One question I would like to ask is of atheism is the sense in which atheism is the denial of the category of 'the sacred' or 'the holy'. The denial of the idea of the holy is not quite the same as denying that there is a God although there's obviously an overlap. But the 'experience of the holy' is a much broader category, in that it may or may not be centred around God. Buddhism for example has no belief in a creator god, yet it seems to be similar to theistic religion in terms of its ethical philosophy and behavioural demands (celibacy, non-violence, non-coveting etc) and even in many philosophical respects.

The OP, by a contributor who was banned almost as soon as joining, asserts that belief in the supernatural is 'asinine' on the basis that it cannot be 'proven' - meaning, I presume, that it cannot be made subject to empirical validation. But this is basically just junior-school positivism so I don't think warrants consideration.

The point I want to get at is broader. What, after all, is the meaning of the idea of revelation, from an anthropological viewpoint? Are there states of spiritual illumination? These kinds of insights arise, I think, from what us moderns would deem 'non-ordinary states' - this article posits trance states which have been culturally valued since pre-historic times. (Worth noting that 'ecstacy' means literally 'outside stasis' where 'stasis' is normal day-to-day consciousness.) Or again in Buddhism, in which 'there is a whole set of teachings pertaining to the topics of realisation and the aspect of lokuttara, (a ‘transcendent’ dimension). These teachings emphatically insist on the possibility of an embodied, subjective and numinous experience through the practice of meditation' (source).

So - does atheism sweep all of this off the table? It seems to me that it must, lest 'the divine foot is let in the door', as Richard Lewontin once put it. Or can it more limited, and so more nuanced, than that?

One question I would like to ask is of atheism is the sense in which atheism is the denial of the category of 'the sacred' or 'the holy'. — Wayfarer

Forget 'the holy', according to Nietzsche, if you believe in grammar, you're a theist. Is intelligibility a matter of transcendence? If it is, we are all participating in the sacred whether we know it or not, right?

'The sacred' is not a clear idea. Sacred tends to be held in relation to something. Lenin's embalmed corpse was sacred to the Communist party. I imagine that many atheists, who are also secular humanists, would hold human rights as sacred. If you take as a presupposition that human suffering is wrong and wellbeing is good, then this makes sense, but it lacks aesthetic charm and a transcendental guarantor. The Western cannon would be held as sacred by many secular folk too - Dawkins has made this point often.

I generally hold that belief in god/s or higher consciousness is an aesthetic response. And, as I have said to you before, I think the way you express your positions often suggests (to me) that transcendent significance (via idealism, reincarnation, meditation) is aesthetically superior to a world of Weberian disenchantment (the products of stultifying Darwinism, scientism, scepticism, rationalism).

What do you understand by 'the sacred' can it be a secular notion?

One question I would like to ask is of atheism is the sense in which atheism is the denial of the category of 'the sacred' or 'the holy'. — Wayfarer

What do you understand by 'the sacred' can it be a secular notion? — Tom Storm

Absolutely not:

"The sacred" is connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.

The sacred is religious rather than secular.

The sacred is religious rather than secular. — SpaceDweller

Definitionally yes, usage... who knows?

Definitionally yes, usage... who knows? — Tom Storm

colloquially the word "sacred" is often borrowed, ex:
My country is sacred (but nobody is worshiping my land)
President's office is sacred (but nobody is worshiping his office)
holly war (but nobody is worshiping a war)

I use the word all the time and I am an atheist. It's useful to have a term to describe that which is sacrosanct and inviolable.

What do you understand by 'the sacred' can it be a secular notion? — Tom Storm

Not in the context of post-Enlightenment western culture, because secular culture was explicitly defined against religious culture. The word itself goes back to the secular calendar, distinguished from the sacramental calendar (and its holy days), the secular calendar being concerned with the day-to-day affairs. But in a philosophical sense the division is not so clear cut. Einstein held to his ‘cosmic religious views’ expressed in many of his later-in-life writings, even though he reviled organisational religion as childish and immature. As discussed in the ‘concept of religion’ thread a few weeks back, it’s really impossible to arrive at a simple definition of religion (outside the stereotypical post-Enlightenment attitude, which makes it dead easy.)

