Bart Ehrman: One Can Be Both an Agnostic and an Atheist

I encountered Bart Ehrman many years ago, when I encountered his excellent book, Misquoting Jesus. Today I learned that Ehrman writes at his own website, The Bart Ehrman Blog. Yesterday he published an article that makes sense out of a confused topic: the difference between agnostics and atheists? Erhman holds that the difference is not a matter of degree, a common misunderstanding. The title of Ehrman article is "On Being an Agnostic. Or Atheist?" Here's an excerpt:

. . . I think it is possible to be both an agnostic and an atheist. And that’s how I understand myself. So, in this newer view of mine, agnosticism is a statement about epistemology – that is, about what a person *knows*. Do I know whether there is a God in the multiverse? Nope. I really don’t. How could I know? I’m just a peon on a very big planet, circling around a very big star, which is one of some 100 billion stars in this galaxy, which is only one of anywhere from 100 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in this universe, which may be only one of trillions (infinite number?) of universes. So, well, I don’t have a broad perspective on the question. So I don’t know. I’m agnostic.

Atheism, on the other hand, (in my way of thinking) is not about knowledge but about belief. Do I *believe* that there is a God? No I don’t. I especially do not believe in the biblical God, or in the traditional God of Jews and Christians (and Muslims and so on). I simply do not believe that there is a God who created this world (it is the result of forces beyond my comprehension, but it goes back to the Big Bang, and we are here because of evolution, and I exist only because of some pretty amazingly remote chances/circumstances…); I don’t think there is a divine being who is sovereign over this world who interacts with it and the people in it, who answers prayer, who brings good out of evil. I don’t believe it. So I’m an atheist.

So I’m an agnostic atheist. Or an atheistic agnostic. Take your pick!

I like this approach.  No one knows whether there is a god hiding behind a distant star. It's possible that there is such a lurking god, even though I'll never be able to prove or disprove such a claim. This inability to prove or disprove god is an epistemic challenge, according to Ehrman. I am forced to live a life of ignorance about many things, including shy gods hiding in outer space (or in my toaster, or wherever). Ehrman would attach the word "agnostic" to that epistemic predicament. Fair enough.

And in the meantime, I need to either act as though god does exists or that god doesn't exist. As I see it, this is a question of where I'm setting my default for belief.  Some people set the bar low and they believe in all kinds of mystical claims and conspiracy theories.  I am extremely skeptical about claims about gods (and many other things). This might also be seen as how I set up my "burden of proof," as we might say in a courtroom. Those of us who are highly skeptical need extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims.

I consider the question of whether god exists to be an extraordinary claim, but others might set the bar much lower.  Some of them believe with with nothing more than a hope and a duty old book of apocryphal tall tales. What do I believe when I (a person who sets the bar for proof high) don't see any evidence of a god and yet I can't disprove the existence of god? Shall I act "as if" or not "as if" there is a god? A lack of belief in a god is what Ehrman calls "Atheism."  This nomenclature makes sense to me.

I will give this some more thought, but I'm inclined to join Ehrman as new member of the church of Atheist Agnostics.

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John McWhorter Discusses Anti-Racism with Bill Maher

Linguistics Professor John McWhorter sat down with Bill Maher on a recent episode of Real Time to discuss "anti-racism." McWhorter describes himself as someone who is hearing things that don't make sense and his quest is to try to obsessively make sense of things like "anti-racism."  The interview was as intense as it was fast-moving. Several take-aways:

A) "Anti-racism" condescends to people who identify as "black," infantilizing them.

B) There is a great diversity of thought among those who identify as black, almost two-thirds of whom are middle class (or even higher earning), the majority of whom do not live in ongoing fear of being harassed or shot by the police,

C) None of this is to suggest that there isn't still racism, which needs to be addressed.

D) Wokeness is a religion where "whiteness" functions as "original sin" that afflicts even babies, a religion where Robin DiAngelo's misguided book, White Fragility is mistakenly being treated as "research" instead of second-rate literature that advocates for victimization;

E) People pretend to "atone" for "white privilege" by posting on FB that they are "doing the work." This solves nothing.

F) White Fragility is not representative of "the general black view of things."

G) There is no one "black view" of things - Also, "'Yes we can't'" has never been the slogan for black America and it's not now."

H) In the religion of Wokeness, advocates pretend that "racism has never been worse" than today, even in the 1960's and even during the 1850's. These are palpable untruths to any person who knows even a tiny bit of history. "Why is it un-black to address degree?"

I) It is childish for anyone to shut down opposing views to protect themselves from never being told that they are wrong. This "cathartic" approach will never change anything. We need meaningful engagement.

J) Social media has everyone "peeing in their pants," afraid to defer even minimally from Woke orthodoxy, which is making "mendacity" ubiquitous.

K) The fear of being honest and the fear to even tell a joke is "becoming almost everywhere. The only exceptions are people who are "weird like us and you don't mind being hated. But most people are not going to have that disease, and so we are stuck where we are."

If you'd like to follow John McWhorter, you can find him on his own Substack Website, It Bears Mentioning.   Also, McWhorter often joins Glenn Loury for conversation at The Glenn Show on Patreon. 

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Taking a Moment to Survey this Project of Dangerous Intersection

I recently received an email from a new reader ("Greg") who expressed appreciation for some of the articles he has read at Dangerous Intersection. I decided to share my response to his letter (see the bottom of this post).

