
“On a side-note, dos people here learn about logical fallacies at all in school?”
They usually start off with grammar.
[Daphne – That’s the problem, Malcolm. Grammar hasn’t been taught for years. My first encounter with grammar was while learning Latin at university, in my early 30s.]
Euthanasia(as opposed to assisted suicide) is, in my humble opinion, a very difficult and dangerous subject. To begin with I admit to not knowing about the subject so I stand open to correction, but from what I understand it’s a doctor or relatives taking the decision to kill a person suffering from some painful terminal illness! I do not take it to refer to cases like the unfortunate Welby’s case in Italy which I consider assisted suicide.My fear is that euthanasia can easily be abused since it is done without the consent of the patient (otherwise it’s assisted suicide). A living will would ease such fears!
[Daphne – Please let’s not have a debate about euthanasia. It’s so not an issue.]
“They usually start off with grammar.”
My problem wasn’t grammar, it was typing. Just like the “have” instead of “hate” in the first sentence.
Besides, while finding grammar important, I rank the ability to maintain an adult conversation quite much higher.
Why is euthansia not an issue? It’s still killing off “unwanted” individuals, or individuals who, in the eyes of some do not need to live any more.
The step from abortion to euthansia is not a long one. From there to eugenics. Why not?
*sorry for mentioning euthansia, but I think that it ties in nicely with abortion; feel free to withhold this comment. I understand that you may want to keep the comments on topic*
[Daphne – Yes, I want to keep the comments on the topic. Euthanasia has nothing to do with it, and nobody is talking about euthanasia, except for a couple of people with untrained minds, like this Micallef person. One does not follow on from the other. Every country in the world allows abortion except for Chile, El Salvador, Ireland, The Philippines, Poland and Malta. None permits euthanasia, though a couple do allow assisted suicide in highly restricted situations.]
“None permits euthanasia, though a couple do allow assisted suicide in highly restricted situations.”
Actually some countries do as the link below will show, even though most can be considered assisted suicide.
Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists even submitted a proposal to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics calling for consideration of permitting the euthanasia of disabled newborns (Euthanasia is however currently illegal in the U.K.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_and_the_Law
But I agree it has nothing to do with abortion and even less so with divorce
I have exhausted all I had to say about abortion. However before resting my case I will copy and paste my comment to the Times on this same issue. No one replied to the question I asked (though I did post my comment around 2 o’clock this morning and the news item under which I posted it is not on today’s online version of the newspaper).
If no one from the life-from-conception-women-haters brigade gives me a decent answer I’ll rest my case.
Thanks Daphne and keep it up.
cu Colin
Colin Vassallo (9 hours, 22 minutes ago)
Entrench this in the Constitution:
“No one shall force a woman to go through with her pregnancy against her will”
If you don’t want to, then kindly tell me what should we do to a woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy. I find this scenario quite disturbing. Shall we pin her down to her bed for nine months until she delivers or shall we chain her to a wall in a prison cell until the baby is born?
[Daphne – They can’t answer because they don’t have an answer. Finding the answer demands thought, involves a moral dilemma, and they are comfortable only with black-and-white, cast-iron certainty. That’s why most of them are religious types. They can’t live without the certainty that religion provides, though of course, only unthinking religiosity causes this. Many religious people are not like this at all.]
Oh what a dilemma… I know it’s not on topic and all and you want it to stop, but just a small correction on your last note. There are a number of countries that do permit euthanasia, most explicitly The Netherlands.
Now I don’t want to continue sidetracking, so for whoever is interested just head off to Wikipedia and leave this blog post alone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_and_the_Law
[Daphne – It’s important to distinguish between euthanasia and assisted suicide. Strictly speaking, euthanasia involves killing somebody without their express consent because you think their life is not worth living. With assisted suicide, the person wants to die because of extreme pain and suffering and no chance of getting better, but cannot take his or her own life because of immobility or similar. Buying this person a bottle of pills and giving it to him would be assisted suicide but not euthanasia. Switzerland has assisted suicide clinics. You go there, you give your consent, and are literally ‘put down’. Most of the clients are people suffering from agonising terminal disease. I’m not crazy about the idea, but thinking about it, I realise that it’s more the idea of the organised efficiency that repels me. I am not similarly repelled at all by the idea of giving somebody a bottle of pills and another bottle of whisky. If people in this situation would rather die, then it’s up to them and I don’t believe pain and suffering should be prolonged in this way. It’s nothing short of cruelty. I’ve had dogs put down just to end their misery, and not because I think they don’t have a soul and so it doesn’t matter. The crucial bit is the will to die, and the understanding that this person would have killed himself anyway, given the chance to do so. Then there’s what some people have tried to turn into a grey area, but which is really quite clear-cut: refusal of treatment, as in the Piergiorgio Welby case. Taking a brain-dead person off a machine is not euthanasia. Acceding to a patient’s request to ‘pull out the plug’ is not assisted suicide, but granting his legitimate request to refuse treatment.]
I might be in the minority here and sound anti-clerical but am I the only one thinking “How can a priest who has no idea of a relationship, engagement, marriage, children and marriage problems in all their different ways profess to tell married people how to live their lives and encourage, even demand that married couples, even if they are unhappy, even if there is emotional,physical or verbal abuse going on in front of young children, or even without children, stay together.?”
Aren’t there justified cases of divorce and separation?
Are we so stupid as to cast a wide net and say no divorce for anyone at all because one or two couples may have abused the system and got married just for fun , only to divorce a day/week later? (Britney Spears)
Who are we to judge and say to EVERYONE ‘no we should not have divorce?’ By what right does a layman/priest/politician speak for the population and for those who are actually living through hell, hardship and abuse? If a couple is truly in love they will stay together whether divorce is introduced or not.
Please let us not put on our ‘holier than thou’ hats and pretend to be the voice of right. Clearly those people advocating no to divorce have not lived through an abusive relationship. They have no idea what its like and unfortunately no right to attempt to force their opinions down the throats of the rest of the population who suffer in silence.
This is a democracy. Let the people speak. Call a referendum.
[Daphne – A referendum on divorce is a bad idea. It makes the rights of the minority subject to the will of the majority. It’s been done by other states, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Nor do we need a referendum on whether we should introduce a law that every other country in the world has, except Malta and The Philippines. It would be ridiculous.
