…and this is a 
The false equation
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: February 26, 2007 11:30 AM, by PZ Myers
I've rarely seen it so starkly said:
"We are witnessing a social phenomenon that is about fundamentalism," says Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark. "Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England. Most of them would regard each other as destined to fry in hell.
"You have a triangle with fundamentalist secularists in one corner, fundamentalist faith people in another, and then the intelligent, thinking liberals of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, baptism, methodism, other faiths - and, indeed, thinking atheists - in the other corner. " says Slee. Why does he think the other two groups are so vociferous? "When there was a cold war, we knew who the enemy was. Now it could be anybody. From this feeling of vulnerability comes hysteria."
Wow. So Dawkins is setting off bombs, appropriating religious people's land, and hates gay people? And he thinks Christians and Muslims are going to hell? Talk about not getting it…
I like how he categorizes people of faith as the reasonable ones, with a few "thinking atheists" tossed in so he can sound inclusive.
The article really doesn't get any better from there. It makes the premise that atheism is identical to fundamentalism, and ties it to violence and attempts to deprive people of their civil rights, all claims completely contrary to the evidence (but who cares? It's OK to slag mere atheists with lies), and it's all wrapped up in a hysterical frenzy of anti-Dawkins terror. That guy really hit a sore spot, didn't he?
As usual, there's the expected whining about Dawkins' book by people who, if they even bothered to read it, didn't understand it. I like this attempt to escape the anti-religion logic:
Gray argues that this fixation misses the point of religions: "The core of most religions is not doctrinal. In non-western traditions and even some strands of western monotheism, the spiritual life is not a matter of subscribing to a set of propositions. Its heart is in practice, in ritual, observance and (sometimes) mystical experience . . . When they dissect arguments for the existence of God, atheists parody the rationalistic theologies of western Christianity."
Shorter John Gray: "We know religion is stupid, but it makes us feel good."
If that's all religion is, I suggest he take up Tai Chi for the ritual, go sit in a forest or by the seashore for a 'mystical' experience, and join a book club for the sense of community. I have to despise these arguments that try to pretend religion is not what it is—they are in essence conceding that the atheist's criticisms are valid and that they have to redefine religion to avoid them, but they are not intellectually honest enough to admit that the existence of gods, souls, an afterlife, and the efficacy of prayer are indefensible propositions.
And then there's Rabbi Julia Neuberger.
Neuberger is to take on Hitchens, Dawkins and Grayling when she speaks at a debate against the motion We'd Be Better Off Without Religion next month. The debate has been moved to a bigger venue. "What I find really distasteful is not just the tone of their rhetoric, but their lack of doubt," she says. "No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don't accept there's doubt in all things, you're being intellectually dishonest. "
Hasn't. Read. The. Book.
Atheism, even that firebrand atheism Dawkins is pushing, certainly does admit to doubt, and Dawkins wrote at considerable length about it. All the good Rabbi has to do is expose us to some evidence for her religion, and we'll consider it. Too bad these religious kooks never have any.
If that's going to be Neuberger's tack, though, this debate is going to be entertaining—Dawkins will mop the floor with her. There's something wonderful about a debate opponent who not only charges in with a silly proposition, but does so by completely mischaracterizing the other side; it should be a real Emily Litella moment.
I don't think Ophelia liked the article, either.
Comments
Seems some can't differentiate between "some doubt" in science, and "all doubt", which is appropriate to religious claims.
Of course these people don't really get together and discuss their stance (wouldn't exactly improve their beliefs if they really went through their claims), since some of them will complain about the "skepticism" of science, some will complain that science doesn't have any doubt, and many will simply state both at alternate times. Well at least it saves them the trouble of learning what scientific skepticism entails, meaning that they can continue on in their self-congratulatory collective incoherence.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 26, 2007 11:54 AM
Sounds like something watch.
Posted by: Bachalon | February 26, 2007 11:54 AM
Comparing Dawkin's atheism to religious fundamentalism reminds me of this great James Randi quote:
"If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
Posted by: Sonja | February 26, 2007 11:59 AM
Anyone, anyone who equates the doctrine bound RCC with methodism, or American baptists or even Anglicanism has their head in the sand.
This is a church who exists for rules and dogma. In some ways the RCC is far worse than the fundies despite a luke-warm embrace of some science.
Posted by: Uber | February 26, 2007 12:00 PM
I'm always irked by people slinging around terms like "fundamentalist" without a consideration for what it means. Too often these days, people substitute it for "asshole", which just makes the term utterly meaningless.
I've asked people who have used it before whether they feel that fundamentalism is concerning the beliefs of individuals, or the attitude. They almost invariably say that it's the attitude, which they regard as a corollary to the fundamentalist's beliefs. The problem is obviously that they haven't spent very much time around fundamentalists.
