Religion Aims, Again
Section 3 of Allen Orr’s review of Richard Dawkins’ A Devil’s Chaplain reminded me of a review of the same book by Michael Ruse. I commented on Ruse’s review last month. Section 3 of Orr’s review deals with Dawkins’ criticisms of religion, and what Orr thinks is wrong with them.
You might argue that what conflicts did occur between science and religion were due to misunderstandings of one or the other. Indeed you might argue that Dawkins’s belief that science and religion can conflict reflects a misconstrual of the nature of religious belief: while scientific beliefs are propositions about the state of the world, religious beliefs are something else—an attempt to attach meaning or value to the world. Religion and science thus move in different dimensions, as Gould and many others have argued.
You might – and a lot of people do. Michael Ruse for example:
People like Dawkins, and the Creationists for that matter, make a mistake about the purposes of science and religion. Science tries to tell us about the physical world and how it works. Religion aims at giving a meaning to the world and to our place in it. Science asks immediate questions. Religion asks ultimate questions. There is no conflict here, except when people mistakenly think that questions from one domain demand answers from the other. Science and religion, evolution and Christianity, need not conflict, but only if each knows its place in human affairs — and stays within these boundaries.
That certainly is a popular argument, or rather assertion, these days, isn’t it. But it isn’t true. Religion does try to tell us about the world – it tells us there’s a supernatural being in charge of it. That is a truth-claim. Religious people do in fact believe in the existence – the real existence, not some fuzzy metaphoric existence – of this supernatural being. They may be vague about the details, but they believe the critter exists – that’s what being religious means. And then, just as I said last time, this business about ‘aiming’ to give a meaning – anyone can aim to do anything. I can aim to give the world a meaning. Does that oblige anyone to accept my attempt? Why are we obliged to be respectful about religion’s ‘aims’ of that kind?
And in any case that claim is a bit of footwork. Both reviewers try to defend religion from Dawkins’ criticisms by changing the definition of religion of the word – but as Dawkins himself points out in one of the essays in A Devil’s Chaplain, that is not the normal meaning of the word. It’s a mere tactic, that kind of thing, and I don’t think it’s respectable.
Christopher Hitchens has some choice things to say about this kind of thing in his Letters to a Young Contrarian:
I have met many brave men and women, morally superior to myself, whose courage in adversity derives from their faith. But whenever they have chosen to speak or write about it, I have found myself appalled by the instant decline of their intellectual and moral standards. They want god on their side and believe they are doing his work – what is this, even at its very best, but an extreme form of solipsism? They proceed from conclusion to evidence; our greatest resource is the mind and the mind is not well-trained by being taught to assume what has to be proved.
So. You might argue that Dawkins’s belief that science and religion can conflict reflects a misconstrual of the nature of religious belief, but you’d be wrong, it doesn’t. It’s the belief of S.J. Gould and Ruse and Orr that it doesn’t that reflects the misconstrual.
Evangelical Atheists such as Dawkins are something of an embarrassment to more thoughtful, and so less vehement, atheists since he is so superstitious; he’s a believer of things he can’t explain. There’s some similarity to Gould, the inadvertent creationist, in that Dawkins’ blind belief mirrors that of theists and lends credence to belief, elevates it above knowledge. His writings resemble religious writings – he witnesses his faith publicly – and so functions in society like any other religious leader proclaiming the superiority of his revelations.
Science does not show that there is no “supernatural being in charge” any more than it shows that there are no superstrings. Science has no information on these subjects though it has searched, so far without convincing results. Those given to wagers predict outcomes, but they typically don’t bet more than they can afford to lose.
Science thus far has had a largely negative role in religious disputes; it can disprove many positive assertions of supernatural events and propose more useful theories of observed processes (e.g. evolution). But science can neither prove nor disprove the core beliefs of Dawkins or any other religious leader yet, and perhaps never will. Dawkins’ is skewered by his own belief since science is as deflating to Dawkins’ beliefs as any other. To cling to his beliefs when they are self contradictory is an entertaining and instructive display of the human capacity for belief. It isn’t just that the magician has something up his sleeve, his hands are disconnected from his wrists. Perhaps neuroscience will provide an explanation for this human capability.
“Science does not show that there is no “supernatural being in charge” any more than it shows that there are no superstrings.”
