I repeatedly read non-atheists saying that atheists are foolish in various ways. Strident, arrogant, irrational, even unscientific. I obviously read a better class of atheist because I seldom see this, but today I did come across a foolish piece in which atheist Paul Fidalgo tries to accuse Tony Blair of saying, in a recent speech at a Georgetown University get together of Muslim and Christian scholars, that atheists are terrorists.
I say “tries”, because Fidalgo himself admits that he was obliged to remove the word “equates” from his first version of the title, and replace it with “groups”. In other words to admit that he had failed in what he was trying to argue.
This article originally used the word “equates” in the headline, which I have changed to “groups.” Realizing that Blair never specifically makes a perfect equivalency between atheism and religious violence, I thought this was a fairer word to use.
But instead of admitting that his argument is holed below the water-line, Fidalgo leaves it there, accusing Blair of wanting to say or trying to imply, blah blah, what he never did say, and actually never even tried to say. Blair does indeed group secular critics of religion with terrorists, but not in a way that is inaccurate. Both categories of person are, he says, a problem for religious believers of his sort, which they are. Terrorists use religion to do and to argue for bad things, thereby discrediting religion and making people not like it. Atheists say that religion is nonsense (and agnostics say that it might be), thereby discrediting religion and making people not believe in it. Fair enough. But Blair never claims that the two groups are identical. He does use the rather rude phrase “scorn God” to describe what atheists do. But if, as he and his audience all assume, God does exist, and yet here are these people saying that God doesn’t exist, “scorn” is okay to describe such behaviour. I don’t hear Blair saying that atheists believe in God but just don’t like him, in the manner, I believe, of atheists in former times.
I and many other atheists and agnostics agree with Islamic terrorists about what their particular religion says. They say it supports, even demands, terrorism, and we think it does too. About that we disagree with Tony Blair. So, Blair could have grouped such atheists and agnostics with terrorists in that way also if he wanted to. But to have said anything like that would have undermined what Blair did say, which is that Christians and Muslims should stick together in the face of the two front conflict they now face against terrorists, and against secular opponents of religion. What unites Christians and Muslims, Blair said, is more important than what divides them. Their shared belief in God should, that is to say, count for more than their contrasting beliefs about what God wants and who has had and now still has the hottest line to him and what should be done about this and how it should be done. If you want to criticise this speech, then criticise this implausible project of ecumenical unity, achieved by airbrushing out what Muslims especially actually say and actually believe. Don’t complain that Blair regards both secularists and terrorists as being, in their (our) different ways, opposed to him. They (we) are.
Tony Blair is, to put it mildly, not my favourite contemporary. Gordon Brown has been a very obviously disastrous Prime Minister of Britain, and before that, it is now clear to all but the willfully blind, a disastrous Chancellor of the Exchequer. But Brown’s predecessor in Downing Street, Tony Blair, was the one who made the whole Brown slow motion car crash possible. He set it all in motion with his disastrously effective charm offensive. He appointed Brown. He failed to sack Brown. He handed the whole ship over to Brown, as soon as it became clear that it was headed very publicly for the rocks. Now there is even talk of Blair becoming the ruler of Europe. Whether that happens or not, this man has clearly not given up trying to be powerful.
All the more reason, then, when people criticise Tony Blair, for them to get it right.
Actually, no. I say atheism is a religious belief. It requires faith in things unknown and probably unknowable. It requires a belief that whatever came before our universe or exists outside of it or alternatively that nothing came before or exists outside of it, and therefore is a religious belief without a point. For all we know, our entire universe may be some adolescent deity’s school science project.
It is always a mistake to conflate “no belief in god” with “belief in no god”. The second position carries almost as much baggage as “belief in god”. Self avowed atheists intending the first statement are merely being imprecise. But self avowed atheists intending the second are being silly. They can’t prove their case. They can’t even define a test for it.
And now back to your regularly scheduled topic. If one were to draw up a list of values for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in Christianity and compare them to values for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in Islam, one would find them to be mostly opposites. To even say they believe in the same God is to ignore the substance of their respective doctrines and believe something that if true would be absolutely untenable.
Brian,
I understand your disapproval of my post. Indeed, I did hope to make clear that he did not *specifically* equate atheists and terrorists, but that this point was only tangential.
I fear I may not have expressed it well enough in my column, but I do think it was disgusting to be, yes, grouped with religious terrorists, even if the intent was innocuous. By referring to these two groups in the same breath–twice–Blair makes an implied relationship. If he intends only that relationship to be in terms of “people nice believers have some difficulties with,” at the very least he needed to delineate the difference. Instead, he lumped them into the same pot, which I think implies a kind of moral equivalence, even if not intended. If not intended, it only shows how little he thinks of nonbelievers that this would not even occur to him.
You may still not agree with me, but perhaps I have made myself a touch clearer.
Thanks,
Paul
The notorious atheist Dawkins regularly gives atheism a bad name by stridently promoting it, and proposing that kids be force-fed atheism at school. I bet he does more damage to atheism than he realises.
Based solely on my own experience, I suspect you’re right. I used to describe myself as an atheist (of the no-belief-in-God type), but the belief-in-no-God type of atheist, especially those who promote a militant atheism, are making me uncomfortable with the term, and I’m more likely to describe myself as an agnostic, these days.
It’s an odd place for me to be, because I’ve been lecturing my friends for years on the importance of committing to a point of view and not sitting on the fence. But, for me, that does not include denying the validity of other points of view.
Midwesterner – your argument is disingenuous. Being an atheist does not mean that you have to maintain, or provide your critics with, a fully reasoned analysis of the creation of the universe. It simply means that you reject the faith-based, unevidenced position that the universe has been created by a deity. I do not believe in god. I consider (based on the complete lack of scientific evidence) that there is no such thing as god. I have absolutely no idea what came before the big bang, so there is nothing for me to have “faith” in in that regard. Maybe a scientific explanation will be forthcoming in due course. Maybe it will remain beyond the power of human reason and endeavour to work it out. But I do not consider that a gap in human knowledge of the universe is good reason for me to invent or sustain a myth to fill it.
As for atheists being unable to make or sustain a case for there being no god, you’ve got it backwards. If you told me that there was a fairy in your garden, I’d expect you to provide evidence of it. It seems that you would simply tell me that you have faith that there’s a fairy, that it’s not amenable to scientific enquiry, but that it’s nonetheless for me to prove that there is no fairy. You shouting “aha!” when I’m unable to do it, neither proves your case nor invalidates my unwillingness to accept the existence of your fairy.