The Catholic Church doesn’t insist on warring couples staying together. It allows them to separate. But then they are barred from the sacraments if they have other sexual partners, because it’s the mortal sin of adultery. The real reason that the church opposes divorce is not because divorce sanctions the parting of couples but because it legitimises something the church doesn’t allow: remarriage when the original spouse is still living.]
The problem with people like Ms. Micallef is that they thrive on confrontation. I will not delve into the merits of her “arguments” as these have been widely debated and in any case, it would be overkill. What really strikes me is the dogmatic, terse, quasi-biblical, uncompromising “style: in which she pens her opinion. Just read her opening for tasters;-“No Divorce and No abortion. We shall see.” What then I ask?
In an even more divisive, stereotypical, anti-male fashion, she rants on-“All you men, calling for abortion. How shameful. How typical. Thank God you will never see this happen in Malta. A baby may be unwanted for you men but the baby is always wanted by someone else. A baby is a baby not because it is wanted by the father.” Ms. Micallef appears oblivious to the fact that women may in fact want abortion and that the persons behind GOL (and presumably Ms. Micallef’s allies) are men.
This is not the way to draw support to your cause, whatever it may be. I also suspect Ms. Micallef and the like actually enjoy being ostracised and ridiculed – it gives them a few more bonus points with their maker.
My two cents worth.
I am definately in favour of divorce, and the right of people to decide their own future. And I agree that the introduction of divorce should not be decided by referendum.
Abortion is a tricky thing. Oh yes, I am in favour of providing a mother the chance, and after due consideration for her actions, the chance to abort. But what about the child? Who looks after its rights? The right to live, to grow up, in short to be? Should I, or anybody come to that, have the power to take away another person’s existance?
Somethimes I thank God I am not a woman, and will never have to make this choice. I do think however that we may not judge a woman who has decided what she wants to do. If she decides freely to abort, than she should be allowed to do so. Nobody appointed us as his or her’s conscience. However I do hope that less and less women avail themselves of this opportunity.
“But then they are barred from the sacraments if they have other sexual partners, because it’s the mortal sin of adultery. ” But of course the church has every right to do that! Whether you care or not is another matter but I may have mentioned before that I have a divorced friend (abroad) who is divorced (and re-married) who is barred from receiving the sacraments. She complains about it but basically that is a choice you have to make! I agree with the church on the issue, where I don’t agree is when people like Miriam Maria Micallef and the legendary Jacqueline try to remove the choice to “sin” (in the eyes of the church). For heaven’s sake God gave us the freedom to sin by giving us a free will and intelligence, why should we think that can take that freedom away!
[Daphne – David, nobody is questioning the right of the church to make its own rules and try to impose them on its followers. I was merely pointing out to somebody that the church doesn’t try to stop married people separating and has no objection to it (anymore). The objection is based on sex with a new partner and on remarriage, which it considers to be an adulterous state.]
Ok, I’m still being rude enough to deviate from the subject, but I don’t agree that your definition of euthanasia and assisted suicide is correct. The one thing that differ depends on who performs the act. It’s true that if a doctor, or anyone else for that matter, hands someone a bottle of suicide pills, it would be considered assisted suicide. But if a patient is incapacitated and it’s the actual doctor that administers the medicine, it’s euthanasia, no matter who consented to what. It’s not the consent that determines.
“The step from abortion to euthansia is not a long one. From there to eugenics. Why not?”
You are doing the same leap of irrationality as Ms. Micallef and even mixing in eugenics as well, taking it a step further. It’s not an argument, it’s a side issue, a red herring. Abortion have nothing to do with euthanasia, end of story. Euthanasia have nothing to do with eugenics, end of story. Eugenics requires the act to be imposed on the subject, something no pro-choice supporter I’ve spoken with ever suggested.
There will come a time when the European Court of Justice (Luxembourg) will decide on some abortion-related case. During the Irish referendum we prepared some answers to a question relating to abortion. Here are the 2 answers:
http://www.euinfo.ie/index.php?page=faq&op=read&id=9
You can go directly to the second answer, which is more comprehensive in that it also tackles the situation today and not just that pertaining to the rejected Lisbon Treaty.
You can rest assured that what Gift of Life are doing is not only ridiculous, it is indeed irrelevant, more so since our constitution has lost its supremacy over anything coming from the Union, including the ECJ, which often decides on matters where the Union holds no competence, establishing case law nonetheless.
Also note that our answers have been under tremendous scrutiny by the Irish Yes-to-Lisbon brigade and they did not manage to find one single fault in our answers.
@ Daphne. ‘The real reason that the church opposes divorce is not because divorce sanctions the parting of couples but because it legitimises something the church doesn’t allow: remarriage when the original spouse is still living.’
Absolutely true, but there’s more. The legitimisation of something the church doesn’t allow effectively weakens the church’s (for which read any church’s) hold over people, i.e., it’s power, and there lies the rub. Take away obedience and what’s the church left with? Some valuables, perhaps, but no status.
The supreme irony in the case of divorce is, of course, that Jesus Christ sanctions it, as well as re-marriage whilst the original spouse is still living, in the case of adultery by the wife (of course!): Matt 19:9 ‘I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for unfaithfulness, and marries another commits adultery.’
Admittedly, the statement is slightly ambiguous in that whilst a man divorcing his wife is certainly permissable in the case of adultery (unfaithfulness – though then again, define unfaithfulness) re-marriage without adultery is not so clearly confirmed. Of course this right to divorce applies only to the husband and not the wife.
“David, nobody is questioning the right of the church to make its own rules and try to impose them on its followers.” I know that and happen to agree with your position 100%. I was just pointing out something to no-one in particular
So we Maltese are the only ones who should be thankful to God. The rest of the world is not burdened with such obligations of gratitude – God has apparently allowed the rest of humanity to go astray and deserves no thanks for that. No wonder – after all, aren’t we the Chosen People? Who else can lay claim to being the children of il-kbir appostlu missierna San Pawl, of being steadfastly Christian uninterruptedly for two millennia? With our sacred blood, we saved Christendom from the evil onslaught of the infidel in 1565 and, with us around, there’s hope yet for mankind. We shall resist, secure in our impregnable last bastion of Catholicism and the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. Deus vult – God wills it, as the Crusaders cried while the Christian hordes marched east to recapture the Holy land.
Had Ms. Miriam Maria Micallef’s parents divorced before she was conceived, or aborted her, Malta would be one step closer to the year 2008.
Why is Miriam Maria Micallef so adamantly against divorce and abortion, do you think? There has to be an underlying reason….I don’t think it’s just because she is a misguided, religious zealot. Generally when a person fights for something, he stands to gain from it.
