Monday Musing: Taking Sides in the Recent Religion Debates

Look, no matter whether you are religious or an atheist or some other thing, no matter what you believe, I expect you'll agree with me about the importance of this question: why do so many people believe the wrong thing? The reason I can be fairly sure that this is a question which has deep meaning for you, as well as for me, is that none of even the religions with the greatest number of adherents (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism) comprises anything even close to a majority of the world's human beings (and atheists, of course, are no more than a drop in the bucket of humanity). So, as long as you have some sense of curiosity about other humans, you probably wonder why most people don't share your correct beliefs. (And this is not even to take into account the many rifts within each religion: Catholic v. Protestant, Shia v. Sunni, etc.) Atheists and the faithful are alike in this: they all hope, sometimes rather desperately, that one day everyone will share their own salutary views. But we'll come back to this question a little later.

Today, I would just like to set down a few loosely related observations about the debates that have recently raged around the publication of several very high-profile books attacking religion. The most prominent of these have been Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, and Sam Harris's The End of Faith, as well as his Letter to a Christian Nation. (Yes, I've read all of them.) What has been remarkable to me is the degree of harshness of the polemic that has been directed at these books by eminent intellectuals as well as journalists and laypeople. Many of these criticisms seem to me to fall roughly into three broad categories, each of which I'd like to examine a little more below:

1. These views of religion themselves exhibit a sort of fervid faith (in rationality, in science, etc.).
2. These are theologically naive views of religion from individuals unqualified to examine it.
3. These views of religion miss the important political underpinnings of recent religious resurgence.

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Rationality as a Sort of Religion

This is perhaps the least damaging of the objections but, not only is it very common, it betrays a very basic philosophical confusion endemic to our postmodern era which I want to try and dispel here. But, first, a quick example of what I am talking about taken from the comments section of a post right here on 3QD about the Harris/Sullivan debate on religion:

...there are several unexamined "faiths" at the bottom of Harris's rationalism. That the world is rational, for one thing. That ontology and epistemology overlap. That all that is "real" is material, and vice versa. That a thing can be known from the sum of its parts. And many more.

Reason works very well once it has been lifted up to a functional level by foundational assumptions. To attribute the "rationalist" perspective to someone like Harris, allows us to make these assumptions transparent, which goes a long way toward making someone like Andrew Sullivan look awfully silly. It's a charlatan's game, and we shouldn't fall for it.

--Deets, April 5, 2007

Here's the foundational problem that Deets brings up, stated simply: there is no neutral perspective from which science or even rationality itself can be defended or deemed superior to anything else. This is uninterestingly and tautologically true (but leads to much mischief!), as one must be scientific, or at least rational, to show anything at all. In other words, it is not possible to convince anyone of the truth of anything, unless they share certain background beliefs. This means that if someone tells you that AIDS is caused, not by the HIV virus, but by evil spirits whom we must appease by ritually sacrificing cats, for example, there is no way to convince them otherwise without using science, and presumably, a belief in the overall correctness of the scientific method is not something that one shares with one's interlocutor in this case. So Deets is technically correct in pointing out the "foundational assumptions" here, but there is no need for the sophomoric conclusion that this makes Harris's arguments a "charlatan's game." Indeed, Deets's line of reasoning could be used to make any- and everything a charlatan's game. The Earth is not flat, but round, I say. Nope, says Deets, this requires an unwarranted assumption of scientific method. Potassium cyanide is a poison, I say. Maybe, maybe not, says Deets. Sodium metal and chlorine gas can combine to form table salt, say I. I don't think so, says Deets. I nervously ask, does the sun rise in the east? Says Deets (and I ain't makin' this up!):

As you well know, the sun only "rises" in the "East" ... from a particular perspective, which our culture long ago rejected as illusory. There is no East, and there is no rising.

--Deets, April 6, 2007

What can one say to Deets? Nothing. One can't say anything because if Deets is responding in this way, then one does not share enough beliefs with Deets to make communication with him (or her) possible. After all, even just using language to communicate requires that the other agree on what "sodium" is, what "chlorine" is, and even what "is" is. Presuming that we agree on what all these things are, I could try to show Deets that I can repeatedly bring sodium and chlorine together and reliably end up with salt, but that would assume that Deets is impressed with the scientific method, an assumption which I am not allowed to make. (Of course, context is always important to meaning, and therefore to truth, so of course there are contexts in which "The Earth is flat" will be true and others where "The Earth is round" will seem a gross over-simplification or false, which is why there is always an element of good faith in communication.) There is really no point in having such a conversation. There is, literally, nothing one could say. (Okay, I apologize to the real-life Deets for turning him/her into a bit of a caricature for the purposes of my argument, but this really is the outcome of his/her line of thinking.)

The good news is that as human beings we share a huge set of background experiences and beliefs that do make communication possible, and we do agree on many things, and most of us can talk to each other. Even Deets actually has rationality in plentiful supply in his (or her) comments, and carefully follows accepted lines of reasoning in constructing clever arguments. Technical and foundational issues in epistemology or even ontology needn't keep us from making everyday judgments of truth about all sorts of matters, including whether, say, smoking is bad for one's health, or whether HIV causes AIDS or evil cat-loving (or hating?) spirits do. (One of the things that human beings all over the planet agree on to a remarkable degree, is science itself. It is a truly shocking--and pleasing--thing to me, that for the most part, scientists in Japan, Malawi, Pakistan, Sweden and Indonesia essentially agree on a huge volume of knowledge and even the methods by which it is produced.) So what is the point of debate about anything, you might ask. It is this: what our project becomes, at least with those people with whom we share a basic understanding of logic and enough background beliefs about the world to be able to assert things like "sodium metal and chlorine gas can combine to form table salt" and have them assent, is an attempt to convince them of something by getting them to be coherent about their beliefs. So if someone says "I agree that sodium and chlorine combine to form salt, but I don't believe that hydrogen and oxygen gases can be combined to produce water," I can perhaps try to show that the same beliefs this person shares with me which lead her to believe that sodium and chlorine combine to produce salt, also entail that hydrogen and oxygen can combine to produce water. In other words, all of us share so large a number of beliefs, that it is not possible to be aware of all the logically possible statements that they entail, so the purpose of argument and debate is (often) to show someone that they are holding contradictory beliefs, one of which should be given up; this is how, despite Deets's reservations, it is possible to have useful discussion.

You might by now have lost track of what this has to do with the "rationality as a sort of religion" objection. What I've tried to explain is that while it is logically true that certain assumptions of rationality or even agreement with the methods of science, etc., need to be made, these are not unreasonable assumptions. It is perfectly legitimate of Harris or Dawkins or Dennett to make an argument of the following sort to a religious person, "Since you agree that sodium and chlorine combine to produce salt, and you agree that X, and you agree that Y, and you agree that Z, ... and you agree that such and such is a good method of deciding these things, and this thing, and that thing, and... then you should also agree that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old." What if they don't agree that sodium and chlorine combine to produce salt, or even that the sun rises in the east? In that case, yes, there isn't much to say.

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Theologically Naive Examinations of Religion

This, for some reason, is the objection most dear to the more sophisticated critics of Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris. There are two related ideas here: there is the standard cheap-shot of "What made X an expert in Y?" (As if only astrologists should ever be allowed to judge the claims of astrology!) And then there is the more credible, at least at first blush, idea that important and serious theological ideas and arguments have been completely ignored by these writers. Once again, first some examples. Here's the very first paragraph of renowned Marxist-and-psychoanalytic-literary-theorist Terry Eagleton's review of Dawkins (gently entitled "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching") in the London Review of Books:

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.

Much of the Eagleton review continues in this vein, getting more hysterical, if anything:

What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case?

And this is H. Allen Orr, also reviewing Dawkins, in the New York Review of Books:

...The God Delusion [is] a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins's book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they're terminally ill?).

These gentlemen do protest far too much, but before I get to them let me say another thing: the problem with arguing with a religious person, say a Christian, or to be even more specific, say a Catholic, is that you have no idea what she actually believes. If I tell you that I believe science is correct, you can be pretty sure about a lot of my very detailed beliefs. You can be sure, just to beat this example to death, that I believe that sodium and chlorine can combine to form table salt. You know that I believe that the Earth is close to four billion years old, that the sun is a star, etc., etc. You can be fairly certain that I don't pick and choose my beliefs in some arbitrary fashion: "Yes, sodium is real, but uranium is just a figure of speech!" On the contrary, as soon as one begins to corner a religious person about one of their more egregiously silly beliefs, they weasel out with some version of "Oh, but I don't take that literally!" Transubstantiation may be literally true to some, and only a metaphor to other Catholics. Same with pretty much everything, so it is just not possible to examine every way to conceptualize even just the concept of God, which is just one of the things that theology has spent centuries doing. Religious concepts tend to be slippery as they need not cohere even with each other, much less experience, or dare-I-say-it, reality. The constraints (if any) on how one conceptualizes God, or the afterlife, or hell, or sin, are very loose. No one can be expected to argue with every single one of these conceptions that an army of theologians may have produced over millenia.

But maybe they have produced some particularly significant arguments or ideas worth grappling with. Yeah, sure, maybe they have. What are they? It is remarkable that for all the times this objection, that writers such as Dennett and Dawkins and Harris are ignoring sophisticated theologians, is raised, not a single actual idea or argument due to these theologians is ever mentioned. Why not just say, Mr. Eagleton, what exactly in Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Eriugena, Rahner, and Moltmann refutes Dawkins's arguments? Unless this is an empty and desperate display of erudition, why not bring up how these subtle examinations of grace and hope might confute Dawkins? Orr can scarcely believe that Dawkins has written a whole book about religion without bringing up William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example. Well, Professor Orr, he chose not to, but you are certainly free to show us how James and Wittgenstein weaken Dawkins's case. Why don't you? No, really, just think about it: suppose you are trying to argue that astrology is nonsense, and someone keeps piping up that you haven't read this or that work by this or that astrologer (especially if there are millenia worth of output from "astrologians"). What will you say? I would say, you bring it up. Show me how what someone wrote weakens my case.

-----***-----

It's All About the Politics, Stupid

Actually, this is the only objection to Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris to which I am at least somewhat sympathetic. Roughly, it is really a set of related ideas which go something like this:

1. I am smart and well-educated enough to know what you are trying to tell me about religion.
2. Only people like me will read your book, and you are not telling us anything new, so at the least, your book is boring.
3. The only reason you have written this book now, is that many in the West are fearful of a resurgence of a highly politicized, dangerous, terroristic, and fundamentalist Islam and the infamously imminent "clash of civilizations", and this is therefore an opportune time to attack religion in general and sell books.
4. Your examination of religion ignores the victory in the West of an economic system which has resulted in such a skewed distribution of not only wealth, but even opportunity for education, access to healthcare, etc., that to ease their noisy lives of desperation, more and more people turn for solace to religion.
5. And similarly, your focus on the violent and evil acts of a minority of religious extremists, for example, in the Islamic world, with no mention of the systematic political and economic violence done to their societies in the name of strategic considerations, oil, spreading the shining light of democracy, etc., allows your readers (at least the less religious ones) in the West to ignore these latter political considerations and blame everything bad happening in, for example, the middle-east, on the evil irrationality of religion. [This doesn't apply only to the middle-east or Islam, but anywhere there is religious conflict. The idea is that even if religion were to disappear, there are underlying political injustices that would need to be addressed, and too great a focus on religion allows us to ignore these.]

