In response to the Sat31May03 by Omar Lughod:

> ...No doubt, there are bad atheists. But the entire
> point of my last email was to show that the prejudice
> in a premise does not preclude its being true.

That's obvious, Omar. I'm open to good arguments,
but the Atheists still need to provide them. I've
read Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Ayer and many of
their imitators in the 20th century. They just don't
address the inner, spiritual issues at hand.

> One must show the invalidity of the argument on
> its own terms. It is only after the argument has
> been shown to be invalid that one can reveal, as
> an etiological aside, that it went wrong because the
> author was prejudiced in a certain way.

That's agreed, Omar.

> Even if we assume, as you do, that all atheists are
> deeply prejudiced against God, that by itself
> does not preclude that they cannot gain
> knowledge of religion.

No, Omar, there are two errors there. I don't
*assume* that all atheists are deeply prejudiced
against God, I have *demonstrated* it. It is easy
to demonstrate. Also, an atheist cannot gain
knowledge of Religion *by definition*. He can
collect data *about* Religious socio-economic
statistics, but that is a long way from researching
the main point of Religion -- the inner experience.
For the Atheist *by definition* there is nothing
valid to be obtained by examining spiritual data
as such. That is no assumption -- that is easily
demonstrated.

> Consider the following thought experiment that
> demonstrates my point:
>
> a large hole opens up into another world, and we want
> to understand the religious practices of that world's
> inhabitants. You have a choice: you can send in either
> two believers to study them, or one believer and one
> atheist. Which duo will you send if you have no other
> options?

Omar, your metaphor reveals a serious contradictions,
namely, that human beings who are religious can be
studies as aliens from another world. Yet that is
a common approach of Atheists. Religion -- to be
studied scientifically -- must be studied as Religion,
as an inner, human experience, and not as an objective
socio-economic statistic in some Anthropology
expedition.

> My own intution, and i would appreciate input from
> others into this, is that the two would provide both a
> corrective to each other's prejudices, and that the
> atheist's particular prejudices may permit hir to
> consider aspects (material, phenomonological, etc.,)
> of their religious experience that the believer
> couldnt appreciate. But more interesting, i think,
> than these virtues of the second pair, is that it is
> their very prejudices that would count as an objective
> variable for us when we were considering their
> conclusions: knowing that a person is an atheist
> allows us to be suspicious of certain procedures in
> hir analysis; rather than count as a negative, this is
> in fact positive knowledge as far as we are concerned,
> for we know how to better understand the data we are
> given. For in a real sense, if they shared our own
> prejudices (if we were believers interpreting the
> first duo's results,) we would be more prone to miss
> something that would otherwise be picked up if we were
> atheists interpreting the same.

Omar, your reckoning here still assumes that Religion can
be studied from the outside, rather than from the inside.
That is the first fallacy.

Also, you are very quick to count an Atheist's prejudices
against Religion and God as "positive."

Also, in any *objective* study of the *finite* sciences,
it is clearly better two have two reporters with different
orientations. Yet Religion cannot be studied without
the *subjective* aspect, simply because Religion is
not entirely *finite*, but its Content is the Infinite.
Yet this basic fact about Religion is simply ignored
by the Atheist.

> A prejudice does not make an argument, or analysis
> automatically false:

This is your argument, Omar, that the Atheists prejudice
cannot be automatically declared false? It is mainly a
confession that the Atheist is prejudiced. Yes, the
Atheist is prejudiced against God *by definition*,
that is, by hir very title. Also, it is entirely correct
that a prejudiced opinion is not *automatically*
false. Yet who argued for automatic falsehood?
I can *prove* using logic that an Atheist cannot
contribute anything substantial to theology, since
the Atheist, to be an Atheist, deliberately ignores
the data of theology. It is insurmountable.

> 1) to begin with, a prejudiced premise can still be
> true; the fact of the prejudice only reveals that the
> reasoner will probably be ineffective in the long run,
> since most truths operate outside the parameters of
> any limited framework (which is what a prejudice is);
> a prejudice is a fact about the reasoner, but whether
> it in fact affects the validity of hir argument must be
> shown.

That is tautological, Omar. It is not much of an
argument.

> In any case, it cannot be shown on logical grounds,
> since there is no logical argument from the definition
> of an atheist, to congenital religious blindness.

You are mistaken, Omar. A-theism, or 'absence of
theism,' is logically excluded from the data of theology.
That logic is plain and obvious. Perhaps you are
hoping to show that by simply treating Religious
people as aliens, or as objects under a microscope,
that Atheists can obtain knowledge about Religion.
They can only see socio-economic statistical data,
but that is not getting at the Content of Religion.
By definition, they *reject* that Content, and that
is their opening premise. They they are clearly
blind to the Spirit, to the Trinity, to Eternal Love
and to Christ. They obviously -- logically -- have
no idea what these terms really mean.

> The first is an analytic argument, the second
> requires empirical verification, and such verification
> is not apriori.

It is simple to give empirical verification for the fact
that Atheists exclude themselves from observations
about the subjective aspects of theology, Omar. It
is clear that you avoid this self-evident fact.

> 2) sometimes a prejudiced perspective gives you insights
> that an unprejudiced perspective will not. For it
> gives you an 'angle', that a wider perspective, the
> presumed, "God's eye view" would not. one could indeed
> argue that God cannot know anything because he has too
> much perspective.

This argument of yours, Omar, serves to strengthen my
point -- you speak of "God's eye view" with a grain of
salt, since the Atheist does not accept that such a thing
can possibly be real.

> ...I did not claim that
> you presume that God exists; i claim that you are
> failing to consider arguments that begin with the
> premise of God's existence, and argue, to the
> absurdity, or the falsity of the idea of that
> existence.