Tedd, this should have nothing to do with points of view or opinions, but rather with cold hard facts. When it comes to facts that are unknown to us (and may well be unknowable), sitting on the fence is the only right thing to do.
@Brian Micklethwait:
Could you please clarify your definition of terms used here?
The Shorter Oxford defines “theist” thus:
Yet you use the term “non-atheist” – I think you may have intended to use this instead of “theist”, but I am not sure – and later you differentiate between:
This raises an uneasy question in my mind as to whether you are intending to refer to the negative of mono-theism or the negative of poly-theism. So I sat down to think about it over a nice hot cup of tea, but that didn’t help.
Regardless, you seem to be in some difficulty in distinguishing between your atheist and your elbow.
Maz, your ‘fairy in the garden’ analogy is inapplicable here, because you would be required to prove the nonexistence of said fairy anywhere in the universe, not just in that particular garden.
@Midwesterner:
I think that is quite a valid point, but Johnathan Pearce would probably condemn you for “tortured reasoning”, as he did one NJ Dawood in an earlier, rather heated discussion on this forum (A Muslim woman asks to be flogged in public for drinking booze). The terrorist (joke) NJ Dawood had said:
Whilst Dawood would clearly seem to be from another and very unpleasant planet (but is unfortunately – for us – living on our planet), I had to admit that he seemed to have made a valid point.
@Alisa:
Hear, hear!
(Though I do think the fence-sitting risks missing the fun and expenditure of emotional energy from irrationally forcing people into taking absolute sides.)
To each their own:-)
@Brian Micklethwait:
Whoops! Sorry, I had misread who had posted what on here – I had thought you had raised the distinction between one type of atheist and another (which confused me, along with the “non-theist” term), but a hasty review just now made me see that it was Midwesterner, not you. Abject apologies. Entirely my fault. My only excuse is that I was in a hurry (packing for a flight) and had been careless.
Defining terms could still help though, as it might help this rather interesting discussion.
This all makes me wonder if Blair isn’t trying to pull off the impossible – The Big One – making two antipathetic religious ideologies “come together”.
Hasn’t been possible for 1,400 years, but Blair might do it in his lifetime? Hmm. The omens don’t look so good.
Mind you, Blair could always seem to be able to make black=white (with the help of his party spin-doctors), so he may have a card or two up his sleeve yet – e.g. Surely anyone so bold should be made World President?
I disagree, but the disagreement may be largely semantic.
I suspect that many, if not most, self-described agnostics would, if pushed, come down on the no-God side — as would I. I think it’s actually important to push oneself that way, without losing open-mindedness. That’s what I mean by “committing to a point of view,” with respect to something that is unknown or unknowable. (Open-mindedness being not the absence of an opinion, but rather the presence of an opinion combined with a willingness to re-examine that opinion in the light of new evidence or arguments.)
That only makes sense unless you take the view that all theories about anything are ‘religious’ belief.
All understanding is based on conjectural theories. All of it. And we use our reason to form a critical preference for the unfalsified theories that seem to best explain things on the basis of what is known right now.
My theory is that ‘objective reality’ exists independently of my perception of it and indeed independently of my very existence, i.e. I suspect if I stop existing, the universe will still exist. Can I ‘prove’ that? No. However I use my reason to form a critical preference for the theory that everything is not a figment of my imagination on the basis it seems the best and deepest explanation, even though much about reality is unknown and the totality of reality is probably unknowable. I ‘believe’ that to be true.
Is that a religious belief?
My reason has led me to conclude that ‘god’ does not actually explain anything, so I discard it as useful theory. ‘God-as-entity’ would presumably be something that perceives outside the universal level but rather at the multiversal level, and thus the totality of reality, outside the constrains of space/time, is open to it. As I have no evidence of that or theories why that is even needed to explain anything, I think the idea of a ‘God entity’ is nothing more than a psychological artifice.
If someone comes up with a plausible “quantum theory of god” that slots neatly into and expands the Copenhagen interpretation
, I will be happy to start pondering ‘god’ again. Until then, it seems a waste of time and I discard god much as I discard the invisible pixie theory of gravity or the theoretical link between pirates and global warming. If that notion is a religious belief, then all theories about anything are religious beliefs and the word ‘religious’ is superfluous.
My only ‘belief’ is that our understanding of the nature of reality is a series of conjectural falsifiable theories (including the theory that our understanding of the nature of reality is a series of conjectural falsifiable theories).
And if there is a viable quantum theory of god, I think she is probably called Eris…
I don’t consider myself an atheist, because the universe is simply too large, complex, and beyond my ability to comprehend for me to make such an overwhelmingly final statement that there is no god. The lack of humility about this makes me suspicious of the most dogmatic of atheists. For one, I wish Dawkins would stick to writing about evolution.
That said, I have not encountered a human religion that I do not consider to be utterly ridiculous.
This all leads to the question of what exactly you mean by the word “god”, of course.
Actually, I think that all this rather comes down to what one means by the word ‘belief’. Or, to be more precise, the difference between ‘belief’ and ‘religious belief’:
No, that notion is not a religious belief. Saying that to the best of your knowledge something does or doesn’t exist is not the same as categorically asserting said existence or the lack of it. The difference between the two positions normally manifests itself in how one treats positions contrary to his own. Maybe this is another way of saying what you had in mind, Tedd?
“This all leads to the question of what exactly you mean by the word ‘god’, of course.”
That is precisely the crux of the issue. If by “god” one means some sort of Spinozan Initial Cause, or prime mover, or the creator of everything, then I don’t think it makes much difference whether you call that “god” or the “big bang” or something similar, as they all mean pretty much the same thing. It also has basically no utility in our daily lives. The entire concept is relatively unimportant, and not worth much discussion.
However, if by “god” you mean an anthropomorphic, man-centered entity which watches over us all and takes an interest in the personal affairs of each of us (i.e, the Christian god), that is a wholly irrational concept for which I have no use.
God is obviously just man-writ-large. We see ourselves acting and take that as a model for the universe, supposing there’s ‘somebody’ making stuff happen there, too.
Oddly enough, the idea that everything works the same way, which is central to any hope of understanding of the world, means that our working by will is excellent evidence that will works in the world generally.
And don’t everyone jump up and down shouting, “No, we’re machines!” We observe we have free will, much more directly than we observe the ‘objective’ evidence from which we adduce the argument that we’re machines.