I do not agree with items 1, 2, or 3 of this list, but feel that there is something to the last two. The first step is wrong because there is much new material in these books (more on that below), and there are new ways of thinking about familiar problems. The second step is clearly not true, as the books have been on best-seller lists and it is clear that a lot of religious people have read them, to their benefit (even if not with full agreement) I am sure. The third step is just silliness, and anytime is a good time to fight irrationality! As for steps four and five, although one cannot dictate to people what their books should be about, given the demographics of religion (at least in America) and the overall salience of religion in the current geopolitical mess, one wishes that these authors would have had something to say about the factors that have produced a resurgence of such hypocrisies as evangelical Christianity, such odious forms of faith as jihadist-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam, etc., or at the very least acknowledged that religion does not exist in a vacuum, but is shaped and exploited in reaction to political and other realities. Their not addressing this at all leaves one with the uneasy feeling that an elephant in the room has been ignored.

-----***-----

So, we come back now to the question with which I started these brief observations: why are so many people wrong? We tend to agree with humans everywhere about most things, after all. This is not just true in the realm of knowledge (because of which science is the same everywhere, as I mentioned earlier), but the other two classical realms as well: the moral and the aesthetic. Leaving religion aside, we find the same things morally repugnant: incest, murder, rape, dishonesty, theft, etc., and we even find the same things beautiful: sunsets, poetry, music, Angelina Jolie, whatever. Why then is religion the exception? Well, because religion can be seen as just one more phenomenon in the natural world, this, I believe, is properly a scientific question, and the greatest value of the books I have been discussing has, at least for me, been to present new scientific work in anthropology, in psychology, in neuroscience, and many other fields, which bears on this question and is suggestive of possible answers. I wrote a short account giving a flavor of some of these developments here, if you are interested.

My previous Monday Musings can be seen here.

UPDATE: In all fairness to Deets, he has a post at his own blog about his views on all this here.

Comments

[Cyberpunk Hero]

To expand on your second point, I would say that Dawkins' (and his colleagues, although Dawkins is the one I have the most experience with) weakest point is his inability (or unwillingness) to approach his arguments from the side of theist.

The atheist sees religions as being practically interchangeable. That makes sense - they have the same weaknesses of logic. One phrase, "Prove it" stops them all in their tracks. The magic incantation, capable of crushing all religious beliefs in one fell swoop.

But from the perspective of the believer, "my" religion is different. My religion is right. The rest of them are wrong, but I'm the exception.

From there, it isn't a far leap to point out one of Dawkins' (many) generalizations and say, "Oh, see, his argument doesn't apply to me. So, sure, he can disprove everyone else, but I'm different. I'm right."

I can't help but think that the pro-reason faction could do a much better job of making their case by taking care to form arguments that deal with each belief more specifically. A "quick and easy" primer on why Catholicism is bunk, followed by an elegant evisceration of Buddhism might be more sympathetic than "Here's why religion is stupid". The religious have been playing this game for a long time, probably longer than the non-religious, and they're hard to beat (even when you're right.)

On the topic of "Why Are So Many People Wrong?" I'd like to add that politics is another arena where "so many people" are "so very wrong". When half the country is red and the other half is blue, 150 million people are idiots. The problem is likely a similar one, given the reverence many hold for their political beliefs. I'll be damned if I know what it is, though. Why doesn't everyone else see that libertarian-socialism is obviously the best political system, and "weak" atheism the strongest theological perspective? I mean, duh, right?

[Cyberpunk Hero]

I'm sorry, I just realized I may not have been absolutely clear what I was referring to above.

I'm not saying that Dawkins' arguments are invalidated by the way he phrases them (9 times out of 10, at least), or that he is truly not conscious of the distinctions between the many religions. Instead, I am suggesting that it appears that way from the religious perspective since it fails to account for the "But I'm the exception! I'm the REAL true religion!" perspective held by most religious adherents.

It doesn't appear to make as much sense to them because, naturally, it isn't derived from the rules of their worldview. And maybe a more specific approach would be a stronger one.

Probably should have made that more explicit in my original comment.

[meika]

"But I'm the exception! I'm the REAL true religion!"

Yet more proof that evolution is true, only evolution could come up with something as weird as religious belief. I certainly can't see any good rational god coming up with it.

Maybe the world was created by the devil, with religous belief thrown in as a viciously funny afterthought.

[Jonathan]

Abbas,

Thanks for this. I agree with you almost to the letter. But thanks for putting forth patiently and with real attention what should be obvious to any thinking person. What Dawkins and Dennett have done is carve a space in the public sphere for athiests, and to that we owe them a real debt of gratitude.

[Elatia Harris]

Thank you for engaging with this material, Abbas. My hugely personal reaction to many of these points is to step back and start wondering if there is, after all, world outside mind. You make some excellent observations about what has to happen before dialogue can take place, before the interlocutors are more than heedless figures on soapboxes shouting diatribes into the uncaring air.

Almost 20 years ago, Karen Armstrong wrote that man -- for all his defining nature entailed -- might as well have been called homo religiosus as homo sapiens. I think she would agree with your last observation that the religious impulse -- though perhaps not religion itself -- is a phenomenon in the natural world. A big, big area of our consciousness. So that, if we all have this impulse in common, then God-seeking and a sense of the sacred should have led us all to the same kind of consensus that allows everyone in the world to find the screwdriver a superlative tool? It might be that enlightenment about these matters comes very slowly and unevenly, and is fraught with setbacks and even reversals. If so, then the evolution of the religious impulse would not illogically parallel that of reason, tool-making and discovery in the rise and fall of civilizations generally. If the concept of zero, the way to build a true arch, and all but a few of the plays of Sophocles can just get lost for millennia at a time, then why is it so remarkable that the religious impulse leads us anywhere but uninterruptedly onward and upward?

Thanks again for some thought-provoking material.

[Bobo]

It is amazing how certain topics just keep popping up in certain circles. Anyone who is interested in a very involved conversation on these topics should check out a discussion from about a week ago on Radio Open Source (www.radioopensource.org/back-to-god-with-camille-paglia/).
I ended up as one of the few people trying to defend the role of religion in modern society. Many of the points which were made in the conversation were similar if not identical to points which I just read on 3qd.

To briefly supply another perspective, I ask one simple question: Is there something which religion offers that cannot be found anywhere else? If we begin systematically setting aside things which can be found from other sources -- moral guidelines, natural history, ritual, etc. -- we find ourselves left with one essential thing: God. Whether you believe in God or not, I think it is a worthwhile activity to contemplate his/her/its nature. Is God in itself a worthwhile aspect of our lives, individually and as a society?

The thrust of my idea on this topic is that God can be taken to represent all things in our lives which are more powerful than us. Thus, religion gives us insight into the nature of our relationship with all higher-powers. That's my view, does anyone have any other answers as to what religion can offer?

[Deets]

Abbas,

You may put whatever words you like into the mouth of the caricatural "Deets" but as for the real-life commenter of that name, some clarifications are in order.

First, the reason I said the sun doesn't "rise in the east" is because it doesn't. Tautological and uninteresting, perhaps, but I don't make the rules. The sun, of course, is stationary (relative to us). I don't say this to be pedantic, but to make the point that we can choose perspectives (and thus be enabled to communicate, which you rightly put a premium on) but we should not pretend that these perspectives are uniquely true. That's worse than what the religious fundamentalists do, because we at least should know better. (That's where the charlatanism comes in).

You'll find me in agreement about smoking, HIV (I'm slightly heterodox on this one), sodium chloride,and the rest of it. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because I see all truth statements as a choice, that I consider them equal. Useful discussion, after all, is one of my favorite activities.

Why, if truth and "truth" approach each other asymptotically, do I make such a fuss about distinguishing them? The simple answer is that, like any scientist, I enjoy accuracy. But the more pertinent answer is that I am hoping to help reveal the intellectually chilling rigidity of the extreme rationalist position. Rustiness and entrenchment pose a far greater threat to our collective mental health and elasticity than "religion" ever can.

Your question "why are so many people wrong?" assumes there are only mutually exclusive descriptions of reality. It would be folksy of me to mention the parable of the blind men and the elephant. But I think you will agree that if you think of the literally infinite number of true statements possible about any slice of our universe, the idea that a single description can get it all right is somewhere between foolhardy and arrogant. I don't ask you to deny that Na + Cl make salt, merely that, having done so, we would next ask if it were on a wound, a snowy highway, a seedrow, a slug, or a baked potato we should pour it.

Finally, it's a bit rich to write, as you do:

What can one say to Deets? Nothing. One can't say anything because if Deets is responding in this way, then one does not share enough beliefs with Deets to make communication with him (or her) possible. After all, even just using language to communicate requires that the other agree on what "sodium" is, what "chlorine" is, and even what "is" is.

without acknowledging that this was my precise point in the comments you cite. For Harris, or anyone, to pre-define religion based on the conclusion that this defintion comprises all that is toxic to humanity, is hardly an embrace of "useful discussion."

I am thoroughly impressed by scientific method. What I am not impressed by is the sweeping under the rug of premises as though they were not subject to every bit as much examination as the conclusions.

[Logikator]

Harris believes in a soul. Dawkins endorses him. That is my damn problem.

P.S. Set me straight!

[Logikator]

Apologies for butting in again but while I am in the deer-caught-in-headlights mode, I just want to ask why, oh why does Abbas not see Harris' rabid fetish for violence as a problem?

p.s. phew.... Right! I'll go back to trolling.

p.s. phew....

[James]

Another more damaging critique of Dawkins et al. is that they entirely ignore the academic discipline of religious studies, the field that was once known as the scientific study of religion. How can you take seriously writers who ignore what an entire class of serious scholars has to say?

The critique of religion presented here is really a critique of a particular kind of religion--and the Catholic example given above reveals this. These writers are critiquing post-Reformation Christianity and religions that have been influenced by post-Reformation Christianity.

In so far as religion is about belief, interpreted as intellectual assent to a set of factual propositions, these critics are largely right, but this is a very narrow, historically contingent, definition of religion.

[Seth Edenbaum]

The misreading of Deet's comment on the 'rising' of the sun is just bizarre.
And the problem, if I have to say this again is not religion itself, but foundationalism. Rationality is a goal which people will never consistently meet. We create formal structures to stabilize our experience, law being a prime example. The function of religion historically is as the foundation to law and therefore of society. People who are religious don't argue about religion but from it. Hobbes could be an exception I guess. If you want to engage the ideas of the faithful, ignore their arguments as such and look behind them.
Technocratic vulgarians may like to think of themselves as rational beings, but they're no more rational than an autistic who orders his life like clockwork. I had to wonder what kind of imagination would not get the obvious meaning of Deets' comment? In order to do so I would have to look behind that misreading at the attitude of the respondent.
Fixations on the technics of rationality are irrational. Explain to me how technics can cure us of the Donald Rumsfelds of the world, who don't go to church and are still so delusional?

