The Australian 2016 Census figures show a decline in Christian belief from 61% to 52% of our population. This goes along with the steady decline since 1901:
In just over a hundred years Christianity has lost 44% of the population in Australia. Obviously the Christian church is doing something wonderful to continue in this downward spiral.
In a blow to Islamophobia the decline in Christianity (9.1%) was more than the percentage of Muslims in Australia (2.6%).
The category of "No religion" is up from 22.6% to 29.6%. Despite what some atheists may like to believe, "No religion" does not mean that every person in this category is an atheist. It includes agnostics and theists who belong to no religion.
An Agnostic’s Assessment Of New Atheist Attitudes by Matt Nelson
BBC Radio personality, John Humphrys, an agnostic ... responds to seven common New Atheist attitudes in his book, In God We Doubt (I have reconfigured the statement/response format for easier reading):
1. Believers are mostly naive or stupid. Or, at least, they’re not as clever as atheists.
To which Humphreys responds: “This is so clearly untrue it’s barely worth bothering with. Richard Dawkins, in his best selling The God Delusion, was reduced to producing a “study” by Mensa that purported to show an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief. He also claimed that only a very few members of the Royal Society believe in a personal god. So what? Some believers are undoubtedly stupid (witness the creationists) but I’ve met one or two atheists I wouldn’t trust to change a light-bulb.”
2. The few clever ones are pathetic because they need a crutch to get them through life.
To which Humphrys responds: “Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible. It doesn’t prove anything about either.”
3. They are also pathetic because they can’t accept the finality of death.
To which Humphrys responds: “Maybe, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Count the number of atheists in the foxholes or the cancer wards.”
4. They have been brainwashed into believing. There is no such thing as a “Christian child”, for instance—just a child whose parents have had her baptised.
To which Humphrys responds: “True, and many children reject it when they get older. But many others stay with it.”
5. They have been bullied into believing.
To which Humphrys responds: “This is also true in many cases but you can’t actually bully someone into believing—just into pretending to believe.”
6. If we don’t wipe out religious belief by next Thursday week, civilisation as we know it is doomed.
To which Humphrys responds: “Of course the mad mullahs are dangerous and extreme Islamism is a threat to be taken seriously. But we’ve survived monotheist religion for 4, 000 years or so, and I can think of one or two other things that are a greater threat to civilisation.”
7. Trust me: I’m an atheist.
To which Humphrys responds: “Why?” He adds: “I make no apology if I have oversimplified their views with a little list: it’s what they do to believers all the time.”
FROM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillahunty
Matt Dillahunty (born March 31, 1969) is an American public speaker and Internet personality, and was the president of the Atheist Community of Austin from 2006 to 2013. He has hosted the Austin-based webcast and cable-access television show The Atheist Experience since c. 2005 and formerly hosted the live internet radio show Non-Prophets Radio. He is also the founder and contributor of the counter-apologetics encyclopedia Iron Chariots and its subsidiary sites.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FROM https://twitter.com/matt_dillahunty/status/436273926654529536
I've been told there's a reddit discussion about my credentials. Easy. I have none. No degrees. No seminary. Doesn't matter.
I had an atheist mate tell me that a "skeptical" podcast now destroys the whole of the psychological assumptions behind education. Absolute bullshit! ( Nor is scientific scepticism exactly the same as scepticism in philosophy. This is a verifiable fact that he also doesn't seem to comprehend.)
The "Bright" atheist (but not so bright in education) who stated this in his quaint little podcast ( the most popular form of gathering information for atheists) is Brian Dunning (convicted of wire fraud) who has absolutely no qualification in education. He is a "computer scientist by trade". Another example of a person speaking outside their area of expertise.
I attended a NLP seminar in the 1980s by Michael Grindler (brother of John Grinder) when it was beginning to become popular. If NLP is wrong (as proven by science) then teachers will not use it. Teachers aren't stupid. Teachers still have a huge amount of material from psychology (to name but one discipline) that they can use in educating students. NLP is only one tool in many hundreds that may be used.
