Tonight, Richard Dawkins will speak at KU's Lied Center from 7:30 to 9, followed the next morning with a less formal Q&A. In preparation for that, here are some thoughts on The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
In responding to Atrios' comment that "When people start invoking religion in discussing issues …it's utterly meaningless to me personally," slacktivist points out that "Sectarian language isn't much use when trying to communicate with people outside of the sect." Fred continues:
This is why it's necessary for religious believers to adopt the common language of others when speaking to those outside of our particular communities. Religious language needs to be translated into intermediary terms and principles that others can understand, appreciate and engage.
This is where most works of evangelism fail, and why evangelism can be so annoying. While Dawkins' book is less obnoxiously self-important than works of Christian apologetics can be, it still doesn't quite seem interested in understanding the beliefs of people who aren't Richard Dawkins. Like other works of apologetics, I expect it will serve best in appealing to those inclined to agree with it to begin with.
Alas, I am doomed not to join that elect group. Scientists like me, who do not believe it's necessary to wage war on supernatural beliefs, come in for nearly as much opprobrium as do people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old. Of a passage from Gould's Rocks of Ages in which Gould makes what I feel is a standard view that science and religion address non-overlapping sets of questions, Dawkins writes "this sounds terrific – right up until you give it a moment's thought." Throughout the book, any attempt at accommodation is dismissed as political posturing, "bending over backwards to be nice to an unworthy but powerful opponent." It's hard to be kind in reviewing a work that compares you to Neville Chamberlain.
Agnostics come in for similar criticism. The problem again is that Dawkins is unable to engage with the actual beliefs that other people have. Because he disagrees with Gould's, Dawkins "simply do[es] not believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what he wrote in Rock of Ages." Dawkins rejects attempts at labeling him a "fundamentalist," but this inability to recognize that other people think differently about the matter seems to define fundamentalist belief.
At times, the problem seems less like the accidental inability to appreciate how other people perceive metaphysics, and more like his is intentionally setting up straw men. In his survey of theist and supernatural beliefs, he skips Taoism entirely, and is oddly dismissive of the sort of spiritualism that Einstein and many others happily espouse. He essentially defines those beliefs away. People who have those beliefs may consider them religious, but since it isn't what Dawkins is arguing against, he advances a narrower definition of theism that even some theologians would not accept.
For Dawkins, "a theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation." A prominent theology in the last century has been "process theology." In this approach, the concept of free will is extended beyond rational beings to all of existence. God does not directly manipulate the world, God merely has the power to persuade. God does not create ex nihilo, nor does God personal intervene in the material world. Indeed, events in the material world can change the deity over time, leading to the sort of ethical progress that Dawkins demonstrates in his chapter on the inadequacy of theistic morality.
Process theology exists as a result of serious intellectual work by theologians and religious thinkers. It would have been to Dawkins' advantage to engage with the existence of such serious religious thought, rather than dismiss the idea of a deity as delusional off the bat.
Arguments that genuinely engage what people think and that offer new information, are more useful to all involved than restating the same arguments people have always made. Pointing out that the Old Testament has some weird stories and endorses morally unacceptable practices won't change anyone's mind about it.
In that sense, the most important and original section for me comes towards the end, when Dawkins raises the entirely valid point that we ought not to refer to children as "Catholic children," "Muslim children," "Jewish children," etc., any more than we would refer to them as "Keynesian children," "Monetarist children" or "Marxist children." Religion is not genetic, and a child raised in a particular religious setting should not be labeled with a particular religion until they actually are mature enough to choose a set of metaphysical commitments.
Unfortunately, that part of the book is brief, and embedded in a chapter that invests too much effort arguing that religious indoctrination is – or at least can be – as a greater violation than childhood sexual abuse. The flaw is laced through the book – bad effects of religion are offered as arguments against any sort of belief in anything supernatural, while attempts to invoke the positive that has come from such beliefs is dismissed a priori as irrelevant. "Religion's power to console," Dawkins writes, "doesn't make it true." A fair point, but not necessarily a compelling argument against religion, either.
Dawkins invests substantial effort presenting evolution as an argument against theism, that (as he says several times) the universe as we know it is unlike what we should expect from one that is designed. While it is certainly true that it is unlike some ways that it could be designed, he never actually develops the argument that a deity would be unlikely to produce a universe like our own. I would argue that he could not possibly make such an argument – a position he mocks, but only because he misunderstands it.
To understand the problem, it's worth picking up a tool from a proof of God's existence that Dawkins rightly rejects – Unwin's Bayesian approach. Unwin applies Bayes' theorem to a set of entirely subjective assessments of the probability of various things if God exists (the sensation of good, the existence of evil, religious experience and miraculous events). Unwin crunches his subjective beliefs about the probability of those things of God exists, and winds up with some large probability of God's existence. Dawkins rightly rejects this as a compelling scientific proof, but doesn't recognize that this example shows the error in treating theism as a scientific hypothesis.
Bayes' rule essentially assesses the probability of the data you observe if your hypothesis were true times the probability of your hypothesis being true relative to the probability of getting that data somehow (the probability of the data given that your hypothesis is true times the probability of your hypothesis being true plus the probability of the data given that your hypothesis is false times the probability that your hypothesis is false). What's nice is that it allows a researcher to add his or her own subjective knowledge to the analysis up front, though enough data ought to wash out the effect of subjective bias.
What is the probability that the universe would look the way it does if there were no God? If there were? How do we assess those probabilities scientifically? God is, by definition, capable of creating anything, and without knowing a great deal more than we do about God's will, it would be the height of hubris to insist that we know what God would prefer. It is possible to assess the probability of some event due to known natural causes, but without knowing the other part of the equation, our subjective assessment of the probability of God's existence will dominate the equation.
People who approach the equation thinking that God almost surely exists will find confirmation for that belief in everything. People who think God almost surely doesn't exist will find confirmation for that belief everywhere. And people who think that it isn't coherent to attach a probability to God's existence (a category Dawkins ignores entirely) will also reject the idea that additional evidence could possibly allow someone to assign such a probability.
Having arrived at that conclusion, such a person might well take the position that it's not worth the effort to try to change people's minds about the matter. Dawkins' attempt at addressing the reason why people should care is singularly unimpressive. Chapter 8, "What's wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?" lists a variety of cultural battles, including those over stem cells, equal rights regardless of sexuality, abortion and science in which religion has made itself a roadblock or where it has inspired violence.
The argument is that faith per se is harmful, and should be replaced by more constructive approaches to morality and metaphysics (Dawkins argues that metaphysical questions are unworthy of consideration anyway). The counterargument is that slavery ended in America thanks to religious people, and that Gandhi's and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s religious faiths were essential to their unquestionably good works. Indeed, he manages to discuss how religion drove Fred Phelps to promote his anti-gay bigotry in a protest at Coretta Scott King's funeral without mentioning that King's vocal support for gay rights was itself driven by her religious faith.
Dawkins is an important figure in the battles over science education, so it is, as RSR rightly notes, unfortunate to see his willingness to sacrifice science education in pursuit of a religious war. His attitude seems likely to turn off substantial chunks of his preferred audience, as evidenced by the largely mixed reviews from other sciencebloggers. However, it should make tonight's event quite interesting.
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To be honest I am disappointed you conflate the irrational rubbish of apologetics for Dawkins pointed arguments. Even if you disagree with him there is simply no real comparison between the two.
This is also a bit misleading. Religious people acting in accordance to enlightenment thinking not the ancient texts themselves.
Then one should ask why it won't change someones mind. It should be enough. You don't need new arguments when the old will do just fine.
This is not a result of serious intellectual work. It is the pandering and fantasy of men sitting around trying to wish something into being. Dawkins is correct and your are incorrect here. Where is the evidence for this thinking? Even a shred? With none it is no more/less valid than any other theology.
How can one be a fundamentalist when one simply says produce evidence? It's a ridiculous ploy.
When Dawkins says "Religion's power to console doesn't make it true", you describe it as "a fair point, but not necessarily an argument against religion". It seems to me that that is Dawkins' key point and his most important challenge. Simply, "is it true?" The religious don't seem to be able to deal with that one.
I'm not clear on why supernaturalism is not an issue that science can talk about. Why not? Because Gould said so?
Einstein threw around the "G-word" when he did not mean it in the traditional, generally-understood sense, thus leading to the widespread and erroneous belief that he was a theist.
Einstein the agnostic
stephenjaygould.com
By invoking the "Einstein the spiritualist" falsehood, you discredit your argument.
Oh, and how many Taoists do you think there are, worldwide?
If you haven't read Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby, I highly recommend it. It reviews the involvement of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics, deists and others who have abandoned conventional religion) in American history, including such social reform movements as abolition, women's rights and civil rights.
To the extent that religious people were involved in abolition, they were breaking with their religious tradition and embracing enlightenment values of human worth.
Slavery in the Bible
Chapter 8, "What's wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?" lists a variety of cultural battles, including those over stem cells, equal rights regardless of sexuality, abortion and science in which religion has made itself a roadblock or where it has inspired violence.
I haven't read the book, so I don't know the full list, but....