A novelist is someone who tries, consistently and with great effort to separate his intuitions, biases, fixations and neuroses from his rational awareness, and who documents his failure to do so. Dawkins is little more than a "high priest" of rationalism because he thinks that the tools of logic will save us from the irrational: but any tool can be used irrationally.
People tend towards faith. The goal is to have none, in anything or anyone. To be morally responsible to to worry and doubt, and then to be able to acknowledge failure after the fact. Fiction and theater, and all art, are the transformation of that all into a game.
Look up adversarial ethics and ponder why we use them, and why lawyers and doctors get all tv shows; and then maybe you'll realize that your faith -in yourselves, and that is the unwritten theme here- is misplaced.

[Stuart]

The idea of god is the ultimate arrogance. Humans are worthy of (blank/salvation) depending on religion is asinine.

[Daryl McCullough]

I disagree with the premise in your opening paragraph. You write: Atheists and the faithful are alike in this: they all hope, sometimes rather desperately, that one day everyone will share their own salutary views.

I don't agree with that at all. Not everyone hopes that the whole world will eventually believe what they believe. There is no particular need among Jews for the rest of the world to convert to Judaism. There is no particular need among Buddhists for the rest of the world to convert to Buddhism. Zoroastrians are not trying to convert the rest of the world.

Christianity, Islam, and the New Atheism are the proselytizing sects, but not many others.

To me, religious diversity is a good thing. The fact that there are Jews and atheists and Buddhists and Christians enriches us all.

[Daryl McCullough]

Here's another point of disagreement (I'm working my way through your post, one paragraph at a time). You say In other words, it is not possible to convince anyone of the truth of anything, unless they share certain background beliefs.

I don't think that's true. You can convince someone of the usefulness of an approach by showing its consequences. If people are dying all around you of smallpox, and some group isn't dying, and that group all had smallpox vaccinations, then it's pretty natural to want a vaccination yourself. That doesn't mean that you have bought into the germ theory of disease, or the scientific method, or rejected the existence of demons. It just means that you have learned that vaccines are a better way to prevent smallpox.

Scientific progress does not require converts to the scientific world-view, it only requires that there are small areas in which a person is willing to find out what works and what doesn't.

You don't need a unified world-view in order to make scientific progress. You can make progress in one small area while still believing in ghosts and gods in other areas.

The claim that smallpox is due to disease, not evil spirits, is a useful claim, and people can come to see its usefulness. The claim that there are no evil spirits anywhere is a philosophical claim, which is only useful in its particular instances.

[beajerry]

Well written article, Abbas! You have great talent for summing things up.

For me, I view the issue the same way: science can/must examine human belief etiology. My own theory, and that of many, is that belief systems are but pattern recognitions that were once used for basic survival skills and evolved later via city/state life into mythological purposes (making sense of life and ethical purposes).
City/state life is also political life, thus the inextricable weave it has with religion. To try and pluck out the soot and baggage of thousands of years of politics from core religious beliefs is impossible.

This new atheist 'movement' that threatens to ultimately discount the pragmatic value of religio/politico systems may have much hubris but the debate is necessary.
It is a healthy weeding of religion. The religious should welcome it. Why? Because pattern recognition systems based on antiquity will only become more hysterical and dangerous as time moves farther and farther away. "The center cannot hold" and all that.
In other words, just as pattern recognition neurology changed as people moved into cities, it must change as cities move into a globe.

[nizamarain]

"Another more damaging critique of Dawkins et al. is that they entirely ignore the academic discipline of religious studies, the field that was once known as the scientific study of religion. How can you take seriously writers who ignore what an entire class of serious scholars has to say?"

James, is this not what Abbas spent his entire second section addressing?

As Abbas put it, what do these serious scholars have to say that undoes the arguments of Dawkins et al.?

[Daryl McCullough]

Yet another point. I think it is a mistake to lump Dennett's book in with Dawkins' and Harris'. Dawkins and Harris wrote polemics trying to convince the reader of the correctness of atheism. Dennett's book is a study of the phenomenon of religion. He obviously hopes that if people understood the origins of religion, they would reject its claims, but his book is not primarily about rebutting those claims.

[Daryl McCullough]

Abbas,

But here is a point where I agree with you. You write

It is remarkable that for all the times this objection, that writers such as Dennett and Dawkins and Harris are ignoring sophisticated theologians, is raised, not a single actual idea or argument due to these theologians is ever mentioned.

There may very well be wondrously sophisticated theological arguments for the existence of God that Dawkins may have never read. However, such arguments are irrelevant to the actual practice of religion. The 3-billion (or however many it is) believers on Earth believe what they do without the benefit of these sophisticated arguments. So discovering such arguments would not serve to justify the practices of the 3-billion. They would be proven wrong by such an argument (believing the right conclusion for an incorrect reason is just as much a rational mistake as believing an incorrect conclusion).

If someone wanted to justify religion, it seems to me that he would have to justify it in terms of how it is practiced by those 3-billion.

[Daryl McCullough]

Sorry for making a nuisance of myself. I suppose I just write my own damn essay. But it's more fun to respond to what other people say. Abbas writes:

...what our project becomes, at least with those people with whom we share a basic understanding of logic and enough background beliefs about the world to be able to assert things like "sodium metal and chlorine gas can combine to form table salt" and have them assent, is an attempt to convince them of something by getting them to be coherent about their beliefs.

This is indeed the key issue. Is coherence of beliefs important? It's not obvious to me that it is. An alternative approach (which is the way that almost all human beings live their lives, in my opinion) is to divide the world up into domains, each domain having an associated set of beliefs, an associated set of practices. Within a domain, beliefs need to be coherent, but there is no need to have an overarching set of coherent beliefs that apply to all domains.

For example, when talking to another human being, you use a model of humans as intentional agents: They have sensations, they have feelings, they have emotions, they have goals, they have beliefs. These are the aspects of being human that are relevant when having a conversation. In another domain, (physics), a human can be seen as matter interacting through the laws of chemistry.

These two ways of looking at a human being are so drastically different that it is extremely difficult to see how they can be made coherent. I'm not saying that they can't be, just that it is difficult and the vast majority of people don't bother to do so. Instead, they figure out on a case-by-case basis whether it is appropriate to treat a human as an intentional agent, or to treat him as a blob of matter. Sometimes (for example, a doctor trying to discover the source of a patient's pains) it is necessary to consider both aspects at once, but even then, typically the bridging is done in an ad hoc way, rather than via a universal, overarching worldview.

I personally think that rationality only works, in a practical sense, because we have the ability to work with incoherent sets of beliefs. If it were necessary that all beliefs be coherent before rationality does any good, then we would have gotten nowhere.

Of course, the multiple domains approach runs into problems when the domains overlap. In those cases, it's just like when political constituencies disagree. Either you reach a compromise, or one faction wins out.

[Scott Ahlf]

This just emphasizes the wisdom of William James who stated:
"Religion, another long chapter in the history of the human ego"
Also, "Religious Scholars" are a class of people
who play tennis without a net, but demand it up on the return.

[Symphony X]

theologically naive? lol, what on earth does this mean?

is this akin to those that are dragonologically naive?

[Xerxes]

The claim that smallpox is due to disease, not evil spirits, is a useful claim, and people can come to see its usefulness. The claim that there are no evil spirits anywhere is a philosophical claim, which is only useful in its particular instances.

Perhaps I've missed the point the poster was trying to make, but the usefulness of the no-evil-spirits claim is that it makes the discovery of the true cause of the next pox you tackle so much easier. There's no need to waste a lot of time showing that each pox you discover is not caused by evil spirits. The no-supernatural-events assumption is crucial to the progress of science, and that's OK, since its veracity has never been threatened by the slightest amount of empirical evidence.

[Bill Ectric]

Top-notch discussion!

There are some athiests who don't want everyone else to be athiests: Rulers who use fear to control people.

[Daryl McCullough]

Perhaps I've missed the point the poster was trying to make, but the usefulness of the no-evil-spirits claim is that it makes the discovery of the true cause of the next pox you tackle so much easier.

But most people are not medical researchers. They are concerned about protecting themselves, and their own children, but they aren't concerned about solving all the world's problems. So the more all-encompassing generalization is really not that relevant to them.

[Deets]

Perhaps I've missed the point the poster was trying to make, but the usefulness of the no-evil-spirits claim is that it makes the discovery of the true cause of the next pox you tackle so much easier.

Let's not forget that a thing can be both useful and false, or at least useful and not fully true. We tell schoolchildren that atoms are like little solar systems, not because we want to mislead them, but because it helps them envision atoms' chemical and physical characteristics, and because they don't need to know the details, not now.

Most of us see the world through through these explanatory models: Classical mechanics as billiard balls, atoms as little pellets, with littler-pellet satellites, planets in circular orbit around stars, genes as little beads on a string. All false, but useful. To back to the central metaphor of this thread: we still talk of the sun "rising" over 500 years after Copernicus.

[beajerry]

The sun IS rising in relation to the horizon. Deets, I'm afraid you're stuck in semantics, metaphors, and similes that only distract and have been the cause of many a great philosopher's high paper bill.

Xerxes' point nails it, I think.

[Deets]

Beajerry,

If you are driving, and pass a pedestrian on the side of the road, would it not be a funny way to describe the pedestrian as "moving backwards relative to the car?"

We are all "caught in semantics." Rationalism requires stopping short when the conversation hits a certain threshold of complexity. That's fine; clarity is to be valued, and life indeed may be too short to chase every rabbit down its hole. That doesn't mean the holes and what's in them are any less real for not chasing down them.

As for Xerxes comment, when did I argue in defense of the supernatural?

[Rod Flank]

Is it not enough to say that faith/conditional belief itself is not what constitutes religion but a faith/belief in a supernatural realm/entity which has moral authority and at times physical agency in this world is what constitutes religion, thereby flummoxing the "reason is too a faith!" humbug?

And to point two I agree with the above, McCullough I think, that the primary objection to the "ignores theology" argument is simply that so do most practitioners and many of their leaders. Why should Dawkins be any more required to address Augustine than your local suicide bomber or GOP fundraiser?

I do also sympathise with some of Deets' underlying points. I would say only that at a certain point people make the choice to engage the world usefully and in terms coherent to others for the benefit of the commonality. Some precision may be lost in the process. But, yes, it is a misreading to think that "the Sun does not rise in the East" is the equivalent to "the Sun does rise in the West."

[bored]

Why would anyone who was not religious argue the subject with someone who is? It makes no sense: faith does not respond to logical argument. If you can't bring yourself to walk away, that choice to continue becomes your illogic, not the believer's.

[Nat]

Interesting debate! Three points: Hinduism is mentioned in the first paragraph, yet it is factually incorrect to say that Hindus believe all other religions are "wrong."

This is the faith that gave birth to the saying "truth is one, paths are many" and accepts that all people (athiests included) are doing what is right for their soul at this point.

So as someone's mentioned above, only a fairly small number of belief-systems proselytize, atheism among them (during the Soviet days, and currently in China, with every bit as much bloodlust as any Inquisition).

Second point: "This means that if someone tells you that AIDS is caused, not by the HIV virus, but by evil spirits whom we must appease by ritually sacrificing cats..."

Millions of animals are sacrificed each year in vivisection labs around the world to appease what a large number of us, expert and otherwise, consider to be deeply flawed models of the relevance of drug reactions in other species.

Removing the Biblical sanction that only humans have souls, and that animals are ours to use as we see fit, makes this practice even more morally bankrupt.

Science, rather than being the gold-standard of human endeavour and logic, can actually get stuck in a rut and continue illogical, barbaric and grotesque practices every bit as long as the most primitive witch doctor.

(As an aside, I'd like to see that hypothetical witch doctor come up with anything as flawed as the pig-to-primate organ transplantation scandal, chronicled in http://www.xenodiaries.org/ - flawed inasmuch as it totally ignored existing scientific knowledge. Even the most bizarre religion usually adheres to its own pre-existing rules and structure.)

Final point: "Prove it" as the ultimate deflator of religious *belief* (as opposed to a specific supernatural event)?

With respect, I think not, firstly because it is impossible to *prove* the non-existance of God (it's very hard to prove a negative on any level, hence we tend to have things like presumption of innocence in criminal trials).

And secondly because, since religion is based on personal experience and emotion, the person requiring the proof could only call the belief invalid if they underwent the same experiences, with the exact same mental and emotional makeup as the believer, and somehow came to a different conclusion - a virtual impossibility.

Yet that would be the only way of satisfying the scientific requirement of replicating (or disproving) results using the same procedure and equipment - in this case, the believer's whole personality and worldview.

It's those factors that have given the believer all the proof they want or need, and not externals, like God leaving a signature on Mount Everest.

[Scott Ahlf]

Einstein and the concept of ‘god’
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” Albert Einstein, in a letter March 24, 1954; from ‘Albert Einstein the Human Side’, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 43.

“My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.” Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215; from Alice Calaprice, ed., ‘The Expanded Quotable Einstein’, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.” Albert Einstein in a letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797; from Alice Calaprice, ed., ‘The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 217.

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.” Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, ‘Albert Einstein Creator and Rebe’l, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.” Albert Einstein, letter to a Baptist pastor in 1953; from ‘Albert Einstein the Human Side’, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 39.

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modelled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.” Albert Einstein quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955; from George Seldes, ed., ‘The Great Thoughts’, New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 134.

“I cannot accept any concept of God based on the fear of life or the fear of death or blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar.” Albert Einstein; from Ronald W. Clark, ‘Einstein: The Life and Times’, New York: World Publishing Company, 1971, p. 622.

“During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man’s own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfilment of their wishes.” Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein’s ‘Out of My Later Years’, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, p. 26.

“I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world as far—as we can grasp it. And that is all.” Albert Einstein, to Guy H. Raner Jr., July 2, 1945, responding to a rumour that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; from Michael R. Gilmore, “Einstein’s God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?,” Skeptic, 1997, 5(2):62.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

Come on, Nat, some of this stuff is easy:

Hinduism is mentioned in the first paragraph, yet it is factually incorrect to say that Hindus believe all other religions are "wrong."

This is the faith that gave birth to the saying "truth is one, paths are many" and accepts that all people (athiests included) are doing what is right for their soul at this point.

Although I'm coming into this with somewhat limited knowledge of Hinduism, you yourself quote, "truth is one, paths are many" indicating that disagreeing with that truth (as atheists, and Christians, and many others do) is incorrect.

Even the most bizarre religion usually adheres to its own pre-existing rules and structure.

Hah. Good one.

Final point: "Prove it" as the ultimate deflator of religious *belief* (as opposed to a specific supernatural event)?

With respect, I think not, firstly because it is impossible to *prove* the non-existance of God (it's very hard to prove a negative on any level, hence we tend to have things like presumption of innocence in criminal trials).

I think you're reversing things a little. You can't (rationally) reach a conclusion, any conclusion, by saying, "Well, you can't disprove it, so there, nyah!" God included.

And secondly because, since religion is based on personal experience and emotion, the person requiring the proof could only call the belief invalid if they underwent the same experiences, with the exact same mental and emotional makeup as the believer, and somehow came to a different conclusion - a virtual impossibility.

Right. Because "personal experience" and "emotion" are a terrible way to reach conclusions. It certainly isn't rational to spend your life's savings on lottery tickets because you have a powerful feeling that you're going to win this time - why should religion be different?

You're just pointing out reasons why theists have trouble proving the existence of God, then saying that they shouldn't have to. The inability to produce proof of God is exactly the point.

[Nat]

"Although I'm coming into this with somewhat limited knowledge of Hinduism, you yourself quote, "truth is one, paths are many" indicating that disagreeing with that truth (as atheists, and Christians, and many others do) is incorrect."

No, it's indicating that the Hindu person doesn't feel they need to foist their beliefs on others - because each person is on their own journey, and it's pointless. Obviously they believe that their religion is the truth - all of us believe that our own thoughts (theist, athiest, whatever) are true.

There is no logical disconnect between the ideas that:
1. a person can really believe that there is a truth of some kind, that is absolute;
2. that person has no interest in dictating the path of other people, including those who choose to believe in no religion at all, and therefore deny the existance of any truth, or any path, or need for a path at all.

Within Hinduism, and I think this is true of other religions that believe in reincarnation, there is a wider acceptance that people have the beliefs that are right for their stage of evolution, and that no one person can hold the whole truth of the universe in their mind.

"Right. Because "personal experience" and "emotion" are a terrible way to reach conclusions. It certainly isn't rational to spend your life's savings on lottery tickets because you have a powerful feeling that you're going to win this time - why should religion be different?"

Personal experience is the way people reach all conclusions! What is a scientific experiment except personal experience - one that can be replicated, and so be experienced by others, under the same circumstances?

Reliable observation and peer-reviewing are just ways of layering more personal experiences, until we reach a consensus we can trust (because our internal belief system allows it).

If personal experience is such a terrible thing, would you buy a new kind of car without taking it for a test drive, and maybe reading how other people, who are experts in that area, have experienced the vehicle first?

Or to put it another way, what is "proof" except "show me" - aka,"let me experience it"? If you're willing to believe in things NO-ONE can experience, I have a magic money-making pixie you might like to buy....

And emotion comes into most choices people make, from what career to follow (usually the one that stirs their desire and ambition), what politics to have (the one that speaks in the right way to their fears and aspirations) to which partner to choose - most people choose through love, not rational deduction!

How many people would swap their own child for one that scores higher on some rational list of achievements or behavioural traits?

It's not a rational choice to eliminate human suffering and disease, on an over-populated planet, yet emotion kicks in and most of us would like to do that, if we could.

"You're just pointing out reasons why theists have trouble proving the existence of God, then saying that they shouldn't have to. The inability to produce proof of God is exactly the point."

No, I'm not saying they shouldn't have to - I'm saying that they can't - how can anyone prove, or disprove, the existance of a non-manifest being using manifest physical methods, such as trying to weigh it, or photograph it, or whatever?

I did state at the top of my point that I wasn't talking about proof of specific supernatural occurances, which are indeed susceptible to objective proof, but the experience of religious belief, the internal experience of connection with some kind of Deity, which is what your post mentions as being susceptible to "Prove it."

You might as well ask someone who says they are in love to prove it.

There is scientific proof that people praying and meditating enter certain physiological and mental states, and there is proof that people in love experience chemical changes, but you can no more prove the existance of love that you can of religious beliefs - they are internal experiences.

To expand on that one, if someone had an imaginary girlfriend they loved, you could prove that person didn't exist, because people are subject to objective observation by outsiders, in a way that is impossible with a non-material, unmanifest being such as most people's versions of God.

Since no-one I know has claimed that their God inhabits a manifest form that can be proven using the rules we'd apply to, for example, proving a new species of elephant exists, that internal reaction - faith - is all we have to go on.

And to ask for objective proof of that experience is, unless we develop systems for downloading someone's entire personality and memory, impossible.

Could you tell me, and this is a serious question, not me being facetious, if there has ever been a serious scientific experiment conducted to DISPROVE the existence of any kind of God? And if so, how was that done?

[Scott Ahlf]

Nat--
"Could you tell me, and this is a serious question, not me being facetious, if there has ever been a serious scientific experiment conducted to DISPROVE the existence of any kind of God? And if so, how was that done?"

This is precisely the point----
You are asking a metaphysical question that cannot be proven or disprove. Science asks questions that are put out for proof, and if any counter evidence is proven, the premise is then no longer valid.
This is not to say that Bronze Age Creation Myths cannot be looked at with embarrassment, and the likelihood of there validity would be astronomical and unlikely to the point of absurdity.
Buddha actually refused to answer metaphysical questions (although the Pali Cannon, the best text we have on the subject was written 400 years later, in another language, on a island in the Indian Ocean by monastics-- tell me the conditions of transmission fidelity on that one!)--
Anyway, we cannot play by the same rules when speaking about these was of observation (or with metaphysics, lack of)

[Cyberpunk Hero]

"There is no logical disconnect between the ideas that:
1. a person can really believe that there is a truth of some kind, that is absolute;
2. that person has no interest in dictating the path of other people, including those who choose to believe in no religion at all, and therefore deny the existance of any truth, or any path, or need for a path at all."

Which misses the point. Hinduism has certain tenets that are incompatible with the accepted reality of other religious worldviews. Therefore, other religious worldviews must be incorrect (according to Hinduism).

What is a scientific experiment except personal experience - one that can be replicated, and so be experienced by others, under the same circumstances?

Precisely. The same experiment can be repeated with the same results. Hardly a "personal" experience.

I'm saying that they can't - how can anyone prove, or disprove, the existance of a non-manifest being using manifest physical methods, such as trying to weigh it, or photograph it, or whatever?

That is quite a dilemma. Interestingly, many fake things don't have proof. It tends to be a hallmark. But that's another story.

And to ask for objective proof of that experience is, unless we develop systems for downloading someone's entire personality and memory, impossible.

That would be why they have the inability to present proof, and therefore are susceptible to a demand for proof.

Could you tell me, and this is a serious question, not me being facetious, if there has ever been a serious scientific experiment conducted to DISPROVE the existence of any kind of God? And if so, how was that done?

Irrelevant, nonsensical, and a straw man.

As I mentioned above, you cannot support the existence of an entity by indicating that it cannot be disproven.

[Nat]

That's correct Scott, I am asking that, and that's why I don't think "prove it" is a valid critique of someone's religious beliefs.

However it's a legitimate and established scientific technique to theorise the existance of a body (subatomic particle or planet, for example) and its nature by observing its effect on other more easily observed objects.

Therefore, people who convert to, or abruptly renounce, any form of religion would probably make a most interesting study for theists and athiests alike.

Only a fool would think that lacking the tools to measure something directly means it cannot exist.

[Nat]

"Which misses the point. Hinduism has certain tenets that are incompatible with the accepted reality of other religious worldviews. Therefore, other religious worldviews must be incorrect (according to Hinduism)."

Nope, they are facets of the truth, since the whole cannot be comprehended, is the general belief. I'm sorry if that's too complicated for you to understand, or if I've explained it inadequately.

Can you accept that you and a cat may see the same thing - say, an electric heater - and understand it completely differently? You may both be right about its effects on your lives - cat thinks it's the wonderful warm glowy thing that deserves affection, you curse the cost of keeping the heating on all the time - but it is in fact just a heater, running off mains electricity.

