Despite my dislike of gladiatorial contests, I seem somehow to have acquired a reputation for pugnacity toward religion. Colleagues who agree that there is no God, who agree that we do not need religion to be moral, and agree that we can explain the roots of religion and of morality in non-religious terms, nevertheless come back at me in gentle puzzlement. Why are you so hostile? What is actually wrong with religion? Does it really do so much harm that we should actively fight against it? Why not live and let live, as one does with Taurus and Scorpio, crystal energy and ley lines? Isn't it all just harmless nonsense?
I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally voice toward religion is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement. But my interlocutor usually doesn’t leave it at that. He may go on to say something like this: "Doesn’t your hostility mark you out as a fundamentalist atheist, just as fundamentalist in your own way as the wingnuts of the Bible Belt in theirs?" I need to dispose of this accusation of fundamentalism, for it is distressingly common.
Holy Books vs. Evidence (Fundamentalism and the subversion of science)
Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a very different matter. Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn’t happen with holy books.
Philosophers, especially amateurs with a little philosophical learning, and even more especially those infected with "cultural relativism," may raise a tiresome red herring at this point a scientist’s belief in evidence is itself a matter of fundamentalist faith. I have dealt with this elsewhere, and will only briefly repeat myself here. All of us believe in evidence in our own lives, whatever we may profess with our amateur philosophical hats on.
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I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that.
It is all too easy to confuse fundamentalism with passion. I may well appear passionate when I defend evolution against a fundamentalist creationist, but this is not because of a rival fundamentalism of my own. It is because the evidence for evolution is overwhelmingly strong and I am passionately distressed that my opponent can’t see it--or, more usually, refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book. My passion is increased when I think about how much the poor fundamentalists, and those whom they influence, are missing. The truths of evolution, along with many other scientific truths, are so engrossingly fascinating and beautiful; how truly tragic to die having missed out on all that! Of course that makes me passionate. How could it not? But my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming.
Are criticisms of some as being "fundamentalist" atheists valid? I don't believe so if there are situations that could occur which you agree would change your mind. I don't believe there are similar situations for fundamentalists in the religious sense.
Do Christians consider the Bible to be "evidence" - equivalent to scientific evidence? I believe some do. But so do Mormons (Book of Mormon) and Scientologists (L. Ron Hubbard's writings) of their particular "bibles". Why is one more valid than the others if they were written by the hands of men?
9 comments:
I think that the 'problem' arises when religious books though physically written by men (and it was almost exclusively men who did the writting, editing and deciding what was 'in' and what was 'out') they are inspired or directed by God(s). Therefore they have more validity - and authority - than mere mortal musings known generally as Science.. not matter what the 'proof' being presented. Humans are (very) failable but God is not. Therefore despite the mistakes and contradictions that litter the Bible - and presumably other religious tomes - they are seen as having much more substance than works such as Origin of Species or any of the works of Dawkins.
I agree with CK here. I also think that fallacies or contradictions in holy books are often explained away with various versions of the cliche that mere humans cannot possibly understand the intentions of God. If there's a contradiction that means we aren't understanding it correctly, not that the pencilpusher (or - gasp - God) made a mistake. Infallability seems to me to be a very large, convenient crutch in these cases.
Pretend the Bible never made it this far in time. Pretend every copy was destroyed.
God glorifies himself in nature and creation.
I don't know how anyone can look at the unborn child in the womb and *not* think about a divine creator. You don't have to decide that there is a Creator but don't you find yourself in awe of the miracle of birth? And it truly is a miracle everytime a healthy baby is born in light of everything that could go wrong. We can only be spectators to the wonderful things that life offers--we merely try to understand it. We can't even duplicate it properly.
Look at the ocean and it's depth and vastness--we haven't even covered 1% of the ocean's floor.
Look at the vastness of space--With all our technology, we still don't even know if we're *alone*.
Science explains the "how" or the "why" and the "what" and the "when" but science doesn't explain the beauty of it; the mysteries.
Have you seen Children of Men?
Sadie asked: I don't know how anyone can look at the unborn child in the womb and *not* think about a divine creator.
Quite easily actually. The same way I can look at a kitten, or a flower or an ocean or a galaxy. None of that makes me feel in the slightest that there is a creator - divine or otherwise.
Sadie said: You don't have to decide that there is a Creator but don't you find yourself in awe of the miracle of birth?
No. Birth is a natural process which is very well understood. It is most definitely not a miracle.
Sadie said: And it truly is a miracle everytime a healthy baby is born in light of everything that could go wrong.
Not really. If healthy babies were the exception rather than the rule our species would've died out *long* ago. Many thing can (and do) go wrong with the birth process but the majority of births are pretty normal.
Sadie said: Science explains the "how" or the "why" and the "what" and the "when" but science doesn't explain the beauty of it; the mysteries.
Well, science is *all* about explaining the 'mysteries' and does that pretty well. But obviously science is not designed to explain everything about everything. That's where philosophy etc comes in.
Sadie said: Have you seen Children of Men?
Yes. Great film. I have it on DVD. Why?
Psalm 90 - "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men." Had to figure you would get some religious parallel from the movie. But that's because it is great fiction. Different people take different things from it. I'm sure that CK and myself take something else entirely. If anything, the movie shows a world which God has abandoned.
I love the movie, BTW.
"Science explains the "how" or the "why" and the "what" and the "when" but science doesn't explain the beauty of it; the mysteries."
I disagree. I look at pictures from the Hubble telescope and sure I wonder and try to wrap my brain around the sheer vastness of the universe. I look at a flower and I see beauty, but I also see a natural process of evolution and survival of the fittest at work that allowed that flower to live in the form it's in today.
Science does not have to be sterile of beauty or wonder or awe.
Birth is a natural process at Cyberkitten said. It is a wonderous and awesome process, but it is still nothing more than nature doing what it does. That doesn't strip it of its power and wonder.
I also think there are certain things that science cannot adequately explain. One can say that human emotions are merely chemical reactions in our brains causing various pheromones, neurotransmitters and other physical reactions - but there's something more to consciousness than the sum of its parts. But science doesn't have to be a take it or leave it endeavor. It's not necessarily all or nothing.
If anything, the movie shows a world which God has abandoned.
I agree.
:)
I love the movie, BTW.
Me too. I got the message of "this is what would happen to us if God turned his back on man." Laura said it very well on her blog recently, we're just animals, waiting to rip each other apart.
Funnily the idea of the film having anything to do with God never crossed my mind....... [grin].
Cyber: Me either. It wasn't explained what caused the sterility - so it could have been any number of things. I never saw it as God either. Just shows how different poeple reach vastly different conclusions when presented with the same information...
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