Coming from an incredibly conservative hometown, I know a great deal of fundamentalists, insofar as they believe the world to be between six and ten thousand years old, feel that abortion is wrong based on the soul content of embryos, and despise homosexuality. Many of these people, while possessing severely backwards and repugnant ideas about the way the universe works, are incredibly nice. You don't see them on street corners with placards, they're utterly charming and pleasant, and many times not overbearing in their demeanor. Very civil.
These people are fundamentalists. One might suggest that they're hardly a threat to reason, being as they're so downright pleasant and outwardly humble, but they will almost always vote the same ticket as Pat Robertson or James Dobson. Fundamentalism isn't, can't be defined by someone being irate, or shouting on a corner. Too many people who obviously aren't fundamentalists get sweeped up in the label (anti-war protesters for example), and too many people who obviously are get left out (the pleasant creationist guy who runs the Christian coffee house).
Posted by: Loren Michael | February 26, 2007 12:05 PM
My favorite comment:
"I refer to secular fundamentalism. The problem is that these people believe that they have the absolute truth. That means you have no room to talk to others so you end up having a physical fight." Azzim Tamimi
Because atheists like Dawkins always end debates in fisticuffs, or just nodding politely while the religious commentator prattles on and on about the absolute truth of their religion. Oh, and suicide bombers seem to be nonexistent among atheists.
Posted by: Kent | February 26, 2007 12:05 PM
I wish debates like this would come through one of the colleges or universities near where I live...
I'd certainly attend.
Posted by: Derek | February 26, 2007 12:07 PM
As usual, there's the expected whining about Dawkins' book by people who, if they even bothered to read it, didn't understand it.
Of course. Dawkin's teaching is secret one, only for neodarwinistic devotees. We others miss dawkinsonian imagination how ancient fish climbing mount improbable became feathered eagle in the end.
Posted by: VMartin | February 26, 2007 12:07 PM
PZ, the problem is that, even though you and Dawkins are right, the majority of people are going to side with the other guys, simply because the majority of people are religious and they are incapable of seeing the obvious flaws that you are pointing out.
Posted by: Cyde Weys | February 26, 2007 12:11 PM
Here's the deal:
They're afraid that you're going to do to them what they did to you and to anyone who didn't think EXACTLY like them.
They're afraid that once the atheists take over, religion will be banned and its practitioners rounded up, jailed and persecuted -- and they will point to Russia and China and other allegedly atheistic states to prove that this will happen. Never mind that both Russia and China's respective traditions of unbelievable violence (much of it religious violence) and lack of a post-feudal history made their experience somewhat different from, say, Sweden's or Cuba's.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | February 26, 2007 12:13 PM
And you've read it, VMartin? You might try looking at Chapter 4, "Why there almost certainly is no God", to find that he rather plainly addressed Neuberger's false assertion. The point is that there is nothing secret about it at all.
I see that when you aren't being Davison's sycophant, you're being a vacuous little troll instead.
Posted by: PZ Myers | February 26, 2007 12:19 PM
Even money someone at the debate will drag out the chestnut about Dawkins' not understanding the refined, subtle formulations of modern theology. Of course, it goes without saying that criticizing Dawkins for lacking experience in theology is tantamount to saying that the vast majority of religious people are ignorant of that which they worship. At the same time, such a claim actually reinforces Dawkins's argument that it is dubious in the extreme to call a young child "Christian" or "pagan". Surely, if an interested amateur, an Oxford professor, cannot grasp the material then we have no business attributing religion to children. I find it difficult to resist the conclusion that the theologians are taking themselves to task for not teaching theology to the billions of people who need to understand all the details of their God.
I suspect that a good percentage of the Dawkins-bashing sound-and-fury actually reflects a fundamental difference in approaches. See if this sounds reasonable:
A theologian — by which I mean one who makes an academic study of a religion in which he believes — is naturally bound to authority. In the Western tradition, he must place all ideas in relation to divine authority, from which all truth radiates. He must also pay deep homage to human authorities: people like Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas who found their share of grace and wrote basically infallible books about it.
Theologians may disagree among themselves as to which orthodoxy best channels the Word of God, but they'll all say that there is a true, inspired orthodoxy. (If you meet one who says otherwise, that catechisms are merely covers for Chaos, look around for mirrors, swords and labyrinths, because you're probably trapped in a Jorge Luis Borges story.) To a first approximation, theology is a discipline in which the game pieces and rules of play were set out centuries ago, and everything which comes after is just elaboration — fitting the irritating developments of a world which just won't stay still into a medieval framework.