Your different understandings of it relate to your own limitations and preferences, and neither is therefore a complete experience of all its effects.

"That would be why they have the inability to present proof, and therefore are susceptible to a demand for proof. .... As I mentioned above, you cannot support the existence of an entity by indicating that it cannot be disproven."

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that "prove it" is an irrelevant question when it comes to trying to undermine someone's religious beliefs.

The reality of those experiences for people was the issue, not the (as far as I'm aware, impossible) issue of proving whether any kind of God does or doesn't exist.

""Could you tell me, and this is a serious question, not me being facetious, if there has ever been a serious scientific experiment conducted to DISPROVE the existence of any kind of God? And if so, how was that done?

"Irrelevant, nonsensical, and a straw man."

Not so - it was a genuine question, because I figured you may know more about this since you seem to feel so strongly about the issue.

If you choose to see it as something else that's your choice entirely, but my question was literal, and a request for information.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

Nope, they are facets of the truth, since the whole cannot be comprehended, is the general belief. I'm sorry if that's too complicated for you to understand, or if I've explained it inadequately.

Can you accept that you and a cat may see the same thing - say, an electric heater - and understand it completely differently? You may both be right about its effects on your lives - cat thinks it's the wonderful warm glowy thing that deserves affection, you curse the cost of keeping the heating on all the time - but it is in fact just a heater, running off mains electricity.

Your different understandings of it relate to your own limitations and preferences, and neither is therefore a complete experience of all its effects.

Except this "whole" truth is incompatible with the "whole" truth presented by many other religions. At some point, someone is wrong. To keep backing up and saying, "Well, it's really just a part of a greater whole." is ridiculous since that belief is supposed to be the whole.

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that "prove it" is an irrelevant question when it comes to trying to undermine someone's religious beliefs.

This has nothing to do with undermining belief. This is about the fact that it is impossible to provide any proof to validate any religious belief, making religion quite illogical. (And to swing back around to my original point, that is how atheists see the discussion ending, although theists don't see that as a sufficient reason.)

Not so - it was a genuine question

Then it was a ridiculous one. And a straw man, of course.

[Deets]

Cats do love heaters.

Cyberpunk Hero, you are mistaken about Hinduism, which does not burden itself with the same rigid notions of exclusivity as Western religions tend to. In the Hindu model, there is a formless "godhead," much like the Kabbalist Ein Sof (boundlessness, void, nothingness), that in its turn assumes the form of the reality we know, including gods, devas, avatars...

One could plug in the mythical narratives of Christianity or rationalism without contradiction. In theory anyway. The point is that compatibility is not an issue. The Hindu cosmology is not zero-sum, either/or, as ours is.

Scott A, don't confuse Metaphysics with something touchy-feely. Metaphysics is simply the branch of philosophy that tries to work out how data fits together to form a comprehensible whole. Evolutionary theory is "metaphysical," in that it makes statements about the nature of reality. "No creator god" is just as metaphysical as its opposite.

[Nat]

"To keep backing up and saying, "Well, it's really just a part of a greater whole." is ridiculous since that belief is supposed to be the whole."

Deets has addressed this better than I have, but my sole remaining comment on it is that you are factually wrong about the actual nature of Hindu belief, and you will find verification of that in any halfway thorough academic examination of Hinduism.

Most religious beliefs allow for some degree of mystery (the phrase "God works in mysterious ways" comes to mind) whereby the believer does not need to know everything, just have faith and follow their own path.

""Not so - it was a genuine question

Then it was a ridiculous one. And a straw man, of course."

I'm amused that you keep misinterpreting what was a literal question, it makes me wonder how many other misinterpretations you wilfully apply in life.

As for calling it ridiculous (when I think it bears very relevantly on the whole issue we're discussing) - well, I can't be bothered to insult you back because it's 4.30am here, and I'm feeling very mellow. Suffice to say that as ways of saying "I don't know" go, calling the question ridiculous is about the lamest - I don't think even politicians do that any more.

[BW]

I'm still waiting for an atheist (any atheist!) to respond to Alvin Plantinga's review of Dawkins.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

Cyberpunk Hero, you are mistaken about Hinduism, which does not burden itself with the same rigid notions of exclusivity as Western religions tend to. In the Hindu model, there is a formless "godhead," much like the Kabbalist Ein Sof (boundlessness, void, nothingness), that in its turn assumes the form of the reality we know, including gods, devas, avatars...

One could plug in the mythical narratives of Christianity or rationalism without contradiction. In theory anyway. The point is that compatibility is not an issue. The Hindu cosmology is not zero-sum, either/or, as ours is.

Yes, I understand that from the Hindu perspective, the Christian mythology is entirely compatible. But from the Christian perspective, the idea of "plugging in" Christian mythology into the Hindu mythology is absurd. The compatibility only goes one-way.

I think maybe I'm phrasing myself unclearly. Hinduism works in a way where may coexist with other religions. However, Christianity works in a way where it cannot coexist with Hinduism, except through re-interpretation from the Hindu perspective. So while a Hindu may very well say that the "godhead" assumes the form of the Christian God, it simultaneously says that the "godhead" also assumes the form of other gods, a belief which is incompatible with Christian belief systems.

Hinduism is capable of taking elements from other religions and incorporating them into its belief system, but Christianity is not capable of acknowledging that as valid.

Basically, this is how it goes down: Christianity says, "Hey, I've got a God." Hinduism says, "Cool, that's a form of Brahman." Then Christianity says, "What? No, screw that. It's God. You're wrong."

I'm amused that you keep misinterpreting what was a literal question

I'm taking it quite literally - it's just that the question is nonsense. You may as well ask if scientists have ever spent time devising a way to fesulbub a gorgonshort. No such test could possibly exist, since God's existance or non-existance doesn't change any predictions to the outcome of any conceiveable test. The very idea of God is defined in such as way as to be untestable, so it would be impossible for anyone to even begin the attempt of disproving God in a scientific manner.

[Tom]

BW

You want to see atheists response to Plantinga's review?
Check out http://richarddawkins.net/article,676,The-Dawkins-Confusion-Naturalism-ad-absurdum,Alvin-Plantinga

Lots of replies from lots of atheists. That review had many many flaws, as is well demonstrated by a lot of the comments.

[Scott Ahlf]

Deets--
My use of "metaphysics" has also been used more loosely to refer to "subjects that are beyond the physical world". A "metaphysical bookstore", for instance, is not one that sells books on ontology, but rather one that sells books on spirits, faith healing, crystal power, occultism, and other such topics.
Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy"; the term "science" itself meant "knowledge". The Scientific Revolution, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Metaphysics therefore became the philosophical enquiry into subjects beyond the physical world.-
Religion is the metaphysics I speaking of, and is like playing tennis without a net--
Only the "religious scholars" demand the net up on the return serve--

[Nat]

"Basically, this is how it goes down: Christianity says, "Hey, I've got a God." Hinduism says, "Cool, that's a form of Brahman." Then Christianity says, "What? No, screw that. It's God. You're wrong.""

No, the Hindu is more likely to say, "Good for you." Wrangling about terminology is not part of that path either - the Hindu God can be worshipped under millions of different forms, names and concepts. You're factually wrong.

And regarding the second part, I don't believe I was commenting on what Christians thought anyway?

"You may as well ask if scientists have ever spent time devising a way to fesulbub a gorgonshort."

If millions of people round the world had serious relationships with a gorgonshort, and it motivated religious and political movements that shaped every society on earth, then it would be a legit use of time to check if it actually existed.

Large amounts of study have gone into the purpose and background of dreams, and what (if any) connection they have to our waking consciousness, because although dreams are intangible and only experienced on an inner, personal level they can and do affect people's lives.

Likewise, research continues into so-called psychic phenomena, such as telepathy and telekinesis.... which many people find absurd and many other find fascinating.

So the basic idea that you happen to think any notion of a deity is absurd does not, sadly, mean that everyone else agrees, and therefore I found the idea quite reasonable that someone may at some time have attempted to prove or disprove it with an experiemnt.

Before you displayed your total ignorance about Hinduism, one of the world's largest faiths, I thought you may have heard of such a thing and hence posted my question.

I realise that just confused you and you prefer to retreat into mumblings about "straw men" and the way in which anything you personally find absurd is therefore not a fit subject for serious study, and in so doing you have demonstrated the exact same closed mind and need to be Right while others are Wrong that the worst theist fanatic displays.

I'm mildly dismayed I bothered getting into this conversation, since it has gone nowhere new, but I wish you all the best anyway, it must be hard work being so dogmatic, I don't envy you.

[Willey]

"Large amounts of study have gone into the purpose and background of dreams, and what (if any) connection they have to our waking consciousness, because although dreams are intangible and only experienced on an inner, personal level they can and do affect people's lives."

Ah, then by your logic, dreams are as real as God, since neither can be "measured" by science.

If millions of people round the world had serious relationships with a gorgonshort, and it motivated religious and political movements that shaped every society on earth, then it would be a legit use of time to check if it actually existed.

Most people in the US don't believe in evolution, so does that disprove it automatically? Is this mob rule now?

[Nat]

Dreams have an effect on people's lives and so are a valid subject for scientific research - therefore, that validates my enquiry about whether anyone has ever tried to scientifically prove or disprove the existance of a Deity.

Darwin came up with the theory of evolution not by seeing it in action, but by observing its results, so I'd say it was also in the same broad category of things that can be measured through observing their effects and trying to work out what causes them.

Is it that hard to understand the similarities?

[Deets]

Scott,

I agree that "metaphysical" is often used, colloquially, in the way you describe.

My point was just that science requires an element of metaphysics, in the pure sense, to function meaningfully. It's one thing to conduct experiments and confirm or reject specific hypotheses. It's another to make general statements about reality based on these findings. "There is no god" is metaphysical, just as much as "there is a god." Reductionism is metaphysical, as is string theory, or neo-Darwinism. In that sense there comes a point in every discipline when we all play tennis with the net down.

[Alon Levy]

Roughly, it is really a set of related ideas which go something like this:...

I think you're understating the political critique of Dawkins and Harris. It's not just that they totalize religion (which is basically what your points #4 and #5 say), but also that they seem bent on arguing in ways that have consistently failed to work.

There's nothing special about religion as a political movement, or about new atheism, that makes it impossible to compare it to the plethora of movements that have cropped up in the last century. So, for example, you can look at which feminist books have had a strong positive influence, and which have failed to do any good. Betty Friedan's works fall in the former category; Gloria Steinem's are somewhere in the middle; Susan Brownmiller's fall in the latter. But the things Dawkins and Harris say are a lot more similar to the bullshit theory expounded in Against Our Will than to the clever ideas of The Feminine Mystique that virtually kickstarted second-wave feminism.

It goes both ways. Not only do Dawkins and Harris seem to make a conscious effort to alienate anyone who doesn't already agree with them, but also they don't see how similar behavior among fundamentalists suggests some obvious remedies. The parallels between religious fundamentalism - mainly Islamic, but also Christian and Hindu - and communism are so great that coming up with some analog of regulated capitalism is almost certainly the best way to go. And yet this new atheist movement instead ridicules any such regulated capitalism and instead opts for robber baron capitalism, which is what created communism in the first place.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

No, the Hindu is more likely to say, "Good for you." Wrangling about terminology is not part of that path either - the Hindu God can be worshipped under millions of different forms, names and concepts. You're factually wrong.