In particular, it appears that the academic evidence against NLP is not about “learning styles”
at all but items such as the concepts
within NLP of "mirroring and matching" (and other areas such as eye movement as
indicators of preferred learning styles, etc) and being a “tool to influence
others”. If "mirroring and matching", and eye movement as indicators of
preferred learning styles, and NLP as a “tool to influence others” are all wrong
then it does absolutely no damage whatsoever to education and various competing
theories on learning styles.
This is the most-people-believe-what’s-false-therefore-it’s-false fallacy, or the Coyne fallacy, named after its most frequent user, Jerry Coyne. This fallacy is used to reject a proposition because most people misunderstand or hold false beliefs about that proposition. So that if the average church or temple goer has a definition of God that suffers certain inconsistencies, therefore God doesn’t exist. If you accept that then you’d have to believe that since the average citizen has mistaken ideas about evolution (holding to Intelligent Design, say), therefore evolution is false. Truth is not a vote.
Jerry Coyne laughs and tries to dismiss it but he has a very poor understanding of philosophy. He engages in "foolosophy" (love of foolishness) rather than philosophy (love of wisdom).
People have asked me to comment on the recent spat between Jerry Coyne and Ross Douthat. As longtime readers of this blog know from bitter experience, there’s little point in engaging with Coyne on matters of philosophy and theology. He is neither remotely well-informed, nor fair-minded, nor able to make basic distinctions or otherwise to reason with precision. Nor, when such foibles are pointed out to him, does he show much interest in improving. ...
Naturally, his incompetence is coupled with a preposterous degree of compensatory self-confidence. As I once pointed out about Dawkins, Coyne may by now have put himself in a position that makes it psychologically impossible for him even to perceive serious criticism. The problem is that his errors are neither minor, nor occasional, nor committed in the shadows, nor expressed meekly. He commits a howler every time he opens his mouth, and he opens it very frequently, very publicly, and very loudly. His blunders are of a piece, so that to confess one would be to confess half a decade’s worth -- to acknowledge what everyone outside his combox already knows, viz. that he is exactly the kind of bigot he claims to despise. That is a level of humiliation few human beings can bear. Hence the defense mechanism of training oneself to see only ignorance and irrationality even in the most learned and sober of one’s opponents; indeed, to see it even before one sees those opponents. And so we have the spectacle of Coyne’s article last week on David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God, wherein he launches a 2800 word attack on a book he admits he has not read. The sequel of self-delusion, it seems, is self-parody.
Still, it is worthwhile responding now and again to people like Coyne, so that bystanders who wouldn’t otherwise know any better can see just how pathetic are the “arguments” of New Atheists. ...
The Abysmally Ignorant Jerry Coyne
Jerry Coyne complains:
Another problem is that scientists like me are intimidated by philosophical jargon, and hence didn’t interrupt the monologues to ask for clarification for fear of looking stupid. I therefore spent a fair amount of time Googling stuff like “epistemology” and “ontology” (I can never get those terms straight since I rarely use them).
This is an amazing confession. It shows that the man is abysmally ignorant outside his specialty. He is not wondering about the distinction between de dicto and de re, but about a Philosophy 101 distinction. It would be as if a philosopher couldn't distinguish between velocity and acceleration, or mass and weight, or a scalar and a vector, or thought that a light-year was a measure of time.
Despite his ignorance of the simplest distinctions, Coyne is not bashful about spouting off on topics he knows nothing about such as free will. Lawrence Krauss is another of this scientistic crew. And Dawkins. And Hawking and Mlodinow. And . . . . Their arrogance stands in inverse relation to their ignorance. A whole generation of culturally-backward and half-educated scientists does not bode well for the future.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FROM philosopher Massimo Pigliucci.
