An atheist philosopher leaves the door open to religion's power

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

“Religion doesn’t need to be true to save your life.”
“How one feels is as vital to one’s survival as how one thinks.”
“We are help-seeking mammals and religiosity is built into our brains.”.....

“I came to see religion as one of the earliest forms of culture and I realized it needed to be addressed in a systematic way.” And that prompted him to zero in and write “Why We Need Religion.”

To read more:

https://religionnews.com/2018/08/01/philosopher-stephen-asma-leaves-open-the-door-to-religions-power/

[marylandblue]

1. The headline is misleading, the philosopher is agnostic

Religion News seems to make misleading headlines a lot.

[guillaumeb]

4. From the article:

Asma replied, “You can’t know for sure but in my own life, I suspect there is no God in the personal way that the monotheisms recognize. ” And so, in classic Asma way, he leaves the door open.

At DU, there is an atheist/agnostic group, so DU recognizes the overlap.

[marylandblue]

9. Yes there is overlap, but it's wrong to alter his self-identification

There is overlap between Christianity and Islam too, but it would be wrong to put "Christian" in the headline for an article about a Muslim.

[MineralMan]

2. He's not an atheist. Misleading title.

He styles himself a Buddhist/Agnostic, right away, so he's clearly not an atheist.

In any case, one person saying something is just one voice speaking into the wind of millions of voices. What prompted you to choose to post this particular essay?

I haven't seen your screen name around here for a few days. I hope you were doing something enjoyable.

[guillaumeb]

3. My wife and I volunteer a lot.

And our church group is involved in an interfaith coalition which has been taking much time. Thank you for asking.

I posted it because of the "religion is hard-wired theme".

[MineralMan]

5. Still, the article title is incorrect, as is explained

immediately in the story. So, it's not an atheist saying these things. it's a "Buddhist/agnostic." That's a different thing.

Again, I often wonder if you even read those religionnews.com articles. You keep saying you do, but then you post another one with an incorrect title.

I always go and look, of course. religionnews is not news, really. It's just a collection of articles by and about people most have never heard of. It's a lousy source, really. I don't know why you rely on it so heavily.

[guillaumeb]

6. I wonder many things about many people, but generally I keep the

"wondering" private.

At DU, there is an atheist/agnostic group, so DU recognizes the considerable overlap between the 2 positions. And you are well aware of the definition of the 2 positions so there is no need for me to link to definitions.

[MineralMan]

7. You didn't write the article's title.

You used the article as a source, though. Since it's clear that the subject of the article does not consider himself to be an atheist, why was the title written that way? See, I have written hundreds of articles for publication. I've never seen a title that misleading on any of them. Title writers are really supposed to read the material they're titling.

I don't believe there's a lot of integrity over there at religionnews.com. Not a lot at all.

Off topic: I discovered an old article I wrote in 1980 yesterday, by accident. I was looking up something else and encountered it. I had no idea it had been preserved on the internet. It's not my earliest published article, but it's way back there. Its title isn't deceptive:

http://www.rexresearch.com/xtlradio/classic.pdf

[Mariana]

11. "...generally I keep the 'wondering' private."

[MineralMan]

12. C'est pour rire, vraiment.

[Major Nikon]

10. His argument is a convenient lie is better than an inconvenient truth

His alleged non-belief is debatable, but regardless his argument is really not fundamentally different than other religionists' arguments for religion which is to underscore all the flowery feel good parts of religion and ignore all the down sides.

Not surprisingly the same author has a track history of equally flawed conclusions with a similar heavy reliance on the anecdotal. He's a big fan of Eastern medicine, most of which is quackery and argues pseudoscience is really no different than science, based on his own account of turtle blood making him feel better after a cold.