I think you're missing the point I made in my previous response.

The Hindus see what the Christians do as being worship of the godhead. The Christians see the idea of a godhead as being, well, blasphemous. The point is that the Hindus aren't agreeing with Christianity as much as they are reinterpreting it into their belief system.

The Hindus MUST see the Christian belief system as being wrong, at least in some areas, since the Christian belief system asserts that Hinduism is wrong.

If millions of people round the world had serious relationships with a gorgonshort, and it motivated religious and political movements that shaped every society on earth, then it would be a legit use of time to check if it actually existed.

Sure. If the existance of a gorgonshort allowed us to make predictions, then we could test whether or not that prediction is true.

I found the idea quite reasonable that someone may at some time have attempted to prove or disprove it with an experiment.

Except that we're dealing with entities without testable properties. That's why your question is so outrageous - you're treating gods like things that can actually be tested scientifically.

Large amounts of study have gone into the purpose and background of dreams, and what (if any) connection they have to our waking consciousness, because although dreams are intangible and only experienced on an inner, personal level they can and do affect people's lives.

Likewise, research continues into so-called psychic phenomena, such as telepathy and telekinesis.... which many people find absurd and many other find fascinating.

Deities are distinct from all of these subjects in that these are testable. They allow us to make testable predictions, giving us the ability to determine their veracity. Deities lack that ability, making even the proposition of "disproving" them ridiculous.

[Harold]

I'd just like to put in a word for an intelligent critical chapter-by-chapter review of Dawkins by Christopher Heard at Higgaion. It's taking him a while but he does do some detailed analysis of Dawkins's arguments, which at least show that Dawkins needed a stern editor.
http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/index.php?paged=5

[Nat]

"The Hindus MUST see the Christian belief system as being wrong, at least in some areas, since the Christian belief system asserts that Hinduism is wrong."

No, they believe it is the right system for that person. You're very big on telling me what Hindus MUST do, have you ever known many? Studied that path?

Ramakrishna, who went on to practice most major religious paths after attaining enlightenment, may be a good place for you to start - of course you don't have to believe any of it but his explanations exceed my own attempts.

You seem mighty keen to project your own intolerances onto a large group of people who have not one single thing in common with your worldview.

"Except that we're dealing with entities without testable properties."

Which brings me back to the point I raised with you, years ago when I still had some enthusiasm for this - how does "Prove it" demolish anyone's religious beliefs?

I'd like it if some bright spark somewhere had come up with a way of testing this, perhaps by observing effects (the effects of prayer and meditation are every bit as tangible as the effects of, for example, alcohol or love) and that's what I asked about.

Sure, I wasted my time, but if the issue of proof is at hand it deserves examination.

If I said to you, say on this page where you're not within earshot of my environment, that I can hear music, and you said "tell me what it weighs, or I won't believe you and you're wrong" and we later established that music cannot be weighed, your argument against my experience of hearing it falls rather flat.

It would be rather more reasonable to ask me if anyone else has heard it, if I can describe it, or if there is any likelihood that a source of music exists at my location.

Only when you've eliminated those possibilities could you safely say I was imagining it.

Intangibles like fear, love, faith, exist in a meaningful way for most of us, when we discuss them we tend to know what the other person is referring to, yet they are only measurable in their effects.

The same is true of god, via the effects of religious belief.

Therefore, for you to:
a. say that religious belief can be demolished by a request for proof that you yourself admit is impossible for anyone to provide, and;
b. to say that you don't believe in something so everyone who does MUST (I'll copy your capitalisation) be wrong, puts you right on the plane of the fanatics and intolerant types who have given religion a bad name throughout history.

If I asked you to provide photographic proof that last week, on a given day, you did not commit a crime, and that proof was in no way possible for you, I would hardly have a case that you must therefore have committed it.

I can't think of any more ways to explain the flaws in your "prove it" statement to you, which you describe as "The magic incantation, capable of crushing all religious beliefs in one fell swoop." - perhaps you may like to ask another grown-up if they can help, if you still don't understand why it's flawed.

And I don't actually want to spend any more time dismantling your nonsense because maybe you need it more than I need to engage with this any more.

[Scott Ahlf]

Deets--
We are back to "God" being metaphysical---
One cannot prove or disprove the premise.
Sure, Bronze Age creation myths can be rejected as childish and embarrassing, and no one with reasonable sized a forebrain can believe, or conversely, not see evolution as valid and observable (one can watch the aids virus select and evolve in a matter of a very short time, empirically)---
I'm with the Buddha on this one--
One should not even argue about unanswerable questions, but they can and should be discussed as pure speculation.

[Deets]

Nat and Cyberpunk hero,

As fate would have it, this article just appeared today on one of my favorite blogs:

http://souljerky.com/articles/invention_of_hinduism.html

(the article is a few years old, but extremely pertinent to your discussion).

Scott,

I think you misread my last post. Yes, God is a metaphysical proposition, but so is atheism. Why won't you apply the same standard? What would Buddha say?

[Scott Ahlf]

Deets:
Entirely right--
Atheism cannot be proved or disproved-(at least not at this point, not necessary unsolvable in the future, as the Buddha would say "don't cling to that one, you will suffer")--
I'm with you Deets
I just don't want you to suffer.
Scott

[Cyberpunk Hero]

No, they believe it is the right system for that person.

Which is exactly another example of the incompatibility. The Christian belief system believes it is the right belief for everyone. The Hindu belief system disagrees. The two clearly disagree.

I don't know how to put this much more simply. If the Hindu belief is that the Christian God is an aspect of Brahman, and the Christian belief that the Christian God is not an aspect of any entity, how does the Hindu belief not include the implicit assertion that the Christian belief is incorrect? I fail to see any support for this conclusion outside what you have been asserting.

Which brings me back to the point I raised with you, years ago when I still had some enthusiasm for this - how does "Prove it" demolish anyone's religious beliefs?

I'm curious what you mean by "demolish anyone's religious beliefs". Are you referring to demolishment as in convincing someone to renounce their beliefs, or as in an argument that demonstrates the lack of validity in a belief? I, of course, was referring to the latter (as I think is apparent in my comments) but your phrasing is a bit unclear.

I'd like it if some bright spark somewhere had come up with a way of testing this, perhaps by observing effects (the effects of prayer and meditation are every bit as tangible as the effects of, for example, alcohol or love) and that's what I asked about.

What sort of effects? As I mentioned earlier, deities are defined in a way as to be untestable. They have no repeatable and testable effects.

If I said to you, say on this page where you're not within earshot of my environment, that I can hear music, and you said "tell me what it weighs, or I won't believe you and you're wrong" and we later established that music cannot be weighed, your argument against my experience of hearing it falls rather flat.

It would be rather more reasonable to ask me if anyone else has heard it, if I can describe it, or if there is any likelihood that a source of music exists at my location.

But you see, you can provide some sort of concrete evidence. Testimony from independant sources, observation of direct evidence, etc.

Without evidence, there is no way to know that a thing exists.

ntangibles like fear, love, faith, exist in a meaningful way for most of us, when we discuss them we tend to know what the other person is referring to, yet they are only measurable in their effects.

"Measurable in their effects." Right there. That's the difference. Love, fear, etc. have effects. Measurable effects. Effects that can be predicted and tested.

The same is true of god, via the effects of religious belief.

That, frankly, is ridiculous. Religious belief has no measurable effects that can be reasonably attributed to deities.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

Deets, thank you for the link to that article. It was a very interesting read.

[Alon Levy]

That, frankly, is ridiculous. Religious belief has no measurable effects that can be reasonably attributed to deities.

People who perform prayer studies would disagree with you on that.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

That, frankly, is ridiculous. Religious belief has no measurable effects that can be reasonably attributed to deities.

People who perform prayer studies would disagree with you on that.

Okay, saw this one coming.

Even if studies were to prove that prayer has some sort of power, it still doesn't mean anything for theism or religion - just that prayer has power. Any connection between an effect of prayer upon the world is, at best, only indirectly connected to the validity of religious belief. To say, "These people prayed, and it seems like their prayer influenced reality, so God must have done something" is an unnecessary stretch.

[Elentar]

Nat--there are fundamentalist Hindu sects out there. They are quite willing to kill unbelievers. This means that Hinduism has triumphalist aspects, regardless of YOUR interpretation of Hinduism. If you want to argue for your interpretation of Hinduism, I suggest you go argue with them. You can, of course, argue what they believe is not true Hinduism. This would put you in the company of moderate Muslims, moderate Christians, etc, etc. When they agree with you, come back to tell us what Hinduism is. This should keep you busy for some time.

To all those who think God has to be disproven: the default position for any claim is disbelief until proven. This is why the British and American justice system insist that someone is innocent until proven guilty--the onus of proof is on the state to prove that THIS person committed the act. Postive claims require positive proof, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Materialism and atheism are simply default logical positions, and will remain so until someone actually provides proof of the existence of God. Despite innumerable attempts over thousands of years, no one ever has. With this track record, the smart bet is that they never will.

Regarding points 4 and 5, the skewed access to social services in uniquely American, which is why religiousity is rising in the States but not in Canada or Europe (anxiety promotes religiousity.) But as for the follies of foreign policy, although Western foreign policy has been appalling in the Middle East, Islam has been a dead culture for 900 years, culturally, scientifically, politically, and socially irrelevant. This is why the Middle East has been a chew toy for the great powers, and will remain so for the forseeable future. Crediting the West for circumstances which predate its rise is not just historically wrong, it's more than a little arrogant.

[BW]

Tom,

Thanks for the link. I must say that I found much more name-calling than reasoned response at that link.

Here I salute the editors of 3quarksdaily for playing an extremely rare and admirable role: that of the gracious and civil champion in the atheism/theism debate.

(Far more gracious and civil than either Dawkins or his critics...)

[Scott Ahlf]

BW-
"Far more gracious and civil than either Dawkins or his critics..."
You obviously have not visited Dawkins web site--
A remarkable diverse range of opinion, openly displayed on the front page--
Of course, the propaganda line will never acknowledge this. Harris is remarkable in his restraint and civility.
But, this is threatening to people clinging to a superstition based reality.
But, agreed, I salute 3Quarks for their open forum.

[seth edenbaum]

"But, this is threatening to people clinging to a superstition based reality."

The question you and everyone else ignores (and I'm pretty sure you'll all continue to do so) is whether there is anyone who doesn't cling to the equivalent of "superstition based reality"
Habits of mind are more dangerous than superstitions per se. The 20th century showed us that. Arguing with the faithful is just a way for rationalists to avoid the real problem: that knowledge isn't wisdom.

Nerds have a hard time with that one. And the humanities is now full of nerds and geeks. Historians will be writing about that sooner or later. In the meantime the humanities are becoming a sidebar to the continuation of the academiic teleology of Sputnik.

[Tom]

BW

Yes there is certainly an element of name-calling in the comments on Dawkins's site. But there are still plenty of reasoned responses tucked away among the others. Which is the important bit, considering your first comment implied that Plantinga's article was difficult for atheists to reply to...

And in a small defence to the name-calling, nearly every one of the anti Dawkins reviews presents the same tired old theist arguments and straw man criticisms, I can understand why some get fed up responding in detail to them.

[Tom]

Seth

I'm interested in your comments, even though I'm sure I'm not completely understanding them.

Surely you don't hold say fundamentalist Christianity and "rational" atheism as equal in terms of validity (an equivalent "superstition based reality")?

[seth edenbaum]

I don't argue with religious people. It's pointless to debate those who argue from faith. You seem unable to grasp that. Your continued willingness to argue with them seems as illogical as their belief. How can you claim to exhibit reason if you are unable to walk a way from such a useless argument?

As often as not the sort of people who challenge the faithful are blind to their own assumptions. Richard Posner calls himself an atheist, and says his economic philosophy is one based on reason. He will maintain that even when empirical evidence contradicts his "law."

Anyone can be seduced by ideas, or by hope.
That's the problem; and avoiding that discussion, as Dawkins and Posner do does more harm than good. They claim a mantle of reason that no one has a right to claim. The 20th century was full of such people, and history has not judged them kindly.

You take it on faith that people are capable of reason. You take it faith that you are as well.
You begin with a mistake.

[seth edenbaum]

... are capable of a consistent reason.

[Tom]

You seem to think you know a bit about me, which is interesting coming from someone who claims that knowledge is so elusive. I can recognise a pointless debate when I see one, and this is definitely one.

I can appreciate the philosophical point, but have little time for its application. Like it or not we all have to deal with this reality and decide how to act. I'm glad that there are people that have faith enough in their reason to work towards a cure for cancer, or debate those who think their God has a problem with condoms when we are faced with the reality of AIDS ravaged Africa.

For what it's worth I have seen both Dawkins and Sam Harris acknowledge that reason/science is based on assumptions. Harris says it well:
The fact that the underpinnings of our knowledge are in some sense inscrutable (and may remain so), the fact that Hume's worries make sense, the fact that Wittgenstein can say things like "our spade is turned," does not place every spurious claim to knowledge on an equal footing with science. The discomfort induced in mathematics by Godel does not make the doctrine of Mormonism even slightly more plausible. There is still a difference between jumping a puddle and walking on water.

Cheers.

[Seth Edenbaum]

Just because I take it for granted that most people with driver's licenses are capable of driving a car safely, that doesn't mean I trust their sense of reason.

You speak in absolute terms, of reason and not. You would call the damaging caste system in India a product of religion. I would call the policies of the IMF and the World Bank over the past 40 years the product of institutional culture and habits of mind. The invention of antibiotics was a breakthrough in modern science, their rampant over-prescription is he product of of faith in the face of reason.

How do you teach people to change their behavior? If you're interested in helping them, you'll learn that there are all sorts of tricks to play and that often people require education in what would otherwise be common sense. This is true of all of us in various ways. A friend of mine gets in screaming fights with an old friend from Harvard Medical School who still defends Bush. And there are scientists who go to church. and who call the West Bank "Judea and Samaria" Silly I know. And sometimes criminal.

So you could try to find ways of engaging these people (sometimes you need to have them arrested) or you could just keep lecturing them But lecturing doesn't do much, unless you're only interested in feeling superior.

This is all pretty basic empiricism

[Scott Ahlf]

Seth- Ah yes, postmodern relativism. It is all grey--
In my world antibiotics work, atomic bombs explode, and the world was not created in 6 days--
I must not be post modern.

[seth edenbaum]

Scott,
Obviously you don't know how to read.
Quote something I wrote back to me and tell me what you think it means. Otherwise this is as useless as arguing with a priest.

[Deets]

Tom,

Harris is a case study in the lost distinction between knowledge and understanding. (That's what you get when human mentation is re-imagined as mere propagation of "memes" without reflection or creativity). This is a man who reportedly practiced Zen Buddhism for 20 years, and yet advocates pre-emptively nuking muslim countries and torturing captives for information. Zen is notoriously prickly, but that's a bit out of scope.

No one I know of, not "postmodernists," not religious zealots, not even nihilists, want to place "every spurious claim to knowledge on an equal footing with science."

Scott, the "shades of gray" metaphor has been caricatured to represent a unitary field of gray goo, without distinction (as in the not-so-clever "how postmodernists see the world" cartoon), but this is not what "shades of gray" means. It really is "all gray" if by gray you mean the "grayscale." I'm sure you saw the news that gonorrhea in America has become resistant to another class of antibiotics. So, yes, in the abstract they "work," but in application it's nowhere near simple.

[Scott Ahlf]

Seth---
Yes, you are wallowing in relativism---
"The question you and everyone else ignores (and I'm pretty sure you'll all continue to do so) is whether there is anyone who doesn't cling to the equivalent of "superstition based reality"
Habits of mind are more dangerous than superstitions per se. The 20th century showed us that. Arguing with the faithful is just a way for rationalists to avoid the real problem: that knowledge isn't wisdom."

However knowledge does create antibiotics (we live in world based on evolution, resistance does happen-so do new antibiotics- welcome to "Darwin's Dangerous Idea")

Other people believe in faith healing---

From personal experience, science, and observation, I'll go with the antibiotics.
The "superstition Based Reality" people can
die of infection, as did a huge portion of the human race before antibiotics.

Thinks are not equal--
Relativism is a meme infected on the intellectual establishment in the 1980's.

Deets-- Antibiotic resistance is evolution in action---
remember Codependent orgination form Buddahism 101?
Nothing grey about it--
Messy feedback loops--

[Tom]

Deets, just a point about what you said about Harris:

"and yet advocates pre-emptively nuking muslim countries and torturing captives for information."

On torture, I think that you are being a bit unfair to Harris and his views. His point is a bit more complex than just "advocating torture".
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

With nuking Muslim countries, can you provide a source for that? I would be very surprised if his views are as black and white as you portray (shades of grey maybe?)

[seth edenbaum]

You literally ignore what you want to.
"However knowledge does create antibiotics"
...and faith leads to their overuse.
I mentioned that before Deets did, but no matter.

You write like an reactionary Catholic. You're less interested in helping people than in proving them wrong. If relativism means an ability to respond to people's beliefs in a way that makes it possible to help them, than I'm a relativist. But of course I'd never let you near any government discussion of health care or drug policy. You'd be a danger to yourself and the rest of us. Empiricism doesn't interest you any more than it interests Donald Rumsfeld.

"Relativism is a meme infected on the intellectual establishment in the 1980's."
And you don't know much history either.

The imagination is a dangerous thing, but not as dangerous as the lack of it. Rational actor theory is more dangerous than born again christianity, that's for damn sure.
I'm done. I say it's pointless to argue with people of faith and I've been doing it all day.

So long kid.

[Scott Ahlf]

Seth--
Agreed
I've played tennis with you for long enough with the net down. I can only let you have it up on the return for so long, then the absurdity of the game is exposed.
This is like being in a Ibsen play.

[Deets]

Tom,

I don't have a page reference (I don't own "End of Faith"), but the operative quotes are:

"Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them."

and

"In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own."(my emphasis)

This have been quoted by more than one reviewer, and I don't think you'll find them anywhere in the Diamond Sutras.

Now, granted, these are conditional statements. He's not just saying "more rubble, less trouble." But does it really matter what the context is when one is arguing for a hypothetical nuclear first strike?

As for torture, I've read the clarifications. My response is that "successful" torture is a fantasy. (See this excellent article by Jim Henley for more on this). I mean the word fantasy in two ways: both as delusion (regarding its effectiveness), and as wish fulfillment. There's something more than pragmatism going on here, and it has something to do, in my opinion, with inflating the boogeyman aspect of "radical Islam" in order to entrench Harris's own position as the rational agonist.

[Deets]

Scott,

What is this "net" you are so fond of mentioning? Can you point to concrete examples of where Seth (or I) hold a double standard over the rules of argument? Concrete only, please, and from this conversation only. Please.

[Scott Ahlf]

"The imagination is a dangerous thing, but not as dangerous as the lack of it. Rational actor theory is more dangerous than born again christianity, that's for damn sure."

While this may be a interesting cocktail party discussion, it is playing with the net down--
It is speculation, and cannot be backed up,
and, forgive me, is playing in the shallow end of the pool with no consequences.

There are consequences with a staph infection, or flying at 50,000 feet--
The net is up again, and every time you fly, you have accepted my perspective is correct.

Relativism is fun, and makes for interesting debate--
But it is just that- debate

[seth edenbaum]

Back for one comment:

Replace "every" with "many" and I know a lot of people who want to place claims to knowledge on an equal footing with science: priests, economists and a few analytical philosophers.

A person may be a considered to be (or expected to be) a rational actor in his field of expertise, as an auto mechanic is expected to be logical while working on an engine, but that says nothing about his behavior the rest of the time. Scott's logic is the logic of technical professionalism as Platonism, and there's no need to go into zen or any other esoterica to point out the fallacy.
Also, he uses tropes he picks up elsewhere: nets being down, relativism and the 80's etc. He cuts and pastes everything but the anger.

[Scott Ahlf]

Deets:
"I don't think you'll find them anywhere in the Diamond Sutras."
I don't think the meditators like myself will survive.
Pinker has convinced me of that--
"But no need to survive" (in fact it is highly unlikely).
Obviously Seths knowledge of Buddhism is limited, and not from direct experience--
Of course I don't know that first hand, so I'm as speculative and judgmental as his superstitions and assumptions are.
I will see what pillow time tonight brings,
or not brings.
metta
Scott

[I. Calvino]

esoteric |ˌesəˈterik| adjective intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest : esoteric philosophical debates.

maybe I will hang around. This is becoming so absurd it's kind of fun.

The imagination is a dangerous thing, but not as dangerous as the lack of it. Rational actor theory is more dangerous than born again christianity, that's for damn sure.

"While this may be a interesting cocktail party discussion, it is playing with the net down--
It is speculation, and cannot be backed up,"

We we could get into some economic history here. Does the name Joe Stiglitz ring a bell?

Maybe one of the other, official geniuses here can rescue Scott, or explain recent debates in economics.
To a tune by Joe Walsh: Just a couple of Or-di-na-ry ra-tio-nal-guys, or: "Hey dude check the microscope!"
Or you could go ax Max [He's my friend.]

[Scott Ahlf]

Calvino--
Hey, I like Max! I Check Max out everyday.
A little market centric, but, hey, the causal conditions of just hanging out in his world would do that.
I can't be saved---
But Jesus does save-- At Bank of America.
Give Max a thumbs up for me.

[Scott Ahlf]

Deets:
One last thing. I saw your reference to Alan Watts on your site.
I had Alan Watts for a scholar in residence for a year, and met with him weekly. Very interesting man, and exploring new ideas very early in the game, but had the usual human faults.
Don't get attached to Alan---
I concerned about you suffering

[Tom]

I interpret Harris's comments on torture to do with highlighting the double standard with respect to society's acceptance of "collateral damage" in war. I think it's a good point and that it raises difficult moral questions that are worth discussing.

The reason I raised the points is only because I thought it was an unfair simplification of what his stated views are. The situation in which he talked about a nuclear strike is so hypothetical that I don't agree at all that he could be said to be advocating nuclear strikes in the way you implied. I think the context does matter.