Marxism is to all intents a secular religion. Heck, Darwinism is too, to some people. Richard Dawkins used to hold school camps to imbue children with a satisfactorily scientific-rationalist mindset.

What’s that satirical verse I sometimes quote….

I believe in a single substance, the mother of all forces, which engenders the life and consciousness of everything, visible and invisible. I believe in a single Lord, biology, the unique son of the substance of the world, born from the mother substance after centuries of random shuffling of material: the encapsulated reflection of the great material sea, the epiphenomenal light of primordial darkness, the false reflection of the real world, consubstantial with the mother-substance. It is he who has descended from the shadows of the mother-substance, he who has taken on flesh from matter, he who plays at the illusion of thought from flesh, he who has become the Human Brain. I acknowledge a single method for the elimination of error, thus ultimately eliminating myself and returning to the mother substance. Amen.

(I believe that is paraphrased from The Book of the Tarot.)

But then, on the other hand, the Buddha was,relative to the culture of his day, a secular philosopher, as he rejected the authority of the Vedas and taught a method that was arguably more like that of the ancient sceptics and stoics than the early Christians. As far as the Brahmins were concerned he was a nihilist. But ultimately, his aim was to transcend the eternal cycle of birth and death, and that can’t be fit comfortably into a secular framework (notwithstanding the earnest efforts of secular Buddhism.) But then, the Buddhist conception of dharma cuts across the Western divisions of sacred and secular, in that it emphasises ‘seeing for oneself’ and acquiring insight through disciplined meditation, which is like neither what we think of as religious dogma, nor empirical science.

You raise some very important points. I too am of the view that there should be some things that are sacred if that's what you're getting at. In the simplest sense, it puts hallowed objects, ideas, places, whathaveyou in a safe spot in a manner of speaking, away from corruption/defilement/spoilage as it were; an essential part of being a good human being seems to be to protect/preserve/perpetuate that which, in general, keeps us sane, peaceful, content, and simultaneously, provides a higher ideal we all must try to attain. This, in short, is what holy is all about in my humble opinion.

The problem/catch is that sacrednsss is used as an excuse/reason to stifle free thought, the classic example being, at the moment, Islam - it doesn't take much to elicit a fatwa from the grand Ayatollah of Iran if you catch my drift.

It'a a tightrope walk - on one side fatwas and on the other side orgiastic decadence. Tough call!

The problem/catch is that sacrednsss is used as an excuse/reason to stifle free thought, the classic example being, at the moment, Islam - it doesn't take much to elicit a fatwa from the grand Ayatollah of Iran if you catch my drift. — Agent Smith

Of course that is true. Religions can be a source of oppression, no doubt about that, but they’re not only that.

Of course that is true. Religions can be a source of oppression, no doubt about that, but they’re not only that — Wayfarer

How do we tell when things are going south? Slippery slope fallacy notwithstanding, always being on guard is a headache, oui?

I hear this. The only issue, which I don't think is entirely trivial, is that we don't know what the limits of what "the natural" are. By this I do not mean science and scientific enquiry, but nature in general. We are creatures of nature, so our thoughts, feelings, emotions and reasons are also natural.

But this covers an immense amount of territory. So why postulate something beyond "the natural", if we don't know just how big it is?

It would be a different story if we somehow knew that the natural only covers, say, non-conscious things. Then we would be forced to say that everything mental is supernatural.

But then we are merely stipulating definitions and not discussing the content of these terms.

We are creatures of nature, so our thoughts, feelings, emotions and reasons are also natural. — Manuel

By extension then man made fibers are natural too. Cheers for nylon!

Can you name an example of anything we know of which is non-natural?

The problem/catch is that sacrednsss is used as an excuse/reason to stifle free thought, the classic example being, at the moment, Islam - it doesn't take much to elicit a fatwa from the grand Ayatollah of Iran if you catch my drift — Agent Smith

What is free thought? Don't you think your thoughts have been formed by science, on school? You were forced by law to follow the brainwash. Or braintaint maybe. Isn't science stifeling too? There are a lot of science ayattolah's. Threatening with punishment if you don't adapt.

Surely, not everything natural is good. Earthquakes are natural, but suck for people. Hemlock too if used in certain ways, so it's not as if natural is somehow sacred or benign.

