William Kingdon Clifford and death

Given that I consider myself an atheist - and consequently don't believe in an afterlife - a friend scoffed when I said that I'd come to terms with my mortality and my inevitable death. I know that this struggle is one reason that some people cling to faith, but I don't see the point in fretting about the inevitable, on top of which, it's not like you're going to care once you're gone !

Anyway, it turns out that a 19th century mathematician whose work forms the basis of my post-graduate studies held similar views, and I had no idea until yesterday. William Kingdon Clifford on his deathbed chose the following epitaph for his tombstone;

I was not, and was conceived.
I loved and worked a bit.
I am not, and grieve not.

After reading that epitaph I was intrigued and did a little more reading. It turns out that his views on faith and justified belief are very much my own too. I had no idea I'd like his philosophy as much as I do his algebra !

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" - William Kingdon Clifford.

Dogma

I think most outspoken atheists have been asked, at some point, why they care about how others arrive at their beliefs. If you're lucky the question will be a legitimate inquiry aimed at understanding your position, if you're unlucky you might get the patronising "Why are you so angry at God ?" or something similarly dull. The fact is, what people believe determines how they behave, and that affects all of us. It follows that belief becomes everyone's business, or at the very least fair game for criticism by others.

So here is the fundamental problem: any beliefs derived from faith necessarily constitute a dogma. In other words, the fact that you need faith to accept an assertion implies, by the very definition of faith, that any conclusions or beliefs that you form as a result of the assertion, constitute dogma - a set of unquestionable rules that can't be taken on merit, only on faith.

My first gripe with dogma is that if you accept that your beliefs inform your actions (I don't know how you could deny this), then it stands to reason that you should want to hold as many true beliefs as possible - and by implication, as few false beliefs as possible. To try to ensure this you need to be able to defend your beliefs intellectually - to present your reasoning as to why some belief is justified or true. It's not possible to do this with dogmatic beliefs as dogma, by definition, is a form of argument from authority - a logical fallacy.

The second reason is almost sinister - dogma relieves the individual of responsibility for their actions. After all, dogma is taken as incontrovertibly true, and consequently it's not up to the individual to defend it or explain their actions that are taken in accordance with it. By following a system of dogmatic belief you become the Nazi SS officer or Apartheid policeman who was "just following orders", you're no different from the Aztec priest who sacrificed innocents because "the gods demanded it". The only difference will be the degree to which your particular dogma prescribes actions that are harmful or immoral. Despite what many of the faithful would have us believe, we're moral beings in spite of dogma, not because of it (or most of us are anyway).

Finally, and this is more of a personal view about dogma rather than a concrete argument, I find it absurd that anyone would try to cram a suitable set of responses to life's variety into a rule set as mundane as the 10 commandments¹, for example. What's wrong with using your head and rationally evaluating situations as they arise ? Is it really always wrong to lie (bear false witness) ? Is coveting your neighbors possessions wrong when it motivates you to excel rather than steal ? Personally I far prefer people take on a maxim like the golden 'rule', or "do no harm", and apply it intelligently to situations as they arise.

At the risk of being accused of resorting to rhetoric - but hopefully to illustrate some of the points I'm trying to make about dogma - consider the following; When you see people fighting the latest vaccines - are they using rational evidence or dogmatic assertions ? When people fly aircraft into buildings are these rational actions or ones driven by dogmatic systems of belief ? When you hear about people punting garlic and potatoes over ARVs for treating HIV are supporting their claims with rational evidence or are they making dogmatic decrees ? When the Vatican maintain their stance on condoms in the face of the seriousness of HIV are they following dogma or reasons ?


¹ An interesting aside - Catholics and protestants have slightly different versions of the ten commandments based on different ways of dividing up the verses. Catholics don't recognize the prohibition against graven images and rather divide the 10th commandment in two, thus separating a mans property into his wife and his possessions (women as property - how terribly progressive).

Christ's own versions of the ten commandments are different in the 3 gospels in which they are given (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and in fact only include 6 or 7 commandments, depending on which gospel you're following.

The 10 commandments given in Exodus are different too, and predate the others (they're also the only ones actually labeled "the 10 commandments"). So on top of everything else dogma is both confusing and contradictory.

(www.ironchariots.org)