Deism, in other words, is the logical default position, not atheism. Beyond that, though, I regard any claims about God with a raised eyebrow.
“[O]ur working by will is excellent evidence that will works in the world generally.”
Certainly, but to leap from that observation to the conclusion that deism is the “logical default position” is illogical. It’s the classic post hoc, ergo prompter hoc fallacy. “Will” may indeed work in the world generally, but it does not follow that it is the only thing which works, or that some being’s “will” is necessary to the creation of the universe.
And it absolutely says nothing about an anthropomorphic god, which is what most people mean by the word.
Atheism, like religion, has many shades. As noted, there is the no-belief-in-God versus belief-in-no-God distinction. But you also have the belief-in-no-Theist-God versus belief-in-no-Deist-God, disbelief-in-specific-Gods versus disbelief-in-any-God, belief-as-an-act-of-faith versus belief-as-an-everyday-model-of-the-world, and so on.
Do Christians (assuming we have some here) believe that the Norse Gods (for example) do exist, might exist, or that they don’t exist? Would it be reasonable for them to ‘believe’ that there are no Norse Gods, presumably with no more absolute evidence than atheists have? Is it just faith? And wouldn’t that mean that you would have to believe that a sincere believer in Odin and Thor, who does so as a matter of faith, is nevertheless wrong? Is it not therefore a matter of faith that faith can be mistaken?
And for agnostics – are you agnostic about specific Gods, like Kinich-Ahau, who is patron-God of the number 4, who therefore commands diseases and drought? When you say Gods might exist, do you mean this ‘Sunface Fire Macaw’ might really exist in an actual bricks-would-bounce-off-it sort of sense, and really have the powers stated? Or Ek-Chuah, God of war, salesmen and chocolate? And if not, what do you mean?
If not, do you therefore believe that Theists who believe in specific Gods such as Kinich-Ahau can be confidently said to be wrong?
Could you perhaps be atheist about some subset of Gods, while being agnostic about the rest?
Everyday beliefs don’t require this sort of word-torture. I believe that capitalism works, and jumping off a cliff would kill me, and that if I didn’t pay taxes I’d go to prison. I believe there is no set of special arm flappings that would enable me to fly, or a magic sigil that if written on my forehead would persuade the taxman to let me off. I would not consider myself a cliffs-are-dangerous-agnostic. And yet I don’t have absolute proof in any sort of rigorous philosophical sense. But nobody argues epistemology with you if you say it.
PA, I am a culture-specific religious agnostic, so the answer to that question would be ‘yes’:-) Also, as I now re-read Laird’s comment, I have to add that I am agnostic on god as the Creator, but an atheist on god as some dude (/dudette?) who really cares whether I eat a cheeseburger or not.
Alisa,
OK, agnostic on God as the creator. Let’s see if we can narrow that down a little further. 🙂
It is said that originally the Earth was nothing but water and darkness, ruled by the giant Mbombo, who one day felt a pain in his stomach and so vomited the sun, moon, and stars. A little later, after the sun dried out some land, Mbombo vomited people, leopards, eagles, a monkey called Fumu, trees, the falling star, the anvil, the sky, the razor, medicine, and lightning.
Could that be true?
Now generalise.
Could that be true?
It certainly could. So could any of the myriad other creation myths (sorry, “histories”) cooked up by humans down the eons, including the Judeo/Christian/Muslim version. Makes no difference to me, as whether any one (or none) of them is true is irrelevant to my daily life (assuming, of course, that Mbombo doesn’t start calling for sacrifices or whatnot). So I join in Alisa’s agnosticism/athiesm.
Perry,
The God-as-Entity argument arises plausibly from the unusual state of our own Universe. Many ‘constants’ of nature seem haphazard- I often read physicists who explain that if Gravity was just slightly stronger, or slightly weaker, then life (as we know it) would be impossible. Other constants also seem random.
This is the Anthropomorphic principle. They try to explain some of the odd numbers by suggesting that there are many parallel universes with differing constants, so that the chance of a universe with the right values is guaranteed. This leaves God to arise from any of these universes, and to live and move in the ‘fields’ of chaos. ‘And in the Real Beginning, God arose from Chaos, and took charge.’
Here’s the thing I never did understand. Let’s all be honest here.
If I don’t believe in Sasquatch, or the Yeti, it is the same as saying that I believe Sasquatch and Yeti do not exist.
With regards to Brahma, I don’t believe in him. Therefore, I believe that there is no Brahma.
I don’t believe in geocentrism. Therefore, I believe geocentrism isn’t true.
I don’t believe smoking is good for you. I also don’t believe smoking is harmless. Therefore I believe that smoking is bad for you.
It’s only in religion where people try to weasel their way out of it and saying that the one doesn’t equal the other. Why?
Pa Annoyed: I suspect most Christians will say that all these other ‘gods’ do exist – but not as deities, merely as Powers and Principalities. At least, there is the possibility that they do have an objective existence, just not as commonly described.
Perry: What proof do you have that the Copenhagen model is true? What proof do you have that the multiverse exists? You don’t. You can’t. Nobody has ever gone ‘outside’ and captured objective evidence that such is the case.
So yes, insofar as this is your metaphysical model of the ‘big picture’, it is a religious belief.
‘God’ or ‘gods’ not external to our universe could not predate our universe and could not explain its existence. So for this discussion I am presuming ‘God(s)’ to mean something prior and external (but possibly internal as well) to our universe and its particular laws of reality.
Where existence came from is a valid question. But as it is of necessity external to our reality, it is absurd (in the sense of ‘absurdism‘) to hold any opinions on the purpose (or lack thereof) for existence including, to my mind, what is or isn’t needed to explain the existence of existence. It exists. It matters to recognize the possibility (probability) that our laws of physics are unique to our existence and that any understanding of those laws is useful and relevant only to things completely within this universe.
My personal belief is that the demonstrable laws of physics are the only information available to us and anybody who says they ‘know God’ is probably going to try to sell me a bridge. The laws of reality can be either variables put into a model by a deity or something spontaneous; I think I agree with Laird when he says:
*stipulating ‘to us in this universe’ as extending the statement beyond this universe would be silly.
Whenever I hear a militant atheist declaring the non-existence of ‘God’, I have much the reaction I have to kids arguing over which fictional superhero is stronger. A creator god (or absence of same) would by definition be external to our existence, therefore by definition beyond our estimation, therefore a topic only capable of yielding religious opinions.
