Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Two old friends have left a fascinating set of comments on an earlier thread and I liked them so much that I'm moving them up here to make sure everyone sees them. I have known Henry Neufeld for about 15 years, since first meeting him in the Compuserve religion forum. I have known Sastra for probably 10 years, since meeting her in a religious debate channel on IRC. Henry is a Christian, a Hebrew scholar and the director of a Bible school; Sastra is an atheist and longtime activist. Despite those differences, they are two of the clearest thinkers I have ever known. I'll paste the exchange below the fold. First, Sastra's comment:
I suspect that ID advocates haven't bothered to condemned Stein's statement because they have all intuitively translated it into what Stein actually meant. They translate everything into their own idiom, because they are fighting a different war. It's not about the science."Science leads to killing people" doesn't really mean what it appears to say. Instead, it means:
"If you base your world view only on science -- and leave out God -- then you are an atheist. Atheism leads to killing people. Atheism is the real enemy. We're going after atheism."
Darwinism = atheism. Flat out. That's why even educated cdesign proponentists don't feel strange confusing evolution with abiogenesis. It's why they can ask how "Darwinism" explains how the planets got here, or where the universe comes from, with a straight face, and get nods of approval from their listeners.
I think this is why those who defend the theory of evolution are somewhat polarized on this issue. The obvious rebuttal is to point out that evolution does NOT mean atheism. You need not follow it strictly all the way down: there are many theists who feel comfortable incorporating any and all scientific findings into their faith. Make this clear, and the ID tactic will fail. And you don't get into the quagmire of defending atheism.
BUT -- because the ID issue has been framed by its advocates as a full-scale attack on atheism -- atheists feel required to fight back. What group wouldn't, under the same circumstances? Otherwise, it feels as if the evolutionary side is conceding that yes, atheism is immoral, and atheism leads to immorality -- but evolutionists aren't all atheists, so that makes it okay.
And Henry's response, agreeing with her:
Sastra: The problem I've found is that it is very easy to be misunderstood when defending evolution by making it clear that it is not atheism, which of course it isn't. But it can easily sound like, "The ToE would be bad if it was atheism or fit well with atheism, but it isn't, it doesn't, so it's OK."The only reason the theory of evolution is OK is that it is good science, and correct insofar as we know to date. Whether it helps me as a theist fill out my theological system, or whether it helps one be a fulfilled atheist as Dawkins noted is irrelevant.
I agree with what you're saying, but the propaganda against atheism is so pervasive and has been so effective, that when one quite properly separates the theory of evolution from atheism, one can be readily misunderstood as acknowledging that atheists are immoral or that if the theory of evolution supported atheism, it would be thereby be a bad theory.
To repeat myself redundantly, a scientific theory is valid based on the science involved, not on what philosophical or theological systems make use of it, what people feel comfortable with it, or what ideas propagandists associate with it.
I agree with all of this. And I think it's important to make it clear that when we say that evolution is not synonymous with atheism, that doesn't mean that atheism is a bad thing. It's not. Sastra suggests, tongue in cheek, attaching the Seinfeldian phrase "not that there's anything wrong with that" to such statements.
Comments
I've always felt that when angry atheists say that science leads to atheism, they're playing right into the fundies' hands.
Posted by: Brandon | May 13, 2008 9:55 AM
And I always cringe when others put up straw men like "angry atheists" and exploit the fervor against atheism to attempt the get the religious on their side.
Posted by: David H | May 13, 2008 10:07 AM
But calm, loving and attentive atheists say it also - because it happens to be true for many people.
Science and religion are in rational opposition in several areas.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 13, 2008 10:12 AM
Brandon: Yes, they are being imprecise. What they mean to say is, "My understanding of science has contributed to my being an atheist." That some also add, "And any intelligent person looking at the same evidence should also chose atheism," is where the problems start.
On the general matter of framing, I am curious as to when science started to become an evil thing in public discussion. Yes, we've always had Frankenstein and Godzilla, I'm talking about where did a nation in love with cell phones and plasma TVs get the meme of scientists as evil atheists?
Posted by: kehrsam | May 13, 2008 10:14 AM
And when fundies say that evolution must be false because it leads to atheism and atheism is eeevil, I've always felt a little angered.
Posted by: Morgan | May 13, 2008 10:15 AM
People who have the philosophical view that science implies atheism usually understand the difference between a philosophical view and science itself.
Posted by: Taz | May 13, 2008 10:20 AM
Brandon said:
While much of the creationists' rhetoric is either illogical or extends beyond the facts, I do concede one of their points when its modestly presented:
When a evangelical or fundie does an effective job of researching the history of the development of the Bible and religious beliefs in general, coupled with learning and understanding scientific methodology and the resulting theories; their belief in a god as understood by most evangelical and fundie laymen will be transformed to something different. While it's true accepting the reality of evolution does not guarantee the student will reject belief in a theistic god with the attributes fundie's assign him, it will for many cause them to change to either a less theistic notion, and perhaps a more deistic notion of God, if not outright agnosticism or atheism.
Therefore, the threat the uneducated masses of evangelicals and fundies and their leaders perceive that is presented by the increasing body of knowldege discovered through scientific methodolgy is legitimate. To ignore that reality by our side would be virulent ignorance on our part.
Posted by: Michael Heath | May 13, 2008 10:29 AM
Science is, at base, the process of understanding the world. The puritanical strain in U.S. culture has always viewed the world as corrupt and irredeemable, and so any systematic study to understand that world must be equally nefarious. So part of our nation's distrust of scientists comes from that. The rest, I think, is just human nature; people resent the idea that someone else could know more than they do, and so hate the educated out of a sense of wounded pride.
Posted by: Julian | May 13, 2008 10:31 AM
Ah, but the believers are correct about this. Science does lead to atheism. There is plenty of empirical evidence for that fact. Surveys of the general population, of those with undergraduate degrees in science, of those with graduate degrees, of science faculty, and of members of the National Academy of Sciences clearly show that the more one progresses in the study and practice of science, the more likely one is to lose religious belief. If we're going to discuss this from an empirical viewpoint, it would be pretty silly to ignore that salient fact. When a fundamentalist couple hears their son announce that he has been accepted into a physics doctoral program, they are quite correct to fear for his faith.
It's true, as the conciliators point out, a) that science doesn't logically entail atheism, and b) that there are religious scientists. Alas, it's a bit like suggesting there is no conflict between basketball and being short, by pointing out that playing basketball doesn't logically entail being tall, and that there have been some pro players who were under six feet. Nonetheless, we all understand the practical connection, that there is a tactical advantage in basketball to reach around and above one's opponent.
Similarly, to the assertion that the universe includes a god, the scientist naturally asks: What does that mean? What is the evidence for that? How could anyone tell? Where can we find the relevant data? What experiment might we run to test the relevant claims?
The scientist isn't required to go down that path. And some who believe won't. But it's a natural (not logical) consequence of the kind of thinking behind science. When that kind of thinking is applied to theology, the results are universally negative. Scientists generally don't believe in a god for the same reason that scientists generally don't believe in a unicorn.
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 10:32 AM
I always like to point out that Evolution does not rule out the idea of God, just the Judeo/Christian/Muslim God of the completely refuted Book of Genesis
There could be all kinds of deist Gods or other creator-type Gods who used massive timescales and natural laws to get the job done. However, given the amount of waste and pain in nature, we cannot say that this would, by any means, be a good God.
And pointing this out tends to make heads implode, one way or another.
Many religious-defenders see any general argument for a God (such as the first-over argument) as supporting their particular God and any evidence against their particular God (such as evolution) as supporting atheism.
When you decouple the (for example) Christ versus Atheism dichotomy, and unfold it into the atheism-agnosticism-deism-all particular Gods spectrum, it not only clarifies the discussion, but can make it less adversarial, and may even lead a religious individual to wonder why and how any true religion could ever come into conflict with science at any point.
Posted by: Jason Failes | May 13, 2008 10:45 AM
Sorry, I meant "first-mover argument"
Posted by: Jason Failes | May 13, 2008 10:56 AM
@Russell:
Actually, I think the evidence only shows a strong correlation between scientific training and atheism. A causal relationship is certainly reasonable, but not necessarily an established fact.
There was even a recent study that argued that atheism causes an interest in science, rather than vice versa (can't find the link just now).
Posted by: qetzal | May 13, 2008 11:01 AM
Russell - Studies have shown that countries that are less relgious (of all types) have lower rates of homicide, childhood STDs, teen pregancies & etc. Therefore science leads to atheism leads to a higher standard of living and general happiness.
Damn those evvvvilll scientists straight to H*ll. :) DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 13, 2008 11:10 AM
Exactly. Somebody's personal experience is his business. But when you say, "Once you accept evolution you have to eventually except atheism," guess what? You're bosom buddies with Pat Robertson.
Posted by: Brandon | May 13, 2008 11:12 AM
Qetzal, I suspect you're correct that the causality flows in both directions. Fundamentalists may steer away from studying the sciences, or feel less comfortable doing so. But does it really matter to the believers, whether it is science that weakens faith, or that science is more amenable to those who already have a weakness in their faith?
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 11:13 AM
To expand a bit on what Russell said: there is no particular conflict between religion and evolution, but there is one between religion and science.
One demands faith, the other demands questioning and evidence. The two approaches do not compat.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | May 13, 2008 11:13 AM
It's obviously wrong to say science inevitably leads to atheism. It's even more wrong to equate the two--they are clearly not the same thing, and one need not necessarily involve the other. One could be atheist without science, or a scientist without atheism.
But it's just as wrong to deny any connection between science and atheism. People like to point out that 40% of AAAS members believe in God. But think about that. In the general public, god-belief is closer to 90%. Science enormously increases the chances of a person being an atheist. If you pick a random person from the population at large, there's only maybe a 1 in 10 chance he's an atheist. But the same random sample from the most prestigious scientific organizations will be more likely to pick out an atheist than a theist.
Is this because science nudges people towards atheism, or because atheists are more attracted to science? Maybe both. It's hard to tell which way the causation goes. But the empirical correlation is undeniable. There's some kind of connection there, whatever it might be. Sometimes apologists tend to gloss this connection over, but it's there. Very devout religionists are not incorrect in seeing science as a threat to their beliefs. In some ways, it really is. Science has a long history of overturning traditionally held beliefs and challenging what people thought they knew with certainty, so this shouldn't be surprising. And I disagree with people who say God is (somehow) completely immune to this process. To say science poses no threat to religion is a blatant falsehood--science poses a threat to any and all established ideas, whether religious, political, philosophical or, for that matter, scientific.
That's what makes it so great. :D
Posted by: Wes | May 13, 2008 11:16 AM
And of course those who accept "microevolution" but deny "macroevolution" (in other words, almost all creationists) are doing precisely that, following science to the point that they disagree with it on religious grounds. Just as those who are Young Earth Creationists follow geology down to the point where the age of the earth is concerned.
I have a great deal of respect for Sastra, but frankly science means "following the process strictly all the way down" -- if you don't do that, if you let some extra-scientific concern cause you to reject where the evidence leads, then you're not doing science. You don't get to pick and choose your science on the basis of your extra-scientific commitments.
Evolutionary theory is compatible with deism -- beyond that, not so much. And while it may be politically expedient to paper over this fact, so that the religious won't do stupid things like demand evolution be booted out of schools, it is ultimately disingenuous to suggest that evolution doesn't indeed lead to the rejection of almost all religious accounts of the origin of species, including humans.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 11:18 AM
As a 5'10" atheist, I have to say I love Russell's basketball analogy. I have never felt closer to dunking the ball as I do right now. Thanks, Russell. :)
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 13, 2008 11:21 AM
"I've always felt that when angry atheists say that science leads to atheism, they're playing right into the fundies' hands."
I am not sure what you are getting at here.
Are you denying that studying science can lead to people reassessing their views on religion and becoming atheists as a result ? Only there is plenty of evidence that studying science does lead to some people becoming atheists. You only need to read what PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins have written on this. It is important to note that it is not science itself that led them to become atheists, but the re-evaluation of their world-view following their exposure to science.
Or are you saying that some atheists may well have become atheists for the reasons described by Myers and Dawkins but they should not say so ? In which case you had better explain why their lying about why they are atheists would be
better.
"There was even a recent study that argued that atheism causes an interest in science, rather than vice versa (can't find the link just now)."
The argument was put forward by Matt Nisbett, and as usual he got it wrong. He cited a study that suggested advanced scientific study has little effect on whether a person was an atheist or not, and quoted Richard Dawkins saying he had become an atheist because of his study of science. Unfortunately for Nisbett, Dawkins became an atheist in his mid-teens, long before he had even started at university and studied what could be called advanced science. I believe PZ states he became an atheist at much the same time. Nisbett seems to have failed to consider that any adjustment in a person's world-view resulting from exposure to science would seem to come in the mid-teens, and in their 20's.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 11:24 AM
Brandon writes:
And I've never heard anyone say that, except for some fundamentalists.
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 11:25 AM
Sorry if I am a bit brutal, but what rational person cares about "theological systems"? Theology is entirely summed up by trying to count the number of angels on the head of a pin.
"Henry is a Christian, a Hebrew scholar and the director of a Bible school;"
So he believes mythology, he studies mythology, and teaches mythology.
Posted by: bernarda | May 13, 2008 11:25 AM
Read through the comments here:
http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/03/why_the_pz_myers_affair_is_rea.php
Ignoring the post itself (in which I personally feel Nisbet was out of line) I'm not pulling this out of my ass. I'm not saying all angry atheists feel this way, or even a majority. But the sentiment is there. PZ Myers and Dawkins have also said on multiple occassions that evolution and religion are inherently incompatible.
Posted by: Brandon | May 13, 2008 11:32 AM
kehrsham said:
"On the general matter of framing, I am curious as to when science started to become an evil thing in public discussion. Yes, we've always had Frankenstein and Godzilla, I'm talking about where did a nation in love with cell phones and plasma TVs get the meme of scientists as evil atheists?"
Sunday mornings in church is where.
When - perhaps when Bush started talking about stem cell research?
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 13, 2008 11:36 AM
And which religion is evolution compatible with? Which religion does not offer some supernatural explanation for the origin of humans?
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 11:43 AM
Wes -
You need to be more careful conflating causation and correlation. An inquisitive nature, for example, or an unwillingness to blindly follow the "common wisdom", could lead someone to both study science and question theology.Posted by: Taz | May 13, 2008 11:43 AM
They have every right to believe that, just like the religious have every right to believe that religion and evolution are inherently incompatible. Just like other people believe they are compatible.
None of those positions are verboten, nor should they be. People can believe whatever they like about the philosophical, moral, or theological implications of a scientific theory. None of it impacts the validity of the science itself.
If it's true that atheism and science aren't the same thing, then it is necessarily true that some scientists will believe that atheism and science are compatible, and others that religion and science are compatible, and vice versa. It would be foolish to try and stifle any of those views; far more productive is to point to them all and say "See? You can start with a true scientific theory and end up with completely opposite religious conclusions. So don't be afraid of it."
It's vanishingly rare historically to see censorship -- i.e. "Meyers and Dawkins and atheists should shut the hell up" -- work. Far better to fully air all of the various positions and reinforce the point that none of them impact the truth or falsehood of the science itself.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | May 13, 2008 11:49 AM
Brandon writes:
If you can find quotes from either where they assert that evolution logically entails atheism, or that it's impossible to be both a biologist and a believer, I would be interested in that. I think it's important, when discussing the tension between science and religion, to try to be precise about the various kinds of relationship to which one alludes. "Inherently incompatible" is a pretty generic term, and depending on the meaning assigned to it, I could assent or dissent or simply stand puzzled at the assertion that evolution and religion stand in that relationship.
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 11:50 AM
I never knew that the phrase "not that there's anything wrong with that" was a Seinfeldism. (I never could stomach that show.) I'd wondered why it suddenly became so popular a few years ago. Glad to finally know.
Carry on.
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 13, 2008 11:57 AM
My religion. Any further questions?
Jeff Hebert: I don't want to censor anybody. I am simply saying that many atheists believe that evolution and religion are incompatible. I am stating that they are wrong, and that by saying so they are hurting their own cause.
Russel: PZ Myers never said that it's impossible to be a religious scientist. But he seems pretty uncritical of these Larry Moran quotes:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/07/moran_on_theistic_evolution.php
Posted by: Brandon | May 13, 2008 12:03 PM
So.. I'm interested, do miserable, stupid, selfish, over sexed, violent bastards become relgious, or does relgion make them that way? ;) -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 13, 2008 12:06 PM
Here's what gets me: what is it about evolution in particular that leads to atheism, as opposed to science in general?
When it comes down to it, it's the methodological naturalism of science that ultimately puts the notion of God into a smaller and smaller box. In science, any time a belief and evidence are at odds, the evidence wins. All too often, that means religious texts are contradicted by all fields of science, including cognitive psychology, astronomy, meteorology, archeology and geology. The more we can understand and explain the world as natural forces, the less we feel the need to understand the divine will of God as a method of dealing with them.
So what is it specifically about biology, and evolution in particular, that drives fundamentalists to single out evolution in particular? Is it simply because this was the last great gap that God was driven out of by scientific thought? Or is it something personal, the idea that human beings are just another animal, as opposed to being something special and chosen by God?
Personally, I can't say it was evolution that drove the notions of God out of me. I've never been terribly religious, but I always cast about for notions of God and the Spiritual, even while taking college-level courses in Biology. But the scientific nature of skepticism in general that finally caused me to reject religion completely in offering understanding of the world around us, and accepting an atheistic worldview.
Posted by: Left_Wing_Fox | May 13, 2008 12:10 PM
Yes -- does your religion postulate a supernatural origin for humans?
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 12:15 PM
Personally, I think that increasing security, wealth, education, mobility and access to information are the factors that have led to the decline in organised relgion. This happens in all mature societies, eventually we "grow out" of needing an imaginary friend.
Posted by: DingoJack | May 13, 2008 12:16 PM
Wes,
That's an interesting claim. Does science pose a threat to the established idea that the scientific method is a reliable way to investigate/learn about anything/everything?
Tulse,
Mine. Kenneth Miller's. Henry Neufeld's.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 12:16 PM
JuliaL, I'll repeat my question to Brandon -- does your religion postulate a supernatural origin for humans?
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 12:25 PM
Left Wing Fox,
I suspect being exposed to biology, rather than physics or science, would show how many religious groups simply lie about the science. I can imagine learning that a religious group to which you have been exposed lies would make many people question other aspects of their teachings.
As to why biology seems to be singled out, as opposed to physics or chemistry I suspect there are a number of elements at play. First the theory of evolution has been around a bit longer than either relativity or quantum theory. You do get the impression that a good number of the groups opposed to evolution are unaware of any science done in the C20th. They have heard of Darwin but the synthesis of Darwin's theories and genetics is something that seem to be an alien concept to them. They would seem to be oblivious to the fact that the two main theories in physics are also killers for the idea the earth is a mere 6000 years old. I suspect this may in part be because whilst the theory of evolution at its simplest is pretty easy to understand (unless you are disposed to not understanding because you think your religious teachings trump reality) those of relativity and QM are not. There aee plenty of people who think they understand what evolution says, but don't, and so cannot tell when religious leaders are lying to them. Those who think they understand relativity and QM are probably more likely to really understand them (at least the basics) and so would not get taken in by the lie.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 12:34 PM
Tulse,
Perhaps, depending on exactly what you mean by "supernatural." And apparently worked out through evolution.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 12:37 PM
"Mine. Kenneth Miller's. Henry Neufeld's."
Incorrect, at least as far as Miller goes.
Miller is a Catholic. Try reading the Catholic teachings on the matter, and you will realise that they do not consider humans arose solely as a result of evolutionary forces acting over millions of years. They consider humans also a require a soul, and the soul part is down to god, not nature.
I have not idea what your religion is, or Neufeld's, but given your ignorance about Miller's please forgive me for asking to supply some supporting evidence to support your claims.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 12:39 PM
"Does science pose a threat to the established idea that the scientific method is a reliable way to investigate/learn about anything/everything?"
Good question. I think the answer is "Yes.", since one could imagine science not working: no consistent results to work with. But I don't think it's correct to imply that science deals with "anything/everything": our subjective experience of the world is beyond its reach. If I think I can talk to God, you really can't disprove it, for example.
Posted by: uncle noel | May 13, 2008 12:40 PM
Yes. But I can only speak for myself. :D
Posted by: kehrsam | May 13, 2008 12:41 PM
John Doe,
You are exactly right. To a great extent, fundamentalists create their own problems by lying to their young people.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 12:43 PM
"If I think I can talk to God, you really can't disprove it, for example."
That could depend on what you claim god is telling you. If you claim god is giving facts about the world that you could otherwise not know, that is a checkable claim.
It is also possible to monitor brain activity during times when you claim to be talking with god. If the scan shows nothing other than the normal activity connected with internal dialogue, then that would tend to disprove your claim.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 12:46 PM
I'll object to the Larry Moran quote, and more generally, to the claim that science requires methodological naturalism. That presumes exactly what science lacks, some a priori metaphysics that says, "things like this are natural, and other things aren't, and we study only the first." Thinking like a scientist is dangerous to religion precisely because it doesn't have such limits. To the claim that there is a god, the scientific reaction is not some run to safe boundaries: "ah, that god-thing is defined as supernatural, whatever that means, and so I can't think about it the way I think about anything else." The scientific reaction of the scientist is just the opposite: What does it mean for there to be a god? What would be evidence for that?
Scientific thought is dangerous to religion not because god falls outside the boundary of science, but because it is the nature of scientific thought to not credence such boundaries.
On the smaller matter, I'll point out that PZ has written plenty in his own words, and when I asked if you can find him saying something you claimed he has said, it's a pretty poor response to say, "no, but here he is approvingly quoting Larry Moran saying something close."
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 12:48 PM
I think some semantic clarifications need to be made. The following statements are not identical in meaning:
1. Evolution/science logically entails atheism.
2. Once you believe in evolution/science, you will become an atheist.
3. Learning about evolution/science contributed to my personally becoming an atheist.
4. Evolution/science makes belief in God logically incoherent.
Richard Dawkins believes #3 and #4. Daniel Dennett believes at least #4, though he told me he became an atheist quite independently of learning about evolution. I couldn't say about PZ Meyers. #1 implies to me that evolution means atheism, which just doesn't sound right.
Posted by: Gretchen | May 13, 2008 12:49 PM
John Doe,
Clarification, please.
As Kenneth Miller indicates his religion does not conflict with evolution, are you saying that he is a liar? Or that he is ignorant, meaning that he somehow believes things he doesn't know he believes? Or what?
And you are saying that science claims that humans arose ONLY as a result of evolution and that no god could have been involved?
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 12:51 PM
kehrsam - Yes but which? Scientific minds need to know :D DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 13, 2008 1:03 PM
Evolution vs mythology. There can only be one winner in this game, And the victory will go to evolutionary biological sciences. You see it is much easier to work with scientific fact than mythological mumbo jumbo. Welcome to the modern ago of scientific enlightenment. Yes it would be nice and comfortable to maintain the old primitive mentality by explaining all of life's mysteries using a single name.
But in todays modern scientific arena. You just know for certain that compound evolutionary generational biological development and advancement is how life works.
If you have a problem accepting scientific fact let me email you a kleenex
My information is based on more the 7500 hours of research into the worlds most advanced form of life ever discovered. This era of advanced prehistoric marine biology became extinct 540 million years ago. The Hallettestoneion Seazoria dragons. Discovered in Utah by earth moving construction workers just below an ancient seashore five years ago. The discovery of the true sea dragons officially recognized as the Hallettestoneion Seazoria dragons will bring about a much greater understanding of how compounded evolution works.