But when it comes to writing for the general public, I suggest that scientists stick to what they know best, unless they are willing to engage the literature of the field(s) that they wish to comment upon. When Coyne makes statements of the type “anybody doing any kind of science should abandon his or her faith if they wish to become a philosophically consistent scientist”, he literally does not know what he is talking about because he does not have a grasp of what it means to be “philosophically consistent” in this context. He has of course no obligation to study philosophy, but then he should refrain from writing about it as a matter of intellectual honesty toward his readers.
FROM Daniel Dennett "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking" (W. Norton & Co: 2014) p.25
... a list of rules promulgated many years ago by the social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport [Rapoport’s Rules ] ...
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
1 - You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
2 - You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3 - You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4 - Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Logic is firmly within the domain of Philosophy. Logical thinking is not automatic for atheists (who like to call themselves "critical thinkers" or "Brights") nor does logic originate in the domain of science.
Some very basic philosophical questions: "What really matters to you? How should you then live?" You can find out the answer by measuring the time you spend on certain activities. This is relevant to atheists, theists, agnostics and non-theists. If any person associated with those groups spends the majority of their time telling other people how they should live their lives then they probably don't have much of an "authentic" life ( to quote atheist Jean-Paul Sartre). They are, instead, totally consumed with ensuring everyone else has the exact same world-view as themselves and are thus "inauthentic".
I'd rather live my own life and enjoy it than spend my life consumed with telling others what to do and how they are wrong because they don't share my worldview.
An "inauthentic" life becomes worse when, if you follow some of the new atheists, you are supposed to spend at least part of it mocking the views of others. Mocking is not a logic argument. Therefore my question is: "Is it far more important to spend the vast majority of your limited time telling others that they are wrong rather than living your own finite life? What is the benefit of such a life both to oneself and to others?" Whatever your answer, it is equally relevant to atheists, theists, agnostics and non-theists.
Of course, the other huge philosophical question is: "What if I am wrong and I have spent the majority of my finite life telling people to follow my error?"
Everything stated in the video could also be stated about atheism and atheists themselves.
The video argument summarised in reverse:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"In a serious mood because it's time to knock something on the head. When atheists run out of comebacks in these debates, rather than coming up with verifiable evidence to support their claims they tend to try other tactics to stay in the game for reasons that are, ironically, self evident. It's nothing new but I've been seeing a lot of this lately. The old unverified idea that we believers are all delusional and that all religion is a virus that should be destroyed. Seeing as it is going to fall on deaf ears I really don't know why I'm bothering because even when their ideas are held up to them and they see for themselves the transparent rubbish that these arguments are, they tend to hold onto them and keep repeating them anyway. So not knowing why I am bothering, here I go.
Atheists do things that believers usually don't bother emulating:
- Some actively campaign daily against something they don't believe exists
- Some seem to think that insult is a form of valid argument (It isn't)
- Some seem to think that they are more intelligent because they are atheist (They aren't)
- Some want the laws of the land they live in changed to discriminate against believers
- Some have a blind acceptance of scientism with knowledge of the flaws as demonstrated by the philosophy of science (The problems of induction and verification)
- Some have a blind acceptance of empiricism without understanding it's problems as demonstrated in philosophy
- Some want all religious knowledge banned in schools and universities
- Some discriminate against all religions and want all religion destroyed
- Some want to describe themselves as persecuted minority and state that this is why they should be so aggressive, insulting and abusive (Compare to the pacifist tactics of the minority group led by Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr)
- Some want to imitate the religion that they hate and form atheist churches and atheist TV programs and channels
- Some openly state that they are reactionary protest group against believers and without a God / gods or believers there would be absolutely no need for atheism.
- Some taunt believers with straw man fallacies such as "You believe in a sky daddy". (It would really help if atheists knew about that which they are against.)
-Some believe that belief in a God has a detrimental affect on society and believers themselves (Atheists really should study more history and read outside their quaint little books written by people with no qualifications in the subject area)
- Some pontificate about matters outside their area of expertise (A biologist ranting about religion is an example.)