There are things called "supernatural", stuff like ghosts, auras and the like. I think these things are based on faulty judgement of perceptions and evidence for these things is shaky at best.

Even if suddenly there is good evidence for these phenomena, why call them supernatural? I mean, we can't find 95% of the universe, but we don't call that "supernatural".

What is free thought? Don't you think your thoughts have been formed by science, on school? You were forced by law to follow the brainwash. Or braintaint maybe. Isn't science stifeling too? There are a lot of science ayattolah's. Threatening with punishment if you don't adapt — Haglund

Everybody knows what free thought is. Look it up.

I said nothing about science. Nevertheless, you would be going against the spirit of science if you ever adopt a dogmatic stance as a scientist. With religion, dogmatism (so-called orthodoxy) is a defining feature.

From our friend Wiki:

for an encyclopedic entry. (November 2020)

Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a freethinker is "a person who forms their own ideas and opinions rather than accepting those of other people, especially in religious teaching." In some contemporary thought in particular, free thought is strongly tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems. The cognitive application of free thought is known as "freethinking", and practitioners of free thought are known as "freethinkers". Modern freethinkers consider free thought to be a natural freedom from all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from society

"not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma"

Ain't school learning you what authorities say you must? Fir example there is the dogma of molecular biology. And many more.

You submit a strawman that certainly no significant group adheres to, which is that the Hebrew Bible is to be read literally and in isolation. — Hanover

The only strawman here is the one you made. It is not a matter of reading the myths literally. How do you understand the following:

Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.' — Isaiah 45:7

Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” — Job 2:10

The term translated as evil is ra'. It means bad, trouble, adversity, calamity.

If they did, adherents would be stoning little girls. — Hanover

I raised this problem before, but you ignored it. By what light do we read such passages from Deuteronomy? I think it obvious that we read them in light of beliefs and values which are not fixed and eternal, but relative to time and place. Those who wrote and those who first heard the Law did not think that it was not to be taken literally.

'The sacred' is not a clear idea. — Tom Storm

The experience of the sacred is clear; there is nothing clearer. Clarity par excellence.

No. Science is not dogma. Scientists can certainly be ‘dogmatic’ though with their beliefs and ideas.

There is a reason why scientific theories adapt and change over time and The Bible and Koran remain exactly the same - one is Dogma and the other is constantly changing.

What do you understand by 'the sacred' can it be a secular notion? — Tom Storm

The intellectual approach is misguided here. Either one has had the experience of the sacred or one has not.


As to a definition: It's like porn. You know it when you see it.

No. Science is not dogma. Scientists can certainly be ‘dogmatic’ though with their beliefs and ideas. — I like sushi

Indeed. But a lot of unproven dogma is used. And the same holds for religion. There are some pretty dogmatic people in the world of religion and science.

There is a reason why scientific theories adapt and change over time and The Bible and Koran remain exactly the same - one is Dogma and the other is constantly changing — I like sushi

There is more than the bible or koran. The books of classical mechanics don't change ever. They form a dogma. And that dogma, by authorities and law is forced upon the upgrowing people.

I raised this problem before, but you ignored it. By what light do we read such passages from Deuteronomy? I think it obvious that we read them in light of beliefs and values which are not fixed and eternal, but relative to time and place. Those who wrote and those who first heard the Law did not think that it was not to be taken literally. — Fooloso4

There are two ways to read the Bible: (1) from a traditional view of a believer or (2) from the view of biblical scholarship. If you want an answer under #1, you will need to look at the tradition you are referencing and we can look at all the theology and additional texts used by that group. An Orthodox Jew would read it differently than a Reform Jew and differently than a Christian, and there are variations among Christian denominations.

Your last sentence quoted above is simply not correct and it conflates the views of #1 and #2. If you want to stand in the position of a believer, you are correct in asserting that Moses received the law from Mount Sinai and he accepted it as the word of God, but you also (depending upon your religious viewpoint) might be accepting that an oral law was also handed down that day that dramatically added to and altered the written word. That is, if you're a believer, tell me what you believe, and I'll believe you, but the views you're expressing of believers do not describe any real group of believers.