Pointing out wrong answers to an unanswerable question is itself a religious exercise. ‘Show me evidence’; is the condition for my attention. While I am willing to assert the overwhelming unlikelihood of any particular religion, the possibility of some kind of intelligence at a higher domain level than our universe is not something that can be estimated and not something about which I presume to know anything.
PA, I disbelieve any creation theory that runs against the preponderance of our understanding of the laws of reality, in other words, doesn’t end where our best estimates of the universe’s origin kick in. I also disbelieve any that presume knowledge of what came before the universe. So I guess that would be all of them.
I don’t know if this comment makes sense and as it has been a long, full day, my brain is getting (even more than usually) muddled. I agree with what I quoted of Laird and think that any effort to find or exclude origin or meaning beyond the laws of reality/physics is absurd. It’s been years, perhaps decades since I read Spinoza and I haven’t read Kierkegaard since high school and I don’t recall getting very excited about either of them. I don’t know enough about absurdism to know how much I agree with it but it appears to me that there is much useful to be found there.
In any case, if you seek the mind of God, study its creation (the laws of physics). If you don’t believe in god(s), study reality (the laws of physics). The answer is the same so the question is unnecessary.
You seem not to understand the scientific method or what I am talking about then. You cannot ‘prove’ anything. You, Gregory, cannot even prove reality itself exist beyond your skull. Think you can? Then please prove you are not just imagining everything you experience. Of course you cannot because any ‘proof’ could itself be imaginary. Do I think that is the best theory? No, but I cannot ‘prove’ it is not the case. The best you can do is form a critical preference for what best explains things on the basis of what is currently known. You can only falsify a theory, you can never ‘prove’ it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
If you want to understand the Copenhagen interpretation, read this for starters. Oh and most versions of Copenhagen go with one universe, but when I had the multiverse version explained to me, my head hurt.
Now try to explain how that is meaningfully a ‘religious’ belief.
Nuke Gray: Thank goodness for William of Occam. That is why I specified a good “quantum theory of god” that actually makes the theories work better. That said, unlike some who are deeply invested in this issue, I actually do not care if “god” exists one way or the other, so if someone could provide me something compelling that makes the other bits fit better and gives us the elusive “theory of everything”. I would be quite happy to incorporate it into my views.
That said, my lack of deep investment either way probably springs from my near certainly ‘god’ does not in fact have any objective existence (hence I just cannot get excited) and even if something that can meaningfully be called “god” does exists, it is might be more akin to Azathoth than the Christian notion… 😀
Perry, would you accept the following as, at least, worthy of consideration?
Time magazine, on February 23 of 2009, had many pages devoted to Faith. One of the pages presents proof that regular church-attendance adds years to your life. Is this God rewarding Church-goers, or some other unknown factor?
Perry de Havilland:
Actually, the Copenhagen interpretation assumes a unique history by definition — measurement is assumed to mysteriously collapse the wave function to provide a unique value of the measured observable, distributed according to the Born probabilities. The many-worlds interpretation is totally distinct; it does away with the collapse altogether and (bizarrely) assumes that instead different outcomes decohere into parallel non-interacting worlds.
Wikipedia has a nice tabulated overview of different QM interpretations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics#Comparison
An agnostic is a God-fearing atheist.
Perry: Certainly. If all of reality is simply my imagination, then obviously all of reality is under my control. If all of reality is under my control, then *I* am God, and nothing happens that I do not allow or will to happen at some point or another.
Since this is manifestedly not the case, therefore I cannot be the source of the reality I perceive.
Or were you going to say that perhaps it is my subconscious imagination that is generating reality? Then my subconscious is truly out of sync with the rest of me… people call this insanity. In that case, then my subconscious is God.
Is reality then being generated Matrix-like? Sure, but you can’t prove (or even perceive) the layer *beyond* the Matrix. In which case, the Matrix *is* reality. Or what is your definition of reality? Or perhaps you are speaking of the Platonic forms, or the Hindu maya? In which case, we are speaking at different levels altogether and I can certainly agree to disagree.
You say I do not understand the scientific model. Well, here’s what I do understand; when the evidence does not fit the model, you change the model and not the evidence. Of course, you want to make sure that your experiment (and subsequent observations) were not tainted, and you want to remove potential bias and error and all that… but at the end of the day, that’s what you do.
And what is your definition of proof? Mathematical proofs exist in abundant measure; there is historical proof that Troy once existed, that Carthage once existed, that Julius Caesar once existed… and that Jesus once existed, was crucified, and a whole bunch of people believed He rose again and worship Him as a God. Scientific proof abound as well – given that you accept the basic axioms, cause-and-effect being one of them.
Here’s something else for you to chew on. The Copenhagen model speaks about wave functions and collapsing them and what not. The many-worlds model speaks of the multiverse, in which every possible outcome occurred.
The primary thrust behind this is the fact that the very act of measuring something has an effect on the thing being measured. But what if you didn’t need to measure it to know the outcome *because you are in control of the whole shebang*?
Do not expect God to be like man. Man was made in the image of God, not the other way around.
As for religious belief, well, not all religious beliefs require gods. I probably have a different notion of religion to most other people, I will admit. But I submit that Scientism is a religious belief. And I further submit that when you say God has to be limited to something that can be explained by and explains further quantum physics, then you adhere to Scientism.
But perhaps I am veering off track here. I don’t want to pick on a single strand of your belief system and harp on it. More like, at the end of the day, all of our hard data and evidence ends at a certain point, beyond which we have to take *something* on faith. I take God on faith, you take Science! on faith (or at least, that’s the impression I get).
Could be wrong about your post, though. I’m doing this from work and I have a major headache of a project coming due next week.
How can you prove it is not ‘manifestly the case’? Prove you can control your dream. You could just be having a conversation with yourself, locked in your delusional notions that there are other people when in ‘truth’ you are arguing with yourself. It matters not because nothing can be ‘proved’ that cannot be reduced back to the nihilistic hallucination argument.
But I do not actually think the ‘objective relativity is a delusion’ theory explains much (although clearly as we can only perceive a fraction of the nature of reality via our senses, we do in effect live in a form of ‘virtual reality’ in that the only way to understand the bits we cannot perceive is to use our reason to theorise about those aspects of reality). So I just form a critical preference for the theory that seems to explain things best with what I know right now rather than just conclude it is all a dream. Is that ‘faith’?