But, to steal a quip from Carl Sagan, in science there are no authorities, only experts. There is a world of difference between these two categories! An expert knows her subject matter, but we don't have to pay special reverence to her Word. Nobody gets distraught by the fact that the math Minkowski used to describe Special Relativity was more elegant than Einstein's; we just say that Einstein had the right big ideas, and then we go ahead and teach Minkowski spacetime. A freshman course on physics includes topics of which Newton never wrote, vectors for example. Likewise, despite all the creationist braying over "Darwinism", an introductory biology class leaves The Origin of Species far behind, even in all likelihood discussing findings in genetics which came years after Watson and Crick.
Without really paying attention to it, science and science education have embraced Alfred North Whitehead's motto: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
Theology refuses to acknowledge this entire idea!
Thanks to cheap books and the Internet, a well-read teenager can poke holes in all the ontological arguments ever offered to prop up Divinity. We really can demolish Anselm's arguments in less time than it took Anselm to build them. ("The perfect Wikipedia article must exist, because among its maximal set of most excellent attributes, it must have the attribute of existence. . . .") This is called progress. But within the bounds of his profession, a theologian must find this attitude to authority not just anathema, but completely incomprehensible.
In science, "authorities" are questioned, criticized, rephrased, amended, summarized and sometimes even discarded. In theology, they are illuminated with gold leaf.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 26, 2007 12:24 PM
I think you're right, Cyde Ways, and that's why we have to continue to open our loud mouths and fight against religion.
The word you're missing, Phoenix Woman, is "projection". They're afraid that if we took over, we'd do to them what they'd like to do to us.
Posted by: PZ Myers | February 26, 2007 12:24 PM
You forgot the Gumbys!
Posted by: Peter Lund | February 26, 2007 12:44 PM
PZ Myers:
And you've read it, VMartin? You might try looking at Chapter 4, "Why there almost certainly is no God", to find that he rather plainly addressed Neuberger's false assertion. The point is that there is nothing secret about it at all. I see that when you aren't being Davison's sycophant, you're being a vacuous little troll instead.
Laws governing evolution of living forms on the Earth have nothing to do with darwinism. And great mystery of evolution has nothing common with Dawkins phatasmagories at all.
Greatest scientist as Robert Broom (as well as T. Chardin) considered evolution to be spirit-governed process. It is in accordnace with the best tradition with russian as well as british metaphysical thinking. See this article from Vaclav Petr from Prague Charles Uni (I can tell you one of the best nowadays Czech scientist biolog and philosopher profesor Zdenek Neubauer turned to be antidarwinian too).
British metaphysics as reflected in Robert Broom's evolutionary theory:
http://www.mprinstitute.org/vaclav/Broom.htm
You should better read John Davison's Manifesto and to reconsider your darwinistic opinion.
Posted by: VMartin | February 26, 2007 12:48 PM
Great post. Thanks for writing about this. I saw that aritcle this morning and it pissed me off, too. It is amazing that people still have no clue what FUNDAMENTALISM is. I mean, it's impossible to be a fundamentalist atheist because we have no holy book telling us what to do!
Posted by: writerdd | February 26, 2007 12:50 PM
A lot of so-called moderates seem to have a huge problem making a distinction between saying that a belief is mistaken, and "suppressing" the belief. There's that ever-popular mantra: "Everyone should be allowed to believe what they want." What does that mean? Freedom of thought and conscience -- or a relativistic indifference to content? In many cases, it seems to mean both.
I think the reason fundamentalist Christians and atheists are often equated is the perceived attitude of intolerance: they both tell other people that they're wrong! And telling other people they're wrong is ... wrong. As Daniel Dennett pointed out in his last book, people often have more faith in the value of faith, any faith, than they have in specific religious claims.
The concept of an honest, respectful debate on issues seems to have slipped away, and been replaced by the namby-pamby idea that it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you're nice about it and don't try to push it on others. In other words, as long as you don't do something rude and aggressive like try to persuade someone to change their mind.
It's the Mr. Roger's School of Theology: "I like you just the way you are."
Posted by: Sastra | February 26, 2007 1:00 PM
James Randi quote:
"If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
Deeper than it looks. For example, I've never played Chess in a tournament. Does that mean that my not playing Chess is a hobby? Superficially, that's absurd. But suppose I'm attracted to Chess (I am), read the Chess column of the Los Angeles Times (I do), am friends with a Chess Tournament Director (Benjamin Nethercot), am friends with a former U.S. Women's Chess Champion (marriued name Sharon Friedman), and attend Chess tournaments as a spectator (including the U.S. Chess Open, as I have).
Then, to True Believers in Chess (who are Rated Players), what am I? Clearly not one of them. I don't have a rating. But also clearly not someone indifferent to Chess or attacking their belief system.
It might be said indeed that, for me, not playing Chess is a hobby. Where by "playing" means in tournaments, where the play is official. Unofficially, I did beat Ben Nethercott (very close to International Master) in a game where I had K 5 pawns to his K R. His father was watching, which may have given me a psychological edge.