Simple minded people should not even bother going to the Seazoria website at www.hszoria.com And you will know if you have a primitive mentality. Because if your fisrt thought is these remains are just rocks than this new science called Hallettestoneology is not for you. Go back and stick with your current text book ideology. You need to ask the true in depth scientific questions like what was the triggering event that occurred 540 million years ago that created these extremely specialized repeating configurations of individual stones that are in the exact configurations of large scale highly evolved prehistoric sea dragons right down to the very finest details.
The Hallettestoneion Seazoria dragons are from a recently discovered new era of advanced prehistoric marine biology.
The Seazorias are currently the worlds oldest, largest , and more importantly the most advanced forms of (marine) life ever discovered
Seazoria
www.hszoria.com
Posted by: Seazoria | May 13, 2008 1:03 PM
"As Kenneth Miller indicates his religion does not conflict with evolution, are you saying that he is a liar? Or that he is ignorant, meaning that he somehow believes things he doesn't know he believes? Or what?"
I am saying that if he is holding to the standard Catholic teaching on this issue, then yes, he is wrong.
"And you are saying that science claims that humans arose ONLY as a result of evolution and that no god could have been involved?"
No, I am saying there is no evidence any god was involved. So to claim, as the Catholic church does, that a god was involved conflicts with science. The Catholic church does not teach god COULD have be involved, the teach he WAS involved. A scientific claim, not supported by the evidence.
It is possible that Miller does not follow the standard Catholic line on this, in which I case I would withdraw my objection to your mentioning him. However he is then not then representative of the Catholic church's position on the matter.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:06 PM
Ken Miller's religion is Ken Miller's Religion. Just because he says he's a Catholic does not mean he agrees with the Catholic Church on every single issue.
Posted by: Brandon | May 13, 2008 1:15 PM
John Doe,
That's a bit clearer to me.
So you are actually saying that the Catholic Church's position that evolution does not conflict with its view of God is incorrect. It is the Catholic Church, rather than Miller, that is either lying about this issue or is too ignorant to grasp what you grasp, which is that no scientific evidence any god is involved is the same as scientific evidence that no god is involved, because if there were any god, it would be detectable by human beings using the scientific method.
Have I got it right? I trust you agree there's no point in my attempting any other reply to you until I've understood you.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 1:19 PM
"Ken Miller's religion is Ken Miller's Religion. Just because he says he's a Catholic does not mean he agrees with the Catholic Church on every single issue."
Then people need to stop using him as an example of someone who embraces a mainstream religion and yet accepts evolution.
You cannot have it both ways. Either he accepts the teachings of his religion, in which case he is not a good example to be used when discussing the role of god in human evolution, or he does not, in which he is not a good example to be used of someone who follows the teaching of his religion with regards evolution.
The simple fact is that the current teaching of the Catholic church on human evolution is not supported by the scientific evidence. So anyone disagreeing with that position is not a good example of how you can be a Catholic and accept evolution.
So I take it you take issue with Julia using him as an example ?
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:25 PM
"So you are actually saying that the Catholic Church's position that evolution does not conflict with its view of God is incorrect. It is the Catholic Church, rather than Miller, that is either lying about this issue or is too ignorant to grasp what you grasp, which is that no scientific evidence any god is involved is the same as scientific evidence that no god is involved, because if there were any god, it would be detectable by human beings using the scientific method.
Have I got it right? I trust you agree there's no point in my attempting any other reply to you until I've understood you."
I am not sure what Miller's position is on the matter. I do know he identifies himself as a Catholic, and thus when used as an example of a religious scientist can be considered to be an example of a Catholic religious scientist.
If his views do not conform with those of the faith he professes then why did you use him as an example ? If his views do not confirm then Miller's religion still conflicts with the science, it is just he chooses to ignore that part of his relgion. Not quite the example you were claiming he sets.
And if Miller does not wish to have his views confused with those of the Catholic church then would need to stop referring to himself as a catholic.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:31 PM
Here's Matt Nisbet's aforementioned thread about the RAAS study that seems to show that science doesn't cause atheism:
http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/04/does_advanced_science_educatio.php#comments
I am increasingly suspicious of the framing Matt and the study's authors put on it, but there's interesting stuff there. (Especially in the comments.)
Bear in mind that the study was funded by the Templeton Foundation.
The study seems to show that by and large, advanced science education doesn't cause atheism. Rather, religious folks self-select out of advanced science education.
Either way, it's interesting.
Consider the fact that about 10 percent of Americans are nontheists. Yet about 93 percent of top scientists are. (If we take the National Academy of Science as representative of top science.)
A small minority of the population is doing the vast majority of top science.
Nontheists do about 100 times as much top science, per capita, as theists. (And several hundred times as much as fundamentalists, I think.)
Wow.
The study results are stated in a way that makes me skeptical. They stress that advanced science education doesn't "necessarily" lead one to "drop" religion, and things like that.
That doesn't mean that advanced scientific education isn't corrosive of religious belief.
I suspect that even if there is huge self-selection going into science, advancing in scientific knowledge is correlated with becoming less religous and less orthodox in religion.
If the study's authors had evidence against that, I suspect they'd have made that clear. Instead they chose to stress the filtering going into science. I do believe that's a big thing, but I seriously doubt it's the whole story, or the only big thing.
When you have a two-orders-of-magnitude difference in performance between two populations, you likely have several interesting effects that are all major.
The study conclusions say that the best predictor of scientists religiosity is the religiosity of their household of origin---if a scientist is religious, he/she was very likely raised religious.
Talk about "best predictors" can be confusing, however. It may be the case that religion of origin is a better predictor of scientists' religion than race, sex, or income level, but is nowhere near as good a predictor as you'd like. If your other predictors are bad, your best predictor isn't necessarily good.
I have a candidate predictor that I suspect is much better---religion of origin minus 2 on a 5-point scale of orthodoxy from scriptural literalism to atheism.
That is, most fundamentalists would become theologically liberal theists, most theists would become agnostic nontheists, and most nonbelieving "agnostics" would become (disbelieving) atheists.
I'd also like to see the RAAS folks show how good a predictor atheism is of scientific achievement, and especially of top science. It's clearly miles ahead of race and income, and apparently well ahead of sex.
I'll bet the Templeton Foundation wouldn't be happy if they stressed those things, though.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 13, 2008 1:31 PM
Julia,
To address another your points.
You seem to be implying that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If you are then you are simply wrong. Whilst a lack of evidence is not as strong evidence in favour of something, it is none the less evidence of absence.
The claim by the Catholic church that humans require a soul to be fully human is a scientific claim. They do not have any scientific evidence to support it. People have tried looking for souls, and have never once found any evidence they exist. That failure to find evidence that they exist means something. It does not mean souls cannot exist, but it does mean those wishing to claim they do have to do a bit more than just assert they do if they want to be taken seriously.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:38 PM
John Doe,
You didn't answer my question directly, but I am concluding that you do think that:
Am I right about that?
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 1:40 PM
Okay, I'm going to stop listening to John Doe until he reads through this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
Posted by: Brandon | May 13, 2008 1:42 PM
Wes wrote:
In my case the atheism was completely seperate. My pursuit of an astrophysics degree, with which it was my intent to eventually study cosmology, began (more or less) with the pursuit of god.
If you can imagine the sound of the raw steak dropped on the tile floor, well- that would have been the sound my belief made not too far into my undergraduate degree :)
I don't think we should let philophy off the hook so easily though either- those classes were probably more to blame for my atheism than anything :)
Posted by: Leni | May 13, 2008 1:43 PM
Paul W - You said "Consider the fact that about 10 percent of Americans are nontheists. Yet about 93 percent of top scientists are. (If we take the National Academy of Science as representative of top science.)"
Could this be evidence that relgious folks find science to threatening to thier mindset and so shy away from it?
Surely this position could also be postulated by this study? - curious DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 13, 2008 1:44 PM
"The study results are stated in a way that makes me skeptical. They stress that advanced science education doesn't "necessarily" lead one to "drop" religion, and things like that."
And this why I took issue with Nisbett. When you look at what people who have become atheists as a result of studying science they tend to say it happened either in the mid-teens, or early on at university. You see far fewer claiming it happened once they were embarked on a PhD.
Certainly the courses studied even by bright kids in the mid-teens would not qualify as advanced science, and I am not sure that even the first scientific courses taken by undergrads would either.
In otherwords I suspect that if a person is liable to become an atheist as a result their studying science it probably will happen before they get to the stage of studying advanced science (which I take to mean either later under-grad studies or post-grad).
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:44 PM
John Doe:
Well... that depends on what evidence one would expect. The absence of evidence for the traditional Christian god very clearly is a problem for it. That has motivated significant effort by Christians to explain that away, or to fabricate evidence where there isn't any. This isn't done just for the sake of the non-believer. Christian inspirational literature is full of excuse for the seeming absence of a god with whom every Christian is expected to have a personal relationship.
On the other hand, the absence of evidence is pretty much mute with regard to a Deist's god. Or with regard to Bostrom's hypothesized future descendants of ourselves who have created the simulation of the past in which we now might reside.
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 1:45 PM
"Well... that depends on what evidence one would expect. The absence of evidence for the traditional Christian god very clearly is a problem for it. That has motivated significant effort by Christians to explain that away, or to fabricate evidence where there isn't any. This isn't done just for the sake of the non-believer. Christian inspirational literature is full of excuse for the seeming absence of a god with whom every Christian is expected to have a personal relationship."
I did have in mind the traditional Christian (or Islamic, or Jewish god) when I wrote that. And yes, I agree that the lack of evidence is a real problem for those of those faiths who want to make claims that their god gets involved in the universe.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:50 PM
Julia,
If the Catholic church claims that souls are real things, and my understanding of what they say on the subject is that they do, then that is a scientific claim. In which case it requires evidence to support it. There is no such evidence, and thus no need for any rational person to take their claim seriously.
You can try to claim there is no evidence that disproves the existence of souls, and you would be correct. However you would also have accept the same for leprechauns.
Bradon,
I read it. Care to tell my why you wanted me to ?
At the same time care to stop being a boorish arsehole ?
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 1:57 PM
Uh, Mr. Doe? The Tulse?
"The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."
Humani generis, courtesy of Pope Pius XII in the 1950s. This is the official position of the Catholic Church.
As evidence that people were mistaking evolution back then as well, there's that 'as coming from pre-existent and living matter' clause at the end. Which is rather like a boy being allowed into a baseball game by his mother, but ONLY IF HE PROMISES to hit the ball with a bat instead of his forearm.
Posted by: Glazius | May 13, 2008 2:01 PM
Just in case anyone thinks I was being rude accusing Brandon of being a boorish arsehole, you are right. I was.
No more rude than he was though, in deciding rather than address the points I have made, he will ignore them. I assume he did so because he found it to difficult to address them and so decide to be go all pretentious on us.
I have come across Brandon before. He is not noted for being intellectually honest.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 2:03 PM
"The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."
Exactly. Totally supports my position, if you read it.
Not at all sure why think this contradicts what I have said. Care to explain ? I am assuming you picked up on where it says "The human body", and not the human body and mind. Care to explain their omission ?
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 2:08 PM
If you believe that humans appeared through supernatural intervention, then your religious beliefs aren't compatible with evolution. To the extent that Kenneth Miller's and Henry Neufeld's religious beliefs involve divine intervention, their beliefs are not compatible with evolution.
It is not sufficient to simply say that one believes in evolution and is religious, as if that settles whether the two positions are intellectually consistent. One has to actually make the argument. And to the extent that any explanation demands some sort of supernatural intervention, I would argue that such explanation is inherently non-scientific.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 2:08 PM
Hey DingoJack, a while back you mentioned studies on different countries showing less religious countries having less issues with homicide/teen pregnancy/etc. Do you have some links for that handy? Not that I disbelieve you, I've only found a few though (there was one good one on divorce recently) and I'm interested in more studies along those lines.
As for the topic at hand, being a physics grad student I know of only one seriously religious person among us (someone who would probably broadly say he believes in most of the bible literally). One of my close friends as it happens. I had a fun argument with him trying to figure out exactly what his and mine positions on God&co actually is. In practice while his views are broadly religious they would've sent him right to the stake in the good old days.
So can a good scientist be seriously religious? I'd say yes, but his/her conception of religion and god has little to do with the common conception of those things by most people nominally in his/her faith. That or they don't really give a damn.
Posted by: Coriolis | May 13, 2008 2:13 PM
DingoJack,
Sounds good to me. I suspect that several things are going on. One is that some people find science threatening and shy away from it for "emotional" reasons. Another is that some people simply think a lot of science is wrong, because it conflicts with things they "know," and they lose respect for science, and therefore interest in it. Still another is that some people just find science much less interesting because they don't think science can even touch the "most important" subjects, and religion or New Age woo can.
I'm pretty tired of theologically liberal Christians, New Agers, etc., with whom I can't have a reasonable discussion of the nature of life, thought, emotions, morality, etc. They have no idea that science can even study those things, and therefore find science more irrelevant than really "threatening." That steers them away from the only thing that offers any real knowledge of those subjects.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 13, 2008 2:28 PM
Hey Mike, if them dragons was so advanced, how come they went extinct?
Kidding.
Serious comment:
The claim that God was involved in evolution is not a scientific claim; no evidence is used for the claim (by the Church, anyway) and none could refute it. I think the statement that such a belief "conflicts with science" confuses how the belief is arrived at with the belief itself. Belief in God only conflicts with science in the sense that it is not a scientific belief!
Personally, I think belief in God is more of a political position than anything else for most Americans.
Posted by: uncle noel | May 13, 2008 2:36 PM
Not that there's anything wrong with that. :)
Posted by: uncle noel | May 13, 2008 2:38 PM
To the extent that one's belief in God also entails supernatural intervention in the natural world, then such belief is a scientific claim.
I suppose one could be a Deist and argue both that God existed, but that after Creation did nothing, although I fail to see why one would bother to worship such a disinterested entity, and in practice none of the religions we're discussion are that kind of watered-down Deism.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 2:42 PM
"The claim that God was involved in evolution is not a scientific claim; no evidence is used for the claim (by the Church, anyway) and none could refute it. I think the statement that such a belief "conflicts with science" confuses how the belief is arrived at with the belief itself. Belief in God only conflicts with science in the sense that it is not a scientific belief!"
How can it not be a scientific claim ? It makes a specific claim about material events within the universe. What could refute it ? Try lack of evidence that it happens.
The same goes for any claims of god intervening in the universe. Such an claim is one concerning material events that happen within the universe and thus entirely within the purview of science. Any religious person who allows for such intervention does have a conflict with science.
Posted by: John Doe | May 13, 2008 2:47 PM
I think that's likely. I was an atheist before I became a scientist, but scientific knowledge was important in leading me to atheism. It's what gave me the confidence that religion was riddled with falsehoods, and generally a hindrance to actually understanding anything important.
The fact that it happened when I was a schoolkid doesn't change that. It also doesn't mean that it wasn't "advanced scientific knowledge" that killed my religion, for an appropriate value of "advanced." I knew things about evolution and psychology in high school that most college grads still manage not to know.
Part of the phenomenon here is that our education system tries hard to avoid the theological implications of science.
Sure, we may teach kids that the world is older than 6000 years, but we do NOT generally stress the most interesting things for the big picture, which conflict with majority religious views---for example, what science has learned about the evolution of the mind and morality.
(Not only are the biblical literalists wrong, but the Pope and theologically moderate protestants are too. God never gave us free will, there was never a Fall of Man, and you therefore don't have much use for a Savior. Oh, and by the way, the mind is something the brain does, and when you die and your brain stops doing it, you're dead.)
These are things that science knows, even if some scientists manage to comparmentalize and avoid accepting them.
BTW, I too like the basketball analogy. Francis Collins is the Spud Webb of science---a 5'6" dunker. Outliers like them don't mean that there's no systematic conflict between shortness and basketball greatness, or between religion and science, for fundamental reasons.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 13, 2008 2:54 PM
I predict that in the not too distant future John Doe and mroberts will both participate in the same thread at the same time. The resulting matter/anti-matter explosion may destroy the blogsphere as we know it. Could be quite a show.
I'll pop the popcorn. DJ, will you bring the beer?
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 13, 2008 3:02 PM
Here's an interesting question: Can there even be a truly scientific belief system that fully encompasses issues of ultimate origins (both of life and of the universe)? Some individuals here seem to be suggesting that, but I somehow doubt that every belief they confidently hold has real scientific evidence.
Carry on; I'm interested to see where this thread devolves...er, I mean, goes.
Posted by: The Christian Cynic | May 13, 2008 3:22 PM
Christian Cynic, I think you raise a great question. How does one account for morality from a purely scientific point of view? I don't think anybody denies that morality in some form exists, the source of it appears to be the issue. Christians believe it to be from God, but where does the atheist believe that morality comes from?
Posted by: mroberts | May 13, 2008 3:25 PM
John Doe writes:
I remember quite well my first physics course, because the teacher took quite a different approach. Yes, there was the usual introduction to forces, conservation laws, etc. But from the first week, a couple of nights a week, the class was required to gather at the dark end of the quad, where with a telescope, we observed over a few weeks the motions of the planets. Learning how to take data in that fashion was a large part of the experience. We would take the data back to class, and plot our observations. And then see, over the weeks, how they compared to the epicycles and equants of Ptolemaic astronomy. If I recall correctly, Mars was retrograde at the time, which made this a particularly interesting exercise.
At first, this seemed sort of silly to me. I had read ahead, and understood Newton's inverse square law, and how that lead to elliptical orbits. Eventually, though, something clicked in me. It wasn't about the particular theories we were studying. It wasn't even about physics. It was a start of an understanding of what science is really about. Just a start. No doubt, that could have been quashed or forgotten had I made different choices in years that followed. I was fifteen, and not yet an atheist.
What counts as "advanced" science is very much relative to the current state of knowledge. Ptolemaic astronomy is old science. It hasn't counted as "advanced" for a few hundred years. It doesn't require much math. But it is still hard won knowledge that had to be discovered by those ancient astronomers taking careful measurements, formulating models, testing them, and refining them.
So here's my hypothesis. Science isn't just a subject matter. It is an approach to learning about the world. Some young students who take science courses figure that out. Not just in the sense of being able to recite the words back on a test, but in a deeper sense. Most don't. More of the former go on to study more advanced science. More of them also lose their religious belief.
This, of course, is anecdotal. I'm not sure there is any way to measure it. But purely as a statistical matter, I'll observe that the fact that most scientists lose their religious belief before their advanced studies doesn't mean there is no relationship between the study of science and that loss. It's quite a plausible hypothesis that the early study of science leads to changes in the thinking of some students, which changes both a) facilitate further study of science, and b) lead to a loss of religious belief.
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 3:25 PM
Tulse,
You seem to be setting up an argument in which there are three possibilites: There is no god; or God is located far away and has nothing much to do with the rest of the world/universe; or God sort of hangs out somewhere nearby and reaches over from his location to poke a finger into the process of evolution. The third seems to me to be implied by your choice of the word "intervened."
But I don't see God as a separate entity in a world of entities. I see God as the ultimate all-inclusive unity within which all else, including objects, relationships, processes, forces, unrealized possibilities, etc. exist. Another metaphor sometimes used for God is "the ground of all being."
So, yes, I see the existence of human beings as deriving from God. Evolution certainly seems to be the biological process involved in getting from the first self-replicating molecules to us. And, no, that isn't the same as, or even very much like, saying that God "intervened" (reached in from somewhere outside the process) in evolution at any point.
As for Kenneth Miller and Henry Neufeld, they speak for themselves: they have done their own explaining of their views of God as not conflicting with the scientific Theory of Evolution.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 3:26 PM
The natural/supernatural distinction is bogus. It's not only not clear what it means, it's unclear what it could mean.
Science can study anything that has observable effects. (Even if the observable effects are very indirect.)
The NOMA myth says that science only studies the natural. That's just bunk.
For example, there's nothing at all unscientific about recent studies of the effectiveness of astrology and intercessory prayer.
Science can debunk the supernatural just fine, as long as there's a falsifiable hypothesis.
The Pope's hypothesis about humans' god-given specialness is falsifiable. Not only that, there's good scientific reason to think it's false, so it definitely conflicts with science.
The Pope keeps wandering out of his NOMA-defined magisterium into ours. Religion essentially always does that, though, which is why NOMA is bullshit.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 13, 2008 3:27 PM
Christian Cynic, I think belief systems are wrong-headed. A belief system is precisely the kind of thing that scientific thought is meant to defend against.
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 3:28 PM
But I don't see God as a separate entity in a world of entities. I see God as the ultimate all-inclusive unity within which all else, including objects, relationships, processes, forces, unrealized possibilities, etc. exist. Another metaphor sometimes used for God is "the ground of all being."
That sounds like God is everything. Why call that "God" as opposed to "everything"?
It seems like a terrible perversion of the word "God", which already has a number of meanings---unless you're making some interesting claim about all that stuff that somehow justifies calling it "God."
What is it you want from the word "God" that isn't everything and nothing?
Posted by: Paul W. | May 13, 2008 3:32 PM
Well, I agree with Tulse that a "disinterested" Deist God is nearly useless, but I think such a belief is rather common - I think Thomas Jefferson was of that mind. However, I think what we're talking about here is a God who is somehow involved with the universe in a way that is somehow beyond the reach of science. What that way is, is, of course, a mystery. (I'm playing Devil's advocate here -ha ha.) Saying that such a belief is not scientific is rather unnecessary. Saying that it is anti-scientific is just not true. It is the claim that some truths are beyond science. My colleague tells me she knows Jesus personally. Forget the brain scans, etc.; this is not a testable hypothesis.
Posted by: uncle noel | May 13, 2008 3:34 PM
Whee! Ed put me in a post! And I'm coming in late...
Russell wrote:
Well put. Modern apologetics tend to be very adamant that 'the existence of God' is NOT a scientific hypothesis. It's nothing like a scientific hypothesis. It's a fact claim -- but not a normal sort of fact claim. It's a combination of fact and feeling -- like loving your mother, or hoping for tomorrow. If you leave the feeling out of it, and just approach God as a factual hypothesis -- that's scientism. Which is "science going outside of its boundaries."
I think scientific thought is ultimately dangerous to religion because it leads to a habit of looking for clarity and simplicity, and knocking out the unnecessary. If not checked, it eventually leads to analyzing even God for clarity and simplicity, and approaching it like any other hypothesis, instead of something in its own unique category. And while religion may lead to an enthusiasm and even love for science, following science will not lead to the conclusion that the factual claims of religion are scientifically true -- but they should be.
That last phrase will divide off atheists and theists.
In The God Delusion Richard Dawkins defined the God Hypothesis as "there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it." Critics went nuts. Why, he didn't even get close to a legitimate definition of God! How does one define God, then? Well, not in any way atheists define God, that's for sure.
Many religions are "compatible" with evolution in that God can always work through evolution. But I think the real conflict between religion and evolutionary theory is not that it takes away a lot of stuff God is supposed to have done, but that it totally flips your perspective around on what constitutes an explanation. And then one looks at how our explanations have gone -- complex from simple, building bottom to the top.
Cranes vs. skyhooks, as Dennett put it. God is a skyhook -- but we can build another God which looks similar by using cranes. When a magician can do in the open what a psychic can only do in dim light and secret, the tendency is to get suspicious.
Posted by: Sastra | May 13, 2008 3:38 PM
mroberts said:
Actually, some people do. Here's a wiki level into to moral skepticism and moral nihilism. Hope you find it interesting.
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 13, 2008 3:48 PM
Russell:
I think you're reading too much into what I said; as might have been evident by the sentence after, I was simply referring to the collective set of all the beliefs one holds. (Consequently, I avoided using the term 'worldview' because it holds too many different connotations, but my choice may not have been too much of an improvement.) So I don't think your objection holds in light of that.
And just for the record, I wasn't really referring to morality, pace mroberts. I would, however, seriously question the honesty of anyone who claims that every belief they hold has been reached by a purely scientific methodology.