If it is, it is not ‘religious’ faith, any more than trusting a friend not to misrepresent something to me is ‘religious’ faith in my friend. Or is that the ‘religion’ of ‘friendism’? It seems to me this need to call atheists ‘religious’ stretches the category well beyond breaking point.
Sure. Just as most Europeans live longer than most Africans, which presumably proves god prefers white people to black people.
@Perry de Havilland:
I’m not so sure that idea hangs together.
I heard that it had been established beyond any reasonable doubt that Africans are short-lived compared to the Europeans simply because the latter had arranged for a privately-held company called “Trafigura” to deliberately and knowingly dump massive amounts of deadly toxic waste into the Africans’ environment, thus ensuring a long-lasting impact for the maximum possible proportion of the population and for many generations to come. It’s been in all the news. Samizdata should make a post about it. Oh, wait…
Absent any proof that will is insufficient to explain all observed phenomena, parsimony (“don’t multiply explanations”) requires us to presume it’s the only explanation. That’s why deism becomes the default position.
Bear in mind that to me, you appear to be a mechanism, even though to yourself (presumably) you have free will. Given that, it’s very hard to show that apparently will-less mechanism proves that ‘pure’ mechanism exists.
Incidentally, the notion that God ‘started’ the world is a misconception, or at least not a very sophisticated view of God. Since at least Plotinus (ca. CE 204–270) the idea has been that the world flows continuously out of Divine Will: it wasn’t created once, in the past, but is created continuously (including its past) in the present.
Beliefs about anything that lies outside of our reality are by definition in the ‘supernatural’, aka ‘religious’ realm. I am not aware of any exemption granted to beliefs about what doesn’t exist outside of our reality as opposed to beliefs about what does exist outside of our reality. They are all beliefs about the supernatural.
Faith in a friend’s integrity or faith in an understanding of the laws of physics are not exempted from the category ‘religious’ because they aren’t ‘faith’. They are exempted from the category ‘religious’ because they are about physical reality and not about the supernatural.
I’ve been watching BtVS on DVD to wind down to get to sleep. In last night’s episode, ‘Graduation Day – Part 1’, ‘Buffy’ attempts to kill ‘Faith’. It seemed so apropos to this discussion. 🙂
“. . . it wasn’t created once, in the past, but is created continuously (including its past) in the present.”
Actually, as I understand it (I’m no expert; someone here will undoubtedbly correct me if I’m wrong) certain flavors of quantum theory also posit that the creation of matter is a continuous process. So once again all definitions circle back together: a creationist “god” and the “big bang” are essentially synonymous (and also essentially meaningless).
And even if that sort of empty “deism” is your default position, it says nothing about the anthropomorphic “god” which is the focus of most religionists. They seize upon the creation mystery as some sort of “proof” that the “god” which created the universe also cares whether I eat a cheeseburger today. Which is, of course, irrational and a complete non sequitur.
Yes, but I wouldn’t tie it to the distinction between “belief” and “religious belief.” I’ve had heated arguments about the merits of user-pay television but, despite my stubbornness on the subject, I think it would be a stretch to describe my beliefs therein as “religious.”
In a sense, I suppose you could call all belief “religious” but, as someone pointed out, that tends to make the word religious superfluous in that context. I make the simple distinction that “religious” belief is belief about a subject that is clearly religious, whereas belief is merely belief about anything. (I.e., “religious belief” is a subset of “belief.”)
For example, I believe there is no personal God, as I understand most western religions to mean it, and that is a religious belief. I also believe, like Perry, in an external, objective reality that is independent of my observation of it and of my very existence. That, to me, is more of a philosophical belief than a religious belief. But that could be merely a cultural prejudice on my part, as I think some eastern religions challenge the notion of external reality. I also believe that I would enjoy driving a Formula One car, if I had the chance, and that seems to me to be not religious at all.
I suspect my definition won’t be satisfactory to some atheists and agnostics because it means their positions on subjects such as God and creation are “religious,” and they dislike the label being applied to themselves. But the label actually applies to the subject, not the person.
Alternate hypothesis:
Church-goers are less likely to partake in various activities with harmful effects like heaving drinking and wild orgies, etc. (Okay, except for me. But I’m never invited to those kinds of parties.)
Alternate Hypothesis Two:
In the US, women are more likely to actually show up for church than are men. Women also have longer lifespans, on balance.
Alternate hypothesis Three:
Depression shortens lifespan. Social isolation contributes to depression. Which means that participation in social activities works to counteract depression, which lessens depression’s unfortunate effects on health.
Gregory:
You really don’t understand climatology, do you?
“Heaving” drinking?” HEAVY drinking, excuse me.
Although, the two may add up to the same thing. Especially if Jagermeister is involved somewhere.
Nick, this is beneath an intelligent person like yourself. It is basic psychology. Really.
Indeed Sunfish, Gregory is obviously not a climatologist:-)
Tedd: yes, I had this in the back of my mind when commenting last night, but was too tired to articulate it. So with all what you said in mind, how do we define religion? Is Greenism a religion? My standard line of thinking has been: religion is a subset of ideology, one that involves an active worship of an entity. To me this distinction is purely technical, because practically speaking I couldn’t care less if a person worships Christ, or Gaia, or some real-life person, or just an idea. What I care about are two things: the fact that they actually worship something/someone and the philosophical/practical ideas they attach to the object of their worship if the said object is not an idea in itself already (i.e. the case of regular, non-religious ideology as I defined it above). Obviously, the latter has much greater weight than the former: the fact that someone worships a long-dead guy named Mo is silly (not to mention not-good-for-you in the longer run), but not necessarily harmful. But when I read about the things this guy did (like marrying a 9-year-old girl, among other things), and learn that this behavior of his is considered a feature rather than a bug by his followers, this is when this particular religious ideology becomes problematic in my view.
There are two sorts of atheists.
There are the group who say something like the following:
“If only we could meet our dead friends and family again – if only there really was life after the end of this life. But, sadly, it is not true – this life is all we have, we are not going to meet our dead friends and family again, when we are dead we are dead and we must face this bitter truth with what courage we can”.
And there are the athiests who are JOYFUL about the lack of hope – who take PLEASURE in “when we are dead we are dead”.
This latter group might be called “evangelical athiests” – who go about “spreading the good news”.
I think the latter group of athiests are barking mad.
Oh, fershure. My only point was that the logik-mit-uns claim that so many atheists make is contradicted by the evidence. I’m more than willing to concede that actual religions get the details wrong in suspiciously convenient ways.