Further, I study the Mathematics of Chess (see the Chess-related sequences in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences).
In the same way, I am not a True Believer of any established religion. But Religion fascinates me. I've been to services in many different churches and synagogues. I've read many books on religion. I've performed marriages as the Minister. I've published Theological essays and poems. I've written about what I call Theophysics and Theomathematics.
So is not believing in God a hobby for me? The case can be made.
Agnosticism is a heterogeneous population. I am a Chess Agnostic but still interested. I am a God Agonstic, but still interested. I do happen to believe rather strongly in Evolution by Natural Selection, Stellar Evolution, the Old Earth. I hedge my bets on the Big Bang. I am very skeptical of String Theory.
There is a stance that can be summarized as: Skeptical of belief X, but also skeptical of the Skeptics of X. That can be done in an open-minded and polite way.
It would be nice if the X Believers and X-Skeptics tolerated each others' existence, the way the Chess professionals tolerated and were puzzled by me, in conversation. But, alas, many X-believers seem too fearful and angry to tolerate the way that Jesus instructs one to be -- nonjudgmental of, say, whores, and loving ones' enemies. I guess that Creationists are thus, ultimately, not true Christians, in the way that many Islamist terrorists are not actually behaving in an Islamic manner.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | February 26, 2007 1:01 PM
VMartin is a kook.
Broom is pictured as an admirer of the work of Richard Owen, as a lifelong and thorough student of the Bible, as an evolutionist who believed in the disembodied existence of spirits as well as in transcendental spiritual force who guided his research activities and discoveries. Broom's evolutionary theory is based on the existence of some sort of 'intelligent spiritual agency' of two types: a) the lower agency, present in animals and plants, of limited vision and limited power, and b) that of a much higher type which has planned and directed evolution (via directing from time to time the former, inferior agencies). Broom pointed to the presence of an uncountable multitude of convergences which cannot be explained satisfactorily by lamarckism or by darwinism.
Uhg.
Posted by: Steve_C | February 26, 2007 1:02 PM
VMartin:
[Spit take.]
Wha?
The killfile grows one entry longer.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 26, 2007 1:04 PM
Just a word of warning, I clicked on VMartin's link.
Thats ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Grrrrrr....
Can PZ please install some sort of anti-psychotic filter on this forum ?
Posted by: MartinC | February 26, 2007 1:07 PM
I have sent the following to the newspaper, I was so annoyed...
Staurt Jefferies said, in your newspaper:
"Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England."
I call him LIAR, and dare him to sue.
If he is telling the truth, he should be able to produce an example to justify his case .....
Really, sirs, does no-one proof-read the nonsense some of your guests write?
Between this idiot, and Bunty (Madelaine B.) spouting on about how "peaceful" islam is, I'm beginning to wonder how you can call yourself a news paper ....
G. Tingey.
Posted by: G. Tingey | February 26, 2007 1:12 PM
There are many fundamentalisms in the contemporary world, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto varieties. These movements all differ in what they claim to believe, but they are strikingly analogous from a sociological point of view. They are all protests against modernity and share many of the same political and cultural characteristics. I'm not aware of any atheistical outfits that are remotely similar in organization or tactics to these movements. Claiming that Dawkins is somehow the counterpart of Falwell may be rhetorically effective, but it's bad sociology.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | February 26, 2007 1:14 PM
Gee, I'm flattered. But I must admit to being a little confused; in which corner are the liberals that don't do much thinking (or at least much thinking about Epistemology) go? Or the thinking, liberal, bigots? (They do exist). How about the communists? And how is not Dawnkins a thinking atheist? An intelligent, liberal, thinking atheist even. (I'm not exactly a fan of Dawnkins, but he does think.)
Posted by: Andrew Wade | February 26, 2007 1:15 PM
It reminds me a bit of Ambrose Bierce's definition of "cynic": "A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision." (Of course his definition of faith is pretty good too: "Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.")
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | February 26, 2007 1:16 PM
"Emily Litella moment" is a worthy phrase.
Posted by: Jeff Chamberlain | February 26, 2007 1:19 PM
VMartin thinks Teilhard de Chardin was a great scientist?
As opposed to an obscurantist windbag, who was involved in the Piltdown fraud?
But he WAS a priest!
Posted by: G. Tingey | February 26, 2007 1:19 PM
I posted the into so noone else would have to click on the link.
Posted by: Steve_C | February 26, 2007 1:19 PM
I posted the INTRO. Uhg.
Apparently the Czech Republic is neck and neck with turkey on creationism. And they don't even have Noah's Ark up on one of their mountains.
Posted by: Steve_C | February 26, 2007 1:24 PM
Well, it seems that the conversation that I have dreaded and hoped for has finally begun.