[Daphne – Re your last point: not necessarily a direct, personal gain, but the gain of living in a better society. As for Ms Micallef, it’s probably lack of exposure to different ideas, over most of her lifetime.]
If an abortion takes place because the child will be born with Edward’s disease or some other terminal illness – isn’t that sort of like euthanasia? I don’t see a big difference.
[Daphne – I have to agree with you there, but for a different reason. If the argument against abortion is derived from the right to life of the foetus, then you can’t argue that a defective foetus has no right to life by virtue of its physical or mental shortcomings.]
freethinker – are you related to Norman?
they say that God lets us be free to decide whatever we want. but i don’t remeber she/he/it giving me the choice to start to exist. (sorry for my english daph)
another thing…. if i know that my wife/girlfriend/friend has a badly deformed incapacitated baby in her womb…i would do anything in my power to help her KILL the baby…. i don’t mind where my soul goes after my death because of this act of mine (killing the baby). but i’d rather know that my baby’s soul is in heaven (s/he is innocent – all inncoents go to heaven) rather than letting him/her be born and let him/her live in hell on earth (fl-infern ta l-art)
My Opinions on these controversial issues: maybe it could open people’s minds or the responses could open mine.
Abortion is not murder, the fetus cannot live without his/her mother, and since women are now finally human beings, they can decide whether they are ready to put themselves before their children and take a rational decision.
I mean whats the point, of bringing a child in the world, if you’re going to neglect him/her and fill that child with hate?
Jesus Christ is not going to stop him/her finding a Mothers love from heroine and believe me there are many cases like this happening all of the world.
If you want to bring a child into this world, by all means do so, the right to abort a pregnancy is not stopping you from enjoying the life of parenting. After all abortion is only controlled parenting just like condoms, life does go on.
Divorce is an obvious right, and we should all have it at a secular level. Our current restrictions should only apply to those who are Catholic in faith & we shouldn’t force people to live how we want them to do.
And Malta is not the last bastion of Christianity, America is, and they Voted for Bush…Twice!
I agree with ASP above. If someone I knew was in such a situation, I’d definitely want them to pull the plug.
And speaking of plug…
Alfred Buttigieg wrote a play called ‘Ippermettili Nitlaq’ that deals with this very subject. It will be staged at St James Cavalier over the first two weekends of October.
I happen to know that the cast is great!
Daphne
Re: your comment to http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/?p=769#comment-22303 above, I fully agree with you. If these pseudo God-fearing charlatans currently infecting the Internet advocate wholeheartedly the right to Live, then they must surely also should support the right to Die, especially when to live means being kept alive by a man-made machine, or living means a life of never-ending excruciating pain!
There is still a ‘grey area’ that should be tackled – what if a person is on a life-support machine in a deep coma? If the next of kin decide to get the doctors switch off this machine, then surely that is technically euthanasia. But is this morally wrong?
[Daphne -In Malta, when there is no hope of recovery, the doctors themselves ask the next-of-kin whether they wish the support systems to be removed. But they don’t act without the consent of the next-of-kin. A dear friend of mine had to make this decision alone about the father who had raised her single-handedly, after he suffered a massive stroke. She was there when they switched off the support system and she can still describe the moment when she heard the ‘blip’ sound. Other doctors simply give patients dying in agony increasingly large doses of morphine to help bring the end round faster. Here’s where I disagree: that there is no counselling system. The next-of-kin are presented with a blunt choice, but some people are unable to make this choice. There was a case involving people I know very well, where the husband, who was almost 90, was left slowly dying on a drip for almost a month in a hospital bed – the drip was keeping him alive. His elderly wife couldn’t make the decision to take him off the drip because she said it would be ‘killing him’, and no doctor talked her through it, and explained the difference. The result was a pointless extra month of agony for this man, and on a more prosaic note, a hospital bed occupied when it shouldn’t have been – though of course, that shouldn’t be a consideration, but in practical terms, it is. Fortunately, Gift of Life haven’t turned their attention to this little matter yet, because I can see the future: a campaign against doctors, people who can survive dying because brain-dead people are hooked up to all the available machines, beds full of dying people kept ‘alive’ with drips and machines, and so on.]
@ ASP – “all innocents go to heaven” – oh yeah, all innocents go to heaven? Who told you? Tinky Winky? Why do you have to involve religion into the issue of abortion? God is a fairy tale. God doesn’t exist. How can you believe in a god that “loves us” – would a loving father allow 5 year old kids to be exploded into a millions pieces in Iraq?
Oh sure, you bloody religious pussies bring on the argument of “oh God gave us free-will and it’s not god’s fault what happens on Earth”. What a load of horse shite.
What about tsunamis? Does a loving father who controls everything in the universe allow a tsunami to blow an innocent 5 year old boy to the land of Oz – or are tsnuamis a consequence of our free-will? Yeah, they must be. I knew I shouldn’t have set my air conditioner to maximum, I must have inadvertently triggered a tsunami.
[Daphne – No need to get rough. Lots of people believe in God while dispensing with religion. They don’t find it necessary to know what God is. It’s just a comforting thought or, in terms of your description, a scary one.]
First of all – how can we convince people not to feel divorce has any connection with abortion.
Although, I`m not young and a practising Catholic, I still feel my belief shouldn`t be imposed on all and sundry so would not dream of opposing divorce.
Abortion is a completely different subject. There might be a few occasions when `accidents` might happen but whoever takes the risk of getting pregnant and does not take all necessary precautions has only herself to blame. There is the morning after pill I believe.
I don`t think that abortion is a right of a woman doing what she wants with her body = she can do that as long as it doen`t hurt any one else. In the case of abortion, she definately is hurting some one. If the child would be unacceptable or an inconvenience to her couldn`t she give it up for adoption ?
As to the prospect of the severely deformed child in the womb = this must be a tragic dilemma. I might feel as ASP does but when someone said this some time ago, there were various disabled people who wrote in deeply offended that people were saying they should have been aborted.