But Dawkins doesn’t say it does – in fact he says it doesn’t, but also that it doesn’t follow that one should believe anything simply because science can’t show that it doesn’t exist.
From ‘Snake Oil and Holy Water’:
‘Science has no way to disprove the existence of a supreme being (this is strictly true). Therefore, belief or disbelief in a supreme being is a matter of pure, individual inclination, and both are therefore equally deserving of respectful attention! When you say it like that, the fallacy is almost self-evident; we hardly need spell out the reductio ad absurdum. To borrow a point from Bertrand Russell, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbit around the planet Pluto. We can’t disprove it. But that doesn’t mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn’t.’
Dawkins is not an embarrassment to all ‘more thoughtful’ atheists – this one, for example. The atheists who concede way too much ground to the theists just to be kind and ‘tolerant’ are the ones who embarrass me.
Pointing out that evangelical athiests are embarrassing to thoughtful atheists isn’t tolerant of theists, it concedes even less ground since even the beliefs of atheists are questioned. “Superstition ain’t the way”.
But atheism isn’t a belief. If I’ve heard that canard once I’ve heard it a million times. Atheism is simply non-belief, rejection of a belief, refusal to accept a belief, abestention from a belief. The burden of proof is on the people who assert that there is a deity, or a teapot orbiting the sun, not the people who decline to believe them. I’m not a theist in the same way I’m not a fairyist or a Great Pumpkinist. That’s not superstition.
Back40’s quote:
“Science does not show that there is no “supernatural being in charge” any more than it shows that there are no superstrings. Science has no information on these subjects though it has searched, so far without convincing results. Those given to wagers predict outcomes, but they typically don’t bet more than they can afford to lose.”
Yeah, well…science has been consistently demostrating the falsity of religion’s claims to truth for hundreds of years. It might not be able to show there’s nobody in charge (and it shouldn’t try, because the onus of proof should lie with the group that is making the extraordinary claim, as in “God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th”), but it has severely limited the extent of the truth claims that organized religions can make. The embarrasing mistakes made by religions in this sense have been giving headaches to powerful organizations like the Catholic Church for centuries.
“If I’ve heard that canard once I’ve heard it a million times.”
And denied it a million times while stating a raft of beliefs. This gives comfort to theists in the “accidental creationist” way since they percieve the essential similarity of the approach to deep questions.
They think they perceive the essential similarity, they claim they perceive it. I say they don’t, because it isn’t there.
Certainly I have plenty of beliefs, about all sorts of things. So what? What follows from that? I don’t however assert the existence of a supernatural being, still less urge other people to accept the assertion.
And what José said, too. We were saying much the same thing at much the same time.
It isn’t an important issue, one that makes a difference in the way things are or will be, but the perceptions of theists that evangelical atheists are just like them, a competing religion, is demonstrated by the arguments of E.A.s
When José says “it [science] has severely limited the extent of the truth claims that organized religions can make” he fails to note that science has been impacted just as much and in just the same way. The more we learn the less we know since so much of what we thought we knew is false. Science and religion roll with the discoveries and change their narratives to incorporate new information. This isn’t always quick or graceful, but it happens.
Theists see this as competing narratives absorbing new information and that those who belive either narrative are kindred souls. They take comfort from this as it affirms their approach even if it doesn’t confirm their conclusions.
This is the cause of embarrassment for less strident atheists who lack beliefs since they don’t give in to the all too human impulse to believe, to take comfort in certainty.
But who has said anything about certainty? Aren’t you just reading that in?
It seems to me that if one removes the default position that theism is right and non-theists are the ones who have to justify themselves – in short if one removes the burden of proof from the non-theists – then Dawkins doesn’t seem a bit strident. He only seems strident, it seems to me, to people who want to give religion the benefit of the doubt. I simply fail to see why it should get that benefit.
And do less strident atheists lack *all* beliefs?
And your last sentence conflates belief and certainty, but they’re not the same, are they? I don’t use them interchangeably.
I’m a little disappointed that you skipped over Orr’s three strong arguments in order to focus on his weak one, which he admits Dawkins has argued against previously (albeit weakly). What of his contention that Dawkins unfairly privileges science by calling the religious meme a ‘virus’ and the scientific one a meme which adheres to ‘standard methodology’? And what about the argument that the worst evils of the past century have been overwhelmingly secular– even atheist– rather than religious? And Orr answers the charge that religion stands in the way of scientific truth with an historical argument that can hardly be wrong– Christians, and their progeny, have built the best schools for centuries. Why are you evading these arguments?