...often the beliefes of various fundamentalist sects (of Christianity, Islam, or whatever) are touted by the anti-religouis as examples of the societal harm of "religion."
Dawkins should spend some time going to the church I used to attend in Berkeley, the First Congregational Churce of Berkeley. The vast majority of the congregation there, and as close to a consensus as you could get among the staff (lay and ordained) would be on the "Dawkins" side of all of these things. Indeed, at times I felt irritated that being a socialist/liberal in all things had become one of the sacraments.... The fact is that, not only with slavery and the MLK civil rights stuff, many of the religious are, partly because of their religion, on all sides of various issues. That lets some of the air out of the notion that religion itself is responsibible for bad social policies. It's certain type or flavors of religion, or certain interpretations of religion, that support those sorts of things, and indeed those things also often have support from the non-religious.
-Rob
To the extent that religious people were involved in abolition, they were breaking with their religious tradition and embracing enlightenment values of human worth.
Mustafa -- it is only the extreme "biblical authority" fundamentalists, and the virulently anti-religious such as yourself, who seem to think that a literal reading of all of the Bible should represent the true philosophy of a Christian.
That's a straw man for the argument you're trying to make. If you're arguing against Biblical authority types, then, sure, it's a reasonable argument. But that's not what we're talking about here.
It would be much more convenient for you and Dawkins and all of those who hate religion of all Christians were Biblical literalists, for then you would have opponents easy to dismiss. Alas for you, it isn't so.
The fact that some, or even many, in the 19th century used the Bible as partial justification for slavery doesn't invalidate the fact that many then and now saw slavery as anathmea to their overal religious philosophy. Religion, even Christianity, even protestant Christianty, is far from monolithic.
-Rob
I raise the issue of abolitionists because Dawkins accepts people's own descriptions of their religious motivations for intolerant and violent behavior, indeed objects when violence between regions of Iraq is not presented as religious. If we are to accept one group's self-description of religious motives, we can't contort ourselves to reject those same self-descriptions when they produce different results.
Mustafa claims that I discredit myself by accepting the Einstein as spiritualist argument. But Dawkins does too, he just doesn't think Einsteinian spirituality counts. "As I continue to clarify the distinction between supernatural religion on the one hand and Einsteinian religion on the other, bear in mind that I am calling only supernatural gods delusional." Dawkins also writes of Einstein's own self-described religiosity (p. 19) "In this sense, I too am religous, with the reservation that "cannot grasp" does not have to mean "forever ungraspable." It isn't clear that Einstein would attach the same caveat, and it is over that point that Dawkins and I disagree.
Richard says "I'm not clear on why supernaturalism is not an issue that science can talk about."
The reason is simple. By definition, the natural is bound by natural laws. It is predictable for that reason, we can test our predictions and learn about the natural in that way. By definition, the supernatural is not bound by natural laws (if it were, it would be natural). The supernatural, then is not predictable and not testable. Science occupies the realm of testability, so science cannot address the supernatural, not even the question of whether the supernatural could possibly exist.
Uber writes: "You don't need new arguments when the old will do just fine."
Clearly the old arguments don't work just fine, or religion would have died out long ago, right? These arguments are either wrong in fact or wrong in approach. I think the latter is more likely. I presume that before dismissing process theology as "not a result of serious intellectual work," Uber actually attempted to read some of the work in the field, gave it a chance, and therefore has some specific reasons for rejecting it. My breath is bated.
After all, rejecting arguments simply because they conflict with one's own beliefs is exactly what's so objectionable about fundamentalism. That ideology refers to religious movements that reject compromise, and insist on a return to fundamental principles of the movement. It's hard not to see Dawkins' uncompromising assault on faith and anyone willing to accept faith in other people as a form of fundamentalism. I stand by what I said. Dawkins dismisses questions that go beyond testability simply because he does not regard them as "legitimate." According to whom? Why is Dawkins entitled to assess what anyone else should find to be "legitimate"?
As for my reference to apologetics, the Wikipedia defines it as "The field of study concerned with the systematic defense of a position," including works like Plato's Apology. Is Plato now "irrational rubbish"?
This is an argument that is always baffling. Ever single Christian sect uses the bible and it's reading in some form or another. The entire statement misses the point.
It's not a strawman. Everyone understands that certain religions, actually all, don't take everything literally. The truth is they all pick and choose which is literal and which isn't.
This is a pointless paragraph. ALL Christian sects take parts literally and ALL Christian sects take parts as metaphor. There is no consistency as to which does what.
Then they oppose their supposed divine book. You can call it whatever you like but at least pretending the bible is 100% the word of God is intellectually consistent. To ignore large swathes of it and then say they view slavery as an anathmea is either a tactic admission of the faulty view of the book or the superiority of a secular, rational worldview.
No one doubts that at all. I agree. But Dawkins arguments gain strength here not lose.
Then what is it if not bound by natural laws. Give us one simple tiny example of anything that is as such. Otherwise what are we really talking about here? Just BS correct? Why do people need to cling to the hope of the supernatural for which nothing, not a shred of evidence exists.
That which ahs not been reasoned into cannot be reasoned out of. It's got nothing to do with arguments.
This is the same BS everyone spouts in theology. Your right I could go on in a blog post about why the theology is just as stupid as any other. But until someone provides real evidence one way or the other that process theology has more merit why should one bother. It's intellectual masturbation.
Yeah right. This is fast becoming a tired old canard. Because people reject arguments with no backing or evidence they are fundies. Makes perfect sense. Prove your case. No one said the thoughts aren't interesting, just of no more value than any other.
Right. He says people buying all sorts of ideas without a shred of evidence is not an admirable quality. he says teaching your children about eternal suffering if you don't do this this or this is not admirable. And he is wrong how?
Thats fine. But you are wrong.
To me a legit question has a legit answer. Your correct though in this it is an opinion. One can ask any question they choose but when one thinks you have found the answer you need to support it with something.
This is BS. To a degree I see how you see it. To me I see an attack using pricipled arguments not to enhance atheism but expose the flaws in a irrational mindset.
Josh, all religions claim that supernatural beings have an effect on the natural world (us). Therefore their effects should be measurable, if not predictable. If the supernatural has no effect on the natural world then there's nothing to talk about (except for the fact that billions of people govern there lives, to some degree or other, on the alleged existence of said beings). The scientific method can certainly help us examine the veracity of supernatural claims. I don't want to have to invoke Russell's teapot analogy.
Totally heartly agree.
And it's funny the amount of irrationality those useless debates generate, especially from the "rational" army...
How much better it would be if Dawkins did some more science again, how I miss the good old times (in fact his BC was one of the major causes of my scientific career).
As Carl Sagan once put it, it's strange seeing how these or the others desperately want God or the universe to be stupid and uninteresting. Luckily there's more than common sense can grasp, and admitting that should not be a capitulation but a stimulus to keep going beyond. Without such an attitude science wouldnt have progressed a millimeter.
Funny how invoking different kinds of "enlightement" as miraculous neverending sources of truth is rarely recognized as superstition.
Too bad Gould is gone, but his insights will survive...
Side note: taoists cant be measured, by construction.
Question for the evening: why do people keep babbling about science without being scientists? Or for the matter about religion without understanding religion?
1. Religion is like politics everyone has a view and they are all equal.
2. Who does understand religion?
To be honest, I never understood this whole debate. If it can be proven using scientific methods, it exists. If it cant, I am confident it doesnt exist. Why should there be any urge to believe something not backed up by facts?
Richard, do you have an actual case of a supernatural event? Just because people claim that the supernatural is possible, does not will it into existence. I have never witnessed a supernatural event, but how would you even know if it was supernatural? You argue that it is possible for something to occur that was stimulated by non-natural means, so you must have knowledge of a particular non-natural event. What was this event? Asking me to accept that there are phenomenon that cannot be explained by natural processes is meaningless if you have no examples of such a phenomenon. This is why the supernatural is a non-starter for science.
There is a world of difference between reading the Bible literally and using the bible and its reading in some form or another. If you find that baffling, then you're of just as guilty of simple-minded thinking about reading things that may have meaning as are the Christians who insist that you must accept all of the Bible literally to be a Christian.
Yes, it is clear that you want to "blame" all Christians for the stands and behaviors of the fundamentalits, and yes, it is clear that if it were reasonable to do so your argument would be that much stronger. However, your inability to understand that there is nuance is no more an argument for a conflating of fundamentalists and all of the religions than is the inability of an ID proponent to understand an evolutionary mechanism for something an argument for ID.
-Rob
I haven't read the book yet. Is that the entirety of his dismissal, or did he continue on to give a reason or two why he rejects it? Having seen his comments elsewhere on this issue, I suspect the latter, which, if so, would make your treatment of his dismissal rather shallow and misleading.
Your description of it does not make me want to rush out and start reading up on process theology. It sounds like apologetics aimed at explaining how God could still exist in a world which in all respects appears godless. One swipe of Occam's razor takes care of that. Oh, and events can change the deity over time? The vast majority of monotheists believe there god is infinite and therefore unchangeable. Many even claim he is outside space and time.
Invoking free will to save your concept of God is not convincing, as free will itself is a controversial and dubious concept. I don't want to argue about it here though because even the definition of free will is highly controversial.