- Some want to force all people to become atheists with no freewill choice of belief in a God / gods.
- Some believe they are entitled to wave their lack of belief around and demand special respect for it
- Some wish to deny believers the same equal rights as atheists
- Some think that they do not have to provide any verification or positive logical rational argument for their lack of belief. (Atheism has no positive argument for its existence - it proceeds from a negative argument against theism.)
- Some repeatedly shift the burden of proof for atheist claims away from atheists even when confronted with verifiable atheist claims that "God probably doesn't exist" in the atheist British bus campaign.
- Some repeatedly lie that "atheists never make any claims about God" (despite a verifiable plethora of atheist books and websites that do make claims about God)
- Some think they have rational justification to destroy another's belief. (They don't.)
- Some hold on to cruelty, prejudice, bigotry, hate, terrorism and war.
- Some are guilty of the very same hypocrisy that they claim to see in others
A-theism is as irrelevant to daily life as a-invisiblepinkunicornism or a-fairyism or a-flyingspaghettimonsterism or a-santaclausism or a-toothfairyism or a-leprechaunism.
The new atheists have adopted empiricism, verificationism, scientism and humanism on top of their lack of belief in a God. Empiricism, scientism and humanism do not directly and logically flow from a lack of belief in a God.
Atheists, do you see how pathetic these arguments and tactics are? These arguments that you use against us believers are irrational and illogical and sometimes plain spiteful. We believers will stand up against your atheism when you want to militantly attempt to destroy our religion and God / gods. If you want atheism then keep it to yourself. If you choose to take it into the public arena, which is your right also, then expect that believers will demand that you provide a verifiable positive rational logical argument for your lack of belief in a God / gods. You have not yet done so as a negative argument against theism is not a positive argument for atheism. Both could be wrong. Also expect that your hypocrisy and lack of knowledge about religion, theology and philosophy of religion and philosophy of science will be exposed. Just don't make ridiculous unverified claims and straw man fallacies about believers and their God / gods.
I find it interesting that an atheist requires a cult. Dusty Smith's "Cult Of Dusty" also has many features of a cult such as:
- cult leader speaking outside his area of expertise
- asking for money
- brainwashing
- calling for the destruction of those he disagrees with
- cult leader advocating practices that he doesn't himself use. Example his catchphrase "Logic!"
Is this the pinnacle of atheism? Is this how atheists want everyone to be?
Dusty Smith is an American comedian, author, actor, Internet entrepreneur, and musician. ...
At 20, Dusty discovered a loophole in popular search engines that allowed him to dominate the search results for many of the most searched keywords and by 24 had MADE HIS FIRST MILLION IN ONLINE REVENUE. ...
At 30, Dusty began to research heavily into Christianity in order to prove to an atheist friend that it was true. However, this research led him to become one of the world’s most outspoken atheists. ...
The Cult of Dusty is currently one of the most popular Atheist channels on Youtube with tens of thousands of subscribers and millions of video views worldwide.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Where did the million dollars go? Dusty Smith asking for money after his wife's car accident and his failure to buy insurance. (His wife has recently left him and he moved house.)
So people ask me all the time, "How can we destroy Christianity?" Well its actually pretty simple. Christianity is one large Meme made up of many smaller memes. To destroy Christianity you simply have to learn the counter-memes. It's like a video game. When a Christian tries to infect you with a Christian meme, you simply turn the tables and infect them instead with the "counter-meme". Memes are just mental viruses and once you infect a Christian's mind with enough counter-memes, eventually Christianity dies the death of a hundred viruses. I have deprogrammed thousands of cult members and its always the same.
Dusty Smith
17 hours ago · Edited
Just got a good question. "Why bother to try to change a 40 year old's mind about God?" Because it actually benefits you to destroy religion as soon as possible. They are holding back the evolution of our society. An evolution that could help you live much longer with a much higher quality of life. The sooner it's destroyed, the more benefit you get out of it. You'd really have to be an idiot not to get involved and try to make our society evolve as quickly as it can. If for nothing more than selfish reasons alone.