And, on the final, more common argument– can you really not see how positing a supreme being who represents absolute knowledge, goodness, and power is a gesture which aims to give meaning to life? The theists could hardly believe that it worked if they didn’t say the being really existed, now, could they? The effort to give meaning to life may require a truth claim, but it’s a truth on a different level than the observational truths of science. It’s metaphysical, rather than physical.
I don’t beleive any of it, myself, but I can understand what they’re getting at, and I can understand the willingness to give credence to something which has been believed for millennia before us. I still don’t get the sense that you or Dawkins is even trying to understand before launching your criticism– which is emotional, propagandistic, and not very scientific.
Back40’s new quote:
When José says “it [science] has severely limited the extent of the truth claims that organized religions can make” he fails to note that science has been impacted just as much and in just the same way. The more we learn the less we know since so much of what we thought we knew is false. Science and religion roll with the discoveries and change their narratives to incorporate new information. This isn’t always quick or graceful, but it happens.”
Back40 fails to make an important distinction about the “narratives” (funny, I smell the stench of epistemological relativism) of science and religion. The reason why science has been so impacted(and I don’t agree that science and religion have been impacted in just the same way, but that can be addressed later) is, first, because science never claims to have it absolutely right…it’s an enterprise that works by closer and closer approaches to the truth- in a statistical way, if you like (of course this has also changed through the years too) …it doesn’t ever make claims with the certainty that religions make and it certainly does not pretend to be immutable. Second, (and a very important point to make), science has not been affected in this way by religion’s “discoveries”. Back40 forgets to point out that science has been modified and has changed its “narratives” because of the discoveries made by…(guess who?) Science itself. Its self-corrective character is what makes science, in my view, the most powerful tool ever devised for probing the mysteries of nature.
Marijo’s quote:
“Orr answers the charge that religion stands in the way of scientific truth with an historical argument that can hardly be wrong– Christians, and their progeny, have built the best schools for centuries. Why are you evading these arguments?”
It’s not surprising that Christians have built the best schools for centuries: they practically built the only schools for centuries. Their faith has permeated and dominated the Western World for hundreds of years…to the point that the last 1700 years (but particularly up to the time of the Enlightenment), hardly any school in Europe and the Americas has not been a Christian Institution. But so what? How is that a strong argument? Why doesn’t Marijo point out what, according to her, are the virtues that Christian Schools have that make them the best? Surely objectivity and regard for scientific truth are not some of them, as anybody who’s witnessed the current row about the teaching of Creationism can attest. And if she argues that many scientific discoveries were made by men of the cloth in facilities created by religious institutions it seems to me a non sequitur. It’s like saying that because most of the achievements of science in the last couple of hundred years have happened in the Western World and that the Western World happens to be mostly Christian, ergo Christianity is what has made the scientific discoveries possible. Wrong logic.
The “secular evils” that Marijo refers to were not evil because of their secular character. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others replaced supernatural religion with a totally irrational cult of personality that owes nothing in itself to secularism. Their quasi-religious reverence for the state and its leaders, the unquestioned sacredness of the word and deeds of whoever happened to be on top at the moment is what gave these regimes their evil character. Atheism is just the lack of belief in supernatural beings. It does not pretend to extract any moral values or teachings from that conclusion. It certainly does not pretend to replace God with Chairman Mao or Comrade Stalin. See the contrast between that and religions, which claim moral absolutes. Religious “evils” have been perpetrated directly by organized religions (especially, but not necessarily limited to those of the abrahamic kind)and based directly on religious claims. The Inquisition, the Crusades, the slaughtering of millions of infidels have clearly happened because of that “gott mit uns” mentality. I doubt we can say the same of secularism (Funny, can you imagine an argument for killing and pillaging on the lines of “We’ll attack them and conquer them because there’s no god, or because God is not on our side but is not their side either,…or…etc…)
Marijo,
I’m not evading. I make and made no claim to be doing an exhaustive analysis of Orr’s review. I wanted to talk about that particular argument because it’s one I’ve seen before, and because it’s so lame it surprises me. I tend to specialize in pointing out particularly lame arguments. Why not, after all? People go on making them; I see no reason to stop pointing them out.