Not believing in something that does not exist is not "extremism." But it appears that Dawkins has finally gotten the so-called tolerant sexularists to reveal their true colors. Yes, it makes me angry to see yet another supposedly learned individual frame disbelief as "fundamentalist" as belief, and advocate some sort of (constantly shifting) middle ground. (How am I supposed to compromise, by believing that Jesus "kind of" rose from the dead? Turned water into wine coolers? I can't do that, people!)
I'm not going to take the bait this time about equating atheists with terrorists and I suggest that others don't, either. I have learned from experience that you are not going to convince someone who thinks you're a terrorist that you aren't, and the debate that ensures just plays into their hands.
Gray argues that this fixation misses the point of religions: "The core of most religions is not doctrinal. In non-western traditions and even some strands of western monotheism, the spiritual life is not a matter of subscribing to a set of propositions. Its heart is in practice, in ritual, observance and (sometimes) mystical experience . . . When they dissect arguments for the existence of God, atheists parody the rationalistic theologies of western Christianity."
I see some things to agree with here, however:
It is also a caricature of non-western religions to portray them as having no doctrine. That is simply not true. Lay Buddhists worship Buddha, and they're not supposed to. They believe in sin, salvation, and hell. Some Muslims in Yemen and North Africa revere saints, and they're not supposed to. Look at the Sunni-Shia divide: that's not based upon doctrine? And it is simply not the case that non-western beliefs as actually practiced do not impose creationism or apocalyptic doctrines upon their followers. John Gray needs to meet actual practicing believers (as I have), not just write about pure, esoteric religious theory.
Isn't there something ironic about me knowing so many people of different faiths, more so than these advocates of "tolerance"?
Posted by: Kristine | February 26, 2007 1:27 PM
Oooh. I mean "secularists." Whoops. :)
Posted by: Kristine | February 26, 2007 1:29 PM
"sexularists" ...
"Oooh. I mean 'secularists.'"
Freudian Slip if I've ever seen one. Sorry, couldn't resist. Easily imagine Emily Litella saying that. But I do agree with you, Kristine.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | February 26, 2007 1:34 PM
Sorry. One more point:
"What I find really distasteful is not just the tone of their [Dawkins and Grayling] rhetoric, but their lack of doubt," she [Neuberger] says. "No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don't accept there's doubt in all things, you're being intellectually dishonest."
Um. Lack of doubt? That's pretty twisted.
I have no lack of doubt that the Greek gods do not exist, either. Neither does Neuberger! Does that mean she's an extremist, or a confused soul just trembling to reconvert and sacrifice a goat to Athena at the Parthenon?
No, as the article points out, religion hasn't disappeared. But the present-day religions will someday disappear, just as the relgions of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, and Egyptians did. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam will die off (I hedging on Hinduism and Buddhism, though). ;-) There will be new religions in place of the old. What doesn't change? What will always be around, though perhaps never in the majority? Atheism.
Posted by: Kristine | February 26, 2007 1:43 PM
We're all born atheists. To insist that every living person has to accept the possibility of a "god" by default is absurd. We should all doubt our evidence for the absence of a god?
Why?
Posted by: Steve_C | February 26, 2007 2:01 PM
I like what John Gray said. I find it ridiculous/amusing/sad how PZ and Dawkins thinks that they get to define what religion is, so they can keep attacking it. If religionists want to "redefine" what they believe in so that it doesn't conflict with science, this pisses PZ off. Why? Because he's got fewer occasions for self-rigteous mockery and easy laughs? It's this sort of behavior that earns you an extremeist label, because your interest is in keeping up the conflict rather than settling it, keeping up a tired conflict rather than engage in productive dialog.
The fact is that "religion" covers a wide range of phenomena from the profound to the profoundly stupid. It seems equally stupid to focus solely on the worst of religion. That's why I prefer Dennett's book to Dawkins. He is no believer either, but at least he's willing to try to see what the point of religion might be.
Posted by: mtraven | February 26, 2007 2:01 PM
Stelve LaBonne wrote
It's not merely "accepted"; it's required and valued. That's exactly the main problem I have with religion in general: It places its highest value on belief in the absence of evidence, faith in the teeth of contrary evidence. That value is the pernicious core of religion. All the ills of (and attributable to) the religious flow from the notion that it's not only OK, but creditable to accept and act on propositions for which there is no plausible evidence.Posted by: RBH | February 26, 2007 2:05 PM
These nutjobs have come completely unhinged. Atheists don't have doubt? What? And even if they didn't, how does having doubt justify belief? That is probably the most twisted logic I've ever seen.
And how exactly is Richard Dawkins like a terrorist? I don't recall him blowing himself up. Oh, I see how this works. Religion is always good, and when it isn't good, it's because those entirely rational people who worship invisible bronze age storm gods have come unhinged and started acting more like atheists.