Your claim is equally incorrect here, Omar. I do not
presume that God exists, and I also do not regard
Religion uncritically. But to regard Religion with
the true eye of the scientist, the researcher should
first recognize the full purport of what is being studied.
Religion is first and foremost *human*. Secondly,
Religion is profoundly *subjective*.

Can we be objective about subjective facts? With
Hegel we can (and probably we cannot otherwise).
But the Atheist, who is still a dualist, will try to
treat Religion entirely objectively. Thus hir effort
does not yield much more than socio-economic
statistics. That is perhaps the most superficial
approach to Religion that can be imagined.

> My point is that you simply ignored arguments that in
> fact presuppose that God exists, but on that basis are
> led to the opposite conclusion.

You are most mistaken, Omar. I have said again and
again, spanning several months, that Hegelian
science takes the added effort to *prove* that God
is really REAL. This is proven by three Dialectically
modified arguments for the Cosmological argument,
the Teleological argument and the Ontological
argument. One cannot go to pre-Hegelian writings
to find Hegel's brilliant modifications. Only Hegel
has made this great scientific step forward.

> Moreover, you claim that it is logically impossible,
> if an atheist, to provide a scholarly analysis of
> religion that is of any real value. Consider the
> following summary of Nietzsche's view, which is
> built on, among other things, philological analysis:

Nietzsche? God-is-dead Nietzsche? Sarcastic
Nietzsche? Does he deserve to be mentioned in
the same discussion of Hegel's profound and
universal genius?

> Nietzsche makes a genealogical examination,
> specifically a psychological and philological one,
> of the motivations for the religious impulse (I am
> working here specifically from his 'Genealogy of
> Morals'). Hypothesizing power as the determining
> factor in all events, Nietzsche shows (through the
> examination of language changes: the word 'bad'
> initially meant 'common' or 'weak') how moral values
> were transformed, with the rise of a religious
> priesthood, to favor the meek, and to put the warrior
> class on a moral defensive. Resentment characterizes
> this class, since it remains, fundamentally, envious
> of the health of the warrior: Nietzsche points among
> other things to the relish the religious fathers took
> in the postulated punishments of the wicked. It
> generates a religion that makes a virtue of its own
> impotence, and a vice of all the virtues originally
> associated with the warrior: their guiltless, life
> affirming, will to power. the will to power has been
> transformed into a life denying will with the ultimate
> product of an all consuming nihilism. [paradoxically,
> religion makes a virtue of 'truthfulness' as a means
> of gaining power over the warrior class, but that
> truthfulness leads to the skepticism that puts the
> belief in God in peril]. this nihilism collapses the
> whole notion of value, but it also prepares us for the
> postmodern capacity to experiment with our own lives,
> since we have learned, through the process of
> religious self denial, to shape and guide our values
> experimentally. The uberman that Nietzsche
> postulates, is an experimenter with life, and would be
> the ultimate product of the nihilist's biological
> logic.
>
> Such an account cannot withstand much scrutiny by
> todays standards of philological scholarship, but can
> you deny its intuitively plausible insights?

I deny that it has *any* plausibility, Omar. It is a
self-serving attack on Religion. Religion is far, far,
far, far more complex than this Warrior-Will-to-Power
charicature that Nietszche portrays.

> Do you not consider the will to power, if not a
> scientifically viable concept, still, a
> phenomenologically plausible one?

Oh, yes, Omar, the Will to Power (or as Hegel says
it, the Master/Slave consciousness) is a real fact
that must be dealt with in history -- even today.
It is also correct, as Hegel says, that when the
State takes over a Religion, that Religion becomes
corrupted by the Power of the State.

So, as Hegel says in his earliest theological writings,
Jesus taught a Religion of Love and Compassion, and
Forgiveness, Mercy, and Friendship, and did not
distinguish between class, race or gender, however,
when the Holy Roman Empire took hold of Jesus'
teaching, they preached the burning of heretics,
the burning of witches, the persecution of Galileo,
a State-enforced dogmatism, and many other
perversions of Christ's Holy Word.

But that is far from a study of Christ's Holy Word,
Omar, which is, scientifically, the true Content of
Christianity (as one example of Religion). The
researcher who merely goes through history trying
to show the sins of State-run Religions does not
do a scientific job of researching that Religion.
That researcher merely offers more socio-economic
statistics. It is *not* a viable study of Religion.

> Do you not consider
> such motivations when examining the behavior of
> academic philosophers? it is such insights that would
> lead first to Freud, and then to a whole slew of great
> novelists, and literary critics who recognized in
> Nietszche one of their own: that is, one who
> understands, in a profoundly aesthetic manner, what it
> is they give expression to through the devices of art.

Let the literary types have their Nietzsche. He belongs
to them. There are many philosophers who do not
regard Nietzsche as a philosopher at all, since his
methodology was simply his poetical expression of
his opinions, opinions, opinions. No proofs! He
laughed at proofs! You demand proofs, Omar, so
why do you raise Nietzsche so high since Nietzsche
would never stoop to offer to prove any of his
opinions!

> Eric Erickson provides a very interesting neo Freudian
> analysis of Luther's religious experiences, if you
> would like to consider an interesting counter argument
> to your claim that it is impossible to say anything
> valuable about religion while remaining an atheist.
>
> =====
> Omar

I am quite a fan of Sigmund Freud as regards the
study of mental pathology. Yet I disagree strongly
with Freud when he regards Religion as a form of
mental pathology. Freud, like all aspirants to the
title of objective empiricist, did not do justice to
Religion. Consequently, his followers cannot do
justice, either. They continue to regard Religion
from the outside, rather than from the inside.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo, M.A.