[Daphne – Marika, you sound like a nice lady, but please don’t fall into the age-old trap of blaming the woman and saying that she should lie in the bed she made for herself. It takes two to make a baby, but only one usually pays the price in those circumstances. Also, the morning-after pill is classed as an abortifacent, and it is not available here. Yes, like you I think it is far more sensible to pop a pill the next day than to go through all that three months down the line, but there are all sorts of reasons why this might not be possible. I’m surprised that, as a woman possibly with children of her own, you can’t see why a woman would prefer to abort a foetus than to deliver a baby to term and give birth to it, only to hand it over. A normal woman can have an abortion with only the merest flicker of regret, but it takes a woman with a psychopathic lack of feeling to deliver a baby, hand it over, and live her life without being haunted for the rest of that life wondering where that child is, what he is doing, what he looks like, is he OK, did she make the right decision, will he ever come and look for her, etc, etc. You see, the foetus that is aborted is gone for good. The baby that is given up for adoption is a lifelong reality. He remains in your life. And you in his.]
Bormann, I hope that’s not your only reason for not believing in God – because it’s not a very good one. You’re suggesting that if God exists, he’s the guy responsible for all the wars, natural disasters and general crap in the world. Fair enough. But then you’ll also have to accept that he’s the same guy who created all the great stuff such as life, happiness, coral reefs, kittens, orgasms etc… You can’t logically accept one presumption without the other. Now even the most hardened cynic must agree that the pros far outweigh the cons.You have every right not to believe in a deity but your comment above implies that all atheists are morons and that is simply not the case. Besides, from your argument it actually sounds like you do believe in God but just think he’s a bit of a w**ker.
[Daphne – I’ve always wondered what makes God a ‘he’, assuming that he wouldn’t have chromosomes and he doesn’t need genitals. I imagine it’s the result of the ancient patriarchal view of the world, and to references to Christ as the son of God, when he already had a mother in the equation, so that was out.]
Come on Daph be reasonable – look at the evidence. Great floods, lightning, swarms of locusts, sportscars, and all the menstrual business given to the women. God may not be a guy but he definitely thinks like one.
[Daphne – Damn right. Thanks for the laugh. I need it, with all these nerve-wracking deadlines.]
@Mariop: I don’t know which Norman you have in mind and I have no relations called by that name. What do you mean – am I missing something?
While I am heart and soul in favour of enacting a divorce law in Malta to bring us in line with the rest of the world and, even more, because it is a civil right and the right thing to do, I am not in favour of abortion. The foetus should not be made to pay the price of circumstances, no matter what they may be. It is true that some pregnancies may be the result of tragic events like rape (including systematic rape for political reasons as happened in Bosnia) but the baby is not to blame for this. Unfortunately, life consists also of tragedies and one must accept this fact. For most tragedies in our lives, we have no satisfactory solution. One may be the blameless victim of a traffic accident and lose a limb – what does one do, kill or maim the one who caused the accident? At most, one sues for damages. Then why do some believe that the tragic circumstances of rape or other unfortunate events should be somehow solved by eliminating the baby just because it is helpless and cannot defend itself while not being the one to blame? I am taking rape as the extreme case which is sometimes brought up as a valid reason to abort. All life and especially human life is inestimable and should never be extinguished if it can be helped. It is my impression that some contributors are taking this subject a little too lightly. If respect for the unborn life is reduced, then one is perilously close to reducing respect even for the life which is already born — this may sound like a cliche’ but remains nevertheless true.
I would invite those who are talking of “killing the foetus” as if it were killing some virus to stop and think more on what they are saying. We are talking of human life here. My views have nothing to do with entrenching the ban on abortion in the Constitution, which I consider an unnecessary step, or of punishing mothers who commit abortion – which serves no purpose. I am talking here of respect for all human life whether born or unborn, whether that of the mother or of the unborn child. Life is the ultimate value and, if it is thrown away, other values may follow suit.
This point of view does not depend on whether one is male or female. Biology decrees that it is females who bear offspring and there’s nothing to be done about that. But this is the reason why women deserve even more consideration than men in certain circumstances. In cases of extreme danger, like the sinking of a ship, women and children are saved first. The underlying idea behind this is that these represent the guarantee of the continuation of society. Children are the future and women are the bearers of children. This does not make women reproducing machines as some would have it. The fact is that it takes nine months for a woman to produce a child while one man can impregnate many women: hence it is more important to have many women than many men for a society to thrive biologically and from this follows that women are saved first. It may sound primitive but these ideas must have enabled humanity to flourish as it has in times of danger when the rate of mortality was much higher than it is today.
freethinker: “women and children first” – would that include a fertility test for women who are childless, and would women who have already borne and raised children be sent to the back of the queue?
Corinne Vella: Here’s another snippet about US voters’ current quandry. Some whites in rural communities want to vote Democrat but are wary of voting for an ‘African American’ (Obama is only half Kenyan) so they feel they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. And those are the ones who vote. Many don’t.
Debates on humanity and religion abound but often lack the insight of humility in the way they are conceived and articulated. Think about this for a second: How would the world be, today, without any form of religion? How would we live? What would we live for? I am a Catholic and still have my own doubts. Faith is not easy and I have questioned myself and my religion a million times… I wish to believe and do believe but it’s not easy at all.
Unfortunately, when one looks at what sort of immense and infinite spaces are captured by the Hubble telescope, one cannot but think of how insignificant we and our pursuits could be in the context of things… On the other hand, one cannot think that all ‘this’ is just a coincidence and that maybe we are all part of a great plan laid out by a truly infinite god. How many of us do find the time to just lie down and just contemplate on these things? It may lead nowhere but it can put a lot of things into their proper perspective.
Corinne:
Personally, I do feel that Obama’s skin colour has been given too much news. My guess is that the majority of the people who refrain from voting for Obama due to his skin colour wouldn’t vote Democrat in the first place. I know that’s a generalisation and I can’t say I have the figures to back it up, it is merely a hunch.
Freethinker:
When do you consider life to begin? At conception? Are morning after pills ok for you? Also, when you say that the foetus pays the price, does it not incur to you that in an early pregnancy there might not be a price to pay as the foetus would not be self-aware, not have feelings and even though there is a potential for life, there is no viability without the mother.
These are the same people who have littered Malta with the +9 (UGLY) stickers which have been affixed to many a lamp post and even on monuments. Shame on them!
“How would the world be, today, without any form of religion?”
Probably much better.
“How would we live?”
The same we do now, less superstitions and fixed morality based on a 2,000 year old (or more) philosophy.
“What would we live for?”
We would live for ourselves, our family, our friends, humanity, and why not – the enjoyment and care of other species as well.
“On the other hand, one cannot think that all ‘this’ is just a coincidence”
Why not? Well, not really a coincidence if one believes in evolution and cause and effect. There would still be the problem of the “prime-mover”, but there is nothing that proves that this prime-mover has to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, less still that “it” controls our lives and judges anyone.