"There are unusual varieties of religion that are not like the religion actually believed by the vast multitudes of people on this planet" really doesn't get you anywhere. The variety of religions is not an argument for any underlying truth to the concept.
It's kinda funny that you say this:
and then this:
Does the failure of Newton's Laws to predict the precession of Mercury, coupled with the fact that we use Newton's Laws every day, devalue the worldview of science? Duh, no. Does the fact that some have used "social Darwinism" as an excuse for horrible social policies and to rationalize racist views indicate a tacit admission that the viewpoint behind biological evolution is flawed? No. Does the fact that Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity don't work together indicate hypocricy on those who use one or both theories to explain and predict things? No. Is there intellectual dishonesty in the fact that science progresses, that our understanding is modified and extended as we spend more time thinking about it? No.
You seem to be expecting, or even insiting, that those you oppose hold an absoultist view, and you view it as a flaw if they don't. Yet, the scientific worldview is anything but absolutist. The greatest error is in believing that you Know Everything. That's where religions go horribly wrong, when they refuse to admit doubt or the possibility of re-interpretation. Yet now you seem to think that it is intellectual inconsistent NOT to do that.
The basic problem is that you don't really understand what religion is in the minds of many of the religious. You understand what you think it is, but what you think it is only applies to the subset that are themselves absolutists.
AND, that was what Josh's original post was about. You, Dawkins, and others rail against the thing that is religion, and if anybody tries to tell you that religion isn't exactly what you are railing against, you tell them that they are wrong about their own beliefs, or that they are intellectually inconsistent.
Try listening to what Josh has to say instead of repeatedly yelling that you hate all of religion, and if somebody claims religion is something different from what it is that you really hate, shouting at them that they're wrong about what religion is.
-Rob
I'm sorry, but I find this baffling. You seem to be saying that the good things inspired by religion count to its credit, but the bad things don't count against it. Again, the variety of religion is certainly not an argument for any underlying truth.
And yet again, the variety of religion is not an argument in its favor. If an atheist argues against the "God of the people", he is accused of being intellectually shallow. If he argues against the "God of the philosophers", he is accused of being irrelevant.
Josh, all religions claim that supernatural beings have an effect on the natural world (us). Therefore their effects should be measurable, if not predictable.
How about the actions of those who believe in those religions, who organize group efforts around religions institutions, who perform acts in the name of their religions? All kinds of stuff, good and evil, is done by churches and in the name of religion. Many of the peopel who did those things were motiviated by their faith in their God and their perception of their relationship with their God.
Doubtless you will say this doesn't count, because you can find fully secular institutions that fit most of the description about, except for the faith stuff. And, yeah, evidence of group action when that group is organized around some philosophical pricinple is not evidence of the supernatural.
HOWEVER, if you are religious, might you see some of the good things that some do in the name of religion "the work of God?" Whether it is or it is not really that, many may see it that way, metaphorically or literally. You can't prove or disprove whether or not it really is-- for exactly the reasons Josh mentions, in that it wouldn't be supernatural if it were subject to methodological materialism. But, for those of faith, these things may be seen as God influencing the world. If you find no use or value in thinking that it is, then, fine, that's great. If you do, or if the people who do it do, then what's so bad about that? Unless they're doing bad things-- but we should be opposed to people doing bad things whether or not they are done in the name of religion.
-Rob
Where did I say that? I didn't say that at all. You're making that up. I don't see that in anything that I wrote.
What I was responding to was the notion that it was counter to the religion of many to fight against slavery. Yeah, while many saw their religion as supporting slavery -- and that is bad -- also many saw their religion as demanding them to oppose slavery. All I was arguing was that the latter existed, not that the former didn't.
-Rob
I don't think this saves your argument. To speak of "Einsteinian spirituality" or "Einsteinian religion" stretches the definitions of "spirituality" and "religion" to the breaking point.
And yet again, the variety of religion is not an argument in its favor.
It is, however, an argument against condemning all of religion by condemning a subset of it. Which is really what it was all about in the first place.
-Rob
Rob-
That would be a consistent position. Why would one use the bible in some form or another except perhaps as an interesting read. Outside of cultural meaning what seperates it from any otherbook? I think it is perfectly possible to be anything and believe nearly anything and be a Christian. I just don't find any of them consistent.
One person makes **** up that they cannot justify rationally. Another person makes different **** up that they cannot justify rationally. Their **** differs. Is it not possible, as Dawkins attempts to do, to criticize the phenomena of making **** up that cannot be rationally justified?
As Dawkins and others have said many times, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I'm aware of supernatualism's escape clause: science can't prove supernatural beings or forces don't exist, because they are not of this world. And Dawkins says again and again that he can't disprove the existence of god. Unfortunatley, people argue that this means religion is exempt from critique. If it's true that science has nothing to say, then how can we argue against Inteligent Design creationism, for example?
I've read all of Gould, and I have to agree with Dawkins on this issue. Science can say that there is no evidence that a supernatural being is fiddling with our world, noodly appendage or not. If someone continues to claim to believe in such a being, let's ask them why. If that's impolite, well, so it goes. People get challenged on their political views all the time, why not on their supernatural claims?
Just find people who can agree on one across the board and give reasons why any supernatural idea should be given credence at all.
You're not going to find supernatural beliefs that are widely believed across the board, because there is no "one true religion" the way there is "one true science". Science depends ultimately on nature, which has empirically been remarkably consistent (when poked enough) over the centuries, and there's no reason to suspect that that will change. Yeah, scientists have disagreements, but generally those are where the data is still sketchy. All but a few fringe scientists do, however, believe the same things about a whole lot of things.
Religion is a completely different animal. You don't see all of the religious believing the same thing. As such, there's no reason to suspect that they will all converge on an agreement of everything being the same the way that science does.
Does that make it "wrong?" It doesn't make it right, certainly. If you insist that your religion as right, and in that insistence you include things (e.g. 6,000 year old world) that are known to be wrong, then, yeah, your religion can't be completely "right" in any sense of the word. Religion is a fundmentally different beast from science, though; it does not need universal consistency and universal acceptance by all of its followers to remain viable as an intellectual endeavor. Science does, becuase we are all trying to understand the same nature. Perhaps we will use different models or express things differently, but ultimately the predictions need to be consistent. Not so with religion, because relgion is not science; it's something else.
Religion and/or spirituality deals with things that can't be proven or disproven through the scientific method. For the things that can't be proven -- if people find value in believing in them, then perhaps they are right for them. They can't be proven or disproven, but they may still be valuable. And, there may still be real intellectual thought involved in consdering many of those issues-- which is why universities generally do have departments of religious studies, why there really are thoughtful theologians out there.
You don't have to give any supernatural ideas any credence at all. If you don't see any value in them, then don't mess with them. If the success of science has obviated for you any need to think about the supernatural, that's great. You don't see any need for them. However, it's an unjustifiable leap to go from there to saying that it's wortless in an absolute sense, it's worthless for everybody, to spend cognition on it. Yeah, if your religion says somthing that directly counteracts the knowledge of humanity, then you know that's wrong. Just because it isn't subject to the scientific method, however, doesn't mean that it's completely intellectually vacuous.
There is more to human thought than pure science. No one of us really cares about all of human thought. This does not mean that somebody who cares about and thinks about and believes in something not provable that you don't belive in is delusional. It just means that there's no value in it for you.
-Rob
Cutting through the arguments ad assertum ("this is BS," "you are wrong," etc.), the central argument that Uber (and Dawkins) advances is that the supernatural can't be shown to exist, so it isn't worth considering. I disagree.
That we can't show that super-strings exist doesn't make them less worthy of consideration. They, of course, are natural phenomena, and one day a test will either falsify their existence or give support for them. The same cannot be said of religion, but that's fine. At this time, both are intellectual enterprises of interest only for their own internal reasons. The same could be said of the enterprise of art history and literary studies.
I suppose some people would regard those fields of study as "intellectual masturbation," but you don't see anyone writing books encouraging people to abandon the entire enterprise of art.
Finally, I have to say that asking me to show you something supernatural in the natural world just shows that you didn't understand what you were responding to. By definition, the supernatural is not in the natural world. Some people believe it exists without evidence, others believe it doesn't exist (also without evidence), and others think that without evidence, the question of its existence is unanswerable.
My argument here is not that the supernatural does exist, nor that it absolutely doesn't. I don't fall on the single axis of probabilistic belief that Dawkins constructs, and I suspect that many other people don't either. It doesn't fall to me, then, to demonstrate that the supernatural does or doesn't exist, it falls to you to show that assigning any probability to that question is a coherent act.
As for Mustafa's objection to my treatment of Dawkins' comment that Gould's idea "sounds terrific right up until you give it a moment's thought," yes, he does say more. My main point in that quotation was to point out the arrogant treatment of a colleague who no one would claim did not think about what he said. It's fair to disagree with Gould, but unfair to claim he wasn't thoughtful. And that approach is consistently his approach to people who see things differently. They are irrational and delusional.