Paul,
I’m not quite sure who you have in mind for the second group. I know atheists who take pleasure in not deluding themselves, as they see it, but I don’t know of any who wouldn’t like the opportunity for a longer life, or who celebrate losing friends (to any cause).
Although, if it came down to it, I think eternity would not be as pleasant as a casual consideration might conclude. Being a mathematician, I have perhaps some clearer concept of what ‘eternity’ would actually mean.
Start with the unimaginably huge number consisting when written down of a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. This is called a googol. Now consider a 1 followed by a googol of zeroes – a number so large that it could not be written down within the observable universe. This is called a googolplex. Now consider an 1 followed by a googlplex of zeroes. Carry out this 1-followed-by-the-previous-number-of-zeroes procedure a googolplex of times.
Now imagine sitting around for this number of years, with (or without, if you prefer) your friends and family.
And understand that this is still only the tiniest, most invisible and insignificant speck in comparison to the eternity yet to come.
Immortals call it the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.
Truly, I would not wish eternal life on my worst enemy. This life must end, and all matter must move on to something new. And I would rather spend my finite time here celebrating what we have got – this tremendous privilege of being alive – than bemoan what we have not and what could not be. And like Mark Twain, I would be no more unhappy about it than I am about the billions of years of oblivion before I (or my friends) were born.
Although I would also say that while I do want my life to be finite, a couple of thousand years would be nice.
Exactly. It’s not the prospect of an eternal life that is appealing to me, but rather the ability to have a choice. I can always end it if and when I get tired of it.
So, Alisa, instead of answering the quote, or refuting it, you try to wish a fact of reality away. No doubt a psychological defense reaction of some kind……
It would seem that we are all debating definitions and fundamentals; or perhaps definitions *of* fundamentals.
Perry, not my intent to argue with you too much, because obviously we’re veering off-topic (but hey, this is teh Intarwebs, right?) but here’s the thing.
You are indeed correct that one cannot “prove” this is not all just a dream. For a given definition of “prove” at any rate. But here’s the thing; all methods of proof (regardless of the area in which the proving is to be done) rely on logic or observational evidence. And both at the end of the day rest of axioms, things which are so fundamental they do not require proof.
Or rather; axioms themselves are not provable, not in the way we are speaking of here. And because of this, when we look at the same piece of evidence or logic, the axioms we hold determine how we view it.
And when we’re speaking of the axioms wrt the nature of reality, we are speaking of religious beliefs, no matter how you slice it. I believe God upholds the universe. You don’t. I believe God knows all things. You believe that quantum mechanics means no one can know everything. God help me, I believe in YEC. You believe in a universe that is several billion years old.
In all of these instances, we have exactly the same physical evidence, observational data and logic available to us. However, I proceed from the axiom that the Bible is true. You proceed from a different axiom.
Are all axioms the same? No, nor are they all equally valid. But they are all ‘unprovable’. Russell once tried to prove 1+1=2. Took him several hundred pages to do it, and Godel showed up some time later to say, no, that proof doesn’t quite work.
Pa Annoyed: You know, people think that life will eventually become boring and meaningless. I beg to differ.
Think about the prodigious output of Man in terms of scientific discovery, technological advancement, literature both fictional and non-fictional, movies, comics, cartoons, cuisine, wines, beers, various other achievements, since the beginning of time. Think about the fact that there is no way a single person could absorb all of that (even just the stuff he likes!) in 120 years. Even if you gave him a lifetime sufficient for him to go through all of that over the past 6,000 years (for example), when he finished he would need that much time again because more stuff would have come out, possibly as much as before.
And then, think about wanting to repeat that. Would you be content with reading your favourite book only once? Eating a bacon-topped double cheeseburger only once? (Insert your favourite food) For crying out loud, there are entire hordes of teachers out there teaching the same class and the same syllabus umpteen years because they like it. And level grinding is proof there are people out there who revel in repetition.
Think about going to new places, meeting new people. No, life will never be boring, even if you limited it to this side of our existence.
Nick, what I meant is that there are several perfectly simple explanations to this data (Sunfish provided some of the most obvious) without the need to appeal to the supernatural.
Now that statement is absolutely untenable. Given the wide variety of beliefs that Christians espouse, Islam might as well be considered a Christian sect (which it is, with some admixture of Jewish, Zoroastrian and pre-Islamic Arabic pagan beliefs; but that kind of syncretism is not uncommon in Christian groups all over the world.) What distinguishes Islam from the other myriads of Christian sects is its success, and this is why it is considered a world religion in its own right.
There are beliefs (both Christian and Islamic) that are incompatible with modern society, just as there are flavors of both Christianity and Islam that are beneficial, or at worst mostly harmless. Saying that Christian values (as though there was a single set of Christian values) are diametrically opposed to Islamic values (as though there was a single set of Islamic values) is intellectually lazy.
Alisa:
For me, religion is an aspect of other things more so than a thing itself. It all comes down to what a person views as sacred or divine.
For example, it’s possible (perhaps just barely) to believe in the Gaea hypothesis without thinking of Gaea as being divine or sacred. But most Gaea believers probably do (consciously or unconsciously) feel about Gaea as a divinity, and Gaea’s products (the environment, except — apparently — mankind) as sacred. The latter kind are religious and the former kind not so much.
Likewise, I think some advocates of Darwinism are at least flirting with religion. The theory of natural selection opened up whole new areas of science, and is rightly revered. But if we begin to think of it as sacred then we are practicing religion, not science. (It’s entirely possible that the phenomenon of natural selection is sacred — that it is the closest thing to divinity in the universe. But, because such thinking is inseparable from human values, it’s religious thinking, not scientific thinking.)
In that sense, I agree with your idea of religion as a subset of ideology. But I’m not sure ideology is even necessary. Religion is a subset of anything that we can have feelings of sacredness or divinity about.
Gregory,
“Think about the prodigious output of Man in terms of scientific discovery, technological advancement, literature both fictional and non-fictional, movies, comics, cartoons, cuisine, wines, beers, various other achievements, since the beginning of time. Think about the fact that there is no way a single person could absorb all of that (even just the stuff he likes!) in 120 years. Even if you gave him a lifetime sufficient for him to go through all of that over the past 6,000 years (for example), when he finished he would need that much time again because more stuff would have come out, possibly as much as before.”