Posted by: The Christian Cynic | May 13, 2008 3:49 PM
JuliaL:
My apologies, JuliaL, but what the hell is that even supposed to mean? It sounds like pantheism to me, which is one way to go, but which in most forms doesn't really distinguish between "God is the universe" and "there is the universe" -- in other words, how is your God any different from the physical world?
uncle noel :
If God is involved in the physical universe then God is not beyond the reach of science. If God produces observable effects in the material world, then that is amenable to scientific investigation.
Would you say the same thing if she claimed to know Santa Claus personally? Or Napoleon? Or Harry Potter? How is claiming to know Jesus in principle different from those examples?
Sastra:
Sure, but under that view elves are compatible with the industrial production of shoes because they work through the large machines and sweatshops to produce Nikes, and goblins are compatible with souring milk because they work through the microbes involved in dairy spoilage, and storks are compatible with human birth because they work through maternity wards. One can proliferate hypothetical entities as one chooses, but if those entities are not necessary for the explanation, then the explanation isn't in the domain of science.
We have clear materialist accounts of how species arise, and those accounts do not require the intervention of God. (And, to be clear, the empirical findings could be otherwise -- every organism could have "I made this. Signed, God" encoded in their DNA; every organism could have a completely different mechanism for inheritance, their own equivalent of DNA; the paleontological data could show much more complex organisms arising prior to unicellular organisms, etc.) So while it is true that some religious people may feel that their beliefs are compatible with science, if they think that a supernatural agent is required to explain evolution, then their beliefs are not compatible.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 4:03 PM
mr.roberts wrote:
Rather than answering the question directly, I'm going to use it to highlight how science and religion approach a question in different ways.
"Where does morality come from?"
From science: First, what is meant by "morality?" Where would it differ from ethics? How common is a sense of right and wrong, and would it have had evolutionary advantage in a group dwelling species? Does a 'moral sense' exist in other animals, in rudimentary stages? What is the neurology behind how we make ethical choices? Is "empathy" one of the common reactions of the human brain? How is it provoked, and does environment effect it? What are psychopaths, and how do their brains differ? What stages do children go through in learning morality? Do cultures also go through stages, and if so, when and why? Are there universal rules shared by all people, or do they all vary? Do human have an innate "cheating" detector, and what factors lead to either seeking revenge, or bestowing forgiveness? Are ethical decisions changed by group effects, and to what extent? How much of our morality is nature, how much is nurture? Can we form hypotheses on these issues, and test them?
From religion: We get morals from a Moral Source.
I really don't think that saying morality comes from God is informative. Religious "explanations" all seem to suffer from the same problem.
We get love from a Love Force. We get reason from a Reason Source. We get meaning from the Source of All Meaning. Our minds are derived from the Mind Source which is God, which has Mental Force, and uses its power to act.
Where did we come from? We were created by a Creative Source. How does the Creative Source create? It creates through the force of its Creative Power. How was the universe made? It was made by a Universe-Making Source, which used its Universe-Making Power through the Force of its Intention.
Religion isn't really answering the questions here: it's simply rearranging the questions into the form of answers.
Posted by: Sastra | May 13, 2008 4:10 PM
I guess mroberts hasn't read Moral Minds (Marc Hauser) or some of the books on the origins or morality (I think Michael Shermer has a few, Steven Pinker wrote one, IIRC, and there are others). Morality can easily arise from natural processes, aided by cultural mechanisms once they arose, including the origination of intelligence. There have been a lot of papers and books written about the subject, some good, some bad, combining Biology, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and a bunch of other -ologies.
Posted by: Badger3k | May 13, 2008 4:24 PM
The ability to be moral, like the ability to learn human language, comes from evolution.
Morality is an evolutionarily handy thing in a social
animal.
If you look at other social mammals, especially chimps and bonobos, they have rudiments of most aspects of that ability.
If you look at human cultures, you find a lot of variation, but also some deep similarities across cultures, which appear to be evolved in.
They are not only cross-cultural, but appear early in development, apparently faster than they could be learned without built-in biases towards certain kinds of moral systems and away from others. (But not before certain brain circuits mature.)
Briefly, morality is largely instinctual, but with parameters being set socially and detailed rules being learned.
It does not come from religion, but from biological and social evolution.
I don't have time to go into details right now, but I highly recommend Marc D. Hauser's book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Minds-Nature-Designed-Universal/dp/0060780703
Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson's book Unto Others: the Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior is also excellent.
http://www.amazon.com/Unto-Others-Evolution-Psychology-Unselfish/dp/0674930479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210710662&sr=1-1
Posted by: Paul W. | May 13, 2008 4:35 PM
As a scientist, I do not believe that leprechauns do not exist. I know I have no evidence that they do, and no evidence that they do not exist.
Any conclusion is bad science.
I can however say that I have a reasonable suspicion that leprechauns probably do not exist.
Oh, and my religion... Which I have no intention of explaining any more than I intend to attempt to justify whether or not I love my mother.
- Which is not controlled by pheromones if I do not see her, nor is it based on evolutionary behavior to support propogation of the species, (particulary if I am adopted), nor is it supported by altruistic trading, particulary if she is not very maternal and did not raise me.
A process we do not yet understand is exactly that. Any conclusions about what it IS, instead of what it MIGHT BE, are unscientific.
I happen to be very fond of The Big Bang. I think that there is a great deal of evidence to support it as an objective event that occurred. But until someone can explain WHY this would happen, and not WHAT happened, even from a physics standpoint, unicorns (non-corporeal), leprechauns (in infinitely small space suits), a diest God, or currently unexplained phyical processes are all valid arguments for causation.
Why does everything start out as "no religion can say X..." followed by arguments about why "Judeo-Christian-Islam constructs do not support X.."
A religion IS NOT REQUIRED to have a creation myth. Just because most do, does not make it a prerequisite for the definition of a religous belief.
Posted by: rndmnbr | May 13, 2008 4:41 PM
Brandon repeats this:
Others have used the same words - and they are flat out wrong. No atheist believes evolution and religion are incompatible for the simple reason that they know religious evolutionists exist. Or are you claiming they deny Ken Miller and Francis Collins are real? What PZ and Dawkins have clearly stated many, many times is that religious evolutionists compartmentalize their science and their belief, and further, that this can - not will - affect the quality of their science. These views are, of course, up for debate.
So quit with the goddam strawmen, would you?
Posted by: pedlar | May 13, 2008 4:53 PM
Just because people say that the two are not incompatible doesn't mean they are right. And your claim is incorrect in that I am an atheist who believes that evolution is incompatible with all forms of religion except for Deism.
Exactly, and because they have to compartmentalize, that means that their religious beliefs are not compatible with science.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 5:01 PM
It has been decades since I studied social psychology in college, but I recall reading about cognitive dissonance and that compartmentalization was a technique some humans adopt to handle it. Cognitive dissonance could be caused by accepting evolution as a scientific theory well grounded in observations while at the same time believing in a god who intervenes in human life. One would simply put these two ideas in separate compartments and avoid dwelling on any incompatibilities.
Would not Stephen Jay Gould's concept of Nonoverlapping Magisteria be recognition of the idea that human can compartmentalize ideas that are not compatible?
Personally, I believe that once we stop compartmentalizing and consider the logical consequences of evolution and man's place in the natural world, it is difficult to sustain a belief in a god that created man in his own image. To be religious and simultaneously scientific I would think would imply a high level of cognitive dissonance and probably multiple strategies beyond just compartmentalization to handle the logical incompatibilities.
As for myself, my limited study of the natural sciences and evolution came well after I left the Catholic Church at the age of 13. My reading of the church's history and the wars of religion during the Reformation was my first introduction to skeptical thinking about religion. The lucky chance of finding Bertrand Russell's writings at the library is what convinced me to become an Agnostic. Now, midway the journey of my life, I am slipping into being a simple Atheist. Reading about evolution only reinforces my lack of religious beliefs, but did not in anyway lead me to Atheism. However, I must confess like one of the other posters that those philosophy classes in college did not help to bring me back into the Catholic fold.
Posted by: John P. DuLong | May 13, 2008 5:01 PM
Tulse,
No apologies needed; it's a real question, I think, not just an insult, and therefore not rude. I see God not just as the totality of the physical world, which is pantheism, but as the totality of all possibilities, physically realized or not, and all relationships. I think that God, like other wholes, has qualities no subdivision of the universe does, and therefore rates a separate name.
As God is unique, analogies are difficult, but I'll try a very weak analogy or two to see if it helps make me clearer to you.
An engine is made up of parts, but the engine is more than the parts. You don't poke around among the spark plugs looking for your car engine, and you don't look outside the car to see if the engine is standing there intervening to make the spark plugs work.
Tulse is more than a group of cells, more, even, than cells grouped into organs. You would not be yourself without your brain, and yet your brain grown in a jar would not be the you that exists now either. Your right arm is a part of you (assuming you have it), and yet it not Tulse. I wouldn't look into your brain to find you, though I would no doubt find there many individual clues to you, as you are not identical with any sub-portion of it. Nor do I look for Tulse hanging about outside reaching over occasionally to intervene to make the body walk or speak.
From an early age(14), I've seen the world as a single thing, an overarching whole, a whole with qualities that go beyond those of any individual part. Many or perhaps(?) even all of those parts our rather newly evolved brains have figured out how to model and study. In that whole, each thing is connected to each other, so when I later learned about evolution it made perfect sense to me as a scientific theory of how living organisms are connected throughout time. Not only does the TOE not conflict with my view of God but it supports that view of ultimate interconnectedness.
There is nothing anti-scientific or illogical about thinking that all the sub-systems we see, with all the connections we continue to find, may in fact be part of a single whole. Nor is it either anti-scientific or illogical to think that whole may have qualities beyond that of any of its individual parts.
I think that many/most religious people have some sort of glimpse of that interconnecting whole and struggle to find some way to think about it and communicate about it. Most of our communication about that uses anthropomorphic language, but that's not unusual. (See Paul W's "These are things that science knows, even if some scientists manage to comparmentalize and avoid accepting them." -science knows even if many scientists don't?)
I believe that God exists. I am unable not to believe it. How could a world of connections and systems simply cease to connect at the highest level? And I have never found anything in scientific theories that contradicts what I see God to be.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 5:05 PM
Julia L. wrote:
Like what?
Such as...?
Posted by: Sastra | May 13, 2008 5:15 PM
Absolutely -- I'm genuinely interested.
No, but there honestly doesn't seem to be very much religious in that, either. There are plenty of examples of phenomena like emergent properties in purely physical systems (such as Tulse), and I'm not clear what the advantage is of labeling the entire universe and its possibilities "God", or that such a label describes any entity that it would make sense to worship in the traditional sense. At the very least, I think it is safe to say that your beliefs are well outside the standard view of most religions of a supernatural deity that created, but is separate from, the universe.
And while I don't completely understand your belief, in terms of the question of the battle over evolution your position is pretty benign. I'm not really worried about Deists and Pantheists and those who advocate "Spinoza's God", since that's not where the threat to science is. To be fully honest, I may not think that such beliefs make much sense or are justified at all, but they're not the religious beliefs that worry me.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 5:18 PM
Tulse: "If God is involved in the physical universe then God is not beyond the reach of science. If God produces observable effects in the material world, then that is amenable to scientific investigation."
These statements are unsupported. My colleague is certain that Jesus affects her. This affect is possibly observable by me, but is not "amenable to science" because it is unique to her.
JuliaL:
"Connections and systems" don't sound like God. But I understand where you're coming from. The universe is certainly an amazing place. Does it really matter whether we name the vast mystery of it "God" or not?
Posted by: uncle noel | May 13, 2008 6:05 PM
You hit the nail on the head again :) This form of religious "explanation" is fun too:
"Science answers the how questions, religion answers the why questions."
OK, why would God create sentient beings through a wasteful, cruel and contingent process over billions of years?
"God is ineffable / It is not for us to question God / Good question, let's meditate on that" etc. (btw, would Ayala's answer be "plausible deniability?")
Wait, didn't you just say that religion answers the why questions? (Has it actually ever done so? Other than "Because I said so!")
Posted by: windy | May 13, 2008 6:27 PM
Sastra,
You ask what qualities are possessed by God that are beyond those of any subpart?
How would I know? Real question. If they are beyond, or in addition to, qualities possessed by the parts, then I'm not at all sure how I could know what most of them are.
Omniscience and omnipotence seem to the sort of thing many/most people might guess that a supreme being would have, but maybe that's just more anthropomorphic thinking. Consciousness of some sort? Even fruit flies have something related consciousness, I seem to remember reading. If an object as simple as my brain has it, I suppose that perhaps a whole that includes multiverses with my brain as one of a huge (or infinite) number of subparts would have consciousness, though not one I could imagine any more than even a non-human sort of primate can imagine mine.
I do think that absolute integrity must be one, as integrity suggests wholeness, unbroken connections, completeness. That's the rock on which my ethical system/decisions are based. And I see the pain and inefficiency and unpleasantness of many kinds of broken connections; lack of integrity seems to me to take us away from a closeness to God/wholeness/each other, ourselves.
I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your second question. I said, "And I have never found anything in scientific theories that contradicts what I see God to be." And you said, "Such as...?" Were you asking me to name scientific theories that don't contradict this view of God? Evolution, gravity, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, string theory, the nature of DNA, the geologic age of the earth and the universe, relativity . . . . Or did you mean something else?
Uncle Noel,
I rather doubt that it matters to God what name you use, and it certainly doesn't matter to me. For myself, the word "God" seems a simple enough way to refer to whatever is ultimate and whole and all-inclusive. I like your phrase "the vast mystery of it."
Posted by: JuliaL | May 13, 2008 6:31 PM
"Science answers the how questions, religion answers the why questions."
Would anyone care about the "why" question at all if it turned out that the answer had nothing whatsoever to do with us?
The "whys" of religion always seem to make human beings and our personal comfort a major purpose and goal of the universe. If we care about it, it's built into the structure of the cosmos. I wonder if any religious person who uses the statement windy gives here would really, truly, accept a divine answer to 'why' that just wasn't all that personally reassuring or inspiring.
For example:
"God created the universe to make black holes for its own amusement: human beings were a completely unintentional byproduct, and God doesn't bother to concern himself with us at all -- except for a few astronomers, from time to time. When you come to understand God fully, you will be disappointed, depressed, and unfulfilled. Praise Him anyway."
Not what they expected, but at least there is a God to give purpose to things. In this case, black holes. It didn't just "happen." There's a point to it all, so we have meaning. Yay!
Yes, we need religion to answer the "why" questions, because science is just so unsatisfying when it comes to the 'why.'
Posted by: Sastra | May 13, 2008 6:46 PM
Julia L wrote:
I meant, "What are some examples of scientific theories which conceivably COULD contradict what you see God to be?" Since you've been looking and haven't found any, I was just curious what you were looking for.
Posted by: Sastra | May 13, 2008 6:51 PM
Yep! that's me in a nutshell.
I posted about it here.
Posted by: Henry Neufeld | May 13, 2008 7:06 PM
Of course this claim is amenable to science. If I put her in an fMRI when she believed that Jesus talked to her, would I see activity like that in people who have hallucinations? Are the affects she claims replicable by other means? There are a whole number of ways to scientifically investigate such claims -- if there weren't, we'd be stuck taking the experiences of psychotics at face value.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 7:40 PM
Coriolis asked "Hey DingoJack, a while back you mentioned studies on different countries showing less religious countries having less issues with homicide/teen pregnancy/etc. Do you have some links for that handy?"
Here you go Coriolis:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.htm
In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a "shining city on the hill" to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health.
If the data showed that the U.S. enjoyed higher rates of societal health than the more secular, pro-evolution democracies, then the opinion that popular belief in a creator is strongly beneficial to national cultures would be supported. Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical "cultures of life" that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted. Contradicting these conclusions requires demonstrating a positive link between theism and societal conditions in the first world with a similarly large body of data - a doubtful possibility in view of the observable trends.
There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 13, 2008 7:48 PM
Tulse said:
But one (presumably) assigns qualities of autonomy and sentience to God. Couldn't (S)He simply choose not to talk to her when she's in an fMRI? Forgetting whether it's reasonable to worship an entity that goes to such lengths to obfuscate their presence, is the claim still amenable to science?
Posted by: Kamel | May 13, 2008 9:17 PM
Whenever a Christian tells me that evolution leads to atheism, I tell him he is absolutely correct. To disagree would be lying. I don't like to lie, and the Christian would know I was lying anyway.
God was invented to solve scientific problems. Now that science is rapidly solving those problems, the God invention is becoming more and more unnecessary and useless. That's a good thing. Religion is responsible for massive ignorance and never ending violence. In my opinion convincing people to throw out their childish religious beliefs is just as important as convincing them to accept the science of biological evolution.
Posted by: BobC | May 13, 2008 9:35 PM
By that standard, the claims of most dime-store charlatans can't be addressed by science, since all aver that their powers cannot be probed objectively.
More to the point, this is also the logic of those who are diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. For example, one type of delusion seen in schizophrenia is that one's organs have been removed and replaced with someone else's. When confronted with the fact that there are no scars, the patient will simply assert that the surgery was done extremely well. If you want to put direct communication with Jesus in the same category as paranoid delusions, I'm fine with that.
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 10:36 PM
Thanks alot Priya. Btw to anyone else who may be looking it, the link should end in .html not .htm. I'll look over it.
And Tulse, broadly speaking I agree with you, but understand that a religious person can simply claim that whatever physical response you are observing is caused by their god rather then "natural phenomena". Hell, if christians wanted to, they could just claim that god is doing evolution through natural selection (in his infinite wisdom and all that) and there would (at least on the surface) appear to be no problem.
The real problem with evolution (which is remarkably similiar to the old problem they had with the earth not being the center of the universe) is that humans are not special. There is a persistent belief that human beings, religious experiences, supernatural events are "special" in some sense and that we need them.
Of course science sort of goes against that whole mentality - a big requirement for scientific experiments is that they not be "special", they need to be repeatable and objective, rather then spectacular one-off subjective experiences. And in that sense I find religion and science almost completely incompatible. At the least, to be a good scientist one has to realize this discrepancy and deal with it in some way.
Posted by: Coriolis | May 13, 2008 10:38 PM
BobC, as has been pointed out there are many people who accept evolution and are not atheist. So the evidence disproves your what you are claiming is correct. "Evolution can lead to atheism," would be a true statement. "Evolution is incompatible with my understanding of theism," would also be correct. But since in the US the majority of people who accept evolution are also Christian, how can you honestly say that the evolution leads to atheism? Aren't you rejecting evidence to fit what you want to be true?
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 13, 2008 10:51 PM
Right, and a person with paranoid delusions can claim that invisible satellites are beaming thoughts into their heads. We don't take their untestable claims at face value, so why should we take the untestable claims you cite as given?
Posted by: Tulse | May 13, 2008 10:55 PM
Hey I never said we should Tulse. But of course, that's the beauty of the double standard for religion.
And Abby Normal, the profesional scientists who actually deal with evolution and presumably understand it better then most are overwhelmingly more atheist then the larger society they are a part of. For that matter I bet if you did the statistics for the people in this country who do and do not believe in evolution you'd find that the ones who do not believe in evo are far more religious then those who don't. Just because it's not 100% correct everytime does not mean that BobC's opinion is not a little more then just some guy guessing at random.
Saying that "Evolution always leads to atheism" would be too strong and that's not what he actually said. However the correlation is far more significant then just "evolution can lead to atheism".
Posted by: Coriolis | May 13, 2008 11:08 PM
Science didn't lead me to atheism, but reading the Bible did. Science just confirmed it.
Posted by: Catman | May 13, 2008 11:18 PM
Abby, I don't think one has to assert that everyone who credences evolution is an atheist in order to say that evolution leads to atheism. It would be enough if it led many more people to atheism than it led the other direction. When someone says that driving drunk leads to accidents, they're surely not obliged to demonstrate an accident in every case?
That said, I stick by what I have said earlier, that it is not evolution per se that leads to atheism, but the scientific mode of thought. Studying physics or geology is just as risky. (Though evolution has particular challenges for Christianity.)
Posted by: Russell | May 13, 2008 11:29 PM
"But since in the US the majority of people who accept evolution are also Christian, how can you honestly say that the evolution leads to atheism?"
I noticed most of the Christians who accept evolution don't really completely accept it. Instead they invoke God to invent and/or guide evolution. It's obvious they really don't know very much about it. I also noticed the biologists, who understand evolution better than anyone, are mostly atheists. I might be wrong, but I think religious biologists are extremely rare. The only biologists I know of who are still theists are Collins and Miller. I don't know what motivates them to throw out all the common sense they have so they can believe in some magical sky fairy.
If God is not necessary to explain something as complicated as life, how could this magic man possibly be needed for anything else? In my opinion it makes no sense to accept the scientific fact of evolution and still believe there's a supernatural creature performing magic tricks somewhere. Some people manage to do this, but maybe they are just too lazy to think.
Posted by: BobC | May 14, 2008 12:06 AM
Why are we getting a sudden influx of Pharyngulites? Just so you all know what you're dealing with, here are some gems from BobC:
"All Baptist ministers make a living lying to children. The world is a slightly better place every time a Baptist minister drops dead. If some Christian morons are offended, that's good."
"Religions are good for nothing but violence and ignorance, so I will continue to cheer whenever a worthless preacher man drops dead."
"Whether the moron Baptists ministers know they are lying or not, what they do for a living is repulsive. There can be no greater crime than brainwashing innocent children. Baptist ministers are worthless scum. They have caused more harm to this country than the 9/11 terrorists."
That's right. Baptists ministers, all of them, are worse than Al Qaeda. Just wanted to warn you before you waste your breath trying to reason with this guy.
Posted by: Brandon | May 14, 2008 12:44 AM
I think a strong root of the impasse between religion and science begins with one's "default world view".
For someone coming from a scientific world view, the default stance is one of naturalism. Everything that exits is created, evolves and is destroyed by detectable, natural forces. Any claims of supernatural interjections are seen as being empirically unnecessary and aestheticly vulgar to everything we know about how things in the cosmos work. -As well as not having much in the way of evidence to support them.
Whereas religion's "default world view" is one where the supernatural is believed to, at least in some sense, underlie and interconnect everything so supernatural interjections are not viewed as something necessarily "out of place" with the cosmos.
This is where science and religion get off on the wrong foot right away and is just one reason why they are ultimately incompatible.
Posted by: Caliban | May 14, 2008 1:01 AM
Brandon, thanks for your interest in me. That's correct. I do think ministers are scum. They don't fly airplanes into buildings, but they have done a great job ruining the lives of millions of children. The world most definitely becomes a slightly better place whenever one of these liars for Jesus drops dead. Do you have a problem with that?
We can thank ministers, especially the backward Baptist hicks, for America's almost total ignorance of science. Only 14% of Americans accept biological evolution without invoking a magical sky fairy to explain it. That's disgraceful and the moron ministers of America are a major reason for it.
Posted by: BobC | May 14, 2008 1:08 AM
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 14, 2008 1:37 AM
Actually I take it back. You seem to be defining "leads to" as "increases the probability of." To continue with the drinking and driving example, most people who drink and drive don't usually get in to an accident. It just increases the odds. But the person originally stating "evolution leads to atheism" is almost certainly thinking in an absolute sense. So by answering their question by saying, "yes it does," seems misleading at best.
Does that make sense? (I should know better than to post at 2 am. I'm certainly not at the top of my game.)
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 14, 2008 2:00 AM
BobC,
How hard would it be to use your line of reasoning to assert that the majority of American kids don't accept the new fangled math because Bart Simpson told them they don't need it? More of them could recite a south park or simpsons line I'm betting than a recent sermon by one of those moron christian ministers.
Do you really think the majority of kids who are falling behind in math, science, and school in general are really doing so because of baptist ministers?