I wonder if these people would be so quick to trivialize religiously motivated terrorist attacks if they weren't just watching them "on the tube". Then we wouldn't see arguments that amount to "Disbelief = Killing People With Bombs in The Name of Allah".
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 2:10 PM
[second spit take of the day. . . root beer this time!]
Have I been following an entirely different public debate? PZ, Dawkins, Altemeyer, Sokal and all the rest haven't been defining what religion is in order to maximize the number of rhetorical targets. Far from it: they took a look at what religious people actually think and do. This becomes their empirical definition of "religion". Theologians who attempt to justify a Deist or Spinozan God and then pray each Sunday to a Bearded Sky Father are the ones playing with redefinitions.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 26, 2007 2:11 PM
Wow that'd make for a great nickname...
Sexularizer. *g*
Posted by: secularizer | February 26, 2007 2:12 PM
mtraven said: ...because your interest is in keeping up the conflict rather than settling it, keeping up a tired conflict rather than engage in productive dialog.
PZ is right not to settle it, because settling it means that atheists stay quite, like they have more or less been for centuries, while the religious continue to prattle on and, worse, to inflict their religious beliefs on the lives of others. Settling the conflict means staying with the status quo. No, PZ is right to speak up. All rationalists need to do the same.
Posted by: Ric | February 26, 2007 2:13 PM
mtraven, I call bullshit. What Dawkins attacks- and he's quite explicit about this- is the kind of religion to which most religious people really adhere. That's the kind which is actually important in real-world terms. No doubt the world would be a much better place if most religious believers resembled, say, Scott Hatfield. Well, hello- that's not the world we actually live in.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | February 26, 2007 2:13 PM
Yep. Dawkins and I aren't redefining religion -- we're looking at what people actually practice, and criticizing that rather than some attenuated hypothetical version that theologians have invented.
Also, it's not because they're switching to some definition that is free from error -- I think the 'mystical experience' thing is pretty darned silly.
Posted by: PZ Myers | February 26, 2007 2:16 PM
I take the definition switch as a positive thing. It means that they're beginning to see the position of divine dogma as indefensible, and have started reaching for something easier to defend instead. And William James is very, very easy to defend.
I wonder if this means the local pastors are going to start reading Aldous Huxley?
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 2:23 PM
PZ: In that I am a skeptic, and also skeptical of skeptics, I am particularly interested in discussions with scientists who HAVE had a 'mystical experience' -- because, though accounts of mystical, transcendental, and peak experiences can SOUND silly, they are clearly of subjective validity to the subject, and can lead to fascinating results as the subject attempts to reconcile the subjective experience with an objective scientific paradigm that denies the possibility of a mechanism for that experience.
I suspect that you'd stay a skeptic of religion and Creationist nonsense even after you had a 'mystical experience' -- just as Bertran Russell once responded to a question. I paraphrase.
"Suppose, Dr. Russell, that you died and found yourself in heavern, at the htrone of God. Would you renounce your atheism?"
"No, sir," he said (still paraphrasing. "I'd tell God: 'I still don't believe in you!'"
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | February 26, 2007 2:23 PM
Jonathan vos Post:
Why are so many of your comments about you?
Posted by: Irving Irving | February 26, 2007 2:26 PM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | February 26, 2007 2:26 PM
Besides, mystical experience is nothing more than an appropriate combination of dopamine, serotonin, vitamin deficiencies and phenethylamines.
Since the religious crowd seems to be so big on 'mystical experience' now, I'd bet I could score some drugs from the next Jehovah's Witness who haplessly stumbles onto my front porch.
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 2:28 PM
Uh oh, Steve. We've suggested that there's a scientific explanation of religious experience.
That means we're like the terrorists one sees on "the tube".
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 2:31 PM
Captain Awesome weighs in on the comparison. Very not safe for work. (Assuming I picked out the right one: I'm at work.)
Posted by: Bronze Dog | February 26, 2007 2:31 PM
mtraven,
Which religions don't conflict with science? Give us some examples. A "religion" that is fully reconciled to science and reason wouldn't be a religion at all, in any useful sense of the word.
Posted by: Jason | February 26, 2007 2:32 PM
Equating the "mystical experience" — i.e., what you can potentially get from the night sky, music and/or LSD — with religious belief is just silly. Analogy:
I enjoyed the privilege of an alien abduction every few weeks during my junior year of MIT.