“How many of us do find the time to just lie down and just contemplate on these things?”
I do, and I also read a lot on the topic.
“It may lead nowhere but it can put a lot of things into their proper perspective”.
It sure does. If anything, it might give us some much needed humility. After all, we are just a speck in the universe.
@ Malcolm:
True, natural disasters neither prove nor disprove god. However, they do bring into question the omnipotence, benevolence and omniscience of god (that is, if one believes in a personal god as opposed to an abstract god that does not interfere in planetary affairs).
It’s not enough to say “god created all the good stuff” either. If god is omnipotent and omniscient (and benevolent), “he” would have created a perfect world, with no natural disasters, for instance.
As for the pros outweighing the cons, it is only a person who is in a fairly stable and happy situation who can say that. Try telling it to the child in Africa dying of AIDS, perhaps because some missionary has preached against condom use.
Regarding all atheists being morons, how about substantiating your statement with facts. How about proving the existence of a benevolent, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent god, for starters. Also, I wouldn’t say that the world’s leading scientists (including Einstein) were, or are, morons.
Finally, I have read the Bible. How many of those who simply dismiss atheism have actually read any of its leading books?
@ Corinne Vella: Come on Corinne, must we reduce everything to absurdity? This thing about a fertility test, if you’re referring to having one done before departure, is so ludicrous it does not even merit discussion. I do not even think it is legally possible to enact and enforce. The value of women (or men) is not only in their fertility — in fact, my argument is about human life, fertile or sterile. All human life is, as I said, of inestimable value, its value is incalculable. You cannot say one human has less value than a hundred humans put together because each individual’s life has an incalculable worth. And that includes life yet unborn. This is not rhetoric – it’s a fact. This is why slavery was one of history’s most despicable realities, not only because it deprived humans of their liberty but also because it attempted to attach a price, a mercantile value to that which is inestimable.
@ Pat
the argument that the foetus is not aware of itself (and so can be killed) has been put forward by that paragon of (in)sanity Peter Singer … We are not sure whether or not certain animals (e.g. cats and dogs) know that they are alive, does that give us the right to kill them on a whim? Incidentally, Peter Singer also condones bestiality … just to give you a glimpse of the workings of the man’s mind …
@ Kenneth Cassar
Why do people have to picture God as a neurotic Big Brother who wants to micromanage everything? Evil exists in the world because of our free will. Is it God’s fault that some of us value money more than another human life? Natural disasters happen just because they do. How would you expect science to work if God were to constantly disrupt natural patterns to fit in with our [mistaken] impression of his role in the Universe? And, logically, you cannot do away with a Primary Cause … Catholics call it God, Taoists call it Tao etc etc …
Hi Daphne, hope you dont mind if I jump onto your blogwagon again, but Religio et Patria’s point is interesting and I’d like to have a shot at it.
How would we live without religion? It’s a fascinating question but I don’t think anyone can really answer it. As far as I know there has never been a culture or civilisation that professed no religious belief at all. (There have been isolated attempts to eradicate religion – cambodia being a good example – but these were ideologically driven, and resulted in nothing more glamorous than mass-murder.) More significantly, religious belief appears to be unique to humans – and I use the word ‘human’ in the wider sense. Ritual burial was practised by Homo Neanderthalis. There is evidence of the same with Homo erectus, although less compelling. The implication is that the fundaments of religion most likely came about as a direct consequence of two (maybe more) factors – the expansion of the brain, and the ability to communicate ideas across generations (i.e., language). That is to say, even pre-sapiens human beings had the ability to wonder how the world came into being, question the purpose of their own existence, and then formulate answers and pass them on to their descendents. Interestingly enough, while the resulting religions differ in the details, they all seem to share certain basic elements: eg, a belief in life after death, with metempsychosis and eschatology being by far the most popular doctrines.
Humans, it seems, have always considered themselves too important to simply die.
So to come back to RP’s question: religious beliefs are hardwired into human consciousness from before today’s humans even evolved. Positing a world where human civilisation evolved without any religion at all is all very intersting, but ultimately an exercise in fantasy. However, it is perfectly possible to imagine a world in which religion is a thing of the past – at least, insofar as current beliefs are concerned. In fact this has already happened. Today’s mythology was after all yesterday’s firmly held belief.
[Daphne – Raphael, you are more than welcome. Please join in whenever you like.]
Religio et Patria Wednesday, 24 September 1419hrs
“Debates on humanity and religion abound but often lack the insight of humility in the way they are conceived and articulated. Think about this for a second: How would the world be, today, without any form of religion? How would we live? What would we live for? I am a Catholic and still have my own doubts. Faith is not easy and I have questioned myself and my religion a million times… I wish to believe and do believe but it’s not easy at all.
Unfortunately, when one looks at what sort of immense and infinite spaces are captured by the Hubble telescope, one cannot but think of how insignificant we and our pursuits could be in the context of things… On the other hand, one cannot think that all ‘this’ is just a coincidence and that maybe we are all part of a great plan laid out by a truly infinite god. How many of us do find the time to just lie down and just contemplate on these things? It may lead nowhere but it can put a lot of things into their proper perspective.”
Blessed are you who can sit back and contemplate on the grand design of things at your leisure whilst others feel that twenty four hours in a day is simply not enough to cope with all of life’s demands.
Pat: I think so too but it’s enough of an issue in the electoral campaign for that story to have made headline news. Whether or not you or I think Obama’s skin colour is relevant does not affect the outcome of the presidential election and its aftermath. What small town white votes think does.
Freethinker: It is not I who have reduced such matters to absurdity. It’s Tony Mifsud of GOL with that ridiculous letter published in the Times as though it were a contribution of substance rather than a parody of itself.
Say what you like about Peter Singer, but it is hard to find a person who can dissect an argument in more depth than him, regardless of if you agree with him or not. I have not read any of his books, I must admit, but have listened to speeches by him.
You then go on saying we shouldn’t kill cats and dogs on a whim. Well, of course not, just as we shouldn’t do abortion on a whim. What kind of an argument is that? It’s the same type of argument laid out by Ms. Micallef in the original article when she proposes that we pressure women to abort.
Then we have the famous red herring returning. Peter Singer wrote a widely criticised, but also celebrated, article on interspecies sexual relations. His view, as a utilitarian, is that there should be no criminal offense for bestiality as long as there is no suffering involved. His motive is that the dehumanisation and the loss of dignity are on the person performing the act and as long as there is no demeaning effect on the animal, it cannot be considered immoral. It is not a view I share with him, but at the same time you cannot deduct one of our prime moral thinkers to one single article he wrote.