This group was started because of my experience with atheists.
The vast majority of atheists that I encountered in atheist forums eventually resorted to insult and / or ad hominem fallacy when I did not agree with them 100%. ( There were also many polite, educated atheists with whom it was a joy to discuss.) The Moderators approved of atheists insulting non-atheists but those who insulted atheists were warned or banned. This type of hypocrisy was rampant in the vast majority of atheist forums I was a member of or visited.
Along with being “angry [mean], argumentative, dogmatic [closeminded]" the obnoxious type of atheists wrongly assumed that they had a higher IQ and were more logical and rational than any non- atheist though the vast majority had never studied the domain of logic and rationality - philosophy. Many atheists had never read the religious texts that they criticised or, if they did, could only read them in a naive amateur literalist manner. They knew very little about the nuances of hermeneutics. They regularly criticised religions though they had never met in person anyone from the religion they were criticising. They, again, knew very little about the religion's various dogmas and the different denominations within the religion.
One quite famous atheist who has a "cult" regularly uses his catch phrase of "Logic!" while at the same time sprouting some of the most illogical and irrational nonsense in an “angry [mean], argumentative, dogmatic [closeminded]" manner peppered with as many swear words that he can think of. “angry [mean], argumentative, dogmatic [closeminded]" isn't any way to persuade people to adopt your worldview.
Each month new atheists are added to this group. I have blocked more atheists for not following the group rules than any other group of people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. No personal insult of members or individuals. 2. No insult of deities / prophets / spokespeople 3. No posting threads irrelevant to the aim of the group. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One would think that these minimal rules would be easy to follow but apparently they are quite difficult for some atheists who are regularly encouraged to to do the exact opposite on many forums.
Dialogue is the creative thinking together that can emerge when genuine empathetic listening, respect for all participants, safety, peer relationships, suspending judgment, sincere inquiry, courageous speech, and discovering and disclosing assumptions work together to guide our conversations. It is an activity of curiosity, cooperation, creativity, discovery, and learning rather than persuasion, competition, fear, and conflict. Dialogue is the only symmetrical form of communication. Dialogue emerges from trusting relationships. ...
- Balance Inquiry and Advocacy ...
- Listening to understand ...
- Suspending judgment ...
- Respecting all: Attribute positive motives and constructive intent to each participant. Appreciate all that is good about them, all that you share in common with them, and all they can contribute. Acknowledge the dignity, legitimacy, worth, and humanity of the person speaking. Allow for differing viewpoints and learn all you can from them. Examine the origins within your self of any tendency you have to disrespect participants. Resist your temptation to blame. Remain humble and accept that they can teach us and we can learn from them. Attain and appreciate their viewpoint; do not attack, intrude, deny, dismiss, dispute, or discount their comments. Banish violence.
- Speaking your voice ...
Quotations:
“People don't listen, they reload.” ...
“The unity of contraries is the mystery at the innermost core of dialogue.” ~ Martin Buber ...
“Inquiry and violence cannot coexist.” ~ Peter Garrett
“The magic of dialogue is that it really does enhance respect and acceptance of others.” ~ Daniel Yankelovich ...
“There is something valid in every position.” ~ Johan Galtung ...
"The bible is nothing more than an ancient monkey text written by primitive screwheads who didn't know hat the fuck the were talking about." - Dusty Smith, Facebook 27/01/2014
A very logical comment by Dusty that is empirically verified ... or maybe not.
What academic qualification does Dusty have in logic or biblical scholarship? Oh, that's right - none. Dusty boasts that his logic and knowledge all comes from Google and YouTube which are hardly definitively true. As a philosopher trained in logic at a university I could tell Dusty about the logical fallacies that atheism is built upon.
