Wow, wow. Lots of chatter around the ScienceBlogs about religion and evolution, etc. etc. Ed Brayton starts it off, drawing a line in the sand against those with an "anti-theist agenda." John Lynch tends to side with Ed. Our resident Ozzie, John Wilkins has been getting into it with Jason Rosenhouse. Josh at Thoughts from Kansas has criticized Dawkins. And of course P.Z. Myers has his own views on these topics.
A few points.
1) This isn't a two-faced coin. I think in Ed's post he overreaches a bit. Some people who are militant atheists are pretty nuts. Other people aren't. Some people really do verge on being inversions of the theocrats they detest, while other individuals make narrow, pointed critiques.
2) Nevertheless, as someone who is politically Right-of-Center, and has some rather un-PC viewpoints, I know that there is a tendency for those who fight the good fight for evolutionary science against the depredations of the Other Side to assume that we are all "good liberals" who believe in "social justice" and all the rest. Believe it or, just like atheism, accepting evolution as the best explanation for the tree of life does not necessarily entail any other viewpoints. There do tend to be particular correlations between being anti-evolutionist and right-wing in the United States, but please note that in Europe this tendency does not seem to exist, to be conservative does not imply rejection of evolutionary biology. The correlations and patterns we see before us may not be necessary functions of the structure of ideas that we see bundled together, but simply coincidences emerging from historical contingency.1
3) Going back to #1, not only are there manifold viewpoints and nuanced positions, but I think this is a good thing. When it comes to 2 + 2 = 4, I think people should agree on this. When it comes to the earth being round, or biological evolution being the most compelling scientific explanation for the diversity of life, I believe that right thinking rational humans should accept these without any controversy. But, when it comes to issues like "is religion good?" I am not particularly invested in the idea that we all need to agree on this. I have stated my own position multiple times, I am not a believer, and I am seriously critical of some aspects of religion, but I also believe it is probably a default human condition which would require too much social engineering and perhaps even totalitarianism to eliminate. It isn't worth it. That being said, I do believe that individuals such as Richard Dawkins play an essential role in the ecology of ideas and the public discourse. I am not one who believes that a religious position by the nature of being religious is automatically invalidated from public discussion, and similarly, I do not believe that anti-religious ideas should be barred or considered impolite. The various positions result in a pluralism of ideas and opinions which sustain a tense metastability which is probably the best we can attain in a liberal society where views differ on normative issues at far remove from the material world.
4) On the specific issue, "But is it good for evolutionary science?" I think the existence of both Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins is a good thing. My reasoning is simple, Dawkins allows Miller to triangulate, while Miller makes the charge of evolutionism necessitating atheism a lie. Just like an army is best when there are specialities, so the cause of evolutionary science in the public forum needs special forces who are tailored toward their own roles and niches.
1 - A real life example of this, in The Creationists Ronald L. Numbers offers that in 1930 Mormons at BYU rejected evolution at a 30% clip, but by the late 20th century this had shot up to 70%. Why? The reality is that the Mormon church has no official stand on this topic, but in local seminaries (religious schooling) Creationism is taught as implied form Mormon doctrine. Numbers suggests this is a function of the identification of Mormons with Protestant conservative culture on political issues, and we all know that conservative Protestantism in the United States is the North Pole of Creationism. Mormon adherence to Creationism is probably simply a cultural identification, not something inherent to the Mormon belief system.
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Hey - how come we agree again (see my comment on Stranger Fruit)?
perhaps there is a god....
Perhaps there isn't ;-)
agnostic prevaricator!
similarly, I do not believe that anti-religious ideas should be barred or considered impolite.
That depends on what you mean by anti-religious.
There is, "I think religion is wrong and leads to social harm." The case can be made.
There is also, "I think that religious people are lesser, that they are ignorant and/or unwilling/unable to evaluate reasonably their own modes of thought. They are not as smart and as thoughtful as atheists like me."
The latter statement is out there in spades, and when people complain about "anti-religion," it's generally the later.
But if that is not impolite-- then why is it not impolite to have anti-semetic, or anti-atheistic viewpoints? "Jews are lesser people than me because of their religion," or "atheists are lesser people than me because of their views on religion." Generally in polite culture we tend to consider srident expression of viewpoints like that impolite at best, potentially dangerous at worst. Why is it then not impolite to make a similar blanket statement about all of the religious?