If you take the position of #2 (a modern biblical scholar), you will not say such things as "those who first heard the law" because that assumes a sudden handing down of law as opposed to hundreds of years of the Bible being written, it being edited, and it being combined by an editor into a single scroll. It also assumes a single march step through time of how the Bible was used and accepted, ignoring the fact that rabbinical Judaism is not at all similar to the Jewish practice during the times described prior to the destruction of the Temple.

What you are describing in your post is a modern fundamentalism that asserts a simple literalism to the Bible that isn't historically something biblical adherents held to, and it's certainly not something I adhere to. For that reason, it's a strawman.

As to your comment that biblical interpretations by adherents have varied through history and that fact is obvious, I agree. The insertion of biblical interpretation into this conversation only arose in this conversation when someone asked me about the historical accuracy of the flood (which I denied), but I never suggested the question of who God was best answered by referinng to the Bible.

The only strawman here is the one you made. It is not a matter of reading the myths literally. How do you understand the following:

Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.'
— Isaiah 45:7

Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”
— Job 2:10 — Fooloso4

You would be interested in my interpretation of biblical text? Why? I think we could spend weeks on Job alone, considering that does present a very complicated discussion of theodicy.

That makes no sense. There is no ‘dogma’ in science because science makes no claim of absolute truth.

Just because scientists can be ‘dogmatic’ it does not mean that science contains dogma … that is just plain wrong. Religious texts on the other hand are the very definition of dogma by claiming to be irrefutable truths.

English is a messy language, but it bothers me that people choose their own meanings and uses for words to suit their weird ideological views.

There are two ways to read the Bible: (1) from a traditional view of a believer or (2) from the view of biblical scholarship. — Hanover

These are not mutually exclusive, many but not all scholars are believers.

Your last sentence quoted above is simply not correct and it conflates the views of #1 and #2. — Hanover

Are you claiming that stoning was never taken literally? If it conflates your dubious distinction it does so for good reason. The rabbis who interpret the Law, both then and now, were both believers and biblical scholars.

If you want to stand in the position of a believer, you are correct in asserting that Moses received the law from Mount Sinai ... — Hanover

There are many believers who doubt the historical veracity of this.

If you take the position of #2 (a modern biblical scholar) — Hanover

You shifted from biblical scholarship to modern biblical scholarship. The inclusion of the perspective of time is significant.

that assumes a sudden handing down of law as opposed to hundreds of years of the Bible being written, it being edited, and it being combined by an editor into a single scroll. — Hanover

At some point it was said that certain infractions were punishable by death by stoning. Are you claiming that it was not understood literally then? At some point it was written down, are you claiming that it was not understood literally then? Eventually, however, there was no longer compliance. Such things were no longer regarded as morally acceptable. It is just this change that I am pointing to.

What you are describing in your post is a modern fundamentalism ... — Hanover

Again, what I am describing is changes in beliefs and values.

As to your comment that biblical interpretations by adherents have varied through history and that fact is obvious, I agree. — Hanover

How do you reconcile such changes with your claim that there is an objective morality?

I never suggested the question of who God was best answered by referinng to the Bible. — Hanover

So what would you suggest is the best way to answer the question?

I think we could spend weeks on Job alone, considering that does present a very complicated discussion of theodicy. — Hanover

That is certainly true. Are you suggesting that we should not take your claim that:

At least we can define God as the good and deny unholy acts are decreed by him, but only falsely in his name. — Hanover

seriously? Or are you saying that you are not prepared to back up your claim? When you say "we" who are you referring to?

Just because scientists can be ‘dogmatic’ it does not mean that science contains dogma — I like sushi

Same for, say, religion.

No. Religious institutes have attempted to combine ‘dogma’ and ‘doctrine’.

There is no dogma in science. There is dogma in religions.

There are dogmatic and non-dogmatic people in both.

I sense you're conflating authority with knowledge (justified true beliefs).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there's nothing amiss about putting rationality on a pedestal like philosophers, scientist, and freethinkers do. No authority, even one inanimate like logic must be allowed to hold such sway over our lives. However, as you would've guessed, I'm merely running around in circles here - it's rationality that cautions against rationality!

There is no dogma in science. There is dogma in religions. — I like sushi

A dogma is an unproven conjecture. And there are lots of them in science.

I sense you're conflating authority with knowledge — Agent Smith

You are, by law, directed towards the institutions of knowledge. In my humbly humbleness I can't help calling that authorative... :grin: