I have not, I think, made a secret of the fact that I am a "Neville Chamberlain atheist," at least when set against the jeremiads of P.Z. Myers or Larry Moran. Part of this is due my personal laissez faire orientation when it comes to to falsities in the minds of others. So long as the falsehoods do not impinge upon my own life I am inclined to let them stand if a full frontal attack would necessitate the spending of time better allocated to other pursuits. Of course, religion is not a trivial thing, its manifestation has significant import for our world. But my own attitude has been shaped by the reading of scientific literature which suggests that some form of organized supernaturalism is an inevitable outcome of modal human psychology. In particular, this passage from In Gods We Trust has been a significant force in my own inclination toward pragmatism in regards to religion:
Finally, the fact that God's word is accepted as true on faith-come what may-entails that it can never be false or deceptive or merely figurative . Ordinary preoccupation with lying and false belief in communication therefore plays no role in interpretation (or at least no consistent role). Neither can failed attempts at verification or confirmation of this or that aspect of the information represented in a religious statement, or inferred from it, undermine the audience's belief in the statement's truth.
On the contrary, apparently discomforming evidence only seems to make believers try harder to understand the deeper truth and to strengthen religious beliefs. For example, after reaading a bogus article on a new fidning from the Dead Sea Scrolls that seemed to contradict Christian doctrine, religious believers who also believed the story reported their religious beliefs reinforced (Batson 1975). For believers, then, confidence in religious doctrine and belief can increase through both, confirmation and disconfirmation of any factual assumptions that may accompany interpretation of those beliefs....
(page 92-93)
There are two major points that I think are important here:
1) Religion is an extremely powerful complex of ideas, robust and resistant to a fault against being overturned. This should not surprise anyone, but, I have met many atheists (including myself) who have attempted either analytic or empirical disconfirmation of the God hypothesis aimed at believers. Data such as the above suggests that we're wasting our time. Of course, people do change their minds and beliefs, but the process is psychologically & socially complex. It isn't a matter of "doing the sums," so to speak.
2) This powerful tendency to not face up to disconfirmation isn't really restricted to religion. Much of Thomas Kuhn's work on science suggests that the same process is at work in that culture, paradigm shifts are enabled by the death of a generation of scientists who refuse to give up on hypotheses long falsified. Similarly, obviously many political beliefs and positions exhibit the same tendency.
As I have stated, religion is natural, and it co-opts conventional human psychology. But, that being said, it is also special. Men do not give their lives for the glory of a scientific hypothesis, but they do die ostensibly in the name of God. The stubborn adherence to the absurd is a common human tendency, but religious beliefs marry this to overwhelmingly powerful emotional valences, drawing on multiple psychological vectors (e.g., emotional attachment to the personal God, identification with the religious community, etc.). There are many tributaries which flow into the river of religion, and that is what gives the phenomenon its torrential power. If religiosity was dependent upon one subsidiary for its robusticity then tackling it would be an easy feat, but it is a many headed hydra. While it maintains its invariant character within the human psyche in the face of countervailing winds, on the social scale measured in generations it is incredibly adaptable and flexible, mutating and accommodating within the broad bounds of its conceptual constraints.
Let me assume for a moment that you, the reader, are in the minority of the human race which does not subscribe to the supernatural religions. How are we to deal with the fact of the ubiquity of religious belief and practice? If religion is a natural phenomenon, what engineering responses can be taken to tame it? If one is building a road and one encounters a mountain there are multiple options which are available. One might destroy the mountain with explosives. One might tunnel through the mountain. Or, one might build around the mountain. Each choice has costs and benefits. Tearing down the mountain will be difficult and entail great cost, and, the consequences of such a geological rearrangement on the overall environment are not trivial. Tunneling through the mountain is an engineering challenge, not without its costs or dangers, though one would expect that the environmental impact might be less than tearing down the mountain as the geological rearrangment is trivial. Finally, going around the mountain involves less cost, but would add length to the road which would translate into long term costs of time for anyone traveling the path (so, the short term cost is slight, but integrated over time it would build up). But a choice we make for one mountain is not a choice we need to make for all mountains, and just as some engineers specialize in tearing down mountains, so others focus on efficient road building. Religion is a complex phenomenon, and if we as unbelievers are to engage it and turn it to our own ends our own models must be sufficiently nuanced and our courses of action multi-faceted and conditional. Otherwise, we fall into the fallacies of the fundamentalists, who are wont to divide the world into their imaginings of darkness and light, denying the textured gradations of reality.
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I agree. I personally do not believe in religion, yet have no desire to "convert" anyone to my beliefs. Most people are into religion (which seems to be an innate characterisitic of most people) and, as long as they do not interfer with the exercise of my personal life, I could care less.
My main beef with the "religious" people (here in the U.S.) is if they try to delay the benefits of the biotech revolution (i.e. effective anti-aging therapies). Except for this issue, I have no problem with christianity, in general, in the U.S. Most christians I have talked to about this issue have no problem with anti-aging biomedical technology, providing it does not use embryos, so I think I have no problem with christians or christianity.