Unfortunately, the rest of Dawkins' argument doesn't inspire confidence in his reason. He offers a different author's suggestion that "why anything exists at all" is a non-scientific question, then twists around to argue that in fact, the question lies beyond theologians also (though he neglects to explain why). He then proceeds to assert (not argue, not present evidence, just assert) that he does not believe theology even has a province. We can be proud that the "nyah, nyah, nyah" is left implicit. It smacks a bit too much of Rutherford insisting that all science is physics or stamp collecting. Is Dawkins any more justified in denying theology a province than Rutherford was in denying biology its?
Maybe, maybe not, but Dawkins doesn't offer any such justification. He just dismisses a colleague as unthoughtful for disagreeing with him.
Is it not possible, as Dawkins attempts to do, to criticize the phenomena of making **** up that cannot be rationally justified?
Well, sure, but that's not entirely the issue. Part of what I originally was responding to was the list of "social issues" that Josh quoted from Dawkins' book. My point there was that those social issues are not universal to any given religion, so using them to condemn all of religion is a hollow argument.
The other point I was making is how often I see people posting arguments that religion is wrong or is a bad thing by taking certain Bible quotes and reading them literally-- and then arguing that the religious who don't take the Bible literally are being intellectualy dishonest and inconsistent. Sometimes, arguments against some specific religions are posited as an argument against the very concept of religion, and they aren't the same thing.
I haven't read Dawkins' book, but it seems from Josh's review that perhaps part of what Dawkins has done is not argue against actual religion, but argue against his conception of what religion is.
-Rob
I say religion is an irrational bunch of superstitous silliness.
It always cracks me up that atheists who worship science as the arbiter of all things remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that its presuppositions (i.e. that the world is a rational place that operated according to rational laws) are inherited directly from Christianity.
No doubt that's just an accident. It's a well known fact that science was well on its way to success in every other pagan culture in history. There was, of course, as any atheist will point out, a Hindu Newton, a Shinto Darwin, a Moslem Maxwell and a Mayan Einstein.
Sure.
No doubt too it's just an accident that that silly Bible was the first document in history to declare that the natural world was 'rational' in the only scientifically meaningful sense of the word. (in a little section that some rabbi had the wit to call 'The Book of Wisdom')
Speaking of child abuse, we're spoon fed the 'enlightenment' bullshit in grammar school that science began with the Greeks. But not only did the Greeks never articulate a belief that the natural world was fully rational, they never initiated a system of experiment, preferring by and large theory and philosophy over observation.
It's just an accident too, no doubt, that Galileo believed in God, and Newton believed in God (to the point he assumed it was God who supernaturally kept the solar system in balance), and Kepler, and Maxwell, and Planck...and...etc etc, and that they had the gall to believe their interest in the workings of the natural world was inspired by said, silly God.
Nothing supernatural in that, of course. We all know the human mind is motivated purely by accidents. It's just a happy accident that the univerity institution, which to this day confers the only legitmate credential of scientific graduation recognized the world over, was the creation of the medieval church, whose medieval popes granted these same institutions the charters which protected their autonomy, without which science as a self-sustaining activity is not not possible, as evidenced by the fact that it never survived anywhere else.
But I digress. Where were we. Oh yes, that silly nonsense that people teach their children in Sunday School about the world being the product of a rational mind. What a crock, huh?
If someone continues to claim to believe in such a being, let's ask them why.
It would, however, be a completely pointless conversation. You won't accept any value in religious beliefs without scientific evidence. The religious, meanwhile, aren't going to be able to provide scientific evidence, because that's not what religion is about.
You'd be talking past each other, completely unable to actually communicate. Unless you're willing to accept reasons for faith in a religion that aren't provable in the same way as the prediction of a scientific hypothesis, you will never be satisified with any answer that anybody religious could give you.
For you to believe what they believe, yes, that's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. However, except for the purpose of convincing you, or convicing somebody else demanding scientific evidence, then the claim doesn't require the kind of evidence that you need-- what would it be used for?
I'm not trying to argue here that religion is right. I am, however, trying to argue that for some (many?), it has value. To argue that people seeing value in reigion is a bad thing requires an argument that actual societal harm comes from that. And, yeah, I fully agree that faith in certain kinds of religion -- the sort of fundamentalism that is based on a denial of modern science, or that requires you to kill everybody who doesn't follow your faith -- is horribly bad. But there are other flavors of religion out there that don't cause that kind of societal harm, and arguably do societal good. It's not for you, it may not be "right", but what's the big deal in that case? Why must all of it be banished, or condescendingly dismissed?
John Farrell, you've convinced me. The Inquisition was precursor of the Institute for Advanced Studies.
But not only did the Greeks never articulate a belief that the natural world was fully rational,
This statement is baldly incorrect.
Look up Thales of Miletus (sixth century BC).
The notion that science grew out of Christianity is serious historical revisionism. Yes, science as we practice it today is largely (although not entirely) an outgrowth of Western culture, and, yes, Christianity it is in the world today is largely the version that was re-exported to the world from Western culture, so in many ways the two grew up together. But the causation is not there, and indeed in Western culture there has long been a tension between the two. (Look up, for example, Galileo.)
Indeed, once upon a time, centuries ago, Islam tended to have better scientists than Christianity did.
-Rob
"Unfortunatley, people argue that this means religion is exempt from critique. If it's true that science has nothing to say, then how can we argue against Intelligent Design creationism, for example?"
If IDC would stop insisting that it is science, it would be theistic evolutionism. The difference between Billy Dembski and Francis Collins is that Dembski thinks his religious beliefs are scientifically justified, while Collins is able to separate his scientific beliefs from his theological ones.
Neither does placing theology outside of science mean that it is beyond criticism. As we've discussed, evangelical Americans in the 19th century argued over the religious justifications for slavery. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought not just a political battle, he fought a theological battle within the American Christian community. Theology can and does change in response to argument and discussion.
If (as Razib argues) people are going to believe something, one way or the other, it's better that we engage these issues head-on, and counter conservative theology with more modern theologies, ones that are more tolerant of differences and less insistent on imposing beliefs on others. Try reading slacktivist or rereason (check the blogroll) and you'll find serious people engaging complex theological issues to excellent effect. Those people are more likely to convince others about the merits of letting science speak within its own realm, regardless of what they think about theological issues. And that's a win for atheists, agnostics, and theistic NOMA advocates.
John, are you claiming that the human mind is supernatural and that Christianity is the impetus for modern rational discourse. It is an interesting discussion you put forth, but entirely imperceptable through the tidal-wave of sarcasm. A clarification would be grand.
Josh, I have never been able to apply a probability to either existence or non-existence which is why I honestly call my position agnostic. Neither argument can be sustained. The common atheist argument is by Occam's Razor but that really doesn't produce a meaningful result. We humans are so prone to err and hubris I can only conclude that we have no idea at all about God.
I just want to reiterate Rob's comment that "I'm not trying to argue here that religion is right. I am, however, trying to argue that for some (many?), it has value. To argue that people seeing value in religion is a bad thing requires an argument that actual societal harm comes from that."
And that evidence can't be cherry-picked, ignoring good things that come from faith.
I'd also like to introduce a new phrase into the discussion, based on a distinction borrowed from Barbara Forrest when she spoke at KU: "personal revelation." Personal revelation is typically taken as the evidence on which religion operates. Science, in Forrest's analysis, is based on our shared experience of reality, religion on an individual's personal revelation. That the latter is subjective makes it hard, if not impossible, for people to even communicate about it, let alone to subject it to empirical tests.
The answer is 42.
Josh, I will check out the blogs you refer to. However I question the tactic of replacing conservative theology with a more moderate theology when the basis for both is nonsensical. This, I concede, is a matter of opinion. There are plenty of people arguing for that tactic, and they have been arguing it for years. I can't say that it has shown much success in the U.S. I'm glad that Dawkins is presenting another alternative.
Regarding Dawkins' "arrogant" treatment of Gould, did you ever hear Gould talk about Dawkins? I thought that Dawkins was being rather gentle, considering.
As does religion. We are part of this world and so is religion.
Thats fair but if religion makes claims such as about floods, dead men rising etc. These things happen in the natural world not the supernatural.
Then:
So then how does ANY theology shed any light whatsoever on it?
That is simply baloney. And there is little rational in alot of Christian thought. And I'm not an atheist.
However I question the tactic of replacing conservative theology with a more moderate theology when the basis for both is nonsensical.
The thing is, many would disagree with you that the basis is nonsensical.
As such, you have to ask yourself what the real goal is. If your goal is to defeat supernatural thinking, then, yeah, the tactic is senseless. If the goal is to engender a broad public understanding of and acceptance of science, then the tactic can be quite helpful.
Consider : on the one hand, you offer people an option between accepting the wrong things about the world their faith claims, or rejecting faith altogether in favor of nothing but philosophical naturalism. On the other hand, you offer people the option to see that one can maintain one's faith without having to deny truths about the natural world learned through science.
The black/white option will win fewer people over. If a line is drawn in the sand -- you MUST reject religion to accept science -- many are going to conclude that science is hostile and threatening to them. If, on the other hand, you allow for people of faith to maintain their faith while still being smart about science, you will probably win more over than you will telling them that the very basis of some of their most important beliefs is nonsensical.
So, as to whether or not the tactic makes sense -- what is your real goal?
-Rob
I will defend Dawkins' view that belief in supernaturalism and organized religious hierarchies is largely pernicious.
First of all, unnatural/supernatural ways of thinking about the world are not limited to ID/creationist attacks on evolution. There is huge belief in psychics, astrology, faith healing, appearances of the Virgin Mary--even on cheese sandwiches!--stone statues that burst into tears, in exorcism, ghosts, prayer, Loch Ness and other lake monsters, life after death, crop circles, body meridians, laying on of hands, foot-ology, raptures, tarot cards, Nostradamus, book of Revelation, red heifers appearing in Israel, alien abductions, feng shui, magnetic bracelets, secret codes in the Bible, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums to connect with the dearly departed---all stuff related to supernaturalisms. The list of irrational nonsense is endless. We are in an age of belief in silly things. Many are relatively harmless, but it is a sign of an unhealthiness in our society. And, this is, I think, related to fear.
Secondly, organized religious groups, like other organizations, have as their real purpose the propagation of the organization, adding members, and advancing their influence. The Catholic objection to family planning/birth control is a perfect example--it is clothed in "morality" but its real objective is adding more Catholics. I do not claim that they are hypocrits; this is probably an unconscious motivation that gets twisted into a moral issue, such being the nature of human minds to fool ourselves, especially when there is a strong desire to "belong" to an organization. Our tribal needs.
I agree that religious motivations have done some good for some people. The example of slavery is not one that favors Biblical believers, because they used the Bible to justify slavery for hundreds of years. The ideas of the Enlightenment and Darwin and Lyell did more to undermine slavery than any religious organization.
And urban living. Urban living provides insulation and anonymity from tribal village pressures where everyone is compelled to believe the same. The notion of diversity/pluralism only prospers in an urban-like environment. And rejection of god-beliefs, unnatural/supernatural explanations expands with greater education.
Not even Dawkins is saying you MUST reject religion to accept science. He just doesn't see how the two can be combined rationally. The goal, obviously, is to defeat supernatural thinking. Philosophical naturalism is actually quite a rewarding way to think, and there's no reason for anyone to be shy about saying so. Whether Dawkins convinces many people, he's at least putting it out there, and I hope he keeps it up. It's not like the Believers are lacking representation!
Not even Dawkins is saying you MUST reject religion to accept science. He just doesn't see how the two can be combined rationally.
Well, OK, then try that one on a person of faith. Again, it's not a great tactic to use if your goal is to encourage general public acceptance and understanding of science. If you insist that believing anything other than science is delusional or irrational, it's not a great way to make friends.
It's not like the Believers are lacking representation!
Unfortunately, what is best represented, and is most loudly proclaimed, are the ones on each side who insist that the other side is all wrong and must be completely defeated. Yeah, the believers are represented, and, yeah, the outspoken athiestic scientists opposed to all religion in general are represented. Whoopee. I'm not trying to argue either side, and the fact that one side is represented doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy about the other side.
There is some representation from those would would allow for accepting that intelligent, thinking people can have religious faith while being good scientists or good accepters of science -- but unfortunately those people are often soundly denounced in science communities (like, say, the comments on this blog). I really don't think that's healthy, nor likely to lead to solving the most important problems.
Philosophical naturalism is actually quite a rewarding way to think, and there's no reason for anyone to be shy about saying so.
Sure -- and for many, thinking about their faith is also a rewarding way to think. Yet you seem to be going beyond saying that philosophical naturalism is a rewarding way to think, and saying that it's the only way to think (at least for somebody whose intelligence or rationality isn't to be insulted).
-Rob
Rob-
From a purely political standpoint I think I agree with you. But when I enter into discussions like this I am simply discussing the merits of the arguments itself.
I think one can be a perfectly good scientist and be religious. I also think these people are compartmentalizing which is fine. But why they don't carry the methodology over to their beliefs is beyond me.
First off in a discussion on religion and if religion is pushed into a discussion as per public debate it is perfectly acceptable to tell someone they are irrational. If folks heard it more often from more people they would examine their beliefs much more closely. Of course some would just put their fingers in their ears and go la-la but they are likely unreachable anyway.
The primary difference as I see it is that naturalism doesn't seek to impose a bunch of BS on everyone or have the horrible concepts associated with it that religions do at their core. It never ceases to amaze me that people will talk about the beauty of religion(and I do see beauty there often) while overlooking the stinking rotting core that is the need to be saved from 'eternal suffering' by a blood sacrifice. It is so disgustingly primitive I often times cannot undertstand why everyone person in a pew doesn't question it's value. And while I may believe it personally it never seems to not bother me.
Then I realize religion is more about emotion than intellect. Which is why even bright individuals may believe.
Rob Knop wrote
I'm reading it now -- I'm just up to p. 70. The central message I've derived so far is that Dawkins is mainly arguing that religion encourages belief -- nay, makes a virtue of strong belief, even subjective certainty -- in the complete absence of evidence, and that's pernicious. Ellery's comment above illustrates that same point via a long series of examples, and I strongly sympathize with it. All the blather about non-overlapping magisteria and the (alleged) limits on scientific knowledge are but to defend that core religious position: belief in the absence of evidence is a bloody virtue in some domains of human thought. In my less than humble opinion that's an indefensible basis for living and I believe (with some evidence to support the belief) that it will ultimately be lethal for civilization. I'm more and more glad that I don't have grandchildren.
What's odd about this discussion is the assumption that you must accept supernaturalism to be religious. That is just innocent of any theology more complicated than that found in fundamentalist tracts.
What matters in the miracle story is not the miracle, but the story. Historical criticism can tell me that Moses didn't exist, that Herod died before Jesus was born or that the virgin birth story originated decades after the crucifiction. But then there was no philosophical prince of Denmark called Hamlet and that Macbeth never met any witches. So what?
Certainly I wasn't raised to respect propositional belief in the face of evidence. But evidence ultimately doesn't resolve questions of meaning. To think it does is scientism, not science.
"Dawkins is saying you MUST reject religion to accept science. He just doesn't see how the two can be combined rationally."
I don't see the distinction here. Dawkins isn't just saying that he doesn't see how they can be combined, he's saying there is no way to combine them.
Limits on science are fundamental parts of the philosophy of science. Testability is a fundamental feature of modern treatments of the philosophy of science for a long time. Logical positivism failed as a philosophy of science in part because it admitted things into the realm of science which were not proper science. Popper would cite Freudianism and Marxism as examples.
There's nothing wrong with limits. What lies beyond those limits can be interesting to ponder, and there is nothing inherently pejorative about something being on one side or the other of a border. I'm not praising or criticizing evidence-free belief. I just recognize it as a legitimate phenomenon.
It would be foolish of me, for instance, to insist that everyone should share my distaste for the works of Charles Dickens. I am aware that other people consider him a genius, but I find their evidence-free assertions of his genius unconvincing.
What conclusions can we draw about the existence or quality of Dickens from this? I would argue de gustibus non disputandum, and apply the same standard to religious belief.
It's certainly true that some religious beliefs do and have caused harm. Examples are easy enough to find many of our ancestors came to this country precisely to get away from those excesses. But it isn't clear that that requires the end of all religious belief.
Certainly I wasn't raised to respect propositional belief in the face of evidence. But evidence ultimately doesn't resolve questions of meaning. To think it does is scientism, not science.
And neither does religion. And where religion attempts to do so, it presuposes that the question of "meaning" is - well - meaningful.
"Why are we here" presuposes that the question has any more inherent meaning than "Why is that puddle here". Science can most certainly ask the latter question to most peoples satisfaction ("Because it rained"), so why do people presume that "Why are we here" should have any more complicated an answer than that which science (and each individual's parents) can provide.
The man is a bigot.
How did you reach that conclusion!
Gould may well have believed that religion and science could co-exist, but the fact is that he was wrong. The principle of non-overlapping magisteria is fundamentally flawed, and Dawkins demonstrates this quite clearly in his book, and the principle has been shown to be false by the actions of the religious.
To demonstrate the flaw in Gould's idea, Dawkins uses as examples a number of biblical stories that present testable scenarios; I prefer to use argumentum ad Isaac Asimov-ium: in particular his short story "Nightfall".
Nightfall is set on a planet of perpetual daylight, but there exists a religious sect that claims that every 3,000 (or so) years, God engages in a Noah's flood-esque world-wide destruction, purging the world of it's sins.
According to Gould's principle, science has nothing to say about this. Similarly, religion has nothing to say about science. In the story, however, scientists discover a hitherto unknown planet which will cause an eclipse every 3,000 years, and the darkness that ensues would drive everybody mad. At the same time archaeologists discover ruins dated some 3,000 years old that show a cycle of civilisations that are burnt to a rubble every 3,000 years.
Clearly science - in this story - has an awful lot to say about religion: it's saying the religious are correct in one aspect of their views; and naturally the religious organisations love this and make a big deal out of it - just as Dawkins suggests the religious would do if science ever proved (for example) that Jesus had no "earthly" father.