Also, may also make some comments on your response to Kenneth Cassar. The view that god micromanage everything is, knowingly or not, shared by most Christians. Every time you think God will intervene through prayers, you do expect him to listen to your tiny request and change the world ever so much around you. Then you claim science can’t work if he keeps disrupting natural patterns. What on earth is a miracle then? I agree with you on the premise here, but not on the conclusion.
Why can’t we logically get away without a primary cause? Causation is far from the only way of looking at the world and is in fact a very inefficient way. We do know that our own universe started at a single point in time (and space conveniently enough). Whether there was something before or not is another question, with no obvious answer. People tends to think in our own narrow way of viewing time and simply think that there had to be something before, ignoring the fact that time itself is a property created at this point.
On the other hand introducing a concept like Yahweh into it throws all logic out the window. If you introduce him on the premise that there had to be something before anything, you automatically gets stuck in a redundant “Who created the prime mover”. You can’t set up a logical premise and demand that people follow it, only to ignore it in your own argument.
Sybil:
“Unfortunately, when one looks at what sort of immense and infinite spaces are captured by the Hubble telescope, one cannot but think of how insignificant we and our pursuits could be in the context of things… On the other hand, one cannot think that all ‘this’ is just a coincidence and that maybe we are all part of a great plan laid out by a truly infinite god. How many of us do find the time to just lie down and just contemplate on these things? It may lead nowhere but it can put a lot of things into their proper perspective.”
I too, am perplexed by the enormous wonders delivered to us from the Hubble telescope. I think it’s important to appreciate the vastness of space and the incredible properties discovered within the universes’ mighty realm. The one thing it does teaches us, no matter how hard that thought might be, is that WE, as human beings, are neither central, nor important. To say that this was created with us in mind seems impossible to me. We live on a tiny planet, happening to be the only one we know of that can contain advanced life forms (not saying there aren’t more), in a tiny solar system, in a tiny galaxy, in our own little corner of the universe.
Following is one of my favourite clips on Youtube. It truly shows us how small we are and that there are bodies in space with sizes our human mind can’t even comprehend. Then when we realise that despite the enormous mass of these objects, they are but a tiny dot on the sky, we truly see what a glorious universe we really live in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfs1t-2rrOM
Also, may I add some more to the discussion about societies without religion. Voltaire famously stated (and I’m paraphrasing) “When people stop believing in god, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything”. This is also so beautifully summarised by Karl Marx in his constantly misquoted “religion is the opium of the people”:
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.”
I come from a society which have pretty much abandoned traditional religious belief (yeah, I’m still Swedish for those who wonder) and I have no reason to believe that we weren’t better off due to it. But, at the same time you can’t open a newspaper without finding a horoscope. You still see people spitting over their shoulder when their path is crossed by a black cat. Surveys still show a strong belief in ghosts, spirits and other mumbo jumbo.
What it tells us is that there is a need in people to find wonder and purpose in life and we can’t simply exclude religion from people’s life without offering a replacement. As history has shown us that replacement was not to be found in communism, but why couldn’t this be found in science, or simply in an appreciation of the world around us? Why does this have to be supernatural, when all the evidence points to the non-existence of such things? I do not pretend to have a good answer, or a replacement ready, but it does not stop me from searching.
Corinne:
You might be right and perhaps I’m being naive, but I’m still skeptical that these small towns (not taking the “hick towns” into consideration, as they are already republican) are as racist as many predict them to be. Most surveys done so far has shown that the traditionally democratic states have stayed democratic and the traditionally republican states have stayed republican.
Pat: It wasn’t a prediction; it was a report. The observation was not mine alone. It’s been stated by political observers – traditionally Republican voters who do not want to vote for McCain are in a quandry: they don’t particularly want to vote Democrat but they think Obama is the better alternative even though he’s not quite what they wantidentity etc. etc.
A similar thing happened here a few months back, except the consequences were much less significant for the world at large.
@ Zizzu:
I have no trouble at all with the belief in a non-personal God who does not meddle with human affairs. If people believe in such a God, I don’t see a problem.
The problem starts when people create God in “man’s image” and start saying “God wants this, God doesn’t want that”.
So yes, I agree with you that natural disasters happen just because they do, and yes, miracles would be a violation of the laws of nature.
As for the “prime cause” or “prime mover”, yes, I agree that its a paradox and perhaps an unresolvable dilemma, for, think about this: If there was a first cause which is needed to explain “creation”, how would one explain the existance of a creator? So we would be back to square one.
Also, it is usually said that a complex being (or world) requires a more complex creator. However, would this not suggest that in infinitely complex creator would in turn need an infinitely more complex creator in its turn?
However, understanding evolution enables us to see that complex beings evolve (over billions of years) from simple ones, ad infinitum. Therefore, although certainly no proof, this suggests that the prime cause (or prime mover) need not be infinitely complex, omniscient and omnipotent, let alone benevolent (or malevolent). It could in actual fact be infinitely simple.
Now, as Carl Sagan wisely said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, so the onus is on believers in a personal God to prove that “he” exists. Also remember that one cannot prove a negative. People who asks atheists or agnostics to prove that a personal God does not exist might as well be asked to prove that there is no invisible teapot orbiting round the earth.
Just to point out to Kenneth Cassar that I didn’t say that all atheists are morons – quite the opposite in fact. I just stated that people who use stupid arguments to dismiss the existence of a god (any god) make atheists look bad. I’m sure Einstein wouldn’t use the ‘God is not always nice to everyone – ergo he doesn’t exist’ argument to justify atheism. That’s because he’d assume that God is more complex than Barney the Dinosaur. (Or would have had Barney been around.)
I’m sure that the leading books of atheism would have provided you with more insightful arguments. Unless you misread those as well…
“The God Delusion” – Richard Dawkins – highly recommended.
@ Corinne: agreed
@ Malcolm:
After reading your comment again, I know that what you meant is that arguments or attitudes such as Bormann’s make atheists look like morons.
My apologies.
the reason why man believes in a God is simple, and can be explained by evolution. As man developed more complex brains he was able to plan into the future. This means that man was the probbaly the first species to be able to figure out that death was inevitable. In order to counteract this negative thought of death , and remain motivated in a hostile environment that needed rules, regulations and co-operation to survive , evolution favoured those who believed in God. Today we are developing other motivations , and there are legal rules and regulations that enable man to co-exit without the need for relgion. This is why religion is starting to die off in the democratic world.
