Category Archives: Religion

Adam Smith on the Death of David Hume

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Adam Smith, the economist and philosopher, and David Hume, the philosopher and historian, were very close friends. In 1776, after Hume died, Smith wrote a letter describing his friend’s attitude toward his coming death. It is controversial whether Hume was an atheist, but it is clear that he maintained his skepticism regarding religion until the end.

Below are excerpts from Smith’s letter:

His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements run so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. “I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmondstone,” said Doctor Dundas to him one day, “that I left you much better, and in a fair way of recovery.” “Doctor,” said he, “as I believe you would not choose to tell any thing but the truth, you had better tell him, that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.”

When he was reading, a few days before, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself. “I could not well imagine”, said he, “what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I therefore have all reason to die contented.”

He then diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and with imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them. “Upon further consideration,” said he, “I thought I might say to him, Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives the alterations.” But Charon would answer, “When you have seen the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat.”

But I might still urge, “Have a little patience, good Charon; I have been endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.” But Charon would then lose all temper and decency. “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue.”

Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion…. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.

I ever am, dear Sir, Most affectionately yours, Adam Smith

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic880131.files/Adam.Smith.to.W.Strahan.Death.of.Hume.pdf

Their Shoes Look Good, Too

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You don’t often hear about a company that wears its atheism on its sleeve — or its shoes. Atheist Shoes, however, is a German company that claims to make very comfortable shoes “for people who don’t believe in god(s)”.

According to their website, they noticed that packages sent to the U.S. were having a lot of delivery problems. So they devised an experiment, mailing two packages to the same address, with “Atheist” clearly printed on one and not the other.

The results were or were not surprising, depending on your understanding of Americans and religion (and maybe the U.S. Post Office). You can see the results on their website, which is worth visiting just to see how they tell the story (apparently they are artists in addition to being atheists — and someone there also writes very good English).

P.S. — If you scroll way down the page, there’s an epilogue that discusses the results of their study and its scientific aspects.

http://www.atheistberlin.com/study

P.P.S. — This is also good:

http://www.atheistberlin.com/hole

Mary, My Wife, My Disciple?

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The Smithsonian has a long article with a lot more information about the scrap of papyrus that suggests Jesus had a wife.

Personally, I don’t care whether he was married or not (or what kind of sex life he had, if any). What’s interesting is that Professor Karen King, who is presenting this new information to the world, doesn’t claim that the papyrus provides reliable biographical information about Jesus. She admits that it calls into question the official view that Jesus wasn’t married, but she thinks that its real significance is that it shows yet again that important alternative versions of Christianity were suppressed by church authorities:

“Her scholarship has been a kind of sustained critique of what she calls the ‘master story’ of Christianity: a narrative that casts the canonical texts of the New Testament as divine revelation that passed through Jesus in ‘an unbroken chain’ to the apostles and their successors—church fathers, ministers, priests and bishops who carried these truths into the present day.

According to this ‘myth of origins,’ as she has called it, followers of Jesus who accepted the New Testament—chiefly the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, written roughly between A.D. 65 and A.D. 95 —were true Christians. Followers of Jesus inspired by noncanonical gospels were heretics hornswoggled by the devil.”

In this case, the alternative version is one in which a woman (possibly Mary Magdalene) has a larger role in the history of Christianity, either as the wife of Jesus or as an “apostle to the apostles”.

 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Inside-Story-of-the-Controversial-New-Text-About-Jesus-170177076.html#ixzz27288Pbf5

Politics and the Prince of Peace

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According to a Gallup poll from last year, 62% of very religious white Americans are Republicans, while 27% are Democrats. In Gallup’s words: “A white American’s degree of religiousness … is a strong predictor of that person’s political orientation”.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/150443/Religious-Whites-Identify-GOP.aspx

Yet it isn’t obvious why this is the case. It certainly isn’t obvious that Jesus’s teachings are more consistent with right-wing politics than left-wing politics (and certainly not by a margin of more than 2 to 1).

No doubt there are many reasons why this state of affairs has come to pass here in America. While doing some casual reading on the internet, however, I came upon an article called “Would Jesus Vote Republican?” on a site called RaptureReady.com. Perhaps this article isn’t representative, but the author strongly recommends voting for Republicans, even though they are the lesser of two evils:

“The Republican Party brings to the legislative table in America a much safer, more sound course of governing, in our view. The GOP, for the most part, opposes abortion, legitimizing homosexuality as equal to heterosexual relationships, and huge programs that create and perpetuate destructive, mammoth social programs…. That party is, by and large, in favor of a strong national defense, national sovereignty, and keeping God’s name at the heart of our national character”.

http://www.raptureready.com/republican.html

One thing we might all agree on concerning the paragraph above: it doesn’t have a lot to do with Jesus.

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

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There is a new book out by journalist and former philosophy grad student Jim Holt called Why Does the World Exist? It’s worth reading if you’re interested in questions like that.

Nowadays, when people ask why the world exists they are generally asking why the Big Bang occurred. Unfortunately, nobody knows. The most common answers are that either some random quantum event or some higher being made it happen. Some physicists think that our universe is just a small part of reality and that the existence of a vast, possibly infinite, collection of other universes explains why ours is here and/or why ours is the way it is. 

As soon as a particular cause or reason for our universe to exist is suggested, however, it is natural to ask why that cause or reason is the explanation, rather than some other cause or reason. Why are the laws of quantum mechanics in effect? Where did God come from? Where did all those other universes come from?

This is why the answer provided by a Buddhist monk at the very end of the Why Does the World Exist? is my personal favorite: “As a Buddhist, … he believes that the universe had no beginning….The Buddhist doctrine of a beginning-less universe makes the most metaphysical sense….A billion causes could not make the universe come into existence out of what does not exist”.

Perhaps the reality that exists beyond our universe or that preceded the Big Bang (the super-universe, the multiverse, the quantum foam, whatever it might be) always existed and always will. It simply was. Or is. It never came into existence, so no cause, reason or explanation is necessary or even possible. Perhaps it’s cyclical. Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s always changing. Perhaps it isn’t. But it had no beginning and might have no end.

The great 17th century philosopher Spinoza referred to all of existence as “God, or Nature” (Deus, sive Natura): “That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature”. I prefer “Nature” to “God”. To Spinoza, it was the same thing and it was eternal.