“can you really not see how positing a supreme being who represents absolute knowledge, goodness, and power is a gesture which aims to give meaning to life?”
Yes of course I can. I didn’t say I couldn’t. But that’s just my point. ‘Gestures’ can ‘aim at’ giving a meaning to life all they want to, but that doesn’t make their ‘gestures’ or rather truth-claims true – and that was the point at issue.
“The theists could hardly believe that it worked if they didn’t say the being really existed, now, could they?”
Of course not. And herein lies the problem. It’s generally considered bad epistemic practice to let one’s wishes determine one’s estimate of truth claims. There are good and compelling reasons for this thought.
“The effort to give meaning to life may require a truth claim, but it’s a truth on a different level than the observational truths of science. It’s metaphysical, rather than physical.”
Sorry. That’s just religious jargon. There is no ‘different level’. And in any case, my claim is that what you say is simply not true – that religions and religious people do in fact make truth claims in an ordinary sense. They only resort to that different level stuff when pressed, and then they can’t explain it. It’s just hand-waving. ‘You know – that – that – different level, where what I want to be true is true.’
What José said –
“Atheism is just the lack of belief in supernatural beings. It does not pretend to extract any moral values or teachings from that conclusion.”
Exactly. Not a belief, the lack of belief. What I keep saying.
Does religion make truth claims about the physical world — yes.
Do these claims seek a special privilege where they expect to avoid scrutiny and the test of reason — yes.
Are the claims and tenets of religion found to be useful — yes, by some.
The issue that bad thinking and evasive tactics are used to remove these claims from the field of inquiry is one thing — it’s laughable and easy to dismiss. But there is more, they want more than they’re due. They want to expand beyond their proper place, that “different level”. I would gladly give them dominion of their realm, turn my back, walk away and allow them their little poison.
Now if they would just stay in their place, everything would be fine. But they won’t stay there. They try to creep out into public policy, and influence electability. They usurp the intent of clear thinking and rational discourse — well reasoned, best available choices. They chisel demarcation lines where none exist and resist inquiry. Moreover, their intrusions are founded on fanciful writings foul of contradictions and amorphous allusions and claim territory they have not earned. And always creep, creep, creeping into our civil lives.
This can not be said of science and the spirit of the enlightenment. It seeks best possible explanation, given what is known now, and subject to change as new information becomes available. And always stays in it’s place, the field of observable datum.
greg
“do less strident atheists lack *all* beliefs?”
That would require the lemony fresh homo futuris. The human impulse to collapse inquiry and leap to conclusion makes belief a natural temptation. But we have many other natural inclinations that we resist too. It’s no cause for self loathing to be tempted to believe, pro or con, but it isn’t an accurate or useful thing to give in to. Uncertainty exists.
This is confusing for some, they mistake uncertainty for relativism. It’s not difficult to see the difference but it may be novel.
Yes but belief is not the same thing as certainty. The distinction is important. You mentioned beliefs, I pointed out that we all have them. Not certainties, but beliefs. Beliefs can be rational and justified as well as irrational and unjustified. It’s possible to believe true things as well as untrue ones.
In short, we seem to be talking at cross-purposes.
“But there is more, they want more than they’re due. They want to expand beyond their proper place, that “different level”.”
Exactly. People who are called (as Dawkins so routinely is) militant or strident or doctrinaire etc etc atheists are simply responding to the absurd claims and demands of the religious party – for instance that other people should join them in their delusion, or that atheists are less moral than theists.
People who are called (as Dawkins so routinely is) militant or strident or doctrinaire etc etc atheists are simply responding to the absurd claims and demands of the religious party – for instance that other people should join them in their delusion, or that atheists are less moral than theists.
—-
I have always considered morals that one has developed oneself as much more robust than those accepted as part of a faith. Although, even as an atheist, I accept I have been influenced by my upbringing, which included Christian viewpoints.