BobC: "Religion is responsible for massive ignorance and never ending violence"
How convenient to sum so many of the worlds problems by blaming them on religion. Religion has been connected with much violence over the centuries and deserves scrutiny. But isn't a simpler answer the power and control governments (and the power brokers who reside within them) get when they use whatever means at their disposal to acquire/maintain supremecy? IMHO, a better correlation can be shown between worldwide power struggles and the large scale ignorance and never ending violence they breed than between baptist ministers and poor science accumen.
Posted by: Rich | May 14, 2008 3:20 AM
Well evidently* relgion and higher levels of societal malfunction are corelated. So which is it, do you think, does relgion lead to malfunctioning societies or does malfunctioning societies cause relgion? -DJ
*see paper cited above 13 MAY 7:48PM
Posted by: DingoJack | May 14, 2008 3:57 AM
Tulse wrote:
When someone says that something "cannot be tested by science" or some variation thereof, I think there are at least two ways to interpret that.
The first is that X is outside of science because it's not a factual claim. It's a moral precept, or an expression of emotion, or an opinion, or a feeling. The problem isn't just that it's hard to test -- it's that it's in the category of things that aren't going to be either true or false, or right or wrong. "Chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream." You could think up tests to see if it was the most popular, or to confirm that pleasure centers in the brain light up when it's eaten, but there's no conceivable test that would prove that chocolate was objectively best -- even if every person in the world hated it. It can neither be demonstrated or falsified because of the kind of thing it is.
The other way to interpret some X being scientifically untestable is to do what Tulse is talking about here. You can easily imagine positive tests for X. You can conceive of a future ability to verify it in some way. It is not, in theory, outside of science's ability to examine or confirm. But X is unfalsifiable because, with X, you have given yourself special permission to make as many excuses as it takes to explain why, once again, X didn't work. It is never cut by the razor. It's always "hiding," and can always potentially "come out."
If you are a scientist, I think that the habit of trying to be clear on defining hypotheses will lead you to be more likely to place the concept of "God" in that second category, than in the first. And, as a scientist, habits of scientific integrity will make you view anything in that second category with deep suspicion.
Posted by: Sastra | May 14, 2008 8:27 AM
Since when did Science become the only academic discipline to the question of God or no God? The scientific method is good for many things but for others it is dangerous in my opinion.
My example: I watched the stupid movie I Robot with Will Smith the other night. He was pissed at the robots because one saved his life and let a little girl drown. The robot calculated the percentage of the chance that both would live and his was higher. So he was saved.
I do not want to live in a world that only uses "Empirical Evidence" and leaves out the heart. We are not robots and that little girl in the movie's life was just as valuable as Wil Smith's character. This site is about Science I understand but there are other areas of study. Theology is one of them and to throw it out because it does not seem to jive with some Science is just as bad as throwing out Science because it does not jive with some parts of Theology.
If I am right then the closed minded atheist is just a foolish as the closed minded Christian, Muslim, Theist... It is not wonder they tend to get into bloody wars and verbal insults: They both are always right! Which means that the other had to always be wrong. And, oh yeah, they both have evidence to back of their dogma.
Posted by: King of Ireland | May 14, 2008 8:39 AM
It's not -- philosophy and history have certainly taken their shots as well.
No one does, but that is not the issue. No one is saying that you can't decide what value you place on things (and it looks like you value little girls more than Will Smith, which is fine). But when deciding how to act on those values, you want empirical evidence -- if you want to save the little girl from drowning, you won't throw her a rock, or sing at her, or do calculus, but instead use an empirically developed technique such as a lifesaving ring.
Posted by: Tulse | May 14, 2008 9:50 AM
Yeah, the closed minded atheists get into bloody wars and the theists stop at verbal insults. I mean, they're equivalent, right? Sticks and stones, and words? Right?
......
I guess not.
Posted by: FO | May 14, 2008 11:15 AM
Ok KoI name the laws of robitics. Go on I double dare you. :) -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 14, 2008 11:23 AM
Tulse,
I had to attend to some family matters (I care for an invalid mother), and didn't get to answering your response to me yesterday. I'd still like to.
The emergent whole which is you gets a name; it helps the rest of us talk and relate to you. The ultimate emergent whole gets a name for the same reason. The word "God" suggests the possibility of consciousness and relationships in a way that "universe" does not. Much of traditional worship consists of rituals designed to symbolize, and help us be aware of, what cannot easily be put into words. Group rituals are more helpful and meaningful to some people than to others, but they are not central to, or necessary for, everyone's experience of religion.
I think that "standard view of most religions" is an overstatement. In a time when the fundamentalists' very anthropomorphic views are the mostly loudly expressed and the most often heard, it may well seem that way. And even in the most anthropomorphic of these views, there is usually another current of thought with rather inconsistent but nonetheless significant elements of "God is in our hearts" and "God is everywhere."
There are a very large number of religious people who use what they learn about nature to infer more about the nature of God. So, while from the science side, a benign religious belief is one that can be ignored, from the religious side new scientific discoveries offer exciting insights. Seeing God as ground of a stationary, rigidly ordered world is one thing, but realizing that God encompasses a world of enormous diversity and change is another.
I'm a Christian.
It's difficult even to think about a transcendent and encompassing God, which is why, I think, that we have so many ways of talking about it. To me, the value of Christian symbolism is that it attempts to make the concept of God easier to perceive by envisioning a human being with absolute integrity, which makes him both man and God.
I also very much like a Hindu-based story of God symbolized as an infinite ocean containing what exists and what doesn't exist: a vision not unlike that of multiverses where all the possibilities not realized here are yet existent elsewhere. In that story, we are each like little drops of spray, believing ourselves to be isolated beings that will cease to exist when we fall from the air, but falling to discover at last that we are and were always an integral part of the great ocean.
I go on at such length because I'm trying to make clear why I think that while many individual beliefs connected with religion conflict with science, it isn't useful to make the generalization "Religion and science conflict."
Posted by: JuliaL | May 14, 2008 11:44 AM
JuliaL, you are of course welcome to believe whatever you like, and as I said, I don't have much practical (as opposed to intellectual) objection to people who hold your kind of views. My primary concern is with the political and social power wielded by the religious to oppose rationality, including science, and the expression of your views don't seem to offer that threat.
That said, to be honest, I'm not clear how the views you express would qualify as "Christian", since that label traditionally implies a God that is separate from creation. Also, a belief in a god (including Jesus) who performs miracles would be in conflict with science. So being a Christian, at least on who believes in the miracles recounted in the New Testament including the resurrection, means that at some point your religious beliefs and science collide.
Posted by: Tulse | May 14, 2008 12:39 PM
JuliaL,
I have to suspect that you don't really have a good understanding of the science of emergent phenomena. It's not the kind of thing you should get warm fuzzy feelings from, or reverential feelings of the sort that would justify the sort of reverence implicit in terms like God.
If you look at evolution, processes of emergence are phenomenally, monstrously ineffecient, and their results are largely monstrous. For every 100 steps "forward" by any human standard, you get something like 99 steps back.
If you look at the underlying physics, the emergence is equally un-heartening. The entire universe appears to be describable by a mindbendingly simple equation---exactly which equation is still up for grabs---plus a inconceivable amount of absolutely random quantum noise.
(If you're partial to many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics, as I am, you don't even need the noise. The apparent vast amounts of random information are just an artifact of which universe you happen to find yourself in.)
For example, the general statistical pattern of the distribution of mass in our universe seems to be an artifact of spontaneous and ultimately random symmetry breaking in a rapidly inflating bubble of space time. The particular distribution of matter we actually observe is due to something like butterfly effects, only moreso, with individual quantum random events in the first nanosecond of expansion affecting where there would be dense clusters of stars vs. vast tracts of intergalactic nothing.
Religious folks who lose their orthodox beliefs are prone to hallucinating religionish meaning into stuff like quantum physics, neuroscience, evolution, and now "emergence" generally.
This is a huge mistake. Actually understanding emergence gives no support for anything remotely like any religious view ever conceived before the advent of science.
You can call this sort of thing "God" if you want---it's a free country and you can call it George McGovern if you feel like it---but that's just goofy.
Modern science systematically shows, over and over again, that religion is systematically wrong, and that the impulses to "deify" various phenomena are systematically misguided and misguiding.
If you want to misunderstand reality, the most reliable way to do it is to try to map religious concepts onto it, or justify religious feelings about it.
The more science you know, and the deeper the science you know, the clearer it is that modern liberal theology is a desperate attempt to salvage an utterly failed paradigm.
There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of cosmologists and evolutionary biologists are atheists. They know a lot about emergence, and they know it bears no useful resemblance to any religious concept.
It makes perfect sense to be awed by the universe, and fascinated by the "mystery" of it. But not in the sense of reverential awe for religious "mysteries". It's just not that kind of universe.
I do believe that the universe(s) constitute what you might call a "unitary whole." Matter and energy and space and time and all the higher-level things like information processing and love and supernovas are all manifestations of something bizarrely uniform and simple, with combinatoric possibilities.
I don't think it's accurate to call that all "God" if that's any different from saying "it's all just stuff, doing what stuff does."
I have a profound suspicion of the term "God," because throughout history and almost universally now, the term has meant essentially the opposite---that the universe is not "all just stuff, doing what stuff does."
Near as I can tell, whenever anybody uses the term God to apply to something purportedly real---even everything it's because they want something out of the term that they're just not going to get.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 14, 2008 1:00 PM
Tulse,
I was describing the feelings of Wil Smith's character in the movie. Both lives are valuable. That is exactly the point. Your point is valid about the life ring.
I think it is a great metaphor on this whole issue. The smaller more testable issues like germ theory of disease, cures for cancer, and what technologies are best can and should be based on verifiable data. To complicate these issue with discussions of the supernatural, as far as Science class goes, is stupid in my opinion and harmful. Like Ed says, we can say God did or actually look for a testable cure. He is right when he says to just say God did and leave it at that is a bad idea.
But... to try and answer lifes biggest questions like the value of human life using Science can be destructive. This does not even get into the existence of God and other bigger questions. If Science wants to protect itself from another Dark Ages then I think people need to wake up and quit using it to say things it never can and never will.
Dingo,
Are you refering the the three laws of the movie?
Posted by: King of Ireland | May 14, 2008 1:00 PM
"The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator."
Interesting area of study. The challenge is to seperate the low theistic quality in terms of cause and effect from the miriad of other cultural differences. For example I'd think an athiest in the Japanese culture might tend to behave quite diferently than an American athiest even though they hold the same non-belief in common.
There seems to be a simplistic grouping of all people who's faith may range from orthodox to unorthodox, from mystic, spiritual, or heavily organized all into one box. This makes it pretty easy to show most wars as being caused by religion, since most world leaders have some form of religious background if not current practice... but I'm not convinced it is true. Our current war for example was planned by a set of neocons who do not strike me as religious, but who did use religion as a way to gain a slight edge in elections. Probably a can of worms to bring up but just one example.
Posted by: Rich | May 14, 2008 1:43 PM
That doesn't necessarily mean that the war isn't caused by religion, one way or another.
Elites often exploit popular religion to get and keep popularity, giving them the leeway to do whatever it is they want to do---either by making it sound like religion supports their policies, or just by having more slack because they're generally seen as "good guys," so that whatever they're doing seems likely good.
Those observations about the usefulness of a "public appearance of piety" in politics go back to at least ancient Rome, and I'm pretty sure to ancient Athens.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 14, 2008 1:59 PM
You are absolutely right, but I don't know of anyone (apart from a few extreme benighted sociobiologists) who think that Science answers questions of values -- that's not its job. What people do say is that reasoning about values should be consistent, and where appropriate, informed by evidence.
Posted by: Tulse | May 14, 2008 3:05 PM
I disagree. You can call me a benighted "sociobiologist" if you want.
Science has a whole lot to say about values and moral judgments.
In particular,
(1) Most religions embody theories of morality that are empirically false on several levels
(2) There is a common core of moral reasoning ability that appears to be evolved in, largely maturational rather than learned, and not "irrational."
To oversimplify a bit, there appears to be an instinctual basis for morality, with principles and parameters roughly analogous to universal constraints on grammar in our evolved linguistic ability.
Moral judgments generally involve three things:
(1) moral intuitions about what kinds of things are basically good or bad (goods), or allowable or disallowable (rights and duties). The basic principles underlying these intuitions are grounded in biology.
(2) "factual" information at several levels, e.g., about whether morality was revealed by a god, what was revealed, what the expected consequences of an action are, how much those actions cost or benefit those affected, etc.
(3) a lot of reasoning that is mostly just reasoning, i.e., prone to clear errors and correctable like any other reasoning errors.
#2 & #3 alone means that science has a lot to say about moral issues. It dramatically constrains the space of possible valid moral beliefs.
For example, suppose you believe that all abortion is bad because (a) God revealed that murder is bad, (b) murder is killing something with a soul, and (c) God gives zygotes souls at the moment of conception, then you're wrong.
Abortion might be bad, but that just isn't why; there's no god, no authoritative revealed morality, and no souls imparted at conception.
Plato was wrong when he equated virtue and truth, but there was some truth to it. Mistaken "facts" and errors of reasoning lead often lead to moral mistakes.
That shouldn't be a very controversial claim, by the way. Almost everybody with any brains who's thought about the subject acknowledges that moral mistakes are possible. Even if there was no common ground in moral intuitions to start from, that would still be true and very important.
(Even if we all started with different, unchanging moral preferences, we could still sometimes reason correctly from different premises to the same conclusion. Moral mistakes would mess that up.)
#1 is also important. There's good scientific reason to think that morality is a particular natural phenomenon, even if it's blurry around the edges (like a species).
In particular,
(a) moral preferences aren't just subjective aesthetic preferences like tastes for particular food or music; they're not "whatever you like"
(b) moral preferences aren't just arbitrary; there's a special logic to them
(c) thought experiments can clarify moral principles in a way that often leads to convergence toward a natural, shared moral core. (E.g., the recognition that a given action isn't always wrong, and what kinds of things can justify it.)
Scientific knowledge of the nature of morality itself as well as all the auxiliary facts can lead to increased agreement about morality.
That's not to say we'll just be able to put in the facts, turn the crank, and get out moral judgments that we'll all agree with. Natural morality isn't that simple, or that consistent, and we'll likely always have moral conflicts.
On the other hand, at least certain principles of morality seem to be universal; understanding those and getting plain facts right increases the chances of moral agreement.
By misrepresenting morality itself, and spewing spurious "facts" relevant to moral judgment, religion systematically reduces the chance of correct moral judgment and moral agreement.
There may be an ineliminable part of moral disagreement that comes from irreducibly subjective differences, but that doesn't mean there isn't a bigger part that's due to falsehoods at several levels, perpetuated by religion.
The upshot is that science has a whole lot more to say about what's right and wrong than religion does, if we throw out the religious bullshit about morality.
Religion is the biggest impediment to morality ever. It has evolved to co-opt morality and to be co-opted for immoral and amoral purposes.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 14, 2008 4:00 PM
It may have a lot to say about reasoning regarding values, but it cannot actually provide values without courting the Naturalistic Fallacy.
Posted by: Tulse | May 14, 2008 4:09 PM
OK, but I think that's way less of a problem than it seems to many people.
Take grammaticality as an example. The sentence "I think morality is like grammar" is grammatical. The (non-)sentence "I grammar morality morality think morality grammar I" is not. It's not only not grammatical in English, but (given the word senses) isn't grammatical any any possible human language.
(Don't hold me to that; I didn't spend any time constructing and analyzing the example.)
That's not a subjective claim; it's an objective one. The grammar of English isn't subjective; it's an emergent natural fact. (Even if it's fuzzy around the edges, due to dialects, like species boundaries are fuzzy.)
Similarly, the "universal grammar" underlying all human languages' surface grammar is a natural fact, given the kind of animals we are. (Even if it's a somewhat fuzzier phenomenon than Chomsky thinks.)
Given that analogy to language, we can say that morality, like grammaticality, isn't just a subjective judgement. There's at least a big objective component to it.
And it is binding on everybody. If I say I like the second (non-)sentence just fine, so it's grammatical, I'm just wrong. If it's ungrammatical in any possible human grammar, I'm very profoundly wrong.
If I'm aphasic, I may not be able to get the distinction. That doesn't make me not wrong. It's still ungrammatical, whether I can tell or not. And if I know the rules but just don't care, and just like that word order for some weird reason, that doesn't make it grammatical either.
Likewise, if I say that torturing babies just for the thrill of it is moral, as long as I paint them blue afterwards, I'm just wrong. That is not moral in any possible human morality.
If my moral reasoning abilities are broken, I may not be able to tell the difference between moral and immoral actions, but that doesn't mean immoral ones aren't immoral. It just means that as a moral agent, I'm broken.
If I'm a sociopath, I may know but not care; I can tell that something is wrong, and realize that I'm a bad person, but still choose to do wrong and be a bad person. That doesn't make me not a bad person; quite the opposite.
No moral system can save a true sociopath; it shouldn't be a mark against natural morality that there are broken units out there, any more than it's a mark against grammatical theory that there are aphasics or perverse anti-grammatical people out there.
If there's a shared moral core based in biology, refinable to reasonable convergence based on maturation, learning, and sound reasoning, that's close enough to "objective morality" to be useful---and far better than anything religion has to offer.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 14, 2008 4:31 PM
Paul, I don't think there is good evidence that there is clear naturalistic and consistent moral "grammar" built in to humans. Beyond that, I don't think that, even if there is, that says what our morality should be. There are plenty of evolution-inspired writers who've argued, for example, that rape and slavery are naturally evolved traits, simply part of our makeup, but apart from benighted sociobiologist I don't know of anyone who thinks that this means our ethical systems shouldn't oppose these views.
You presumably have heard of the Holocaust? Of the human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs? Of suicide bombings of innocent civilians? Of the nuclear bombing of civilian population centres? In all those cases, large portions of the relevant society approved of those actions, which makes it very odd to claim that such things are not a "possible human morality", at least in a descriptive sense.
If you want to make a prescriptive claim, that such actions should be wrong, then you've left the realm of science.
Posted by: Tulse | May 14, 2008 4:59 PM
Julia,
For a good discussion of emergence, see Stuart Kauffman, "Investigations".
Also, his recent article at the Edge website Breaking the Galilean Spell is an exploration of your deist approach to the universe:
His aim:
Posted by: drdave | May 14, 2008 5:00 PM
For a bunch of atheists, y'all seem to have the concept of religion wrapped up in a neat little hermetic package. JuliaL has offered you a deeply considered description of her religious belief, which Tulse & Paul W. quite blithely brush off as not properly constituting religion.
Perhaps you might stop for a moment to ponder what your own unstated assumptions about religion are. Certainly many religious people hold beliefs that range from laughable to despicable. But what JuliaL has done is to argue that not all religious people pray to a magic sky fairy for their favorite team to win the World Series, and not all Christians believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. She has offered you a description of what sounds to me like taking an attitude of awe, reverence, & gratitude toward the complexity & beauty of the universe & life within it.
How is it either necessary or desirable to exclude that form of religiosity from religion? In other words, you appear to be framing the concept of "religion" rather narrowly as religious fundamentalism. JuliaL is demonstrating that plenty of Christians interpret their tradition in a variety of other ways. Just because a vocal minority makes all kinds of wacky, uncivil, & downright dangerous claims about the way God works doesn't mean that all or even a majority of Christians agree.
To assert that she doesn't know what her own religious views are because they don't comport with your preconceived caricature of religion is rather ungenerous, not to mention presumptuous.
Posted by: carrie | May 14, 2008 5:17 PM
She has offered you a description of what sounds to me like taking an attitude of awe, reverence, & gratitude toward the complexity & beauty of the universe & life within it.
So why call it a religion then. Why not call it "taking an attitude of awe, reverence, & gratitude toward the complexity & beauty of the universe & life within it."
How is it either necessary or desirable to exclude that form of religiosity from religion?
Where's the religion in it? Sounds more like "taking an attitude of awe, reverence, & gratitude toward the complexity & beauty of the universe & life within it." Where's the religion and why is she hiding where it is?
Posted by: 386sx | May 14, 2008 6:01 PM
Where's the religion in it? Sounds more like "taking an attitude of awe, reverence, & gratitude toward the complexity & beauty of the universe & life within it." Where's the religion and why is she hiding where it is?
Not that atheists wouldn't disagree that this is what a lot of religion really is though, mind you!
Posted by: 386sx | May 14, 2008 6:08 PM
386sx:
This "complexity & beauty of the universe & life" is exactly what Kauffman is advocating.
Posted by: drdave | May 14, 2008 6:27 PM
386sx: But that's my point. How exactly do you define this "religion" thing that you find missing from JuliaL's description (nevermind my lame paraphrase)? A reasonable person makes a good-faith effort to describe to you her religious perspective, & you reply by telling her that what she thinks is religion isn't really religion. I find that both arrogant & intentionally obtuse. It seems to me that those who are accusing her of dressing up "non-religious" experience as religion have a responsibility to articulate the criteria by which you define religion.
You may also want to consider why you, as an outsider, believe yourself to be a better authority as to what may be properly considered religion, esp. if you come to the discussion with a bias against it. Read: where do you get off telling someone else that their subjective experience of God doesn't qualify as religion, esp. if you just think it's superstitous nonsense to begin with?
Not to imply that there's anything wrong with disdaining religion. Just that I'd expect those preferring the scientific method would have an interest in defining their terms carefully and avoiding logical errors.
Because if you constrain religion to only include belief in a white-bearded sky fairy who intervenes to make sure we get the lead in the school play if we pray hard enough and avoid lustful thoughts, then you and JuliaL aren't really having the same conversation.
Excluding the spiritual experience of the majority of the planet (or even a significant minority) may score you some rhetorical points against the Pat Robertson crowd, but it doesn't contribute much to a conversation about whether and in what ways religious belief can or cannot coexist with rational scientific discourse.
It looks suspiciously like: all religious people are nutjobs, JuliaL sounds like a rational person, therefore, she's not really religious, she's just mistaken. Or she's hiding her true fundamentalist leanings. You don't find that condescending?
Posted by: carrie | May 14, 2008 6:28 PM
Have you read Hauser's Moral Minds? I recommend it.
I think there's good reason to think that there are universal, natural features of a roughly instinctive moral faculty. It interacts with more general reasoning, which often obscures the regularities in the moral faculty itself.
(I'm not saying that these are separate brain areas or anything that simplistic, by the way.)
Many of the differences in moral systems are generated by different beliefs, e.g., in specific rules revealed by specific gods.
Still, there are many cross-cultural regularities that come out. Sometimes those regularities are most obvious in the patterns of exceptions.
So, for example, in essentially every culture there is a principle that wanton causing of great harm to others for little benefit to anybody is wrong.
Apparent exceptions to that rule are often, on closer analysis, examples of conformity to it.
To use your example of the Holocaust, just look at Nazi propaganda about Jews. In order to override the no-wanton-harm rule, you must vilify the people you're harming or exploiting. If there wasn't a moral principle to be overridden, claims of racial inferiority, ideological dangerousness, and nefarious conspiracies wouldn't be necessary---you could just say "hey, let's kill those guys and take their stuff," and do it. You wouldn't have to say that it's for the greater good.
The claim that it's for the greater good is very common---and that shows something important, too. To justify selfishness or in-groupishness, you generally have to dress it up as altruism of some sort, or a claim that being fair in the obvious sense won't work. ("Those people don't understand anything but force," "those people aren't competent to rule themselves," etc.)
You see that pattern all over the world. For example, in hunter-gatherer tribes, the most common name that a people has for itself is just "the people," in their native language. And it's very common that they give other tribes names like "the snake-in-the-grass people," reflecting their institutional downgrading of outsiders' humanity.
(I have a Native American friend who pointed this out to me. The popular name for her tribe is one foisted on them by white people, who got it from a neighboring tribe. It's not flattering, and it's not something they like to be called.)
It appears that there is a natural human tendency to have empathy for others "like oneself." A major function of ideology, including religious ideology, is to limit empathy, so you can apply certain relatively fair standards of justice within the group and less fair standards to outsiders. Culture largely evolves to limit and channel instinctive empathy, and restrict the scope of the naturally emergent sense of justice to what's good for the group.
If that's true, and I think it pretty much is, it's very important. Most of the ideological things that serve to limit empathy and justice are based on falsehoods---that other people are systematically or grossly inferior, etc.
This seems to be a fortuitous evolutionary accident. Limited altruism has a great survival advantage social animals evolved for living in small bands. In our case, it appears that much of what limits altruism to a small band is not evolved in, but part of the structure of the environment, including culture.
(There are also non-ideological factors, like the effects of salience. People near by and in view are easier to empathize with than large numbers of people far away and out of sight.)
We don't seem to have an instinctive limit on our sense of justice that says we morally "should" only apply it only within our likely-kin group; instead we rely mostly on dissimilary, lack of salience, and especially ideology. The structure of our evolutionary environment did the rest.
One of the things missing from that kind of account---especially the pop versions of it---is that we also have the evolved-in ability to reflect on our instinctive drives and moral judgments. Many of our unanalyzed moral judgements at any given moment do not survive rational scrutiny. Other, more fundamental ones, do, and are more likely to be retained.
Moral philosophers have a term for this---"reflective equilibrium." At any given moment, your moral intuitions are an inconsistent tangle of basic and derived rules, and which ones you apply may depend on superficial details of how a problem is framed. On reflection, you see conflicts between your own intuitions, and realize you've made mistakes or prioritized things in a way you're not comfortable with. So you re-analyze your own moral "system" in the face of conflict, discarding some things that you realize were based on moral mistakes---improper workings-out of something more fundamental---and converge to a stable set of judgments based on a proper prioritizing of goods, etc.
At least, that's how it's supposed to go. If we're all (1) basically rational and (2) working from a shared core of basic moral intuitions, and (3) in possession of the relevant facts, we should converge to roughly the same set of stable moral judgments.
It's an empirical, scientific question whether morality actually works that way. Given plenty of true facts and thought experiments, do we in fact converge to a stable view---or do our moral intuitions just keep shifting around, like a game of rock-paper-scissors? Do different people converge to similar moral views, or do different people go off into different positive feedback loops, getting stuck in different stable modes of moral reasoning?
I think the cross-cultural and inter-cultural evidence suggests that there's considerable convergence unless we start from different "facts"---e.g., whether God exists, whether he gave us souls at conception, and whether he said you should kill your daughter if she lusts for a foreign soldier.
Even given wildly divergent starting "facts" like that, the underlying moral regularities show through in many ways. For example, I once asked a Muslim girl what would happen if she had sex. She said in all seriousness her father would have to slit her throat and drink her blood. I probed a bit, and out came the usual kind of rationalization you find the world over---that The Moral Rules(TM) are necessary for the functioning of society, and Very Bad Things would happen if they weren't enforced. Society would fall apart, and pretty much everybody would suffer terribly.
That's the kind of perverse moral reasoning you find everywhere. What seem like irreconcilable, fundamental moral differences are actually mostly an artifact of differences of opinion on non-moral "facts." If that Muslim girl were to realize that Allah did not in fact dictate the sexual rules, and that societies with different sexual rules can in fact work just fine, I think she'd come around to something more like the usual liberal Western view.
That doesn't mean that in a world where everybody recognized the scientific facts, we'd all have identical moral systems. There may be innate or nondeterministic differences that matter. For example, it may be that some people are innately more Utilitarian-leaning than others, and others are innately more deontological-leaning. Most people everywhere seem to have both sets of intuitions, and they do conflict in places; people may resolve those conflicts differently in a way that survives in reflective equilibrium, and always disagree on certain cases.
I'm pretty optimistic that we'd at least get some basic agreement based on pretty-much-universal human morality in reflective equilibrium---certainly more than we get with the various bullshit religious perversions of natural moral reasoning.
I think the words "prescriptive" and "descriptive" get very funky right around here.
Consider a simpler case than actual human morality. Suppose we consider Asimovian robot-morality.
In that case, we have 3 laws inscribed into the core reasoning of robots, with a definite prioritization. Call the usual state of a usual 3-laws robot "A-moral". (A is for Asimov.) Any robot lacking one or more of the three laws is objectively speaking not A-moral.
Whether that's descriptive or prescriptive sorta depends on whether you're inside the moral system or outside of it. For me, it's descriptive. But for one of the robots described, it's prescriptive, because they're built to buy into it. (If you add a little meta-machinery, anyway.)
I think that's the best you can hope for for any moral system, secular or religious, if you think about it. If you're fundamentally amoral or "evil," the fact that you "should" or "shouldn't" do what's right is just not motivating.
But if you're the kind of thing described, you may consciously recognize what it is that you "should" be, and find that it has at least some automatic, motivating appeal.
One of the things I find interesting about human morality is that most of us seem to be naturally inclined to care at least a little what's right or wrong, even if we're also largely selfish.
Another interesting thing is that most of us seem to "buy in" in a certain way---we think it's important what's true, and what we would think was right if we really understood things. That is, we're programmed not only to want to do right (all other things being equal), but to have at least some interest in correctly working out what is right.
Most of us seem to be able to understand, given the right stimuli, that we are not in reflective equilibrium, and to want to get it right.
Religion seems to be evolved to disable those beneficial human tendencies---to give easy wrong answers so insistently as to override our tendency to work out the right answers.
And that's the main reason I'm anti-religion. I think its main evolved function is to parasitically pervert natural morality. It's a virus of the mind that disables our intellectual and moral defense mechanisms.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 14, 2008 6:35 PM
Paul W.,
You have some very strong value judgments, and I hope they work well for you or, failing that, that you find some that work better.
drdave,
Thanks much for the suggestion; it was good of you to offer it, and I will try to look up your suggested reading. However, I used terms like "emergent" only to try to find a common vocabulary for this conversation, not because I think there's some scientific explanation to be worked out there.
I find myself completely convinced God exists. I have a strong suspicion that our evolved human brain isn't capable of a detailed abstract understanding of that. I think science is the best method we have for constructing pragmatically useful models for ourselves of how portions of the universe operate, and I wouldn't be surprised if science were the best we're ever going to do (if "we" is used to mean animals of our species). When I learn more about scientific discoveries, I assume that I have additional clues to make guesses about God, not the other way around.
Tulse,
I'm a Christian because I choose to be a follower of Jesus. I choose that because the metaphor and mythology of the stories about him are a way for me to connect with God. Various other Christians have numerous conflicting notions about what else a Christian ought to believe, but my notions aren't particularly unusual - annoying to some other Christians, but really not unique at all.
386x,
I don't usually respond to your comments because I'm rarely confident that I understand them. Perhaps I'm just too old and out-of-touch with the modern sarcastic one-liner style. Sorry.
Carrie,
Thanks for the kind words. I don't think, though, that Tulse has brushed off my words, just followed them up with a natural suspicion as to whether there isn't really some (rather long perhaps)list of fundamental beliefs a person has to have to be Christian. As you note, the fundamentalists get the publicity and the rest of us have to deal as best we can with the fallout. As you so correctly say,
Maybe it's time now for me to move on to reading the more recent very interesting threads on Ed's blog.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 14, 2008 7:12 PM
carrie wrote:
I think that this is exactly what those who are trying to understand Julia's version of "God" are trying to do -- define the terms carefully and avoid logical errors.
As it is, it almost seems as if Julia's God is the sort of thing atheists all believe in, too. So either we are misunderstanding her, or there's something logically wrong with the definition of God.
Posted by: Sastra | May 14, 2008 7:31 PM
Blockquote>Here's what gets me: what is it about evolution in particular that leads to atheism, as opposed to science in general?
Evolution in particular explains the origin of human beings without any need for a supernatural entity, People who think that morality comes from that supernatural being will naturally resist that idea.
As to what kind of religious belief is compatible with science, ISTM that every scientific explanation leads to another question:
For instance, "Why do things fall down?" is explained by saying that objects with mass attract each other.
"Why do they attract each other?" because they bend space-time.
"Why do they have mass" I don't know, but we're working on that one. (forgive me if that is in fact an answered question. My knowledge of physics is in fact pretty rudimentary.)
"Why does bending space-time make things move towards each other?" That's just the way the world works.
Bingo! There's no difference between "That's just the way the world works" and goddidit.
So at some level, a religious belief that God is the reason the laws of the universe work is a religious belief compatible with science, although this view, sometimes called "Einstein's God" isn't really very satisfying or personal.
My own journey to complete atheism came about as science explained more and more, and religion explained less and less, until the religious questions, the "why" questions others have alluded to, seem meaningless and silly.
Posted by: BaldApe | May 14, 2008 7:37 PM
Messed up the blockquote. Oh well, hope it's obvious.
Posted by: BaldApe | May 14, 2008 7:48 PM
I've really been struck by the level of civility & substantive debate at this site, particularly by Tulse. I hope I haven't detracted.
What I should have said is that a definition of religion that excludes a significant portion of people who consider themselves religious can only impede mutual understanding.
Tulse's suspicion is not unreasonable: there are plenty of people w/ plenty of lists. The only question is whether the people with lists get to decide what quality of belief constitutes True Christianity. I think JuliaL has made an excellent case for a religiosity that is compatible with rational thinking and humane interdependence and that its differences from arbitrary Christian constructs are what make it more rather than less authentically religious.
Or that a definition of religion that includes hers is more useful than one that excludes it.
Posted by: carrie | May 14, 2008 8:24 PM
JuliaL's religion isn't a problem. It's just a quirk, something that makes her her. She isn't out to teach it in schools or legislate it in Congress. She doesn't even want to use it to thwart the progress of science. Unfortunately, she's all Humpty Dumpty in defining her philosophy as religion at all. The definition of a christian is one who believes in the deity or at least the semi-supernatural origins of Jesus. Merely following his teachings doesn't qualify. Hell, I'm a flat-out atheist and I follow some of Jesus' teachings- on the treatment of the poor for example. I think perhaps JuliaL is afraid to take that last step and, instead, must package her philosophy of life into a neat little package and call it "religion".
In any event, whatever it is, it isn't the sort of thing that most of us are talking about when we say that science and religion cannot coexist- or at least cannot do so without some logical gymnastics on the part of the faithful.
Announcing herself as an example of a religious person who accepts science is a little disingenuous.
Posted by: raindogzilla | May 14, 2008 8:35 PM
Carrie wrote:
Well, to be fair to 386sx, most of us do not refer to (for example) deism or pantheism as religions, at least not without some sort more formal structure or communal aspect. Of course there are always exceptions and classifying is always troublesome, but there are definitely religious or spiritual beliefs out there that we don't typically refer to as "religions" for a variety of reasons. And again, there are always exceptions, but I don't think "because I feel it" is necessarily the best criteria. One of many perhaps, but in and of itself it certainly doesn't tell us very much about the nature of or cultural aspects of a particular belief.
Whatever the case may be, I don't think 386sx is being out of line in questioning it here. And perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see the "white-bearded sky fairy" constraint being offered by anyone but you.
...
On the topic of why it would be necessary or desirable to exclude this particular description (awe and reverence, I take you to mean)- I think I have heard it said before that religion is what occurs at the cultural level, and spirituality is what occurs at the individual level.
So perhaps feelings of awe and reverence are probably better described as simply religious or spiritual feelings, rather than religions. In that respect, I don't think it's arrogant for a non-religious person to ask how a religious person's feeling of awe different from a non-religious person's feelings of awe.
I feel awe and reverence. Most of us do about one thing or another. At what point do these feeling cease to become regular garden-variety feelings and become religion? If you think the answer is "whenever the person who experiences it says it is" that's certainly fine, but you really shouldn't be surprised or put off if not everyone is satisfied with that answer.
Posted by: Leni | May 14, 2008 8:38 PM
386x,
I don't usually respond to your comments because I'm rarely confident that I understand them. Perhaps I'm just too old and out-of-touch with the modern sarcastic one-liner style. Sorry.
That's okay it just makes me God that's all.
Evolved human brain isn't capable of a detailed abstract understanding = that means I'm God.
Thanks!
Posted by: 386sx | May 14, 2008 8:42 PM
Paul W: Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I don't agree with all of your argument, but it is an excellent synthesis for this format.
I wrote a series of posts largely in agreement on DuWayne's blog last fall. Slightly different topic, but the series starts here: http://debrayton.blogspot.com/2007/09/rights-part-i.html
JuliaL: As usual, we are in complete agreement, except I'm a Christian rather than a pantheist, because I believe in the historical accuracy of the Gospel texts (more or less -- I don't believe in "inerrancy", because I don't know what that means).
Raindogzilla: Oddly enough, you and my Southern Baptist pastor are in complete agreement! His take on it is: "If what you are looking for is religion, spin the wheel and pick one, they're all the same, just a more or less emotional reaction to the universe. If what you are thirsting for is a relationship with the Creator of the universe, however, Christianity is the door to choose."
386x: Since you are God, which way do I need to face for my morning prayers? I have been accused of heresy for choosing ESE.
Posted by: kehrsam | May 14, 2008 9:40 PM
Carrie wrote:
Yes, it's hard to have a conversation on something if there's not a lot of agreement on the meaning of the major terms. Definitions on religion have been -- well, let's say there seems to be a variety.
For general enjoyment (and to see how long I can make a post), I present the following. Please pick one (1):
-----------------------------------------------------
Religion: The service and adoration of God or a god as expressed in forms of worship, in obedience to divine commands, especially as found in accepted sacred writings. (Webster's)
Religion: "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe"
Religion: belief, typically organised into doctrine, in the existence of one or more invisible beings who, again typically, command human beings to live and act in certain ways, and reward or punish accordingly. (AC Grayling)
Religion is "...the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." (William James)
Religion "... is what one does with his solitariness." (Whitehead)
Religion: "social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is sought." (Daniel Dennett)
"To be religious is to effect in some way and in some measure a vital adjustment (however tentative and incomplete) to whatever is reacted to or regarded implicitly or explicitly as worthy of serious and ulterior concern."
- Vergilius Ferm.
"By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of Nature and of human life."
- J.G. Frazer.
[Religion is] the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind. - G.W.F. Hegel
"Religion is the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." - William James
"I want to make clear that by the term 'religion' I do not mean a creed. It is, however, true that on the one hand every confession is originally based upon the experience of the numinous and on the other hand upon the loyalty, trust, and confidence toward a definitely experienced numinous effect and the subsequent alteration of consciousness: the conversion of Paul is a striking example of this. 'Religion,' it might be said, is the term that designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been altered by the experience of the numinous." - C.G. Jung
Religion (subjectively regarded) is the recognition of all duties as divine commands.- Immanuel Kant
Religion is that system of activities and beliefs directed toward that which is perceived to be of sacred value and transforming power. - James C. Livingston
Religion is a system of language and practice that organizes the world in terms of what is deemed sacred.- William Paden
To take everything individual as a part of the whole, everything limited as a representation of the infinite, that is religion.... The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.- Friedrich Schleiermacher
Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.
- Herbert Spencer
The religious is any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of its general and enduring value.- John Dewey
Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life.- Paul Tillich
Religion is the varied, symbolic expression of, and appropriate response to that which people deliberately affirm as being of unrestricted value for them.- T. William Hall
I understand by religion any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion.- Erich Fromm
It seems best to fall back at once on this essential source, and simply to claim, as a minimum definition of Religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings. - E.B. Tylor
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal and the hopeless quest.- A.N. Whitehead
Religion may best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics to non human things or events.- Stewart Guthrie
Religion is a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate condition of his existence.- Robert Bellah
Religion is...the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being.- F.H. Bradley
When I refer to religion, I will have in mind a tradition of group worship (as against individual metaphysic) that presupposes the existence of a sentience beyond the human and capable of acting outside of the observed principles and limits of natural science, and further, a tradition that makes demands of some kind on its adherents.- Stephen L. Carter
"Religion is a unified set of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."- Emile Durkheim
All religion...is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces.- Friedrich Engels
Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.... If one attempts to assign religion its place in man's evolution, it seems...a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.- Sigmund Freud
A religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
- Clifford Geertz
For an anthropologist, the importance of religion lies in its capacity to serve, for an individual or for a group, as a source of general, yet distinctive conceptions of the world, the self and the relations between them on the one hand ... its model of aspect ... and of rooted, no less distinctive "mental" dispositions ... its model for aspect ... on the other.- Clifford Geertz
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."- Karl Marx
A religion we will define as a set of beliefs, practices and institutions which men have evolved in various societies, so far as they can be understood, as responses to those aspects of their life and situation which are believed not in the empirical-instrumental sense to be rationally understandable and/or controllable, and to which they attach a significance which includes some kind of reference ...of a supernatural order.- Talcott Parsons
Religion is the serious and social attitude of individuals or communities toward the power or powers which they conceive as having ultimate control over their interests and destinies.- J.B. Pratt
Religion is an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings.- Melford E. Spiro
[Religion is] a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature.
- Anthony Wallace
Religion can be defined as a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate problems of human life. It expresses their refusal to capitulate to death, to give up in the face of frustration, to allow hostility to tear apart their human aspirations.- J. Milton Yinger
Religion: belief in a white-bearded sky fairy who intervenes to make sure we get the lead in the school play -- Carrie
WELL, alright-y then! Now we've cleared that up!
Please don't get me started on definitions of God.
Posted by: Sastra | May 14, 2008 9:45 PM
Well, I've had a pleasant family evening, and I think that before bed, I need to make two clarifications (not arguments, I hope):
raindogzilla,
I haven't much of a philosophy of life, except for the determination to stick to integrity as my central ethical standard, and I derive that standard from my view of God, not the other way round. When I was 14 I had an insight in the form of a vision (I say vision, because it was something I saw, not heard or felt) into what God is, and that has guided me ever since. "God exists" is probably the only absolutely solid belief I have; it would certainly be easier for me to believe that I don't exist than to believe that God doesn't. Personally I see that as religion, not philosophy - or maybe if religion is a subdivision of philosophy, it's both.
As for being a Christian, I don't just follow Jesus' teachings. He is for me the central image, person, mythology (see Henry Neufeld on the subject of Christianity and mythology) that gives me an understandable, human way to connect with God.
I answered a question about whose religion it is that doesn't conflict with science. If you feel that my religion is fake, perhaps you would care to learn more about Henry's or Kenneth Miller's: they are much, much more learned and eloquent on the subject than I am. It's not likely to hurt anything if you decide that I'm not telling the truth about myself, but it would be unfortunate and inaccurate if you were to conclude that there are no sincere religious persons, or Christians, who accept science.
Leni,
As usual, you make useful distinctions.
I too think it's a reasonable question, and I suspect the answer may be that the feelings aren't really different, just the perceived object of those feelings. I rather wish I did feel awe and reverence more often. Actually, I've always had a rather pragmatic, and not particularly emotional, sort of character and rarely feel those two emotions. Certainly the view of God I developed so many years ago, and which has served me all these years, involved no emotion beyond a mild version of my constant companion, curiosity.
Sastra,
You've done the research (well, except for Carrie's, where she was of course actually being sarcastic, not claiming that that's what religion really is), and now we await your synthesis. If anybody can do it, you can.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 14, 2008 10:34 PM
Carrie:
But that describes my attitudes as well. I am a vegetarian because I hugely value my own consciousness, and feel that I have no right to deprive other conscious beings of such a wonderful thing. I read astrophysics books to be awed at the immensity of the universe and at how tiny our place and time is in that astounding vastness -- and I always get goosebumps thinking that the elements in my body are literally the ashes of exploding stars, that we are all in a real sense made of stardust. I read biology books to be amazed at the phenomenally complex things that have arisen from simple principles working on that stardust. (And I watch Natalie Portman movies when I want to be grateful for beauty, but that's another topic...)
I don't mean to come off as dismissive of JuliaL, and I certainly would not say that her feelings are somehow fake, given that I think I understand most of those feelings very well myself. I just don't see how they fit the notion of a "religion", much less "Christianity". I don't see that as a problem, as the name doesn't change what JuliaL actually feels, merely how it labelled.
And ultimately, as others have said, if everyone who called themselves "religious" were like JuliaL, Dawkins wouldn't have written The God Delusion, and PZ Myers would blog a lot more about zebrafish and cephalopods. The problem for science is not with those who have an all-encompassing awe and reverence for the universe, but with people whose Bronze Age beliefs demand that they inflict those beliefs on others, even though they violently conflict with reality. That's the type of religion that worries me.
Posted by: Tulse | May 14, 2008 11:01 PM
I don't think that's what's going on.
I'm honestly curious why people call certain things God or religion that lack most of the features most people associate with those things.
Not because I think it's necessarily wrong to do so; at least sometimes, I think it's the right thing to do.
When I ask what somebody means by "God," and why they choose to call that "God," there are several kinds of answers I can understand. I think most almost all of them actually have something deep in common which most people can't easily articulate---that's why you have to probe a bit if you want to make sure you understand.
As I understand god concepts, there are certain commonalities across most seemingly entirely different concepts of god.
One important, prototypical kind of god or God is a person who may not have a body, but has a mind and intentions. That kind of god is something that has beliefs and probably desires. It's usually important that a "god" also has some kind of superhuman "supernatural" properties. That might be an uncanny deftness at hurling thunderbolts, the ability to create love between other beings, or just some kind of deep knowledge or wisdom unattainable by "natural" means.
Another common kind of God is something like the Force from Star Wars, or so
Posted by: Paul W. | May 14, 2008 11:08 PM
Ooops... sorry for that partial post. Don't know how it got away. Please ignore it, thanks.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 12:02 AM
Tulse,
I'm a vegetarian, too.
As much as I appreciate Carrie's take on what I was saying, and as important as respect for all elements of the world is to me, I really must repeat that feelings have very little to do with my view of God now and essentially zero to do with the original insight that convinced me that God exists.
That evening was peaceful and routine. In fact, the vision of God as the summation of everything past, present, future, realized and unrealized, with the addition of special qualities of God's own occured in a few minutes between my sitting down to rest a moment after washing dishes and my getting up again to dry them. Emotion, other than a very mild surprise (I believe I said aloud, "Oh. So that's how it is."), was simply not a part of that defining experience. And emotion, even very desirable ones like awe and reverence and gratitude, remain peripheral to my conviction that God exists.
I'm not at all sure this matters to anyone except me, but I feel the need to be accurate in a issue so central in my life.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 15, 2008 12:32 AM
KoI - sorry I didn't get back eariler, but I gotta sleep sometime. In answer to your question (14 MAY 1:00PM) Yes, but you get extra points for the "zeroth law".
Abby Normal - Your a cheap date aren't you? How about you bring the beer, I'll get the popcorn. (Still waiting for either) :)
Priya - Thanks for digging up the study for me. I tried but couldn't seem to find it.
All - Very interesting thread, but let's not get too bogged down in definitions. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 15, 2008 12:48 AM
I would DJ, but all I've got around here is American beer, which is like sex in a canoe... fucking close to water.
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 15, 2008 1:15 AM
Alright, I'm going to be the one to say it. I used to have many experiences of a "sublime" nature. But none of them helped me to think clearly.
Being an old geezer now, i prefer to think clearly than to think inspirationally. Perhaps that just means I'm old now. I don't know.
Today i had an exchange at work with a very young Muslim woman who didn't want to buy certain products because she thought they were made by Jews. As an atheist, i was so angry and upset that i barely held my tongue. Now, of course, i regret doing so and wish i had told her exactly what i thought of her racist, ignorant bullshit.
I simply can't help imagining that the world would be better off without all this exclusive religious nonsense.
I know most religious folk are decent people, but when i have these racist, religious encounters I get so damn mad that i just can't see the value in what they subscribe to.
I just don't see how religion is different from mythology. Although i love mythology. I just don't want it to be taken literally. That would kill it.
Okay. Mad rambling ends now. :)
Posted by: Caliban | May 15, 2008 1:20 AM
Abby - Ok I'll bring the beer!
When in Queensland, I drink XXXX, when in NSW, I drink Black, when Victoria, I drink Melbourne Bitter, when in Western Australia, I drink Goon*, when in South Australia, I drink - a nice 2000 Merlot (hints on licquorice, buurnt oak, used sump oil and day-old carbonara or some such) -DJ
*Cheap red wine that comes attractively packaged in box with a shiny plastic bag inside (containing the wine). A proudly Aussie invention.
Posted by: DingoJack | May 15, 2008 1:56 AM
Religious belief or assumption, is a spectrum. It is not a straightforward spectrum though. For example, while I am quite a bit closer in thinking to most atheists than I am to religious extremists, I would put myself past the fifty/fifty mark on assuming that their is some sort of god.
There are way too many factors involved to make the denunciation that this is religion but that is not. I have been told on a number of occasions that what I actually believe, when I have taken the time to explain it, is not much different than that of the atheist that I am explaining it to. I have been told that for all intents and purposes I am an atheist, or at least an agnostic. The problem with that is, I believe that god is highly likely and while I haven't begun to work out the nature of god, I don't believe that such understanding is completely impossible. Unlikely to be sure, but I actually believe that if god is, then it must be possible to not only discern, but quantify the nature of god.
We just haven't worked out how yet.
As for the awe and wonder, oh I have it. I have it in spades. Possibly the most awe inspiring notion to me, is that in the unlikely event that the human race persists for millions of years and expands to millions of planets, there will still be mysteries to explore. Really big expanses of space and time absolutely blow my mind, make me weep for my infinitesimal place in all of that. And yet there is an odd comfort in that. Because ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, our tiny little human experience, on our tiny little world, in this tiny, less than sliver of time - it really doesn't matter.
Because even if our human experience spans millions of years and millions of worlds, it will be billions of years gone by the time the universe as we know it ceases to be. And it is as likely as not that ours is not the first, nor will it be the last - nor is it likely that ours is the only sliver of "human" experience, in this or any other universe. But pictured from a distance and compression of time, I see it as a flickering of lights here and there. I like to think that the lights occasionally merge - that ours will.
But I find a quiet comfort in the notion that no matter how vast it becomes, our human experience is finite, while the universe isn't in any comprehensible fashion.
To me, god is just a cherry on the cake. I have a definite fascination and appreciation for my perception of god. My quest for god is as personal as my experience of the world and the universe around me. At times, I think of my experience of the world and the universe around me, as the word of god. It is certainly as close as I come to a notion of divine revelation.
So yes, it is very personal, very exciting and I find great comfort and a certain joy in my lifelong side trek into discerning the nature of god. I'm an insomniac, who really needs to lay down for periods that are comparable to getting a decent nights sleep. I meditate a lot and have a lot of time to explore and wonder. I visit hypothetical worlds, hypothetical people of hypothetical shapes. I talk to hypothetical gods, trying to make sense of it all. I never do, but I really, really enjoy doing it. And after a lifetime of little sleep, I have found that it is the most restful passtime.
Is it religion, I don't think it really is. But it is very much a religious experience and has led me to certain assumptions that are not entirely shy of theism, though I outright reject revealed religion.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 15, 2008 2:13 AM
Leni, the distinction you make between spirituality & religion is very useful to this discussion And I agree that personal experience may not be a sufficient criterion for judging whether someone is religious, but it seems to me to be rather blithely brushed off altogether by a few commenters.
Paul, I think you hit the nail on the head here, "When I ask what somebody means by "God," and why they choose to call that "God," there are several kinds of answers I can understand." I only want to suggest that the kinds of answers we are capable of understanding are constrained by our cultural specificity. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Buddhism dispense with an anthropomorphic god who intervenes in human affairs? There are those who consider Buddhism more properly a philosophy than a religion, but I'm not sure its practitioners view it that way. And I think it says more about their assumptions than about Buddhism.
I suppose I find a definition of religion that draws upon the very oppressive structures of orthodoxy that threaten rationality & science counterproductive. That is, it make sense to me to make alliances with religious people who are reasonable so that we don't give the fundamentalists permission to continue to define religion for everybody, religious or otherwise.
Take for example, my Presbyterian church. There are 3 qualifications for membership: belief in God, accepting Jesus as your savior, & something else so equally vauge that I've forgotten what it is. The important thing is that, since priests no longer mediate an individual's relationship to God, the individual gets to decide what those 3 things mean to her. So in our church, there are plenty of people who don't believe in the inerrancy of the Bible (pretty mainstream) as well as people who don't believe in the resurrection (rather more heretical). Plenty of reasonable people (& many more unreasonable people) will argue that people holding such beliefs aren't truly Christian. But if a church as mainstream as the Presbyterian church (USA) accepts the self-identification of such people as Christian, then I'm suspicious of what end it serves for non-Christians to be less generous & tolerant of the variety of religious experience among individuals. The motivations of fundamentalist Christians who do so are fairly obvious. I doubt very much that that people at this site have similar motives.
I simply think it's a mistake to look to orthodoxy for that unique component to spirituality that differentiates it qualitatively from experiences common to those who are not religious. There seems to be an undercurrent in this thread that if belief doesn't include an anthropomorphic God or the divinity of Jesus, then it doesn't quite qualify as religion, but my point is that there's plenty of this kind of belief within mainstream Christianity. One could join Jerry Falwell in excluding these people from the faith, or one could be hopeful (even if continuing to be mystified at the irrationality of it) in the progress of religious people working toward holding the rational & the spiritual in fruitful tension. We're the ones, after all, who can stand up at school board meetings & say, "teaching ID is not only bad science, but it's bad theology to boot - not only doesn't it belong in the classroom, but it offends my religion." If only we could get the American public to believe we exist.
Posted by: carrie | May 15, 2008 12:00 PM
and apologies for the sky fairy line. I think I had this thread confused with another I was reading at the same time. In any event it wasn't intended as an insult to commenters on this thread, I was trying to disentangle a more superstitious attitude toward religion from what I was reading here.
Posted by: carrie | May 15, 2008 12:06 PM
Carrie - I'd define a religion as a system of belief that postulates an undetecable being or beings that have supernatural powers. Thus Buddhism originally was a philosophy, it postulated no god(s), anyone could reach nirvana by enlightenment, it was only later that religious features were encrusted onto it, due to contact with other peoples. That is how I understand it anyway. -DJ
PS The English often make fun of the Archbishop of Canterbury by describing him as: "the one who doesn't believe in god". If Anglicans (eventually) cease to believe even this, then are they a relgion or social club?
Posted by: DingoJack | May 15, 2008 12:18 PM
JuliaL wrote:
A synthesis? E gads. This thread is almost over!
A while back I started collecting definitions of 1.) God 2.) religion and 3.) spirituality. I've got pages now. This was partly out of frustration -- people were using words in such different ways -- and partly out of fascination -- people were using words in such different ways.
I'm not sure I can really attempt to pull it all coherently into one idea. Which is the point. Carrie had said:
"For a bunch of atheists, y'all seem to have the concept of religion wrapped up in a neat little hermetic package. JuliaL has offered you a deeply considered description of her religious belief, which Tulse & Paul W. quite blithely brush off as not properly constituting religion."
I wanted to point out that atheists such as Tulse, Paul, and myself are already aware of the vast diversity of ideas on what constitutes "religion," "spirituality," and "God." At a speech I attended, Richard Dawkins once held up a copy of Ursula Goodenough's Sacred Depths of Nature and said that there was really nothing in the book he disagreed with. With the change of a word here or there, he would have been proud to have written it himself. And yet it's a "religious" book.
We know there are versions of God out there that an atheist can accept and believe in. As I said before, I think this makes those definitions problematic.
I suppose the extensive list of definitions of "religion" I posted above could be loosely divided into 3 basic categories: defining religion as belief and worship of supernatural, magical, essentialist, vitalist "powers" or beings; defining religion as an attitude towards what is most important and sacred; defining religion functionally, in terms of rituals or how it benefits and unites the community/believer.
Under that second category, most atheists automatically become "religious," or at least "spiritual." While some people think this is a wonderful way to unite us all, those of us with scientific, methodical attitudes are bothered by the suspicion that nothing meaningful has really been determined, and nothing useful is being distinguished. Very nice, but we're much more interested in what happens when we look at and analyze that first category, because that's where the real conflict is, and that's where something critical and explicit is being put forth. Solving disagreements by rearranging the words is a bit too easy.
(Oh, I knew Carrie was being sarcastic; I was just being sarcastic back.)
Posted by: Sastra | May 15, 2008 12:49 PM
Problematic for whom or in what context? I wouldn't experience it as problematic if you as an atheist accept and believe in the same thing that I do, not even if you persist in believing we are accepting something not-God and I persist in believing we are accepting something that is God.
Well, now I do have a problem. I certainly don't fit into groups 2 or 3 - attitude and/or feeling is most definitely not what my religion is about; the rituals are a sometimes valuable offshoot, but certainly not the core - and group 1 feels pretty uncomfortable with all those fundamentalists in there breathing down my neck. Could we have a group for those who define religion as the seeking out and exploration of a relationship between the person and an ultimate, transcendent unity or being? Wouldn't that let us welcome in many additional Buddhists and Hindus, not to mention any leftover devotees of Emerson? Relationships are the very heart of what many, many people consider their religion to be.
(Yes, I knew you were being sarcastic back to Carrie; that's why I excluded her definition.)
Posted by: JuliaL | May 15, 2008 1:28 PM
Carrie, thanks for the clarification...
I'll sorta pick up where I accidentally sent the partial post above.
There's a kind of "God" that's common among New Agers. (And some very theologically liberal "Christians" who regard the Jesus story as myth, including some ministers I know. The scare quotes there aren't meant to be insulting, BTW, it just signifies that there are arguments both was as to whether that's best described as Christianity.)
This kind of god is something like a force or energy or vibration, or deep underlying pattern or tendency of the universe, or maybe the deep structure of everything.
Overtly at least, it's not a person or anything like a person; people who believe in such a thing and call it God are often annoyed if you think they believe in a god who's a person---something with beliefs and desires---much less a Middle Eastern sky fairy with a beard.
I have a hypothesis about this sort of thing, and why people would call such a thing God. My hypothesis is that there's usually a covert belief, however vague, that rests on a deep confusion about persons, non-persons, and the possible properties of each.
Consider The Force from the original Star Wars movie. Overtly it's just "a force" that pervades the universe. Why does everybody recognize it as something mystical or divine, and in some sense God-like?
If we met a New Ager who actually believed in The Force, why wouldn't we be surprised if they chose to call it "God"? Why is it obvious to everybody that you could have an attitude of awe and reverence for it, in a "religious" sense?
Why does it "feel right" that you could have a religion about it, in a way you couldn't about, say, relativistic space-time, matter, and their manifestation as gravity. After all, gravity is an ultimately mysterious force that pervades the entire universe.
But gravity is not interesting in the right way.
I think a crucial difference is that gravity is "just stuff" that isn't directly and intrinsically relevant to human concerns. Sure, it's important to everybody, crucial even, and if you understand gravity, you can do things like slingshot a spacecraft around a planet and out of the solar system... wow! But that's just boring science-and-engineering utility, like other stuff that's "just stuff."
The Force is not "just stuff." The force isn't a person, but it "knows" things, or somehow embodies knowledge, and the knowledge it channels is of a sort very, very interesting to humans.
So when you see Luke channeling the force to whack a jumpy ball without seeing it, or blow up the Death Star without thinking, that's interesting. Luke has found the a certain kind of reliable direct knowledge. By tapping into it, he can know things, without the usual mediation by unreliable information processing like sensation and perception.
That's the sort of thing people find very interesting, and somehow very familiar, which is why it works in the movie.
But The Force is more divine or maybe Godlike than that, and we all know that, too. The Force overtly isn't a person with a mind, and yet it knows or embodies the difference between right and wrong. Holy shit. That's really not like any actual force known to science.
It's about as unlike a force as anything could be. Forces are incredibly dumb, low-level things, utterly impersonal, unaware and insensitive to any human interests.
But this "Force" knows things that you very much want to know. It may not care about the difference between right and wrong, but nonetheless it's directly attuned to good and evil. Holy mackerel.
Not only that, but The Force is reliable in a certain sense. The movie doesn't tell you that, but you immediately recognize its god-like nature, and you know that without consciously thinking about it.
Suppose, for example, that Obi-Wan said "Use The Force, Luke!" and Luke said "Dammit, Obi-Wan, I used the freaking force, and The Force fucked up!
That could never, ever happen, because we all know unconsciously that the force is divine, or something like it, and that divine things never just "fuck up".
Now consider a New Age kind of "God" some that people I know believe in. It's very vague, but seems to be something like an invisible blue glow that pervades the universe, and it sorta loves you or it is love, or it wants you to be here or something like that. (Maybe it just wants you to be here in a very vague, impersonal way, wanting things like you to be among the things that emerge from the rich tapestry of the totality of everything.)
What are we to make of such "Gods"?
I think we should realize that they can't exist, because the concepts they're based on are demonstrably wrong.
It might have been reasonable to believe in such things 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago, but we know better know. We actually know something about truth, morality, and emotions that we didn't know before. We know that they're not low-level properties that can be embodied or reliably detected by a substance, or force or energy or "vibration".
They can only be apprehended by something like a mind.
We know things we didn't used to know about minds. They are material processes in certain kinds of physical systems and not others. In particular,
1) minds are intrinsically computational processes in intrinsically complex computers
2) beliefs are complex information in that kind of complex computational system,
3) truth is a subtle relation between patterns of beliefs and other things, and
4) emotions are interrelated complexes of beliefs and regulatory states of the right kind of information-processing system.
The kind of high-level properties and abilities people regard as godlike are actually exclusively properties of minds, things in minds, and relations between things in minds and other things. Not just because that's the only place we have observed them so far, but because those are the kinds of things they turn out to be, once you understand them---accept no substitutes.
Most "non-anthropomorphic" God concepts turn out to be anthroporphic after all, in some subtle way that people don't recognize. They are based on a certain kind of fundamental category mistake, thinking that certain properties or abilities can be features of something that really, really, can't possibly do that.
That's why I'm interested in what people do or don't choose to call God.
I think almost everybody who believes in "God" is making at least a weak form of an anthropomorphic category mistake---and that if they don't make such a mistake, they are unlikely to call what they believe in "God."
That's one reason I call myself an atheist---a disbelieving "strong atheist", rather than an "agnostic" "weak atheist." I not only don't think there's reasonable evidence for anything I'd call a god, but think that what most people want out of a "god" is impossible; the more people are attached to the term "God," the surer I am that it doesn't exist.
I do think there are exceptions, and those are interesting too. I think there's a small number of people who can believe in something like "the deep structure of the totality of the universe and its ramifying networks of possibility" and call that "God", and manage not to drag in covert anthropomorphic baggage.
I'd argue that that's a bad use of the term "God." It lacks not only the features of most traditional anthropomorphic gods that most people believe in, but the more basic and subtle category mistake that is common to almost all the other god-concepts as well.
When you say "God," I think almost everybody gets something out of that, which implies that you have (a) a certain kind of emotional attitude that other terms don't capture, and (b) that attitude makes sense.
Most people can understand that attitude toward most "gods", even an invisible glow that is impersonal but "is love" or just "embodies truth". They can't understand it toward the universe as a whole, without assuming that there's something extra in there that justifies a "religious" attitude.
I'd personally prefer that people not call things "God" that aren't god-like in the sense above. I think it just confuses things for roughly 97 percent of people, including people who say their God is "not anthropomorphic."
More importantly to me personally, I think it misses the truth about what natural kind of thing god-concepts have always been, everywhere. God-concepts have always based on a certain kind of metaphysics, in at least some respect---namely, a conflation of high-level and low-level properties, and a certain kind of radical reductionism where nonlocal, extremely complex phenomena are thought of as something like substances or energies.
The fact that modern science shows that such things can't actually exist is of course a bonus for atheists like me. That doesn't make it not true. :-)
As a practical matter, if I'm right, believer's in a truly thoroughly nonanthropomorphic "God" should be very, very wary of using that term---even to other people who claim to believe in a similar-sounding "non-anthropomorphic" "God". Even if you aren't making a subtly anthropomorphic category mistake, they probably are, and will misunderstand you as agreeing with them.
If that's what you want, for framing reasons, that might be useful in a not-fully honest way. It lets you avoid calling yourself an "atheist," as they likely would call you if they knew what you don't believe.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 2:12 PM
This is problematic for anybody who wants the word God to mean anything at all. On your sense of "God," what most atheists believe in would count as god. Most of us believe there is a totality of everything and all its ramifying possibilities. That's almost tautological.
If we agree that that counts as "God," then everybody believes in God and there's no such thing as an atheist.
That's would be a very odd thing for atheists to assent to.
Unless there's something you're not telling us, you've just reduced the information content of the word God to zero, i.e., made it useless. (Much worse than useless, actually, since it's so systematically misleading.)
It's like saying almost everybody has a car, because I can call a left foot a car. That would be very... um... idiosyncratic.
I'm pretty comfortable with words that have diverse senses, cluster concepts that generate new senses, fuzzy concepts, natural kind concepts, etc. But this is going a bit far.
Abraham Lincoln once asked a crowd, "How many legs does a horse have, if you call a tail a leg?"
The crowd shouted "Five!"
Lincoln said "Wrong! Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."
Sometimes seemingly crazy claims that an X is a Y are actually true. For example, it can be surprising to some people that dolphins are not fish---they're mammals, like us.
A counterintuitive claim like that can be absolutely true, but it generally requires an extraordinary and interesting explanation.
You haven't given us one, which makes me wonder if there's something you believe that you haven't told us. (Maybe because you can't consciously articulate it.)
Consider the dolphins-are-fish claim. People encountered a kind of thing that they only understood superficially, and called it "dolphin." Dolphins are dolphins because that's what they were named, pure and simple. There's a causal, referential link there---dolphins are whatever those things are that we've encountered and called "dolphins," whatever surprising things about them we might later learn.
When we learn that they're mammals, not fish, they're still dolphins, because we never had an actual permanent definition of what it was to be a dolphin---just a name for a "natural kind" of observed phenomenon in the world.
(We might have had "definitions" that assumed that dolphins were fish, but those "definitions" were ultimately provisional descriptions, and trumped by the scientific fact that dolphins are mammals. We go back to the actual phenomenon, and change the "definition" to fit reality; that happens all the time in science.)
You might try and tell a similar story about "God," as many liberal theologians often do. They say that primitive people who encountered God simply misunderstood what they were experiencing, making anthropomorphic assumptions and whatnot. What makes it okay to keep using the word God is that those primitive poeple actually encountered something real and it's okay to update the definition of "God" to fit what we've since figured out about God---he's not a he, has no beard, etc.
To tell that kind of story, and salvage the term "God," you need to show that people actually encountered God, and named a real thing "God," so it's okay to "redefine" the term "God" to fit whatever that turns out to actually be.
I'm skeptical that you can pull off that kind of move. There is no good evidence that what early people called "God" actually existed at all. There is no evidence that what they called "God" wasn't a manifestation of what you call god, except in the sense that every thing is a manifestation of the totality of the universe.
If we allow that move for God, we need a reason not to allow it for unicorns and leprechauns. People have "encountered" those things too, and whatever it was they interpreted as perceiving unicorns and leprechauns was also presumably a manifestation of the totality of the universe.
So without a principled reasons to grant you that flexibility in the use of the word "God," we don't have a reason to exclude nonsense like "the universe is a unicorn."
There are many ways that words can acquire many legitimate meanings. That doesn't mean there are no rules. You do seem to be invoking the Humpty Dumpty rule---that a word means whatever you use it to mean. That is not okay.
Of course, you're free to use any word in any way you want. But without a good justification, we're free to think you're just abusing terminology. (And be mystified as to why you think it's okay.)
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 3:06 PM
OK, read it. Interesting. I agree with a lot of it, and I'm not quite sure what the points of disagreement are.
Feel free to bring up something specific.
I agree in general that particular moral systems tend to evolve in ways that respect the underlying economics, more or less. (Without the individuals being aware of that, usually.) But there are also memetic drive issues, with belief evolving to propagate themselves at the expense of the people who have them. (Also mostly without individual awareness, usually, except on the part of a few particularly cynical and opportunistic charlatans.)
Sometimes it sounds like you're what anthropologist would call a naive functionalist, i.e., somebody assumes that cultural features serve a "good" function. (At least in some economic sense.) I suspect that's mostly an issue of presentation, because sometimes you seem not to assume that.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 3:25 PM
Sastra -
We know there are versions of God out there that an atheist can accept and believe in. As I said before, I think this makes those definitions problematic.
Why? Or more to the point, why should I, who has beliefs that fall within that spectrum accept that this isn't religious in nature, because doing so is a problem for you?
Solving disagreements by rearranging the words is a bit too easy.
I can see where you are going with this, but I am not so sure about it being too easy. I certainly don't think it's necessarily the wrong approach. Language defines reality. I think that the biggest issue is not that we substantively close to the same beliefs. Rather, it is the inherent discomfort that comes from people who's perception of reality differs from our own.
So ultimately it really isn't that easy to solve a disagreement this way, but I think that when agreement can actually be reached this way, it is a very effective solution.
JuliaL -
Relationships are the very heart of what many, many people consider their religion to be.
Absolutely. This is the core value of my own spiritual experience and quest to discern the nature of god.
Regardless of whether or not any god exists, I suspect that the attraction to it, is because at our very cores, we are solitary creatures. Our individual experience of the universe around us, is very much our own shared by no one else. It seems obvious to me, the attraction to a being that can actually share that individual experience with us. That can in effect, provide us with companionship in even the deepest, darkest aspects of self.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 15, 2008 4:03 PM
Like anyone wants to hear about spirituality from someone who admits he's no better than Hitler. Yeah, that's you Duwayne
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 15, 2008 4:18 PM
Paul W.: Your argument against expanding the concept of god to the point of meaninglessness was very well articulated & highly persuasive. On a practical level, it is exceedingly inconvenient that any discussion about god should require a lengthy disquisition as to what that concept means to the parties. But I'm not altogether sure that was ever not the case.
The point I want to interrogate is the assumption that a definition of god must be sufficiently distinct from what an atheist believes in order to be useful. I think that depends on the use to which you intend to put the word. If that use is to delineate differences in structures of belief among atheists and theists of different types, absolutely.
I happen to think that a definition of god that doesn't exclude the beliefs of (some? many? all?) atheists could be put to good use (assuming we can avoid the temptation to define what other people believe for them). One is in giving people who are not ready/willing/interested in relinquishing belief altogether somewhere else to go besides fundamentalism. Another is in people of different views on belief in coming to a common understanding of one another.
It looks to me like we're looking at the same evidence but applying/discerning different meanings from it. Your example of consciousness is a good one. I, however, don't agree that understanding the biochemical processes underlying consciousness reduces it to a mere physical process on the same level as, say digestion (not to suggest that's what you're implying). That is, even when/if we understand the physical operation of the brain completely, I don't think that explains away the human soul necessarily. In my view, belief in the human soul is an attribution of value & meaning on the sum of the physiological processes that generate human consciousness, and untestable assertions about its immortality I find somewhat beside the point. For me, belief in God is a perception (I grant the possibility that it is instead attribution) of meaning and value immanent in the universe we both perceive. You reach a different conclusion, but we seem to share many important values. I think that distinction is both nontrivial and useful.