First, the rationale for non-belief is that there this is no empirical evidence for God therefore God does not exist. Therefore atheists demand empirical evidence from all believers in God for the existence of a non-empirical God. That is a category mistake. One can never provide empirical evidence for a non-empirical God. The non-empirical is not empirical.
Secondly, it is also a Straw Man fallacy as no contemporary theologian posits an empirical God yet atheists wrongly assume that all theists somehow believe in an empirical God. It is a really good idea to understand the type of God that you are arguing against and not to misrepresent it.
Science cannot measure non-empirical items such as consciousness or beauty or God. There are no empirical units of measurement that one can use on the non-empirical.
Dusty Smith's catch phrase is "Logic."
I have presented logic above by one who has studied at a university and knows logic.
Logic is part of the domain of philosophy. It should be noted that logic does not automatically lead to atheism.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
phi·los·o·phy (fĭ-lŏs′ə-fē)
n. pl. phi·los·o·phies
...
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
...
6. The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
It is utterly amazing how many atheists boast of using logic yet have no formal training in logic and have arguments that are quite illogical.
Marcus Mergett (using a clown face for his Facebook profile) is a case in point. Quoting his own words from Facebook on 24/1/2014:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Anyone who claims to be a scholar of the bible is the scholar of a fictional fairy tale book full of murder, rape, genocide, misogyny etc.... no history classes use it as material..... atheism is the ability to think logically and look at evidence with a skeptical eye.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He then posted the first paragraphs of an article by Dr Joel Hoffman in the Huffington Post without attribution thus leaving readers to think that he had written the text himself. Marcus Mergett stated that no church ever mentioned such things. He is absolutely incorrect. Many liberal churches do say exactly the same as Joel Hoffman. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-joel-hoffman/the-bible-isnt-history_b_2803409.html This is worth quoting at length ....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One way to understand the difference between history and fiction in the Bible is through the Old Testament's natural division into three parts:
Sometimes 'believing the Bible' means believing that a story in it didn't happen.
The world and its nature (Adam to Terah).
The Israelites and their purpose (Abraham to Moses).
The Kingdom of Israel and life in Jerusalem (roughly from King David onward).
Even a cursory look reveals a clear and significant pattern. In the first section, characters live many hundreds of years, and in the second, well into their second century. Only in the third section do biblical figures tend to live biologically reasonable lives.
For example, Adam, in the first section, lives to the symbolic age of 930, and Noah lives even twenty years longer than that. Abraham, from the second section, lives to be 175, his son Issac to 180, and Jacob "dies young" at the age of 147. But the lifespans from King David onward, in the third section, are in line with generally accepted human biology. ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcus Mergett quoted the above paragraphs to prove that the bible was a complete work of fiction and unrelated to history. Marcus failed to either read or comprehend the next part of the article which contradicts everything that Marcus previously stated. I quote again (captials for emphasis):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
... Furthermore, HISTORIANS mostly agree that only the third section represents actual HISTORY. ... HISTORY and fiction mingle throughout the Old Testament ... Jeremiah's HISTORICAL description of the siege on Jerusalem is not the same as Ezekiel's non-historical vision of the dry bones, just as there are HISTORICAL elements (like the invention of fire-hardened bricks) even in the non-historical account of the Tower of Babel. ... The New Testament similarly offers more than just stories, and, as with the Old Testament, only some of the stories in the New Testament were meant as HISTORY. Others were intended to convey things like theology and morality. ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcus Mergett fails in logic on all the points he mentioned:
1. "The bible is a fictional fairy tale."
Incorrect. The bible is a collection of books by different authors and at different times that has been edited. It contains some history.
2. "No history classes use the bible as material."
Incorrect. Many universities use the bible as source material for the history of ancient Israel.
3. "Atheism is the ability to think logically and look at evidence with a skeptical eye."
Incorrect. One does not automatically become logical by being an atheist. Nor does logic automatically lead to atheism. "The ability to think logically and look at evidence with a skeptical eye" is the domain of philosophy and not atheism.