Let me elaborate on that:
Junior year for us physics majors is deliberately designed to be a brutal experience. To use flamboyantly gender-biased language, the professors want a chance "to separate the boys from the men" (you can substitute "sheep from the wolves" if you prefer). Key ingredient in the witches' brew is Junior Lab, a class which the course catalog says will require eighteen hours of work per week. Well, if you're a slacker, perhaps: I never knew anybody who did a decent job doing less than twenty. And you're expected to be taking three other classes at the same time, including your first real encounter with quantum mechanics — a nice, intuitive subject which gives you time to relax and contemplate — and if you believe that, I've got a very attractive deal on a bridge in Brooklyn. . . .
Put simply, if you survive junior year, you know you can make it as a physicist. You also learn just how productive you can be in a state of sleep deprivation. I was a lightweight, usually tumbling into bed between two and four A.M. when others could go all night long. However, I would wake up around six, when the sun started hitting my bedroom window, and damnably, I would have the hardest time falling asleep again.
So I would curl up there in bed, not able to be awake, not able to sleep. And then, pretty dependably — when I was truly zonked with exhaustion but somehow unable to doze off — I would feel a wave of numbness, followed by a strange paralysis. With my eyes closed, I would see my room, but with the sizes and proportions all distorted. If the experience lasted long enough, I would sense myself rising into the air and sometimes even flying through abstract tunnels of light.
"This is so freakin' cool!" I would exclaim. After a few such experiences, I discovered I could give myself a good shake and break the sleep-paralysis. Sometimes, after I did that, I could relax into my little hypnogogic trance again.
I expect lots of people have had similar experiences, half-awake and seeing odd things. (I mean, I tripped out in a dentist's chair at age eight after inhaling too much nitrous while they fixed my sugar-rotted baby teeth. Weird things can happen to the brain, even in daily life!) Junior year at MIT gave me the chance to explore the phenomenon, to test it with a little repeatability.
Now, experiencing an assortment of psychological and physiological perturbations which I could identify as similar to alien-abduction reports did not convert me to a UFO believer. Quite the opposite: by identifying a down-to-Earth explanation for these purported abductions and verifying that explanation with my own experience, I've firmly grounded myself in skepticism.
Why should a "spiritual" or "mystical" experience be any different?
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 26, 2007 2:44 PM
Math degrees work the same way. Once, after going for three days without sleep, I was sure that there was light coming out of my toes.
God be praised!
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 2:49 PM
"Very not safe for work. (Assuming I picked out the right one: I'm at work.)".
You picked out the right one, BD. I took the day off.
Posted by: AustinAtheist | February 26, 2007 2:49 PM
mtraven:
What positive thing do religions have a monopoly on?
The common denominator of religion is a belief in hell.
Belief in the utility of torment or the threat of torment is, um, the definition of terrorism.
What is this undifferentiated 'religion' that religious people appeal to?
Posted by: D | February 26, 2007 2:49 PM
Taoism, Buddhism, Deism, any form of mysticism or apophatic theology, really any sort of liberal religion that doesn't insist on interpreting scripture literally.
But as Gray said, it's not so much the doctrines but the practice, and the proof that religous practice doesn't conflict with science is that thousands of scientists manage to practice their religion without it coming into conflict with their scientific work. Each one of those is an existence proof.
It's easy to caricature religion and attack the caricature, but I don't really see the point. Instead, how about paying some attention to people who actually study religion and might know something about it, like Scott Atran?
Posted by: mtraven | February 26, 2007 2:51 PM
To be fair, certain sects of Buddhism and Taoism don't rely on belief in Hell.
Of course, that doesn't mean they've monopolized clear thought, peaceful and contemplative natures, or a love of nature.
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 2:51 PM
"Mysticism" compatible with science?
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 26, 2007 2:56 PM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | February 26, 2007 3:01 PM
That's not really an isolated instance though. Another example is the idea that loyalty is a positive good (virtue), ie instead of being seen for the evil (vice) that it really is. Think about it - because some of you may well currently be in the great majority which accepts that one as the former rather than realising it's the latter.
The sole point of loyalty is to encourage people to support fellow insiders when they are doing wrong just because of belonging to a shared in-group as against some out-group (ie instead of opposing their wrong-doing as you should). If someone in your in-group was doing right, you wouldn't (or shouldn't!) need loyalty in order to support them in that. And if an outsider was the one doing the right thing, you should be supporting them in it and not refraining or even pretending that they are doing wrong just because they are an out-grouper.
A significant part of religion is about pretending evil is good and vices are virtues (and vice versa). The neutral tends to be de-emphasised or even demonised. That doesn't exactly make for tolerance among religious followers.
Posted by: SEF | February 26, 2007 3:13 PM
Mr. Von Post please explain what exactly a 'mystical' experience is and how one could know one had one without it being a simple construct of the human mind.
This doesn't show a lack of conflict but rather a willingness of the scientists in question to not apply the same thinking to both of their lives. Likewise the huge number of scientists who are atheists is better evidence that when applied it reduces superstious belief.
Almost all Buddhists don't.