This website has been important for me as a tool for me for trying to understand the world around me. It has not been entirely successful, of course, and never will be. The world is a inherently confusing moving target, making the quest to understand an ongoing project. It is also a complex adaptive system that demands multi-layer analysis. It's a big onion that requires exploration involving constant reframings based on both reductionism and emergence. Further complicating things, the tools we can use for understanding, spoken and written language, can only scratched the surface of our world. I have been increasingly expressing my frustration with this mismatch between our language and our quest for understanding by focusing on the "meaning of meaning." It's not that we can't make progress, but we often have to be satisfied (if we are honest) with what Nietzsche refers to in this "five fingers" reference:

Just beyond experience!-- Even great spirits have only their five fingers breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

--from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 564, R.J. Hollingdale transl

Greg's email served as another reminder to me (this has become a constant topic for me) of the intersection between group dynamics and truth. I would bet that I've written about this intersection on dozens of occasions here at this website, The problem being illustrated by Solomon Asch's classic social science experiment.

Greg, thanks for your email, and welcome to this website. I look forward to your comments, especially when you disagree!

Thanks for reaching out. It delights me when I receive letters like yours. My site started off almost like a personal journal about 15 years ago and I often write about topics as my own personal effort to figure things out rather than to tell other people how to think.  It's also been a good tool for me to help me remember and organize my thoughts. Otherwise, information pores into my head and then seems to leak right back out.

It has long been my belief that Group labels (e.g. "Christian") disguise the fact that within each labeled group there are millions of disparate people, some of them having very little in common with the others, even though it seems like they are all homogenous when you see them together in the pews on Sunday.  In other words, I don't think there's any alternative – we all have to figure it out ourselves in the end.  Good luck to you in your own personal project, and good for you to recognize that there's no substitute for hard work when it comes to figuring out anything important.  Let me know when you finish your book. And yes, that would be good to have a cup of coffee someday once the vaccine starts doing its work in a big way.

I have worked very hard to articulate my own views regarding religion and they have evolved over the years. You might find my series of articles on this topic relevant to your own endeavor. I title these articles "mending fences," and you can find the first of the sequence (of five articles) here: https://dangerousintersection.org/2010/07/11/mending-fences-with-believers-and-moving-on-part-i/

If you choose to take the time to read through these five articles, I would very much be interested in hearing what you think about them.  I don't often see my approach expressed by other people, although more recently I have been increasingly influenced by the writings of David Sloan Wilson, on the coupled topic of religion and evolution.
Again, thanks for reaching out!
Erich

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What is a Cult? Descriptions from Cult Education Institute

There's a lot of accusations that Americans on both the political right and left are now members of "Cults." What exactly is a cult? After doing a bit of research, I found these helpful descriptions / definitions / traits of Cult Leaders and their followers from the Cult Education Institute. The following material is from the CEI webpage titled "Warning Signs":

Ten warning signs of a potentially unsafe group/leader.

  1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
  2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
  3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
  4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
  5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
  6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
  7. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
  8. Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
  9. The group/leader is always right.
  10. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.

Ten warning signs regarding people involved in/with a potentially unsafe group/leader.

  1. Extreme obsessiveness regarding the group/leader resulting in the exclusion of almost every practical consideration.
  2. Individual identity, the group, the leader and/or God as distinct and separate categories of existence become increasingly blurred. Instead, in the follower's mind these identities become substantially and increasingly fused--as that person's involvement with the group/leader continues and deepens.
  3. Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned it is characterized as "persecution".
  4. Uncharacteristically stilted and seemingly programmed conversation and mannerisms, cloning of the group/leader in personal behavior.
  5. Dependency upon the group/leader for problem solving, solutions, and definitions without meaningful reflective thought. A seeming inability to think independently or analyze situations without group/leader involvement.
  6. Hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda, which seems to supercede any personal goals or individual interests.
  7. A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.
  8. Increasing isolation from family and old friends unless they demonstrate an interest in the group/leader.
  9. Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.
  10. Former followers are at best-considered negative or worse evil and under bad influences. They can not be trusted and personal contact is avoided.

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About Calls to Prayer

For several years I have taught week-long courses at law schools in Istanbul, Turkey. Those visits have been put on pause due to COVID. I was a couple weeks from traveling to Istanbul once again in early March, 2020, but I reluctantly cancelled that.

I often think of the many people I repeatedly visit when I'm in Turkey. Like most of my friends in the U.S., digital technologies have made it possible to keep in touch, but I look forward to the day when I can once again take it all in through all five senses.

Back here in St. Louis, Missouri, I tend to my ordinary life. Every week or so, however, I fondly think of something that I couldn't have predicted before I first visited the Middle East. I often think of the call to prayer.

In the Middle East, the muezzin calls out from the top of nearby minarets five times each day (sometimes more than one at the same time if you are between minarets). It's a call, for sure, and almost seems like a song, but I've been told that it is not singing. The calls seemed like intrusions on my ears until I heard many of them. Gradually, over my repeated visits, the call to prayer became an exceptionally beautiful moment for me. I write this as an atheist who doesn't understand any of the words of the call to prayer. For me, its beauty is about the sounds and the moment, coupled with images of the venerable mosques I visited (I took these photos in Turkey and Egypt). Also coupled with the second-to-none hospitality of the people I met in the Middle East. It's different than church bells, because it's only five times each day and because you are not hearing a mechanical bell--you are hearing a human being earnestly calling out to you.

As I repeatedly visited Turkey, I started looking forward to the calls as opportunities to stop and think about life and my place in the world. I also took it as a reminder to always be tending to things that really matter because the day is always slipping away. It is also a reminder that you are part of a much bigger community because that call is to everyone in hearing distance, not just you.

There are many reasons for craving an effective vaccine for COVID. For me, this is a reason that I didn't anticipate. This is a good example of a reason that you should travel to new places: If you travel with the right state of mind, you will be changed by what you encounter.

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