Quoting from Sartre in Simone de Beauvoir's 'Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre' (Translated by Patrick O'Brian; Penguin; London:1984) p 436 - 443 ... interviews with Sartre just before his death
[DB = De Beauvoir S = Sartre]
**************************
DB: Among these friends were there any who tried to persuade you - I don't say convert you - but to persuade you of God's existence?
S: No, never. .....
DB: There was a time when you knew some Christians very intimately, and that was in then prison camp. Indeed your best friend was a priest.
S: Yes, most of the people I mixed with there were priests. But at that time, in the prison camp, they represented the only intellectuals I knew. ....They were intellectuals, people who thought about the same things as I did. Not always as I thought, but even so reflecting upon the same things was a bond. ... The Abbe Leroy told me quite spontaneously that he would not accept a place in Heaven if I were turned away. ...
DB: And when you wrote Being and Nothingness did you vindicate or try to vindicate your disbelief in God philosophically?
S: Yes, of course, it had to be vindicated. I tried to show that God would have to be the "in-itself for itself," that is, an infinite in-itself inhabited by an infinite for-itself, and that this notion of "in-itself for-itself" was it self contradictory and could not constitute a proof of God's existence. ... In Being and Nothingness I set out reasons for my denial of God's existence that were not actually the real reasons. The real reasons were much more direct and childish - since I was only twelve - than theses on the impossibility of this reason or that for God's existence. ... Even if one does not believe in God, there are elements of the idea of God that remain in us and that cause us to see the world with some divine aspects. ... I don't see myself as so much dust that has appeared in the world, but as being that was expected, prefigured, called forth. in short, as a being that could, it seems, come only from a creator; and this idea of a creating hand that created me refers me back to God. ...
DB: Apart from the feeling of not being here by chance, are here other fields in which there are traces of God? In the moral field, for example?
S: Yes. In the moral field I've retained one single thing to do with the existence of God, and this is Good and Evil as absolutes. ...
DB: Or as Dostoievsky says, "If God does not exist, everything is allowed." You don't think that, do you?
S: In one way I clearly see what he means, and abstractly it's true; but in another I clearly see that killing a man is wrong. .... I look upon the absolute as a product of the relative, then opposite of then usual view. ... it is certain that the notions of absolute Good and Evil arose from the catechism I was taught. ... That's what I mean. I think the objects I see here do indeed exist apart from me. It's not my consciousness that makes them exist. They don't exist for the sake of my consciousness and merely for that; they don't exist for the sake of the consciousness of mankind and merely for that. They exist without consciousness in the first place. ....
DB: When a man like Merleau-Ponty ... said he believed in God, or when your friends the priests, the Jesuits, said that they believed in God? On the whole what do you think the fact of stating that he believes in God represents the way a man leads his life?
S: ... At present .. there is no intuition of the divine. I think that nowadays the notion of God is already dated. .... They have a vision of the world that belongs to a past age. ...
***************
Sartre's above proof of God's non-existence also requires a thorough knowledge of philosophical terms that most Christians have no idea about. Sartre wrote in French and so as English speakers and reader we only have a very poor translation to work with. Namely:
"Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what is is." Being includes both Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself, but the latter is a nihilation of the former. As contrasted with Existence, Being is all-embracing and objective rather than individual and subjective.
"Being-for-itself" is the nihilation of Being-in-itself; consciousness conceived as a lack of Being, a desire for Being, a relation to Being. By bringing Nothingness into the world the For-itself can stand out from Being and judge other beings by knowing what it is not. Each For-itself is the nihilation of a particular being. It is the human way of Being which is fluid and open to possibilities and imagination.
"Being-in-itself" is non-conscious Being. It is the Being of the phenomenon and overflows the knowledge which we have of it. It is a plenitude, a fixed and complete being, and strictly speaking we can say of it only that it is. It has no relation to itself or to anything else.
