…and this is a 
Spell already broken, and I haven't even read the book
Category: Books • Godlessness
Posted on: January 27, 2006 10:10 AM, by PZ Myers
Daniel Dennett has this new book out, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and I don't know that I want to read it. It was just reviewed by Michael Shermer in Science, and my general feeling was an uncomfortable vibration, liking some of what they said, but feeling at the same time that it was a tossup whether Shermer or Dennett is more annoying. Shermer has a tendency to be conciliatory towards religious babble, while Dennett has this overwhelming adaptationist bias that makes me cranky.
I've put a chunk of the review below the fold, let me know what you think.
In a 1997 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson discovers a fossil angel. Suspecting a hoax, she takes a piece of the fossil to the natural history museum, where Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (playing himself) analyzes it. The age-old conflict between science and religion then plays out in this ne plus ultra of pop culture. When Gould announces that the test results are "inconclusive," Reverend Lovejoy boasts: "Well, it appears science has failed again, in front of overwhelming religious evidence." Marge counsels Lisa's skepticism with motherly wisdom: "There has to be more to life than just what we see, Lisa. Everyone needs something to believe in." Lisa's rejoinder is classic skepticism: "It's not that I don't have a spiritual side. I just find it hard to believe there's a dead angel hanging in our garage." The Scopes-like trial that ensues ends when the judge issues a restraining order: "Religion must stay 500 yards from science at all times."
This is, in fact, Gould's conciliatory solution, which he called non-overlapping magisteria, and it is the primary target of Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in Breaking the Spell. All restraining orders are off, as Dennett calls for "a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many." The spell to be broken is the taboo that science will render incapable "the life-enriching enchantment of religion itself."
I don't have the anti-Gouldian sentiment of Dennett, but this sounds like a worthy goal so far; I detested Gould's Rocks of Ages (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Pretending that there is no serious conflict between science and religion and giving each imaginary non-overlapping magisteria was both wrong and counterproductive. Religion has no monopoly on ethics and questions about why we are here (and in fact, has an abominable track record on both domains), and asking the religious to cede the entire realm of the natural world to scientists was naive.
So sensitive is Dennett to the potential reaction on the part of his audience (which he maintains is the general public, over 90 percent of whom believe in God) that the book's first 55 pages are devoted to an apologia for scientific research on religion. My concern is that religious adherents will take offense at Dennett's rationale before they get to the heart of the book, where the author really shines. In one passage, for example, he tells believers that their repugnance to science is misdirected but admits that his attempt to convince them otherwise "is a daunting task, like trying to persuade your friend with the cancer symptoms that she really ought to see a doctor now, since her anxiety may be misplaced and the sooner she learns that the sooner she can get on with her life, and if she does have cancer, timely intervention may make all the difference." The deeply devout will not take kindly to their beliefs (about either science or religion) being equated with cancer.
First penalty to Dennett: 55 pages of sucking up to the sensitivities of the religious? Spare me. It sounds like I might get to page 2 before deciding I'd have more fun brushing my teeth or shoveling the driveway.
Second penalty to Shermer. It's not about what people take kindly to—what is it with these faint-hearted skeptics who squirm uncomfortably at the thought of plainly stating a case? He doesn't like the 55 pages of hand-holding for the devout, and he doesn't like blunt comparisons either.
Shermer does sometime grate on me with these kinds of tepid inconsistencies, but at least he isn't Deborah Solomon.
Breaking the Spell is really written for scientists and scholars who have thought little on the subject of religion as a natural phenomenon. Dennett's starting point is the "rational choice" theory of religion, proffered by sociologist Rodney Stark and his colleagues, which holds that the beliefs, rituals, customs, commitments, and sacrifices associated with religion are best understood as a form of exchange between believers and gods or God. Where resources and rewards are scarce (e.g., rain for crops) or nonexistent (e.g., immortality) through secular sources, then religion steps in to act as the exchange intermediary. To an evolutionist like Dennett, such exchanges demand that we look for a deeper causal vector: "Any such regular expenditure of time and energy has to be balanced by something of 'value' obtained, and the ultimate measure of evolutionary 'value' is fitness: the capacity to replicate more successfully than the competition does."
If I did make it through his introductory apologia, this is where I'd have to give up, again. This assumption that religion must contribute to fitness is a standard panadaptationist assumption, and I disagree strongly with the entire premise. Deleterious traits can be fixed in a population, too, and complex properties like religious behavior aren't going to be so neatly dissected into simple causes. Religion is a parasitic side-effect, a by-blow of other characteristics (like social cohesion, curiousity, the need to explore causes) that are addressed sub-optimally by the simple shortcuts of religious dogma. Treating it as a good solution, rather than a pathological and limiting one, is conceding it far more credit and respect than it deserves.
Shermer M (2006) Believing in Belief. Science 311(5760):471 -472.
Comments
Not entirely on topic, but I'd recommend getting hold of the Ruddiman book also reviewed in the same issue.
Is anyone else slightly surprised that Shermer got to review for Science?
Posted by: SteveF | January 27, 2006 10:25 AM
"the general public, over 90 percent of whom believe in God"
do people really think this kind of statistic is meaningful? granted, if you poll broadly with the binary query "do you believe in god?", some huge percentage may very well answer "yes". but my bet is that if that were followed by an essay query "and 'god' means what to you?", a lot of responses would suggest that the first answer could just as well have been "no". furthermore, to the point in the book review, the relevant statistic is the percentage of prospective readers who would answer "yes", since that's who might be offended. among that group, my guess is that a meaningfully structured query would produce a dramatically different result.
or is this just naive optimistism?
Posted by: ctw | January 27, 2006 10:48 AM
You may have seen this piece already this morning.
Makes my head hurt. Ouch. Non-overlapping magesteria, my eye.
Posted by: Angry Professor | January 27, 2006 10:52 AM
Oops, "magisteria," up there.
Posted by: Angry Professor | January 27, 2006 10:53 AM
Posted by: ivy privy | January 27, 2006 11:00 AM
Bad Shermer Writing Alert:
The spell to be broken is the taboo that science will render incapable "the life-enriching enchantment of religion itself."