No. Because in a mere googolplex of years, you would have gone through every possible configuration of the human mind that’s possible. Not only the whole of human history, but all possible human histories. In ten raised to a googolplex years, the second step, the number is so incomprehensibly vaster than the previous vast number that the previous number that ordinary, everyday concepts of vastness are totally inadequate. Every possible history of the entire universe would make no dent. And the third step expands on this in a way as much beyond it in comprehensibility as the second step exceeds the first.
The human imagination struggles with a billion years, a 1 with a mere 9 zeroes following it. Even a single extra zero makes it ten times larger, so by the time you get to about 30 or 40 zeroes, at around the scale of the fundamental limits of quantum mechanics, the numbers have ceased to have all human meaning.
The ‘prodigious output of Man’, far from being a impressively mighty spire, is an invisible smear underneath the carpet on the ground floor.
Religious ideas like eternal life make no sense outside the limited perspective of a creature that has no idea what it’s talking about. (This isn’t an insult, just an observation.) When your idea of something really big is everything humans have ever done, ‘eternity’ sounds sort of nice, because you simply cannot imagine what it would be like; what it would entail. It’s the only way you could have come up with it. It’s the same with creation myths or miracles and commandments. They’re all the sort of things people with no understanding of how the universe works can imagine. They have ‘human’ stamped all over them. They’re all at a human scale, about human concerns, approached in a human way. They’re not the sorts of things a God, if such a thing could exist, or indeed any being vastly smarter than even me, would say or do.
And yes, you can provide axioms to assert anything you like. But there’s another problem besides provability, and that’s consistency. Internal consistency, and consistency with observation.
Is ‘truth by assertion’ a useful method? The fundamental question is: Does reality agree?
OK, we all have met (or at least heard of) people who are so much infatuated with someone (usually a person of opposite sex) that they go beyond mere love or even admiration, and almost literally worship that person (cue in your typical stalker from some movie, with the pictures of the Big Hollywood Star all over the walls of their crummy apartment). Is this religion? It certainly is religious in it’s nature, or religion-like, but it is not a religion. My point is that by religion we normally mean something shared by a group of people. This is also the difference between ideology and personal philosophy or whatever the term for that might be.
I think that’s a better definition of a church, not of a religion. If I believe that I’m God that’s a religious belief, and whatever structure I put around it is a religion (in addition to probably being a delusion) — whether or not anybody else believes it. If I can convince someone else, then I have the beginnings of a church.
I don’t see any problem with a religion of one person. In a way, I think that’s what all religious belief is, since we each probably mean something slightly different even if we’re using the same words.
Well, we are having trouble to reach a common definition of religion, how can we possible define an atheist?:-)
Pa Annoyed: But now we are arguing at cross purposes. And I really don’t want to spend too much time on this (it’s not that important to me) so let’s just take a brief look.
Perspective of limited human: mind is being ‘manifested’ by brain. Assuming neural cellular regeneration to support indefinite human lifespan, this means memories are constantly being thrown away. If you forgot you ever read a book, let alone its contents, won’t you find it just as interesting to read it again?
Perspective of Human 2.0 (Resurrection Edition): Mind no longer limited by brain capacity. Therefore, always more room for new things, and always more capability for new thoughts.
You can’t even imagine infinity, same as the rest of us, right? So by what right do you unilaterally declare that it will be uniformly boring for everyone? There are people out there who are locked in their own heads, seemingly sealed away from external stimuli. They don’t seem to be in a great big hurry to kill themselves. For that matter, if a human was completely pain-free, he or she won’t think about killing himself or herself either.
The hole in your logic is you placing a finite human in an infinite timespan. What if yonder human’s mind’s potential reach is infinite?
Also, consistency with observation. Axioms are unprovable. Hence, whatever you observe will have an associated model that ‘explains’ the observation in accordance with the axioms.
For example, a Christian YEC and an evolutionist looks at the double-helix of DNA. The Christian YEC goes, “Wow, the incredible beauty and elegance of God’s design, even in a fallen world it manages to do almost everything it’s supposed to do.” The evolutionist goes “Wow, the incredible beauty and elegance of something that arose by random chance via undirected processes out of chaos, almost as if it had been designed, that does almost everything it’s supposed to do.”
Which of them is correct? Well, that would depend on the axioms you hold, won’t it? But the same observations, the same data available to both.
Truth by assertion is incredibly useful when you apply it as it’s meant to be applied. For example…
mathematical axioms
logical axioms
assumptions underlying the scientific method
All truth by assertions, so to speak. “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.” Truth by assertion, given imprecise language.
It’s only when you apply it wrongly then you have a problem.
That would be easy! Once we define religion, then we say that atheists are against any religion. We can use one to solve the definition of the other.
As to your earlier points, I was wondering if Perry would come up with some answers, or questions of his own. Sunfish raises some good ideas to think about, yes, but how come atheists don’t get any benefits when they meet together? If all it took was socialising, tennis and lawn bowls would be the new fountains of youth.
I don’t know about lawn bowls, but has anyone done a study to see if tennis players live longer than the median? I would bet that they do, both because of the socializing and the exercise. (They probably live longer than church-goers, for that matter!)
I would say that’s an unwarranted expansion of the meaning of atheist. An atheist is simply someone who believes that God does not exist (or, if you prefer, denies the existence of God), which presupposes that we are talking about the Judeo-Christian God. If you want to go beyond that, I think the word you’re looking for is irreligious.
Yes Tedd, you are right again.
But the elbows, Laird…
It’s the church-going tennis players that screw up the data. But the serious answer is that tennis is cardiorespiratory exercise, and when performed regularly that does play a substantial role in health.
And Nuke, if there are disparate health benefits to other religions vs. atheism, enterorectogestion may be why.
It’s the same with creation myths or miracles and commandments. They’re all the sort of things people with no understanding of how the universe works can imagine. They have ‘human’ stamped all over them. They’re all at a human scale, about human concerns, approached in a human way. They’re not the sorts of things a God, if such a thing could exist, or indeed any being vastly smarter than even me, would say or do.
Wouldn’t it make sense that if God wanted to talk to people He would adjust His speech to be understandable to us? (Note that people were saying this before modern science existed.) I would imagine that a dog’s perception of his master is limited to things understandable by dogs and relevant to canine concerns.
Gregory,
Yes, it’s possible that if you forget – throw away all your memories of your distant past – then you would be back to a tolerably finite span (for any given personality) with oblivion at either end.
But the numbers I’m talking about exceed even Human 2.0. Even if a human were to expand to incorporate the entire universe, the same thing would happen. And of course such a being would no longer be the same as the original; it would no longer be our ‘dead friend’ as he or she was.