Sure, I’ve no doubt been influence by Christian viewpoints too. And as is well known, there are plenty of elements of Christian ethics that are well worth being influenced by (though there are others that are not, which is perhaps less well known). But: 1. they are not original with or exclusive to Christianity – Jesus was not the first person ever to recommend loving one’s enemies, and 2. they are worth being influenced by because of their merit, not because of who said them. We pick and choose, and we do the picking and choosing on the basis of criteria that are independent of Christianity or religion in general. As Anthony says: morals accepted as part of a faith are less robust – perhaps precisely because there is so much of the latter kind that we ignore without quite admitting to ourselves that that’s what we’re doing. A kind of double consciousness is built-in.
I’m afraid I find religion quaint. Weird. Superfluous. But mostly harmless, emphasis on the mostly.
However, I also think it’s true that religion and science conflict whenever they attempt to describe the nature of the material world, which is always for science and all too often for religion. One sign of a sensible religion is that it readily gives way to and accepts physical evidence; pathological religions, like creationism and fundamentalism, refuse to surrender even when hit with a sledgehammer of evidence.
Unfortunately, this means that sensible religions are always in retreat, and are vanishing towards a nebulous and abstract metaphysic that has no real meaning in our day-to-day life. I can sort of understand why some people who deeply love their God-poppa set their feet firmly in the sand and refuse to budge another inch, and fight for even the stupidest, most trivial ideas.
It doesn’t change the fact that they are still stupid ideas, unfortunately.
I’m on Ophelia’s side here, against Ruse’s, because it seems fairly clear that a lot of what traditional theists do (those around here, at any rate) involves making truth-apt claims about the way the world is (there exists a such-and-such) and about various events (He makes dead people rise, metes out reward and punishment to immortal souls, and so on). Traditional theists as they understand themselves don’t engage in some Wittgensteinian form of life; they describe the world. They take God’s absence from the inventory of the world to be a serious problem. This all seems right.
But what’s with the dispute about whether atheism is a belief or an absence of belief? I would have thought it’s a belief in a negative existential claim: I believe that Santa does not exist; it’s not merely the case that I fail to believe that Santa exists. What’s the point of denying that one has such a belief? I must be missing something, since I don’t see what hinges on this.
Fontana, if you believe _something_ then you are claiming _something_ and the burden of proof is on your shoulders; if you abstain from believing _something_ (i.e. fail to believe) then you don’t have any burden to prove.
PZ – ‘mostly harmless’. Maybe you’re right, but…just for one thing, I don’t think it’s very good for one’s ability to think clearly. If one just goes ahead and believes in one area, why not all?
fontana, yes, what AAB said. It’s not that I’m denying it, it’s that I’m trying to make clear the asymmetry to people who insist that both are a ‘faith’.
OB
_the asymmetry to people who insist that both are a ‘faith’_
The assumption is a shared sense of meaning. Faith being ‘belief’ without proof. But in this increasingly polar conflict ‘faith’ to the theists means more ‘a belief system that will allow us to face the abyss of existential meaninglessness and survive, relatively intact and still functional’. Maybe there’s a German word for that. The point that no one seems to want to work with is these guys are not stumbling through an accident of illogic, they’re desperately clinging to some flotsam in a storm-tossed sea; literally fighting for their lives, though they may not know it consciously. It’s a biological strategy first; the intellectual aspect, even the metaphysical, comes a distant second.
Greg
_This can not be said of science and the spirit of the enlightenment. It seeks best possible explanation, given what is known now, and subject to change as new information becomes available. And always stays in it’s place, the field of observable datum._
Yes, it stays in its place but, like religion, its self-defined place is everywhere. Saying that science doesn’t enter the metaphysical pulls the rug out from under this discussion. Science goes to the door of metaphysics and says there’s nothing in there. And if science did discover the presence of ‘something’ in there, you can bet your lab-coat there would be an expedition mounted to go see what it was. Pace the necessity of that something having physical presence, and therefore etc…
My problem with that is not the refusal of science to to dilate past the readily observed, it’s the carte blanche of opportunism without governance. The grotesquely absurd insistence that experimental animals feel no pain, or that their experience of pain is so ‘different’ from the human as to be unimportant. The reliance on contemporary cultural morality to guide what are explorations of the culturally yet-unencountered, so that there are no cultural precedents to limit the essentially heartless taking apart of ‘things’ that science is so good at.
We are all, the scientifically sceptical and the spiritually credulous alike, rising out of a swamp of desperate, anxious ignorance.