Is that not the central explanatory idea of the review? And this is how Shermer chose to phrase it? So the "spell" is a taboo...but whoops, the taboo is actually phrased as a proposition... a proposition that science makes an enchantment "incapable". WTF?
A clearer phrasing of his thought would be, "The spell to be broken is the taboo against using science to erode the 'the life-enriching enchantment' of religion."
But probably a better thought would be, "The spell to be broken is the idea that science can not and should not study religion, that religion is a domain of human behavior off limits to scientific scrutiny."
Posted by: cm | January 27, 2006 11:15 AM
I like Shermer, He's not perfect like everyone else but by and large he does a good job bringing the skeptical viewpoint to the masses. And most often in clear concise language.
Posted by: DC | January 27, 2006 11:21 AM
ctw,
I agree that simply asking if someone believes in god is unlikely to give you a good idea of what fraction of people might be offended by Dennett's thesis. According to http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_poll3.htm 96% of Americans believe in "God or a universal spirit." Not that informative, as you say, but 63% of respondents to one poll claimed "I know God exists and I have no doubts about it." They will most likely be insulted by Dennett's book.
Asside: there are lots of other tidbits from the religious tolerance site that are worth reading. For example, "Good atheists will enter heaven" - 44% say yes.
Posted by: Andre | January 27, 2006 11:27 AM
PZ, you would be right to object to this if Dennett were talking about inclusive fitness or gene fitness, but it's clear from his other writings that here he can be talking about nothing other than meme fitness - which is admittedly still a nebulous concept. But the "meme's eye view" is a useful idea even in the absence of a theory of memes.
When you ask "who benefits" from religion, Dennett says the answer is just religion itself; in other words, I think he would agree with you that "Religion is a parasitic side-effect", with the proviso that he would take "parasitic" much more literally than you do. There are certainly others who argue that religion must provide some actual benefit to individuals or societies (usually by invoking some kind of group selection), but Dennett to my knowledge doesn't make this claim - in fact, quite the opposite.
Anyway, I should be getting my copy soon and I look forward to reviewing it myself later. I think you'd have to agree, though, that Dennett and Dawkins among others have been racheting up the conversation lately.
Posted by: Pete | January 27, 2006 11:28 AM
When the people quoted in the article (to which Angry Professor linked) talk about the average student's "ignorance about religion," who are they talking about? Obviously, they want to push religion onto everyone who is not a believer, and thus "ignorant." Oh, groan! I personally think that nonreligious students are less ignorant about religion than are religious students. I think that Richard Dawkins is MUCH less ignorant about religion than are the ID hawkers at the Deception Institute.
Religious people tend to know only about their own religion, and what they "know" is often just what they feel, not what they factually know. Even columnists in magazines like Christianity Today lament the fact that more and more Christians can't name figures from the Bible or place them in the appropriate narrative. They "know" that the Bible is literally true but have less Biblical literacy than, say, I do.
I've always hated Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" argument and I agree with PZ. However, my atheism has little to do with evolutionary theory and everything to do with the fact that, even if there is a God, I don't care.
I never cared who was prom queen, I don't know the names of sports figures, half the hosts of Saturday Night Live are complete strangers to me, and I while I was really good at being a Bible student when I had to (in fact, I can still quote Scripture better than my relatives), it was all intellectual, another result of my geekiness. Because I'm not an authoritarian personality who needs to follow somebody. I chafe at submitting myself to someone else's idea of what is good for me. It doesn't comfort me. I don't even understand how it could comfort someone else.
Isn't it time that humanity cut the damn apron strings?
"The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor."
--Eric Hoffer
Posted by: Kristine | January 27, 2006 11:32 AM
Not having read the book, either... I'd be hesitant to assume that Dennett is being as quite as hyperadaptionist as you (based on Shermer's "hearsay") make it sound.
It seems right to me to think that at some granularity---unit of selection---religion has to have survival value, at least for itself, if not for its hosts. And likely for individuals within groups, if not for the groups. The question is not so much whether religion is adaptive, but who it's adaptive for, in what respect.
My own views are pretty similar to Pascal Boyer's in Religion Explained, which I think is good---I'll be interested to see whether I find Dennett's views more or less plausible.
A la Boyer, I think the right first-order, relatively local analysis is that religion is pretty much a parasite that exploits the failure modes of perfectly normal cognitive heuristics. (It's not mostly about specialized adaptations "for being religious," with a "God part of the brain" and all that.) The things that make us stupid are mostly the flip side of things that, in most contexts, make us pretty smart. It's not mostly about being evolved to be religious, but about religion exploiting things that we're evolved to be, for other reasons. It's more like a spandrel than an adaptation per se,
at least at first glance.
But that doesn't mean that it isn't adaptive, in some respects and at some scales. In fact, it probably has to be, to some extent, or such a systematic failure of rationality would likely be evolved out. (Not necessarily, e.g., there just might not be a feasible evolutionary pathway "out of the hole," but plausibly.)
So on one hand, religion could be somewhat detrimental to every group, overall, but on the other hand beneficial to most individuals within each group. (If only because religion evolves to punish irreligion, thereby perpetuating itself.) And different religions would be more or less adaptive relative to each other, even if they're all kinda bad. (If everybody has parasites, those with the least harmful parasites have an advantage. A harmful parasite may evolves to have mitigating advantages, even if it doesn't "progress" to being a beneficial symbiote.)
Or religion could be detrimental to most of the individuals within the group, but beneficial to the group in the long run, e.g., by exploiting most individuals in a way that is beneficial to later generations. (If only within the context of cultural arms races with other religious groups. E.g., if your neighbors are organizing into powerful kingdoms, it behooves you to do likewise, to be able to defend against them; a religion that coevolves to defend such oppressive political structures may be "good" for people, but only relative to being conquered by better-organized and even more oppressive neighbors---and even if, in absolute terms, it all sucks due to a great big insoluble commons problem.
So while I think that religion is by and large a bad thing, overall, it can still be true that (1) religion can be good for individuals, even if it's bad for the group, (2) religion can be good for a society, even if it's bad for most of its members, (3) religion can be "bad for" people or societies in absolute terms, but still good for them relative to other religions, etc. These things have presumably played a major role in the social evolution of religions---how could they not?---and perhaps a significant role in the evolution of human psychology.
The bottom line is that I think highly adaptationist stories are right and proper, but naive ones are likely to miss a lot and be wrong. The interesting questions are about units of selection, context-dependence, and relative advantage. (And ugly tradeoffs... lots of them.)
It's often tempting to think of religion as being simply bad, implicitly comparing it to modern scientific rationalism. But scientific rationalism was mostly unavailable to most cultures throughout history. The benefits of scientific rationalism mostly come way in the future, relative to such societies---you need literacy, economic power, and a large, long-term accumulation of synergistic knowledge to get the major payoffs. Your average hunter-gatherer band or warlord fiefdom wouldn't benefit a whole lot from being scientific rationalists, because they wouldn't have the economy of scale. Sticking to tried-and-true, evolved social constructions would often be the safer course. (You might do a lot of the right things for the wrong reasons, but at least "it works," more or less. If you question everything, but can't sort enough out quickly enough, you may be doomed.)
So it seems plausible to me that people are evolved to be something-like-religious, if only in the sense that they have what amounts to a "conservative streak" that often outweighs their "analytic streak." This is a general "adaptation" to a very poorly-understood and difficult-to-understand world. It often adaptive to accept your culture's traditions and traditional undersandings, rather than being critical and radical, because (1) they may be wrong, but at least they haven't gotten you all killed off yet and (2) something that is much better in practice is too hard to figure out.
Of course, the fitness landscape has changed now that we have modern science and philosophy, and piles of technology. There is a highly-developed, mostly off-the-shelf alternative. The conservative and traditionalist streak that served us passably well in the past---embodying perhaps the only practical social evolutionary strategy---is quite a hindrance now that something much better is available.
Posted by: Paul W. | January 27, 2006 11:34 AM
opinion: I think PZ won't like the book.
The whole idea of religion being necessary or having some positive role in human societies is much too forgiving, is it not?
I agree that deleterious traits can be fixed in populations, but really feels like (to me) religion must give some advantage for nearly every society to feel the urge of creating or importing its belief system.
It might not be that it has positive effect, though, but that it is necessary to mankind organised societies to be successful.
As a matter of fact it would be nice to have some straighter answer than "feelings", hence to have some nice sociological studies on the matter, which is exactly the case Dennett is arguing for.
Think about it PZ, how nice it would be to rely on some serious publication to state that religion is actually bad for you?
Posted by: Jerome feldmann | January 27, 2006 11:39 AM
P.Z. - While sympathetic with what you say here (and to your general worries about evolutionary psychology), I do wonder about your claim that "Religion is a parasitic side effect...". If we're going to be suspect of "just so" stories that defend apdatationist claims, shouldn't we also be suspicious of non-adaptationist just so stories? Since the comparative method is hard to use for traits such as religion (because, e.g., most of our close relatives are extinct), shouldn't this count toward a more general skepticism here? Maybe that is all you're suggesting, I wasn't sure.
It will be interesting to see how much Dennett engages with the more scholarly (i.e., less popularized) works of Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran. Anyone read it yet?
Posted by: Chris Stephens | January 27, 2006 11:48 AM
I guess I'll rise to the defense of NOMA. Gould's Rocks of Ages certainly did not "pretend" there was no conflict between science and religion; that was, of course, the entire purpose for the book. Nor did Gould, as I read it, grant any exclusive rights to religion in the "magisterium" outside of science, it simply recognized that for many people religion was what filled that space. Mostly I read it as an appeal to religious people to not let their dogma try to answer questions about the natural world. You may think this is naive, PZ, but it is surely no more naive than the belief that religious people are going to be strong-armed straight to atheism. It is also the approach that the more enlightened religious (e.g. Ken Miller), have already been taking.
Posted by: Eric Wallace | January 27, 2006 11:58 AM
Kristine said:
However, my atheism has little to do with evolutionary theory and everything to do with the fact that, even if there is a God, I don't care.
Sounds more like APAtheism:)
Posted by: Alan W | January 27, 2006 12:16 PM
I so want to like Dennett because of the service he did with "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," but I can't really forgive him for "Freedom Evolves," which was so unconvincing that it left me more in doubt of the possibility of free will than I had been before reading it. If this was the best argument available for any kind of free will worthy the name, then clearly free will was vanishingly implausible. Fortunately Owen Flanigan came along in "The Problem of the Soul" and mopped my angst-beaded brow, but Dennett just plain made a mess, I'm afraid. Yet he's often listed in the same breath as Pinker and Dawkins. Strange.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | January 27, 2006 12:22 PM
My copy is still winging its way through the U.S. post, so I haven't read it either. But my guess is that PZ is reacting to some parts of the book, possibly minor parts, and that he'd like other parts.
PZ, you said recently that you disliked Dawkins's panadaptionism, but that you liked his aggressiveness on religion. Shouldn't the same remarks apply to Dennett? The first 55 pages, I'd guess, are an attempt to lure genuinely religious people into giving his book a chance. And while Dennett may be a panadaptionist, here's an entire book of him going to town on religion -- making, it seems, arguments similar to your own about not letting religious claims lie. I bet you might enjoy it.
But again, I could be wrong, I haven't read it yet. My only defense is: neither has anyone else in the forum!
Posted by: Stephen Frug | January 27, 2006 12:29 PM
I don't know. I know Dennet is useful as an atheist who can write well, but I was rather underwhelmed by his "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" -- basically, Dennett (a philosopher!) read popular works by Dawkins and Gould and decided that he liked Dawkins' ideas better. That was enough to get glowing endorsements from Gould's enemies on the dust jacket, but it didn't make for a very convincing book for people who didn't have already an axe to grind against Gould. Theories like punk eek may be wrong, but they aren't mystical "skyhooks" as Dennett puts them.
At least this new book is about religion, which I would agree is more in Dennett's line of work than is evolutionary theory. And Gould's NOMA *is* a philosophical rather than a scientfic theory. Unfortunately, it sounds like Dennett wants to put his pop-science understanding of evolutionary biology into work again *sigh*. I would think that NOMA could be attacked simply on philosophical grounds.
Posted by: Jonathan Badger | January 27, 2006 12:54 PM
'It is also the approach that the more enlightened religious (e.g. Ken Miller), have already been taking.'
Miller, while doing great things in the war against creationism, is certainly not a more 'enlightened' religious thinker. He simply doesn't apply his reasoning to his faith. That doesn't make him special, it doesn't make him enlightened, it makes him just another joe blow who can't defend his religious claims.
This is very evident in the final section of an otherwise fine book that goes on to say God exists, doesn't mess with natural laws, AND look it just happens to be the God I was raised to believe exists. While doing some rather pathetic apologetics as to why his religion is better than say the religion of Islam.
So no, he is certainly not more enlightened. In some ways he may be worse.
Posted by: GH | January 27, 2006 1:15 PM
Dennett is a great writer, probably the best writer on philosopy of mind and cognitive science - and one of the best thinkers we have (we being scientific materialists). Since scientific materialists are the best-educated of the good thinkers (since scientific materialism follows from a good understanding of science plus a dab of Occam's razor), he is one the best thinkers there is, period. I am looking forward to his book. I'll read it before I criticize it.
Posted by: msf | January 27, 2006 1:28 PM
The quote below is from ctw, the second post in comments above.
"the general public, over 90 percent of whom believe in God"
I also feel that statistic is not helpful, it is a default answer in our culture like "Which do you think is better, to be a good person or a bad person". My guess is that most people's beief in God is a combination of childhood imprinting, a vague memory Pascal's wager and, when answering questions about religion, find it easier to claim one rather than say "none" or at least "not very much".
Volvox
Posted by: Volvox | January 27, 2006 2:13 PM
In some philosophical circles, "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is called "Dennett's Dangerous (or Deranged, depending who you're talking to) Book".
He is a good writer, which is bad in this case as he is too seductive. The book (the first half of it, roughly, before his ad hominem attack on Gould starts)is constructed as a chain of logical arguments: A thus B, B thus C, C thus D...etc. When the book first came out I read it and once I got to the final conclusion (Y thus Z) I was shaking my head - how is this conclusion possible - no way! So I went back and read it more carefully and finally managed to detect a couple of spots where his "thus" is not really "thus", but that is obfuscated by his flowery rhetoric. I then discussed the book at a meeting of several philosophers of biology and biologists who ravaged the book even more and showed me even more dishonest examples of shoddy thinking in the book.
People who know him personally say that Dennett is even more panadaptationist and determinist than he lets out in his writings. He is a "Star Trek" determinist, meaning, if you do the Gould's thought experiment of rewinding the tape of the History of Life, Dennett would expect, just like the crew of Enterprise finds on every planet they visit, that evolution will produce, every time, a single intelligent species which will look just like a human actor in costume, and there will be Nazis in black SS uniforms at least in 10% of the cases.
As for adaptive function of religion, I like the way Paul W explains it (I also like the way Paul W explains Origin Of Life in the next thread) and the best place to look for the "social cohesion" explanation is David Sloan Wilson's book Darwin's Cathedral.
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January 27, 2006 2:16 PM
I am not especially enthralled with Gould as such. I would readily admit that there is a conlfict between science and fundamentalist forms of religion. I certainly agree that ethics has no monopoly on religion. Moreover, I believe that the normativity behind science is more fundamental than the normativity of ethics. One of the best instances of someone discovering this form of normativity, of gropingly putting it into their own words for the first time (on a some sort of community blog) right before my eyes was as follows:
The world is what it is independently of you, and you ought to recognize it for what it is. One expression of this normativity is the recognition of the importance of being able to admit when one is mistaken. Both forms of normativity are of great importance within the domain of science and well beyond. Yet as I understand it, the first normativity I mentioned is (in the view of atheists) a normativity which any belief in the supernatural violates. This is the source of much of the difficulty which atheists, such as yourself, have with religion per se.
At the same time, I believe it should be fairly obvious that science by no means provides one with a complete system of ethics. There is such a thing as a professional code of ethics regarding scientific practice (and similarly for medical or legal practice, and no doubt for various industries), but science does not provide the individual with an ethical system with which to guide their lives. For this, an atheist will either reach for philosophy or try to arrive at their own personal views of how one should properly live one's life and what the purpose of their life should be. What one needs is a framework in which to conceptualize one's life as a whole as it stands in relation to reality as a whole, and given the specialized nature of the sciences, this something which they do not and quite possibly cannot provide. What one needs at this level is something much more approaching art than science. And no one can impose such a vision of what one's life ought to be upon another, nor should they even try. It is something which each individual must do for themselves. This insight forms part of the foundation of pluralistic, free societies, whereas its denial is essential to the existence of totalitarian societies and fundamentalist theocracies.
Now one distinction which I believe it is fairly important to make is between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist religious views. (If you find it difficult to make this sort of a distinction, please bear with me for a moment.) Individuals who are not fundamentalists take a non-literalistic approach to their religious beliefs. They look to the source of their religious beliefs for a form of guidance, but view whatever texts those religious views are documented in oftentimes in a highly allegorical manner. Typically, such individuals will have some sort of transcendental conception of God which for them involves no real possibility of conflict between their personal religious views and the empirical world. They can adapt to the modern world. They can accept the changes which modernity and globalization bring about. And they can accept the discoveries of science and recognize their implications. In contrast to the rigid, dogmatic, literalistic approach of fundamentalists, such individuals are largely open to rational persuasion, particularly over time. But when attempting to effect changes in how someone whose view of the world differs in terms of its fundamentals from one's own, it is best to leave those fundamentals alone, in part, simply as a matter of respect for their person, for the independence of their mind -- in the same way that you expect this sort of respect for yourself from others. The deliberate attempt to undermine those fundamentals will undermine their worldview and their self-concept in a way that is experienced through anxiety, and which be perceived, at least at a psychological level as a threat and attack. The natural reaction, under such circumstances, is to fight back and attempt to destroy or at least remove the source of the threat. Attacking religion per say is likely to drive many of the more moderate members of religious communities into the arms of the fundamentalists discourage those moderates who remain on your side.
Now I have a five (admittedly pointed) questions:
First, according to some recent statistics, apparently 40% of all scientists in the United States have some form of religious belief. Ken Miller is one good example. Does this make them any worse at science?
Second, do you think that due to their religious beliefs they are any less open to rational persuation on points that are particularly relevant? Can you persuade them on matters of real importance?
Third, do they believe that they may be able to persuade members of their own religious communities on matters of real importance?
Forth, would the members of their religious communities be in a position to persuade those would are not committed to some form of fundamentalism on matters of real importance?
Fifth, how will stand the best chance of rationally persuading someone on a matter of some importance, by approach them as an enemy or as a friend?
For more on my views regarding religion...
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 27, 2006 2:19 PM
I've disagreed with PZ on Dennett before, and I'll do so again. Dennett's thinking is often much more nuanced than PZ gives him credit for. For example, check out this passage from his "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (p. 485):
So, like Pete, I doubt that Dennett's treatment of religion will be quite as "panadaptationist" as PZ fears.
Posted by: Ricardo Azevedo | January 27, 2006 2:27 PM
GH, I consider him more enlightened (than say, Behe, or Dembski) because he doesn't let religion color his scientific conclusions. I don't much care how he justifies his own religious beliefs.
Posted by: Eric Wallace | January 27, 2006 2:42 PM
Has anyone caught this week's New Scientist, with its articles on religion? Robin Dunbar commits the adaptionist sin of assuming that religion is an advantage (a social mechanism for promoting the production of endorphins, apparently), but there's an interesting sidebar on intentionality and homonid brains.
I'm picking my way through the rest of the articles, but it looks like plenty of food for thought. Really, that's what I look for in my pop science reading (including Pharyngula): not The Truth, but particles of thought that I can use or reject to construct my own truth. If Dennett is wrong to push adaptionism so much, then that's fine by me. He's still a good writer who introduces me to interesting thoughts. I don't feel under any obligation to believe everything he writes.
Posted by: NelC | January 27, 2006 2:57 PM
Fair enough Eric.
Posted by: GH | January 27, 2006 3:02 PM
"First, according to some recent statistics, apparently 40% of all scientists in the United States have some form of religious belief. Ken Miller is one good example. Does this make them any worse at science?"
It could. It might not, but it's certainly more than trivially possible. From what little I know of the man (I care very little about the Christian who does science and other human interest stories; just not relevant.), it doesn't appear to impede his science. But I can easily see some sort of study on the efficacy of prayer that a religionist might not be capable of designing or performing properly. Indeed, we seem to get one of those every few years.
"Second, do you think that due to their religious beliefs they are any less open to rational persuation on points that are particularly relevant? Can you persuade them on matters of real importance?"
Faith is inherently anti-rational. It might be possible to persuade themn in some anti-rational context. Torture them into it? Drug them into submission? Play to their fears? placate them? Obviously these are unethical. Whether the matter is of importance to me, them, or some third party is irrelevant. One is left with the alternatives of molly-coddling the anti-rationality, or going after its roots. Since I think we'd all prefer people be more rational, the choice is obvious.
"Third, do they believe that they may be able to persuade members of their own religious communities on matters of real importance?"
I'm sure they do, but all historical evidence is hard against them. Liberal (for lack of a better word) religiosity typically takes pains to either conform itself to the orthodoxy in most details or results in schism as the more conservative religionists refuse to give ground. Religions respond to dissent by cracking down, not by opening the doors to wide-ranging discussion that may imperil dogmas. The Counter-Reformation, for example, was a virutal purge of the sort of liberal religiosity you're talking about from any positions of official tolerance. Areas in which believers were once allowed fairly wide latitude became extremely narrow doctrines and trensgression was punished.
Posted by: Samnell | January 27, 2006 3:11 PM
andre: tnx for the pointer (the site will be useful in other pursuits). and yes, belief in "god or a universal spirit" conveys minimal information. I'm as non-religious as one can get but would still be reluctant to say I don't believe in a "universal spirit", having no idea what that might mean.
the 63% is perhaps more meaningful since that degree of certainty suggests a pretty clear concept of the "god" in question. and that may be small enough for some justifiable optimism. eg, most of my close friends would parrot kristine's "even if there is a God, I don't care", but might not self-label as "atheists" because of the baggage that term carries. since we are an unexceptional lot (eg, no activists, philosophers, etc), I can only assume that there are many more of us out there than is suggested by poll results. if one (perhaps optimistically) assumes 10-15%, the resulting imbalance is "only" 4 or 5-to-1. further adjusting for likely economic and educational advantages (on average) and the attendant potential influence, "our side" might actually be at no more than a 2 or 3-to-1 disadvantage, in which case prof myers's direct confrontation approach might be less quixotic than it appears.
Posted by: ctw | January 27, 2006 3:17 PM
In response to my post, particularly where I wrote:
Samnel wrote a post where he stated:
As I believe should be clear from my post, I do not believe in "molly-coddling" the more open-minded, thoughtful christians. I simply do not advocate going on the attack as you apparently do by "going after [the] roots of their faith." I do not believe this would be productive or would make them any more rational -- indeed, I believe it would have quite the opposite effect, however much short-term satisfaction or emotional gratification you might find in it.
Instead, I would choose to deal with them much the same way I would typically choose to deal with any atheist: discover the points upon which we agree and work from there -- by means of rational persuasion in a piecemeal fashion. I do not expect total agreement (as your conception of "rationality" would seem to require), but then again, I see no need for it. Evolution, not revolution. The later of these two all too often has a great many unintended, undesireable consequences.
In any case, after looking at your superficial attempt at a response to my post, I noticed that their were two questions you didn't even try to address.
I will focus on just one:
Why didn't you attempt any answer here? I believe the reason is obvious. Now by what standard is your approach the rational one? What is it that motivates you?
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 27, 2006 4:14 PM
"Instead, I would choose to deal with them much the same way I would typically choose to deal with any atheist: discover the points upon which we agree and work from there -- by means of rational persuasion in a piecemeal fashion."
So allow them to continue compartmentalizing and fight this very same fight over again and again for all eternity, every time science makes a major advance? What a miserable fate.
"I do not expect total agreement (as your conception of "rationality" would seem to require), but then again, I see no need for it."
My notion of rationality does not require total agreement. Most deists could probably meet it.
"In any case, after looking at your superficial attempt at a response to my post, I noticed that their were two questions you didn't even try to address."
I chose not to answer questions which seemed redundant in my answers to the other questions. But if you insist, and I shall ignore your dimestore Miss Cleo routine about my motivations.
"Fifth, how will stand the best chance of rationally persuading someone on a matter of some importance, by approach them as an enemy or as a friend?"
I expect my friends to be ready to tell me when I'm wrong. I'd much rather have friends who respect me enough to call me on things than "friends" who kiss my ass over whatever delusions I harbor. Feel-good kissasses are the kind of people I prefer to avoid.
Posted by: Samnell | January 27, 2006 9:05 PM
I agree with others here that Dennett is not as extreme as some seem to think...he is much more subtle and reasonable. He is certainly not an "panadaptationist," and as mentioned before is particularly suspicious of adaptationist arguments for any aspect of human culture. Also, he did not call punk eek a "skyhook," his term for special or non-natural phenomena used to explain something hard, he just said it's not that big a deal or a major refinement of mainstream opinion. He did accuse Gould of being a skyhook-seeker...fair enough considering the fuzzy language and clear religious sympathies Gould often used in popular writing, and his self-image as some kind of Che-style science revolutionary.
He and Gould hated each other, which made a lot of people feel the need to pick sides...not very productive considering they are both brilliant in some ways and pig-headed, arrogant and wrong in others.
Finally, to say something is adaptive certainly doesn't mean it is always and everywhere beneficial (or that beneficial for a tribe group of less than 50 is beneficial for intercontinental societies of billions), nor is it some kind of value judgement on its worth or desirability. Species go extinct all the time based on their "adaptations."
We can see religion as a parasitic meme (insert comment on problems and silliness of memes here) feeding off some adaptive aspects of mammalian social behavior. Or, we can see it as extensions of these prior adaptations disastrously interacting with a new environment, human culture and language. Not too far-fetched to me.
Posted by: miko | January 27, 2006 11:04 PM
"We can see religion as a parasitic meme (insert comment on problems and silliness of memes here) feeding off some adaptive aspects of mammalian social behavior. Or, we can see it as extensions of these prior adaptations disastrously interacting with a new environment, human culture and language. Not too far-fetched to me."
Somewhere ("Unweaving the Rainbow", I think) Dawkins suggested that much of supernaturalism is the product of overactive anthropomorphizing and the relative danger of false negatives vs. false positives in hunting and gathering. Hunters who go off after imaginary prey on occasion are losing time and energy, but as long as they still catch enough to keep kicking, they manage. Hunters who instead miss the signs of genuine prey tend to go hungry more often. Simplified sure, but it makes a lot of sense to me that religion is the product of the pattern-seeking ability of the human mind going on super-overdrive and finding all sorts of connections that are purely coincidence and anthropomorphization. Cancer of the mind's abilty to associate events, perhaps.
Posted by: Samnell | January 27, 2006 11:28 PM
Last weekend's NYT Book Review had an essay by Judith Shulevitz, part of which is devoted to "The Evolution-Creation Struggle" by Michael Ruse. We are told that Ruse distinguishes between the science of evolution (of which he is a strong supporter) and "evolutionism".
Presumably evolutionism exists for exactly the same reasons religion exists.
Posted by: Arun | January 27, 2006 11:57 PM
I'm with Paul W and coturnix; religion appears to be parasitic on the default illogical (but very useful probably when quick decisions without information need to be made) mode of getting an action plan running in the Homo consciousness.
But from then on I don't buy any "useful" or "deleterious" arguments in terms of adaptation at all because it's plain that the "religion" that is here under examination is the Patriarchal structure of the tribes of Abraham and that has nothing more or less to achieve than dominance of a lot of people by a very few old men.
And this patriarchal set of ethics has really only dominated the society that I know since it began radiating a bit over 2 thousand years ago. The single "God" is a very very useful way to wield a rigid control. Multiple deities make people so much more able to play with different causes and ethics, so are very inconvenient for central control.
The religions of Abraham are staging a big fight against the loss of their authority and this is a lot to do with those who bought the blinkers that narrowed their view of the ineffable down to a "God", having their view widened and even the blinkers taken off by the Enlightenment.
It's regrettable that a lot of your US religion still thumps on in the tones of the queer little band of fundamentalists that so couldn't face the Enlightenment that they nicked off to a place where they could still get away with the words of Abraham as a full recipe for living.
Mr Gould didn't need to write at length. A simple "stay out of what you don't know" would have done.
Mr Dennett? I have a very small opinion of someone who makes a living out of muddying the waters - even if he's good at aphorisms.
I will however wade through his latest to see what new ones he's come up with. A great showman.
Posted by: darkymac | January 28, 2006 12:46 AM
This is in response to Samnell.
First, I hope you don't mind, but while there may have been a couple of other problems with my earlier post, I think one of the most blatant was where I quoted you and inserted the words "of their faith" without placing them in brackets. I had quoted you with, "going after [the] roots of their faith, but what you have actually said was, "One is left with the alternatives of molly-coddling the anti-rationality, or going after its roots." My bad. The insertion probably would have been fine as a reasonable interpretation, but I needed the brackets to indicate that this was what I was doing.
Now on to your most recent post.
I had written:
You responded:
Well, there are at this point a number of possible responses, each of which gets at a different facet of the problem involved.
First, if we are talking about what I call "enlightened, open-minded christians" of which I know a few, then we are probably talking about people who believe in women's rights, gay rights, some environmentalism, people who believe that God gave them a brain because he expected them to use it, people who believe as a result of their religious ethics that they should admit when they are mistaken. All of this seems quite rational to me.
Now assuming that you are dealing with such open-minded people, it is not going to be a struggle every time science progresses, or at least no more of a struggle than if you had the same number of atheists or deists (you mention them later) but who have quite different views.
Second, who is to say that they are compartmentalizing? True, their belief in God is a matter of faith, but it may very well be the case that their belief in God in some important way acts to support their rationality -- by providing the normative guidance needed to admit when they are wrong, or by encouraging them to be honest.
I have dealt with this possibility in some detail in:
Religion and Science -- in terms of practical implimentation. Interestingly, the ideas (which I expressed essentially in a religious language) sounded very familiar to friends and acquaintences of mine who are religious. I suspected they would. It has to do with the distinction between articulated and tacit knowledge -- the difference between "knowing what" (i.e., articulated knowledge) and the "knowing how" (i.e., tacit knowledge).
Now this is not to say that non-religious people aren't honest, moral, or that they are unable to admit when they are wrong, but it isn't necessarily a given.
What afterall is atheism?
One point: there is no god. What follows from this?
Nothing in particular. No guidance in either the realms of cognition or morality. That is unless you have some particular system of thought in mind -- a replacement, if you will -- for religious beliefs. Do you?
And please don't tell me that science is it. Science consists largely of highly specialized subdisciplines nowadays. It isn't like one individual could keep track of it all. And it certainly wouldn't provide them with the kind of integrated perspective through which they can understand their relationship to the world and how they should live their lives. For that you need religion or philosophy. Or at the very least, some kind of ideology. But that isn't exactly something one can test. It isn't science. Although it might be an expression of rationality or an expression of artistic sense.
Atheists are oftentimes quite open-minded, willing to admit their mistakes, honest, moral, what have you. But this is not a given, and it most certainly isn't universal. Being an atheist doesn't necessarily make you a saint or even for that matter more rational than those who are religious. Rationality exists in degrees, and some people can be quite rational in some areas of their lives while being rather stupid in others.
In fact, I know of some atheists who are fairly dogmatic. Given their philosophic orientation, they view certain intellectual developments in Western Civilization with suspicion or even in terms of something rising just a little above a conspiracy theory. They have serious issues with Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics -- the basis for nearly all 20th Century theoretical physics -- because it is counter-intuitive, violates their conception of time, violates their ideas of how velocities show be added, violates their conception of distance, geometry, causality and perhaps even (at least in their view) the independence of the object of awareness from the subject who is aware of the object (i.e., the Copenhagen Interpretation put forward by Niels Bohr, or for that matter, the Participatory Universe idea put forward by John Archibald Wheeler prior to his discovery of Illya Prigogine).
From what I can tell, they seem to be stuck in the world of Newtonian physics. (Not that there is anything wrong with Newton -- at least for the typical engineer.) These are people who in the name of "individualism" would re-invent the wheel, quite possibly with every generation if they didn't have someone to look up to that would define for them what is "rational." (Well, that might be a little unfair. Besides, not all of them are that way. Maybe just 50%. Still...)
I wrote:
You responded:
Then I suspect many religious people (at this point, for the sake of argument, I will simply assume we are talking about Christians) could meet that standard as well -- except in certain highly delineated areas (I personally don't know exactly what lies in that area -- haven't asked -- I figured I would be intruding into something fairly personal). Unless of course you have something specifically against Christians.
I wrote:
Your responded:
Please watch the language -- this blog belongs to PZ.
However, I appreciate the setiment. I believe it is important to have friends who have different views (otherwise we are talking about an echo chamber -- which as far as I know aren't particularly conducive to thinking rationally) and who feel free to disagree with you. Checks and balances. When people get surrounded by those who hang on their every word or who idolize them, they tend to get sloppy.
However, how exactly are you going to convince them that as a matter of rationality, they should accept your atheism? Do you have a specific empirical experiment in mind? If they have a transcendental conception of God, I doubt that your experiment will be particularly useful. But then again, why would it need to be? If what you actually care about involves this world, why not discuss that?
Or perhaps what you have in mind isn't an experiment, but some sort of philosophic argument. Fine. I can appreciate that, believe me, but take it to your philosophy class. Don't try imposing it upon people who aren't interested in philosophy. For one thing, why should they buy into your particular philosophic approach over some other?
And I don't know if you have noticed, but natural languages seem to be better adapted to human life than the artificial ones. I suspect (given the distinction between articulated and tacit knowledge) something similar might be at work in the realm of systems of belief. Particularly independent individuals may do quite well with their own philosophic systems -- because, through the process of thinking through their beliefs, they are actually constructing the tacit knowledge as well as the articulated. But this doesn't mean that they can articulate how their system of beliefs should be applied to the life of another.
Respect someone's personal religious beliefs until they become a real issue, both for the sake of civility and plain human decency. If they aren't inviting a critique and they seem quite rational in nearly all other areas of their lives, perhaps there is something rational (even if only tacit) there afterall.
There are, obviously, points at which an individual's religious beliefs become an issue. For example, Dominionism:
Dominionism
The Royal Race of the Redeemed?
Christian Nazism Exposed
by Lewis Loflin
These guys are a real problem and a real threat. So are the creationists who would help place them that much closer to a position of power. But your more liberal Christian friends?
Check this out:
An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science
(We've reached our goal of gathering 10,000 clergy signatures. The
next step in our campaign is outlined here.)
Pay special attention to the second paragraph. Then ask yourself who you should be allying yourself with and who you really need to oppose. (That is, assuming you have read one of the links on the Dominionists.)
Take care.
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 28, 2006 12:55 AM
This is in response to Samnell. (excuse -- shudder)
I have tried posting a response to you just now, but either its length or the fact that it included four hyperlinks acted as some sort of trigger. I thought about posting it in pieces, but this wouldn't be fair to PZ -- he might end up posting it a second time, or maybe he just has his reasons for wanting to do things the way things are set up. So I am going to assume that he will check out what I sent, then decide whether or not he considers it worth posting. (I thought about putting it up somewhere else, but I prefer keeping everything together myself.) His choice. No problem.
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 28, 2006 1:12 AM
What the heck...
This is in response to Samnell, Part I
First, I hope you don't mind, but while there may have been a couple of other problems with my earlier post, I think one of the most blatant was where I quoted you and inserted the words "of their faith" without placing them in brackets. I had quoted you with, "going after [the] roots of their faith, but what you have actually said was, "One is left with the alternatives of molly-coddling the anti-rationality, or going after its roots." My bad. The insertion probably would have been fine as a reasonable interpretation, but I needed the brackets to indicate that this was what I was doing.
Now on to your most recent post.
I had written:
You responded:
Well, there are at this point a number of possible responses, each of which gets at a different facet of the problem involved.
First, if we are talking about what I call "enlightened, open-minded christians" of which I know a few, then we are probably talking about people who believe in women's rights, gay rights, some environmentalism, people who believe that God gave them a brain because he expected them to use it, people who believe as a result of their religious ethics that they should admit when they are mistaken. All of this seems quite rational to me.
