[MD] Demanding Evidence From Theists

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Steve --


You quoted the following excerpt from your post to 'Atheistic Hope':

> As anti-essentialists, we pragmatists don't want to think of religion as
> the sort of thing that has an essence. There is no critique that we
> should offer about religion as a whole, because there is no particular
> way that religion must be in order for it to be true its own essence.
> Instead we need to consider the various ways of "being religious"
> and critique them individually. ...The pragmatist atheist's only concern
> for religion is, as Richard Rorty put it, the "extent to which the
> actions of religious believers frustrate the needs of other human 
> beings..."

As this website includes messages from other MD participants, I assume you 
are speaking for Pirsig and the MoQ,  Why an MoQer should be obsessed with 
anti-theism and the need to condemn  religion is a mystery to me, since a 
"pragmatist" (if that's what a Pirsigian really is) has no more "evidence" 
of Quality than the believer has of God.  But your opening statement 
contains so many inconsistencies that I felt compelled to comment.

You categorize pragmatists as "anti-essentialists" and say they "don't want 
to think of religion as
the sort of thing that has an essence."  Yet, you don't define "essence" or 
offer any justification for denying essentiality, even as it applies to the 
pragmatists's worldview.  The inference is that religion is wedded to 
essentialism, which is an unfounded assumption.

You assert that "there is no particular way that religion must be in order 
for it to be true its own essence."  But that is precisely what religious 
sectarianism is   Religion is a spiritualistic practice founded on a 
particular dogma or faith-based belief.  Indeed, it's the "practice" of 
religion which enables the believer to "be true to the essence" of his or 
her belief system.

You say "There is no critique that we should offer about religion as a 
whole," yet that is the thrust of your entire essay.  You fault faith-based 
beliefs and "duty to Truth, Reason, or Moral Law", and stress the 
pragmatist's (Rorty's) concern about "the extent to which the actions of 
religious believers frustrate the needs of other human beings."  Later on, 
you say "the point of holding beliefs is not to
seek Truth but to gratify particular desires," that "we need to try to get 
our beliefs to cohere with [others'] beliefs."

Man has an innate need for spirituality which each of us expresses as a set 
of personal beliefs.  If the aim of the "pragmatist atheist" is the 
uniformity of beliefs without essence, evidence, truth, or faith, my guess 
would be that 'Atheistic Hope' is a delusion.

Essentially speaking,
Ham

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> While some atheists (often those who proudly refer to
> themselves as Rationalists) see the appeals to faith rather than
> to evidence in relation to religious beliefs as the shirking of the
> believer's responsibility to have true beliefs or at least to base
> their beliefs on evidence, pragmatists don't think that we have
> a duty to Truth anymore than atheists think that we have a duty
> to God. Pragmatists who happen to also be atheists don't think
> we have a duty to any such nonhuman powers as God, Truth,
> Reason, Divine Will, The-Way-Things-Really-Are, or The
> Moral Law and might then be regarded as more though-going
> in their atheism than Rationalists.
>
> From an evolutionary perspective, the point of holding beliefs is not to
> seek Truth but to gratify particular desires. Beliefs are thought of as
> tools for helping us get what we want. Since truths are pursued in support
> of particular human interests, before we can even talk about the truth of 
> a
> belief, we need to sort out what sorts of desire we hope this or that 
> belief
> will satisfy. This is what is often called "The Pragmatic Method." 
> Likewise,
> instead of conceiving of evidence as something which "floats free of human
> projects" and demands our respect, Rorty says that the demand for evidence
> is "simply a demand from other human beings for cooperation on such
> projects." Our duty is not to "evidence" but only to ourselves and to our
> fellow human beings. We want our beliefs to cohere with our other beliefs,
> and to the extent that we want to participate in common projects with 
> other
> people, we need to try to get our beliefs to cohere with their beliefs, 
> *but
> only to that extent*. So the demand for evidence and the corresponding
> obligation to justify our beliefs only needs to come up when we are 
> engaged
> in a common project..."
>
> Regards,
> Steve