Jose
_Its self-corrective character is what makes science, in my view, the most powerful tool ever devised for probing the mysteries of nature. _
The dissection of living tissue is what’s modeled there. Probe, cut open, take apart. That the world itself may be a living thing is of course unprovable nonsense. The animist superstitions, of all that exists being alive, we’re done with that.
Life being defined as what we’re doing. Rocks being sort of cohesive in a molecular sense but not really, you know, *alive*. And the stars…
My point being that there are people who would say that the mysteries of nature are capable of dialog, that it’s human blindness and arrogance that prevents it from taking place. So we practice a kind of vivisection on the sacred.
Which brings me to the testimony part. I think the distinction between natural and supernatural is a result of a prior separation from both, that what we are is causing us to miss a lot of what’s there; that the two are the same, there’s no line of division. We see them as separate because we’re separate from them both.
msg says:
“I think the distinction between natural and supernatural is a result of a prior separation from both, that what we are is causing us to miss a lot of what’s there; that the two are the same, there’s no line of division. We see them as separate because we’re separate from them both.”
Do you really think we are separate from the natural? That there is an artificial barrier between what you can probe and investigate and baseless claims than once tested evaporate? What is the supernatural? I can’t conceive of anything existing separate from the natural world. The supernatural, to put it bluntly, is worthless nonsense that we have been holding to desperately for thousands of years. I would figure we should know better by now.
As for the carte blanche status of science that you argue: Who in their sane mind would think experimental animals feel no pain, or that it is unimportant? I would say Darwinian evolution would probably be the strongest tool to argue that the experiences of beings other than humans must be similar, at least qualitatively to our own experiences. The evolutionary view goes a long way towards stressing that most differences in perceptions and experience between sentient beings are of degree. How’s that for arguing that the pain of animals is non-existent or non-important? What does the myth of the soul tell us on this issue?
As for the view that we are “vivisecting the sacred” I think we should be looking first at how some things derive their sacred character. Is it rational to call something sacred? To rely on the “yuck factor” in deciding and defining our morality? Taking refuge in the blurry concept of the “sacred” seems to me a retreat into obscurantism and irrationality.
Science, as a totally amoral entity, should not be blamed for the ethical failures of individuals who use it in a harmful fashion. It does not claim to be the creator and keeper of morality, as opposed to religion, who has a much stronger moral charge against it, considering how its partisans have commited all sorts of atrocities for millenia.
msg:
‘The dissection of living tissue is what’s modeled there. Probe, cut open, take apart. That the world itself may be a living thing is of course unprovable nonsense. The animist superstitions, of all that exists being alive, we’re done with that.’
How does your use of this worthless simile bring anything substantial to the conversation? I am certainly not taking the view that the world is a “living thing”. Have you misunderstood my point? Or is this just the meaningless association of totally different ideas to cloud the issue?
aab:
two points. A long time ago at a conference I heard someone say that you’ve hit philosophical rock-bottom with ‘burden of proof’ arguments, and I get the sense that’s right. Second, I don’t think that only people who believe that p have a burden of proof; we can imagine situations where there’s a burden to vindicate other doxastic attitudes, such as non-belief. For example, the claim “there are no WMD in Iraq”– if someone were to express non-belief (indifference, not belief in its negation), I think it’s fair to say that there’s an epistemic burden on the person to say why that attitude is the right one. So the burden of proof point doesn’t really help.
Erm…
“A long time ago at a conference I heard someone say that you’ve hit philosophical rock-bottom with ‘burden of proof’ arguments, and I get the sense that’s right.”
Your second point is good, but this one leaves something to be desired. You don’t even say what it was a conference of! Could have been pest control officers for all we know. And then that someone. Oh yes? Good old someone – now there’s a name to reckon with!
I’m only mocking.
I meant to answer your question the other day, and then got busy and never got to it. You may be right – but so many people claim that atheism is exactly symmetrical with theism, that both are beliefs in exactly the same way. So I always think it’s worth pointing out that atheism is not (necessarily at any rate) a belief but rather the opposite of one. I just think that is, factually, the case. Not believing in fairies is not a belief, surely. It can also, if pressed, be a belief. If you asked me, ‘Do you believe that fairies don’t exist?’ I would say yes. But I don’t think I have to say that, or formulate the thought, in order to not believe [split infinitive necessary there] in fairies.