No worries Kenneth – your latest argument shows that you’re not one. And kudos for mentioning Russell’s teapot.
Kenneth, you only have to worry about the perception of atheists if you make a drama of identifying yourself as one.
I remember reading something by Graham Green where he said, ‘I denied God as though he existed’. The point is that you are creating dispute where there should be none. Is there a word like ‘atheism’ for people who don’t believe in the existence of dragons? Are entire books written to prove the in-existence of said dragons? No. So why should there be for people who don’t believe in any other supernatural being?
If you don’t care about what people who believe in dragons think of you, then you shouldn’t care about what people who believe in a god think of you.
Grand Parade
Are you saying that belief in God is a genetic trait?
Even if it were so, it would take thousands of years before any drastic change, such as religion “dying off”, became apparent.
@Matthew
Interesting point. Try telling it to the parishioners of San Gorg in Qormi and Rabat, Gozo. If they don’t believe in dragons, then what exactly was it that their patron saint supposedly killed all those centuries ago?
But your analogy is nonetheless flawed. I have never heard of a suicide bomber killing dozens of people out of a belief in dragons. Nor has any dragon ever ordered the President of the United States to invade Iraq. This sort of thing is unlikely to occur when the object of one’s superstition is an overgrown, fire-breathing lizard with wings.
I imagine this might explain why so few books have been written to dispel the Dragon Delusion.
Raphael, you’re missing the point. There’s no logical difference between a book called the Dragon Delusion and one called the God Delusion. You find the former amusing because you are reading it from within your own cultural perspective, which is one of treating the existence of God as more likely or logical than the existence of dragons, when in fact it isn’t.
Hey! Stop denying the existence of the one true Dragon God. Please! Don’t you see this is blasphemy. As the last great prophet “Dragomed”, blessed be his name says, There is only one Dragon God, and that which he joins let no man put asunder. It is all written down in the “new testicle” of our lord saviour “dragonus” the one and only offspring of Dragon God, who was beget by the never tainted Miriam Dragonette, from a single egg, miraculously conceived and pronounced by the angel Dragielle.
So there! And I am not a Dragian fundamentalist, but I can’t allow you to ridicule the one true religion. The Dragon God knows who you are!
Matthew wrote: “Is there a word like ‘atheism’ for people who don’t believe in the existence of dragons? Are entire books written to prove the in-existence of said dragons? No. So why should there be for people who don’t believe in any other supernatural being?”.
There are very important differences.
1. People who believe in the existence of dragons don’t kill people who don’t believe in dragons or believe in different dragons.
2. People who believe in the existence of dragons don’t make laws that have to agree with what the dragon is supposed to have said thousands of years ago. Also, people who believe in the existance of dragons don’t prevent other people from living lifestyles that the dragon doesn’t approve of.
3. People who believe in the existance of dragons don’t claim, for instance, that the dragon is opposed to condom use, and that it is sinful to use condoms even if condom use may save someone from contracting AIDS.
Many people who believe in God (though obviously not all) do some or all of the above.
Oh, and I forgot. There need not be a word like ‘atheism’ for people who don’t believe in the existence of dragons, unless of course, those who believe in dragons claim that dragons are Gods. But in that case, the word would still be atheism. Atheism is not just a rejection of Christianity. It is unbelief in anything supernatural.
[Daphne – I have to correct you there. Atheism means exactly what it says: the ‘a’ functions in the same way as the ‘a’ in ‘amoral’. The ‘the’ comes from the ancient Greek for ‘god’, pronounced ‘theos’, and in ancient Greek, the word pronounced ‘atheos’ meant ‘godless’. Most atheists – obviously – believe in no supernatural beings at all (well, why believe in ghosts if you don’t believe in a god?) but this does not mean that an atheist is defined as somebody who doesn’t believe in any supernatural beings at all.]
Kenneth:
Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Why is it so difficult to get people to think abstractly?
Those three points make for a really flimsy argument for atheism, because they’re specific to the time, place and cultural context in which we live. HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING (in case anyone takes me literally) what are you going to do if the Vatican gets wind of your little list, and the next thing you know, you’ve got a papal bull in the post saying, ‘Kenneth, we’re sorry. You were right after all. We’ve looked at your list and decided to change our ways.’
Will you suddenly convert to Catholicism?
I’m giving you a better reason not to: belief in any supernatural being, whether it’s God, Ganesh or Dumbledore is ILLOGICAL. I have met too many people who believe that they belong to some kind of a tribe called The Atheists. The only difference between them and any other religion is that they can get their sacred text signed by the author at Waterstones. If you don’t use your own reasoning to work out why you don’t believe, then you’re just another fanatic, and just as dangerous too.
@ Daphne: Correction noted. Yes, you are correct in saying that atheism means unbelief in God (any God). However, one still cannot compare unbelief in dragons with unbelief in God/s, unless dragons are said to be Gods, in which case unbelievers in dragon Gods would still be called atheists. Moreover, belief in dragons does not have to involve belief in anything supernatural, let alone belief that dragons are Gods. Therefore, this makes Matthew’s analogy faulty.
_________________________________
@ Matthew:
Thanks for calling my post ridiculous. Those three points make for a really flimsy argument for atheism for the simple fact that they are not an argument for atheism at all. They are only an argument (not even that…an argument of the sort would take at least a whole book) in defense of the claim that the propagation of atheism is far more important and worth our time than the refutation of belief in dragons.
If, as you say, hypothetically the vatican agrees with my list and changes its ways, this would mean that the dissemination of atheist arguments would simply be conducted for the sake of the dissimination of truth, and not for the sake of the refutation of beliefs that may (and usually do) cause harm.
Would I convert to Catholicism if the Pope agrees with my points and changes Catholicism accordingly? Of course not, for the simple reason that I value truth for its own sake, and not just for the benefits it might bring.
One last thing. You hardly know me. Don’t assume anything about me, please. I don’t believe in any “sacred” atheist texts, and the reasons for my unbelief would take volumes, so I won’t attempt to give them here.
And rest assured…I’m neither dangerous nor fanatic.