Islam is a different story. Razib, since you know more than I do, your comments will be more relevant than mine with regards to this.
Islam is a different story. Razib, since you know more than I do, your comments will be more relevant than mine with regards to this.
i believe islam needs to be gelded. that is, it needs to be desacralized in the way christianity was in the 17th to the 19th centuries across europe. all gods must bow to the liberal dispensation which makes man the measure of all good things.
May be in general religiousness is the experience of those aspects of our reality, that are per definitionem not precisely to be defined by human reasoning alone - for example: what is beauty? what is goodness? ... - or that are not precisely to be defined by our pure three-dimensional thinking in terms of time and strict relationships of cause and effect - for example: what is matter, what is an electron, what is light, ...
If we see a sunset at the seaside, by physical and neuroscientific thinking we can EXPLAIN the causes of this experience. But at the same time we know, that those aspects, that make this experience a very, very special experience for us, are not "explained" at all by all this scientific explanations alone. There are more aspects of reality beyond the "pure reason" of which the boundaries have been shown by Immanuel Kant.
And for those experiences beyond "pure reason" humanity and our cultures have artists, poets, musicians, dancers, architects and so on, who try to give valid testimonies of this area of experiences of humans. But often they are not proud because of that. Beethoven for example says:
"The true artist has no pride; unhappily he sees that Art has no bounds. Obscurely he feels how far away he is from his aim, and even while others may be admiring him, he mourns his failure to attain that end which his better genius illumines like a distant sun."
Other human beings, fascinated by the great things, that human artists can produce, like to imitate them WITHOUT having talent for that or without having discipline for that or humility or whatever is necessary to produce great and valid art. They use the wrong tools to give valid expressions of these experiences, they have unpure motivations for speaking about these areas beyond pure reason. And most badly: They use their strict three-dimensional, time- and causality-thinking to give testimonies about areas of human experiences, about that no valid testimonies can be given by this tools and methods (as we know since Kant).
Often their motivations are very "unpure". They see, that they can gain power, influence and prestige by speaking about that areas. - And this was the time, when tribal religions and world-religions came into being.
My impression is: Those "religions", that have the most resemblance to the area of arts, that have a lot of beauty in their (often childlike) phantasies and mythologies, that have a lot of humanitarianism, kindness in their thinking, give a better and more valid expression about the area of "pure reason" than those religions, that are predominant today.
The more humankind has gained true scientific insights, the more religion has tried to give testimonies LIKE science and its three-dimensional thinking and the more it lost its ability to give true and valid testimonies of the area, human religiousness comes from.
Modern world religions are only a very last (and bad) phase of all those human religiousness, that is possible. And in general the arts have better tools to give expression of modern "religiousness" than monotheistic religious communities of today.
And if we ask: What makes human experiences (beyond pure reason) "special", I think one often forgotten answer is: "personality". It is the fact, that each human being is unique. If your life comes to an end, one unique possibility of human experience comes to an end.
Some of the nastier elements of organized religion might be countered by pop psychology. If you're constantly nurturing conspiracy theories, maybe there's something WRONG with you. If you're hung-up about homosexuality, maybe you're a latency boy. Feel driven toward asceticism?...you're unbalanced. That would be going around the mountain, I guess.
But, that being said, it is also special. Men do not give their lives for the glory of a scientific hypothesis, but they do die ostensibly in the name of God.
And other things too. Maybe it's not that special either.
Suffering in its most general sense and suffering in particular senses (HIV, the various cancers, sickle cell, homelessness, drug abuse, etc.) are inevitable consequences of human existence and social interaction.
Still, we try to look for ways to cope with, ameliorate, and treat such problems.
We will probably never eliminate religion as long as humans exist. But why should we be complacent about its existence, then?
Razib--
i believe islam needs to be gelded. that is, it needs to be desacralized in the way christianity was in the 17th to the 19th centuries across europe. all gods must bow to the liberal dispensation which makes man the measure of all good things.
Couldn't agree more.
One quibble. I'd say the "desacralizing" occurred primarily between the 18th and mid 20th centuries. The 17th (together with much of the 16th) introduced competition in the form of proliferating protestant sects that eventually had to be accepted as both within the European "family", and something that needed to be somehow coexisted with in many places, rather than endlessly spilling horrific amounts of blood and treasure over fruitlessly trying to eliminate the competition. (Reformation and Counter-Reformation.)
Yes the acceptance of a considerable degree of (still Christian and sacred) religious pluralism was a probably necessary precursor to expanding that pluralism to include Jews (still Bible followers if only part of the Xtian bible) and even Diests in the Englightment, who were well down the road towards desacralization, even if they often didn't quite publically admit it.
I suppose the view of PZites and, particularly, the irritating Sam Harris, is that the mountain is really an active volcano. Therefore, they say, we ought to try to demolish it before it demolishes us. I have always been dubious about the logic. What happens if you try to demolish an active volcano?