Of course, where science and religion depart in this story is that the scientist says that this is not because of a sinful nation, but because of the blind forces of nature. Religion is saying "You are sinful, and because you're sinful God will punish us. That is the meaning of this".
This may just be a story, but the principle holds. Religion does not let science be, and no sensible theologian would ignore science if it demonstrated the historical accuracy of one of it's claims. Similarly, science may not set out to demonstrate the falseness of the claims of the religious, but it is constantly, nevertheless, doing so. Genesis has life happening the wrong way round. Thor doesn't create thunder with a hammer. Complexity of life does not require a "goddidit" answer. These are areas that were once the realms of religion, but are now very much in the realm of science.
If you read the book - as so many people commenting on it are apparently failing to do - you would see that Dawkins is not simply making an argument from personal incredulity. He is demonstrating, instead, that attempts thus far made to do so are woefully indadequate, and a moment's thought would demonstrate that.
I don't think Collins is quite thorough enough in his separation. For example is his Moral Law argument scientific or theological?
Uh huh. And sometimes we cite actual data to knock down a theory of how something works in biology. What's the biggee? Dawkins argues against the general concept that faith is an acceptable form of epistemology, and offers examples that religion in practice has frequently resulted in bad things. It makes sense to me.
As for the "moderate" or "liberal" theists, if someone abandons 90% of her belief in a fairy tale, am I obligated to praise her for this 90%, or is it acceptable to criticize the remaining 10%? The task is complicated by her insistence that the remaining 10% is actually rational.
As for John Farrell's argument that Christianity is responsible for the rise of science and everything else good in the Western world, this thesis has been put forward in a book by Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random, 2005). Stark's scholarship and conclusions have not gone over well. This has come up a few times at Stranger Fruit:
The (Wrong) Reason For Everything
Stark's Ravings On Reason
"Gould may well have believed that religion and science could co-exist, but the fact is that he was wrong. The principle of non-overlapping magisteria is fundamentally flawed, and Dawkins demonstrates this quite clearly in his book, and the principle has been shown to be false by the actions of the religious."
I found Dawkins' attempts at comparing NOMA supporters to Neville Chamberlain insulting and unsupported by evidence.
At the end of the Q&A last night, he said of theology "the whole point of not believing in God is that you don't think theology is a subject at all." I disagree. I think you can take the subject seriously without believing in God, and that assuming away the field of theology is not a productive way of proving that God doesn't exist. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but arguing against it requires engaging the arguments in play.
No one here, and no where in Dawkins' book, is the actual basis for NOMA addressed: that science's limits are based on simple philosophy of science, not on political calculations. What lies beyond science, beyond the natural, may or may not be an interesting question, but it isn't a scientific one. I would argue that it is definitionally a theological one, though that may be a broader definition of theology than Dawkins would use.
Baldywilson is right that religions do try to extend themselves beyond the proper limits of theology, and NOMA advocates object to that, as they object to attempts at extending science beyond it's intrinsic limits. If that's flawed, it hasn't been shown why.
Re: Collins on Moral Law.
If someone believes that God tweaked the laws of the universe (persuaded the universe, in the process theology sense) in a way that would allow natural selection and the evolutionary process to produce life as we know it (which is a rough form of the TE position), why shouldn't we give credit for moral laws to both natural processes which are the proximate cause and to the deity who structured the system that produced the laws.
I'm not necessarily advocating that view, I'm just saying that I see how the two magisteria can work together on the question of morality.
Big "if".
Big "if".
The problem is that science cannot but wander into realms that reglion seeks as its own. As science takes away religion's refuge as a place for explanations for physical phenomenon, - upon which it has built its rituals and its grand authority - religion attempts to find new solace as either a moral authority, or an answer to a nebulus "why".
It is certainly true that science - per se - does not answer moral questions; but that does not mean that theists and theologians should therefore be considered the authority on this matter by default. Indeed, given their source material, one should consider their views on the subject highly suspect.
This is the false dichotomy presented by the theist: science cannot provide moral guidance, therefore God. But, of course, this does not consider secular moral philosophy. The true choice is between secular moral philosophy and theology. Adding science in to a question of moral principles is, of course, nonsense, but that does not mean that therefore theology has a final place of refuge.
In this argument - just as the argument between science and religion regarding observable matters - religion must prove itself a superior moral philosophy than secular philosophy, and so far it's not doing terribly well.
Because I don't believe the same presumption, and they cannot justify it rationally? You are proposing that "making **** up" must be a respected step in an intellectual process. I disagree vehemently.
"Fundies only speculate about the end of the world, atheistic scientists have provided the means to make it REALITY."
Fundamentalists do not just "speculate" about the end of the world, they actively desire it. The type of fundamentalist that you are refering to is actively anticipating armageddon as the good and just will of their God.
The atheistic scientists you apparently so deplore, on the other hand, have discovered atomic energy. And, yes, they discovered how to create atomic weapons which - as you so delicately put it - provided the means to make the anhalation of mankind a reality.
But these atheistic scientists - whatever their political views on warfare - do not actively advocate the destruction of civilisation, or desire the end of the world. They do not raise millions of dollars in funds to propose death and destruction to hasten some prophesied end times. They do not see global thermonuclear warfare as one of the greatest acts that mankind could perform for their god.
Fundies also speculate about a great many other things. The slaughter on the streets of homosexuals. The subjegation of women to men enshrined in law. I could go on.
If you are attempting to engage in the debate to state that religion should have a place at the table when debating morality, you have thus far failed to make it.
Mustafa, I'm saying that science proceeds by falsification, and since the supernatural isn't falsifiable, it isn't science, and it's inappropriate to apply scientific methods to unscientific ideas. Various people's theologies offer internally consistent answers to ultimate questions, questions which science cannot answer by definition. They may be right, they may be wrong, but your disagreement with them is no more evidence either way than their belief is.
Clarissa: It entirely inappropriate to claim that scientists are somehow responsible for Armageddon. Fundamentalist politicians like George Bush have done far more to move us into a state of permanent war, and have done more to make the use of WMD politically palatable than the "atheistic scientists" of groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists or the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Whatever critique I offer of Dawkins' attacks on the beliefs of theists, the attacks of fundamentalists theists on the morality of people who disagree with them (theist or atheist) are and have always been much harsher and substantially less honest.
I'm saying that science proceeds by falsification, and since the supernatural isn't falsifiable, it isn't science, and it's inappropriate to apply scientific methods to unscientific ideas.
You are presuming, here, that the supernatural is not falsifiable. An internally consistent theology is not necessarialy un-falsifiable, as it's external theology - how it would afect the natural world - is a physical claim.
One good example of this is Deism. It is easy to claim - in the face of the evidence for the Big Bang Theory - that some supernatural event, be it a god, godess, gods, godesses or some mix, was the cause of the Big Bang and the inflationary universe.
That we cannot state at the moment that such a claim is invalid does not, in itself, mean that such a claim should be considered valid. We can no more be satisfied with the explanation that the goddess Vlidou spilled the universe from her manevolent nostrile than we can with any other explanation, short of the true explanation that science may or may not be around long enough to find.
The fact that we cannot disprove supernatural claims should not lend one to accept that they may have credence.
The fact that we cannot disprove supernatural claims should not lend one to accept that they may have credence.
On the other hand -- and this is what Josh is really after -- it doesn't mean that you need to dismiss all people who may give them some credence as inable to understand or appreciate science. It doesn't mean that you must insist that considering those ideas is inconsistent with the ability to understand, accept, and do science. Yet, Dawkins, and many here, seem to be arguing just that.
Nobody's saying that you need to accept any religion's claim. Nobody's saying, "you can't prove it, thus you have to believe it." We're just trying to say that trying to defeat all of religion is not, despite what you might think, really defending science; it's just making gratuitous enemies with whom you may disagree only on topics irrelevant to accepting good science.
We're just trying to say that trying to defeat all of religion is not, despite what you might think, really defending science; it's just making gratuitous enemies with whom you may disagree only on topics irrelevant to accepting good science.
I don't believe, however, that these topics are at all irrelevant to accepting good science. But, more to the point, I don't believe that they make a good philosophy.
The argument - I will restate - is not just between science and religion. This is a false dichotomy. That which science cannot answer does not automatically fall within the realms of theology. Before theology can be considered, it must also pass the test of theological philosophy versus secular philosophy.
This is not about making enemies gratuitously, but rather expecting the religious to defend their ground against the expectations of both science and secular philosophy.
The religious will chose enemies as they deem fit. Science and secular philosophy don't need to seek enemies amongst the religous, nor does it need to gratuitously offend them. The religous - moderate or otherwise - will find reason to be offended with us anyway.
"One good example of this is Deism. It is easy to claim - in the face of the evidence for the Big Bang Theory - that some supernatural event, be it a god, godess, gods, godesses or some mix, was the cause of the Big Bang and the inflationary universe.
That we cannot state at the moment that such a claim is invalid does not, in itself, mean that such a claim should be considered valid."
Of course. And by asserting a supernatural cause of a natural process, what you presented would be a magisterium cracking act.
However, borrowing the idea of divine persuasion (rather than causation) from process theology, we could imagine that a deity put a thumb on the probabilistic scales in the quantum event that brought the universe into being, and did so at key moments that set the natural laws and the physical constants which, through a series of contingent events, led to life as we know it.