Posted by: carrie | May 15, 2008 4:49 PM
Sastra wrote:
JuliaL wrote:
What Paul said. If people who don't believe in God can believe in "God," the word "God" is being applied to something so different than it's usually applied to that it's less confusing to simply find a new word. Otherwise, it's too easy to equivocate, even unintentionally.
What if I changed it to:
[2] defining religion as an attitude or relationship towards what is most important and sacred; the experience of the numinous.
That said, I'm going to agree with Paul again (I agree with him a lot, actually.) Nobody would talk about having a relationship with gravity, or the universe, or some other completely mechanical, impersonal force or existent. I suspect you're adding something extra in to "the transcendent unity of everything" which makes you call it "God." You will probably disagree, but I think you're adding in an anthropomorphic characteristic -- or perhaps an anthropocentric one. Or both.
I've also been interested in the impersonal versions of God (I'm more or less a former Transcendentalist), and I find some sort of anthropomorphic/anthropocentric qualities or aspects lurking underneath the surface of virtually all of them. Paul's analogy with "The Force" in Star Wars is a good one.
I'm going to paste in another big chunk from one of my files. Sorry it's long again, but at this point in the thread only the diehards are left.
This comes from a discussion where I was asked to define the difference between "Natural" and "Supernatural." I don't make the distinction based on what is "in Nature" or "can be studied by science" because I think those characteristics are too flexible, and do not hit the heart of the distinction. From what I can tell, I'm more or less echoing Paul here:
-------------
Supernatural:
of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a top-down view of reality in which pure Mental being, properties and/or products somehow precede, ground, influence, connect with, or integrate material nature. Human life is central to understanding or unlocking the true nature and meaning of the universe. Complex systems such as life, intelligence, consciousness, and values are not ultimately reducible to or supervenient on material processes.
Something is supernatural if it:
1.) uses laws different than those which apply to the familiar form of the universe we share in common experience (ie matter, energy, time arrow, etc.)
2.) is directly related in a significant way to the existence and direct causal power of thought, personhood, Mind, intention, emotion, intelligence, or values such as Good and Evil (or combinations thereof.)
Examples of supernatural phenomenom: disembodied souls, ghosts, ESP, psychokenesis, magical correspondances, vitalism, karma, prana, The Force, God, cosmic consciousness, mind as "energy force," a universal tendency towards the harmonic balance of Good and Evil, progressive evolution towards Higher States, mind/body substance dualism, holistic nonmaterialistic monism.
Natural:
of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a bottom-up view of reality in which complexity arises from simpler states and components of matter and energy which are lifeless and mindless. Complex systems such as life, intelligence, consciousness, and values are ultimately reducible to or supervenient on material processes, and there is nothing cosmically significant about human life, welfare, or choice.
Something is natural if it
1.) can theoretically be explained in terms of laws which apply to the familiar form of the universe we share in common experience (ie matter, energy, time arrow, etc.)
2.) is not anthropocentric, is not concerned with human actions and thoughts, and gives no special disembodied causal powers to thought, personhood, Mind, intention, emotion, intelligence, or values such as Good and Evil (or combinations thereof.)
Examples of natural phenomenom: the universe of common shared experience; other universes or forms of reality outside of or immanent in this familiar one of experience in which matter and energy either exist in different ways, and/or obey different laws (as long as those laws do not meet the criteria above for 'supernatural.')
-----------------
I would hesitantly place you into both category #1 and category #2. I hesitate because I'm still not real clear on what you mean by saying that God has a "quality of the whole which none of the parts have." When I asked you above, you said you weren't sure. Maybe omniscience and omnipotence -- but those are anthropomorphic. Consciousness -- but that would be anthropomorphic too! So you settled on "integrity" -- "wholeness, unbroken connections, completeness" -- and you apparently think that's not applying a human characteristic. I think you're subtly equivocating on the meaning of "integrity" -- "the bridge has structural integrity" vs. "I always try to have integrity in all my dealings with others."
I think that what you believe is God, is what I would label as supernatural.
Posted by: Sastra | May 15, 2008 5:23 PM
I'm not sure what this really means or where it leads.
One thing I'd rather not do is give people an out, so that they can have things both ways, and believe things that are inconsistent without realizing it. If you're an atheist, you should know it. If you're not an atheist, you should know that. In either case, you should know what that means and what the evidence is---or at least know that you don't know, and reserve judgement.
One thing that's way too common is that most believe things that that have been pretty well debunked by science.
For example, most people believe in souls in a fairly traditional sense. They shouldn't, and we shouldn't make it easier for them to. We shouldn't conflate the psychological phenomenon of the self, which does exist, with the traditional dualistic concept of the soul, which apparently does not.
We could try to salvage the term "soul" and say that the we do have souls, it just turns out that they're the same thing as "selves," and are implemented as processes in brains. I could say, every time I mention the "soul," that it's made out of (emergent patterns among patterns in) meat, rather than some spirit-stuff.
It's much clearer to say that I have a self, but not a soul.
Luckily, for making that particualr distinction, we already have a pretty good pair of words with different connotations. "Self" is practical and direct, and pretty clearly applies to something we actually have. "Soul" clearly has more dualistic metaphysical baggage. We can make the distinction without always saying something like "my soul of the brain-function kind, not the immaterial spirit-stuff kind."
It would be nice in talking about "God" if we had different words with different connotations, making it easy to do that. Unfortunately, we don't.
The problem isn't just that we don't have the right words, though. It's much worse than that. We don't have a consensus on the concepts, even roughly.
Many of the people trying to liberalize the meaning of the word "God" don't seem to want it to mean anything in particular. They just seem to want it to remain vague, leaving them free to express unclear thoughts and give them a positive spin.
One use for that is to allow people to believe vague and probably inconsistent things without showing it, and typically without even realizing it themselves. They can be comfortably confused and nobody can bug them about it.
Another use is to mislead people by omission, allowing them to believe they share a belief in something when in fact they don't, in either of two ways:
1) Somebody who believes in a non-God "God" can claim to believe in God and fit in with theists. That bugs me because it helps marginalize atheists who are honest about it. All the talk about how reasonable it is to believe in God and science make atheists like me sound unreasonably for thinking they're not compatible.
I'm tired of being made the odd man out, even by people who actually agree with me but imply to others that they don't.
2) Somebody who believes in a God god---something embodying a subtle deep category mistake inconsistent with science---can falsely claim not to believe anything inconsistent with science. If the term "God" gets vagued up to that extent, it just provides cover for woo-woo nonsense.
That kind of spurious agreement can be useful in the short term for papering over differences to build coalitions, but in the long run I think it's terribly destructive. It makes it harder for people to actually communicate and maybe learn something, and come to real agreement.
For me, that's most important when it comes to morality. I think the best hope we have of making things better is to understand and agree on the principles of morality, so that we can cooperate better.
But look at the New Age movement. You'd hope that New Agers, having abandoned scriptural literalist dogma, would be able to get down to the business of having real morality---caring about others, understanding and accepting social responsibilities, etc.
Nope. They're the most self-centered, narcissistic demographic out there. Most New Agers think that personal "spirituality" is the most important thing, and that the world will magically become a better place if they just lead "spiritual" lives---they'll just bypass the problems otehr people face, radiate good vibes that make things work out, and set a good example so that everybody does.
Too many think that if they just tap into the invisible blue glow that pervades the universe and loves you, they'll automatically have better lives that make other lives better, without actually having to do any hard thinking or heavy lifting. I hate that.
(There are some exceptions of course, including my New Ager sister who really does put effort into making the world a better place in concrete ways.)
It really bugs me that atheists are stereotyped as cold, amoral "unspiritual" people, and "spiritual" people in the New Age sense get a pass. (They may be regarded as kooky, but hey, at least they're spiritual, and believe in something, even a sort of God---not like those cold heartless atheists.)
The New Age movement is one of the things that makes me think that the moral problems with religion aren't all due to fundamentalism, or weaker sorts of orthodoxy. You can be as unorthodox as you like, and still get morality all wrong because you're lost in bullshit. The trick is getting it right and the best hope for that is to settle for nothing less than the truth about reality.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 6:58 PM
Paul W. wrote:
This argument over how far the definitions of 'God' and 'religion' can be stretched is very similar to the debate over the word "spirituality" -- which is, if possible, even more vague, fuzzy, and ill-defined. Should secular humanists find a reasonable definition of spirituality, and then make haste to reassure the faithful that they, too, are "spiritual" people?
I don't know, but I think not.
In addition to your excellent points above, the 'papering over of differences' feels very much like "trying to pass." I can tell everyone that I am "religious" and believe in "God" and have a very "spiritual" nature and now nobody has to worry that I'm going to upset the status quo and come out and disagree and be all judgmental or anything. And I don't have to change any of my beliefs at all!
Because nobody will think I mean what I really mean. And because it looks like I'm buying into the idea that religion is a good thing and you can't be good without it.
DuWayne wrote:
Your intentions are good, but still I feel like a gay person might if informed that there are meanings of the words "straight" and "heterosexual" which include him, so we can just slide him into mainstream society by promoting these more inclusive definitions, and bigotry will disappear. He's now a "straight heterosexual!" Stigma gone!
The tolerant folks who are happy to define heterosexuality to include homosexuality should be just as happy to call everyone a homosexual. But no. Stigma still there!
I don't think it would be an effective solution.
Posted by: Sastra | May 15, 2008 7:26 PM
I love you too Priya, thanx for brightening up my day bigot.
Paul -
As an aside, I actually believe in the more traditional duality, even as I accept that a certain amount of Self is physiological.
It would be nice in talking about "God" if we had different words with different connotations, making it easy to do that. Unfortunately, we don't.
At least in print we do. I make certain distinctions between people who talk about God and people who talk about god. When people refer to god, I assume that they are not talking about the Abrahmaic God. Indeed at that point, I assume that they probably aren't talking about any mainstream conception at all. At that point, I realize that unless they provide context or otherwise define it, I do not know what they mean by god.
Likewise, when god is discussed in verbal conversations, I start with the base assumption that they mean something other than a mainstream conception and look to context and inflection to figure it out.
The problem isn't just that we don't have the right words, though. It's much worse than that. We don't have a consensus on the concepts, even roughly.
And this is actually the answer to the problem you have in the quote above. We really don't have a consensus on the concepts.
I have debated with atheists who believe in the same duality that you disparage above, I've even engaged with a couple of them on this blog. Are they not atheists? I would tend to think not, as this is a big part of why I don't call myself an atheist or agnostic.
Many of the people trying to liberalize the meaning of the word "God" don't seem to want it to mean anything in particular.
It's not that we don't want it to mean anything in particular, it's that we don't really know for certain who, or what god is. To me, it is quite possible that what I perceive as god interacting with my life, is really my own soul, or a hallucination - or any of a number of things. It's not that I want it to be a vague concept, it's just that to me, it is.
But again, you answer this one too, in the para right above it.
1) Somebody who believes in a non-God "God" can claim to believe in God and fit in with theists. That bugs me because it helps marginalize atheists who are honest about it.
That statement bugs me, because it implies that JuliaL and to a certain extent myself, are being dishonest. Neither of us is and I am quite confident that JuliaL is just as sincere in her stance as I am about my own. Again, we're not being dishonest or attempting to marginalize you or make you look like an asshole - "We don't have a consensus on the concepts, even roughly."
I'm tired of being made the odd man out, even by people who actually agree with me but imply to others that they don't.
I am very sorry to hear that. If it makes you feel any better, I am tired of being the odd man out too. Basically being a evile heretic who is going to burn in a myriad of hells, because I am not the right sort of theist, if even theist I am. OTOH, I am a irrational fool, who believes in sky fairies of some sort or another.
That kind of spurious agreement can be useful in the short term for papering over differences to build coalitions, but in the long run I think it's terribly destructive. It makes it harder for people to actually communicate and maybe learn something, and come to real agreement.
I think that you are assuming an awful lot with that.
First, there are few of the coalitions you are talking about, because the differences are far more important to most people involved, than the vague similarities. Most Christians I know, probably believe that I am going to hell. Even when I was very active in the church, my pastor was constantly trying to "save" me.
Second, polarization of any sort has destructive tendencies. God belief is just one of many polarizing forces and again, to most Believers, the brand of god belief is of critical importance - if it's not the right kind, then the person holding them isn't much different than an atheist.
It makes it harder for people to actually communicate and maybe learn something, and come to real agreement.
Has it done so here? JuliaL and I have different views about god. And both of us have radically different views about god from the vast majority of theists. And yet from what I have seen thus far, this has allowed for a very interesting discussion that has indeed led to some agreements, even as disagreements persist.
For me, that's most important when it comes to morality. I think the best hope we have of making things better is to understand and agree on the principles of morality, so that we can cooperate better.
Never going to happen. I mean never. Morality is subjective, always has been, always will be and it has nothing to do with god belief or lack of god belief. Even specific theists, who believe absolutely in dogmatic moral frame of their faith have a subjective take on that moral frame. And many of us have very different moral frames, never mind how we interpret or make practical use of it. Sure, there are many aspects of these frames that are common, rape being one that jumps right out there. This does not mean that we will ever come to some universal moral framing. Nor do I think we would be happy with the results if we did, it is part of the variety that makes being human so exciting.
The trick is getting it right and the best hope for that is to settle for nothing less than the truth about reality.
I have to say that is close to the most arrogant thing I have heard anyone say in a long time.
I accept that the truth about reality is theoretically possible to acquire, but it is about as likely as definitely and quantitatively proving or disproving the existence of God or god. And unless you absolutely Know that nothing but what we see and understand exists, then you can never really settle on anything. Because there is no way that humans have come up with yet, of Knowing the Truth about reality.
Not that there is anything wrong with not settling. I haven't and probably never will. But the implication from your statement is that you have, which means that you know the truth - I for one doubt you actually do.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 15, 2008 8:05 PM
Sastra -
Your intentions are good, but still I feel like a gay person might if informed that there are meanings of the words "straight" and "heterosexual" which include him, so we can just slide him into mainstream society by promoting these more inclusive definitions, and bigotry will disappear.
I just have to chuckle at the irony of your example. I actually generally refuse to identify as straight, have for years. If somebody asks me if I am straight, I say no. I just loathe the notion of being defined by my sexuality.
I am more and more moving in that direction with regards to religious labeling. Quite honestly, it doesn't matter. I judge others, based on the context of the situation and their abilities within that context. If I am hiring a new helper, I don't give a damn about anything except how they are going to affect my jobs. If I am meeting the parents of children of my friends, I don't care about anything except whether or not this is an appropriate person to have in my child's life.
So for discussions of sexuality, I like to say that I am a human who likes to have sex with other humans. I guess an appropriate response to queries about my religious inclinations would be along the lines of; I believe many things and don't believe many others. It just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Ultimately though, I wasn't really trying to claim that anyone has reached such an agreement here, just that such agreements can be very effective solutions when they happen. This also doesn't mean that all the stigma and ill will goes away from society when such agreements are reached, such resolution is limited to those involved.
Going back to my; I am a human and I like to have sex with other humans. I once went the rounds with someone who was rather obviously not keen on queers. He kept trying to pin down my sexuality and I stuck with the aforementioned response. I finally asked him, "What difference does it make? Does it make me more or less of a person, who I want to fuck? Would you suddenly be afraid of me or interested in kicking my ass, if I said I am gay? If we worked together and had a decent working relationship, cooperating to make ourselves look better to the boss, would that suddenly be destroyed if I said I'm gay?
By the time we were done, he had realized that it really doesn't matter. Now I doubt that he was ready to go out and put a rainbow sticker on his car and join a GSA, but it certainly had a fairly strong impact on his views. And the discussion was entirely semantic in nature.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 15, 2008 8:26 PM
DuWayne,
I don't have time to reply in detail right now, but I'd like to clarify one thing:
I did NOT mean to imply that anybody in this thread was in any way dishonest. Certainly not JuliaL or you.
Nobody here has wronged or dissed me in any way that I can recall---just some normal disagreement---and if I made it sound otherwise, I sincerely apologize. I feel that I've been treated quite well, despite the contentious subject matter, and I thank you all.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 8:29 PM
That's quite a double standard you've got there Duwayne, people who think its wrong to be gay aren't bigots but those that oppose polygamy are. You're a real peach.
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 15, 2008 8:34 PM
One more quick clarification:
DuWayne, I certainly recognize that it's possible and for most people, entirely reasonable to be a dualistic atheist, and can fully sympathize with your situation.
I myself was a dualistic atheist for years. I only changed my mind after serious study of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind. I think that given expert knowledge of those things, it's more reasonable to be an atheist monist.
I don't mean that as an argument from authority; I don't expect my saying that to convince anybody of anything---and it shouldn't. I'm just saying I've been there, and I agree that it sucks to be in no-man's-land.
Certainly one of the things I like about ScienceBlogs is that I'm not the odd man out here for being an atheist monist, as I am in the larger world.
That's why I have to find other contentious positions to take, like that there's an objective basis for something usefully resembling objective morality. At least I can get dogpiled for that minority view. :-)
More on that later.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 15, 2008 8:49 PM
Priya -
Actually, I use your definition to call you a bigot, not mine. Polyamory and polygamy do not hurt anyone, yet you so strenuously disapprove. According to your idiotic definition that makes you a bigot. Reap what you sow darlin, reap what you sow.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 15, 2008 8:50 PM
Paul -
I look forward to it. And you probably won't get dogpiled on morality - least ways my own views on morality get dogpiled when I go there.
Priya -
I would add that you don't actually meet my criteria for being a bigot, because you are most certainly an ignorant little git.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 15, 2008 9:00 PM
I'm far from having worked out what I'm trying to articulate. I appreciate your patience and your fascinating arguments. Let me give an example a shot:
The word "Christian" means an adherent of the Christian religion. The word "Hindu" means seeker of god. The former definition serves to distinguish it from other faith practices, the latter defines itself in relation to others. The former has the virtue of specificity, of allowing us to speak clearly and carefully about fine distinctions among categories. The latter has the virtue of constituting the self in relation to others unlike yourself. Both attitudes toward identity have positive & negative consequences (personal & cultural). I tend to believe the benefits of the latter outweigh those of the former in matters of religion & art. It is certainly not unreasonable to hold the opposite position. The strengths & weaknesses of the two perspectives don't line up evenly, though (it isn't necessarily obvious objectively which is a greater good: specificity or inclusiveness. It depends on what you value, what your objective is).
I think the former attitude towards language contains an underlying assumption that there be a real, discoverable referent to which a name or a definition can most closely conform. But religion is a social construct. Since God is removed from the equation by (infuriating, I totally grant) by being unknowability itself, all we have to talk about it is what is the significance we assign to or observe in the experience of living with unknowability. The latter I think is in many ways better suited to social constructs: the more interesting question is not what is genuine religious belief, but what do we mean when we say (or don't) "I believe"? Particularly since self-identification is a constitutive element of religion, the way we define the identities we choose shapes the ways in which we are able to relate to our world.
Posted by: carrie | May 16, 2008 12:56 AM
Duwayne, its a well known fact that polygamy exploits women and deprives men of partners. It is not bigotry on my part to oppose that which is harmful to others. If you want to use my definition of bigotry to decide who's a bigot then its high time you called King of Ireland a bigot for disapproving of gayness which harms no one. Of course you won't because you're a hypocrite, using one standard for him and another for me. Thats the problem with you, you've stated that your primary goal is attacking me, the truth and whats right don't matter to you.
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 16, 2008 1:44 PM
Priya -
...its a well known fact that polygamy exploits women and deprives men of partners.
First, exploitation of women and girls is not inherent to polygamy. One of the reasons that polyamory is the term preferred by a lot of people who live that lifestyle, is because the term polygamy carries some rather nasty connotations. There are plenty of people out there who live in multiple partner relationships, who do not get into exploitative practices. Really, the exploitation of polygamy is entirely the purview of cults that practice polygamy for religious purposes.
Second, I really don't buy the argument that it deprives men of partners. The closest to this argument is again, found in cults that are choosing partners from a sharply limited pool. In, for example, FLDS cults, young men are routinely driven from the congregation because there aren't nearly enough women for every male to get some. This is not however, a problem where the population is not so sharply limited.
When you remove the religious trappings and behavior that is not inherent to polyamory/polygamy, then your objections are, by your definition, bigoted.
If you want to use my definition of bigotry to decide who's a bigot then its high time you called King of Ireland a bigot for disapproving of gayness which harms no one.
I have no desire to use your moronic definition of bigotry against anyone but yourself. I should think that it is entirely legitimate to use your own definition of bigotry against you, considering how adamant you are that it is the legitimate definition.
As for KoI, I was actually reserving judgment when he came up before, because I really wasn't sure. But my subsequent experience of him lends me to believe that he is struggling with a lot of new information and it's interaction with his faith. I would have to say that no, he is not a bigot. The more he learns and converses with people here, the more he is opening up to the similarities he has with others, rather than the differences.
Thats the problem with you, you've stated that your primary goal is attacking me, the truth and whats right don't matter to you.
Now who's lying? I have stated no such thing. What I have said is that I rather enjoy baiting you, which I do. I don't have to set the truth and what is right to the side at all, indeed I wouldn't, because truth and what I believe is right are of the utmost importance to me. The thing is darlin, you give me everything I need to bait you and call you out as the small minded, unimaginative, totalitarian, petty little hypocrite that you are.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 16, 2008 6:03 PM
Duwayne your delusions about polygamy being benign are laughable. Its been demonstrated over and over again that its harmful
Your the hypocrite Duwayne. You use one standard to judge me and another standard to judge King of Ireland. And you don't even correctly apply my standard of bigotry to me for that matter. No doubt King of Ireland disapproves of Polygamy as well and like the lying hypocrite you are you claim he's not a bigot but I am.
You previously stated that your primary goal is attacking me and its once again clear that the truth and what's right don't matter to you.
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 16, 2008 6:28 PM
Duwayne said "I have no desire to use your moronic definition of bigotry against anyone but yourself. I should think that it is entirely legitimate to use your own definition of bigotry against you".
A reasonable person doesn't use a standard they find moronic to judge anyone, thanks for demonstrating yet again just how unreasonable you are.
truth and what I believe is right are of the utmost importance to me.
You've made it clear that isn't the case, liar.
I rather enjoy baiting you
Too bad you're totally incapable of doing so. What you're doing is screaming that if no one listens to your lies you'll continue to make a fool of yourself, by all means please continue to do so.
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 16, 2008 6:50 PM
Using a rhetorical device to demonstrate hypocrisy isn't hypocrisy itself.* You might quibble over whether he's using your definition of bigotry correctly, though from what I remember from the original exchange DuWayne's characterization is spot on.
*In case it isn't clear, DuWayne doesn't really think you're a bigot.
Posted by: argy | May 16, 2008 6:52 PM
I'm afraid you don't make any sense Argy. Given that Duwayne's admitted he's no better than Hitler I'm not all all concerned what he thinks or doesn't think about me.
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 16, 2008 7:12 PM
*In case it isn't clear, DuWayne doesn't really think you're a bigot.
SHHH! I don't think she's worked that out yet.
What's amusing is (as I'm sure Ed could attest) I am really bad at catching irony and sarcasm, thus I am pretty bad at pulling off irony and sarcasm. Rare indeed is it that I can actually slide it past someone else.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 16, 2008 7:14 PM
More lies, good for you Duwayne, perfectly in keeping with your immoral personality.
Posted by: Priya Lynn | May 16, 2008 7:25 PM
Sastra,
I hope it's not too late to make a quick reply to one or two of your comments.
I see what you mean, though I guess it doesn't bother me much to think we might both point at the same thing, and when I say, "Aha! God!" you reply with "No, it isn't." But yes, it could work, I suppose, to have two names for the same thing, one that suits you and one that suits me. When I say, "Where's Rebecca?" and my son-in-law says, "Marie's in the kitchen," we understand each other well enough. What I can't do is not say God, because I really, really mean God.