“… The evolutionist goes “Wow, the incredible beauty and elegance of something that arose by random chance via undirected processes out of chaos, almost as if it had been designed, that does almost everything it’s supposed to do.” Which of them is correct?”
Neither of them.
Because in this case, the evolutionist has misunderstood the theory and got it completely wrong. It doesn’t arise by random chance. It’s not undirected.
One of the biggest problems with the public understanding of evolution by natural selection is that the explanations of it commonly concentrate on the mutations, which are not really important, and pay far less attention to the natural selection, which is at the core of the theory. Evolution is directed by the fact that some organisms, because of their inherited characteristics, are far more likely to die before reproducing than others. Life is sculpted by Death.
Pour some thick treacle out onto a flat table. Now as it slowly spreads, wipe away any that encroaches inside a certain line. By an astonishing miracle, the remaining treacle will ‘steer’ itself around the line, fitting itself to all its intricate contours. And yet, treacle is not smart. It’s tendency to spread is as undirected as random mutation.
Clearly, attributing the design to the spreading treacle, when it’s obviously the wiper-away that is the cause and source, would be silly. Likewise, in natural selection the organisms are ‘designed’ by the environment around them that kills bad designs faster. They are ‘designed’ by the effectiveness or otherwise of the design itself.
The distinguishing mark between the two hypotheses lies not in the elegance and beauty of some parts of the design, but in the obvious botched incompetence and inefficiency of other parts. Even a human engineer would not have made that mistake, so how could an omniscient, omnipotent deity?
I know that answers to that particular point have been proposed – by the Gnostics for example – but it’s not one that’s widely argued. So people don’t always have access to the same observations, the same data. They often don’t know about some of the weird stuff biological research has discovered. And as a result, come to different conclusions.
Pa Annoyed;
You are obviously under the mistaken belief that everyone born before the twentieth century was an idiot. They weren’t. Of course they knew that eternity lasts a long time, even if the term “googolplex” hadn’t been coined yet. Yes, really, they had the same cognitive capacities you do. I recall a Puritan describing an entire Earth of nothing but grains of sand, from which a single grain was removed every thousand years, and that the time it took for all the grains to be lost was tiny by comparison. Yes, you can think up even bigger numbers (what about ten such Earths?! A thousand! A googolplex of googolplexes of them?!?!11!), and then witlessly imagine that somehow the old Puritan couldn’t have done the same. But any reasonable person can see that he had the same idea in mind.
More importantly, if the people in question can no longer experience boredom, your point is irrelevant.
Aaron,
I am no more under the impression that everyone born before the 20th century was an idiot than I am that most people born in or indeed after the 20th century are.
(And I intend that both ways.)
Your puritan’s number is only about 10 to the power of 33. A googolplex of googolplexes is utterly insignificant too, compared to the number I was discussing. But my point wasn’t simply that it was huge, it was the sheer unimaginability of the implications of what at first glance looks like a simple and straightforward verbal formulation.
Yes, some theologians have tried to follow through the implications to their absurd conclusions. But I’m pretty sure that whoever first came up with the idea did not, and nor do most people who accept it, and indeed hope for it. People naturally mourn when their friends and relatives die, so they like to fantasize that death isn’t permanent. But when they imagine the afterlife, they only imagine the first little bit of it, and let the rest fade into the mist of a vague “and so on”. Humans naturally have limited horizons.
Yes, I suppose people could be altered so that they didn’t get bored. They could also be altered so that eternal hellfire didn’t bother them, and didn’t hurt. (Or for that matter, that feasting in a city of gold would be a torment. Or indeed that they would have no interest any more in meeting up with all those old friends.) But the point of the afterlife having these particular properties is that people are expected to continue with the same likes and dislikes they had before – that they are essentially the same people they were in life.
My point was that from an unmodified human perspective, eternity would actually be as bad or maybe even a more horrifying prospect than simple hellfire. That its authors normally feel no need to explain their way around this peculiarity is simply a reflection of our fallible humanity, and that of the concept’s originators.
In this sense of having limited imagination, all humans are “idiots”, myself included. Our ideas about the universe are immeasurably crude and unworthy. If even I can see that, then surely any reasonably intelligent deity that we might hypothesise would do so too.
Pa Annoyed;
I find it amusing you proceeded to make the same inane point I had anticipated. Yes, given any unimaginably large number, you can create larger numbers: so what? It’s not penis size and you didn’t win any contest with the Puritan. And if you think you did, I raise any number you mention to the power of a googolplex, so now I win.
Granting the supposition that your argument is irrelevant, and then insisting on it because of your guess that the people who first mentioned immortality were obviously premodern dolts (after admitting that premoderns weren’t stupid) seems a little weak. You don’t get to insist upon an unmodified human perspective because anyone with eternal life is already modified, at least by comparison to what we experience now. It shouldn’t need said, but evidently does, that ancients could figure this out as easily as a modern. It is a rather trivial point, after all, however useful it is to you to arbitrarily exclude it. So once again, every you’ve said is irrelevant.
We haven’t even addressed the idea of atemporality.
I find your last paragraph confusing. Are you saying (as you seemed to before) that a God who takes an interest in human history would nevertheless perform miracles, issue commandments, and so on, that are not “human-scale” in the sense of being perceivable or relevant to us? But you seem too intelligent for such an odd notion. There’s no good reason an omniscient and omnipotent being shouldn’t be personally interested in literally everything (the birds of the air, etc.), so if such a being exists we shouldn’t be surprised He cares about our affairs. Any intervention into human history on his part is going to be human-scale by definition, otherwise it wouldn’t actually be an intervention in human history, now would it?
Pa Annoyed asked who I was pointing at.
Richard Dawkins and co.
I think that if R.D. or his followers found themselves waking up in heaven they would be ANGRY.
As they would be if they thought a dear friend or relative had more than physical and mental decay (the ageing process) and then nothingness, to look forward to.
This is what I mean by “barking mad”.
I should point out that Twentieth Century theologians have now settled on “about three times as long as the Stanley Cup playoffs” as the duration of eternity. Tiny, beak-whetting birds are right out of it.
Time is also rather subjective. Ever notice how when you’re doing something fun and/or interesting, times seems to fly, and when you’re stuck in traffic, it seems like a thousand years?
Obviously there are limits to such subjectiveness, but it does point to the fact that one would have to be incredibly arrogant to say that eternity is absolutely boring for everyone.