Note that this does not attempt to fill a gap, and doesn't assert supernatural causation in the natural world. A theistic evolutionist could easily envision a deity acting as an influence on the quantum events which drive mutation, giving ultimate causation to processes which on a proximate level are contingent and stochastic, all without asserting a gap and without requiring supernatural causation.
I'm not here to defend these ideas, nor even to suggest the necessity of them. But they exist, are self-consistent, and do not conflict with any scientific knowledge that could ever exist. I don't see a need to wage intellectual war over such ideas.
There is merit in defending the ability of science to operate freely within its appropriate magisterium. If people want to have counterfactual beliefs, I only care when they try to impose them on other people. Other than that, I stand by what I said about Dickens above.
The religous - moderate or otherwise - will find reason to be offended with us anyway.
You presume a lot. The whole "no matter what we do, they will hate us" (whoever they is) tactic is kinda a scary one. I hate to see it being used in the name of defending good science.
This is not about making enemies gratuitously, but rather expecting the religious to defend their ground against the expectations of both science and secular philosophy.
Do you think science should be expected to defend its ground against the expectations of various religions? 'Cause, if you'll find out if you ask just about any fundamentalists, or read answersingenesis.org, it doesn't do so well.
Of course, it's absurd to ask science to defend its ground against the expectations of any religion. But why, then, must all religion defend its ground against the expectations of science? Yes, if a religion is making a prediction or statement that flies direction in the face of something we know to be true through science, then we know that prediction or statement is wrong. But why must religion defend it's ground -- that is, the things Josh talks about the science doesn't even address -- against science? Why is that expected, whereas (as I fully agree) it's absurd to expect science to defend its ground against the expectations of religion?
-Rob
Occam's razor. Slash: gone.
What is this legitimate ground of religion? Things that cannot be shown to exist (i.e. the supernatural) and things that (things that cannot be shown to exist) are alleged to influence, such as morality, although this alleged influence cannot be established either. I think Dawkins makes a decent case about this.
Let me note that you switched from someone believes something to we should give credit.
This appears to be exactly what Josh did in the above quoted post. If he wishes to retract or correct his post, he hasn't made that clear.
I get the impression that Josh did not read the link I provided, dissecting Collins' moral law argument, and that Josh is entirely unaware that this idea is considered unimpressive in modern philosophical circles.
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I also ask, is the middle paragraph of the quote from Josh a scientific or a theological proposition? Because he promised us that the two should not overlap. This is a serious shortcoming of the 'nonoverlapping magisteria". Theists don't actually respect it. They want it to protect their religion from the encroachment of science, but feel free to cross over in the other direction whenever it is convenient for them. Collins, for example believes in miracles. That isa clear encroachment of the supernatural into the natural world. He also claims that science is not the appropriate tool to address religious questions, and then launches into his alleged scientific evidence for the existence of God. This is self-contradictory.
Many religious claims are not internally consistent, but of course you'll beg off that you are only defending the ones that are.
Since they are making the claim, they need to supply evidence for it. That is the burden of proof. There are so many things that cannot be proven false, and yet we have no trouble disbelieving: Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, invisible pink unicorns, blue fairies, orbiting china teapots. This is the "presumption of disbelief" at work, which most people seem prepared to accept for everything except their own supernatural claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Somewhere way up above you mentioned string theory. String theory is testable in principle, if not in practice today. Also, it has received a great deal of criticism for just exactly that reason. So when you to say that supernatural claims should be exempt from supplying supporting evidence, string theory is a bad example.
Where? In the shift between "someone believes" to "we should give credit"? Whatever, I've been specifically saying that I oppose any effort to impose theological beliefs on others. By "give credit" I guess I really meant "allow others to give credit."
Clearly both. The scientific proposition gives a proximate answer, the theological gives an ultimate answer. Separate magisteria.
This is the first time you provided the link to that review. I haven't read Collins' book, so I can't comment on what Collins himself claims. If indeed he places Moral Law as a proof of God, inexplicable by natural processes, he's making an argument that isn't terribly coherent. Certainly one can explain altruistic behavior from natural principles, and most. My point is that coherent approaches which do not cross magisterial barriers exist, and Dawkins hurts his argument by pretending they don't exist.
My point about string theory was that "we can't show that super-strings exist doesn't make them less worthy of consideration. They, of course, are natural phenomena, and one day a test will either falsify their existence or give support for them. The same cannot be said of religion, but that's fine. At this time, both are intellectual enterprises of interest only for their own internal reasons. The same could be said of the enterprise of art history and literary studies."
I feel like I addressed exactly the points you are now raising.
String theory will continue to receive criticism until such tests are done. Meanwhile, when will these elusive internally consistent religions put forward by a few philosophers and believed by no one be put to the test? That is why the comparison is not valid.
Earlier I linked a Panda's Thumb thread which linked directly to the Talk.Reasons article.
When will Hamlet be put to the empirical test? Do historical inaccuracies in "Tale of Two Cities" invalidate it? Or do we apply different standards of evidence to different fields of inquiry?
If you keep saying such ridiculous things, I will start mocking you, then throw you off the blog. I have made it very clear in this thread that I am speaking of epistemology, not aesthetics. Theists are not just claiming that their religious beliefs are artistic or appealing (standards that might be applied to a work of fiction), but that they are actually true. As I have repeated several times now, making **** up is not a respectable form of epistemology.
If you would educate yourself at least up to the typical undergrad intro to philosophy level, we could have a much more sensible discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equfju9kJfA
Sam Harris: Author of "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" explaining why it is contraindicated as a species to believe stuff that isn't true at this point. That habit may have served us well in the past, but if I may borrow one of Harris' arguments, it is now possible to build a nuclear device to kill the infidels / heathens and still believe you will get the 72 virgins / Sit at the right hand of Jesus.
What's wrong with moderation?
What if someone told you, I am a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but a *moderate*, I just like to go out in the woods and wear my awesome white hood and burn crosses while standing in a circle singing songs and stuff, but we don't do anything violent. Thats why I take offense when you use the KKK as an example of a bad / evil organization and tar all KKK members with the same brush. Although some *extremist* members of my cultural organization did some bad things once upon a time, they in no way represent the majority of members, who are peace loving individuals who simply want to go on with their lives. In fact, if you read Mein Kampf and *interpret* it correctly, you'll see that it's just a good guide for morality that we follow.
See what that does? Moderates are running interference for fundamentalists by giving them the cover they need to spread hate by making it difficult to criticize Christianity, Islam or Judaism. This must stop. I will personally stop treating the religious the same way I treat slightly retarded people when they can prove that what they believe has any merit whatsoever. Thinking real hard that something exists does not will it into being.
Cheers!
Mustafa, this is my blog, and I do the kicking off. You don't do that, and you don't threaten it. Simmer yourself down. I've taken plenty of philosophy classes, especially philosophy of science classes.
My point about Shakespeare is that he manages to capture a certain sort of truth, not in the sense of accurate history, but accurate descriptions of ethical thinking (good and bad) that can serve as truthful guides. It isn't so hard to conceptualize most religious texts in that same way, as true in a metaphysical sense, not in the scientific sense.
The epistemology of faith is rooted in personal revelation, not in empiricism. I'm not advocating it, I'm just saying that that is how it works. You can reject that as an approach without insisting that other people ought to reject it as well.
And that gets to the point about moderation. A couple hundred years ago, it would have been unthinkable that a nice Jewish girl would marry a German Lutheran, but I owe my existence to just such a union. My fiance is Catholic, I'm culturally Jewish. Again, there was a time when such a union would have resulted in both of us being tortured by the Inquisition. The Catholic Church has changed a lot, has moderated. Official pronouncements from the Church are careful to respect the separate magisteria.
Using the KKK in the example above is needlessly inflammatory. The KKK is not a moderate group. It is not a group of peace-lovers who want everyone to live and let live.
Religion has genuinely moderated, in no small part because it has lost its secular role in society. When the Catholic Church was chasing my people out of Spain, it wasn't just a religious organization, it was a political power. When churches began accepting, even seeking, separation between church and state, it moderated religion's ability to and interest in imposing itself through force. We're still early in that political transition in some parts of the world, where the younger religion of Islam is still sorting out the proper relationship between secular and religious power.
If I went around saying that I intended to treat as retarded anyone who believed that Charles Dickens was a great writer, would you praise my rationalism, or mock me for being an ass? Where is the harm in treating religious differences like aesthetic differences, and saying "de gustibus non est disputandum"? In other words, I understand you believe gods don't exist, and that other people believe they do. I don't know and don't care either way, and I don't see why you guys (or Dawkins) do care.
I'm sorry that it didn't take.
So what? Does your repetition of a comparison to a work of acknowledged fiction in any way change the fact that the vast majority of religionists consider their religious belief to be epistemology, not aesthetics? You have not refuted my point.
Personal revelation is not a reliable form of epistemology. I'm not just not advocating it, I am advocating against it.