I like that better, yes.
I don't think that integrity isn't a human characteristic. I think that we all work with and through our human brains, evolved in their present form only very, very recently in the time since the big bang, and evolved in the physical context of a primate struggling to survive in the physical environment present on one little planet in a very big universe. It would be pretty arrogant, I think, for any of us to imagine that anything we achieve is non-human in any way. Our scientific theories and discoveries are really nice little models of the workings of the world as far as our brain perceive that world, but truth? Hardly. So of course anything at all I say must to some degree be contaminated by the little human brain I use for thinking and making sentences. I do have serious doubts about the ability of that brain ever to know much about the ultimate unity and wholeness that I think is God, but, like DuWayne, I'm willing to be surprised about that.
When I say I think one quality that God has is integrity, I'm really meaning that in a way that is closer to the bridge having integrity than to the modern, vague, generally-good-person sort of notion we sometimes have when we say a certain person has integrity.
I base my ethics on that concept because it reminds me that every nut (in the various senses of that word) and every connection has a value that must be carefully considered before doing anything to damage, disconnect or break them. It help me remember to keep my words and feelings and behavior connected, not in conflict with each other. And it reminds me of the great dangers of breaking relationships or trust with other people. It reminds me that I am part of a web that includes the roach I brush out of the house instead of stomping (whenever practical) and all the other natural elements of the world I far too carelessly consume or damage in passing.
Paul W,
I don't get what a nongod God is or a God God, but I never quite understood people talking about like liking somebody. Would it help you any at all in categorizing my views of God to know that I go to church and that prayer is an extremely important (and very frequent) part of my day? I do assure that I don't think less of you for saying that religion and science are incompatible; I just think you're wrong.
Carrie,
Well Said! Well said!
Well, anyway, people, we have succeeded, I think, in establishing one very important thing: It is possible to have a civil conversation about whether or not science and religion are compatible, and that's something.
Posted by: JuliaL | May 16, 2008 7:48 PM
No, it doesn't.
On one hand, consider the word "atom." The concept of the atom changed radically when we realized that atoms have internal structure---in the original sense, they are not atomic, i.e., indivisible units with no internal structure. The concept changed several more times in the 19th and 20th centuries, when we learned that electrons aren't really particles orbiting the nucleus, and things like that.
And yet the word atom means something. It refers to those small particles that for most purposes are indivisible, that can be grouped into molecules.
So now we have at least two common meanings of the word atom:
1) the original sense, in which we can say Democritus was wrong, thousands of years ago, to think that atoms are indivisible smallest-possible-units of matter
2) the general abstract sense of "atom", useful for describing relationships between parts of very different kinds of systems, in which we talk about relationships among "atoms", which are things we take as indivisible at that level of analysis, even though for other kinds of analysis, we might look inside. (Computer scientists use that sense a lot.) For example, for most purposes a cent is an atom of American money. (But not all purposes; banks may calculate interest in small fractions of a cent.)
3) The usual sense in talking about physics and chemistry, in which atoms---whatever they're actually like inside---are those particles we call atoms, which stick together to make molecules. That's a "natural kind" term, like "dolphin" which has stuck to an actual phenomenon.
There are at least three senses of the word "atom," which work in different ways. That can be confusing occasionally, but usually it's entirely clear which sense is meant, and if it's not clear, it can easily be made clear. So "atom" works as three words, each of which means something definite and works just fine.
It isn't a Humpty Dumpty word; it doesn't mean whatever the speaker uses it to mean. If it did, we'd get sick enough of that problem and come up with new words or phrases to express the different concepts. (Like "chemical atom" or something.)
We also don't throw our hands up in the air and say that atoms are mysterious and unknowable---they're sorta indivisible, sorta divisible, and wacky stuff like that! Instead, we think about what "atom" was supposed to mean, and break it down into different senses, each of which has an explainable logic to it.
On the other hand, consider the word "phlogiston". Phlogiston was a hypothetical substance that was supposed to explain things like animals suffocating and fires going out when deprived of fresh air. The buildup of phlogiston was supposed to account for smothering. People thought that "phlogiston" referred to a real substance.
But it doesn't. That's not why animals smother and fires go out. There isn't a substance produced by respiration or combustion that builds up and halts the process. There is a substance produced by respiration and combustion, now called carbon dioxide, but it doesn't smother animals or fires. What smothers things is running out of an input (oxygen), not the accumulation of an output (phlogiston).
Scientists could have chosen to use the word "phlogiston" to refer to carbon dioxide. It's like phlogiston in that it's produced where phlogiston was expected to be produced. But it's unlike phlogiston in that it doesn't explain smothering, and that matters a lot. It doesn't explain what phlogiston was hypothesized to explain.
They could have tried to save the theory by saying that phlogistion isn't a substance after all, but is still in a sense something that "builds up"---a deficit of oxygen---and accounts for smothering.
But why bother? It's clearer to say that the Phlogiston theory was wrong, so there's no such thing as phlogiston, even if there is something equally interesting going on.
Arguably, we should have done that with the word "atom" when we found out that chemical atoms are not indivisible. The reason we didn't was that it wasn't worth the trouble. Chemistry was well advanced and the word was thoroughly stuck to an actual phenomenon. Chemists didn't really care that "atoms" turn out not to be atomic, i.e., indivisible.
And nobody really cared about fighting over whether "atoms" are really atoms in that sense, because it wasn't very confusing. In the context of chemistry, we can regard atoms as atomic. In the context of high-energy physics, we can whack them really hard and crack them open. It's just one example among many of a word with related but distinct senses.
"God," on the other hand, seems to be a word in trouble. There's good reason to think its original referent simply doesn't exist, like phlogiston. And there doesn't seem to be a clear sense in which we can salvage it, as we can the word "atom."
Atoms, in the usual chemical sense, not only do exist, but they are like (indivisible, Democritan) atoms in a very important ways---the chemical theory of atomic elements and molecular compounds still works. The divisibility of the atom under weird circumstances doesn't keep real atoms from explaining what theoretical atoms were meant to explain. Democritus was right that a modest number of kinds of atoms (elements) can explain the existence of a vast variety of substances, by how they're combined to make molecules.
"God" on the other hand, doesn't seem to be able to explain anything. The original person-with-magical-powers theory turns out to be wrong. The revised nonperson-with-top-down-properties theory seems to be wrong as well.
Like phlogistion and unlike atoms, a non-anthropomorphic, non-anthropocentric "God" consistent with modern science doesn't seem to be able to explain the kind of thing gods were always meant to explain. We have better theories.
It seems pointless to call such a thing "God," even if it's real and even if it's deeply unlike "just stuff" in some way. Whatever it is, it isn't God in the same way that carbon dioxide just doesn't really cut it as "phlogiston." Carbon dioxide is a useful thing deserving of its own name, free of the baggage of an unsalvageable theory.
I think most people actually get all this on some level, even if very few can articulate it this way.
When people call whatever-it-is "God" and don't mean the traditional white guy with a beard, it's because they're assuming that there's something out there that justifies certain feelings. And that is always, or very nearly always, based on a theory that retains unanalyzed anthropomorphisms.
(Or at least anthropocentrisms and unrealistic or incoherent top-downisms, as Sastra pointed out. Confusions about "emergent" properties are the new fad for justifying that.)
Back when I was an atheist dualist, I very seriously entertained the idea that there was something like The Force or Karma or some less-anthropocentric principle of emergent order, or something. I could have called that "God" and called myself an agnostic.
I didn't, though, because I didn't want the baggage---the last thing I wanted was to confuse that very interesting and special thing that I thought was likely to be real with the discredited anthropomorphic theories of Western religion, or the muddled goofiness of most traditional Eastern religion.
I thought at the time that Eastern mystics might be onto something, metaphysically---that people had encountered something real and interesting that could justifiably be called "God" despite the horrid baggage of that term in Western culture.
But I didn't want to call it "God," even if that use was justifiable, because for almost anybody I could talk to, they'd assume I meant something I didn't. An orthodox Christian would naturally assume I meant a magic person, of course. But even a Zen Buddhist or an agnostic Joseph Campbell "power of myth" fan would almost certainly read something importantly false into the term.
My intuition was that if I was onto something, it was something that has systematically been misunderstood by Easterners and New Agers, so the true thing would be better than God, in the sense of not being the kind of ignorant or goofy thing invariably meant by any of the common uses of "God." Why tar such a cool and fascinating real thing with the traditional, primitive, ignorant label "God"?
Now god is unknowability itself?
WTF?
I actually know a number of things unknowability---things like Goedel sentences, logical incompleteness in several senses at several levels, signal detection theory, bounded rationality, etc., etc...
What I don't know is why anybody would think that "God" is a good word for anything like that, or any other kind unknowability.
Isn't that just God the Copout? Is God just where we stop thinking?
That seems to be the emergent pattern here.
People like to talk vaguely about things like "emergence," "integrity," "unknowability," or whatever, and then slap the label "God" on it.
Few of the people who do that (Stu Kauffman being a rare exception) actually know much about emergence, unknowability, etc. And very few seem to be very interested in actually finding out what we can and can't know, can and can't talk about, etc.
That's a bad sign, IMHO.
I don't find it infuriating, by the way. It just seems pathetic.
It seems like a way people avoid actually doing the hard work of figuring stuff out for real.
It allows them to dismiss what rationalistic science weenies talk about as "just stuff," and invent a new God of the Gaps. God is whatever it is that the rationalists can never know, but that non-rationalists can intuit, making them "spiritual" and special.
(Sastra---you can probably see that I agree with your comments so much that it's hard to reply to them in an interesting way.)
Posted by: Paul W. | May 17, 2008 2:42 PM
This is very unclear to me.
In light of modern science, it seems to me that the only "integrity" that the totality of the universe has is of the lowest-level sort, as far removed as could be from human "spiritual" concerns as could be.
In terms of connotations, it's no more accurate to say that the Totality has "integrity" than that it's very very uniform, and exhibits a rather extreme and boring kind of consistency. There are a few regularities, and an inconceivable amount of randomness that respects those regularities, statistically. That's the universe for you, in a nutshell.
How is your "integrity" different from saying that "it's all just stuff, doing what stuff does?" Why do you want to call it integrity if not to tap into intuitions about relevance to human concerns?
This sounds like a category mistake to me. Considered as a whole, the universe only has complete "integrity" in the boring low-level sense of conservation laws, gauge theory, etc. Pretty dry un-godlike stuff.
At the higher levels, there are emergent regularities, with interesting exceptions. The higher you go, the messier it gets.
Interesting things happen in a staggeringly few places; the deep simplicity and randomness of the universe ensures that most of the universe is very dull, most of the rest is pretty dull, and a vanishgly small fraction of the universe is pretty interesting.
People often desperately latch onto that and make it sound liek the universe is set up for "interesting" (to us) patterns to emerge somewhere.
But that's really not right. One thing to know about big random systems is that things can't be random at every level everywhere. Randomness at one level generates uniformity at another. (For example, large batches of absolutely random values have a strong tendency to have similar distributions of values---if you back up far enough and squint, random black and white is a consistent gray.)
If there's a God, it's inordinately fond of randomness. Or "God" "is" randomness.
One reason physicists are overwhelmingly atheists is that they get this. They get that every time physicists have assumed there was any kind of "God," that has misled them. Not just the bearded guy who wrote the laws of Newtonian physics like a judicial degree, but even the vague Eastern or New Age "cosmic" gods. The universe always turns out to be more profoundly accidental than any God concept or "spirtual" attitudes would lead you to believe.
Things being regular at one level is often a sign that they're very random at lower level. That's interesting and useful to know---it's how ideal gas laws emerge from statistical mechanics of bouncing molecules---but it's nothing to get "spiritual" about. It just is what it is, and it's all just stuff.
What's humanly interesting about the emergent things we observe---gas laws, minds, societies, economies, etc.---isn't a reflection of the underlying integrity of the totality of the universe except in that "boring" non-"spiritual" sense.
When you get to things that are humanly interesting, that kind of utter "integrity" of the universe is misleading. The low-level sense in which everything is "connected" and ultimately the same kind of stuff is often very misleading if you apply it to higher-level things like righteousness, economies, etc.
For example, in the short term, its easy for humans to think in zero-sum terms, because in many situations, roughly zero-sum game situations arise. If one person gets a good deal, somebody else gets a worse deal, and things like that. But in the longer term and at a larger scale, the same situations are frequently not nearly zero-sum.
If you think that the underlying unity and integrity of physics tells you that "everything is one" and "what goes around comes around," you're just wrong. What goes around often does come around, but that's a different kind of regularity, and it isn't a consistent law like the low-level "law" that generates it.
The underlying unity of everything does not give you high-level things like, say, a law of Karma. Reasoning from one to the other is just an error.
Whether you should squish a cockroach or "set it free" outdoors shouldn't be determined by simplistic and invalid reasoning like that. If you want to know whether to squish the cockroach, you actually need to know stuff about morality, and about cockroaches, and about the consequences of your actions.
I get very hinky when I hear about people regarding nature as "sacred," e.g., in the context of environmentalism. That only seems to confuse issues.
Simplistic "emotional" reasoning often gets in the way of figuriong out what's right or wrong. People's unanalyzed gut feelings---like valuing baby seals highly because they're so damned cute---distracts them from figuring out things like what would most reduce suffering.
Likewise, simply valuing cockroaches because "we're all connected parts of the whole" and cockroaches are therefore "like us" is pretty simplistic. It obscures questions of whether cockroaches are "like us" in a way that matters. (Can a cockroach suffer, for example. Will it suffer less if you kill it than if you release it outdoors?)
If the unity of the Totality of the cosmos serves as a corrective to thinking too locally, that may be a good thing. It may remind you that actions have many consequences, so that you'll think things through more. But if the effect is to hand you simplistic rules based on invalid analogies with a gut "spiritual" feel, that's bad. It will serve to justify doing the wrong things because they just feel right, and you'd be better off thinking things through in the right terms at the right level of analysis.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 17, 2008 3:49 PM
It's like a nonatomic atom. (See my earlier post above.)
Actual atoms (in the usual sense) turn out not to be atomic in the original sense.
Likewise a nongod God is one that doesn't have any of the properties of a God, for any generally accepted sense of the word "God."
That would depend on why you go to church and what sort of "prayer" you engage in.
Is this prayer prayer, or some sort of nonprayer prayer?
:-)
Are you cutting a deal with or asking a favor from a personish god? Are you asking for guidance from a non-personish god that exists somewhere besides your imagination? Is it just meditation, with no assumption that you're tapping into The Force or the Invisible Blue Glow?
Are you using your special spirit-sense to detect something besides your own thoughts, in the expectation that the intuitions you get will provide useful principles to guide your life?
What is prayer thing you speak of?
Posted by: Paul W. | May 17, 2008 4:13 PM
Paul -
Are you cutting a deal with or asking a favor from a personish god? Are you asking for guidance from a non-personish god that exists somewhere besides your imagination? Is it just meditation, with no assumption that you're tapping into The Force or the Invisible Blue Glow?
Are you using your special spirit-sense to detect something besides your own thoughts, in the expectation that the intuitions you get will provide useful principles to guide your life?
What is prayer thing you speak of?
All of the above.
Or to simplify, we'll go back to a very important statement you make upthread;
We don't have a consensus on the concepts, even roughly.
This doesn't just apply to a group of people, it is just as accurate when I am referring only to myself.
I was recently in close quarters to the most recent shooting in my neighborhood. Believe me, this was a moment for prayer, as I had my hand jammed as tightly as possible against a hole in a women's leg. In what probably amounted to less than a minute, I went through all of those descriptives, in roughly that order. But underpinning it all, was a gratitude that I hadn't been shot and that my family (whom I was on my way to meet at the light rail platform) wasn't there yet when it happened. And even that gratitude was something of a run through, because it was genuine gratitude without a material focus for said gratitude.
The reason that I use a rather extreme example (other than the fact that it has been really big in my mind the last two weeks) is that I was reacting without the luxury of dwelling on it. I didn't have time or capacity to split hairs and nail down my feelings, so the feelings that surfaced were entirely my natural reaction. And in that reaction, I certainly did personify god, even as I assume god is more ambiguous. I also assumed a firm disconnect, in spite of assuming that god might merely be a personification of some aspect of myself. Because every bit of overt focus I have, was focused on helping a women who had just been shot in the leg, I didn't get to overtly influence how I was feeling about it at that moment and the results not only contradict my normal feelings, they contradicted what I was feeling right then.
And this is something that is generally true, though to a much more relaxed degree, most of the time. To me prayer and the object of my prayers, is very much dependent on where I am at that point. For the most part, it is a meditation, but it also quite often involves personification.
I sincerely hope that rather than coming off sounding the nut, I was able to provide a answer that makes some sense.
Posted by: DuWayne | May 17, 2008 5:15 PM
I realize that's true of a lot of people. They have conflicting beliefs, and conflicting intuitions that reveal or amount to covert beliefs.
For example, some people consciously believe in a God that is not a person, but turn around and pray to it as though it were. On some level, they think it's a person, or person-like enough that it somehow makes sense to "pray" in something like the conventional sense.
That's the kind of religious thing that I think is inconsistent with science. We have good scientific and philosophical reason to believe that any "God" that might exist is not the kind of thing that listens to prayers.
For example, when you feel "gratitude" for random luck, that's an inappropriate emotion. Nobody did you a particular favor that kept you from getting shot. (Unless you're an asshole who's "asking for it," of course.)
For example, if a stray shot hits somebody next to you, that's just their bad luck, not especially your good luck.
Religion largely consists of having inappropriate emotions toward things and then irrationally finding justifications for those attitudes.
That's most obvious when you look at orthodox religion ancient scriptures, with their bizarre metaphors---e.g., that God is your father, and your shepherd. Even if the stories were basically true, we have better metaphors now. The God of the Old Testament is literally a powerful alien, who's very like Dr. Moreau---he experiments with creating lower orders of beings, punishes them for being disappointing creations, and even wipes out almost all of them when he gets pissed off at what is ultimately his own damn fault.
In the New Testament, he even sires a half-breed bastard son by one of his inferior created beings, and has it sacrificed to himself so that he can forgive other inferior creatd beings.
That's just woefully, fundamentally, deeply fucked up. Even if we regard it as myth, it's a profoundly fucked up myth.
(That's one reason I'm puzzled why anybody who doesn't believe the orthodox stuff would identify as a liberal Christian. To me, that's like somebody who likes only the good stuff in Mein Kampf identifying as a "liberal Nazi". Why go there?)
When you ditch the whole god-is-a-person thing, and all the scriptural baggage, what is left? Does the problem just go away?
I don't think so. To the extent that you believe in any kind of "supernatural" stuff, and feel religious about it, you're almost certainly indulging in an irrational attitude and belief about something. Maybe it's harmless to you as an individual, if it's a minor indulgence and you're lucky.
But consider the common belief in "luck" that isn't just random, and doesn't work by "making your own luck," i.e., doing things that actually change probabilities in the usual causal way.
Many, many people believe in luck. They see patterns that aren't there in random events, and they take that seriously. They think they're "lucky" or "unlucky" and act accordingly, which is bound to screw up their behavior on average.
For a lot of people, believing in Luck is like believing in The Force. It might not be called religious, or seem religious---maybe it's just a "free-floating superstitiousness" that isn't integrated into a recognizable theology. Still, it's a significant part of their world view.
Luck, like The Force, may not be an obviously anthropomorphized agent, but it's an anthropocentric whatever. It's something you can "have on your side" or be on the wrong side of, or something like that. You can accentuate it with rabbits' feet or lucky numbers, and screw up with breaking mirrors, etc.
A lot of people consider their beliefs consistent with science, but somewhere in their belief systems they believe in some kind of Luck.
For example, many "agnostics" with a leaning toward a vague New-Agey god such as the Invisible Blue Glow think that they can be "spiritual" and "tap into" something that will do something beneficial for them, to to them. It will make them somehow better, or luckier, or more in tune with something that makes things work out better.
This kind of innocuous superstitiousness seems to them far more enlightened than believing in a God who's an old man with a beard and a big stick.
I don't think it actually is, much, in the sense that it's making the same basic mistake that humans have been making for millenia. It's making the same basic mistake that people make when they say Katrina was God's punishment for licentiousness and sodomy in New Orleans.
And it's very dangerous. One way that many New Agers manage to be socially irresponsible is by thinking that "things work out as they should," and that good things come to good people and bad things happen to bad people. The main thing you need to do is lead a "spiritual" life, and "be a good person" in a general way, and things will work out for the best.
Often they cast that explicitly in terms of Karma, but often they don't---they may reject all ancient religions, and consider themselves modern and enlightened, but still retain an idea that there's some basic principle of the universe that what goes around comes around.
That kind of view has excused and enabled a whole lot of suffering for millenia.
For example, in Hinduism that seemingly harmless view evolved as a major justification of the Caste system and other horrible injustices, allowing them to last for thousands of years.
Even most Buddhists believe that horrid crap. I once heard the Dalai Lama himself tell the father of a child with Down syndrome that, yes, the kids problems were his own fault. To be born with such a horrid condition, he must have done something terrible in a past life, and Karma is teaching his soul an important lesson.
Wow.
And when it comes to free-floating ideas of Luck, those are often terribly harmful as well, even before they're wrapped up in vile theology and used to excuse injustice.
Millions of poor people spend money they can't afford on lottery tickets, because they buy into various fallacies about money and do not understand statistics or the decreasing marginal utility of money. They don't understand that even if the odds weren't against them, as they are, relying on random luck is a bad bet. (Winning a million dollars won't benefit them a million times more than losing one dollar.) That's horribly damaging, and it goes on everywhere, every day.
Many modern, seemingly rational but "spiritual" people reject low-brow superstitions like astrology and the kind of overt "Luck" that leads poor people to play the lottery, and think their "spirituality" is something fundamentally different than those benighted things.
But often, at root, it's the same thing. The "God" they pray to, or just mediate to get "in touch with," is really the same thing---it's an anthropocentric delusion.
And often, they think that's not in conflict with a scientific view of the universe. After all, science can't "prove" that there's nothing to it, and it "feels right," so maybe it's just intuiting something real that's just out of reach of science.
That rationalization is based on missing the big picture of what kind of thing science has shown the universe to be. It's conflating high-level things relevant to human decision making with low-level things, like a "luck principle" or a "cosmic essence" or something.
Science does show that those things don't exist, by showing what it is to sense, perceive, and know things. Sensing, perceiving, and knowing are information processsing" in very complicated machinery. The things we know are mostly high-level facts about relationships between things that are themselves complicated things whose existence is relational.
No simple, low-level thing that's less complicated than a mind could know the things that you want to know, and feed them into a form you could directly understand.
There is no easy way to bypass sensation, perception, and cognition and just know things in a way that makes you smarter or luckier.
In that sense, believing that god has a mind makes more sense than believing in some vague essence like The Force or Karma.
It's nonsense, of course; blatantly anthropomorphic gods show every sign of not existing. But a subtle anthropocentric "God" is even less tenable.
A superintelligent alien being might be able to know things you don't know, by sensing more things, processing information better, and storing more knowledge. Such a being might be able to spoon-feed you things you need to know, as the Force spoon-feeds Luke the position of the target without him having to think.
Without another mind to communicate with, though, you're screwed. A force can't tell you what you need to know, because it's too dumb to understand the stuff you can understand, or to understand you well enough to put high-level knowledge into a representation that will be knowledge in your brain.
An anthropomorphic God is not tenable, but people who think a merely anthropocentric god is more plausible are really kidding themselves.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 17, 2008 11:05 PM
And isn't God supposed to be "like us" in some sense? Not that the enlightened believers here think that God literally created us in his/her/its "image", but that metaphor is hardly obsolete.
Posted by: windy | May 19, 2008 2:33 PM