Now assuming that you are dealing with such open-minded people, it is not going to be a struggle every time science progresses, or at least no more of a struggle than if you had the same number of atheists or deists (you mention them later) but who have quite different views.
Second, who is to say that they are compartmentalizing? True, their belief in God is a matter of faith, but it may very well be the case that their belief in God in some important way acts to support their rationality -- by providing the normative guidance needed to admit when they are wrong, or by encouraging them to be honest.
I have dealt with this possibility in some detail in:
Religion and Science -- in terms of practical implimentation. Interestingly, the ideas (which I expressed essentially in a religious language) sounded very familiar to friends and acquaintences of mine who are religious. I suspected they would. It has to do with the distinction between articulated and tacit knowledge -- the difference between "knowing what" (i.e., articulated knowledge) and the "knowing how" (i.e., tacit knowledge).
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 28, 2006 1:21 AM
This is in response to Samnell, Part II
Now this is not to say that non-religious people aren't honest, moral, or that they are unable to admit when they are wrong, but it isn't necessarily a given.
What afterall is atheism?
One point: there is no god. What follows from this?
Nothing in particular. No guidance in either the realms of cognition or morality. That is unless you have some particular system of thought in mind -- a replacement, if you will -- for religious beliefs. Do you?
And please don't tell me that science is it. Science consists largely of highly specialized subdisciplines nowadays. It isn't like one individual could keep track of it all. And it certainly wouldn't provide them with the kind of integrated perspective through which they can understand their relationship to the world and how they should live their lives. For that you need religion or philosophy. Or at the very least, some kind of ideology. But that isn't exactly something one can test. It isn't science. Although it might be an expression of rationality or an expression of artistic sense.
Atheists are oftentimes quite open-minded, willing to admit their mistakes, honest, moral, what have you. But this is not a given, and it most certainly isn't universal. Being an atheist doesn't necessarily make you a saint or even for that matter more rational than those who are religious. Rationality exists in degrees, and some people can be quite rational in some areas of their lives while being rather stupid in others.
In fact, I know of some atheists who are fairly dogmatic. Given their philosophic orientation, they view certain intellectual developments in Western Civilization with suspicion or even in terms of something rising just a little above a conspiracy theory. They have serious issues with Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics -- the basis for nearly all 20th Century theoretical physics -- because it is counter-intuitive, violates their conception of time, violates their ideas of how velocities show be added, violates their conception of distance, geometry, causality and perhaps even (at least in their view) the independence of the object of awareness from the subject who is aware of the object (i.e., the Copenhagen Interpretation put forward by Niels Bohr, or for that matter, the Participatory Universe idea put forward by John Archibald Wheeler prior to his discovery of Illya Prigogine).
From what I can tell, they seem to be stuck in the world of Newtonian physics. (Not that there is anything wrong with Newton -- at least for the typical engineer.) These are people who in the name of "individualism" would re-invent the wheel, quite possibly with every generation if they didn't have someone to look up to that would define for them what is "rational." (Well, that might be a little unfair. Besides, not all of them are that way. Maybe just 50%. Still...)
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 28, 2006 1:23 AM
This is in response to Samnell, Part III
I wrote:
You responded:
Then I suspect many religious people (at this point, for the sake of argument, I will simply assume we are talking about Christians) could meet that standard as well -- except in certain highly delineated areas (I personally don't know exactly what lies in that area -- haven't asked -- I figured I would be intruding into something fairly personal). Unless of course you have something specifically against Christians.
I wrote:
Your responded:
Please watch the language -- this blog belongs to PZ.
However, I appreciate the setiment. I believe it is important to have friends who have different views (otherwise we are talking about an echo chamber -- which as far as I know aren't particularly conducive to thinking rationally) and who feel free to disagree with you. Checks and balances. When people get surrounded by those who hang on their every word or who idolize them, they tend to get sloppy.
However, how exactly are you going to convince them that as a matter of rationality, they should accept your atheism? Do you have a specific empirical experiment in mind? If they have a transcendental conception of God, I doubt that your experiment will be particularly useful. But then again, why would it need to be? If what you actually care about involves this world, why not discuss that?
Or perhaps what you have in mind isn't an experiment, but some sort of philosophic argument. Fine. I can appreciate that, believe me, but take it to your philosophy class. Don't try imposing it upon people who aren't interested in philosophy. For one thing, why should they buy into your particular philosophic approach over some other?
And I don't know if you have noticed, but natural languages seem to be better adapted to human life than the artificial ones. I suspect (given the distinction between articulated and tacit knowledge) something similar might be at work in the realm of systems of belief. Particularly independent individuals may do quite well with their own philosophic systems -- because, through the process of thinking through their beliefs, they are actually constructing the tacit knowledge as well as the articulated. But this doesn't mean that they can articulate how their system of beliefs should be applied to the life of another.
Respect someone's personal religious beliefs until they become a real issue, both for the sake of civility and plain human decency. If they aren't inviting a critique and they seem quite rational in nearly all other areas of their lives, perhaps there is something rational (even if only tacit) there afterall.
There are, obviously, points at which an individual's religious beliefs become an issue. For example, Dominionism:
Dominionism
The Royal Race of the Redeemed?
Christian Nazism Exposed
by Lewis Loflin
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 28, 2006 1:26 AM
This is in response to Samnell, Part IV
The Dominionists are a real problem and a real threat. So are the creationists who would help place them that much closer to a position of power. But your more liberal Christian friends?
Check this out:
An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science
(We've reached our goal of gathering 10,000 clergy signatures. The
next step in our campaign is outlined here.)
Pay special attention to the second paragraph. Then ask yourself who you should be allying yourself with and who you really need to oppose. (That is, assuming you have read one of the links on the Dominionists.)
Take care.
Posted by: Timothy Chase | January 28, 2006 1:28 AM
This is a response for Timothy, Part I
Presuming PZ tolerates us. I should perhaps preface these comments with a confession of possible bias on my part. I am a gay man living in a small, Midwestern town. To add insult to injury, I ended up attending the local community college (nice place) in a university extension program with an evangelical school downstate (horrible, awful place and people) to get a teaching