-Rob
Why is it then not impolite to make a similar blanket statement about all of the religious?
religion is a choice, a belief system.
it is anti-semitic to say that jews are genetically hard-wired to be grasping money-grubbers. i don't think it's anti-semitic to say that jewish adherence to halakah and 3,000 year old commandments derived from bronze age mythology are regressive, primitive and anti-social. prejudice against jewish practices is totally fine, prejudice against jews qua jews as a people is not. this is a big issue for me because many people attempt to muffle criticism of islam by using the analogy with racism. i have elaborated why i think that analogy is weak. religion is like politics, not race.
in regards to the distinction between something being impolite and something being dangerous, i think that the brush of what is impolite is rather broad, and tend to accept impoliteness. it is acceptable for a substantial fraction of american christians (around 1/2) to believe that those who do not accept christ or the christian religion will burn in hellfire for not holding their beliefs. they impolitely broadcast these views in public forums. that's just the reality of american life and freedom of speech. so i think it is acceptable for people to be contemptuous and critical of religion in public. skepticism must balance faith.
but again, this isn't a black & white thing. when 1/2 of the public rejects an atheist teaching in a public school i don't think it is because they think that the atheists will be reading tracts from the god delusion. rather, the typical american (or at least every other american) seems to believe that atheists are fundamentally persons without moral fiber or principle, that they do not acede to the civic piety and are outside the bounds of citizenship (recall that locke reject atheist citizenship because we did not hold to any divinity to bind our oaths). if we are degenerates because of our lack of god, than conversely i think it is acceptable for some atheists to depict the typical christian as an uncouth cretin. the typical human is in my opinion an uncouth cretin, so this isn't that big of a deal anyhow.
the reality is that there are many types of atheists and christians. myself, i have little interest in these disputes so long as people leave me to be as i am. but the reality is that we live in a world where propogation of religion is accepted. in contrast, atheists will not evangelize unless they are attached to some powerful ideology (like communism), so we need the bulldogs here and there to keep the religionists honest. i went to a high school that was 50% mormon and most of the rest conservative protestant. i 'witness' people by the fact that i was not shy about being and unbeliever. i showed them that we're people who bleed and breath just like them.
You are so right. This is a beast with seven heads and ten horns.
Dawkins, I think, does us no favors. There have been aetheists and aetheistic and anti-religious tracts forvever. It's not like there's some huge demand for more discourse here. Aetheists, it seems to me are about 110 times more likely to write about their beliefs than Christians, even today.
And I predict that Richard Dawkins' Jesus-baitng will convert very nearly one extra person to aetheism.
Witnessing is tiresome in aetheists as well as in protestants, I'm afraid.
A lot of the trouble here, I think, is that so many people (including Dawkins) take religion as a propositional system: they think its force derives from its ability to explain the sorts of things that science explains. Well that's not why people are religious. Most people are fundamentally incurious about things in the natural world they don't deal with often, and creation stories are nothing but another in an endless series of iterations of the basic idea that there is an order to the world that gives meaning to the lives of believers.
The details of that order are trivia, they aren't the bases of the system.
If we truly want to look at religion from a scientific standpoint, we should be looking at the experiences that really seem to drive it: loss of loved ones, redemption experiences, the birth of children, etc, NOT arguing about creation myths that are fundamentally inessential to the phenomenon we are interested in.
Dawkins' obsession with this topic is a measure of his intellectual shallowness. Yes, Richard, you have a much better creation story. OK? It is probably only aetheists whose whole cosmology hinges on their creation story!
A phenomenon as pervasive and popular as religion has got to have something going for it. Creation myths, which vary widely across cultures, are probably not one of them. So let's quit the bullshit, move on and try to understand the enemy.
Aetheists, it seems to me are about 110 times more likely to write about their beliefs than Christians, even today.
that's probably false. go to a barnes & noble and check the "christian" section vs. the "atheist" section. even correcting for the smaller number of athests i think that's false.
A lot of the trouble here, I think, is that so many people (including Dawkins) take religion as a propositional system:
yes. i've spoken of this several times, but the god delusion suggests he is aware of tihs. i am wondering if his rhetoric is simply rhetoric.
that's probably false. go to a barnes & noble and check the "christian" section vs. the "atheist" section. even correcting for the smaller number of athests i think that's false.
Oh, it's more than probably false! But my point is more that aetheists don't need an in-your-face-style spokeman to bring them out of the closet. If they need a spokesman they need an MLK, an insistent but domesticated fellow. Not the Malcolm X of aetheism.
yes. i've spoken of this several times, but the god delusion suggests he is aware of tihs. i am wondering if his rhetoric is simply rhetoric.
I know you know this, as it's one of your more interesting (to me) hobbyhorses. But Dawkins I'm not so sure about.
I haven't had much time to really go over his book, but it seemed to me that he did a quick fly-over on the issue of death, which I consider to be one of the more important issues religion deals with (much like here: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_24_5.htm).
He seems a lot more concerned with coming up with an evolutionary expanation for religion than he does with expalining it.
He needs to drop the adaptionist blinders--who cares for the moment whether it's adaptive, let's figure out what it is and how it functions!
For instance the religion/death deal is LEAST interesting when looked at from the "promise of immortality" angle. The way in should be experiential: loss, consequent realization of mortality, consolation, etc.--it's first and foremost a very powerful experience, not a deal struck in the great adaptive marketplace. (Of course it may well be both, but that's not the best angle of approach, I'd say)
While Dawkins seems to claims religion as his proper subject, but it seems to me he steadfastly refuses to deal with it on any terms but those of his own subfield. But you can't understand how soemthing evolved without thoroughly understanding its function. Dawkins doesn't truly seem to have the requsiite vocabulary or the curiosity for this task.