Because the vast majority of religionists do not consider their religious beliefs to be aesthetic, they consider it to be actually true in the epistemological sense. Moreover, the vast majority of religionists consider their religious belief to be rational. And for a large number of religionists, their religious beliefs affect their political and social views. If this were not a democracy I guess it wouldn't matter.
When Dawkins tries to make this point by tallying the bad things that have come from religion, you cry foul, but you seem to be missing the point entirely.
I am tired of repeating points that you cannot refute and apparently do not even understand, so I'll leave now.
I thought this earlier post from RBH summed up the aim of the Dawkins book nicely and concisely, so I'll leave you with it:
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Using the KKK in the example above is needlessly inflammatory. The KKK is not a moderate group. It is not a group of peace-lovers who want everyone to live and let live.
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No, that's only YOUR IMPRESSION of the KKK as a group. I am SURE that many more KKK members are peaceful than are not, despite their despicable ideology.
This applies exactly the same way to christians, muslims and jews.
Do you think I am justified in believing jews are a group of country-stealing navel gazers who think that they deserve palestine because they were promised it by their gruesome deity? No? Then the KKK example above stands. Certain Jews (the ones dedicated to the fundamentals of Judaism) believe exactly that.
Do you think I am justified in believing that Muslims are just terrorists who haven't exploded yet (because if they die killing infidels they get an express ticket to paradise)? No? Certain Muslims (the ones dedicated to the fundamentals of Islam) believe exactly that.
I am being deliberately inflammatory to show you just how much cover moderates give fundamentalists. The people who _actually believe_ Judaism and Islam believe the two paragraphs above and act upon that belief, as is clear from both contemporary islamic attacks on jews / infidels, and post WW2 jewish terrorism and massacres against palestinian arabs (after all, both religions include prescriptions of genocide for infidels).
I used to think just like you, I used to be convinced by all that NOMA nonsense. Then I realized that by not choosing a side, you ARE choosing a side. I rather be on the side of truth and reason.
"The people who _actually believe_ Judaism and Islam believe the two paragraphs above and act upon that belief, as is clear from both contemporary islamic attacks on jews / infidels, and post WW2 jewish terrorism and massacres against palestinian arabs (after all, both religions include prescriptions of genocide for infidels)."
I don't think it falls to you to decide who "actually believes" in Judaism or Islam. Not all Jews are Zionists, and its positively atrocious for you to be asserting that you know better than they do what they believe. Certainly most American Jews oppose Israel's actions in the occupied territories, and there's a substantial and growing religious opposition to it within Israel as well. It's the logical fallacy of the excluded middle, and someone who asserts a dedication to "truth and reason" ought at least to avoid logical fallacies.
Imagine if someone said "anyone who _actually believes_ in atheism would be an immoral scumbag" and points to Stalin. Heck, you don't have to imagine it, that absurd argument is abundant. Dawkins rightly dismisses the argument by saying that Stalin may well have been an atheist, but that it isn't clear that his atheism caused his genocidal tendencies. The same argument can be made for violence in the Middle East. The violence there is political, even if it's drawn along religious boundaries.
As for you, Mustafa, work on your reading comprehension. When I say "where is the harm in treating religious differences like aesthetic differences," I do not mean treating them AS aesthetic differences. I mean that we treat aesthetic differences as reflecting personal truths that are not worth getting into social battles over. Your response that "the vast majority of religionists consider their religious belief to be rational. And for a large number of religionists, their religious beliefs affect their political and social views" is first false, then irrelevant. Most religious people view their religious faith as independent of rational, empirical validation. That's what faith means. Furthermore, if your objection is to people's political and social views, why not have a discussion about that? Why fight over theism, or tolerance of theism, with people you agree with over social and political issues? Why does religion matter in this intersubjective sense.
What I'm working from here is the philosophy of John Dewey. Read up on it.
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I don't think it falls to you to decide who "actually believes" in Judaism or Islam.
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I don't decide, I just read the books. I take what the books say seriously and at face value, then I look to see who in the world is actually behaving in the way prescribed by those books.
If people who want to call themselves "Jews" or "Christians" or "Muslims" do not repudiate the laws put forth in their own holy books, then they are endorsing those things by omission of action, after all, it is their holy book.
If they find what is in those books repulsive, then they can simply stop calling themselves jews, christians or muslims. If they continue to argue that those books are great moral guidance if only you interpret their horrible brutality "correctly", then they deserve no more than to be lumped in with the people they protect by such an action. There is no excluded middle, just as you do not grant the KKK or National Socialism a moderate "middle" I do not grant these other vicious ideologies one either.
Further, atheism is not a belief, it is a lack of belief, that is all. Someone pointing to Stalin and saying "Oh look at the horrible things atheism has done" is confounding the point. Humanism, the ethical system that often accompanies atheism is firmly grounded in reason. Meaning that humanists reject ALL dogma, no matter the source. Stalin may have been an atheist (or not, who knows) but he was a profoundly _dogmatic_ man, as was his regime. Replacing religious dogma with political dogma is not a goal of atheism or humanism. Our struggle is against dogma of all kinds, and the scientific method is the best tool we have of arrival at truth to combat it. There is no other.
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And for a large number of religionists, their religious beliefs affect their political and social views" is first false, then irrelevant.
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My otherwise really nice neighbor as well as my mother in law are both vociferously against Gay Marriage based solely on a vague, liberal understanding of christianity. So I would say that there is at least anecdotal evidence that people's religious beliefs DO affect their sociopolitical views in non-trivial ways. I also know from one of my closest friends who is a *very* liberal muslim that people at his mosque are just as bigoted against gays as my neighbor and my mother in law.
I hate to say that these people are accidental bigots, but that's exactly what they are. Bigots.
This bigotry would not exist in a world without dogma.
They also consider the existence of the supernatural as self-evident, believe in miracles etc.
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I mean that we treat aesthetic differences as reflecting personal truths that are not worth getting into social battles over.
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What the heck is a personal truth Josh?
Here is what I feel it all boils down to:
1. If you accept theism, you accept dogma. (feel free to replace "accept" with "tolerate").
2.If you accept dogma, anything goes, completely unpolluted by evidence.
3.On Dogma hang all of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, National Socialism, Racism, Classism, Sexism, Communism, etc.
Dogma is our enemy and we must be strident and unwavering in our rejection of it.
PS: I'll read up on this John Dewey character.
What is "personal truth"? I dislike Charles Dickens. I think he is mediocre. I also don't dig Henri Rousseau. These are truths, but apply only to me. Personal + truth = personal truth.
"If they find what is in those books repulsive, then they can simply stop calling themselves jews, christians or muslims."
Who are you to say that? Why shouldn' the Christians, Jews and Muslims get to define their own religious identity? 250 years ago, this country was founded on the backs of slaves. We changed. But I could string together an argument like yours above that if modern US citizens didn't want to be tagged as apologists for slavery, we should change our name. Maybe to "Canada."
I agree with you that dogma is dangerous. I locate my own concern more with attempts to impose subjective beliefs on others. I oppose authoritarianism. It is certainly true that that tends to come from religious corners, with attempts to force religion into science class, for instance. But I'm behind the ACLU when it defends the rights of neo-Nazis to march peacefully or religious people to practice their own religion privately.
It's the classic story of another person's right to swing their fist ending at my nose.
Yes, religion is a factor in anti-gay prejudice, and you are very right to call it bigotry. But like most bigotry, the issue is more about people fearing "the other" than about specific religious teachings. Were it the latter, you wouldn't see openly gay clerics in the Episcopal Church, nor would that church and others perform weddings for gay couples. Again, religion isn't the problem, bigotry is.
Further proof of that comes from looking at polling. Younger people, people who grew up after gays came out of the closet, are much more tolerant of homosexuality and of gay marriage than people who grew up without knowing that knew gay people. Religiosity in society remains constant, but tolerance rises.
I can reject dogma, and refuse to base my behavior on dogma, without requiring others to abandon their dogmatic beliefs.
Dewey was a prominent philosopher of the "pragmatic" school. In that view, we should live our public lives in terms of our shared, intersubjective reality. How you handle your personal, subjective experiences is no one else's business.
Barbara Forrest, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse, did her thesis on Sydney Fox, a colleague of Dewey.
At my religious boys school, the regular, somewhat weird, priests were supplemented annually by "redemptrists" dressed in purple cloaks. Their sole function appeared to be yelling harangues insisting that masturbation would lead to an infinity of hell fire. Oddly philosophical asides on just how long infinity was, and just how painful the flames were. The catch was that in the RC world one has to attend 'Mass' weekly, and to eat the transubstantiated bread after masturbating was enough to get those fires stoked. [Giordano Bruno, the early one, had denial of transubstantiation on his heresy list, he got the finite, but definitely real fire]. NT (Typical) boys with a healthy, if sullen, resentment of authority, had little trouble with this BS. A few 'sensitive' souls actually took this seriously, for a year or so. Took me twenty years to get a decent sex life together. Now _thats_ abuse.
The idea of 'transubstantiation' seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to 'break' rationality, to snap rational thought into a kind of hypnotic trance state. ["the bread IS the body of Christ, not 'represents', not 'in a spritual sense' but ACTUALLY,REALLY IS the body of Christ"] Thats also abuse, of a somewhat more subtle kind.