Matthew – I agree with you on the cultural perspective front. Certainly our culture considers God to be a likelier possibility than dragons. And yet, when you factor in all the qualities we often attribute to God – that he created the Universe, that he listens to prayers, grants immortality, performs miracles, etc – the suspension of disbelief required suddenly becomes enormous. On the other hand dragons are a good deal more believable from a biological point of view – their qualities actually exist or have existed, just not all rolled into the same animal.
(By the way: there is one magic dragon I believe in. His name is Puff, and he lives by the sea. He frolics in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee…)
[Daphne – Oh, that hippie 1960s book! I loved it. Or is it the song you’re thinking about? I’m getting my Puffs confused. But thanks for the memories. I had two copies of the Puff the Magic Dragon book – one was a St Dorothy’s prize rather late in the day when the hippie era had passed, and the other was a birthday present from around 1970. I still remember the cover perfectly well, and will probably end up raiding my parent’s house to try and find it. I had kept the prize one because it had struck me as funny to see this formal prim little convent school certificate stuck inside a typically wild 1960s dragon-tale. And to think it was supposed to be a metaphor for drug use….]
@ Antoine Vella
Yes, belief in a God is very likely to have developed as a genetic trait. There is no doubt that believing in a God conferred a significantly increased chance of survival in a hostile environment that required humans to form organised groups with a hierarchy of leaders and primitive governments. Modern democracies now run on secular rules and regulations, and believing in a God now confers no particular advantage in most parts of the world. I would think that this particulargenetic trait would probably be wiped out within the odd thousand years.
It was the song – we had it on vinyl when I was a child and my father used to hum the tune while driving his peacock blue Triumph Herald… those were the days. But I somehow don’t think he ever quite got the pun on ‘puff’. (Or maybe he did… who knows?)
Daph – You can always get a more recent version from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Puff-Magic-Dragon-Peter-Yarrow/dp/1402747829
Lino Cert
“. . belief in a God is very likely to have developed as a genetic trait. There is no doubt that believing in a God conferred a significantly increased chance of survival . .”
Of course there are doubts. You are referring to one of the many theories about God (or about the evolution of humans, for that matter). In science, unless you have incontrovertible proof, you never say “without doubt”. You cannot even say “very likely” when it’s just an opinion of a few authors who are simply conjecturing about a possibility.
I’m not being personal but you do not seem to be familiar with genetics. For a gene to be “wiped out”, as you say, it would have to be so disadvantageous that anyone carrying it would die, either without reproducing or reproducing on a very limited scale. Even if we were to say, for argument’s sake, that there is a ‘god gene’, you yourself admit that it is not harmful but simply non-useful. There would therefore be no selective pressure for it to be removed from the gene pool.
You are also mistaken when you claim that humans are living in “modern democracies” in “most parts of the world”. Only a small proportion actually live in democracies and the percentage is destined to go down. I could find out how many if I looked but, to be honest, can’t be bothered right now.
Where did you get the 1000 year figure for the disappearance of the ‘God gene’? Billions of people follow some kind of religion – according to you most of them have this special gene. Do you realise how long it would take for such a widespread gene to disappear? Lino, with all due respect, you’re taking wild guesses and dressing them up as scientific facts.
“In science, unless you have incontrovertible proof, you never say “without doubt”.”
Just a small correction there, you NEVER speak about “proof” in science. It’s just not relevant. Science is based on theories, which in turn is based on evidence, speculation, experiments and quite often other theories. Proof is for mathematicians and suspicious spouses.
I’ll have to agree with Antoine here. Even if there is a “God gene” (and this theory is very much misunderstood – if “God gene/s” exists at all, “it” would not actually be a “God” gene at all, but a gene/s that makes people susceptible (no negative connotation intended) to belief in the supernatural (including of course, an afterlife). Of course, I would say that this is all theory, but Daniel C. Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell – Religion as a natural phenomenon” would be worth a read for anyone interested.
Regarding such a gene/s (if it exists at all) being wiped out, once again, Antoine is correct here. If it exists at all, it would seem likely that the majority of humans have it (I would actually say that most atheists would probably have it as well). Therefore, I find the belief that such a gene (if it exists in the first place) would be eradicated in a 1000 years, frankly absurd, for the following reasons: It would be present in millions, and evolution is not that quick to eradicate a trait or gene possessed by millions in a few thousand years (unless a catastrophe wipes these millions of people out). Also, for a gene/trait to be wiped out, not only has it to confer huge disadvnatages, but its allele has to confer huge advantages. Usually, when both a gene and its allele confer benefits, what happens is that an evolutionarily stable equilibrium is reached, where both a gene and its allele flourish in the gene pool (not necessarily in equal numbers).
@Kenneth Cassar
” Also, for a gene/trait to be wiped out, not only has it to confer huge disadvnatages, but its allele has to confer huge advantages”
The God gene trait does not, at the moment , confer any significant advantages, but it does’t take much imagination to foresee a future where major wars break out between opposing factions , eg between Christians and Moslems, with the type of chemical and nuclear warfare that would be available within a few hundred years it would be quite plausible to suggest that most religious factions would wipe each other out, or that that secular societites would predominate.
@ Lino Cert:
If “major wars break out between opposing factions , eg between Christians and Moslems, with…chemical and nuclear warfare”, the probable outcome would be that everyone would be wiped out, not just humans with the “God gene”.
May I here suggest another book which deals on the point you mention? (Sam Harris – The end of faith (Religion, terror, and the future of reason).
thanks for the tip, I downloaded this book for free on http://rs287.rapidshare.com/files/74699023/Sam.Harris.-.The.End.of.Faith.pdf
What I found interesting was the proposition that a religion that manages to persuade a sufficient number of its own followers that there is a reward after death for self-destruction may well result in a massive scale of self-destruction that may wipe out not only believers, but also non-believers. To those sceptical followers of this blog may I just remind that the events of 09/11 came quite close to setting off one such devestating chain of events.
You’re welcome, Lino.
The trouble in this age of easily obtainable WMDs, is that religious extremists cannot be dismissed as just crazies, but should be seen as a very serious threat.
Moreover, the religious moderates who claim that when reason conflicts with revelation we should choose revelation, would unknowingly be justifying the actions of the extremists. If there’s anything true about fundamentalists, it is that they know their religious texts only too well.
@Kenneth Cassar
I see religion as a pyramid, with a large base consisting of the law-abiding church-goers providing support for the apex of the pyramid that consists of dangerous fundamentalists. Unfortunately the extremists at the top of the pyramid are highly motivated and organised, and so the only way of bringing down this pyramid is to hack at the base and hope it will eventually topple.