Posted by: Uber | February 26, 2007 3:14 PM
I guess being skeptical about your own experiences is a hard thing to do. After a particularly bad thunderstorm I saw a glowing ball come through the aluminum frame of my window and float about five feet off the floor and hit the wall on the far side of the living room. Since I know that strong oscillating fields can cause you to perceive things that are not there and these can happen is thunderstorms, and I also know there is some (but not much) evidence of ball lighting, to this day I am not sure if what I perceived was real or not. All I know for sure is that my I really saw it, but I do not know if it was real. It is not a wise thing to believe everything you see, your brain is a big filter on the cosmos.
Posted by: Tulle | February 26, 2007 3:16 PM
I once read about a guy who ingested an exotic psychedelic drug nobody has heard of before (2,5-dimethoxy-4-bromoamphetamine) and discovered the true meaning of Fourier transforms.
And you thought this sort of thing only happened in Thomas Pynchon novels!
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 26, 2007 3:25 PM
Subscribing to the notion that something "exists" beyond the scope of nature, can interact with it but cannot be measured, is asinine. Any scientist who prays to a deity and has convinced themselves of the efficacy of a supernatural (= unnatural = non existent) "realm" beyond the scope of empirical probing needs to grow up.
Posted by: Alex | February 26, 2007 3:25 PM
I watched the Beyond Belief segment that had Altran.
His point seemed to be that man is irrational therefore religion must be tolerated and science has no proof that religion is the problem versus the nature of humankind.
He seems to be saying that people do irrational things despite what religion tells them, even it religion itself is irrational and tells them to believe and do irrational things.
He also makes statement that science has no evidence that letting go of religion would have beneficial results. And that there's nothing proposed to replace it. Or how faith can be dismantled. At the same time Altran proposed no tests, ideas or views on religion itself. Just that the scientists had it wrong.
It's seemed like alot of tail chasing.
Posted by: Steve_C | February 26, 2007 3:27 PM
Yes, mysticism can be perfectly compatible with science. Science is about knowing as much as possible about the natural world. Mysticism is about acknowledging what we don't know and possibly can't know.
Posted by: mtraven | February 26, 2007 3:30 PM
mtraven,
Do please show me the scientific evidence for the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation or the deities of Taoism.
As for scientists who "manage to practise their religion without it coming into conflict with their scientific work," I am sure that many people, not just scientists, go through the motions of religious practise (attending church services, etc.) for social or professional or family reasons without really believing the claims of truth the religion makes. Scientists who truly believe that religion is compatible with science seem to be rather thin on the ground. If the work of religious scientists like John Polkinghorne and Francis Collins is the best they have to offer, I don't think they need be taken very seriously.
Posted by: Jason | February 26, 2007 3:30 PM
mtraven:
That's not a proof that religion and science aren't in conflict, it's a proof that such people exist who are psychologically capable of performing the rituals of science at the same time they're rationalizing away their inherently anti-scientific beliefs.
You act like none of us have ever heard this line of bullshit apologetics before.
I'm guessing it's because Atran isn't saying anything that we haven't already addressed a million times before. He asserts that the existence of irrationality is a reason to abandon rational behaviour, which is nothing more than a fancy-pants re-telling of every single other apologia for religion that has ever been offered in the history of academia.
From the skimming I've done, Atran needs to stick to anthropology. He's way out of his depth, here. His entire argument is nothing more than a long string of strawmen, arguments from popularity, equivocation, and outright lies. In fact, they're the exact same strawmen, arguments from popularity, equivocation and outright lies that religious apologists have been making for centuries. He even trots out the tired old "Hitler and Stalin were atheists" line of crap, then asserts that Fukuyama and Herrnstein/Murray are still taken seriously by the socio-scientific community.
I can't imagine being so desperate to justify yourself that you'd take a man like this seriously.
Posted by: Dan | February 26, 2007 3:33 PM
I dunno Steve_C, I've met people who became atheists, and then they became Ayn Rand-thumping objectivists. Certain people really are predisposed to stupidity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be digging a foxhole to fight back the onslaught I'm about to get for badmouthing Ayn Rand on the interweb.
Posted by: Dustin | February 26, 2007 3:34 PM
Watch out Dustin! Randians are a passionate bunch.
Hey, I liked 'The Fountainhead' too, but it was just a movie. Like 'V For Vendetta.'
Posted by: Colugo | February 26, 2007 3:39 PM
I think mysticism is about pretending to know something about the unknowable or nonexistent. It's belief based on self-delusion or dreamy confused thinking.
Posted by: Steve_C | February 26, 2007 3:39 PM
Don't worry, Dustin, if PZ can survive the Dilboid hordes then I'm sure you can survive the Randroid hordes. ;)
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | February 26, 2007 3:41 PM