As for whether he is inflating the danger of fundamentalist Islam for his own gains, you may be right, there would certainly be extra book sales in it for him. I do know that some of the surveys that come out of Islamic communities are very scary and are worth highlighting though.

With him having views that are contrary to Buddhist texts, it's not like Harris claims to be a Buddhist, so I don't see why it is an issue that some/any of his views run against Buddhist philosophy.

Well that's me done, time to stop reading this post-modernist stuff and get back to good old religion bashing. Or not.

Cheers.

[Cosimo Piavosco di Rondo]

Max Sawicky:"A little market centric"
I've been arguing with an idiot.

[Scott Ahlf]

Cosimo--
Don't let that Guy Fawkes mask fool you--
Max is a closet market fundamentalist--
He just doesn't know it---
Scott

[Joe N.]

Dawkins et al. are upset about 9/11. By their accounts it's the worst thing that ever befell humanity, WWII and many other catastrophic events notwithstanding (no irrationality here mind you.) Who's to blame? (Not the politicians and policy makers!) Find a dog to kick. Religion is an easy target, let's take it down a notch or 10 or more. Blah blah blah.

Let's find another dog to kick.
How about science? What are some other big problems we face today (besides terrorism, which is and can only be the most awful of awfuls, because it's "casued" by religion.)

Lets say, destruction of environment, global warming, thermonuclear weapons, all weapons of mass destruction,
rampant obesity, cancers of every form,
inhuman treatment and experimentation on both humans and animals.

Now, I don't suppose science has anything to do with these horrors does it?

Joe N.

[Cosimo Piavosco di Rondo]

"Now, I don't suppose science has anything to do with these horrors does it?"

Science is a tool, nothing more. Tools are neither responsible, nor irresponsible.

[Joe N.]

Cop out. "Science is a tool, nothing more..." said in a wistful Katherine Hepburn sort of way...
Science is a belief system, a culture, a way of life. And its as often wrong as any other.

Even when its right its wrong, for example in promoting nutritional fads and entire industries devoted to servicing those fads that have done nothing to improve the
actual health of Americans.

What if it's all One Big Fat Lie?

Do I dispute the science behind all tehse nutrional studies? Not necessarily (although fraud in Science is becaoming more a problem.) But even so, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And science is always and forever operayting witha little knowledge.

yet again, we still don't really know the long term consequences of profligate use of antibiotics. To assume that it has to be a good long term result is folly.

[Cyberpunk Hero]

Science is a belief system, a culture, a way of life.

Wait, no. That's not even remotely true.

[Shahzad H]

Joe N : "Let's find another dog to kick.
How about science? What are some other big problems we face today (besides terrorism, which is and can only be the most awful of awfuls, because it's "casued" by religion.)"

Elentar : "But as for the follies of foreign policy, although Western foreign policy has been appalling in the Middle East, Islam has been a dead culture for 900 years, culturally, scientifically, politically, and socially irrelevant."

I wonder what Edward Said would have said about the above were he around today. The editors here at 3D have been great, but it's hard to imagine how views such as these are any different from the ones we ascribe to the 'Fundamentalists'. That such statements are now taken to be self evident truths without being challenged is what may have led Said to write 'Orientalism' :)
Cheers.

[ars]

"Science is a belief system.."

Right. That must be why physics PhDs are required to affirm the truth of the theories they have studied before graduation.

Please stop spreading the lie.

[Cosimo Piavosco di et Cetera]

I wasn't clear enough [I should not need to be]

Mathematicians may call themselves formalists but they think of themselves as Platonists (did I say that already?)
For some people automobiles and the internal combustion engine are are a "way of life." To criticise that choice is not to say that cars don't run on gas. Science and the "culture of science" are not the same thing.

Does even one of you understand the difference?

[Jerry Monaco]

I left this post yesterday but perhaps it seems to have been lost. Forgive me for posting again.

I am an atheist who has done a lot of political work with left wing religious folk, mostly around issues concerning Central America. I was a pretty "intolerant" atheist when I began working with these political friends but they taught me to be otherwise. By "intolerant" I mean the following: I thought that because religion is one of the "chains of illusion" (to borrow a phrase from Erich Fromm) one needed to condemn and oppose religion in order to promote "free thought" and in order to deal with "reality". But my religious friends taught me a few things (mostly unintentionally) about myself. Mostly what they taught me is that none of us are free from the chains of illusion, and if you free yourself from religion, there are other areas of self-deception and other delusional belief systems that can easily substitute. Here are a few other lessons from my practical experiences while working with religious people..

1) It is necessary to distinguish "faith" in general from "religious" faith.

This is very much like your first point in regard to Deets. And you do concede that he has a point, but that he goes to far. But I would like to add one more thought to this.

Faith can be based in reason, but what-ever "faith" is, it is mostly "non-rational". For some reason people such as Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, for example, have a deep "faith" that people can think for themselves and that if they think for themselves and act together politically in a democratic way their lives will improve. I am not sure that there is much evidence for this belief.

Faith in "something" is a necessity, even if it is faith in rationality, or that life is worth living, or the idea that people working together can make the world better. The people I worked with did not bring me to believe in their religion or their God, but they showed me that their are deep wells of faith that are not quite "rational." I do not know why people who face possible murder continue to do things like organize for human rights or organize unions but they do and they often explain it to me as a form of "faith." I do not believe that you need to be religious to have this kind of faith but I do not think that it is wholly rational. It is perhaps partly rational.

Further it is necessary to distinguish superstition, irrationalism, and obscurantism from religion in general for historical reasons that I will come to.

2) Religion, Institutions, Ideology: It is probably best to distinguish "religion in general" from any particular form of "organized religion" or from the various social and cultural institutions of religion that form a part of the status quo (particularly the "state") in any given community or society. One of my main problems with Dawkins is that he does not seem to recognized that a "religion with state power" or a religion with allied with "political" power is often dangerous. This is allied with his other blindness for the fact that religion allied with state-power is often "simply" ideology by other means and that the real question from a "naturalistic," point of view, is "why is ideological thinking necessary for state power and institutional mobilization." This question also can be applied when analyzing other human institutions such as business corporations.

The people I worked with in Central American solidarity groups were involved in "organized" religion but for the main part they were setting up their own "base" institutions that worked outside of the accepted status quo. In many ways they looked at themselves as oppositional to the accepted institutions of their own religion. The character of such an oppositional attitude from within a religious orientation can be either "good" or "bad", oppressive or partially liberatory depending on the historical circumstances. It is precisely these historical circumstances which are ignored by Dawkins, though not by all of us atheists.

As an example let me point to the Anabaptists, in their time of historical emergence. They fought vigorously for the separation of Church and State and for such ideas that children should decide for themselves, only when they came of age, if they should be baptized or not -- two ideas that Dawkins vigorously endorses. The "heresy" of the Anabaptists was that they did not believe in established "authority", they believed that individuals (within a "loving" community) should interpret religious doctrines for themselves, that children should not be foisted with religion but should be "baptized" by their own choice when they are old enough to chose "belief." This was their stated "ideology". Let me suggest that many of the beliefs that we as atheists and free thinkers have analogous reflections in many anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian religious movements, even in early Christianity. But when these religious movements become established, and especially when they ally themselves with state and institutional power, they become pro-authority and anti-"free thought." (Note: I am not saying that all non-established religious movements are anti-authoritarian, simply a significant portion of those we find through-out human history since the emergence of complex societies.)

Which brings me to a further point:

3) The battles against superstition and for reason -- battles that Dawkins seeks to carry-on -- have historically taken place from inside various religions, as movements for reform of the established religious institutions. Whether these movements were themselves free of superstition and exhibited high levels of rationality is another question. But it is a simple historical fact that what we would call "enlightened" modes of thinking were most often anti-establishment movements from within various religious systems -- in rebellion against the superstitions, irrationalities, and obscurantism of their day. This is wholly ignored by Dawkins, even when it was those very religious movements that first brought up many of the ideas he expresses.

It is my belief that all of us are prey to various kinds of irrationalism, obscurantism, superstition and other kinds of self-delusion and self-deception simply by the fact that we are human. When these self-delusions and self-deceptions take on a political or social form they are properly called "ideology" and often enough these ideologies have a religious expression.

Being atheists that we also fall prey to these ways of thinking, of course. I don't think that Dawkins is very much aware of how historically these ways of thinking have been fought by various people, religious as well as non-religious, in all ages and how these ways of thinking, believing, and acting are not explained by simply assuming that they are a product of "religious thinking."

4) Dawkins does not acknowledge or seem to know that "religious" thinking seems to be at the roots of much of scientific and rationalist thinking. Historically and culturally, religious thinking as a form of reaction against "orthodoxy", has often led to scientific thinking. I think one only has to look at the various ancient mathematicians in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to see this, or in more recent times Descartes and Newton.

Jerry Monaco

[Abbas Raza]

Dear Jerry,

Thanks for your detailed and reasonable and thought-provoking comment above. Thanks also to all the other commenters for a stimulating discussion.

[seth edenbaum etc.]

"Faith in "something" is a necessity"
No it is not.

[Joe N.]

When I say "Science is a belief system, a culture, a way of life" and its caused mighty big problems I'm talking about how science *is* in the world today. You can make intellectual distinctions all you want but what I'm saying is *this* world we live in is largely the result of 400 years of science. Do I drive a car? Take anitbiotics? Use electronic gadgets (and the internet?) Of course - I'm living in this society and culture like anyone else. But that doesn't prevent me from also seeing that we stand on the precipice of unimaginable environmental destruction. Now, that has a lot more to do with science than with religion. You can say - well, that's how people have "used" science, that's not sciences fault. I don't see how such a statement is anything more than academic. Here's the rub, people will expect "science" to cure these problems. Now the real crux of a lot of these problems is exactly what I said - science is forever and always operating with a little knowledge. We couldn't foresee global warming when the first garage tinkerers brought forth the wonderful horseless carriage and people said "cool beans dude!" And when the scientists at Los Alamos brought forth the A-bomb some of them at least hoped it would end all wars. Hardly - and now some people in our government want to use them again. And who knows what will come out of genetic enegineering. You say - "Whatever - it may be good or bad but science is not to blame should it be bad, just the judgement of those folks who misuse good ol' science?"
Nonsense I say. Its the same old same old. Learn somethnig new and someone will use it full speed ahead damn the consequences. You think now we see that bad things (global warming) happen from teh law of unintended consequences we will mend our ways and not fall prey to such UNFOUNDED FAITH IN PROGRESS again? Hah!

[Joe N.]

To Cosimo:

You say: Science and the "culture of science" are not the same thing.

Same for religion- Dawkins wants to blame all sorts of nastiness on "Religion" per se - well, tit for tat then science must accept blame for all its nasty by-products.

[Cosmo Cosmopolitan]

Science is a tool.
If you want to call religion a tool I'll follow along quite happily, with the caveat that you would mean that it is a "social" tool: a method of maintaining social stability through the rule of and the interpretation of law: the Bible as foundational text. as constitution.

Mysticism is both the least interesting and the least important aspect of religion. The social aspects are quite rational [ask an anthropologist or Pope, either could explain.]
What you mean to do is defend is the rule of law against the rule of science and the culture of words against the culture of numbers.
I'm down with that. But the earth still revolves around the sun.